Left Wing Terrorist Organizations and Veterans

The other day we looked at Right Wing extremist organizations and examined some of the holes in the DHS report that were based upon a false report from the SPLC. Based upon the report “large numbers” of active duty military and veterans with PTSD join racist right wing terror organizations. Interesting, that DHS thinks that but not true. Today to balance it out we will look at the report on Left Wing Terrorists. The Left wing report is very odd in that the implication is that left wing terrorists are not violent.  Based upon the arrests of the men caught trying to blow up synagogues in NYC yesterday I think we can dismiss this as patently untrue.

Strangely there was no media coverage on the report on Left Wing Terrorism. Another disservice and I wish that the media would step up a bit and cover things even when they are unflattering to their causes. Anyway, this is a much more interesting report for a whole lot of reasons.

Here is a copy of the whole report:

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/hsa-leftwing-extremists-increase-in-cyber-attacks-dated-26-january-2009.pdf

Here is a key part:

“(U//FOUO) DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines leftwing extremists as groups or individuals who embrace radical elements of the anarchist, animal rights, or environmental movements and are often willing to violate the law to achieve their objectives. Many leftwing extremist groups are not hierarchically ordered with defined members, leaders, or chain of command structures but operate as loosely-connected underground movements composed of “lone wolves,” small cells, and splinter groups.

— (U//LES) Animal rights and environmental extremists seek to end the perceived abuse and suffering of animals and the degradation of the natural environment perpetrated by humans. They use non-violent and violent tactics that, at times violate criminal law. Many of these extremists claim they are conducting these activities on behalf of two of the most active groups, the Animal Liberation Front and its sister organization, the Earth Liberation Front. Other prominent groups include Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty; and chapters within the Animal Defense LeagueUSPER, and Earth First!USPER.

— (U//FOUO) Anarchist extremists generally embrace a number of radical philosophical components of anticapitalist, antiglobalization, communist, socialist, and other movements. Anarchist groups seek abolition of social, political, and economic hierarchies, including Western-style governments and large business enterprises, and frequently advocate criminal actions of varying scale and scope to accomplish their goals. Anarchist extremist groups include entities within Crimethinc USPER, the Ruckus SocietyUSPER ,and Recreate 68 USPER”

In a way I am glad that they left out any linkage to military veterans. Take the example of Doug Peacock. Doug Peacock, wilderness activist and grizzly bear researcher. He is the author of several books on grizzly bears. He was the model for the character Hayduke in Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang. Good book, look that one up and you start to get the concept idea for the “Earth First!” organization. Peacock is also a Vietnam War veteran, been diagnosed with PTSD, and talks about Earth First!:

“Well, their tactics were, you know, no compromise in defense of Mother Earth. And I thought they were right on. I supported them all the way. You know, their tactics advocated militant defense of the wilderness, including sabotaging bulldozers and spiking trees and all of that kind of stuff.”

So here we have the role model for membership in the terror organization is a veteran. This for an organization named by name in the DHS report and there is absolutely no concern about veterans joining these organizations. This makes me smile a bit when you think about it because the media has actually succeeded in causing the government to ignore evidence and believe the hype. I suppose it is all good. I am just saying that the number of time veterans mentioned in Right Wing report = 29. Number of time in Left Wing Report = 0. I guess veterans are just as likely to join either a left wing or right wing terror organization, by which I mean to say it is not likely at all for a veteran to join a terrorist organization

Another problem is they left out all of the racist left wing terrorist organizations out of the report. Shocking I know, but there actually are many racist left wing organizations. The Black Muslims that were caught the other day are a good example. It is not all “Rainbow Coalition” on that side of the fence.  Left wing racists have always been much more violent than the right wing and harder to penetrate. They just are terrible at organization, planning and fall into bitter infighting that paralyzes the organization.

Take the Jewish Defense League for example. Between 1970 and 2002 the JDL carried out more than 40 acts of terrorism in the US killing more than 20 people. They hate Muslims and Palestinians. They are solidly left wing. Of course they don’t have any US Military veteran members that anyone can show.

