Remembering a Civil War Soldier

Posted on November 5, 2014November 5, 2014 by Denise Simon

Rules of engagement today are designed with mountains of lawyers, applied politics and global implications. But there was a time when a single long war was fought exclusively on American soil, the Civil War.

Soldiers in the Civil War fought for a country in their own home country, many was a family member against yet another family member with sides deeply divided. Here is the story of a soldier of more than 150 years ago that is being awarded the highest military honor, and even lawyers and politics were a part of this event so many years later. Enjoy the read and applaud the valor.

Why a Civil War soldier will get the Medal of Honor — 151 years after his death

By Dan Lamothe

First Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing was bleeding profusely from wounds to his abdomen and shoulder as thousands of Confederate infantrymen advanced on his artillery battery in the Battle of Gettysburg. At least one of his soldiers begged him to seek medical treatment, but he refused. He stayed on the battlefield another 90 minutes while under attack, ordering his men to keep firing their three-inch cannons right up until the moment that he was killed with a gunshot to the head.

The Union Army’s ability to stop that assault by at least 13,000 soldiers — known as Pickett’s Charge, after a Confederate general who led rebel troops taking part in it — is a key part of the Civil War’s most iconic battle. But the heroism of Cushing, 22, on July 3, 1863, was not honored with the nation’s highest award for combat valor, even though 63 other Union soldiers received the prestigious decoration.

U.S. officials will rectify that Thursday.

President Obama is scheduled to award the Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony to descendants of the Cushing family, more than 151 years after the battle. They’ve passed his story down for generations with pride, but had not considered it possible that Cushing would receive the award, they said.

“His whole family was a very brave family,” said Jessica Loring, who is Cushing’s first cousin, three generations removed. “His mother would say, ‘Death before dishonor’ when she sent her sons off to war, and three of them died very young.”

It’s a highly rare, if not unprecedented, occurrence for battlefield bravery to be recognized with the Medal of Honor so many years later. Cushing initially was recognized posthumously with an honorary “brevet” promotion to lieutenant colonel, something that was common for officers at the time, said Mark Bradley, a historian with the U.S. Army Center of Military History. But officers rarely received the Medal of Honor at the time. Some other Union soldiers who were awarded the medal for actions at Gettysburg received it posthumously; for decades, no one nominated Cushing.

About 40 years ago, a woman who lived on a farm in Delafield, Wis., once owned by the Cushing family began asking why not. Margaret Zerwekh, now 94, learned about the soldier’s heroism while researching his family, and began compiling an application to nominate him for the Medal of Honor. She enlisted the help of then-Sen. William Proxmire (D.-Wis.), and later received backing from other members of her state’s congressional delegation. Then-Sen. Russ Feingold (D.-Wis.) nominated Cushing for the Medal of Honor in 2002, Army officials said.

Even then, the process took years. The Army approved the nomination in 2010, but the amount of time that had passed since Cushing’s act of heroism required Congress to suspend the statute of limitations on the honor. Legislation to do so passed in 2013, paving the way for Obama’s approval of the award.

Zerwekh and many members of the Cushing family had not met until this week, turning the event into something of an extended family reunion. Helen Loring Ensign, 85, of Palm Desert, Calif., will receive the medal from the president at the White House. It will be displayed in numerous locations afterward, including Gettysburg and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., which Cushing attended and where he later was buried.

“The idea is that it shouldn’t just sit on someone’s mantlepiece and just stay there,” said Jessica Loring. “It needs to be shown so people today can understand the price of making our country free and the sacrifice it takes. We want to bring Alonzo to life in what he did for this nation.”

Although Medals of Honor awarded today require proof beyond a reasonable doubt of acts of valor, Bradley said it is difficult to determine the exact details of Cushing’s actions 151 years later. The standard at the time was not as stringent, however, and there is no doubt that Cushing faced a fearsome barrage and refused to give up his command.

