To All.
Good Tuesday morning April 7, 2026.The weather is partly overcast now but expected to clear by 9 and get to 78 by 2
The classes started up again last night and it turned out well.
I hope that your week is off to a good start.
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This day in Naval and Marine Corps History (thanks to NHHC)
Go here to see the director’s corner for all 97 H-Grams
Here is a link to the NHHC website: https://www.history.navy.mil/
April 7
1776 The Continental brig Lexington, commanded by John Barry, captures the British tender Edward near the Virginia Capes after a fierce fight that takes nearly an hour.
1944 USS Saufley (DD 465) sinks the Japanese submarine I 2, west-northwest of New Hanover, while USS Champlin (DD 601) is damaged after intentionally ramming German submarine U-856 380 miles off Nova Scotia, Canada. Champlin then teams with USS Huse (DE 145) to sink U-856.
1944 USS Gustafson (DE 182) sinks the German submarine U 857 off Cape Cod, Mass.
1945 Fast Carrier Task Force 58 aircraft attack the Japanese First Diversion Attack Force, sinking Japanese battleship Yamato and light cruiser Yahagi west-southwest of Kagoshima, Japan, as well as sinking four Japanese destroyers and damaging four others in the East China Sea.
1990 The Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine USS Albany (SSN 573) is commissioned at Naval Station Norfolk.
1979 USS Ohio (SSBN 726), the first Trident submarine, launches at Groton, Conn. She is commissioned into the Navy in November that same year. Following a conversion to a guided-missile submarine in 2006, she is now SSGN-726. I was able to do a tour on this boat in the early 80s and it was very big and very impressive skip
1993 The Avenger-class mine countermeasure ship USS Warrior (MCM 10) is commissioned. The ship is currently based in Sasebo, Japan.
2017 On the orders of President Trump, USS Ross (DDG 71) and USS Porter (DDG 78) launch Tomahawk missiles into Syria April 7, in retaliation for the regime of Bashar Assad using nerve agents to attack his own people.
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This Day in World History April 7
1199 English King Richard I is killed by an arrow at the Siege of the Castle of Chalus in France.
1789 The First U.S. Congress begins regular sessions at Federal Hall in New York City.
1814 Granted sovereignty in the island of Elba and a pension from the French government, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates at Fontainebleau. He is allowed to keep the title of emperor.
1830 Joseph Smith and five others organize the Church of Latter-Day Saints in Seneca, New York.
1862 Confederate forces attack General Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh, Tennessee.
1865 At the Battle of Sailer's Creek, a third of Lee's army is cut off by Union troops pursuing him to Appomattox.
1896 The Modern Olympics begin in Athens with eight nations participating.
1903 French Army Nationalists are revealed to have forged documents to guarantee a conviction for Alfred Dreyfus.
1909 Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson become the first men to reach the North Pole.
1917 The United States declares war on Germany and enters World War I on Allied side.
1924 Four planes leave Seattle on the first successful flight around the world.
1938 The United States recognizes Nazi Germany's conquest of Austria.
1941 German forces invade Greece and Yugoslavia.
1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson authorizes the use of ground troops in combat operations..
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Rollingthunderremembered.com .
April 7
Hello All,
Thanks to Dan Heller and the Bear
Links to all content can now be found right on the homepage
homepage http://www.rollingthunderremembered.com
.. If you scroll down from the banner and featured content you will find "Today in Rolling Thunder Remembered History" which highlights events in the Vietnam war that occurred on the date the page is visited. Below that are links to browse or search all content. You may search by keyword(s), date, or date range.
An item of importance is the recent incorporation of Task Force Omega (TFO) MIA summaries. There is a link on the homepage and you can also visit directly via https://www.rollingthunderremembered.com/task-force-omega/. There are 60 summaries posted thus far, with about 940 to go (not a typo—TFO has over 1,000 individual case files).
If you have any questions or comments about RTR/TFO, or have a question on my book, you may e-mail me directly at acrossthewing@protonmail.com. Thank you Dan
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Thanks to Micro
From Vietnam Air Losses site for ..April 7 . .
April 7: https://www.vietnamairlosses.com/loss.php?id=513
This following work accounts for every fixed wing loss of the Vietnam War and you can use it to read more about the losses in The Bear’s Daily account. Even better it allows you to add your updated information to the work to update for history…skip
Vietnam Air Losses
Access Chris Hobson and Dave Lovelady’s work at: https://www.VietnamAirLosses.com.
This is a list of all Helicopter Pilots Who Died in the Vietnam War . Listed by last name and has other info https://www.vhpa.org/KIA/KIAINDEX.HTM
MOAA - Wall of Faces Now Includes Photos of All Service members Killed in the Vietnam War
The site works, find anyone you knew in “search" feature. https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/ )
By: Kipp Hanley
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. From the List Archives
AWSOM STORY
Thanks to Mike “Quick Draw”McGraw Here is a short article he wrote for the Military Aviation Museum on some of the experiences that his father, Joseph D "Pogo" McGraw related to him about the "Battle off Samar" in 1944. This was Taffy 3. A group of three destroyers. Four destroyer escorts and a couple of small Jeep carriers that saved the beaches at Leyte gulf from being destroyed by a large force of Japanese battleships, cruisers and destroyers.
A Grumman FM-2 “Wilder Wildcat” Ace’s Story
The Battle Off Samar 25 October 1944
It is early morning aboard the USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73) and the VC-10 pilots not launched on the dawn combat air patrol (CAP) mission head to the wardroom for coffee and breakfast. Their routine operations schedule is about to become a desperate fight for survival as the fog of war envelopes them, literally from an early morning fog and mist in the form of an overwhelmingly powerful enemy surface formation appearing unexpectedly on the horizon.
