Category Archives: Defense

Virginia Must Investigate and Control the Relationships of Its State Institutions of Higher Learning With the Government of China

Posted on November 16, 2023 by | 38 comments

by James C. Sherlock

The title of this article seems at first glance axiomatic.

After all, the power “to conduct … all intercourse with other and foreign states” is granted in the state constitution to the Governor.

Yet that power has been assumed by some Virginia state institutions of higher education (IHEs) with the apparent approval of their state-appointed Counsels.

They need better lawyers.

Courtesy U.S. – China Economic and Security Review Commission

The story of Communist Chinese influence in America’s IHEs is the story of left-wing faculty. The same ones that march in Hamas rallies.

They divide the world into oppressed and oppressors, with no room for individuals. They offer a narrative, not discussions.

Somehow, in their admiration for Chinese Marxism, they have missed the fact that the Chinese government is one of the most oppressive regimes on earth.  Straight out of Animal Farm.

It does not bother them that Xi Jinping and his government wish America harm. Or that America is on the brink of war with that country over Taiwan.

The campus radical leftists, and many of the schools they dominate, have their own threat assessments and foreign policies that do not align with those of the United States. Continue reading →

38 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Defense, Democracy and Western Civilization, Education (higher ed), Government Oversight, Marxism

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William and Mary and the Chinese Communist Party – Dangerous Allies – Part 3

Posted on November 14, 2023 by | 6 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Chinese fighter and U.S. jet over South China Sea.  Courtesy CNN and YouTube.

William and Mary’s superb AidData program makes major contributions to America’s understanding of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). The school is justly proud of it.

AidData published in December of 2021 a study Corridors of Power – How Beijing uses economic, social and network ties to exert influence along the Silk Road.

Chapter 3 is “Social ties: How does Beijing leverage education, culture, and
exchange to amplify its foreign influence strategy?”

I recommend it to the President and the Board of the College.

I promised in this Part to look at:

  • the William and Mary/Chinese Foreign Ministry Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA);
  • Chinese student recruiting and admissions;
  • the courses they take, and their internships and the applicability of their skills to the People’s Revolutionary Army and Navy;
  • what happens when those “students and scholars” return home; and
  • the money.

We’ll do that, and we’ll look at the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to see if it possibly applies. Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in Defense, Education (higher ed), Governance, Government Oversight, Marxism, National Security, Threat Assessment

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Will the Left Repudiate this Evil?

Posted on October 31, 2023 by | 15 comments

(This column was published earlier today by The Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy)

by Chris Braunlich

“You dance with the one who brung ya” goes one of the oldest sayings in politics.

It means that when elected officials get into public office, they vote with those who helped put them there.

The deadly Hamas attack on Israel, an event slaughtering 1,400 Israelis that Hamas political bureau member Ghazi Hamad called “our message to the world,” has exposed divisions up and down the Biden liberal-left coalition – and sent a warning signal about those who power that coalition.

Polling data demonstrate the split among Democrats, fueled largely by the young and the left.   It has already caused President Biden to shift his tone, and a recent Reuters report noted that “Biden, 80, has evolved in the face of a challenging 2024 reelection bid, (and) threats by some would-be supporters to withhold their votes over his lack of backing for Palestinians .…”

Four hundred congressional staffers have signed a letter to their bosses opposing the Administration’s current approach. Two-hundred each among the former volunteers of presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have done the same. Groups supporting Biden are disbanding. Continue reading →

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Posted in Defense, Democracy and Western Civilization, Uncategorized

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Miyares Moves to Support Israel

Posted on October 19, 2023 by | 24 comments

Jason Miyares

from The Republican Standard

In the wake of the attack on Israel carried out by terrorist organization Hamas last week, Attorney General Jason Miyares is calling upon Virginia law enforcement agencies to help Israelis fight for their lives in a new way.

Fox News obtained copies of a letter distributed to over 100 sheriffs’ offices by the AG’s office, urging them to donate “surplus body armor, protective gear and other tactical equipment” to be collected by his office and sent to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Continue reading →

24 Comments

Posted in Defense, Law enforcement, Leadership

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Virginians Sail Towards Gaza

Posted on October 9, 2023 by | 97 comments

USS Gerald R. Ford with Carrier Air Wing 8 embarked. Official Navy photo.

by James C. Sherlock

The U.S. Navy has sailed towards the sounds of battle for more than 200 years.

This time it is responding to the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, already in the Mediterranean Sea as part of permanently increased presence in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to move to east as a reaction to Saturday’s attacks in Israel.

