Tag: war

Yes. Next question

Conde Nast asks a Troubling Question to which the answer is obvious:

The Troubling Question in the French Jewish Community: Is It Time to Leave?

How can anyone be allowed to paint a swastika on the statue of Marianne, the goddess of French liberty, in the very center of the Place de la République?”

That was what the chairman of one of France’s most celebrated luxury brands was thinking last July, when a tall man in a black shirt and a kaffiyeh leapt to the ledge of Marianne’s pedestal and scrawled a black swastika. All around him, thousands of angry demonstrators were swarming the square with fake rockets, Palestinian and Hamas flags, even the black-and-white banners of ISIS. Here, barely a mile and a half from the Galeries Lafayette, the heart of bourgeois Paris, the chants: “MORT AUX JUIFS! MORT AUX JUIFS!” Death to the Jews. It was Saturday, July 26, 2014, and a pro-Palestinian demonstration turned into a day of terror in one of the most fashionable neighborhoods of the city.

“Do something! Do you see what is happening here?” the chairman said to a line of police officers watching the demonstration build to a frenzy. “What do you expect us to do?” one officer said, then looked away. For years, the chairman, a longtime anti-racism activist, has turned up at rallies like this one to see which politicians and which radical groups were present. (For reasons of personal safety, the chairman asked not to be identified for this story.) France’s endless demonstrations are a mainstay of the republic, a sacred right rooted in the legacy of Voltaire. But hate speech is a criminal offense—people may express their opinions, but not to the extent of insulting others based on their race, religion, or sex. The protest—against Israel’s Gaza policies—had been banned by the government, fearful of violence, following flare-ups in the preceding weeks. But if the police were to move in too quickly, the riots might continue all summer long—suburbs in flames, mobs in central Paris.

Photographs and videos of the swastika and its perpetrator, of protesters chanting “Kill the Jews,” and of the Palestinian, Hamas, and ISIS flags were sent in a rush to various groups in the Jewish community who assess threats. By early afternoon, some of these reached Sammy Ghozlan, a 72-year-old retired police commissioner who has spent his career working the banlieues, the belt of working-class, racially mixed suburbs that surround Paris. Ghozlan is a folk hero of the banlieues and has a nickname that is impossible to forget: le poulet cacher—“the kosher chicken.” (Poulet is slang for cop.) For 15 years, he has overseen France’s National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism—known by its French abbreviation, B.N.V.C.A.—a community hotline he founded that is funded by his police pension and whatever small donations he can come by. Its purpose is nothing less than to protect the Jews of France….

Two days before the Charlie Hebdo
attack, Sammy announced what, to many, including me, was unthinkable:
Sammy Ghozlan, proud Frenchman and the dean of Paris’s anti-Semitic
crime-fighters, had joined the thousands of French Jews moving to
Israel.

The Jews in Europe are doomed because they spent the last 70 years undermining European nationalism and supporting the transformation of European population demographics. That strategy was understandable, given their mid-century experience with German nationalism, but short-sighted, and its long-term failure was absolutely inevitable. That is relatively obvious now; everyone from Benjamin Netanyahu to Sammy Ghozlan has concluded that it is time for continental Jews to go home to Israel. And while the Jews in the UK aren’t quite at that point yet, I expect they will be soon enough. The English have long looked with mild disapproval upon the Jews in their midst, but
they simply don’t hate them the way their millions of recent Polish and Muslim immigrants do.

What is much less obvious at this point is that the Jews in America appear to be similarly doomed because their elite has spent the last 50 years undermining American nationalism and supporting the transformation of America’s population demographics under the mistaken impression that it would be “good for the Jews”. Feeling threatened by European nationalism as a result of their experience with Germanic nationalism, a small number of elite Jews worked very hard to remove the barriers to entry that protected their people from those who hate them considerably more than Frenchmen or Americans do. In fact, some of them are still at it; consider this piece published in the National Journal:

Nearly 70 percent of Jews support comprehensive immigration reform, according to a survey released by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution in March 2013…. Jews have always been immigrants. We’re always searching for a safe place to call home. That is one reason we are so invested in making sure that today’s immigrants have the opportunity to build their lives in America like we did.

Obviously very few Jews have made what might be called the French connection between immigration and anti-semitism yet. Due to the larger Jewish population in America and the USA’s bigger geography, the USA is probably 30 years behind France in this regard, but one nevertheless can observe the same process at work. The outcome is so predictable that one would almost suspect those responsible of being ruthless Zionists with the long term goal of driving all of their compatriots to Israel whether they will or no.

