Posts Tagged ‘history’

Give me a break Katherine

Posted: August 10, 2010 by datechguy in opinion/news, war
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You choose to enter a military academy knowing what the rule was and now you’ve decided that you are going out, or should I say coming out in style.

While at the academy, I have made a deliberate effort to develop myself academically, physically, and militarily, but in terms of holistic personal growth I have reached a plateau. I am unwilling to suppress an entire portion of my identity any longer because it has taken a significant personal, mental, and social toll on me and detrimentally affected my professional development.

Was Yale not good enough for you before or did you need a cause celeb to make sure you got in young lady?

If you wanted to serve the public could you not have entered a police academy after college? #9 in your class makes it even worse, it means that you should have known better.

As I’ve said before I’m for whatever makes the military stronger so on the underlying issue I don’t really care one way or the other as long as you can show that one way or the other is a net gain for the service, but this issue has been in play your entire life don’t start whining that you don’t want to play by the rules.

Go to Yale, I’m sure you’ll do well. Have a great life, but don’t go crying to the world because the military continues to follow the orders given by a democratic president and passed by a democratic congress and still maintained by another democratic congress. A military particularly one subordinate to civilian control, follows orders If you can’t follow lawful orders then do something else.

Then again I might be a little hard on you, you’re just a kid and was likely very full of yourself. If you thought you could hack it but can’t, hey it happens. I’ll pray for you and encourage others to do the same.

Memeorandum thread here.

Three words for Susan Estrich: James Knox Polk

Posted: August 10, 2010 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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That is the answer to her piece about one terms presidents.

Winning may not be the only thing, but in politics, it’s the thing that makes everything else possible.

That is actually a pretty solid statement and the next two are significant as well:

Being a one-term president is a badge of failure, not success, even if it comes by being true to your convictions.

Being a one-term president means that, for the next term, someone who rejects those convictions will be making the decisions that count. How can that be a good thing?

KingGold not withstanding she makes an important point (remember Polk didn’t run for re-election) you need both convictions and the willingness and ability to make your case to the American People to succeed in the White House. The fact that Polk comes to mind so quickly makes her case since when you have only a single exception to prove a rule false, it’s usually a pretty good general rule. (There is also Grover Cleveland who after losing due to following his convictions defeated the person who beat him four years later.) Her argument fails for a totally different reason; she is making the wrong case.

Susan thinks the problem is being so true to his convictions, that people are forgetting the second part of the equation here.

She is misreading these people, the leftists lionizing one term presidency are trying to make lemonade out of lemons.

The problem is not that president Obama doesn’t know how to make a case to the American People, he does, it’s that he has made his case for months and America has rejected it.

They have rejected it not because he didn’t make it properly, but because if you put dogfood on a cracker and call it Hors d’œuvres, no matter how you sell it, it’s still tastes like dogfood on a cracker.

Joe Scarborough in command at Spotsylvania Court House

Posted: August 9, 2010 by datechguy in Afghanistan war, opinion/news
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On Morning Joe again today Joe Scarborough brought out his favorite number “50 Al qaeda” when talking about Afghanistan and if we should be there. (it was not the most ridiculous statement of the show as a guest talked how it costs $1 mil per GI there saying we should spend it on their people instead as if a ten man medical team was not just slaughtered there two days ago) Every time the subject of Afghanistan is brought up the 50 al-Qaeda number is trumpeted by Joe in his argument that we should cut and run withdraw.

By an odd coincidence I was re-reading about the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House this weekend. It was a seminal moment in the war because Grant after being defeated soundly at the Wilderness instead of retreating as other Union generals did raced for Spotsylvania to get around Lee by the left. Grant’s troops raced for the courthouse in the hope of getting there first.

James Longstreet had been badly wounded and his division was now under the command of the unexciting Richard Anderson. Anderson’s division, not renowned for speed, raced for the same point on a road that was being cleared even as he marched

At Spotsylvania the Cavalry of course got there first. There was a clash at a rail pile where Confederates defended against the Union Cavalry trying to dislodge them but the infantry was just behind them. When the first Union elements arrived General Warren (one of the heroes of Gettysburg told his Brigadier John Robinson to attack informing him that there was nothing but dismounted cavalry ahead of him.
It was true at the time he said it but between that moment and the time of attack, the first infantry brigades made it to the line, beating the union troops there by less than a minutes and insuring that the massive bloodshed that the country had gone through for 3 years would be prolonged for at least one more.

Under the Joe Scarborough theory of warfare there will never be anything more than Fitz Lee’s dismounted cavalry in front of the rail piles and all decisions to be made should be on that basis. There will always be just 50 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the Taliban are not our business.

I like Joe but lucky for us the tactical and strategic decisions in Afghanistan are not his.

Reagan and the Republican Establishment

Posted: August 6, 2010 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Big Government tell me I’m apparently not the only person who remembers the Republican Establishment’s reaction to Reagan:

You had to live through it to recognize the metamorphosis. During those early days of June 2004, as the nation mourned the passing of Ronald Reagan, you would have never known he had been ridiculed and treated with disdain for most of his political career—not only by Democrats but by establishment Republicans. Frankly, I was stunned by the display of love and gratitude in 2004.

As the Reagan motorcade drove toward the Reagan Library for the final tribute, ordinary citizens along the route were paying their final tributes as well. It was an amazing moment.

But it was not always so.

Yet another testament to the great love the Republicans have for members of their party who are actually capable of winning elections. Somehow he sees the same parallel with Palin that I do.

Imagine that!

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