“That area looked like a slaughterhouse,” Bradley said of the battlefield around Cushing, known as Cemetery Ridge. “There were dismembered horses… literally hundreds of Confederate dead and dying lying in front of the guns. This was not a sight for the faint-hearted, and that is where Alonzo Cushing spent his last hours on this hour.”

Two of Cushing’s brothers also are considered war heroes. William B. Cushing was a commander in the Union navy, and best known for playing a key role in the sinking of the CSS Albemarle, an ironclad Confederate ship. An older brother, Howard B. Cushing, was a soldier during the Civil War and later killed in a fight with Native Americans in the Apache tribe.

Obama out of Iraq Due to WH, Maliki, Mahdi Army

Posted on November 3, 2014November 3, 2014 by Denise Simon

The White House knew better than anyone else when it came to Iraq. At all costs, Barack Obama wanted out and to declare hostilities over. He prevailed however, today Iraq is a battleground not seen before.

In Mosul, two army divisions also disintegrated as thousands of soldiers and police officers shed their uniforms, dropped their weapons and ran for their lives. Shehab, told that his commanders had deserted, tossed his rifle and ran away too.

“We felt like cowards, but our commanders were afraid of Daesh. They were too afraid to lead us,” said Shehab, 43, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. The military collapsed in Mosul even though Washington spent eight years and $25 billion to train, arm and equip Iraq’s security forces. The United States has now deployed 1,400 advisors to try to rebuild the shattered military into a force that can repel Islamic State.

So how did Iraq reach this point?

Behind the U.S. Withdrawal From Iraq

Negotiations were repeatedly disrupted by Obama White House staffers’ inaccurate public statements

By James Franklin Jeffrey

Updated Nov. 2, 2014 7:31 p.m. ET

The spectacular success in early 2014 of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, an offshoot of al Qaeda in Iraq, is often blamed on the failure of the Obama administration to secure an American troop presence in Iraq beyond 2011. As the U.S. ambassador to Iraq in 2010-12, I believed that keeping troops there was critical. Nevertheless, our failure has roots far beyond the Obama administration.

The story begins in 2008, when the Bush administration and Iraq negotiated a Status of Forces Agreement granting U.S. troops in the country legal immunities—a sine qua non of U.S. basing everywhere—but with the caveat that they be withdrawn by the end of 2011.

By 2010 many key Americans and Iraqis thought that a U.S. military presence beyond 2011 was advisable, for security (training Iraqi forces, control of airspace, counterterrorism) and policy (continued U.S. engagement and reassurance to neighbors). The Pentagon began planning for a continued military presence, but an eight-month impasse on forming a new government after the March 2010 Iraqi elections delayed final approval in Washington.

In January 2011, once the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was formed, President Obama decided, with the concurrence of his advisers, to keep troops on. But he wasn’t yet willing to tell Prime Minister Maliki or the American people. First, Washington had to determine the size of a residual force. That dragged on, with the military pushing for a larger force, and the White House for a small presence at or below 10,000, due to costs and the president’s prior “all troops out” position. In June the president decided on the force level (eventually 5,000) and obtained Mr. Maliki’s assent to new SOFA talks.

The Obama administration was willing to “roll over” the terms of the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement as long as the new agreement, like the first, was ratified by the Iraqi Parliament.

Iraqi party leaders repeatedly reviewed the SOFA terms but by October 2011 were at an impasse. All accepted a U.S. troop presence—with the exception of the Sadrist faction, headed by the anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, which held some 40 of Iraq’s 325 parliamentary seats. But on immunities only the Kurdish parties, with some 60 seats, would offer support. Neither Mr. Maliki, with some 120 seats, nor former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the leader of the largely Sunni Arab Iraqiya party with 80 more, would definitively provide support. With time running out, given long-standing U.S. policy that troops stationed overseas must have legal immunity, negotiations ended and the troop withdrawal was completed.

