The Aerodrome: New White House helipad.

The Aerodrome: New White House helipad.:   At least to some degree, of all the vandalization that Trump has done to the White House, perhaps this is not completely offensive. Report...

New White House helipad.

 

At least to some degree, of all the vandalization that Trump has done to the White House, perhaps this is not completely offensive.

Reportedly this was put in because the new Sikorsky VH-92A used as Marine Corps 1 was scorching the lawn, which raises the question of why the President requires such a heavy duty helicopter, or a helicopter at all.  The Canadian and British prime ministers do not have dedicated helicopters.

Also worth noting, a mile of sod on the National Mall is now ripped up, thanks to the 250th Hootenanny that Trump caused to occur.

Everyone getting their own toys. Absurd military specialization.

Oh geez, here we go again:

Special Operations Command wants a 10-pound 5.56mm machine gun

The command that oversees U.S. special operators expects the Flyweight Assault Machine Gun to begin field testing in 2028, a spokesperson said.

Just recently I wrote a piece here about how it's really time for major reform in the U.S. Military, including a major scaling back of its size.  This is more evidence of that.

Military funding is so thick that we've reached the point where about every two weeks some branch or command of the military requests a new small arm.  It's frankly absurd.

The Army just recently adopted the M7 rifle and now is already looking at a M8 carbine based on the rifle. At the same time, it adopted a new machine gun. The M250.  Both are in a new cartridge.  The M7 was supposed to replace every variant of the AR15 (the M4 Carbine and the M16).  The M250 was supposed to replace the M249 and the M240, thereby also getting everyone on to a new 6.5 cartridge.

Special Operations was supposed to get the new SIG M338, which shoots a variant of the .338 Win Mag.  They are using the Mk 46, their own lightweight version of the M249.

Now they want a lightweight 5.56 machine gun.

The Marine Corps, for its part, has been so/so with the M7, and is using the 5.56 M27, a piston variant of the AR.  The M27 takes the place of both the M4/M16 and the M249 in the Marines.  It looked at the M7 and has rejected it.

The USAF uses the M4.  There are airmen who depend on a longarm, but they're relatively few in number so it really doesn't matter what the USAF uses.

Anyhow, this is nonsense.

The AR platform rifles have always been problematic. At this point the ARs share the same distinction occupied by the late 19th Century "trapdoor" Springfields in being a weapon that was never very good, got people killed early on, but which has lingered on forever.  Replacing it was a good idea.

The Army uses more longarms than anyone else and anything suitable for a soldier is suitable for a Marine.  The Marine Corps should be made to get with the program.  

Nobody needs a carbine. That's just stupid.

Nobody needs a 5.56 caliber weapon anymore. That's just stupid.

It's also a stupid waste of money.

For that matter, there being a M17 and M18 pistol is as well.

US military pistols tend to give me  heartburn to start with, as the post Vietnam War history of them has been dumb.  The M1911 never needed to be replaced, new ones just needed to be ordered.  Congress forced the 9mm and that's how we ended up with the M9.

Having said that, the oddly unloved M9 is a good 9mm pistol.  It really doesn't need to be replaced at all.  Just as the M16 was never able to replace the M14 fully, the M9 was never able to fully replace the M1911, which started a late in the day comeback even seeing the Marines re adopt it for special use as the M45.

Because everyone now loves striker fired pistols, we decided we needed one and adopted the SIG in the form of the M18 and M17.  That was bound to make Glock heads upset even though the Glock isn't that great of pistol, frankly.  The myth of the misfires started but apparently that is now over.

I guess I can tolerate there being a M18 compact variant of the full size M17, but frankly that's a little stupid for the most part.  I can see some use for it, but only some. Still, the USAF handguns are all M18s.  The Navy and Marine Corps also use the M18, rather than the M17.

Anyhow, during the Cold War, Congress at one time had enough and required the services to use uniform equipment.  After the Vietnam War that started to erode away.

It needs to come back.