The Israelis will deal with Gaza.

The repositioning, crucial for our Israeli ally and our own regional interests, holds at deadly risk other actors in the region that may consider joining in the battle.

The officers and sailors in that battle group are mostly Virginians. Continue reading →

97 Comments

Posted in Defense, Democracy and Western Civilization

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Stop All Aid to Palestinians and Other Terrorists. Every Bit of It

Posted on October 9, 2023 by | 55 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

On Saturday morning Hamas terrorists unleashed Hell on innocent Israelis. As Israel’s ambassador to the US pointed out, given the population of Israel 600 dead Israelis is the equivalent of 20,000 dead Americans.

This was Israel’s 9-11. Their Pearl Harbor. Some say it was the most deadly day in history for the Jewish state.

And all I can say today, after this weekend of horror in Israel, is thank God for Elon Musk.

Had Musk not spent a chunk of his personal fortune on Twitter, many of us would not have seen the horror Hamas inflicted on innocent Israelis. No way Jack Dorsey’s crowd of left-wingers would have allowed citizen journalists to tell the real story, the unfiltered truth, about the unimaginably grotesque attacks throughout Israel.

We wouldn’t have seen the graphic videos of these fanatical men driving around in a Jeep with the dead body of a young woman in the back like a slaughtered animal, stopping to allow cheering bystanders to spit on her mutilated corpse.

We wouldn’t have seen the bloodied woman – clearly a rape victim – being dragged by her hair into the street by men screaming about Allah and then shoving her into a car overloaded with men who were grabbing for her. God rest her soul. Chances she survived the next few hours are slim.

We wouldn’t have seen the bawling children being shielded by their parents as they were savagely herded into cars and taken as hostages.

We wouldn’t have seen the stacks of bodies.

Nope.

All we’d have is sanitized references to “Hamas militants” – as if this is a regular army – and criticism of “Israel’s right-wing intelligence” for failing to thwart the unprovoked attack on civilians. Oh and lots of whataboutism about how hard life is in Gaza for Palestinians and that Israel is to blame. Continue reading →

55 Comments

Posted in Defense, Ethics, Media, Politics, Resilience, Transparency

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Navy Ditches Drag Queen Recruiting Videos

Posted on September 21, 2023 by | 55 comments

Norfolk naval base

by Kerry Dougherty

Whoa. Stop the presses. Big news out of Washington.

Navy brass has confirmed that it’s scrapped its ingenuous recruiting tool. You know, the one we wrote about last spring: drag queens.

Yep, Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, a non-binary sailor who likes to dress up like a woman and prance around on stage as drag queen Harpy Daniels, will no longer be featured in Navy recruiting videos.

We wrote about this sailor last May.

This is a stunning about-face. Who could have predicted that fishnet stockings and lipstick wouldn’t be an irresistible lure to bring in the sort of sailors we need in the modern American Navy? Who knew that drag queens would rather be reading to pre-schoolers than twerking to serve their country? Continue reading →

55 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Defense

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The Enduring Value of Arlington’s Endangered Monument to Reconciliation

Posted on August 29, 2023 by | 51 comments

The Confederate Memorial in Arlington.
(Arlington National Cemetery; photo by Rachel Larue)

by Donald Smith

Jim Webb, former U.S. Senator from Virginia, former Navy Secretary, and certified badass (Navy Cross, Silver Star and two Purple Hearts from his service as a Marine officer in Vietnam) grabbed quite a bit of attention last week.  On August 18 he called for the Confederate Memorial at Arlington Cemetery to be spared.  You can read his commentary here, if you have a Wall Street Journal subscription (or have some free articles left.)  Here’s a link to a no-paywall article on Webb’s piece.  Here’s a link to the most prominent criticism I’ve seen of Webb’s piece, from Civil War historian Kevin Levin. 

Webb’s commentary points out an important and, until now, mostly ignored repercussion of Congress’ blanket approval of the Naming Commission’s recommendations:  it diminishes our nation’s soft power.  That makes it harder for our military and diplomats to achieve our nation’s goals overseas without having to resort to coercion or violence.  Continue reading →

51 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Defense, Democracy and Western Civilization, Leadership, Politics, Virginia history, Virginians at War

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Every Day is Memorial Day in Normandy

Posted on May 26, 2023 by | 11 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

My most memorable Memorial Day did not take place on Memorial Day at all, but a few weeks earlier. In May of 1982.

