Responsibility

Welcome back to the Scuttlebutt. 

It should be no secret to anyone who’s been here before that Hyman Rickover is not my favorite person in the universe.  Nevertheless, the old bastard had a couple good points and quotes.  One that sticks with me, and should stick with you is:
Responsibility is a unique concept… You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you… If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.

In Afghanistan, we apparently never had anyone responsible. I say that, because there are things now coming to light, things that have been known for the last year by our government, things about that debacle, that absolute abortion, that, in other days would have caused people with first names like General, Admiral, and Director to have lost their jobs, their pensions, and in some times and places their very lives.  Things that are now admitted, but no one has been made to answer for them.

Oh, we’ve all known about the tens of billions of dollars worth of equipment ever since it happened.  We all knew that we abandoned hundreds of AMERICAN CITIZENS, allies, and children behind when we were ORDERED to tuck tail and run.

Our press, at the time, mostly didn’t cover it or glossed over the worst parts.  Our social media hushed it up, put it behind black “age-restricted” or “partially false” screens so that you couldn’t see it unless you took extra steps, in the hopes that you wouldn’t bother, and could now be returned to the “stupid animal tricks” portion of their efforts to dumb down America.  Our allies, on the other hand, like the Australian Broadcasting Corporation called us out for it, and rightly so.  Frankly, it’s likely that our failure in Afghanistan, and our fleeing, like Arthur and his knights running away from the rabbit, lead directly to the invasion of Ukraine.  And no one was held responsible.

  
Hell, State, that never to be sufficiently despised Liberal Think Tank at Foggy Bottom; the people who are supposed to be responsible for how we talk to and deal with other nations, the people who report directly to the President, and act as the senior cabinet position, has and is actively obstructing civilian attempts to get Americans and allied individuals hiding, fearing for their lives from the Taliban death squads, the fuck out of that shit hole.

Now it’s come out, in a documentary called “Send Me” and covered in a report by the NY Post here.   


That some US Army Colonel, apparently from the 82nd AB, for no good reason other than a dick measuring contest, turned away five busloads of preapproved people, seemingly just to prove that “I’m in charge here! I decide who goes and who doesn’t!”  The report states that all five buses of people had been searched by Marines, and vetted by the government, their luggage had been taken for loading, and they showed up at the “black gate” the secret military-controlled gate to the Kabul airfield at 3 AM on Aug 25, 2021.  That’s when they ran into this “Frank Burns” type cocksucker who wanted to prove how big his dick was.  (Here’s a hint for you Colonel, just because you have one, doesn’t mean you should whip it out and piss all over everything, just for fun… Although in your case, I want to put you in charge of an Electrical Substation and have you piss all over that.  I figure we can clean you up with a mop and a broom afterward and flush the remainder down the toilet.)


“I don’t care who they are, they get back on those buses and those buses go back into Kabul,” he said, according to Kennedy (Tim Kennedy, MMA fighter turned soldier) — even after the team explained their bags had been screened and were already in the airport.


The colonel could not be pleaded with, and would not even make an exception for people with US passports because he didn’t know “if that’s fake or not,” the anonymous team member recalled.


He then ordered the refugees back into the bus and off the base at gunpoint, where they would pass through a vengeful Taliban security force.


“This decision to turn this bus around essentially just killed, just murdered these people,” former Marine Chad Robichaux said.


“And by the way, some of these people are children, some of these people are women, some of these people are Americans that we just sent back to the Taliban.” “It’s impossible to explain the level of desperation people felt,” said team member Nick Palmisciano, a former soldier and writer, and producer. “Just think in the first couple of days people were trying to hang on to the bottom of C-17s. That’s desperation that Americans don’t understand.”


The scene outside the airport grew increasingly grim, littered with dead bodies – many of them babies – as the Taliban allegedly randomly assassinated people to assert control.


“There were people that threw babies over the wall [of the airport] … not realizing that on the other side of the wall was concertina [wire],” Palmisciano said. 


