There are no more aggressive religious proselytizers than atheists.  They sell their religion with ferocity and would willingly burn at the stake anyone who stands in their way.

Last I looked, the First Amendment prevented the government from creating a religion from above or interfering with someone’s religion.  It didn’t nullify God.

Apparently someone forgot to explain those simple constitutional facts to the suits running the Air Force:

The patch logo was changed after a military atheist group, the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, protested the reference to God on the patch. The patch has a saying on it in Latin, which is common for military patches, that tranlates [sic] to: “Doing God’s Work with Other People’s Money.”

The saying was then changed last month to say: “Doing Miracles with Other People’s Money.”

Special troops are, by definition, small in number.  If everyone could do what they do, they would be special.  They are made up of men with unusual mental and physical strength.  Again, by definition this is a subset of all men.  (No disrespect meant to the majority of men who aren’t unusual in both their mental and physical strength.)  Once these men are selected, they are subject to rigorous training, training that would be impossible to give to large groups.  Special forces go beyond “the few, the proud.”  They also fall into the class of “rare and few in number.”

Given their numeric limitations, it makes sense to use special forces sparingly.  Once lost (God forbid), each member of a special forces team is very, very hard to replace.  Someone needs to tell that to the President, who, flush with SEAL Team Six’s exquisite raid on Osama (a raid that subsequently resulted in the vengeance-driven loss of many members of that same team), is tasking those guys with responsibility for Afghanistan — all of Afghanistan.  As Max Boot says:

The kinds of direct-action strikes that these units carry out are an integral part of any comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy–but they cannot substitute for the absence of such a strategy. That was the mistake we made in Iraq from 2003 to 2007 and in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2009. Now it seems Obama is making that mistake again, to judge from news reports the White House is planning to lean heavily on the Special Operations Forces as they withdraw regular troops from Afghanistan. This is not a way to defeat the Taliban, the Haqqanis, and other dangerous terrorists on the cheap–it is a way to lose the war while pretending you are doing something to win it.

To which I would add that it’s also a war to squander a special breed by placing them at unreasonable risk, so that they might no longer be there when we really need them.

I’ve finished reading the wonderful Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine, and am about to embark upon Give Me Tomorrow: The Korean War’s Greatest Untold Story–The Epic Stand of the Marines of George Company.  One of the things that stands out in any book one reads about the Marines is the fact that they never leave their fallen comrades behind.  The Chosin Reservoir campaign, which is covered in Brute and which is the Give me Tomorrow, wasn’t just a stunning military victory, it was also a profound moral victory because the Marines not only fought their way out of a deep hole, but they didn’t leave anyone — living or dead — behind.

To me, there’s a vaguely Biblical quality to the Marines’ reverence for their fallen.  As you know, under Jewish law, the dead must be buried immediately.  I always thought that was simply a practical rule for a people living in a hot climate.  A more scholarly friend, however, explained to me that there is a much deeper, spiritual reason behind the rule.  The human body is God’s creation.  One does not fold, spindle, or mutilate that creation (so that piercings and tattoos will not show up amongst the Orthodox).  This was not just an abstract idea.  During Biblical days, the Jews lived surrounded by pagan tribes that practiced human sacrifice and ritually mutilated enemy corpses.  By immediately burying their dead, the Jews ensured that God’s handiwork would be respected and protected, even in death.

Sometimes, recovering the dead may take a while, but the Marines try to leave them in safe hands and they go back when they can.  This video is a moving illustration of that fact.

Here’s a really bad idea:  name a United States Navy after Representative John Murtha (deceased), the man who cheerfully, and without any credible evidence, castigated American Marines as cold-blooded killers in the wake of the Haditha massacre.  The Marines, of course, were all exonerated but for Frank Wuterich, who accepted a slap on the wrist plea bargain, something he no doubt did because he has three small children at home and could not risk the vagaries of a full trial.  Add to that Murtha’s history of political corruption, and it sounds to me as if any ship that bears his name is going to be an unlucky ship indeed — not to mention a ship that is an insult to both our military and our taxpayers. *

My feeling is that, if you have a bad idea, and it’s been brought to your attention that it really is a bad — indeed, indefensible — idea, you should retreat as quickly and as gracefully as possible.  Of course, that’s not how political bureaucracies work, so Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus is standing strong behind his bad — indeed, highly offensive — idea.

