Category Archives: Military

UPDATED (10/23): A Brokenhearted Gen. John Kelly On Burying A Son And Buddies

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Military, War

Irrespective of party politics, John Kelly’s address as a soldier (retired United States Marine Corps general) and a bereaved dad, delivered in his capacity as President Trump’s chief of staff, ought to be read and watched.

Via the New York Times:

“Most Americans don’t know what happens when we lose one of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, our Coast Guardsmen in combat. So let me tell you what happens:

Their buddies wrap them up in whatever passes as a shroud, puts them on a helicopter as a routine, and sends them home. Their first stop along the way is when they’re packed in ice, typically at the airhead. And then they’re flown to, usually, Europe where they’re then packed in ice again and flown to Dover Air Force Base, where Dover takes care of the remains, embalms them, meticulously dresses them in their uniform with the medals that they’ve earned, the emblems of their service, and then puts them on another airplane linked up with a casualty officer escort that takes them home.

A very, very good movie to watch, if you haven’t ever seen it, is “Taking Chance,” where this is done in a movie — HBO setting. Chance Phelps was killed under my command right next to me, and it’s worth seeing that if you’ve never seen it.

So that’s the process. While that’s happening, a casualty officer typically goes to the home very early in the morning and waits for the first lights to come on. And then he knocks on the door; typically a mom and dad will answer, a wife. And if there is a wife, this is happening in two different places; if the parents are divorced, three different places. And the casualty officer proceeds to break the heart of a family member and stays with that family until — well, for a long, long time, even after the internment. So that’s what happens.

Who are these young men and women? They are the best 1 percent this country produces. Most of you, as Americans, don’t know them. Many of you don’t know anyone who knows any one of them. But they are the very best this country produces, and they volunteer to protect our country when there’s nothing in our country anymore that seems to suggest that selfless service to the nation is not only appropriate, but required. But that’s all right.

Who writes letters to the families? Typically, the company commander — in my case, as a Marine — the company commander, battalion commander, regimental commander, division commander, Secretary of Defense, typically the service chief, commandant of the Marine Corps, and the President typically writes a letter.

Typically, the only phone calls a family receives are the most important phone calls they could imagine, and that is from their buddies. In my case, hours after my son was killed, his friends were calling us from Afghanistan, telling us what a great guy he was. Those are the only phone calls that really mattered.

And yeah, the letters count, to a degree, but there’s not much that really can take the edge off what a family member is going through.

So some Presidents have elected to call. All Presidents, I believe, have elected to send letters. If you elect to call a family like this, it is about the most difficult thing you could imagine. There’s no perfect way to make that phone call.

When I took this job and talked to President Trump about how to do it, my first recommendation was he not do it because it’s not the phone call that parents, family members are looking forward to. It’s nice to do, in my opinion, in any event.

He asked me about previous Presidents, and I said, I can tell you that President Obama, who was my Commander-in-Chief when I was on active duty, did not call my family. That was not a criticism. That was just to simply say, I don’t believe President Obama called. That’s not a negative thing. I don’t believe President Bush called in all cases. I don’t believe any President, particularly when the casualty rates are very, very high — that Presidents call. But I believe they all write.

So when I gave that explanation to our President three days ago, he elected to make phone calls in the cases of four young men who we lost in Niger at the earlier part of this month. But then he said, how do you make these calls? If you’re not in the family, if you’ve never worn the uniform, if you’ve never been in combat, you can’t even imagine how to make that call. I think he very bravely does make those calls.

The call in question that he made yesterday — or day before yesterday now — were to four family members, the four fallen. And remember, there’s a next-of-kin designated by the individual. If he’s married, that’s typically the spouse. If he’s not married, that’s typically the parents unless the parents are divorced, and then he selects one of them. If he didn’t get along with his parents, he’ll select a sibling. But the point is, the phone call is made to the next-of-kin only if the next-of-kin agrees to take the phone call. Sometimes they don’t.

So a pre-call is made: The President of the United States or the commandant of the Marine Corps, or someone would like to call, will you accept the call? And typically, they all accept the call.

So he called four people the other day and expressed his condolences in the best way that he could. And he said to me, what do I say? I said to him, sir, there’s nothing you can do to lighten the burden on these families.

Well, let me tell you what I told him. Let me tell you what my best friend, Joe Dunford, told me — because he was my casualty officer. He said, Kel, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1 percent. He knew what the possibilities were because we’re at war. And when he died, in the four cases we’re talking about, Niger, and my son’s case in Afghanistan — when he died, he was surrounded by the best men on this Earth: his friends.

That’s what the President tried to say to four families the other day. I was stunned when I came to work yesterday morning, and brokenhearted at what I saw a member of Congress doing. A member of Congress who listened in on a phone call from the President of the United States to a young wife, and in his way tried to express that opinion — that he’s a brave man, a fallen hero, he knew what he was getting himself into because he enlisted. There’s no reason to enlist; he enlisted. And he was where he wanted to be, exactly where he wanted to be, with exactly the people he wanted to be with when his life was taken.

That was the message. That was the message that was transmitted.

It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation. Absolutely stuns me. And I thought at least that was sacred. You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor. That’s obviously not the case anymore as we see from recent cases. Life — the dignity of life — is sacred. That’s gone. Religion, that seems to be gone as well.

Gold Star families, I think that left in the convention over the summer. But I just thought — the selfless devotion that brings a man or woman to die on the battlefield, I just thought that that might be sacred.

