The Will to Win

This was received from an Air Force colleague, who had received it from a Marine friend. It's worth passing on.

Unless you are willing to be as unreasonable and as brutal, as your enemy, do not engage him in a conflict -- because he will win.

An old leatherneck says it better. Here's what the WWII veteran said right after overhearing someone say that "You can't bomb an ideology.":

The hell you can't, because we did it. These Muslims are no different than the [Imperial] Japanese. The Japs had their suicide bombers too. And we stopped them. What it takes is the resolve and will to use a level of brutality and violence that your generations can't stomach. And until you can, this shit won't stop. It took us on the beaches with bullets, clearing out caves with flame throwers, and men like LeMay burning down their cities, killing people by the tens of thousands. And then it took 2 atom bombs on top of it. Plus we had to bomb the shit out of German cities to get them to quit fighting. But, if that was what it took to win, we were willing to do it. Until you are willing to do the same...well I hope you enjoy this shit, because it ain't going to stop!

Back then, we had leadership, resolve, resources and determination. Today we're afraid to hurt people's feelings .... and worry about which bathroom to piss in!!!

On one thing, though, I must disagree. "These Muslims" ARE different from the Japanese of World War II. The Japanese fighters were soldiers — uniformed soldiers, with a code of conduct enforced by their superiors and their military structure. They acted as a military force. Compare that to "these Muslims" who lack honor, think committing rape is normal and acceptable behavior, and prefer to attack civilian non-combatant targets — right down to beheading a woman for the "crime" of going to the market by herself. In other words, this is what "these Muslims" are like.

This is the new reality, as we've all seen. We ignore it at our peril.

Implausible Hillary

A letter to the editor was published in the Albuquerque Journal last Tuesday, November 24th, relating to Hillary Clinton's oft-repeated claim to have been improperly rejected by Marine Corps recruiters. It was printed under the title

Clinton's Marine Corps claims implausible

HOW DARE SHE?

Hillary Rodham Clinton claims she tried to join the Marine Corps, as reported in the Albuquerque Journal on Nov. 14 ("Clinton's Marine Corps story begs for explanation").

As a woman who served in the Marines more than 10 years, I find her story to be far-fetched. Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post reporter who fact-checked Clinton's claim, found a number of problems. But there are more.

The main problem is that Clinton claims she was turned away by a recruiter. Recruiters have quotas to meet. They are hungry for bodies to send in to the pipeline. A person needs to be highly unqualified to be rejected by a recruiter.

Clinton says the recruiter said, "That is kind of old for us," referring to her age of 26 at the time. If she graduated from high school at 18, then spent four years in college and three in law school, she would have been only a year out of school. Her age would have been appropriate for [her] to join the Judge Advocate General's Corps as a lawyer for the Marines.

Clinton also said the recruiter told her, "You can't see." My distance vision is approximately 20/1000 and I enlisted with no problem. I doubt Clinton's vision is worse than mine. Unless her vision was so impaired that she was walking into the furniture, the recruiter would not have been the one to reject her on medical grounds. Only a doctor would have that qualification.

Further, joining the military is often part of a larger pattern of a person's life. A few years before I went off to boot camp, before I could even drive, I sent in one of the cards often found in magazines to let the military know I was interested. So I had a Marines T-shirt, whereas Clinton organized events against the Vietnam War.

Marines are known by our motto, "Semper Fidelis." With this implausible story, Clinton shows her infidelity to the truth. Clinton shows she doesn't have the moral courage to stand among the few and the proud.

MAURREEN SKOWRAN
Albuquerque

It sounds to me like Hillary Clinton is one of those whose only connection to the U.S. military is in her imagination, and whose imagination is significantly divorced from reality. I know more than a few like that, like the friend who believes our soldiers are taught in boot camp how to commit war crimes. And I'm sure they will all vote for Hillary.

UPDATE: There's also an item headlined I Was A Woman In The Marine Corps In the Mid-70s. Hillary Clinton’s Story Doesn’t Add Up. She doesn't believe Hillary, either.

Safe Spaces

Just a few days ago, two rather different things were in the news (sort of). Students (at least, some of them were) at Missouri University were demanding "campus safe spaces". That same day (November 10th) was the birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC). My response is like that of Steven Hayward at the Power Line Blog. He noted there had been a previous demand by youth for safe spaces, in Campus "Safe Space," 1930s Edition:

In that same post, he also appropriately noted the Marine Corps' birthday:

Hayward said it. There's nothing left to add.

Navajo Code Talkers

The Navajo code talkers worked in the US Marine Corps in the Pacific Theater in World War II. Their work remained classified for decades after the war. The code talkers were told not to discuss the important service they had provided, and they honored that commitment. Even their families didn't know what they had really done in the war.

