As we remember D Day storm clouds are gathering in the Middle East. We may have much worse things to deal with than the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that we lie here true, even to the death to our Spartan way of life." -- Simonides

This epitath at the pass of Thermopylae comes to mind when I think of the Spartans, the Highland Scots, or the Vikings. We've gained a lot from modern civilization, but we've lost something too.

Gates of Fire is a novelization of the Battle of Thermopylae. There 300 hundred Spartans under King Leonidas held the pass against an overwhelming Persian force long enough for the Greek city states to rally their forces for a successful defense. Their heroism was an inspiration to their fellow Greeks and has continued to be an inspiration down through the ages.

Steven Pressfield brings to life both the harsh realities and the nobility of the ancient Greeks. Life was hard, but there was also beauty, gentless, and compassion. His dramatization of events leading up to the battle, the battle itself, and it's aftermath shows how ordinary people can come to do extra-ordinary things.

As is his custom, Glen Reynolds has some excellent links for 9/11. Never forget.

I just finished reading Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead, an entertaining retelling of the Beowulf saga as it might have happened. It was originally published as The 13th Warrior and a movie with that name was based upon it. I feel a kinship to Beowulf as the old king who calls for Beowulf's help is named Rothgar, a name which has evolved into Rogers.

John Ringo's The Last Centurion tells the tale of an American soldier dealing with apocalypse. The premise of the story is to suppose that things generally continue along the path of the early 2000's until 2019, when our planet is hit with both a significant cooling event and a global bird flu epidemic that decimates the population.

With the Four Horsemen on the loose, Bandit Six finds himself responsible for a huge cache of arms and supplies in Iran after most U.S. military forces have been pulled back to the States to deal with the emergencies at home. He has only an augmented company to provide security and eventually has to destroy the weapons and try to get his command across the chaotic Middle East to friendlier territory. They have to fight their way home, rearranging the map in the process.

In this fast paced novel, Ringo explores a possible future that turns a lot of today's presumptions inside out. Current trends are not a reliable indicator of future performance. It's a good read that I found hard to put down.

Today is the 67th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese are friendly now, and the message is that we must remain vigilant agains unexpected threats.

We're 7 years into a long war. Don't Tread On Me is a video commemorative. Think about it.

In Search of the Warrior Spirit by Richard Strozzi Heckler documents a project to teach awareness training to a group of Green Berets. This training included meditation, bio-feedback, and Aikido. Strozzi Heckler seeks to separate the essence of being a warrior from the mass industrialization of modern warfare. While generally interesting, the book spent too much time on the author's angst about teaching professional warriors.

Over at Belmont Club there's a humorous, but inciteful explanation of warfare in todays world. It includes down-to-earth explanations of military terms such as:

Bad People:

People that need whacking.

Battle Command:

Motivating Soldiers with a cigar in your mouth.

Combined Arms:

Using all of your combat power at once and surviving it.

Full Spectrum Operations:

Careful whacking combined with lots of explaining.

Operational Art:

Getting the Air Force or Navy to deal with the bad people before Soldiers have to.

Not so bad people:

Anybody in the area of operations that is not a bad person or a Soldier.

SNAFU:

A Twentieth Century term for land operations.

Soldier:

Individual speaking in expletives and wearing cool-looking digital camouflage that doesn’t blend in with anything.

Unified Action:

The opposite of SNAFU

Whacking:

The redistribution or impairment of biological functions intended to eliminate intercellular cooperation within a sentient organism.

My Uncle Doyle has set sail on his final voyage. He was laid to rest in Mount Vernon, Washington.

Uncle Doyle loved traveling which prompted him to join the Navy with the outbreak of World War II. He was a helmsman and skippered small utility boats along the west coast of the U.S. He was a bus driver and supervisor after retiring from the Navy. When he wasn't driving something professionally, he liked to travel via motorcycle or RV.

Andy Olmsted died a couple of days ago in Iraq. Here's his final blog post.

Take time to remember those who go in harms way for you: past, present, and future.

The U.S. Marine Corps celebrates it's 232nd birthday today.

Semper Fi!

We attended the Boulder Military Officers Association of America meeting this morning. One of our members, Bob Brockish, was featured in the Rocky Mountain News for his service as a Marine infantryman during the Korean War.

I spent the afternoon building a raised garden from six inch cross section landscape timbers. I used 10 inch spikes to secure them and my little 3/8 inch drill wasn't up to the job of drilling pilot holes so I had to buy a new 1/2 inch drill. I drove the spikes with a blacksmith's hammer, and even with the pilot holes, it was work. I have a new appreciation for blacksmiths.

John Scalzi's The Sagan Diary is a novella lenth piece that recounts some episodes form his Old Man universe from the viewpoint of Lt. Jane Sagan of the Colonial Special Forces. It is somewhat fragmented, but provides an interesting counterpoint those to his novels.

In Rereading Vietnam, Robert Kaplan looks at some Vietnam War memorys that most Americans are unaware of. There were more military successes than failures for the U.S. in Vietnam, just as the in today's Iraq. Most people never hear of them.

I rode down to Boulder for the MOAA meeting this morning. Bob Brockish gave a good talk on the battle of Horseshoe Ridge during the Korean War in which he was a 19 year old Marine rifleman.

It's most often called the War on Terror, but terror is a tactic not an opponent. Our opponents are a collection of islamic jihadis and petty tyrants who want to destroy our modern, liberal, democratic, capitalist civilization.

Phil Carter and Austin Bay are debating our options. The first installment is about the viability of the all volunteer force in the current environment. I'd say that round one goes to Austin.

I recently responded to a call for participation for a Web Survey on the Use of Robots Capable of Lethal Force in Warfare issued by the robotics lab at Georgia Tech. "Robots" are currently used in warfare mostly in combat support roles like reconnaisance and explosive and explosive ordenance disposal, and are controlled by a soldier, sailor, or airman, and they have little or no autonomy. Ths U.S. and other militaries are contemplating more extensive use of unmanned machines in direct combat and these machines will be capable of greater autonomy. Someone will almost certainly do this, and it may be a good thing, but it is somewhat disturbing and requires careful consideration.

One of my Christmas presents was a Windtalkers DVD. Though the movie hasn't been a great commercial success success, I liked it. Having met both a Comanche and a Navajo code talker, I would have liked more focus on the code talkers themselves, rather than Sgt. Enders' angst over his grim mission, but that would have been a different story. Windtalkers told it's own story, and it's a good one.