Thread: Where's Gen. Patton When You Need Him?

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Where's Gen. Patton when you need him?

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Posted: November 22, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

© 2008

And he [Ishmael, the father of the Arabs] shall be as a wild ass among men; his hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell over against all his brethren.
~ Genesis 16:12

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country!

~ Gen. George S. Patton

Prologue

As I read the ominous headlines: "Somali pirates demand $25 million ransom for supertanker"; "Somali pirates seize 9 vessels in 12 days"; "Yemen powerless to combat Somali piracy"; "Maersk says re-routing some of fleet due to piracy" – I nearly fell into despair. Then I listened to America's modern-day prophet Elijah, Dr. Michael Savage, rallying the troops on his radio show earlier this week, and my soul was revived.

What did Savage say? While reading about the latest acts of naked piracy by these Islamic radicals who are causing an international catastrophe in the Gulf of Aden, Savage gave one of his classic impromptu monologues of which I can only paraphrase thusly:

Who is this Admiral Mullen? What does he mean he was "stunned" at the rise in piracy in that area? Is he crazy? Has he been on "The View" TV show or taking a cruise off the coast of California? Oh yeah, that's right Admiral Mullen is one of those Harvard-MBA-type military leaders that calls in his military commands on his trusty iPod.
After Savage's fire-and-brimstone diatribe, I fell into a somewhat melancholy mood and silently uttered this Socratic soliloquy to myself: "Where are the real men? Where are the great generals like George Washington, William Tecumseh Sherman, Douglas MacArthur, George C. Marshall? … Where is Gen. George Patton when you really need him?"

These were exceptional Americans, real kick a-- leaders that accomplished their military mission first and asked questions later; men who put America, her interests and the protection of her people above even their own lives.

Savage then stated why in 1775 the U.S. Navy was created in the first place: to secure America's independence from our colonizer, Great Britain. After we declared independence from England, they removed their navy protection from America's commercial ships traveling in international waters, thus making our ships easy prey to the Barbary pirates, Muslim terrorists from Morocco, Algiers and Tunisia that plundered every commercial vessel they could, capturing dozens of American ships and stealing their cargo.





How did America act towards this Islamic aggression? John Adams, the ambassador to Great Britain, favored diplomacy; Thomas Jefferson, the ambassador to France, wanted blood, but he would have to wait 25 years until he became America's third president and greatly strengthened the Navy, immediately dispatching a fleet of warships to the Middle East to confront America's 19th century version of Muslim terrorists.

It was America's unflinching resolve to fight Islamic terrorists who attacked our merchant ships that inspired one of the verses to the Marine's Hymn: "From the halls of Montezuma to shores of Tripoli ..." "Montezuma" refers to the Battle of Chapultepec (1847), which took place during the Mexican-American War (1846-4; "Tripoli" refers to the First Barbary War (1801-05) and the decisive Battle of Derne.

Where did America go wrong?

When I was a little kid, I recall watching all those classic war movies and documentaries. One image that haunts me to this day is when President Harry Truman, that insecure little haberdasher, fired the great World War II hero, Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Why? Because during the early days of the Korean War, MacArthur wisely wanted to be proactive and launch a frontal attack against China to prevent the looming communist menace from spilling over into the Korean peninsula where we were making great progress at routing the North Korean army. Truman balked, and MacArthur was called back home.

The victory parade MacArthur received down Broadway in New York on April 20, 1951, was perhaps the largest parade for anyone in American history. Moreover, to me it was a tacit symbol by the American people who essentially gave the diminutive Truman a collective middle finger salute for treating one of our greatest war heroes with such contempt. From that point onward in American military history, the quality of leadership became substandard, compromised and increasingly feminized.

Gen. George Washington, dead, Gen. Sherman, dead, Gen. MacArthur, dead, Gen. Marshall, dead, Gen. Patton … they're all dead! What military man do we have today to protect us? George W. Bush gave us a politically correct admiral with a Harvard MBA and no navy aircraft combat experience named Mike Mullen.

Here is an excerpt of the press conference Adm. Mullen gave on Nov. 17:

Q: Were you stunned or surprised by the attack on this large vessel today versus going after smaller boats?


