Tsunami in American Samoa

119 dead. Thousands in need of assistance in American Samoa after a tsunami. Where is the President? Why hasn't he flown to the scene?

President Obama is with Oprah in Europe somewhere, trying to sell the idea of the 2016 Olympics in Chicago, Illinois. President Obama flew on Air Force One to Europe for a one hour meeting. What did that cost? How much fuel was wasted? Couldn't he have conferenced in? If he needed to burn fuel, why didn't he go to Somoa?

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.
--Tacitus

Growing up

Better and Better put up a post a few days ago about Scouting, homesickness, camping, and how he came to discover one of my favorite authors, Robert Heinlien.

His site is worth a visit, both for this post and as an addition to the blogroll.

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.
--Robert A. Heinlein

Captain Obvious

I have what feels like a meaningful insight, and someone, genuinely puzzled by my excitement, says, "Meh? Of course. Everyone knows that."

It has happened again with the last couple of posts. Sometimes I feel like I am stumbling around the range like one of the cavemen in a Geico commercial, and what passes for personal insight to me is a flash of the blindingly obvious to everyone else. I feel this way because it is so often true. It was pointed out to me again today, both in person and online.

Brian Enos has a website. If you haven't heard of him, here's a link to where he wrote a short piece about his own shooting experience and history. There is a large forum on the site as well, and it is frequented by many good shooters with lots of experience. If reading will help, his forum should be a regular stop for all of us trying to improve our skills.

There is a section devoted to zen and shooting, and it explores in detail what I have been poking at with a stick.

If you understand, things are just as they are... If you do not understand, things are just as they are....
--Zen proverb

Range Time

I don't get to the range as often as I'd like to. It's a drive, and then there's work, family, other activities, and sometimes weeks go by. When I do get there, setting up, tearing down, pasting targets, all sorts of things that are not shooting have to happen. So in a 2 hour range visit, how much time is my finger actually on the trigger? 10 minutes, maybe?

Now I like my time at the range, walking down to the 200 yard berm to set up a target, talking about guns and ammo with the other shooters, just being outside on a beautiful afternoon. But still, it is the shooting, the practice time I am talking about. I am trying to get better with a 1911, to shoot at my potential in USPSA matches.

I don't dryfire at home. Lots of shooters do, but dropping the hammer on a 1911 in the house, no matter how empty the gun, well, you only have to be wrong once. Her tolerance for my hobby would be gone before my hearing returned. So, looking at all the options, how do I get more practice?

That Wilson Combat in the picture? It's an airsoft gun. I think it might be part of the answer.

Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.
--Vince Lombardi

Practice

Say you are driving down a residential street. You are sober, driving attentively, and a car backs out of a driveway a couple of houses down. You stop and avoid the collision by a few feet. There was just enough time.

It is the application of the brakes I want to talk about. Because we all do it and we don't think about it. Something happens in front of us and without thought, we hit the brakes. It's a reflexive action. The thinking part of the driver processes the danger, but the move to the brake pedal just happens.

When we first sat behind the wheel of a car and drove slowly around a parking lot, it was all conscious thinking. We drove jerkily, over-correcting and when we did take our foot off the gas and move it over to push the brake, it was all done by thinking about it. And we all sucked at driving at that point. In the scenario I described at the beginning, we would have all hit the other car while we were still thinking about stopping.

Thousands and thousands of repetitions later, we all put the act of applying the brakes into muscle memory. Now we can drive along, listen to the radio, carry on a conversation, and when the conscious decision to stop is made, we smoothly, reflexively, apply the brakes.

I don't think there is any way to shortcut this process, it is the repetitive practice that makes the response automatic. Practicing martial arts, competitive shooting, sports at every level, all require intensive investments of time. Think of football, for example. They break down the game to basic elements and then practice them over and over. Football practice is drills and more drills.

I starting thinking about this a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, after the pistol match, where I managed to take my usual middling effort down a notch to mediocre, I was talking about this with a friend. We always joke that when the buzzer goes off, our brains fall out. It explains missed targets, fumbled magazine changes, all the results of a little adrenaline and time pressure that culminates in the difference between 1st and 31st place on the scoresheets.

What I realized was that the best shooters are shooting the way we all apply the brakes. Reflexively. Yes, they see the target, make the turns, have a plan for the stage, but when the buzzer goes off, they are shooting out of thousands of hours of practice and muscle memory. Draw, mag changes, front sight and trigger. In essence, their brains might fall out too, but they aren't using them anyway. This insight is going to change how and how much I practice. It may not make any difference in the match results, but I will benefit.

To return to the original example, what if we took the brake pedal away? Put a button on the steering wheel to actuate the brakes. It certainly could be done. Everyone would get a refresher course, some practice, and then go back to driving. We would get used to using it fairly quickly in normal driving, but in that sudden panic stop, I think we would all plow into the back of the other car, our foot pressed firmly on the floor where the brake pedal used to be.