Related threads:

The United States needs military reform. Der Fibber's Bunker and our outdated Cold War Military. This needs to go, and go back to the future.

Labels: 1940s, 1948., 2020s, 2026, Army, Military, Military Industrial Complex, The Second Trump Administration, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, U.S. Space Force, United States Marine Corps

The United States needs military reform. Der Fibber's Bunker and our outdated Cold War Military. This needs to go, and go back to the future.

Before World War One the size of the Regular Army was 127,000 men, up from 100,000 in 1914.  In 1939, before the start of World War Two, the Regular Army had 174,000 men.

It's time to go back to that.

Donald Trump this week:

Let's be clear.

We aren't being served well by a professional military class at all, and if most of the fighting strength of the nation was in the National Guard and Navy Reserve, we wouldn't be in a mess like Iran now.  If we did that, having a fortress at the White House would be pointless.

And frankly, it's pointless anyhow...

The ballroom is completely pointless.  There's another large Washington facility that can fit this purpose.  In short, the next President needs to scrape this monstrosity and fill the bunker in with concrete.

But let's take a little deeper dive into this.

Trump's building a bunker.

Just like Hitler did.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-V04744 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5437633

Am I saying Trump is Hitler?  No, he's more like Idi Amin.  Idi Amin was a nutjob who stood mostly for his fat self, and that sums up Donald Trump pretty well.  

But building a bunker underneath the White House shows a mentality, and not just in Trump, but in the military, that it's 1964 and the Soviet Union is going to start a Third World War today.

Dwight Eisenhower's nightmare of the dangers of the military industrial complex have come true. And not only have them come true, our military sucks.

Not on the troops level.  On the troop level, say E-1 through O-6, it's really good.  But the problem is evident.  We have a Cold War legacy military and its a danger to the country itself.

Prior to June 24, 1948 the United States had a completely different defense model, and it worked very well.  It defended the nation and it never constituted a threat to the republic itself.  It also didn't work great for assaulting other countries.  It didn't, accordingly, do great in the offensive War of 1812, but it did suffice to keep the British counter invasion from succeeding, if only barely, and in part due to British morale and logistical problems.  It won the war against Mexico and because of its structure it necessitated the US coming to terms with Mexico.  It defeated the racist Southern rebellion of the 1860s, albeit at great costs as the South had the same military structure.  It slowly won the long asymmetric war against the Native population.  It beat Spain and then prevailed in the Philippine Insurrection.  It performed brilliantly in World War One and World War Two.

Since then, with the new structure?  M'eh.

We didn't lose in Korea, but we didn't win either.  Interestingly, in that "conflict", the old model was still partially in place, and without it we couldn't have fought the war.  We turned around with hte new model and lost completely in Vietnam.  Since Vietnam we've fought Iraq twice, the first time, with limited objectives, we did okay, and the second time resulted in us getting bogged down for years.  We also got bogged down in Afghanistan and ultimately surrendered to the Taliban.  We're losing now and are going to lose to Iran.

So what's the structural problem here?

Before 1948 the US defense model was based on the following:

• Large professional Navy (which the Marine Corps was a tiny part of).
• Very small professional Army. As in very, very small.
• Large state controlled, in peacetime, reserves, which started being called the National Guard with the New York State Militia adopting that name in 1824.
• A small Coast Guard (originally the Revenue Cutter Service) that was in the control of the  Treasury Department.

That was it.

There was no standing Army at all . The founders thought standing armies were likely to take over the country, sooner or later.  A professional navy was different as it would always be busy sailing around the globe and therefore couldn't stage a coup.

The thought was that if the US was actually attacked, and the number of suspects who might attack it were quite small, the state militias could be called into active duty service to defend the huge country.  A very small standing Army was formed in 1784 for frontier duty, and expanded after the US was badly beaten up in a frontier Indian war in 1786.  It seemed to have been proven that if the country was going to engage in frontier Indian Wars, it needed some sort of Army.  It was also frankly felt that sort of Army was not a danger to the Republic, as it was like the Navy.  While the Navy was busy off of Gibraltar (no joke) or Chile (no joke), like everyone else's navy, the Army would be off in the wilderness were it would be on the edge of extinction and busy.  If a real war came, the state's would muster their militia and the Federal Government call them into Federal service.

