Memorial Day

"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."John 15:13 NIV

Click here for a riveting account of the World War II battle of Tarawa in 1943, as told by the late Gil Ferguson, who, at age 19, survived the battle, and later served 10 years for pro-family, conservative values in the California Assembly. Tarawa was the first US amphibious assault against a defended beachhead. Victory here came at the price of 3,000 dead or wounded U.S. Marines.

There Is a Military Solution to Terror....

....you brainwashed liberal dupes!

...the best way to end an insurgency is, quite simply, to beat it.

Why was this not obvious before? When military strategies fail – as they did in Vietnam while the U.S. pursued the tactics of attrition, or in Iraq prior to the surge – the idea that there can be no military solution has a way of taking hold with civilians and generals eager to deflect blame. This is how we arrived at the notion that "political reconciliation" is a precondition of military success, not a result of it.

There's also a tendency to misjudge the aims and ambitions of the insurgents: To think they can be mollified via one political concession or another. Former Colombian president Andres Pastrana sought to appease the FARC by ceding to them a territory the size of Switzerland. The predictable result was to embolden the guerrillas, who were adept at sensing and exploiting weakness.

The deeper problem here is the belief that the best way to deal with insurgents is to address the "root causes" of the grievance that purportedly prompted them to take up arms. But what most of these insurgencies seek isn't social or moral redress: It's absolute power. Like other "liberation movements" (the PLO comes to mind), the Tigers are notorious for killing other Tamils seen as less than hard line in their views of the conflict. The failure to defeat these insurgencies thus becomes the primary obstacle to achieving a reasonable political settlement acceptable to both sides.

This isn't to say that political strategies shouldn't be pursued in tandem with military ones. Gen. David Petraeus was shrewd to exploit the growing enmity between al Qaeda and their Sunni hosts by offering former insurgents a place in the country's security forces as "Sons of Iraq." (The liberal use of "emergency funds," aka political bribes, also helped.) Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has more than just extended amnesty for "demobilized" guerrillas; he's also given them jobs in the army.

But these political approaches only work when the intended beneficiaries can be reasonably confident that they are joining the winning side. Nobody was abandoning the FARC when Mr. Pastrana lay prostrate before it. It was only after Mr. Uribe turned the guerrilla lifestyle into a day-and-night nightmare that the movement's luster finally started to fade.

Reinstate the Draft? Think again....

The events in Berkeley have prompted commentary from some on the Right along the lines of this:

What needs to happen is to reinstall the draft, and require each college grad to spend at least two years in the military service, preferably the Marine Corp, and I believe we would see some great changes in the minds of our youth.

Sorry, but no, although the sentiment is in the right place. Our military has done splendidly in Iraq (and don't let the liberal media fool you, they have done splendidly) precisely because they are all-volunteer. I would be wary of taking commie kids into the service, because then there would be a 5th column of unhappy traitors in the serivce who would "frag" their officers if given half a chance. That would be a bad idea.

Would exposing some commie brats to real hardship knock some of the Bolshevik brainwashing out of their heads? For the naive ones in a state of youthful rebellion, perhaps, but then again, two years post graduation, trying to find a real job and otherwise working in the real world, would accomplish that too, and at much less taxpayer cost. Moreover, there are two big problems with this line of reasoning:

1. For a good many of the leftist brats, it is *not* rebellion. They are "red diaper babies". They are actually "good" sons and daughters, following the scripts instilled in them by their commie parents. The Old Left of the 1930's spawned the New Left of the 1960's which has spawned the Newest Left now.

When I was a student at Berkeley (I know the territory) I came to know the "Student activist" types. Nearly all of them had parents in the faculty or otherwise in the University bureaucracy administration, and their parents were tacitly and sometimes actively egging them on.

You would NOT want to draft these people--potential Benedict Arnolds, Alger Hisses, and Philip Agees all. I would use a revived Un-American Activities Committee on these people instead. Name them and shame them.