People who write about spring training not being necessary have never tried to throw a baseball.
--Sandy Koufax

Just a Reminder

It's men like this that we are sending in harm's way.

As you get older, it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
--Ernest Hemingway

Mike Rowe

I had passed along a video to Edge over at Conservativeflix. It is Mike Rowe, the host of a TV show called Dirty Jobs, talking about work and the value of work. I had never paid much attention to Mr. Rowe. I don't have cable and had only seen a few funny clips from the show. This talk is the work of an intelligent, thoughtful man, it is almost 20 minutes long and well worth the time to watch.

Now Edge has found a letter that Mike Rowe wrote to a young Boy Scout at the request of the boy's father. The topic is "Should I push on and become an Eagle Scout?" I won't quote it all here, but his perspective is old school to say the least. I like it.

I have no idea if you would prefer an easy life of predictability and mediocrity, or if have the passion to follow the road less traveled. Only you get to decide that.
--Mike Rowe

Someone is at War

As I said in my last post, we aren't at war. The enemy, however, easily identified and operating freely inside our country is at war with us. Here's headlines, just from today, 9/24/2009.

Man arrested in alleged attempt to bomb Dallas skyscraper

Illinois man charged in plot to bomb federal offices

U.S. terror suspects accused of targeting Marine base

Suspect hit beauty stores for bomb supplies

And what exactly do these people in these four separate plots have common? What is it that causes them to want to murder and maim as many Americans as possible? Dunno. Nothing in the articles that ties them together.

Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, Hysen Sherifi, Saifullah(Daniel Boyd), Najibullah Zazi, and Talib Islam(Michael Finton) all must have just decided to individually go off on their own, get what training was available, and attack civilians inside the U.S. Crazy men behaving badly. Probably misunderstood, victims somehow.

Now if they were all tied together by some belief system, all warriors in the War on America that Osama Bin Laden declared, that would make more sense. It would also make them spys and saboteurs. If found guilty at tribunal, they could be executed by firing squad.

If, you know, we were at war.

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.
--Osama Bin Laden, from the Fatwah Urging Jihad Against Americans -1998

War

Are we at war? No.

We have not been at war since September 2nd, 1945. Whatever we have done since, in Korea, VietNam, the Gulf Wars, and Afghanistan, they are not wars. They have involved combat, casualties, and all the appearances of war, and we commonly call them wars, but they are not.

This is an important distinction, and one that I wish Pr. G.W. Bush had recognized on September 12, 2001. Because he committed troops without a Declaration of War from Congress, an uncertain state of armed conflict has existed since. Pr. Bush, attempting to "stay the course", became increasing seen as being to blame for the loss of life and expenditure that the conflict represents.

What would I do? If I was an adviser to the current President, I would tell him to pull the troops out. Bring them home. Pick a date and order all assets to be removed, all equipment to be embarked or destroyed in place, and come home. Make an effort to refurbish and resupply the combat units, and establish a defensive posture.

Have reaction forces stationed in various places that could be used for short incursions when necessary for the defense of the United States. Use carrier based assets to project force. End nation building and having large numbers of troops in hostile territory.

I would have the President make a speech describing this new policy. He would outline the steps he was taking, and put the Constitutional role of declaring war back where it belongs. Congress would not be able to abdicate it's responsibility and then point fingers. They would have to vote to declare war. Then they would have responsibility for being involved in setting out the goals, deciding what victory will be, and share in the responsibility for every Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Marine that is hurt or killed in carrying out that mission.

Then, as a nation, we could either decide to declare war, or not. As a nation, we would live with the consequences of those choices. Because if we're going to fight a war, we need to give it everything we have, we need to be concerned with nothing but victory. Compassion, rebuilding, domestic issues, everything else needs to take a back seat until we have emerged victorious.

If we really supported our troops, we would demand it from our government. When we did declare war, we would take the assets at our disposal, and use them. Strategic bombing, heavy tanks, artillery bombardments, whatever we could do to protect the health and safety of our troops while accomplishing the mission would be the order. The health and safety of the enemy would not be a concern. Destroying their forces, killing them, elimination of their will and ability to fight, forcing the survivors to surrender on our terms, those things would be our concern. I would expect that they would be trying to do the same to us. Call it the Sherman Doctrine, or the LeMay/Patton doctrine. Call it war, and war is Hell.

It would be better than committing troops without air and artillery support. It would be better than trying to use HMMVs as combat vehicles. It would be better than having a slow steady stream of young dead and crippled Americans coming back from overseas. It would be better than fighting while limiting the use of available resources. What we are doing now is shameful.

Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.
--Thucydides

Auto 5 Owner's Manual

Browning keeps an archive of old manuals. If you want to know how to adjust the recoil bands in an Auto-5, the directions can be found in the PDF file. This is probably the manual included with the shotguns during the last years near the end of production. Here's what Browning had to say about the Auto-5. As always, click the picture to biggify. Now if it comes out that John Moses Browning designed the new Maxus and left on parchment scrolls the plans, to be opened and viewed when technology caught up with his genius, they'll make millions.

