Posts Tagged ‘NG36B’

Paying in cash vs. paying in blood

Posted: November 27, 2021 by ng36b in News/opinion, Uncomfortable Truths, war
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One of the major differences between the influence that China wields verses the former Soviet Union relates to China’s use of monetary incentives. The US and British defectors that sold nuclear, diplomatic and other state secrets to the Russians from the 40’s until the Soviet Union collapsed were not normally paid a lot of money. Only four ever made over $1 million, and those were only the ones that sold out significant secrets, such as Aldrich Ames identifying nearly ever top US recruit in major Soviet institutions. Most of these turncoats were motivated by ideology. They truly believed in the Soviet Union, right up to the end, and were quite willing to give our enemies secrets for cheap.

China is different. You don’t have to subscribe to China’s idealogy to be on their doll. China willingly flexes its financial muscles to buy people off. Even worse, China is happy to do this quite blazenly and openly. There isn’t a more perfect example then Hollywood right now. Did you notice the nod to China in the movie Midway? Or the pandering by actors like John Cena to Chinese audiences? Sure, maybe some of these people really believe that China is better than the US, but likely most are simply gold digging, and China offers lots of gold for those that toe the line.

This is coming to a head in the Solomon Islands right now, in this week’s very underreported story. Riots (not of the “mostly peaceful” variety) are happening in the Solomon Islands, an island nation that most Americans only remember from a World War 2 battle on the island of Guadalcanal. Located just north of Australia, the Solomon Islands operated in Australia’s sphere of influence for a long time. Australia provided government support and significant economic investment in mining, forestry and other areas. In exchange, the Solomon Islands were relatively peaceful, at least with their neighboring countries.

That has changed though. Manasseh Sogavare, the current Prime Minister, oversaw the end of the Australian mission to the Solomons in 2017. Not long after, the Solomon Islands stopped recognizing Taiwan and instead recognized the PRC. Almost immediately, Australian investments started to disappear, with Chinese firms replacing them. Everything from gold mines to logging is focused on, or has been purchased by, China. Heck, even China state run media says the Solomon Islands will be a Chinese hub soon.

The point here is China is building its empire with cash. When Japan attempted to invade a large portion of the Pacific, it ultimately lost because it was difficult to pacify that large of a population. Germany had the same struggles, losing significant numbers of troops in the post-invasion peace keeping operations in places like Poland and the former Yugoslavia. China avoids paying in blood for its conquests by simply throwing cash at the problem. Buy off a government, and they’ll let you take their resources via debt diplomacy. What’s not to love? You get what you want without having to use your military power.

If war comes to the Pacific, China won’t need to pull a Pearl Harbor moment to capture territory like the Japanese did in WW2. Instead, we will be the ones paying in blood to recapture territory and resources China simply purchased outright. Sadly, we will likely be seen as invaders, and will suffer the same consequences Germany and Japan did during WW2.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. You can support the author by reading and rating his books on Amazon, and with Christmas coming, every little bit helps!

What didn’t go well in Virginia

Posted: November 20, 2021 by ng36b in elections
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Not everything went well in the Virginia elections, and its important to point out what could be better.

Let’s look at fundraising, specifically for the House of Delegates. Now, the House of Delegates doesn’t get as much attention as the governor race, but all 100 delegates were up for election, and since they make the laws, having control is important. In close races, Republicans fell short on fundraising by a lot, and had they raised a bit more, might have swung a few more elections.

In District 10, Republicans lost by ~500 votes, but were outspent by over 1 million dollars

In District 21, Republicans lost by ~200 votes, but were outspent by $500,000 dollars

In District 93, Republicans lost by ~1,000 votes, but were outspent $333K to $62K

Clearly, this is a problem. Spending doesn’t always predict winning (see NJ) but it does enable more ads, more flyers, more rallies and more travel. Delegates don’t get big press coverage and struggle to get their name out there, and fundraising makes all the difference.

Let’s talk about apathy next. While there was a lot of energy, there are nearly as many curmudgeons that refused to vote, refused to donate, and refused to be poll watchers, but had plenty of time to whine and complain about politics. I’ll call these people the “Commenting Peasants,” because they won’t lift a finger to help the issues that they claim to care about, but many are all thumbs when making comments on Reddit or other social media sites. Republicans have a lot of these people. Close elections, especially delegate elections, come down to very few votes, and unless people start shaming these “Commenting Peasants” to stick their comments where the sun doesn’t shine and get their butts out to vote, Republicans will continue to lose close elections.

