[December 31, 2024] The war between Russia and Ukraine is important because it gives us a glimpse into the future, not just of warfare tactics and strategy, but of Russian President Putin’s ultimate goal. And within the past few days, Putin now claims that “We won’t negotiate! We’ll fight all of Europe!” In a TASS news article, Russian… Read More »
[December 29, 2024] Anyone who has spent any time in the military understands that every meal is a high point of the day (and mail call). A meal in the field during a military exercise, typically C-rations, is even better because it tastes extra good – so it seems. “C-rats” were a distraction from the dangerous and hard… Read More »
[December 26, 2024] There were so many Generals between III Corps and MNF-Iraq that it was hard for me to know who worked for who and, more importantly, who had the authority to direct our Engineers to do specific tasks. Every senior officer, it seemed, wanted us to do something – all of which made sense – but… Read More »
[December 24, 2024] She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Well, that’s an exaggeration. By this time, I’d been in combat for six months, and a woman in the red dress would turn the head of any man. It was Christmas Eve, 2006, when I arrived at the Army Corps of Engineers headquarters’ for a special… Read More »
[December 22, 2024] One of the most useful abilities of a good leader is to take a highly complex idea (or set of ideas) and put into a few short words the meaning that best describes that idea. So it was with Frederic J. Stimson, who took a formal challenge to debate a then-famous Socialist, James F. Carey.… Read More »
[December 14, 2024] The Big Band Era was in full swing and growing up in the 1950s and 60s, my parents made us all watch The Lawrence Welk Show. And they made me polka dance to the music. I hated it more than anything. Broadcast on black and white television until about 1965 (and then in Living Color),… Read More »
[December 13, 2024] Growing up in the pre-computer, pre-smart phone age offered a number of unexpected opportunities and advantages for boys. These were times when your parents expected you to take care of yourself, be self-reliant and possess grit and determination. And that’s where the saying, boys will be boys originated. Boys were essentially pushed out of the… Read More »
[December 12, 2024] I honestly never heard about this shopping cart theory before this morning. After reading an article about it, click, I immediately understood the idea behind the theory. The “theory” states that you can tell whether somebody is fundamentally a member of civilization or a savage based on whether they return their shopping cart. It’s obviously… Read More »
[December 11, 2024] On this date in 2006, the Iraq War was entering a new phase. There was yet no new Army Operations Order, no special briefings, no new command guidance, or change in leadership. We would not even recognize this date for what would later become – the beginning of pre-Surge deployments of troops designed to destroy… Read More »
[December 10. 2024] The foreign policies of President-Elect Donald Trump are going to be radically different from the Biden Administration. We see this difference most easily regarding the Hamas strategy of holding hostages since October last year. “Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World,… Read More »