Making Hay: the Left can’t even wait a week after Fort Hood.

It seems that the Left can’t keep their hands off the fresh wounds at Fort Hood:

• Newsbusters pwns Newsweek’s blog. The left hates the troops no matter what they say.
• Michelle Malkin pokes holes in the AP’s “unknowns”
• “Chris Matthews: We may never know if religion was a factor at Fort Hood” (hotair)
• Jules Crittendenhas a round up of the MSM coverage.
• This Aint Hell has the story for the Anti-War Left’s point of view here, here, here and here
• Mark Steyn puts this into perspective

Why can’t the left just leave Fort Hood alone?

Fort Hood Shootings

I cannot even begin to imagine the heartbreak the families of the victims must have right now. Soldiers are a family, a big family. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families affected by this tragedy.

Before anyone gets carried away, let the Army take care of it’s own. We need to shun politicians and “activists” who’d use this tragedy to make political hay.

Profile of the shooter here.

More details at Military.com and Foxnews.com.

The Grasshopper and the Ant

Perhaps more than any other open-source outfit, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has put serious intellectual muscle into examining the implications of waging war in an environment where potential enemies don’t just threaten to use nuclear weapons, they actually detonate a nuclear device.

While nuclear disarmament remains a noble aspiration, the world is going in the other direction, that is, more states with more nukes, says CSBA President Andrew Krepinevich in a new report, US Nuclear Forces: Meeting the Challenge of a Proliferated World. From four nuclear states in the 1960s, there are now double that number (adding China, Israel, India and Pakistan) and we may soon reach ten (North Korea and Iran). Potential enemies have learned they can’t survive a conventional war in the face of the U.S. precision strike arsenal. In their strategic calculus, the only means of deterring U.S. military action is a nuclear weapon.
—
US Must Plan for Nuke Wars
By Greg Grant Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 , DODBUZZ.coom

See, I thought that by electing the left’s chosen canidate, we would get a world with out nukes. Ya know, sunshine, rainbows, unicorns and the hippies singing songs about peace…

Instead we have Iran rushing to complete a nuclear weapons as fast as they can. American “think tanks” don’t want our allies to protect themselves.

Missile defense accoring to the left, doesn’t work. Diplomacy? Work every time.

Except when Iran, North Korea et al. make fools out of our diplomats.

In the multi-national talks, talk being the key word, Iran and North Korea have show their willingness to duck, dodge and screw with the UN, the IAEA and US presidents. Sadly this is lost on the left. They want us to surrender. They fear war so much they get all Nevile Chamberlain when ever a missile is fired. Some pundits even suggest that the old “Cold War” paradigm of containment should apply to a nuclear Iran or North Korea.

BS! Nuclear rogue state will use them. They don’t care. Iran’s leaders have a apocalyptic death cult culture who’s roots are barely concealed by militant Shiite Islam. In order for them to stay in power and justify their permanent war economy, they need the US and nuclear weapons. Nuclear war just fulfills their promise of holy war. North Korea is a cult of personality run by one man, he dies the military junta that takes his place may have no choice but to strike.

We need to be prepared to fight. Cuts, and “give peace a chance” will result in a nuclear explosion.

Krepinevich describes a proliferated Middle East as a place of extreme instability as competing intelligence agencies constantly scour neighbor’s territory for weapons; since nuclear arsenals would be very small, the discovery of such weapons would likely invite a prompt attack to instantly shift in the strategic balance.

The report is intended to “raise awareness” of the need to reexamine many of the underlying assumptions of strategic logic regarding nuclear weapons that have not moved much beyond Cold War era thinking, Krepinevich says.

Let’s hope the people in charge read it.

” If we keep our windows broken, our hearts will also be broken”

It obviously kills far less within the well-to-do, the upper middle classes, than among the poor and the lower middle classes, living in the decayed neighborhoods at the borders of slums, and among poor, working, and lower middle class people living in the slums. They are not violence breeders, nor potential criminals. Poverty does not generate crime and violence. Neglect and disorder do. The poor, mainly black males are their victims.
…
If we keep our windows broken, our hearts will also be broken and we will have to survive under the shadow of the guns.–
Under the shadow of guns: drug lords’ tyrannical fiefdom in Brazil
Sergio Abranches

Read it. E-mail it to the loony left and the bleeding hearts you know.

