Tag: war

Learning about the Spanish Civil War seems to have put a modicum of some stiffer substance – one can hardly call it steel – into Rod Dreher’s spine as he gradually begins to discover why the Nationalist Right is inevitable.

In 1930, the military dictatorship was overthrown, and municipal elections across the country the next year led to a big win for combined parties of left and right who favored a democratic republic. (N.B., not all leftists and rightists wanted a republic!) After the vote, the king abdicated, and the Republic was declared. Later that spring, leftist mobs burned convents and churches in various cities, while Republican police stood by doing nothing. This sent a deep shock wave through Spanish Catholicism.

The Republic, in typical European fashion, was strongly anticlerical. It quickly passed laws stripping the Catholic Church of property and the right to educate young people. There were other anticlerical measures taken. Anti-Christian laws, and violent mob action, were present at the beginning of the Republic. Prior to watching this documentary, I assumed they happened as part of the civil war itself. Imagine what it was like to see a new constitutional order (the Republic) come into being, and suddenly you can’t give your children a religious education, and your churches and convents are being torched. How confident would you be in the new order?

According to the film, Spain was still in the 19th century, in terms of economics. It was largely agrarian, with a massive peasantry that was underfed, and tended to be religious and traditional. On the other hand, they were dependent on large landowners who favored the semi-feudal conditions. These landowners were extremely conservative. Their interests clashed, obviously, and became violent when the land reform promised by the liberal Republicans did not materialize fast enough for the peasantry. Mind you, the Republic was declared in the middle of the global Great Depression, with all the political and economic turmoil that came with it.

The urban working class was organized along Marxist lines, though the left was badly fractured, and unstable. There were democratic socialists, but also communists who hewed closely to the Stalinist line. Plus, anarchists were a really significant force in Spain, something unique in Europe at the time. They competed politically, and usually aligned with the left in fighting the right. But they refused to compromise their principles by taking formal power, even when the defense of the Republic required it.

Regional autonomy also played a role in defining sides. When the civil war started, Catholics supported the Nationalist side (the Francoists) … but not in the Basque Country, which was religious, but which wanted more self-rule — something the Nationalists despised. Catalonia also wanted more independence, which meant it was firmly Republican. Barcelona, the Catalan capital, was a Republican stronghold for left-wing reasons, to be sure. I bring up the situation with the Basques and the Catalans simply to illustrate the complexity of the conflict.

Anyway, the 1933 elections resulted in a swing back to the right, with a coalition of center-right and far-right parties winning control, and reversing some of the initiatives of the previous government. Socialists, anarchists, and coal miners in the province of Asturias rebelled against the Republic. They murdered priests and government officials; the military, led by Gen. Franco, brutally suppressed the uprising. All of this radicalized the left even more.

By 1935, left-right opinion had become so polarized that there was practically no middle ground left. Both sides came to distrust democracy because it was the means by which their enemies might take power. And, as one Nationalist interviewed in the documentary puts it, people on the left and right just flat out hated each other. The whole country was a powder keg.

By the 1936 campaign, the centrist parties had practically disappeared.

He’s really going to harden his position after he reads Anthony Beevor’s book on the war. Once you figure out that the other side really, genuinely, and truly wants to exterminate your religion and your race, only the suicidal and the delusional will persist in trying to “come together” and seek to “discuss our differences”. You can brag about being anti-racist, apolitical, post-ideological, colorblind, or even apathetic all you like, but once it finally registers that the other side is literally hell-bent on destroying everything and everyone you value, it’s no longer possible to continue lying to yourself.

I saw this in a microcosm in my interview with Bleeding Cool editor-in-chief Mark Siefert. He simply could not, and would not, believe what I was telling him about the SJWs in comics. He insisted that there must be a place at the table for everyone, that it didn’t have to be war to the knife. I assured him that he was wrong, and that the SJWs could not be reasoned with, and the next day, he discovered the truth when he was ejected from his position by the very SJWs he’d been defending as reasonable the day before.

