CDR Salamander

Lessons on Italian hand gestures

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:54:00 +0000

By the Italian Senate!

Back in '07 the Leftist Prodi government fell then got back up again. Well, I love this picture from the fracas. You can learn a lot.

Need a lesson, this guy can help you out. How many Italian hand gestures do you see?

...and yes, you must watch this again.

Fullbore Friday

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:10:00 +0000

Do you always fight to win at all costs? When do you retreat?

Time today to look at our own backyard - the War of 1812, and a Navy leader that - to my great shame - I knew nothing about until this year.

This is what got my attention,

Aboard a pontoon boat chugging past the marshland of Maryland's upper Patuxent River on a recent Saturday, Ralph Eshelman pointed to the spot where the muddy brown water hides a shipwreck nearly two centuries old, part of the American flotilla that defended the Chesapeake Bay when the British burned Washington during the War of 1812.

That only hints at the story.

Before we get to the War Story, let's look at the man - and the questions his story asks.

When do you stop serving your nation? When your nation is in peril - is any job beneath you? Do you have an idea that can take your "low" position - and make it great? How flexible are your Sailors? How flexible is your leadership?

Background,

During the Revolutionary War, Barney became the youngest Commander of a Continental Navy frigate. Tales of his capture by the British and his daring escape were well known. After the defeat of England in America, Barney traveled to Paris to deliver peace documents to Benjamin Franklin. While in France, he was introduced at court and met Marie Antoinette. In 1795, he accepted a position as commander for the French Navy which he held for five years before returning to his home in Maryland. In 1812, Joshua Barney was fifty-three years old and living in Elk Ridge, Maryland. Because of his previous service to France, Barney was not allowed a leading position in the U.S. Navy, but accepted command of the schooner Rossie.

....and so a great man gets to work for his nation.

By December of 1812, the Royal Navy was raging across the Tidewater region blockading towns, looting and plundering. The Chesapeake and Delaware Bays were blockaded. The first defeat the British suffered was at the mouth of the Elizabeth River in Virginia when they failed to take Norfolk, but their wrath was so great they sacked the city of Hampton for revenge. As the British invaded the Eastern Shore, the American army was concentrated in Canada and the strategic Chesapeake was relatively undefended. Although something had to be done, America's forces had few reinforcements and little money.

In response, Joshua Barney designed a plan entitled "Defense of the Chesapeake," and submitted it to President Madison. The detailed plan included sketches of gunboats similar to barges, with oars, light sails and one large gun. The small, quick barges, manned by local men would be tricky targets, could keep watch over the enemy and sail into the shallow Chesapeake waters where the larger British gunboats would not dare enter. They were relatively inexpensive to construct, and Barney believed the barges could be sold after the war for commercial use.

In August 1813, Barney was appointed commander of the Chesapeake Flotilla and local shipyards began constructing the barges. Bounties were offered to entice men who would otherwise continue to privateer to enlist. News of the flotilla spread quickly and the British began constructing their own barges on Tangier Island. Although stymied by a shortage of men and supplies, Barney's Chesapeake Flotilla with seven 75' barges, six 50' barges, two gunboats, one row galley, one lookout boat and the flagship Scorpion set sail in April 1814 investigate the Potomac and check any defects in the flotilla.

Note the nature of his vessels. Do you see the seed of the PT boat? The PGM? Dare I say - irregular warfare - littoral warfare? Nothing is new, only the people and the tools they use are.

With eighteen ships and barely a month's supplies, the flotilla sailed from Baltimore on their first mission, to attack Tangier Island and destroy the British barge fleet under construction. Like all able commanders, Barney adjusted his tactics to his terrain and his strength, becoming a waterborne gadfly. Obviously he could not challenge Cockburn's heavyweights ship-for-ship. But he knew the Chesapeake: its deep water, its shoals, its numerous shallow creeks and estuaries into which he could fly for safety. So he buzzed, rather than assaulted, the enemy; waiting until a likely victim came too close to his watery sanctuaries, whereupon his flotilla, led by his appropriately named flagship, the sloop-of-war USS Scorpion, mounting eight carronades and one long gun, plus a furnace for heating shot, would sally forth to inflict damage on them. He never hoped to sink them, but he did make Sir George pay attention.

On June first the flotilla encountered the British schooner, HMS St. Lawrence and her seven boats, between the mouths of the Potomac and Patuxent Rivers near Cedar Point. The flotilla pursued, firing away, until the beleaguered schooner came under the protection of the huge 74-gun line-of-battle ship HMS Dragon. When Dragon's big guns opened up, Barney's gunboats put about and ran for shallow water with the British ship lumbering in futile pursuit. This spirited engagement was known as the Battle of Cedar Point. Because of Barney, Cock burn's hopes of renewing in 1814 the pillage of the previous year were frustrated, and instead of repeating such atrocities as he had inflicted on the town of Havre de Grace, Maryland, he was reduced to pig-sticking and tobacco-pilfering operations.

Thus began a series of darting attacks, retreats and tardy reinforcements, evident on both sides, that ultimately locked the entire Chesapeake Flotilla within the confines of the Patuxent River. But this story is not without its moments of sheer terror, true leadership, frustrations and small victories that proved the men, and their Commodore, to be some of the great American heroes of the War of 1812. "The bravery of the 500 flotillamen and marines was proven time and again as they turned back wave after wave of the numerically superior foe seeking to destroy it ..." says the introduction to Flotilla Battle for the Patuxent. ...
On June 7th .... The British Commander Barrie of the HMS Dragon blockaded the mouth of the Patuxent and waited for reinforcements from the eighteen gun Jaseur and the thirty-eight gun HMS Loire. Barney continued to retreat up river and landed on the shores of St. Leonard's Creek. Outgunned by more than four to one, Barney had little hope for victory. But, the shallow waters of St. Leonard's Creek and the surrounding high grounds were an excellent location to mount a defense.
...
The mouth of the creek was blockaded by two British frigates, HMS Loire of 38 guns and HMS Narcissus of 32 guns, plus the sloop-of-war, HMS Jasseur of 18 guns. For three days the British Navy launched wave after wave of assaults against the U.S. forces, often employing Congreve rockets to destroy the flotilla, but the Commodore and his men stood fast. On each occasion the British boats came up until they caught sight of Barney's flotilla, and were promptly chased off by the Americans, who took care, however, not to meddle with the larger vessels.

Colonel Wadsworth, commanding a force of American artillery on shore, offered to cooperate from the shore while Barney assailed the two frigates with the flotilla. Assisted by a force of U.S. Marines, commanded by Captain Miller, the joint attack took place most successfully on June 26th. The Loire and Narcissus were driven off, although not much damaged, and the flotilla rowed out in triumph into the Patuxent.

Someone think "hybrid Sailors" is anything new?

In mid-August, arrival of a large portion of the Royal Naval fleet commanded by Admiral Cock burn, and four thousand veteran soldiers of "Wellington's Invincibles" under Major General Robert Ross, made their appearance in the Chesapeake, escalating an already desperate situation.

The District of Columbia formed a part of the Fourth Military District, in which the effective troops, under Brigadier General William H. Winder, numbered about two thousand, scattered over widely separated points, some as far away as Nor folk. A company of the Marines was at the barracks in Washington, and a company of Artillery in Fort Washington. General Winder had warned the government that imminent peril threatened and had asked for troops with which to meet it, but it seemed impossible to convince the authorities that he was right, or that any circumstances could arise that would place the capital in peril. General Winder was personally convinced that Annapolis was the real British objective, but most other military and government officials believed that Baltimore must be where the British troops were heading.

Commodore Barney moved his flotilla up the Patuxent as far as Nottingham, about 40 miles from Washington, where he reported to the Navy Department that the enemy had entered and were ascending the river. "The British are in the Patuxent," Commodore Barney wrote Navy Secretary Jones on Friday, the 19th. The Admiral, he was told, planned to destroy Barney's flotilla and "dine in Washington on Sunday." The orders of Secretary Jones were to run the flotilla as far up the river as possible, and upon the enemy landing, to destroy it and march to join General Winder.

On August 19th and 20th the British invasion forces landed at Benedict, Maryland and directed the march of their forces upon Washington on the 21st, following the Patuxent River both by water and by land. The advancing British troops numbered five thousand, including one thousand Royal Marines. Following his orders, the Commodore retreated upriver to about five miles north of Pig Point. There he landed with four hundred men, leaving about a hundred men to blow up the flotilla. On the morning of August 22nd the British were astounded to see an orderly line of American row galleys and merchant ships extending before them upriver, blown up in quick succession. More than sixteen ships of the Chesapeake Flotilla sank in the Patuxent within a few minutes.

General Winder's militia were scattered here and there, and when it became known that a large land and naval force had landed at Benedict, only a small body of men were at hand to checkmate the movement, and General Winder had slight confidence in them. The General found himself with five hundred regulars and two thousand undisciplined militia -- mostly farmers, many armed only with shot-guns. Learning on the 22nd that the British had camped the previous night at Nottingham, General Winder began to believe that they might indeed be heading for Washington rather than Baltimore or Annapolis. But he sent orders to his various military units to wait at various "half-way points," in order to ensure at least some defense at each possible objective. The General knew that a sizable British naval force was proceeding up the Potomac, and feared that they would be joined by the British troops to attack Fort Washington, an easy march directly west from Nottingham. Attacking across the bridge over the Eastern Branch of the Potomac at Bladensburg seemed a fairly remote possibility.
The General's scouts continued to report on the activities of the British, now in Upper Marlboro. One report said they were on the road to Annapolis; another that they were heading for Fort Washing-ton; another that they were again on the road to wards Bladensburg. At 10 AM the morning of August 24th, a scout came galloping in with news that the British had been marching for Bladensburg since dawn and were nearly halfway there!
...
Commodore Barney's little force of five hundred flotillamen proceeded by forced march to Bladensburg, accompanied by Captain Samuel Miller and 120 U.S. Marines, and five pieces of heavy artillery from his flotilla and from the Washington Navy Yard. Following were two ammunition wagons which he had hastily procured.

General Winder had drawn up his forces to cover the road for some distance west of town, on the west bank of the eastern branch of the Potomac, in a fine position to defend the bridge over which the British must pass. President Madison, Secretary of War General Armstrong, and Secretary of State James Monroe were also there, but they hindered far more than they helped by giving conflicting orders.

Arriving at 1 PM, at the same time the British had begun attacking General Winder's forward line, he arranged his artillery in battery at the center of the second line position on the west bank of the eastern branch of the Potomac. The Commodore himself directed the artillery (2 eighteens and 3 twelve-pounder ship's guns mounted on carriages), while Captain Miller of the Marines commanded the rest of the force -- 120 Marines and 370 flotillamen armed as infantry.

As at Bunker Hill, the two first attacks of the British were bloodily repulsed, chiefly by Barney's guns. By his own account, "At length the enemy made his appearance on the main road in force and in front of my battery, and on seeing us made a halt. I reserved our fire. In a few minutes the enemy again advanced, when I ordered an 18-pounder to be fired, which completely cleared the road. Shortly after, a second and a third attempt was made by the enemy to come forward, but all were destroyed. They then crossed over into an open field, and attempted to flank our right. He was met there by three 12-pounders, and Marines under Captain Miller, and my men acting as infantry, and again was totally cut up. By this time not a vestige of the American army remained, except a body of five or six hundred posted on a height on my right, from which I expected much support from their fine position."

