The investigation into the mass murder on Ft. Hood continues, but there is no doubt who was responsible, and his motivations are clear.  He (his name doesn’t deserve mentioning) acted out of a radical belief in Islam and a hatred of the United States.

One decision by the Army will determine how the service, and the administration, view this attack.  Will it be viewed only as a crime, or will it be viewed as a terrorist attack committed by an enemy of this nation?  The answer lies in whether or not the victims are awarded Purple Hearts.

Army Regulation 600-8-22 (regulation page 20, pdf page 40), article 2-8 b.(6), requires that “the act must be recognized by the Secretary of the Army as an international terrorist attack.”

(6) After 28 March 1973, as the result of an international terrorist attack against the United States or a foreign nation friendly to the United States, recognized as such an attack by the Secretary of Army, or jointly by the Secretaries of the separate armed services concerned if persons from more than one service are wounded in the attack.  (http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r600_8_22.pdf)

The victims of this cowardly and monstrous attack deserved better than to die or be wounded in what was otherwise a place of safety.  Their sacrifice must be properly recognized.  They earned and deserve the Purple Heart.  What, and when, will the Secretary decide?

Posted by Fouled Anchor in Army, Homeland Security | read comments (34)

It is cowardice, not blindness, when you are afraid to look.

You don’t look, because if you looked, you’d see.  And if you see, you’ll know.

And you don’t want to know.  Because then you can deny that you knew.

And claim there is no way you could have known.

But it is your job to know.  To do otherwise is dereliction, or worse.

The tide of political correctness that has absolutely pervaded our senior military leadership in this nation is a (THE) direct cause of the tragedy at Fort Hood.  The recent news of the dishonorable and shameful actions by senior officers at the US Naval Academy regarding the Color Guard detail at the World Series (http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com. ) is merely a symptom of that disease.  The USNA incident was not simply the condoning of discrimination based on skin color, but discrimination against two white midshipmen being COMMAND DIRECTED.  Similar “diversity” efforts mandating equally unfair measures, have been done not just with the tacit concurrence of senior officers, but at the direction of those senior officers.

To those who do not believe that this rampant political correctness and lack of moral courage on the part of field-grade, general, and flag officers contributed to the Terrorist attack at Fort Hood this past Thursday, I offer an excerpt from a Ralph Peters column in yesterday’s New York Post:

“Given the myriad warning signs, it’s appalling that no action was taken against a man apparently known to praise suicide bombers and openly damn US policy. But no officer in his chain of command, either at Walter Reed Army Medical Center or at Ft. Hood, had the guts to take meaningful action against a dysfunctional soldier and an incompetent doctor.

Had Hasan been a Lutheran or a Methodist, he would’ve been gone with the simoon. But officers fear charges of discrimination when faced with misconduct among protected minorities.”

I have left out Mr. Peters’ comments regarding the somewhat disturbing non-reaction of our Commander in Chief.  Such will be debated elsewhere in forums more appropriate than this. Suffice to say a certain Cambridge Police Officer might be glad to hear that our President has of late become a fan of “finding out all the facts” before making public comment.

However, I would go much farther than Ralph Peters regarding the Army’s cowardice.

Article 94 of the UCMJ is the punitive article covering Mutiny and Sedition.

Article 94 states, in part:

(a) “Any person subject to this chapter who–

…fails to do his utmost to prevent and suppress a mutiny or sedition being committed in his presence, or fails to take all reasonable means to inform his superior commissioned officer or commanding officer of a mutiny or sedition which he knows or has reason to believe is taking place, is guilty of a failure to suppress or report a mutiny or sedition.

Among the elements of the offense one finds this:

(5) Failure to report a mutiny or sedition.

(a) That an offense of mutiny or sedition occurred;(b) That the accused knew or had reason to believe that the offense was taking place; and

(c) That the accused failed to take all reasonable means to inform the accused’s superior commissioned officer or commander of the offense.

Major Hasan’s chain of command should be charged under Article 94.  Not only did they certainly know of Major Hasan’s pronouncements and internet postings and hadn’t the courage to discipline him, but they allowed this man who had sworn himself an enemy of this nation and its Constitution to be promoted to his current rank.

