Archive for December, 2011
On the warm evening of 17 December 1939, the German panzerschiff KMS Graf Spee glided silently into the shipping channel of the River Plate (Rio de la Plata) at the mouth of the harbor in Montevideo, Uruguay. She cleared the channel at about 1830 local time, and the crowds gathered pierside (and beside their radios in England) assumed she was headed to sea to re-engage Commodore Harwood’s HMS Cumberland and two battered light cruisers, Ajax and Achilles.
Graf Spee had haunting connections to the waters in which she found herself. She was named for Admiral Maximillian Graf von Spee, who, with his two sons, and his Sudseegeschwader of cruisers Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, Nurnberg, Leipzig, and Dresden had met their ends off South America in the Battle of the Falkands, a battle that included an eerie parallel to the events of December 1939, and was fought just nine hundred miles from where Graf Spee now sailed, almost exactly twenty five years before.
What the crowds who watched the drama didn’t know was that Graf Spee was manned by a skeleton crew of officers and senior rates. Her captain, Hans Langsdorff, had made the decision to scuttle his ship. Graf Spee came to a stop at about 2000, when her remaining crew were taken off by tug. Scuttling charges exploded, along with munitions in her magazines, in the fading evening light.
For many, including the leadership of the Third Reich, the move seemed inexplicable, even cowardly. Further examination in the aftermath of events reveals a situation of serious damage to Graf Spee, a touching humanity from her Captain, and a web of British deceit that forced the German Captain’s hand.
- Damage to HMS Exeter A and B Turrets
On 13 December, Graf Spee engaged in a dawn running fight against Harwood’s force of HMS Exeter, as well as light cruisers Ajax and Achilles. Graf Spee’s six 11-in (28cm) guns wrecked Exeter, and damaged Achilles and Ajax. However, in the exchange Graf Spee was struck no fewer than thirty times. Hits had wrecked her Arado float planes, her foretop rangefinder, and her galley. More importantly, Graf Spee’s oil purifier, required for her diesel engines, was damaged by an 8-in hit from Exeter, leaving her with fuel for just twenty hours’ operation.
Damage to Graf Spee
In the mean time, British intelligence spread disinformation that heavy Royal Navy units which included battlecruiser Renown and aircraft carrier Ark Royal, lay over the horizon off Montevideo to intercept Graf Spee. In actuality, any Royal Navy units capable of defeating the German were unable to intercept until the 19th at the earliest. But the rumors were convincing enough for the numerous German agents to faithfully report the information to the German consulate, and to Langsdorff.
Captain Langsdorff, his ship crippled by the damage from the fight on the 13th, believed he was facing a greatly superior force. Graf Spee, even at full strength, was four knots slower than Renown, and her 11-in guns, while with comparable range to Renown’s 15-in (38cm) main battery, were markedly inferior in weight of shot and penetration. She certainly was no match for the air contingent aboard Ark Royal.
A gentleman warrior who managed to destroy nine merchant vessels at the outbreak of war without the loss of life, Langsdorff chose not to send his ship and his crew to what he believed to be certain death. Instead, Graf Spee is scuttled in the shallow waters of the River Plate estuary. Two days after his ship is destroyed by her own crew, Captain Langsdorff wraps himself in the colors of the Imperial Navy, and takes his own life. His crew is interned, and the thirty-seven dead among his crew buried with honors in a Montevideo cemetery.
Captain Langsdorff attends Crew Funeral
Funeral Procession for Captain Langsdorff
Twenty-five years earlier, British cryptanalysts had broken the German Naval code, and had baited a trap for Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee in the form of generating a fake order to raid the British coaling station at Port Stanley in the Falklands. There, Sturdee’s battlecruisers awaited the Sudseegeschwader, overtaking the worn-out German cruisers and sinking them after a short pursuit.
In 1914, the British deception pushed the German warships into a one-sided battle that led to their destruction. In 1939, it was the ruse of that very threat of overwhelming force that caused the self-destruction of the pocket-battleship named for the commander of that 1914 squadron. Twenty-five years and less than a thousand miles away.
Posted by UltimaRatioReg in Aviation, Books, History, Maritime Security, Navy | read comments (16)
United States Forces-Iraq (USFI), the American military command in Iraq, cased its colors Thursday outside Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). During the traditional military ceremony, the unit’s colors were rolled and stowed, symbolizing the disestablishment of the formation and the end of the U.S. military’s nondiplomatic presence in the country. The last U.S. forces (save a company-sized Marine Security Guard detachment at the U.S. Embassy) are slated to leave the country next week, well ahead of the Dec. 31 deadline stipulated by the status of forces agreement between Washington and Baghdad.
