Unforgiven

In typical post-modernist fashion we've "moved on" past the events that once dominated our discussion on the predecessor of this place, Intel Dump. But Glenn Greenwald does us a favor by reminding us that we have never really addressed, never "truth-commissioned", never "De-Baathified" our moron-level criminality in southwest Asia.Of all of us here, only Charles had the clarity and vision to call the Mess-o-potamia what it was; a criminal act, an act of aggressive war of the very type that earned the losers the gallows at Nuremburg sixty years ago.

"By contrast, we treat it all as a pointless relic of the irrelevant and distant past, all because the people who did it have banded together to decree that the worst possible crime is not what they did, but instead, would be if the rest of us examined what they did and insisted on meaningful accountability."

A Bullet to the Heart

Another guest post, from the Jedburgh Team over at Ranger Against War:

People will die of fright in anticipation
of what is coming upon the world
--Luke 21:26

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright, bright
Sun-Shiny day
--I Can See Clearly now the Rain is Gone,
Johnny Nash

Til they were outed, Trijicon, Inc. : Brilliant Aiming Solutions™ featured little Bible quips on their advanced combat optical gun sights, things associated with death and destruction. Friend FDChief recently made note of this on MilPub (Blessed Are the Snipers), and we will extend it since Rifle Marksmanship is one of Ranger's life tools.

All of us Old Goats were taught basic Rifle Marksmanship with iron-sighted, .30 calibre service weapons. This training included Known Distance Shooting prone, sitting and kneeling and offhand. All positions were fired both slow and rapid fire. All these aspects and the course of fire (200, 300 and 600 yards) were modeled after the National Rifle Association National Match Course.

The only difference from the NRA was that military matches issued GI ammunition while civilian matches shot their own personal match ammo using a service rifle. Ranger's first National Match competition was through the Director of Civilian Marksmanship at Camp Perry, Ohio.

The last time pulling range duty for ROTC Summer Camp (Ft. Bragg), the course of fire was simply foxhole, standing and supported shooting at pop-up silhouettes. That was the sum total. Since soldiers usually do not carry around foxholes or field sandbags in their rucks, this course did not provide realistic combat training.

But for scopes. In the past, only the 1903/A4, M1C and M1D and the XM21 service rifles were issued with scopes for sniper use. Interestingly, the effective range is not extended by using a scope, since the limiting factor is the shooter's ability and the accuracy of the rifle. The figure is usually 460 meters normal rifle range for the average shooter and rifle.

If one cannot shoot sans scope, adding one does not change one's inability to hit the target. If you flinch without a scope, you will probably flinch worse after you are bitten by a scope.

The ACOG/Trijicon brags it's Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight is "the most technically advanced combat gun sight available" (brownells.mil-le.com, pg. 39). The US Marine Corps has contracted 800,000 ACOG's at $660 Million USD ($825 per unit in 800,000 lots) for the USMC. Not such a good deal when the catalog lists them at $792-$836 for lots of one, depending on the mounting system.

Probably the Bible quote costs the USMC extra.

The following questions arise:

* How many people are in the USMC? Why are they ordering so many scopes?

* Why is a $792-$836 scope being added to a $1,500 rifle? Why not just train the soldiers to use the factory iron sights?

* Why put an ACOG on an auto-fire weapon?

* Does the use of this scope really effectively extend the 5.56 mm round's range to 800 meters?

* If the enemy is beyond 460 m., why not just work them with mortar and artillery fire?

* If we are currently using Rules of Engagement, then we can't fire until fired upon, and clearly, anybody doing so will not engage unless within 460 m. So, what is the advantage to our soldier's using the ACOG?

* If the enemy is 400-600 m. away, why not apply 7.62 Machine Gun fire on them? Anything further is why God created Redlegs and mortarmen, God bless their souls.

* The AK47, DPM MG and RPD MG are all iron-sighted, 460 m.-effective weapons. We are fighting rag-tag, rag bags for heaven's sake.


So, we now have an issue rifle, with ACOG scope, which costs $2,575 (including after-market add-ons), but what is it?

It is a rifle that often malfunctions in combat. This is a functional as well as a training problem. Fire discipline must be inculcated in the troops; shooting to make noise alone overheats a weapon. Excessive full auto/burst regulated fire also prematurely overheats the weapon.

If we are putting ACOG's on every rifle, then we should eliminate the auto/burst function on the service rifle for all except one auto rifleman per team. Aimed fire should be stressed.

There are several competitive and perfectly serviceable sights and scopes on the market. All are sold by Brownells and can be viewed online. These included the Burris fast-fire ($219.95) and the Trijicon Red Dot ($310.83). There are three pages of comparable M16-family scopes, many of which are more economical and just as serviceable as the ACOG.