MULLEN: I'm stunned by the range of it, less so than I am the size. These are pretty – they have proven to be pretty capable, can get on and off lots of vessels. I mean, this is a 300,000-ton – three times bigger than one of our aircraft carriers. But once there's an avenue to be able to get up on it, they – and it's – typically these ships, even that big, don't have that many – you know, the crews are not exorbitantly large. So once they have access, they seem to be able to get on and take over, which they've done in this case.


I don't know about you, dear reader, but I'm certain Gen. Patton would not have responded in this manner. I don't even think he would have granted a "press conference" because he would have been too busy blowing these Somali pirates to hell. Patton once remarked: "Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more."

Not with Navy Adm. Mike Mullen. "Attack" doesn't seem to be in his vocabulary; he seems part of this new generation of metrosexual military officers that are thoroughly feminized and politically correct in their training and war strategy. That's how Mullen rose through the ranks. The Washingtons, Shermans, MacArthurs, Pattons have all been thoroughly purged from the ranks of the U.S. military, and only Harvard MBAs are left to fill the officer core. No wonder America hasn't definitively won a war since World War II – our soldiers and our military leaders have been utterly emasculated by the socialist left!

Epilogue

Though Adm. Mullen is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and holds control of the most powerful military in the history of humanity, a ragtag group of Somali terrorists on speed boats and wielding machine guns have all but stopped commercial shipping in one of the busiest and most lucrative shipping lanes in the world. All the U.S., the "international community," the U.N., the Saudis, can do is pay the $25 million ransom, and Adm. Mullen brags about the effectiveness of the enemy:

MULLEN: The – they're very good at what they do. They're highly, you know, they're very well-armed. Tactically they're very good. And so once they get to a point where they can board, it becomes very difficult to get them off, because clearly now they hold hostages. And from the standpoint of – the question then becomes, well, what do you do about the hostages? And that's where the standoff is.
Instead of having a real man, an intelligent man, a competent man of action like Gen. Patton, whose resume in World War II alone solidified his place as arguably the greatest military leader in American history, we have the bungling incompetence of President Bush, the uselessness of Adm. Mullen and the vanity of U.N. diplomacy with terrorists.

Dr. Savage concluded with these statements: "We need 'warriors' not 'worriers,'" and "If we have the greatest military in the world, but are afraid to use it, what good is it to us?"

Where is Gen. George Patton when we really need him?!






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« U.S. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was stunned by the latest capture by pirates.(Getty Images)



Pirates Embarrass U.S. Navy

November 19, 2008 | From theTrumpet.com

The biggest high-seas oil heist in history, and guess what America does?

America just had a boatload of oil stolen—a big one. The U.S. Fifth Fleet knows where the ship is, and it knows who stole it. But it isn’t doing much about it—it isn’t allowed to. If he were alive, Admiral Perry would be pulling out his hair. Why won’t America use its power?

Somali pirates captured a fully-laden Saudi supertanker off the coast of the East African nation of Kenya this past Saturday. The giant oil tanker, carrying the equivalent of one quarter of Saudi Arabia’s daily oil output—2 million barrels of oil—was en route to the United States via a section of ocean actively patrolled by the U.S. Navy.

In all fairness, the Fifth Fleet is attempting to police an area four times the size of Texas. Yet, the hijacking did catch naval officials off guard. “This is unprecedented,â€

Somali Pirates Expose America’s Broken Will
November 21, 2008 | From theTrumpet.com



[b]Defense Department “stunnedâ€

General Patton or MacArthur, wouldn't fit in today's military. They were from an era when generals were left to plan their offensives, not the Whitehouse and the Pentagon.

Saudi Arabia to Join NATO Naval Mission; Pirates Boost Defenses


By Caroline Alexander and Marianne Stigset

Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabia said it will join a fleet of NATO warships on an anti-piracy mission, as hijackers bolstered defenses around an oil-laden Saudi tanker captured off the East African coast.

The kingdom will contribute ``naval assets to help in pursuing piracy in the region, and this is the only way this can be dealt with,'' Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters in Oslo today after meeting with his Norwegian counterpart, Jonas Gahr Stoere. ``Negotiations and ransoms only encourage piracy and are not a solution.''

