Category Archives: Defense and National Security

The Real and Present Threat of Flooding in Virginia Requires Coordinated Action

Posted on February 20, 2022 by | 40 comments

2021 FEMA flood map Hampton Roads

by James C. Sherlock

An editorial in The Virginian-Pilot this morning is titled, “A worrisome, watery future,” and is built around an update on flooding from NOAA.

It is a grave situation.

NOAA projects one foot of combined sea level rise and subsidence here in Hampton Roads by 2050. The adjacent map has not been updated to the new assessment. One more foot of water will turn most of the map orange and red – submerged and very submerged.

For larger scale perspective, see here.  For a thumbnail of a USACE storm risk management study of the City of Norfolk see here.

The Pilot editorial writer, approaching his conclusion, wanted to say something about green initiatives. So he did. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and such.

You can be for or against RGGI, but you cannot reasonably contend that it will stop flooding in Hampton Roads. The editorial is an example of green absolutism. That is one of the philosophies that has blocked state action on multi-jurisdictional flooding.

But it isn’t the only one. Continue reading →

40 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Defense and National Security, Flooding

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The President Had Somewhere Important to Be

Posted on August 31, 2021 by | 72 comments

Credit: Getty Images

by James C. Sherlock

The caption of the photo:

“US President Joe Biden looks down alongside First Lady Jill Biden as they attend the dignified transfer of the remains of a fallen service member at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, August, 29, 2021, one of the 13 members of the US military killed in Afghanistan last week.”

I watched.  I am sure I had lots of company.

  • Virginia Veterans — nearly 730,215 — one out of 10 adults.
  • Virginia active duty (89,303) and reserve military (25,977) = 115,280
  • Virginia Army National Guard 7,500 soldiers and 46 armories
  • Virginia Air National Guard 192nd Fighter Wing at Langley AFB Hampton – approximately 200.

In an unblinking story for The Washington Post, Matt Viser exposed a failure of leadership and understanding of the moment that was a direct insult to all Americans.

The President was there to representing us all. He shamed us. Continue reading →

72 Comments

Posted in Defense and National Security, Governance, Virginia history

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Warner Promises Tough Questions on Afghanistan Collapse

Posted on August 19, 2021 by | 66 comments

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Fiasco. The hasty and chaotic withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan has shocked politicians from both sides of the aisle.  Virginia’s own Senator Mark Warner, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, will work with other committees to investigate how the US was caught off guard by the Taliban’s quick victory. The Hill quotes Warner as saying, “As the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I hope to work with the other committees of jurisdiction to ask tough but necessary questions about why we weren’t better prepared for a worst-case scenario involving such a swift and total collapse of the Afghan government and security forces.”  Warner correctly adds, “We owe those answers to the American people and to all those who served and sacrificed so much.”

Warner described the images from Afghanistan as “devastating.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Defense and National Security

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Virginia Beach and Afghanistan

Posted on August 14, 2021 by | 84 comments

by James C. Sherlock

It was never a Navy war.

But in this Navy town, it was brought literally home to us again and again. We are home to nearly half of the Navy SEALs, including SEAL Team 6.

Something like 4,000 to 5,000 total plus their families.

SEALs are America’s special operations forces specially trained for undersea, coastal, river and swamp operations. They train on our beaches, in our swamps, bays and ocean. Some of us can hear their live gunfire at night.

Folks in the Navy flight paths hear big transports take off at 4:00 in the morning, guess that’s them going God knows where, wish them well, and try to go back to sleep.

About 15 years ago, I went through physical rehab in a civilian facility here with one of them, a Chief Petty Officer who you would not have recognized as a sailor. He and I were there for different types of injuries.

I was retired and rehabbing a knee operated on for arthritis. He was rehabbing muscle damage from a bullet wound. Affected his trigger finger. Continue reading →

84 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Defense and National Security, Virginia history

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WaPo Nabs Polk Award, Is Pulitzer Next?

Posted on February 25, 2021 by | 88 comments

Ian Shapira

By Peter Galuszka

How ironical.

Our esteemed Jim Bacon has been on a tear in recent months writing about media coverage of the problem of systemic racism at the Virginia Military Institute.

Of special interest to Jim is the reporting of Ian Shapira, a Washington Post reporter who has been digging into the VMI. After his stories were published, the superintendent of VMI retired and an inquiry was launched.

Jim doesn’t like what the Post and Shapira have done. Some of Jim’s headlines go right to the jugular including “VMI Update: The WaPo Makes Another Sleazy Insinuation” and  “WaPo Ratchets Up Assault on VMI.”

At one point, Jim made this observation: “Polish up that Pulitzer. It looks like The Washington Post is vying again for the big prize in journalism”

Well, guess what happened? Shapira and the Post have won a George Polk award for their VMI coverage. The citation reads thusly: Continue reading →

88 Comments

Posted in Blogs and Blog Administration, Courts and law, Culture wars, Defense and National Security, Education (higher ed), Ethics, Race and Race Relations

The Mythology of Robert E. Lee

Posted on February 9, 2021 by | 61 comments

By Peter Galuszka

With excellent timing, the former head of the history department at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point has come out with a book about the mythology of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and much of the White “Southern” culture.