Personally, I would like to see Browning make a run of new Auto-5s. I think they would be surprised to find out how many would sell. I am willing, however, to take to the range and thoroughly test any shotgun that Browning want to send me. I promise to report about it here in detail.

I am, by the way, a disciple of St. John Moses Browning...
-- Thomas M. Goethe

Browning has a New Shotgun

They call it the Maxus. Here's the promo:
I haven't even held one of these yet, let alone shot one. So it might make me want a new shotgun. The artwork in the video is well done, and I like the way it showed how the action worked. It would be hard, though, maybe impossible, for me to take that new Maxus to the range and leave the Auto-5 in the safe.

When I think about the a shotgun disassembled, this is what I see.
When I think about carrying a gun out to shoot trap or three gun, the feel of the stock and the sight picture, the recoil and the sound of the action, even the smell of Hoppes No. 9 as I clean the gun at the end of the day, it is the Auto-5 that comes to mind.

My wife says that I am overly sentimental, and I suspect that she is right.

John M. Browning produced works of genius in all firearms fields: in pistols, the 1911 Colt; in rifles, the 1894 Winchester. The Browning Auto-5 was his masterpiece.
-- COL W. R. Betz

Because looking up what words mean in a dictionary is so right wing.

Two quotes from the article in the WSJ, first the question:

Under Max Baucus's Senate bill that Mr. Obama supports, everyone would be required to buy health insurance or else pay a penalty as high as $3,800 a year. Mr. Stephanopoulos posed the obvious question about this kind of coercion when "the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don't [buy insurance]. . . . How is that not a tax?"

And then this followup:

"I don't think I'm making it up," Mr. Stephanopoulos said. He then had the temerity to challenge the Philologist in Chief, with an assist from Merriam-Webster. He cited that dictionary's definition of "tax"—"a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes."

Mr. Obama: "George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. . . ."

From now on, no research. Words mean what Pr. Obama says they mean, nothing more and nothing less.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.
--Voltaire

_____________________________________________
Update:
From the AP wire:

Obama insisted this weekend on national television that requiring people to carry health insurance — and fining them if they don't — isn't the same thing as a tax increase. But the language of Democratic bills to revamp the nation's health care system doesn't quibble. Both the House bill and the Senate Finance Committee proposal clearly state that the fines would be a tax.

And the reason the fines are in the legislation is to enforce the coverage requirement.

"If you put something in the Internal Revenue Code, and you tell the IRS to collect it, I think that's a tax," said Clint Stretch, head of the tax policy group for Deloitte, a major accounting firm. "If you don't pay, the person who's going to come and get it is going to be from the IRS."

Mausers and Muffins

Mausers and Muffins, also titled Home on the Range . Not that she needs the hits. Not even that she would notice the increase if everyone who sees this clicked through to her site. But because as YeOldFurt said, it's a site worth visiting. Beautiful gun pictures, recipes (bacon recipes!), and stories told from the center of a life.

Today she has a post titled I am a Shooter. Go and read, this one is shiny.

I am a shooter, my father's daughter, the fight in me strong.
--Brigid, writing at Mausers and Muffins, 9/19/2009

Reloading

The hard part of reloading is getting started. I'm always looking for good sites on the topic, and I think I've found one worth sharing. And for any old Marines out there, yes, it has lots of pictures.

I was going to try to write this, but I don't think I could do as well as Carteach0. 3 sections on case prep, then priming, loading powder, and bullet seating. Here is the first in the series. The rest of them can be found in order in the picture and title menu running down the left side of his page.

There are kits out there with everything you need to get started. Next thing you know, you'll be working up some pet load and making all your ammo for match shooting for about 20% of what factory ammo costs.

The rest of his site is well worth a visit and he gains a spot on the blogroll. Lots of gun, ammo, and shooting related posting. The video and suggestions on how to iron out flinching problems is another good place to start.

The man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
--Henry David Thoreau

Amazing

Unusual, to be sure. A sport I had never heard of. Still, amazing.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
--Aristotle

Hope

This is what hope looks like. Go and look at the pictures of the 9/12 event in Washington D.C. and know that we are not alone. I'll post one image, but it was hard to choose.

Freedom is not for government to give.
--Michelle Malkin

What's that gun for?

Might be for defense. Might save your neighbor's life. Might save yours. From ABC News in St. Petersburg, Florida:

Investigators say Patricia Thiel walked into the backyard of her home at 2012 Bonita Way and was attacked by Jake, a 100 lb. pit bull owned by another man who lives in the same home. As she cried out for help, a neighbor looked over the privacy fence surrounding the yard. Jake charged the fence, causing the neighbor to retreat, police say. That neighbor ran door to door, eventually finding Joseph Wharton, who lives several doors down. Wharton got his 9mm handgun and fired three shots at the animal, hitting it twice and killing it.

