Should We Close Our Service Academies And War Colleges?

Thomas Ricks believes that we should shutter West Point and the other service academies because they’re expensive and, as far as he can tell, they produce no better officers than ROTC.  Plus, their instructors don’t have PhDs, making them essentially junior colleges.

So says James Joyner.

Frankly, I think it fairly safe to wonder if Ricks isn’t harboring some sort of anti-military bias, given his body of work.

He got the Surge so staggeringly wrong, for example, one wonders how anyone would give him credit on getting so radical a change as eliminating West Point, right.    The Gamble is the most recent book of his I’ve bothered with. You pretty much knew what you were dealing with when he opened, approvingly with the Jack Murtha narrative of Hadditha.

I’m forced, with these and several other brushes I’ve had with the man’s work, to conclude that what we’re dealing with here is leftist with all of the attendant political baggage… to the point where anything he says about the military is to be taken with a half shaker of salt.

In this case Ricks is essentially suggesting that we take our best and brightest on the military track and place them in civilian colleges, apparently forgetting the fact that most of the colleges around the country have consciously decided to disallow such mixing of Military… witness the ouster of ROTC programs from college campi across this country, but let’s ignore that small point, for the moment.

Perhaps, the man is hoping that by exposing our military to leftist idealism rampant in the halls of “higher learning”, that our military will be less effective.  For surely, that’s what we’ll get.

Every once in a while, the secret desires of the leftist media leak out.

Others: Jules Crittenden, Information Dissemination Memeorandum

Addendum:  (David L)

Me at Out the  Beltway:

The military tends to be conservative because the price of failure is not paid in reduced corporate earning but rather in the blood of soldiers. I for one and not willing to entrust the lives of soldiers to Rick’s theory.

Given the time is takes reach say division level command, any effects of Rick’s proposed change would take decades to produce change and even more decades to remedy.

Our current system works. When given a reasonable objective, and sufficient operation freedom, the American fighting men produces results. A free Iraq is just one example.

I will not that the only war we lost was lead by a corporate executive, McNamara, who knew more about graphs and metrics than about military leadership. I’ll take Storming Norman any day

As  for recent examle, John McCain graduated fr0m the Naval Acadamy, with transcripts.  The one claims to have graduated from Columbia, but no transcripts have been released to support this ration dubions assertion.   I’ll take the Nanal Acadamy.

The NY Post:

The Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network have been slapped with a record $285,000 fine for violating a slew of federal election rules during his 2004 bid for president, the Post has learned.

In a decision to be made public next month, the Federal Election Commission found that Sharpton’s Democratic primary campaign accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from private sources.

Al Sharpton, in a typical pose

It also “kept poor records of its activities and expenditures” and commingled funds with Sharpton’s civil-rights group. All are prohibited under the Federal Election Campaign Act.

Interesting, how they had to wait until there was a Democrat in the White House before finally getting around to issuing a ruling on these misdeeds.

There’s an awful lot more going on here than the commission finally decided to rule on.  Indeed on the first pass Sharpton was to pay half a million dollars worth of fine.

If all of these fines, however, all these misdeeds, are involved in a losing effort, one can only wonder how many misdeeds were wrapped up in the more recent winning effort.  I’ll leave that to your imagination.

Al Gore: Call your office, you twit.

Ice is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.

The report, originating in Australia, suggests that there is a little bit of concern with regards to the western shelf where there is in facts and all thing going on.  In general however the report says that the situation in an article of is otherwise stable, and the ice there is in fact growing, not shrinking. 

The one area that is cited, can easily be explained by volcanic activity.  Unless the environmentalist nonsense is now going to argue that the effects of “global warming” are now restricted to part of land mass. 

Once again, dear reader, proof that the environmentalists have been lying to us.  Gee, big shock. 

What is saw on a bumper sticker today:  “End war through world law.”

What I read on the Internet today:

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Dutch commandos freed 20 Yemeni hostages on Saturday and briefly detained seven pirates who had forced the Yemenis to sail a “mother ship” attacking vessels in the Gulf of Aden, NATO officials said.

World law, what world law.   Not only does world law not exist, no mechanizm exists which could deliver world law.    The United Nations is anything but a  representation of the world.   The UN exists to give tin pot dictators a world stage.

Wth respect to piracy, catch and release does not work    It does not lower fish stocks, illegal immgration and now piracy.

More, Ed Morrissey, Hot Air:

Instead of delivering a message of strength, NATO sent the message that pirates have more rights than the traders sailing through those waters. The only way these pirates should have been released was in the middle of the Indian Ocean with nothing but lifejackets and a bucket of chum each. Until the world gets serious in the 19th-century way about pirates – which nearly wiped it out altogether – we will never end it in the 21st century.

