In the 234 years of writing and speeches about America -  what it means, what it offers its citizens, what it does,  should do and stand for – by Presidents, Generals, Admirals, poets, the press, observers, citizens, and leaders – none are more compelling and important than the final sentence of the Declaration of Independence. Yet, on the 4th of July, 1776, even as the Declaration was adopted and before the words were delivered to General Washington and the Continental Army, the British Army having retreated from Boston, now landed in force in New York, severely outnumbering Washington's Army.  In retreat the Continental Army barely escaped a flanking entrapment at Long Island, and by late October had suffered two more defeats at Harlem Heights and White Planes.

As winter began and the British settled into winter quarters, with these successive defeats, the dominant positioning held by the British, battle losses by the Continental Army, plus the ending of militia commitments, could it be expected that the necessary thousands of troops would reenlist in the spring of 1777?  As the Continental Army encamped along the Delaware River on December 8th, finishing the long retreat from New York, Washington was now  considered an indecisive commander by many, some signers of the Declaration had gone over to the British, the Continental Congress had abandoned Philadelphia;  the General could see the army evaporating before his eyes.  The promise of the victory at Boston and the words of July were within a breath of being but  a small footnote in history.

Washington sent his most trusted agents into Philadelphia and New Jersey to enjoin the leaders to raise troops. In mid-December he wrote to Lund Washington, "Our only dependence now is upon the speedy enlistment of a new army.  If this fails , I think the game is pretty near up." Few new recruits were found.

But Washington was not beaten, knowing fully the consequences, along with General Nathanael Greene,  he makes the plans to cross the Delaware in the middle of the night and attack the Hessian garrison at Trenton.  He writes "... but necessity, dire necessity, will, nay must, justify an attempt." General Washington  has made the decision- for the army and a nation.

Americans all, know the story of the incredible game changing December 26th victory against the Hessians at Trenton, but the more telling story is not that of the battle, but rather it is of the "march."  Planned with three attacking elements, two are unaccomplished because of ice in the Delaware River.  Breaking camp at two in the afternoon, the conditions of the river and the winter storm cost three hours in the Delaware crossing. Given the need for surprise and a dawn attack, it would have not been considered cowardly to abandon the attack.  Washington never hesitated, explaining later to John Hancock, " I well knew we could not reach Trenton before day was fairly broke, but … I was determined to push on at all events."

In victory there were only two American casualties – both men freezing to death during the march.

The most well known painting of the Christmas night movement to Trenton depicts General Washington as bold leader standing at his boat's bow as the army crosses the Delaware.  The cover of 1776by David McCullough is adorned with a representation of Washington accepting the surrender of the Hessian commander.  But in viewing  the above little known painting of General Washington observing the beleaguered, ill outfitted Continental Army as it staggers through the cold, sleet and snow taking the whole of the night before reaching Trenton and attacking in a snow storm three hours later than planned, one requires little imagination to guess Washington's mind.  How heavy was the burden of the multiple  defeats, knowing there might not even be an army come the spring, knowing that defeat here most certainly would be the end to the revolution, and indeed, how heavy on his mind was the responsibility created by the words of the July 4th Declaration?

The audacious decision to attack across an icy river in the worst of winter weather resulted in a victory that made a piece of paper - expressing with some most excellent words  an incredible concept –  a living thing, an ideal we celebrate for the 234th time.  For me, the essence of decision making  and leadership is not to be seen  in the depiction of victory, but rather here  in perspective of General George Washington in the snow as his rag-tag Continental Army moves to battle, his decision completely in the balance.  Over time, the painting presented above has grown to be my favorite representation of American History, compelling as possibly representing the singularly most significant event in our history to this day. Without Trenton there would have been no "Spirit of 76" out of the 4th of July.

We celebrate our country's birthday in the warmth of summer recalling the day we declared our right as free and independent states, the day the signers pledged their lives, fortune and sacred honor, but we would do well to also  recall a bitter cold Christmas night, a general and an army that made it so.