Early voting is here to stay, yet Republicans didn’t have a “drive to vote” group going. That was a huge mistake. The Campaign Sidekick app I had told me to ask people about who they would vote for, but I had no way of putting someone on a list to be driven to a voting station. Why on earth not?

Lastly, why on earth didn’t we hear more from Winsome Sears and Jason Miyares? In person, these people are excellent speakers, better in my opinion than Youngkin. I’ll say it now, Sears needs to be groomed to run for governor next time around. These two should have been featured in more ads and more speaking engagements.

That’s the bad as I see it. Nothing critical that cost Republicans, but plenty of areas where more attention could have picked up more votes and more delegate seats.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. If you liked this post, consider purchasing the authors book for you or a friend.

The ground game in Virginia

Posted: November 13, 2021 by ng36b in elections
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Terry McAuliffe (who will now be referred to as McAwful) lost big in Virginia. Since I live in a swing city in Virginia, I saw very heavy campaigning on both sides the entire election, and the media have missed quite a few important points about why the election went so badly for McAwful.

First, the school board issue goes far beyond Loudon County. Loudon County has made news because a young girl was raped and the rape was covered up, but school board issues were brewing for some time. The Virginia Beach school board passed measures concerning transgender students and masking over the very vocal concerns of parents, and attempted to impose CRT under a different name as well. Chesapeake School district attempted to delay the mask mandate, but when Virginia’s health department saw that, they changed their rules to mandate masks, so Chesapeake and others had to comply.

That state government overreach really torqued people the wrong way. Up until then, Governor Northam had the appearance of a pretty middle of the road governor on COVID-19 response. He wasn’t a Ron Desantis, but he wasn’t murdering senior citizens like Michigan, California and New York. I could go to a Home Depot and purchase pretty much whatever I needed, while my parents in Michigan weren’t allowed to purchase anything but cleaning supplies. In fact, the military treated its service members far worse in terms of restrictions, so Governor Northam really avoided the heat for his COVID-19 response.

That’s why Terry McAwful was polling so well for so long. He was literally coasting to a win. That was compounded by Glenn Youngkin refusing the first debate with him because of a conflict of interest with the moderator, a known Democrat supporter. Most swing voters in Virginia were looking around, seeing their state not suck, and shrugging thinking it wasn’t all bad, up until the school boards were basically told to stuff it on the topics of masking, trans kids and CRT. That’s when the rumblings started.

Now, McAwful could have easily still won by simply punting on the issue of school boards. He could have said “I think we need to listen to parents but also listen to educators,” or some meaningless nonsense like that. Had he done that, it would have been difficult for Youngkin to paint him as an extremist because, again, Virginia hadn’t really been all that bad.

But McAwful opened his mouth and used his inside voice, making his now famous statement that parents shouldn’t be involved in their kids education. Right around the same time, Loudon County broke as a story, and kept breaking despite attempts to shuffle it off into a corner.

At this point, Youngkin did exactly what you’re supposed to do when an opponent falls on their sword: twist.

Compare that to previous debate performances by John McCain, now to be called McFakeRebel. Remember when McFakeRebel would try to stick something on Obama, who would just brush it off, and McFakeRebel had no followup? I remember that. I watched those debates saying “Seriously, grow a spinal cord and pounce!” Contrast that to Youngkin, who pounded McAwful every single chance he got on his statements. He did not let up one bit.

Youngkin’s ad campaign was non-existent until the last three weeks, but when it came, man it came hard. You couldn’t drive in Hampton Roads without seeing big, bold, red “Vote for Youngkin” signs. At least one industrial business flew a giant Youngkin flag that was quite visible from the High Rise Bridge. Even better, my kids saw a plane dragging a “Youngking for Governor” banner every time it was bright and sunny outside.

Youngkin was all over social media, especially on YouTube, which is number 1 in terms of social media use. Facebook is beginning to decline, and Snapchat and Instagram are increasing, so its safe to say that should change in the future, but overall, it was a good move on Youngkin’s part.

