Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from northeast Ohio, my fellow NB bloggers!

Right back at ya from NE Ohio, gt! 

New Direction for the war on terrorists from a veteran.

"I am over 50 and the Armed Forces think I'm too old to track down terrorists. (You can't be older than 42 to join the military.)

They've got the whole thing backwards. Instead of sending 18-year-olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys.   You shouldn't be able to join a military unit until you're at least 35.

For starters:

Researchers say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.

Young guys haven't lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. "My back hurts! I can't sleep, I'm tired and hungry!"

We are impatient and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make us feel better and shut us up for a while.

An 18-year-old doesn't even like to get up before 10 a.m. Old guys always get up early to pee so what the hell. Besides, like I said, "I'm tired and can't sleep and since I'm already up, I may as well be up killing some son-of-a-bitch.

If captured we couldn't spill the beans because we'd forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real brainteaser.

Boot camp would be easier for old guys. We're used to getting screamed and yelled at and we like soft food. We've also developed an appreciation for guns. We've been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the house, away from the screaming and yelling.

They could lighten up on the obstacle course however. I've been in combat and didn't see a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any pushups after completing basic training. I can hear the Drill Sgt. now, "Get down and give me ... er... one."

Actually, the running part is kind of a waste of energy, too. I've never seen anyone outrun a bullet.

An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He's still learning to shave, to start up a conversation with a pretty girl. He still hasn't figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his head. These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm's way.

Let us old guys go after the enemy. The last thing an enemy would want to see right now is a couple of million pissed off old farts with attitudes and automatic weapons who know that their best years are already behind them."

Many thanks to the author who ever and where ever he is.
Merry Christmas

... and no manufactured and made-up non-issues, today. They're all off-limits.

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If you can read this, thank a teacher. If it is in English, thank a Soldier. - My barber

Because Shinseki didn't apply the strategy.  You can think of strategies all day long, but if you don't apply them, what good are they?

Now on to the rest you your whimpers and whines, all because instead of coddling you with a Nanny State, we are defending the country. 

He took another General's idea that if we had followed when it was proposed we would have avoided an unknown amount of violence and death.  Alfred Thayer Mahan once said that "The study of history lies at the foundation of all sound military conclusions and practice."  Fact is, if you are in the military, it is quite wise to take other's ideas and apply them.  That is why so many of us spend so much time looking at history.

And unlike you I understand wholeheartedly that violence and death solves LOTS and LOTS of problems.  Violence is time tested and true and ALWAYS works.  If it doesn't, that's because you aren't being violent ENOUGH.  (We could take a page from the Mongols, as they conquered the Middle East quite effectively, but the methods they used will make you cringe with total fear, as our methods today already make you very squeamish.)

All Petraeus did was use another General's idea 5 years late.    All Жуков did on the Eastern Front during the Great Patriotic War was dispense with the reactionary thinking of the generals on the front that got the Red Army into so much trouble in WWII.  Does he get any less credit?  No.

More soldiers will decrease violence?  No way!   Actually, the same amount of soldiers as before being more violent would decrease violence, but that is clearly lost on you.  Besides, I really can't see why someone as anti-Iraq war as you is bitching so much.  (Other than bitching for thr sake of bitching, for which we can rely upon you to do.)

Res tantum valet quantum vendi potest.