How about the Boricua Popular/Peoples Army? Between 1979 and 2005 they killed more than a dozen of people and carried out multiple attacks against the US military causing tens of millions of dollars in damages to the US government and various commercial enterprises as well killing more than a few people. They are ultra left wing, racist and quite violent. By the way, they don’t take US military veterans.

Don’t even get me started on the various Islamic groups. The hatred and venom from the area of just about everything makes me vomit and wonder if there is any education system in the world that could overcome that. We could go on and on but you start to get the idea. Lots of bad people, racists, hatred, left wing in the last 40 years and no where in the DHS report.  A simple oversight? Bad research? Problems with their computers?  I think both reports are a disservice to the law enforcement agencies of the US and an embarrassment to the DHS.

So why is the DHS telling lies about the military based on faulty information from the SPLC? Remember it only took me about 45 minutes to figure this out in some spare time and I am just an average guy. I don’t even chase down terrorists for a living (at least not right now) So, this is a great question. We will continue on Monday.

Today we will look at a very tiny slice of veteran-government relations. If you read the blog yesterday you can see I hold a different view of how the military is portrayed in the media than most people. The linkage between how we are portrayed in the media and how the government treats us is irrefutable. This won’t be easy reading I can tell you that, but it will be the truth.

This will be a long post so I will split it up over the next several days.  Of my loyal readers who now number more than 2 I know you will be burning with veritable excitement over the posts so I will ensure they come out regularly.

My intention is to debunk the false report from the DHS about veteran right wing extremism. Luckily for me I was able to do this in about 45 minutes on line, but putting the information together in one spot was the issue.

Part 1

The brouhaha over the much ballyhooed report about right wing extremism has died down to a reasonable level and all the pseudo apologies have been made and accepted on the behalf of veterans, sort of. Here was the wording that upset so many people:

“(U) Disgruntled Military Veterans

(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists—including lone wolves or small terrorist cells—to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.

— (U) After Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, some returning military veterans—including Timothy McVeigh—joined or associated with rightwing extremist groups.”

Guilty as charged.

McVeigh sure did that.

And it is the worst individual act a former member of the US military has ever done in the last 250 years.

Of course, Millions of veterans who left the service in the 1990s did not blow up government office buildings.

Apparently, someone wants to paint with a broad brush.

Why are veterans a particular threat? Well because of this:

“(U) A prominent civil rights organization reported in 2006 that “large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the [U.S.] armed forces.”

There are several problems here as the nearly the entire statement is lie.

First, let us clear up at least one big misconception. The vast majority of right wing racist terrorists actually are not veterans.

You see, racists don’t often join the military because they would have to live, work, shower, sleep, fight and maybe die right beside someone of a different race than them. While this may seem obvious to my eight year old son it is not so obvious to the DHS and to crazed left wing organizations like the above mentioned “prominent civil rights organization”. So where did this information come from?

It was Southern Poverty Law Center. I don’t know much about the SPLC but I do know this; they hate the military with a passion. Why? I am not certain but their smear campaign is undeniable. And the DHS and FBI are using the false information that they supply to put into reports going straight to law enforcement agencies all over the country without even a cursory fact check. This is negligent.  So in SPLC report the SPLC said:

“….large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists continue to infiltrate the ranks of the world’s best-trained, best-equipped fighting force. Military recruiters and base commanders, under intense pressure from the war in Iraq to fill the ranks, often look the other way.”

I don’t know of a single commander who would look the other way. To say it happens “often” is lying at best. A base commander!? HA! If a base commander got word that a commander was “looking the other way” he or she would send a team of IG officers and NCOs that would descend upon the unit and rip it (and the chain of command) to pieces. Racism is poison pill to a unit and it is stamped out if it is ever discovered. Otherwise the soldier will go to the Equal opportunity rep and complain. If that ever happened the commander will get FIRED, quickly. Yes, we still do that in the Army. Despite what people may “know” about Army recruitment the Army is at more than 100% strength and has been above 96% for the entire war, if only corporate America had it so good.

This leads to another obvious question. If the report were actually true, why would congress not investigate the Army and find out if it were true? Well because they did investigate using the FBI (three times) and found out it was not true.