Freedom, Property and the Left

Ever since communist government fell in the early 90’s, the American left has had to mask it’s love for Karl Marx. Marx’s murderous philosophy (and that of others who aped him, Mao et al.) has killed millions. This is not an exaggeration, Stalins’s famines, Pol Pots killing fields, China’s “Great Leap Forward” arrested, tortured and killed over 200 million people combined.

Yet as the global economy sputters, the left covers up their crimes. They pine for economic disaster and the fantasy of a government run economy. I had a professor in college that blamed capitalism for the Great Depression and insisted that the New Deal saved the world. It was WWII that saved the economy, as for the world? Many countries turned their backs on capitalism and it took 50 years for them to wise up.

Tell that to the left. For them, the Cold War is a fantasy, history very blurry on our side of the Iron Curtain. Stalin, Mao and Marx are their Draco in Leather pants:

Bold words, especially in academia, where suggesting somebody has communist sympathies — even if he’s carrying a bloody hammer and sickle in one hand and Trotsky’s severed head in the other — instantly draws gleeful cries of “McCarthyism!” I say, if this be blacklisting, make the most of it:

* Miami University’s Robert W. Thurston, in his 1996 book Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, rejects the overwhelming evidence that Stalin’s purges took the lives of millions. He concedes only 681,692 executions in the years 1937 and 1938, and a mere 2.5 million arrests. Even using those low-ball figures, that means that nearly one of every 20 adult Soviet males went to prison and that more than 900 of them were executed per day. Nonetheless, Thurston says Stalin has gotten a bad rap: There was no “mass terror…extensive fear did not exist…[and] Stalin was not guilty of mass first-degree murder.”

* Theodore Von Laue, a professor emeritus of history at Clark University, goes further in a 1999 essay in The Historian. He says it’s the damnable Russian peasantry that ought to be begging poor Stalin for forgiveness: “He supervised the near-chaotic transformation of peasant Eurasia into an urban, industrialized superpower under unprecedented adversities. Though his achievements were at the cost of exorbitant sacrifice of human beings and natural resources, they were on a scale commensurate with the cruelty of two world wars. With the heroic help of his uncomprehending people, Stalin provided his country, still highly vulnerable, with a territorial security absent in all history.” And Stalin was no mere poet, Von Laue adds, but a damn fine technocrat too: “The sophisticated design of Soviet totalitarianism has perhaps not been sufficiently appreciated.”

—Fools for Communism,Still apologists after all these years,
Glenn Garvin, Reason Magazine

Those historians, Jackie Kennedy’s “bitter old men”, are bitter because many of them saw the USSR as the shining beacon of hope. They hated America or capitalism so much that a communist state was preferable. They ignored the wars communists started or made worse because one American President dared stand up to the Russian bear:

In his epilogue, with its digressions on the second Iraq war, Meyer flagellates himself for a post-1989 article he wrote that had a “triumphalist tone,” and he urges readers to ponder the wisdom of a Lewis Carroll metaphor: “The world is always partly a mirror of ourselves.” As Meyer explains, “We see all things, enemies especially, through the lens of our own hopes and fears and desires, inevitably distorted.” One wonders if Meyer believes the Soviet Union—responsible for the forced starvation of Ukrainians in the 1930s and for Stalin’s bloody purge trials, to name just two of countless atrocities—deserves that notoriously crude yet ultimately accurate label, “evil empire.”

Reagan, of course, had his flaws, as voluminously documented by scholars, enemies, and sympathizers alike. But Gorbachev, Time’s “Man of the Decade” for the 1980s (unlike Reagan) and a Nobel Peace Prize winner (unlike Reagan), often escapes similar scrutiny. Meyer is more interested in score settling, pointing out that many hard-liners in the Reagan and Bush administrations, several of whom later joined George W. Bush’s administration, misjudged Gorbachev’s seriousness.

