Tag: war

Declaring victory and bringing the defeated troops home is absolutely the right move in Syria. The same thing should be done in Afghanistan and Iraq.

President Donald Trump’s decision to declare ISIS defeated and order a full US withdrawal from Syria has been met with anger and disbelief by the Washington establishment that hoped for regime change in Damascus.

Trump declared victory over Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) on Wednesday morning, as media reported that some 2,000 or so US troops will leave Syria within 60 to 100 days. Though Trump had openly spoken about wanting to leave Syria back in March, senior officials in his administration have said that US forces would stay there indefinitely.

One satirical news site perhaps put it best, “reporting” that both the left and the right were taking aim at Trump for “breaking with the longstanding American tradition of remaining in Middle Eastern countries indefinitely.”

Cue another round of “the troops weren’t defeated, they just weren’t permitted to win.” Such statements reflect a total ignorance of what war is. The USA completely failed to obtain its military objectives. Despite many, many threats, Assad is still standing and the US-Israeli proxy troops of the Islamic State and the Kurds were repeatedly defeated by the Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah-Russian alliance. All the US forces have accomplished is to prevent the complete destruction of their Syrian allies.

Like it or not, the USA is an empire in deep decline, and the sooner AIPAC realizes this and stops trying to parasitically make use of the US military forces to accomplish objectives it is incapable of accomplishing, the better it will be for everyone, especially Israel. Israel faces its own problems of a corrupt and declining military, as Martin van Creveld has been pointing out since before its failure to defeat Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon War.

But at least Israel can defend its own borders. The much-vaunted US military cannot even manage that.

The only thing more ridiculous than Justin Trudeau trying to deal with China is the thought of Jordan Peterson trying to do so:

A third Canadian citizen has been detained in China, Canada’s National Post newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing the Canadian foreign ministry. A spokesperson with Global Affairs Canada said it was ‘aware of a Canadian citizen’ who has been detained, but did not provide further details, citing the Privacy Act.

At a daily news briefing in Beijing, China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she was unaware of the situation.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – who said on Friday the detentions were unacceptable – told CTV his government was taking the situation very seriously.

‘We have engaged with the Chinese officials to determine what exactly conditions are they being detained under? Why are they being detained?’ he said in an interview aired on Sunday. McCallum met Kovrig for the first time on Friday.

Canada apparently doesn’t understand that Uncle Sam doesn’t have the global muscle that he used to have. What we’re seeing here is another of the death throes of the neo-Trotskyite globalist order.

Eamonn Fingleton, the author of In the Jaws of the Dragon, ($19.99 at Castalia Direct) observes that the USA would be very, very unwise to put much weight on its strategic alliance with Japan in the event of a serious war with China over the South Pacific:

The Japanese and the Chinese are pragmatic people who rarely let history get in the way of good business. And there is no question that, for both sides, the alliance is good business. The two economies are highly complementary: Japan’s ultra capital-intensive manufacturers supply the sophisticated components and complex equipment needed by China’s labour-intensive factories. As the resulting consumer goods are exported mainly to the west, the relationship is a win-win in trade terms for both nations. For Japan in particular, the benefits are far larger than is generally understood: it has an enormous interest in China’s exporting success. Thus although China’s exports to the U.S. now exceed even Japan’s, the widely voiced conclusion that China’s success has come at Japan’s expense is misguided. The truth is that a large proportion of the high-tech components and materials used in China’s exports originates in Japan. In effect, much of what Japan exports to the U.S. these days goes through China. This helps explain a crucial fact: Japan’s aggregate current account surpluses with the world as a whole are three to four times greater than China’s.

Short-term economic considerations are not the decisive factor in Japan’s changing diplomatic priorities. Japan’s preference for a world led by China rather than by the U.S. is based on culture. Though many westerners imagine otherwise, Japan is deeply uncomfortable with many aspects of western culture. Although Japan presents a thoroughly westernized face to the world, this reflects no sincere acceptance of Judeo-Christian values.

Japan and China share Confucian and Buddhist traditions. Both are ruled by a traditional East Asian ethos of father knows best. Citizens are saddled with a heavy burden of duties while being denied many rights taken for granted in the west.