The last thing that Youngkin did well was let your opponent be your anti-hero. On abortion, Youngkin was quiet, but after Northam basically said it was ok to dump live babies in a bucket and decide whether to kill them later…do you really think Youngkin could be any worse than that? Or on gun control, while Youngkin didn’t get the NRA’s endorsement, nobody believed that he would be worse than McAwful. Youngkin didn’t bother campaigning on those things because nobody in their right mind had doubts about how he compared to McAwful.

Youngkin’s campaign was knocking on doors, putting up signs, holding rallies and in general getting out there. I’ll discuss things that went poorly in a different post, but Youngkin’s ground game was far above what you normally see. I remember the days of annoying Obama kids that wouldn’t leave me alone in my home. I hated them, but I had to admit that they were out there working the ground game, which is a big reason behind him winning. Youngkin had the same enthusiasm going. No amount of support from Biden, Harris or Obama will make up for people knocking on their neighbors doors.

Thankfully, Virginia will have a House of Delegates and Executive branch next year that just might end our stupid pandemic and get us back to normal.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. You can support the author by purchasing one his books here. Heck, buy two and send one as a Christmas gift!

No room for warriors

Posted: October 30, 2021 by ng36b in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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Viscount Slim, from Wikipedia

When Viscount Slim was placed in charge of British forces in Burma, he inherited a mess, and his Army was forced to retreat from the onslaught of Japanese forces. While mobilizing his forces in the city of Sagaing, a small entourage of Burmese civil servants drove up to his tent, unrolled a neatly typed document, and demanded that Viscount Slim remove all forces from one of the nearby hills. The typed document was a decree from the Burmese governor, who had been assured that there would be no fighting near his capital city. When Slim replied that he indeed did not want any fighting near the capital, but that he doubted the approaching Japanese commander would see things his way, the small throng of civil servants simply stared at him in disbelief. The only question that came up was “Will we receive 6 months of advanced pay then?”

As humorous as this story is (recounted in the book Defeat into Victory), the U.S. military is rapidly approaching this same level of absurdity. The shift in priorities from fighting and winning our nations wars to completing mandatory training on domestic terrorism and transgender policy is pretty much complete. Nowhere is this more apparent than the Navy. It’s incredible, and frightening, to watch the military spend millions of dollars seemingly overnight to roll out domestic terrorism training while our ships rust at the pier without proper maintenance. Even in the bloated 3.5 trillion infrastructure proposal, there was no money allocated for increasing our ship building or repair facilities, which would have been an easy, bi-partisan allocation to make.

This insidious march has resulted in the advent of the administrative commander. We now have a host of officers in leadership positions that are simply unable to make hard decisions. They will toe the line on the increasing demands made by Secretary of the Navy instructions. Even the mundane instructions related to equal opportunity, sexual harrassment and whistleblower policy have become so strict that it becomes impossible to balance these requirements with operations. Commanders are expected to drop everything, including their primary military mission, in response to any complaint from any Sailor. If a Sailor complains about a supervisor, that supervisor must be instantly isolated, even if the ship is in the middle of an operation. We’ll fly out lawyer after lawyer to make sure everything is done correctly, because we can’t trust a commander’s intuition.

Worse still, if a commander tries to make a decision, he or she will get second guessed by an Admiral sailing a desk with a yellow flag thousands of miles away. That’s a guaranteed way to take a trip to Admiral’s Mast, where the rules of evidence don’t apply, and a punitive letter can quickly derail a career. Did you make waves trying to fix endemic issues and upset someone’s rice bowl? Be prepared for a number of equal opportunity and Inspector General complaints. Don’t worry, there will be enough so that SOMETHING sticks, because the yellow flag officer can’t not find someone guilty of something.

These yellow flags will drive out the warriors. There isn’t room for people trying to balance operations with personnel. Yellow flags don’t want independent thought. They don’t want warriors in the ranks that might take actions against the enemy, push the envelope and actually fix problems. Those people are dangerous, because they might violate section 4 of paragraph A of chapter 3 in SECNAVINST 6969.120E. Or is it 120F? Better make sure we get the up to date rules onboard our rusting ship!

There is no room for warriors, and once the warriors have been driven off, our administrative commanders will look just like the Burmese civil servants, wanting their advanced pay from their cushy post-military jobs in the military industrial complex while a resurgent China pushes America from its ivory tower.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. I mean, duh, that should have been obvious from the material. If you want to support this author, try purchasing his book for yourself or a friend, since Christmas is coming soon!

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