I’d sooner have a sister in a whorehouse than a brother on the Pittsburgh
No hard copy of The Sand Pebbles readily to hand at the moment. ADM Mullen ought to read what Richard McKenna had to say about The Beast on page 504.
Everybody who has served has probably served with homosexuals. If they weren’t “openly” homosexual and running off at the mouth about it and making a nuisance of themselves, and they did their job, the heterosexuals could wonder in mild curiosity and not care much one way or the other. There is no great advantage to unit cohesion and esprit d’corps to be had in removing all doubt.
UPDATE 0204101845:
They talked almost desperately about the girls they would have. Their hands would curl with pleasure and their bearded lips roll back. Girls were much more important to a crew’s health than beer or onions. Girls helped to keep in its cage a certain Beast that was always trying to get loose in a ship.
The Beast was trying to get loose in the San Pablo. There were many little signs. The customary skylarking and horseplay began going a bit too far for comfort. Harris began talking openly about the cruiser U.S.S. Pittsburgh. The Beast was notoriously loose in Pittsburgh.
“I’d sooner have a sister in a whorehouse than a brother on the Pittsburgh,” Farren said one day at dinner. That was the saying in the Fleet, about that ship.
“I wish you had a sister on the San Pablo,” Harris said. “But I’d settle for your brother.”
Holman tensed himself to help Farren, if it came to a fight. But Farren let it go.
The next morning when the lights came on there was a small square of canvas, with a handful of damp sand heaped upon it, in Harris’ place at the mess table. Harris had the watch in the engine room. Everyone saw the sand and canvas and no one spoke about it. It was an old, old seagoing warning.
When Harris came off watch he stood and looked down at the sand and canvas. Everyone else looked at Harris. His beard was spiky gray, like his hair. Hair thrust out of his nostrils and ears. It was like quills. He grinned his wolf-trap grin around the compartment and he was wearing the very face of the Beast.
He did not see what he was looking for in any of the other faces. Without a word, he picked up the sand and canvas and carried it outside and dropped it into the river. After that there was no more talk about the Pittsburgh.
Racial image led to removal of 82nd commanders
2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment decapitated by whoever inserted this into their briefing:
“As great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well,”
U.S. ambassador puts brakes on plan to utilize Afghan militias against Taliban
Afghan officials and Eikenberry have also expressed concern that unless there is a detailed plan to connect these village security forces to Ministry of Interior oversight, they could fuel the rise of warlords and undermine the already fragile government in Kabul. Another worry is that the local tribal leaders could manipulate U.S. officers who do not understand politics and tribal grievances in a particular area, U.S. officials said.
“Our level of intelligence is so lacking,” said an adviser to the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan. “We could be supporting people whose interests are not what we think they are.”
State’s level of intelligence is lacking.
Winning Afghanistan at the Community Level by Christopher D. Kolenda
There is nothing more demoralizing than getting clobbered for a cause that people no longer support.
The community level will be decisive—and that support is entirely up for grabs. Communities have been neutral thus far, in part out of a survival psychology that has emerged over the past 30 years. Moreover, the sentiment of many community leaders is that they have not taken a side in this conflict because no one has taken their side. As several elders have remarked, “We are robbed by our government, bombed by international forces, and beaten by the Taliban.” The side that mobilizes their support will tip the balance.
Addressing the underlying conditions enables us to earn local support, disaggregate the enemy, and then apply appropriate means to coopt and reintegrate local fighters, while isolating and destroying the ideological hardcore in detail. Effective security, governance, and development that enfranchise local communities are existential threats to the insurgency.
The regime in Saigon didn’t much care for the CIDG.
Maliki never cared much for the Sons of Iraq. The Marines noted his concerns and pacified Anbar with the help of Sunni militias anyway.
Now the English-speaking Tajiks in Kabul and all their Euroweenie NGO buddies have convinced the American Ambassador to retard the progress of what could have been a success story.
Shit.
According to Dexter Filkins, he was the commander of one of the many pro-government armed groups in the Gardez area.
