In a speech of incredibly blatant power-lust, candidate Obama on 2 July 2008 called for the creation of a civilian national security force as powerful as the military. There are reports that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is buying up to 2 billion rounds of ammunition. DHS says they will buy perhaps 750 million rounds for a five year period. Some speculate this is an attempt of the Obama gang to make ammunition expensive and of very limited supply for civilians. It is part of the attempt to limit the citizenry to 7 rounds apiece, perhaps.
Well, it sure is a curious matter. Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz discovered the DHS has more than 260 million rounds in stock. DHS bought more than 103 million rounds in 2012 and used 116 million rounds. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the primary weapons use part of DHS. They had 15 shooting incidents in 2012 and fired fewer than 100 rounds. DHS has a total of 70,000 agents, so the average number of rounds fired in training was apparently 1,657 rounds an agent. In comparison, an Army officer fires an average of only 350 rounds a year. Perhaps Obama was very serious that he wants his civilian national security force to be even better trained than the Army and more powerful.
This has a special meaning to me. In 1970, I was drafted and the Army trained me as a light arms infantryman and sent me to Vietnam to fight the North Vietnamese Army. My entire training consisted of about 4 trips to a firing range where I was given an M16 whose sights were always very badly aligned for me. I was never allowed to fire more than about 10 rounds and about half of those were commonly used to align the sights. Several times the first round hit 3 or 4 feet away from the target. My last 3 or 4 rounds were pretty well aimed and the Army was satisfied with my shooting ability. I was not. I thought I was seriously under-trained. But Obama's DHS agents are clearly not suffering from under training at the firing range. He is really serious about his civilian army.
Even the Social Security Administration is arming up. Its 295 agents investigate Social Security fraud and apparently those fraudsters are mighty dangerous. They bought 174,000 hollow point rounds to deal with the threat. This is 590 rounds apiece. Each of them will fire enough rounds to train about 15 of us late Vietnam era light arms infantrymen. I do not believe they have been involved in as many shoot-outs as the ICE agents are, so they must be well-trained. Though one does not normally use expensive hollow point rounds for training.
This is a very curious affair. The Obama regime has a real penchant for curious affairs which the press rarely has any interest in learning more about. Given the totalitarian socialists he and his friends so much admire, a rational person sure has to wonder and worry about what is going on.
Showing posts with label Vietnam War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam War. Show all posts
22 March 2009
Kidnapping Brides for China
It has long been Chinese policy to limit families to one child. This policy was often looked upon kindly by liberals and socialists who bemoaned the growth of the human population and the strain that put on the environment and on resources. Many of the child-limited families choose to have a boy and abort or somehow lose girls. This leads to the obvious problem that there are ultimately far too few women for the young men who wish to be married. There are similar imbalances in some areas of India, owing more to a choice than a government mandate.
The Hmong people commonly live in small villages in the mountainous areas of Vietnam and Laos. One such area lies on the border with China. Kidnappers are now preying on young Hmong women and hijacking them across the border into China, where they are earning their kidnappers goodly fees as unwilling brides. [The Economist, 14 - 20 March] I suppose we are supposed to mark this up to unintended consequences of well-intended actions. How could anyone have anticipated that a one-child limit would result in a terrible imbalance of boys to girls? How could anyone anticipate that there would be many unhappy young males with nary a bride to be found?
Sometimes it is truly a wonderment that people can be so foolish.
The Hmong people commonly live in small villages in the mountainous areas of Vietnam and Laos. One such area lies on the border with China. Kidnappers are now preying on young Hmong women and hijacking them across the border into China, where they are earning their kidnappers goodly fees as unwilling brides. [The Economist, 14 - 20 March] I suppose we are supposed to mark this up to unintended consequences of well-intended actions. How could anyone have anticipated that a one-child limit would result in a terrible imbalance of boys to girls? How could anyone anticipate that there would be many unhappy young males with nary a bride to be found?
Sometimes it is truly a wonderment that people can be so foolish.
11 November 2008
Veteran's Day
I always work on Veteran's Day and I am always a bit grouchy on Veteran's Day. As an optimist, I do not particularly like myself on Veteran's Day. But it is a rough day.
My father served as a Navy aviator in the Pacific Theater of WWII and then had a 22-year career in the Navy. Growing up, we lived in many communities, so I always thought of myself as an American, not as a Virginian, a Texan, a Rhode Islander, or Jersey kid. Dad went on cruises to the Western Pacific, the Caribbean, and to the Mediterranean Sea. He was the skipper of VA-75, an attack squadron. Dad and his squadron flew 12-hour flights at treetop altitude to fly under radar deep into the USSR. These would have been one-way trips in war: they did not have enough fuel to return. Then he was a student at the Senior Naval War College and then an instructor at the Junior Naval War College. In 1963, he retired and took a job with American Airlines at their maintenance base in Tulsa, OK.
I was always proud of my Dad and of his dedication to American freedoms. He and I were both proud of his service in the Navy and I was happy to do my best to help him in his work by being the man of the house when he was away on a cruise. But my Dad's service was never adequately appreciated by most Americans.
While in graduate school, starting work on my Ph.D. degree in Physics, I received my orders to report for induction into the Army. They were delayed so I could finish the year in which I was enrolled and I reported for duty in June 1970. I would rather have continued my graduate work, but I was healthy and a proud American. I served a bit over 12 months in Vietnam.
I did not think the Vietnam War was enough in America's interest to justify a draft, but I did then and do now believe that the fight we entered into was in the best interests of the South Vietnamese, most of whom did not wish to live under a totalitarian Communist regime. This of course is predicated upon the condition that we stayed the course until the war was won, which pernicious Democrats and socialists refused to do. The way in which Congress abandoned the South Vietnamese is one of the most dishonorable of all American actions in our history.
