Tag: war

The ranking commander in Afghanistan has publicly conceded that the Afghan war cannot be won.

The Afghanistan war cannot be won militarily and peace will only be achieved through a political resolution with the Taliban, the newly-appointed American general in charge of US and NATO operations has conceded.

In his first interview since taking command of NATO’s Resolute Support mission in September, Gen. Austin Scott Miller provided NBC News with a surprisingly candid assessment of the seemingly never-ending conflict, which began with the US invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001.

“This is not going to be won militarily. This is going to a political solution,” Miller said. He mused that the Taliban is also tired of fighting and may be interested in starting to “work through the political piece” of the 17-year-old war.

But it’s not clear if the Taliban is open to negotiations. Last month, a top Taliban commander told RT, in a rare interview, that the group’s leaders had no desire to negotiate with the Americans.

Congratulations, it only took 17 years for the U.S. military to discover why Afghanistan is called “the graveyard of empires”. That’s some fine military intelligence at work there. Go the hell home. The invasion was bad enough, but the decision to try and occupy Afghanistan was reprehensibly stupid. No more wars without formal Congressional declaration.

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

The problem is that Americans don’t understand that the frontier closed over one hundred years ago. These people are not coming to America to become Americans, they’re invading America to demand tribute. There’s an old saying about the Danegeld: once you pay the Danegeld you’ll never be rid of the Dane. The United States brought in immigrants, brought in refugees, and all they did was encourage more. And that’s why the United States is falling apart.

The average IQ has fallen by as much as eight points. The country is literally stupefying itself, enstupidating itself, however you want to describe it, the country is actively lowering its standard of living and its ability to maintain its infrastructure. It is not sustainable. Trump understands what is politically possible better than me, that’s true, but it’s not about politics. War is not about politics. When Clausewitz talks about war being politics by other means, that’s the whole point, it’s about other means. Once you’re in the realm of defending borders, that’s not something that you need to win support for, you either do it or you don’t, and if you don’t do it then you have failed. It’s that simple.

Gordon says the entire West is infested with that mentality. That’s absolutely true and it’s not an accident. It’s a mentality that has been pushed systematically on the West by a coalition of peoples whose interests are intrinsically anti-Western. It’s not a single group of people. It’s not just the Jews, it’s not just the socialists, it’s not just the various immigrant peoples,  it is a coalition of peoples whose interests are in general opposed to the interests of the Western people.

Now the West has brought it on itself, you know. The fact that the West colonized these other countries, the fact that the West imposed their economic systems and their currencies and their legal systems and everything else on other countries, is now coming back to bite the West. This is a normal reaction to empire. If you study the empires of the past, whether you study the Athenian empire, whether you study the Roman empire, whether you look at some of the Chinese empires, whether you look at the German empire, whether you look at the British empire, all of these empires were fundamentally weakened by the nature of their having established their rule over foreign nations because it’s a relationship that goes both ways. When you set up a colony in another nation you obviously affect that nation, but that nation also affects you. That’s why the Dutch have an issue with the people who obtain Dutch citizenship through living in the Netherlands Antilles.

This is a historical pattern that repeats itself over and over and over again, and the logic of empire is what is now destroying the United States empire. People say, well, you know, the US is not an empire, we don’t have an emperor. Well, who was the emperor of the Athenian empire? You can’t name it,  there wasn’t one, because an empire is not about what you call the ruler or rulers, it’s fundamentally about whether one nation is ruling over a series of other nations or not.

A reader is reminded of the historical cycle described in the ancient Chinese classic:

The latest Darkstream immediately brought to mind the famous opening lines of Three Kingdoms:

“Here begins our tale. The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.”

The urge to unite speaks to man’s hubris and arrogance, and the eventual division, to the inevitable end of that folly and hubris.

The second migrant caravan crosses violently into Mexico:

Second migrant caravan storms into Mexico: ‘Violent’ group from Central America carrying BOMBS and guns defies a huge police presence to cross the border from Guatemala as Trump deploys 5,200 troops.

The second caravan making their way up through Central America have members armed with explosives. Had gasoline bombs made of soft-drink bottles, and improvised PVC tubes to launch fireworks. Mexican federal police briefly blocked the migrants from crossing the Suchiate River on Monday, but the migrants soon defied the law enforcement presence and broke through into Mexico. Many tried to swim or wade across to Mexico, some while carrying children. Law enforcement avoided a second day of violence, a day after a confrontation left one migrant dead.