According to Rohullah Samon, a spokesman for the governor of Paktia province, the attack happened at 4:30pm outside a branch of the Kabul Bank when the suicide bomber approached on foot. “The head of a security company… was moving with his convoy when he was attacked by a suicide bomber wearing a suicide vest,”
According to KEYC Channel 12 Mankato, the security teams that were attacked are joint civilian-military units that secure and develop areas of Afghanistan.
According to AP’s reporting of what Paktia Deputy Gov. Abdul Rahman Mangal said, seven people were killed, including the commander of Afghan security guards at a base for a provincial reconstruction team in Logar province.
Is there more than one PRT in Logar?
Do they have any bases other than Shank?
Does this blog have any readers at FOB Shank who can confirm or deny that their ASG commander was killed in Gardez?
If Nasir Paray was the commander of one of the many pro-government armed groups in the Gardez area, which one was it? Do they have a name?
If Nasir Paray was the head of a security company, which security company?
If Nasir Paray was the ASG commander at Shank, what was he doing in a convoy in front of the Gardez branch of the Bank of Kabul on a Thursday afternoon?
And what had he done that so annoyed the Taliban that they expended a PBIED and much good will to take him out?
ajacksonian comment at Hot Air via that Army of Davids guy
From Walter Russell Mead:
Jacksonians are instinctively democratic and populist. Hamiltonians mistrust democracy; Wilsonians don’t approve of the political rough and tumble. And while Jeffersonians support democracy in principle, they remain concerned that tyrannical majorities can overrule minority rights. Jacksonians believe that the political and moral instincts of the American people are sound and can be trusted, and that the simpler and more direct the process of government is, the better will be the results. In general, while the other schools welcome the representative character of our democracy, Jacksonians tend to see representative rather than direct institutions as necessary evils, and to believe that governments breed corruption and inefficiency the way picnics breed ants. Every administration will be corrupt; every Congress and legislature will be, to some extent, the plaything of lobbyists. Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it’s probably a fly. Jacksonians see corruption as human nature and, within certain ill-defined boundaries of reason and moderation, an inevitable by-product of government.
The outhouse has become a cesspit and now threatens to seep into the basement and take the house with it. You can’t sleep but for the flies and it is well past time to cover up that old pit, back fill it, shore up the foundations of the house and get out the bug spray.
A Tea Party will not be built solely on getting the disaffected from the current two parties, it must reach out into the Independent voting block that is now made up of those who have walked away from both parties and will not adhere to either as they are the parties of flies. Indeed registering disaffected voting age Americans who have let their voting lapse into non-voting is the essential route to take to shift the balance in the US. Those who have been beaten down by ‘bi-partisanship’ and ‘third ways’ and ‘across the aisle agreements’ now see that the flies are equal on both sides of the aisle and that both sides want a larger cess pit, it is just a question of rate of expansion not of doing the deed.
That is the greatest power in America – individuals realizing their liberty and freedom are at stake and exercising their franchise right to choose whoever they want who represents THEM and not a PARTY. Those fundamentals of continually securing the number one greatest freedom, which is the freedom FROM government is one that must be continually repeated, refreshed and renewed. Elected members are not there to ‘help’ this or that segment of the population at the expense of everyone, but to allow individuals to lead the freest life so that liberty can be best used to secure one’s own place in the world and, from that, create a stronger society and a stronger Nation.
The old two party rhetoric now blurs into a zero party State which is ruled by elites who want nothing more than to rule, not govern. Do not accept their either/or solutions when liberty and freedom demonstrate that there are a plethora of ways to do things and that is best left up to you, as an individual, not to any government from local to National. And it is in the local areas that a Tea Party movement will have the most effect: local lawmaking, local regulations, local taxation, local graft, and the dismantling of local political machines.
It is your life, your home, your liberty and your Nation.
Don’t let others tell you what is right or wrong, or how much they will give you if only you will give up your liberty… your freedom… to them.
One man makes a majority.
And that is you.
No one else can do that for you.
Your life depends upon it.
ajacksonian on January 9, 2010 at 9:32 AM
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Maybe.
If not, then stroking out in a fit of apoplectic rage is just what They* want you to do.