Gambier Bay and VC-10, a composite squadron of FM-2 Wildcats (VF) and TBM-1C Avengers (VA) are supporting amphibious landing operations on the island of Leyte, Philippines. Rear Adm. Thomas L. Sprague’s Task Group 77.4, consisting of 18 escort carriers organized in Task Units 77.4.1, 77.4.2, and 77.4.3, known by their voice radio call signs as Taffys 1, 2, and 3, respectively[i] are flying ground attack, close air support, CAP and anti-submarine patrol missions over the invasion fleet, beach head and advancing ground forces. Rear Adm. Clifton A. F. “Ziggy” Sprague’s Taffy 3, including USS Gambier Bay, 5 sister CVEs, 3 DDs and 4 DDEs are stationed to the east of the island of Samar and closest to the opening of the San Bernardino strait into the Philippine Sea. A daring night transit of the strait by IJN forces under Vice Adm. Takeo Kurita will bring his 4 battleships, 6 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers and 11 destroyers (Center Force in the Sho-Go 1 Philippine defense plan[ii]) into violent contact with Taffy 3 at approximately 07:00 on October 25, 1944 beginning the “Battle off Samar”.
On this day my father, then 20 years old Ens. Joseph D. “Pogo” McGraw was an FM-2 pilot in VC-10 who found himself embroiled in what will become perhaps the most surprising and lopsided naval victory in the Pacific. He will survive the war, fly F9F2 Panthers over Korea, test fly the XF4D Skyray, bomb forest fires with modified TBM Avengers and inspire me (his oldest son) to become a Navy fighter pilot. It wasn’t until then that I got the story of this day as he lived it in his FM-2.
Ens. Joseph D “Pogo” McGraw. National Museum of Naval Aviation
Having flown the dawn CAP the previous day and scoring his second and third aerial victories downing 2 Kawasaki KI-48 twin engine bombers[iii], Pogo was one of those in the wardroom as general quarters sounded. “We ran to the ready room where the intel officer informed us that the enemy was in sight to the north west and man aircraft! Grabbing only my helmet I went to the flight deck finding an FM-2 on the fantail to man-up and was the last VF off the deck. The deck run takeoff was pretty dicey as I had to wait a long time for the deck to clear ahead of me and the ship was performing violent evasive maneuvers as I began my takeoff roll. High caliber munitions explosions were bracketing us and very close. Once airborne we found wingman of opportunity and attacked the enemy surface combatants[iv].” The standard tactic was to have the VF go in first to strafe and draw fire away from the VA who followed to deliver torpedoes. “I never thought I would be strafing a battleship in my little Wildcat, but there we were!”[v] Ens. McGraw made 11 low level strafing runs on a battleship, and 3 heavy cruisers in the face of intense anti-aircraft fire during his first flight[vi].
Huge geysers of water erupt around Gambier Bay as a Japanese cruiser, most likely Chikuma (barely discernable on the horizon on the right), fires at her, 25 October 1944. (U.S. Navy Photograph 80-G-287505, National Archives and Records Administration, Still Pictures Division, College Park, Md.)
Running low on fuel and out of ammunition Pogo went looking for his ship to recover and rearm. As he approached Taffy 3 he observed that Gambier Bay was mortally wounded and sinking, the other carriers were under attack and offered no chance of a landing. Diverting to overhead Tacloban field he realized that the field was in no condition to receive, rearm and refuel aircraft, there were several crashes on the field already and to stay in the fight he would have to find a Taffy 1 or 2 carrier for recovery[vii]. Flying to the last known position of Taffy 2 he found and recovered aboard the USS Manila Bay and reported to VC-80 ready for duty, he had 8 gallons of fuel remaining[viii].
Forty minutes later refueled and rearmed Pogo launched with VC-80 for more attacks making strafing runs against a battleship, a heavy cruiser and a destroyer[ix]. Recovering and rearming for the third time he launched again from Manila Bay as section leader on a CAP mission. After arriving on station and patrolling for 1.5 hours they were vectored toward a large boggy and encountered 18-20 Vals (Aichi D3A type 99 single engine bombers) escorted by 10-12 Zekes (A6M3 Zeros). During the ensuing engagement Ens. McGraw shot down one Val and one Zeke making him the first and only VC-10 Ace[x]. Recovering aboard Manila Bay after his third flight of the day and logging over 9 hours in combat he remained with VC-80 for the next 2 weeks flying missions (after arriving with only his flight suit and helmet) until USS Gambier Bay and VC-10 survivors were recalled. The gallant and determined actions of the Taffy ships and embarked aircraft through their relentless attacks “were instrumental in effecting the retirement of a hostile force threatening our Leyte invasion operations and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval service.[xi]”
In his later years Dad opened up about his experiences giving motivational presentations to wardrooms, ready rooms, and “dining out” functions. He was placed on the Top Gun travelling lecture circuit as “Zero Killer” and enjoyed having a continuing influence on Naval Aviation as a Fighter Ace. He would be the first to point out that in his opinion he didn’t do anything that anybody else wouldn’t have done and that the men who fought their DDs and DDEs so valiantly in the Battle off Samar and those who went down with their ships were the real heroes. I am honored to perhaps help him continue to influence Naval Aviation and those on the “tip of the spear” by telling his story. Thanks Dad and all who have and are serving.
Mike “QuickDraw” McGraw
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Thanks to the Flyover
TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2026
Good Morning! On this day in 1963, legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus won the first of his record six Masters Tournaments, part of a five-year run from 1962 through 1966 in which only he or Arnold Palmer won the tournament at Augusta National.
