Well, BO had to go on TV and say he was actually going to support the Iraqis in harms way…
From his expression, he REALLY didn’t want to be saying that, much less authorizing the bombing… Wonder how that crow tasted???
We had a go round at lunch yesterday with the LWL in the office about it (the same one that was all for women in combat, except for ‘her’ precious snowflake of course). She wants ALL of the military pulled from overseas, they aren’t needed, don’t belong, are causing problems, yada, yada, yada… And the children, they need more funding for the children coming in…
Cut the military at least in half, etc…
Well, I can only speak for the Navy, since I do have a bit of knowledge about it…
We have in the neighborhood of 100 ‘mandated’ evolution’s each year in WESTPAC alone, plus others in the North Atlantic, Europe and South America. We don’t have the ships or manpower to meet those now, and the administration is doing NOTHING to reduce/change them. NOTHING!!! These requirements come from/are mandated by treaties, (NATO, OAS, ANZACUS), country agreements (1946 Japan, WWII agreements with France, Germany, Spain, etc.), and UN charter participation (Korea). If the administration is so hard over on this, why aren’t they going back and re-negotiating all these things? Possibly because they don’t care??? The only people being hurt are the military, not them…
The other one she threw up was, “Well we don’t need to fight Russia, they lost. Your war games are wrong.” Um… Not so much… Putin was/is/always will be KGB, he’s dead set on reconstituting the USSR. She and probably most of the public don’t realize we ARE back on a cold war footing with Russia/USSR lite. Bombers off the coast, penetrations of US airspace, Russian missile submarines off our coast, ramping up presence in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean (and the Brits, Dutch and others with no ASW capability are asking for help).
Back in the 90s we dropped the three war scenario and I reminded her that there HAVE been a number of panel reviews of manpower and capabilities leading to a number of base closures and personnel/equipment reductions. The problem is that drawdown has continued thanks to sequestration, to the point it’s questionable that we could actually fight ONE regional conflict and meet other defense requirements.
When systems are not maintained/replaced (not by the new shiny, just REGULAR maintenance), mission readiness suffers and more assets have to be put in the hopper to get that ‘one’ mission out. In the case of ships, one just finished a TEN month deployment. And they are quick turning to go back on deployment soon. So much for OPTEMPO/PERSTEMPO requirements…
The administration has turned the military into a social experiment, has run out actual leaders, sent RIF letters to folks currently deployed downrange, extended deployments (that whole required presence thing), and in a lot of our minds, is purposely doing everything they can to run our military into the ground and make joining the military unpalatable to as many young folks as they can.
Lets say we DO pull back from Korea and Japan (treaties be damned)…
Piracy would skyrocket, China would own Japan and Taiwan in two years, and we would be blocked from going any further west than Guam without Chinese permission or armed escorts. Korea? Jong-un would be attacking as the last airplane left Osan… He’s said that…
I don’t disagree with making others pay their share, but I don’t want to see our kids die because they’ve been hung out to dry, or pushed beyond any sane limits either on the personal or equipment side. And that IS happening… Look at what is now going on in Iraq… Targets… First it was 100, then 300, then 750, now??? And 300 Marines to guard the embassy (but we pulled out)…
The bombing yesterday… Which is what started the whole argument. If we’d pulled the Carrier Strike Group out, I asked her who would have done the bombing…
Crickets…
Then she said to the effect that the USAF could do it from the US… Sigh…
So I asked how many missions could they run a day?
Airily she said words to the effect of as many as they need…
Well, actually… NO… It would take roughly 14 hours from the states to the theater, lets say four hours there, and 14 hours back. So to ‘maintain’ that for a minimum of 48 hours, it would take 24 missions, a ‘minimum’ of 10 bombers (assuming they didn’t break, and 24 crews (pesky crew rest requirement). So a realistic minimum is 20 bombers and 48 crews…
Now according to Wiki (yeah, I know), there are 96 bombers that can ‘do’ the mission (B-52/B-2) and another 61 ‘maybe’ (B-1).
BUT, you also need tankers… There are less than 500 of them world-wide, oh but wait… They are all brought back too… So now we have to have tankers fueling tankers, to fuel bombers… Back of the envelope, ‘roughly’ 70 tankers required and 70 crews, or 140 crews and airplanes minimum…
OR you bang one flight of F-18s off the boat every two hours, they fly a total of 6 hours including two hours onstation. And tank from their own tankers (Texaco). That would take 96 sorties, 48 aircraft, and about 60 pilots/crews. Easily done from ONE carrier… (As was done YESTERDAY and TODAY). But they shouldn’t be there… yada, yada…
Oh yeah, and the first airplane is putting ordnance on the bad guys in two hours vs. FOURTEEN hours…
But we ‘still’ need to gut…er… cut the military???
