Tag: war

Or much better yet, not at all. Bill Lind considers the latest neocon push for war with Iran:

Last week’s most important news event received remarkably little press.  According to the February 14 New York Times, shortly after landing in Poland for a major international conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed truth.

No sooner had he landed that the prime minister’s Twitter account announced “an open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries, that are sitting down together with Israel in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran.”

In case anyone doubts that this was a case of committing truth, the Times reported that “An hour later, the Twitter posting was changed to ‘advance the common interest of combating Iran.’”

So Israel wants war with Iran, and so do several Arab states with loud voices in Washington, especially Saudi Arabia.  From an American perspective, the problem is that both the Israelis and the Saudis will want the United States to fight the war for them.

This promises to be the Iraq war all over again.  American neocons were major players then in devising a new strategy for the destruction of every Arab country that could be a threat to the Jewish state.  Iraq was first on the list.  But then, as now, America was supposed to do the fighting, take the casualties and pay the bill.  The neocons worked on a president who had little understanding of foreign policy (though Trump is a great deal brighter than W.) to do their bidding, and he fell for it.  The result was a disaster for America and the region (and, ironically, Israel).  We lost more than 5000 young Americans dead, tens of thousands wounded, trillions of dollars wasted, and the Iraqi state destroyed, to the benefit of Fourth Generation, non-state entities such as Al Qaeda and ISIS that are real threats to the U.S. and Israel, which Saddam’s Iraq was not.  We also destroyed the main regional power that was blocking Iran’s quest for regional dominance.

Now, we are supposed to make up for that blunder by going to war with Iran.  The result would likely be even worse.

When defeat is disastrous and victory arguably even worse, the wise move is to not go to war at all.

Even defense industry experts are beginning to acknowledge the gradual alteration in the balance of global military power as its planetary supremacy is observably slipping away from the US military:

The US keeps losing, hard, in simulated wars with Russia and China. Bases burn. Warships sink. But we could fix the problem for about $24 billion a year, one well-connected expert said, less than four percent of the Pentagon budget.

“In our games, when we fight Russia and China,” RAND analyst David Ochmanek said this afternoon, “blue gets its ass handed to it.” In other words, in RAND’s wargames, which are often sponsored by the Pentagon, the US forces — colored blue on wargame maps — suffer heavy losses in one scenario after another and still can’t stop Russia or China — red — from achieving their objectives, like overrunning US allies.

No, it’s not a Red Dawn nightmare scenario where the Commies conquer Colorado. But losing the Baltics or Taiwan would shatter American alliances, shock the global economy, and topple the world order the US has led since World War II.

Granted, the RAND analysts have serious incentives to find problems to which they can sell the answers. But that doesn’t necessarily indicate that the vulnerabilities they describe do not exist, especially when they are describing scenarios very similar to what other observers have pointed out.

I don’t believe there is anything that can be done that is going to seriously slow the growth of regional power at the expense of the global power, especially because I believe we have already passed the point of peak globalism, for at least this cycle and possibly for good.

I suspect this is why the neocons and other Israeli imperialists are so desperate for war, almost any war, these days despite the American public’s complete lack of interest in waging any additional ones. They are clearly aware that the USA is only going to be less powerful, and less capable of military intervention around the world, in the future.

Perhaps you may recall the discussion of when and where the late-stage imperial US military is going to meet its inevitable debacle that finally signifies to the world that the empire is fully in decline. This proposed scenario would appear to be an excellent candidate in the unlikely event it should come to pass.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is prepared to throw the power of its naval force – and urges the world to join in – to block the Iranian oil shipments circumventing unilaterally imposed US sanctions against Tehran.

“Iran is trying to bypass the sanctions on it through the covert smuggling of petroleum via the sea. As these attempts expand, the navy will have a more important role in efforts to block these Iranian actions,” Netanyahu said at a navy cadets’ graduation ceremony in Haifa on Wednesday.

Failing to explain how exactly Israel’s relatively small naval force would impose the suggested blockade against Iranian oil tankers, Netanyahu only emphasized that Israeli sailors are well-trained and adept at carrying out sea missions against adversaries.