Here we have the results of the most recent FBI report. 203 people involved in racism 2001-2008. This sounds like an impressive smoking gun until you realize that during that period more than 4,500,000 people served in the military. My math says that this is about 0.004% of the military (that is 4/1000 of 1%).  Let us be generous and say that there were twice as many they were not caught.

Personally I think this is unlikely because they would have had to have maintained a very low profile and kept there mouths shut, which is something that most racists don’t seem to be able to do. Let us also say that there were similar proportional numbers in violent black and Hispanic supremacist groups that were not examined such as the BGDN, Black Panthers and others. I think we are still talking less than less then 9/1000 of 1%.

Anyone looking at those types numbers and calling them “large numbers” is the kind of person that buys a lottery ticket with the expectation to win.

We have showed that at least part of the report was a blatant lie. Continuing in that vein we note that the DHS report said this:

“(U//LES) The FBI noted in a 2008 report on the white supremacist movement that some returning military veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have joined extremist groups.”

Maybe. But, we are missing the whole statement for some strange reason.  The FBI report actually stated this:

“(U//FOUO) White supremacist extremists hope to revitalize the white supremacist movement by exploiting antigovernment sentiment among opponents of the overseas conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although some veterans of these conflicts have joined the extremist movement, they have not done so in numbers sufficient to stem declines among major national extremist organizations, nor has their participation resulted in a more violent extremist movement.”

Strange when you compare that to this in the DHS report four months later:

DHS/I&A assesses that the combination of environmental factors that echo the 1990s, including heightened interest in legislation for tighter firearms restrictions and returning military veterans, as well as several new trends, including an uncertain economy and a perceived rising influence of other countries, may be invigorating rightwing extremist activity,

Now wait a second… the FBI says right wing extremism is in decline and veterans are not really helping the cause, the DHS says that they are experiencing a resurgence and getting invigorated by veterans. They can’t both be right.

One wonders why the DHS would determine that so we again have to go back to the real “source” which is the SPLC. They have much more to say in their “report”:

“Neo-Nazis “stretch across all branches of service, they are linking up across the branches once they’re inside, and they are hard-core,” Department of Defense gang detective Scott Barfield told the Intelligence Report. “We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad,” he added. “That’s a problem.””

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/news/item.jsp?aid=66

Despite the fact that this has statement has been posted and reposted all over then net there are several problems with that statement.

First problem was there wasn’t any graffiti, at least not that anyone can actually prove or show.

Second, even if there had been graffiti, there are more contractors in Baghdad than there are soldiers anyway. Not to mention lots and lots of other people that don’t like the US military much and like to cause problems, like terrorists.  To imply that soldiers put it there is dubious at best. Now a bit of gang graffiti was found, most from racist gangs, but not from AN.

Third problem is that there are not any “hardcore” groups in the military. Strange I know but there has not been a single racially motivated killing or assault since 1996. There has been a single case of a soldier being successfully prosecuted for being member of a white supremacist organization since the Iraq War began.  Jermey Wilcox was convicted, but his conviction was overturned on appeal as being factually untrue. I think he very well may be a racist even though it was not proven. Jeremy is a thief (and stupid) but not violent. How his “special training” in the 82^nd Airborne Band will help the nauseating cause of white supremacists is something I don’t understand, maybe they need buglers and drummers for the Klan rally. Well, they got him so now they have to keep him, we don’t want him back.

The strange thing here is that while a lot of attention is given to Right Wing racists almost none is given to Left Wing terrorist hate groups. This might lead you to believe that they are not any. Tomorrow we will take a look at that.

Media and the Military

Today we will examine a slice of media-military relations.

Last week David Feherty a sports news columnist went on TV saying:

“From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.”

This was bad enough but the apology was actually worse:

“This passage was a metaphor meant to describe how American troops felt about our 43rd president,” Feherty said in a statement. “In retrospect, it was inappropriate and unacceptable, and has clearly insulted Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid, and for that, I apologize. As for our troops, they know I will continue to do as much as I can for them both at home and abroad.”

The problem here is that he apologized to the wrong set of people and no one even seemed to notice. Setting a stereotype about the type of people in the military and what they “might” do is an old media past time. People get away with it every day and no one seems to care much.