As the British attempted their flanking movement, the Commodore ordered Captain Miller and the flotillamen-infantry to charge, while he poured a destructive fire upon their flank. The charge was executed with great celerity and determination; the veterans of the 86th and 4th -- the "King's Own Regiment" -- giving way before it, pursued by their assailants, the sailors crying out to "board `em." They were driven back to a wooded ravine 3, leaving several of their wounded officers in the hands of the Americans. Colonel William Thornton, who bravely led the attacking British column, was severely wounded, and General Ross had his horse shot under him.

It would have been well for the honor of America if all who were present on that day had behaved with the same decision and effect as Commodore Barney and his command. Their heroic resistance saved the combat at Bladensburg from being an unqualified disgrace to American arms. "It was a magnificent stand; the slightest follow-up of Barney's counterattack might have produced an American victory. As it was, the road to Washington now lay open." But while they were sustaining the credit of their country, the other troops had disappeared, and in the confusion of their retreat, the wagons containing the ammunition for the cannon and small arms had been carried off. The British light troops acting en tirailleur had, in consequence of the total absence of any support, gained positions on his flanks near enough to produce effect with their fire, and to wound and kill several of his best officers. Captain Miller had been wounded in charging the enemy; and Commodore Barney himself, after having had his horse killed under him, received a musket ball in the thigh.

The force of the enemy was constantly increasing, for the lack of ammunition for Barney's artillery ended the only effective resistance to the British advance. When it became evident that a reinforcing column of Virginia militia could not arrive in time to aid the gallant flotillamen, who were obstinately maintaining their position against fearful odds, and that further resistance would be useless, General Winder ordered a general retreat. The retreat order was never passed to Barney's command, but with no ammunition, flanked on the right and deserted on the left, the Commodore knew that the end had come. He ordered the guns spiked and the men to retreat. The officers and men who were able to march effected the retreat in excellent order; but the Commodore's wound rendered him unable to move, and he was made prisoner.

General Ross, who had lost nearly three hundred men before getting across the river, gave great attention and care to the wounded Commodore; he so admired the bravery of the "blue-jackets" that he paroled all the flotillamen, including the Commodore, on the spot. The General ordered that he be taken at once into the city and his wounds treated.

That is leadership.

I took a lot of text, from here and here, but that story needed to be read without interruption. If this doesn't get you going - I don't know what will. Want to know what is behind the phrase, "Finest traditions of the Naval Service?" That should help.

I need you USNA guys to help me a bit here.

The British have a great tradition - they do battlefield tours. From Flanders to Afghanistan - they dedicate days to unit battlefield tours, and use them as both a training opportunity and a way to inculcate the traditions of their military and lessons of the giants who served before.

Now, all the above took place in Annapolis's backyard. Please tell me there is some kind of classroom or even better - shipboard "battlefield tour" set-up involving Barney's example.

Imagine taking one of the USNA's sailing yachts and following the path of the Chesapeake Flotilla - at sea and on land. A Navy version of the Nijmegen march - if you will.

There - chew on that. Give that idea to a good JO and a couple of 1/C MIDN and let them run with it.

...and speaking of shame - think of all the "people and things" we have named our ships after this decade; know this - we have not had a USS Barney since 1992.

One final note of caution - like I always say - you are irreplaceable until you leave; then you are forgotten.

Joshua Barney returned to his home in Anne Arundel County and began petitioning Congress for compensation for his men. The wound he received at the Battle of Bladensburg was a bullet deep in his thigh which could not bq removed and which he lived with for three years before it caused a fever that caused his death on December 1, 1818.

Diversity Thursday

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:58:00 +0000

For those who were hoping that the Color Guard racial discrimination story would fade away - well, looks like it might get its third breath.

Why does this story have legs when the Diversity Face Kabuki Dance has been going on for years? On the face, pun intended, it is because we have two identifiable faces and names that unquestionably were discriminated against based on their race. Also it is because those individuals, their family, friends and supports did not take it like sheep. They are standing up for their right to not be discriminated against. There is hope there. Hope that we may be at the beginning of the end of the retrograde and debunked racialist theories of the 1970s that hold such sway over our military. We'll see.

Today though, in the Philidelpha Inquirer, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has picked up the story and tied together the two big Diversity stories of last few weeks - the Ft. Hood attack and the USNA Color Guard racial discrimination case.

The connection is clear; there is a reason I call the Navy's branch of the Diversity Industry and those of their sister services, Diversity Bullies.

Like all Diversity Bullies, through softly-coated words, threats, and innuendo - they create an environment throughout the military from Annapolis to Bethesda to Texas where no one will oppose their diktat. If you do - you will be smeared. In the military, even if you are innocent - one smear and one FITREP cycle, and your career is done. Innocence be d@mned - we have a god to feed.

No theory there - I read it in the emails I receive from active duty officers. I wish I were at liberty to tell their stories, but I really don't need to. For those on active duty for any length of time - you know them.

Upset a uniformed member of the Diversity Cult that has any say in your professional reputation or career path - and you are done.

The Diversity Bullies have created a climate where we can no longer talk clearly to each other. Like the Communist Romanian Politburo - we mindlessly clap and chant what we have to in order to avoid being destroyed. Truth be d@mned - the diktat must be followed.

For the larger context of Sen. Santorum's column - you need to read it all; but here are the parts of interest to the USNA Color Guard story.

Six U.S. Naval Academy students were to form the color guard at Game 2 of the World Series, played Oct. 29 at Yankee Stadium. Everything was going fine until the academy brass discovered something terribly amiss, and Capt. Matthew Klunder jumped into action. Klunder, the commandant of midshipmen, ordered that two members of the color guard be replaced.

Were the midshipmen cut because of incompetence? Was there some disciplinary problem? No. They were benched because they are - white men. The Naval Academy's top officials had decided the color guard needed a white woman and a Pakistani American man for the sake of "diversity."

The color guard had practiced as a group of six and always intended to march as six. The two midshipmen who were replaced were invited to go to the game anyway and serve as backup.

But while en route to the game, the Pakistani American midshipman noticed that he had forgotten his cover (hat) and shoes. The more senior of the two replaced midshipmen had his full uniform and was able to fill in.

After word got out about the color guard changes, the Naval Academy, in an effort to mitigate the controversy, issued a news release stating that it had decided to expand the color guard to eight members.

The academy's official Web site calls diversity its "highest personnel priority." I think it's possible to favor diversity and still wonder if it should be the Naval Academy's "highest personnel priority." Is the academy, dare I say, going overboard?

I fear it is. Unfortunately, though, it's also perfectly in line with official Navy policy. After all, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, proclaimed when he was head of the Navy that "diversity" is a "strategic imperative."

All the way down to color guards at baseball games.

...

this is the kind of politically correct incantation that forces otherwise reasonable people to say silly things, and to behave in ways that are worse than silly - with disastrous consequences.

It's not a critical national-security matter when a few white male midshipmen almost get bounced from a color guard. After the Fort Hood killings, however, we should look at the military's blind commitment to "diversity" and see if it's blinding us to the obvious - and the dangerous.

Rick Santorum can be reached at rsantorum@phillynews.com.

BTW, I left Senator Santorum's email there for a reason. If you have an Annapolis Diversity horror story to tell - send it to him.

It is one thing to send them to me - but if you want it seen by a much higher player - he's standing by.

Who knows - maybe somewhere in out senior leadership we have a man or woman as brave as Pîrvulescu. Maybe.

OK, this LCS I will take....

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:49:00 +0000

You know I liked the LCS-I better than the mission-module-madness ..... and it looks like LCS-I has morphed into the cringe inducing Multi-Mission Surface Combatant .... that has morphed into what is showing up at the Dubai Air Show as the "Named by Captain Obvious" Surface Combatant Ship ...... which if you must give me something in a USA designed hull that is ready to go now and is smaller than a DDG-51 in order to meet the Frigate Gap ..... I'll take this over the uni-mission LCS any day.

Just look at it!

...provides simultaneous Anti-Air, Anti-Surface, Anti-Submarine, Electronic Warfare and Special Operations support capabilities. ... is a high speed, highly maneuverable combatant capable of executing missions both in open ocean and near coastlines in all sea state conditions. The MMSC design uses the latest U.S. Navy technologies, allowing interoperability with U.S. and allied naval forces to participate on joint and coalition operations.

.... available in multiple configurations and is adaptable to meet the needs of naval forces around the globe. The international design features the proven Aegis combat system with the SPY-1F (V) radar and the MK 41 Vertical Launching System.

(click here for larger picture)

That ain't a Corvette - that ain't a Frigate - give it a larger gun and it would be a Pocket Cruiser.

For now though - what we have here is a smaller variation of the Spanish F100. This has inherent multi-mission capability. Can defend itself adequately and though a lot will have to be shoe-horned in - it is a tough 'lil uber-Corvette. Still a china doll with a glass jaw - but one that might get in a hit or two in a fight.

If you are going to force the LCS hull on me - then give it to me in this package. Sure, it will cost $1 billion+; but it is what it is and gets you more than a LCS + two mission-modules and logistics tail it needs ever could.

At least with this ship - if you send the CO and his Sailors in harm's way they will at least have the tools to be able to put up a fight against whatever comes their way.

Hat tip Mike.

Approved for shipboard use?

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:46:00 +0000

Hey - get some sh1thot EOD CWO4 a $300,000 budget, a 90-day deadline, a pre-paid guv'munt travel card and have him figure out where this could save Sailor's lives.

Oh, and give him some 100#-head LCDR we just paid to get his PhD in Physics to be his driver and technical advisor.

Kind of like Thelma and Loise - but with khaki and a right to blow stuff up.

Just an idea.

USA vs. Spain

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:05:00 +0000

Plan Salamander wins again.

Somali pirates attacked the Maersk Alabama on Wednesday for the second time in seven months, though private guards on board the U.S.-flagged ship repelled the attack with gunfire and a high-decibel noise device.

A U.S. surveillance plane was monitoring the ship as it continued to its destination on the Kenyan coast, while a pirate said that the captain of a ship hijacked Monday with 28 North Korean crew members on board had died of wounds.

Pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama last April and took ship captain Richard Phillips hostage, holding him at gunpoint in a lifeboat for five days. Navy SEAL sharpshooters freed Phillips while killing three pirates in a daring nighttime attack.
Four suspected pirates in a skiff attacked the ship again on Tuesday around 6:30 a.m. local time, firing on the ship with automatic weapons from about 300 yards (meters) away, a statement from the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain said.
An on-board security team repelled the attack by using evasive maneuvers, small-arms fire and a Long Range Acoustic Device, which can beam earsplitting alarm tones, the fleet said.

Vice Adm. Bill Gortney of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, said the Maersk Alabama had followed the maritime industry's "best practices" in having a security team on board.

"This is a great example of how merchant mariners can take proactive action to prevent being attacked and why we recommend that ships follow industry best practices if they're in high-risk areas," Gortney said in a statement.

And how does the submissive lov'n bottom that is Europe respond.