Gorbachev’s economic reforms were vague and ad hoc, and they wound up being tremendous failures. …. He avoided repeats of 1956 and 1968, when the Soviet military ruthlessly cracked down on its restive satellites, but did send troops to murder residents of Vilnius, Tblisi, and Baku. As Mary Elise Sarotte observes in her new book 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe, Gorbachev “had not sought to introduce completely democratic politics into the Soviet Union.”
—The Cold War Never Ended
Michael C. Moynihan , Reason Magazine.

Ronald Regan called a spade a spade. The USSR was an evil empire. Gorby was just a clock punching loser, another apparatchik. He lost when the hard liners tired a coup in 1991. Then the USSR fell. We won.

But twenty years dulls the memories (Again, Michael C. Moynihan) :

In place of the old myths, Meyer erects new ones: “For all the problems they faced…most East Germans had no desire to leave their country,” he insists, “contrary to the impression fostered in the West. Many if not most were perfectly comfortable with the socialist system that guaranteed them work, low-cost housing and free lifelong health care and schooling.” There is no source for this fantastical claim. That a certain measure of nostalgia for the East German dictatorship exists from a distance of 20 years is undeniable, but an opinion poll taken in 1990 showed that 91 percent of East Germans favored unification and, by definition, the dissolution of the “worker’s state.”

Writing In the Wall Street Journal, Brian Anderson reviews the concluding volume of the Marxist trilogy by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Hardt and Negri are the authors of Empire (2000), Multitutude (2004) and now Commonwealth. The books are published by Harvard University Press, supported with the surplus value extracted by capitalists from the back of the proletariat.
…
Anderson is thus well qualified to assess the merits of Commonwealth as he does. He concludes his review on this fitting note: “Commonwealth is a dark, evil book, and it is troubling that it appears under the prestigious imprimatur of Harvard University Press. Countless millions were slaughtered by adherents of Karl Marx in the 20th century. God help us if the scourge returns in the 21st.”
Commies yes, mommies no!
Powerline Blog

So now that the accounting scandals and bailouts have passed, a new round of parlor pinks it clamoring for Marx. They see the government as more “fair”, “humane” and into “social justice”.
and as the above except shows, ever private property is evil. Bull. That’s just Marxism with the serial number filed off.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They’re all more profitable than the health insurance industry.

In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making ”immoral” and ”obscene” returns while ”the bodies pile up.”

Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That’s anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.
—
FACT CHECK: Health Insurer Profits Not So Fat
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, October 25, 2009

Like the commies of yore, they demonize the ‘rich’ even if their ‘facts’ are 100% lies.

Contemporary leftists, on the other hand, view their opponents as people you send off to the Gulag, unworthy of any respect, deserving of any kind of low blow, no matter how foul. So you accuse Goldwater of insanity, slander Justice Thomas as a sexual monster, casually publish plays, books, and films calling for the assassination of President Bush, and assault the first serious Republican female candidate at her weakest point — her family. And of course, you scream to high heaven if any form of turnabout occurs in your direction, as in the case of the Obama family, which was declared “off limits” early in the presidential campaign, at the same time that Palin’s family was being stretched on the media rack. (Someday, somebody has to do a study of liberalism and hypocrisy. It’ll be an awful lengthy volume.)—
The Slander Network
By J.R. Dunn, American Thinker

And now that lefties are in control of the levers of power, here comes the push for control:

Flaws in incentive compensation practices were one of many factors contributing to the financial crisis. Inappropriate bonus or other compensation practices can incent senior executives or lower level employees, such as traders or mortgage officers, to take imprudent risks that significantly and adversely affect the firm. With that in mind, the Federal Reserve’s guidance and supervisory reviews cover all employees who have the ability to materially affect the risk profile of an organization, either individually, or as part of a group.—
Federal Reserve Press Release,, quoted by Hotair.