Because of their common cultural heritage, the Japanese and Chinese think alike in economic matters, too. Officials in both nations have huge powers to direct savings flows, build export industries, and generally shape economic outcomes. This means the two nations find themselves making common cause in opposing American efforts to reshape other nations’ economies along U.S. lines.

Human rights is another area in which a common cultural heritage has helped align the two nations’ diplomatic interests. Japanese and Chinese leaders are at one in viewing a nation’s human rights policies as a purely internal affair. Thus Japan does not try to dictate China’s human rights policies, any more than China tries to dictate Japan’s.

I suspect Fingleton’s analysis is much more likely to be correct than the common foreign policy assumption that Japan is frightened of China and will rely upon the US military to protect it from its increasingly ascendant neighbor.

As difficult as it may be for the average Westerner to accept, the Japanese do not genuinely prize the Western values and social structures that were forcibly imposed upon them subsequent to their military defeat at the hands of the USA. The USA has twice imposed its will upon an unwilling Japanese people, first in 1853, then again in 1945, and I expect that the Japanese would be considerably more comfortable in a Chinese hegemony than in the entirely foreign one that the US hegemony represents.

The Japanese know perfectly well that the Chinese are not a naturally aggressive empire. For centuries, China has been internally focused, and far more sinned against by imperial Western powers than inclined to engage in any imperial adventures. True, the Japanese occupation of the 20th century was cruel, but considerably less cruel and less lethal than the Cultural Revolution that followed it.

And it is entirely evident that the superficial adoption of Western ways has not been good for the Japanese people. The malaise that affects them is entirely the result of the attempt to impose Western civilization on a foreign nation lacking any integral connection to its three foundations, Christianity, the Graeco-Roman legacy, and the European nations. I doubt it escapes Japanese observers that the West is presently suffering the same malaise as a result of its rejection of its own civilizational roots.

The globos are baring their teeth. They are trying to intimidate President Trump with a series of very public threats concerning future indictment and prosecution, but in doing so, they are also making it very clear to him that if he is ever going to Drain the Swamp, he had damn well better unleash The Storm while he still can.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Sunday said that President Trump might “face the real prospect of jail time” after prosecutors indicated last week that he directed illegal payments during his 2016 presidential campaign.

“There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him. That he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Adam Schiff on the Russia Investigation: My takeaway is there’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office the justice department may indict him. That he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time.
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) December 9, 2018

Schiff’s comments come after federal prosecutors said in a legal filing Friday that referred to Trump as Individual-1 that Trump coordinated with and directed his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, during the 2016 campaign to make illegal payments to two women claiming they had affairs with Trump. It was the first time prosecutors made those accusations against Trump.

This is not just some petty Congressman shooting off his mouth. This is a major Deep Swamp creature who is expected to become the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee

Sarah Hoyt has yet to come to terms with the fact that it is her “born American in Portugal” civic nationalism that has led the United States to the brink of civil war:

But is it better if the rough music plays and civil war breaks out?

Civil war is not impossible. Despite the fact that we’re emulsified, red and blue living side by side (but not in harmony), civil war is not impossible. It’s just not the civil war we’ve read about in history books, the stories of the grey and the blue and neat armies on the field.

Sure, sure, brothers fought on opposing sides and son against father. But it was still largely territorial. Terrain gained and lost.

If civil war comes, it will be a war of insurrection. Of many groups against many. Of balkanization. Of neighbor turning on neighbor. Of houses burning and corpses hanging from neighborhood trees. Over and over and over again, and vendettas tossed in.

We’ve seen this. Most such wars go on forever. They become clan wars and wars of vengeance. After a century or so you fight because of what they did to your side in ’79. Or whenever.

Or we could get lucky. Read “lucky.” One side could emerge victorious. A faction could emerge the strongest in a few years and pacify the country. By then it will take fire and blood and an iron boot. We’ll have to be unreally lucky to reform again under the old Constitution after that. More likely we’ll become like the other countries of the world, even the nominal republics: power and the old families, and the “right blood.”

Is that what you want?

It is not what I want.

But neither do I want the silent ignominy of tolerating fraud, of slowly sliding into a socialist morass because we dared not speak.

