Achy Breaky Family

If today is "...are we doing our job as men?" day at CDRSalamander - let's go from husbands & co-workers to a father's responsibility.

It was almost three years ago when I first posted about the train-wreck that I saw coming WRT Miley Cyrus. You can review the archive here.

Regardless of what you may think of her father's decisions - this must break your heart. As a father of young women - it does mine.

Blaming publicists and Miley's handlers, Billy Ray gives an anguished interview in GQ's March issue, where he adds he wishes "Hannah Montana" never happened.

"I hate to say it, but yes, I do. I'd take it back in a second," said Billy Ray, who is divorcing Miley's mother, Tish.

Reflecting on Miley's controversial moments -- including seductive photos on the Internet, pole-dancing at the Teen Choice Awards, and posing for Vanity Fair draped in a sheet -- Cyrus says he should have been more strict, and accuses her handlers for going too far to promote her, and then using him as the fall guy.
...
"I'm scared for her. She's got a lot of people around her that's putting her in a great deal of danger. I want to get her sheltered from the storm."

Talking about Miley's 18th birthday party at LA bar Trousdale, he says, "You know why I didn't go? Because they were having it in a bar. It was wrong. It was for 21 years old and up . . . all them people, they all wanted me to fly out so that then when all the bad press came they could say, 'Daddy endorsed this stuff.' I started realizing I'm being used."

Then photos surfaced of Miley smoking the legal herb salvia from a bong. Billy Ray, who gave the interview to GQ's Chris Heath five days after the photos emerged, says he hadn't spoken to Miley since, but confronted one of her handlers: "They told me it was none of my business."

But he admits, "I should have said, 'Enough is enough -- it's getting dangerous and somebody's going to get hurt' . . . Honestly, I didn't know the ball was out of bounds until it was way up in the stands somewhere."

I'm sorry Dad. Everything that happened up to her 18th Birthday is north of 51% your problem. Now that she is 18 - it's hers.

No one is a perfect father - goodness knows I'm not .... so don't beat yourself too much over it - and don't blame others, it will only make your pain worse, and stop you from finding peace.

Hopefully others can learn from this arch - but we will see it again.

I wish you and Miley the best and hope she can find better guidance as an adult, and can find strength and a center. I also wish for you and her to find a path back to each other.

Friends don't let friends put their kids into Hollywierd's cesspool

Lara’s sadly predictable horror

Most everyone know s by now what happened to CBS reporter Lara Logan,

"In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers,"

First reports can be only outlines, but we can assume that this is accurate by this time.

We all wish her well and are glad she is alive and in good hands now. This was avoidable though, but also unavoidable as well due to our own decisions about what is or is not acceptable conversations.

Mrs. Salamander and I had a talk about this last night and we both came to the same conclusion – one I originally didn’t even want to post about. I would like to say that I didn’t want to post about it out of respect for Ms. Logan and the nightmare she lived through and need to recover, but though that a reason, that is not the primary reason.

I realized that the primary reason that I didn’t want to post on it was the same reason that Ms. Logan found herself in a place she should not have been – fear. I was afraid to discuss the hard truth of the real world and how women outside the protective bubble of the West are viewed – and the tragic results of thinking that in the middle of the global scrum – reality does not apply to us.

CBS news – regardless of your opinion of it – has a lot of very educated professionals, especially in among its international correspondents. Somewhere among Ms. Logan’s co-workers was someone who had to know what the Arab world was like in 2011. They had to know what the reputation of Western women in general – and American woman in particular – is in that part of the world.

The low position their own women are held in Arab society combined with what Hollywood and pr0n has done to warp reality around the world about what a blond-haired, blue eyed American female is all about – and this horror was almost predictable.

Those who have spent time in Italy all know the low-opinion Italian men have of American females. Take that and increase it by a factor of 10 and you have the opinion of the average Arab male on American women about right. You ignore that fact to your own danger.

Why do we have “honor killings” by Arab men of their Westernized daughters? It is because they do not want their women to become what they have in their head American women are – and are willing to kill their own children because of it. Yes, it is that sick.

