Looking Ahead By Looking Behind.

We’ve all had that semi-otherworldly sense, ‘that I’ve been here before’. I’ve had it strongly enough on a couple of occasions where it literally raised the hair at the back of my head. One such occurrence was when I saw a series of reports about China’s belligerence towards Japan and, most recently, the Philippines. Those of you who still remember history as it used to be taught… actual, factual, times, places and events, are beginning to stand out as China continues its headlong rush to confrontation with the west.

American and Filipino Marines carry out military exercises in the Philippines.

The Japanese, prior to WW2, were flushed from two victories over the Russians and the Chinese. Japanese militarists were flexing their muscles through officially banned, but nonetheless politically influential, Samurai ‘Secret Societies’. His Imperial Majesty the Japanese Emperor, Hirohito, had plenty of extra-territorial aims of his own. The Japanese saw westerners as hairy, uncultured and smelly barbarians, who just happened to be in possession of some remarkable technology which had given the west a decided (although temporary as far as the Japanese were concerned) lead over the unbelievably courageous, but hopelessly medieval, Japanese military.

We should have paid much more attention to the unbelievable speed with which Japan became a first-rate military and real and present danger to US interests in the Pacific and elsewhere. There were such courageous people in our military who were clear-eyed and whose vision for the future was equally clear. These men were often marginalized, their careers sidelined.

Weak and fearful politicians were determined to keep America out of any further ‘foreign adventurism’. This ‘blinders-on attitude’ prevailed right through to the day Pearl Harbor was attacked and, truth to say, not a few of my own beloved Marine Corps were guilty of the same thing. Smugly pigeon-holing the Japanese as comic characterizations of buck-toothed toy soldiers with bad eyesight.

By now you know exactly where I’m going with this. The Chinese are adventuresome and extremely bellicose. They are challenging our dominion over the Pacific. Two of our strongest allies, Japan and the Philippines are being directly challenged by the Chinese military.

China is now attempting to claim possession of the Island of Okinawa… one of the Japanese home islands. The ground on Okinawa has been consecrated by the blood of American and Japanese boys and the men who led them.

As I said in a previous article… I’ve walked many of the Okinawan hills and the sharply steep volcanic ridges where these battles took place.
We need to tell the dufoids in Washington… never again!

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

The Real Tragedy Of Japan And What We Should Take From It.

The Japanese people have become as fierce an ally and friend as they were an enemy. As a young Marine I studied the campaigns of the Pacific War, where American Marines and Japanese Imperial soldiers threw themselves at each other in some of the most savage battles in the history of armed conflict. I saw a couple of those islands, actually walked some of the places where the battles were fought.



During a training cycle I had occasion to spend some weeks in Japan. I traveled the countryside when I could. I met many ordinary Japanese people in their day-to-day lives. I talked to an English teacher… a fisherman… a tank commander in the Japanese home defense forces… farmers, students and businessmen. Without exception they were sincere, friendly people. I was invited into complete strangers’ homes and treated like an honored guest… It occurred to me that perhaps it was because I made a sincere effort to learn the language and customs, and I exhibited a lively curiosity which they were only too happy to satisfy.

We are watching a people who have just suffered one of the great tragedies of the modern era… the death toll is going to be horrendous. Far higher than the figures we’ve seen up to now. What has been remarkable has been the response of the Japanese people to an event which would have prostrated many other countries outright. Grieve?… Hurt? Yes, they grieve and they hurt, but they immediately begin the long path to recovery. There are no bleating cries for others to do for them what they can do themselves.


There’s no looting. Imagine a situation like this in Oakland or Los Angeles, where looting has been rampant during disturbances… where the only stores that didn’t get looted were those owned by Korean and Vietnamese, who were defending their properties with M-16 rifles and shotguns. (Amazing how the bad guys avoid stuff like that).

We can take a lot from this if we’re willing to listen and learn. Our Lame Stream Media has screamed every irresponsible headline they could fabricate, starting multiple layers of conflicting rumor. The Japanese are playing the whole nuclear thing rather close to their vests… but they’re not wont to deal in fiction or rumor either.

We don’t have a press any more. They spew just exactly what their Marxist bosses want them to. And right now that’s to gin up nuclear fears, in preparation for walling atomic energy away for ever in the dungeons of the environmental radicals and the EPA… who, by the way, is scrambling like crazy to implement cap and tax before our timid Mr. Boehner can summon up the testosterone to cut the EPA’s feet out from under it.

So while our President plays golf, goes to Rio or whichever vacation du jour he is on, and our majority leader takes time to figure out he has a majority, the Japanese people will go quietly about putting their lives together. Of course, we’ll help. What good friend wouldn’t? But it will be the Japanese, with the same indomitable will and sense of purpose that enabled them to return from the devastation of World War Two, that will pull them through.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Japan.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

America’s Great Apologist Grovels Again.

I’ve been looking for something else to write about. Some change from the distressing, embarrassing and depressing norm in the news in this country these days. I’d like to do something light and optimistic.

Sorry folks, just haven’t come across any Sugar Plum Fairies lately…unless you want to count Obama’s economic program…it’s for sure a fantasy, albeit a very dangerous one. I’d like, as well, to refer to him as Mr. President or President Obama, but somehow he just doesn’t match up with the honorific. He may be somebody’s president but he’s not mine. Not by virtue of his actions towards the the military of this great country for which he shows great disregard and disdain.

Look at his face when he speaks of our military, or the WARS they have to fight on our behalf, or the mission they have been given. He lies, he lies all the time. His face and his body-language speak worlds about him… his disdain and dismissal of the American people despite his mealy-mouthed platitudes and empty promises. His megalomaniacal schemes, so tied to his massive self-aggrandizement. The perfect profile for a tyrant-in-waiting. The guy acts like a skinny Hugo Chavez.

Not satisfied to wreck everything he touches domestically, he’s off to Asia to grovel at the feet of more foreign leaders. BOWING before this Emperor and Empress of Japan. They are nice dignified people…but not deserving of genuflection from the ‘leader’ of the greatest country on earth.
This is the second time His Irrelevance has done this you will recall. A head of state does not bow to a head of state…doesn’t this clown have a protocol chief? Or maybe the protocol chief is as feckless as he is. I have a private theory about why Barry consistently has to denigrate this country and abase himself in front of foreigners, who despise us more after he’s done than if he’d just stayed the hell home.

In a nutshell, (and no I’m not referring to Nancy-with-the-stapled-eyelids-Pelosi) it’s because he’s an EMPTY SUIT…literally, there’s no there, there. He doesn’t respect himself and so has no respect for others. He was kicked from pillar to post as a kid. What moral grounding he did get was from all the wrong places. He’s bitter and warped, he hates this country. He despises our Judeo-Christian principles. He is an admirer of a philosophy which seeks to destroy us and he seeks to ingratiate himself with others of that belief system, to have us believe that it is an ‘outreach’ to a peaceful religious philosophy when all evidence points to the contrary. He can’t understand why Americans aren’t rushing to embrace him, his warped and out of control Marxist Democratic party and his oppressive, destructive and repressive policies.

I am VERY impressed with the people of this greatest country on earth. The huge move towards Patriotism and Constitutional law that is sweeping this land from coast to coast is heartening and exciting.
It is so much more than a political revival. It is America reasserting the values that our founders built into the foundations of this Republic. It’s Americans asserting America.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009