After she stomped out, one of the guys said she needed to take off the rose colored glasses, stop smokin dope, and actually look at reality… Sigh…
But she and a lot of others never will. It’s for the children…
And I’m not even getting into what would happen if you dumped 300,000 more people on the economy by cutting the military in half, much less what that would do to the business base in this country. And who knows how many civilian/commercial jobs would be lost due to those cuts??? 600,000? A million? More???
Most people don’t understand just what it takes in manpower, equipment, logistics trains, etc just to put one bomb on top of the bad guy’s heads.
Ray
I’m in Norway now, meeting with Kongsberg and others. Entire Norwegian air force is 1/2 of one carrier battle group. Norwegians say that if there is a war with anyone, they rely on the US to save them.
I said, “you gave Him the Nobel Peace Prize”.
They said, “it was an f-up and so is He.”
Yeah.
Ray- Exactly… It’s not magically appearing out of nowhere…
LL- Agreed! Wave at the P-3s as you go by… 😉
We are so screwed…….
I doubt it would ever come to a ground war on CONUS or having bombs dropped on us but if we get weak enough they WILL be able to tell us what (and what NOT) to do. There are a lot of our allies that face real trouble without our help. And we won’t/don’t have the muscle to help them.
Let alone the willingness.
And after what this bunch in DC has done it is going to take YEARS if ever for our allies to trust us again. I doubt the Iraqi’s ever will. We abandoned them twice.
Once you realize Teh 0ne is nothing but a ComIntern sleeper it all makes sense.
Ric- Agreed
Stretch- Manchurian Candidate… sigh…
The insane live in the world of “should”. The sane live in the world of “is”.
Unfortunately, those who were elected have a vision that rests on a foundation rooted in “should” (or perhaps, some other word that starts with “sh”).
Keep the faith. One miracle of this new, highly connected universe is that reality can spring back from a much smaller seed of “is”.
Our children are starving for honor, dignity and heroes. Most resent the craven sell-outs of the liberals who project their own weaknesses on “the children.”
Be strong. Keep writing.
+1
+1 Eaton Rapids Joe
What you said at the start about BO not really wanting to say that… Funny thing is my 9 year old was watching his body language, and said what you said. Pretty sad when even a 9 year old can acknowledge that.
For the woman that said that about Putin.. one of my Best friends is Russian, she left in her early 20s— never to return. Now she is 30. She backs up your statements about Putin wanting to return the country to communismn. Her family comes to the States every year to shop. A pair of jeans here is 30 bucks…over there around 300! Her dad bought a computer here…spent around 400 for it, the same one in Russia would have cost him triple.
Joe/WSF/Rick- Thanks!
JUGM- Remind me to tell you what I got for two pairs of Levi’s with the tags still attached…
Y’all showed much more restraint to your local special snowflake than I’m capable of. First words out of my mouth reading that passage where she stomped off in a hissy fit were, “Sucks being a $*#&ing imbecile, don’t it, dearie?” I’d be on the carpet in HR first thing Monday morning…
Of course, the real problem is that there are enough $*#&ing imbeciles out there to vote the king of the $*#&ing imbeciles into office…
You know, the problem is that at the end of the day, nothing changes.
So, I’ve taken a different tactic when it comes to this kind of stupidity.
If you think about it, it can happen in one of two ways:
1. Idiot makes sweeping comment regarding something that they have no understanding of. You calmly try to discuss where they’ve made mental errors. They reply with emotional arguments that are beside the point. You counter these arguments with logic, they respond with anger at your personal attacks (pointing out their errors), and you part ways with them angry and you shaking your head in confusion.
2. Idiot makes sweeping comment regarding something that they have no understanding of. I respond that they obviously have no idea what they’re talking about, and that I’m not going to waste my time trying to explain how dumb they sound. They respond with anger at my personal attack, and we part ways with them angry and me laughing.
The net result is the same, and I don’t waste mental energy trying to help them correct their errors.
I’m not making any friends this way, but I wouldn’t be their friend anyway (and I save time).