Given the success in winning a SOFA in 2008, what led to this failure? First, the need for U.S. troops was not self-evident in 2011. Iraq appeared stable, with oil exports of two million barrels a day at about $90 a barrel, and security much improved. Second, politics had turned against a troop presence; the bitterly anti-U.S. Sadrists were active in Parliament, the Sunni Arabs more ambivalent toward the U.S., and polls indicated that less than 20% of the Iraqi population wanted U.S. troops.

Could the administration have used more leverage, as many have asserted? Again, the main hurdle was immunities. The reality is that foreign troops in any land are generally unpopular and granting them immunity is complicated. In a constitutional democracy it requires parliament to waive its own laws. An agreement signed by Mr. Maliki without parliamentary approval, as he suggested, would not suffice. (The legal status of the small number of “noncombat” U.S. troops currently redeployed to Iraq is an emergency exception to usual SOFA policy.)

Some suggest that the U.S. could have made economic aid or arms deliveries contingent on a Status of Forces Agreement. But by 2011 the U.S. was providing relatively little economic aid to Iraq, and arms deliveries were essential to American and Iraqi security. Was the 5,000 troop number too small to motivate the Iraqis? No Iraqi made that argument to me; generally, smaller forces are more sellable. Could someone other than Mr. Maliki have been more supportive, and were the Iranians opposed? Of course, but with or without Mr. Maliki and Iranians we faced deep resistance from parliamentarians and the public.

Could President Obama have showed more enthusiasm? True, Mr. Obama seemed to feel he couldn’t force an unwanted agreement on the Iraqi people, and he didn’t work with Mr. Maliki as President Bush had. But Mr. Obama spoke or met with Mr. Maliki three times in 2011, and Vice President Joe Biden was constantly in touch. What counted most with Mr. Maliki was not rapport but the coldblooded calculus of pluses and minuses affecting his political fortunes. On the other hand, the negotiations were disrupted repeatedly by White House staffers with public statements inaccurately low-balling the troop numbers and misinterpreting Iraqi decisions.

The withdrawal of troops allowed President Obama to declare that he was “ending the war in Iraq”—oddly, since it was the Bush administration’s military victories and successful negotiation of the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement that had set the timeline for U.S. troop withdrawal. Later, during the 2012 presidential debates, Mr. Obama inexplicably denied that he had even attempted to keep troops in Iraq.

Could a residual force have prevented ISIS’s victories? With troops we would have had better intelligence on al Qaeda in Iraq and later ISIS, a more attentive Washington, and no doubt a better-trained Iraqi army. But the common argument that U.S. troops could have produced different Iraqi political outcomes is hogwash. The Iraqi sectarian divides, which ISIS exploited, run deep and were not susceptible to permanent remedy by our troops at their height, let alone by 5,000 trainers under Iraqi restraints.

Iraqis in Shiite-dominated greater Baghdad generally support the army, he said. But he also acknowledged that the army cannot defend the surrounding “Baghdad belt” without the help of thousands of Shiite militiamen Kamil calls “volunteers,” particularly because areas just to the north, west and south have a Sunni majority.

Officers in one of many units that collapsed in Mosul, the 2nd Battalion of Iraq’s 3rd Federal Police Division, said their U.S. training was useful. But as soon as their American advisors left, they said, soldiers and police went back to their ways.

Retired Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, in charge of Iraqi training in 2007 and 2008, said Maliki’s government intimidated and assassinated Sunni officers while Maliki seized personal control of the security forces from commanders. Human rights groups have accused Iraqi security forces of detaining and killing Sunnis.

Selected quotes from the text above is from By David Zucchino

Why Iraqi army can’t fight, despite $25 billion in U.S. aid, training

No Definition for Terror

Posted on November 3, 2014November 3, 2014 by Denise Simon

I have no connections to anyone currently employed by the FBI but I do have several with former FBI’ers. Our formal and non-formal discussions are chilling when it comes to operations, assignments and investigations at the agency.