Really optimistic painting of the First American Rgt as party of a U.S. Army series.  Painted in 1976, this depicts a 1976 view of this.  In real life frontier soldiers wouldn't have been wearing white wigs, probably would have been semi shaven, and a lot of the enlisted men wouldn't be wearing uniforms  Nobody can keep white trousers clean.

Frankly, some of this acknowledged that being a soldier requires training, but overall isn't that hard.  It wasn't that hard then, and it isn't now.  The Regular U.S. Army has always looked down on state militias, but the evidence doesn't support the disdain.  In this period, likely the only branch of the Army that really required training were engineers and artillerymen, which the Army did provide, and which did require a professional service to sustain.

It was Canadian militia that basically won the War of 1812, and had the British Regular Army not performed up to expectations, Ohio would be a Canadian province today, as would most of the Rocky Mountain West.

The Mexican War was also fought largely with wartime volunteers and state militiamen.  The Army branch that really shined with the artillery, which was made of troops in the Regular Army, again pointing out what I've noted above.  Much of the early western soldiering was done by the Corps of Topographical Engineers, which again demonstrates it. For regular grunt fighting, volunteers and militiamen worked just fine.

This was all proven again during the Civil War.  Almost all the troops on both sides were wartime servicemen.  Lots of notable officer in the war came right out of peacetime civilian careers.  And notably a really large and bloody war was fought for the long-haul by men who had only state service before the war.

The National Guard's contribution to World War One was so large that the US would not have been able to fight the war without it.  For that matter, the Mexican Border War coming right before it completely relied on National Guardsmen defending the border when the Pershing's Regulars went into Mexico. And again, in World War Two, it was the Regular Army and the National Guard that really kept things going until mid 1943.  A lot of early U.S. Army commitments relied on the Guard well into Operation Torch.  Frankly, the Guard was sacrificed to some degree as they were available and trained.  As late as the Korean War, and only two years into the new defense structure, the entire service relied upon Guardsmen and Reservists to a significant degree.

So that establishment has worked.

After 1948, and more particularly after 1950, the US started to assume that it needed to be on a wartime footing all the time, and that lead to the massive Cold War military. The Cold War was the reason for that.  The assumption was that if war broke out with the Soviet Union there wouldn't be time to mobilize, so the US had to be ready to go from day one.

The Cold War has been over since 1990.  The current size of the Army is 453,000, down from 700,000 during the colder parts of the Cold War, but way up from what it was prior to the Second World War.  The British Army, in comparison, is 109,410.  The French Army, which has commitments all over the globe, is 264,000 men in size.

And I'm not including the Air Force, which didn't exist until 1947.  Prior to that it was part of the Army.  It has another 321,848 active duty personnel.  Into that you have to add the Space Farce, the comical absurdity that has 14,000 personnel.

The Navy, before World War Two, had 160,000 personnel serving 790 active ships.  It has 344,600 serving 480 ships now.  That size is about right.

The active duty Army's and Air Force's is not.  It's entirely too large.

And the structure is wrong.  The Joint Chiefs of Staff, formed in 1942, cover every service including sub services of the services.  It currently has eight members for what ought to be two services.  Having a large body like that risks turning it into a sort of German General Staff.

Complete with the incompetency such large bodies have.  Note how well the German General Staff did in World War One and World War Two.

It's the kind of body that thinks it should build bunkers. And its the kind of body that has the problem noted here:

The U.S. Army’s Dangerous Obsession with WWII Europe

The Second World War, which is now over 80 years ago, is the last really successful war the US fought.  You can't say we've lost ever war since, although I've seen that claim made, but like a large colonial power, which aren't, or aren't fully, our professional military gets involved in a lot of smaller wars with dubious results. A lot of those bad results is that, at the end of the day, we look back upon the Second World War in Europe.  We've been preparing to restage it ever since 1948.