However, Roger Middleton, a piracy expert at the London-based think tank Chatham House, said the international maritime community was still "solidly against" armed guards aboard vessels at sea, but that American ships have taken a different line than the rest of the international community.

"Shipping companies are still pretty much overwhelmingly opposed to the idea of armed guards," Middleton said. "Lots of private security companies employee people who don't have maritime experience. Also, there's the idea that it's the responsibility of states and navies to provide security. I would think it's a step backward if we start privatizing security of the shipping trade."

The other option is ......

Somali pirates are thought to have received a £2million ransom tonight by Spanish authorities after the release of 36 crew members, held for six weeks.

One of the captors on the Spanish trawler said the cash had been paid - and Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero did not deny the allegation.

It is thought to be the second time Spain has paid a ransom to free hostages, despite a general policy by Britain and other Western countries not to.
...
A Somali villager named Ali Ahmed Salad said 12 armed pirates left the ship shortly after noon Tuesday and joined colleagues near the pirate town of Haradhere.
Ali Gab, a self-proclaimed pirate, told The Associated Press that a boat had delivered $3.3 million in ransom. Gab said pirates began leaving the ship shortly afterward, and that a Spanish warship nearby watched the proceedings.

Weak horse.

Like I've said before - when the Islamists get stronger - the center of the Long War will, again, be Europe - they are the weak horse.

Oh, THAT forward paint locker

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:24:00 +0000

BrickMuppet came up with a post on KURAMA incident that caught my eye - and it wasn't just the picture.

The collision reportedly touched off a fire in the forward paint locker off Kurama which seems to have fared the worse of the two.

It is unclear how much of the damage was due to the collision vs the fire, but if paint thinner in sufficient quantity had a steady supply of air then the fire could have easily reached blast furnace temperatures. With the close proximity of the 5 inch magazines and the sheer intensity of the fire, the fact that the ship is pier-side rather than on the bottom is a testament to her damage control team.

It. Doesn't. Take. Much.

Here is the Damage Control puzzler puzzle of the day; ponder your paint lockers, their location, and what is near them - oh - and your DC teams.

Good thing about leaving the Navy ...

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:02:00 +0000

You can pick your own airline to travel in.

Walt would understand what they were doing though.

Awww .... you just want to squeeze their cheeks!

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:53:00 +0000

Ain't the new born so cute and cuddly!

We have a freshly minted Navy milblogger out there. Go say hi!

UPDATE: ... and don't let the young'uns die an early death due to lack of love. Go over to them and give them a comment or two!

LCS - truth trumps PPT

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:57:00 +0000

There was once a time when the core group of LCS critics were a small, lonely, bunch. Picked on by many - called nasty names - dismissed as not being transformational enough in our thinking.

Always derided as not understanding that historical norms, institutional knowledge, and a traditional understanding of a warship at sea no longer applied to today's 21st Century Navy. Didn't we see? We are even creating new naming protocals for our ships! Entire classes will begin their hull numbers with "21!" Better yet, "1,000!"

It wasn't so much the cost - it wasn't so much the etheral transformatinalist's language - it wasn't the wave-of-the-hand dismissal of damage control reality that bothered everyone at the core; no. What was most worrying was the focus on manning to a minimum in full knowledge that watchkeeping and ship's maintenance could not be radically reduced - as humans are human - they have to sleep, eat, and take care of those things mammals need to do.

Sailors have always been "hybrid." When a ship is engaged in combat operations - it has never been overmanned. Damage control, extended combat watchkeeping, and fighting hurt always required a properly manned and trained ship. These things the LCS critics took as self-evident. The "Optimal Manning" cult of the Green Eye Shade though did not. Hope is not a plan, but for some it sure was a manning concept.

Like we often warned - after a few PCS cycles, shadows appeared pier-side, deployments were planned, ships needed to be manned, and missions needed to be done - that changes would have to be made.

Behold.

The Navy’s first littoral combat ship, Freedom, will add 20 sailors to its crew when it makes its trial deployment next year, making for a total complement of about 95 people, as opposed to the crew of 75 the ship was originally designed to carry.
...Freedom’s 20 extra sailors would sleep in two 12-rack berthing modules, about the size of shipping containers, which will ride in the ship’s multiuse mission spaces. While the 75 core crew members will stay in the ship’s integral berthing spaces — which include double-tall racks, rooms of no more than eight sailors, and a head and shower to each berthing area — the VBSS sailors’ lodging will be more like those of sailors on a destroyer, he said.

“The racks are exactly the same — there’s a vent fan, a night light above it, there’s the same strap to hold you in. They’re that creamy beige color with the little step,” Good said.

Did you catch that? My first thought - how much extra space will there be in the multiuse mission spaces for mission modules?

In addition to the extra sailors, Freedom’s “tailored” surface warfare package will include two 33-foot rigid-hull inflatable boats for its VBSS sailors; its two Mk 46 30mm guns mounted on the multiuse boxes atop the superstructure; an armed MH-60S Seahawk; and “quite a collection of boarding team equipment,” Good said, including flak jackets, small-arms weapons, grappling hooks, and specialized gear for at-sea boardings.

Freedom will not take a Fire Scout unmanned helicopter or any of the maritime robots it’s designed to carry, nor will it carry the Non-Line-of-Sight missiles designed to be part of its surface mission package. That weapon, being developed with the Army, is still being tested.

Friends - in this case - "tailored" means incomplete.

So, what do we have here? From the sounds of it - there is no way you could fit a complete Surface Warfare Package in an LCS, as - moment arm concerns aside - I don't think you could fit the additional people and equipment to support NLOS, Firescout etc. I will give you partial credit though - assume a one for one swap for Seahawk and Firescout - just to make it simple as we go forward on this post. But still .... is this what we mean when we talk "Surface Warfare Mission Module?"

We should probably call this something else - as what they are putting onboard isn't going to be doing much Surface Warfare. Call this the Maritime Law Enforcement package .... which is a Coast Guard Mission ... which makes LCS ..... wait for it .... a very fast, very expensive Patrol Gun Boat with extra space.

Thank you - pay the bartender, I will pick up my beer on the way out.

Let's get back to the manning issue though.

Cmdr. Don Gabrielson, Freedom’s Blue Crew commissioning commander, who has since moved on to a position on the Joint Staff, anticipated criticism of the Freedom’s taking extra people. It might be seen as an early concession that the ship can’t operate in the real world with the small crew for which it was designed, but that’s not so, he said.

“People are going to say, ‘Hey, this is more people than they said they’d need. They’re lying to us!’ ” he said. But just as an LCS will take aboard custom equipment to hunt submarines or mines, so too does it need custom gear — in this case, sailors — for a visit, board, search and seizure team, he said.

“VBSS is a manpower-intensive evolution. I did one deployment to the [northern Persian Gulf] and boarded 400 ships in three months. Sometimes, when you board those ships, you keep them, lock them down for five months at a time, and you need sailors aboard all the time when they’re in that condition.” An LCS can’t spare any of its 75 sailors — 40 multitasking core crew members and 35 sailors from a mission-module and an aviation detachment — so it needs the extra hands.

Shipmate - what I am missing? You have a partial, excuse me, "tailored" mission package, but you still have to bring and extra 20 personnel? I thought you said 35 were for the mission-module? So, let me do my NROTC BA math here; 35+20=55 to support just a partial, excuse me, "tailored" mission package?

Funny - I didn't see that vignette on a PPT anywhere. Oh, weren't we warned by the Antitransformationalists about the fact that operating at sea is by it very nature a "manpower-intensive evolution?" Weren't they told to sit down and shut up? Oh yea - thought so.

“One of the things we’re looking at is crew workload. We’re monitoring it, and it was deemed prudent that we should bring on a separate team for that [maritime security operations] boarding team capability,” said Capt. Mike Good, the program manager for LCS’s mission modules.

You bet it is. Thing is - there is no reason this needed to be said in 2009. "We" knew this over a half decade ago, but no one wanted to hear it.

Now that we have handled the manpower issue in macro - let's look at it in micro.

“The racks are exactly the same — there’s a vent fan, a night light above it, there’s the same strap to hold you in. They’re that creamy beige color with the little step,” Good said.

However, the berthing containers will not include showers or heads for the extra ship riders. For the trial deployment, sailors will use the core crew’s heads and showers, and Naval Sea Systems Command will look into developing a new stand-alone restroom container for future use with, but not part of, the extra-sailor berthing modules.

“As you might imagine, it’s a better strategy to separate them,” Good said.

Gabrielson said the VBSS team using the crew’s heads and showers “was a nonissue.”

“It’s not something where people are gonna go, ‘This is bad,’ ” he said — but it could be tricky given the geography of the ship.

Many of the ship’s heads and showers are inside the eight-person berthing spaces, meaning VBSS team members will have to enter crew members’ berthing rooms to use their facilities. Chiefs and officers also share heads and showers.

Nasty spin. Why do we teach our leaders to spin? In this day and age, you are not fooling anyone - you just degrade your credibility.

Don't call an issue a "non-issue." Don't say that is isn't something a Sailor is going to complain about as bad - when you know very well that the poor SOB's in the live nearest bearthing area with a head and shower to the two 12 man shipping containers are going to find a bad experience dealing with a parade of their fellow Sailors bust'n a55 in their head all night long as they try to sleep. It is one thing to share a head with 8 men eating poorly - it is altogether another thing to double that number or more.

How about we just acknowledge the challenge, say we will mitigate it and move on? Don't pi55 on Phil Ewing's head and tell him it's raining. That is just insulting.

So, there you go. So far, LCS is moving along just like we told you it would. Shame - this was avoidable. All we had to do was go with the VISBY option or even better - Patrol Frigate along the lines of the better European designs.

Sigh. And the people responsible are still not held to account.

Barney’s Christmas Gift List for Seapower Wonks – Top 5 Books

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:28:00 +0000

Ho, ho, ho! It's off to a'read'n we go!

Second in this year's series of book recommendations. This time from the Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College, Professor Robert C. (Barney) Rubel.

Phib asked me to provide a list of top five books for Christmas presents. Took a bit of thinking to distill a list down to five, but here are some that come to mind as useful for those that are reasonably savvy on maritime affairs, as I imagine most folks that read this blog are. I hope some, at least, are not familiar to Salamander’s readers.

The Campaign of Trafalgar, by Sir Julian Corbett.

This is an elegant depiction of the events leading to the culminating battle of the Age of Sail. Beyond its literary merit, I believe this book influenced subsequent naval history in a very direct way. It was published in 1910 and a copy soon appeared on the shelves of the U.S. Naval War College library (the original printing is still here). Those with knowledge of World War II in the Pacific know that Admiral Raymond Spruance was in command at the Battle of the Philippine Sea and also that he was a student and instructor at Newport, undoubtedly reading this book more than once. See if you can find the passage that may well have influenced Spruance in his decision making at the Marianas Turkey Shoot. Pay attention also to the kind of mind meld that the Admiralty and the dispersed flags and captains had in an era when communications took weeks or months.

Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World, by Roger Crowley.

If Corbett’s book is elegant, then Crowley’s is voluptuous. It’s descriptions of the forces and events leading to the Battle of Lepanto are almost cinematic. I bought this as an audiobook from iTunes, and the narrator’s British accent and assiduously correct pronunciation of Spanish, Italian and Ottoman names and places further enhances its vividness. This is serious naval history though, and like Corbett’s book, provides the careful reader with deep insight into the forces and chains of events that produced that rarest of military events, a decisive naval battle.