In April 2003, then-Saddam International Airport was designated Objective Lions and seized by Task Force 2-7 in an assault for which an Army combat engineer would posthumously receive the Medal of Honor. These were the days of “shock and awe,” as the outset of the war in Iraq was dubbed, during which the United States military occupied the Iraqi capital in a matter of weeks. Objective Lions would quickly become the sprawling Victory Base Complex, the iconic centerpiece of the United States’ eight-year war in Iraq. Two American presidents would subsequently pass through BIAP, the center of the operation that became the focal point of U.S. military operations and foreign policy for the better part of a decade.
In invading Iraq, the United States had hoped to fundamentally reshape the region’s geopolitical reality by establishing a pro-American regime in Baghdad. The invasion did reshape the region, but not in the way Washington had intended. The invasion and subsequent American pressure did ultimately push Saudi Arabia to cooperate with Washington’s counterterrorism objectives, as well as prompt Riyadh to begin meaningfully, and with increased aggression, confronting the radical Islamist elements within its own borders. But the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime also destroyed the established balance of power between Iran and Iraq, which had stood as a pillar of American foreign policy in the region for generations.
As the American war effort deteriorated into a protracted counterinsurgency and nation-building project, resurgent Iranian influence and power became increasingly difficult to ignore. The United States and its allies found themselves fighting not only foreign jihadists but domestic Sunni nationalists and Shiite militias, some armed with improvised explosive devices provided by Iran — the single most deadly and effective weapons used to kill U.S. and allied troops.
The war ultimately cost the lives of almost 4,500 American troops, more than 300 allied troops, and a likely unknowable number of Iraqis. The United States maintained more than 100,000 troops on the ground in Iraq — and for a significant period closer to 200,000 — throughout almost the entire duration of the war. That number does not count significant contributions made by allies, not to mention the legions of private security contractors that supplemented those forces. While this was never sufficient to impose a military reality on the country — the numbers, in other words, were not substantial enough to pacify the population — this nevertheless represented an enormous and sustained commitment. It impacted the entire power structure in Iraq, the balance of power in the region and American military commitments elsewhere in the world. The structural significance of this commitment of forces is difficult to overstate, therefore it is difficult to overstate the significance of that force’s removal.
Only a few thousand American troops remain in the country, and for all practical purposes, USFI has long been declining as a significant military presence. But few elements operating in Iraq or Iran had any interest in taking any action that might delay the U.S. withdrawal. When USFI finally leaves next week, it is hard to envision a force of any magnitude being redeployed to the country in the foreseeable future — barring an extreme scenario — for any length of time. The circumstance most likely to lead U.S. troops to intervene would probably involve a noncombatant evacuation of diplomatic personnel and American nationals (for the purposes of that evacuation, the runway at BIAP will likely play a central role in American thinking about Iraq.)
In short, a key structural element of the framework in which Iraq and the wider region has operated for nearly a decade officially ceased to exist on Thursday. And this framework played a central role in the apparent quietude of Iraq in recent years. That quietude cannot be taken for granted moving forward, and the most important geopolitical result of the American invasion of Iraq — the emergence of Iran as a regional power — has yet to be meaningfully addressed and countered.
Below is a guest post from BJ Armstrong. He is a naval officer and a would-be naval historian who has written occasionally for the USNI Blog. He is a contributor to Proceedings and Naval History and has published in a number of other magazines and journals from American Diplomacy to Adventure Kayak. He is currently somewhere in, near, or around the Indian Ocean.
The headlines today have beamed in, half way across the world, as the news of the death of writer and public intellectual Christopher Hitchens spreads. So why should we, naval officers or members and regulars at The Naval Institute, care about the passing of such a figure? The simple fact that the New York Times actually “stopped the presses” in order to reformat and include his obituary (something that rarely happens in todays cost-savvy media world), should at the least make us take notice of the man’s passing. Readingmany of the headlines we are told that he was a “militant writer,” which isn’t really the same thing as being a military writer (though some Americans may confuse it).