Happy Birthday America

Note: Sources for this article are 1776 by David McCullough and 100 Decisive Battles: From Ancient Times to the Present – The World's Major Battles and How They Shaped History by Paul K. Davis

The story of interest over the past days in regard to Rolling Stone's "The Runaway General –  Stanley McChrystal, Obama's top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House" does not go down easily, for more than just the obvious reasons.  I am reminded of General Rupert Smith's comment used in the completing post for the core What Kind of War series:

... we are living in a world of confrontations and conflicts rather than one of war and peace; one in which the clear categories of security and defence – the basic purposes for which force is used – have merged… This is no longer industrial war… absolute and clear threats in recognizable groupings, and… stable political contexts for operations… The threats ... are of and amongst the people – in the flesh and in the media – and it is there that the fight takes place. (My emphasis added)

1. War, warfare, violence, and conflict in this century


2. How we view, categorize, and respond to crisis


3. Control and impact of the narrative


4. Impact of the information sphere on organizational response, the media, rumor, how we think, how we decide


5. System perturbation, purposeful or unintended, in a system-of-system world existing in a state of unstable equilibrium


6. Leadership in complex environments

Over the jump, 10 articles from CNN, Foreign Policy, World Politics Review, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, World Policy Institute, and Military.Com

1) Islamist websites: McChrystal fired because war is lost (CNN)

The recent change in commanders in Afghanistan is proof the U.S and its allies have lost the war, statements posted on two Islamist websites said Thursday… The Taliban spokesman said the change in command is useless because Petraeus, the new Afghan commander, is weak.  "Indeed, he has got no (more) special qualities than General McChrystal had," Ahmadi said in his statement…. In another statement, a group calling itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan said Petraeus is mentally worn out because of the lengthy war, which began in October 2001. ..."Nine years of military actions, different strategies and back-breaking monetary and life damages at the hands of mujahideen have left the crusaders totally in distress," the statement said.

Hastings clearly demonstrates a keen eye for off-color detail, but fails to weave the threads into something more coherent or meaningful. Getting the facts straight and reporting them is one thing; knowing your subject and making sense of it is quite another.

When you form a team, why do you try to form a team? Because teamwork builds trust and trust builds speed. There's always the undercurrent of a little friction in that team, but if that's made public, then it can deteriorate the public trust between people. Whoever hasn't violated that trust should cast the first stone."

If you read the Rolling Stone article carefully, you can see that the reporter, Michael Hastings, has woven three stories together. One story is the story of General McChrystal trying to keep up morale in a tough war with his troops thinking he is too worried about civilian casualties …I bet this is the story Hastings pitched to McChrystal's staff and the story McChrystal thought was being reported. ... The second story is Hastings's rather tendentious reporting on what McChrystal's enemies and critics say against him—their complaints, and their doubts about the war. ... I suspect that this is the story Hastings pitched to his editor. The whole thing has the feel of a hungry guy hoping to hunt a big trophy kill: taking down a four-star hero and showing that his war plan … is fatally flawed and doomed to failure ….The problem for McChrystal is that there is a third story woven through the article. This is the story of McChrystal and his staff on an unexpected layover in Paris when a plane is grounded because of the volcano. This part of the story has a "weekend in Vegas" feel to it. ...This third story was an accident – serendipity for the reporter and a train-wreck for McChrystal.  The underlying facts are not surprising or accidental at all.

 ...after Vietnam, an ethos of exposure swept the culture. The assumption among many journalists was that the establishment may seem upstanding, but there is a secret corruption deep down. It became the task of journalism to expose the underbelly of public life, to hunt for impurity, assuming that the dark hidden lives of public officials were more important than the official performances. Then came cable, the Internet, and the profusion of media sources. Now you have outlets, shows and Web sites whose only real interest is the kvetching and inside baseball.  In other words, over the course of 50 years, what had once been considered the least important part of government became the most important. These days, the inner soap opera is the most discussed and the most fraught arena of political life.

