What The WestPac Boats Are Up To

A reader in Japan sent some photos and stories about what a couple of our boats our on WestPac have been doing lately:

The USS GREENEVILLE (SSN 772) is currently deployed to the Western Pacific in support of the War on Terror. As part of her mission, the GREENEVILLE made a port visit to Chinhae, South Korea, in early April. Following a large multi-nation exercise, the GREENEVILLE enjoyed the tremendous hospitality of the South Korean community.
The South Koreans greeted the GREENEVILLE in tremendous style, with an entourage of several high ranking officers, members of the community, and a band.
The South Korean submarine, LEE JONG MOO, hosted the GREENEVILLE in a number of events. Both the LEE JONG MOO and GREENEVILLE crew members took part in a project at a home for the physically disabled in the Chinhae community.
The South Koreans continue to show unrivaled hospitality – a great reward for a crew hard at work in the Western Pacific Theatre.

Here are the pictures of a wreath presentation to the CO and the boat arriving (this isn't the easiest landing to conn into, btw):




USS Key West is also making friends out on the pointy end of the spear:

The KEY WEST (SSN 722) is currently deployed to the Western Pacific in support of the War on Terror. CDR Tom Ishee and his crew aboard the KEY WEST made a port visit to the relaxing venue of Sasebo, Japan, in early April. This port visit gave the crew and opportunity to enjoy some well earned rest and relaxation – while also participating in community projects.
The wardroom and crew of the KEY WEST manned shovels as they helped to clean-up the grounds of Tenshin Ryo Children’s home. The event allowed for the crew to play with children at the home, which will be remembered for a lifetime for not only the children but the crew themselves.
The KEY WEST also hosted a lunch to community members in which high ranking Japanese Navy Officers and the Vice President of the Sasebo Chamber of Commerce were able to man the scope of the KEY WEST.

Here's a photo of one of the crew with one of the children from the Children's Home:

Nappy-Headed Hos

So, radio talk-show host Don Imus has been fired for saying the Rutger's Women's basketball team is a bunch of "nappy-headed hos" (which means, "wooly-haired whores").

I never listened to Imus, because what little I heard of it was boring as hell. I never found him particularly astute or entertaining, and had no idea why he ever had an audience.

But hey, if there was a market for it, I didn't care that he was on the air.

And if there isn't a market for it because suddenly nobody likes him anymore and finds his cantankerous insults unappealing, the corporate overlords have every right to yank the show.

I'm all for judging people. I said it just a few days ago here, in fact!

we can all counter this culture of equivalence and non-judgment, by starting to judge.

Yes, judge others -- but this is not a license to harm them. Rather, use your judgment and discrimination (there's a word that has to be reclaimed from having a purely negative meaning!) to determine with whom you will continue to associate and respect.

In the best of all possible worlds, people would have had enough good taste that Imus never would have gotten a national show in the first place.

But, there's something else going on here that is terrifying in its wrongness.

Note in my quote above, I said the point was not to do harm.

The mature thing to have done, would be for everyone to just tune him out, if -- if! -- what he did was so unspeakably awful, and let the market do its work.

Instead, the likes Oprah and Obama added to the week-long calls for Imus to be fired, just for doing what everyone knows is his usual schtick of mere insulting words. They were jumping on a bandwagon, and following a virtue fad, instead of being leaders of courage.

Otherwise, they would have said something like

Who the hell is Imus that anyone cares what he says of them? Is our self-esteem so shallow that this professional fool can hurt us with mere words?

I mean, you'd think Imus had physically beaten small children, kittens, and puppies half to death with a rubber hose (a nappy-headed hose?) the way people were reacting!

Nobody got too bent out of shape when he once called someone a "boner-nosed beanie-wearing Jewboy." Or, also according to the Wall Street Journal, when he called the New York Knicks "chest-bumping pimps."

Because who cares? It's not like Imus is an elected official, in which case discussion of his keeping his job would be totally appropriate, or some "role model."

Just turn it off if it's stupid and it will go away.

See, this is not really a case of virtue and good taste suddenly arising in the hearts of millions of radio listeners, through a process of self-development and reflection, which is what I am calling for.

