Tag: war

So the Pentagon is taking credit for preventing Iran from following through on its nonexistent plans to attack the United States:

Washington’s peace-oriented threats towards Iran have paid off – at least according to Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, who says that the Islamic Republic had to “put on hold” its violent plans thanks to US efforts.

While Iran has repeatedly denied allegations that they are responsible for recent tensions and said that they prefer diplomacy to threats, Shanahan on Tuesday was certain that Tehran’s dangerous behavior had only been curbed by the US’s proactive measures.

These peace-keeping gestures presumably include sending a navy strike group to Iran’s border, ratcheting up crippling sanctions and President Donald Trump’s amiable threat to end the country altogether.

Meanwhile, another 10,000 or so hostile foreigners invaded the southern border today. The Pentagon did nothing at all about that and had no comment about either the invasion or its inactivity.

I remember hearing a little about this Islamic uprising in the Philippines two years ago, but I had no idea that the combat was so intense, or that it took place on such a large scale:

Marawi: a vicious urban siege

On 23 May 2017, security forces from the Philippines conducted a raid in the city of Marawi to capture an insurgent named Isnilon Hapilon—the former leader of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and self-proclaimed Emir of Islamic State in East Asia. The forces who conducted the raid reported much tougher resistance than expected. The insurgents were rapidly reinforced and quickly revealed extensive preparations throughout the city—well constructed defensive positions, concealed routes, hidden ammunition and arms caches, and an almost doctrinal urban defensive plan. The raid was repulsed, and by the end of the day the so-called Islamic State in the Philippines (IS-P) had triggered their long-laid plans to dominate the city.

Martial law was declared by President Rodrigo Duterte and a five month urban siege to regain the city commenced. The battle was pitched against a well-resourced, sophisticated enemy who had the ‘home ground advantage’. Extensive preparations had been conducted throughout the city and an intense, protracted and close-quarters battle – the likes of which has not been seen in the region in decades – became the only way to destroy the enemy and recapture the City. On 23 October, following 153 days of war, this gruelling mission was achieved.

The costs of the Battle of Marawi were high. Opinions on infrastructure damage vary but aerial imagery indicates that huge swathes of the city have been devastated by the fighting – the mass destruction flattening entire city blocks. The World Bank estimates it may take two decades to restore Marawi to its original condition. However, the true price of the battle is that paid by the people of Marawi and the lives of those fighting. 165 members of the AFoP were killed in action, with over 1,000 injured. Some reports indicate over 1,000 insurgents were killed in the siege, which also took the lives of 47 civilians. The fighting drove over 400, 000 people from their homes.

This article would make for a magnificent piece in the next volume of THERE WILL BE WAR, as it is a detailed review of the tactics utilized by the armed forces of the Philippines as well as the insurgents.

Until the occupations succeed. Neo-Palestinians are attempting to sucker President Trump into yet another useless foreign war, presumably on behalf of Israel:

Donald Trump has reportedly been presented with a plan to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East to counter the so-called Iranian threat, the New York Times reported.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan disclosed the updated military plan at a meeting of Trump’s top security aides on Thursday, the publication said, quoting anonymous sources inside the administration.

Several options to tackle Tehran in the region were outlined to the president during the briefing, while “the uppermost option called for deploying 120,000 troops, which would take weeks or months to complete,” the Times said.

While the revisions “ordered” by “hard-liners” do not promulgate a land invasion of Iran, “the development reflects the influence of Mr. Bolton, one of the administration’s most virulent Iran hawks,” The Times reported. Bolton has been a long-time advocate of using military force against Tehran, even penning an op-ed in 2015 titled “Top Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”

The proposal to send additional reinforcements comes amid accusations from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Tehran has been engaging in “an escalating series of threatening actions and statements in recent weeks.” To counter the unspecified threat, the Pentagon has already deployed the USS ‘Abraham Lincoln’ carrier strike group and bomber task force, including B-52s, to the region.

