The Umbrella Men

Channeling His Inner Neville Chamberlain

Streamlining the Military - Different Sauces for Goose and Gander

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's new defense budget proposes to reduce the size of our military to its lowest level since 1939. He makes noises about making the military more stream-lined, flexible and lethal, but one sees little of that in what we've seen so far. What we've seen so far in history is a pattern of Democrat presidents Carter, Clinton and Obama demoralizing and defunding the military every time they have the power to do so. After Carter's disaster in the desert during the Iran Hostage Crisis Clinton's record with the Black Hawk Down incident and the bombing of an aspirin factory, one waits with baited breath to see the results of Obama's gutting of the US military.

I notice the media have stopped counting the number of deaths in Afghanistan since this president came into office. I remember during the Bush years we used to get an ABC special every time we got another death toll magic number.

George W. Bush with the troops

The idea of stream-lining the military is not new. I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military at the very beginning of his administration. He proposed a massive re-evaluation of all systems and equipment and a careful, planned sharpening of the sword so to speak. He believed we should skip a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed and used the funds to speed up technology, which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. 

The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.

But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. President Obama with his confiding to Vladimir Putin that he'd be able to be more "flexible" after his reelection, his hand fluttering and confusing and ineffective responses in Syria, Libya and the Middle-East in general have only convinced the dictators of the world that they can act with impunity. That America is a paper tiger.

Vladimir Putin and Barak Obama have a meetin'.

Unfortunately for our future as a planet which does not glow in the dark, America possesses terrible and destructive weapons. Ask yourself, if someone mistook you for an intruder and were pointing a gun at you, which would you rather have on the other end of the gun: a trained soldier or police officer or a frightened girl who barely managed to release the safety on her 357 Magnum. Criminals know for certain who is more likely to shoot them accidentally and probably hit them where it's painful if at all. They also know who to speak calmly to and not make any threatening moves at because they will likely wind up dead if they do.

We have a frightened bunch of girls in the White House right now with the nuclear trigger in their handbags. At least that's the impression virtually everyone in the world has after Obama's World Apology Tour and his confusing tough talk and no follow-through foreign policy.

Neville Chamberlain and Adolph Hitler making "peace".

The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me eerily of the Nazi incursion into the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlain's sellout of the Sudetenlanders to Hitler for an illusory promise of “peace in our time”. Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm, twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.

Just sayin’

Tom King

I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military, skipping a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed to ones which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.
But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me of the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlains sellout to Hitler for an illusory “peace in our time”.
Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm can twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.
Just sayin’
Tom King
- See more at: http://www.ktbb.com/youtellme/2014/02/27/to-be-unready-for-war-is-to-invite-one/comment-page-1/#comment-13331

I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military, skipping a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed to ones which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.
But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me of the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlains sellout to Hitler for an illusory “peace in our time”.
Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm can twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.
Just sayin’
Tom King
- See more at: http://www.ktbb.com/youtellme/2014/02/27/to-be-unready-for-war-is-to-invite-one/comment-page-1/#comment-13331

I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military, skipping a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed to ones which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.
But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me of the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlains sellout to Hitler for an illusory “peace in our time”.
Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm can twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.
Just sayin’
Tom King
- See more at: http://www.ktbb.com/youtellme/2014/02/27/to-be-unready-for-war-is-to-invite-one/comment-page-1/#comment-13331

I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military, skipping a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed to ones which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.
But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me of the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlains sellout to Hitler for an illusory “peace in our time”.
Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm can twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.
Just sayin’
Tom King
- See more at: http://www.ktbb.com/youtellme/2014/02/27/to-be-unready-for-war-is-to-invite-one/comment-page-1/#comment-13331

Katyn II: The Polish People Fear a Repeat of 1940

The people of Poland are in shock and are worried about the Russians again. Saturday's plane crash that killed, not only the president of Poland and his wife, but practically the entire leadership of Poland's military and government, is already being called Katyn II. It is a measure of just how nervous their neighbors make them. If you don't know what Katyn I was, prepare yourself for a string of "interesting" historical coincidences. Given Polish history, the Poles can be forgiven if they find what happened this weekend in the forest near Smolensk eerily parallel to what happened 70 years ago in the forests near Katyn.

It was 1940, Europe was in turmoil and Poland was, unbeknown to most of its citizens, the subject of a secret agreement between Germany and Russia, dividing the country between them. On March 5 1940, Joseph Stalin signed a secret order as brutal as any Hitler ever issued, that led to the capture and mass murder of 22,000 Polish doctors, lawyers and military officers in the forest near Katyn. The crime was so brutal that the German (Goebbels, of all people) was able to use it as propaganda against the Russians. The assassinations decapitated the Polish Army and the leadership of its public service sector as the Germans and Russians prepared to overrun the Polish nation.

The plane crash that took the life of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 95 key Polish government and military leaders is already being publicly called Katyn II by many Poles and one can hardly blame them. The plane was carrying the president and his entourage to a Katyn memorial service on the 70th anniversary of the tragedy.

President Kaczynski and his twin brother, founding members with Lech Walesa of the Polish Solidarity movement have been less than diplomatic with either the Russians or the European Union of late. They've been less than diplomatic with the European Union about its bullying tactics. Suddenly, the troublesome leader is eliminated in a crash that ironically took place at Smolensk, not far from the Katyn Forest. It effectively decapitates the government and brings the opposition party almost instantly to power, at the same time leaving all three Polish military branches without their top leaders, the banking system and much of the Polish civil service. Predictably, the Russians are blaming the crash on the Poles. The newspapers in the states are dismissing Poles who compare the disaster to Katyn "extremists".

It's also a bit unnerving that the day after the crash, news about it is already buried in the back pages of the newspaper behind glowing headlines about how Neville......., I mean Barak Obama is bringing us peace in our time by signing a nuclear nonproliferation agreement with the Russians, the upshot of which is that the U.S. is laying down its nukes with few real guarantees that anyone else will lay down theirs. With the stroke of a pen, the U.S., for all practical purposes ceases to be a superpower. Of course, considering that we've got an administration that seems intent on turning us into Albania, it's not surprising.

By the way, be careful looking up the Katyn massacre. In the first two pages of a Google search on the subject last night, more than half of the sites that showed up were fiercely virulent malware sites. I had to flip my computer off at the wall to escape having malware forcibly downloaded to my computer. Odd that the obscure term "Katyn" would suddenly be the keyword for so many malware sites. It's as though someone didn't want people reading that particular bit of history.

I have a friend in Poland. He says everyone is in shock. He mentioned Katyn right away. I think the Poles would do well to reexamine that bit of their history. If the U.S. doesn't stand with Poland on this one, then once again, Poland is all alone. Pray for Poland. They will very likely need it if history is indeed being replayed.

Just one man's opinion.
Tom King