I’ve been a casual observer of conspiracies for decades. The entire purpose of many of them is to provoke alarm and foolish outbursts from the truly concerned which can then be amplified and magnified by concern troll agents provocatuer in order to provide a basis for ridicule, delegitimization, and marginalization.
But, then again, some conspiracy theories are true.
Wither Sovereignty – Executive Order Amended to Immunize INTERPOL In America – Is The ICC Next? broke on December 23, 2009.
Why Does Interpol Need Immunity from American Law? same date.
Obama Surrenders U.S. Sovereignty: His INTERPOL Executive Order December 28, 2009
The Interpol question on December 29, 2009
White House Stonewalling on Obama’s Executive Order Unleashing Interpol December 30, 2009
Could Obama Use INTERPOL to Evade Constitutional Law? December 30, 2009
If you really are prepared to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help you God, are you any less prepared today than you were on December 22, 2009, before you knew about Interpol?
Don’t get excited. It matters little what badge they wear.
Clean your weapons. Hone your blades. Contemplate the task before you.
Pray.
* all enemies, foreign and domestic, included amongst which are Transnational Progressivists.
UPDATE 200912311033: Prosecuting American ‘War Crimes’
The International Criminal Court claims jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
There was a pop and then smoke wafted through the cabin. A passenger then climbed over several seats, lunged across the aisle and managed to subdue the suspect, the eyewitnesses said. The Nigerian man was placed in a headlock before being dragged up to the first class cabin. WSJ
Pandemonium ensued as crew members tried to douse the suspect with water.
Passenger Syed Jafry said that’s when a burly man jumped over several seats and tackled the blood-thirsty extremist.
“He took him under his arm and got hold of his neck and then other people helped him,” Jafry, who was sitting three rows behind the suspect, told Fox News. “He handled it very well.”
The heroic passenger was taken to the University of Michigan Medical Center and was still hospitalized Friday night. The extent of his injuries was not revealed. — NY Daily News
UPDATE: Meet the Northwest flight 253 hero
Hero 2009! Kaffir of the Moment! Infidel of the Year Award! Jasper Schuringa!
Al Qaeda: Nigerian Arrested In Failed Plane Attack, Hero Passenger Stops Him
12 GA double ought buck.
Ho, ho, ho!
Who are these guys?
Are these Gordon Brown’s arbakai from two years ago?
Did they used to be Helmand Scouts?
Whoever they are, British Special Forces Support Group apparently have stood up a “highly regarded” force of indigenous auxiliaries.
Special forces troops open up new front against the Taliban in Helmand
British special forces are based in a secret location which The Sunday Telegraph has decided not to identify, where the SFSG select and train Afghan volunteers to serve in the highly regarded Afghan Territorial Force (ATF).
Those who pass the rigorous selection process, which involves physical training, field craft tactics and weapon skills, are posted to front line units to work closely with British troops, where they are now highly regarded.
The Sunday Telegraph has agreed to an MoD request not to publish further details of the relationship between the ATF and the special forces for fear that security may be compromised.
But one defence source said: “The ATF are in great demand. They have saved dozens of British lives. Every unit in Helmand wants to work with them because they are such a fantastic asset.”
I have been trying to keep up with tribal militias, village defense forces, AP3/APPF/Guardians, and any other anti-Taliban Pashtun Armed Supportive Groups, but this is the first I’ve heard of the ATF
UPDATE 1212092020: Found this dated 8 Apr 09
Brigade Reconnaissance Force (BRF) and Afghan Territorial Force (ATF)
The BRF is an integral asset of UKLF CSG, [United Kingdom Landing Force Command Support Group] and the ATF is a collaboration between UK and Afghan personnel that seeks to maximise the impact of the newly formed indigenous security forces. Working alongside ATF provided the troops with local insight. Working with some 14 different organisations, there have been elements deployed on the ground for over 100 days during the last six months and the energy and flexibility of the reconnaissance troops was shown in the nine different major operations that BRF have been involved in over the tour.Just prior to Christmas, and again recently, they were involved in independent initiatives in the areas of Nad-e-Ali and Marjah which have done much to facilitate the increasing security within Lashkar Gah, Helmand’s provincial capital. These areas are used as safe havens for the Taliban leadership and provide substantial levels of income to the enemy through poppy cultivation. In addition, BRF has protected logistic patrols and successful counter-narcotic operations have also seen them capture over 10 tonnes of poppy seed, 5 tonnes of hashish and 80kg of wet opium.
