DD 1000

Okay, so I can't resist starting with this bright idea. I am a former Naval Officer, and in fact a Surface Warfare Officer (which means my life was about driving ships). Stepping back into the real world, though.....$4,000,000,000,000 plus (that is "Billion with a B" for fans of the movie "Pentagon Wars") for a single destroyer with a two guns. Okay, I hear all the arguments about needing to introduce new technologies...but all at once, and all on one platform. The pork that feeds our Government Labs is so rampant in this kind of a concept it makes one wonder if the Navy has any intention of ever being relevant again. We intend to build 7 of this, probably for a final cost in excess of 21 Billion Dollars (that is nearly half of the entire annual budget of the Department of Homeland Security). For that we will get maybe 2 forward deployed at any one time......2. Have we completely lost track of important concepts like economy of force, global presence....who are we going to fight with these 2 ships. I am so frustrated watching the Navy shrink itself to irrelevance because of fear...fear of not being on the most advanced ship, fear of taking any losses (this is the military, that is what we signed up for), fear of admitting that you were wrong, fear of losing budget...all rockheaded silliness. Our nation cannot afford to fund these ridiculous pipedreams (one of my partners uses the term "unobtanium"). We have real challenges and threats, threats that can deeply affect the nations future, these threats do not come in the form of another Midway. They come in the form of small, high speed, hard to detect platforms packed with goodness knows what (we do know what, we just call it "classified").

I think we need to have the Department of the Navy (in fact the entire Department of Defense) stand up to the country and describe what they are doing....lets put that to an election and see if we want to spend $21B for 7 ships....or maybe fix up all the schools in the country, build a truly first rate cell infrastructe, protect our country against cyber threats, or any of 100 other more worthy causes than these 7 wastes of our taxes. The money belongs to the citizens, not the Navy....we need to hold them accountable.

Starting Out

Having come to Washington DC to live and work, I find myself surrounded by events, people, and ideas that constantly challenge my optimism that the world can be a better place. I am also confronted with the realization that the world I had hoped for can only be achieved by a realistic and consistent effort to live in the world. I don't have any illusion that I am in any way above or better than those around me. To the contrary, I am exactly an example of the fallen nature of man that so disappoints me. Every day I am confronted with choices that are never clearly right or wrong, and sometimes force me to put aside high minded morals in favor of protecting my family, friends, and partners, all of whom I care deeply about.

So rather than fall completely to the dark side of life in DC, it seemed that I could at least express and expose to others those events that happen here that we as a nation need to pay more attention to (at least in my humble opinion). I have realized lately that my faith calls on me to stand up for the teachings of our Lord and Saviour. Doing that from inside the protective walls of the Church really does nothing to bring His Word into action in the world, so I will try to frame those things around us in what I understand of His teachings. Not to say that I won't also simply express my human frustrations with the world that could be, but isn't. I might also, in the immortal words of RFK, spend some time asking "why not". So this is my journal, filled with thoughts that you might reject, but attempting to make connections that might not be apparent in the "now" journalism that we are exposed to.