Troop deployments are well and good. But they are meaningless unless the President is prepared to actually utilize their firepower when the border is attacked.

That’s the prediction from a former Army general:

The former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe says it’s likely the United States will be at war with China in 15 years. Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges said at a Warsaw security forum on Wednesday that European allies will have to do more to ensure their own defenses against Russia as Americans focus more on the Pacific.

Hodges said: “I think in 15 years — it’s not inevitable, but it is a very strong likelihood — that we will be at war with China. The United States does not have the capacity to do everything it has to do in Europe and in the Pacific to deal with the Chinese threat.”

I put no stock in this general’s grand strategic analysis, but the timeframe is interesting, as well as the tacit admission that the US is no longer the sole global superpower it once was, but is merely the foremost global power now. And the trends most certainly do not favor it retaining that status considering how it has not even been able to maintain the Monroe Doctrine or defend its own borders.

Furthermore, the US is not going to fight a war with China until China is completely ready for it, and when that moment arrives, the US will lose its influence over Asia in much the same way Russia has lost its influence over Eastern Europe whether the war is fought or not.

Ignoring the invasion isn’t making it go away. Quite the contrary, as it happens:

The Mexican El Universal news outlet is reporting that more than 14,000 Hondurans — not counting people from other countries who are marching toward the United States — are leaving that Central American nation to seek asylum here. The news outlet reported that “municipal authorities,” the Catholic Diocese in the Mexican city of Tapachula, and the Mexican National Migration Institute (INM) provided the 14,000 figure.

“The first group walked for 37 kilometers from Ciudad Hidalgo to Tapachula on Sunday afternoon and was comprised by 5,333 children, women and men,” El Universal reported. Later that afternoon 3,000 more men, women and children started “to walk under the rain.”

“Meanwhile, there are 3,000 children, women and men in the Ciudad Hidalgo International bridge, shared by Mexico and Guatemala, who are looking to enter Mexico with documents provided by the INM,” the news outlet reported.

The God-Emperor is going to have to ignore the bureaucrats, the negotiators, the moderates, the temporizers, and the fence-sitters on this one.

The lesson of history is simple and straightforward. Always sink the damn ships!

It’s perhaps informative to recall that the US Air Force created a Highway of Death in response to considerably less provocation from Iraqis back in 1991. And those Iraqis were not attempting to physically invade the USA.

If the US military will not defend the borders of the USA, it should be completely defunded and disbanded.

If the US military will not defend the borders of the USA, there is literally no point to its existence at all.

UPDATE: This is what happens when you don’t sink the first ship.

A second migrant caravan is heading for the American border having formed in the wake of an initial group, which has already crossed Guatemala and entered Mexico. The second caravan is made up of 1,000 people and crossed the border from Honduras into Guatemala on Sunday, before arriving in the town of Chiquimula on Monday night. They are following in the path of a much-larger group, believed to number around 7,000, which was sheltering in the town of Huixtla, in southern Mexcio, overnight on Monday.

That’s an important thing our side needs to grasp. For most white people, individualism, civic nationalist, anti-racism and so forth are what define their life as a citizen. To abandon those things would be the same as moving to another country. People do walk away from the friends and family to start new lives. Many of the people reading this have ancestors they knew, who left the old familiar to become Americans. For most Americans, though, this is the destination, so leaving it is like abandoning the point of their life.

The reality is, America is going to be a majority- minority country, at least while it remains a country. There is no changing that demographic reality. Robert Stacy McCain is right about “summoning men of goodwill to our banner.” We will need numbers to contend with the rising brown tide that threatens the West. It’s the “goodwill” part that our side must always keep in mind. Converting these normies is about convincing them that rooting for your own team is the moral thing to do, the thing men of goodwill do. That’s our challenge.

Key phrase: “while it remains a country”. It won’t. It can’t. The empire is already observably in decline and unsustainable. The USA can no longer be considered a nation-state because the state is no longer synonymous with the nation.

The lies will not hold. They never do over time. All the nonsense about “men of goodwill” and “patriots bleed red” and “creedal nations” will no longer be believed by anyone, anywhere. It’s already rejected by anyone of significant intelligence who is paying attention. So, signal your virtue all you like, proclaim the “Brotherhood of Man” to your heart’s content, avert your eyes from the terrible reality if you must, but none of it will make any difference to those to whom you are so desperately signaling when the Red Horse rides.

