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I'm not a Trump lover or hater. When he started his campaign every "Career politician" hated him, GOP and Dems. That's when I sat up and took notice. There must have been a reason for that and I believe it's coming to light. He rolled into DC, kicked over their ant farm and started shaking the tree, and a lot of nuts are falling off that tree.

No. That was a good call and I give President Obama full credit for the decision. Of note, of course, was that Biden is on the record as having been against the decision.

I think there is a valid argument that if someone joins the armed forces of a foreign military the US is at war with, they forfeit their rights to citizenship. I don't think you can have a reasonable expectation that Benedict Arnold could ride into battle in his German battle tank in Trier and we can't do shit about it. However we are still debating whether its even reasonable to be "at war" with an "idea" (war on terrorism), hence classifying that dude as a combatant gets really tricky. The reality is, up until the 21st century no one seriously regarded terrorist as military problems outside of the force protection concerns. They were law enforcement problems and terrorist were regarded as criminals, not combatants. However when we set out to dismantle al Queda there was a realization that there isn't enough federal power in law enforcement to do that. I blame Bush and Obama for this quagmire. Obama's obsession with RPA's though is particularly interesting to me because there are a lot of parallels to that and JFK's obsession with US Army SF. I wonder if the MQ-9 schoolhouse one day is going to be named the "Barrack Obama Remotely Piloted Aircraft School."

Your critiques on his part policy seem to fall in line to a media agenda to paint them as irrational and misguided. Your an officer dude, you have to be able to read between the lines on some of this stuff and realise POTUS doesn't make those decisions in a vacuum and media has no way of knowing what the environment around those decisions are. People bring him researched options and he makes choices. Usually the people that bring him choices are informed and briefed by career employees and not appointees. There is a circle in Washington that has been discussing the same shit for years. It's a mix of federal employees, academics and senior uniformed members. I can name a dozen reasons why all of your policy critiques were GREAT ideas although I don't personally agree with 100% of them. So before you discount the country for anti-intellectualism I'd suggest you review your own geopolitical playbook and figure out why some of these things could have been a good step for the country because you automatically assume the items you listed were "bad things". I think the current POTUS has the best geo-political strategy we've seen since Bush #1 up to the point he ended the Cold War. Leagues better than Clinton, Bush #2 and Obama. Why? Because Trump recognizes there are capacity limits for our foreign influence and being the only world super power, especially one bogged down for 20 years by a counter terrorism quagmire, doesn't give you carte blanche to effect the world any way you want. I got other news for you too man, foreign policy is America first. That is the basis of Western sovereignty and is nearly universally agreed upon by ethicist and academics who discuss the role and purpose of a state. Every country's government acts in their own interest. If you think Germany, the Kurds, South Korea or any of these other partnerships we broke glass on think we are "friends" you are full of it. They are going to stab us in the back the moment our interest misalign. Trump's vision is quite simple. America's best bet at influencing foreign politics is by being a stalwart example of domestic statecraft for other countries to model. Focus on ourselves first, and our virtue and prosperity will become attractive enough for other countries to model. But if you want to go adventuring all over the third world to build partnerships, my question is, who's going to pay for it? You complain about rising deficit but then half your post levies complaints that we aren't spending enough. Speaking of economic ironies, you bemoan the fact that jobs are stagnant and trending to a service economy but also bemoan withdrawal from environmental protection agreements and a trade war with China. Can you not see that these things are interconnected? A business only does one of two things. It either provides goods, or it provides a service. If we aren't providing goods, we have to provide a service. The US is trending to a service economy because it is too expensive to setup industrial manufacturing here, hence no goods. One reason that it is expensive is because of strict EPA laws that mandate companies have to front cost for compliance and how their waste is handled. For a while we were able to float on certain tech sectors because China didn't have the technological know how to upstart this on their own. But since we decided to allow 20 years of industrial espionage in an effort to preserve "a good relationship" we have now lost that edge as well. Bro, the world isn't sunshine and roses. You can have your EPA laws and warm fuzzies with China, but don't wake up pissed you are working at Starbucks at 35 then. You made a choice. But I think what annoys me about your post most of all is your use of the term progress. Because you don't recognize when you say that you mean progress by YOUR standard. What you don't realise man, is this all comes down to values, and in general Americans have the same values but they tend to order them differently. So when you say "progress" you have belittled every single person who doesn't order values the same as you do. You don't think conservatives love the environment? Bro have you been to a Cabellas? However, a some conservatives are making the concious decision that people having means to put food on the plate is a higher value than protecting a climate that we honestly have little understanding of how it's change will impact global sustainability. Some people are making a concious choice that economic prosperity is the most important thing to get control of first and then interest can be taken in foreign influence, the environment, etc....

Total military time is about 7,300 hours. 4,100 sorties.

I was told to check back in about a week (8/17) for Hawaii. Has anybody gotten an update from Jacksonville or DC?

