War and the Military

Remembering the Alamo, Davy Crockett, and the Butterfly Effect

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The Alamo fell just before dawn 190 years ago today. An estimated 220 men died in the furious attack by would-be Mexican emperor Santa Ana’s army of 5,000: once it breached the walls of the fortified mission, a massacrec commenced that was over in 20 minutes.. The defenders had come from many states, territories and nations, and eventually they knew they were going to die if they stayed. Only one of them, Lewis Rose—maybe—decided to leave. Even the messengers sent out by William Barrett Travis to seek rescuing troops returned to the Alamo knowing hope was lost, and they they would be killed. After 13 days, during which the Alamo was pounded by cannon fire, forcing the men to spend the night making repairs, the battle was over. But those 13 days gave Texas General Sam Houston time to raise the army that would defeat of Santa Ana at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Ethics Alarms has posted ethics essays about the Alamo almost every year since the blog began. It is my favorite U.S. historical story, mixing drama, legend, ethics lessons and fascinating personalities, notably Jim Bowie, Travis, and, of course, Davy Crockett. Here is my first post about Davy, from March of 2010, posted to mark the passing of Disney legend Fess Parker, whose portrayal of the frontiersman on TV brought Crockett out of the historical shadows.

Crockett was the most important casualty of the battle, because at the time of his death he was the first modern celebrity, famous in part for being famous, celebrated by dime novels and sensational, and fictional, stage plays. His death focused public attention on Texas as nothing else could. Actress-singer Zendaya is the most popular celebrity in the U.S. today: imagine what the public reaction would have been if an Iran-backed terrorist attack had eliminated her. (Try to imagine it without reflecting on the relative values of a nation whose top celebrity is Zendaya as compared to a nation whose children idolize “The King of the Wild Frontier”). In that 2010 post I wrote in part,

“Like another iconic figure who once portrayed him, John Wayne, what Davy Crockett symbolizes in American culture matters more than his real life story. He built a reputation for being the perfect example of the rugged American individualist, standing tall for basic values, especially honesty and courage, while keeping a sense of humor and an appetite for fun.  In his doubtlessly ghost-written 1834 hagiography, “Narrative of the life of Colonel Crockett,” Crockett stated his credo as

“I leave this rule for others when I’m dead: Be always sure you’re right–then go ahead.”

It is as good an exhortation to live by the ethical virtues of integrity, accountability and courage as there is, and it gained great credibility when Crockett remained in the Alamo to die defending a nascent Texas republic, in complete harmony with his stated ideals. Battling for right against overwhelming odds,remaining steadfast in the face of certain defeat, never complaining, never looking back once he had decided to “go ahead,” Crockett’s legend is a valuable and inspiring, if not always applicable, example for all of us when crisis looms. Nobody who ever saw the final fade-out of the Disney series’ final episode, with Fess Parker furiously swinging “old Betsy,” Crockett’s Tennessee long rifle, like a baseball bat at Santa Anna’s soldiers as they swarmed over the walls, ever forgot the image, or mistook what it meant. Davy knew he was going down, but he would fight the good fight to the end….”

They don’t teach the Alamo in schools any more except in Texas, and the woke historical revisionism of the battle casts it as a minor event and even a shameful one, since many of the Texas settlers Mexico invited to settle its Texas territory brought slaves with them. In our “1619 Project” World they were fighting for white supremacy against a brown army.

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Iran Attack Aftermath: Update

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

1. You have to give Ann Althouse credit, as annoying as she often is. She lives in Madison, her blog readers once were predictably progressive, but she is relentlessly mocking the Axis’s inability to show the integrity and common sense to admit that President Trump finally taking action against Iran is praiseworthy.

