Despite the abject failure of leadership at the top, the Navy and Marines still know how to fight and win.  From the U.S. Naval Institute blog, here’s an eyewitness account of the takedown of some Somali pirates by Capt. Alexander Martin. It’s written in military-ese, but the narrative will give you a glimpse into how the military actually works.  It should be required reading in the White House:

I was in my stateroom that morning having a cup of coffee when Major Mike “Honcho” Ford, a burly southerner with a cowboy’s drawl, knocked on my door. “Hey man,” he said calmly, “we got a ship that’s been pirated. No official tasking yet, I’ll pass you a sitrep when I get it. Go ahead and put the guys on alert-120.” As the 15th MEU’s Maritime Raid Force Commander, the platoon and I had been training with “Honcho” for nearly a year for this mission, so what happened over the next 60 minutes was by now a well-rehearsed standard operating procedure.

I called down to the men’s berthing. Few words were exchanged between my acting-platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant Hartrick, and myself. “Staff Sergeant, skipper” “Yes sir.” “A vessel’s been taken by pirates – I don’t have much else for you at this time. Set alert-120.” “On it, sir.” We both hung up.

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*** Updated and Clarified

Out here along the Picketwire, we were mighty surprised ten years ago when we heard about an historian back east who’d proved that nobody to speak of had actually owned guns back in early America. This came as a big surprise, because it wasn’t what we’d heard from our daddies and granddaddies. But this historian, Michael Bellesiles by name, had all the facts and figures to prove it. This was pretty cheering to the New York Times’ reviewer (Garry Wills, “Spiking the Gun Myth,”), who said Professor Bellesiles had “dispersed the darkness that covered the gun’s early history in America” and provided “overwhelming evidence that our view of the gun is as deep a superstition as any that affected Native Americans in the 17th century.” Apparently a lot of people agreed, because Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture was given the Bancroft Prize.

Well, you probably know what happened. Some gun nuts and spoilsports started looking into Professor Bellesiles’ research, and it turned out that the evidence Garry Wills was so happy about didn’t actually exist. Professor Bellesiles had made it up, and the press had eaten it up. “Now many of Mr. Bellesiles’s defenders have gone silent,” the Times had to report a year later (Robert Worth, “Historian’s Prizewinning Book on Guns is Embroiled in a Scandal“):

Over the past year a number of scholars who have examined his sources say he has seriously misused historical records and possibly fabricated them. They say the outcome, when all the evidence is in, could be one of the worst academic scandals in years.

And in the end, they took his Bancroft Prize away, and he lost his job at Emory University in Atlanta. (more…)

And now there are Four.

Yesterday, Andrew Breitbart’s fourth “Big” website, Big Peace, launched, fittingly born on the Fourth of July. Editor-in Chief Peter Schweizer, a scourge of liberal mendacity and hypocrisy, is joined by the redoubtable Frank Gaffney and Jim Hanson of Blackfive in a blog devoted to foreign policy and military affairs. Already, Peter and his crew have fielded an impressive array of bylines, including several retired military officers, the brave authority on Islam, Nonie Darwish, and the estimable Jed Babbin, among others. It’s an auspicious start to what will quickly become a must-read, indispensable national security blog.

The timing couldn’t be more propitious. With the war in Afghanistan approaching an important turning point — will American troops withdraw, as President Obama promises, or will they fight to win, as General Petraeus wishes? — the role of the Pentagon and the State Department are ripe for examination. As never before, the Pentagon is embroiled in a struggle for its very soul, with the PC, “green” bureaucrats pitted against the professional officer class, while Foggy Bottom, on its continuing, quixotic quest for “stability,” continues to be less an instrument of American foreign policy than a protector of the status quo — especially that of our enemies.

On a personal note, I particularly welcome this blog and hope to contribute to it myself from time to time. I was born on one of the major Marine Corps bases, and was raised in various military duty stations around the country. Having been present both at the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, I’ve seen first-hand the causes and consequences of American foreign policy in action, and know how important it is. Small decisions in Washington today may have immense consequences thirty or forty years down the line, so it’s vital that we try to understand their ramifications early and often. (more…)

Now this is what you call standing up like a real Marine and taking responsibility. From the Hartford Courant:

After nearly a week of criticism following revelations that he misrepresented his military record and five days after a press conference in which he expressed regret for his misstatements, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Richard Blumenthal apologized.

“At times when I have sought to honor veterans, I have not been as clear or precise as I should have been about my service in the Marine Corps Reserves,” Blumenthal said in a statement emailed to the Courant late Sunday by his spokeswoman, Maura Downes. “I have firmly and clearly expressed regret and taken responsibility for my words.

“I have made mistakes and I am sorry. I truly regret offending anyone,” Blumenthal said. “I will always champion the cause of Connecticut’s and our nation’s veterans.”

If not quite the textbook definition of chutzpah, this is darn close. (more…)

The question has been asked here before but it bears repeating. Where were the Connecticut media for 20-some years while the state’s attorney general asserted repeatedly (and falsely) that he had served in Vietnam? Why did it take an out-of-state newspaper to expose the reality that Dick Blumenthal had only served stateside in the Marine Corps Reserves after several draft deferments?

Blumenthal has enjoyed some of the most adulatory press of any public official in the state. And he is assiduous in seeking coverage. It has been said before that, unless Chuck Schumer is visiting, the most dangerous piece of real estate in Connecticut is that little space between Blumenthal and a TV camera.

Inasmuch as he’s always been acutely aware of his public image, how could such a man stand idly by while media outlets printed flattering information about him that he knew was inaccurate? How could he, in his own words at yesterday’s press conference, “misspeak” about his service “on a few occasions” and the news media let him get away with it? Most of those “occasions,” by the way, were gatherings of veterans’ groups. (more…)

The Orlando Sentinel recently reported that President Obama wants to nix NASA’s moon missions and instead intends to spend funding for space ventures beyond earth’s orbit. Perhaps to Avatar’s beautiful planet Pandora?

Now what would make the president stray so far from JFK’s vision of lunar supremacy? Perhaps he wasn’t that thrilled to learn what I just did about what occurred on the first moon landing. My friend Eric Metaxas wrote a great book, Everything You Alwayhs Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid To Ask), and in it he recalled that Buzz Aldrin confirmed to him that he took communion on the Moon.

Nobody knew.  The live broadcast was blacked out at the time.  Here are Aldrin’s own words, as quoted by Metaxas: (more…)