UPDATE 1215091015: House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 12 May 2009 (pt 0025)
£500,000 cash gift to the Government of Afghanistan to allow them to equip an Afghan Territorial Force in Helmand province. (Notified to the House of Commons in a departmental minute of 30 October 2006).
So the ATF has been in the works since October, 2006?
- FILE0068 on Flickr Uploaded on December 16, 2007 by ChuckHolton
Marines Pounce Behind Taliban Lines With Ospreys and Armored Steamrollers
Why, Google Without Terrorist Propaganda is Like Whip Cream Without the Cherry!
Google: helping make terrorist dreams come true
How many Jihadi videos did Hasan watch on YouTube?
Self-radicalization without Jihadi videos is like self-gratification without porn. Pictures get you there quicker.
UPDATE: 200911271035 The next time the Taliban kill an American, thank Google’s YouTube service for helping spread their vile propaganda.
Countering enemy propaganda is a mission self-mobilized Civilian Irregular Counter-Insurgent Supportive Information Operators can do.
Why does Google get away with it?
UPDATE: 200912311016 Dawn Patrol-alanche! Welcome, Dawn Patrollers.
The Afghan National Army still isn’t ready for prime time.
The Afghan National Police are more likely to shake you down at a check point on the highway than do any silly cop stuff like fight crime or lock up criminals. The most gung ho Police Mentoring Team can’t fix the courts and the jails.
The National Directorate of Security gets mentored by whom, exactly?
Afghan National Security Forces need more help than we can give them and they can absorb between now and Obama’s declaration of “Peace With Honor.”
So how ’bout we spread some love to sub-national Security Forces at the provincial, district, and tribal levels?
I hate the New York Slimes. I hate linking to them.
I don’t hate Dexter Filkins.
As Afghans Resist Taliban, U.S. Spurs Rise of Militias
Reader’s Digest version:
The American and Afghan officials say they are hoping the plan, called the Community Defense Initiative, will bring together thousands of gunmen to protect their neighborhoods from Taliban insurgents. Already there are hundreds of Afghans who are acting on their own against the Taliban, officials say.
“The idea is to get people to take responsibility for their own security,” said a senior American military official in Kabul, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “In many places they are already doing that.”
The first phase of the Afghan plan, now being carried out by American Special Forces soldiers, is to set up or expand the militias in areas with a population of about a million people. Special Forces soldiers have been fanning out across the countryside, descending from helicopters into valleys where the residents have taken up arms against the Taliban and offering their help.
One of the most striking examples of a local militia rising up on its own is here in Achin, a predominantly Pashtun district in Nangarhar Province that straddles the border with Pakistan. In July, a long-running dispute between local Taliban fighters and elders from the Shinwari tribe flared up. When a local Taliban warlord named Khona brought a more senior commander from Pakistan to help in the confrontation, the elders in the Shinwari tribe rallied villagers from up and down the valley where they live, killed the commander and chased Khona away.
The feud between the Taliban and the Shinwari elders caught the attention of American officers, who sent a team of Special Forces soldiers to the valley. This reporter was unable to reach the interior of the valley where the men live, so it was difficult to verify all of the elders’ claims.
Both the Shinwari elders said that “Americans with beards” had flown into the valley twice in recent weeks and had given them flour and boxes of ammunition. (Unlike other American troops, Special Forces soldiers are allowed to wear beards.)
American officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they intended to help organize and train the Shinwari militia. They said they would give them communication gear that would enable them to call the Afghan police if they needed help.
Read the whole thing.
That ODA working with the Shinwari are having some hellacious adventures. Allowing their story to be told could persuade, change and influence elements of the domestic target audience in ways beneficial to U. S. Army Special Forces and maybe even beneficial to “victory.”
Meanwhile, back at Camp Eggers . . .
UPDATE 1123090128: Tim Lynch sez Dexter Filkins writes a great article and it is worth reading but unfortunately as in most things published by the New York Times it is complete bullshit.