Defend the weak, the poor, and the fatherless.
--Psalm 82

What's the Ratio?

In the event of a murder in a Yale research lab, the news resources of a nation are mobilized. Front page news, emerging details, background stories on the victim, the suspect, Facebook photos, and on and on.

How many Marines would have to die in Afghanistan to get the same coverage? Since we are talking about science, here's your equation:

IF--> A=Annie Le's murder
D=deaths in combat
Y=Yale
M=Marines
N=News coverage equal to that given to the recent murder at Yale

IF YA=1, solve for D in the following equation:

NYA = NMD

Fifty? Five Hundred?

I fully appreciate that the recent death of Ms. Annie Le is a terrible loss. Starting with her family and rippling outward through her friends and acquaintances, and even out to us, who didn't know her. Every one of those Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers is a terrible loss, too. If the effort put into to the coverage of her loss had been shared with the combat losses of the past few weeks, the country would know something about the men who have gone into harm's way on our behalf.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
--George Orwell

Careerism and Blinding Stupidity

Gen. Stanley McChrystal has had a heck of a career. His assignment to be the senior commander in Afghanistan came in June. He should resign tomorrow. It is the only remaining act he could take to salvage the tatters of his honor. Here, from an article in the New York Times, are his own words in support of the policy that cost the lives of U.S. Marines and their Corpsman:

Even in the cases of active firefights with Taliban forces, he said, airstrikes will be limited if the combat is taking place in populated areas — the very circumstances in which most Afghan civilian deaths have occurred. The restrictions will be especially tight in attacking houses and compounds where insurgents are believed to have taken cover.

Yup, I guess the whole chain of command from the President on down figured no one in the Taliban ever read the New York Times online. 'Cause shit, sportsfans, I wouldn't have to be the second coming of Chesty Puller to figure out that some mud huts full of women would give me a wonderful location to kill Americans from. Here's the recollections from the embedded reporter, Jonathan S. Landay, click the link and play the audio, listen to the anger and frustration in his voice as he talks about the details of the 3 hour battle. Pinned down, left with out air support or artillery, a patrol left to die for political expediency.

The names have been released.

1st Lt. Michael Johnson

Staff Sgt. Aaron Kenefick

Gunnery Sgt. Edwin W. Johnson

HM3 James Layton, a Navy Corpsman, his body found where he had been providing aid to a wounded Marine. Another Corpsman who joins the long line of Navy Corpsman who risked and then gave all in support of their Marines. Semper Fi, Doc.

Public outcry should shake the entire command structure. Write your Senators and Congressmen, get this policy changed. Demand it.

We are pinned down. We are running low on ammo. We have no air. We've lost today.
--Marine Maj. Kevin Williams

Sometimes I Hate Being Right

Yesterday, over at 3 Boxes of B.S., I left this comment:

...I think it’s the U.S. government's job, including the President, to protect and defend the United States. Civilians in other countries? Not so much. Minimize the enemy civilian casualties, to be sure, but keeping U.S. troops safe as possible while achieving the mission in a war zone is the prime job.
If we kill enemy civilians and our sons come home safe, I’m okay with it. If you are not, we will always disagree, and you are free to think whatever you want about that. If we had to kill a couple of million of them to end this war with one less wounded or dead American GI, I think Pr. Obama should do exactly that. Anything less is a violation of his oath of office.

Today, another old Marine emailed me this article from Military.com . Four Marines died while their unit requests for artillery support went unanswered. The responsibility for this goes all the way to the top. The President of the United States is the Commander in Chief. Four Marines died because the rules of engagement had been changed again to protect the enemy. Now all the enemy has to do is huddle in close to "civilians" and we won't strike. Four Marines died while defending our country because their own commanders would not defend them. Four Marines died unnecessarily.
Four families will get Marines in Dress Blues on their doorsteps this week. Four families will bury their sons, their brothers, their uncles. Four families will always have an empty place at Christmas dinner, old pictures to remind them on birthdays, four families have been torn with an unrepairable wound.

When you lose someone you love, you die too, and you wait around for your body to catch up.
--John Scalzi

When Guns are Outlawed

When guns are outlawed, or even heavily regulated, the world will be a land of unicorns and rainbows people will use other weapons.

From Baltimore. Man Kills Intruder With Samurai Sword. The money quote for me is the description of the intruder as "a 49-year-old repeat offender who had been released from jail only Saturday".

So remember boys and girls, when guns are outlawed, it's going to be a sword fight.

When the world is at peace, a gentleman keeps his Sword by his side.
-- Wu Tsu

If a Tree Falls in the Forest?

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is here to hear it, did it make a sound?
If approximately one and half million Americans gather in the nation's capitol for one of the largest and most peaceful protest marches in our history, and the press does not report it, did it happen at all?
How many thousand people pass this one camera on their way to the capitol? The National Park Service estimates the crowd at 1.2 million. The "Million Man March" was estimated at 400,000. How much press did that receive?