What is the answer?

I don’t have one.

The answer is not what about what Fake Americans want. It’s not even about what genuine Americans want. It’s about what they wanted and what they permitted over the last 70 years. At this point, due to the mass movement of peoples, civil war for control of the territory of the United States is not only not impossible, it is all but inevitable. There are three choices: subjugation, secession, and civil war. In the most likely scenario, we will see elements of all three, beginning with subjugation of the genuine Christian American nation, followed by secession, then what passes for civil war.

And the reason it will happen is because far too many people like Sarah Hoyt were permitted to not only become legal citizens, but were given a voice in government. Now the Fake Americans are more or less ruling over the people they invaded, and many people who came here because they wanted to live in an American society ruled by Americans don’t like the inevitable consequences of their own collective actions.

Sarah is not a bad person. And one cannot reasonably fault people acting at the micro level for the macrosocietal consequences. But good people with good intentions have succeeded in accomplishing many very bad, very destructive things since the dawn of recorded human history. I don’t blame her, or people like her, for invading America, I blame those who permitted and encouraged the invasion. But I do certainly fault them for refusing to admit that they were always part of the problem, even now.

Of course the United States “will become like the other countries of the world.” How could it possibly fail to do so, now that it is mostly inhabited by people from those other countries?

Nothing to see, just a top naval officer down. Move along now….

Vice Adm. Scott Stearney, who oversaw U.S. naval forces in the Middle East, was found dead Saturday in his residence in Bahrain, officials said. Defense officials told CBS News they are calling it an “apparent suicide.”

Stearney was the commander of the U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. Rear Adm. Paul Schlise, the deputy commander of the 5th Fleet, has assumed command, the Navy said in a statement.

It looks like we’re about to find out whether President Trump proves worthy of the trust Americans have placed in him or if he’s going to cuck like every American president since Eisenhower.

There are now 500 invaders from the 5,000-strong caravan in Tijuana who have broken past the Mexican lines and are rushing the US border. The US has fired tear gas at them, but done nothing else as yet.

This is the moment of truth, because it is clear that the invaders believe Trump is bluffing and will not permit the U.S. military to utilize violent force to defend the border. And now that they have called, he has to either follow through or fold.

Trump likes to consider himself a tough negotiator and he is certainly an effective one. But if he folds here, he will lose a considerable amount of credibility with even his strongest supporters and significantly increase the currently low odds that he will lose in 2020. This is the moment when he has to be willing to utilize violence to Make America Great Again; if he is not, then he’s going to find all of his bluffs being called with impunity by his opponents, foreign and domestic.

Always sink the ships. Always. If there is one lesson that history teaches, it is to always sink the ships.

No, it’s not a reference to the Arkhaven comic book, but actual events in Paris:

French police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse violent demonstrators in Paris on Saturday, as thousands gathered in the capital and beyond and staged road blockades to vent anger against rising fuel taxes.

Thousands of police were deployed nationwide to contain the eighth day of deadly demonstrations that started as protests against tax but morphed into a rebuke of President Emmanuel Macron and the perceived elitism of France’s ruling class. Two people have been killed since Nov. 17 in protest-related tragedies.

Tense clashes on the Champs-Elysees on Saturday saw police face off with demonstrators who burned plywood, wielded placards reading “Death to Taxes” and upturned a large vehicle. At least 20 people, including four police officers, were injured in the day of unrest in Paris, according to police. One person sustained a serious hand injury.

Police said that dozens of protesters were detained for “throwing projectiles,” among other acts. In the Place de la Madeleine, scooters were burned to blackened shells.

“It’s going to trigger a civil war and me, like most other citizens, we’re all ready,” said Benjamin Vrignaud, a 21-year-old protester from Chartres. “They take everything from us. They steal everything from us,” said 21-year-old Laura Cordonnier.

Although its not an overt nationalist revolt, it is an indirect one. Because the obvious and inevitable consequence of the government spending vast quantities of money on unproductive foreigners living off handouts in various guises is higher taxes and lower benefits for the natives. Note one very important aspect of the insurrection:

But authorities are struggling because the movement has no clear leader and has attracted a motley group of people with broadly varying demands.