Just my opinion based on a lifetime of shooting rifles.

A Question for the Readership

The last couple of posts have discussed our government and its economic policy. Based on the comments, there seems to be considerable disagreement about the details but a general understanding that the U.S. government seems to be doing something wrong; the GOP and their blue enemies both at fault, more or less.

So.

We've talked about what the U.S. seems to be doing. I would like to hear from the group what they think we SHOULD do. My questions would be these:

1. What would you say are the fundamental functions of a national government - specifically, what should it pay for? Certainly things too big for individuals to do; build harbors, airports, bridges, armies, submarines...but which? And is there a real need for subsidiary governments - provinces, states, regions...and how do they fit into this scheme?

Is medical care for its citizens a good idea for a national government to provide? A state government? How about pensions for the elderly or infirm? Support for science, or the arts? Subsidies for fishermen or farmers?

Is there a sort of Maslow's Hierarchy of governing? Where would you rank these things? If you had to throw something or things overboard to right the Ship of State, which would you recommend?

2. How do you pay for these things? What sort of taxes would you recommend, and how would you apply, administer and collect them? Who should collect more, the nation, or the state/region?

3. And last, to what degree should all of this taxing and spending impinge on the private economy of the nation?

I'm not asking for "perfect" solutions - just ideas. And, I would also ask - to what degree would you consider your ideas practical? Given the state of the nation today, is there any hope, in your opinion, that your ideas could ever be adopted?

Everything Old is New Again

Jim and Lisa at RANGER AGAINST WAR have a nice little post up discussing something similar to the preceding post here - regarding what is happening to the U.S. economy and the apparent disconnect between the travails of the ordinary citizen and the circus act going on inside the Beltway.

"Discretionary wars, health care tampering . . . it seems like fiddling while Rome burns. Walmart is the new GM, and when this bellwether of our economic fitness is straining at the seams, doesn't that demand notice?"

Perceptive boyo that he is, the Minstrel Boy adds:

"...the game needed to be changed. the styles and rules altered. That wasn't done. also, the pig of bad debt, credit default swaps and other failed schemes has yet to move through the python of the economy. Without intense and often draconian measures to rearrange the way business is done, all we are doing is postponing the inevitable collapse."

The frustrating thing about all this is that this isn't rocket science. Pretty much anyone who has looked at market economies knows and knew that without some sort of regulatory and fiscal governor that the market goes through these booms and busts regularly. U.S. history is full of them, from the foundation of the republic until the Great Depression.After 1932, though, and the rentier class having shat the bed so thoroughly that even the self-delusional Rockefeller wannabes couldn't pretend something wasn't wrong, the Roosevelt Revolution slammed down on the financial high-rollers, forcing them to swap some of their profits for the assurance that the Feds would prevent the proles from lynching them - and remember, they had Soviet Russia as a scary reminder that this wasn't impossible.

So most of us labored under the artificial stability of the regulated market for most of our lives. We thought that this sort of economic crash, the kind that destroyed people's lives and wrecked entire regions, was a sort of myth we read about in history books.

But Ronnie and his merry band of freebooters (and let me add that although the debased intellectual coin that brought us "Greed is Good" came from the Right, the political lifting that removed the New Deal brakes on the financial gamblers required many enablers of the Left, as well, the hypocritical bastards...) brought back the Big Casino, gutted Glass-Steagall, releveraged the markets and ushered in the financial crapshooters (Bob Reich, I think, said once that the only real financial "innovation" that benefited the average consumer was the ATM - everything else was a way for the financial insiders to spin illusory profits out of the bubbles) and, hey, presto, it's back to the Great Panics of the 19th Century.So, MB, it's more than just a temporary digestive problem. I truly believe that we've fundamentally changed the way the game is played, changed it back to be closer to the way it was played in the days of the Robber Barons and the Gilded Age.Thoughts?

Fight, Flee or Freeze?

From Attackerman:

"For the Obama administration to exempt defense spending from its kinda-sorta-spending-freeze is a position that makes no sense from a policy perspective. None at all. From a political perspective, it only begins to make sense because a brain-dead media would amplify the braying ignorance blasted from a GOP congressional megaphone about Defense Spending Cuts OMG. And even then it doesn’t make sense. A holdover Republican Defense Secretary is now the biggest advocate of an even slightly sensible defense budget in the Obama administration."

I agree completely with the point that making the DOD exempt from budgetary consideration is insane. Whether or not Defense spending is excessive is another matter - I suspect that it is but don't know enough of the programmatic details to make a rational assessment.

Glenn Greenwald has more:

"But the freeze is more notable for what it excludes than what it includes. For now, it does not include the largest domestic spending programs: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And all "security-related programs" are also exempted from the freeze, which means it does not apply to military spending, the intelligence budget, the Surveillance State, or foreign military aid."