Al-Faisal didn't provide details of the Saudi contribution to the forces in the Gulf of Aden, flanked by Somalia and Yemen and leading to the Suez Canal, where at least 91 merchant vessels have been attacked since January. The Saudi ship is being held for a ransom of $25 million.

In Harardhare, a town in Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region close to where the ship is anchored, pirates are bringing in extra fighters to strengthen security, Bile Mohamoud Qabowsade, senior adviser to Puntland President Adde Muse, said in an interview yesterday.

The Sirius Star, which belongs to Saudi Arabia's state-owned shipping line, Vela International Marine Ltd., along with its crew of 25 was seized on Nov. 15 about 420 nautical miles (833 kilometers) off Somalia. It is carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude valued at about $110 million. The ship itself is worth about $148 million new.

The Saudi foreign minister confirmed two days ago that Vela was in talks with the pirates; Vela has declined to comment. A man who identified himself as Abdi Salan, a member of the hijacking gang, said in a telephone interview yesterday that the ship's owners must pay up ``soon.'' He didn't say what would happen if they didn't.

Military Role

Predicting the outcome of the negotiations, or how much the pirates may receive in the end, is difficult, said Andreas Sohmen-Pao, chief executive officer of BW Shipping Managers Pte, one of the world's largest shipping operators.

``These negotiations tend to take place in private,'' he said today in an interview with Bloomberg Television. ``This is an opening negotiation and no one knows where it will end up.''

The only long-term solution is for navies to step up their efforts to protect merchant ships, Sohmen-Pao said.

``Merchant ships are not designed or equipped to fend off pirates,'' he said. And the alternative of taking the longer route around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope ``is complicated.''

The ransom may be the highest sum demanded by pirates from war-torn Somalia, which hasn't had an effective government since the 1991 fall of the Siad Barre regime. They have asked for an average of $1 million per ship this year, according to the London-based research organization Chatham House.

NATO Warships

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has four warships off Somalia. India, Malaysia and Russia have sent warships, and a European Union fleet is expected to reach the zone next month. The U.S. coalition in Afghanistan has a task force there, bringing the total of warships in the area to 15, according to French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck. The area is almost twice the size of Alaska.

The seizure of the oil tanker may push Western navies to step up their actions against hijackers, who find potential targets with Global Positioning System navigational aids and satellite phones and use captured fishing trawlers to launch attacks out at sea, according to an October report by Chatham House.

NATO is considering changes to its operations in the area, even if it isn't immediately planning to send more ships, Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, chairman of the alliance's military committee, said at a news conference in Brussels this week.

German Parliamentary Vote

Germany's parliament will vote this month or next on whether to join the EU fleet and Russia is likely to add to its one ship in the area, the Neustrashimy, or Intrepid, a navy spokesman said.

The navies of India, Russia, France, Britain and Germany have all battled pirate vessels in the past 12 days alone.

Military action is ``the only solution,'' Jens Martin Jensen, interim chief executive officer of Frontline Ltd.'s management unit, the world's biggest owner of supertankers, said in a telephone interview. He called for navies to be given a clearer mandate ``of what they can do and what they can't.''

Jean Ping, chairman of the African Union Commission, said yesterday that piracy off the coast of Somalia indicated a further deterioration in the country's political situation.

UN Force

He called in an e-mailed statement for ``more sustained and coordinated efforts by the international community to support the peace efforts in Somalia, including the early deployment of United Nations peacekeeping forces.''

The Sirius Star's crew includes citizens of Croatia, the U.K., the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia. Its hijacking, from boarding to the pirates' taking control, took just 16 minutes, Agence France-Presse said yesterday, citing U.K. reports.

The military reports said the tanker was too large and too laden to outmaneuver pirate speedboats, and was poorly defended, according to AFP.

It was the most brazen assault yet in the region, as it was the largest vessel seized worldwide and was the farthest from the coast when attacked.

To contact the reporters on this story: Caroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net; To contact the reporter on this story: Marianne Stigset in Oslo at mstigset@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 21, 2008 08:17 EST



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