The Other Ace

On the military front Airborne Combat Engineer - main link on the Blogroll - has an interesting and active Mil blog I'd recommend for his resources, as well as his content. While I'd hesitate to call  him an airhead to his face, his particular focus beyond general war news is all things Airborn.

He has an item up on the 82nd today, including its role in the rapid and strategic response military Rumsfield is getting four more years to shape. Check it out.

The 82nd, as America's Strategic Response Force, can deploy to anywhere on this 3rd rock from the Sun on 18-hours notice, which is considerably faster than most units can deploy.

As an aside, I'll never forget Robert Duvall's contribution as an AirCav officer stationed in Vietnam, the Republic of - in Apocalyse Now. Death from Above, the Death Card and the smell of napalm in the morning made and stayed in the culture from that one and then there was Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.

"we use Wagner. My boys love it. It scares the hell outa' the slopes."

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like .... victory!" [Wistfully:] "Ya know, someday this war's gonna end."

But what the hell were Harrison Ford and a young Laurence Fishburn doing in there - I don't even remember them. And if Duvall knew Sheen was going to become Presdient one day I bet he woulda fragged his ass - afterall:

"Charlie don't surf!"

Comments

[Rhod]

This all sounds very familiar. We have twin boys, one a Cav Scout now in Air Assault with the 101st, and another, a Combat Engineer with the 82nd. How this happened I'll never understand.

Airborne GI's are sometimes insufferably smug, even to a Marine, and they can all be very, very tiresome. Good soldiers, but the presence of one can be difficult; the presence of two with a background of competition already, sends you running for the car keys.

At any rate, once you're around these guys for a while, lefties seem even more preposterous and the world doesn't seem as dangerous.

[Gordon]

Airborne Combat Engineer is one another of those blogs I liked the second I saw it.

[Dan]

Hmmm, I dont know about you, Gordon. You think intelligence is beauty, but also like paratrooppers the minute you see them and you had a pic of Paris Hilton posted today. Something tells me you have an interesting personal life and a very sick mind. Ha

[ACE]

Thanks for the link, the reference, and the kind words, Dan. And glad you like the "ACE" site (as destinquished from the more popular "Ace" (of Spades) site, Gordon.

Interesting observation, "Rhod." Airborne trainees are stripped of any smugness they brought with them, then built back up to think they can fight five Marines with one hand and win. Long after one gets out of the military, he still tends to charge right into the middle of a situation where he is surrounded and outnumbered, and is constantly looking for ways to make a problem someone else creates THEIR problem, not HIS.

Paratroopers also tend to have a very simple, clear, non-nuanced view of the world's problems and how to solve them. I HATE the response (mostly from lefties) that things are "more complicated" than I make them sound. They think and whisper to themselves that I'm opinionated, stubborn, simplistic, etc. I think to myself that they are misguided,intellectual pansies.

Some things, like quantum mechanics, can only be simplified so far (as Einstein said). But, many other things really are simple and straightforward, and attempts to nuance and obfuscate them just stand in the way of progress.

ACE out

[Rhod]

Ace:

Clearly a military man, and one I could get along with. I have a third son who served in Afghanistan (Combat MP) and Guantanamo, and with my own background, the whole thing can get pretty tedious when we're all together. All that directness and to-the-point stuff bypasses some nuances that make sense. Like not challenging a family member to a duel as a casual way to spend a Fall afternoon.

They might have learned this at their father's knee, so I am not blameless. In this part of Connecticut, conservativism is regarded as an untreatable psychosis; so a bit of the outcast mentality effects us here, and with it a certain reflexive sensitivity and directness is always pushing through. Even at home, but I exaggerate a lot. We have the kind of fun that only the discomfort and pain of military life can bring when you're not knee deep in it.

At any rate, behind the curtain of indulgent tolerance the local lefties have for us, I've noticed something like envy (if not fear)with them. They cave pretty quickly when you press a point, either in the schools or in social settings, chiefly because they haven't the stomach for conflict. They also expect to find mental limitations among conservatives, and nothing frightens them more than to find that you aren't stupid.