Hitchens wasn’t quite as “militant” as the press would lead many of us to believe. Instead he was a self described “contrarian.” That’s something that The Naval Institute recognizes: the importance, the value, the vitality of contrarians. In fact, at the founding of the Institute in 1873 that was pretty much the whole idea…to open up naval thought to new voices and new ideas. The mission of today’s Naval Institute, “to provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write in order to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to national defense,” is one that Hitchens would have embraced.
When I left for deployment, not knowing that it would be record setting length, I stocked up on some “books” for my e-reader. One of them was Hitchens’ “Letters to a Young Contrarian.” Modeled after the work of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in his “Letters to a Young Poet,” Hitchens approached the question “Could I offer any advice to the young and the restless; any counsel that would help them avoid disillusionment?” And he was off and typing, making it appear so easy. Hitchens was a well read man, exceedingly well read, and I freely admit that many of his references sent me scrambling for a Google search as I read “Letters.” He conceded that “It’s too much to expect to live in an age that is actually propitious for dissent. And most people, most of the time, prefer to seek approval or security.” That was all the more reason, he assured his young correspondent, to continue to think outside the box, and to write and talk about it. It is all the more reason, today, to finish that article each of us has been thinking about submitting to Proceedings as well. “Don’t expect to be thanked, by the way,” he wrote, “The life of an oppositionist is supposed to be difficult.”
While inDubai, somewhere south of eight months into deployment, I made the rounds of a few of the media stores at the enormous malls to check out the English language books. Laying on display in a Virgin Megastore was an enormous paperback tome with Hitchens’ mug on the cover, entitled “Arguably.” It is a collection of reviews and essays that he has penned over the past decade. Of course, near the eight month point and with the end of deployment still well over the horizon, I needed more reading material and I purchased myself a copy.
The thing that the essays in “Arguably” have reinforced for me is that every genre gives you an opportunity to communicate your ideas, and sometimes to even have fun. Hitchens book reviews are learned and obviously from a man who consumes the written word voraciously, full of references to other works in whatever field he’s discussing, but also full of ideas. Not just the ideas brought up in the book under review, but counter-thoughts and expansions of those ideas and connections to others. It’s a reminder that we are always learning as long as we are always reading. The first encouragement in the John Adams quotation that the Insitute has embraced, “to dare to read, think, and write,” will help us build the background and the knowledge that allows Hitchensesque connections and the flow of ideas to continue. His essays frequently come at important subjects like international politics from unusual angles, like “Long Live Democratic Seismology” which will make you reconsider the political ramifications of geology. My father, a geologist by education and trade, has been trying to tell me this for years. There are other essays that are just outright fun. His discussion on the proper etiquette involved in refilling wine glasses at a restaurant is fantastic.
Hitchens came from a Navy family. His mother and father met in Scotlandduring the Second World War when they were both serving in the Royal Navy. His father continued serving after the war and retired from the service as a Commander. Hitchens was raised in the style of many Navy brats, moving constantly to stations across the world. I remember watching an episode of the Charlie Rose Show when Hitchens admitted that he had even considered a naval career, but the discipline and silent nature of his father drove him away from the idea. He wrote on naval subjects when they drew his attention, including the discussion of connections between The Barbary Wars and modern day counter-terrorism. There is a part of me that half wonders if he was ever a member of the Institute. He should have been, we would have been a stronger organization with him onboard.
So, put aside your differences with him on the subject of religion, or your disagreement over whether or not women are funny, or whether or not you believe that waiters should refill your wine glass (thus interrupting conversation and trying to guilt you into buying another bottle), and find something by Christopher Hitchens to read. I suggest something controversial or contrarian, it shouldn’t be hard. Because daring to read, think, and write is exactly what he would want us to do, and it is a fitting tribute.
The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense, the US Navy, or any other agency. Hitchens wouldn’t need a disclaimer, but he didn’t work for Uncle Sam.
Sometimes, I think the only secrets left in this World are in the minds of men…
Open source and commercially available intel via things like Google Earth seems to be quickly making ‘military watching’ the new pro-am hobby (the thin line between entertainment and war). Between the ‘work’ that been done in regards to those strange lines running across the Chinese desert, to the work at Georgetown on the bunkers of the Second Artillery Corps, it seems that anyone so inclined can do decent if not serious analytical work.
As well as this,
DigitalGlobe Inc. said Wednesday one of its satellites photographed the carrier Dec. 8. A DigitalGlobe analyst found the image Tuesday while searching through photos.
From the Associated Press.