Rather, this rejection of Imus is a faux-"virtue" imposed by authoritarians, according to arbitrary and capricious whims. Simply because the women on the team, and especially the coach, claimed their feelings were really, really hurt! Boo-hoo!

What they wanted instead, was a spectacle. They wanted to harm. They wanted to have a media circus, full of rounds of unaccepted apologies (not very Christian!), weepy news conferences, and the arrival of those paragons of truth and virtue, shakedown-artists Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

And would people just stop apologizing for everything? I also said we should own our vices. Imus should have said something like,

I get paid to insult people because there's a market for it, and that's the nasty kind of whore I am, and what's wrong with you that you care what I say?

I recall once back at University in the late 80s, being at my club, during a controversy when some student was making a "statement" by burning an American flag. A reporter from the campus paper stopped by to get a reaction from the head of one of the conservative student groups, who was also a member of my club. I don't know the final wording, but they were trying to come up with something along the lines of "just because you have a right doesn't mean you should use it."

I thought that was the wrong answer, but I didn't know those people and wasn't very political at the time so I didn't make my own suggestion. But instead, I recall thinking they should have said something like,

The Young Republicans fully support this student's right to display his sophomoric ignorance and stunning lack of originality to the whole community.

Mocking it steals the thunder. It was meant to provoke, so should have been deftly sidestepped, robbing it of all its force.

That's what should have happened here.

Instead, though I applaud whatever development of better judgment in the tastes of American consumers has taken place, terrible precedents are being set.

How dangerous if the mere claim of hurt feelings -- from mere nasty words! -- from the victim-group du jour can dictate policy and what kinds of speech we can use!

It's easy to support the removal of Imus if casual insults are not your kind of humor. But having once established that certain types of humor are not allowed to be consumed by free adults, there's no stopping an erosion of all discourse in principle.

If only these self-appointed guardians of our sensitivities spent 1/10th of this effort on exposing and deploring the kinds of words that call for the destruction of our Constitutional way of life by introducing koranic sharia law and inciting the use of violence against our infidel society.

Instead of worrying about silly meaningless words tossed off by an entertainer. Words that are hardly as insane and corrosive as Rosie O'Donnell declaring 9/11 was a government conspiracy -- to audience applause! -- which if enough people believe, could literally lead to the collapse of our civilization.

I saw the Rutgers coach on CNN's Paula Zahn the other day, and she was saying shocking things like "nobody has a right" to say such things! Can you imagine? No right to say certain words!

Some of them [the players] wiped away tears as their coach, C. Vivian Stringer, criticized Imus for "racist and sexist remarks that are deplorable, despicable, abominable and unconscionable."

You'd think he had physically raped them or something. What is this Dianification of our society? Butch up!

They wanted Imus dragged through the streets in a tumbrel cart, and put in the stocks to be pelted with rotten eggs as a focus of public rage.

Wasn't it always the "progressives" who deplored such mob fury in society? What with their books like the Crucible and references to witch hunts and McCarthyism -- except there were, in fact, communist spies highly placed in our government, giving critical secrets to Uncle Joe.

But, those treasonous commies never called anybody such a terrible name as nappy-headed ho!

Hmm, Nappy-headed Ho, Nappy-headed Ho...kind of has a ring to it. Rolls off the tongue.

As a turn of phrase, meant to be insulting, I actually admire it. Nice sound to it. Punchy. Effective.

Nappy-Headed Ho.

Say it while you're still allowed!

Think the "slippery slope" argument is mere hysteria? We've already slid down the slope. Consider the Kafkaesque case of David Howard, who had to resign as aide to Washington, DC's mayor, for using the word "niggardly":

city employees were offended that the aide used the word "niggardly" in describing how he would have to manage a fund's tight budget.
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"Niggardly" means miserly and has no racial connotation.

So, with everyone knowing that he didn't really use the "n-word", he still had to resign.

Because people were offended, and obviously over a complete irrationality. They could have just as easily gotten him fired for saying "banana" and claiming it hurt their racial sensitivity somehow! Because we've established the actual meaning of the word isn't what counts!

