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Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category

My apologies to the readership I had for so long. I took off a while for several reasons, work related, I was, and remain very busy, personnal reasons, my wife was ill, and I had a lot to take care of at home.

I am going to start a series of columns directed at our nation, and its leadership crisis. I continue to support Ron Paul.

As for “racism” committed some 20 years ago, I checked the references to that article. Even CNN never said he actually wrote the articles (actually about four lines of one article) himself. He never defended their content (said they were taken out of context – a standard excuse I realize) and it is not unlikely he did not read them prior to publication. He was in Congress and still practicing medicine at the time and yes he was negligent and should have caught it but didn’t. At the time the LA riots had just occurred. The rioters had behaved pretty badly, among other things dragging innocent people from their cars and beating them to death, and feelings were running high. If this is Dr. Paul at his worst then he is a saint by Washington DC standards.

As for Dr. Paul’s social policies, some of you may recall his opposition to the Federal War on Drugs, whose consequences fall disproportionately heavily on black people. There is also the disproportionately large black prison population, which would be much reduced by Dr. Paul’s plan to pardon all non-violent drug offenders. If this is racism maybe we need more of it. I don’t see Barak Obama stepping up to the plate on this issue.

Besides, if we don’t like Dr. Paul who will we support instead? How about the “peace laureate” Barak “Bush on steroids” Obama? Then there’s Mitt “Bush on even more steroids” Romney or how about four years of that freedom loving, constitution supporting marriage expert Newt Ginrich? If the Republicans have a brokered convention, maybe we could slip in John “bomb ’em back to the stone age” McCain or Lindsay “send ’em all to Guantanamo” Graham.

The passage of that infamous NDAA, should have removed any doubt that we should support the only candidate who is even promising to reverse it. If you can be executed, tortured or imprisoned for life without charges on somebody’s whim what difference do economics make? Without basic liberties what do we really have left? Where are out true priorities?

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http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/panelists/2010/12/ron-paul.html

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LTC Carlton Myer is another US hero, he really gets it. The stuff he puts out is well researched/documented. He has also wrote a great book on war. It is all at G2mil.com. I will post weekly updates from his blog.

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From my friend LTC Carlton Myer, at G2mil.com

”The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”
H.L. Mencken

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For those of us not able to be present when this young NCO received the Medal of Honor, here is a video link to the 8-minute presentation by the president. SSG Giunta is the first living service member to receive this award since the war in Vietnam.  This is what our country needs, leaders like SSG Giunta, who is so humble, and very squared away. I took three things away from this, first SSG Giunta’s leadership, how humble he is. Second, the President’s sincerity for this even and toward SSG Giunta (shows me that he can have a better half of his term if he stands up to big money and turns attention to helping the middle class), and the third, is the comradship of SSG Giunta’s fellow soldiers who attended, some that even left the Army, still showed up to support him. That makes the Band of Brothers more than a bumper sticker.

If you don’t have 8 minutes to invest, as my good friend SFC Jeffrey (R) Roper so eloquently pointed out to me, take the time to listen to this Soldier speak for the last 40 seconds of the video. It’s worth your time.

Shortcut to:

http://www.stripes.com/news/obama-medal-of-honor-recipient-giunta-as-humble-as-he-is-heroic-1.125607

Don

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http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/20167/

Dragging the U.S. Military Culture into the 21st Century

13 August 2010 tags: , , , , by don

Summary:  Our soldiers fight using 21st century weapons but ancient methods.  Under the stress of a decade-long and running long war against adaptive but poorly equipped enemies, our military slowly evolves from its WWI doctrines (massed firepower, 2GW), towards methods used by the Wehrmacht in WWII ( maneuver war, 3GW).  The origin of these doctrines lies in the century following Prussia’s defeat in the Napoleonic Wars.  Here Donald Vandergriff describes what’s happening and why it is necessary.

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I admire Senator’s Webb’s writing skills very much.  Below is a recent article / OpEd, and I think he’s really onto something here.  It certainly helps explain the very real and very sharp resentment of many Veterans who fought the war in Vietnam.  He also cites some figures that are eye-opening, such as 91% of Vietnam Veterans are glad they served their country,  78% enjoyed their time in service, and 73% of those killed were volunteers, not draftees.

