5-28-25

Yesterday I spent a great deal of time talking about peace through strength…..the

idea that by having a more robust, capable, and well-trained military we could

actually deter our enemies without having to fire a shot….simply because our

enemies knew that firing shots is something that the US military could do

extremely well…..let me give you an example of a smaller version of peace

through strength….there is a tendency for criminals to prey on the weak….if you

are walking out of a Wal-Mart into a dark parking lot with a cart full of goods, and

your slumped over your basket staring at your cell phone while you amble to your

car then bad guys will spot you from a distance and see you as easy prey….but if

you walk out the same door, into the same parking lot, and you’ve parked under

the lights, and your head is up and on a swivel taking in your surroundings, and

you look like you fully intend to be a person who would resist…..your odds of

getting mugged decrease dramatically…..and all you did was project

strength…..it’s no different on the world stage…..picture the world as a dark Wal-

Mart parking lot…..the US needs to walk with its head up and looking like a hard

target…..but there are also some preparations….some supplies…..some

materiel…..some weapon systems…..and we have got to spend our time and

resources giving our troops the absolute best…..I agree with Secretary of Defense

Hegseth: no more electric tanks, no more climate change alarmism, no more DEI

in uniform……give ‘em what they need to be the biggest baddest dog on the

block…..

I used to do a lot of backpacking back in the day……I love the outdoors and to me

one of the richest times in life is sitting with friends around a campfire after a

solid day’s hike……my favorite is actually winter backpacking and I’ve been out in

some ice storms that rocked our world…..I’ve been above the tree line in the

Rockies…..spent time in the Smokies and along the lower Appalachian

Trail…..With winter backpacking it’s a bit different…..the temperatures and

threats of inclimate weather mean that you have to carry more….you get into that

fine line of how much to carry knowing that you don’t want to freeze to death,

but then again, you don’t want to carry so much that you create a different kind

of misery……But I usually erred on the side of carrying just one more thing….and

yes, sometimes it was hard, but having had frostbite in my military past I was

determined not to be in that position…..so my rule, and yes it was a rule, was

“you can always take off what you don’t need but you can’t put on what you

don’t have”…….its a good rule…..dry socks, an extra shirt, my favorite fleece…..it

may take more to get those things to the campsite but once you’re there they

make it all the better…..

But I also know what it means to go without……I know what it means to be in a

hard place doing hard things without the right gear…..it ain’t good……in 2004 I

was in Baghdad during the era of soft-sided Humvees…..there is zero protection

from a canvas door I assure you…..all the canvas doors did was keep some of the

dust and direct sun off of us….nothing more……my team was initially task

organized under an Infantry Battalion of the 1 st Armored Division and all they

drove was soft-sided vehicles…..and then we began to branch out and hire local

Iraqi labor to cut steel and hang them on the hinges, except they were too heavy

for the hinges and had a tendency to break off, so we had to put reinforced

hinges on as well…..but they had no glass, they were just steel half doors but it

still felt better…..and then we contracted with local labor to build steel shells for

the truck beds of some of our Humvees….and then we scrounged some Kevlar

mats and hung them on the outside of the vehicle for extra protection….and then

we realized that the undercarriage was thin protection so we lined the floors with

sandbags….. which was cool but it all overwhelmed the suspension and the

Humvees would literally drive with their noses in the air because of the rear

weight….so then we had to beef up the suspensions…..by the time we got these

things steeled up they looked more like a bunch of vehicles from a Mad Max

movie…..(JP is putting up a picture of one of my homemade armored gun trucks

right now) but we just took to calling them “Jed Clampetts” after the junky old

truck they drove in the Beverly Hillbillies sitcom……that old rule about “you can

take off what you don’t need, but you cant put on what you don’t have” was

getting some serious use…….that rule is true and we couldn’t put on any

more….we just didn’t have what we needed…..

But then came the changeover and the 1 st Armored Division transitioned out of

the battlespace and my team was assigned to an Infantry Battalion under the 1 st

Cavalry Division……and every one of those muldoons came to town in brand new

uparmored Humvees complete with ballistic glass, hardened body shells, and

reinforced suspensions, and of all things…..air conditioning! ….and they were

fast!.....Our Jed Clampetts looked pretty sad next to those armored

Cadillacs……but back at home my sweet wife was praying…..she was literally

praying that God would put me in an armored vehicle….somehow she knew the

deal and she also knew what was available and she was praying like only a military

spouse knows how to pray…..”Lord bless Phil with an armored vehicle”…..So one

day on the FOB….maybe a month after the new Battalion had taken over I was in

the Battalion TOC and the XO hollered at me to come by his office…..Major Ed

Tanguy, a really good guy from Oregon, so I headed down the hall and came in to

see him…..he asked a few questions about my teams operations…..the level of

effort we were applying to do things for the Battalion in and amongst the civilian

population….he asked where we had been most recently and then he seemed

surprised to hear how often we were outside the wire…..Little did I know that

within the Battalion the line companies rotated their time off the FOB but the XO

looked at me and said “but you guys roll out the gate pretty much every single

day”…..”roger that” I said……and then you could’ve knocked me down with a

feather when he said “well, then I’m giving you my uparmored Humvee”……I kid

you not…..we couldn’t put any more rigged-up homespun fake armor on our old

Jed Clampetts….but now we didn’t have to…..the XO treated us like one of his

own and gave us his personal armored vehicle….with air conditioning!.....We were

beyond proud of that sweet uparmored ride…..my callsign was “Titan 6” so I

sprayed the Tennessee Titans logo on the vehicle for good measure…..(JP is

putting that picture up too) …….soon thereafter I sent Charlene a picture of me

standing in front of my new fancy uparmored Humvee holding a sign that said

“Happy Mothers Day!”……it was the best Mothers Day gift I could have sent

her….and honestly, a few weeks later, when a massive car bomb….a VBIED….went

off next to my convoy I was doubly glad to have it……

But that experience reinforced for me the idea that our troops should never have

to be without….they should not be faced with the decision of whether or not to

over-modify their gear…..its one thing to buy your own holster, or special thermal

insulated longjohns…..but no soldier should have to bet their life on subpar or for

that matter, obsolete gear…..the United States has the greatest military on the

face of the earth and as a result we have the largest military budgets in the

history of ever……but our men and women deserve it……is there waste, fraud and

abuse in the efforts made by the military industrial complex? Absolutely ….and

that’s why conservatives need to step in and provide the kind of accountability

that is needed…..but we also need to stop wasting time and spending precious

defense dollars on woke ideologies, and feel good green energy compliant

facilities, and pushing to make our military vehicles compatible with the latest

net-zero emissions ideology…..we cannot have young troopers who gets less time

on a firing range, or in his combat vehicle, or servicing a helicopter, because it is

imperative that they spend precious training time attending seminar style

briefings on the dangers of not being gender friendly and why co-ed showers in

the barracks are really not a big deal……

We need to give the men and women who serve in this greatest of militaries the

gear and the training that they need to fight and win, to increase both lethality

and survivability……stop fluffing up the budgets with unnecessary social

experimentation and get back to training and equipping warriors……

I’ve seen it firsthand……our troops can always take off what they don’t need, but

our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines cannot put on what they don’t have……

let’s give ‘em what they need to be the biggest dog on the block…..

That’s a wrap for the Rightside Way