Yesterday's poll asked whether readers had ever helped save someone's life, and a reader named Jim wrote in with a story spanning decades of service, from his first CPR save at age 17 to years spent working in the ER and trauma unit. Thank you, Jim, and to all the first responders and nurses out there doing the hard work most of us never see.
If you’re one of roughly 50 million Americans enrolled in Medicare Part D, these changes could affect your costs more than you realize. On today’s episode of The Flyover Podcast, host Ayla Brown shares details on the updated spending cap, what counts toward it, and the long-awaited end of the donut hole. Tune in here!
Worried that AI-driven market shocks, job losses, and financial instability could derail your retirement? Today’s sponsor, GoldCo, is helping Americans protect their savings with time-tested strategies like precious metals.
Trump Holds Iran to Deadline
President Trump reiterated his threats against Iran on Monday, warning in a White House speech of strikes on bridges and power plants if Tehran doesn't reopen the Strait of Hormuz by tonight’s 8 p.m. ET deadline.
Iran rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal on Monday, demanding a permanent end to hostilities with guarantees against future attacks instead. Tehran communicated its response through Pakistani mediators.
Meanwhile, Israel said it killed two senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard figures: intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Majid Khademi and Quds Force undercover unit leader Asghar Bakeri.
Trump also praised the weekend rescue of a U.S. weapons system officer downed inside Iran, calling the complex operation, involving over 150 aircraft and 200 munitions, an "amazing show of bravery." He said military members would join him at the White House.
Michigan Beats UConn for National Title
Michigan basketball won its second national championship last night, beating UConn 69-63 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis to end a 37-year title drought. It's a coronation moment for Wolverines head coach Dusty May, who turned the program into a title champion just two years into his tenure.
It was Michigan's defense that carried them to the title. The Wolverines held UConn to 63 points, the Huskies' second-lowest scoring output of the entire tournament.
When UConn tried to slow the game to a grind, Michigan's physicality—combined with a cool 19 points by Most Outstanding Player Elliot Cadeau—ultimately won out, but not before a tense final minute where UConn pulled to within four points.
Michigan had been 0-4 in title games since its last championship in 1989, a drought that included two Fab Five runner-up finishes and losses in 2013 and 2018. Last night, Dusty May etched his name alongside the all-time greats in Ann Arbor.
Ranking: America's Tallest Buildings
A new ranking of the 20 tallest buildings in America shows New York and Chicago still dominate the skyline, claiming 14 of the top 20 spots between them.
One World Trade Center holds the top spot at 1,776 feet, followed by Central Park Tower at 1,550, which is also the tallest residential building in the world. The newest entry, JPMorgan Chase's $3 billion headquarters at 270 Park Avenue, opened last year and cracked the top 10 at 1,388 feet.
Only three buildings outside those two cities made the list: Philadelphia's Comcast Technology Center, the Wilshire Grand Center in Los Angeles, and San Francisco's Salesforce Tower.
The 95-year-old Empire State Building still ranks 10th.
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. From the archives
Thanks to David and Dr. Rich
Just when you think you're pretty tough...
Five hurricanes and 240 days later: Australian woman rows 14,000km solo across the Pacific | Queensland | The Guardian
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Thanks to Nice News
History was made yesterday. Just before 2 p.m. ET on Monday, Artemis II set the record for the farthest distance from Earth ever traveled by a human crew, surpassing the 1970 Apollo 13 record of 248,655 miles. The four astronauts on board reached this milestone as they made their lunar flyby and approached the far side of the moon, where they observed various topographical features, like craters that stretch hundreds of miles wide. See pictures from the flyby, plus dozens of other fascinating shots from the journey to the moon.
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NATO Was A Big Loser In The Iran War
BY TYLER DURDEN
MONDAY, APR 06, 2026
Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
NATO members are not legally required to join any member’s military operations that are not formally sanctioned by the alliance or not aimed at protecting the homelands of the membership.
But they often do just that.
President Donald Trump speaks from the Cross Hall of the White House in Washington on April 1, 2026. Alex Brandon/Pool/Getty Images
Some NATO members joined the Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq on the theory that, in the post-9/11 environment, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein were dangers to all Western security.
They followed the precedent set by America’s 1999 intervention in the distant Balkans, leading a three-month NATO campaign to dismantle Slobodan Milošević’s often bloody ambitions of a Greater Serbia. The United States also joined the 2011 U.N.-approved, and French- and British-inspired, NATO “coalition of the willing” bombing campaign in Libya.
That effort proved a seven-month misadventure—especially since the targeted Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi had given up his nuclear weapons program and was desperately trying to cut a deal with the West.
When NATO members in the past have operated unilaterally to defend their own national interests, they have often called on the United States, as NATO’s strongest member, for overt help.
For nearly 40 years, the United States had offered logistical, intelligence, reconnaissance, refueling, and diplomatic support to the French in their unilateral and postcolonial efforts to protect Chad from Libya and, later, Islamists.
During the 1982 Falklands War, a solitary Britain faced enormous logistical challenges in steaming halfway around the world to eject Argentina from its windswept and sparse islands.
U.S. aid was critical to the effort.
So America stepped up to help with intelligence, reconnaissance, the supply of some two million gallons of much-needed gasoline, and crucial restocking of Britain’s depleted Tomahawk missiles.
The American tilt to Britain prompted anger from most Latin American nations of the shared Western hemisphere, as well as from many Hispanic American citizens at home.
No matter—President Ronald Reagan rightly saw the importance of solidarity with a NATO member and a long-time American ally. So he gave Britain a veritable blank check for American aid.
Currently, America has not asked NATO members to help bomb Iran—even though Europe, not the United States, was in range of Iranian ballistic missiles, and soon perhaps nuclear-tipped ones as well.