—
Thank goodness the government of Barack H. Obama dodged the temptation to allow the Party — sorry, I mean the State — to own all industries; that would be Marxism (which would presumably thrill Anita Dunce). Instead, the banks and industries will all be privately owned — but the owners will take orders directly from the Party.—
Could See This Coming!
by Dafydd ab Hugh

So despite winning the Cold War, despite being shown that Communism doesn’t work, the left is still trying to take freedom away. They hate the individual, private property and success.

Despite the fact that those thing give them the freedom to spew their hate.

Oh well, Fidel Castro said “history will absolve me.” Hisotry has not been kind to Marx et al. Hisotry, despite the lefts attempts to warp it, will show that the left is still made of fail.

The Iron Lady on socialism.

H/T: SondraK, Instapundit and

Chew on this: Yes we Can?

Tasty links as the month of October leaves us:

1. “What the left-wing excuse factory wants is for the American people to overlook the radicalism of the people populating Obama’s inner circle”(Patterico)
2. Shepard Fairey Lies like a rug, gets caught Like all propaganda, the HOPE poster is as thin as a (false) promise.(Jues Crittenden)
3. “Via Recovery.gov
   Obama would have done better if he would have opened a McDonalds in each state.” (Gateway Pundit)
4. Turkey goes from pro-Western Democracy to “a full member of the Iranian axis” and our leaders don’t care. (powerline)
5. Ace defends Rush Limbaugh (Ace of spades)
6. Lapdog Media Pot calls Fox News kettle black (Jawa Report)
7. “…a lot of folks are saying health care is a right for all and we all should help pay for it. I’m wondering: Since owning a gun is a right, do you think everyone can chip in and get me a new rifle? “ (Confederate Yankee)
8. Gates reminds Emanuel/Obama he is Sec Def(ace of spades)

also via Gateway Pundit:

China’s UAV’s:

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal. — Lionel Trilling

China’s People liberation army must be very mature. From the J-10, their copies of the HMMWV and UAV’s, they have stolen from the greats. And by greats I mean US designers.

Seeing the success of USAF & CIA predator drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have followed suit with drones of their own. In the 1960’s, US firebee drones were recovred off the Chinese coast after their missions over Vietnam. They reverse engineered them into the WuZhen-5 (ironically, the PLA drones were also sent against Vietnam).

Now they have tried to copy the Predator drones and the Global hawk. They want to replicate our success at killing small forces hidden in impassable terrain AND they want to beat your Air Defense Systems and networked forces.

Global Hawk Clone taxis:


Predator Clone (pics for China Defense mashup):

Yilong UAV

and “The Dark Sword”: high speed UAV concept:

The Dark Sword

Still, they can’t beat the real thing:

H/T: Wired.com

Dogs and Cat’s living together: Irregular forces and National Armies

Seeing the shellacing Iraq took in OIF, the bloody fight during the occupation and the current situation in Afghanistan, North Korea has began coping their methods:

North Korea Mimics Al Qaeda
North Korea’s army is big, but antiquated, only marginally mobile and it presents a massive target to allied airpower.

Pyongyang knows that and is shifting some of its troops, tactics and technology to benefit from lessons learned during the U.S. fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 80,000-man special operations force has been recently schooled in the employment of enhanced, improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Their use was refined in Middle East fighting and the combination of SOF and IEDs is considered one of the top threats to the government in Seoul.

Russia used irregular forces in it’s war with Georgia.

Now a 1,000-page report commissioned by the European Union lays the blame on Georgia for the artillery attack that touched off the war. But it doesn’t let Russia off the hook either: The Russians, the report states, turned a blind eye to atrocities by South Ossetian irregulars, and deliberately stoked tensions in the run-up to war.
…
Russian troops pushed well outside the boundaries of the disputed enclave of South Ossetia; opened a second front in Abkhazia; and were followed by militias who conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Georgians in South Ossetia.

What does this mean? It means that forces dedicated to ‘irregular’ warfare could get eaten alive when the enemy suddenly morphs into a regular fighting force . When Chinese forces entered the Korean War, the US Army and Marines were taken aback. Some in the Pentagon even called for the use of atomic weapons. Only bombing and napalm held the line. Even then the ‘war’ ended in an armistice.

