He is not destroying it, merely replacing it ...
Posted on 11/06/2008 1:13:54 PM PST by pabianice
I saw first-hand the Hollow Carter Military. Now that I’m long retired from the Navy, I get to watch my Navy and the rest of the military gutted by internal enemies of the United States, the very people I took an oath to defend against.
I entered the Navy in the late 1960s and arrived in Vietnam in early 1970 along with my naval combat aircraft crew. Vietnam has been written about to death and many of the lies and slanders about the United States and its military have been dispelled, despite the likes of traitors such as John Kerry and William Ayers. In Vietnam, the Navy – as did all the services – performed honorably, bravely, proudly, and often heroically. Day after day, month after month, my crew and I watched as our forces were prohibited from winning by President Johnson in his White House situation room, who actually, personally, reviewed all targets, recommended by real soldiers and then rejected the ones that would have let us win. Johnson lived in terror – not of the communists who wanted us all dead – but of the press and the cocktail party circuit, whose approval he needed like an addict needs heroin. My crew’s two tours in Vietnam was a frustrating exercise in being prevented to win. By 1972 the Media Brothel had convinced the country that we could not win in Vietnam and had to get out as quickly as possible. We did in 1973, abandoning our allies in Southeast Asia to years of communist savagery that was scrupulously hidden by the Press Brothel. Two and a half million former allies skinned alive, set on fire, strangled, shot, beheaded, drowned. Millions more sent to die in concentration camps that made those of Nazi Germany look attractive in comparison. And a US military excoriated by the Left’s press whores as losers, barbarians, morons, baby-killers, rapists, monsters, and worse. William Ayers – who we now learn will continue to be a close Obama advisor -- got his start in politics as an unrepentant, destructive, career rectum.
It’s thus easy to guess what happened to the US military after we fled from our friends and allies in Vietnam and neighboring countries. I was there, too. After completing several tours in Vietnam, my active duty obligation ended and I transferred to the Ready Reserve. The US Navy Ready Reserve – now called the Selected Reserve – was comprised of people who had completed their active duty but wanted to stay affiliated with the Navy (the other services had similar programs). There were scattered across the country about a dozen naval air stations dedicated to the Reserves. I affiliated with a squadron at one of them, hoping to keep alive the unique sense of duty, excellence, and professionalism we all had come to take for granted in the Navy.
But it was post-Vietnam and the country wanted nothing to do with the military – much like Obama’s supporters now trumpet their hatred for the US armed forces and its soldiers and sailors, those despoilers of a utopian, pristine Middle East that looked a lot like Disney’s Fantasy Land – a land that we had brutally destroyed for fun and profit and for not Valuing the Difference of the Multicultural Diversity of a child-like, innocent Third World. Congress – in its pell-mell stampede to abandon Vietnam and take a shower to wash-away the stench of the {ugh!) military – had no desire to continue funding the military. The naval air station from which I was now flying had been built in 1941. Its 30-year-old plywood buildings were literally falling apart. I opened a window one night and watched in amazement as the entire window – frame and all – slowly did a gainer out of the wall, one and a half summersaults, and crashed to pieces on the ground below. My roommate and I had to find an extra dirty blanket and nail it over the hole in the wall. No money for basic structural repairs. No linen; just a coarse Navy blanket and a dirty, spit-soaked pillow (no pillow case) on a bare, dirty mattress covered with hair-raising stains. No money for linen. No heat or hot water after 2300, so in the winter, there were no showers or heat all night. No money for fuel. The barracks rooms were black with dirt and smelled like dirty, old socks. No money to clean. There was no food after 1800 for tired, hungry reservists arriving for a drill weekend after a 12 hour day at their civilian jobs. No money for the galley. There were many light fixtures out. No money for repairs. The barracks back ladder was broken and stayed broken for two years. No money, etc.
And now let’s talk aircraft. In the fleet we had flown the P-3 Orion, a sub-hunter which we used in Vietnam to fly recon. We were not allowed to actually carry weapons (Johnson and McNamara had decided that would be “too provocative” and “contrary to the peace process”), so when we found an infiltrator trawler hugging the coast, bringing-in weapons with which to kill US servicemen, they’d shoot at us with AK-47s (and sometimes bigger stuff) and we had to run away and call-in naval gunfire to sink them. Several P-3s were lost with all hands using this dumb-ass tactic. At NAS Reserve Base, there were SP-2Hs and a few SP-2Es, elderly aircraft that preceded the P-3 by 20 years and were very old and very tired. (Yes, you guessed it: no money from Congress, busy drinking and having an orgasm spending the “peace dividend” As the late George Carlin would have said, ‘vuja day’).