After the colonel turned the would-be refugees away, a phone call was made to Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina who asked generals to intervene, but by that time the fate of the refugees and Americans had been sealed.


Senator Tillis confirms the events.  So, the Army has known, and the Senate has known about this particular debacle for over a year.  They’ve done nothing.


To quote the song, “they won’t be held responsible, they were merely Freshmen.” Except of course, that they weren’t Freshmen, they ARE the most senior officers and civilian managers of the biggest branch of the US Military, and they are your elected leaders.


They seem, one and all, to believe that “it doesn’t matter. The people will not remember, or don’t care.” This rot starts at the Offal Office, goes down the street to the Capitol Building, and then down about another mile and a half to the inner rings of that funny five-sided building.  If you don’t raise hell, they will be proven right.  You don’t care, or don’t want to remember, and those lives don’t matter.


Another piece of “no one responsible:” (I’m going to have a few of these) 


The University of Washington School of Medicine, in cahoots with the Mainstream Media, made a big deal a while back that they had done a major study proving that “gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary adolescents caused rates of depression to plummet.”  In real English, that means “we proved that female children who had an addadicktome, and male children who had a dickectomy were less depressed and less suicidal.  Claiming “gender-affirming care was associated with a 60% reduction in depression and a 73% drop in harmful or suicidal thoughts among the participants.”


But, the problem is that they LIED. Independent journalist Jesse Singal started posing questions about the study to UW Communications staff, and one of the study’s authors, who agreed to speak on background, confirmed that some of the data the researchers presented, along with their claims, did not add up.


“Among the kids who went on hormones, there isn’t genuine statistical improvement here from baseline to the final wave of data collection, at baseline, 59% of the treatment-naive kids experienced moderate to severe depression. Twelve months later, 56% of the kids on GAM [gender-affirming medicine] experienced moderate to severe depression. At baseline, 45% of the treatment-naive kids experienced self-harm or suicidal thoughts. Twelve months later, 37% of the kids on GAM did.”


Laura East, Department of Epidemiology spokeswoman, emailed colleagues that Singal posted “some pretty concerning claims.” However, she wrote that UW Medicine should not respond.


“As there is an overwhelming amount of positive coverage of the study’s findings, I don’t believe there’s a need for a proactive response beyond continuing to monitor, but welcome your ideas for any other actions or messaging with the study team. Happy to jump on a call too, if that’s easier,” East said. Source and another.


One UW Medicine staffer acknowledged that, at worst, the research was “made up” yet did not want to engage because it had already received “extremely positive” coverage. At Seattle Children’s, a staffer won’t respond to reasonable criticisms that could affect its patients and their families. 


Dr. Kym Ahrens, an assistant professor in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Seattle Children’s Hospital and UW Medicine, is one of the study’s authors and was on an email chain with the communications staff. After initially writing a draft statement to clarify the findings, she offered an alternative plan.


“If it gives too much attention to clarify at all, I am also very open to not responding,” she suggested via email.


So, the doctors lied, they really didn’t admit that they lied, and are using this failed study to advocate for permanent, irreversible mutualization and sterilization of adolescents upon request.  (You know, the people that according to the same folks, aren’t responsible enough to own a firearm? IE under 21 Years of age?)   


That’s OK though, they’re not responsible.


CDR Salamander called my attention to another mess brewing in the Balkans.


It seems the Serbian Government has decided that with everyone in Europe paying attention to Ukraine, this is a good time to get some of “their own” land back…


“Serbia’s president called on NATO on Sunday to “do their job” in Kosovo or he says Serbia itself will move to protect its minority in the breakaway province.


“The fiery televised address to his nation by President Aleksandar Vucic followed the collapse of political talks between Serbian and Kosovo leaders earlier this week mediated by the European Union in Brussels.


“Serbia, along with its allies Russia and China, has refused to recognize Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence. A NATO-led intervention in 1999 ended the war between Serbian forces and separatists in Kosovo and stopped Belgrade’s bloody crackdown against Kosovo’s majority Albanians.