Warfighting and Disruptive Technologies: Disguising Innovation, by Terry C. Pierce.

I reviewed this book for the NWC Review a few years back and kind of panned it. Subsequently, I found myself referring back to it routinely as I directed the War College research and gaming effort in the development of the current maritime strategy. Pierce puts his finger on some organizational dynamics related to naval innovation that I’ve discovered are relevant today. I might term the approach “insidious innovation.” Be prepared, though, high cost, poor editing and an almost indecipherable Chapter 2. The subsequent case studies are where the value is.

Agents of Innovation: The General Board and the Design of the Fleet that Defeated the Japanese Navy, by John T. Keuhn.

A book some of my colleagues don’t like, I found it illuminating despite clunky writing style in some areas and an irritating repetition of the central theme: the effect of the fortification clause of the 1922 Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty on US Navy innovation in the 1920s and 30s. Like Pierce’s book, it uncovers important organizational dynamics associated with naval innovation – a hot topic in my world right now. Like Corbett’s book, there is hidden treasure in this one too. I will give you a clue if you decide to read this book and look for it: I am a retired naval aviator who just wrote a chapter for an upcoming book on the history of naval aviation. In it I examine the near-catastrophic accident rates associated with the transition from propeller aircraft to jets.

U.S. Naval Air Superiority: Delevelopment of Shipborne Jet Fighters - 1943-1962, Tommy H. Thomason.

Available on Amazon. This book looks like a coffee table book, and indeed it is full of wonderful pictures. However this book is serious reading for anyone interested in how the Navy went from props to jets. Thomason was a flight test engineer and manager in the aerospace industry for almost 40 years, and this book is an insider’s account of how all the Navy jet fighters were developed, from the Phantom I to the Phantom II. His graphics are great; they really give you SA on everything from how and why jets need irreversible hydraulic controls and yaw dampers to the overall flow of fighter development. You don’t need to be a pilot or engineer to understand this book, but folks with stick time will definitely appreciate it. He has a companion volume on the development of attack aircraft if you want a comprehensive set.

Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice, by Wayne P. Hughes.

Ok, this is number six, but I couldn’t resist. I hope everyone that reads this blog sees this and says “yeah, I read it.” If not, and you fancy yourself as someone knowledgeable in naval warfare, then get it and read it now. I do not take seriously anyone who talks about naval warfighting and has not read this book. Written in 1986, this book is ever more relevant in today’s world. Wayne is still a force in naval innovation too.

If you want to see the other recommendations as we go towards Christmas, just click the books tab.

Amazon.com Widgets

Crime, terror, or insurrection?

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:41:00 +0000

In the wake of the Ft. Hood terrorist attack, what mindset do we have at the heart of the Department of Defense? Do they think they were the victim of a crime, a terror attack, or an insurrection?

Let's go to Webster:

Crime [krahym]
–noun
1. an action or an instance of negligence that is deemed injurious to the public welfare or morals or to the interests of the state and that is legally prohibited.
2. criminal activity and those engaged in it: to fight crime.
3. the habitual or frequent commission of crimes: a life of crime.
4. any offense, serious wrongdoing, or sin.
5. a foolish, senseless, or shameful act: It's a crime to let that beautiful garden go to ruin.

Legal Dictionary
1 : conduct that is prohibited and has a specific punishment (as incarceration or fine) prescribed by public law —compare DELICT, TORT
2 : an offense against public law usually excluding a petty violation —see also FELONY, MISDEMEANOR
NOTE: Crimes in the common-law tradition were originally defined primarily by judicial decision. For the most part, common-law crimes are now codified. There is a general principle “nullum crimen sine lege,” that there can be no crime without a law. A crime generally consists of both conduct, known as the actus reus, and a concurrent state of mind, known as the mens rea.
3 : criminal activity
ter⋅ror⋅ism [ter-uh-riz-uhm]
–noun
1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

Legal Dictionary
Function: noun
1 : the unlawful use or threat of violence esp. against the state or the public as a politically motivated means of attack or coercion
2 : violent and intimidating gang activity terrorism> —ter·ror·ist /-ist/ adj or noun —ter·ror·is·tic /"ter-&r-'is-tik/ adjective
in⋅sur⋅rec⋅tion [in-suh-rek-shuhn]
–noun
an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government.

Legal Dictionary
Function: noun
: the act or an instance of revolting esp. violently against civil or political authority or against an established government; also : the crime of inciting or engaging in such revolt insurrection against the authority of the United States…shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years —U.S. Code

Synonyms:
insurgency, uprising, mutiny.

Now that we have defined out terms, ponder this from 17thLine;

Admin Officer: Effective immediately, reservists will no longer be issued weekend parking permits for the Pentagon. Those permits currently in use are now invalid.
Unit Member: Immediately? Like, how immediately? I just parked my car.
Admin Officer: You can move it when we’re done here. Just pray that it isn’t towed before you get back outside [ha ha].
Unit Member: Where are we supposed to park when we’re on duty?
Admin Officer: Well, there’s another DoD building about a mile up the road. If there’s a space there, you can park. Otherwise there is a parking garage at the mall across the interstate. I think it’s about $10 to park there all day on the weekends. And before you ask, no, you can’t submit that for reimbursement.
Unit Member: Why are they taking away the parking passes? It’s not like there’s a ton of people here on the weekends. (ed. – The Pentagon really is deserted on Saturdays and Sundays. Only a handful of 24×7 folks work there and the lots are empty).
Admin Officer: It’s a security issue. They can’t have a bunch of people parking here that they don’t trust. (ed. – Is now a good time to mention that every member of the unit had a clearance of Top Secret or higher?)
Unit Member: Security? Trust? I’m a commissioned officer in the United States Navy and I have a government issued security clearance, but I can’t be trusted to park within a mile of this building?
XO: Obviously a sensitive issue here, but we have a lot to cover this morning, so let’s move on. Readiness officer, who is on the lists for this weekend…

In a time of war, we have the core of the military that does not trust its commissioned field grade officer corps to park their car out of fear that one of them may attack The Pentagon.

I'm lot a legal scholar - but it sounds like someone feels that there is an insurrection - but wants to act like there is a crime wave.

Shame - because the enemy is fairly easy to define - if you have the moral and intellectual courage to admit where they may come from, and are willing to look in the right places to find them. A coward's response is to assume everyone has the potential to be a terrorist - call it the "...we give Grandma from Minnesota in a wheelchair the same treatment at the airport as a 25-yr old Yemani student..." school of counter-terrorism.

So in the middle of a terrorism-centric Long War, we respond like we have an insurrection on our hands - yet we have a "crime" mindset. We will to wait for something to take place before we can act. What a logic disconnect.

That is not a mindset for a mature organization.

Oh, what is Phib's take? Simple. We have native-born terrorists on our soil and in our military. The USA Major at Ft. Hood was not the only terrorist with a US passport and/or military ID waiting to go active. The thing is - the entire Reserve Force is not part of a terrorist organization - so why are we treating them like one?

An act of "smart security" - or an act of cowardice in the place of action?

What do we do? We assume that our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines are what they say they are unless evidence tells us otherwise .... but then again ... you have to act on the evidence you find, if you are looking for it.

There is the rub.

UPDATE: This action predates the Ft. Hood attack - back to 2006. That begs an even larger question ......

The Bitter Fruits of Good Intentions

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:54:00 +0000

As we seem to have reached an Operational Pause in the USNA Color Guard racism scandal, perhaps it is time to update everyone on the latest. If you need a review, or are new to the topic, please click here and follow the links to earlier posts and the background information then come back.

This post is going to have a different structure than most - three authors in one post. There may be some repetition, but that is OK. One report might be slightly different as another (our sources are different). Some of this is strong - but that is OK. Creative friction, love, and emotion create sparks. In a Representative Republic - the light and heat from sparks are healthy and helpful.

As those with first hand knowledge cannot or will not report on what happened, you will have to take 2nd and 3rd hand reports. One blind person cannot describe well what an elephant is - but three people can - especially if each one has a huddle of sighted people around them whispering in their ears. To give the best overview possible - I'm going to give you three blind men blogg'n.

We're going to have a post in three Acts; in the 1st Act, I will provide an overview of a few thoughts I have on the subject and report some of the information I received since last THU night’s ‘Dant call.

Act II will be by USNA Professor of English, Bruce Fleming. He has a unique perspective of having listened to dozens of MIDN on the color guard issue and the general atmosphere of racial discrimination that exists at the USNA. The MIDN talk to him because he is known as one of the few people there that a MIDN feels will keep their confidence and will be a listening ear to their worries, complaints and questions on what is a radioactive topic for almost anyone who is not a tenured professor – and even then – there is a price to be paid for intellectual and moral courage.

Act III will be a short, simple, and modest proposal by a Commissioned Officer who is a long-time friend of this blog and has an exceptional pedigree.

Act I:

When I first posted on this two THU ago, I thought this might have a standard “24-hr News Cycle” that in the Blogosphere sometimes runs to 12hrs and if it is a good post, and will have an echo a day or two later as other bloggers pick it up. If you are real lucky – the print media will pick it up – you never know.

As the first word came to me on what was going on prior to the World Series Game that the USNA Color Guard was going to be in – I frankly thought is was a rumor based on a poor assumptions and miscommunication. Sure, I know the selective selection BS that the Diversity Bullies has everyone doing (in my career I was party to many episodes of the kabuki lie that we all participate in) – but I really did not think that it had gotten so bad that someone would pick out specific individuals to discriminate against. But, I was wrong.

Day after day, I started to receive more emails from parents, alumni, serving officers, and even staff and Midshipmen from Annapolis. Then I started pinging some of my regular blog-buddies, contacts, and spies to confirm what was coming across the Salamander transom. Especially coming on the heels of the Honor Code fiasco, it reached a point that The Potemkin Color Guard had to be run that THU.

From there, things started to pick up speed. More people got in contact with me. Navy Times picked it up. We went over 100 comments. Over the weekend I worked the story with the Washington Post. A close run thing, they wanted to make sure, like I did, that this was a ligit issue. They had a higher threshold to go over – but they ran with it as well about the same time we put out an update.

A week on, the story continued to grow. I was a guest on the Michael Smerconish radio show, we put out a third update, Uber-bloggers from MichelleMalkin, JawaReport, PowerLine, Bookwormroom, MudvilleGazette picked it up as well as many other bloggers down the Technorati ecosystem. Professor Fleming was a guest on WBAL radio, and then I followed up as a guest on WTOP on SAT.

All the while – the traffic to my site increased almost four-fold. At the peak (on 11 NOV nonetheless, in a week dominated by the Ft. Hood attack), we tickled 7,000 page views that day – a holiday. When you consider that my site averaged 2,000 page views a day prior to this story – that is significant interest boost. As a matter of fact, since we ran the first story, the average page views have been a little more than 3,000 – a 50% increase. In a phone call I had with a member of the press who wondered what kind of interest this story had, those numbers – sustained – kind of answered that question - that and 100+ comments on my posts and over 200 at the Washington Post.