When backed by a superpower (North Vietnam and the Viet Cong were backed by the USSR) or the next best thing (Russia’s ‘militias’ in South Osseta) smaller forces are hurt badly. Downsiing the military may not work if terrorists and insurgents can flee to safe areas with AAA and regular forces protecting them. A lighter military may be outgunned.

Light Fighter Planes: From Crop-Dusting to Counterinsurgency?
Moreover, in its haste to show that it is not focused on the next war, the Air Force may be trying to fight the last war. These planes won’t be deployable for use in Iraq or Afghanistan until 2013 at best. The plan thus rests on two huge assumptions: 1) that we’ll still be fighting counterinsurgencies there or elsewhere for which we’ll need 100 more planes, and 2) while we are going back in time militarily, our enemies won’t be going forward. Even within insurgencies, various non-state actors like Hezbollah already field anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles; now we would just be providing them with easier targets.

May have argued for the US Air Force to go back to prop-driver COIN airctaf (COunter Insurgency). These aircraft are slow, traveling at WWII-era speeds. One desigen is in fact a WWII era plane modified with a turbo prop. The above quote comes from the Brookings Institute. They are notorious for being anti-military, but here they give surprise with a vote of confident for the MQ-9 UAV and for conventional forces.

The DOD should prepare for both. The conventional fight should not be sacrificed for today’s wars.

Broken windows & broken cities

The violence in Mexico has been on the upswing since the 1990’s. From horrific news reports to movies like Traffic, the war on drugs in Mexico is a real war. Sadly it’s been one of mostly casualties.

Desperate to resolve the situation, the President of Mexico and many in the US media, horrified at the violence, claim that up to 90% of the guns there come from the US. Some even claim that fully automatic rifles and machine guns (banned or heavly restricted in the US and banned outright in Mexico) come from the US. Not true.

The violence stems from the failure of Mexican institutions to function. The police and military are corrupt. Soldiers and cops desert their posts (taking their weapons with them). Many are on the take or owned outright by the cartels. A whole unit deserted to work for the cartels. Los Zetas was a special forces unit of the Mexican army paid for and trained by the US. They deserted and now are almost a cartel themselves.

The failure of government to enforce the little things makes the bigger crimes possible.

From City Journal comes this tale:

The Truth About Policing and Skid Row:
For 25 years, Skid Row constituted a real-world experiment in the application of homeless-advocate ideology. The squalor that engulfed the 50-block district just east of downtown Los Angeles was the direct outgrowth of advocates’ claims that the homeless should be exempt from the rules of ordinary society. The result was not a reign of peace and love among society’s underdogs, but rather brutal predation and depravity. Occupants of the filthy tents and lean-tos that covered every inch of sidewalk in the area pimped each other out and stole from, stabbed, and occasionally killed one another. Gangs and pushers from South Central and East Los Angeles operated with impunity under cover of the chaos that reigned on the streets.

The intrepid small wholesalers and warehouse owners who tried to keep the area’s once vigorous commercial trade alive removed feces, condoms, and hypodermic needles from the entrance to their properties every morning. Elderly residents of the local Single Room Occupancy hotels were imprisoned in their tiny apartments, terrified to go outside.

A hell on Earth created by social activists causes a spike in murders, drugs and other crime. A fatal shooting happened inside a “clinic” operated by some bleeding hearts. Lax rules and no police presence caused a double homicide.

In 2006, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton announced a full-scale attack on Skid Row anarchy. His Safer City Initiative (SCI) would be a demonstration project, he said, for Broken Windows theory, which holds that tolerance for low-level forms of crime and disorder allows more serious crime to fester. When the police started enforcing jaywalking, public urination, and public camping laws, thousands of warrant absconders and violent parolees on the lam lost their refuge. Order gradually returned to the streets.

….

Skid Row’s radical social-service providers and public-housing advocates declared war on the Safer City Initiative. They directed a nonstop barrage of propaganda and lawsuits against the LAPD, claiming that its officers were abusing the poor on behalf of would-be gentrifiers. One of the most vocal critics was Casey Horan, executive director of Lamp Community and a highly public presence in Skid Row politics.