But then again, every day is Memorial Day when you stand on those beaches at Normandy. It was a glorious spring morning on the coast of France. The sky was the deepest shade of blue. A gentle wind made the American flags flutter. And I was there with 52 Irish boys. Bad boys.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Forty-one years ago, I lived in Dublin, where I attempted to eke out a living as a freelance writer in the dingy offices of the now-defunct Irish Press. While back home, American newsrooms were swapping their IBM Selectrics for computers, this one was stuck in another era. Manual typewriters created a chattering cacophony, cigarette smoke turned the air blue, greasy chip wrappers littered the floors. Everyone was known by their last name.

Except me. I was The Yank.

I was toiling away on some forgettable story, dutifully reminding myself to spell gray as “grey” and harbor as “harbour,” when I overheard two of my editors talking.

“Ask the Yank,” Muldowney said. “She’ll go anywhere.”

“Hey, Yank,” O’Kane shouted. “How’d you like to go to France for the weekend?”

“Yes, please,” I begged.

I’d never been to France. I was weary of the endless Irish gloom. The unexpected offer of a weekend in sunny France was so seductive I never asked if there was a catch.

There was, of course. Continue reading →

11 Comments

Posted in Defense, Democracy and Western Civilization

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Why They Fought — and Deserve to be Remembered

Posted on April 19, 2023 by | 46 comments

Units descended from both Confederate and Union forces are now part of the Kentucky Army National Guard’s 138th Field Artillery Brigade. These campaign streamers, from the brigade’s colors, commemorate that service. Streamers with a gray top commemorate Confederate service, blue tops honor Union service.

by Donald Smith 

Soldiers go to war for many reasons — home, country, duty, glory, personal adventure. But, in the midst of battle, soldiers fight for their comrades — “the man to the left of me, the man to the right of me,” as the saying goes. Good soldiers are driven by an intense desire to not let their comrades down. That drive is one of the main reasons why Americans have always honored combat soldiers. Now, the United States Congress has arguably left out one segment of America’s past fighting force — Confederate soldiers — and indicated that those men don’t deserve the same level of respect from today’s military. Continue reading →

46 Comments

Posted in Defense, Governance

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Strategic Insanity Off the Coast of Virginia

Posted on April 18, 2023 by | 36 comments

by James C. Sherlock

As I warned in three columns in late December, the Pentagon has now objected to Department of the Interior plans to develop offshore wind farms along the central U.S. coast.

It has warned that almost all of the areas planned for development of the huge turbines conflict with current military operations.

That is the public pronouncement.

DOD also knows that, because the wind farms are designed to provide a high percentage of the electric power on the East Coast grid, it will be charged to defend them against attack.

And it knows that defending those sitting ducks clustered together in fixed positions in international waters against modern weapons is not just a problem, but as a practical matter impossible.

But DOD apparently won’t admit that publicly. Yet. It is not clear that the Department of Homeland Security, with oversight of the Coast Guard, has even thought about it.

But if the turbines are built, DOD and the Coast Guard will be tasked to try to protect them. Their defense can’t even be attempted without a cost to the defense budget that will dwarf both in acquisition and ongoing operating costs the cost of building and operating the fields themselves.

The Navy and Coast Guard will need far more ships and the Navy more submarines, and the personnel to operate them, than they currently have.

The additional resources will need to be used for defense of the wind farms, not to meet our under-resourced national defense obligations overseas.

And the attempt will still fail against modern weapons. Continue reading →

36 Comments

Posted in Central planning, Defense, Energy, Infrastructure, National Security, Threat Assessment

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Naming Commission is Stripping History

Posted on January 25, 2023 by | 46 comments

by Donald Smith

The week of January 16, 2023, was a big one for Virginia heritage issues in the Richmond area. Connor Williams, the chief historian for the Congressional Naming Commission (CNC) came to the American Civil War Museum to explain and defend the commission’s sweeping recommendations toward, and its disparagement of, Confederate memories on Department of Defense installations.

That week also saw the announcement that the Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Richmond would be renamed as part of a campaign to strip “racist history from military facilities,” according to a story in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

In the article, Sen. Mark Warner (D), a former governor of Virginia, praised the renaming. “Naming decisions should honor the patriotism of our veterans,” he said.

So, by highlighting that particular part of Warner’s statement, the Stars and Stripes apparently thinks that, in Mark Warner’s eyes, Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire and the Virginia soldiers he treated during the Civil War were neither patriots nor veterans.