Somewhere in CBS, someone had to say, “This is a bad idea. Lara has no place in that mob. She is in danger and we can’t protect her.” They kept it to themselves though, I am sure, out of fear. Fear of being called sexist or worst. Even if they had spoken up, the some person up the chain would have told them to squash it.

Being the driven professional that she is, Ms. Logan probably would have told that person to not worry – that she was fine. Even after Greg Palcot and Anderson Cooper’s assault – CBS sent Lara Logan in that mix. They had to know that if attacked, she would be sexually assaulted.

Every female prisoner taken by the Iraqis in both wars were sexually assaulted. This is what happens to women, Western or otherwise, who are taken by force – again, especially in that part of the world.

From the start, this should have been a concern. What was happening in Egypt was not like what was happening in Iran where you saw plenty of females. Even there, as is normal now in most of the Muslim world, they were covered women. Egyptians are not Iranians. You saw a few females in the Egyptian crowd, but not many and when you did they were in groups and protected.

In an environment where Western reporters are attacked, you threw an under-protected, un-covered, female, blond American. She was brutally beaten and sexually assaulted. No one at CBS or in the audience should be shocked. No one who has socialized with men in that part of the world will be shocked. I’m not.

I won’t expect that we will hear too much of this though for the same reason I almost didn’t post on it. It is uncomfortable to discuss, painful to think about, and out of respect for the victim you want to just avoid the topic.

However, that is not how you address the real world though. The real world is a mean, nasty, brutal, backward, and unforgiving place. We need to be reminded of that now and then, sadly. If we talk about it enough – then maybe others will not be put in harm’s way unnecessarily.

Maybe.

$#*! My CINC Says

Watch it via RCP.

Will on the Lost Decade

Through the last decade - a decade of "fat" - we took a High Risk-High Reward strategy.

If you want the high reward, you need to understand that you might just wind up with the results of the high risk if you are not smart, careful, and have a good self-regulating system in place. We talk about LCS, DDG-1000, LPD-17 here a lot ... George Will discusses it in a broader context.

First the macro,

... since fiscal 2001, what is called the military's "baseline budget" has increased 80 percent, to $534 billion. That number is, however, much less than what is actually being spent, and not just because it doesn't include much of the spending on the two wars.

The Obama administration wants to cut $78 billion over five years, in addition to cuts already planned.

What did we buy with the Navy's share of that?

The average age of America's amphibious assault vehicles is 38 years, more than that of strategic bombers (34 years) but less than that of tanker aircraft (46 years).

Dull, but important. The curse of the unsexy.

It didn't happen by accident. There are reasons why in the last half-decade especially, we have lost so much of our credibility in front of our paymasters; Congress.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), writing to Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, said that "the Pentagon is one of the few agencies in the federal government that cannot produce auditable financial statements in accordance with the law." So "I will continue to push for a budget freeze of all base budget non-military personnel accounts at the Defense Department until it complies with the law regarding auditable financial statements."

To govern is to choose, always on the basis of imperfect information. If, however, the strong language of Forbes and Coburn is apposite, Congress cannot make adequately informed choices about the uniquely important matters that come to McKeon's committee. This fact will fuel the fires of controversy that will rage within the ranks of Republicans as they come to terms with the fact that current defense spending cannot be defended until it is understood.

Retro Wednesday

F-18G, circa 1944, I believe.

Admit it - you wish they all looked like that.

Trading a cow for a handful of beans at Annapolis

The military is a profession that requires a firm understanding of thousands of years of the profession of arms to succeed. Especially at war - if you don't understand the past, you are condemned to repeat it. When you repeat in at war - you are defeated, your people are killed, and the future of the nation you serve is put at risk.

Remember all the not-so-cute little fashions we have seen over the years like TQL? Well, "cyber" isn't quite that way - but like "transformation" it has become a buzzword catchall. A kind of verbal and concept shortcut that is supposed to have everyone nod their head and say, "Yes, it is important. All is new now."