Retired U.S. Army Gen. Ty Seidule, a former paratrooper, has deep Virginia roots and his analysis goes right to the heart of the problems plaguing Virginia, Civil War memorabilia, Richmond, Charlottesville, the Virginia Military Institute and more.

He grew up in Alexandria and had ties to the Episcopal prep school where he expanded his desire to be a “Southern” gentleman while worshipping the likes of Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.

Here’s a link to my review of his book in Richmond’s Style Weekly. The Post also reviewed the book this past Sunday.

61 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Courts and law, Culture wars, Defense and National Security, Federal issues, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Race and Race Relations

Mark Zuckerberg, Call Your Lawyer

Posted on January 11, 2021 by | 60 comments

by James C. Sherlock

“You don’t need a Weatherman To know which way the wind blows.” — Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues.

Consider this:

“Facebook was hit with twin lawsuits by the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from dozens of states on Wednesday, in one of the most serious challenges ever to the Silicon Valley giant. The cases could potentially result in Facebook being broken up.

Here’s what you need to know.

The FTC and the states accuse Facebook of abusing its dominance in the digital marketplace and engaging in anti-competitive behavior.

“Facebook’s actions to entrench and maintain its monopoly deny consumers the benefits of competition,” Ian Conner, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a statement. “Our aim is to roll back Facebook’s anticompetitive conduct and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can thrive.”

And that story was dated Dec. 11, 2020. 

Maybe last week was not the best time for Facebook to kick that hornets’ nest with another potential antitrust violation. Continue reading →

60 Comments

Posted in Antitrust, Business and Economy, Courts and law, Culture wars, Defense and National Security, Media, Science & Technology

Hard Power Matters – America’s Universities Must Protect It

Posted on December 17, 2020 by | 23 comments

by James C. Sherlock

This is a continuation of the discussion raised by my column on the folly of educating Chinese and Iranian visa holders in Virginia universities and colleges. Some in that discussion thought soft power would overcome what America loses in hard power.

Soft power is both crucially important and utterly insufficient to guarantee the future freedom and prosperity of the West and its allies around the world.

We need credible military capabilities — hard power — as well.

Hampton Roads is the largest concentration of military power in the United States, perhaps the world. The Pentagon is in Arlington. Northern Virginia is awash in government and contractor defense personnel. But this issue directly affects all of America. And Europe. And South America and Africa, which are seeing overt Chinese attempts to influence events on both continents. And our allies in the Pacific.

China is without question the biggest long term military threat to the United States and its allies. It combines technology, economic power, an enormous and talented population and ruthless leaders. Continue reading →

23 Comments

Posted in Defense and National Security, Education (higher ed)

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Why Are We Educating Citizens of Hostile Nations in Advanced Math, Science and Engineering?

Posted on December 16, 2020 by | 37 comments

by James C. Sherlock Updated Dec 16 at 1:55 PM

The title poses a reasonable question.

China and Iran are two of America’s greatest national security threats.

Yet we continue to educate their citizens in the most security-sensitive programs of instruction at the highest levels of American higher education.

Chinese and Iranian students are nearly exclusively enrolled in fields that are needed for the use and development of military and espionage technology, including both national security and business espionage, to be employed against the United States and our allies.

We didn’t educate Soviet scientists during the last cold war. What is different this time?

On Dec. 9, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged universities in the United States to scrutinize China’s assistance and students, warning that Beijing was set on stealing innovation.

I checked available National Science Foundation (NSF) data to try to gauge the impact of America’s advanced graduate education of Chinese and Iranian nationals.

I use here the awarding of doctoral degrees, especially in math, science and engineering, as the measure of the threat. Continue reading →

37 Comments

Posted in Defense and National Security, Education (K-12)

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WTJU Podcast on State’s Economy

Posted on December 16, 2020 by | 6 comments

By Peter Galuszka

This may be familiar turf for some readers, but here is a podcast I worked on with WTJU, the radio station of the University of Virginia. It gives a larger overview of the changes that data centers are making in the state’s economy and what that might mean in the future.

This elaborates on a Style Weekly story I posted here a few weeks ago.

Early this year, WTJU started preparing a series of podcasts under the “Bold Dominion” banner that explores how politics, economics and culture are changing in the Old Dominion. I think they have had 25 episodes up until now and I have participated in some of them. I also do a weekly Q&A on state politics.

Here’s the most recent podcast:

https://bolddominion.org/episodes/what-does-a-burgeoning-tech-industry-mean-for-virginia

6 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Defense and National Security, Economic development, Energy

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Stewart Gets Last-Minute Gift From Trump

Posted on November 20, 2020 by | 30 comments

Corey Stewart

Peter Galuszka

Corey A. Stewart, a conservative firebrand from Prince William County, is getting a last-minute going-away present from President Donald Trump.

As Trump’s administration comes to an end, Trump has created a position on trade at the U.S. Commerce Department that is just for him. In 2016, Stewart headed Trump’s Virginia election campaign before being fired. Stewart said that he was Trump before Trump was Trump.

