Comment on Facebook, On Turtles and Hoplites

The Romans did the Turtle. It is a technique that shows their professional training. The Greeks used the Phalanx. The key facts to remember for the phalanx are first that everyone in it was a middle class farmer with enough money to buy their own armor and technically an amateur, although in Sparta the men left the management of the farm to their wives while the men lived in barracks and trained. The really rich, the descendants of the old aristocracy, were not in the phalanx, except as senior officers, but in the cavalry.

The second important fact is that the Greek citizen soldiers were called hoplites after their shield. The shield was held by a strap and hand grip onto the left arm. That allowed the right hand to wield a spear or short sword for close in work. The shield protected the left side of the body of the man holding it and it also covered the right side of the body of the man standing to the left of the man holding the shield. That meant that the man at the far right end of a line of warriors had no one standing to their right and therefor their right side was unprotected. That is why standing to the right is the position of greatest danger and is the position of Honor.

During a battle hundreds or even thousands of hoplites would line up with the bravest and most honored warriors in the front line and to the right and then more lines behind them. The two armies would advance and then attempt to stab with their spears over the shields or beat on their opponents shield with their sword until by force the enemy was pushed back. A battle resembled a rugby scrum with weapons. The noise of swords beating on shields must have been deafening. Once an opening was made because of the lack of protection for a hoplite on his right side the tendency was for the soldiers fall back and turn to protect themselves. So any opening could turn into a route.

It would be impossible to run to safety while holding the heavy shield. Dropping the shield was a sign of dishonor. In Sparta a mother would tell her son who was going off to war that he should come back with his shield or on it, meaning dead. Also in Sparta if a soldier was a coward the young women, who were famous for their greater freedom than other Greek women, would get up at the next village festival and dance and sing a song about the coward. Most young men would rather face death than face having the young women sing that song about them.

In pre-Classical times or the Heroic Age rule was by the kings or their children who engaged in single combat. In the Iliad Achilles and Hector fight and the other soldiers form a circle to watch. Once Hector is dead the other Greeks run up to stab at the corpse and pose with it. No one had a cell phone camera though. The kings could afford to ride into battle on a chariot drawn by small horses, but they usually dismounted to fight.

Later the other aristocrats who also could afford horses gained more power. They had the right to speak in council and later their votes could restrain the power of the kings. The kingship became a religious and symbolic office in aristocratic governments. Chariots fell out of fashion and horses were bred to be large enough to ride into battle. There was no stirrup though so equestrian combat did not resemble that of Medieval Europe. When the hoplite and phalanx formation was adopted during the Greek Dark Ages, after the Dorian invasion the middle class farmers gained political power.

In Athens wealth became dependent on seaborne trade and the navy. Athens shifted from having slaves pull the oars on its ships to hiring free but poor Athenians who needed a job to man the fleet. That proved to give them a decisive advantage, making the Athenian navy as unbeatable on water as the Spartan army was unbeatable on land. The Athenians who could not afford the hoplite armor but who could risk their lives pulling an oar then gained the right to vote in the Assembly, making Athens a Naval Democracy.

h/t Regan Howard

Comment on Instapundit: "Japan is loading up on F-35s for an aircraft carrier meant to check China."

Sure it's a "Helicopter Destroyer." If you fly a helicopter near it then the F-35 can shoot it down. For operations in the seas within 3,000 nm of Japan, which is to say from the home waters to Singapore, Anchorage Alaska, or Honolulu Hawaii, two smaller carriers operating with support from silent non-nuclear submarines and ground based air can work. A third carrier will be needed so that two are always available with normal maintenance and training cycles. The number of combat sorties that two decks together can generate is significantly more than twice what one deck alone can perform. It is actually more cost effective to operate more carriers. Recently Japan has followed China in showing a presence in the Indian Ocean. In the event of combat with China though I would think that these assets would be kept closer to home. The Japanese do not have the large carriers and submarines with nuclear propulsion that give the endurance and range for combat on a global scale. If Japan can conduct ASUW and ASW operations in the South China Sea, support USN operations, and defend her own territory then that is enough. If needed they can be part of a response to aggression against the Republic of Korea and potentially threaten a blockade of China's ports. Within the range that I gave, roughly 3,000 nautical miles or 8 days travel at a standard bell of 15 knots, the emerging Japanese forces can serve well.