And into this world walks Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

... those who focus on McChrystal's impolitic commentsas justification for his departure risk missing the larger point—namely, the contradictions and fecklessness of a policy that created the frustration on the ground to begin with, and which led some members of McChrystal's staff to vent their feelings to a Rolling Stone reporter. 
... the comments seem to reflect frustration with the administration's tolerance of political maneuvering, both in Washington and Kabul, that runs counter to that strategy's effective implementation.

First, the president himself announced plans to begin withdrawing forces from Afghanistan in July 2011, sending the signal to a range of factions in Afghanistan and Pakistan that they should begin maneuvering for position after the U.S. withdrawal. ...
Second, the U.S. civil-military team in Afghanistan is clearly dysfunctional. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, an accomplished former general who commanded in Afghanistan, notoriously sent two cables to Washington second-guessing McChrystal's operational plans and trashing Afghan President Hamid Karzai as an unreliable partner. ...
Third, the Rolling Stone article raises the question of the role played by Richard Holbrooke, an accomplished and distinguished, if somewhat temperamental, diplomat and the president's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Is such a role even necessary? The president already has a secretary of state, a secretary of defense, an ambassador (normally the president's representative in the country to which he or she is posted), a national security adviser, a regional combatant commander (at CENTCOM), and a commanding general in the field. With that many cooks in the kitchen, no wonder they cannot all get along

Civilian control of the military is as essential to our Republic as is a free press.  But does anyone believe that the dynamic between office dwellers from Foggy Bottom and academia and political cronies with authority over snake eaters, captured through the prism of the media (more office dwellers), will result in something productive?

The general and his aides had faced down terrorists and the enemies of America. They had welcomed into their midst journalists from top news outlets. The result had been stories that mostly made the men running the war in Afghanistan look like a bunch of can-do warriors…. But Team McChrystal and its leader met their downfall this week because they failed to recognize, as soldiers like to say, that the opponent, and the situation on the ground, had changed. ... It appears now that the hardheaded, make-my-own-rules military man didn't recognize that the latest in a series of interlocutors was not like the others. Michael Hastings was the most dangerous kind of adversary — a kindred spirit.

It was not in fact a term born in Iraq — the practice of chroniclers traveling with soldiers is as old as war, and even the word "embedding" itself was in use in the 1990s. But Iraq was certainly where it crossed over into the wider lexicon. Within the military there may now be some debate about whether embedding survives in its current form, after a journalist granted close access helped bring about the downfall of a four-star general within the very military system which spawned it.

According to McChrystal, the "Afghan people are at the center of our mission…in reality they are the mission." These sentiments are reflective of what has become the new way of American war—population centric counter-insurgency (COIN). The focus on COIN doctrine was enshrined by Gen. David Petraeus and the 2006 publication of the Army and Marine counter-insurgency manual, FM 3-24, which calls for a military approach that seeks to convince the population that counter-insurgents, acting on behalf of a sovereign government, can be trusted and are worthy of popular support.
            With its seemingly progressive and humanistic approach, FM 3-24, and counterinsurgency in general, offer a seductive ideal for the future of American war-fighting. But the veneration of COIN conceals a brutal reality. The history of counter-insurgency in the twentieth century is not a story of warm and fuzzy war, of benevolent soldiers providing essential government services to grateful natives, of armed social work, or of the gentleman soldier's antidote to the Shermanesque notion of Total War. Instead, counter-insurgency is a repeated tale of coercion and violence directed largely against unarmed civilians. And this defines both those COIN efforts that have been successful—and those that have failed.

A general is gone, another arrives, 70 plus days into Deepwater Horizon – What do we learn?