Now, there was some real reason to prepare for that war, really, and it darned near actually occurred. There's still reason to prepare for it, even though Donald Trump has a titanic crush on Putin and loves him dearly, making him the least reliable ally of all time, but we're preparing for it like it's 1941 and not 2026, which also makes us unprepared for anything else.  It also puts us in the mindset of a country that feels it needs to have a gigantic bunker at the White House.

Now, the contrary thread of thought here has been in place since the Militia Act of 1903, which formally committed the various state militias into being the official reserve of the Army.  The Army hated that at the time, but after World War Two, and during the Cold War, it brought the National Guard up to speed.  By the 80s the Guard was every bit as combat capable as the Regular Army is, and that's still the case.  Today, the US really can't fight a big war without the Guard, and truth be known it can't even make its overextended foreign commitments without it.

It's time to take that one step further.

And by that, I mean back to the future.  

The current size of the Army National Guard is 328,084. That ought to be brought up to an even 500,000, and the strength of the Army down to 175,000 active personnel.  The Air National Guard has 106,000 personnel.  The Air Force should be scaled down to about that size, and the Air National Guard up to about 400,000. Following that, the Army National Guard, the Air Force, and the Air National Guard ought to be folded into the Army establishment so there's no longer a seperate Air Force (or Space Force). The Marine Corps should fully go back into the Navy and the Coast Guard back to the Department of the Treasury.

The Air Force Academy ought to be closed and so should West Point. College ROTC programs can take care of training officers, and in an environment that doesn't lead to a military class.  I'd leave the Naval Academy, and the Coast Guard Academy, there, as sea related stuff is unique.  Being a soldier, frankly, isn't all that unique.  I've been one.

With this, the Joint Chiefs should be scaled down to three, one Chief from the Army, one Chief from the Navy, and one Chief from the National Guard.  The Chairman ought to always be a Guardsman.

Why all this?

Well, it's a lot harder to launch illegal foreign wars with a defense posture that's designed for actual defense, and not offensive warfare.  We aren't going to attack another country if we have to call up a bunch of Guardsmen to do it.  And we have less of a chance of becoming an imperial nation if we don't have an imperial military structure.

Monday, July 29, 1946. Anping Incident.

Chinese Communists and U.S. Marines engaged in hostilities in Anping, China.  Four Marines and 15 Chinese Communists were killed.

Tensions between the American military mission to China, which had very unclear directives, and the Communist Chinese were increasing.

First group picture of the International Justices of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East since Major General Myron Cramer took the place of Justice Higgins on the bench. Seated, left to right, Justice Patrick, Great Britain; Justice Cramer, United States; Chief Justice Webb, Australia; Justice Mei, China; Justice Zaryanov, Russia. Standing, left to right: Justice Pal, India; Justice Roling, Netherlands; Justice McDougall, Canada; Justice Bernard, France; Justice Northcroft, New Zealand; Justice Jaranilla, Philippine Islands.

Last edition:

Sunday, July 28, 1946. Wells exposes the assault of Sgt. Isaac Woodard, War Crimes in the Philippines, the passing of St. Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, actors and actresses, Apostolic Christianity, Catholic, Christianity, India, Philippines, Racism, Radio, religion, Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, War Crimes

Tuesday, July 13, 1926. Goat Getters.

King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy took a boy who had just been hit by a train into his auto and rushed the boy to the hospital. The poor boy later died.

Yes, it's not a big thing, but then again, it is.

Major General Littleton Waller, USMC, died at age 69.  

Waller had a long career with a lot of combat action.  His career survived his being being court-martialed for the disastrous Samar expedition in the Philippine Insurrection and the summary execution of 11 Filipino civilian porters at Lanang for mutiny in 1902.  He'd retired in 1920.