If the United States is insane enough to start another war, this one with Iran, you can go ahead and move up that 2033 estimate for its collapse. Unnecessary attempts at expansion meeting with completely unexpected military defeat is probably the second-most-common way for empires to fall throughout recorded history.

I thought Iraq risked being the USA’s Syracuse. But Iran would make for a much better candidate.

The thing is, we KNOW the US empire is going to fail catastrophically and lead to the eventual collapse of the state. We absolutely know this, what we don’t know yet is when and why. But the picture does appear to be coming into focus.

Gunboat diplomacy doesn’t work when the natives have anti-ship missiles:

A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander warned on Sunday that the presence of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf used to be a serious threat, but now represents a target, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency.

The U.S. has sent forces, including an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers, to the Middle East in a move that officials said was to counter ‘clear indications’ of threats from Iran to American forces in the region.

The USS Abraham Lincoln is replacing another carrier rotated out of the Gulf last month.

‘An aircraft carrier that has at least 40 to 50 planes on it and 6,000 forces gathered within it was a serious threat for us in the past but now it is a target and the threats have switched to opportunities,’ said Amirali Hajizadeh, head of the Guards’ aerospace division.

Now, it’s likely that Iran is just bluffing about its military capabilities, as Middle Eastern countries are wont to do. But it’s not certain, which is why it could be a catastrophic mistake for the US Navy to be playing old school intimidation games with its most powerful and most symbolic warships.

The problem is that while the Iranians probably have not developed a missile capable of sinking a carrier, the Russians and the Chinese probably have, and what better way to puncture the notion of US invulnerability than arranging for the sinking of a US aircraft carrier with plausible deniability.

The time of the Boomers is drawing to a close. The question now is how long any of the nations they inhabited survive them.

The Boomer Age is drawing to its close.  When one speaks of this group, it tends to mostly focus on white Boomers (not that others are outside the group, but to such a great extent, it really does mean those of mostly European background, if for no other reason than they have been the largest demographic group).  When that age does end, we will see an ever-dwindling European demographic majority in many Western nations (Canada and the USA are almost certainly the first, soon followed by a variety of European nations).  That significant point of majority will be fading, as the numbers precipitously drop until below 50{f50d4126b30a4b8775ab6f2d7b1f889a5b05b2c1f19981bd6101ecb574a7fa8a}.  The question looming then is, what is next?  Will it be the glorious Brave New World of harmonious multiculturalism or an uneasy balkanization that trends ever more to tribalism and violence?  Based on existing evidence and studies, I believe that it will be closer to the latter.

A major demographic shift is impacting most Western nations, some more than others.  This shift will lead to a far more multicultural/ethnic scenario, with those of European background as the minority within the next few decades.  At first blush, many will say this is not a problem, holding out the wonders of civic nationalism and existing relative stability and prosperity with an already highly mixed demographic.  The problem here is that this position doesn’t really hold water in the long term, as can be demonstrated by existing nations who have not been able to sustain a similar state of peaceful existence and by studies that point in the same direction.

While one can’t blame the Boomers for the mass invasions that began in the 60s, one can certainly blame them for aiding, abetting, and celebrating them. And when they smugly point out that the shattered demographics of the West will not be their problem, all we can say is that at least they won’t be around to interfere with their successors who have taken on the task of solving it.

If you think the prospects for persecution isn’t invading Christendom along with all the various non-Christians, you simply aren’t paying attention:

The persecution of Christians in parts of the world is at near “genocide” levels, according to a report ordered by Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. The review, led by the Bishop of Truro the Right Reverend Philip Mounstephen, estimated that one in three people suffer from religious persecution.

Christians were the most persecuted religious group, it found.

Mr Hunt said he felt that “political correctness” had played a part in the issue not being confronted. The interim report said the main impact of “genocidal acts against Christians is exodus” and that Christianity faced being “wiped out” from parts of the Middle East.

