Well, can’t unsee that….

It's dog shit, and the fact that George W Bush dares show his face here is nothing short of enraging.

I am a GWOT vet. I hate literally every aspect of this. There is nothing redeeming about it whatsoever and I’d honestly prefer no memorial at all instead of this art house eyesore.

There is an oft remarked tendency toward hostility between military personnel & "journalists", to the point it is often used as a trope. I cannot recall a clearer example that explains why that trope exists than this man's commentary here. I'll let Sgt. Franz expound further:

I had quite forgotten this. It reinforces my view that Nixon had the foreign policy acumen of a gold fish. Yes, Linebacker II brought the Vietnamese Communists to the table and secured a "peace with honor" agreement that allowed him to save face politically and put the best spin he could on defeat. Nor was it entirely Nixon's fault given that the conflict had been mismanaged by the previous four administrations going all the way back to Harry Truman. In practice the Paris Peace Accords ensured that the Republic of Vietnam would be alone when hostilities resumed, while the communists would continue to have external backing. Predictably, the communists resumed offensive operations the following year in Dec. 1974 and by April 1975 South Vietnamese defenses were effectively crushed. Which ushered in a new round of massacres, purges, concentration camps, and refugees.

I frequently post in opposition to the fawning Patton cult on this platform. That said, Patton knew more than a little about warfare and what made military units function well. I've always been of the opinion that whenever possible (circumstances permitting), a superior should be ferociously protective of subordinates. When praise is warranted, shout it from the rooftops. When discipline is required, keep it internal to the unit whenever possible.

Yeah, this is on point.

In my personal opinion; Hasan & Akbar should both face a firing squad. The other two can be dispensed with per death penalty SOP. In general; rape, murder, espionage, & treason deserve the harshest sanction and we shouldn’t be reticent about handing it out to those convicted.

This one is getting added to the "Reasons I don't jump out of perfectly good airplanes" file. Ouch.

Almost as bad was the IJN’s lost if its best aircrews. Japanese military flight school standards were arguably the toughest in the world pre-war, which meant they turned out excellent crews in extremely small numbers. They struggled with expansion once war with the US began and the losses at Midway slaughtered the men who might have become instructors or helped hold the line until new training pipelines could spin up and then led/mentored new squadrons of green aviators.

"Evil cannot create anything new, it can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made" —J.R.R. Tolkien

No, it isn't. In fact it's quite literally how the US checked the USSR/global communism for most of the Cold War. Other than NATO and a few other key allies outside Europe, if a nation was willing to oppose communism - we would work with them. With very few exceptions based on other differences. The relationship didn't have to be eternal, just reliable with respect to the one national security concern that trumped all others. This policy waxed and waned depending on which era of the Cold War we're discussing, but by and large it was SOP for the US and it worked.

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty-never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” -Winston Churchill

Give the USAF a few hours notice and it can vaporize whole zip codes on command.

I see what you did there AETC....

Given his resume, I'm frankly shocked at this article. The task of the military (functionally) is to win its nations wars. This by definition does not fit into anything traditionally "ethical" by civilian standards. Because it means killing human beings en masse in service to the nation, and in our case at the direction of duly constituted civilian authorities. This reads like the author is attempting to fit military operations into a civilian ethical lens and that always heralds disaster and defeat. Instead of quoting philosophers, theorists, and giving Clausewitz a perfunctory nod - I'd be far more impressed if he discussed in detail the ethics and modern implications of the Dachau Shooting, or Charles MacDonald's description of shelling German towns full of civilians who wouldn't surrender because he refused to risk his men for their sake. For the Navy folks, let's have a heart-to-heart on unrestricted submarine warfare - something Flt Adm Chester Nimitz defended Karl Dönitz on at Nuremberg. For the Air Force, unrestricted air war against both military & industrial targets without regard to civilian impact - and if you want to get really spicy: strategic bombing to weaken enemy morale. There are hard, necessary, uncomfortable, and worthwhile conversations to be had on military ethics, but regurgitating sophomoric platitudes and corporate buzzwords isn't one of them.