Some Navy vets, accustomed to battle, are not walking away from this specific engagement.  They’ve started a website called “No Murtha Ship.”  If you go there, you can get the story about Murtha, obtain contact information for the Office of the Secretary of the Navy (please, be polite), sign a petition, and make a donation.

I made a donation, and that’s thanks to you guys.  As I’ve mentioned before, because my husband is the major breadwinner in the family, and because he’s hostile to my political views, I’ve always thought it tacky to take his salary and donate it to the political causes I support.  I know it’s community property and I know that I contribute to the community by doing everything but make lots of money, but he’s a bit territorial, so I don’t do it.  When I want to donate to causes, I go to my little PayPal account, which you guys fund when you make a donation to this blog.  Yes, I know that is also community property, but I’m territorial too, and the money in there feels like mine, mine, mine.  I consider it good money, and I use it to go after bad ideas or, even better, t0 support good causes.

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*And yes, I know that Murtha served bravely in Vietnam, but the steel backbone he developed there seems to have rusted away in the swampy air of Washington’s Foggy Bottom.

I’m not surprised that there is a fair amount of rape in today’s military.  The facts on the ground readily explain, although they never excuse, it.

To begin within, our troops have grown up and lived in a hypersexualized culture.  Up until a few decades ago, in movies and on TV screens, even married couples didn’t sleep together and they never shared more than a chaste kiss.  Now, every aspect of culture is saturated with rampant, no strings, no respect, no relationship sex.  By the time our kids are teens, they’ve listened to songs, seen shows, and been exposed to news stories that contain more graphic sex (think of blue dresses and cigars) than previous generations saw (or heard) in their entire lifetimes.

If you take these kids — or, more accurately, these young men — and, during their peak testosterone years, place them in a hermetically sealed environment, where the straight guys are living cheek by jowl with women, and the gay guys are living cheek by jowl with men, there’s going to be sex.  Some of it will be consensual; some of it will be maybe consensual as long as one party doesn’t subsequently change his or her mind; and some of it will be out-and-out rape.  My statements are not meant to excuse rape, but to note its inevitably in the current military world.

It’s also inevitable that liberal film makers,* charged with the self-imposed responsibility of clipping the military’s wings, will make a film about it, and that the film, The Invisible War, will appear at the Sundance Film Festival. Less inevitable, although perhaps more disturbing, is that American Democrat politicians will attend the screening in significant numbers:

Politicians such as Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio attended the film’s premiere in Park City, Utah.

One gets the feeling that these same politicians are readying themselves for something and, as far as the military goes, I’m sure it’s not good.  The military must act aggressively to prevent and punish rapes, but I’m always suspicious when the Democrats suddenly find a new area for military reform.

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*The film makers are Kirby Dick, who directed, and Amy Ziering, who produced.  Dick’s roster of films includes Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, a film with a title that says it all; Outrage, a movie attacking closeted gay politicians who lobby for anti-gay legislation, which means Dick believes it’s immoral for individual gays to put their beliefs about society ahead of their personal desires; and Twist of Faith, about a man dealing with having been sexually abused by a priest; Derrida, an homage to the French philosopher and deconstructionist whose ideas probably did more than just about anyone else’s to help the Marxists take over academia; and Private Practices : The Story of a Sex Surrogate; .  One does not come away with the feeling that Dick would be the type of person who is kindly disposed to the military.

Ziering’s resume is substantially shorter, but one gets the same whiff of Leftist agitator/community organizer from her work.  The only two films for which I could find any information were Taylor’s Campaign, which was was about the homeless and had, as narrator, that Leftist stalwart, Martin Sheen, and Derrida, which she co-directed with Kirby Dick.