Even in the case of immigrants who don’t have anything against Jews, groups such as the Mexicans and Chinese, the demographic tradeoff has been a negative one for the Jews because unlike the various European nations, the newcomers are totally immune to the Holocaustianity to which misbehaving Jews have tried to hide behind for decades. Forget Greenspan, Bernanke, and Yellen, even critics of Bernie Madoff, the Jewish con artist who materially harmed more Jews than any anti-semite since Adolf Hitler, were declared to be “anti-semites” by Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League.

But notice that for all the wealth and power possessed by “the chairman of one of France’s most celebrated luxury brands”, such things are impotent in the face of the Muslim numbers, which dwarf France’s Jewish population, 5 million to 500,000. (Note to American readers who think France is being swamped by Islam: the USA has proportionately more Hispanic residents than France has Muslim residents, 52 million and 18 percent vs five million and 8 percent.)

Now nationalism is resurgent throughout Europe, everywhere from Greece and Italy to Norway and Sweden. But while those European nationalists are primarily opposed to the Jew-hating invaders, they will not lift a finger to aid or defend the Jews who have been actively attempting to suppress them for decades. Indeed, most Jews in America are still more concerned about the nationalists than they are about those who are actually calling openly for their death. The European Jews have learned better.

It is said that generals always fight the previous war. In this case, it seems apparent that the diaspora Jews were determined to fight their previous enemy rather than their current one. But it should have been obvious that any nation that is unwilling or unable to defend itself is a nation that will be equally unable to defend its guests.

That is why I expect the French policeman’s response will serve as a predictive microcosm of the European and American responses to the war that the New Europeans and the New Americans are waging on their resident Jews.

“What do you expect us to do?” one officer said, then looked away.  

If the Jews in America do not wish to see America follow Europe’s lead in this regard, they are going to have to do a complete 180 on immigration, do it fast, and do it hard. Regardless, I suspect an investment in Israeli real estate may be something to seriously consider as the demand for housing there is only going to grow.

Accountability is abuse

A female officer learns the hard way that holding women accountable is “hostile, unprofessional and abusive”:

A Marine officer who led the service’s only all-female recruit battalion was fired amid complaints of a toxic leadership environment — but her supporters say she was only trying to make the unit better by holding women to tougher standards.

Lt. Col. Kate Germano, the former commanding officer of 4th Recruit Training Battalion at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, was found to be “hostile, unprofessional and abusive,” according to a command investigation obtained by Marine Corps Times. She was relieved for cause on June 30 by Brig. Gen. Terry Williams, Parris Island’s commanding general.

But officers who served with her say she was a blunt reformer who spearheaded efforts to improve recruit training regardless of gender, and that a vocal minority in the battalion undercut her achievements. Germano’s tactics, for example, dramatically improved range qualification rates for female recruits.

The ensuing controversy, some say, provides a glimpse into an ongoing struggle to establish equal standards for male and female Marines at the Corps’ East Coast recruit depot. Now Germano is petitioning lawmakers for redress, saying she was treated unjustly by base leadership. Germano declined to provide additional details about those efforts, due to concerns about protected communications to Congress.

Williams cited a poor command climate and the loss of trust and confidence in Germano’s ability to serve in command, according to a statement that was provided to Marine Corps Times. The command investigation, completed June 25 and obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, states that Germano displayed “toxic leadership” by publicly berating and showing contempt for subordinates, bullying Marines and singling them out for under-performance.

On one occasion, the investigation found, she made comments during a sexual assault prevention brief that female Marines interpreted as victim-blaming, leading some to testify that it would make them feel less comfortable reporting a sexual assault within the command.

Germano also “reinforced gender bias and stereotypes” in the minds of her Marines by telling them on several occasions that male Marines would not take orders from them and would see them as inferior if they could not meet men’s physical standards, the investigation found.

Women seem to be very, very uncomfortable with the idea that if you are inferior, you will be regarded as inferior. Apparently the idea is that as long as no one actually refers to someone’s objective inferiority at something, as long as everyone pretends not to notice the inferiority, that magically makes the inferiority disappear.

It’s ridiculous. They’re fucking cargo cultists.

There shouldn’t be female Marines in the first place. But as long as there are, it sounds like Germano is the kind they should want. Unfortunately, it sounds like her expectations of accountability are too masculine for today’s emasculated Corps.

Prediction, the USA is going to be in for some serious military shocks in the relatively near future. Forget the logistical, equipment, and technological advantages, this is not how a first-class military force is maintained.