The scenario would be bad enough if it was only the Israeli Navy putting itself at risk of being sunk, but there is no way the Israelis would make such a move without expecting the US Navy to come to its rescue once it found itself in well over its head.

And getting into a green-water naval war would arguably be the worst possible scenario for the dominant blue-water navy and conjures up images of the French Navy at the Battle of the Nile, only in this case, it would be the sea power that would be at a serious disadvantage from land-based missiles and torpedoes despite its air superiority.

Remember when I said the USA is going to lose its next major war? This USAF general is underlining my case:

Improving diversity and acceptance across the Air Force isn’t just about being politically correct, it’s a “warfighting imperative,” USAF Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said Friday.

Speaking to a room packed full of airmen at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium, Goldfein said for himself and many leaders across the service, it can be hard to recognize issues other airmen face. These leaders need to accept that “we have blinders on as leaders,” and need to reach out to airmen from all backgrounds, races, genders, etc., to point out ways to improve.

“The only way we can see that is to surround ourselves and build teams in ways that others can point them out for us,” Goldfein said, adding that there needs to be a “big tent” culture of acceptance in the Air Force.

The decline and fall of the US empire is going to amuse and mystify historians for centuries, if not millennia. I’m feel as if I’m beginning to understand how Juvenal felt before writing his classic satires.

I don’t see this shortage of sailors being a problem that adding twenty-five thousand women, transvestites, and low-IQ immigrants to the Navy can’t fix:

The Navy is short about 6,200 sailors to meet its at-sea requirements for its current force, and that gap could grow as the service adds new ships to the fleet, the head of U.S. Fleet Forces Command told a House panel on Tuesday.

Those sailors will, in part, be used to plus-up crew numbers on each surface ship after the Navy had previously gone to a lower “optimal manning” crew size to save personnel costs, Adm. Chris Grady told a combined hearing before the House Armed Services readiness and seapower and projection forces subcommittees.

“As we sailed through that environment, we recognized that that was too few, and indeed since 2012 the number on a DDG was 240; in 2017 it’s about 270 and will be funded back up very close to the original size of a guided-missile destroyer in 2023 at about 318,” he said. “Personnel is expensive, and that number did not work out well, and we’re now buying back to a larger size crew complement for a destroyer.”

According to the written testimony from Grady and U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. John Aquilino submitted for the hearing, the missing sailors are from the mid-grade and senior enlisted ranks that will take years to train and place in the fleet. The pair indicated there wasn’t a specific set of billets they needed to fill with the new sailors but rather that they were needed across platforms at sea.

That number could grow as the Navy adds ships to the fleet and personnel needs rise, Grady said. Growing sailors fast enough to the level of technical ability to operate the proposed 355 ships is set to be a major challenge for the service and a key focus of the Navy’s ongoing surface reform effort.

Acute manning problems were found to be a factor in the fatal collisions of USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) and USS John McCain (DDG-56). For example, Fitzgerald did not have lookouts on the bridge wing immediately before the crash, and sailors aboard McCain weren’t qualified to use the helm controls which contributed to its collision.

I wonder how many of those expanded destroyer crews of 318 are going to be pregnant and unable for deployment when the ships go to sea? Or, is the real number required 240, but so many sailors are unable to deploy that they need a nominal crew of 318 in order to fill the real number needed for the mission?

Once more, we see that the conspiracy theory of history tends to be more accurate than the mainstream version:

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has for the first time divulged explosive secrets about how the United States supported ISIS and intentionally allowed the Takfiri terror outfit to gain power in Iraq so that Washington could creep back into the Arab country.

Maliki, who served as PM between 2006 and 2014, told a local TV station on Sunday that the administration of former US President Barack Obama had played a key role in the creation of ISIS by allowing the terrorist group to overrun Iraqi territories.