Why so much interest in something, discrimination is pursuit of diversity in the military, this time around? Well, a few things I think. First, unlike most goal/quota problems, in this case you can actually put a face and a name to the discrimination. Unable to fudge around it – the decision was made to actively discriminate on the basis of race. It was done in an institution that is supposed to be a meritocracy that belongs to an institution that relies on a system of fairness, impartiality, and professionalism. Racism as clear as this, red in tooth and claw, was to many inside and outside the USNA one straw too many. Enough.

And so, we find ourselves roughly two and a half weeks after the act – and the story is still bubbling. The latest milestone took place last THU. It was Dant’s Call, the Commandant of Midshipman, CAPT Klunder, facing ~4,000 Midshipmen.

From the reports I received, this was not the warm, fuzzy Dant’s Call that are supposed to take place. Sad, in a way. Dant was a quite popular Dant as the story has been told to me. A professional’s professional, good guy in a tough job trying to do the right thing. I think that description still holds, but I don’t think his relationship with the MIDN will ever be the same.

Out of the box, Dant’s Call became an “Us vs. Them.” He started with a PPT trying to explain that race, ethnicity, and gender have nothing to do with anything at Annapolis. Everything the MIDN had been reading about differences in admissions, honor code violations, and the latest the color guard, are all misconceptions. That didn’t leave much wiggle room coming out of the box.

Evidently, the Dant does read CDRSalamander, as one of the comments here was confirmed,

"Sir, you see, I think we have an issue of age here. Your generation was taught to see color when you grew up, and your generation still does. MY generation was taught not to see color, and we still don't until someone from your generation reminds us to."

That was nice to see, as that is something we have hit on almost every THU for the last few years. The more that sinks in, the better. Will they act on it? No - I don't think so. The Diversity Bullies have an income to maintain - and many Boomers stuck in the 60s and 70s that are in power and their amen corner have too much invested in their cultish view of this country.

Evidently, the Dant stated that it was a lesson for him that generations see things differently and the younger generations are more color blind than his and older. He also stated that he didn’t ever give anyone something because of their race. Ok. Words need action - and that is the problem.

Then came questions. In a case of enthusiasm, emotion, and stage freight – it appears that a Plebe (4/C MIDN) asked a question asking the Dant to resolve two conflicting statements he made – concerning the conflict we brought up in the Washington Post article related post, “ The Mask Slips at Annapolis”

Well, the Dant’s hackles went up due to perhaps the directness, and tone of the question. In his response said, among other things, he berated the MIDN that, “If you’re going to quote me to the media, use the full quote and not sound bites.”

A bit defensive? Perhaps – but he is under a lot of stress. This has not gone well for him, and the 8v6 conflicting comments still have not been resolved. A good guy in a bad corner.

I found this part interesting. As most of you know, I support the repeal of DADT, but know that the good that would come from it would be ruined by the Diversity Bullies who will have another job security area – and they will scratch at good skin until it bleeds just so they can sell band-aids.

Well, in another question, the repeal of DADT came up. BZ to the MIDN who tied this together: the question was basically, “When don’t ask don’t tell gets repealed, will there be diversity of sexual orientation?” The Dant’s response – probably, as required by law. Pre-emptive surrender, and perhaps he was caught off balance. Shame that was the answer, a lost opportunity, again, to defend the Navy as an institution. Phib’s answer? Simple. “If DADT goes away – then as leaders we should get the mindset of “Don’t Care. ” Do as we do now – lead, evaluate, and reward your Sailors on the basis of sustained superior performance and carry out the plan of the day. Next question.” Given what has happened recently – he probably wouldn’t have liked the follow up snark – “Just like we do with the Color Guard, Dant?” That would be, at the least, what MIDN 4/C Salamander would have thought.

A nice admission – but in many ways adds more questions was the Dant’s statement that he regretted his decision to cut two people out of the Color Guard. A snarky person present might think, “Because you got caught.”, but I think you have a view of the professional doing something he probably thinks he has to do, but doesn’t fully support doing. I am guessing here and may have it wrong, but that is what that reads to me. Sad thing though – the questions that statement brings up, if we got it right, goes right back to the conflicting 8v6 comments by the Dant and the PAO – backed up by press releases and official statements.

There is a lot more there – but this post will be long enough and I’ll leave it there. In the end though, what we don’t have is any debunking of the fact that we have a confirmed case of direct racial discrimination at Annapolis – discrimination excused and sandbagged away in a hope that opposition and the embarrassment of its exposure will simply fade away.

Outside USNA, the excuses usually fall into one of two areas. The first I find the most honest, an excuse that some support active discrimination against one group as long as it gives a picture others want put out there – that racial balance or the appearance of racial balance is more important to the Navy than performance, duty, hard-work, fairness, and honor. I don’t agree with that world-view, but in comments here and in places like SailorBob and the Washington Post, you can hear that.

The second excuse bothers me more. Eventually a certain percentage of true believers in an obviously self-contradictory and corrosive cult will turn away from it – and as it is debunked, the fellow travelers will peal off. That is why the first excuse grouping doesn't bother me that much - there is hope.

One thing I cannot stand though is intellectual passivity. The second excuse is something like, “So what. We have been doing that selective diversity selection cr@p for years. No big deal, it is just to put a face on the Navy – and in any event, it makes some in Congress feel better about supporting us.”

Talk about no core. That is no core. No perspective. No understanding of second and third order effects.

We also saw something else afterwords. It seems that some upper-classmen at Annapolis decided to pig-pile on the 4/C MIDN who asked a question. Their “peer-mentoring” basically was, “If an CAPT says it is raining, but the sun is shining out side – you carry an umbrella and talk about how hard it is raining.”

Nice. And that is the attitude that gets us shipbuilding programs that cannot build ships, Commanding Officers who get relieved for things they have been doing since they were a LTjg, and in the end, has multi-piloted aircraft auger in or run off the runway because the junior pilot didn’t want to warn the senior pilot that his approach was FUBAR. Nice.

Before we move on to Act II & III (which I didn’t read prior to the writing the body of Act I), I wanted to end with a quote from a MIDN that summarized one third order effect of this decision. I like it – and it states why selling your honor, word, and integrity for a debunked, retrograde Diversity Industry is a cancer.

Every midshipmen came the Academy for a reason, and we all expected to be rewarded for our performance. We had great ideas about what the Academy stood for. We were told stories about the honor concept, and how dishonorable acts were not tolerated. We thought everyone would be equally held to the same high standard. And then we came to the Naval Academy and we found out that that wasn't quite the case.

Next is Act II of a three-part post. As a reminder, Act II is by Professor Fleming. He'll explain it.

Act II:

Last Friday the well-tended Yard of the United States Naval Academy—its leaves now all but fallen, and immediately removed from the still-green grass by our attentive grounds crew (our campus is in its entirety a National Historic Landmark, after all)—was abuzz. My classes were all but unteachable, to both plebes and upper-classmen: all the midshipmen of the United States Naval Academy wanted to talk about was the “Dant’s Call” of the night before. They had plenty to say.

This rare assembling of the Brigade to hear upper-level spin on a pressing problem was occasioned by what I call Colorguardgate, the removal of the week before of two white males from the USNA color guard that had been asked to perform at the World Series in New York, and the substitution of a woman and a non-white male for them. All stories agreed that the Commandant had made this substitution; things got complex when it turned out, once in New York, that the non-white male had forgotten his gear, so one of the white guys, who had been told to come along and watch the color guard he had been removed from, was put back. But one wasn’t; he protested in an e-mail; the Commandant ordered the Brigade not to talk to reporters or protest the apparent discrimination (the guy not put back has filed a grievance case with the CMEO—anti-discrimination—system). The story exploded into CDR Salamander, from there to the Navy Times and Washington Post, and to Fox News, radio shows (I was on one on Thursday, for WBAL Baltimore/Ron Smith Show) and the “blogosphere.”

The Naval Academy engaged in furious spin, with a cover story through our “don’t even pretend you believe us” Public Affairs Officer about this being a misunderstanding because the Dant had decided to march six members of the color guard, and then eight, and then six: there’s no outside evidence that this is true, incidentally; all that can be confirmed is that the two white guys were taken off. The only undisputed fact is that two white males were told, the day before, that they were off because they stood guilty of being white males and we needed a more “diverse” group to show at the World Series, and the only reason the people marched who did was the one “diverse” guy forgetting his gear.

This may be a trivial case of discrimination in the face of the perversion of admissions and the decimation of the honor concept (all reported on in recent weeks). But like some of those symbolic flash points, it was what set the Brigade off. They’d been talking about it for a week: I had visits from distraught students, e-mails in my box, pleas to talk about it in class—which I tried only half-heartedly to resist: this was a leadership lesson handed to us, a super case of What Not To Do. Why pass it by?

Hence too the Thursday Dant’s Call in response to the furor, an en-masse mando meeting of the Brigade in our cavernous basketball arena, Alumni Hall. And then on Friday morning, the impossibility of talking about Shakespeare in class: all the students could think about was the meeting of the night before.

“If only he’d just admitted that we do all this stuff,” a firstie said bitterly. “Only just admitted. I don’t ask him to fix it, even. Just admit the truth.”

But he didn’t. Another said: “All I wanted him to do was admit he made a bad decision. Everybody makes bad calls. Just admit he had done so.” But he didn’t do that either.

All the mids who discussed the previous evening with me agreed that CAPT Klunder, up to that point the golden boy of the Brigade—largely because he lacked the corrosive personality of his predecessor—fobbed off responsibility again and again: he wasn’t there, he didn’t make that decision, and so on. Over and over I heard, “I can never trust him again.”

Not only did he fob off responsibility, he again and again—so their report—ducked the question. And sometimes, out-and-out lied. During the question session he was asked about the preferential admission for non-whites. [ NB: This is by now a matter of public record; if you don’t believe Prof. Fleming, look at the composition of our remedial school NAPS that virtually guarantees admission to USNA: it’s half recruited athletes, some of whom are minorities, and the other half just minorities without the athletics, with some priors—and a handful of exceptions for political reasons. Last year NAPS instituted an even lower track than its usual remedial one, and threw out the fall trimester’s worth of grades—so intent is USNA on getting minorities through the system and to Annapolis. And the CAPT in charge was relieved, and now the Academic Dean—apparently because they were unable to make the magic trick happen of making silk purses out of sows’ ears. Or look at the composition of our remedial pre-college courses: last semester I took one of mine at random (I volunteered to teach these): 16/18 NAPSters, exactly half minorities, the other half recruited athletes. I can tell you how things get this way, but if you don’t want to listen to me, riddle me this: where are the similarly score-challenged white non-athletes? Hmmmm? They got REJECTED.] CAPT Klunder responded to this question, the woman telling the story assured me, by hiding behind a smoke screen of talking about the need for geographical diversity. We have minority students because congressmen sent them to us. Huh? Geographical diversity only kicks in for the COMPETITIVE NON-WHITE candidates who have to win their Congress(wo)man’s slate. Athletes and minority candidates are DIRECT admitted with NO REGARD to geography. They do not even have to GO VIA THE CONGRESSMEN. Can it be he really doesn’t know this? Instead he offered statistics carefully chosen to show that 50% of the cases recommended for separation in 2009 both for minorities and non-minorities, athletes and non-athletes, were approved: we’re even-handed, the statistics were meant to show, no preference for the recruited students. But the fact is that we don’t even let the cases get that far! Over and over I heard about an athletic department CAPT calling the honor board to postpone or cancel hearings of black football players. And virtually no one is put up for separation any more in 2009. Was this a sampling of two? The Dant, sticking to his script, didn’t say. And none of it impressed the students: virtually all rolled their eyes, though some by saying: “he’s a smooth performer. I’ll give him that. ”

Over and over the midshipmen expressed their intense disappointment with the Dant. He’s an 0-6! He has to tell us the truth! Me, I chuckled. Fat chance, I said. He’s a mid-level staff officer who takes his marching orders from the Supe, who takes his marching orders from the CNO, who takes his marching orders, apparently, from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. If he acknowledged to you what everybody at USNA now knows, that preferential treatment for athletes and minorities skew admissions at USNA and produce our rejection of many stellar candidates in favor of less qualified ones, have rotted the honor system (statistics published in the Annapolis Capital showed minorities and athletes wildly over-represented in honor cases—and these are the ones that are allowed to go to adjudication), and have busted morale, he’d be liable for legal prosecution: what they’re doing is illegal. Of course he has to lie to you, I told my deeply disillusioned midshipmen.