One of my father’s favorite stories concerned his niece, who lived on a farm in Israel.  Daddy was visiting there one day when he saw his niece, who was then about 5, playing with a wee little baby goat.   At this point in his narrative, Daddy would always stop and explain to the city-bred people around him that there are few things cuter than a frolicking kid.  Here, see for yourself:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What Daddy found so amusing was what his niece was saying to the cute as they played:  “Oh, little goat, little goat!  I love you so much.  [Pause for kissing the goat.]  We’re going to have you for dinner tonight!”

Our president might have been listening in on that story.

In his State of the Union address, Obama began and ended by billing and cooing about the wonders of a military that perfectly carried out his order to kill Osama bin Laden. His very first words were an encomium to the troops:

Last month, I went to Andrews Air Force Base and welcomed home some of our last troops to serve in Iraq.  Together, we offered a final, proud salute to the colors under which more than a million of our fellow citizens fought — and several thousand gave their lives.

We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world.  (Applause.)  For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq.  (Applause.)  For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.  (Applause.)  Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated.  The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.

These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces.  At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations.  They’re not consumed with personal ambition.  They don’t obsess over their differences.  They focus on the mission at hand.  They work together.

Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.  (Applause.)  Think about the America within our reach:  A country that leads the world in educating its people.  An America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high-paying jobs.  A future where we’re in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren’t so tied to unstable parts of the world.  An economy built to last, where hard work pays off, and responsibility is rewarded.

By the way, am I the only one who finds that last paragraph a bizarre non-sequitur?  How does praise for the troops carrying out their mission transform into our following their example by having lots of (government-funded) education, (presumably green) energy independence, and a big high-tech sector?  Mr. President, need I remind you that Rule Number One of timeless oratory is that it should make sense.

Eventually, after almost an hour of standard campaign bloviation, all of which involved the government spending more and more and more taxpayer money on green energy, on Leftist education, on tried-and-failed social welfare initiatives, and on other Big Government boondoggles, Obama got himself back to his beloved troops (emphasis mine):

Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.  (Applause.)

That’s not the message we get from leaders around the world who are eager to work with us.  That’s not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin, from Cape Town to Rio, where opinions of America are higher than they’ve been in years.  Yes, the world is changing.  No, we can’t control every event.  But America remains the one indispensable nation in world affairs –- and as long as I’m President, I intend to keep it that way.  (Applause.)

That’s why, working with our military leaders, I’ve proposed a new defense strategy that ensures we maintain the finest military in the world, while saving nearly half a trillion dollars in our budget.  To stay one step ahead of our adversaries, I’ve already sent this Congress legislation that will secure our country from the growing dangers of cyber-threats.  (Applause.)

Above all, our freedom endures because of the men and women in uniform who defend it.  (Applause.)  As they come home, we must serve them as well as they’ve served us.  That includes giving them the care and the benefits they have earned –- which is why we’ve increased annual VA spending every year I’ve been President.  (Applause.)  And it means enlisting our veterans in the work of rebuilding our nation.

[snip]

Which brings me back to where I began.  Those of us who’ve been sent here to serve can learn a thing or two from the service of our troops.  When you put on that uniform, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white; Asian, Latino, Native American; conservative, liberal; rich, poor; gay, straight.  When you’re marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails.  When you’re in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one nation, leaving no one behind.

One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden.  On it are each of their names.  Some may be Democrats.  Some may be Republicans.  But that doesn’t matter.  Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation Room, when I sat next to Bob Gates — a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary — and Hillary Clinton — a woman who ran against me for president.

All that mattered that day was the mission.  No one thought about politics.  No one thought about themselves.  One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission.  It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job — the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs.  More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other — because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s somebody behind you, watching your back.

“Little troops, Little troops, I love you so much.  [Pause for kissing up to the troops.]“  “I’ve proposed a new defense strategy that ensures we maintain the finest military in the world, while saving nearly half a trillion dollars in our budget.”  “I’m going to have you for dinner tonight.”

