Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Teflon Decision-Making from Our Military By Bing West
Monday, May 13, 2013
Sunday
was quite a day for Benghazi and the U.S. military. At the platoon
level, you are expected to admit errors in firefights in order to
correct mistakes and do better the next time. We all make mistakes. But
as we saw on yesterday’s talk shows, once you reach the top level,
whether retired or not, you deny any possibility of error and label any
question about military performance idiotic. This is not the behavior of
a healthy organization, and if it persists, we are in for a nasty shock
in a future crisis or conflict. On
CBS, former secretary of defense Bob Gates launched an impassioned
defense of the Obama administration, sneering at critics for holding a
“cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces.” He
staunchly defended the administration’s high-level decision-making
surrounding Benghazi, citing four reasons. First,
he said sending fighter jets “ignored the number of surface to air
missiles that have disappeared from Qaddafi’s arsenals. I would not have
approved sending an aircraft, a single aircraft, over Benghazi.”How
many aircraft has the U.S. lost in hundreds of thousands of combat
flights since 2001? Zero. The former SecDef is so afraid of an unknown
risk that he would not send an aircraft capable of destroying a mortar
site while Americans died? This is the pinnacle of risk avoidance. Second,
he said, ”To send some small number of special forces or other troops
in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the
threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually
going on on the ground, would have been very dangerous.” Let’s do a
quick review: The CIA did send in seven fighters; four special-forces
soldiers in Tripoli were ordered not to pitch in; the Marines on
Sigonella wanted to help; and there was nothing more to face than a mob
inspired by a video (accoridng to the administration). But for the
Pentagon, the risk was just too great. Message to those who were
already fighting on the ground in Benghazi: You are on your own. SecDef
believes it’s “very dangerous” to go into combat. Third,
Gates argued, “We don’t have a ready force standing by in the Middle
East, and so getting somebody there in a timely way would have been very
difficult, if not impossible. The one thing that our forces are noted
for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm’s way, and
there just wasn’t time to do that.”Message to warfighters:
Forget all those who, like Generals Mattis, Patton and Marshall, claim
that in combat the ability to improvise is the mark of a true leader.
The Pentagon will simply refuse to fight if we have not had the time to
plan and prepare as we see fit. Fourth, Gates explained, “my decisions would have been just as theirs were.” Sadly, I believe him. Meanwhile,
over on ABC, George Will and retired general James Cartwright were
excusing the military by saying ten hours was not enough time to react.
The general said it takes up to “a day or two” to arm an F-16, file
flight plans, arrange for refueling, etc. Therefore the solution is to
pre-stage the right kinds of forces, which requires a much larger
military and a knowledge beforehand about the location and severity of
the threat. By the reasoning of Will, Cartwright, and
Gates, we do not have general-purpose forces; we have special-purpose
forces. Do we need more forces staged around the world, or do we
just need senior officers who can respond to emergencies outside their
normal checklists? Appearing
on CBS and NBC, retired ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, who led a
review of Benghazi, said in the process he posed no questions to
Secretary Clinton. “I don’t think there was anything there that we
didn’t know,” he said. “I don’t see yet any reason why what we did at
the Accountability Review Board should be reopened.” It was
the review board that asserted the U.S. military could do nothing to
help. The review made no mention of evacuating the embassy at Tripoli
because of the risk of a terrorist attack, presumably because there
wasn’t “anything there that we didn’t know.” In fact, the congressional testimony by Mr. Hicks did include at least three new revelations. First,
very senior State Department officials reprimanded Hicks for bringing
up the idea of a terrorist attack, rather than a mob enraged by a video. Second,
four special-forces soldiers, en route to Benghazi to help our wounded,
were ordered by an officer in Stuttgart to stand down. Not only did
that suggest unwillingness to take risks for beleaguered comrades, it
also raised the question of misplaced authority in the chain of command
during battle. What authority permits an officer thousands of miles away
to override the commander on the ground? Third, Mr. Hicks testified that Secretary Clinton approved, at about 8p.m. Washington
time, the evacuation of the embassy in Tripoli dueto terrorist
threats. That was a dramatic, escalatory decision, and it’s unknown
whether the president or the Secretary of Defense was notified. In
the event, the U.S. military took no new, immediate action, even though
the embassy was being evacuated, as a result of the chaos at Benghazi.
That is big news. The military has justified itself by saying the battle
was over by the next morning, but no human being could predict when the
battle would end. Had the embassy in Tripoli been overrun, the military
would not have rationalized its non-actions by saying, “well, the
battle was over.” The lack of military action reflects a failure to improvise, a basic test of leadership in battle. One
question illustrates the inertia of our top generals and staffs: Had it
been President Obama who was missing in Benghazi, would the military
still have done nothing? National Review