Ethel Hays repeated a common myth.

As we've discussed before, marriage ages have remained fairly stable at their current levels since the Middle Ages.

Last edition:

Monday, July 12, 1926. Amhrán na bhFiann.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, Anthems, British Empire, Gun Control, Ireland, MIddle East, Music, Personalities, T. E. Lawrence, World War One

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 143rd Edition. The Chopper Edition.

And now it's a helipad

King Donald has spent a lot of his time this term of office remaking Washington D.C. itself.  He's already vandalized the Rose Garden, the East Wing, and the Reflecting Pool. Messing with buildings is something he is familiar with, and which he fancies himself good at, even though the evidence from D.C. is that he has the taste of a 19th Century bordello owner.

Now it's a helipad.  It'll be granite and on the White House grounds, and have the Presidential Seal on it.

The supposed reason is that the new Marine Corps 1 choppers are bigger, or more powerful, than their predecessors and therefore weren't working out well on the White House lawn.

The new helicopters are Sikorsky VH-92 Patriots. They are big.

Trump claims that Sikorsky will pay for the pads.  Lockheed Marine, which now owns Sikorsky, has more or less confirmed that.

I'll credit some of this story as credible.  These giant helicopters are really heavy, no doubt, and Washington D.C. is a swamp.  It may indeed have surpassed the dent in the lawn level.

Still, there's reason for concern.  Not one of Trump's major DC endeavors has worked out well. The East Wing desecration is way over the original price estimate and is likely to be torn down as soon as the illegitimate claimant to the office is out.  The Rhino Lining on the reflecting pool has been a disaster and has lead to a false criminal charge against an innocent former Olympian. Just on sheer experience, there should be concern that the price here will be off, the taxpayer will foot the bill (which maybe in this instance they should) and that it'll go badly.

Moreover, the helicopters maker footing the bill is disturbing, relationship wise.

Marine Corps 1 itself is one of those things that has turned the Presidency from being representative of the people into a type of king.  Eisenhower introduced it in 1957 as he wanted a quick way to get to his summer home in Pennsylvania.  There's no reason that the taxpayer should have been stuffed with that.  Now we've been stuck with a Presidential helicopter ever since.

Different countries, it might be noted, approach this differently.  Lots of countries do use government aircraft for chief executives, but some really restrain it.  Finland is one example.  It has aircraft for the chief executive, but if that person is traveling long distance, they do so commercially  A relatively recent Mexican president intentionally did that.

There's probably no way around this at this point, but frankly it is a bit much.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 142nd Edition, 25th Amendment Watch 21st Edition. The Vietnam Rag, Red Scare Editions.

Labels: 25th Amendment Watch List, Barack Obama, Communism, Conscription, Donald Trump, Red Scare of 1919, Red Scare of the 1950s, Socialism, The Madness of King Donald, Vietnam War, Vladimir Putin, Zeitgeist

Death's Head

 

Imperial German Totenkopf.

This election has been a reminder about being careful about getting tattoos.

Maine Democratic Senatorial candidate Graham Platner, in addition to other skeletons (no pun intended) in his closet, has, or at least had, a large Death's Head tattoo on one of his breasts.  Not one like the one above, but one more or less like this:

Shown here:

Well, I say, had, now its this:

We're informed that's a Celtic knot and a dog.

Well, anyhow, this has caused quite a flap, as the design he had is pretty clearly the same one used by the SS during World War Two.

He says he didn't know that.  Frankly, while people are incredulous about that, he may very well not have known that.

Indeed, one of the things that's interesting about this, as an (amateur) historian is that suddenly everyone is an expert on World War Two German insignia.  I doubt that many people, anymore, were before the last couple of weeks.  Indeed, I can recall Walmart getting in trouble some years ago has had a t-shirt it was selling with some Nazi symbology on it, if I recall correctly SS ruins.

