Horses and Bayonets: Another Meme That Does Not Mean What They Think it Means
One of the early horsesandbayonets meme pictures. Note that those soldiers aren't using bayonets.
Last night, Obama supporters again proved that they will hear what they want to hear. As the “binders full of women” comment gave Democratic women a hook for their assumption that Romney is bad for women in government, Obama’s comment about horses and bayonets launched an instant meme in which his supporters see what they want to see. This time, however, they are making fools of themselves.
If you were watching football or anything enjoyable last night, Romney was talking about the importance of maintaining our forces and lamented that we now had the smallest navy since 1916. Obama countered that Romney didn’t know much about the military, that this wasn’t a game of Battleship, that we had more than horses and bayonets these days. The left saw this as a zinger. Tweets about the obsoleteness of bayonets and horses started to flow. The left relished the idea that they were more military savvy than Romney. Alas, they were mistaken.
We still use bayonets. And horses. Remember when it seemed to take forever before we went into Afghanistan after 9/11? Special Forces had already gone in—on horseback—to ID and paint the targets for our attack. There is a lovely memorial going in at Ground Zero to commemorate these heroes. Bayonets can be seen in stock photos of the Tomb of the Unknown Solider and in the Few, The Proud, The Marines commercials. In Great Britain one can still earn medals for proper use of a bayonet. (h/t @tobyharnden) In contention for the best comment of the night started by a mother of 2 Marines to Mona Charen: “Ambassador Stevens would have loved a horse or a bayonet or a Marine with either one.”
Obama was probably trying to say that in the modern era the number of ships isn’t as important as the kind of ships. If Obama hadn’t been aiming for a petty zinger, he might have been able to articulate that point. He didn’t, and his supporters ran with the horses and bayonets meme which exposes them as not only ignorant, but willfully ignorant of the military.
I’m not a military expert either, but what kind of idiot thinks aircraft carriers are the solution to everything? Parking several very expensive to operate aircraft carriers off the coast of Somalia to stop piracy?
And yeah – someone inform our current Commander in Chief that we used horses in Afghanistan (we were short then, we needed more…) and OUR OWN BORDER! We’re using them right now, today!
Obama has the attention span of a gnat, and has no idea what he was saying, I guess it was given to him in debate prep. He can’t stand a real debate on the issue and so all he can do is change the subject and throw mud.
Obama isn’t an operations guy, he’s never paid attention to any of this stuff, and then, he don’t do numbers. If the conversation turns to numbers, he’s just reciting, or guessing, and usually incorrectly.
Horses make sense in the military for the same reason that K-9′s do – well-trained animals let the military do things that would be impractical or impossible without them.
Not to mention trained seals (not the SF Kind) and dolphins who hunt for mines used by the Navy. The skills and abilities of well trained animals are still very hard, not to mention expensive, to replicate if they can be replicated using modern technology.
Which is exactly why the US Army still has a very strong vetrinary corps. Use the right tool for the job.
Just yesterday the Puffington Host carried a story about Friday’s dedication of the statue honoring the Special Forces outside the new WTC in New York. It is of one of the Afghan Horse Soldiers.
We should start a campaign to provide ‘Bayonets for Benghazi’
A clueless remark like that was entirely predictible as was the left’s childlike reaction. Obama and Liberal Democrats in general have a distrust and disrespect for the military bordering on “loathing” as Clinton once expressed it which goes back to the Vietnam War. It’s no wonder they express their ignorance of the subject on occasion (i.e.corpseman)and applaud themselves for their stupidity.
You’d have thought that during debate prep, when the size of the Navy came up, his people could have used something more appropriate such as sailboats or coal powered capital ships. That would have at least tied the conversation back to 1917.
But bayonets? Not too many years ago, I worked in a secured area where we had enough Manhattan Project material to make Moscow into a glowing piece of black glass, and the Marines guarding the site carried bayonets.
Obama thinks he knows all about it because he has his violence rigged like a video game.
After Ms Jarret OKs the next name on the Presidential kill list, the order is relayed to an Air Force drone operator who guides an Predator drone in from hundreds of miles away and makes the impersonal hit with a missile.
That isn’t war. That is murder.
War is boots on the ground, dirt, sweat, fear and blood. Soldiers and Marines are taught to fight with the bayonet for a reason. Because they may need to, when fire and maneuver is done and you have to close.
The man needs to go, folks.
Oorah!
yep even an M-4 carbine has a bayonet. You know he practiced that line but, here we have the commander in chief having a conversation about the navy and the first thing that pops into his head is horses???? It was his military reduction defense smart ass remark and he blurted it out without thinking. I mean it was okay, now I can use my zinger
Greetings:
It was back during my military daze that I had my first attack of bayonetophobia. When our Drill Sergeants would force march us draftees out to the bayonet training area, have us affix a not very long knifey-looking thingy to the business end of a perfectly good shooting iron, and then run us full-speed at a bunch of used tires into which we were to stick the pointy end of the aforementioned underdeveloped knifey thingy all the while shouting at the top of our already overworked lungs “The purpose of the bayonet is to kill”, I couldn’t help but think that these almost adult supervisors of ours were out of their ever loving one-track minds. So, being a fairly autonomous Private from the Bronx of the day, I decided to offer the nearest individual whose sleeves had more stripes that mine ever would, my take on our current endeavor. So, I says, “Hey Sargey baby, how’s about we change our explication to something along the lines of, “The purpose of the bayonet is to remind all of us to bring plenty of ammo.” ? “Wouldn’t that be less labor intensive and saving all that carbon dioxide that we would be exhaling would probably give us a headstart on that global warming problem that will be showing up in about 30 years ?”