"Cyber" - in its normal and even over-applied definition - is important to understand, in a fashion, but only in context. C4ISR/Cyber/IT/etc are just evolutionary developments and tools - no more revolutionary than other ones that have come along before from steam power to smokeless powder to nuclear weapons.

If you lack a historical perspective - like an ignorant savage, new things will either frighten you or cause you to worship them - especially when others above you voice them like a verbal tic.

Over at USNIBlog, co-blogg'r there and Midrats guest Captain Alex Martin, USMC, has a post that should cause everyone to pause. Read it all; but here are the meaty bits.

First, he says it better than I can;

... the most critical function of our service academies is to imbue in the cadet or midshipman the ultimate humility: that none of their undergraduate experience is about them.

It’s up to the individual midshipman to embrace this – that they aren’t working so hard at the Naval Academy for themselves but rather for the opportunity to one day work so much harder for someone else – and it’s up to the administration to give the mids tools along the way to make their hard work pay-off.

Leadership training is one such tool. Moral and physical development are others. A rigorous curriculum of math, science and engineering are others still. But the tools learned in the study of history, and HH104 in particular – USNA’s required course in American Naval History – are some of the most important of them all.

As a matter of desired devices, history is entirely commensurate with the challenges of leading men and women in combat or at sea. A sound understanding of history provides the officer a lens to more clearly understand the mistakes and successes of the past, a framework to process the problems at hand, and a workable socio-calculus that helps approach an understanding of what tomorrow may hold.

... and now - well - read it and weep.

At some point during last academic year (2009-2010) the Department of the Navy tasked the previous Superintendant, Vice Admiral Fowler, to add a cyber warfare class to the core curriculum. No public announcement was made. Apparently, last spring a small working group, operating in the shadows, was established to come up with a plan to create introductory and upper-level cyber warfare courses. The USNA community knew nothing about the working group’s tasking and work and learned of this development only last fall. The dilemma was how to add these courses without overloading an already full plate.

Surprisingly, the working group recommended moving American Naval History to 1st Class year. Apparently, they didn’t care that this decision will leave new midshipmen adrift and ignorant of the history of their profession, and their nation, for three years. Again, no official announcement was made.

The fact that HH104 was dead only came to light by happenstance. In October, the History Department underwent a routine, external review. The review report was distributed to the Department faculty in late October and HH104’s removal from 4th Class year, buried in the report, was presented as a certainty.

As word trickled out, upset ensued. First, the military and civilian faculty who teach HH104 expressed their unanimous opposition to moving HH104. Then, a number of History faculty who do not teach HH104 registered their dismay that such a major curriculum change would occur without any serious consideration and vote by the Faculty. The general reaction of midshipmen who have heard of the HH104 shift is consternation. Most recently, the shift of HH104 has prompted vigorous and agitated discussion within the Faculty Senate.

What upsets everyone as much as moving HH104 is the way in which it was done. The military and civilian faculty members who teach American Naval History were never consulted as to the effect this shift would have on the professional and academic education of midshipmen, nor was the larger History faculty consulted as a group. This change occurred in the shadows, violated the established policies regarding curricular review, and appeared as a fait accompli.

Amazing. Simply amazing.

Once again - Read it all.

Tsu - over to you.

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UPDATE: There is a follow-on post by LCDR BJ Armstrong, USN that is outstanding. Read it too.

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UPDATE II Electric Boogaloo: USNA via their PAO has responded with more detail and background. See the link in comments.

Women vie for Salamander's attention

Of course I have a Valentine's Day post.

Yes, yes, and good googly moogly yes.

One day, everyone will agree with me - but until then, I will be happy with this victory in this, ahem, particular area.

New York plastic surgeon Elliot Jacobs said buttocks surgery in particular has increased because of fashion and the increasing awareness of surgical procedures for this part of the body.

"It is fashionable, certainly, the large curvy, derriere is a thing of beauty, and always has been in some cultures, but it's become that way in American culture." Jacobs said.

This is the time on the front porch when we dance.