In February of 1972, I returned to graduate school. There were some people who treated me as though I were a normal graduate student, some who treated me with a measure of extra respect, and there were some who assumed that I was a baby-killer and had perhaps made a practice of raping women. Women students were commonly the most unkind of all. The Physics Department faculty was generally great, even though some opposed the war. But overall, a returning Vietnam veteran was not well-received on campus.
The socialists are at it again in their opposition to the Iraq War. This time, they are trying not to treat the veterans of that war as badly as they did those of Vietnam. I believe they actually embarrassed themselves a bit with respect to their behavior after Vietnam toward veterans. Or maybe they just realized in time that it had not been particularly smart politically. Nonetheless, when your country largely repudiates the reasons for which you fought your war, you will feel unappreciated as a veteran. The socialists like to blame the war on Bush, despite Saddam's making a regular habit of shooting at American aircraft and despite Congress stating that there were 23 reasons for our continuing the war with Iraq. Yes, continuing the war which Saddam had never stopped fighting as he violated the Armistice he had signed over and over again.
I do not know of a war, outside of one or two fought with Indians, that any American veteran should not feel proud of his participation. Certainly the present Iraq War and the Afghanistan War are both efforts our veterans should be proud about. I wish to be among those who thank you for providing security to other Americans and for your efforts to act as honorable Americans under trying conditions. Thank you.
I will be less grouchy on Veterans Day when almost all Americans come to appreciate that freedom is the exception in man's history, while anarchy or tyranny are the commonplace. In order to avoid the horrors of the commonplace, we have to have a clear idea of what our individual rights are and be adamant in defending them. We need to understand our much ignored Constitution and choose to live by it. And we sometimes need to fight for our freedoms, as our veterans have done. The fight is a constant one in the realm of ideas and a not infrequent one in the realm of weapons. American heroes are badly needed in both realms. My hat is off to all of you who are veterans of these conflicts.
My father served as a Navy aviator in the Pacific Theater of WWII and then had a 22-year career in the Navy. Growing up, we lived in many communities, so I always thought of myself as an American, not as a Virginian, a Texan, a Rhode Islander, or Jersey kid. Dad went on cruises to the Western Pacific, the Caribbean, and to the Mediterranean Sea. He was the skipper of VA-75, an attack squadron. Dad and his squadron flew 12-hour flights at treetop altitude to fly under radar deep into the USSR. These would have been one-way trips in war: they did not have enough fuel to return. Then he was a student at the Senior Naval War College and then an instructor at the Junior Naval War College. In 1963, he retired and took a job with American Airlines at their maintenance base in Tulsa, OK.
I was always proud of my Dad and of his dedication to American freedoms. He and I were both proud of his service in the Navy and I was happy to do my best to help him in his work by being the man of the house when he was away on a cruise. But my Dad's service was never adequately appreciated by most Americans.
While in graduate school, starting work on my Ph.D. degree in Physics, I received my orders to report for induction into the Army. They were delayed so I could finish the year in which I was enrolled and I reported for duty in June 1970. I would rather have continued my graduate work, but I was healthy and a proud American. I served a bit over 12 months in Vietnam.
I did not think the Vietnam War was enough in America's interest to justify a draft, but I did then and do now believe that the fight we entered into was in the best interests of the South Vietnamese, most of whom did not wish to live under a totalitarian Communist regime. This of course is predicated upon the condition that we stayed the course until the war was won, which pernicious Democrats and socialists refused to do. The way in which Congress abandoned the South Vietnamese is one of the most dishonorable of all American actions in our history.
In February of 1972, I returned to graduate school. There were some people who treated me as though I were a normal graduate student, some who treated me with a measure of extra respect, and there were some who assumed that I was a baby-killer and had perhaps made a practice of raping women. Women students were commonly the most unkind of all. The Physics Department faculty was generally great, even though some opposed the war. But overall, a returning Vietnam veteran was not well-received on campus.
The socialists are at it again in their opposition to the Iraq War. This time, they are trying not to treat the veterans of that war as badly as they did those of Vietnam. I believe they actually embarrassed themselves a bit with respect to their behavior after Vietnam toward veterans. Or maybe they just realized in time that it had not been particularly smart politically. Nonetheless, when your country largely repudiates the reasons for which you fought your war, you will feel unappreciated as a veteran. The socialists like to blame the war on Bush, despite Saddam's making a regular habit of shooting at American aircraft and despite Congress stating that there were 23 reasons for our continuing the war with Iraq. Yes, continuing the war which Saddam had never stopped fighting as he violated the Armistice he had signed over and over again.
I do not know of a war, outside of one or two fought with Indians, that any American veteran should not feel proud of his participation. Certainly the present Iraq War and the Afghanistan War are both efforts our veterans should be proud about. I wish to be among those who thank you for providing security to other Americans and for your efforts to act as honorable Americans under trying conditions. Thank you.
I will be less grouchy on Veterans Day when almost all Americans come to appreciate that freedom is the exception in man's history, while anarchy or tyranny are the commonplace. In order to avoid the horrors of the commonplace, we have to have a clear idea of what our individual rights are and be adamant in defending them. We need to understand our much ignored Constitution and choose to live by it. And we sometimes need to fight for our freedoms, as our veterans have done. The fight is a constant one in the realm of ideas and a not infrequent one in the realm of weapons. American heroes are badly needed in both realms. My hat is off to all of you who are veterans of these conflicts.
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