….

Given Horan’s long record of opposition to assertive policing, jaws dropped all over Skid Row on the morning of August 12, 2009, when the Los Angeles Times quoted Horan criticizing the LAPD for not fighting lawless behavior aggressively enough. Horan’s about-face came in a Times exposé of the reckless mismanagement at Lamp that had led to a double murder in April. Horan’s desperate effort to deflect responsibility for the violence in her own facility contradicted everything she had ever said against the Safer City Initiative and blew apart the advocates’ longstanding opposition to proactive policing.

At around 5 am on April 12 (Easter Sunday), a drug dealer and an associate were gunned down while watching TV in a Lamp residence.

And so the article continues.

Broken windows. Drug legalization and gun bans do nothing. Without the will or ability to enforce basic laws and rules, society breaks down. Criminals see a green light to step in. Like Skid Row, the poor sections of Mexico have no police presence, or the police are part of the problem. No functioning government, so criminals can operate in the open.

Now “War Is Boring”’s Zach Rosenburg puts forth some solutions to the violence in Mexico.

South of the Border, Part Two:
2) Tighten restrictions on weapon purchases through new restrictions or better enforcement. Of course, the cartels can — and do — obtain weaponry elsewhere, but the quality, quantity, and ease of obtaining high-grade weaponry here makes the U.S. a natural arms market.* Denying them the opportunity to use American weapons may substantially raise the risk, and thereby the cost, of purchasing weapons. However, as any politician knows, legislating anything to do with guns invokes the wrath of constituents like little else. Politicians in the American Southwest, who have the greatest interest in stopping violence in Mexico, also have the constituencies least likely to agree with restrictions on weapons. Better enforcement is certainly a possibility, but many of the weapons going to Mexico are legal until they actually cross the border.

3) Tighten restrictions on money to deny cartels their profits. The same principles above apply to this idea. Americans generally do not appreciate restrictions to the free flow of cash, and there are easy ways around the restrictions in place.

4) Allow the shipments of the least violent organizations through while cracking down on the most violent, allowing the more peaceful smugglers a crucial competitive edge. Frankly, I don’t know if this ideal organization exists, but by clearly favoring organizations that do the least damage to the extent that it creates a major price disparity, other groups are given an incentive to do less harm. Alternately, as a certain amount of violence in Mexico is due to smuggling groups fighting each other, allowing one group a monopoly on the best smuggling routes could lead to much less competition.

5) Bankrupt Mexican smugglers by encouraging alternate smuggling routes or production from less harmful places. Take radars down from Caribbean routes; stop patrolling the Canadian border; let more Asian cargoes through without inspection. Allow the competition easier access to American markets, thus denying Mexican cartels a competitive edge. Canadian institutions are likely to be less susceptible to corrupting influences than Mexican institutions; violence in northern Cambodia would not affect as many Americans as in northern Mexico. Will coca grow in Asian climates?

7) Put smuggling organizations in a position where the costs of violence are far outweighed by the benefits of nonviolence.

Back to City Journal and the Safe Streets Initative:

One of the most vocal critics was Casey Horan, executive director of Lamp Community and a highly public presence in Skid Row politics. Lamp is a subsidized housing provider that counsels its mentally ill clients to use drugs “safely”—an approach to drug treatment known as “harm reduction”—rather than requiring abstinence from drugs as a condition of residency. Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez has championed Horan, giving Lamp a prominent and always virtuous role in his book and subsequent movie about Skid Row, The Soloist.
….
Horan’s denial that the Lodge sheltered a busy drug trade was childish but hardly surprising. Her explanation for how the murders could have happened in her facility, however, was nothing short of stunning. She had the gall to blame the police for the murders—because they weren’t policing aggressively enough on Skid Row, she said! “It was really the Wild West out there,” Horan sniffed. “We were aware that this is bleeding through our doors.” The “LAPD did not adequately police the area immediately outside the Lodge,” the Times paraphrased her as saying, “despite numerous calls Lamp made to them about crime there.”