  • Here, she favorably cites Philip Klein in “Donald Trump Wasn’t Bluffing on Iran” (National Review), and notes,
    “From the comments over there: “How Barack Obama must feel now, having tried sucking up to the Ayatollah, then bribing him (as did Biden later), and now finally realizing, after mocking Trump and denouncing Trump and lying about Trump, that the president who will be remembered as being truly consequential, is Trump. Sleep well, President Obama. Trump got him.”
  • Here, she quotes “Fear turns to joy as ordinary Iranians see off Ayatollah Khamenei/There was smoke and a sound. We looked up. Did they kill Khamenei, they asked”
  • Here, she reminds us that Trump-hater Sen. John McCain joked about bombing Iran nearly 20 years ago, wondering when we would “send them an airmail message. ” “Question answered: February 28, 2026,” she writes.
  • Here, she notes that Glenn Greenwald appeals to the authority of Charlie Kirk to condemn the attack, a cheap shot by Greenwald.
  • Here, she salutes (in her own, Ann-ish back-handed way), Sen. John Fetterman for being the only Democrat to openly support the President.
  • Here, she points out how absurd and dishonest the Trump Deranged voices are claiming Trump attacked Iran to distract from the Left’s Epstein files obsession. I would add that if you want a Trump Derangement test, making that argument is as clear a positive for the malady as one could find.
  • Here, she posts a TikTok video in which an Iranian schoolboy declares, “I Love Trump.”
  • Here, she mock comedian Mike Benz, who tweeted that Trump had started WWIII, and then withdrew the dumb comment saying that he didn’t mean that literally but only figuratively because he didn’t know how to describe “what this is.” Ann: If you “don’t know of a 280 character way of describing whatever this is,” there is always the option of saying nothing…”

Meanwhile, her few remaining knee-jerk progressives are largely silent, as are the progressives, troll and non-trolls alike, who frequent Ethics Alarms. I think that is cowardly.

2. Over at MSNOW, the talking heads that routinely attack capitalism are warning that the Iran conflict might adversely affect the stock market.

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The Axis, the Trump-Deranged and the Anti-American Americans Beclowning Themselves During the Iran Misson, 6:48 AM-6:48 PM, EST…

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Me: Not really. All that matters to these tiresome crazies is that President Trump is doing it, so it must be bad. That was a 6:48 AM post. The Axis only got worse, as the Left threw a tantrum over its failed ideology being exposed once again as the weak, foolish sham it is…

Me: Not soon enough. Carter allowed Iran to commit an act of war by kidnapping the U.S. Embassy personnel and holding them for ransom. For all these years, the Democratic Party has been the weenie party, making the world a more dangerous place. Now it is furious because the U.S. is finally using its power as it should have all along. There has to be “a big kid on the block,” or the world goes to Hell, and the Big Kid had better be the one nation that aspires to seek freedom and ethics.

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The First “The Unabomber Was Right” Post of 2026

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Jason Fried is the Co-Founder and CEO at 37signals, the maker of Basecamp and HEY. His blog usually engages in discussing business, technology, design and product development, and his post earlier this month became especially interesting to me after last week, when it seemed like technology was out to get me personally. I experienced infuriating breakdowns or glitches from Verizon, American Express, Amazon Prime, my bank (Wells Fargo), Merrick Bank, Microsoft, and, of course, WordPress. Each breakdown involved frustrating interactions with chatbots and automated “customer service” lines, the oxymorons of the century. In total, I lost about four hours of otherwise billable time, and several of the problems have yet to be fully addressed.

Apparently, however, things will soon get worse, unless I hurl myself into that woodchipper, which seems to work just fine.

Fried writes in part regarding the recent experience of his parents when they rented a house near him to spend a few months. He had just come back from a vacation in Montana and had rented a house there. “[E]verything…was old school and clear. Physical up/down light switches in the right places. Appliances without the internet. Buttons with depth and physically-conformed to state change rather than surfaces that don’t obviously register your choice…traditional round rotating Honeywell thermostats that are just clear and obvious. No tours, no instructions, no questions, no fearing you’re going to do something wrong, no wondering how something works. Useful and universally clear. That’s human,” he concluded.

But not in the new, technologically advanced, “improved” house his parents ended up in. He writes in part (and in horror):

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There Is Hope…[Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Update: The graphic above came from X, and I used it for convenience. Several commenters have expressed skepticism about the report because I didn’t include a source. I should have, and I apologize. The original story came from the website Semafor, and subsequent reports were published in the NY Post, NPR, Yahoo! and others. That doesn’t mean the story is necessarily true, but the two papers haven’t denied it, which is what one would expect if they didn’t want to put a target on their own metaphorical backs and those of the leakers.