But wait, it gets worse!

He was rehired after a month, but only after his "re-education" was complete:

Howard, 44, said yesterday that he never felt "victimized" but that the experience has given him "a certain awareness" he did not have before the incident occurred.

"I just feel very pleased that this whole thing has a silver lining," he said. "The silver lining is that this has led to a discussion that can help everyone understand each other better. . . . I used to think it would be great if we could all be colorblind. That's naive, especially for a white person, because a white person can't afford to be colorblind."

Got that?

Everyone admits he wasn't fired for being racist. In fact, he was fired for not being sufficiently racist! Or at least, racist in the right kind of patronizing way.

Now he can come back to work, acutely aware of everyone's color and the requirements to treat them differently because of it.

In other words, his crime was not to have slurred black people, but to have failed to realize that black people are apparently not only ignorant and illiterate and have no idea what the word niggardly really means, but that black people are incapable of being educated to understand normal proper English! Isn't that simply disgusting?

Now, Mr. Howard knows to enable the infantilization of an entire race by treating them like easily-offended idiots, instead of like normal adult human beings.

Welcome back to the insane asylum, David!

Make sure you stay on top of the latest fads of the authoritarian virtue police!

Nappy-Headed Ho!

I can't stop saying it!!!

Or is it "Nappy-Headed Hoes"? There seems to be disagreement on the proper plural form of "ho." I'll use the form that parallels the usage in the pastry treat, Hostess Ho-Hos.

Ho-Hos? Uh-ohs! My food is racist!

My re-education has taught me that the word Ho-Hos might be misconstrued by imbeciles, so we had best change it. But, Hostess being the San Francisco Treat, maybe it gets a pass for living in a duly-approved "progressive" area.

Or, we could all go into stores and ask where we can find Nappy-Headed Ho-Hos!

Submarine Officer Among Two Idaho Sailors Killed In Iraq

Two Sailors with Idaho ties were killed in separate incidents in Iraq this week. The first death announced was that of EOD2 Curtis Hall of Burley, Idaho, who was killed near Kirkuk with 2 other members of his team.

Soon afterwards, the death of CDR Philip A. Murphy-Sweet, a University of Idaho graduate, was announced. CDR Murphy-Sweet, a Supply Corps officer, had previously served aboard the submarine tender USS Emory S. Land (AS 39); according to one reader, he earned his dolphins while serving aboard USS Dallas (SSN 700) as her Supply Officer in the mid-'90s.

Both of these men are heroes, and will be missed:

Sailors, Rest Your Oars.

The Media Enemy

Feeling down?

Remember, the media has done nothing but generate enemy propaganda, day after day after day, to make you feel that way.

Indeed, considering their relentless efforts for five years now, we're holding up better than they probably expected!

Even the "good war", the one in Afghanistan -- the righteous counter-attack, the anti-Iraq, not a "war of choice" -- is now being portrayed as a lost cause, whose public support has dropped to minority status, if the ridiculous CNN poll can be believed as reported here.

This report from the Christian Science Monitor, which just seems to have learned of the Spring Offensive, barely conceals its glee at NATO setbacks as it expresses its admiration for the cunning and resilient Taliban.

This is pure enemy propaganda that serves no other purpose than to demoralize our will to fight. For example:

New strategy in Taliban's offensive

Already it's a Taliban offensive. More accurate reports indicate NATO pre-empted the Taliban by attacking first and decisively.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Like any modern fighting force, the Taliban have learned the benefits of emotional warfare.

As the Taliban's spring offensive gets under way, kidnappings have become their new weapon of choice, targeting a growing chink in NATO's armor: Across Europe, the United States, and Canada, public opinion for the war in Afghanistan is sliding.

That disenchantment is proving as devastating as any bomb. Last month, after the Taliban kidnapped Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, the Italian government nearly collapsed when opposition parties raised a storm of protest.

Well isn't that special!

Now the Taliban, among the most backward beings on the planet, are lauded as a "modern fighting force."

Real patriots would be denigrating the enemy on a daily basis in order to WIN as fast as possible.