For a guy that doesn’t use salty nautical terms like “port”, “starboard”, “ladder”, “hatch”, or “abaft” in everyday conversation, XBRADTC has an exceptional grasp of Navy stuff.
His post over at Bring the Heat, Bring the Stupid, on the LCS(L), Landing Craft, Support, Large (The “Mighty Midgets”) highlights the ingenuity and adaptability that allowed the US Navy to fight and win the Second World War across the world’s great oceans.
As we turn our defense focus to the Pacific from our current and recent wars, many of the same challenges and lessons from the Second World War in the Pacific are as applicable today as they were from 1941-45. One of the sentences that jumps off the page of Brad’s post is this one:
What was needed was close in fire support for the last stretch of the run in to the beach. The Navy had actually foreseen the problem, but had totally underestimated the scale of fire support that was needed.
Seems there is not much new under the sun. Among the most misunderstood aspects of the massive amphibious effort in the Pacific War was that commanders has few qualms about landing on a fortified beach. While Tarawa and Iwo Jima tend to be the images in the mind’s eye of that war and that time, those were by far the exception rather than the rule, and then almost always by sheer and grim necessity. The vast majority of the landings conducted in the Southwest Pacific Area by MacArthur’s forces in New Guinea and New Britiain and the Admiralties, and a large majority of those in Nimitz’s Central Pacific, aimed at landing in lightly defended or undefended places to project power ashore.
Today, we look at the Pacific, and see the same expanse of water, the same limited basing available, similar issues and problems as were facing planners in the 1930s. There are many who dismiss entirely the need to project power across a beach as a means of theater entry, or who believe such can be conducted by seizing a port or an airfield, or by administrative means (JLOTS), apparently without any enemy resistance, or ability to impact our efforts. The US Navy has been rather intransigent in its belief that no such projection capability is required, or is in fact, feasible. Hence, the statement from CNO Admiral Greenert, making an interesting juxtaposition with Brad’s observations, above:
The third factor favoring a focus on payloads is the changing nature of war. Precision-guided munitions have reduced the number and size of weapons needed to achieve the same effect. At the same time, concerns for collateral damage have significantly lowered the number of targets that can be safely attacked in a given engagement. The net effect is fewer weapons are needed in today’s conflicts.
While empirically true regarding accuracy and effects, the cost of those precision munitions and the lack of redundancy of the platforms and systems to launch them, point once again to there being a far greater need in the actual practice of combat for such weapons than the Navy seems to believe (or admit to) in peacetime. (That we would jeopardize success of a major military operation for failing to prosecute high-value targets adequately out of fear of collateral damage, is much more our own folly of “lawfare” than any inherent requirements for fire support.) As for the ever-predicted change in the nature of war, that chimera will once again be disproved in the next war, as it has been in every war past.
Brad’s post should be instructive to those who would wish to continue building Littoral Combat Ships that are not intended to survive combat in the littorals. We had it right once, when the lessons were front and center in our collective military experiences. How far we have wandered.
h/t Brad and Sal
Posted by UltimaRatioReg in Air Force, Army, Aviation, Foreign Policy, Hard Power, History, Marine Corps, Maritime Security, Navy, Uncategorized | read comments (23)
It is always difficult when people you greatly respect find themselves in conflict; physical or in this case intellectual. Then again, it can be very healthy to the larger effort.
In a great example of “creative friction” at its highest level of practice, we find ourselves with the authors of Red Star Over the Pacific
In the latest edition of the U.S. Naval War College Review in an article titled The Tip of the Iceberg, Norman Friedman reviewed Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes’s book mentioned above.
Not very happy with his review, to say the least, Toshi and Jim responded in The Diplomat with a counter article, The Meaning of Sea Power.
I think good people can fall on either side of the arguments presented – and I encourage you to read both articles to decide for yourself even if you have not read the book in question. That isn’t what this post is about though.
In their response to Dr. Friedman, the authors brought up a topic that will have everyone with an Operational Planning background nodding their heads. Especially those who have taught Operational Planning or better yet have had to lead an Operational Planning team – their words will ring true, and might even open up a scar or two – or even trigger a migraine.
