War is a glorious thing, isn't it, Private Slovik?

They've taken off his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,

An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.

On this day, 1945, The United States Army shot one of its own. In eastern France, twelve soldiers, combat veterans,  aimed M1 Garands at the heart of coward Eddie Slovik of Detroit. All eleven rounds found a mark on the slight body. Officers had humanely loaded one of the rifles with a blank in deference to the polite fiction that  each of the soldiers could believe that he, personally, did  not kill the deserter.

"What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.

No bugles sounded for the execution of Private Slovik who had run from his comrades as they  readied themselves for further blood-letting in the Hurtgen  Forest. The regiment was not massed,  no flags flew proudly in a hollow square. No national nor military honor was proclaimed as the  saddest of Sad Sacks was lashed to a six-by-six timber in a dreary courtyard. One can fairly read the accounts of that morning near Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines as memoirs of a sordid act by the citizens of the United States of America, perhaps necessary, perhaps not.

Private Slovik was not the stuff of which memorable characters are made. His letters to his wife reveal one of those genetic mishaps, a personhood barely fitted for survival even in circumstances more benign than military combat.

HIs youth was a mosaic of weakness, thievery, drunkenness, jail, and general failure. It  extended even to being declared unfit for military service. His final misfortune began when he was scraped from the bottom in the last troll for cannon fodder, reclassified as suitable to be shot at, drafted, trained after a fashion, and shipped out to slay the Hun in the final allied drives of World War Two.

His bad luck accelerated when SHAEF -- Eisenhower and his staff -- added fear of mass desertions to their other worries at about the time when Eddie turned tail, wrote a confession, and hoped he would spend the rest of the war safely in a warm stockade alongside all the others who did what he did. The court-martial and the chain of command, apparently expecting the Supreme Commander to commute, ordered the firing squad. But Eisenhower said "shoot him." Not because he murdered, like Danny Deever, but:

Pour encourager les autres.


To valor.


It is written that Private Slovik died well and with courage in the minutes before he was buried in a hidden grave, marked only by code number. As to les autres?


...The regiment's in column, an' they're marchin' us away; 
Ho! the young recruits are shakin', an' they'll want their beer to-day, 


After hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.

No gory Osama pictures

Obama says he will not release photos of the world's current celebrity corpse. Well decided, Sir. A picture will change no conspiracy-saturated minds (Fake! Photoshopped!), and there's no reason to further inflame the primitive psyches of Osama lovers.

What, you, of all people, defending His Obamaness?


Sure, though I can't imagine doing it often enough to win a night  in Abe Lincoln's bed.

Besides, I'd even defend Harry Reid  and Al Gore if they said something sensible. Fortunately, that pledge is unlikely meet  a practical test.

Libya: "I thought YOU brought the custard pies."

Reuters characterizes some of the activity this weekend:


Without the backbone of regular forces, the lightly-armed volunteer caravan has spent days dashing back and forth along the coast road on Brega's outskirts, scrambling away in their pick-ups when Gaddafi's forces fire rockets at their positions.


And if that doesn't make a guy think of Mack Sennett I'll kiss your arse on the shores of Tripoli and give you a day to muster an Arab Brotherhood audience.

"...and in 2007 I wrote..."

The Random Patriot includes this in a cogent set of thoughts on Obama's impulsive foray into war.

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. 
--Barack Obama, Dec. 20, 2007


A recent White House Executive Order forbids use of the term "hypocrite" until further notice.

Hillary the Wise

The wires this morning carry in mournful detail  the refusal of our Arab allies to give us a hand in Libya. Also, they inform us, the war continues and our European pals of the "coalition" are still having a great time watching Uncle lifting the heavy end.


But leave it to Mrs.Clinton to point out the clear and shining path to peace and victory:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said order could be resolved quickly — if Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi would just quit.


Is that great geopolitical analysis or what?
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Whence Libya

I vowed not to make cracks about a Libyan "exit strategy."  The concept has become beyond parody. But that was before our great wire services began consulting one Henry Guiana,  a "close advisor to the French President."

A reporter asked him how long the war in Libya would last. He replied "a while."

That's good to know, especially since Gallic history allows us to quantify the term.

 "A while,"  in French war talk is a period of time equal to the one beginning June 17, 1940, when French Marshall Philippe "P'tui" Petain turned his back to Hitler, bent over, dropped his trousers, and sighed, "take me."

And ending early June 6, 1944 when Major Cleveland Lytle and three companies of his U.S. Second Ranger Battalion visited the famed French tourist attraction known as  Pointe du Hoc.

So, if we turn this little war over to Paris (and it looks like we might), we can look forward to announcing a pullout along about April Fools Day, 2015.

Elsewhere in the war, we bombed Muamar's tent after checking with the CIA to ensure he was elsewhere.

On the Bernanke front, at $1.5 million per, we're a little over $150 million in the hole if we want to replace the Tomahawks in time to help out the valiant Yemeni freedom fighters.  Check the green ink inventory, Ben.

The first great WTF? moment of the Libya War spin:

At the Pentagon, Navy Vice Adm. William E. Gortney underlined that strikes are not specifically targeting the Libyan leader or his residence in Tripoli. He said that any of Gadhafi's ground forces advancing on the rebels were open targets.

The President orated himself blue in the face that the goal is to remove Gadhafi. So naturally we shoot at people other than Gadhafi.
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Or, as a favorite high-desert denizen says:

Place your bets - Which of today's heroic freedom fighters will become the vicious tyrants the U.S. will be fighting in Libya ten years from now?

Obama is the latest American leader to tell us we can have neat little desert wars.