UPDATE 1124090215: Beaucoup links
A question of tribal policy, November 24, 2009 12:00AM
Secret U.S. plan to support Afghan militias echoes Canadian general’s ideas, Monday 23 November 2009
Gravediggers Disinter Tribal Militia Corpse, November 23, 2009
US pours millions into anti-Taliban militias in Afghanistan, Sunday 22 November 2009 18.48 GMT
Message: Local forms of security emerge once an area is cleared and villagers have something to protect.
Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Enquirer, Bypassing the Karzai Problem
5. Local security helps keep the peace. At intervals along the newly paved “Chinese road” stand armed local home guards. They are the controversial Afghan Public Protection force, known as the AP3, who are recruited by local elders, paid by the Afghan Interior Ministry, and trained (briefly) by U.S. forces. They are a transitional force meant to watch for outsiders. I was skeptical about their usefulness when I visited Wardak in May. But Fidai, who promoted the AP3, says that “where there are AP3 there are no IEDs,” because locals are more willing to give intelligence tips to homeboys. So the AP3 should be retained until the Afghan national police can be expanded sufficiently to staff remote areas of Wardak.
Message: Local forms of security emerge once an area is cleared and villagers have something to protect.
An AP3 skeptic sees the light.
Been scanning for positive news of the AP3. Not much out there. The Quiet Professionals are too quiet. Who is supposed to be strategically communicating to the American target audience about the successes ( there are some, aren’t there?) of what may be one of the most successful programs for using civilian forces since the Civilian Irregular Defense Group in Vietnam?
More on the Chinese Road. How are they going to get all that copper to China? There’s no road through the Wakhjir Pass trafficable for vehicles.
Che-Supporting Commie Goons Beat Tea Party Protesters In Florida (AMAZING Video)
The Cold Civil War warmed up while you weren’t paying attention.
Unarmed self-defense techniques and handiness with video cameras will be worth more than CCW’s and marksmanship in persuading, changing and influencing the fence-sitters.
Looks like the Guardians of Wardak aren’t meeting expectations.
Allied exit strategy at risk as Afghan police run out of recruits
Recruits for the Afghan Public Protection Force are usually sent to Laghman to be trained by American Special Forces. “There hasn’t been a single recruit for more than a month and a half,” General Agha said. “More than a hundred people were rounded up and sent to the training centre, but the commander in charge told me they ran away. Iran opened the border [in the west] and they all thought it was better to go abroad.”
Those who do graduate are armed with AK47 assault rifles and most serve as “light infantry in counterinsurgency operations”, according to a critical report by the European Union.
Too bad.
Been tracking AP3 about 10 months now:
Wardak Awakening, 12/23/09
Afghan Public Protection Force, 02/02/09
Did ANSO Strategically Leak a Classified Email to HuffPo?, 02/11/09
Saydabad Jezailchis, 03/25/09
Jalrez Jezailchis on AlJazeera, 03/28/09
Jalrez Jezailchis Off To Rough Start, 04/09/09
No Zayawalat Jezailchis, 04/14/09
Will Johnny Utah Ever See His Surefire Again?, 05/2/09
Commander Tor Gol, Nirkh Jezailchis, 06/03/09
Wardak Jezailchis Didn’t Cover Themselves With Glory
Clicking on the above links will give you a good idea of what the Quiet Professionals have strategically communicated, or allowed to be strategically communicated unrebutted, about what used to be one of their core competencies.
Non-victory makes perfect sense in the political context of someone whose idea of a solution is a ‘deal’
Read The real thing @ TBC.
America won’t be run out of Afghanistan. It will lose interest and walk away.
6. Nomenklatura:
‘Managing a conflict’, which means actually extending it for the mutual convenience of collaborators in Washington and Karachi, and continuously bleeding our armed forces to make it happen, is not what the US Armed Forces have ever been about, nor should it be. Only a politician who sees the US soldier as no more than an ignorant, expendable peasant could commit this error…
32. Armeggedon Rex:
Many have commented here at the Belmont Club and elsewhere asking something similar to: “If Obama were intentionally trying to wreck the U.S., without being immediately impeached, how would his actions be any different than everything we’ve seen thus far?”