The bias in the media skews the national debate. It means that all political reporting is suspect. When you can no longer trust the news media to report accurately, they have lost any value and relevance and the search for the truth will look elsewhere. Ask yourself, without the internet, how would the news of the last year been different?

News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.
--Lord Northcliffe

Hallelujah

Having posted the things I have posted over the last four days, I want to offer something that counters that evil. I understand that you may not/can not believe it, but this is how it was handed down to us. This was the faith that allowed Europe to free Spain from the Moors. This was the faith that the defenders had at the Gates of Vienna. It is the faith of a warrior, willing to die rather than renounce.

It is the faith that got us through WWII. We honored it in places like this.

It, or something much like it, will be needed in the years to come.

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
--The Nicene Creed, 4th Century A.D.

Not Over It

Not forseeing a time that I will be over it. Click the image.
If you think this can be fought with happy, fuzzy thoughts and brightly colored COEXIST bumper stickers, congratulations. Continue to avoid reasoning, it might disrupt the harmony.

Sons of Islam everywhere, the jihad is a duty - to establish the rule of Allah on earth and to liberate your countries and yourselves from America's domination and its Zionist allies, it is your battle - either victory or martyrdom.
--Ahmed Yassin

Today, Tomorrow, Next Week

Nothing we have done since 9/11 has deterred the will of the enemy to strike again. We have deposed a murderous thug in Iraq, but lacking a plan to control the place after we won, we are left in a tenuous position. Afghanistan is a mountainous country, and the enemy need only wait, striking at targets of opportunity, until we tire and leave.

The rest of the fanatics, in Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan...(is there a pattern here?), and likely some in position here in the United States, are not cowed, impressed, or defeated. When the situation favors them, they will attack again.

During WWII the Japanese used kamikaze attacks to try to break our will to fight on to victory. From late 1944 to the end of the war, approximately 2,800 kamikaze attackers sunk 34 Allied Navy ships, damaged 368 others, killed 4,900 sailors, and wounded over 4,800. The Japanese military had an iron resolve to fight, and yet we pressed on, fighting to victory and forcing them to accept unconditional surrender.

We have not fought a war for victory since. We are not fighting for victory now. We are fighting a war of attrition, losing a steady stream of young soldiers and Marines for no clear objectives. If this is worth fighting for, let's set some clear objectives, and then develop a plan to achieve them.

Here's a series of questions to help everyone look at this clearly.

Who are we at war with?
What are the enemy's goals and objectives?
How do we thwart the enemy's plan?
What are our goals and objectives, what do we call victory?
What steps get us there?
How do we achieve a victory that will create a lasting peace?
How long will it take?
What will it cost, in men and material?

We need to answer these questions. The next attack could be today, tomorrow, or next week. It could be here, and it could, as Bin Laden promised, make us forget 9/11. Think it couldn't happen?

I'll give you one possible scenario.

We have an open country, with tens of thousands of trucks filled with all sorts of things on the roads every day. A cell of Al Qaeda operatives, maybe 25-30 in number could carry this out. One morning, 10 to 15 of them, trained as truckers, using handguns, hijack fuel tanker trucks carrying gasoline. They do this in major truck stops in all different parts of the country.

The rest of them, as a diversion, position themselves with rifles at locations around the highways and ring roads of Washington, D.C. and New York. At a set time during morning rush hour, they start shooting at the windshields of the next fuel or natural gas truck that goes by. The trucks crash, burn, clog the highways with a massive traffic jam, create chaos and casualties, and get the focused attention of the military, law enforcement and news media. These shooters might be able to escape unnoticed.

Meanwhile, the others, in their hijacked tankers, drive those trucks into elementary schools and detonate them. Who could stop them? We've made all our schools "gun free". Security at schools is focused on a Columbine/VA Tech scenario. There might one resource officer with a handgun, there might be none. It would be over before you could begin to get the word out.

Consider the outcome of that. How many kids go to school the next day? How long before we return to normal? Because I get told that 9/11 was a long time ago, and we need to move on, just let it go, get back to normal. Yea, well, for me 9/11 was a wake up call. Way too many people turned off the ringer and went back to sleep.

We built security for the airports and got the airlines running again. What does that cost every year? It's not cost effective anyway. We have tied ourselves in knots to be politically correct. Witness the blond haired, blue eyed children taking off their shoes in "random searches" in the airports. It is kabuki theater, a shadow play to make the sheep feel safer. We are not safe. We are at war, and there are a lot of military and law enforcement spending every day trying to keep this scenario, and ten thousand similar ones, from happening.

It is time to have a national discussion. About the threats we face, about what is being done behind the scenes, about who our enemy is, and what that enemy believes. We can talk about health care after the victory parade.

To kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque [Jerusalem] and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.
--Osama bin Laden
In the fatwa entitled "Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders World Islamic Front Statement" February 28, 1998

George Bush and 9/11

Texas Fred left a comment, and I have been thinking about this anyway, so here's my answer to the Truthers that think that George Bush and Dick Cheney fabricated the 9/11 attacks, used missiles and professionally placed explosives to blow up the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and did who knows what with 4 airplanes full of people.

The truth is 19 men, armed with a belief system based in Islam, and trained by Islamic radicals, took four aircraft and used them as weapons. Those planes are large, the energy in the fuel is enormous, and the kinetic energy at speed is great enough to essentially reduce the entire plane to fragments, transferring that energy into whatever it impacts. A aircraft traveling 600 miles an hour is going 800 feet per second, about the same velocity as a bullet out of a .45 caliber handgun. The bullet weighs 0.033 lb and has 327 ft/lbs of energy. A loaded 747 weighs about 850,000 lbs and has about 8454000000 ft/lbs of energy.

You see, people don't want to believe that our society is so vulnerable, so easy to attack that a couple of dozen men willing to spend their lives could kill so many people and cause so much damage. Add that to the fact that they had been trained like Pavlov's dogs to hate George Bush and the Republicans and you have a situation where it's easy to create an entire conspiracy theory by asking what about this, what about that, how can you explain this?

I'm not linking to it, Google it if you must. I'm not even going to refute it point by point, although it can be. I'm going straight into the rancid center of it and pull it out here for you to consider. Remember that the narrative has been that Bush was a moron, Bush was a monkey, Cheney had to tell him to tie his shoes, etc, etc,...

But at the same time, to be a Truther, you have to believe that George Bush is an evil genius. Capable of masterminding a plot of gigantic proportions. And still I have not reached the center. Because even if George Bush was that evil, you have to believe something else.

You have to believe that thousands of people knew and actively participated in the plot. People setting charges in the World Trade Centers. Military officers firing missiles at the Pentagon. The people that called from the planes, and the people they talked to, all part of the plot. All done for what purpose? To start a war we haven't really fought? And you have to believe that no one talked, that all the investigators that found the truth all went along.

I served in the U.S. military. I have friends and relatives in law enforcement. I have known some hard guys, people that can and have used violence under orders. You could not get them to go along with a plot like this. Everything they believe about themselves would not let them kill American women and children. They would not do it. They wouldn't lie about it after the fact and they wouldn't participate in covering it up. Anyone who thinks this is remotely possible has no contact with, or understanding of, the ethics and honor of professional military and law enforcement.

But if this was true, if this was what happened on 9/11/2001, then the entire core of America is utterly and irrecoverably evil. The President, the Congress, the military, national law enforcement, and thousands of government workers, all participated in an atrocity. It would mean that the only course of action anyone could take would be to fight against it. It wouldn't mean putting up some website or talking earnestly between bong hits to your friends about the Truth of Nine Eleven. It would mean that the United States was as evil and corrupt as Nazi Germany and that you would have to make a stand, to spend your life trying to overthrow this evil.

All the evil the Truthers want to assign to George Bush and the United States? It's real. It needs to be fought. It needs to be defeated. We need to take a stand. But it's not George Bush and it's not the United States. I believe The fact is that the driving force behind 9/11 was Islamic fundamentalism and a hate of non-muslims, and that those people have shown by their actions to be evil, holders of a corrupt belief system, willing to kill women and children in terror attacks, not just on 9/11, but in Madrid, London, Belsen, and over and over in Israel. Attacks that will continue until the people behind them are defeated.

We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!
--Winston Churchill

Eight Years

I was working in a university multimedia department in September 2001. We had access to the video feeds from the satellite dishes on the roof of our building. Just before 9 AM, someone called us and said a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York and the news channels had gone live. We turned on a monitor. I was standing there watching, wondering if it was deliberate or accidental, when the second plane hit.

And just like that, on a Tuesday morning in September, the world changed.

We set up a couple of satellite feeds to display on monitors, and starting watching whatever was been sent. The news kept getting worse as the morning went on. The Pentagon, then Flight 93, and all the while, we watched people die. It was clear that managers in the national news rooms had made the decision not to air what was coming off the satellites. The news crews in New York were sending it, but it was just too much to put on the air.

Because people were jumping. Right up until the building collapsed, people were trapped above the fire and they made the only remaining decision in their power and chose not to burn.
Find the time to watch the first 25 minutes of this video. It was eight years ago today.

I watched them fall.

There are people jumping from the floor above us...This doesn't look good...I love you, take care of Caitlin.
--Thomas McGinnis, trapped on the 92nd floor of the North Tower, speaking to his wife minutes before the collapse on September 11th, 2001

September 10th, 2001

September 10th, 2001 was a Monday. I had scheduled a day off a couple of weeks in advance, and we had made plans to go canoeing. The perfection of the day was breathtaking. A Carolina blue sky, a light breeze, afternoon temperature in the low 80s. We put in at the landing in the primitive camping area in Goose Creek State Park. The marsh grass and trees were showing some signs of fall. The creek runs up through the park becoming narrower as it goes. We slowly picked our way along, stopping to look at birds and wildflowers. When we got to a point where all we could do was turn around, we paddled back out.