Making our troops pay for the Democrats’ frenzied spending binge is a disaster in the making, for them and for us.  The troops are the canary in the coal mine.  If Obama uses his budgetary powers to eat them all up, they are sitting ducks on the battle field and we, suddenly, are sitting ducks at home.  Obama’s great love for his troops is meaningless if he fails to provide them with the financial support they need to have the best weapons and the best training in the world.  I’m all for trimming fat, reducing redundancies, killing bureaucracy, and generally increasing efficiency.  Bankrupting the military, however, will not achieve those goals.

I started this post with a true story, and I’ll end it with an old, rather bad joke:

A famously miserly farmer informed his neighbors that his donkey was costing him too much, and that he was going to train the animal to do without food.  His neighbors were skeptical.  When they next saw him, they asked how the experiment went.

“It went very well,” he said.  “The first week, I cut the oats out of his diet.  That donkey kept going just fine and I saved me a bunch of money.  The second week, I cut the grain out of his diet, and he was still doing his job, and I was saving even more money.  It was only in the third week that I had some problems, but I think I can fix them.  I cut the last thing — the straw — out of his diet, and the damn thing up and died.”

Obama has consistently handed out cash to the unions and his cronies, but he’s planning on stripping the military to its bare bones.  This is not the same as trimming the fat and increasing efficiency.  Instead, he envisions the American military in say, circa 1917 or 1941.  Yes, we won both those wars, but at a terrible cost.  Had we been stronger and more pro-active, each might have ended more quickly and with less bloodshed.

Because my brain works in mysterious ways, I have visions of Obama saying that all the kids playing Call of Duty are pretty much pre-trained, making much of boot camp unnecessary.  That’s so not true.

Doesn’t Obama’s oration remind you of that old commercial “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.”  This SOTU has a soundtrack:  “I’m not an executive, but I play one on TV.  I’m not a statesman, but I play one on TV.  I’m not a Commander in Chief, but I play one on TV.”

I’ve been thinking today about unmatched combatants and a combatant’s willingness to take hits in order to win a fight.  I think about the former often because, when I do jujitsu, I am an unmatched combatant.  I’m usually the only woman in the adult classes, which means that the people (i.e., men) with whom I’m rolling are 8 to 14 inches taller than I am, and outweigh me by 40 to 90 pounds.

Interestingly, these men, all of whom are nice, thoughtful people, are more scared of me than I am scared of them.  When we face each other before rolling, I look them in the eye and say, “Remember to give only about 50%” and, with those words, some of them just collapse in front of me.  They are so afraid that any move they do will hurt me that they do nothing at all.  Instead, they just kind of lie there, which isn’t fun for me or for them.  It’s only the strongest black belts who have sufficient control to give me a run for my money without hurting me.  I optimistically assume that the black belts have some fun with this careful grappling, because they get to focus on skill, rather than strength.

I had the same experience of being an unmatched combatant back in the day when I used to play tag football.  My specialty was sacking the quarterback.  After the snap, I’d just charge him.  (It was always a him.)  Invariably, the quarterback in these informal games would react as if a mosquito was attacking him — he’d back off quickly.  Had I been bigger, I know he would have gone forward, because he wouldn’t have worried about hurting me.  As it was, seeing me buzz around, the guy’s instinct (and this was true for whichever guy was quarterback) was to retreat, not attack.

Interestingly, I’m also an unmatched combatant when I end up in a class with teenagers — boys or girls — who are much closer to me in weight and overall size.  While the grown men are over-controlled, the teenagers are under-controlled, especially the girls.  I’m strong, agile and reasonably skilled, but I also have the slowness and slight rigidity of someone several decades older than these teenagers.  These kids don’t understand slow, their joints feel no pain, and they have cat-like flexibility.  I’m much more frightened of a 110 pound 15-year old girl than I am of a 180 pound 40-year old man.

There’s actually a point to these ruminations about unmatched combatants.  In the examples I’m giving, I am talking about sports combat.  People want to win, but they want to have fun, and it’s no fun when you hurt your friends.  Even the teenagers don’t want to hurt me.  They just have a very limited understanding of what will hurt me.