Free expression and cultural war

This seemed relevant in the present circumstances:

A lesson is learned most firmly when the application of what has been learned turns failure into success. The failure, in Clausewitz’s estimation, was the humiliating defeat suffered by Prussia in 1806. He attributes this failure to Prussia’s adherence to eighteenth-century methods of warfare against an opponent emancipated from the limitations of those methods. The success, as Clausewitz saw it, was the resurgence of Prussia as a military power and the victory over Napoleon in 1813-15. Clausewitz attributes this resurgence to the replacement of the small professional (eighteenth-century model) army by a mass (citizen) army; that is, by recourse to the weapon with which France dominated Europe for almost two decades. In other words, Prussia achieved full nationhood by accepting the principle of national war.
– The Clausewitzian Century, Anatol Rapoport

In like manner, the SJWs have dominated the public discourse for almost two decades by assiduously targeting, attacking, and disqualifying those public figures they deem dangerous to their Narrative. In their foolish confusion of method with objective, conservatives, libertarians, and liberals have, like Prussia, insisted on adhering to outdated methods and gone from defeat to defeat as a result.

This is why the SJWs are so ferociously fighting against Irene Gallo’s well-deserved and overdue dismissal for cause by TOR Books. They know that the successful adoption and utilization of their own methods will lead to the freedom-loving right learning a very important lesson that will help bring about its resurgence at SJW expense.

We can beat them. We will beat them. The only way that we will fail is if we fail to emancipate ourselves from the limitations of outdated methods to which those who have been attacking us for over a decade do not subscribe.

Delusion and deterrence

Mr. Smith has a rather unusual theory about the Charleston church shootings:

Adam F. Smith ‏@Adampdx Jun 18
Haters like @castaliahouse  Theodore “Vox Day” Beale are the cause of massacre at SC AME church #SadPuppies #hugoawards

I look forward to the SJWs at File 770 being as horrified and outraged by this ludicrous accusation as they pretended to be by Mike Z. Williamson’s “too soon” joke. It’s particularly bizarre since I am not Castalia House and @castaliahouse has never taken any position on any American racial or religious affairs.

It’s rather amusing to see the many attacks by their own side the SJWs resolutely ignore as they go about their daily posturing and strike their latest outrage poses. Tor employees attack Tor’s authors and customers alike, Castalia House has undergone six straight months of cracking attempts, Vox Popoli is now into its third straight day of a DDOS attack, hundreds of people emailing Tor Books have been accused of being bots by Tor employees even as as Tor supporters create fake tweets to feign public support for Tor, and yet science fiction’s SJWs still preen and posture as if they’re the good guys because a few hundred science fiction readers followed the rules and violated an unspoken gentlemen’s agreement to which we were not privy and to which we never agreed.

And yet, some of those on our side still want to pretend this decades-long cultural conflict is some sort of white-glove affair. There is a fundamental disagreement between the noble defeatists and those who are less willing to continue to submit to the SJWs attempt to claim cultural dominance at Sarah Hoyt’s post on The Marquess of Queensbury’s rules:

thewriterinblack  
Another observation I have made in the past is that our enemies often not only know that we don’t play by the same “rulebook” as they do, they count on it. Those among the Jihadis who have even a ghost of a clue know that if we were really as bad as they make out, well, it would be easier to pray toward Mecca–just face the blue glow.

Apropos of nothing, I am reminded of a scene in an old Fantastic Four comment. Sue Storm as the Invisible Girl (I think this was before she started calling herself the Invisible Woman) facing Dr. Doom. “Doom, do you have any idea how dangerous my force fields would be if I decided to play by your rules?”

That’s us all over.

Dorothy Grant
And this would be why they hate and fear Vox Day above all others: because he does play by their rules.

RES
If we played by their rules the earth would be scorched. But playing by the Devil’s rules would be to concede defeat — what we fight for is ordered liberty, constrained government, rational argument over insanity.

Batman does not become the Joker, Superman does not accept the values of Luthor, Spiderman does not become Doc Octopus.

RES is completely wrong for the obvious reason that SJWs are not the Devil, they are merely his unhappy, not-very-bright children. And the vital point that RES completely misses is that you do not defend ordered liberty, constrained government, and rational argument over insanity with unconstrained liberty, government inaction, and talk. You defend it with force, and you defend it successfully with force that exceeds that of your opponent at the point of conflict.

The Romans did not become the Britons by defeating them with superior force. The USA did not become Nazi Germany by invading Normandy (although it may as a result of the 1965 Immigration Act). The Soviets did not become the Afghans and the Coalition of the Willing has not become the global jihad. Batman would not become the Joker even if he snapped the Joker’s neck, but he would certainly save the lives of all of those who would have been killed by the Joker in the future.