The cuckspace is shrinking. The middle ground is rapidly vanishing and nothing is going to bring it back. There is nothing to bring it back, because diversity is, quite literally, disintegration. It won’t be long before those who believed they were morally superior for denouncing nationalists as fascists and nazis will be crying for those nationalists to save them… if they are not proclaiming themselves to have been nationalists all along.

The real lesson of the Spanish Civil War is this: you will not save your nation without fighting for it.

Martin Indyk, executive vice president of the Brookings Institution, is deeply concerned about the fact that the U.S. President is confident in the IDF’s ability to defend Israel, especially in light of its US funding:

Trump: “We give Israel billions of dollars, they’ll be okay.” This cavalier attitude is deeply worrying. Ignores the role of US as force multiplier for Israeli deterrence. From here it’s a short step to Trump asking: why are we giving Israel so much money? 

Indeed. But isn’t that a question that Trump, and every American, should be asking? Why ARE Americans giving Israel so much money, Mr. Indyk? Is it tribute? Is it Danegeld? Is it an investment? Will you not be so kind as to explain it to everyone?

It’s not as if the smartest and most historically-aware Israelis don’t already recognize that their reliance on the US military and US money enervates their military forces. Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld has been pointing this out for years, if not decades. And sooner or later, the magic flow of money is going to stop, for any of a wide range of potential reasons.

Why do conservatives believe welfare is any better for the IDF than it has been for the black family, or, for that matter, the white American family? The inarguable strategic fact is that Israel would be considerably safer and militarily stronger if Trump would send them America’s Jews rather than America’s money. And so, for that matter, would America.

The near-total inability of the American people, and the U.S. government, to recognize the full horror of their situation is not exactly new. For Christmas, Spacebunny hunted down a complete first edition set of A History of the Peninsular War by Charles Oman, which she somehow managed to obtain for less than five percent of the going rate. When it comes to things used and garage sales, she is without question an Apex Predator; she is the party primarily responsible for my beautiful collection of books.

Naturally, I immediately awarded the seven-volume set pride of place in my library. In addition to being one of the most thorough and well-sourced accounts of a war in recorded human history, Oman’s history of the Peninsular War is remarkable for its keen observations of human nature. Prior to encountering Martin van Creveld, Oman was my favorite military historian, and A History of the Peninsular War is indubitably his magnum opus.

The attitude of the people of Northwest Spain during the French invasion can’t help but strike the observer of the current US situation as one that is all-too-familiar:

Leon and Old Castile had, as we have already had occasion to remark, been far less energetic than other parts of the Peninsula in raising new troops and coming forward with contributions to the national exchequer. They had done no more than furnish the 10,000 men of Cuesta’s disorderly ‘Army of Castile,’ a contingent utterly out of proportion with their population and resources. Nor did they seem to realize the scandal of their own sloth and procrastination. Moore had expected to see every town full of new levies undergoing drill before marching to the Ebro, to discover magazines accumulated in important places like Ciudad Rodrigo and Salamanca, to find the military and civil officials working busily for the armies at the front. Instead he found an unaccountable apathy. Even after the reports of Espinosa and Gamonal had come to hand, the people and the authorities alike seemed to be living in a sort of fools’ paradise, disbelieving the gloomy news that arrived, or at least refusing to recognize that the war was now at their own doors. Moore feared that this came from want of patriotism or of courage.

As a matter of fact, the people’s hearts were sound enough, but they had still got ‘Baylen on the brain’: they simply failed to recognize the full horror of the situation. That their armies were not merely beaten but dispersed, that the way to Madrid was open to Bonaparte, escaped them. This attitude of mind enraged Moore. ‘In these provinces,’ he wrote, ‘no armed force whatever exists, either for immediate protection or to reinforce the armies. The French cavalry from Burgos, in small detachments, are overrunning the province of Leon, and raising contributions to which the inhabitants submit without the least resistance: the enthusiasm of which we heard so much nowhere appears. Whatever good-will there is (and among the lower orders I believe there is a good deal) is taken no advantage of. I am at this moment in no communication with any of their generals. I am ignorant of their plans, or those of their government.’

