Outgoing Marine Corps Commandant is a Bigot and Good Riddance

I'm of an age where I spent most of my teen years watching the evening news which had coverage of the daily carnage in Viet Nam - and the constant statements of senior U. S. military personnel that "we are winning," we just need a little more time, blah, blah, blah. None of these statements were true, of course, but it's the nature of the top U.S. military brass to always lie so that they can continue their war games which claim the lives of young service members and squander the nation's financial strength. The same thing is happening now in the Middle East except we no longer have the nightly video of wounded and dead Americans on the screen. If we did, we'd have been out of the fool's errand launched by Chimperator Bush long ago. So why do Americans even listen to the lies and pontifications of the senior military brass? It baffles me, personally, because they have an accuracy/truthfulness that makes weather forecasters look like prophets with near 100% scores of accuracy. Yet Obama and others in civilian government pander and kiss the asses of these jerks. And the media gives them a platform to spout their bullshit ideas all to frequently with no anchor willing to challenge them factually.
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A case in point - Gen. James Conway, outgoing commandant of the Marine Corps. General Conway - who might be better called Gen Bigot - shot off his mouth on Fox News on DADT and whined that "as many as 95 percent of Marines would be uncomfortable serving alongside openly gay troops." Does He have any hard data to support this statement? Of course not. But that never stops the senior military brass. Maybe a better question to the good general would be how many young and women he and his senior brass cronies have wrongly sent to their deaths over his career. Now there's a number that could likely be supported with hard data. I suspect the number would be shocking and strip Conway of any credibility on any issue. Here's a sampling of Conway's verbal diarrhea from Fox News:
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Gen. James Conway told Fox News' Jennifer Griffin that a majority of his men and women think a repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy barring gays from serving openly will be problematic, so he has to believe that, too.
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"When we take a survey of our Marines, by and large, they say that they are concerned that it will cause potential problems with regard to their order and discipline -- that it will impact their sense of unit cohesion," Conway said.
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Gen. Conway was the first member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to speak out against a repeal earlier this year after Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen publicly endorsed President Obama's desire to change the law.
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Conway is known for being outspoken, sometimes a renegade, and didn't always agree with the advice being given from the field about the way ahead in Iraq and Afghanistan. He often butted heads with Gen. David Petraeus over the surge in Iraq.
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"Frankly, David Petraeus and I disagreed a little bit on this," Conway said. It was Conway's belief that the Marines stationed in Anbar were well on their way to turning the war's momentum. "So we have said that the surge reinforced successes that were already happening in the Anbar."
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Conway is still singing the Viet Nam era script both militarily and in terms of social issues. My thoughts on him? Good riddance. His retirement next week cannot come soon enough.

Kaboom War Journal - Army Censors Blogging Soldier

The Washington Post has an interesting story about a young army officer whose blog has been shut down by the Military. The body of the blog was saved on an archive and can be found here: http://kaboomwarjournalarchive.blogspot.com/. I'm not so sure what was so offensive, but it is illuminating of a mindset where often superior officers act like petty potentates. Living in this heavily military area and knowing countless guys and women in the military, one hears frequent stories of jackass superior officers (my mother ran a lab in the huge local Naval Hospital for decades and had many an unflattering story to tell as well). Unfortunately, moving up the ranks often involves ass-kissing and playing politics rather than true competence as a warrior and commander. Here are a few story highlights:

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An indictment of the war it was not. Lt. G's dispatches -- at turns hilarious, maddening and terrifying -- provided raw and insightful snapshots of a conflict many Americans have lost interest in. Word got around, and more and more readers closely followed the postings of 25-year-old Lt. Matthew Gallagher, with the site drawing tens of thousands of page views. By the time Kaboom went kaput last month -- Lt. G was ordered to take down his blog -- it had a following that would be the envy of many a small-town paper.

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The blog's downfall was a May 28 posting that, in violation of military blogging rules, Gallagher failed to have vetted by a supervisor. (That the posting depicted an officer in the unit unflatteringly might have played a role. Gallagher declined a request to comment.) The blogosphere, as it's wont to do, went berserk.

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Sometimes overtly, sometimes not, Lt. G wrote about what he saw as a widening disconnect between America and its warriors. His dispatches often read like a desperate call from a largely forgotten war. The Gravediggers received odd letters and care packages from strangers. Some were from older women probably looking for love. One was from someone in corporate America who somehow figured golf shirts would come in handy in a war zone. Then there were the letters from children, which spoke volumes about how many Americans have come to feel about this war.

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Gallagher, who is now a captain, was ordered to delete his blog. He did. The content remains on an archive blog one of his friends created: http://kaboomwarjournalarchive.blogspot.com. The old blog site is now controlled by City Girl, Gallagher's fiancee, who occasionally pens updates on the Gravediggers. Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a military spokesman, said in an e-mail that Kaboom was "deemed by the commander to be counter to good order and discipline of his unit."