According to the former premier, in 2013, the US provided Iraq with intelligence and aerial imagery pinpointing ISIS militants who had lined up behind Iraqi borders in Syria in large groups, waiting to cross into Iraq after what they thought was going to be the imminent fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Maliki said back then Baghdad had no fighter jets capable of bombing the terrorist positions and the Iraqi combat helicopters did not have the range to orchestrate an attack. So naturally, Baghdad turned to Washington for help and asked the Obama administration to provide the Iraqi air force with “one or two” fighter jets under the 2008 security agreement between the two sides.

Washington, however, turned down the requests and advised the Iraqi government to ask Jordan for help but that was a no-go as there was no military cooperation agreement between Baghdad and Amman at the time.

Nevertheless, the Iraqi army’s 7th Division was sent to eradicate the terrorists without air support and made some progress before landing in a deadly terrorist siege that killed its commander and nearly dismantled the whole division.

The former Iraqi PM said America’s support for ISIS did not end there as Washington proceeded to stop all supplies of helicopter parts and other military equipment to Iraq and halted a contract to sell Iraq F-16 attack aircraft even though Baghdad had paid for them in advance.

As usual, all one has to do is wait a few years and the official story almost invariably mutates. For example, did you know that despite the headlines at the time, there was no recession in 2001? Just review the current BEA statistics and you’ll see that it’s been adjusted out of existence.

We may already be witnessing the US Navy’s retreat from its 65-year history of naval supremacy on the high seas:

Amidst rising anxiety over whether the US Navy’s thousand-foot-long flagships could evade Chinese missiles in a future war, the Pentagon has decided to cut the aircraft carrier fleet from 11 today to 10. By retiring the Nimitz-class supercarrier USS Truman at least two decades early, rather than refueling its nuclear reactor core in 2024 as planned, the military would save tens of billions on overhaul and operations costs that it could invest in other priorities. But the proposal, part of the 2020-2024 budget plan due out mid-March, is sure to inspire outrage on Capitol Hill.

Sure, it’s possible that these are just the usual military budget games, but I suspect that the Navy’s long-terms strategists are beginning to come to terms with the fact that the aircraft carrier is simply becoming too vulnerable to be worth the concentration of resources that it represents.

The age of the battleship came to an end with World War II. The age of the carrier will officially come to an end with the next conflict between the United States and a major regional sea power.

I’m not much bothered about the latest Kashmir flareup. It’s pretty obvious that Pakistan wants to de-escalate the situation and has been retaliating in a very measured fashion:

On February 14 a suicide car bomb hit a police convoy in Pulwama in the Indian controlled part of Kashmir. The suicide bomber was a local man. The Pakistan based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) claimed responsibility and uploaded a video of the attacker.

General elections in India are due in May and the Hindu-fascist Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is under pressure. The incident in Kashmir led to violence of Modi followers against Kashmiri people. Pakistan denied any involvement in the incident and called for a joint investigation.

After the suicide attack Modi immediately threatened to retaliate against Pakistan. He did so yesterday. In an elaborate operation Indian fighter jets released stand-off weapons, purchased from Israel, against an alleged JeM training camp near Balakot. India made explicit that it hit a “non-military” target.

While the Indian jets did not enter Pakistan’s airspace the target was within Pakistan’s undisputed borders. Small scale ground combat between Indian and Pakistani at the line of control in Kashmir is nothing unusual. But the air attack exceed the limits both sides so far held to.

Pakistan saw the incident as a failure of its deterrence. India has about 140 nuclear weapons while Pakistan has about 100. Pakistan’s conventional military is inferior to India’s. It therefore follows a doctrine of asymmetric escalation which allows for nuclear strikes in response to conventional military attacks.

Pakistan could not leave the hit within its own borders without response. Not responding would have set a precedence and invite further Indian attacks. Earlier today two Pakistani J-17a jets flew into the airspace of Indian controlled Kashmir and released bombs against what its military claimed to be a “non military target”:

Two rather antique Indian MIG-21 jets scrambled to chase the Pakistani fighter jets away. They were lured into the Pakistan controlled air space and both were shot down. Pakistan published pictures of one of the downed jets and claimed that the other one fell into an Indian controlled area. An Indian pilot ejected from his plane and was captured by Pakistani troops who had trouble to keep the locals from lynching him. The captured pilot was blindfolded and interrogated. He identified as Wing Commander Abhi Nandan, Service No: 27981, and did not respond to further questions. His father is said to be a retried Air Marshal of the Indian air force. The pilot now seems to be fine. He thanked the Pakistani military for rescuing him from the mob.