Many complain about the Iraq war costs; how much did we spend to defend Europe all those years, and for what? So that when the ONE time NATO was activated to defend one of its members after a direct homeland attack, our "allies" can't withstand the kidnapping of one single person? Who chose to be in the war zone?

And with fewer than 2,000 troops deployed, Italy's commitment is nominal at best anyway. What do they bring to the table? Several of the NATO contingents are doing great work, but others declared they will not participate in combat operations; what kind of mutual defense pact is that? Unilateralism looks better every day.

The reporter goes on gush (check out all the emotionally-loaded terms!),

In the weeks to come, the Taliban's greatest weapon is likely to be its emotional assault on international will.
...
Just as they have gotten more brutal, so too have the Taliban become more clever...

It is a timely tactic, suggesting the Taliban's astute read of the political climates in NATO countries [created by you, the media! -- ed.]. Italy's response etched in the sharpest tones what a liability the war in Afghanistan has become for that government. [so solemn treaty obligations due for 60 years of our defending them are a liability. I see. --ed.]
...
But with more than 500 foreign troops dead and last year witnessing the highest death toll since the war began in 2001, the Taliban's new spate of kidnappings hopes to capitalize on public dismay throughout many of the states comprising the bulk of NATO's 36,000 troops.

What's that? 500 dead over 5 years spread out over all of Europe? And the public can't take it?

What kind of ninnies believe such a thing? What kind of cowards buy into it? As Steyn notes,

It's often said that Canada came of age at Vimy, in northern France, in the Easter of 1917, when a nation of seven million lost over three-and-a-half thousand in a few days. Ninety years later, a nation of 30 million cannot absorb four dozen dead in half a decade without recoiling from the very notion of soldiering.

This "public perception" is purely a creation of the media saying over and over again that support is waning. Then the very same media conducts a poll of the very same people who consume their reports of doom and gloom and ask them what their perception is.

How very circular.

Such a fantasyland construction of opinion wouldn't matter compared to the reality on the ground of Operation Achilles...except for the fact that these morons are allowed to vote.

The result is a wildly pessimistic "poll" that just doesn't pass the credibility test:

In Canada, which has 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, 46 percent of respondents agreed that their troops should be withdrawn before 2009, according to a February poll by Vancouver-based polling service Angus-Reid.

• In Germany, which has deployed 3,000 troops, 57 percent of respondents believe their troops should be withdrawn, according to a March poll released by Der Speigel magazine.

• In the Netherlands, which has 2,200 troops in Afghanistan, only 33 percent supported the recent deployment of additional troops, according to a January 2006 poll by market-research firm TNS NIPO.

• The public is also divided in the United States and Britain, the nations with the two largest troop deployments of 15,000 and 5,200 respectively. Fifty-three percent of British respondents to a September BBC poll oppose their government's military operation in Afghanistan. Fifty-two percent of US respondents also oppose it, up four points since September, according to a January poll released by CNN.

Now, I can believe the Dutch and Germans can loathe themselves into national suicide (their now less than replacement birthrate guarantees it in the long run), but a majority of Americans oppose operations in Afghanistan?

And pacifistic Canada, whose liberals despise its military and have shrunk it to near extinction, is leading the way in public support?

At levels higher than the United States -- which was the attacked party?

I'm delighted if a majority of Canadians still support the effort, but how can it possibly, for real, be higher than our own? Which is now supposedly a minority view?

If that's true we should surrender now and save us all further trouble.

Another example of propaganda is this ridiculous short "documentary" video of a gun bazaar in Pakistan.

The narrator, some westernized Pakistani or something like that, goes to visit the Khyber Pass and see the "illegal" gun market in the tribal regions where the Taliban flourishes. He builds it up like something really impressive, like some vast engine of industrial weapons power.

It turns out to be some stupid flea market of shoddy-looking copies of modern guns that have to be test-fired (by shooting randomly in the air) to see if they really work.

Clearly impressed, he goes on and on about how these people make these modern rifles and pistols "with their bare hands!!!"

Though of course, those "bare hands" are operating tools.