I took the opportunity to re-read LtCol Heinl’s classic essay on Special Trust and Confidence, and noted the part about no tolerance for an officer lacking integrity.  Those in Major Hasan’s chain of command at Walter Reed Hospital, and perhaps at Fort Hood, should face a General Court Martial.  The Chief of Staff of the US Army should feel the heat good and hot.  The command climate that creates such cowardice and political correctness needs to be dissolved immediately.

But the problem is endemic to much of our senior leadership, who have time and again sold their souls to comply with what they must have known to be wrong and unjust.  The current climate of social experimentation and sacrifice of all on the altar of “diversity” have made matters far worse.

There are those who claim that such bald-faced bigotry in our Armed Forces, such feel-good politicising and social engineering, such style over substance have made us stronger.

They’re lying.  And they know they’re lying.

As Mr. Peters states, “The chain of command protected a budding terrorist who was waving one red flag after another. Because it was safer for careers than doing something about him.”

What is the logical conclusion of allowing those careers to continue?

Such shameful bankruptcy of moral courage could be found on the faces of those in the gray uniforms sitting in the dock at Nuremberg.   They sat as examples for all the world to see, examples of how otherwise honorable men became criminal accomplices because they did not have the courage to stand up to what they knew to be wrong.    They are examples still, should one have the courage to look.

It is cowardice, not blindness, when you are afraid to look.

You don’t look, because if you looked, you’d see.  And if you see, you’ll know.

And you don’t want to know.  Because then you can deny that you knew.

And claim there is no way you could have known.

But it is your job to know.  To do otherwise is dereliction, or worse.

Posted by UltimaRatioReg in Army, Navy, Uncategorized | read comments (57)

The next offering comes via CINCLAX – and is a truly detailed review of the ground action in New Georgia as we begin to move – slowly, hesitantly and with great inefficiency (at first) from the precarious foothold established at Guadalcanal.  The Japanese will come to learn, as did the Germans on the other side of the world, that once the Americans establish a beachhead, there was no going back – they would relentlessly press their advantage.

And so – the New Georgia Campaign…

– SJS

The Right Place to Go but the Wrong Way to Get There

Solomon Islands

In 1950 Samuel Eliot Morison concluded his final evaluation of the New Georgia Campaign:

The strategy and tactics of the New Georgia campaign were among the least successful of any Allied campaign in the Pacific.

As most of the American planners and commanders were still alive at this time, perhaps Morison was being intentionally soft on them, as his writing excoriates the planners at several other points.

Before 1942 hardly anybody had ever heard of New Georgia, and after 1943 few people would ever hear of it again. Nothing important had ever happened there before, and nothing important afterwards. But for an intense five-month period from June through November 1943, the New Georgia Group of islands would see fierce fighting on land, sea and in the air—and some of the worst American strategic and tactical planning of the war.

The needless complexity of the operation was bewilderingly wasteful, and was often poorly led by Army officers at all levels who had little or no foreknowledge of the terrain and whose troops were woefully inexperienced and physically unprepared. These Americans also had the misfortune of facing one of the most wily and resolute Japanese generals of the Pacific War, Minorou Sasaki.

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Posted by SteelJaw in Army, Marine Corps, Navy, history | read comments (2)

On its face, it was innocuous enough – simple administrative traffic providing notification of an inspection by a senior officer of some outposts:

ON APRIL 18 CINC COMBINED FLEET WILL VISIT RXZ,R–, AND RXP IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE FOLLOWING SCHEDULE:

1.  DEPART RR AT 0600 IN A MEDIUM ATTACK PLANE ESCORTED BY 6 FIGHTERS.  ARRIVE RXZ AT 0800.  IMMEDIATELY DEPART FOR R- ON BOARD SUBCHASER (1ST BASE FORCE TO READY ONE BOAT), ARRIVING AT 0840.  DEPART R- 0945 ABOARD SIAD SUBCHASER, ARRIVING RXZ AT 1030.  (FOR TRANSPORTATION PURPOSES, HAVE READY AN ASSAULT BOAT AT R- AND A MOTOR LAUNCH AT RXZ.)  1100 DEPARTRXZ ON BOARD MEDIUM ATTACK PLANE, ARRIVING RXP AT 1110.  LUNCH AT 1 BASE FORCE HEADQUARTERS (SENIOR STAFF OFFICER OF AIR FLOTILLA 26 TO BE PRESENT).  1400 DEPART RXP ABOARD MEDIUM ATTACK PLANE; ARRIVE RR AT 1540.