It warned the religion “is at risk of disappearing” in some parts of the world, pointing to figures which claimed Christians in Palestine represent less than 1.5{e70c92e04f5adc4f38c33c074721fb5365fd7cb37b6062c89897743e10315f72} of the population, while in Iraq they had fallen from 1.5 million before 2003 to less than 120,000.

“Evidence shows not only the geographic spread of anti-Christian persecution, but also its increasing severity,” the Bishop wrote. “In some regions, the level and nature of persecution is arguably coming close to meeting the international definition of genocide, according to that adopted by the UN.”

Now, what happened in 2003? The neocons convinced President Bush to wage war on Iraq.

To be clear, I don’t believe that the Russians have put nukes in Venezuela. They don’t need to:

RUSSIA has secretly installed nuclear missiles in Venezuela a US politician has sensationally claimed in a chilling echo of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Republican congressman Mario Diaz-Balart said he believes Vladimir Putin’s hidden nukes are now a direct threat to the “national security” of the United States. He made his astonishing allegations hours after Venezuela was pushed to the brink of civil war when opposition leader Juan Guaido called for rival Nicolas Maduro to be ousted from office.

Diaz-Balart told Fox News if Maduro stays in power it could be “an open door for the Russians and for the Chinese and for others to increase their activity against our national security interest.”

Journalist Tucker Carlson then asked: “Are you suggesting they are going to invade?”

“The closest we ever came to nuclear war was because the Russians put missiles, right, nuclear missiles in Cuba,” replied Diaz-Balart.

“Are you saying the Russians will put nuclear missiles in Venezuela?” Carlson asked.

“What I am suggesting is that they are already there,” answered Diaz-Balart, without offering any evidence to back up his claim.

But if there are already nukes in Venezuela, then that will bring a speedy end to all of Pompeo’s idiotic posturing. And given the way in which US missiles have gradually crept eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union, the US doesn’t have any ground for complaint if any nation in the Western Hemisphere decides it wants to take up a Russian or Chinese offer to install a few nuclear missiles as insurance against ill-considered US imperialism.

Charles Oman writes about the spiritual aspect of the War on the Peninsula, particularly as it affected Wellington’s British Army:

I think that even if the Wesleys had never lived, there would yet have been a strong reaction in favour of godly living and the open profession of Christianity, in consequence of the blasphemous antics of the French Revolution. Nothing in that movement so disgusted Englishmen (even those of them who were not much given to practical religion) as the story of the “Goddess of Reason,” enthroned on the high-altar of Notre Dame, at the time when an orgy of bloodshed was making odious the flatulent talk about humanitarianism and liberty which was the staple of Revolutionary oratory. The peculiar combination of insult to Christianity, open evil living, and wholesale judicial murder, which distinguished the time of the Terror, had an effect on observers comparable to nothing else that has been seen in modern times.

Even men who had not hitherto taken their religion very seriously, began to think that a hell was logically necessary in the scheme of creation for beings like Chaumette or Hebert, Fouquier Tinville or Carrier of the Noyades. And, we may add, a personal devil was surely required, to account for the promptings of insane wickedness which led to the actions of such people. A tightening up of religious observances, such as the use of family prayer and regular attendance at Church, was a marked feature of the time. It required some time for the movement to spread, but its effect was soon observable. It naturally took shape in adhesion to Evangelical societies within the Church of England, or Methodist societies without it; since these were the already existing nuclei round which those whose souls had been stirred by the horrors in France and the imminent peril of Great Britain would group themselves.