For the students, and for me, the most central question asked by a midshipman produced the acknowledgement by the Dant that the mids’ generation didn’t see race, his did. That’s why, he was admitting, that the dinosaurs (as I call them) were embarked on this deeply destructive, logically incoherent (does a white sailor need a white officer all his own to perform well? That’s the implication of saying a black one needs a black officer), and toxic program that now almost everybody sees through. They see a Black where the midshipmen of today see a person. What more do you need to hear, I asked the students? He’s just conceded the point. And their lying when they have nothing more to stand on only erodes their credibility more. He’s unwittingly (I’m sure) conceded that this is an outdated, 1968 program of race-typing that lost its relevance in the 21st century: that’s why it’s so deeply destructive with the enlisted sailors and Marines of today. And oh yes: it’s Unconstitutional. There’s that too.

One midshipman asked, “when DADT—don’t ask don’t tell—is gone and there are openly gay sailors, does this mean we’ll recruit gay officers for them?” The Brigade laughed, but I’d say the question is the logical corollary of current policies.

All agreed their confidence in the Dant bottomed out when he shouted down a plebe (this after assuring that all questions would be respectfully entertained) asking a question that put side by side two quotes from the Dant, one to the effect that “we don’t discriminate” and the other acknowledging that he wanted a color guard that was “more diverse.” Of course Mr Nice Guy went away at this one and the yelling started: that’s the unanswerable.

They can’t have it both ways. Of course they discriminate. And the Dant’s stock is now zero with many midshipmen, they told me—only many of the firsties are looking forward to service selection next week, at which point, they tell me, they’ll be done with the whole sorry place. “Sir, I just don’t care any more”—their words verbatim.

This is so sad it’s scary. Ladies and gentlemen: you’ve paid close to half a million dollars per officer candidate (four times what the average ROTC officer costs) to produce this level of cynicism and discouragement. And you know what? If I were they I’d be just as cynical and discouraged.

Only I’m not. So I say: Fire the CNO, the Supe, the Dant, the Academic Dean. Let’s try this again, with people who can follow the Constitution they’ve sworn to obey.

Act III: A modest proposal by a commissioned officer.

Dear VADM Fowler and CAPT Klunder,

You have been leaders in the Navy's diversity initiatives. Since you are such strong advocates of ensuring the traditionally disenfranchised of our nation be given special consideration and casting aside white males because of their color and gender, please consider the following.

Benjamin Cardin was elected as a Senator from Maryland in 2006. He was an advocate of the same diversity initiatives you both favor. In the primary, he defeated Kweisi Mfume, an African-American. In the general election, Cardin defeated Michael Steele, an African-American. Benjamin Cardin is a white male. Had he stepped aside, either Mfume or Steele would have been a Senator and Maryland would have been represented by an under-represented minority. Instead, yet another older white man sits in the Senate.

You could both display the leadership that Cardin lacked by leading from the front. VADM Fowler, would you step aside from your position in favor of a more diverse flag officer? And CAPT Klunder, you too are an older white male selected for flag rank. If you become an admiral, you are denying the opportunity for a more diverse candidate to become an admiral among the ranks of our flag officers which is overwhelmingly white male.

You have both talked the talk to your command, to the community, and to the nation of applicants. It is now time to walk the walk and step aside for more diverse representation in the Academy's leadership if you really believe in what you say. If you're familiar with the analogy of using and egg and bacon breakfast to explain the difference between involvement and commitment - the chicken was involved, the pig was committed. If you are not committed to stepping aside, your words to your command, your admissions office, your brigade, are as empty as the false political concept of diversity that you both endorse. Or simply remember what Martin Luther King said: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Our generation is generally blind to race and gender; we are not stuck in the 1960s. We elected an African-American as President. Did yours? Trust us to do what it right, not what your generation forces upon us based on the decades-old prejudices you saw as children or young adults.

VADM Fowler and CAPT Klunder, please make Martin Luther King's dream a reality and base admission, position, and promotion on merit and character, not on race and gender.

Very respectfully,
An officer in the United States Navy

UPDATE: So, does Fred make this stuff up too? I don't think so. Tell him that to his face - if you can run fast.

Look for the name of this blog - another person with first hand knowledge that shows the lie.

Sunday Funnies

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:35:00 +0000

More Broadside here.

Convert to Islam...

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:51:00 +0000

... so you can get away with saying almost anything . . . .

How does the thread from our friend CJ and the PTA connect to Ft. Hood?

Required reading over at Mudville on the topic.

Some freedom of speech is more of a right than others - you understand, of course...

Can I get it in NTDS?

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:06:00 +0000

Your day is lost. Your efficiency is gone. Unless you have nothing to do today - do not click here.

Very cool - fiddle with the controls.

Hat tip Mike.

Fullbore Friday

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:23:00 +0000

A Fullbore outlook on service, sacrifice, and life.

Yarosh, now 27, spent more than two years in full-time treatment and rehabilitation at Brooke Army Medical Center, home of the Army’s only burn unit. A public affairs officer who had been contacted by Mitchell connected the two men.

Yarosh, who moved back to Windsor, N.Y., after his retirement in January, concedes he was a little uneasy when he sat for the portrait because he worried about how an artist, likely to be more liberal, might depict him. Still, Yarosh agreed because he thought having his portrait done would be “super cool.”

He sat for sessions over two days. Mitchell developed the basic outline during the sittings and took photos and video to complete the portrait later.

The artist, who makes his living in part by doing traditional commission work, said Yarosh’s injuries left the soldier without the typical landmarks — nose, ears and other features — that help an artist see a person’s character.

But somehow, “I felt it was done when I felt I could see his personality. Still, that’s a big mystery to me. I don’t know how it happens,” he said.

Yarosh was astonished when he saw the completed portrait.

“It was perfect. I couldn’t believe that he captured me,” he said. “It captures my pride. I’m proud of the way I look. I’m proud of the reason for the way I look.”

In his own words - even better.

....and yes - to find video you have to go to the French.

I told you they would miss "W"

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:44:00 +0000

It was only a matter of time before reality set in. Was GWB perfect - oh heck no. But .... even in Europe, they are starting to feel that the morning after is a b1tch,

Despite George W. Bush's defiant "you're with us or you're against us" public stance, he actively solicited advice and input from his NATO partners. Obama, by contrast, is saying all the right things in public about transatlantic relations and NATO but adopting a high-handed policy and paying little attention to Europe. And Europe is taking a hint.
...
Even in Britain, where the public loves Obama, the government has been obsessed, after repeated slights -- the infamous CD set gifted to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a press conference canceled due to light snow (or was it fatigue?), being denied a private meeting with Obama at the Pittsburgh summit, etc. -- with the notion that the two countries' "special relationship" is over. To be sure, some of this is overblown -- and hardly new -- but Obama has been less solicitous of his country's most natural ally than any U.S. president in memory.

America's relationship with France bounced back markedly after Nicolas Sarkozy was elected to replace Jacques Chirac. But there have been more than a few bumps since Obama took office. "Obama's policies are not the Atlanticism that Sarkozy was expecting," Macleans quotes Hall Gardner, a professor of international politics at the American University of Paris, as saying. "There've been several elements of disagreement between the two."
...
And indeed, while most European heads of state dutifully congratulated Obama after the surprise announcement of his Nobel win, the European press was as stunned as their American counterparts. The Independent's Ian Birrell assessed that Obama was being "once again lauded for his symbolism and potential rather than his actual deeds." Peter Beaumont of The Guardian equally snarked, "The reality is that the prize appears to have been awarded to Barack Obama for what he is not. For not being George W. Bush. Or rather being less like the last president."

It would be ironic, indeed, if the Europeans started longing for the good old days of the Bush administration. But that nostalgia is closer than you might think.

... and closer to home, the core of the man was made evident again - and the contrast exceptional.

As we will always be grateful for what George and Laura Bush did this week, with no media attention, when they very quietly went to Ft. Hood and met personally with the families of the victims of this terrorist attack.

FOR HOURS.

The Bushes went and met privately with these families for HOURS, hugging them, holding them, comforting them.

If there are any of you out there with any connection at all to the Bushes, we implore you to give them our thanks…you tell them at a bunch of gay Hillary guys in Boystown, Chicago were wrong about the Bushes…and are deeply, deeply sorry for any jokes we told about them in the past, any bad thoughts we had about these good, good people.

You may be as surprised by this as we are ourselves, but from this day forward George W. and Laura Bush are now on the same list for us as the Clintons, Geraldine Ferraro, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, and the other political figures we keep in our hearts and never allow anyone to badmouth.

Criticize their policies academically and intelligently and discuss the Bush presidency in historical and political terms…but you mess with the Bushes personally and, from this day forward, and you’ll answer to us.

We hope someday to be able to thank George W. and Laura in person for all they’ve done, and continue to do. They didn’t have to head to Ft. Hood. That was not their responsibility.

The Obamas should have done that.

But didn’t.

Wouldn’t.

Thank goodness George W. is still on his watch, with wonderful Laura at his side.

All you Bushaters - take a powder - he wasn't all that bad.

Diversity Thursday

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:15:00 +0000

Via the Washington Examiner, this is what the folks in Annapolis are worried about as they spin their honor code into nothing and actively discriminate against unprotected classes.

For reasons only a sectarian can fully understand, they simply cannot cognitively deal with what would happen with a true meritocracy where race and ethnic neutrality was put into place.

What would happen? Well, those with the best qualifications, as defined for that position, would get in. Does it all have to be academic? Of course not - important - but not all. Should race be any factor in a multi-ethinc society characterized, gloriously I might add, with multi-race individuals? No - having race or ethnicity play any role in your selection is a cancer on any society - a fact proven everywhere from Belgium to Yugoslavia to Rwanda.

What if one ethnic group is over-represented? Who cares - what people want is the best qualified and performance potential. Works for the NBA, rugby, and spelling bees - nuclear engineers - why not the Navy?

Well - because the Diversity Bullies and their Diversity Industry co-religionists would be out of a job - and their true believers get the vapors when they see the below - they can't seem to be able to handle facts well.