Further details on uniforms, places to be inspected and the like were provided.  To the recipients in the war zone, it undoubtedly was met with mixtures of resignation and anticipation.  Across the broad Pacific, however, it was met with a sharp intake of breath by CDR Ed Layton, CINCPAC’s chief intelligence officer.  For some time now, since before Midway, the US Navy had been able to read Japanese message traffic with increasing veracity, translating gathered intelligence into degrees of operational success.  The implications of this message, however were far reaching – for it literally delivered the architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor into the hands of the Americans.  How so?  This was the itinerary of an upcoming inspection in the Solomon’s area by none other than the commander of the Combined Fleet himself.

The question, two actually, was whether to act upon it and if so, how to carry it out?  Because, without question, this was the death warrant of Admiral Isoruko Yamamoto.

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Posted by SteelJaw in Army, Aviation, history | read comments (3)

Thus far, and not surprisingly so, the conversation has focused on the naval forces – afloat and ashore, at work in the Solomons.  Today we go a wee bit joint and talk about land-based air and its contribution.

We are all (or should be) pretty familiar with the inter-service rivalry that sprung up pre-war between the Navy and the (upstart) Army Air Corps.  Claims and assumptions flew thick and heavy in the open press and behind War Department doors over what each service could do and the relative utility of the (then) fragile motorized kites called aircraft.  Mitchell’s demonstration off Vacapes in 1921 served to fan the inter-service flames – but the facts are that it did force Navy to look harder at aircraft in an anti-ship role.  On the Army Air Corps side, there was a push on for long-range bombers, leading to the B-17 and later the B-24, and several medium bombers (notables of which were the Douglas A-20 Havoc, the North American B-25 Mitchell and Martin’s B-26 Marauder) which at the time, fell into a “what do we do with these?” train of thought.  As the war opened, the record of land-based bombers was, well, spotty.  There were isolated instances of note – Doolittle’s raid being the most visible (technically, not land-based), but for the most part, the heavy bombers were still almost a year away from making their presence felt in Europe and in the Pacific, had been more noted for being caught and destroyed on the ground in the Philippines after Pearl Harbor was attacked.  While present in the opening stages of Midway, the heavy bombers tried mightily to sink ships from high altitude and only succeeded in destroying lots of plankton and fish(and this, by the way, despite the use of what was then precision targeting via the Norden bombsight, developed originally to attack ships from high altitude), while the B-26’s and other Midway-based aircraft were pretty well decimated, like most of their carrier counterparts, by Japanese carrier-based air and AAA.

As was the case throughout the theater, though, there was some innovative thinking taking place and the sting of Allied land-based air would soon be felt… – SJS

It’s early 1942 and you are inbound to Douglas MacArthur’s staff as his new air commander, commanding the Fifth Air Force and the Allied Airforces in the South West Pacific. The dilemma you are faced with is that the allies have been in retreat in the face of the Japanese onslaught which has seen great swaths of Asia fall into their possession. You, in turn, are to meet that formidable force with a rag-tag group of survivors gathered from around the Philippines and the rest of the theater, now based in Australia. Your counterpart over in the Navy is exceptionally busy as well, struggling to meet the threat with what was still afloat from Pearl Harbor and subsequent attacks (fortunately the carriers survived) and some land-based air. Most of it, however, is out of your territory and besides, controlled by the Navy.

You think about where and how to hit the enemy to effect the most damage, and like your Navy counterparts, deduce that the Achilles heel in the Empire’s far-flung lines of support is shipping, merchant shipping. The thousands of island garrisons, from the biggest at Rabaul to the smallest outcrop of coral and volcanic rock were all heavily dependent on supply from the sea. In later parlance, it would be “a target rich environment.” Problem is, pre-war tactics have proven abysmal when applied in the real world. High altitude precision bombing wasn’t working against a maneuvering target and attempts to replicate at lower altitudes ran into swarms of fighters and heavy flak from escorts. What do you do?

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Posted by SteelJaw in Air Force, Army, Aviation, history | read comments (4)