So FBI, here is a tip, this website http://islamophobia.org/ has listed names and organizations they deem as a threat to Islam. Is this some kind of hit list? What criteria creates such a list and is this approved by the FBI?

But take note FBI, those that are paying attention don’t feel safe in America. Your agency is doing little to sway our fears. Share that same sentiment with Jeh Johnson at DHS please.

It was a few years ago after doing some research and gathering evidence that I attempted to have a dialogue with the local FBI office, the agent on duty asked me if I was an Islamophobe and them hung up on me. It was clearly the time when the FBI was given an edict to be politically correct when it comes to investigations on Islam and all the manuals were stripped from the operating and training systems.

FBI Director Robert Mueller in 2012 capitulated with the American Muslim and Arab American lobby groups and announced that more than 700 documents and 300 presentations from training materials. Abed Ayoub was able to take a meeting with Mueller who represented groups including the Islamic Society of North America, Muslim Public Affairs Council, MPAC and CAIR. Included in the dialogue was also Thomas Perez of the DoJ’s Civil Rights Division. It all goes a step further as law enforcement agencies around the country are required to do Muslim outreach in a robust campaign of political correctness. No one in America is allowed to have independent thought regarding Islam, Muslims or terror as it is deemed offensive to Islam.

So in the meantime, America sadly has endured domestic terror attacks but government refuses to apply the term ‘terrorism’ instead using ‘work place violence’ as is noted in the Ft. Hood shooting by Major Nidal Hasan and beheading of Colleen Hufford in Moore, Oklahoma at the hands of Alton Nolen. The mosques are connected by a network of imams that are devoted followers of Anwar al Awlaki killed by an American drone in Yemen a few years ago. We cannot overlook the Tsarneav brothers the killers of the Boston bombing.

While we do have many that have left the shores of America to join Daesh we also witness the black flags and ISIS graffiti in many locations around the country. America also has agreements with many countries in a VISA waiver program, making it easier to made round trip journeys to rogue states like Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan.

So terror is here America and yet what does the FBI have to say or do about it? Crickets…

So when it comes to defining terror, here is a formal summary of the term. We can only hope that the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice will take note and behave and investigate accordingly.

Terrorism Defies Definition

by Daniel Pipes and Teri Blumenfeld The Washington Times October 24, 2014

http://www.meforum.org/4877/terrorism-defies-definition

Defining terrorism has practical implications because formally certifying an act of violence as terrorist has important consequences in U.S. law.

Terrorism suspects can be held longer than criminal suspects after arrest without an indictment They can be interrogated without a lawyer present. They receive longer prison sentences. “Terrorist inmates” are subject to many extra restrictions known as Special Administrative Measures, or SAMs. The “Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002” gives corporate victims of terrorism special breaks (it is currently up for renewal) and protects owners of buildings from certain lawsuits. When terrorism is invoked, families of victims, such as of the 2009 Ft. Hood attack, win extra benefits such as tax breaks, life insurance, and combat-related pay. They can even be handed a New York City skyscraper.

Despite the legal power of this term, however, terrorism remains undefined beyond a vague sense of “a non-state actor attacking civilian targets to spread fear for some putative political goal.” One study, Political Terrorism, lists 109 definitions. American security specialist David Tucker wryly remarks that “Above the gates of hell is the warning that all that who enter should abandon hope. Less dire but to the same effect is the warning given to those who try to define terrorism.” The Israeli counterterrorism specialist Boaz Ganor jokes that “The struggle to define terrorism is sometimes as hard as the struggle against terrorism itself.”

This lack of specificity wreaks chaos, especially among police, prosecutors, politicians, press, and professors.

“Violence carried out in connection with an internationally sanctioned terrorist group” such as Al-Qaeda, Hizbullah, or Hamas has become the working police definition of terrorism. This explains such peculiar statements after an attack as, “We have not found any links to terrorism,” which absurdly implies that “lone wolves” are never terrorists.