While I admire Mr. Feherty for his continued support of veterans I don’t care much for being called a homicidal manic who would murder the President, the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader given the chance. Is there an expectation now among the American people to believe that the military has a deep seated hatred of democrats and automatically will support a republican? I can tell you from 20 years of service that perception could not be more wrong. There are plenty of democrats in the military and most I know are not aligned with any party. I also know a bunch of them *gasp* even voted for President Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

Still the outrage was about the insult to our political leaders. How were they insulted? I am not sure. But Mr. Feherty’s comments were completely out of line towards the military on par with “baby killer” whether he meant them that way or not. So if he could please stop “helping us” in that way I for one sure would appreciate it.

Never Again

It appears as though the heavy lifting for CGSC is done for the first part of the course. Sadly I orphaned this blog as the writing load rose a bit.  Something about reading 100 pages a day and writing 10-20 pages a week had me not wanting to add to my workload voluntarily. I think I will be back writing a few times a week for the foreseeable future. Since no one is really listening, it doesn’t real matter anyway.

Never Again.

We have decided that once we leave Ft. Leavenworth we will never again live in military housing. There are many benefits to living in military housing but this tour has pointed out many of the downsides since we have been stationed here. On the plus side we are ideally situated. We live across the street from a park, ball field, golf course, mini-golf course and movie theater. I walk 1 mile to class each way and the walking is very safe. There is the commissary, library, PX, health clinic, dental clinic (for me only, the family has to pay a bit out of pocket and go off post) all within walking distance or very short drive if we are lazy. In truth living here is the model convenience for residential living.

My apartment is condo style and 2000 sq ft with four bedrooms and a car port. While the building is quite old everything works and with 12 foot ceilings it is spacious even if the kitchen is small and galley style. Parking is easy and all the lawn maintenance is taken care of 100% as the areas are all common areas and no one has their own yard. While all utilities are included, recently the private housing office started charging extra for utilities if you use more than average but we always use less than average so we should get a rebate we when we leave. All this is only for only $1250 a month.

Then there is the bad side.

It started shortly after we moved in. One day my wife was going to work and she realized that she had left the door unlocked. She turned around walked back into the building and was very surprised to find the a male teenage neighbor standing in the apartment living room. His story was that he had seen the door open and had walked in to see if anyone was home. This was kind of a strange answer because the wife was sure she shut the door just not locked it. We asked around the neighbors and found out he had walked into several of their apartments as well. He always gave the same story.

We spoke to the teen’s mother who assured us that this was not a problem and perfectly normal. She then offered his services for baby sitting our kids. We politely refused. We figured the incident was over with and left it alone.

Two days later the two tires on our SUV were slashed with a knife on the side facing away from the building. We called the MPs who filled out the paperwork and explained that there had been a rash of incidents in the neighborhood in the past few weeks. We asked around and sure enough several neighbors had their vehicles vandalized. Several people we spoke to had not even reported the incidents to the MPs figuring there was no point. Most of them centered around the vehicles being entered and the turn signal stalks being snapped off and stolen. Since the market for broken turn signal stalks is pretty limited the police were fairly sure it was teenage kids. So we are out $300 we with no way of getting it back.

The next incident was actually two incidents and I need to take part of the blame. One of our neighbors, in violation of housing rules was keeping their dog tied up in the common area. We didn’t care much as we understand the limitations to apartment living. My older son went over to pet the dog and was promptly bitten on the hand. The bite was not serious so we warned the kids to stay away from the dog and left it alone. A couple of days later another child in the building was bitten by the same dog. Finally about a week after that my younger son was outside talking with a friend when the dog tackled him from behind and bit him seriously on the leg. When I say seriously I mean multiple punctures, lots of bruising, go to the ER and get antibiotics serious. I went out to talk to the neighbor who did not apologize and tried to claim that this “had never happened before”.  This really annoyed me and I called the MPs (getting to know them well we are).

This time the MPs came and took the dog away for a day for observation and then brought it back. I have not seen the dog outside since but they did not remove the leash either. If I do see the dog outside again I will call the MPs right away because the dog has no business being there. I was pretty upset and did not get to properly review a paper I was working on that was due the next day, but I turned it in anyway.

