re: "Muddy Boots"

Lex at Neptunus Lex ("The unbearable lightness of Lex. Enjoy!") noticed SecDef Gates' speech at West Point.

Money quote(s):

"Mr. Gates’ predecessor notably regretted having to “go to war with the army you have,” rather than the one he wished he had. To me that means having a ground combat element capable of the full-spectrum of military missions, from humanitarian assistance, to training foreign indigenous forces to combined arms mechanized maneuver.

This is not to say that you’d ever seriously contemplate another nation-building mission as we’ve attempted in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we ought to retain a nation-breaking power, and when it comes to enemy ground formations that cannot be done with air and naval power alone – someone has to hold the hill and plant the flag, even if only to haul it back down again once the enemy’s will to fight is broken.

To me the secretary’s speech sounds like we’re tailoring our missions to our budget, which is not in itself an irrational thing to do. But we might as well be honest about it, and admit that we’re voluntarily curtailing our ability to project power in traditional ways in favor of I’m not exactly sure what."

re: "Why The Tea Parties?"

Hugh Hewitt ("among the most visited political blogs in the U.S.") explains why.

Money quote(s):

"There are scores of reasons why a particular tea party protester might show up. Three months into the Obama Administration there is no denying that the president has swung the country hard left from the center-right course that George W. Bush had piloted for eight years. From 1980 until first quarter, 2009, the country had proceeded in a steady center-right direction that even Bill Clinton had generally accepted. With the exception of his commitment to Afghanistan, President Obama has turned the wheel wildly left, and the sudden sharp shift has left millions shaken and confused.The most obvious sign of the radical change is the president's budget and its massive deficits stretching out as far as the eye can see. The "stimulus" bill that wasn't could be understood as a one-time spending frenzy designed along long ago-discredited-but-still-worshipped economic theories of the left, but the budget was different. It commits the country to a doubling of the national debt in five years, and a tripling of it in ten years."

&

"Gitmo is going to close, but no word yet on where the terrorists will take up residence.

The market slide has stopped, but the Dow is still down 1,500 points from the night of President Obama's election, and his radical proposals threaten entire sectors of the economy. He fired the head of GM but the company is still headed for Chapter 11 and an uncertain future as a government car-company. The MSM is still in a trance. Even as terrorists are arrested in England, the new Administration is embracing a new language that muffles the threat and downplays the nature of the enemy."