I have had enough for now. There will be nothing more from me until after Labor Day. I will think about it then. If you wsh to comment or post I will moderate or post your material if I like it. pl
RSS- Open Thread – Inauguration Day 2025
- On December 19, 2024 Congress tried to suspend the federal debt limit until 2027 but the vote failed. The January 2 limit is full. What now?
- Dave Chappelle’s SNL Monologue
- Aurimas Mockus and his grueling quest to row from San Diego to Brisbane – mostly naked
- Drone Industry: American Style
- What really happened with the Pacific Palisades water hydrants?
- Two big launches scheduled for this week
- DeSantis Pitches Moving NASA Headquarters to Florida
- A renewed Ukrainian offensive in Kursk?
- True story of “Anna of Kyiv”: SBI launches investigation into formation of 155th Brigade
I always wondered how you kept up this blog, but for us to go cold turkey until Labor Day??? You have created a monster.
“Goodbye
I have had enough. Maybe later some time”?????
Sarah Palin?
The American public and Iraq?
John Steinbeck?
Jesus?
Col Lang!!?
Col,
Perhaps a retreat to the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani? What ever you do, I’m sure it will go well. Take care sir.
Sincerely,
Steve
Colonel,
While I’m relucant to write on behalf of your loyal readers (who can speak for themselves), I must say that I, and no doubt others, much appreciate your intelligent and at times biting but fair commentary. Enoy the time away from SST and here’s to my hope that you do return post-Labor Day, refreshed and primed for even more incisive analysis. Que la fête commence.
Have a good holiday and return refreshed. You will be missed in your absence. And thank you for running this blog.
(There is something wild and irrational and exhausting about the world – or the western world – at this moment).
Enjoy your vacation from SST, Sir. Take care.
How very French! I applaud your decision mon Coronel. I hope to see you return with renewed vigor, and oh, by the way, please finish the third Devereux book while you relax. I want to see how it comes out.
Always glad to hear your thoughts, sir… even if they amount to “enough, already!”.
Thanks for all that you do.
Sir, thank you for taking the time to share your wisdom. I always enjoy coming here to learn. Thank you and have a great holiday.
I hope you start up again. You have one of the few intelligent and thoughtful blogs about foreign policy on the net.
Good luck either way.
Colonel Lang,
It’s been a lasting grad- seminar led by the finest. You have been a compass in trying and confusing times. You have brought much meaning to this life’s experience. Well done and am looking forward to the turning of the leaves this Fall.
Airborne All The Way Sir!
Best wishes that your mini sabbatical goes well for you. It’s getting tougher for the indies to keep going on solo, so much mind numbing dreck to wade through. Billmon, Moon of Alabama, Cursor have all sadly hung it up. I hope you don’t decide to join them.
Hope to see you back full of vim and vigor.
Buzz Meeks
thanks for your time and effort! enjoy yourself
“hasta luego”
you are expanding my vocabulary again patron.
from phrases.org.uk
the more familiar hasta la vista in popular culture started in a song by Jody Wotley b/ hit popular culture big time in the Terminator
“John Connor: No, no, no, no. You gotta listen to the way people talk. You don’t say “affirmative,” or some shit like that. You say “no problemo.” And if someone comes on to you with an attitude you say “eat me.” And if you want to shine them on it’s “hasta la vista, baby.”
The Terminator: Hasta la vista, baby.
John Connor: Yeah but later, dickwad. And if someone gets upset you say, “chill out”! Or you can do combinations.
The Terminator: Chill out, dickwad.
John Connor: Great! See, you’re getting it!
The Terminator: No problemo. ”
unexpected blow in my solar plexus,
How convenient for me that your vacation schedule coincides with mine… I can relax knowing that I won’t be missing your postings.
Enjoy your time away!
pl, Have a nice summer.
I hope that this stoppage of SST will not be permanent. I have learned alot from you. With you stopping and b at Moon of Alabama stopping I have lost my two favorite blogs – bummer.
Colonel Lang:
Thank you for running your blog. My husband and I have read you regularly now for some time. We appreciate your sharing your knowledge and insights on so many issues. We have learned so much from you and many of your thoughtful commentators. We have especially appreciated the numerous links posted by you and others that have enabled us to follow a subject more in depth. We are much better informed citizens because of following your blog.
