Tar and Feathers. Wish I’d Thought of That.
Rurik sends a link: Tar and Feathers for Ray Mabus
Jed Babbin served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration so he has a very useful perspective.
Back in the Reagan days, the phrase “personnel is policy” revealed an insight on how Washington works. Any administration is more likely to succeed if it hires the best people who are ideologically oriented to its goals. If your agenda is radically-liberal, as Obama’s is, you would choose someone like Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, to be your Navy secretary.
Navy Secretary Mabus, like Obama, believes that our armed services are political tools, playthings to be splashed about like toys in a toddler’s bathtub. Yes, they are all too willing to bask in the glories of DEVGRU (aka, SEAL Team 6), but the credit for those achievements is JFK’s, not theirs.
Under Mabus and Obama, our Navy has shrunk to World War I levels, women are serving on submarines and we are spending untold millions or billions on “greening” the navy. The Marine Corps is about to be cut massively and the navy’s shipbuilding program is being delayed, resulting in a force that may be over-stressed or even incapable of doing its job in the next crisis.
Right now we have more admirals than ships. The fleet stands at about 285 ships, down from the Cold War level of nearly 600. We have about 336 admirals. And some of them are interesting picks.
Babbin continues in some detail so take a minute to read it. There’s little new for most TAH readers, but he does a fine job putting it all together.
And a reminder of one thing we can do short of tar and feathers…
Category: Geezer Alert!, Navy
Sent the e-mail about Murtha to my senator, the indistinguishable Carl Levin. Got the boilerplate response from one of his staffers, thanks for writing, but the Senator is much too busy, blah blah, and Rep. Murtha always had the interests blah blah.
I thought that Mabus was more interested in votes than doing what’s right.
It’s not just Mabus. He’s a hack, yes, but the Navy (sailors and civilians) have a way of imposing inertia that confounds change. Remember NSPS? The first time anyone tried to make the government civilians accountable and competent? That went nowhere.
The key sentence is “[a]nd some of them are interesting picks.” Mabus stacked the deck, so even if he goes, his policies will continue.
1. Every politician uses the.military as a political tool. That’s simply Washington culture and it wouldn’t happen if it didn’t work.
2. Navy at WWI levels. Not true. Our navy can still cover the globe and could not during WWI.
3. Women on subs. Who cares. It’s not a boys-only treehouse.
4. Military cuts: that’s what happens when you fight two of the longest wars in American history while, for the first time in American history, cutting taxes to fight those wars. Even with the cuts, the US still spends more on defense than every other developed nation on earth combined.
Too many flag officers. True but that didn’t begin with Obama. It actually started during George hw bush’s term when he began cutting the post cold war ranks and was continued through the Clinton administration. Flag officers have a way of justifying their existence by creating unnecessary jobs. None of those excess flag officers were cut under George w. Bush either and in fact, the BRAC that took place under during his two terms made it worse.
Finally, as for radical liberal agendas, most of what’s happening are the same policies and arguments republicans made a decade or two ago. Politics itself has become radicalized so every action taken is blown out of proportion until we finally have nutcases running for office.
Sorry Fritz, the left and the MSM think of the military as furniture. When they’re not calling servicemembers “baby killers”. Every time there was a round of BRAC, liberal congressmen would oppose base closings. Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, and Haiti, the military sent in with no clear mission and not enough support. At least Regan recognized the problems in Grenada and signed the Goldwater-Nicholas Reform act.
There are more ways to respect the military than letting them see combat at every opportunity. One way is to make sure that war is really necessary, regardless of the administration. I’m not a partisan, but nor can I allow history to be rewritten. I didn’t say BRAC was unnecessary or bad, but it did make things more top heavy. As for the MSM, they were the biggest cheerleaders at the onset of war. I’ve never heard them refer to soldiers as baby killers. Wrong war on that one. Even the hippies I’ve talked to don’t blame the soldiers. They do, however, blame a culture of war and they’re not too far off the mark on that one. Don’t get me wrong, Clinton wasn’t my favorite either but I do respect that he achieved a political agreement before sending us into the Balkans. A lot of lives were saved because of that. Things are rarely as black and white as we’d like them to be.
fitz – hang with whoever you want to hang with for whatever reasons you want to use. This, however, is not the best place to come trying to educate we who have been there and done that about things like who calls whom “baby killer,” who throws unnecessary epithats in general upon us all, etc.
That might work with other groups, but not with we who have had shit (literally) thrown at us with the full support of the cheerleading msm.
You’re not the only one OWB. I’ve done my time and I don’t plan to get into a dick measuring contest of pain and shit eating with anyone. I had enough of that throughout my time in the service. Not what it’s about for me. I will have a discussion with anyone. A discussion. That’s it. Whether its with you or hippies, I don’t really mind. I’m not a troll but I’m not an echo chamber either. Besides, who wants to have a discussion with someone who only ever agrees with you? Shit, we might as well stand in the mirror and babble to ourselves if that’s what we want. Come on OWB. Is that really what its about for you?
fitz you make valid points but don’t waste your time, these guys don’t want an open discussion, they all want to agree with each other and then start a circle jerk where they all compliment each other about how bad ass they are. 95% of the guys on this site have a higher cholesterol score than IQ score.