The fact that India is lying about having shot down a Pakistani jet is probably a good sign that they don’t wish to genuinely escalate either. The Pakistanis would be well-advised to permit the Indian government to lie to its people about how bravely and fiercely it responded to the loss of its two obsolete MIGs.

But one wonders what sort of political ideology “Hindu-fascism” is supposed to be. Did they bring back the swastika?

The Times of Israel is reporting on an Israeli government minister’s statement about how the US President and the Israeli Prime Minister are going to divide Jerusalem in the latest iteration of a Middle East “Peace Plan”:

Education Minister Naftali Bennett said Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump were planning to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and divide Jerusalem.

Speaking before a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Bennett, who now heads the New Right party, warned the shift in Netanyahu’s declared position would come “a day or two after election day” on April 9.

Shortly after the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu responded to Bennett’s claim with a terse denial.

“It’s natural for him to be anxious, and to get a little confused,” Netanyahu said of Bennett. “It goes without saying that elections can do funny things to small parties.”

In a statement, Netanyahu’s Likud party called Bennett’s warning “utter piffle with no connection to reality. After the elections, Netanyahu will establish a right-wing government under his leadership.”

In his initial comments to the press, Bennett said that the Trump administration had completed its plan for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

“Netanyahu and President Trump have agreed to come out with the plan to establish a Palestinian state on 90 percent [of the West Bank]. They’ve agreed not to present the plan before election day so that it doesn’t hurt Netanyahu, but a day or two after election day the plan will be presented, and will include the division of Jerusalem.”

In the meanwhile, the US has gone back on the promises it made to the Turkish government in order to prevent Turkey from invading northern Syria.

The so called Manbij Roadmap was signed in June, 2018, a full 6 months before Trump’s withdrawal announcement. The deal requires the US to work with Turkey to remove all terrorist groups from Manbij– which is a Syrian city east of the Euphrates– and to assist with security during the transition period. This was the deal the US made with Erdogan during a period of heightened tensions between the two NATO allies. The agreement was made to placate Erdogan and to forestall the imminent invasion by Turkish troops massed on the Syrian border. Readers need to understand that Turkey is not behaving irrationally or precipitously. The Trump team made the deal, and Turkey expects them to keep that deal, that is the long and short of it.

The media has also mischaracterized Trump’s December 19th announcement to withdraw all 2,000 US troops from Syria bringing an end to the failed 8 year-long military campaign. The announcement was not the decision of an unstable and impulsive autocrat who had no real grasp of the situation. (as the media would like you to believe) What the media failed to report is that Trump had discussed the issue with a frustrated Erdogan just days earlier, and he decided to withdraw to avoid an acrimonious split with a NATO ally who was threatening to invade at any minute. Check out this article at the Guardian dated December 12, 2018, just 7 days before Trump’s announcement.

“The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said that Turkey will launch a military operation against the Kurds in northern Syria within days, in a decision that could signal a shift in Turkish-US relations and have far-reaching consequences for Syria’s future.

Long frustrated by US support for Kurdish militias that Turkey views as terrorists, Erdoğan has threatened to push deeper into north-eastern Syria since sending Turkish forces into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in February.

The president said during a televised speech in Ankara on Wednesday that the operation was imminent. “We will begin our operation to free the east of the Euphrates [river] from the separatist organisation within a few days,” he told MPs. “Our target is not the American soldiers – it is the terror organisations that are active in the region.”