Fortunately, the code talkers' work is no longer classified. The Navajo code talkers have an official web site. And some of the World War II code talkers are still alive — including just one of the "original 29" who created the code used with their native language. They made it a code within a code that even other Navajos couldn't decipher. They used their code and language to transmit military information in real time, in the one way that was never broken by the Japanese enemy. Overall, during World War II, the Marine Corps trained a total of 375-420 Navajo recruits to work as code talkers.

The Navajo code talkers are slowly becoming better known. And they are helping to preserve this important part of history, contributing to several books on the subject. Among these, the sole remaining "original 29" code talker is co-author of one book, while men from the second group contributed to another.

We met two of the code talkers — two of the second group of code talkers, the first group after the original 29 — who used the code in the Marine Corps' island-hopping campaign across the Pacific Ocean. They are among the men who contributed to the code talker memoir. These two men, and their code talker compatriots, are working to fund tribal educational endowments.

Kee Etsicitty and Jack Jones at a book signing
in Albuquerque, New Mexico, December 2011

Yes, we were proud to buy a copy of their book, and were honored to be able to have them sign it.

So many years later, these men still serve.

Two Outstanding Marines

New Mexico has a long history of providing men of valor to the U.S. military. Troops from New Mexico rode up San Juan Hill with Colonel Theodore Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War. New Mexico's National Guard (coastal artillery units) were at Bataan and in the Death March at the start of World War II, with many members remaining in Japanese Prisoner of War camps throughout the war. The famous Code Talkers were drawn from the Navajo Reservation of New Mexico and Arizona. Many others from New Mexico, whether in New Mexico by birth or assignment, have served with honor and valor in U.S. military actions from territorial days to the present.

From among New Mexico's more recently valorous men, allow me to bring two particularly outstanding men to your attention. One is from November of 2004 when Falluja was one of the most violent and dangerous places in Iraq. Private First Class Christopher Adlesperger was with one of the teams that moved in to pacify that city on November 10. His squad encountered a well-prepared machine gun position in one of the houses, which turned out to be an enemy command and control position. Adlesperger's response was to attack. He pinned down those at the gun position while he helped his wounded comrades up a stairway he cleared to a rooftop area from which they could be evacuated. From there, though wounded, he was able to use a grenade launcher to make holes in the building wall so he could fire on and destroy the enemy gun position. In doing so, he destroyed the last strongpoint in Fallujah's Jolan District. For this action, Adlesperger was awarded the Navy Cross and has been nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was subsequently promoted to Lance Corporal. LCPL Christopher Adlesperger was killed while leading a clearing mission on December 2, 2004. His Navy Cross was presented to his family on April 13, 2007. Chris Adlesperger graduated from Albuquerque's El Dorado High School.

In the same district of the same city a few months earlier, Captain Douglas Zembiec climbed up on a tank while under fire to guide it to where his men were pinned down. He coordinated the actions of his Marines from atop the tank while bullets and rocket-propelled grenades impacted all around him. He was already badly wounded before climbing onto the tank. And that wasn't the only time. Those who served with him call him a warrior without peer, not much different from those who led the Spartans into combat. He commanded incredible respect from his men, always leading from the front. That action was on April 26, the last day of major fighting before the Marines pulled out of the city under the terms of a cease-fire worked out by politicians and diplomats — a cease-fire that created the conditions under which PFC Adlesperger's unit would have to reenter the city six months later. Since that day in Fallujah, Zembiec has been promoted to Major and given more responsibility. MAJ Douglas Zembiec was reported killed last week in Iraq. As of yesterday, the Defense Department has not yet confirmed his death or provided information on its circumstances. Based on his history, I think we may assume he was taking the fight to the enemy, creating what he called "menacing delimmas for the enemy," when he died. Doug Zembiec graduated from Albuquerque's La Cueva High School where, as a junior, he brought the school its first ever state wrestling title. (He won again as a senior.) MAJ Zembiec was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and a veteran of combat in Kosovo and the Middle East.

The stories of men and women like these are usually not easily available or widely published. Stories on Major Zembiec and Lance Corporal Adlesperger were printed on the front page of the Albuquerque Journal only because they were from Albuquerque. I suspect some of the papers near Camp Pendleton were the only others to print them. The stories of their heroism apparently were not printed before their deaths. These stories can be found, but they commonly have to be explicitly sought out (as Blackfive frequently does).

And then there is the larger question: Where do we find such men? How do we grow or create them? I don't know the answer, and sometimes think the answer may be unknowable. But I do know we can all be very grateful for men and women like these — and many thousands of others. And we need to do better in telling their stories.