2. A draft would give these aforementioned ringleaders a "hook" with which to recruit the naive and the youthfully rebellious. It was no accident that campus unrest ended almost immediately, once Nixon ended the draft.

What ethnics are in the military, and how?

Are minorities overrepresented in the volunteer army? That claim is often expressed in the Mainstream Media. It was hammered home ad nauseam in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. New York Representative Charles Rangel openly advocates a return to the draft on the grounds that "It shouldn't be just the poor and the working poor who find their way into harm's way." [The Return Of The Draft, Rolling Stone, January 27, 2005]

Reinstate conscription, these folks say, and we’d alleviate the disproportionate burden the current system places on minorities.

Funny: I watch network news nearly every night, but I’ve not seen many soldiers of color on the Iraq segments. Most of those guys in Hummers, or recuperating at Walter Reed, look REALLY pale.

And DOD statistics confirm this: 74.4 percent of U.S. military deaths in Iraq, and 73.0 percent of the wounded, are white. Blacks and Hispanics make up 9.7 percent and 10.8 percent of the dead, respectively. (Table 1.)

To be sure, whites accounted for a significantly larger share of battlefield deaths in Korea and Vietnam—but their share of the U.S. population was greater at that time too. (Table 2.)

A Heritage Foundation study released last October compared the demographic characteristics of recent military recruits with the total U.S. population. We present some of their data, along with DOD statistics on U.S. military casualties by race, in Table 3. [Who Are the Recruits? by Tim Kane, Ph.D. Center for Data Analysis Report #06-09]

In 2004 about three-quarters (75.6 percent) of the adult population, and 73.1 percent of recruits, were classified as white. This indicates a population/recruit ratio of 0.97—with 1.00 indicating an exactly proportional representation. The casualty/population ratio for whites is also 0.97.

Bottom line: whites are proportionately represented among both recruits and casualties.
Blacks, on the other hand, account for 14.5 percent of recruits, but only 12.17 percent of the population, for a recruit-to-population ratio of 1.19. Yet only 8.4 percent of casualties are Black—a casualty-to-population ratio of only 0.69.

The same pattern holds for Hispanics, although they may be undercounted in DOD casualty figures due to a reluctance to identify themselves by ethnicity.

Asians are underrepresented both among recruits and, more dramatically, among casualties.
Bottom line: Blacks and Hispanics are overrepresented among recruits, but underrepresented among casualties.

(Note that Hispanics are often double-counted, because they can be of any race. What we really need to refute Rangel is the “white non-Hispanic” military death rate, but this is not provided. However, we can infer that it may above the white non-Hispanic share of the population from the fact that “non-Hispanics” constitute 85.9 percent of the overall population and 93.12 percent of the combat death.)

This bifurcation does not impugn the bravery of Black and Hispanic soldiers. Rather it points out the opportunities the volunteer army affords minorities.

And if you are more likely to be a "lifer", it makes more sense to look for support and logistical roles. And African-Americans and Latinos are more likely to look toward becoming "lifers":

Combat units have gotten whiter because a lot of young white guys join up to "play Rambo" for four years and then go to college using military tuition benefits. In contrast, more blacks view the military as a long-term career.

If you intend to stay in until you are 40 or 50, it makes a lot of sense to pursue a specialty that offers plenty of desk jobs. Crawling on your belly and sleeping in the mud might sound like fun if you aren't staying past your early 20s, but it gets old awfully fast as you yourself get older.

College-educated Blacks, for example, make up 12 percent of the officer corps, yet only 7.6 percent of college graduates are Black. Black enlisted men are under-represented in the military and Special Forces, and over-represented in logistical support and administrative occupations—skills that are valued in the civilian world. A draft would obliterate those advantages.

So which racial groups are disproportionately casualties of the Iraq war?

Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders (Samoans) are the most likely to be killed or wounded. They account for 1.02 percent of Iraq casualties, 4.5-times their population share. They also volunteer at far greater rates than other races.

Second place goes to American Indian/Alaska natives, whose share of the dead and wounded is 1.36-times their share of the population.