Going past the landing, we paddled out into the Pamlico Sound. The breeze was in our faces, so it was slow going, but the water was calm enough for the canoe. We paddled almost all the way across, enjoying the exertion. When we turned around it was a fast run back to the creek, 20 minutes to cover what had taken a couple of hours going out.

We sat in the sun on the landing and ate and talked. After we loaded the canoe on the truck and started home, she fell asleep. I remember it so clearly because it was the last day of the old world. A carefree, gentle day on the water, shared with a fine woman. There will never be another day like it in my lifetime.

Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.
--Wayne Dyer

The Death of British Scouting

Since I have written a number of posts about Scouting, including this one about Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, what I am about to write is painful to me.

Scouting in Britain is dead. It died of politically correct, nanny state overprotection. Lord Baden-Powell set up a program to train young men to self reliant, to be able to go into the woods and make a camp, to overcome and survive on their own. A program to prepare them for manhood.
Rope, fire, knives, axes, tools, and the training and skills to use them properly. To learn these things was to gain confidence, to be prepared. Crucial skills at the very heart of the Scouting program, so important that training with knives begins in Cub Scouts. Not always easy, or safe, but without them, you might as well stay home in front of the television and have mom make you a snack.

Al Rasch, of The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles sent me an email today. Scouting in Britain has told the Scouts and Scout Leaders to discontinue the practice of carrying a pocket knife to camp.

So ends a century of Scouting.

The more responsibility the Scoutmaster gives his patrol leaders, the more they will respond.
--Lord Robert Baden-Powell

What Would You Do?

What would you do if your adult daughter was being stalked by her ex-husband, if you could see that sooner or later he was going to kill her, if you had exhausted the legal steps, and the police were telling you that once you daughter was dead, they would arrest her abuser? Do you abide by the law and watch your daughter terrorized, knowing that it will lead to her death?

Now, let's say you're 78. A WWII vet, a Marine that spent years in a Japanese POW camp. A man who came home, built a decent life, tried to be a loving husband and father. A man in the last good years of your life. Here, an unwanted decision is before you. What do you do?

This is not hypothetical. This happened in California in 1997. Richard Keech shot his former son-in-law. It was by any measure a pre-meditated act. He knew what he was doing, and he had a very accurate idea what the consequences would be. Here's his letter explaining it, written from prison in 2002.

His lawyers tried a PTSD defense, but I don't think it was valid and I don't think it served the truth of the case, either. He was convicted.

He is a writer. Here in his archives are stories from the POW camp, stories of WWII, and stories from the California prison system.

I think they should let him go home to die. He was apparently never a threat to anyone except the man that was a threat to his daughter. California is broke, and this man is 89, whatever it is costing to keep him in prison is wasted money. And if they can let the man that blew up the PanAm jet over Lockerbie and killed 270 people out on compassionate discharge, certainly they can release an 89 year old Marine Corps veteran who killed one person.

Whatever happens, it will not be long before Richard Keech is free of prison, and beyond the reach of the authorities in California. If what I understand of the case is true, he is a hero, having sacrificed his youth in the Pacific and the last years of his life for his daughter's freedom from a monster.

What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.
--Albert Pine

Peter Capstick

Peter Hathaway Capstick was a professional hunter and guide in waning days of the African safari hunting era. He was also a fine writer. I first found a book by him on my grandfather's coffee table. Entitled Death in the Long Grass, it was Mr. Capstick's first book. It is a collection of stories about guiding hunters on safari and about hunting things that hunt you back. Written in a tongue-in-cheek style like we are sitting all just sitting around a dying campfire with a bottle of whiskey, these tales pull you in. Each chapter a new animal and new set of stories.

I will never hunt in Africa. Time and money alone makes this a fact. But even if money was no object, the world has changed, and the opportunities to hunt like he did are mostly gone. His stories remain, and if you want to catch a glimpse of what it was to take a shotgun into heavy brush to try to root out a wounded leopard, to stand and shoulder a rifle as a cape buffalo charges, or even consider death by hyena, this is the book.

I speak of Africa and golden joys; the joy of wandering through lonely lands; the joy of hunting the mighty and terrible lords of the wilderness, the cunning, the wary, and the grim.
Theodore Roosevelt

The Old Place

This was taken in 1986 or so. Four generations look to the camera. My grandfather, my mother, me, and my oldest son. My son is 28 now, about the age I am in the picture. My grandfather is gone. The last time I stayed at the old place was when I went for the funeral in 1992.

I thought about this today because I was looking at a blog that used Google Maps street view, and I wondered, so I went looking. I found this. This is a screenshot of the same house taken from the street view.

My earliest memories are here. All I remember are wispy bits of being in the kitchen, of the way the closets smelled of cedar and mothballs, of sitting on the back steps.

