Hijinks on the High Seas

I’ve always been interested in naval hijinks, mostly because navies are the premier means of “projecting power” for nation-states.* And, of course, gathering intelligence as well. The US’ military has a huge emphasis on naval force-projection because of the logistics of having a navy: a carrier task force group is a movable city with its own inner supply chain. As mentioned elsewhere, you can tell a lot about the purpose of a nation’s military by its force structure.

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Watch the Story Change and Unfold

The initial headline:

“China ‘seizes US vessel’ in S China Sea” (link) isn’t quite deliberately deceptive, though if you look at the page the first thing you see is a great big white non-military-looking ship; you have to read in more detail to realize that it’s a drone that was seized.

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I Wonder if it’s Real

I stumbled on this back when the “news” first broke and concluded it was a “wait and see” kind of thing. I’m still waiting and I still haven’t seen. Allegedly someone bought one of William Shakespeare’s books on Ebay for $400.

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Sunday Sermon: Shooting Back

(Content Warning: war, death)

I’m going to begin today’s sermon with a transcript from a podcast I recently heard. It’s David Wood, speaking at Politics and Prose on “What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars.” Wood’s view is that wars can cause “Moral Injury” – a sort of post-traumatic stress disorder to our sense of right and wrong. The bit that stuck in my mind, which I went back and replayed and bookmarked, was an example that he gave – an example that is very typical of the experiences of many soldiers:

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