It is time for the General Assembly to act. The GA needs to convene a hearing to explore the CNC’s recommendations and let the CNC justify them. Continue reading →

46 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Defense, Government Oversight, Leadership, Virginia history, Virginians at War

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The Naming Commission’s Diktats

Posted on January 19, 2023 by | 30 comments

by Donald Smith

The Congressional Naming Commission (CNC) was authorized as part of the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act. Its eight commissioners included two retired Army generals, a retired Navy admiral and a retired Marine Corps general. It also had academics with imposing credentials. One commissioner is a professor emeritus at United States Military Academy West Point and another is a senior official at the American Enterprise Institute. The commission’s chief historian, Connor Williams, took a leave of absence from his faculty position at Yale to serve on the CNC. The CNC even had an elected federal official — Austin Scott, a Republican congressman from Georgia.

The CNC recommended — among many, many other things — that all active U.S. Army bases named for Confederate generals be renamed. And, in the Preface to Part 1 of its report, it appears to pick a fight.

This is how the CNC report’s Preface characterizes monuments erected to Confederates and the Confederacy in the years following the Civil War:

Most importantly, during the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century, the South and much of the nation came to live under a mistaken understanding of the Civil War known as the “Lost Cause.” As part of the “Lost Cause,” across the nation, champions of that memory built monuments to Confederate leaders and to the Confederacy, including on many Department of Defense assets. In every instance and every aspect, these names and memorials have far more to do with the culture under which they were named than they have with any historical acts actually committed by their namesakes. (Preface, page 3).

The obvious implication of this statement goes well beyond changing some base names. The commissioners presume to pass judgment on (a) what these names and memorials meant to everyone and (b) what the “real” motivations for those statues were. Think about that. Continue reading →

30 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Defense, Leadership, Political Influence, Uncategorized, Virginia history

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Offshore Wind Turbines in International Waters Raise Big Defense Issues

Posted on December 31, 2022 by | 36 comments

By James C. Sherlock

Courtesy U.S. Navy

The Department of the Interior (DOI) is unlikely to be expert in the diplomatic issues and defense vulnerabilities inherent in building wind turbine farms in international waters.

The DOI is, however, greatly concerned with “viewscape” – whether the turbine blades can be seen from shore.  By the wealthy who live there and those who visit.

DOI’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which will issue or deny in March a construction permit to Dominion Energy to build its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project in international waters, may understand the fact that the United States is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

They may or may not be aware that the U.S. has done more to enforce UNCLOS than any other nation on earth.

They may or may not fully understand that UNCLOS will severely constrain U.S. rights surrounding wind turbine projects in international waters in ways that will bedevil us constantly, drive up national defense costs and threaten the long-term viability of the projects.

If they do understand the implications, they may consider that the business of the Departments of Defense and State.

So do I.  Those two departments have dropped the ball.

DOI may not understand that all of those issues are greatly mitigated if the turbine farms are within 12 miles from the coast.  But DoD and State should.

And Congress should.

The House Armed Services Committee should hold hearings before the CVOW permit is approved.

Continue reading →

36 Comments

Posted in Defense, Energy

Dominion’s Planned Offshore Wind Farm Need Not – and Must Not – Be Built Where Planned

Posted on December 26, 2022 by | 115 comments

by James C. Sherlock

I am referring in the title, of course, to Dominion Power’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project to be located in the hatched area below.

It is planned for one of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s (DI) Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) offshore wind farm lease areas. Lease areas that have been rendered obsolete by operational modern floating turbine technology.

The area for which CVOW construction is proposed is overlaid below on an operational graphic of Atlantic international maritime vessel density. Red indicates highest density.

There are only a half dozen expanses of water that reach that international vessel density on the entire U.S. Atlantic coast. They are, of course, the approaches to the East Coast’s major ports.

See the Atlantic Coast Port Access Route Study Final Report Appendix III Fig. 18 below for an operational rendering of international shipping flow at the location proposed for CVOW.

 

See the coastal shipping traffic chart below.

The nearest point is 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach and the furthest 42 miles offshore. The lease area occupies 112,800 acres. One seventh the size of Rhode Island.

Undersea noise propagation characteristics will not be known unless and until it is built.

CVOW, if built, will threaten:

  • the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay;
  • the point at which international maritime traffic funnels to and from the ports of Norfolk and Baltimore;
  • the point at which coastal maritime traffic on the east coast is most dense; and
  • the point at which Navy warships and logistics vessels enter and depart the world’s largest naval base.

You might reasonably ask “Of the entire Atlantic Coast, why there?” Or you might put it somewhat less gently. Net of all the risks and rewards, there is no reasonable answer to that question. Never was.

But the facts have also changed. Continue reading →

115 Comments

Posted in Defense, Energy

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