These issues while bad enough were relatively minor and come with living in many neighborhoods. We have not lived in a close neighborhood for a long time, preferring to live in the country with its own set of challenges and had not had to deal with this type nonsense. Of course this all happened in the space of four months so the frustration level was mounting. What finally did it for us was something completely unexpected and genuinely bad.

We have a community basement in our building that everyone in the building (eight apartments) has keys to. About two weeks ago one of the wives went down there and found a noose hanging in the basement as well as KKK graphiti and NWA gang graphiti. Given the age and ranks of my neighbors I have jumped to the conclusion that it was not any of them, but more likely one of the teens, of which there are only a few in my building.

Now I deem it unlikely that the kids living in my building are involved in gangs but given the night vandalism activity it would not totally surprise me either. I think such things come from the lack of parental guidance in the household as the service member is deployed about 50% the time,  in the field about 20% of the time and worked to death the rest of the time when not on leave. All soldiers know that the trade-off for serving your country in time of war comes at the expense of your family.

A lot of things disappointed me about the incident. We take civil rights quite seriously in my house and I have well indoctrinated my kids as well. I would only hope that parents of my neighbors would be as serious about as we are. I know all teens go through periods of insanity but if I thought for even a moment my kids were involved in this type of activity I would crush it, and crush them in the process if necessary. The noose came down but I went down to the basement today and the KKK and NWA are still up. I will call housing and see what the hold up is that they can’t send someone over to spray some black paint on the wall. If they don’t take care of it I guess I will do it myself on Friday even though I am not supposed to paint it as it is a common area.

Anyway this was a long post but as you can see the problem was not any one thing, but a combination of things and the convience of living on post simply is not worth the price of problems we never had to deal with before. I believe, sadly that Ft. Leavenworth has some of the best housing the Army has to offer. The Post is kept like a park and quite beautiful this time of the year. But given my options I won’t live in a house where people spray disgusting things on the walls of my basement. We have never had these problems anywhere else we have lived and I don’t think my family should have to put up with them. So they won’t, at least never again.

Master of Military Science

I submitted my application to earn the Master of Military Science Degree that is offered here at CGSC today. I have decided to research whether or not the employment of strategic missile defense causes a change to the threat. In other words if the United States deploys a missile defense system in Poland how/ if does that change the threat from Iran and how/ if it will change/ create a threat from Russia.

I had considered working a thesis on counterinsurgency operations (COIN). At my last assignment my team was very successful in advising the Iraqi Army on how to defeat the counterinsurgency in Basra, Iraq. However I noticed that more than half of the thesis in the last few classes were constructed on COIN and figured it would get lost in the noise to sound ratio.  

As an Air Defense Officer I thnk strategic missile defense is an important topic. Enemies of America are almost to the point where they can launch serious attacks from their native soil. While I don’t think that we need to begin a new Cold War type panic with bomb drills under the desk we run serious risks by ignoring the threat. The threat we faced during the Cold War was based on a clash of political and economic systems. Both sides were fully aware of the consequences of total war and neither side wanted to go through the pain or loss.

The threat we face today on this front is based not just on economics and politics but also on religious and racial hatred not to mention personality.  These are not rational concepts and may have a leader not act in the best interests of his people in the belief that he might achieve some meaningless goal. Strange as it may sound Americans don’t have full understanding of these concepts because they don’t have to deal with them on a daily basis. Luckily, true religious and racial hatred have diminished in America to the point where they simply are not relevant in our society and despised and stamped out when encountered. However the threat is out there from an international perspective and quite real, therefore we need to defend our country with the best we have available.

 

Here is a picture of the former Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Brigade that we worked with in Basra; Brigadier General Ghasson. He is quite an officer. He was imprisoned under the Saddam regime for 8 years for disagreeing with Saddam and was freed by American Forces in 2003. He is one really tough warrior and highly intelligent. He beat me at chess 4 out of 5 times and those that have played me know I am no push over. His English is better than many Americans I know and his leadership skills are great. With the fate of Iraq in the hands of men like him they will succeed. http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_gallery2&Itemid=99999999&g2_itemId=7027&g2_page=7

Russian Sabre Rattling

Russia has been in the news a lot lately. Madam Secretary Clinton met with the Russians and offered them a “reset” button for foreign policy. I guess everyone with internet access now knows that the button was labeled incorrectly. Seems it was not only the Russians that did not see the Staples commercial. The button was supposed to be labeled with the Russian word for “reset,” but instead the word that was chosen — peregruzka — meant “overloaded.” I guess it is just as well that the Russians did not push it.