Standards of Conduct

When I was at OCS there was training that everyone in the military had to get. For example there was the mandated vehicle safety training. That consisted of the 30 of us in Mike Company watching the Ohio State Highway Patrol Safety films from the 1950s and '60s showing auto wrecks with dead mangled teenagers while Boatswain's Mate Master Chief Gross, a fine man who got my silver dollar when he gave me my first salute, laughed and the girls ran out of the room to get sick.

In addition there were two training lectures that all members of the Armed Services receive. The first was Code of Conduct on your responsibilities if you become a Prisoner of War. That was delivered by Captain Dick Stratton, who had been a guest in the Hanoi Hilton. He credited his survival to the Navy sending him to Stanford where he read Aristotle and learned that Civilization is what you carry inside you. When a savage is beating on you and you have nothing else you still have what is inside you. I still remember when he said "That whore Jane Fonda." Read the wiki article on him. He was a great gentleman.

The other required lecture was Standards of Conduct, regarding improper personal relations, abuse of authority, and what used to be called fraternization. In other words, sex in the workplace and our role as officers. For that training we were visited in our classroom by a Chief Warrant Officer who had been in the Navy over 40 years. He had been at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. In the Navy unlike the Army a Chief Warrant Officer is close to God. They can talk directly to the Commanding Officer any time they need to, while Chief Petty Officers normally bring problems to the Executive Officer. Any junior officer who tries to pull rank on a CWO is headed for trouble. By the way the Air Force does not have warrants. The AF are barely military. For the training we all stood there while the old CWO came in and ran an eye over us. This is what he said.

"We had a saying on the farm in Arkansas. You don't work the breeding stock and you don't breed the working stock. Any questions?" We all nodded and said, "No questions wise old Chief Warrant Officer." He then smiled and said, "Good. Then you all go out there and have fun."

He was right. Nothing more needs to be said.

What Is Mueller Up To?

Fox News: "Giuliani: Mueller told Trump team he won't indict president"

The intent by Mueller appears to be under the cover of a Special Prosecutor investigation of Russian Collusion with associates of President Trump during the 2016 Campaign, which is now an exposed fraud, to build a case for Obstruction of Justice and other charges that can then be used by the Democrats to push for Impeachment after the midterm elections.

There is no legal means for the federal Executive to bring charges against a sitting President. The Constitution clearly lays out that if a President is suspected of high crimes such as treason or bribery, the word misdemeanor that followed probably meant to apply more to what we now consider felonies, then he should be Impeached and if he is convicted and removed from office then he could be charged and brought to trial through the normal judicial process. There is no provision to first bring criminal charges through the Executive and Judicial branches and then Impeach.

The Congress has the power and resources to conduct its own investigations prior to deciding whether to Impeach. They can also receive information from prosecutors, or anyone else, when in the course of normal business information about impeachable misconduct is exposed. In this case that is not what is happening. Congress did not form its own Impeachment level investigation under the Judiciary Committee. That was partly because with the Republicans controlling both the Executive and the Legislative branches the Democrats could not control an investigation in Congress. Unlike with Watergate they could not present a spectacle to the public. Congressional committee reports have already declared that there is no grounds to consider Collusion charges against the President and that the Mueller investigation should be wound down. The minority Democrats have demanded an open ended fishing prosecution that defies over 350 years of constitutional and legal doctrine. They had to rely on an outside Special Prosecutor.

That is why they concocted the entire fantastic and convoluted plot to have Rosenstein first maneuver Sessions into recusing himself, and then have Rosenstein appoint Mueller as a Special Prosecutor for what they already knew was a fraudulent investigation, since both Rosenstein and Mueller should have known that the FISA warrant was bogus, and then have Rosenstein first advise the President to fire Comey, and then use that to pressure the Congress into demanding that the President not fire Rosenstein and Mueller. That in effect constituted a coup d'etat with an unelected and unaccountable power controlling what are Star Chamber proceedings. Anything produced by Mueller is the fruit of a poisoned tree.

There is a question as to how to investigate misconduct by a President when his partisans control Congress. Under the federalist conception of the Union the Senate does not Impeach it only conducts the subsequent trial but if the Senators were more independent, as they were before the adoption of the XVIIth Amendment, then they and the states could provide a check against a criminal and oppressive Executive supported by the House. Similarly if a criminal in the Executive was supported by a plurality of rural or small states against the interests of the majority of the population then the House could serve as a check. It is a defect of the modern system that one faction can control so many levers of power. In addition to repealing the XVIIth Amendment other means of reducing the influence of national parties and distributing power back to the states can be considered.