But the numbers involved are very small. Neither group is large enough to provide a significant share of soldiers.

Note, however, that both groups inhabit sparsely populated, predominately rural, regions of the country—and that, rather than race per se, is the key factor.

Heritage finds that rural areas contribute far more recruits relative to population than urban areas. Completely urbanized areas have 39.1 percent of the population but accounted for 27.3 percent of recruits in 2005, producing a 0.70 recruit/population ratio. As urbanization decreases the recruit/population rises, reaching 1.56 in the most rural parts of the country.

The urban/rural death gap is the subject of a study sponsored by the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute, which specializes in overlooked parts of the country. Among the findings: "The death rate for rural soldiers (24 per million adults aged 18 to 59) is 60 percent higher than the death rate for those soldiers from cities and suburbs (15 deaths per million)." [William O’Hare and Bill Bishop, "U.S. Rural Soldiers Account for a Disproportionately High Share of Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan," Carsey Institute, Fall 2006. PDF]
One of the study’s authors, demographer William O’Hare, is quoted:

"…..The opportunity differential between rural and urban America is probably higher now than at any time in the past. Our study highlights the price some young folks and their families are paying for lack of opportunity in rural America." [Rural America Pays the Price for War in Iraq, Alternet.org, By Tom Engelhardt, January 27, 2007]

Unfair? Maybe. But it’s the economy, not race, stupid.

Two more thoughts:

1. If we want a winning military, does it really make sense to fill it with people who don't want to be there?

2. Where do different races and ethnics get along better--in the military or on university campuses?

America goes it alone, because it has to....

We hear from whiny liberals, "Waah! We're alienating our allies! They don't support us, and when they do, they only contribute token forces!"

To which Max Boot astutely points out, "They don't support us often because THEY CAN'T, and when they do send token assistance, that's because that's all they can muster up."

Every NATO nation had a "peace dividend" as the Soviet Empire collapsed. But while the USA pruned back its military, the Eurotrash gutted theirs. All NATO nations roughly spent between six and nine percent of their GDP's on the military during Cold War days. But while the USA reduced defense spending to about 4% of GDP today, the rest of NATO ranges from 1.1% (Canada) to 2.3% (UK). Faced with budget crunches trying to keep their social(ist) programs going, the Eurotrash decided to cut the military severely.

This is especially true in Afghanistan, which the Left likes to fatuously claim is "the good war":

Look at Afghanistan, where NATO is always having trouble dredging up an extra helicopter or another infantry battalion to throw into the fray. The British and Canadians are doing more than their share; their willingness to fight hard and take casualties sets them apart from most NATO countries, which prefer to send troops to safe parts of Afghanistan rather than to the front lines in the south and east. But 5,500 British and 2,500 Canadian soldiers can cover only so much ground, even with another 1,500 Brits thrown in. As usual, the United States, with more than 27,000 troops in Afghanistan, is left to carry the lion's share of the burden.

Now the rest of NATO does have top-notch, well-trained and well-equipped troops,

allowing them to punch above their weight class in military affairs. But there is only so much that a handful of super-soldiers can accomplish if their numbers are grossly inadequate. Quality can't entirely make up for lack of quantity.

So when the Eurotrash complain about American "cowboy" actions, it's really resentment at their own impotence, and when the Eurotrash speak of "soft power" and diplomacy in dealing with Iran, what they really mean is no power and appeasement.

The reason there are so many Eurotrash now is that they have forgotten how to do things for themselves. They rely on Uncle Sam while pretending to not like it and acting ungrateful and critical at the same time.

How do we get the Euros to man up? I would suggest that the USA pull out of the Balkans entirely. The Euros, to keep the peace in the area, would have to beef up their own military forces, at least to the point of peacekeeping in the Balkans.

The USA even had to do the heavy lifting during THAT intervention, as the Euros lacked airlift capability. Never mind that it is right in the Euros' backyard, driving distance from Germany and Italy!

"Shift Happens"

An interesting, and also frankly a disturbing, slideshow about the changes in the world.