The curious thing about Russia is that while they were going through their Post-Soviet collapse era they lost a lot of prestige and have come to be thought by many of as a second rate third world nation. This does a grave disservice to the Russian people and the vast resources of Mother Russia. Just to give you an idea about Russia today:

- World’s largest Country in size (12% of world’s land mass)

- World’s largest energy exporter

- #1 In proven natural gas reserves, #2 in oil, #3 in coal.

- World’s 6th largest economy

- World’s 3rd largest currency reserves

- World’s 2nd largest land Army and a very large and powerful Air Force. Many of their planes are comparable to the US and many are better (and much cheaper). The new MIGs coming out will leave our current force in the dust and cost one tenth the amount of an F-22.

Seems Russia is interested in taking the money it has accumulated from the world’s dependence on it’s hydrocarbon based energy reserves and is becoming a world power player again.They have promised to modernize their military and are making inroads to that effect. Maybe they will base bombers in Cuba again (so they say).

The trouble is the United States is no longer an effective counter balance. Our dependence on energy imports have left us at the mercy of our suppliers. It doesn’t have to be this way of course. Instead of spending $2,500,000,000,000 on social programs it might be smarter to spend that money building a modern energy grid.

For example solar power can now be had as cheaply as $3.50/ watt. The US currently uses about 700,000,000,000 watts of electricity a year. Strangely this works out to almost the exact amount needed if we spent it all on solar panels. We could build solar collectors all over the wasted deserts of the Southwest and then export all of out coal and natural gas and become a net exporter of energy. This would change the country forever; no more expensive nuclear waste, no more pollution from power plants, no more energy problems. It would modernize the US and create a production advantage for the US that would likely serve to lure manufacturing back into the country as well as make services like light rail competitive.

In fact this is such a good idea I am absolutely certain it will never happen.

Clautzwitz & Iraq

Today we studied Clautzwitz in History class. For those who don’t know Clautzwitz was a teacher at the first staff college in the world (located in Prussia). He wrote a series of treatise about warfare in the 19th Century that were not completed during his lifetime and published posthumously by his wife when he died suddenly of Cholera leaving her in deep debt.

His works were generally ignored or not fully taught and understood in the United States until after the Vietnam War. He was brought into the fold because the US Military noticed that he spoke at length about the link between National Strategy/ goals and military strategy. This was brought to our attention by the Vietnamese.  They pointed out that even though the US won very battle on the battlefield this was irrelevant as the war was lost due to lack of national will and the failure to link strategic to military goals.

A lot of people like to draw comparisons to the Iraq War in the same vein. In truth there certainly was a distinct absence of link in Strategic Policy from the closure of hostilities with the Iraqi government up to the last two years or so. Mostly this was due to the lack of any strategic policy or even any clearly discernible strategic plan for Iraq from the post war period to late 2006. Why this continued on for so long is a mystery to me.

A lot of this has changed in the last few years and the results have been quite favorable. At this point the war is nearly over and the new Iraqi government backed by the US is emerging as the clear victor. This bodes well for the people of Iraq as the insurgents by their stated voice are merely death seekers and uninterested in any future.

The fact that the US side is winning is interesting considering the leadership vacuum that existed for so much of the war at the strategic level. While there are parallels to be drawn to Vietnam, losing is not one of them, at least not anymore.

Shilling For The Army and Recycle 101

I thought I would address this early on to answer what are doubtless to be odd accusations of shilling and propagandizing for the military. It is a bizarre irony the Army has put me in this position because I can not speak for the Army “officially” and I have no choice but to follow lawful orders and post Blogs identifying who I am and what I do for a living.