And when I listened to this woman and what she was saying, and what she was doing on TV, the only thing I could do to collect my thoughts was to go and walk among the finest men and women on this Earth. And you can always find them because they’re in Arlington National Cemetery. I went over there for an hour-and-a-half, walked among the stones, some of whom I put there because they were doing what I told them to do when they were killed.

I’ll end with this: In October — April, rather, of 2015, I was still on active duty, and I went to the dedication of the new FBI field office in Miami. And it was dedicated to two men who were killed in a firefight in Miami against drug traffickers in 1986 — a guy by the name of Grogan and Duke. Grogan almost retired, 53 years old; Duke, I think less than a year on the job. (Editor’s note: The F.B.I. agent for which the building is named was named Jerry L. Dove, not Duke.)

Anyways, they got in a gunfight and they were killed. Three other FBI agents were there, were wounded, and now retired. So we go down — Jim Comey gave an absolutely brilliant memorial speech to those fallen men and to all of the men and women of the FBI who serve our country so well, and law enforcement so well.

There were family members there. Some of the children that were there were three or four years old when their dads were killed on that street in Miami-Dade. Three of the men that survived the fight were there, and gave a rendition of how brave those men were and how they gave their lives.

And a congresswoman stood up, and in the long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there and all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call he gave the money — the $20 million — to build the building. And she sat down, and we were stunned. Stunned that she had done it. Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned.

But, you know, none of us went to the press and criticized. None of us stood up and were appalled. We just said, O.K., fine.

So I still hope, as you write your stories, and I appeal to America, that let’s not let this maybe last thing that’s held sacred in our society — a young man, young woman going out and giving his or her life for our country — let’s try to somehow keep that sacred. But it eroded a great deal yesterday by the selfish behavior of a member of Congress.

So I’m willing to take a question or two on this topic. Let me ask you this: Is anyone here a Gold Star parent or sibling? Does anyone here know a Gold Star parent or sibling?”

UPDATED (10/23):  Another name for Frederica Wilson:

Americans Should Be Monitoring Dover Air Force Base Closely

Foreign Policy, Military, War

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly addressed the country (but spoke past the twisted Mainstream Media). He spoke as a soldier and a bereaved dad. Kelly’s moving impromptu speech brought back the post written here about the heartbreaking ceremonies ongoing at the Dover Air Force Base. To quote from “Military Deaths, Not Death Benefits, Are The Real Scandal“:

Watch this ceremony at the Dover Air Force Base. Soldiers receive the coffined body of a slain comrade on its arrival in Dover. They handle it with exquisite care, hands clad in white gloves. What a stark, pathos-filled, sad ceremony, every move so tender and respectful.

“The real scandal,” I said then, “is … that American men and women are still dying (and killing) in these dumps for no good reason. What a wanton waste of promise-filled young lives.”

I recommended a “webcam … be installed permanently at Dover—a death clock of sorts—to remind Americans of this God-awful grief and waste.”

 

Is Mad Dog Mattis Off His Rocker Like Rocket Man?

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Military, War

Six minutes into the clip, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson states, with reference to what Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has been saying: “Anyone who thinks North Korea won’t fight to the very death, with every citizen’s blood, is thinking nonsense.” We cannot get 85 percent of their underground facilities with a first-strike! Impossible!

In other words, if Mattis truly believes, as he has said, that there’s a military option in the Korean peninsula, one that won’t kill off millions; he’s gone off his rocker.

… according to Mattis, the Pentagon has a few tricks up its sleeve that wouldn’t involve the decimation of Seoul. When asked whether there was “any military option the US can take with North Korea that would not put Seoul at grave risk,” Mattis responded, “Yes, there are, but I will not go into details.”

Nonsense: “Mattis hints at secret ‘kinetic’ military options for North Korea.”

Some sense.

Rocket Man & The Messy Calculus Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction

BAB's A List, Foreign Policy, Military, War, WMD

Writes Barely A Blog’s resident physicist Myron Pauli:

Missile defense like the Israelis had against the HAMAS missiles “worked” because:

1. The missiles were poorly guided – hence only a limited number required defense.

2. The missile attack was not near-simultaneous – hence the system was not overwhelmed.

3. The missiles did not have nukes – hence they either fell harmlessly or one or two
hit a home or building with limited damage.

However, 34 years after Reagan’s “Star Wars” speech of March 23, 1983 and half a trillion dollars, we are still as vulnerable to massive damage in a nuclear war.

The other reality is that one cannot decouple “defense” from “offense” in that the US may be more likely to be offensively “reckless” if we think (real or delusion) that we are “invulnerable.”

As to THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence): The Department of Defense contractors believe in them, but then they are just tested in DoD controlled scenarios. Still, China and North Korea think they are aggressive and this might get them to be more on a “hair trigger” to launch if they think the US is going to start a war. It is always a messy “calculus” of mass destruction.

The history of America’s “Hitler of the year” villains like Saddam, Qaddafi, Assad, and now Kim Jong Un is that the US seems incapable of learning from its mistakes. Kim Jong Un learned to never give up nuclear weapons – they are his lifeline. Even if he fired three at Seoul and three at Tokyo and only one got to hit both cities – that is enough of a threat to scare the shit out of everyone. With nukes, it doesn’t matter if you can stop “most” or if a few still get through!

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Dr. Myron Pauli received his Ph.D. from Cambridge MA (MIT), in 1981, and has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.