Erdoğan also expressed disappointment that US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria had not left the town of Manbij, as agreed in a US-Turkish deal brokered this year. “The Americans are not being honest; they are still not removing terrorists [from Manbij],” he said. “Therefore, we will do it.” (Turkey primed to start offensive against US-backed Kurds in Syria, The Guardian)

There was no mention of Erdogan’s threats in any of the mainstream news publications. The focus was almost entirely on Trump who was blasted as impetuous and ignorant, a foreign policy dilettante. In fact, Trump was merely pursuing the rational option, which was to give ground on Turkey’s legitimate national security needs while concealing his real motives for the policy-change. Naturally, he couldn’t say the US was withdrawing because of Turkey’s sabre rattling, but that, in fact, is what happened. And that’s why Trump announced a ‘complete withdrawal of US troops’; it was a clumsy effort to hide the fact that Washington was backing down on their plan to control the area up to the Turkish border. The Trump team tried to make it look like the president was just keeping a campaign promise, but–as you can see– there’s more to it than meets the eye.

Now, of course, the administration has abandoned its withdrawal plan and decided to keep 400 troops in Syria indefinitely. Unfortunately, the new policy only further exacerbates the tension between the US and Turkey. The reduction in troops does not in any way alleviate Turkey’s security concerns, in fact, it worsens them because it indicates that Washington is more resolved than ever to preserve the status quo. If the US and their multinational allies stay, the YPG will continue to occupy Manbij and other territory along the Turkish border, the de facto independent Kurdish state in East Syria will be preserved, and Turkey will be prevented from resettling the more than 3 million Syrian refugees it has housed for the last 8 years. So, how exactly does Turkey benefit from this troop-reduction plan?

It doesn’t. Turkey doesn’t get anything out of the deal. Nor does the new arrangement fulfill the basic requirements of the Manbij Roadmap. There won’t be any joint Turkish-US patrols because Washington is now committed to keeping Turkey out of Syria altogether in order to “protect the Kurds”, which is a misleading sobriquet that is used to hide the real motive, which is to occupy east Syria and protect Washington’s terrorist-linked militia.

So, will Trump’s modified plan work? Will Erdogan see the withdrawal of some US troops as an honest attempt at peace and security?

No, of course not, because nothing has changed. The only choice Erdogan has is to ratchet up the pressure by delivering more threats to invade. And that is precisely the course that Erdogan has decided to pursue. 

So, not only will Turkey likely invade, but it now knows what the Russians have learned, which is that there is no point in even trying to reach an agreement with the United States, because the USA does not keep its word. And while the US military gets entangled everywhere from Afghanistan to Venezuela, Russia and China continue to bide their time and quietly improve their carrier-killing capabilities.

It’s really rather remarkable how every US president since Nixon seems utterly determined to throw themselves on the sword of their own Mid-East “Peace Plan”. I know literally nothing about the latest one, but I do know this: it won’t work.

The inevitable consequence of the drive to put women in the military is on the verge of arriving:

A federal judge in Texas has declared that the all-male military draft is unconstitutional, ruling that “the time has passed” for a debate on whether women belong in the military.

The decision deals the biggest legal blow to the Selective Service System since the Supreme Court upheld the draft in 1981. In Rostker v. Goldberg, the court ruled that the male-only draft was “fully justified” because women were ineligible for combat roles.

But U.S. District Judge Gray Miller ruled late Friday that while historical restrictions on women serving in combat “may have justified past discrimination,” men and women are now equally able to fight. In 2015, the Pentagon lifted all restrictions for women in military service.

The case was brought by the National Coalition For Men, a men’s rights group, and two men who argued the all-male draft was unfair.

Men who fail to register with the Selective Service System at their 18th birthday can be denied public benefits like federal employment and student loans. Women cannot register for Selective Service.

The ruling comes as an 11-member commission is studying the future of the draft, including whether women should be included or whether there should continue to be draft registration at all.

Regardless of what the needs of the U.S. military may be now, we know there will be military drafts in the future because there will be war in the future. And now, thanks to the feminists, young women who don’t want to serve in the military will be drafted and forced to risk their lives in combat.

Feminism has always been focused on destroying Christian Western civilization. And turning young women who should be wives and mothers into sterile worker bees and amazons is an important part of that goal.