No reduction of our freedoms will fix Mexican violence. Only a stable Mexican government will do that. Unless they have the will, gun bans are meaningless. Reducing American demand will help, but the Zetas are going global. Drugs are popular all over the world, we just happen to be a neighbor to a nearly failed state. Even the biggest cities swim in garbage, pollution, crime and poverty run rampant. In El Paso, you can see the lack of basic services from the border. What good would there be in trying to reduce harm when the cartels’ money goes farther in the crushing poverty of the cities they operate in?

Lax enforcement of our laws in not the answer. Yes we need to reduce demand in the states, but that only works if drug use and distribution is a crime. Otherwise addicts have no incentive to get clean. “Harm reduction” does not work. With no teeth, people don’t care about the law. That’s why addicts and dealers shot up the “clinics” in Skid Row. That is why the cartels will walk allover lax enforcement. Worse, terrorists will expolit it to strike at America. Broken Windows indeed.

Just as there was no harm reduction in Skid Row, there will be no harm reduction in Mexico. They need to win this one. The cartels must not be able to run and hide. These are not social clubs, they kill without mercy. We can help the people turn the tide, but Mexicans must fight their own battles. From beating the cartels to fixing the potholes. It’s their battle to win or lose.

The future of the US Army uniform

Right now the US military sits at a three-way intersection: two wars, a faltering economy and a desperate need to balance the budget.

Ever since WW II, the services have dug in their heels. The latest example is uniforms. The US Marines came up with MARPAT in the early 2000’s. The Army followed suit with it’s Universal Camouflage Pattern. Made up of a “foliage” green, tans and grey, it was supposed to blend in with “any” environment. Most observers, soldiers and net users noticed that the pattern did not blend in with anything.

Army Combat Uniform

In tests around 2003-4, the pattern that became UCP was dead last in testing. Recent tests have confirmed what many already know: UCP sticks out in the woods and the desert. The Army Combat Uniform has many detractors, but many settle on the camo pattern that seems to stick out like a sore thumb.

Enter Congress.

The conferees understand that soldiers deployed to Afghanistan have serious concerns about the current combat uniform which they indicate provides ineffective camouflage given the environment in Afghanistan. Accordingly, the conferees direct that within funding made available the Department of Defense take immediate action to provide combat unifonns to personnel deployed to Afghanistan with a camouflage pattern that is suited to the environment of Afghanistan.

The conferees further direct the Secretary of the Anny to provide a report on the program plans and budgetary adjustments necessary to provide appropriate unifonns to deployed and deploying troops to Afghanistan. The report shall be submitted to the congressional defense committees by the end of fiscal year 2009.
–Congress Doesn’t Dig UCP – Orders New Camo for A’stan, Militarytimes Gear Scout, quotes HR 2346 Conference Report

After much prodding by Congress, PEO Soldiers and Natick did a new series of tests. UCP did not do well. In response, they’ve developed a new camo scheme for Afghanistan. The tested the ACU, low and behold, it was once again last in the testing:

Overall performance of camo patterns

Now MultiCam was developed by Crye Associates and the US Army’s Natick labs. It looks like a good camo pattern. from the above chart, it is clear that MulitCam preforms well.

US soldiers demo MultiCam

The Army’s response? The ugly UCP-D. Natick tried to put lipstick in the pig by adding “coyote brown” to UCP. The result? I think this sums it up.

“ACU’s work a lot better when they are dirty – looks like Natick made permanently dirty ACU’s and called it a fix”

UCP-D with and without the new IOTV

IMHO, the Army should have just taken MARPAT and changed it, removing the “Eagle, Globe and Anchor”, replaceing it with a star and “US ARMY”. That would have saved money. But alas…

The Army is sending two units into Afghanistan, one with UCP-D and another with Multicam. What is interesting is that BAE systems has a fat contract to make MOLLE gear in Multicam for this test.

Meanwhile, most of us in the rank and file will just sigh and cue up to buy whatever is in clothing and sales.

Here is a link to Natick’s tests:
Photosimulation Camouflage Detection Test