What frustrates me about the noble defeatists is that they are like a football team who refuses to accept the newfangled rules that permit the forward pass. They insist on playing the game in the outmoded way they believe to be the correct way, run the ball every down against a defense with 11 men stacked in the box, and inevitably lose when the other team passes for ten touchdowns and wins 70-0.

The problem is a conceptual one at heart. Even those whose devotion to free expression is unquestioned, such as Ken and Clarke of PopeHat, fail to understand that their efforts are doomed to failure so long as they confuse the objective with the methods used to defend it. This is not a “by any means” argument, it is a straightforward argument for Chicago Rules deterrence.

The best defense for free expression is not to permit the other side to freely libel and slander and calumniate and defame and lie while responding with few feeble protests that what they’re saying just ain’t so. The reason poison gas has made very few appearances on the battlefield since WWI is not because the French, English, and Americans set the Germans a good example, but because they promptly responded by manufacturing and using even more gas than the Germans did. The only reason the USA has not dropped an atomic bomb since 1945 is because the Soviet Union obtained their own in 1949.

Has the assault on free speech waxed or waned since Belgium introduced hate speech laws in 1981? The high-minded non-deterrent approach has failed, continuously failed, for the last three decades. The SJWs find speech-policing to be a useful weapon for marginalizing, disqualifying, and destroying their enemies and they are not going to give it up until they find themselves suffering from it to a greater extent than the free speech advocates do.

If you seek to defend free expression, you can do no better than to follow the lead of Lieutenant General Sir Charles Ferguson, who said of poison gas, which he deplored as a “cowardly” and un-English form of warfare:

“We cannot win this war unless we kill or incapacitate more of our enemies than they do of us, and if this can only be done by our copying the enemy in his choice of weapons, we must not refuse to do so.”

This does not mean we must blindly imitate the other side, particularly not in their instinctual resort to stupid and petty lies, transparent psychological projection, and a foolish insistence on defending the indefensible. Nor should we seek to be as blindly ignorant of them as they are of us. What it means is that we should adopt their more effective tactics, and, as the Allies did with gas in WWI, make even more effective and extensive use of those tactics until they agree to abandon them.

It would be more efficient

It’s a sad day when the parodies are more sensible than the actual policies:

Recognizing the need for a new strategy to fight ISIS, the Pentagon announced today that it would no longer supply the Iraqi Army with American vehicles, artillery and rifles, and instead would supply materiel directly to ISIS.

CENTCOM spokesman Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder says the idea “would be a game changer.”

The plan has its roots in Army Capt. Noel Abelove’s PowerPoint briefing, which was hailed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sources said. Abelove, a supply officer on the Joint Logistics Staff (J-4), realized that cutting out the Iraqi Army middlemen had numerous advantages.

“They taught me at West Point that ‘amateurs talk strategy but professionals talk logistics,’” Abelove told reporters. “The most important advantage is, we only supply about 40 percent of each ISIS requisition.”

Abelove continued: “Before, when we gave the [Iraqi] Army 100 percent, then we had to fly strike missions to destroy a lot of it a week or two later. This way we immediately degrade ISIS by over 60 percent, without having to use our increasingly scarce missiles and JDAMs, and more importantly, without having to put any airmen into harm’s way.”

Other sources indicate that supplying ISIS also reduces the risk of sensitive equipment being passed to Iran by Shiite commanders in the Iraqi Army, or being sold on Craigslist.

“A lot of these guys were piling a lot of cash into banks in Qatar and the Caymans,” according to an analyst who requested anonymity. “Well, screw that. ISIS will literally burn anyone selling our gear.”

Counterinsurgency is difficult enough in the best of circumstances. But it’s even harder when you’re stupid. And that’s the best case scenario. Worst case, “my Muslim faith” wasn’t the inadvertent slip of the tongue everyone, including the interviewer who had to catch and correct him, assumed it to have been.

The first to die

But it is very unlikely that Keith Broomfield will be the last American to die fighting the neo-caliphate of the Islamic State:

Hundreds of people turned up in the Kurdish town of Kobani to bid farewell to Keith Broomfield before his body was handed over to family at the Mursitpinar gate, said Idriss Naasan.

Broomfield, from Massachusetts, died on June 3 in battle in a Syrian village near Kobani, making him likely the first U.S. citizen to die fighting alongside Kurds against the Islamic State group.

He had joined the People’s Protection Units known as the YPG on Feb. 24 under the nom de guerre Gelhat Rumet. The YPG are the main Kurdish guerrilla battling the Islamic State group in Syria.