Stewart is an international trade lawyer and is expected to strong arm Trump’s tough and confusing trade policies.

A special target is China, which Trump has castigated, with some justification, for cheating on business deals, fiddling with its currency exchange rates, growing its armed forces and trampling on human rights.

Stewart will toughen enforcement of Trump’s hostile trade relations, according to news reports.

Some trade experts wonder what the Stewart story is all about. According to Reuters, William Reinsch, a former Commerce undersecretary, said he viewed hiring as “peculiar” since he is filling a position that does not exist. Continue reading →

30 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Culture wars, Defense and National Security, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Federal issues, Government Finance, Immigration, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Regulations and Government Oversight

The “Rat Pack” Makes the Point

Posted on October 28, 2020 by | 24 comments

By Peter Galuszka

On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman took the historically enormous step of integrating the U.S. Armed Forces. The Virginia Military Institute, which prides itself on its warrior panache, didn’t get around to that until 1968 and even today there are serious questions about racism at the state-supported school.

The past few days have seen story after story about charges of widespread racism at the school that led to Gov. Ralph Northam, a VMI graduate, ordering an investigation. The school’s superintendent, an 80-year-old retired four-star Army general has resigned.

The Washington Post got big play for its investigative report about the atmosphere in Lexington, where the school is located. Actually, the Roanoke Times first had a story this summer that Black alumni were concerned that racism was getting out of hand. This morning, the Post has a story about anonymous posts that VMI students apparently made on Jodel, a Website.

If anything, the posts prove the media’s point. Black athletes are referred to insultingly as “permits” because they are excused from normal military exercise because they work out in sports. They are said to be at VMI because they are not good enough at sports to get into a better college. Continue reading →

24 Comments

Posted in Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Defense and National Security, Education (higher ed)

The Return of the “Cooch”

Posted on July 18, 2020 by | 81 comments

By Peter Galuszka

Early this past Wednesday morning, Mark Pettibone and Connor O’Shead were walking on their way home after a peaceful protest in Portland, Ore.

Suddenly an unmarked van pulled in front of them. Men wearing green uniforms, tactical gear and generic signs reading “POLICE” hustled them into the vehicle. They were not told why they were being detained. After 90 minutes, the badly shaken men were released without being charged.

The episode might sound like the activities of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his “little green men” who have shown up in places like Crimea and Eastern Ukraine to intimidate and detain people.

But this was Portland, a progressive city that has seen protests for weeks. President Donald Trump has urged federal authorities to move in on cities to restore his sense of order even though city officials in Portland do not want his help and are investigating what is going on.

And, guess who is playing a role in what could be a growing national trend of federal law enforcement performing “snatch and grabs” of innocent protestors?

That would be Kenneth Cuccinelli, the former hard right, state attorney general and failed gubernatorial candidate. He is now acting deputy secretary of the Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. Continue reading →

81 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Corruption and Scandals, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Defense and National Security, Immigration, Media, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations

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Spanberger Vs. Trump

Posted on July 1, 2020 by | 71 comments

Rep. Abigail Spanberger

By Peter Galuszka

U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7th District, continues to draw international attention as a “New Look” Democrat from Virginia who is savvy about the intelligence community and global affairs.

The former CIA case officer was featured on CNN criticizing the administration of Donald Trump for ignoring reports that Russian military intelligence had paid bounties to the Taliban in Afghanistan to kill U.S. troops and members of the pro-U.S. coalition there.

Her comments were picked up by the British newspaper, the Guardian. This may be the first time that a woman Member of Congress has gotten so much exposure beyond borders of the Old Dominion.

Neither Dave Brat nor Eric Cantor, her Republican predecessors in the 7th district that includes parts of the once reliably Red Richmond suburbs of Chesterfield and Henrico, has gotten such exposure. The only other woman who has come close is U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria, a Democrat and former Navy officer who represents the 2nd District that includes Virginia Beach, another area that was once reliably Red. Continue reading →

71 Comments

Posted in Corruption and Scandals, Defense and National Security, Federal issues, Media, Money in politics, Regulations and Government Oversight

The Time Has Come to Rename the Bases

Posted on June 13, 2020 by | 32 comments

A.P. Hill

By Peter Galuszka

Momentum is growing to rename three Virginia military bases which bear the monikers of Confederate generals. It is part of a movement to reassess Confederate symbols within the military nationwide.

The three bases are Ft. A.P. Hill, named for Confederate Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill Jr.; Ft. Pickett, named for Gen. George Pickett; and Ft. Lee, named for Gen. Robert E. Lee.

This comes in the middle of a controversy between military leaders and President Donald Trump, who says he won’t even consider renaming bases.

There has been a growing rift between Trump and numerous military leaders, notably James Mattis, a decorated Marine general and Trump’s former secretary of defense, about accusations that Trump has tried to politicize U.S. armed forces.

Part of the tension involves Trump’s controversial plan to use federal units, such as the Army’s famed 82nd Airborne Division, to crack down on demonstrators after the slaying by Minneapolis police of George Floyd, an unarmed and handcuffed African-American accused of passing a phony $20 bill. Continue reading →

32 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Defense and National Security, Federal issues, Race and Race Relations