At Sea June 8, 1942
From: The Commanding Officer.
To: The Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet
Via: Commander Task Force Sixteen.
(Rear Admiral R.A. Spruance, U.S. Navy).
Subject: Battle of Midway Island, June 4 – 6, 1942—Report of.
1.) The attack delivered upon enemy carriers by the torpedo squadrons of our forces is believed to be without parallel for determined and courageous action in the face of overwhelming odds. These crews were observed to commence their attack against heavy anti-aircraft fire from the enemy carriers and supporting vessels while opposed by enemy Zero fighters in large numbers. The enemy fighter opposition was so strong and effective that ten torpedo planes out of fourteen of Torpedo Squadron SIX did not return. It is recommended that the Navy Cross be awarded to each pilot and gunner of Torpedo Squadron SIX who participated in this bold and heroic attack. A separate letter containing details of all aircraft attacks and specific recommendations for awards will be submitted. ...

7.) It is extremely difficult to determine the extent of the damage inflicted upon the enemy by Enterprise, as the air groups of all carriers, as well as land based aircraft at Midway, participated in continuous attacks on enemy units throughout the three days action. Based upon reports available to Enterprise, it is estimated the following damage was inflicted upon the enemy:
3 CV's sunk.
1 CV on fire and badly damaged (probably sank night of June 5).
1 CA wrecked and abandoned.
3 CA heavily bombed.
3 DD sunk.

As a very young Lieutenant Junior Grade, I often kidded LCDR Pat Patterson  that I didn't know anyone so old they'd been in the Battle of Midway, so could he tell me what it was like. His reply – "What do I know, I was 19 years old and saw the whole thing backwards?"  When he retired, I was the good humor man for his dinner.  I got a copy of the Victory at Sea episode (3 parts) on Midway and ran it backwards.

In the Battle of Midway, Pat was a Petty Officer Third Class SBD gunner flying from the carrier Enterprise.  (From Enterprise message: Aircraft 6B15, Ens. G.H. Goldsmith, A-V(N), USNR. PATTERSON, J.W., 387 23 15, ARM3c, USN) He said his pilot was a terrible dive bomber, but on that day as they pulled off the run, he saw their bomb hit dead center on the Japanese carrier flight deck.  As fate would have it, they wound up landing on Yorktown rather than Enterprise just prior to the attack on Yorktown.  As he unsaddled from the SBD Dauntless,  a CDR ran out of the island, grabbed him and started accusing him of leading the Japanese strike force back to them.  It took a bit but Pat finally got the CDR to recognize that he didn't control much as the gunner in the back seat.  Shortly thereafter he went over the side as Yorktown was ordered abandoned.  No more had he hit the water, than a sailor landed right on top of him who couldn't swim and almost drowned them both.  Pat gave a quick dog paddling lesson and the rest is history.

Pat went on to getting into the enlisted aviator program.  On the night WWII ended, Pat was taxing out for a night  training mission in a Hellcat.  Mission complete, the "boys" taxied in for some cold ones.

Pat's Silver Star during the Korean War was combat efficiency par none. As a former enlisted aviator he was in a VC squadron doing air-borne target operations state-side when the war began. Similar to "Bridges at Toko Ri," the Navy was losing aircraft going after a heavily defended bridge in North Korea. Pat got ordered to get CQ'd -carrier qualified – and was flown to Korea.  He wound up running a special operation – one droned (radio controlled pilotless aircraft)Bearcat full of TNT, one control plane, Hellcat, and pilot (himself), carrier launched to dive bomb the "Cat" into the heavily defended bridge. Pretty effective – one launch, some flak, one bridge, one trap, come on home, one Silver Star.

Victor Davis Hansen has a fascinating book, Ripples of Battle, discussing the unintended consequences of battle- from ancient Greece to Okinawa.  I inherited the unintended consequences  (as  a "stash" at the old Naval Missile Center Targets Department) of the Tet Offensive and the resulting "bombing halt" on targets in North Vietnam with resultant over pumping of new "wings" into the pipeline.

