1 Attachment(s)
The "idiot Marine officer" we should "ignore"
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from JMA
Next I would like to comment on that (idiotic) quote from that Marine officer. (I hope he is a Lt at most otherwise the USMC is in a lot of trouble) ... So ignore that idiot Marine officer.
Finding the victim of this defamation takes but a little effort.
First, we find Rick's original post:
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Why Syria feels different from Libya
Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Wednesday, February 15, 2012
I've been wondering why I advocated NATO intervention in Libya but don't feel the same way about Syria. I had thought it was because I thought all Qaddafi needed was a good shove, while Syria is more complex.
But I got this note from Billy Birdzell, who was a Marine officer with Special Ops experience and two tours in Iraq who went off and got an MBA (and if you know someone in the DC area who could use that sort of background, let me know and I will forward the note to him). He wrote that, "Killing several thousand Syrians so they don't kill several thousand other Syrians only to leave the nation knowing that several thousand more will die is not protecting anyone."
That strikes me as pretty succinct. It's one thing to provide the means to help finish off a reeling dictator. It is another to wade into a civil war.
Lt. Billy Birdzell turns up in 2004 aka 1st.Lt. William Birdzell, in Dick Camp's Battle for the City of the Dead: In the Shadow of the Golden Dome, Najaf, August 2004, at page 94 (Birdzell .pdf attached).
See also, a related two part article by Col. Camp which starts in Leatherneck Magazine - December 2010; and e.g., Zenith Press, Military Snapshot - A Tank's-eye View in Najaf, Iraq:
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Looking through a tank driver's view port down a debris-laden street in Najaf. Note the barrel of the tank's 120mm cannon. Photo courtesy of 1st Lt. William Birdzell, USMC, from Battle for the City of the Dead by Col. Dick Camp.
And, in the April 2007 Marine Gazette, as Capt. William Birdzell for his award winning article. The article was noted at this SWC post:
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... April 2007, "For what are we ready?", by Capt William Birdzell
In the conclusion, he notes the five great improvements of the 20th century as amphibious assault, close air support, vertical envelopment, tank blitz, and parachute operations. He credits the Marine Corps with the first three and the Germans with the rest.
Some here may know him personally - It's a small Corps.
I stand by the Marine who was defamed.
Regards
Mike
Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities
I must admit that I am mostly in agreement with the sentiments expressed in the document Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities
It has a clear opening statement as follows:
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Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.
Dated August 04, 2011 with a 120 day to commence work deadline. Has it made the deadline, who knows? Will it ever be more than a talk-shop, who knows.
But what it does is makes it clear that preventing mass atrocities is in the nation interest of the US. Good, so now the world knows what the current Administration sees as being in National Interest... so let there be no more of the nonsense around here that action envisaged in terms of the above document not being in the US national interest unless prefixed with "in my personal opinion".
It’s about more than ideology and loyalty for the Russians.
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Originally Posted by
J Wolfsberger
I've heard several Russian Generals, politicians and academicians speaking on Voice of Russia describe the U.S. as an international bully, going from country to country and kicking out any government that displeases us in order to replace it with a puppet of our making. To them, NATO is nothing more than the tool the American Empire uses to add the troops of supplicant allies to our own.
I don't think this is propaganda tossed out for domestic consumption. This is the way the world looks from Moscow.
Since Syria is their last ally in the region, it seems safe to assume that any U.S./NATO/European involvement to topple Assad would almost certainly be met with a strong Russian effort to keep him in power.
Russia has been consistent in its opposition to the creation of a European missile defense shield. Concessions have been made, it is true, but the project has not been abandoned. Given that the likelihood of the creation of an effective missile defense shield is somewhere between the likelihood of discovering a cure for AIDS and the successful manufacture of a time machine (in all seriousness, it’s a pipe dream) one can understand why the Russians might view its continued pursuit as a recipe and possibly even a euphemism for escalation.
So here you have the Russians with a not totally unfounded concern in regards to the nuclear balance of power. It so happens that their sole Mediterranean port is in Syria. Anyone who thinks a nation in that situation is not going to do everything in its power—which in this case amounts to no more than (not) casting a vote—to block a U.N. resolution which calls for regime change in Syria is on crack.