Sarah 1, Caribou 0

Caribou Barbie bags a stag in the latest episode of Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Granted it took four or five shots as the rifle Sarah initially used to bag the buck was shooting high. As a Marine Corp Viet Nam Vet I can appreciate the quandary. It was a pleasant surprise to see her misses and I was amazed that a couple of them were not cut from the tape in editing. I don’t think Marlin Perkins ever missed a shot, even if it was only a tranquilizer gun.

Every Marine recruit is a rifleman first. Marines are great shots because they practice, practice, and practice some more. No, they don’t practice shooting, they practice aiming! When I was in Boot Camp we spent two weeks at the Rifle Range: shooting? No, “Snapping In”!

Snapping In is Marine Corp jargon for aiming. It’s practicing aiming your weapon in the basic positions that a rifleman may find himself in combat: standing, sitting, kneeling, and laying in the prone position.

For more than a week we tightened the slings on our rifles, assumed the positions, and aimed our sights at a white barrel just a few feet away with little, teeny, tiny, black targets on it: about the size of your thumb, as I recall. And for a week, we looked down the barrel of our rifles through the open sites of an M-14 at those teeny, tiny, black targets and practiced our BRASS: breathe, relax, aim, slack, squeeze. Bang! You ‘re dead!

Caribou Barbie and Caribou

Once we got to the range, those big red targets 200, 300, and 500 yards away, looked like the side of a barn compared to those teeny, tiny, black targets on that white barrel. At 200 yards we adjusted our weapons and got comfortable with live fire; at 300 yards another click on the windage knob and I was nearly perfect: bulls eye after bulls eye. It began to attract the attention of my DI. At 500 yards another minor click and bang, rack ’em up and set ‘em down! Pinwheels!

After a half dozen pinwheels at five hundred yards with an M-14 and open sights, my DI stepped over to the Firing Line where I was at and asked to see my weapon. I passed it over to him making sure to keep it pointed down range. He knelt down next to me, looked the weapon over, and said quietly under his breath: “Many more of those and the Marine Corp will make you a sniper and send you out in the jungle alone to collect trophies.” With that he spun my windage knob throwing the weapon off totally, and handed the weapon back to me. My next shot? “Maggies Drawers”, a total miss! I never did get another pinwheel. So Sarah I do understand your misses, and I like how you handled them: all of them. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again.

That’s the American way. Tell your left wing critics to “Kiss your ass!”

What really galls your critics, Sarah, is that they see in you a real foe. Someone from Middle America who will confront the political and financial elite; that cannot only challenge them on principle, policy, character, and charisma, but has the secret ingredient all of our great Presidents have had: grit, true grit, the mark of a true leader. That’s what they fear.

Sarah’s got sand!