For me, as a newly gold winged Naval Aviator, that resulted in 600 hours in the F-8, F-9 and T-33 in 18 months before going A-7s in Lemoore.  LCDR Patterson was Ops Officer for those flight test target missions at Point Mugu.  His "air force" included QF-9, TF-9, QT-33, T33, T-28, P-2, and F-8 aircraft.  I owe him much, as he understood well the issue of not going directly to a squadron and set up an excellent "training" program for his two stashed "nuggets."  I'm pretty sure that in that year and a half two of us sidelined "JGs" had more dissimilar ACM (air combat maneuvering – dogfighting), with more different types of performance qualities, facilitated by some of the highest quality "instructors" (NMC flight test and VX-4 including several MIG killers) than anyone anywhere. What a learning experience and what a hoot.  I'm convinced it saved my ass a little later down stream, so am rightly thankful.

Pat finished his career, retiring as a Lieutenant Commander supporting flight test operations at Point Mugu, California in the targets department.  Like the Marine Corps, each service has its "old breed," and those "old WWII prop dudes" could really fly; I once watched in awe as Pat flew down the runway at China Lake full throttle in a T-28, the propeller couldn't have been more than a couple of feet off the runway.

For sometime now, 4 June has been cause to lift a young Scotch in remembrance of one really great Naval Aviator, boss and great friend: LCDR Pat Patterson – USS Enterprise SBD gunner at Midway, former enlisted aviator, Silver Star recipient, and my first boss after being designated a Naval Aviator. 

In early June 1942, a battle was fought that turned the tide for the war in the  Pacific in WW II, and forever established the "bonafides" of naval carrier based air – Midway.

Fought 68 years ago, here's to LCDR Pat Patterson and to all who led the way. 

Fly Navy the VERY BEST Always Have

For Marie Rossi,  Pat Patterson, Sam Dorn, Gary Shank, Smokey Tolbert, John Lindahl, Gene Goodrow, Mike Bixel, Mike McCormick,  Ray Donnelly, Arlo Clark, Harry Hicks, Chuck Andres, and Randy Anderson. 

You are remembered – You live on -  Great Santini's all.

This year, something a little different – a carve out from the short story Testimony of Pilot by  just recently deceased Southern writer Barry Hannah.  The central character, Ard Quadberry, is Hannah taking literary liscense with his long time friend John Quisenberry, who is a USNA grad and Vietnam time frame fighter pilot in F-8 Crusaders.  'Quiz' schooled me in the F-8,  is a long time friend, and gave me an early copy of Hannah's Airships in 1971.

While the scene involves a Navy fighter pilot, for me, it represents the process of going to war.  The fighter, the helmet only story telling vehicles. Ard Quadberry is airman, sailor, soldier, marine.   In a few words this excerpt captures the sense of what young men and women feel and must do as they steel themselves for war.  Further, Liliian's words reflect the confusion, the sense of helplessness and loss and sorrow of young wives and girl friends as they observe those they love make that transition, moving away- physically, mentally, emotionally – compartmentalization being necessary for survival.  And all the while, underneath it all is the heightened recognition of love of country and insight about America and being an American in service of country that comes with offering all in war. These few words are the essence of Memorial Day for me. 

 From Airships by Barry Hannah

A-7 from VA-56, USS Midway over North Vietnam, 1972

 Through Lilian I got the word that Quadberry was out of Annapolis and now flying jets off the Bonhomme Richard, an aircraft carrier headed for Vietnam. He telegrammed her that he would set down at the Jackson airport at ten o'clock one night. So Lilian and I were out there waiting. It was a familiar place to her. She was a stewardess and her loops were mainly in the South. She wore a beige raincoat, had red sandals on her feet; I was in a black turtleneck and corduroy jacket, feeling significant, so significant I could barely stand it. I'd already made myself the lead writer at Gordon-Marx Advertising in Jackson. I hadn't seen Lilian in a year. Her eyes were strained, no longer the bright blue things they were when she was a pious beauty. We drank coffee together. I loved her. As far as I knew, she'd been faithful to Quadberry.