The whole world, except the U.S. Department of the Treasury, sees the Boston Marathon bombings as terrorism.

If they are not terrorists, the police must find other explanation to account for their acts of violence. Usually, they offer up some personal problem: insanity, family tensions, a work dispute, “teen immigrant angst,” a prescription drug, or even a turbulent airplane ride. Emphasizing personal demons over ideology, they focus on an perpetrator’s (usually irrelevant) private life, ignoring his far more significant political motives.

But then, inconsistently, they do not require some connection to an international group. When Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez shot eight rounds at the White House in November 2011, the U.S. attorney asserted that “Firing an assault rifle at the White House to make a political statement is terrorism, plain and simple” – no international terrorist group needed. Similarly, after Paul Anthony Ciancia went on a shooting spree at Los Angeles International Airport in November 2013, killing a TSA officer, the indictment accused him of “substantial planning and premeditation to cause the death of a person and to commit an act of terrorism.”

This terminological irregularity breeds utter confusion. The whole world calls the Boston Marathon bombings terrorism – except the Department of the Treasury, which, 1½ years on “has not determined that there has been an ‘act of terrorism’ under the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act.” The judge presiding over the terrorism trial in January 2014 of Jose Pimentel, accused of planning to set off pipe bombs in Manhattan, denied the prosecution’s request for an expert to justify a charge of terrorism. Government officials sometimes just throw up their hands: Asked in June 2013 if the U.S. government considers the Taliban a terrorist group, the State Department spokeswoman replied “Well, I’m not sure how they’re defined at this particular moment.”

The U.S. Department of State has yet to figure out whether the Taliban are or are not terrorists.

A May 2013 shooting in New Orleans, which injured 19, was even more muddled. An FBI spokeswoman called it not terrorism but “strictly an act of street violence.” The mayor disagreed; asked if he considered it terrorism, he said “I think so,” because families “are afraid of going outside.” Challenged to disentangle this contradiction, a supervisory special agent in the FBI’s New Orleans field made matters even more opaque: “You can say this is definitely urban terrorism; it’s urban terror. But from the FBI standpoint and for what we deal with on a national level, it’s not what we consider terrorism, per se.” Got that?

This lack of clarity presents a significant public policy challenge. Terrorism, with all its legal and financial implications, cannot remain a vague, subjective concept but requires a precise and accurate definition, consistently applied.

After releasing the Taliban 5, matters are worse when it comes to Afghanistan, Syria Yemen, Qatar and Iraq. We witnessed carefully the hostilities between Israel and Hamas and then we watched the demonstrations in America and Europe of those standing in solidarity with Hamas. So, hey, FBI, if you are going to do outreach, it should be to those in America that don’t trust you or the lack of security we feel. Your agenda is misplaced and sadly I would think any agents would be demanding a pro-active objective against jihad in America have long memories. This is shameful.

World Trade Opens Today, Freedom Towers

Posted on November 3, 2014November 3, 2014 by Denise Simon

It has been a long slog of 13 years to rebuild the World Trade Center after that fateful day of horror on 9-11-01. Truth be told, it should have taken a year or less to rebuild the towers but politics, political correctness and dark money interfered.

Yet without much fanfare, Conde Naste moves in today as the first official tenant. After 40,000 tons of steel and much debate that included building a mosque in the same area, The World Trade Center once again assumes her place in the New York skyline and telegraphs a message to the enemies of America.

Go here to see a less than 30 second video of the reconstruction.

Just a few months ago, the 9-11 Memorial museum opened to the public at ‘ground zero’.

A photo essay is here.

By Keiko Morris – Wall Street Journal

Louis Medina, a security guard at One World Trade Center, couldn’t control his emotions as he thought about Monday, the first day at work for the skyscraper’s first group of office workers, 175 employees of publishing giant Condé Nast.