Anyhow, the Totenkopf has an interesting and weird  history.  It's been around for a very long time, and is famously associated with pirates from the 18th Century, who flew various variants of death's head flags, nicknamed the "Jolly Roger", to warn a ship they were approaching that that's what they were.  Death's head on a flag threatened death, and the hope was accordingly that the opponent would give up without a fight.  Because of the pirate association, legitimate navies coopted the symbol and you can still find it in use to some degree in navies.

The crew of the HMS Utmost showing off their Jolly Roger in February 1942.

The Prussians started using it as a military symbol under Frederick the Great, when it was introduced to hussars. That use was distinct enough that one US state militia unit, formed as hussars, was still using it with a distinctly Prussian style uniform at the start of the Civil War.  It also spread to other units in the various German states prior to German unification, and to some other European nations.  One Spanish unit, for example used it.

Field Marshall August von Mackensen in 1914 in his full dress hussars uniform.

Infante Fernando wearing the uniform of Spain's 8th Light Armoured Cavalry Regiment "Lusitania" in 1915

After German unification following the Franco Prussian War the pre unification units that used it continued to, with some German units and even individuals adopting it informally.  After the German defeat in the Great War, some Freikorps units used it and it carried on in use in German cavalry units.

After Hitler's rise to power, the SS co-opted it almost immediately at the time of their formation, but that didn't actually cause the German Army or the Luftwaffe from using it as well.  German panzer troops wore a black uniform with the Totenkopf early on, with the design aat first being identical to the SS in that regard. The SS later changed its design, which Heer panzer units never did.

German panzer soldier, wearing a 1939 black flat cap, with a feldgrau shirt, black tie and black jacket with Totenkopf lapel badge. The first version of the panzer uniform featured a very large black beret.

This actually created some confusion at the time and still does, although the confusion was more of a problem to German troops during the war.  By 1944 the Totenkopf was associated with the SS as was the color black, which actually was not worn by most Waffen SS troops.  Tanker POWs were easily mistaken for members of the SS and risked being shot out of hand to some degree.  By 44, however, black was being phased out for tankers, both in the Heer and SS, in favor of feldgrau.  They retained the Totenkopf, however.

As sort of a rough rule of thumb, every member of the SS wore a uniform with a Totenkopf device, including auxiliary units.  Armored units of the Heer wore it also, as did the one oddball Luftwaffe armored unit.  One Luftwaffe bomber unit used it as a symbol as well.  Black uniforms were worn by tankers of all branches early on, and as regular SS dress uniforms, but not as Waffen SS dress uniforms.

This doesn't get into the concentration camp system uniforms, which I don't know anything about, and which were often staffed by auxiliaries. They all wore the deaths head, however.

One Nazi organization that didn't wear the Totenkopf or a black uniform was the Gestapo.  Movies and television shows constantly show them doing that, but they didn't.  For example, an SS dress uniform is shown being worn by a Gestapo member in both Where Eagles Dare and Hogan's Heroes.  In reality, the Gestapo didn't have any uniform at all.  The depiction given in Von Ryan's Express is the correct one. They favored civilian dress clothes and trench coats, often leather ones.  They were, after all, secret police and were dressed like civilians.

Marine Corps Raiders' insignia.

One US ground unit used it too, the Marine Corps Raiders, which took it from Naval use.

By the war's end the death's head, except in naval use, was hopelessly associated with the SS, although amazingly some use continues on.  The South Korean 3rd Infantry Division, the British Army’s Royal Lancers and Brazilian Military Police use it officially.  Some Ukrainian units controversially use it which seems to be an intentional effort to associate themselves with the World War Two era Ukrainian National Army which fought both the USSR and the Germans, but the Germans rather late.

Various navies keep using it, but the Nazis didn't taint the pirate association it had on the seas.

One place it oddly saw use was in civilian groups that wanted to cultivate an edge look after the war.  All sort of Nazi paraphernalia became associated with motorcycle gangs.  And heavy metal bands affected the look as well.

