A day of reflection — and from a few years ago — “Honor and Horror.”
Categories
Memorial Day 2023
Tag: defense
“Ruling out aliens? Senior U.S. general says not ruling out anything yet,” ran the Reuters headline. This was over the weekend, “after a series of shoot-downs of unidentified objects,” Reuters explained, clarifying that for the real information, General Glen VanHerck would defer “to U.S. intelligence experts.”
You know, the people who start wars under false pretenses and hounded a sitting president with a fake dossier about bed-wetting prostitutes.
While General VanHerck simultaneously up-played and down-played extra-terrestrials, an unnamed source at the Pentagon denied any evidence for the crafts being anything but terrestrial. Sure. But remember the context: last week’s 200-foot-tall balloon episode.
“To be clear — The Chinese Balloon was an authentic UFO until it was identified,” tweeted Neil deGrasse Tyson. “It then became an IFO.”
I riffed off that truism when I covered the balloon story, too. But does that explain how quickly a balloon panic became a UFO panic?
Ever since World War II’s foo fighters we’ve had hints that something was not completely “normal” in our skies. But the military has never before boasted of shooting down UFOs — though ufology lore is full of stories about just such events.
VanHerck offers a possible explanation: after the balloon brouhaha, the radar tracking systems were reset to include things less jet-like and rocket-like than normal. So other things in the skies that seem anomalous — foo-fighter-like? — all of a sudden become serious concerns.
This was one of the reasons given for the founding of modern Pentagon tracking of “UAP”: there may be more than one type of strange “phenomena” flying/floating/darting-about in our skies, and the military should be able to distinguish one from another, especially from novel drone and other surveillance technology.
Especially in time of war.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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“Yes,” President Joe Biden stated unequivocally in answer to an October 2021 CNN townhall question on whether he would “vow to protect Taiwan.” Biden repeated that “yes” three more times in his full reply.
Months earlier, this president spoke of democratic Taiwan as one of our key allies that we have a “sacred commitment” to defend.
“Yes,” Mr. Biden emphatically informed a reporter back in May of this year who inquired, “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?”
Last Sunday on 60 Minutes, correspondent Scott Pelley asked President Biden point-blank: “Would US forces defend the island?”
Again, the president replied, “Yes.”
“So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, U.S. forces — U.S. men and women — would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?” Pelley followed up.
“Yes,” answered Biden.
Handlers-R-Us at The White House have walked back each and every one of these statements by the commander-in-chief to maintain the charade of “strategic ambiguity” — the U.S. strategy of not saying quite how we will respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. A thoroughly silly policy.
And — come’on man! — the cat is out of the bag! Mr. Biden’s statements, as Aaron Blake wrote in The Washington Post, amount to “firmly committing to send troops to defend Taiwan if China invades.”
I hope the United States and other countries will stand — militarily — with Taiwan, and thereby prevent the Beijing bullies from snuffing out the freedom of 24 million free Taiwanese.
Strength and unity and clarity of purpose are our best weapons against war.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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“Majority of Americans Would Stay and Fight if Russia Invaded U.S.,” read Newsweek’s headline for its report earlier this month about a Quinnipiac University poll.
Overall, “55 percent said they would stay and fight,” the article informed, “while 38 percent said they would flee the country, like the over 1.5 million people who have fled Ukraine as Russia continues its attack on Ukrainian cities and villages.”
The Quinnipiac survey asked, “If you were in the same position as Ukrainians are now, do you think that you would stay and fight or leave the country?”
“Looking at political affiliation,” Newsweek noted, “Republicans were more likely to say they would stay and fight, with 68 percent saying they would do so, as opposed to 40 percent of Democrats.”
Yet, weeks later, Newsweek delivered a fact check to readers concerning a claim made in a social media post: “60% of Democrats say they wouldn’t fight if America was invaded.”
Their fact-checker rated it false, because only 52 percent of Democrats said they would “leave,” with 8 percent not sure. Case-closed.
Yet, the fact-checker kept the case open, suggesting that perhaps folks had also misunderstood the question. “Indirect evidence” of this “can be surmised” by the response to another question: “If Russian President Vladimir Putin goes beyond Ukraine and attacks a NATO country, would you support or oppose a military response from the United States?
“In this hypothetical, 88 percent of Democrats were supportive of a military response,” the fact-checker noted, “more than both Independents (77 percent) and Republicans (82 percent).”
But hold on . . . supporting a military response by others, thousands of miles away, is not the same thing as deciding to personally fight an invading army.
It’s a fact. Check it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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At long last, John Bolton’s 17 month tenure in the Trump Administration is over.
I won’t pretend not to be pleased. Yet I also do not pretend this national security advisor was always and completely on the wrong side. He has consistently claimed to have an ulterior motive for his favored never-ending war footing: “Individual liberty is the whole purpose of political life, and I thought it was threatened then” — when he was a teenager and exposed to the ideas of Barry Goldwater — “and I think it’s threatened now.”
Unfortunately, he rejected the lesson that our Founders knew all too well: constant war-making doesn’t yield freedom. “Of all the enemies to public liberty,” James Madison wrote, it is war that “comprises and develops the germ of every other.” Madison’s list of reasons for war’s dangers include
- Debts and taxes;
- Rule of the many by the few;
- Discretionary executive power;
- Special favors greed economy;
- Propaganda; etc.
Nevertheless, folks like John Bolton continue to think that we can be free while our military micromanages the “resolution” of every conflict across the globe.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who often comes off like a war skeptic, continues to side with the interventionists.
“We’re going to keep a presence” in Afghanistan, Trump said the other day. “We’re reducing that presence very substantially. We’re not fighting a war over there. We’re just policemen.”
. . . policemen who do not arrest anybody . . .
Not a recipe for freedom. Here or in Afghanistan.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Short version of the story: a good guy with a gun at a Maryland high school stopped a bad guy with a gun. In less than a minute. How? Because the good guy had a gun and was inside the school with the gun.
The bad guy was able to shoot a 16-year-old female student, apparently someone with whom he had a previous relationship, as well as a 14-year-old male before an officer on site responded. This officer, Blaine Gaskill, was on the spot in less than a minute. Gaskill and the assailant fired simultaneously. The assailant fell dead. What exactly happened is still unclear; there has been some media speculation that the bad guy may have shot himself.
But the 17-year-old shooter is dead. The female victim, though still alive, is unfortunately in critical condition. The male victim is in stable condition.
The good guy was armed — with a gun. And he was on site. If you’re learning about the incident here first, it’s because the story isn’t being plastered all over the place 24-7 as it would have been had the shooter been able to wreak much more havoc because nobody could quickly counter him.
So, is it okay to let responsible, well-trained administrators, teachers and others in schools be armed?
Well, ask the question a different way. If you happened to be inside the school at the time, would it be okay to survive when some maniac with a gun starts shooting at you and others inside that school?
Let’s defend our loved ones.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