Well, it turns out that the aforementioned Sargey baby was uninterested in either the global environment or why own personal mental health. Thus, my bayonetophobia took hold of every fiber of my being (and upon my return to civilian life, it morphed into the even more crippling kitchenophbia, but that’s a bit off-topic if you know what I mean). Things progressed steadily downhill from there, especially when I started my all-expense-paid vacation (they told me) tour of sunny Southeast Asia where there were in lieu of cabana boys an awful lot of misguided miscreants with, instead of drink trays, these gunny looking thingies with perpetually attached bayonety thingies that still haunt me to this day (and especially when I’m wanted on the kitchen). It was just so much longer than ours, that, if it wasn’t for my already established phobia, it would certainly have given me a severe case of bayonet-envy. It was way long, with a triangular shaft and instead of ending in a pointy point, it ended in a tip like a regular screwdriver. (Those little devils were multitasking when Bill Gates was not yet a gleam in his father’s eye.)
So, things were looking kind of grim for my mother’s favorite and only son. But then, one day not long after, a man came into my life to lead me through and out of the darkness. He was long and tall, much like my self, and always spoke the truth, not so much like myself. All his sleeves were be-striped. His first name was Platoon and his last name was Sergeant and thus he spaketh unto me, “The basic combat load is 22 magazines; we hump 29.”
Dude, that was hilarious. You oughta do something more with that wit, like write some stories.
I spent 2011 as an embedded advisor to a U.S. Army Brigade Combat Team in Eastern Afghanistan. Soldiers at remote combat outposts made extensive use of donkeys to haul supplies and equipment up and down hills to support observation posts.
See, http://www.veteransmagazine.com/membersarea/MagazineIssues/06thmag/hayburners.pdf, for a discussion of the extensive use of pack animals in the modern U.S. military and federal law enforcement.
Pathetic that POTUS has no idea what U.S. Army soldiers are doing during his own Afghan “surge”.
The last successful unit bayonet charge was in … ???
Waterloo ? Wrong!
Crimea ? Wrong!
Sepoy Mutiny ? Wrong.
WWI ? Wrong.
Basra, Iraq 2004 — 20-odd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders ambushed on the road. Dismounted firefight with 100 attackers.
Six of the Prince of Wales regiment arrived to support, dismounted, exhausted their rounds, and then fixed bayonets and charged. 30 attackers dead, remainder surrendered after close-quarters fight.
Last one before that — Scots Guards in Falklands — 1982.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8016685.stm
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/90379/.html
Blades are both intimidating — and deadly — especially when the firearms are exhausted — if you know what you are doing.
FWIW, a lone retired Ghurka in India with only his service khukuri fought off 40-odd bandits on an Indian train — ten minutes — eleven bad guys dead or wounded the rest fled. He was wounded in his off-hand.
http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/One-Gurkha-40-Bandits-No-Contest-2-15-2011.asp
‘Tis indeed a great pity the British Army has not seen fit to send the Gurkhas to Afghanistan…
I was in Afghanistan in 2003 (and 2004 and 2005) working out of Kabul but with frequent trips out and about. Was up in Mazar working with the Brits for a bit and was escorted everywhere by Gurkhas. Also spent some time in and around Kabul in the company of some Gurkhas, handy fellows to have around in a fight and splendidly jocular. And much more intelligible than some of the troops in the Scots or Midlands units.
Just teasing. Kinda.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/defence/8405932/Afghanistan-Gurkha-honoured-for-lone-fight-against-Taliban.html The Gurkhas are so feared and have such a formidable reputation that when word got out that the Gurkhas were on the way, during the Falklands War, those tasked with facing, imho, the second most lethal force of warriors in the world, dropped their weapons and hauled ass. Apparently, the backasswards, inbred dummies that make up the bulk of tahleebahn has provided Gurkhas in Afghanistan many targets of opportunity. Google Gurkhas in Afghanistan, plenty of heroic actions detailed there. And they are not bound by the silly, PC, ridiculous ROE under which the worlds finest fighting men, US Marines, are forced to fight. 0311 1981-1985
Ok, I’ll admit I’m confused here.
In the last debate El Presidente seemed dismissive of the entire concept of bayonets, yet in the second debate he was hollering for a renewal of that singularly stupid Clinton era assault weapon ban which…..ta dahhhhh….incorporated a ban on bayonet lugs on weapons because they were evillllllllllll!
So, which is it? Bayonets are inconsequential, or bayonets are so evil and dangerous that society needs to be rid of them to cut down on the number of drive by bayonetings?
I think Romney was also pointing to fact that one ship can only be in one place at one time, regardless of its firepower. The decreasing overall size of the navy means that it can confront fewer challenges in fewer places at the same moment. Obviously, one carrier group today wields more firepower than a whole fleet of yesteryear, but a singel carrier group can only be in one place at any given moment in time. A larger fleet, meaning more ships, is necessary to project force in multiple places at the same time. Of course, understanding that requires three-dimensional thinking, which appears beyond President Obama’s capacity.
The President’s comment was completely asinine.
Mr. Betti, you can delete the words ‘comment was ‘.
Bayonets are still useful, if only because bayonet drill teaches soldiers to confront an opponent directly, face to face, with intent to kill. Violent physical contact with the enemy is Infantry 101 – there’s no substitute.
Horses? They seemed to be working pretty well in Afghanistan until the Regular Army decided to turn it into Vietnam Pt. II.