Being Navy means, in part, being happy with the scraps that are left-over from the Air Force banquet. Ex-USAF T-34s, T-29s, C-45s, etc., crowded the Navy’s Air Training Command at the same time the Air Force was getting new aircraft, new officers’ clubs, and new base golf courses. But I digress. Being in the Ready Reserve in the 1970s meant flying what you had. And we did. Even back in the 1070s the Navy had adopted NATOPS (Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization). Since the P-2s the Reserves had could not meet operating standards, we flew them anyway (sort of like "Black Sheep Squadron" with P-2s). I flew with the P-2 reserves for almost two years. The average flight was 90 minutes in an aircraft designed for typical nine hour missions. Sometimes the gear wouldn’t lower and had to be cranked-down by hand. Sometimes a wing sprung a leak and we’d watch with apprehension as fuel streamed back off the wing trailing edge, near an engine exhaust. Sometimes a jet wouldn’t start for landing (the SP-2 had two big W-3350 reciprocating engines and two J-34 jets). Sometimes an engine caught fire, always an exciting diversion. Once the hydraulic tank over-heated and the paint caught fire. A crewman beat the flames out with his flight jacket. Sometimes an engine would just fail and we’d stare at the 72-position spark plug oscilloscope, trying to figure-out which of an engine’s 72 spark plugs had failed. For my Navigator NATOPS check, the only pieces of nav gear that worked were the compass and the sextant. The rest of the nav station was dark with failed gear. I shot the sun up to Nova Scotia and back, running a DR plot with EP LOPs while rain water streamed through the seal on the astrohatch.
Finally, I had had enough. After two years I transferred to the Standby Reserve, time in which does not count for promotions or billet assignments. Jimmy Carter was the last straw.
When Reagan was elected, I immediately reaffiliated with the Ready Reserve. We got P-3s! The quarters had heat! There was food! The windows no longer dropped out of the barracks walls! There was linen! The back ladder was fixed! And from Reagan’ first year until I retired, the Naval Air Reserve became and remained a first-class operation. We were equal to the Active Duty Navy. We completed all the same quals. Flew the same equipment. Went on active duty for training, joined active duty squadrons, and out-performed their younger, less experienced crews flying newer airplanes. Won numerous feet-wide and personal awards.
Now it’s the turn of an enigmatic Barack Obama – who has never worn the uniform -- and his stridently anti-military Congress – which hates the military with a Bill Ayers level hatred (they just hide it better). They hate the military because the US soldier is smarter, faster, stronger, tougher, more dedicated than they, the Eloi of the 21st century, who hope that if they just are peaceful enough, the Third World Morlocks will eat someone else and leave them alone for a while to feel good about themselves as they strive to duplicate their fantasy utopian, pristine world that looks a lot like Disney’s Fantasy Land – a land where we all Value the Difference of the Multicultural Diversity of a child-like, innocent Third World. That they are wrong and will hurt the Navy I love is heart-breaking.
So, to my shipmates on active duty or in the Selected Reserve, I wish you well, fair winds, and following seas in a coming repeat of the 1970s’ attempt to destroy the military that has kept this country free for more than two centuries despite periodic gross stupidity, selfishness, and betrayal by politicians that hate the very country that allowed them to succeed. Keep the faith. Stay sharp. Honor. Duty. Country. God. If we go to war with a gutted Obama-Frank-Pelosi-Reid military, I know you will be brave, as you always are. There will again be a government that deserves you.
What’s with this National Security Force the Obamination is talking about?????
The Black Panthers are going to be legitimized as government enforcement agents.
We may not get the chance
Assuming we have a country in four years.
“What’s with this National Security Force the Obamination is talking about?????”
Well nobody actually asked him so.....
???
I didn’t think there were that many of them to be able to police all 3200 counties in the US ...it’ll be an interesting test of States Rights ... what brought us into the Civil War or as I’ve been taught “The War of State Secession” .... the papers of the day wrote about “The Union Is Dissolved” ... states have the National Guard to take care of all that ....
... MrB .... not the piano playing Mr.B?????
First, there is "hollowing out". Carter and Clinton used this method. You reduce the number of people in a unit but keep the unit active. Then if there is a need to expand the military, you simply fill in the slots.
Second, there is demobilization. This is where you deactivate units and reactivate them later if needed.
Obama's goal is to have a less agressive America that is less intrusive to the rest of the world. We would be like Canada, a nation everyone likes because it doesn't throw its weight around.
Obama will choose demobilization. The goal is to make sure that America is never again a threat to world peace. (Think of an Obama Administration as a UN takeover of America and its military.) Once this is accomplished and monies are diverted from the military to entitlements and the nationalization of certain industries (like health insurance), the people will never again want to undertake the expense of a military mobilization.
It's ingenious, and that is why the author of this piece doesn't know what he is talking about.
It’s a good chance the repubs will take Congress after two years of disasters from the Dem government. That will stem some off the bleeding.
Well so far it looks like the MSM is starting to cover their collective a**’s ... like, ‘who is this guy’ anyway, I guess the Obamination is going to address the country ... there’s a video on YouTube where he spells out his agenda and that NSF is in it ....
nope
OK just wondering ...
That’s about it. The internal police aka the Gestapo. Two were training in Philly on election day.
We need to start right now looking at seats we can take in 2010 and not wait until six months before the election to get activated.
Really? I would have never thought, even though I considered the possibility, that Obama would win let alone that 30% of conservatives would vote for him.
Great post. Thanks.
There’s a third aspect, though it may not have much impact-all the people like my brother, who are getting out as fast as they can, because they will never serve under Hussein, and won’t stay to watch the military being gutted. My brother has been in for almost 2 decades, volunteered for Iraq and Kosovo, loved the military, but he’s through.
It’s the new “Militia” so no need for the populace to have guns.
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