At least the Spanish people of the 19th century realized that they had been invaded and they were at war. Today, despite having been invaded by a force 250x larger than the Napoleonic army that invaded Spain, the American people still completely fail to understand that their country, their culture, their government, and their traditions are being fundamentally altered without their will or their consent.

To call General Mattis’s appallingly ineffective performance as Secretary of Defense a disappointment would be a SEVERE understatement. It’s a reminder that no amount of tactical or operational effectiveness means very much when it comes to grand strategy and geopolitical politics, let alone loyalty to American national interests. His letter of resignation:

December 20, 2018

Dear Mr. President:

I have been privileged to serve as our country’ss 26th Secretary of Defense which has allowed me to serve alongside our men and women of the Department in defense of our citizens and our ideals.

I am proud of the progress that has been made over the past two years on some of the key goals articulated in our National Defense Strategy: putting the Department on a more sound budgetary footing, improving readiness and lethality in our forces, and reforming the Department’s business practices for greater performance. Our troops continue to provide the capabilities needed to prevail in conflict and sustain strong U.S. global influence.

One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies. Like you, I have said from the beginning that the armed forces of the United States should not be the policeman of the world. Instead, we must use all tools of American power to provide for the common defense, including providing effective leadership to our alliances. 29 democracies demonstrated that strength in their commitment to fighting alongside us following the 9-11 attack on America. The Defeat ISIS coalition of 74 nations is further proof.

Similarly, I believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours. It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.

My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.

Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position. The end date for my tenure is February 28, 2019, a date that should allow sufficient time for a successor to be nominated and confirmed as well as to make sure the Department’s interests are properly articulated and protected at upcoming events to include Congressional posture hearings and the NATO Defense Ministerial meeting in February. Further, that a full transition to a new Secretary of Defense occurs well in advance of the transition of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September in order to ensure stability Within the Department.

I pledge my full effort to a smooth transition that ensures the needs and interests of the 2.15 million Service Members and 732,079 civilians receive undistracted attention of the Department at all times so that they can fulfill their critical, round-the-clock mission to protect the American people.

I very much appreciate this opportunity to serve the nation and our men and women in uniform.

Translation: I’m a sellout, I violated my oath of service, and I never had any intention of actually defending American national interests, much less defending the Constitution against its enemies, foreign and domestic. So, I’m resigning in a hissy fit because you’re not on board with unwinnable perma-war in the Middle East.

It’s just as well. Notice the Mad Poodle’s focus on diplomatic marketing gimmicks, “the common defense”, and the solidarity of alliances with countries that have less ability to project military force than the average Mexican drug cartel. This guy wasn’t a warrior, he was just another corrupt globalist bureaucrat dressed up in a snappy military uniform, complete with fruit salad and red heels. And notice the telling phrase “defense of our citizens and ideals” rather than “our nation and our Constitution”.

What is Mattis’s legacy? Women in the special forces, trannies in the military, and losing a hopeless proxy war to the Russian-Iranian-Syrian alliance in the Middle East? How very impressive. It kind of reminds you of Julies Caesar and Alexander the Great, does it not? Jimmy Carter’s hapless SecDef could have accomplished as much.

Always, always, ALWAYS wait two days before reacting to anything he says, or anything he is supposed to have said. I was always suspicious of the reports that Trump was afraid to let the government shut down over the wall funding.

The prospect of an embarrassing Christmastime shutdown of the US government loomed Friday as President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats remained far apart on a stopgap funding bill held up by discord over money for a border wall.

An air of chaos hung over Washington as a midnight deadline approached for lawmakers and the president to find a way to do a very basic task: keep the government up and running.

If they do not, key agencies will close and many workers will be furloughed right before Christmas without a paycheck.

The sense of turmoil was compounded by a falling stock market and Trump’s abrupt decision to disregard advisers and allies and pull out of Syria and sharply reduce the US troop presence in Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, seen as a moderating force for an impulsive president, resigned in protest over the Syria decision and Trump’s approach to international alliances that are at the heart of US foreign policy.

