Veterans Day 2022: The torch of freedom

Last year, I posted for the second time a recurring Veterans Day article, long a tradition at TOC and Liberty Unyielding 1.0.  In 2022, it appears for the third time.

In the preface for last year (2021), I felt that much had changed since the current article first appeared in 2020.  (An earlier article was published annually from 2009 to 2018.)

Oddly, though, in 2022 my sense is that the sentiments of 2020 are being reaffirmed.  The problem of threats to freedom continues:  more intensely, and in the same patterns.

The creed of American veterans, the yeoman warriors who have taken up arms for our nation’s purposes, has not changed,

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TOC Ready Room 24 Feb 2022: Putin makes his move

This will be rough and ready, fast and furious, and who knows what else.  Readers will be aware that Putin has just invaded Ukraine.  I include a few interesting tweets below, but for me the significant point is that we can now judge better what Putin’s intentions are.

We’ve always been able to assess with certainty that he wants to subjugate Ukraine.  The question was really what the timeline would be, and how much he was willing to breach the shaky semblance of order we still had left.

I wasn’t unprepared to see him move in something of a blitzkrieg style, but he’s being more emphatic and even “in your face” than I expected.  He’s apparently ready for a full, no-holds-barred breach, and will be counting on no residual conditions of stability to simplify his campaign.

Obama, ‘how wars end in the 21st century,’ and dangerous civilizational complacency

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

Act of Valor; or, A War Without a Narrative…

… but with a Chechen-Jewish Drug Smuggler Named Christo

Let me state up front that I don’t think the filmmakers meant anything by the “Christo” character.  I do think they stumbled haplessly on a hornet’s nest of anti-Semitic tropes – and thereby hangs a tale that matters.

Act of Valor is a moving, gripping film, all the more so for being enacted by real Navy SEALs.  (Full disclosure: this reviewer is a 20-year Navy veteran, and while definitely not a SEAL was privileged to work with some.)  The one major flaw I found with the production, per se, was the rather annoying sound track, which could have dispensed with the hackneyed crescendos at suspenseful moments.  What the SEALs do needs no audience-cues or embellishment.

And they do incredible things.  The movie conveys well