Problems arise when foolish people (by which I mean Lefties) try to apply the rules of sportsmanship to war.  War is not about winning for fun, it’s just about winning.  The fact that a war may be asymmetrical doesn’t mean that the larger power has to handicap itself to give the other side a fair chance.  Certainly, the winning side shouldn’t engage in sadistic massacres, but that’s not because sadism and overkill are unsportsmanlike.  It’s because they are (a) an unnecessary waste of resources and (b) morally bad for the bigger army.

After adjusting for necessary force and moral decency, the bigger army should do whatever is necessary to win, and it should do so without regard to the other side’s weaknesses.  When Lord Wellington reputedly said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, he wasn’t talking about fair play.  He was talking about the brutal field sports public school students used to play, in which no quarter was asked or given.

Part of this willingness to do whatever it takes to win in true combat means a willingness to take the hit.  One of my favorite mil bloggers, America’s 1st Sergeant, wrote a wonderful post about dealing with bullies, a necessary life lesson for him because his father’s military career meant that, as a boy, Am’s 1st Sgt, was repeatedly tested by the bullies at a series of new schools.  He learned, very quickly, that you’re going to get hurt taking on the bullies, but you’ll get hurt worse if you immediately acquiesce.  Bullies do not believe in sportsmanship.  Or, if they do, the only sports that interest them are blood sports — with you being the one who bleeds.

What the Leftists conveniently ignore or forget is that it’s not size, but intention, that makes the bully.  They believe that because America is the biggest force, it is the bullying-est force, and that it must yield to smaller forces in asymmetrical warfare.  That Americans fight to win in a legitimate defensive war against a culture dedicated to world conquest, and do not fight simply to destroy, torture or convert, is a subtlety that eludes the Leftist elites, who root for the smaller, more brutal Al Qaeda or Taliban forces.  At the same time, the Leftists cannot stomach the fact that our troops, recognizing the nature of a fight with a bully, are willing to engage, even if it means taking very painful hits, because that’s the only way to win.

Leftists are bullies, that goes without saying.  But the American elite believe in a bloodless bullying that involves hectoring, embarrassing, humiliating and disempowering those who are ready, willing and able to take the real fight to the real enemy.  It’s rather sad that the Leftists reserve their savagery for their first defenders, while demanding that these same defenders hew to completely irrelevant rules of sportsmanship that have no place on the field of battle.

I’ve often found myself advising clients to settle a suit that they ought to win, but that they nevertheless might not win.  A $10,000 payout is worth the risk of an adverse civil verdict amounting to tens of thousands of dollars.  Most clients settle because, after all, it’s only money.

But what if it’s not only money?  What if a guilty verdict means imprisonment and a filthy record, while an innocent verdict means that, after seven long years, you can finally walk away with your honor intact?  And what if the settlement offer is that you’ll be spared the risk of prison, but that your record will be permanently sullied?

Yesterday, Frank Wuterich, the last of the Haditha defendants, faced precisely those choices.  He chose honor.  Given the way in which the cases against the other Haditha defendants collapsed completely, I’m quite convinced of Wuterich’s innocence.  I hope the court martial comes to the same conclusion.

Ever since Obama became president, the war dead have vanished.  During the Bush presidency, enemy deaths filled that papers as we were accused of mass slaughter; during the Obama presidency, I think our troops are just out there having nice cups of tea with the bad guys, because none of the latter seem to be dying.

Our own dead have also vanished from the media.  During the Bush presidency, the media relentlessly pressed numbers on us, proving that Bush was slaughtering, not only the bad guys, but our own guys.  During the Obama presidency, troop deaths have vanished from the front page, with the exception being that devastating loss to the SEALs a few months ago.

So I guess it shouldn’t come as any surprise that, when six U.S. Marines died in a helicopter crash, one that may or may not have been caused by enemy action, I had to read about it in the British press.  You guys know I don’t haunt the press for stories of American deaths so that I can gloat.  Instead, I feel strongly that, when our troops die, they should be remembered, not to score political points, but as a way of honoring their service and their sacrifice.

To the six who died:  Thank you for your service, and may you rest in peace.