James Joyner this morning :

In what has to be the oddest Peggy Noonan column ever, she extrapolates from a single story of a Michigan family that decided to give up some modern luxuries to engage in subsistence farming to a surreal future in which droves of people throw off the shackles of conspicuous consumption.

Many think that no matter how much money is sloshing through the system from Washington, creating waves that lead to upticks, the recession is really a depression. We won’t “come out of it,” as the phrase goes, for five or seven years, because the downturn is systemic, global, and because the old esprit is gone. The baby boomers who for 40 years, from 1968 through 2008, did the grunt work of the great abundance—work was always a long-haul trip for them, they were the first in the office in 1975 and are the last to leave the office to this day—know the era they built is over, that something new is beginning, something more subdued and altogether more mysterious. The old markers of success—money, status, power—will not quite apply as they have. They watch and work as the future emerges.

[…]

The New York of the years 1750 to 2008—a city that existed for money and for all the arts and delights and beauties money brings—is for the first time going to struggle with questions about its reason for being. This will cause profound dislocations. For a good while the young will continue to flock in, for cheaper rents. Artists will still want to gather with artists—you cannot pick up the Metropolitan Museum and put it in Alma, Mich. But there will be a certain diminution in the assumption of superiority on which New York has long run, and been allowed, by America, to run.

We’re in for darker skylines, shoddier storefronts, uglier people,  scrawnier actors, and scragglier dogs.  And the kicker is:  this is a good thing.

It seems to me rather obvious that what we’re dealing with here is wishful thinking.  The question is, whose?

Says James:

There’s a natural tension with what an Economist piece terms “The obsession with the new and best gadget and the willingness to try out new products gives America a comparative advantage” and an inate desire for simplicity and tranquily. Modern life is quite stressful, especially as compared to an idyllic view of natural life. It is, however, pretty sweet compared to the actual natural life. Or 1970.

Well, look; it’s as I wrote a few Christmases ago ; which one of us hasn’t wanted to resign from the world of the adults and revert back to the carefree childhood years? I suggest that that least partially what drives some of this nonsense. That desire to revert from the world of adulthood is probably what caused the election of the democrats this time around. They came and selling fire tales and the American public bought it. At least, they bought it to a larger degree than usual. The differences, and this time the waking up occur a little bit sooner than anyone anticipated, if we’re to take at all seriously the events of April 15.

But I’m going to dare to take this one step further; I’m going to focus on one particular line in the above para:

“The obsession with the new and best gadget and the willingness to try out new products gives America a comparative advantage”

I don’t suppose, James, you ever noticed that usually when these “back to nature” things come up, and get lauded as a desirable goal that they remove that national advantage? That the theme of reducing the role of the United States as a world leader comes up as often as it does, is enough to logically raise the question if that wasn’t the original goal of the proponents of such utopian visions.

And, what do you know? That angle seems to fit directly in line with the baseline politics of such utopians, too. Consider Al Gore as a prime example. Consider Barrack Obama

And both of these seem quite willing to lay the technological advantage of these United States aside for the stated purpose of “saving the environment”. This despite the fact that their science is at least questionable.

Further they seemed willing to lay aside our military advantage.  In the world we haven’t the moment, the result of that foolishness is eminently predictable.

It’s all part and parcel of the same deal. If there’s anything about this that amazes me, it’s Noonan signing on for this nonsense… Apparently, willingly. I admire her for her writing ability.  Occasionally she has been absolutely brilliant.  But frankly there are times when I began to wonder precisely what her underlying motivations are.  As in this case.

An interesting snippet from William Kristol, Weekly Standard:

What was more interesting was the accompanying statement by the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, trying to justify Obama’s decision–or at least put it “into perspective.” The perspective, the context, is that in the months after 9/11, “we did not have a clear understanding of the enemy we were dealing with, and our every effort was focused on preventing further attacks that would kill more Americans. It was during these months that the CIA was struggling to obtain critical information from captured al Qaida leaders, and requested permission to use harsher interrogation methods. The OLC memos make clear that senior legal officials judged the harsher methods to be legal.”