Europeans are far more vulnerable to Iranian-inspired Islamic terrorism. They are more reliant on foreign oil from the Middle East, some of it passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
All the United States had initially asked for was basing support in disarming a common Western enemy that, for nearly half a century, has slaughtered American diplomats and soldiers and tried to kill a U.S. president and secretary of state.
But most NATO members could not even offer tacit help. Some damned the U.S. effort as either illegal or unnecessary.
The American public watched the British waffle for days over permitting Americans to use their Diego Garcia base.
The Spanish banned American use of their NATO bases and airspace.
The Italians refused a request from American bombers to land and refuel at a Sicilian NATO base.
Many NATO heads of state rebuked the United States to their domestic audiences while, in typical two-faced fashion, publicly offering empty verbal support for the U.S. effort.
The NATO response to an Iranian missile aimed at fellow NATO member Turkey was anemic.
Even worse was the pathetic British reaction to another Iranian missile launch at a British base at Akrotiri, Cyprus.
Yet a successful American effort in neutering a theocratic Iran was clearly of benefit to Europe. So is preventing the international waters of the Strait of Hormuz from becoming a toll booth run by the Iranian mullahs.
Such passivity was in sharp contrast to the five-year-long Ukraine War on the borders of Europe.
Ukraine was not in NATO.
Ukrainian politicos and ambassadors had sometimes played an intrusive, partisan role in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 American presidential elections.
Nonetheless, there were urgent European requests for the United States to honor the spirit of NATO solidarity and to get across the Atlantic as quickly as possible to protect the territorial integrity of Europe.
Yet continental Europe is not intrinsically weak. The combined population of the European Union and European NATO members is around 450 million—a population more than 100 million greater than that of the United States.
These same European nations enjoy an aggregate annual GDP of more than $22 trillion, 10 times the size of the Russian economy.
European diffidence comes on top of the perennial American effort to harangue NATO members to honor their 2 percent of GDP defense commitments—especially in the case of deadbeat Spain and Canada, who for years welched on their pledges.
Trump’s harangues were not what was undermining NATO.
Instead, he ripped off a happy-face scab and exposed a festering wound of increasingly anti-American hypocrisy beneath.
If you wanted to wreck the alliance, there would be no better way than to follow the duplicitous examples of Western European NATO members.
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Thanks to the Daily Signal
. . Victor Davis Hanson: Trump Could Crush Iran, So Why Doesn’t He?
Portrait of Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson
@VDHanson
Victor Davis Hanson, a senior contributor for The Daily Signal, is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and host of "The Victor Davis Hanson Show." His website, The Blade of Perseus, features columns, lectures, and exclusive content for subscribers. Contact him at authorvdh@gmail.com.
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. There’s always two wars, as I mentioned on earlier occasions, a political war and a military war, once the conflict begins. But I didn’t discuss really what the political war is about. President Donald Trump can easily decimate Iran. He can knock out the water, he can knock out the sewage facilities, the power grid, the communications grid, and paralyze the entire country.
And that might even lead to the removal of the regime. But he is not doing that for political reasons. No. 1, he would get global outrage from even our allies, and that is a restraining influence. But more importantly, he wants to empower the Iranian resistance movement, and they need all of that infrastructure if someday they were going to come to power.
Now, I mentioned earlier that regime change was not an explicit aim of this administration when they went to war, but it was a collateral dividend that they hoped would occur by their earlier aims, which all weakened, existentially, the regime: cutting off the Houthis and the terrorist proxies, getting rid of their nuclear proliferation program, the ballistic missiles, etc., etc.
Wiping out command—that will all weaken it to such a degree that even if we were to stop without regime change and follow the agenda, they would stew in their own juice, and people would get very, very angry. We’ll get to that in another video. But right now, what are the constraints that Donald Trump has to deal with?
No. 1, the MAGA base says, “It’s a forever war. It’s an endless war. He broke his word.” We see Megyn Kelly making that argument. We see Tucker Carlson making that argument. Steve Bannon—a lot of people in the MAGA base.
But if you look carefully, he’s used force on many occasions. Took out Qasem Soleimani in his first term, the ISIS kingpin Baghdadi, bombed ISIS into oblivion, took out the Wagner program, the Wagner Group. Second term, he took out Maduro, 25 hours over—all of those were one-offers. He hasn’t had a forever war.
What he did learn is: If you say that you are against forever wars or endless wars, that can be interpreted by your enemies that you’re an isolationist. And therefore, you can increase aggression, and you’ll lose deterrence. So, it’s much better to be a Jacksonian and basically say, “We don’t want to nation-build, we don’t want to get into people’s affairs, but if you aggrieve us, if you’re aggressive, if you provoke us or the interests of our allies and us, we may retaliate in a way that you have no idea [what] will follow.”
It will be asymmetrical, disproportionate, deadly, and that’s what Trump is doing. And I don’t think that anybody historically would say 30 days of an exclusively air campaign is an endless war. But he has to worry about that MAGA base. Not in numbers—the numbers are 90%, 85% of the Republican Party supports him—but the people who don’t have large audiences, and they can be influenced as they look at the pulse of the battle.
Then he has to worry about the economy. One of his signature achievements was getting gas down to $2.50 a gallon in some states. I think in Iowa, it was down to $1.80 prior to the war. The price of oil has soared from $50 to $60 a barrel to $100 to $120 a barrel, and oil is one of the linchpins of the economy. That can hurt him.
And the news, the psychological news of war, and it could be regional and could involve the Houthis, it could involve the Gulf states, it could blow up, we might have to interdict supplies from Russia. All of that creates tension and uncertainty on Wall Street, the stock market, the bond market. So, he has got to be careful of that. That’s an impediment to a purely military campaign.