He came down in an F-something Navy jet right on the dot of ten. She ran out on the airport pavement to meet him. I saw her crawl up the ladder. Quadberry never got out of the plane. I could see him in his blue helmet. Lilian backed down the ladder. Then Quadberry had the cockpit cover him again. He turned the plane around so its flaming red end was at us. He took it down the runway. We saw him leap out into the night at the middle of the runway going west, toward San Diego and the Bonhomme Richard. Lilian was crying.

"What did he say?" I asked.

"He said, 'I am a dragon. America the beautiful, like you will never know.' He wanted to give you a message. He was glad you were here."

"What was the message?"

"The same thing. 'I am a dragon. America the beautiful, like you will never know.'"

"Did he say anything else?"

"Not a thing."

"Did he express any love toward you?"

"He wasn't Ard. He was somebody with a sneer in a helmet."

"He's going to war, Lilian."

"I asked him to kiss me and he told me to get off the plane, he was firing up and it was dangerous."

"Arden is going to war. He's just on his way to Vietnam and he wanted us to know that. It wasn't just him he wanted us to see. It was him in the jet he wanted us to see. He is that black jet. You can't kiss an airplane"

"And what are we supposed to do?" cried sweet Lilian.

"We've just got to hang around. He didn't have to lift off and disappear straight up like that. That was to tell us how he isn't with us anymore.''

Naval Aviation = Night in the barrel (no exceptions)

See Targeted for death -  the killing of Hamas' Mahmoud Mabhouh.  (See  background report on the operation itself)

Los Angeles Times' Marjorie Miller sought the views of an array of military and human rights lawyers on the legality and legitimacy of targeted killings.

So what kind of war or warfare or confrontation or conflict against non-state actors is war amongst the people? How do you fight, how do you survive, how does a country do both and yet maintain its sense of right and wrong?

Over the jump, key thoughts from the above article.

 If new to this site or the What Kind of War series please see the first article: EEI #15 So What Kind of War Is It?

Philip Alston
U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings

If a foreign intelligence agency was responsible for the killing of Mabhouh, the matter should clearly be classified as an extrajudicial execution. There is no legal justification for the cold-blooded murder of a man who, if alleged to have committed crimes, could have been arrested and charged. Political murders of this type undermine the fabric of international law as well as stoke the fires of conflict

Amos Guiora
Professor of Law, S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah

I have long advocated person-specific operational counter-terrorism as a means to protect the state and to protect innocent lives… targeted killings are lawful, predicated on the following caveats.

When is a person a legitimate target in the context of lawful, preemptive self-defense? There is a requirement for an intelligence picture suggesting significant future action that endangers national security.

There are four categories of legitimate targets in the suicide-bombing infrastructure: 1) the mastermind—quarterback—who identifies targets, recruits the bombers and plans the action; 2) the suicide bomber; 3) the person responsible for logistics—the driver, the person who makes the bomb and facilitates the bombing. 4) the financier

People who object to targeted killing often seem to have a covert premise that amounts to functional pacifism—yes, of course you can protect yourselves, but any practicable ways of doing so are, sorry, illegal.

But targeted killing can be an important, discrete, discriminating way of projecting lethal force. Sometimes people mistakenly think that any time you're using force, it must be better to do it in the open, transparent and acknowledged. However, the ability to use force can allow you to take out someone who is a genuine threat without raising the circumstances into open, overt, large-scale war, which could have drastically worse consequences for everyone…

"armed conflict" in a legal sense—and perhaps surprisingly to the non-lawyers—isn't the only basis for using force in international law. The U.S. and many other countries have traditionally relied on at least the international law of self-defense, permitting uses of force even though the fighting does not rise to the level of an "armed conflict" against a nonstate actor.