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I would like to think that the two banner-carrying newspapers in the Axis of Unethical Conduct did the right thing because it was the patriotic and ethical thing to do. I don’t believe that, unfortunately.

I believe that the mainstream media finally knows it is on metaphorical thin ice. Despite their attacks on President Trump for calling them—correctly and fairly— “enemies of the people,” they are smart enough to figure out that they have eroded the public’s trust to a perilous degree. Their competence, motives and integrity are in doubt now. Their arrogance and flagrant violations of the most basic tenets of journalism ethics are the cause of that.

In the past, leaking military plans of a controversial President would have been the natural course for these organizations, and they would have stood proudly on “the public’s right to know.” But I think they fear a tipping point after the Biden disability cover-up and the news media’s conspicuous failure to aggressively follow the bread crumbs in the Somali social services fraud scandal. The Times and the Post didn’t do the right thing because it was in the nation’s interest. It did the right thing because they are afraid.

And, ironically, that is also in the nation’s interest,

On Maduro’s Arrest, the Ethics Dunces and Villains Are All In Agreement: What Does This Tell Us? [Part 2] [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 58 Comments

Part 1 is here.

I assumed that headline was a misstatement, because the jokes write themselves (Hamas is condemning an abduction?). But I checked some Arab world sources, and indeed, all of the terrorist organizations are big mad over President Trump nabbing Maduro. From an Arabic news agency:

Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has condemned the US aggression against Venezuela as a blatant and unprecedented violation of international law…Hezbollah movement, in a statement, condemned the U.S. aggression against Venezuela and the targeting of the country’s vital facilities, civilians, and residential buildings, describing it as a blatant and unprecedented violation of international law….It added that the military aggression shows disregard for global stability and security, and aimed at entrenching the “law of the jungle” in order to dismantle the remnants of the international system and strip it of any substance that could serve as a safeguard for nations and peoples.

The Palestinian movement, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, denounced what it called an “imperialist American aggression” on Venezuela, including airstrikes and missile attacks on Caracas and civilian, residential, and military sites, casting it as a new episode of ‘organized American terrorism” against sovereign states….

Palestinian Islamic Jihad described the US assault on Venezuela as an escalating campaign, from blockade to direct strikes, aimed at domination, occupation, and plunder, and a flagrant breach of sovereignty and international law. It said Venezuela is targeted for its steadfast support for Palestine and regional resistance forces, describing the struggle as part of a shared anti-imperialist battle.

Hamas, for its part, denounced the military aggression on Caracas and the kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife, calling it a grave violation of international law and the sovereignty of an independent state. The movement cast the assault as an extension of unjust U.S. interventions driven by imperial ambition that have destabilized multiple countries and threatened international peace. Hamas urged the UN, especially the Security Council, to take measures to stop the attack immediately.

I have to say, I find this mordantly funny. Could there be a more villainous, despicable group of critics for Democrats to find common cause with? Any minute now, I’m expecting a statement from the Seven Princes of Hell, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Leviathan, Mammon, Belphegor,, and Satan, joined by demons Astaroth, Belial, and Azazel, declaring the U.S.’s dazzling Venezuelan operation to be a violation of international law.

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On Maduro’s Arrest, the Ethics Dunces and Villains Are All In Agreement: What Does This Tell Us? [PART I]

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

The headline is a rhetorical question.

Every now and then—the last was the assassination of Charlie Kirk—all the masks come off and anyone capable of objectivity can see exactly who the unethical, untrustworthy and dishonest among us are. Unfortunately, most people are not capable of objectivity, because bias makes you stupid. One would think, however, that at least those who present themselves to the public as skilled and independent analysts would take some care not to expose their double standards, lack of integrity and hypocrisy for all to see. One would be wrong to think that, as the video compilation above vividly demonstrates.

But why, oh why, do otherwise intelligent people continue to trust these hacks?

Well, you can decide whether that is a rhetorical question or not.

Meanwhile, here is the first part of an incomplete collection of telling reactions to the U.S.’s perfectly executed incursion into Venezuela to remove an illegitimate ruler and his wife who were both under U.S. indictment.