Ian Fraser Kilmister, "Lemmy" of Motörhead who notoriously sported German military and German SS paraphernalia constantly, and who did know what it meant.  He claimed to have no Nazi sympathies.  His father had been a chaplain in the RAF.

The interesting thing there, I suppose, is that the predecessor to the SS was the SA.  The SA didn't use the Totenkopf, but it was comprised of thugs, so in a way the Nazi paraphernalia returned to a demographic that had first used it.

So, what of Platner? 

Darned if I know.  He says he didn't know what it meant, and I suspect a lot of Americans under 70 years of age don't know what it means.  World War Two is simply too long ago for a uniform detail to have much in the cultural memory.  Those younger people who do know what it was used for are likely students of history, members of prison gangs, or white supremacists.  History students don't get tattooed with the Totenkopf.  The other two groups likely do.  That doesn't mean that Platner was a white supremacist, however.

It does require some sort of explanation, however.

While on the topic of the tattoos, let's discuss Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense.

Pete Hegseth is festooned with tattoos.

Pete has a variety of them, which seem to be the following:

• Jerusalem Cross, a type4 of Christian cross associated with the Crusades, rightly or wrongly.
• "Deus Vult", Latin for "God wills it", a phrase claimed to be associated with the Crusaders.
• Kafir, the Arabic for infidel, but also Afrikaans slang for blacks.
• Cross & Sword, apparently referencing Matthew 10:34
• Yahweh, the Hebrew lettering for the name of God, added near his cross and sword tattoo.
• "We the People", The opening phrase of the U.S. Constitution.
• American Flag & AR-15. 
• Roman numerals (1775) & Stars: The year the U.S. Army and the Revolutionary War began.
• "Join, or Die" Snake, the Benjamin Franklin cartoon depicting a severed snake, symbolizing colonial unity during the American Revolution.
• Infantry Patch.

It's really a bit much.  Hegseth is an example of how people become addicted to getting tattoos and won't stop.

So what of it?

Well, the top two tattoos are offensive to some Catholics, myself included.  Hegseth is a member of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, he has stated., which is a collection of Evangelical Churches.  The Crusades are a Catholic thing, grossly misunderstood, and for which Catholics have taken heat from Protestants for five hundred years.  Moreover, the Crusaders would have regarded the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches as heretical.

"Kafir" is a flat out weird thing to tattoo on yourself, and for Sub-Saharan Africans its highly offensive, being the Afrikaans equivalent of the n word.  I suppose its supposed to be a taunt at Muslims.

Tattooing Yahweh on yourself is just weird, and potentially offensive to Jews, as well as others.  Leviticus 19:28 prohibits tattoos themselves, although this is not regarded by most Christians as applicable to Christians and many modern day Jews do not follow that as well.

The point here is this.  Tattooing the Totenkopf on your chest is bound to be offensive to the historically aware.  Tattooing Crusader phrases on your body is no doubt offensive to Muslims, although I'm not particularly concerned about that, but it's a cultural appropriation that is offensive to some historically aware Catholics.  Kafir, as a tattoo, is outright calculated to be offensive to Muslims, and it's highly offensive to Sub Saharan Africans.  And the Yahweh tattoo is disturbing.

I suppose the lesson is to be careful about tattoos.  Hegseth is so tatted up its frankly absurd, but he comes across as disturbed.  Platner comes across as just sort of messed up.

Of course, you don't get to vote for or against Hegseth, no matter where you live.  Your view of him has to weigh into your view of the administration.  If you live in Maine, you can weigh the tattoo in your opinion on whether to vote for him or the ancient Susan Collins.

Showing the spirit our age, I suppose, Donald Trump called Platner a pig.  Pigs have a highly hierarchal pecking order, so I suppose that's the big pig reacting to a younger one in the pen, if you accept the analogy.  

Donald might look to have a Porky tattoo. . . 

Two Weapons stories as the US heads towards ground troops deploying, again, in the middle east.