Blair continues: “Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing. As the President has made clear, and as both CIA Director Panetta and I have stated, we will not use those techniques in the future. But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos and those guidelines

If you take Blair at his word, in the wake of September Eleven we lacked a clear picture of enemy and we were struggling to prevent further attacks.    In contrast, today we know who our enemy is and we are safe.    The only conclusion you can draw from Blair’s words, is that President George W. Bush did a great job  in leading us from dark swamp to bright and sunny hill.   I am not sure that is the message the Obama administration intended to convey, but competence is just not part of the Change and Hope thing

Barack Obama may think of himself as president of the world.   However Israeli Prime Misister Benajim Benjamin Netanyahu is insisting on acting in Irrael’s best interest, and not Obama’s, McClatchy Newspapers:

ERUSALEM – In a direct challenge to President Barack Obama’s commitment to rejuvenate moribund Mideast peace talks, Israel on Thursday dismissed American-led efforts to establish a Palestinian state and laid out new conditions for renewed negotiationsPalestinians to accept Israel as a Jewish state in any future negotiations

What BO overlooks, or is just too stupid tp realize, is that there can be no two state soluition with two nations living in peace, unless both states accept the right of the other to exist:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he’d require – a demand that Palestinians have up to now rejected – Israeli government officials said

The Palistinians have never accepted the right of the State of Israel to exist.   Until they do, they can be no peace and no two state solution.

The term Madam Secretary has certain ring to it,  BBC:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is offering the chance to spend a day with her husband Bill in exchange for help paying off her campaign debt.

The offer was sent to supporters of Mrs Clinton in an e-mail from her former campaign manager, James Carville

 Not all trash from Arkansas lives in trailers.

It time for the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security,  Janet Napolitano,  to resign.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Civil liberties officials at the Homeland Security Department did not agree with some of the language in a controversial report on right-wing extremists, but the agency issued the report anyway.

The intelligence assessment issued to law enforcement last week said some military veterans could be susceptible to extremist recruiters or commit lone acts of violence. That prompted angry reactions from some lawmakers and veterans’ groups.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said the report was issued before officials resolved problems raised by the agency’s civil rights division. Kudwa would not specify what language raised

Hat tip and more, Gabriel Malor, Ace of Spades:

Bombshell Update: Stick this in your hole and smoke it! The DHS civil rights division (DHS has a civil rights division?) apparently raised concerns about the report. The department decided to issue it before those concerns were resolved. Hmm, the fevered conspiracy-mongering that this was released last week as a preemptive strike at the teaparties doesn’t seem as unlikely now.

Discovery is gonna be a bitch.

Napolitano’s  preemptive strike on the First Amendment.   Napolitano’s boss has effectively declared on end to the global war on terror, and does not  appear to see single terrorist outside of  own borders    Given the Obama administration has declared the mission of DHS to be over, there is no reason to tolerate a person as apathetic insensitive to civil rights and inept as Napolitano.

In a firefight, superior firepower prevails, C.J. Chivers, New York Times;

An American platoon surprised an armed Taliban column on a forested ridgeline at night, and killed at least 13 insurgents, and perhaps many more, with rifles, machine guns, Claymore mines, hand grenades and a knife.

 As Bit rambled,

Speaking of Roesgen  That story gets even better after CNN dropped off. Founding Bloggers passes along what happened after the Kleig lights got turned off.

The set to at the Chicago tea party was between a CNN info babe, one Susan Roesgan, and some guy named Norm.   Now thanks Allah Pundit, Hot Air, we know two things.   One, as for Norm, he went on the Mark Levin Show and acquited himself quite well, link.    Two, as for Ms. Roesgen, she is on vacation.

In the case of the Taliban, the party which got ambushed lost.   In Roesgen’s case, the ambushing party got tagged by her would be victim.   If the leftarded medias wants to take down the Tea Partys they are gong to need more than trite Organizing for America talking points.  

When the left’s front like reporters do have the command of the facts of Tea Party participant picked at random, they in for a long, and losing campaign.  In battle between facts and talking points, the facts will prevail.    Moral, homework is better than talking points.  All Roesgen had were her taking points.   She lost.

Wecome, one and all to the most intense nightly read on the sphere… where the typos are always free. The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the Friday Fish Fry Edition.

• (Chuckle) Insty notes Micheal Graham:
  

  MICHAEL GRAHAM: Janet Napolitano was right. There were hatemongers at the Tea Party rallies on Tax Day. They called themselves “reporters.” Remember when journalists sneered at those dumb bloggers with their obvious biases and potty-mouth approach? . . . .

  Yep. What you guys fail to connect with however, is the idea that anyone who agrees with the leftist dominated Dinosaur media, cannot possibly be biased in their eyes, because they think themselves unbiased. No amount of pointing to biased behavior like what we saw the other day, will convince them that THEY… The Dinosaur Media… are in fact the PROBLEM.