1. Two lawyer bloggers, Ann Althouse and Jonathan Turley, who I respect and often reference here, made it clear—Turley a bit more expressly than Ann—that the U.S. action was legal and justified. Althouse went back over her previous comments on Maduro—gee, why didn’t Jen Psaki do that?—to find her expressing sympathy with the plight of Venezuelans and the absence of U.S. action, as in her discovery of a post from 2019:

When Trump was pleading with the Venezuelan military to support Juan Guaido, I wrote: “I was surprised that on the channel I was watching — Fox News — the analysis after the speech was about the 2020 presidential campaign…. People in Venezuela are suffering. They’re starving. We need to help. I thought Trump was trying to get something done, but the news folk rush to talk about the damned campaign, as if that’s what sophisticated, savvy people do. I found it offensive.”

Turley has posted twice already explaining that the action was legally justified, with some other useful analysis today, including a pointed reference to Axis hypocrisy:

…Some of us had written that Trump had a winning legal argument by focusing on the operation as the seizure of two indicted individuals in reliance on past judicial rulings, including the decisions in the case of former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and General Dan Caine stayed on script and reinforced this narrative. Both repeatedly noted that this was an operation intended to bring two individuals to justice and that law enforcement personnel were part of the extraction team to place them into legal custody. Rubio was, again, particularly effective in emphasizing that Maduro was not the head of state but a criminal dictator who took control after losing democratic elections.

However, while noting the purpose of the capture, President Trump proceeded to declare that the United States would engage in nation-building to achieve lasting regime change. He stated that they would be running Venezuela to ensure a friendly government and the repayment of seized U.S. property dating back to the government of Hugo Chávez.

… [Trump]is the most transparent president in my lifetime with prolonged (at times excruciatingly long) press conferences and a brutal frankness about his motivations. Second, he is unabashedly and undeniably transactional in most of his dealings. He is not ashamed to state what he wants the country to get out of the deal.

In Venezuela, he wants a stable partner, and he wants oil.

Chávez and Maduro had implemented moronic socialist policies that reduced one of the most prosperous nations to an economic basket case. They brought in Cuban security thugs to help keep the population under repressive conditions, as a third fled to the United States and other countries.

After an extraordinary operation to capture Maduro, Trump was faced with socialist Maduro allies on every level of the government. He is not willing to allow those same regressive elements to reassert themselves.

The problem is that, if the purpose was regime change, this attack was an act of war, which is why Rubio struggled to bring the presser back to the law enforcement purpose. I have long criticized the erosion of the war declaration powers of Congress, including my representation of members of Congress in opposition to Obama’s Libyan war effort.

The fact, however, is that we lost that case. Trump knows that. Courts have routinely dismissed challenges to undeclared military offensives against other nations. In fairness to Trump, most Democrats were as quiet as church mice when Obama and Hillary Clinton attacked Libya’s capital and military sites to achieve regime change without any authorization from Congress. They were also silent when Obama vaporized an American under this “kill list” policy without even a criminal charge. So please spare me the outrage now.

My strong preferences for congressional authorization and consultation are immaterial. The question I am asked as a legal analyst is whether this operation would be viewed as lawful. The answer remains yes.

A couple items in that analysis warrant special attention, like…

  • “[Trump]is the most transparent president in my lifetime.” That is absolutely true, yet the narrative being pushed by the unscrupulous Axis is that he is a habitual liar of epic proportions.
  • “….most Democrats were as quiet as church mice when Obama and Hillary Clinton attacked Libya’s capital and military sites to achieve regime change without any authorization from Congress.” Indeed, this is the gold standard of double standards that should be shaken in the faces of the reflex Trump-haters like a terrier shakes a rat.

2. 2024’s Ethics Hero of the Year Elon Musk called the elimination of Maduro “a win for the world.” Well, the Good Guys of the world, anyway. Russia, China, Iran and Cuba, as well as neighboring South American leftist states like Columbia and Brazil and drug cartel-run states like Mexico, condemned Trump’s action. Gee, wouldn’t that collection provide the Mad Left a big clue regarding the distribution of bad Guys and Good Guys on this issue? No, because to the Trump Deranged and the anti-Americans, wherever Trump is automatically is the House Where Evil Dwells.

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Addendum to “U.S. Forces Executed “A Large Scale Strike Against Venezuela” To Remove President Maduro: ‘Bully!’” [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Axis media note: CNN’s alert to my phone just now regarding the Maduro operation: “Maduro and his wife dragged from their bedroom…”

Awww.

