AUTHOR’S NOTE: Just needed to say this… – ARRIAS A good man passed away the other day… I’ll call him Mr. Smith. He deserves, as much as is possible, given his career, a note on his passing. You don’t know him, and in all likelihood you never will. He worked for one of those organizations […]

When a Captain or Colonel is promoted to admiral or general, he is sent through a program called “Capstone,” which is basically a 6 week program to make sure all new admirals and generals understand how the services integrate in support of national strategy. A friend of mine told me that when he went through […]

Cruising in an Auburn roadster, Sliding down a twisting country lane, Speckled sunlight through the elms, In the distance lumbers a huge coal train. With a sultry blonde by my side, We drive beside a lazy river, A stand of towering cottonwoods, In the breeze their leaves gently shiver. She’s wears a broad straw hat […]

There’s a minor cottage industry that has sprung up in the last 12 months in which various foreign policy mavens play Nostradamus and forecast “How the War in Ukraine will end,” some with a good deal of detail, some with a very broad hand waving at a map of the world. Of course, using the […]

A distant moan, a growl, the treetops shake, A rafter of turkeys wander out of the trees, Pecking through the grass, feathers ruffled in the breeze, Dawn approaches, the Dismal Swamp awakes. The deer disappear, under the still-green leaf, Fat they’ve all grown through summer’s dog days, Soon trees’ will be dressed in a multi-hued […]

There is a great scene in “the Raiders of the Lost Ark” in which Indiana Jones jumps on a horse to chase the Nazis in their big Mercedes Benz touring car, and he is asked: “What are you going to do?” Jones answers, in his insouciant, devil-may-care style: “I don’t know, I’m making this up […]

There have been a number of articles of late that have made the case that the only thing we can all do now in Ukraine is to back the Ukrainians all the way to victory. The basics of the argument are: The war has involved so much violence on both sides that neither side has […]

What if the train were late? That thought occurred to me as I drove out of Washington DC the other day headed south, and saw the ever-spreading metropolitan area of Washington that now reaches down and through Fredericksburg, Virginia. In a short stream of consciousness moment I imagined myself trying to take the train from […]

Author’s Note: My Muse arrived with the hummingbirds this morning…Arrias In the Dismal Swamp on a summer morn, The air is thick and warm, Like a blanket is lies over the wood, Will the afternoon bring a summer storm… The air is still, not a leaf does stir, Not a peep or a rasp or […]

Franklin Roosevelt, when Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Wilson cabinet, remarked to a friend that: “it would be wonderful to be a war President.” That thought has probably crossed the mind of many a politician who sees himself as a great leader. The war in Ukraine has been grinding on now for almost […]