  All of this is nothing new, of course.. It’s just that when the power shifted in Washtington, the bias of the Dinosaurs was much harder to hide under a layer of leftist prattle and self-rightious indignation.

  See, here’s the thing; Everyone thinks thmselves at the center of the political spectrum. Thus do we have the denizens of Democrat Underground, Willis, Greenwald Drum and so on making out like their views represent the political center.  (Choke, cough) That nonsense is comparatively easy to identify and deal with, at least for those not up to their pipicks in the juices of the socialism they preach in those places. But the when the Dinosaur media, which has spent so long trying to parley an image of being imune to such foibles as political bias, into an image of respectability and infalability, to the point where thye start believing their own shtick,  we have a problem, both as individuals and as a nation.

• Fallen Arches, indeed: I smell a few lawsuits over this one.
• Further Evidence Obama is a fool: As if we needed more .  Of course the usual ACLU Amen Chorus is warming up, St Andrew the Incontinent leading the charge.  As Don Surber points out, the insistence on persecuting the CIA for protecting the nation is absurd. Then again, that’s the left in our country today.  Let’s see, releasing classified documents which will hobble our efforts to secure our country, manipulation of the DHS, all for political purposes.  Oh, and terrorism doesn’t exist because we’ve changed the name from terrorism to something else. Yep. A typical day, in Leftie-land. I’m telling you, American blood will spilled on this account. I’m disgusted. And let me be clear; I support torture of these animals, when information is needful. If you think that problematic, ask yourself a question; What will happen to my lofty morality, if I’m not here to promote it?  You have to win the war, foirst and foremost before you can dictate morality. If they win… and this document release helps them to that end… they get to dictate what is moral and what is not.
•  Speaking of Moral High Ground: The Wall Street Journal is reporting, this morning:
  

  Steven Rattner, the leader of the Obama administration’s auto task force, was one of the executives involved with payments under scrutiny in a probe of an alleged kickback scheme at New York state’s pension fund, according to a person familiar with the matter.

  

  Rattner

  A Securities and Exchange Commission complaint says a “senior executive” of Mr. Rattner’s investment firm met in 2004 with a politically connected consultant about a finder’s fee. Later, the complaint says, the firm received an investment from the state pension fund and paid $1.1 million in fees.

  The “senior executive,” not named in the complaint, is Mr. Rattner, according to the person familiar with the matter. He is co-founder of the investment firm, Quadrangle Group, which he left to join the Treasury Department to oversee the auto task force earlier this year. Neither Mr. Rattner nor Quadrangle has been accused of any wrongdoing. Mr. Rattner did not return calls for comment.

  It gets far more involved, as you might expect and frankly, all I can say is this: Is beinga criminal a requirement for being involved with the Obama Administration? THESE are the people who are suppsoed to drag our economy out of the current problems?  These are the people who dare preach to us about the moral high ground?  Ah, hopey changitude!

•  Yeah, Billy, I saw that:  And this thing is more indication of what I suggested to you yesterday… fear is a great motivator for good.  Can you imagine a better situation than when the government fears the people? And not just the government. That Susan Roesgen thing as we all mentioned yesterday? That is also a manifestation of fear. Unbridled, unreasoning, fear. It’s good to see.
• Speaking of Roesgen  That story gets even better after CNN dropped off. Founding Bloggers passes along what happened after the Kleig lights got turned off.
• Astroturf? Nancy Pelosi is afraid, too.  It’s the only explaination for what we saw out of her yesterday. Boortz, this morning comments on it:
  

  .Princess Nancy has come forward with her own theory as to how these rightwing extremists came to be protesting our government spending habits and our tax code. You’ll love this. Nancy Pelosi actually believes that these tea parties are supported by … ready for the class-warfare card? … “the high-end.” That’s just another way of saying the evil, filthy, disgusting rich. Here’s her quote:

  “This initiative is funded by the high-end. We call it ‘astroturf’; it’s not really a grassroots movement. It’s astroturfed by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class.”

  So there you have it, folks. Rich people were behind this. They’re somehow using the masses to protest taxes so that the evil rich won’t have to pay their “fair share” of taxes. Why is it only the “great” middle class that is deserving of a tax cut? Is Princess Nancy implying that the evil rich don’t actually work to earn any of that money? Hmmmm. You know, of course, that she actually does believe that. Oh .. by the way, Nancy and her husband are worth in the tens of millions.

  Why the “Astroturf” word? Well … and let’s see if we can follow this: The tea party movement is not true grassroots. It’s fake. Fake because it’s promoted and financed by some rich people .. and Fox News, of course. Fake grass = Astroturf. Get it? Unusually clever for liberals, I’d say.