Your blog has been a wonderful learning experience for both of us.
I hope that if you decide not to resume after Labor Day that you will consider a subscription service. What ever you decide we wish you and your family the very best.
Sincerely,
Sherry
P.S. My husband says “Don’t let the bastards get you down!”
Colonel,
Thank you for creating and maintaining your incomparable site and of course for your service and intellect. Hope along with the rest of us that you do come back after Labor Day refreshed…if not, thanks again for the opportunity you’ve created at SST. You will be sorely missed.
Have a good time Col.
Col., rest and recoup but come back…don’t let the fifth columnist win…this blog is needed to counter the agenda…
Enjoy your rest and reflection and please come back refreshed
Well I got through James Carroll’s respite, so I’ll get through yours, but with the same sadness when I wake up that there will none of your cogent, insightful, sensible and wise-from-experience thoughts to read.
Bon chance, mon ami.
Jusqu’a le temps proche,
Leanderthal, Lighthouse Keeper, capecodlighthouse.blogspot.com
Like everyone else, I’ll miss your pointed analysis – need it desperately to counter the pollyannish chatter from COIN enthusiasts over at CNAS. But hell I probably could use a few weeks/months off too… have a cold beer on me.
Enjoy the break Colonel.
The folks who frequent these pages will be pounding on your door to open up no doubt.
you have earned a break. Thanks for your insights.
Colonel, you won’t be missed. I hope your vacation won’t end on Labor Day, you can wait ’til Christmas an d
nobody will care.
Bye!
Enjoy your break. Deep thanks for
what you’ve brought for us to this point. I hope you do resume. This blog is a most useful counterpoint to much of the rest of the stuff out there.
Vaya con Dios,
Fr.Frank DURKEE
It is rare to find comment of such intelligence, it is even rarer to find such a community of intelligent debate. Thanks for everything Colonel.
GR
To quote A “New Yorker” cartoon, “On the internet nobody knows that you are a dog.” pl
Thanks for the insights Col.; if you make it to Michigan I’ll join you in a scotch (even though my doc will insist I have the water).
GR
My wife thinks I should only take a couple of weeks off and you have convinced me that she is right. pl
COL,
I will sorely miss your insights and the conversations that result here on SST. But I greatly understand the simple need for a break – leave, if you will – from all of it.
I hope its relaxing and restful. And that your fruitful in whatever it is you’ll do to keep yourself occupied. (For me, its the first vegetable garden in my career!)
All the best and with the utmost regards,
SP
Thanks, GR!
Have a good summer. Please come back in the fall. Your voice is needed.
Pat,
I’m not sure now whether I should thank you or your wife or even the inimical GR, so I’ll just wish you and your spouse a pleasant break…
Vacations are not simply nice, they can be essential. I am currently taking a long vacation from cable and network news. My internet connection gives me a much wider selection of views. Not quite as wide without a daily reading of SST, however.
Pat
Thanks again for your reality based analysis and commentary as well as for providing a forum of learning with so many excellent contributors.
Enjoy the summer – good beer and bbqs!
As a Green Beret I know you will not allow the sobs to get to you. I look forward to your return and exposing them for what they are.
Cheers!
May you have a restorative vacation and return with fresh vigor. The work you do here is important. Please continue.
By Labor Day plenty of meat will be available for the Lion of Sic Semper Tyrannis!
Distance from daily blogging may really result in some interesting material. Who knows?
What I still see over and over is that the US leadership both civil and military thinks it is control and in charge and events are in hand. By Labor Day suggest that might be refuted for all time. No end to history.
Uncharacteristically, I had not checked in to SST for a couple of days, so I have only just seen your announcement of your holiday.
While we can all appreciate that you badly need a break, I hope that you will feel able to take your wife’s advice, and make it closer to two weeks than six.
Your wisdom will be missed — also the opportunity this blog affords to talk, with civility, about so many matters of crucial importance, with people of backgrounds and beliefs very different from one’s own.
Colonel,
Plenty more of us out here who read your analysis and not comment.
We await your return.
Have a pleasant time off.