Very soon the day was over in which “enthusiasm” was the dread of all normal easy-going men. Something more than the eighteenth century religious sentimentalism, and vague spiritual philosophy, was needed for a nation which had to fight for life and empire against the French Republic and all its works. Those methods of thought were sufficiently discredited by the fact that there was a touch of Rousseau in them : it was easy to look over the Channel, and see to what a belief in some nebulous Supreme Being, and in the perfectibility and essential righteousness of mankind at large, might lead. The God of the Old Testament was a much more satisfactory object of worship to the men who had to face the Jacobin, and Calvinism has always proved a good fighting creed. If ever there was a justification for a belief that the enemy were in a condition of complete reprobation, and that to smite them was the duty of every Christian man, it was surely at this time. The conviction of the universahty of sin and the natural wickedness of the human heart was the exact opposite and antidote to the optimistic philosophy of the eighteenth century, and to its belief that man is essentially a benevolent being, and that if he sometimes breaks out into deplorable violence “tout comprendre est tout pardonner.”

We’ve reached the point that the men of the West are beginning to grasp the limits of reason again. But they have not yet really begun to realize the ease with which it is naturally turned to evil in the absence of Jesus Christ.

As it happens, the German ultra-nationalists are correct. As various military officers have been predicting for years, there will be war in Europe due to the mass invasion of the continent, although the eventual demise of the reunified German state is far from certain:

German ultra-nationalists believe a civil war and an eventual demise of the state will come about, and are preparing for it by training to use firearms and explosives, a local security service has warned. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, sounded the alarm over the rise of the underground far-right, according to Die Welt. An intelligence report seen by the paper calls for increased surveillance of so-called “preppers” – a loose network of ultra-nationalists who prepare for apocalyptic scenarios.

Those people are collecting firearms and other supplies in preparation for “a civil war” or “a feared collapse of public order” in Germany, the BfV revealed. The preppers movement, which first emerged in the US, has long been rooted in survivalism – which sees far-right militias making stockpiles of food, ammunition and medicine that they would use in the event of a doomsday scenario.

Of course, there will also be war everywhere from America to Sri Lanka as well, because war always, Always, ALWAYS follows on the heels of the mass movement of peoples. It’s a little ironic that the BfV is warning about the rise of the “underground far-right” when that is nothing more than a symptom caused by the importation of millions of foreigners against the wishes of the native population.

For the present, it would be going too far to say that the refugees, as well as those who are responsible for their plight back in their homelands, are actively waging war against the West. They lack the leadership and organization required for the effective, large-scale violence that war entails. However, it must be recognized that more than a few in their midst are not averse to using violence in order to achieve their aims. They have, after all, invaded numerous countries without regard for the will of the people of those countries, and their presence is no less likely to spark resistance than the armed invasions of the past. Since war, as Clausewitz teaches, has a built-in tendency to escalate, the resistance can be expected to graduate into all-out armed conflict over time. Especially, as seems likely, if the influx continues and all the valiant efforts at integration prove futile.
– Martin van Creveld, “War and Migration”, There Will Be War Vol. X

Even D-Day buffs probably hadn’t heard about this shockingly lethal training debacle in the lead-up to the Normandy invasions:

The shocking double tragedy of a D-Day rehearsal exercise 75 years ago this weekend has been remembered in a new book.

More than 1,200 Allied soldiers were killed over two days off Slapton Sands in Devon, a disaster that was kept hidden by the authorities for decades.

On April 27, 1944 over 400 of them were slaughtered by the friendly fire of shells bursts on the beach due to a timing error. The following day nine German E-boats passing through Lyme Bay stumbled upon the exercise and opened fire on the mock-invasion fleet, killing 749 men.

Scores of bodies washed up on to the beach in harrowing scenes that would be replicated six weeks later on the beaches of Normandy.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted his men to be battle-hardened ahead of D-Day so he insisted on live ammunition being used during the trial run. But a calamitous error with timings meant some of the landing craft arrived at the wrong time where they came under heavy artillery fire. The tragic mishap meant a wave of servicemen taking part in the rehearsal were killed on the stony beach.

I very much doubt Eisenhower would ever have been elected President if the American people had been permitted to know about his very costly error in judgment. Apparently the U.S. military still has not admitted the live-fire incident, although it did come clean about the E-boat attacks in 1954.