Then I mentioned earlier, he has the midterms coming up, and he can’t lose his legislative majority. If he does, you will see his last two years in office consumed by investigations of the Trump people, his family, his associates, and they [Democrats] will impeach him. You can count on that. They will not convict him, but they will impeach him.
And then, of course, there’s the Israel question. He’s working with a very competent ally. Seventy-five percent of their aims and our aims overlap. We’re both Western democracies. We have a common theocratic enemy that has attacked and killed hundreds, in our case thousands, probably, if you count the Iraq War, and the Israelis have the similar—but we don’t have necessarily completely identical aims.
Why? Because we’re distant and not that vulnerable yet, because they don’t have, yet, an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead. They will, but not yet. Israel is proximate and vulnerable. So, in their way of thinking, the idea that we would neuter or disarm Iran would be like shooting a bear in the shoulder and leaving him on the prowl. He is going to be angry and capable and furious, and he’s going to crawl or charge them. They are the people who will take the punishment. So, in their way of thinking, why would you go to all this trouble, and that’s not an explicit aim of your campaign, i.e., regime change? “It is our aim,” the Israelis are saying.
But that’s not influencing Donald Trump necessarily. He said it wasn’t an aim. He may change and announce he’s changed, but the idea that the Israelis are running things is untrue, but he has to be careful about that.
Finally, there are some other impediments, and those impediments are: if you put an American boot on the ground in the Middle East, everybody left and right becomes hysterical, and for good cause. They remember the first Gulf War. They remember a brilliant four-day war. They remember the liberation of Kuwait. They remember the march on Baghdad.
And what happened? We let Saddam [Hussein] stay in power. We had years of no-fly zones, and then we went back again, and we spent a trillion dollars from 2003 all the way into 2011, and we tried to have a consensual government. We lost over 4,000 soldiers, many more wounded and casualties. And then the Obama administration essentially, by 2010, 2011, said “I’m done with it,” and pulled out.
And now we have Iraq—sort of consensual, sort of not—as a proxy, sort of, sort of not, of Iran. And then we had a 20-year … misadventure in Afghanistan, and we remember that pullout, that horrible August 2021 pullout that led to 13 deaths and, I don’t know, 15, 20, 50—I’ve heard 50—we heard $70 billion of military assets left.
So anytime you go into the Middle East, Americans say, “Tell me when it has ever worked.” Did the Suez Crisis of ’56 work? Did the first Gulf War work and get rid of Saddam? Did the second Gulf War with the Iraq invasion work? Did Afghanistan work? Even did the bombing—we went and bombed the nuclear facilities, and now we have to do it again. It’s a quagmire. We don’t like the Middle East. That’s the American left and right, Republican and Democrat. That is a limitation. So, anybody who says, “I’m going to end this problem with Iran, once and for all, and neuter them, people are going to say,” “It’s in the Middle East, Mr. President.”
So, Donald Trump has to contend with the MAGA base, the crazy Democratic opposition, the midterms, the economy, definitely handling the charge that he’s too influenced by Israel, and the general repulsion of the American people for anything to do with the Middle East, militarily, and blood and treasure on our part spent for people we feel are either ungracious or ungrateful or not worth it in a cost-benefit analysis.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
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Thanks to Mud
This is a very good one. Those in our generation have lived in an age which has allowed us to have experienced both the previous and current, a time when America was great and a time of steady decline. As I have said so many times, it's sad, and I feel for our children and grandchildren.
At the bottom of this article I have added a short commentary by Alexis de Tocqueville. It too is worth a read.
S/F,
- Mud
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/03/the_third_fall_of_rome.html
The Third Fall of Rome
The world is changing. In the West, we are no longer the same as we once were and doubt our right to be here. Sensing our weakness, “barbarians” from afar multiply at our borders (i.e. along the Rio Grande and in the Balkans). Harbingers of chaos, they crowd together and push to get inside. Of course, they are not deterred by a few dithering sentries. Dispossessed and coveting, they know very well where they are going; on the other side of the fence, they see a fat, docile cow waiting to be milked — and slaughtered. The pressure increases year by year. Rome is about to fall for the third time.
Telltale signs of what lies ahead are open to study everywhere in the West — on both sides of the Atlantic. The boundless optimism of yesterday, say, the early 1990s, is like the distant echo of hearty laughter. What we take for granted today — freedom, safety, and prosperity — we might have to fight to keep tomorrow.
In the outside world, e.g. the capitals of the so-called “BRICS” countries, preparations are made to end the hegemony of the West. Sure enough, we have paid indulgences for our alleged sins of colonialism for almost a hundred years. However, we should not expect forgiveness or pity on that account. In case we think that we have built “goodwill” with the third-world countries receiving foreign aid, we have seriously miscalculated. As far as they are concerned, our wealth is up for grabs.
The happy days are over. As Westerners, we are not marching confidently into the future, but bumping and tottering. Our place in history is threatened. In the shadowland of moral relativism, ideological confusion, and fatalistic cowardice, we have lost our bearings. It is as if we, children of the West, have been spoiled to such a degree that we completely neglect the origin of our success in history. This bodes ill for the future. The West is left open to invasion by those who know the struggle for life (i.e. immigrants by the millions from Latin America or Africa and the Middle East). If we become doubtful and leave a power vacuum, unsure of our own raison d’être, others are more than ready to fill it.
The abolition of the cardinal virtues (i.e. prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) in the de-Christianized, transitional societies of the West is approaching as a matter of fact. The body of thought that they represent form the sort of philosophical basis on which you may build an orderly society. Pillars of civilization, they have served us well in the past. The history of the European countries, North America, Australia, and New Zealand testifies to this salient point. Regrettably, however, those virtues have nothing like universal validity. Thus, it is not that they have been given to us by God like the laws of Moses. Neither are they derived from human nature as if inherent dispositions embedded in biology. Strictly speaking, they are unique to Western culture. They represent an arbitrary construct of history. Accordingly, they may not be understood, let alone accepted, elsewhere.