Friedman’s worst sin, though, is to succumb to (if not revel in) what the late Michael Handel
termed the “tacticization of strategy.” Battlefield commanders and many civilians are prone to become spellbound by technological and tactical wizardry. In so doing, they lose sight of the higher – and ultimately decisive – levels of competition and warfare. Since World War II, observes Handel, “technological means have started to wag the strategic dog.” Andrew Krepinevich strikes a similar note in The Army and Vietnam
, faulting the U.S. Army for prosecuting a “strategy of tactics.” U.S. forces seldom lost a tactical engagement with Vietnamese regular or irregular forces, yet they were unable to derive strategic or political gains from these engagements. Conflating equipment and tactics with strategy rendered an unbroken string of battlefield triumphs largely moot.
Knowing your place; a concept even more difficult to accept in the era of the “Strategic Corporal” and all the implications of it. To keep your place takes discipline, knowledge, and better yet a command climate that allows someone to pull you back when you drift away from your proper place.
Strategic planning does not need to concern itself with tactical details (AKA 3,000 nm screwdriver) if all three levels function properly. Not just a Strategic level problem, the temptation is even greater at the Operational level where the tendency to drift down to the Tactical is greatest. People plan where they are the most comfortable, and if you just came back from the Tactical level and haven’t mentally adjusted to the fact you now have to think and plan at the Operational or Strategic – you are setting yourself up for disruptive planning, intrusive direction & guidance, and eventually Tactical level paralyses.
Worse that that – if you are in a decision making position at the Strategic or Operational level – and you are not doing that job from that perspective – who is? The answer is, no one. That is where historians have their fun.
Adding to that problem is the amplifying effect. A poorly constructed or ill-disciplined Strategic guidance results in disjointed and inefficient Operational level direction & guidance. That in turn leads to Tactical anarchy. Where does that lead? Well, not to the “W” column.
Fun stuff … fun stuff. As a side note, if you are interested in hearing the authors discuss their book and China in general, EagleOne and I interviewed them back in Jan; you can hear the archived show here. We’ve also interviewed Dr. Friedman twice, once in 2010, and again earlier this year.
The Japanese carrier strike force, the Kido Butai, lead the attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Since then, the discussion about the attack and its ramifications has hardly paused. We offer up the latest iteration with Sunday’s 5pm (Eastern U.S.) program on Midrats – Episode 101 Kido Butai at Pearl Harbor 12/11 :A lot has been written about what went wrong at Pearl Harbor – a very American perspective.
If you are a neutral tactical or look at things from a Japanese perspective – there was a lot that went right at Pearl Harbor at the Tactical and Operational Level.
Join Sal from CDR Salamander and me as we discuss for the full hour many of the less understood aspects fo the attack on Pearl Harbor and the development in the Imperial Japanese Navy’s tactical innovations with one of the co-authors of the article in December’s Naval History magazine, Pearl Harbor’s Overlooked Answer – Jonathan Parshall.
Mr. Parshall is one of the authors of the book, The Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, a book highly recommended by many naval readers, including this one:
“I have begun reading Shattered Sword… and had to stop. It is too large, reads too well, contains too much information, and is too difficult to put down. Start it at your own risk! My congratulations to the authors and to Brassey’s/Potomac Books for an excellent and valuable product.”
— Norman Polmar, noted analyst, consultant, and author specializing in naval, strategic, and intelligence issues.
Join us, please.
The link is Episode 101. If you can’t join us live, you can listen to the archived version at the same site, or download the show as an MP3. Or, if you prefer, listen or download from iTunes.
*A guest post by STRATFOR Latin America Analyst Karen Hooper
Commander of US Southern Command General Douglas Fraser visited Guatemala Nov. 16-17, and met with outgoing Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom, and President-elect Otto Perez Molina. The visit comes at a critical juncture for Guatemala. Perez Molina will be inaugurated Jan. 14, and has over the past month given numerous indications that among Guatemala’s numerous challenges, he intends to tackle violence and organized crime, head-on. The former general has said he intends to use Guatemala’s elite military forces, Los Kaibiles, to challenge the threat of drug traffickers. The issue is particularly pertinent now, as Mexican drug cartels, including clear signals from the notoriously violent Los Zetas cartel that it not only maintains significant influence in areas of Guatemala but that it will not hesitate to brutalize civilians to maintain that influence.
Guatemala is of course not alone in these concerns. As Mexico’s importance as a transshipment point for cocaine headed north to the United States consumer market from South America has grown, so too has the land route over Central America. Drug smugglers utilize a diverse collection of water and aircraft to bypass geographic and law enforcement impediments. Honduras has become a major offloading point for cocaine that is then moved across the loosely guarded Honduran-Guatemalan border, through Guatemala and into Mexico. Violence in these countries has worsened alongside the rise in drug trafficking, and the ‘northern triangle’ countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala now have some of the highest homicide rates in the world.