I went there every summer, even after we moved away. The woods behind the house seemed to me to stretch forever. I learned to reload in the basement of that house. I learned to shoot, both in the back yard, and at the club my grandfather was a member of. When I was a boy, I used to think that one day I own that house. I wanted it, wanted the memories connected to it.

The house passed out of the family and I do not know who owns it. It doesn't matter. I have the important things. I kept the memories.

Put the bead on the bird and pull the trigger.
-My Grandfather, summer of 1965

Relevance

It would be wrong to look back into history and think that words from two centuries ago could speak to us today. Because if you did give old writings that kind of consideration, you might start thinking that the men who founded the United States were either geniuses or Divinely inspired. You might even decide that the system they put in place had led us to become a country of such wealth and creativity as to be unmatched in the history of the world. That might lead one to think that making wholesale changes to that system was a bad idea. And that would make you an obstructionist, standing in the way of progressive change.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
--Thomas Jefferson

The "Green Jobs" Czar speaks

Mr. Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs, the White House Council on Environmental Quality speaking about the problem Pr. Obama has working with Republicans...

Luckily I'm a conservative libertarian, because otherwise I might feel sort of discounted both by your comment and the smug laughter it elicited.

Everyone has a right to be an idiot. Some people abuse the privilege.
--Joseph Stalin

Blogroll Additions

The Angry Patriot
About the author:

I’m a veteran. 6 years of service in the Navy, from 1978 thru 1984. I work for a major defense contractor. I’m married, divorced, re-married. Seems I got it right on the second try. 4 kids…1 girl, 3 boys. I’m musically inclined…guitar, bass guitar, and of all things, tuba…although its been over 25 years since I played tuba. I’ll still count it, though. I’m a motorcyclist. Love the things. The sense of freedom is simply exhilarating. I’ve been lucky enough to get in with a great group of riders. I’m very much conservative. Not Republican. Conservative. BIG difference. I’m a strict Constitutionalist…the document penned by our Founding Fathers is NOT a living, breathing, change-with-the-times document. Its a blueprint for a successful Democracy.

Voice from the Noise
About the author:

I am a mid-centurion having been born and raised in New Mexico; I now live in Eastern Pennsylvania. I was brought here by my service in the U.S. Navy after almost 5 years of sea duty.

The Silent No More Majority
About the author:

I have been serving on active duty in the United States Marine Corps for 15 years. Hailing from the "Show Me State" I believe in action over symbolism and "doing" over "feeling", and I'm a staunch, Constitution believing, Reagan Conservative

New voices, new viewpoints. Sometimes it helps just to hear someone say something that makes some sense.

Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word; and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection.
--Colin Powell

Is It the Bicycle?

Go here and watch this. Okay, here's a question. Is it the bicycles and skateboards that are causing these injuries? Or is it the humans, exercising their free will without engaging their judgment, that are causing these ugly wipeouts?

I am okay with free will. Most of what I saw in that video falls into the category of being a self correcting problem. I don't want Moms Against Bicycles demanding that I register my bicycle, force me to get training and then carry a permit, only ride in designated bicycle paths where all the surfaces are padded, or otherwise restrict my use of my equipment.

And bicycles aren't even Constitutionally protected.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
--Albert Einstein

Music for a Tuesday in September

The weather turned here yesterday. It may get hot again, but now it feels of autumn. The corn fields have yellowed, and here and there leaves have turned. Something about the light is different in the evenings, and the smell of the air brought me memories of late summers long past.
Separating this music from the movie, it reminds me of fall and the ending of things.

Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.
--Oscar Wilde

American Exceptionalism

In the spring of 1983, while on deployment to the Philippines, I witnessed a small event. It was unusual enough that I noted it, and have told this story several times.

The small villages along the coast had some electricity. A few families, doing slightly better than average, had a television. There was only the government controlled channel, no cable, no satellite, and the internet was a handful of computers connecting universities in the United States.

The station ran news, some local programming, and old American re-runs. Like this.
Every day, the family that owned the TV would move it into the doorway, and all the people in the village would gather to watch Bonanza. I had seen most of the episodes, and it was weird to see fishermen, taxi drivers, chicken farmers, and their families, sitting in the dirt or on mats, watching the Cartrights bring justice to the West. But it was easily the most popular thing on TV.

When I tell this story, I would speak about how it was an American program, that no other country was even in the running. There certainly wasn't any Russian programming that I have ever seen anywhere I went in the world. I thought then, and still think, that it was a glimpse of how exceptional our culture is. That even our TV shows could make the jump out to the world.

I have known that it was our system of government and our culture that made us who we are. The opportunities that exist for individual achievements, invention, and creativity made the United States a country that has helped move the entire world forward. But I don't have the gift of words that Mr. Bill Whittle does. So watch this, and remember. This is who we are. This is what we have done.

When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.
--Adlai Stevenson