Have a nice day, Don

 Heroes of the Vietnam Generation

By James Webb

The rapidly disappearing cohort of Americans that endured the Great Depression and then fought World War II is receiving quite a send-off from the leading lights of the so-called 60s generation. Tom Brokaw has published two oral histories of “The Greatest Generation” that feature ordinary people doing their duty and suggest that such conduct was historically unique.

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My post a couple of months ago about William Deresiewcz’s fantastic article “Solitude and Leadaership,” fits here:

“Note the adjectives: commonplace, ordinary, usual, common. There is nothing distinguished about this person. About the 10th time I read that passage, I realized it was a perfect description of the kind of person who tends to prosper in the bureaucratic environment. And the only reason I did is because it suddenly struck me that it was a perfect description of the head of the bureaucracy that I was part of, the chairman of my academic department—who had that exact same smile, like a shark, and that exact same ability to make you uneasy, like you were doing something wrong, only she wasn’t ever going to tell you what. Like the manager—and I’m sorry to say this, but like so many people you will meet as you negotiate the bureaucracy of the Army or for that matter of whatever institution you end up giving your talents to after the Army, whether it’s Microsoft or the World Bank or whatever—the head of my department had no genius for organizing or initiative or even order, no particular learning or intelligence, no distinguishing characteristics at all. Just the ability to keep the routine going, and beyond that, as Marlow says, her position had come to her—why?

That’s really the great mystery about bureaucracies. Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things—the leaders—are the mediocrities? Because excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back. Jumping through hoops. Getting along by going along. Being whatever other people want you to be, so that it finally comes to seem that, like the manager of the Central Station, you have nothing inside you at all. Not taking stupid risks like trying to change how things are done or question why they’re done. Just keeping the routine going.”

We are in a leadership crisis in this country.

Don

Tim Geithner’s Ninth Political Life

By Simon Johnson, Baseline Scenario, 16 July 2010

In modern American life, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner stands out as amazingly resilient and remarkably lucky – despite presiding over or being deeply involved in a series of political debacles, he has gone from strength to strength.  After at least eight improbably bounce backs, he might seem unassailable.  But his latest mistake – blocking Elizabeth Warren from the heading the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – may well prove politically fatal.

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Mr. Obama’s presidency is now being defined by four intractable problems:

(1) Persistent High Unemployment due to the intractable Great Recession

(2) a Financial Giveaway that protected rich Wall Street bankers at the expense of the masses who are suffering economically from the Great Recession the bankers triggered

(2) A BP Environmental Disaster that reveals the feckless incompetence of the Federal Gov’t — i.e., Obama’s Katrina Moment

(4) His enthusiastic embrace and expansion of the Afghan War into the AFPAK Quagmire.

Ahmed Rashid, one of the most knowledgeable observers of the AFPAK scene (and, ironically, a proponent of the AFPAK intervention) paints a thoroughly depressing picture the nature of the AFPAK quagmire in the attached blog carried by the New York Review of Books.

Petraeus’s Baby Ahmed Rashid, New York Review of Books (Blogs), July 14, 2010 11:15 a.m.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/jul/14/petraeus-baby/

The surprising and speedy crash of General Stanley McCrystal has been seen in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the wider region as just one more sign of the mess that the US and its NATO allies face in what is looking increasingly like an unwinnable conflict.

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Happy 4th of July!

I hope everyone in our country that has worked hard, means well, and is a good citizen has a great holiday today. Go have a good time with family and friends! I pray that our leaders put service before self. Pray for those in the Gulf who have suffered at the hands of greed, pray for our Soldiers deployed, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but all over the globe.  I am spending the day with my son and grandson riding bikes, after having washed my six dogs and a cat. I spent a great day with my good friend Allen Gill at Ely’s Ford Virginia, and at Chancellorsville battlefield hiking.

If you positively impact one person a day, then that is enough.

Don

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