"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Damn the torpedoes . . . full speed ahead!
You know, I always thought it odd that the Bush administration would tolerate a non-political independent-thinking military leader like Admiral Fallon, commander of U.S. Central Command. It’s so uncharacteristic of the “surround me with yes men” mentality of George W. Bush and his sycophants. Well. It appears Bush is getting ready to replace Admiral Fallon with a […]
Gwen, one of my regular readers, alerted me to this story about Pentagon and pharmaceutical industry efforts to create a drug to suppress soldiers’ moral qualms over killing. Psychological Kevlar, in other words, to reduce or eliminate growing mental health problems in troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s the trouble with traditional methods of overcoming our aversion […]
Is air power the new face of successful war-fighting? Much to the dismay of the boots-on-the-ground zealots … the answer for today’s democracies may well be “yes.” During the summer, while U.S. ground forces in Iraq were distracted investigating potential war criminals in their midst, air power delivered a major success. … When thousands of troops […]
Donna and I went to a party today. At one point our host put on a DVD his son sent from Iraq, where he’s serving with the US Army. We’ve known our friend’s son since he was in junior high, and we’ve seen him grow up into a fine young man. The DVD he sent […]
Another letter from my father, describing some of his experiences at the end of WWII in the Pacific, when he was a crewman on the USS Bolster, an auxiliary repair ship: At the end of WWII the USS Bolster was on its way to Ulithi Atoll to join the assembled fleet poised for the invasion […]
Another letter from my Dad, this one about his World War II service as a navy gunner aboard the merchant tanker MS Chester Sun. While at boot camp all of us recruits had to take a battery of tests. The top scorers got to choose which school they wanted; all the others had to take the […]
After my father died, I said I’d write more about him. My Uncle Lindley unearthed a letter Dad wrote to me in 1992, describing the ship he was assigned to at the end of World War II, when he was a sailor in the US Navy. Here are some excerpts from Dad’s letter: The Bolster, an Auxiliary Repair Ship […]
My friend Dick Herman, in a comment to an earlier entry, asked for my thoughts on the warrior ethic. For a few years, back when my career was on fire, I was on the staff of a joint command, working with Army, Navy, and Marine officers. Army and Marine officers could philosophize about the warrior […]