  I guess.  Neal correctly reminds us the Democrats are famous for doring what Pelosi suggests is being done with the tea Parties. Been doing it for decades. So, what Pelosi is doing is called ‘projection’. But frankly, when I hear her speaking about Astroturf, I can’t help but wonder, myself if she remembers what Bill Clinton told us he used to line his pickup truck bed with. You remember that story, right?

You just knew someone would do this eventually.

Washington Times:

Liberal actress and political activist Janeane Garofalo, in all seriousness, said activists who attended tea parties are racists with dysfunctional brains in a recent prime-time television appearance.

“Let’s be very honest about what this is about. This is not about bashing Democrats. It’s not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea party was about. They don’t know their history at all. It’s about hating a black man in the White House,” she said on MSNBC’s “The Countdown” with Keith Olbermann Thursday evening. “This is racism straight up and is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. There is no way around that.”

Olbermann did not once try to challenge her on those assertions.

I’d not expect him to make any noise at all about how much that smells like horsey pucks… that’s not what Soros pays him for. (Astroturfing, indeed)

But I guess neither one has seen any of the photos coming from the protest sites. Or perhaps they were hoping we didn’t notice. I’m going to run these full size to make the point.
Like this one, by way of Glenn Reynolds, in Charleston.

Or this one, in DC, I think, by way of Melissa Clouthier:
.

As Melissa says:

Imagine: There are black people who judge President Barack Obama not by the color of his skin but by the content of his policies. I know, it’s hard to fathom when you’re steeped in identity-politics and every position is defined by your gonads, skin and sexual identification, but can you at least try to imagine that there is diversity of thought in this country still?

Clearly, neither Janeane Garofalo nor Keith Overbite, idiots that they are, can manage to bring their level of thought process up so far.

Any questions, class?

Matthew Lee, Associated Press, is no Jan Schakowsky and is unable to shallow all of Mrs. Clinton’s delusions:

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday the Obama administration will take the unusual step of trying to seize pirate financial assets and property, as it works with shippers to thwart hijackers off the coast of Somalia.

The measures outlined by Clinton, part of a new U.S. diplomatic initiative to thwart sea piracy, are largely stopgap and symbolic moves while officials weigh more comprehensive diplomatic and military action.

Hat tip and more, Ed Morrissey, Hot Air:

Purchase equipment?  Uh, sure.  Pirates are well known for getting invoices and receipts for tax purposes, too.  As others pointed out to Matthew Lee, pirates don’t use formal banking systems or marketplaces for their financial transactions.  Mostly they just steal what they need, and buy the rest through black-market channels.

Somalia has no effective government.   Who in the heck is going to be in position to freeze, much less Identify, pirate assets.   If these is the best the best smart diplomacy the Obamatards can uuster, I, for one, and ready to try dumb diplomacy.  And you?

So where is this much promised smart diplomcay the Obama administration has been promising. Al Jazeera:

The United States has said it would welcome dialogue with Iran but has not dropped its demand for it to halt uranium enrichment activities.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, was meeting Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, to discuss how to move forward in their dealings with Iran over its controversial nuclear activities 

While the one is willing to suck up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  Obama is only willing to tell Bibi Netanyahu to bend over, MJ Rosenberg, Middleeast Peace Pulse:

Yedioth also reports that Obama is conveying his displeasure with the new Israeli government in several ways. “US administration officials informed Netanyahu that President Obama will not be able to meet with him in early May, while the AIPAC conference is held in Washington. The meeting between the new Israeli premier and the president of the United States is perceived in Israel as a sign that the formation process of the new government has been completed and as a salutation by Israel’s close friend. Netanyahu had hoped to capitalize on the opportunity and to meet with Obama during the annual AIPAC conference, but the Americans informed the Israelis that Obama was not going to be ‘in town.’ That being the case, the inclination among Netanyahu’s aides is to cancel his trip to attend the AIPAC conference and to try to secure a date for a meeting with Obama later in May.

Call it what you will, making nice with our enemies but being rude to our friends is anything but smart diplomacy.    Then you have to be an Obamatard to think Obama is smart.

Funny, we just don’t seem have hair stylists like Olga, Carl Schreck, Crime Watch:

In what is either the weirdest Russian crime story of the year so far or a new low in yellow crime journalism, a female hair stylist in the Kaluga region is suspected of holding an armed robber in captivity as a sex slave for two days after he unsuccessfully tried to knock over her beauty salon.

On further reflection, that migbt be good.   If were a lawyer and I were defending Olga,  I ask for a jury trial.  I donbt that Viktor would be willing to testify in public.