The Marine Corps, which insists on avoiding equipment adopted first by the Army, looked at the M7,and said, nah. . . 

M7 Rifle.

Marines not interested in switching from M27 to Army’s M7 anytime soon

Chances are good, I'd rate them as overwhelming, that the USMC will be using M27s within a week or two in Iran.  This will be the modified HK416's first major combat use, maybe its first use at all.

M27 Automatic Rifle.

It's a mistake, the M7 is definitely the better rifle with better ammunition.  But the Marines, if allowed to have a different rifle, will always do so.

Marines in China with M1895 Navy Lee, at the time at which the Army was using the Krag.  They didn't use it long.

And there's now drone killing ammunition:

U.S. Military Unveils "Drone Killer" Rifle Cartridges | An Official Journal Of The NRA

The pelletized ammunition sort of resembles "snake shot" for pistols used by outdoorsmen in the summer months.  It was developed by the Navy.

Movies In History: The Siege of Firebase Gloria.

This movie is flat out bad.

Everyone once in awhile I think I've seen every Vietnam War movie there is, but then I remember there's always at least one more out there.  This was one of them.

This movie features a Marine long range patrol that runs into some early horrors just as the Tet Offensive commences. At that point, they ride a helicopter, stricken by gunfire, into  Firebase Gloria.  

Firebase Gloria is way out in the middle of nowhere and virtually forgotten. It's commander is a drug addled pornography addict whom the Marines frag right off.  The Marine Sergeant Major, played by R. Lee Ermey, in charge of the patrol (no SMG would be in charge of a patrol) takes command of the Army base, somewhat assisted by an improbably old Army 1st Sergeant, and they resist wave after wave of Viet Cong attack.

There's more to it than that, but this film is just really bad.

In material details, it's basically correct, although both of the principal marines wear a jungle fatigue pattern uniform in the French Lizard pattern.  That's not impossible, it's just odd.

Thursday, November 26, 1925. Thanksgiving Day.

Edgerton dodged a bullet.

Remembering what hte day is for, there were church services.

Some were attended by the famous.

As well as the not so famous.

Pan American Mass, New York City.

Georgetown played a Marine Corps football team:

Other news:

Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Today -100: November 26, 1925: I don’t give a damn...: France: Paul Doumer, like Briand, fails  to form a cabinet, so Édouard Herriot, who was last prime minister in April, will try next. Texas G...

Last edition:

Wednesday, November 25, 1925. Hats.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, China, China (Beijing), Clothing, law, Turkey

Friday, November 10, 1775: Founding of the Marine Corps.

 

November 10, 1775: The Birth of the U.S. Marine Corps

This was done by a resolution of Congress, stating:

Resolved, That two Battalions of marines be raised, consisting of one Colonel, two Lieutenant Colonels, two Majors, and other officers as usual in other regiments; and that they consist of an equal number of privates with other battalions; that particular care be taken, that no persons be appointed to office, or enlisted into said Battalions, but such as are good seamen, or so acquainted with maritime affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea when required...

These heraldry dates are subject to some challenge.  It is true that a Marine corps was founded on this day in 1775, but along with the Navy, it was disbanded in 1783.  It was brought back in 1798 due to the need to build up the Navy due to tensions with republican France, the first undeclared war in the nation's history.

There's a collection of lessons here, one being that the founders of the republican feared and detested the idea of a standing military. They regarded a standing military as a threat to democracy, which in fact it is.  That's the reason that the nation's entire defense was based on state militias.  However, as a second lesson, it proved impossible to do, and as a result both a standing Navy and a standing Army had to be created, although the size of the Army was tiny.

A second lesson in this story is that Presidents have, right from the onset, crept up on war, and then later on outright engaged in it, without the required declaration.

Given the climate of the times, all of this should be absolutely frightening.

Last edition:

June 17, 1775. The Battle of Bunker Hill.

Labels: 1770s, 1775, American Colonial Militia, American Revolution, Army, British Army, Bunker Hill, Colonial North America