The number of black and Hispanic students accepted into the Washington region's premier high school has dropped by more than half in the past five years, according to numbers from Fairfax County Public Schools.

Only six Hispanic students and eight black students earned acceptance to the class of 2013 at Fairfax County's Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, down from 12 black students and 19 Hispanic students for the class of 2009. About 480 students were accepted this year overall.

U.S. News and World Report ranks Thomas Jefferson, commonly called TJ, as the best high school in the nation. Its admissions process involves an academic test and an extensive review of the students' backgrounds, but does not incorporate race or ethnicity.
...
Fairfax County's Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Race; % admitted for the class of 2009; % admitted for the class of 2013
Asian; 32%; 54%
White; 53%; 36%
Black; 2% (12 students); 2% (8 students)
Hispanic; 4%; 1%
Multiracial; 6%; 6%

Montgomery Blair High School - Math, Science, Computer Science Magnet Program
Race; % admitted for the class of 2009; % admitted for the class of 2013
Asian; 61%; 57%
White; 31%; 31%
Black; 5%; 8%
Hispanic; 2%; 4%

These numbers have nothing to do with racism. They have everything to do with performance. When you are simply and objectively looking for the best potential, percentages of this self-identified group or that one will show themselves without any "institutional bias" based on race or ethnicity, and most likely they will not represent the percentages of the general population - just like the NBA and winners of spelling bees don't.

There will be differences - but they have nothing to do with what the Diversity Industry earns their paycheck about, not in 2009.

No, it has everything to do with what the control freaks have no control over; family, culture, social support. If that becomes our focus, then the Diversity Industry is out of a job - unless they expend their efforts holding public schools to a proper standard; that is where the fight will be won. I wouldn't hold my breath.

Look at those numbers again. So much for white skin privilege ... and I don't care. The Sailors I know would be more than happy to have a 60% Asian officer corps as long as they knew their job, evaluated them on performance fairly, and brought them, their Shipmates and their ship home in one piece.

What do we want in the Navy - the best qualified - or the right color chart? When it comes to leading men and women in a situation where their lives and the future of their nation is at risk - why do we have to ask the question? Priorities, I guess.

No, the problem is much deeper and is beyond the Navy to address. Again, this has everything to do with public schools, culture, and families. A much more difficult - and uncomfortable subject.

I just wish as much effort was spent on that as there is on the cancerous self-licking ice cream cone that is Diversity.

Go ahead and cry ..

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:43:00 +0000

It's OK.

There's more from MentalFloss. But, if that didn't do it - this will; I hope.

Hat tip Jonah.

A book not to buy

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:21:00 +0000

There is a reason this post is running today.

First, take some time to honor Col. John Ripley, USMC, properly.

We have discussed him before - but I would like you to click here, as this was an about perfect tribute to him when he passed on over a year ago.

On the other side of the equation is the below. One of the most despicable things an author can do is to take a man, his honor, his memory, and his family's good name for his own selfish uses.

From The Capital's article yesterday:

Ripley's daughter, Annapolis resident Mary Ripley, called Fulkerson's picture of her father "a dishonor" to his memory.

"It is a dishonor to our father to turn the things he said - about women in the military and women in combat, and about gays in the military - into a personal view about a hatred of gays and a misogynistic view of women," Mary Ripley said.

"This is real for us, and more importantly, it is real for my dad," she said. "My dad wasn't against homosexuals in the military because he hated homosexuals, but because he was concerned about military readiness. And that was in a different time and place."

Fulkerson said he wrote "An American Knight" after meeting several times with various members of the Ripley family, and never has heard any objection from them about the book.

The colonel's oldest son, Stephen Ripley, wrote an introduction for the book.

Stephen Ripley said his family cooperated with Fulkerson "with our eyes wide open."

"I wrote the introduction trying to give people an idea of my father; TFP was going to write this book anyway, so we tried to participate to make sure it was factually accurate," he said.

Stephen Ripley said he is disappointed in the book.

"My hope and intention is that this book will slide off into oblivion, and never be heard from again," Stephen Ripley said last week. "My dad took some unpopular positions ... (but) he never belonged to the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, even though he had some parallel beliefs."

Another of the four Ripley children, John Michael Ripley, said of Fulkerson's writing, "It's the little details about the real man that get lost when he creates this fictional evangelizer."

"They don't need our permission to write a book about our dad," he said in resignation, "and they can write whatever they want."

Form up with his family. Don't buy that book.

Tiger on veterans

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:13:00 +0000

From the inauguration last Jan - nice and to the point. It was originally printed on www.tigerwoods.com.

I grew up in a military family -- and my role models in life were my Mom and Dad, Lt. Colonel Earl Woods.

My dad was a Special Forces operator and many nights friends would visit our home. They represented every branch of service, and every rank. In my Dad, and in those guests, I saw first hand the dedication and commitment of those who serve. They come from every walk of life. From every part of our country. Time and again, across generations, they have defended our safety in the dark of night and far from home.

Each day -- and particularly on this historic day -- we honor the men and women in uniform who serve our country and protect our freedom. They travel to the dangerous corners of the world, and we must remember that for every person who is in uniform, there are families who wait for them to come home safely.

I am honored that the military is such an important part, not just of my personal life, but of my professional life as well. The golf tournament we do each year here in Washington is a testament to those unsung heroes. I am the son of a man who dedicated his life to his country, family and the military, and I am a better person for it.

In the summer of 1864, Abraham Lincoln, the man whose memorial we stand, spoke to the 164th Ohio Regiment and said:

"I am greatly obliged to you, and to all who have come forward at the call of their country."

Just as they have stood tall for our country -- we must always stand by and support the men and women in uniform and their families.

Thank you, and it is now my pleasure to introduce the U.S. Naval Glee Club.

Class act.

Hat tip Jay Nordlinger.

The Potemkin Color Guard goes mainstream

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:45:00 +0000

As the Midshipmen at the Naval Academy, family, friends, and alumni have been hoping, the story of active discrimination going on at Annapolis has broken into a major daily newspaper of record; The Washington Post. The NavyTimes article by Philip Ewing on Sunday was good - but the Washington Post brings it to a wider audience.

Before we get to Daniel de Vise's article tough, you may want to review the previous posts here from last THU and MON.

Dan de Vise's has done a good, balanced article. What I would like to do, if the author does not mind too much, is to do a para by para commentary.

For this to work though, you need to read the article in full. So, go over to the Washington Post and read it, then come back.

Oh, and click an advertisement or two while you are there to thank them and Daniel for running with this article.

Here we go.

Leaders of the U.S. Naval Academy tinkered with the composition of the color guard that appeared at a World Series game last month so the group would not be exclusively white and male.

An affirmative statement of fact. Keep this para in mind as we move forward. This is the core truth of what happened.

Accounts differ on whose names were added to the color guard roster, or purged from the list. But the net result was that one of the six who marched on the Yankee Stadium field Oct. 29, Midshipman 2nd Class Hannah Allaire, was selected because her presence would make the service academy look more diverse before a national audience.

Accurate - though it would have been two of six if one of the Diversity Selectees did not forget his shoes and cover.

The incident has captured the attention of the Annapolis campus and stirred up the broader community of alumni and military observers, who see it as part of a campaign to bring more racial and sexual diversity to the academy. Diversity is a sensitive point at the Naval Academy, an institution that has been accused by some faculty and alumni of forsaking fairness in its quest to build a brigade that mirrors the nation as a whole.

One small point - the issue isn't "...bring(ing) more racial and social diversity...". The issue is the USNA's unwarranted discrimination against individuals based on race and gender.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, elevated diversity to a "strategic imperative" during his tenure as chief of naval operations. Academy leaders, on their official Web site, call diversity "our highest personnel priority." That thinking reflects "a sea change, in that this initiative was generated from within the military, rather than imposed from without by civilian overseers," said retired Marine Maj. Gen. Thomas Wilkerson, an academy alumnus and chief executive of the U.S. Naval Institute, an independent think tank. Some alumni, he said, "have voiced concerns that it will happen at the expense of quality and combat readiness."

I think MG Wilkerson has a couple of things wrong here. First, talk to anyone with experience dealing with Congress. The push for all things proposed by the Diversity Bullies and the Diversity Industry is hard-run from Congress to the military. The decision was made a long time ago to sacrifice fairness and equal treatment in favor of support for budgets and weapons programs by those members of Congress who fully support the retrograde theories proposed by the Diversity Industry. If you don't do what they want - they will force it on you. Just look what happened to the Coast Guard Academy recently.

No; internally the Navy I know and love wants to treat everyone the same regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin - it is Congress and Big Navy though that decided that equality isn't enough. They must take from others to give to someone else - and will do it based simply on self-identified racial and ethnic groupings.

Second thing that MG Wilkerson has wrong; USNI is not a think tank. It is an independent forum. I hope I don't get dinged at USNIBlog for bringing those two things up - but it is what it is. I mean it in the most polite and helpful way.

A military-oriented blog, CDR Salamander, reported last week that two white, male midshipmen had been pulled from the color guard that went to Yankee Stadium and replaced with two other students, one an Asian American male, the other a white female, to make the group more diverse.

Hey, I get a shout-out too! But .... like Para 1, this is a fact; and this is where things get interesting.

Academy leadership disputed that account.

Hmmmm .... someone here has a different story than everyone else.

My sources? Serving Midshipmen, Commissioned Officers, family, alumni, and friends. I'll stick with my sources ... their stories all agree with each other. Ahem.

"No midshipman was ever given approval to attend this event and then later told they could not," said Capt. Matthew Klunder, commandant of midshipmen, in a statement Monday.

Define "attend." That is different than "perform." Nice trick - but no workie here. Once again - review 8v6.

He said he considered replacing two white males in the group but chose instead to expand it from six to eight to make it more representative of the Naval Academy.

Everyone here who was ever on a precision drill team or color guard, feel free to join in on the CAPT Klunder pig pile.

Did you ever, after training with a specific number of members (say ... four flag and two rifle) ever plus-up at the last minute without practice?

Two of the eight could not perform because one midshipman, Zishan Hameed, had forgotten parts of his uniform. The color guard marches in pairs.

Again - who at the last minute wants to lead a color guard with two extra personnel thrown in - when you didn't plan to perform with that number? Nasty spin.

A report in the Navy Times, citing unnamed sources, stated that two white males were replaced by Allaire and Hameed. The report noted that a pre-game press release named a six-person color guard, including Allaire and Hameed.

That is fact. Confused? You are supposed to be, methinks.

Two members of the color guard contacted by The Post referred interview requests to the school's Public Affairs Office. Another declined to comment on Monday. Two others couldn't be reached for comment.

It should have been mentioned that they can't. They were issued a legal order not to talk to anyone about this. They followed orders.

According to academy spokesman Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, the color guard was invited to present the flag during the national anthem at the World Series game. Senior staff reviewed the names of those who wanted to go, all white males, and decided the group should better reflect the diversity of the academy. Of the 4,400 midshipmen, 20 percent are female and about one-quarter are minorities.

Fact. Now, go read CDR Carpenter again. This starts to get even more fun.

"The color guard that was going to the World Series, which by all accounts is an event on a national stage, with a national audience, needed to be representative of the Naval Academy," Carpenter said.