The anger is mainly over a hike in the diesel fuel tax, which has gone up seven euro cents per liter (nearly 30 U.S. cents per gallon) and will keep climbing in coming years, according to Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne. The tax on gasoline is also to increase four euro cents. Gasoline currently costs about 1.64 euros a liter in Paris ($7.06 a gallon), slightly more than diesel.

That’s why you NEVER permit any movement to accept a leader.

The God-Emperor has GOT to start following through on his threats and warnings, no matter who attempts to obstruct him.

REPORTER: “Mr. President, what about the idea that the military may use lethal force against these migrants?”

TRUMP: “If they have to, they’re going to to use lethal force. I’ve given the OK. If they have to, I hope they don’t have to, but you’re dealing with a minimum of 500 serious criminals. So I’m not going to let the military be taken advantage of. I have no choice. Do I want that to happen? Absolutely not, but you’re dealing with rough people. You ask the people in Tijuana, Mexico, they opened up with wide arms, just come in, come in, let me help you, let us take care of you. And within two days, now they’re going crazy to get them out. They want them out. Because things are happening, bad things are happening in Tijuana. And again, it’s not in this country because we’ve closed it up. Actually, two days ago, we closed the border. We actually just closed it. We say nobody is coming in because it was out of control. But you take a look at Tijuana, Mexico. You see what’s happening there. It’s really a bad situation.”

REPORTER: “What do you mean you closed the border and nobody is coming in? What do you mean by that?”

TRUMP: “If we find that it’s uncontrollable, Josh, if we find that it’s — it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control.”

REPORTER: “Do you mean the entire border?”

TRUMP: “The whole border. I mean the whole border. And Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the United States where they make so many at great benefit to them — not a great benefit to us, by the way. But at least now we have a good new trade deal with Mexico and with Canada. But we will close the border. And that means that Mexico is not going to be able to sell their cars into the United States until it’s open. But we’re going to either have a border or we’re not. And when they lose control of the border on the Mexico side, we just close the border. And we have a very powerful border. We built a very strong border in a very short period of time. And the military has been fantastic, the job they have done. And by the way, Border Patrol and ICE, all of the law enforcement we have involved, and we have local law enforcement, too, they have done an incredible job. And they have wanted this for you know, I’m the first president who’s done to this extent, but they wanted this for years. And some of the presidents, I guess they didn’t care or they wanted open borders.”

President Trump has proven to be an excellent negotiator. No question at all about that. And he’s also shown himself to be considerably more courageous than any politician of either party, up to and including Rep. Ron Paul. I’m not criticizing the man at all, I am aware of what a Herculean task he has taken upon himself, and in fact, the Aegean Stables had nothing at all on the Washingtonian Swamp.

But the time for positioning and posturing is rapidly coming to an end. The time to deliver on the single most important element of his presidency or become a lame duck is rapidly approaching. Pray for the man, pray that he will be granted all the wisdom and courage and resolve that he requires.

The U.S. military now has permission to use force to defend the border:

The White House late Tuesday signed a memo allowing troops stationed at the border to engage in some law enforcement roles and use lethal force, if necessary — a move that legal experts have cautioned may run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act.

The new “Cabinet order” was signed by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, not President Donald Trump. It allows “Department of Defense military personnel” to “perform those military protective activities that the Secretary of Defense determines are reasonably necessary” to protect border agents, including “a show or use of force (including lethal force, where necessary), crowd control, temporary detention. and cursory search.”

However an earlier “decision memo” that came to the same recommendations that were contained in the “cabinet memo” was signed by President Trump, according to documents obtained by Newsweek. There are approximately 5,900 active-duty troops and 2,100 National Guard forces deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border.

It’s fascinating to observe that the mainstream media has no problem at all with the U.S. military “defending Americans” by killing large quantities of civilians everywhere from Afghanistan to Yemen, or engaging in actual shooting wars in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Iraq, and Niger, but pitches a fainting fit at the idea that it might shoot the only people actually invading the country.

If the U.S. military won’t defend the border, then it should be defunded and disbanded. Americans have literally zero need for it.