See how mean that President Trump is? He dragged that poor couple from their bed!

CNN should be shamed out of existence.

Celebrating the 111th Anniversary of the Strange But Ethical “Christmas Truce”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

[Good morning! Was Santa good to you? I might as well repost this essay about the Christmas truce; since I only have published it on Christmas Day, some readers might have missed it, and EA, believe it or not, sometimes gets new followers from time to time…]

One of the weirdest events in world history took place on Christmas 1914, at the very beginning of the five year, pointless and stunningly destructive carnage of The Great War, what President Woodrow Wilson, right as usual, called “The War to End All Wars.”

World War I, as it was later called after the world war it caused succeeded it,  led to the deaths of more than 25 million people, and if anything was accomplished by this carnage, I have yet to read about it.

The much sentimentalized event was a spontaneous Christmas truce, as soldiers on opposing sides on the Western Front, defying orders from superiors, pretended the war didn’t exist and left their trenches, put their weapons and animus aside, sang carols,  shared food, buried their dead, and even played soccer against each other, as “The Christmas Truce” statue memorializes above.

The brass on both sides—this was a British and German phenomenon only—took steps to ensure that this would never happen again, and it never did.

It all began on Christmas Eve, when at 8:30 p.m. an officer of the Royal Irish Rifles reported to headquarters that “The Germans have illuminated their trenches, are singing songs and wishing us a Happy Xmas. Compliments are being exchanged but am nevertheless taking all military precautions.” The two sides progressed to serenading each other with Christmas carols, with the German combatants crooning  “Silent Night,” and the British adversaries responding with “The First Noel.“ The war diary of the Scots Guards reported that a private  “met a German Patrol and was given a glass of whisky and some cigars, and a message was sent back saying that if we didn’t fire at them, they would not fire at us.”

The same deal was struck spontaneously at other locales across the battlefield. Another British soldier reported that as Christmas Eve wound down into Christmas morning,  “all down our line of trenches there came to our ears a greeting unique in war: ‘English soldier, English soldier, a merry Christmas, a merry Christmas!’” He wrote in a letter home that he heard,

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It’s “Do You Hear What I Hear?”Time…Happy Christmas Eve Everyone!

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

It’s the day before Christmas, and all though my house, there’s no sign of Christmas, but I’ve no right to grouse…

…because it’s my choice to be solitary and miserable this season. Two days ago my adult heir gratuitously sent me a hate bomb that was the most hurtful communication I have ever received from anyone. Given that this individual lives rent free in an apartment in my house and is over 30, I expected just a teeny-weeny bit of, if not gratitude, respect. Uh, no. This was only the latest joy-extracting event this holiday season: I also just wounded my leg (the same one that put me in the hospital in July and hasn’t healed completely yet), I was fired from my oldest ethics gig (as with the unexpected attack from downstairs, the reason is obscure) and the number of administrative Swords of Damocles hanging over my head since Grace died last year have increased rather than diminished, as was my grand plan for 2025. So I’m taking pleasure in other people’s Christmas, including yours. So you better have a great one. Tonight I expect to be playing bridge with three ghosts.

Or heading to the bridge, like George Bailey.

Below is an updated and rewritten version of my earlier post about my favorite modern Christmas song, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” When I still had a professional theater company to oversee, I wrote and directed a musical revue called “An American Century Christmas.” It was staged like one of those old-fashioned TV Christmas specials, with the set decorated like a Christmas living room, and celebrity guests arriving with gifts.

I stuffed everything I loved about the seasonal entertainment into the thing: the scene in “The Homecoming” when John-Boy gets his tablets from his father; the scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” when George gets emotional realizing that he’s in love with Mary while talking to Sam (Hee-haw!) Wainwright on the telephone; Danny and Bing standing in for the Haines Sisters and singing “Sisters:” a reading of “The Littlest Angel;” the Peanuts kids and Snoopy decorating Charlie Brown’s sickly tree. I don’t think anyone liked that show as much as I did, but so what. It made me happy. Even remembering it now makes me happy.

The first act finale was a rousing rendition of “Do You Hear What I Hear?” The song means a lot to me, and I’ll be blasting the original version tonight.

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