Is that wrong of me? (grin)
Even Leon Panetta admitted that the military shouldn’t be cut anymore.
I can’t help but notice a parallel between the cuts in the military and the assault on the Second Amendment.
This is also leaving unsaid that we are trashing the whole “nuclear umbrella” theory. If nobody believes that we will treat an attack on Tokyo or Taipei the same as an attack on Los Angeles or New York what’s to stop technically competent threatened countries from going nuclear themselves?
Hell that was the elephant in the room on the whole Ukraine in Crimea mess, the Ukrainians gave up what at the time was the third larges atomic arsenal in exchange for guarantees of their sovereignty. Do you think anyone who is sitting on a pile of old fuel rods is looking at that and thinking that their mutual defense treaties were printed on Charmin?
Uncle Mike- Yeah, that thought ‘did’ cross my mind…
Merlin- That is actually better than the way ‘I’ tried it… I think I’ll use your approach from now on! Thanks! 🙂
JMI- Yep, and when a hard over liberal says that, ‘somebody’ should be paying attention…
Odssyeus- You’re absolutely correct, and no I didn’t even want to go down ‘that’ rabbit hole… Charmin is right… sigh
You go to war with the President you have–not the President you might want or wish to have at a later time.
As to Europe, they drooled ALL over Obama when he got elected. It’s time to reap what they have sown. Like Tam said a while back, if you have any archdukes at home, you’d be wise to keep a close eye on them. It feels like we’ve been here before.
Drifter- Sad but true… And concur with Tam’s comment!
Assumption #1 We’re suppose to be able to fight…
Truth Not any more!
Gerry- Exactly… Is it on purpose? I think so…
I’ve said on many occasions, going back to the Clinton Administration, that just because Russia isn’t Communist doesn’t mean that they are not our enemy. I don’t think Putin wants to go back to communism, but he certainly wants to go back to expanding the size and power of Russia. Hence Georgia and hence the Ukraine.
Europe can afford their generous socialism because they could always short change their military and depend on the US for protection and support. How’s that working out for them now that our President is intent on doing the same thing over here?
TOTW- We know the answer don’t we… NOT WELL!
Hey Old NFO;
I don’t know how I missed this one….I am not sure which direction to rant on this subject, so I will just go in one direction. First off the Europeans…They loved the “anointed one”…they were positively gaga over him because they saw him like them…a socialist and he wasn’t the “Cowboy W”. Well shadenfreude is a bitch….he is screwing them over big time. I guess they always though the Big old U.S.A. would always be there and they could treat us like crap and we would accept it. Now we are drawing down all over the world and now we have Russia and China getting territorial aggressive and the Americans have been defanged. Now they have to wonder what is going on. I am more concerned about the Europeans, they have spent very little on defense….instead they spent a lot of money on their social doo gooder programs and looked down their noses at the Americans. Now the piper is due and they are worried. As far as the Koreans go…I am not soo much worried, unlike Europe, Korea is still on a war footing and their military is very good and the Japanese are waking up to the fact that China is aggressive and they are commissioning their first carrier since WWII. So I am more optimistic there. It will be interesting times
Bob- Don’t disagree at all, well… Maybe on Korea/Japan- For all their ‘good’ intentions, they just don’t have the forces required in Korea if Jong Un comes south, and Japan same issue with China.
Even with a gutted Navy you can still hide behind your Pacific/Atlantic Moats. Your northern neighbours aren’t likely to be much trouble, but in case they got frisky at least it would be a reasonably civilised opponent, kind of a family spat. A decent fence/minefield to your south would secure that border against undocumented Democr, er, aliens, wait, illeg, ahem, migrants. Zipped up nice and tight, all you’d have to worry about would be the terminally ill culture, the traitors, the fifth columnists and sleepers. No wonder the smart ones are bunkering and training….but I think the really smart ones are cutting their losses and getting the hell out of Dodge before the bloodbath starts. Remember, your ancestors didn’t stick it out where they came from, because the odds were impossible. So where to? I’d suggest anyplace you can find where the Hegelian Gramsci Ayers claptrap hasn’t taken too much of a hold. A few million savvy armed motivated folks could carve out a citadel in quite a few places if they all showed up at the same time…
Stefan- Up to a point… And then you’re right… It’s citadel time…
Those kinds of people don’t understand much of anything for themselves, but simply repeat the things they’ve heard said that appeal to their emotions. There’s not a whole lot of point to arguing with them.