Patrick Shrier

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Irony

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Got this in an email from my Dad.  Funny and sad at the same time.

A Lesson  in Irony.

The Food Stamp Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture,  is proud to be distributing the greatest amount of free meals and food stamps  ever.
Meanwhile, the National Park Service,  administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us to “Please Do Not  Feed the Animals.”
Their stated reason for the policy is because  the animals will grow dependent  on handouts and will not learn to take  care of themselves.

This ends today’s lesson.

Book Review: A Hymn Before Battle by John Ringo

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A Hymn Before Battle is the first book in Ringo’s Posleen War Series. It is also Ringo’s first published book if I have my facts straight. Regardless, when I first read this book back in 2002 I thought then and have been subsequently proved right that there are authors out there that are just as good as Heinlein at catching the readers attention and keeping it and Ringo is one of them. Imagine horse-sized reptiloid centaurs that think you are lunch, use advanced weaponry, and think the massed wave attack is the height of tactical finesse. The book is the story of how humanity discovers that not only are we … More after the Jump…

Documentary Storm

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DocumentaryStorm, a website for documentary lovers has asked me to help them promote their site and help them celebrate their one year anniversary.   After checking it out I agreed, they have a pretty good collection of military themed documentaries.   I have highlighted some of the ones I think are the best below.   Fell free to check out their list at DS Military Videos. The Great War, This is the complete Great War series that was initially aired by PBS in the ’90s. The Survivors of Stalingrad:  A good series about the battle for Stalingrad and the subsequent fate of the German troops who were captured there. Ancient Warriors: … More after the Jump…

Medieval Swordsmanship

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Found a really interesting website today about a society aiming to recreate medieval and renaissance sword-fighting methods based on the instructions produced during the period.   It is the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts.   They have a fairly extensive website with plenty of interesting discussion of medieval fighting styles.   They also rightly point out that what we see in movies is about as far removed from reality as The Hobbit.   Very interesting site and worth checking out.

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Awesome Quote:

What do you call it when someone steals someone else’s money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else’s money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else’s money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice.

Thomas Sowell – 27 Dec 2011 – Jewish World Review

Book Review: The Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die in Battle by Michael Stephenson

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the publisher for purposes of reviewing it. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Michael Stephenson’s work The Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die in Battle follows somewhat in the tradition of classics such a Keegan’s The Face of Battle and Victor David Hanson’s The Western Way of War. Where it differs from these two works as that while Keegan and Hanson focus on specific battles or time periods this book aims to be a more general description of the experience of combat throughout recorded history.   In that, the book is … More after the Jump…

A Travesty Calling for Action

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In today’s edition of Stars and Stripes and the LA Times is an article about a combat engineer facing charges for actions he took in combat in Afghanistan last year.  The gist of the story is that the soldier involved shot an unarmed female in the middle of a firefight who was moving towards the rear of her vehicle.  The description of the incident from the article is here: His convoy was reeling from a roadside bomb, his fellow soldiers were engaged in combat with insurgents and a mysterious black car had just screeched to a stop in the middle of the firefight. Some nine minutes later, a black door opens. Second 1: A … More after the Jump…

The Reality of War – Violent Death

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Today I was reading a selection of articles from Foreign Affairs magazine dealing with modern Counterinsurgency and its perceived success or failure.   One of the things that struck me about the articles and that Bing West brings out in his rebuttal to two critiques of a piece he wrote is the modern predilection for forgetting, either purposefully or not, that war is in essence about man killing man.   What should be the enduring image of war is that of a battlefield strewn with bodies after the armies have moved on such as those below. That is not the image that the modern West has of warfare though.   … More after the Jump…

D-Day 68th Anniversary

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Just a reminder for everyone to stop today and take a moment to reflect on the events that happened 68 years ago today on the shores of Normandy in France.   This is the day that the Allies opened up the long-awaited Second Front against Hitler’s Germany.   The invasion took place along almost 50 miles of French coast using five named invasion beaches.   From south to north the beaches were named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.   The first days objectives were not reached over most of the front and in many places it would take weeks to reach objectives that were supposed to have been taken … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Why Germany Nearly Won: A New History of the Second World War in Europe by Steven D. Mercatante

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] At first glance Why Germany Nearly Won: A New History of the Second World War in Europe is another of the rehashing’s of WWII in the East and West that have become so popular since the fall of communism in the 1990’s and the opening of previously closed Russian archives.   That first glance would be wrong.   Steven Mercatante has produced a very well written history of the war in the East that goes to the heart of why the Eastern … More after the Jump…

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Given that I generally try to concentrate on the German Wars of Unification when I do any serious research I thought I would toss this link out there.   I ran across the following article about the Battle of Lundby in 1864 today.   It is probably the best description of any single action from the Danish War of 1864 I have ever seen.   What makes it so great for my purposes is that it is in English and I can direct my readers to it.   The first of the German Wars of Unification, the Danish War of 1864, is practically ignored in English scholarship and thus finding something like this is a treasure as it sheds light on the development of Prussian tactical and operational methods that is not generally open to the English speaking world.

The Marian Legion

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I haven’t touched on anything about antiquity for a while so I thought I would put this up as I have been thinking about this for the last week or two. This is the Marian Legion or the Reforms of Marius, whichever you choose to call it. These reforms are important because they set the stage for the Legion of the period of the Civil War and early Imperium, especially the time of the Pax Romana.   These reforms are probably not a direct result of the genius of Gaius Marius, he just gets credit for implementing them.   That being said, he is the one who implemented them and … More after the Jump…

Updated Comment System

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I have updated the comment system to use Disqus instead of the native WP comment sytsem.  I am in the process o migrating everything to the new platform so it may be a few days before all the old comments show up.

A side note is that I will have more pure history posts coming in the next few weeks as I try to refocus the blog back towards history and somewhat away from political topics.  I am going to strive to give my regular readers more of what drew you to the site in the first place.

The Moral Quandary?

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Lately I have been somewhat preoccupied thinking about the geostrategic position the US and even the wider Western world find themselves in.  While I do not believe that the world is on the cusp of some massive catastrophe, it does seem to me that the rise of Militant Islam in the last ten years presents problems that are new or that at least have not been faced on such a scale by Western countries since before the rise of the modern nation state. Essentially, I think that Islam is facing the West with a crucial choice, one the West would rather not have to make as it goes against all … More after the Jump…

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