“Even 10 years from now, my son will ask me or my daughter will ask me, and I will be like, ‘I was there when the building opened [and] my job was to protect the building,’ ” said Mr. Medina, before succumbing to tears. “A lot of people don’t get a chance to be a part of history even if it is a small part.”

Mr. Medina’s passion represents just one of the layers of meaning surrounding the reintroduction of daily office life on the site where more than 2,700 people lost their lives in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

For many, Monday’s milestone is largely economic, evidence of the continuing reinvigoration of lower Manhattan. And for Condé Nast, the move from Times Square to One World Trade Center symbolizes a corporate pivot toward the digital future for the company that produces the New Yorker, Vogue and Vanity Fair.

Stand Tall America

Putin: Nyet on NATO

Posted on November 3, 2014November 3, 2014 by Denise Simon

Vladimir is getting a huge pass by the White House and John Kerry ignoring what he is doing. Seems the burden of dealing with Russia’s aggressions comes down to General Breedlove, the U.S. Commander of U.S. European and the 17th Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.

Russia seems to be pretty angry with its neighboring countries in the Baltic Sea—especially Sweden. A couple of weeks ago, on October 2, Sweden’s authority for signals intelligence (FRA) leaked a photo of a Russian fighter jet flying only about 30 feet away from a Swedish Armed Forces intelligence plane. Russian warships have threatened a Finnish research vessel in the Baltic Sea on two occasions—August 2 and September 2, and on October 7, armed NATO fighter jets followed Russian fighters above the Swedish island Öland in the Baltic Sea. Last year the country simulated a nuclear attack against Sweden, and Russian jets have been showing off their weapons by exposing their undercarriages when approaching Swedish aircraft.

Portuguese fighter jets intercepted seven Russian jets over the Baltic Sea. Simultaneously, Turkish fighters were scrambled to intercept two Russian bombers and two fighters over the Black Sea.

The English RAF also intercepted eight Russian aircraft over the North Sea. After the interception, the formation split, with the fighters and a tanker returning to Russia while two bombers continued towards the Atlantic. The bombers were later intercepted again by the Portuguese over the Atlantic. For a full list of Russian military aggression in the last year go here.

The Pentagon is well aware of these activities and has intelligence briefings daily with the NATO command. Then last week, it finally came out that Russia was responsible for hacking into the White House internet systems. On Tuesday came reports in the American media that Russian-based hackers had breached some computer networks at the White House earlier this month, triggering an investigation by the FBI, the National Security Agency and the Secret Service. No Obama administration official went on record over the alleged incident, preferring to feed anonymous anti-Russian comments to the Washington Post and many other press outlets.

Then there is Poland, Preparing for Invasion

But Poland is the real issue when it comes to defending NATO’s exposed Eastern frontier from Russian aggression. Only Poland, which occupies the Alliance’s central front, has the military power to seriously blunt any Russian moves westward. As in 1920, when the Red Army failed to push past Warsaw, Poland is the wall that will defend Central Europe from any westward movement by Moscow’s military. To their credit, and thanks to a long history of understanding the Russian mentality better than most NATO and EU members, Warsaw last fall, when the violent theft of Crimea was still just a Kremlin dream, announced a revised national security strategy emphasizing territorial defense. Eschewing American-led overseas expeditions like those to Iraq and Afghanistan that occupied Poland’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) during the post-9/11 era, this new doctrine makes defending Poland from Eastern aggression the main job of its military. Presciently, then-Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, contradicting optimistic European and NATO presumptions of our era that conventional war in Europe was unthinkable, stated in May 2013, “I’m afraid conflict in Europe is imaginable.”