B.Barsoum
I am much more of a lurker than active participant but this is blog is one of the few that I always read. I appreciate your insight and commentary.
Enjoy your summer and hopefully we will see you refreshed and posting again in the fall.
Sincerely,
Hawk Of May
To borrow three lines from a song by the band the Who,
When you hear this sound a-comin’,
Hear the drummers drumming,
I want you to join together with the band…
So I too join the SST chorus. People can say what they want, including “GR“, but Col. Lang’s military tradition out of VMI is serving out nation better than any other. And after seeing and listening to all the talking heads on the television, it helps tremendously for folks like myself to see a tradition that will not sell out the American people. Plus, of course, the SST informs as no other.
So I, along with others, greatly appreciate Col. Lang taking the road less traveled. I am amazed he has given us as much time as he has, and I look forward to more of the same, if he so chooses.
Thanks again for running this blog. Always interesting and challenging to read. All good things come to an end, eventually.
Disfruta!
Uh oh,
First, Moon of Alabama and now SST. Where will we all go?
I can’t wait for you to get back. I have always found your analysis to be interesting.
I second all of the voices above. I look forward each day to your trenchant observations, and my coffee tastes a bit sweeter once I’ve reviewed them. But you deserve a life too; I’ve tried maintaining a blog and I know how taxing it can be.
I hope you come back after Labor Day, but if you decide to “hang ’em up,” mucho gratias, for all that you’ve contributed to my understanding of the world.
Col. Lang,
Enjoy your time off.
See you in the fall.
-G
A bientot, Colonel. Thanks for all you’ve done here and enjoy your break, however long it turns out to be.
With deepest respect and appreciation: thank you for all your illuminating postings and for the vast amount of the time and effort you have devoted to maintaining this excellent blog, Colonel. Wishing you every satisfaction and enjoyment during your more than well-deserved break – but please don’t abandon your devoted readership: like so many others here, I’ll be counting the days until your return.
Colonel Lang,
OK. A little R&R. Then after
Labor Day-
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more”.
Nightsticker
USMC 65-72
FBI 72-96
Sir,
Fifty-three comments and one won’t miss you? It looks like pretty compelling evidence you will be missed, whether it is two weeks or until Labor Day.
Your insights will be sorely missed. I have learned so much from you and your commentators.
Please come back but if that’s not on your agenda, best wishes for whatever you do next.
What about binging on frivolity? A change is as good as a rest.
bingeing.
The curious thing about this blog is that it shows that in the important things what is generally understood as ‘political position’ makes almost no difference. Clarity of vision, deep integrity, and actually knowing something about the issue under discussion deliver views that transcend political categories.
As an unreconstructed pacifist leftist of about Col. Lang’s age, I will very much miss his thoughts.
Colonel,
Please come back refreshed and ready.
Reality has just as hard of a time shining through the claptrap now as it did in the past.
Thanks for it all Pat, and all the rest, somebody called it a graduate seminar,I think?
I learned an awful lot here from some very broad minds, though I tapped out a lotta angry gibberish near Mom’s end there. You go away I’ll miss you like school and a drug all in one, so thanks to GR and your wife. But go ahead, take till September, there’s no web at the cottage.
You’ve challenged me intellectually, morally. At times I think my respect for your country was sustained by it throwing up the likes of you to “carry on the VMI tradition of service . . . “.
Above and beyond, Pat.
Your exemplar forced me to trade stereotype for respect so the experience certainly left me a better person, beyond the intellectual caliber of the talent here.
Thanks for everything. I hope you’re here in September.
John F. said it for me.
So information glutted, speed obsessed et al is our culture that I seldom read news and this is the only blog I read with any consistency. Thank you for your candor and insight.
May your days be peaceful, contented, prosperous and should you choose to do this some more, I look forward to that.
Meanwhile I am listening to Isis, by Shakti – John McClaughln and Zakir Hussain and friends – and the rain falls again.
Dear Colonel,
Although there are many blogs/websites I visit regularly for quick news sources, yours is the only one where I ever read, nay, specifically look forward to reading, the comments.
I hope after a respite, you feel the benefits of hosting this “community of correspondence” outweighs the negatives.
Respectfully yours
We’ll miss ya! Enjoy the rest and come back soon.