Let me just say I intend to be critical of policy I disagree with and supportive of policy I believe is a good idea. Mostly this is because given the noise to sound ratio on the internet I don’t think anyone is listening and if anyone is listening I don’t think they will really care much about what one tired old major has to say about things anyway.

To give an idea about the rhythm of this Blog during the week I will post about Guest Speakers to CGSC, news items of military interest and interesting things learned in class. On Saturdays I intend to post lengthy Blogs about Policies that I think could benefit from a review. On Sundays if I write at all it will be about items completely unrelated to the military just give you my spin on it.

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Today I will examine the recycling program of Fort Leavenworth from the producer end.  I wanted to examine this because there is no recycling program to speak of. I feel this is a great disservice to the community of Leavenworth and the State of Kansas.  This issue that could likely be resolved if the proper staff officer addressed the issue.

When we lived in Virgina we had no trash service. Every week or two we would load up a trailer and take the trash to the dump. At the dump there were containers for glass, various metals, oils, cardboard, newspapers etc. This was fairly easy to do and took about 30 minutes a week to accomplish to include driving the 3 miles each way back and forth to the dump.  Some people in our county were lazy or ignorant and would throw all of their trash into the big dumpster for the landfill but not the majority.

At Ft. Leavenworth there is a separate dumpster for newspaper and everything else goes into a big dumpster for the landfill. This is pretty sad when you think about the fact that there are about 500 tons of cardboard  boxes that go straight into the trash just from soldiers moving on to post.  This works out to about 1/2 to 1 tree every time a soldier moves here.

The community at Fort Leavenworth  is really a gated small city that generates a considerable amount of trash. Trash in most neighborhoods is dumped into dumpsters that could be properly marked for recycle and picked up by a bidding contractor who could sell the recycle material. Just recycling the cardboard would make a considerable difference if there was some type of system established for it.

Most soldiers at Ft. Leavenworth have lived overseas in either Korea or Europe where failing to recycle is a criminal offense that you will be fined for. In Europe containers are clearly marked and located everywhere. Adopting such a system in a military community would almost be second nature for our soldiers and something they could spread to their communities when they retire or leave the service.

In speaking with my neighbors, classmates and instructors all of them support a greater and better system for recycling but say that there is resistance to adopt such a measure. Since I am the new kid on the block I don’t know what the issues are but I do think that someone on the installation staff should review this policy and get the commander’s approval to implement changes.

Disclaimer

As soon as I published the official US Army memo on Blogs the Army changed it. This is pretty normal for how the Army does business.

I have to add a disclaimer.

The Views expressed in this Blog are my personal views only and not an official position or statement from the US Army or any of it’s units or agencies.

Why we are being ordered to post Blogs identifying ourselves, our locations and our duty positions and then post about military related topics and then disclaim that this is not an official position of the Army might seem confusing to civilians but there you have it.

I apologize for the bland nature of the Blog today but I had to get it out there. I can only promise that the next posting will be quite entertaining.

Visit By General Sir Richard Dannatt

The Command and General staff College (CGSC) is well known for the top guest speakers that visit the school on a regular basis. Today was no exception with the Commander of UK Land forces visiting General Sir Richard Dannatt.

Sir Dannatt spoke at length about UK commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the in stride transformation that the British Army is currently experiencing. He confirmed that on the heels of the success in Southern Iraq British forces will depart in bulk this year with some small augments remaining to assist operations around the country. I can confirm the success in Southern Iraq as I spent most of last year right in the middle of Basra. The Security situation improved considerably and by the end of August 2008 the Iraqi central government was firmly in control of all parts of the city.

During the question and answer phase Sir Dannatt answered some difficult questions. When questioned if failure in Afghanistan would mean the end of NATO he stated that would almost certainly be true which was one of the considerations for increasing the UK commitment to Afghanistan. A Pakistani Officer asked if the Pakistani Army adjusted it’s forces to better support the fight in Afghanistan would they be able to rely on the intercession of the Western powers if India posed a threat. He was straightforward in response and stated that the international community would have to pay attention to that situation and respond if that happened.  

Overall this was an excellent talk by a senior officer and I learned a bit about the UK viewpoint from the senior commander level.