The inclusion of the Big Three domestic social welfare programs makes a mockery of this "freeze". This reeks to me of pure political kabuki, the thing that the Obamites were supposed to "change".
Horsefeathers.

(Update 1/26: Andy makes a good point, and the previous pie chart lumped a lot of additional, perhaps defense-related but still technically not pure DOD spending together. This is from the CBO, and breaks out the DOD as a stand alone portion of the budget. It is still, you note, after Social Security, the largest individual slice. And, realistically, the VA, Homeland Security, and the "off-budget" funding for things like the NSA should be included in the DOD slice. It's not THE biggest slice...but it's a hell of a big slice.)

But on the DOD question - this is called "MilPub", after all - this reeks of Democrats running in fear of Republicans demagoging the issue of defense spending.

There is no question in my mind that the GOP will not ever make sane decisions about DOD funding - they all want the money and they all want it all (if they could zero the budgets for the Departments of Energy, Education, HHS and EPA and throw it all at another carrier air group they would, IMO). If the Dems have no stomach for it, is there any way short of Malthusian fiscal collapse to reform the defense budget and acquisition process?

Have at it.

American Psycho

OK...raise your hand, everyone here who thinks that those poor, voiceless little waifs, those sadly neglected and ignored stepchildren of the American Dream, the American corporations, have too little say in our political process. Just rai...anyone? Hello? Can I see a hand here? Is this thing on? Hello?

You would think that the last thing any human with a functioning brain that had spent a month or two of waking moments in this United States would want to see is more, and stronger, corporatism in the U.S. electoral and governing process. Or a fiercer embrace of the legal fiction that Xerox and I.G. Farben and Microsoft are "people", with all the legal rights and powers you have, only with a fucking gajillion more dollars and about an entire phalanx more attorneys. Especially given the kinds of "people" we know that corporations would be - the skeevy neighbor who is always out trimming the hedge when the nubile teenage daughter is out sunbathing. Fuck, we all know how that's gonna end.

Well, thank goodness for our Supreme Court, who knows better than you goddam commie corporation-hating bastards. Here's Dalia Lithwick on Justice Stevens concurrence:

"While Stevens is reading the portion of his concurrence about the "cautious view of corporate power" held by the framers, I see Justice Thomas chuckle softly. (Scalia takes on this argument in his concurrence.) Stevens hammers, more than once this morning from the bench on the principle that corporations "are not human beings" and "corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires." He insists that "they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established." But you can plainly see the weariness in Stevens eyes and hear it in his voice today as he is forced to contend with a legal fiction that has come to life today, a sort of constitutional Frankenstein moment when corporate speech becomes even more compelling than the "voices of the real people" who will be drowned out.

Free at last, free at last, thank God All-Wal-Mighty, they're free at last!

Update 1/22: Glenn Greenwald has a contrasting view here. And I tend to agree with him that this isn't a huge structural change. The ugliness is in exposing the open corporatism of the central four conservative Supremes. Greenwald makes a good point here, too:

"But on both pragmatic and Constitutional grounds, the issue of corporate influence -- like virtually all issues -- is not really solvable by restrictions on political speech. Isn't it far more promising to have the Government try to equalize the playing field through serious public financing of campaigns than to try to slink around the First Amendment -- or, worse, amend it -- in order to restrict political speech?"

Guest Post: FIDling while Rome burns?

Lisa and Jim at RANGERAGAINSTWAR asked me to post this, which I do with great appreciation for their work there and a comment:

"A question came and went in a discussion thread, but I would like someone to address it: Can anyone posit a historical example of military action defeating a terror network?

Further, can anyone provide examples of an occupying military power defeating a terrorist network solely via military means? We can restrict our survey to the 20th-21st centuries.

It is my position that while you can eliminate an externally imposed threat in another country (parachutists), you will never defeat an indigenous insurgent movement. Che in Bolivia and the Chinese guerrillas in Malay might be examples.

An external occupying power will never defeat an indigenous insurgent terrorist network, IMHO."

My comment would be that this would have to be restricted to:

1. Post-1945. The pre-war world was a very different place, both in terms of what people knew about the less-paved parts of the world (almost nothing, in most cases) and how they felt about it. Prior to the end of WW2 there were a LOT of people who felt it was perfectly OK to kill bogloads of brown and black people if it meant good things for Western and/or white people. As far as I can tell the only places left that still think this was are the editorial board of The Weekly Standard and the inside of Charles Krauthammer's head. And,

2. places where the foreigner is not a former colonial power with a large internal colonial population and a taste for ruthlessness - and here I'm thinking Algeria. The French DID pretty much defeat the FLN militarily...but under circumstances I have to consider a "one-off". And they were defeated politically, which counts for something.

Anyway...have at it.