The challenge posed by Zman isn’t wrong, it’s just irrelevant. It won’t be too much longer before the ships are sunk and the caravans are strafed, because mass immigration is invasion.

The strength of the Russian response to the shooting down of their reconnaissance plane has surprised even the Saker:

Today Defense Minster Shoigu announced measures which went far beyond what I had hoped for. Specifically, Shoigu has announced that Russia will

• Supply S-300 air defense systems (with a 250km range) to the Syrians in the next two weeks.
• Russia will deliver advanced automated air defense management systems which will *dramatically* increase the Syrian air defense capabilities and prevent future “friendly fire” incidents.
• Russia will use her electronic warfare capabilities to suppress satellite navigation, onboard radar systems and communications of warplanes attacking targets on Syrian territory in the regions over the waters of the Mediterranean Sea bordering with Syria.

This is a very flexible and elegant solution for the following reasons:

1. It establishes a de facto air exclusion zone over Syria, but not a de jure one. Thus, the Russians will have the flexibility to decide on a nation by nation and aircraft by aircraft basis which aircraft should be suppressed/engaged and which ones to only track and monitor. This will give Russia a very powerful negotiating position with all the actors of this war.
2. It goes without saying that while these new capabilities will be deployed in Syria in response to the Israeli actions, they will also dramatically boost the Syrian capabilities against any potential aggressors including the USA and US client states. The S-300s will make it possible for the Syrian to detect and even track the Israeli aircraft right after their take-off and while still in Israeli air space.
3. While the Russians have not indicated which automated air defense management system they plan to deliver to Syria, it is likely that this is one which is typically used to control the engagement of S-300 and Buk air defense systems, the Poliana D-4. The delivery of this system will dramatically increase the air defense capabilities of the Russian task force in Syria making it much harder for Neocon à la Bolton to target Russian forces.

So much for US/Israeli air supremacy in Syria. The interesting thing about this is that it was announced by Shoigu, not Putin, which may indicate that the Russian military is getting tired of Putin’s temporizing in response to provocations.

Poking the bear is seldom wise.

Apparently the Russians aren’t buying the excuses of the Israelis who went to Moscow to plead their innocence in the case of the IL-20 that was shot down over Syria last week.

One week after a Russian plane was accidentally shot down by Syrian missiles launched at Israeli fighter jets, Russia has announced it will supply the Syrian army with sophisticated S-300 surface-to-air missiles.

Israel has asked the Russians for many years to avoid supplying S-300 missiles to Syria because it could limit the Israeli Air Force’s freedom of operation in Syria. The Russian announcement threatens to break the coordination mechanism between the two countries in Syria and unravel what was thought to be a close relationship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

That’s certainly a good way to shoot yourself in the foot when you were asking someone a favor.

One argument I often hear from free traders is that free trade is necessary because trading partners do not fight wars. Like every other argument for free trade, this argument is false and readily disproven by history.  Consider the 10 largest US trade partners:

In 1931, Japan’s resources were inadequate, and its rural poverty became severe, so it invaded Manchuria, China to obtain natural resources.  The US wanted to keep China free from Japanese control and was competing for natural resources—especially oil, rubber, and tin—from Southeast Asia, while at the same time Japan and the US had significant trade with each other.

In fact, during the Napoleonic Wars, France was Britain’s largest trading partner, which is why Napoleon attempted to create the Continental system to harm Great Britain.

Napoleon also attempted economic warfare against Britain, especially in the Berlin Decree of 1806. It forbade the import of British goods into European countries allied with or dependent upon France, and installed the Continental System in Europe. All connections were to be cut, even the mail. British merchants smuggled in many goods and the Continental System was not a powerful weapon of economic war. There was some damage to Britain, especially in 1808 and 1811, but its control of the oceans helped ameliorate the damage. Even more damage was done to the economies of France and its allies, which lost a useful trading partner. 

In fact, Japan’s three largest trading partners, the United States, China, and South Korea, are also three of the very small number of countries against which it has waged war. Trade does not reduce the likelihood of war, to the contrary, the stresses it necessarily causes the relationship between to countries tends to increase the probability of war taking place.