My view is that there's no question but that the Dubai operation, if it was Israel, is illegal. Under international law, it's a basic rule that you don't operate in another state without its consent. This is a pretty clear violation of Dubai's sovereignty, presumably without the Emirates' consent; Dubai seems to have a murder case on its hands.

So let's talk consequences: Imagine a Chechen leader, considered extremely threatening by Russia, makes his way to the United States. Russian authorities decide they cannot seek his extradition from the United States back to Russia for any number of reasons, and because he is perceived as such a great threat, Russia mounts an operation to kill this person in the United States. Are we OK with that?

The Dubai killing could be a harbinger of a lawlessness in which any state that sees a threat out there can use force in another state to stop it. International law may not always be enforceable, but it provides a sense of settled expectations about how states are to behave. If Israel did it, and if we consent to its use of force in this situation, then what is the principled response to another state's similar action in the United States or elsewhere?

... In the pre-9/11 era, the U.S. would have considered such a targeted killing to be an "assassination," which, under a presidential executive order in effect since the Ford administration, was prohibited if done by U.S. intelligence officers. Indeed, the CIA could not even share intelligence with a foreign intelligence service, including our close allies, if there were any chance it could be used to target and kill an identified terrorist.

Today, that executive order is still on the books.
Our moral code and policy pronouncements once reflected an understanding that such treacherous killing was not how a great nation should defend itself—unless, like Israel, its very survival is at stake. At one time, the United States did not kill in the shadows—until we became as afraid for our lives as the Israelis have been for decades. But are we really afraid now for our survival as a nation? How can a bunch of thugs reduce us to this?

Targeted assassinations can be justified when the target is a legitimate enemy who is actively engaged in planning or organizing or carrying out criminal or terrorist activities, and when it's possible to hit the target without killing innocent people. Also, when it's not possible to bring the targeted person to justice in a normal way; when he isn't living in a zone of peace where law and order prevails and policemen make arrests, but when he is living in something more like a zone of war. When those conditions are met, I think this is a legitimate response to international terrorism.
... It should be the policy of the United States in Afghanistan, and probably in Pakistan too, that after you carry out one of these raids, you should be prepared to defend it. You're using the coercive power of the state in a lethal way, and in a democracy—in a country committed to the rule of law—actions of that sort should be subject to some kind of public scrutiny. 

On the morning of Feb. 19, 1945, an armada of 880 ships with more than 100,000 Marines, Coast Guard units and Navy support personnel sat offshore. More Marines were sent to Iwo Jima than any other battle. Of the 84 Medals of Honor awarded to Marines in World War II, 27 were earned on 36 days of fighting on Iwo Jima, an unsurpassed record in military history… One-third of the Marines killed in World War II died at Iwo Jima. ... 

"... Reminders that our freedom was bought not in courtrooms, not from podiums, not in classrooms, but in dirt and rocks, water and sand, in Godforsaken places like the beaches of Iwo Jima and the men who paid the price never bought anything again…

They are, indeed, always faithful, eternally Marines. In dress blues, they march in cadence across the skies with the thousands before and after them. The wind plays taps and wings are their epaulets."

The words above are by Mary Alice Altorfer.  Please read the complete article here at the Ventura County STAR.

And for an indepth view of what kind of war Iwo Jima was see The Battle for Iwo Jima, here and here.

Someone who changed history….

From Thucydides, to Michael Yon today in Iraq and Afghanistan,  confrontation, conlict, warfare, wars AND War have been recorded for some  2500 years. We are discussing differences in this series.  But Thermopylae to Gettsburg to Midway to Baghdad to mountains of Afghanistan, much remains the same for those who do the  fighting.  This is the carrier Navy piece – in color.

Hat tip to Jim Dunkle for this one.  Sometimes Supply officers do come through.