@DUI
I suppose you’re right. Shame though. The guys I served with could talk about anything, ANYTHING, with each other. Guess that all goes away when you come home. Hard to fit back in so you just stay pissed off for years. Some even make shit up that never happened so they can be pissed off or hate themselves or something and sites like this only keep it going. Best of luck brothers. Don’t stay angry too long. That shit’ll eat you up…
fitz – your response only proves that either you have a reading comprehension problem, you are a troll, or something else equally immature.
Whatever.
DUIDave:
Virtually everyone alive has a higher cholesterol score than IQ. That’s because 150 is an exceptionally high IQ – literally MENSA qualification – but is an exceptionally low cholesterol score. Obviously you weren’t aware of that.
A disparaging comment works best when it’s both (1) apropos and (2) doesn’t prove the maker of said comment to be totally clueless. You might want to remember that.
#3
1) That statement is so ambigious… even if so, doesn’t make it right.
2)According to the Navy’s own website it had 342 ships in April of 1917 and had 774 on 11/11/18. By the 20s the Navy had over 360 ships on active duty. The Navy is almost a 100 ships smaller then in WWI at 285. He’s right your wrong.
3) Yeah, thats why they aren’t retrofitting ships to accommodate women. Same thing right.
4)So much stupid I don’t know where to begin here. The simple fact is we didn’t have enough manpower for contingencies before 9/11. We didn’t have enough force for one medium war, we had to expand, now you want to cut to nearly below that? Only about a third of that power will be available to fight at any one time as it is. We aren’t going to battle the debt with those savings, we are giving Obama another slush fund to bribe whatever entity see fits for his reelection.
@Fritz: “redacted”, “In the Valley of Ellah”, all MSM coverage of OIF and OEF. As Instapundit says, they’re not so much anti-war as on the other side.
Combat is what the military is *for*, but the politicians only see hassle in peacetime. In ties of crisis, they’re like a kid with a hammer. Everything needs pounding. The current crop in the Whitehouse are no different.
I’m all for naming stuff for civil right pioneers, but Murtha? Cesar Chavez? And Rep. Giffords needs time to heal. She don’t need anti-gun nuts and the MSM parading her around like some kind of martyr.
This SECNAV needs to be one of the unemployed. The sooner the better.
#5, you mean the same media that was dryhumping the “Long Afghan Winter” in October 2001 and piously wringing their hands over “quagmire” and “stalemate” five minutes after ground forces entered Iraq? That “cheerleading” media?
#12, yes we do have a lot less ships, but so do our likeliest near-term threats, so he’s sort of right, even though he ignores the fact that there is no longer a British Royal Navy of any note around to do the sorts of things we are now called upon to do, and will continue to be called upon to do, regardless of the latest round of shipbuilding fiascos and budget cuts.
And I note our evenhanded and soothing voice of rational discourse has no problem patting the latest incoherent fucktard troll on the back, which leads me to sort of discount his whole argument.
Oh, and don’t forget the nightly bodycount which mysteriously stopped being newsworthy circa November 2008. Yeah, what a bunch of cheerleaders.
Women on subs. Who cares. It’s not a boys-only treehouse.
Spoken like someone who never stepped foot on a submarine. Google “Dirty Dave” Turley and let me know what you come back with. Also, if it was such a great idea, why is it Big Navy has a total news blackout on how well they’re doing thus far?
285 ships, 334 Admirals. Anyone see a problem with this?
#14 “, yes we do have a lot less ships, but so do our likeliest near-term threats, so he’s sort of right, even though he ignores the fact that there is no longer a British Royal Navy of any note around to do the sorts of things we are now called upon to do, and will continue to be called upon to do, regardless of the latest round of shipbuilding fiascos and budget cuts.”
Your not counting on the fact that our enemies are greatly expanding their access denial capabilties, which are usually based on land.
@16 NHSparky, I have set foot in a sub and you guys are out of your forkin’ minds! We were coming back from Canada and got hit by a storm that broke the ramp of our LST 1198 the Bristol County. We had to go to San Dog while they fixed it so the Amtracs could launch. While we were there we got to tour a sub. I’m not claustrophobic but I can still remember the “closed in” feeling 30 years later.
Yat Yas–I’m like that Irish guy from Braveheart…”The Almighty tells me he can get me out of this mess, but he’s pretty sure you’re fucked.” BWWAAAAAHAHAHAHA!!!!
NHSparky LOL!!! Another thing that bothered me was when they told us about “hot bunking”! That’s just plain wrong. I didn’t like your tiny mess deck either! The no sunlight for a month thing was insane, too.
You know My dad told me a few good stories about the Barb. He always said if you ran one drill on it, it ran two drills on you. Also told me about a time the Tullibe broke the snot out of its propeller shaft.