Even though we have ourselves formulated the cardinal virtues and lived by them for so long, taking them for granted as the basis of social cohesion, we may also lose them, suddenly challenged in numbers by non-West (and anti-West) foreigners with a culture of their own. That menacing prospect, spelling the conditions of complete alienation and civilizational dissolution, we ultimately owe to our own decadence and imprudence. We have slept on our watch.
Unfortunately, we have long since forgotten our own struggle for survival. If the Westerners of today had any historical awareness of the past, they would know that, since the dawn of time, we have fought against invasions from the East. The wealth and strength, which we have preserved so far, are due to the ingenuity of our ancestors, their courage and care for posterity. However, there is a general reluctance to face the real dangers of today and fight for our home in the West.
For a long time, we have made self-denying decisions in a world of competing cultures. Survival in the long term is determined, not by whimsical standards of hypocrisy, to be sure, but the resolve to prevail. However, we possess neither the stoicism of the pagan Greeks nor the piety of the Christian scholastics. Morally corrupted by popular ideas of guilt and spoiled habits of consumerism, we have become extremely selfish, lazy, and pleasure-seeking. It seems that we live solely for the gratification of the present and give no thought to tomorrow. Our conceited thoughtlessness might cost us dearly in the end.
In fairness, we have but ourselves to thank for our current predicament. The origin of the treacherous attack on our society is the worldview of a nihilistic subculture at our universities, shared by ignorant, undisciplined, and self-aggrandizing students. Seduced into political activism by delusions of social justice and penance, they condemn the rest of us to eternal perdition because of a colonial past.
Our self-inflicted weakness, which is of a moral rather than material nature, exposes us to a determined enemy. It so happens that the threats to the West are piling up: there are the immigrants flooding our lands like the barbarians of Roman times; and there is the imminent threat of military attacks from totalitarian empires in Europe and beyond. In the centuries following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 A.D. and the Eastern in 1453, brought about by the Huns and Turks, respectively, we had to fight for our identity and resist the danger of complete absorption by immigrant peoples.
After the mayhem caused by broken borders and uncontrolled immigration, a civilization based on reason, courage, and accountability (merit) rather than orthodoxy, savagery, and submission saw the light of day and thrived. As a response to the medieval doomsday mood (reflected in the aberrant ideals of the Gothic style), the classical ideals of antiquity, ranging from literature to architecture, eventually found their way back to the world of the living; the West was reborn.
Integrating Hellenistic-Roman and Jewish traditions, Christian culture laid the foundation for the Enlightenment, the unhampered pursuit of both scientific knowledge and artistic beauty, and an unparalleled progress in technology and industry. It saved a historical reverence for reason and individualism. Aligned with humanist principles — universal human dignity, individual freedom, and the importance of happiness (cf. the ideals of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” in the American Declaration of Independence) — its teachings stood in stark contrast to a dichotomous slave-master mentality endemic to other parts of the world.
A cultural decline and vulnerability to foreign influence, the likes of which have been unthinkable since the last days of Rome, are now evident in the West. Rather than a lack of wisdom and beauty in the church, however, they reflect the crushing victory of secularism in the twentieth century. Despite unrestricted access to knowledge, Westerners in a de-Christianized world behave like suggestible orphans; the denial of God has cut them off from their own lineage and driven them into the arms of ungodly, inhumane, and fraudulent movements such as modernism and totalitarianism (i.e. fascism, socialism).
Thought by some to represent the pinnacle of civilization, but deeply disorientated in moral terms, the so-called “secular society” is but an unstable and intermediate form characterized by unresolved disputes and upheavals. It has replaced godliness (i.e. Christian faith and tradition) and personal freedom, including the freedom of speech, with claims for “universal rights” (i.e. tantamount to unlimited immigration from third-world countries) and “tolerance of the intolerant” (i.e. selectively sparing overtly illiberal movements from criticism by prohibiting “phobic” views and zealously prosecuting violations).
The legacy of the Enlightenment is eroding. What we took to be immutable, the bulwark of our civilization, is crumbling around us. Civil liberties in society come under pressure from, not the government, at first, but those who strive for total domination, willing to exterminate anybody unwilling to submit.
If the anti-Western forces really succeed, it will be ever so quiet in the West. There will be no exchange of ideas between learned men and women. It will be the time of darkness, the time of cruelty and barbarism.
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Image Public Domain
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years." ¯ Alexis de Tocqueville
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." ¯ Alexis de Tocqueville
"Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." ¯ Alexis de Tocqueville
"Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." ¯ Alexis de Tocqueville
"Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom." ¯ Alexis de Tocqueville
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This Day in U S Military History…….April 7
1862 – Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the battle of Shiloh in Tennessee. Gen. Ulysses Grant after the Battle of Shiloh said: “I saw an open field… so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across… in any direction, stepping on dead bodies without a foot touching the ground.” More than 9,000 Americans died.
1945 – In the East China Sea, the Japanese battleship Yamato is sighted by planes from the American carrier groups which attack the battleship in two waves, involving 380 aircraft. The Yamato suffers 10 torpedo hits and 5 bomb hits before sinking. Some 2498 Japanese are killed on board the battleship. The planes, from US Task Force 58, also sink the Japanese cruiser Yahagi and 4 destroyers accompanying the battleship. A total of 10 planes are lost.