On government funding, Trump reversed course on Thursday and rejected a measure that unanimously passed the Senate and was under consideration in the House.

He appeared to harden his demand for $5 billion in funding for the wall on the US-Mexico border, a pet project he has fought for since he began campaigning for president in 2015.

Remember, Trump is surrounded by the very worst sort of people who will not only take your silence for assent, but will twist and pervert literally every sound that comes out of your mouth without hesitation. All of the weasel words that surrounded the media narrative about Trump’s preemptive cucking on the budget should have been your first sign: “the Trump administration has signaled” and so forth.

All that means is that some subordinates in the administration are trying to influence Trump to go with the flow. It doesn’t mean a damn thing with regards to the President’s policy or what his actual decision will be. And given that “Mad Poodle” Mattis actually resigned in a hissy fit over Trump’s decision to stop fighting an unwinnable perma-war in the Middle East that is of no benefit whatsoever to Americans – that’s what the neocon hysteria is really about –  it’s clear that the President has been under incredible lobbying pressure from Congress, from his advisers, and from the financial industry.

You don’t think it’s an accident that the stock market is being crashed now, do you? This is all designed to put pressure on the God-Emperor to surrender to the World Democratic Revolutionaries and the Democrats.

It appears Israel recently received a rude lesson in why one should always avoid irritating the Russian Bear:

Syria will adopt a new rule of engagement with Israel now that Russia has taken a tougher and clearer stance on the conflict between Israel and the “Axis of the Resistance”. Henceforth, Damascus will be responding to any Israeli strike. If it damages a specific military target it will reply with a strike against a similar objective in Israel. Decision makers in Damascus said “Syria will not hesitate to hit an Israeli airport if Damascus airport is targeted and hit by Israel. This will be with the consent of the Russian military based in the Levant”.

“Russia has informed Israel that there are Russian officers present at every Syrian or Iranian military base and that any strike against Syrian or Iranian objectives would hit Russian forces as well. Putin will not allow his soldiers and officers to be struck down by Israel’s direct or indirect bombing”.

Moreover, Russia has given Syria the green light – said the source- to strike Israel at any time if and when Tel Aviv’s planes launch raids against Syrian military targets or launch long-range missiles without flying over Syria (for fear of the S-300 and to avoid seeing its jets downed over Syria or Lebanon).

The source confirmed that Syria – contrary to what Israel claims – now has the most accurate missiles, which can hit any target inside Israel. The Syrian armed forces have received unrevealed long and medium-range missiles from Iran. These operate on the GLONASS system – the abbreviation for Globalnaya Navigazionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema, the Russian version of the GPS. Thus, the delivery of Iran and the manufacture of missiles inside Syria (and Lebanon) is now complete. Israel, however, claims it has destroyed Syria’s missile capability, including that of the missiles delivered by Iran. According to the source, Damascus controls a very large number of precision missiles, notwithstanding those destroyed by Israel. “In Iran, the cheapest and most accessible items are the SABZI and the missiles”, said the source.

The new Syrian rule of engagement – according to the source – is now as follows: an airport will be hit if Israel hits an airport, and any attack on a barracks or command and control centre will result in an attack on similar target in Israel. It appears that the decision has been taken at the highest level and a clear “bank of objectives” has now been set in place.

These claims of new rules of engagement in the Middle East may be false, of course. They may be nothing more than the usual public posturing. But we will soon be able to tell if they are in effect or not, because if Israel suddenly, and uncharacteristically, stops launching missile attacks into Syrian territory, that will be a strong indication that the reports of the new rules were genuine.

And I tend to suspect these new rules of engagement also have something to do with the recently announced US withdrawal from Syria, as there will no longer an American buffer to defend Israel from a direct Russian response or even a Russian response-by-proxy to Israeli provocations.

Needless to say, someone is lying, or at the very least, wrong. And based on the entire written historical record of war, it is usually the party claiming that the other party’s capabilities have been entirely destroyed.

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