Guatemala as a particularly important player in this issue, not only for its history as a leader in Central America, but also for its strategic border with Mexico, which spans the isthmus and is a critical chokepoint for smugglers traveling north. Guatemala has a complex and competitive set of native criminal organizations, many of which are organized around tight-knit family units. The Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels are both known to have relationships with Guatemalan organized crime, but the lines of communication and their exact agreements are unclear.
Less murky, however, is that Los Zetas are willing to use the same levels of violence in Guatemala to coerce loyalty as they have used in Mexico. Though both Sinaloa and Los Zetas still need Guatemalan groups to access high-level Guatemalan political connections, Los Zetas have taken a particularly aggressive tack in seeking direct control over more territory in Guatemala. The first indication of serious Los Zetas involvement in Guatemala occurred in March 2008 when Leon crime family boss Juan Leon Ardon, alias “El Juancho,” his brother Hector Enrique Leon Chacon and nine associates all died in a gunbattle with Los Zetas, who at the time still worked for the Gulf cartel. The Zetas most flagrant use of force occurred in the May 2011 massacre and mutilation of 27 peasants in Peten, Guatemala.
In addition to ramping up relationships with powerful political, criminal and economic players, Sinaloa and Los Zetas have established relationships with Central American street gangs. Though these relationships are relatively limited to low-level street deals, the prevalence of MS-13 and Calle 18 in the Northern Triangle states and their extreme violence means that this relationship has extremely negative implications for stability in Central America.
The United States has long played an important, complex role in Latin America. At this point, the region has been allocated limited direct security and development aid, currently totalling $361.5 million for fiscal years 2008-2011 through the Merida Initiative and the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI). The Obama administration has requested another $100 million for CARSI. Of this allocated funding, however, only 18 percent has been dispersed due to failures in institutional cooperation and efficiency.
Central America has no short-term escape from being at the geographical center of the drug trade and from the associated violence. While the drug trade brings huge amounts of cash (admittedly on the black market) into exceedingly capital-poor countries, it also brings extreme violence. The U.S. “war on drugs” pits the Guatemalan elite’s political and financial interests against their need to retain a positive relationship with the United States.
Alone, weak Central American governments — and Guatemala is far weaker than Mexico — do not stand much of a chance against these drug cartels. Their only option if left to their own devices is to placate American and Mexican demands by making a limited show of interdiction efforts while in large part declining to confront these violent transnational organizations — if not reaching an outright accommodation. Perez Molina has issued an invitation to the United States to help interdict the flow of narcotics — one that represents an opportunity to do so on more politically favorable and geographically narrow terrain.
More than two years have passed since the Jihad-inspired cold-blooded murder of 12 US Soldiers and one DoD civilian at Fort Hood. An act committed by a man whose radical Islamist views were well known to his chain of command and his peers. By a man who shouted “Allahu Akbar” over and over again while shooting nearly fifty people, killing 13 and wounding 32. By a man who had exchanged more than a dozen e-mails with a radical Islamist, drawing inspiration for the attack from a man, Anwar al-Awliki, whom the Administration targeted for killing as an enemy of the United States, and who labeled the attacker at Fort Hood a hero and martyr for Islam.
Yet, the Defense Department is calling the incident “workplace violence”.
From the Greeley (CO) Gazette:
Witnesses said Hasan passed up several chances to shoot civilians, but instead chose to concentrate exclusively on soldiers in uniform.
Following the attack, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the attack had nothing to do with Islam. It was claimed that Hasan’s murderous rampage was the fault of Army officials who ordered him to deploy to Afghanistan.
Hasan’s radical views regarding Islam were well-known. Once, while presenting a medical lecture to other psychiatrists, Hasan talked about Islam, stating that non-believers would go to hell decapitated, set on fire and have burning oil poured down their throats.
Had Major Hasan managed to plant a bomb aboard a bus that killed thirteen and wounded thirty-two, would that still be workplace violence? The motivation, the target, the results, would all be the same. The only difference would be the method.
The political correctness with which this massacre was treated has been a despicable, shameful display of avoiding the truth. This includes General Casey’s disgraceful and stomach-turning lament about the incident harming the Army’s diversity efforts. Secretary Gates’ PC-inspired unwillingness to comment upon the nature of Hasan’s motivations in the Defense report is equally egregious. The comments by Vern Clark and Togo West that the investigation shouldn’t concern itself with “motivation” are pathetic and dangerous pandering to political correctness.