Really? Where is the "geographical diversity" color guard? Where is the "religious diversity" color guard? Where is the "I like redheads, he likes natural blondes" color guard?

Oh, and the word, "needed." Who defined that need, and in the paragraph above, who was the senior commissioned officer present to agreed to discriminate against two defined individuals on the basis of race?

Is racial discrimination actionable under the UCMJ? I think so. Does it apply in this case? I'm not a lawyer - I don't know. If removing someone from a position based on their race not racial discrimination, what is it?

An academy color guard is assembled from a roster of 28 midshipmen to represent the institution at ceremonies and public events. "That group of 28 can be put together in any combination," Carpenter said. Groups of midshipmen can ask to participate in high-profile events, Carpenter said, but the final decision rests with the commandant and his staff.

OK, CDR Carpenter - you just answered my question. The senior officer that approved the removal of two MIDN based on their race was the Commandant? What does the CMEO had to say about this? The CMEO's webpage states,

It is the Naval Academy’s policy to provide equal treatment and equal opportunity to all midshipmen and staff. The objective of the Command Managed Equal Opportunity (CMEO) program is to promote positive command morale by providing an environment in which all personnel can perform to their maximum ability unimpeded by institutional or individual biases based on race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, or religious stereotypes. To this end, the CMEO program supports the chain of command and addresses issues of sexual harassment and equal opportunity. CMEO officers seek to educate midshipmen about the importance of diversity and to prevent occurrences of sexual harassment and discrimination.

Wow - looks like a clear cut case to me. CAPT Klunder, over to you.

Back to the WaPo article,

Klunder said he originally planned to replace some members of the color guard. "My only guidance to them was that any replacements must be fully qualified team members and that originally proposed team members would still be permitted to travel to and attend the World Series," he said in a statement.

CAPT, you just contradicted yourself.

Earlier, you stated,

"No midshipman was ever given approval to attend this event and then later told they could not," said Capt. Matthew Klunder, commandant of midshipmen, in a statement Monday

Now, I'm not going to play the "attend vs. perform" sea-lawyer game. Let's make that "perform," as that is the issue here.

You then state,

... originally proposed team members would still be permitted to travel to and attend the World Series...

So, we do have an "original" and "Potemkin" color guard team. Thank you CAPT, you just made my point.

After further discussion, he said he decided to expand the guard from six to eight. Klunder said he met with the two midshipmen who could not participate because of the forgotten garments, "to discuss the sequence of events and improve on any communication breakdowns or misperceptions that were experienced."

I am sure the conversation was a bit more than that. Quite a bit more. How about letting the MIDN talk about it? You are.

"It is regretful that assumptions were made" by the six midshipmen who asked to march at Yankee Stadium, Klunder said, "but it has been and will remain the Naval Academy leadership's prerogative" to decide who carries the flag.

Very nice - blame the victim.

No assumptions were make. The MIDN were told by both the MIDN and uniformed chain of command that they were removed because they were white males. That is not an assumption on their part - that is a fact - a fact confirmed by CDR Carpenter.

What is regretful here, is that the Naval Academy takes as its prerogative to openly discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin. Is that in the finest traditions of the naval service? In the 21st century - is that really where we should be? Is that in alignment with honor, courage, and commitment?

Correction: The “think tank” moniker was Dan de Vise's description, not that of MG Wilkerson.

UPDATE: If you want to see what kind of hate and sectarianism the Diversity Bullies breed in the service - click here for a perfect example.

UPDATE II - Electric Boogaloo: Welcome to all you late-linker-ins ..... if you want the latest in the saga, please click here.

A very Phib'y Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:57:00 +0000

Yes, it is that time of year. Remember what we did last year for Christmas? Well, we are going to do it even better this year.

Starting this Tuesday and working each Tuesday through the next month, we will have a different "Christmas Book Recommendations" post. The reason is multifold; (1) I can't stand shopping at the last minute and those who do; (2) If you order something, you need the lead time for it to get to you, properly wrap it, and then get it to the giftee; (3) There are few better Christmas gifts that a person can give to a friend than the gift of a good book.

For our Tuesday series, what we will focus on are - with the exception of my post - "Top 5" book recommendations from guest posters. Some you will know, some you may not know. All of them, however, represent some of the finer minds in our business. These are people of varied backgrounds and opinions - but each deserves your time to contemplate those books they recommend and why.

These recommendations are aimed at giving you ideas on what books might help fertilize the seed corn of the Navy's future.

If you are new to the Navy, a young Sailor, MIDN, or Junior Officer and have not read these books, consider adding them to your list. If you know someone like the above, or have a son, daughter, friend, brother, sister, father, mother that has an interest in the Navy - then this list is for you too.

A love of history - and a love of great books - is an essential foundation stone towards a well rounded, open, and fertile mind that is required for success in any field.

This will be fun - let's get started.

I will open the series with a very simple gift idea: the United States Naval Institute's Classics of Naval Literature.

I have 24 on my book shelf lined up and looking at me right now; yes two dozen - and there are more than that available. With authors like Baxter, Beach (twice), Borghese, Buell, Dickens, Cooper, Dodson, Evans, Exquemelin, Footner, Forbes, Heggen, Hoffman, Leech, Kennedy, McKee, Rayner, Roskill, Sledge, Taylor, Thomas, Thomason, and Von Mucke - how can you go wrong?

From Saudi Arabia to the Arctic Circle - these books were with me. Good stuff.

If you have been reading this blog long and wonder now and then, "where did he get that idea" or "what historical example is he talking about" or "where did that arcane reference come from" --- not to mention a few of the Fullbore Friday ideas over the years --- well these were the things I read as a junior officer.

Do yourself, your Navy, and a young leader a favor. Give them the gift of hundreds of years of accumulated Naval knowledge. Give them the gift of the Classics of Naval Literature for Christmas. Preferably on a "one book a month" installment plan. If you don't want to do it manually - call USNI and ask them to set it up for you. I am sure they will be glad to help.

Past the first reports ....

noreply@blogger.com (CDR Salamander) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:51:00 +0000

There are some simple truths about what happened at Fort Hood.

First, to get the best picture this weekend, you needed to head across the pond to get the right information.

Second was that this was a terrorist attack and/or an act of treason. Full stop.

URR over at USNIBlog about caught my mood in my darker moments. What I would like to do is repeat my comments there, here.

I think the time may at last be ripe to pull a page from the past. Remember back in the Cold War the questions you were asked about when you joined and/or went for a security clearance? The ones about any association you had or once had that with Communist organizations and/or philosophy?

Take that and mix in the more recent push against hate groups – then give it to the lawyers to chew on.

Well – even without singling out a single religion, something to the effect “Do you now, or have you in the past been associated with any secular or religious organizations that advocate violence against the United States government, military or people – or supports those who advocate such violence.”

That isn’t too much of a departure from what we do right now, and should give some more top cover to those who hear one of their coworkers spout off.

We don’t tolerate those who voice sympathy with Nazis – we shouldn’t tolerate those who support Islamic terrorism, or terrorism of any kind.

There are some things a tolerant society must be intolerant of. And yes, it takes moral and professional courage.

Right now, the only high profile official I see with overt intellectual, moral, and professional courage from is Senator Lieberman (D-CT).

Mr. Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said he will work with the panel's ranking Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, to investigate the shooter's motives.

"I think the first steps that should be taken in this regard should be taken by the U.S. Army, because this was an attack on American troops," Mr. Lieberman said. "You've got to see it as if 12 American troops were killed in Afghanistan.

"I am intending to begin a congressional investigation of my homeland security committee into what were the motives, what were the motives of Hasan in carrying out this brutal mass murder ... and to ask whether the Army missed warning signs that should have led them to essentially discharge him."

Mr. Lieberman dismissed the notion that Maj. Hasan's freedom of speech rights would have been violated if the Army had stepped in to discipline or discharge him for his reported comments before the shooting.

"Really, in the U.S. Army, this is not a matter of constitutional freedom of speech," he said. "If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have zero tolerance. He should have been gone."

'Nuff said, because you are not going to get anything of use from the MSM.

For example, from Greyhawk.

ROBERTS: So you were acting like a soldier. You were acting heroically. We should point out that you're with the 20th Engineer Battalion and despite your best efforts and I guess the efforts of your comrades, as well, four members of the battalion were killed, 10 others were injured. And you were shot in the hip and you didn't realize it at the time?
Foster: I had realized it at first, but with that much adrenaline, you tend to forget things.
But here's how CNN is reporting their own interview now:
Among the wounded in the shooting was Pvt. Joseph Foster, 21, who was hit in the hip as he sat at the base's military processing center, preparing paperwork for his January deployment to Afghanistan.
He said he "was sitting in about the second row back when the assailant stood up and yelled 'Allahu akbar' in Arabic and he opened fire," Foster said Monday on CNN's "American Morning."
Foster, 21, said he wasn't clear about whether the gunman said those exact words, noting that "with that much adrenaline, you tend to forget things."
And hero or not, that's what you get for telling CNN something they don't want to hear.

Pathetic.

It also appears that you cannot look to senior uniformed leadership for direction and guidance as well.

Over at BLACKFIVE, LaughingWolf outlines it well.

Now add the final ingredient: A General of the Army who says that losing diversity would be a greater loss than 13 dead and 29 wounded.

And you wonder why no one was willing to step forward and make a formal complaint or notice about a killer who was very open about who and what he was? You wonder why no one pushed the obvious investigations, from the FBI on?

I had more, but right now, just am not sure it is worth it. No leader, civilian or military, is going to own up to their responsibility and all have just shown how much they truly think of those who serve in our military. Disgusted doesn't begin to cover my feelings, and I truly fear what is to come, for if we are not willing to deal fairly and evenly with all, then we have already lost all. Failure to face facts and deal realistically means more and true horrors to come.

For the terminally stupid out there, I am NOT advocating discrimination. On the contrary, I am pointing out the reverse discrimination -- and rampant PC idiocy -- that allowed this horrific event to take place. Or, do you think that if this had been someone with Savage or Beck book to their name that our great and mighty media would not be shouting about the right wing terrorist as loudly as they could?

There you go. Who do I wish we had right now to lead from the front? How about General/Admiral Varadarajan?

So, first, it should be part of the mandatory duty of every member of the armed forces to report any remarks or behavior of fellow service members that could be construed as indicating unfitness for duty for any reason.

Second, there should be a duty to report such data up the chain of command, regardless of the assessment of the local commander.

Third, there should be a single high-level Pentagon or army department that follows all such cases in real time, whether the potential ground for alarm is sympathy with white supremacism, radical Islamism, endorsement of suicide bombing or simple mental unfitness.

Let the first lesson of the Hasan atrocity be this: The U.S. Army has to be a PC-free zone. Our democracy and our way of life depend on it.

Read the whole thing by Tunku Varadarajan at Forbes, but look back at the above --- and be sad.

Why sad? Because the three points he brings up above already exist. The problem is that there is a command climate that causes people to balk because they have no top cover. What General Casey did over the weekend reinforce that command climate.

There must be a change in either the personalities or the climate. Right now, we are stuck in the status quo - and that won't do.

UPDATE: If you want to see the shooter's brief - here it is.