Particularly in light of the fact that both NATO and the Obama administration rejected my advice to seriously bolster Alliance defenses in the East with four heavy brigades, including the two brigades that Warsaw explicitly asked NATO — meaning, in practice, the United States — for after this year’s Russo-Ukrainian War began in earnest, the issue of Poland’s military readiness is of considerable importance to countries far beyond Poland. Instead of creating a militarily viable NATO tripwire that would deter Russian aggression, the Alliance, and Washington, DC, have opted for symbolic gestures — speeches, military visits, small exercises — that impress the Western media but not the Russians.

Simply put: Can Poland defend itself if Putin decides to move his aggression westward? Even if NATO rides to the rescue, as they would be required to under Article 5 — that is now an “if” question to many in Warsaw — will the Polish military be able to buy sufficient time for the Alliance to come to their aid? Notwithstanding that Poland (and Estonia) are the only “new NATO” members that take their Alliance obligations fully seriously, spending more than the required two percent of GDP on defense — a standard almost all longstanding NATO members can’t manage to meet — there are serious doubts about the ability of Poland’s armed forces to defend against a major Russian move to the West.

There is good news. When it comes to resisting what I term Special War — that shadowy amalgam of espionage, terrorism, and subversion at which the Kremlin excels — Warsaw, with its long acquaintance with sneaky Russian games, is probably better equipped than any almost NATO country to deter and defeat Putin’s secret offensive. The recent arrests of two Polish agents of Russian military intelligence (GRU), one of them a Polish military officer assigned to the MoD, sent a clear message to Moscow that Special War will be countered with aggressive counterintelligence.

When it comes to conventional defense, however, the news from Poland appears less rosy. Despite the fact that no one questions the basic competence of the Polish armed forces, nor the impressiveness of their current defense acquisition program, there is a matter of size. The recent MoD announcement that it is moving thousands of troops closer to the country’s borders with Belarus and Ukraine, where any threat would emerge, is encouraging but not sufficient (thanks to the Cold War, when Poland’s Communist military was directed westward, most of its major military bases are closer to Germany than the East). Since the abandonment of conscription five years ago, a cumbersome process that caused readiness problems for some time, Warsaw’s armed forces come to only 120,000 active duty troops, with less than 48,000 in the ground forces (i.e. the army). That number is insufficient to man the army’s structure of three divisions with thirteen maneuver brigades (ten of them armored or mechanized).

A solution to this manpower shortfall was supposed to be found in the establishment of the National Reserve Forces (NSR), with 20,000 fully trained part-time volunteers who would flesh out the order of battle in a crisis. Yet the NSR, which was announced by the MoD five years ago with much fanfare, has had considerable teething problems, with shortages of recruits and inadequate training budgets. Recent reports indicate both morale and readiness are low among NSR soldiers, who feel poorly treated by the regular military, while none dispute that the force has only recruited and trained 10,000 troops, half the target figure.

Quality can compensate for deficient quantity to an extent, and Poland’s recent acquisition of more late-model Leopard II tanks from Germany, adding to the 124 it already has, means they will be able to replace most of their Soviet-model legacy armor, and meet any Russian incursion on an equal footing in terms of quality, if not quantity. By approximately 2020, the air force will have wholly replaced its Soviet-era helicopters, buying 150 modern airframes, while the MoD plans to purchase thirty-two late-model attack helicopters by 2022, which would pose a significant threat to Russian armor.

More interesting still are plans taking shape to give Warsaw asymmetric deep-strike capabilities to resist Russian aggression. The navy and the army intend to acquire long-range missiles to counter superior Russian numbers, but the cornerstone of the deterrence concept called “Polish Fangs” by Warsaw is the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), to be carried by the air force’s F-16 fleet (the wing of forty-eight F-16’s is the backbone of Polish airpower). Combined with drones and Poland’s excellent special operations forces, which are among the best in NATO, Warsaw believes that the American-made JASSM on the American-made F-16 will give them an important qualitative advantage over the Russians, including the ability to precisely hit targets up to 370 kilometers behind enemy lines.

Look up in the sky, you just may see Russian aircraft….then if you do, send a tweet to the White House, they are missing the memos.