Secretary Panetta has the opportunity to correct this travesty and this deliberate misrepresentation of the terrible truth. Which is that the US Army commissioned, and then promoted, an Islamic Jihadist to the Field Grade ranks. They ignored the myriad warnings of his conduct and his radical viewpoint, or were unwilling to confront Hasan and take appropriate action. And, that when Hasan went on his killing rampage, his actions were in the same spirit and motivation as the 9/11 hijackers, the Little Rock shooters, and the Fort Dix plotters.
What it will take is some courage and character, and a willingness to break out of the stifling repression of political correctness. The Secretary should revise the report to reflect what we all know the Fort Hood tragedy to be. A terrorist act committed by a radical Islamist against US Service members, on American soil. That is the truth.
Calling Fort Hood something other than terrorism is a deliberate lie. A lie perpetuated by the desire for political correctness above all things, including the truth.
Posted by UltimaRatioReg in Air Force, Army, Homeland Security, Marine Corps, Navy, Uncategorized | read comments (6)
- Aircraft burning at Wheeler Field with Schofield Barracks in foreground, 7 Dec 1941
George was a neighbor and friend with a remarkable past. I had lived across the street from George for a number of years, and always enjoyed the times when he would amble across busy Route 5 to talk to me when he’d see me out with the rake or the mower. We’d talk football and a host of other sports. He’d been a magnificent athlete, even as an older man, setting records for his age-group in many track and field events for seniors well into his 70s. He was an icon of the tight-knit community who’d been a high school coach and mentor for more than forty years. Tall and dignified, he had remained in excellent shape until the inevitable ravages of time caught his heels in his mid-80s. Even then, he remained a commanding figure.
Like many his age, George was a Second World War Veteran, serving in the United States Army in New Guinea and New Britain in the South Pacific. (This was the same area my Father served in as an MM2 aboard an LCT.)
What I didn’t know, and found out only after quite some time, was that George had been stationed at Schofield Barracks on December 7th, 1941. After a bit of prompting, I was able to get George to relate the story of that morning to me. George had enlisted in the Army upon graduation from Boston University in 1938, where he had lettered three times in football, and twice in track and field. On that fateful Sunday morning, George, then a Sergeant, was scheduled to play football for his regiment, the famous Wolfhounds of the 27th Infantry, against the arch-rival 8th Artillery. He had slept in and decided to skip Sunday mass, and was just getting up to shave at 0750, when he heard the hum of aircraft engines, lots of them, over the runway at Wheeler Field.
Squinting to see in the bright sunshine, George saw the large red roundels on the fuselages of the green-painted aircraft and knew instantly what was about to happen. He described how, because they had stored a substantial amount of ammunition in the Company barracks arms rooms, the various companies of the 27th Infantry were able to quickly bring several .30 caliber machine guns and BARs to bear against the attacking Japanese aircraft. George could hear the rumble of bombs exploding in the fleet anchorage at Pearl Harbor, and see the sky blackened by smoke. However, he would not get a true view of the carnage until a day later, when his company was moving toward fighting positions to defend against the Japanese attack which everyone was sure was imminent. The wrecked airplanes and hangars of Wheeler Field were a harbinger of a scene of even more complete destruction at Ford Island. George described the fleet anchorage as a “shambles”, and recalled seeing every battleship sunk, or capsized, with Arizona still burning like a torch.
The Japanese invasion never came, of course. The recovery from the attack began, and eventually an uneasy sense of order prevailed. But, as George noted at the end of his tale, every man knew that their lives had changed dramatically, and forever.
George never did get to play that football game against the 8th Artillery. From that day on, everyone was on the same team, and the games were finished.
George eventually received a commission in the US Army, and served in the South Pacific as a Captain and Combat Engineer. After the war, he remained in the National Guard, retiring in 1962 at the rank of Colonel. His vintage “crush hat” is one of my prized possessions. George died in November of 2004, at the age of 89. His funeral was, sadly, held on the same day that news came of the death of an area Marine killed in the Second Battle of Fallujah. I think of George every December 7th, and of the story of his remarkable participation in one of the watershed events in our Nation’s history.
Posted by UltimaRatioReg in Air Force, Army, Aviation, Books, History, Maritime Security, Navy, Uncategorized | read comments (1)Recent Posts
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