And as if guns weren't invented and perfected by westerners hundreds of years ago -- by hand!

So there are these people who collect scrap metal and used shell casings, and, like any hobby reloader here in the good ol' USA, make "new" bullets.

Wow. Color me underwhelmed that they can use a scale and operate a hammer and a crimping tool.

Then, we are introduced to...a man with no tongue! Who assembles pistols... with his bare hands!!!

Awestruck, our narrator ends by proclaiming,

You think some soldiers can press on these people and change their way of life? They live in caves! They have no tongues! They build guns with their bare hands!!!

You can't beat these people!!!

Well, maybe the narrator would like us to believe we can't beat these people.

It's an absurd piece of sheer propaganda.

Hmm, let's see, we'd all agree they'd be beaten if they were all dead, right? A few neutron bombs could see to that, hypothetically speaking of course.

But, they're some kind of Supermen who can't be beaten because...they have no tongues!

Why not say something like, "these Americans, you can't beat them...they've walked on the Moon!"

Which we did, several times, with 40-year-old technology and nobody else in the world has done it since.

But making knock-off copies of guns -- with your bare hands! -- by bending sheet metal and working a lathe makes you undefeatable.

Producing aircraft carriers or jet fighters or undetectable stealth bombers or a world-ringing web of orbital satellites to guide our bombs precisely to their targets anywhere on the planet within a few hours of the word "Go!"...that's all unimpressive compared with a tongueless savage sitting in a "cave" with a hammer.

Because, dear god! He uses...his bare hands!!!

It's pure defeatist idiocy, designed to fulfill a psychological need. Maybe modern life is just too easy for humans, and we need to introduce hardship to give our lives meaning, so we're tearing down the most successful and prosperous society every created.

Well, some are doing it. And I'd rather they just sought therapy instead of taking us all down too, wouldn't you?

Bill Whittle has more here in a brilliant (as usual) essay on the psychological motivations of the "dramatists" who must portray us as evil puppets of shadow conspiracies, and our ruthless enemies as noble. Looking at bizarre conspiracy theories, Whittle notes (among other things) that many believe we did NOT in fact land on the Moon, which I showed above perhaps not coincidentally would make the claim of our inferiority easier to swallow for the self-loathing defeatists.

I want to forgo the niceties of the hot towel and go straight for the jugular on this one. My goal here is not to bust any of these four conspiracy theories; that has all been done much more effectively elsewhere. What I am trying to do here is to build a chain of evidence to show a progressively deteriorating epidemic of world-wide insanity, of truly diseased thinking -- not just a misunderstanding or difference of opinion but real, diagnosable mental illness.
...
How much poison can you put into your veins before you are too weak to walk? Too weak to breed? And how much more of this poison I.V. drip is needed until you die? How many of these cultural suicide pills are we going to swallow before we start to wake up to the fact that dramatists – not the government – are going to kill us all?

When you look at what these people ask you to believe, to justify that naked, awful emptiness in their own souls and the horrible damage their lies are doing to our civilization – well, it’s enough to make you want to take Occam’s Razor out of its golden box and slit their miserable throats with it.

By the way, I wrote this posting...with my bare hands!!!!!!!!!!

Let The Debate Begin

Seeing as how today is the 107th birthday of the Submarine Force, I figured it was time once and for all to settle a debate that's been raging for years: Which is the "official unofficial" game of submariners -- Cribbage or Uckers?

I've always been a cribbage man myself, but it could be because that's what the officers play. While Uckers is more often associated with the Brits, I remember seeing at least as much Uckers being played in Crew's Mess on my boats as cribbage. Cribbage seems to have a larger part in submarine mythology, mostly because of the intensity with which it was played on USS Wahoo.

So what do you think -- what is the game that you most closely associate with submarining? Is it cribbage or Uckers? Or is it something else, like poker?

And Happy Birthday to all U.S. Submariners!

Bell-ringer 0750 11 Apr: Jim C. casts his vote for cribbage. Also, it looks like I forgot about Spades, which is getting some support in the comments.

Update 0055 12 Apr: ninme celebrates the Sub Force's birthday in her own inimitable way.