“The EU has overseen years of unsuccessful talks to normalize their ties, saying that’s one of the main preconditions for Kosovo and Serbia’s eventual membership in the 27-nation bloc.” (Ibid)


If this sounds familiar, it should.  It’s pretty much the same excuse Putin used for his incursions into Ukraine.  It’s the same excuse that Hitler used for his incursions into the Sudeten lands and Poland.  It’s an excuse highly thought of throughout the not-free world, as a reason to start a land grab war.  So far NATO has responded by sending a pair of B-52s on a low-level buzz of the affected areas, just to remind Vucic that the lands he’s looking at while sharpening his knives belong to NATO, and when you attack one, you attack all.


Six months ago, I predicted that the war in Ukraine would be the first act of WW-III. (or WW-IV, if you want to call the cold war WW-III) between what’s going on with China and her neighbors, and now Serbia, well… This is still looking to be the smart bet.   


And while this is happening on Bidet’s watch, he “can’t be held responsible.”


There is one small bit of good news to leave you with though.  Cleveland State University, which is still doing “No contact classes and E-Learning” decided that as part of their “E-Proctoring policy” they would place video and audio scanning in all dorm rooms to support ensuring that the students weren’t cheating on tests.  See the students aren’t responsible enough to not cheat if they’re not being watched, and it’s “too hard” to write a test that you can’t cheat on because it’s open book. 


(I say this with my tongue jammed so firmly in my cheek that I’ve sprained something.  My team and I wrote 10 test banks for Licensing and Certification tests.  Tests that licensed the graduates to work on VERY special stuff for the US Navy, anywhere in the world.  These were the equivalent of, for example, the license to work as a High Voltage Electrician.  All of these tests were open book.  We had an 80% pass rate, which indicates that the tests were hard enough to actually evaluate the learning of the student.  But then we weren’t college professors.)


Well, the students weren’t too wild about having their bedrooms wired for lights and sound, so they sued.  They won in Federal court on 25 Aug.  But of course, while it’s a victory for privacy, and against big brother in all its forms, the University can’t be held responsible…


OK, this has gone long enough, I’ll leave you to dwell on responsibilities, and how to hold people responsible for their actions and inactions.


Take care, watch your six, 


Until next time I remain,


Yours in service.
William Lehman.

8 Comments

  1. I met Rickover in 1975. The USS Los Angeles (SSN-688) was freshly commissioned and undergoing standardization trials and he decided to be aboard for a few days. He was definitely a piece of work. His list of personal accommodation demands would put a rock band to shame. He would roam around the boat on the off watches and randomly grill crew members over minutiae. I was a lowly E-5 and got grilled by him for 15 or 20 minutes over the operations in the torpedo room. I must have acquitted myself sufficiently well that nothing was said. Some folks were not so lucky. Our captain was one of Rickover’s “golden boys” (just there to get his Command at Sea chit punched) and he and the XO doted on the old bird like a Hollywood celebrity. Strange days.

    Best regards.

    • one of my proudest brags was that I got to point a fully loaded, cocked 1911A1 right between that bastard’s running lights, and got a commendation for it. He decided to test my metal while I was the entry authorization point for Tech Ops in the Room. No ID, civies, blew right through the barrier… I performed IAW training. He said “don’t you know who I am?!”
      To which I replied “I don’t care if you’re GOD. if you don’t exit my exclusion area, or provide an ID that matches my entry authorization list, I am going to make your birth certificate a worthless document.”
      He turned and left. I got a letter of commendation for that.

  2. Yes, he was an ass, and felt his word was law… Rickover even wrote himself a memo ‘allowing’ him to do something that the Navy didn’t want done. So he sent the memo from his ‘AEC’ persona to his RADM persona… and did it anyway. Re the cluster F at Kabul, name the son of a bitch! Let’s get people asking him pointed questions!!! Time to put people on record for what they did or didn’t do! You and I came up through the Navy back in the day when you were given responsibility and expected to act accordingly!

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