1945 – Japanese Kamikaze attacks damage the carrier USS Hancock and the battleship Maryland as well as other ships
1954 – At a news conference while describing the importance of defending Dienbienphu in Vietnam, President Eisenhower articulates the “Domino Theory” of confronting Communist aggression. “You have a row of dominoes set up and you knock over the first one and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you have the beginning of a disintegration that will have the most profound influences.
1972 – The North Vietnamese offensive in Quangtri Province slows. Good weather allows South Vietnamese pilots to bomb Communist troop concentrations. Communist troops take Locninh, a district capital in Binhlong Province. 15,000 ARVN troops are surrounded by NVA while retreating from Locninh to Anloc.
2003 – In the 19th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom US forces in tanks and armored vehicles stormed into the center of Baghdad, seizing Saddam Hussein’s Sijood and Republican palaces. As many as 5 marines were killed. Many Iraqis died in constant suicidal attacks.
2003 – Capt. Harry Alexander Hornbuckle on the road to Baghdad led 80 US soldiers against 300 Iraqi and Syrian fighters. 200 enemy were killed with no US casualties.
Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day
GALLOWAY, JOHN
Rank and organization: Commissary Sergeant, 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Place and date: At Farmville, Va., 7 April 1865. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Philadelphia, Pa. Date of issue: 30 October 1897. Citation: His regiment being surprised and nearly overwhelmed, he dashed forward under a heavy fire, reached the right of the regiment, where the danger was greatest, rallied the men and prevented a disaster that was imminent.
LUDGATE, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Captain, Company G, 59th New York Veteran Infantry. Place and date: At Farmville, Va., 7 April 1865. Entered service at: New York, N.Y. Birth: England. Date of issue: 10 August 1889. Citation: Gallantry and promptness in rallying his men and advancing with a small detachment to save a bridge about to be fired by the enemy.
COVINGTON, JESSE WHITFIELD
Rank and organization: Ship’s Cook Third Class, U.S. Navy. Place and date: At sea aboard the U.S.S. Stewart, 17 April 1918. Entered service at: California. Born: 16 September 1889, Haywood, Tenn. G.O. No.: 403, 1918. Citation: For extraordinary heroism following internal explosion of the Florence H. The sea in the vicinity of wreckage was covered by a mass of boxes of smokeless powder, which were repeatedly exploding. Jesse W. Covington, of the U.S.S. Stewart, plunged overboard to rescue a survivor who was surrounded by powder boxes and too exhausted to help himself, fully realizing that similar powder boxes in the vicinity were continually exploding and that he was thereby risking his life in saving the life of this man.
UPTON, FRANK MONROE
Rank and organization: Quartermaster, U.S. Navy. Born: 29 April 1896, Loveland, Colo. Accredited to: Colorado. G.O. No.: 403, 1918. Citation: For extraordinary heroism following internal explosion of the Florence H, on 17 April 1918. The sea in the vicinity of wreckage was covered by a mass of boxes of smokeless powder, which were repeatedly exploding. Frank M. Upton, of the U.S.S. Stewart, plunged overboard to rescue a survivor who was surrounded by powder boxes and too exhausted to help himself. Fully realizing the danger from continual explosion of similar powder boxes in the vicinity, he risked his life to save the life of this man.
COLALILLO, MIKE
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company C, 398th Infantry, 100th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Untergriesheim, Germany, 7 April 1945. Entered service at. Duluth, Minn. Birth: Hibbing, Minn. G.O. No.: 4, 9 January 1946. Citation: He was pinned down with other members of his company during an attack against strong enemy positions in the vicinity of Untergriesheim, Germany. Heavy artillery, mortar, and machinegun fire made any move hazardous when he stood up, shouted to the company to follow, and ran forward in the wake of a supporting tank, firing his machine pistol. Inspired by his example, his comrades advanced in the face of savage enemy fire. When his weapon was struck by shrapnel and rendered useless, he climbed to the deck of a friendly tank, manned an exposed machinegun on the turret of the vehicle, and, while bullets rattled about him, fired at an enemy emplacement with such devastating accuracy that he killed or wounded at least 10 hostile soldiers and destroyed their machinegun. Maintaining his extremely dangerous post as the tank forged ahead, he blasted 3 more positions, destroyed another machinegun emplacement and silenced all resistance in his area, killing at least 3 and wounding an undetermined number of riflemen as they fled. His machinegun eventually jammed; so he secured a submachinegun from the tank crew to continue his attack on foot. When our armored forces exhausted their ammunition and the order to withdraw was given, he remained behind to help a seriously wounded comrade over several hundred yards of open terrain rocked by an intense enemy artillery and mortar barrage. By his intrepidity and inspiring courage Pfc. Colallilo gave tremendous impetus to his company’s attack, killed or wounded 25 of the enemy in bitter fighting, and assisted a wounded soldier in reaching the American lines at great risk of his own life.
*JAMES, WILLY F., Jr.
Citation: For extraordinary heroism in action on 7 April 1945 near Lippoldsberg, Germany. As lead scout during a maneuver to secure and expand a vital bridgehead, Private First Class James was the first to draw enemy fire. He was pinned down for over an hour, during which time he observed enemy positions in detail. Returning to his platoon, he assisted in working out a new plan of maneuver. He then led a squad in the assault, accurately designating targets as he advanced, until he was killed by enemy machine gun fire while going to the aid of his fatally wounded platoon leader. Private First Class James’ fearless, self-assigned actions, coupled with his diligent devotion to duty exemplified the finest traditions of the Armed Forces.