At first I wrote these folks off as excessively partisan, but as time passes, and mind-blowing idiocies pile up, I’m thinking more and more that they make an excellent point.
50. wretchard:
The difference between what Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson did is an example of right versus wrong application. One gave you Korea and the other Vietnam. It’s easy now to forget the Iraqi sanctions regime, the Bosnian crisis, etc. were not obviously better, or carried on ad infinitum, necessarily cheaper in terms of human life than going in and doing something. But going in doing something created its own complications. That’s probably what President Obama is afraid of, to give him his due. Giving McChrystal extra men lets him change the game — which the general wants to do — but which carries the risk of introducing new elements. It’s like letting him shuffle the deck and re-deal. What does the President prefer? The devil he knows or the devil he doesn’t?
Not who I thought it was at first glance
The author of Fundamentals of Guerrilla Warfare
Media Malpractice: Tom Brokaw’s World Implodes
Americans have learned the hard way that there was and is a serious effort by some of the most powerful figures in American journalism to quite deliberately keep Americans from making “informed decisions” by denying them accurate information. By ignoring major news stories. By not reporting stories that were or are at variance with liberal politics
More:
. . . across five decades of American journalistic history, the instinct of many Old Media institutions — specifically including NBC and the New York Times — has been to deliberately withhold the truth. To quite deliberately use their journalism skills and tools to misrepresent those whose politics they do not favor.
The money quote:
What once was a considerable reservoir of trust and respect has been drained bone dry.
Two kids with a video camera and some cheesy clothes have done what all the talk show hosts haven’t been able to do over the last year
Found in a comment at TAH:
8 Dave Thul Says:
September 15th, 2009 at 10:07 pm Whatever else comes of this, you have to admire the two people behind the camera. The film maker said on Beck that they had spent about 1300 bucks on the whole thing.Imagine that. Two kids with a video camera and some cheesy clothes have done what all the talk show hosts haven’t been able to do over the last year-take a bite out of ACORN. The census bureau cut ties, and the Senate voted to cut all federal funding. Whether or not the House goes along with it, it was inconceivable two weeks ago that ACORN would be on the outs with Congress.Good work to those two.
James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles are the Civilian Irregular Information Operators /Strategic Citizens I’ve been waiting for.
Strategy Page list this under Peacekeeping:
September 7, 2009: China has quietly been training Afghan police, in the area along the China/Afghan border (the Wakhan Corridor). This area has never been very violent, and escaped most of the fighting that has torn apart Afghanistan since the 1970s. But China refuses to open its border with Afghanistan, fearing complications with the mainly Moslem population on their side of the frontier.
While the Chinese training effort, which is fairly small, has been reported inside China, it has received little, or no, notice by the Western media.
That piqued my interest when I read it, so much that I commented over there:
Cannoneer No. 4 China has a Police Mentoring Team in Badakhshan? 9/7/2009 6:53:28 PM
Does Regional Police Advisory Command of Afghan Regional Security Integration Command – North know about this?What kind of Afghan Police are being trained by the Chinese? Border Police? Counter Narcotics Police? Counter Terrorism Police? Copper mine security Auxiliary Police?
What kind of Chinese are training Afghan Police? People’s Liberation Army Special Operations Forces? Chinese Armed Police Commando Unit?
Why should China open a border crossing at 4,293 meters [14,084 feet] above sea level that is snowed under seven months of the year? Did the Chinese PMT enter Afghanistan at Wakhjir Pass?
Nobody answered any of my questions over there. Perhaps the readership over here knows something.
I don’t think China refuses to open its border with Afghanistan. I think there is no there, there at the border crossing. No town, no road, nothing. I can’t even find a pic of a guard shack. According to Wikipedia,
There is no road across the pass. On the Afghan side the nearest road is a rough road to Sarhad-e Wakhan (also known as Sarhad-e Broghil), about 100 km [62 miles] from the pass by paths. On the Chinese side there is a jeep track about 15 km [9.3 miles] from the pass, which leads to the Karakoram Highway 80 km [50 miles] away. The pass is closed for at least five months a year and is open irregularly for the remainder.