He has, or shortly will, order fighter/bomber attacks and act surprised and outraged when the despicable Godhalfi shoots back. Then we can have another surge.

I look at my pictures of two splendid youngsters just coming into manhood. For how many Libyans would I see them sacrificed?  Friends, there aren't that many, counting  all that are, ever were, or ever will be.
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Adventures in Libya

The President has diverged from the old Kissinger vision of America as the long-riding,  lonesome gunman galloping into town to shoot down the bad guys. He swears we're just hanging around on the edges to tend camp while the French (!), the British, and maybe even some outside Abduls do the heavy lifting.  Sure.

So be it, and it is damned unpatriotic to think about the other nations-in-need-of-building on the Washington to-do list. I suppose Yemen would be next, though Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and maybe even Qatar are in the running.

I must have missed Obama's recall of Paul Wolfowitz to high government office.

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The Washington Post reports we already have five surface ships on the outskirts of town, including two Arleigh Burke DDGs.

One of them is the USS Barry whose motto is "Strength and Diversity." Find what irony you like in that.

Another is USS Stout of recent regime-change fame. Unofficial motto -- "Get Some."
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Tomorrow

On December  7, 1941,  it started for us. 

McGee: "With every passing year  it will seem more quaint, the little tin airplanes bombing the sleepy giants." 

Not many months later, sergeants barely old enough to shave crept through the western Pacific island  jungles. It was not quaint for them. It was ultimate struggle. 

 For personal survival.  For revenge. And yes, for Mom and apple pie.

Fools are  willing to forget these men and women. No one else.

The First Casualty

We should  always applaud the men and women who make it harder for governments to lie through  their teeth,  but I find no sympathetic characters in the leak of classified documents on the Afghanistan cluster up.

Assange and his whistle blowers seem to belong to that  gentle school of tender souls who want us all to believe that casualties are an unnecessary result of war.

They would think it peachy keen if  each SOF squad included a lawyer, a sociologist, a cultural anthropologist, and an ethicist in general practice to determine if our riflemen have a moral justification for shooting back.  Plus, of course,  Geraldo Rivera with a camera crew to make sure everyone is an honest as he is about what really happened in the firefight.

On the other hand, why is it immoral or unpatriotic for Americans to learn that our presumptive  ally, Pakistan, and our putative enemy, the Taliban, seem to be spending a good deal of time conspiring against us? Or that the government we are propping up with young American lives is studded with moral cretinism?

Does the American Republic fall dead of shock to learn that  its high military command is occasionally guilty of asinine  decisions?  Is there any chance at all that if political administratons leveled with their people that fewer idiocies would be committed in the peoples' name?

Pistol to my head and ordered to cheer one side or another, I guess it would be: "Go Wikileak."

(But, Mr. Assange, hire a good retired Marine Corps gunny to vet your releases and keep yourself from sounding quite so Disneyesque.)

The CIA

My sympathy for the bereaved families is as sincere as humanly possible.

And so is my feeling that things just took a sharp turn for the worse in Afghanistan. The stiff personal pride of the agency and its well-known appetite for revenge are now important ingredients in the Mulligan stew of the Middle East.

He said vas?

Sixty-five years ago today Germans demand the surrender of the surrounded and badly outnumbered 101st Airborne Division. In Bastogne, Acting Commmander Brig. Gen, Anthony C. McAuliffe officially replies "Nuts. " The allies, principally Americans, go on to straighten out the bulge.

Greatest generation? I don't know. But certainly a higher proportion of good men than the whine-soaked boomers who came along later.

Tora Tora Tora

Leave it to Travis McGee to get things right. He marked this day as one which will, with each passing year, seem ever more quaint. The little tin airplanes bomb the sleeping giants and the world rushes giddily off to war.

This blog was born of an impulse to remember the attack. Oriental militants who gave an intense new meaning to the term jingo decided that your fathers and mine were simply too dangerous to their plan to loot all of the Far East.

It took a few years. American men and women gave up much. In the end they conquered the North Pacific and provided the margin of victory everywhere else.

I don't know if they were the greatest generation, but it seems to me they were the last competent one. The last stand of the kind of American to whom self-reliance was the worthiest goal. Most of them are dead, so I don't know for sure what they would say about what we have done with the gift they gave us. But I suspect they would not praise a people who create the entitlement culture of Amsoc.

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Since it is my blog: Uncle Amzie, Uncle Gene, Uncle George, Mr. Earl Stouffer, Dr. M.B. Smith, Mr. Tom Hartigan, and all the others: Thank you.

Better men

I wonder if the texting dotcomers of twittering America could produce even ten divisions of men of this caliber from the mill run of its citizens.

This D-Day collection has a number of June 6, 1944 photographs most of us have never seen.

These things are moving. I especially like picture number 44, a D-Day anniversary shot that captures the irony of which mid-century Americans were capable even after ten years of depression and three of slaughter.

We owe the MSM, specifically the Denver Post, for putting this collection together, and my buddy Al in Rhode Island for alerting some of us to it.

Vivid air, signed with honor

It is one of the patriotic days, and I suppose you'll hear a certain amount of  oratory, some praiseworthy, some self-serving.  

An unlucky guy may find himself stuck with one of those neocon-right warriors of the lectern. They demand we send our kids  to war to create "democracy" in every populated desert waterhole  and jungle clearing on earth.  It is always instructive to stop them in mid-rant and ask:

 "Sir (or Madam), please, where and when did you wear the fighting uniform?"  Amazing how many of the loudmouth warhawks found  actual service simply too inconvenient.

Otherwise this D-Day, I intend to reread the Noonan/Spender/Reagan tribute.