OKUTSU, YUKIO
Technical Sergeant Yukio Okutsu distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action on 7 April 1945, on Mount Belvedere, Italy. While his platoon was halted by the crossfire of three machine guns, Technical Sergeant Okutsu boldly crawled to within 30 yards of the nearest enemy emplacement through heavy fire. He destroyed the position with two accurately placed hand grenades, killing three machine gunners. Crawling and dashing from cover to cover, he threw another grenade, silencing a second machine gun, wounding two enemy soldiers, and forcing two others to surrender. Seeing a third machine gun, which obstructed his platoon’s advance, he moved forward through heavy small arms fire and was stunned momentarily by rifle fire, which glanced off his helmet. Recovering, he bravely charged several enemy riflemen with his submachine gun, forcing them to withdraw from their positions. Then, rushing the machine gun nest, he captured the weapon and its entire crew of four. By these single-handed actions he enabled his platoon to resume its assault on a vital objective. The courageous performance of Technical Sergeant Okutsu against formidable odds was an inspiration to all. Technical Sergeant Okutsu’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the United States Army.
SWETT, JAMES ELMS
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Marine Fighter Squadron 221, with Marine Aircraft Group 12, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing. Place and date: Solomon Islands area, 7 April 1943. Entered service at: California. Born: 15 June 1920, Seattle, Wash. Other Navy award: Distinguished Flying Cross with 1 Gold Star. Citation: For extraordinary heroism and personal valor above and beyond the call of duty, as division leader of Marine Fighting Squadron 221 with Marine Aircraft Group 12, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, in action against enemy Japanese aerial forces in the Solomons Islands area, 7 April 1943. In a daring flight to intercept a wave of 150 Japanese planes, 1st Lt. Swett unhesitatingly hurled his 4-plane division into action against a formation of 15 enemy bombers and personally exploded 3 hostile planes in midair with accurate and deadly fire during his dive. Although separated from his division while clearing the heavy concentration of antiaircraft fire, he boldly attacked 6 enemy bombers, engaged the first 4 in turn and, unaided, shot down all in flames. Exhausting his ammunition as he closed the fifth Japanese bomber, he relentlessly drove his attack against terrific opposition which partially disabled his engine, shattered the windscreen and slashed his face. In spite of this, he brought his battered plane down with skillful precision in the water off Tulagi without further injury. The superb airmanship and tenacious fighting spirit which enabled 1st Lt. Swett to destroy 7 enemy bombers in a single flight were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.
I watched this episode on TV and he made the statement that not many people know what they are worth but he did. He was picked up by friendly natives and taken to a larger island and traded for a 10 pound bag of rice. So he knows that he is worth a 10 pound bag of rice....skip
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AMERICAN AEROSPACE EVENTS for April 7, FIRSTS, LASTS, AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THANKS TO HAROLD “PHIL” MYERS CHIEF HISTORIAN AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE AGENCY
7 April
1916: Mexican mounted Rurales fired on Lt Herbert A. Dargue at Chihauhau City, Mexico, where he had landed with dispatches from the US Consul. Capt Benjamin D. Foulois, who had left the plane before the incident, was arrested when he objected. (21) (24)
1945: Twentieth Air Force made the first fighter-escorted B-29 mission against Japan. The taking of Iwo Jima, within fighter range of Japan, made this raid possible. (21)
1955: First production-model Lockheed C-130A Hercules (53-3129) flight occurred at the company's facility in Marietta. (8: Apr 90)
1958: Operation JET STREAM. Through 8 April, Brig Gen William E. Eubank, Jr., 93 BMW Commander at Castle AFB, flew a KC-135 on an 18-hour flight from Tokyo, Japan, to Lajes Field, Azores, to set two records. The marks included longest straight-line distance without refueling, 10,229.3 miles in 18 hours 48 minutes; and speed, 492.262 MPH from Tokyo to Washington DC in 13 hours 45 minutes 46.5 seconds. (1) (9)
1966: A US Army OH-6A helicopter made a 2,213-mile, nonstop, nonrefueled flight from Culver City, Calif., to Daytona Beach, Fla., in 15 hours 13 minutes. This flight broke a record set on 5 March 1965 by a US Navy Sikorsky SA-3A helicopter.
1967: AFSC’s 6511th Parachute Test Group dropped 50,150 pounds from a C-130 to claim an unofficial world record. (3)
1972: Operation CONSTANT GUARD I. To 9 April, the US answered North Vietnam’s Spring offensive. For this operation, MAC moved personnel and cargo from McConnell AFB, Kans., and Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C. to Thailand. Through 13 May, the USAF moved 12 squadrons and 200 aircraft to Southeast Asia to fight off the North Vietnamese. (2) (21)
1995: Operation PROVIDE HOPE. A C-141 left McGuire AFB for Donetsk, Ukraine, carrying 40 passengers and six pallets of equipment and medical supplies. The passengers from the US European Command later taught hospital personnel in Donetsk how to use the donated medical equipment. (18)
1999: The USAF and DARPA selected Boeing to build two unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) for testing at the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB. (3)
2006: The Scaled Composites White Knight mothership dropped the X-37 at about 37,000 feet, and the UAV then flew to the Edwards AFB runway safely. Originally, the X-37 was a NASA flight demonstrator aircraft for the Future X orbital test and reentry research program in the 1990s. DARPA and Boeing revived it as an Approach and Landing Test Vehicle (ALTV). (3)
2007: Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. The 128th Expeditionary Airborne Command and Control Squadron, one of three operational E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attacks Radar System squadrons, recently reached a milestone of 23,000 flight-hours in support of this operation. The JSTARS deployment began on 16 January 2003 when the aircraft flew missions for Operation SOUTHERN WATCH and then Operation Iraqi Freedom. They were first deployed to Prince Sultan AB, Saudi Arabia, and Royal Air Force Akrotiri, Cyprus. In May 2003, the unit relocated to the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing. (AFNEWS, “Joint Stars Exceeds 23,000 Flight Hours, 7 Apr 2007.)
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