It's not whitewashing at all. All I care about is if the strike authority used discrimination and proportionality. In the case of the son, proportionality was applied but discrimination wasn't sufficient due to an inappropriate PID of the correct target. This is a totally plausible situation as PIDs are at their core a probability based assessment that the target is who you think it is. Totally plausible that the son was mis ID'd. Is it tragic? Yes. Is it sad? Yes. Is it a war crime? No, because the threshold only requires that there needs to be an earnest attempt to apply those criteria and from what I know of the Enterprise im sure that took place. We also have to recognize this dude's family was heavily ingrained into AQ and it shouldn't be a surprise to us that his kids are going to be found with their fathers friends and family members who were like minded and that puts them in circles that are high risk. For the strike against al-Awlaki himself, I personally found it to be wrong. The government did not have a strong enough argument to authorize a prejudicial murder of a US citizen without due process.

Brawnie sounds a lot like a guy I knew...liberal SJW who railed on racist filled America even though as a growing up middle class minority, he was provided a free academy education, paid to fly jets, promoted to top ranks and even after all that, was a victim of white Americans and selfish conservatives. Victimhood mentality sucks. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

I tried reading your post with an open mind... but you lost me at “all racists are Trump supporters.” Most ignorant and naive comment for the month goes to you. (Albeit it was your “friend” who said it but you clearly support such a notion.) Congratulations. As a brown/south Asian guy, I went to HS post 9/11. I faced my fair share of racism. I don’t hate them, they were ignorant teenagers. But when I look back at many of them, they turned out to be some of the most staunch/vocal SJW democrats. So I know your “all racists are Trump supporters” is utter BS. Trump is a polarizing figure, but it is dudes like you that create more Trump supporters. I didn’t like the guy at the beginning of his campaign but it is pompous folks like you that actually drew me too him. So keep it up!!

Yeah right. Might as well stuff Al-Awlaki's kin in a Piper Saratoga and call 'em the Kennedys. Bad luck everywhere you go. That's some RPA whitewashing straight outta ACSC courseware. 😄

Some valid points here although Greece and Turkey have both been members since 1952 so we seem to have that mostly figured out although craniums up w/ Erdogan as the new Sultan-for-life. In general I still strongly believe that alliances make us stronger; even accounting for when we have some back-stabbing allies like Saudi or Turkey that at times pursue agendas or allow problems to fester that are supremely unhelpful to our goals. I agree that NATO needed a new purpose after the Cold War ended, but I would argue that Russia is fully back as a major threat to western liberal democracy in terms of ideological and global power competition, and China is an even bigger competitor in that space. Frankly the US could use a better unified NATO, including all the periphery states in eastern and Southern Europe, to join with us and stand against non-democratic, non- or state/crony-capitalist, anti-human rights regimes that are out there actively wielding both hard and soft power across the globe. If you like voting and freedoms and individual rights, a strong US-led alliance like NATO should be the champion of that world-view. Sounds like a great purpose to me and the U.S. can achieve better results at driving the alliance toward that with cooperative leadership rather than poke-em-in-the-eye transactional squabbling and “America First.”

I never thought this would happen, but I agree with Brick. Just because the Obama Administration determined capturing al-Awlaki “infeasible” doesn’t negate his right to due process as an American citizen. This looks especially bad since the U.S. has suspected terrorists, who aren’t U.S. Citizens, in GITMO since 2001 we’re currently trying to give due process to. A U.S. Citizen doesn’t lose their Constitutional rights just because they’re hard to capture and bring to trial. “It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation’s commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad.” - Justice O’Connor

A tragedy for sure. His son wasn't targeted and wasn't known to be in the cafe when it was struck. Been mentioned multiple times. CIVCAS happens. If you think he is the only American or minor we've accidentally killed in an airstrike you would be mistaken. al-Awlaki's 8 year old American citizen daughter died in a raid authorized by President Trump in 2017. Shit happens man. War is ugly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Airlift_Capability

Isn't there a C-17 unit as well?

Rocked it Flea! Personal opinion. Trump is the best president we have ever had. By leaps and bounds. And he doesn’t put up with drama or victim culture. Which is why the current mix of politics is so explosive. Because there is a lot of that on the left right now.

Preferentially pick someone based on genitalia or skin color and not ability for the appearance of equality or inclusiveness..... I’m not sure. That’s a tough one.

As Ernie Gann wrote back in the 60s: “All airline pilots are subject to the high cock-o-lorum of seniority, whether they like it or not. The system was established to banish favoritism and to provide some basis for assignment of bases, routes, flights, and pay. Its great fault, as in any seniority system, is the absolutely necessary premise that all men are equal in ability. The dullard and the genius must both live with the ostrich philosophy that one man can fly as skillfully as another. No one, of course, maintains this to be a truth. But the seniority system must ever persist if only because it is a protection of the weak, who are everywhere in the greatest number.”

The police absolutely raised the stakes, and we let them. Post 9-11, we went from peace officers to telling every cop they were the frontline in the war on terrorism here at home. We radically altered the viewpoint that they were here to serve the public and turned them into a force that is constantly seeking out potential life-threatening enemies. And turns out if you roll into every situation expecting to face an armed and motivated enemy, you become much more trigger happy. I don't fully blame the cops, although their training programs certainly bear some of the blame. We did this to ourselves by teaching cops that putting the odds in their favor to the max extent possible overruled all other considerations, including the rights of the citizens they are policing.