It wasn’t even two years ago when the usual anklebiters were scoffing at the idea of a revived caliphate. And yet, an American has already died fighting it.

Transcript available

From last weekend’s Brainstorm event with Dr. Martin van Creveld, Israeli military historian and the author of The Transformation of War and A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind:

VOX: Speaking of the US, I am curious to know what the general opinion in Israel is of the American neocons who, like you said, have been trying to overthrow Assad. They have overturned the Ukrainian government, the Libyan government, the Iraqi government, etc. What is the general view of the neocons in Israel?

MVC: Oh, we love them. The Israelis are very happy to fight the Arabs and the Iranians with American blood. During the first Gulf War, Israel was then under Yitzhak Shamir and did whatever it could to encourage an American invasion of Iraq. I wouldn’t say that this was decisive but they tried. It was the same when the Americans invaded Iraq for the second time. It was the same when Americans clashed with Iran over nuclear weapons. Each time you can see this very consistently. You can see the Israeli Right and, to some extent, even the Left say okay, this is lovely, we are going to let the Americans put the chestnuts in the fire for us.

Myself, I must say, that I dislike this policy very much. But certainly most Israelis like it. They like to be on the side of the strong as I see it. They push America as much as they can into these ventures. Just today I saw a famous t-shirt that says “Don’t worry America, Israel is behind you.” I also know that some Americans, like Pat Buchanan, have been writing that these lousy Israelis have been trying to use American for their own purposes and have unfortunately they have succeeded. So, personally I am not happy about this policy. I think that it may well one day act as a boomerang.

 VOX: Do you think it is bad for Israel to be dependent in that way?

MVC: Yes, because, as we say in Hebrew, “the one who’s got the money has the say.” It’s bad in several ways, it is bad in the sense that we are tilting too much in the Republican direction. That is a bad thing in my view. It’s not bipartisan. There is a danger that one day support for Israel will probably fade and people will say enough of this. They will say Israelis are exploiting us with American-Jewish help. They are exploiting us for their own purposes. Let them go and fight their own wars. I have been warned more than once by my American friends that this is one day going to happen. It hasn’t happened yet but it is going to happen one day and it worries me. Frankly, it worries me.

VOX: Yeah, you don’t want to use your allies on a war that you don’t need and then not have their support when you actually need it.

MVC: Exactly.

In the event you are not a Brainstorm member but happen to be interested in obtaining a transcript of the interview with Dr. Martin van Creveld, it is available in EPUB and MOBI format at Castalia House.

We haven’t scheduled the times yet, but William S. Lind has agreed to do a future event, as has Dr. Helen Smith. I’ve also contacted Ann Coulter’s publisher and am expect to arrange an interview with her at some point about her new book, Adios America. If there are others you might be interested in seeing on Brainstorm, feel free to make suggestions here. The objective is to maintain a consistently high level of intellectual discourse for the open and closed events alike.

You can join Brainstorm as an Annual or Monthly member
to receive free transcripts as well as taking part in the closed
events. Now that we have 500 seats in the virtual auditorium, there
isn’t much risk of not being able to attend the open ones. On which
note, I should mention that there are still 240 seats left for next week’s event with Roosh V.

A juxstaposition

If there is one lesson, just one, from all of Martin van Creveld’s books, it is that technology does not guarantee military victory. Here is a vivid comparison that shows why things are looking rather grim for the US military if it is ordered to intervene in the Middle East for a third time in three decades in order to take on the Islamic State there:

  1. Let Transgender Troops Serve Openly by THE EDITORIAL BOARD. The Pentagon’s ban on transgender troops is based on obsolete policies and must be rescinded.  The Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, which researches gender issues, estimates there are about 15,500 transgender troops serving in uniform.
  2. Using Violence and Persuasion, ISIS Makes Political Gains. Amid punishing American-backed airstrikes, the Islamic State militants have advanced in Iraq and Syria using a dual strategy of purporting to represent Sunni interests and attacking any group that vies to play the same role.

Military history clearly demonstrates that the side that executes homosexuals, whether throwing them off buildings or having their fellow soldiers beat them to death, reliably defeats the side that allows its soldiers to dress up and pretend they are women.

Yes, wealth and technology are on the side of the crossdressing military. But attrition, geography, and history are on the side that does not tolerate effeminacy.

It’s true that the US military roundly defeated the Soviet-trained, Soviet-equipped Iraqi army twice, the second time largely without a fight. But then, the Islamic State has defeated the US-trained, US-equipped Iraqi army.

Neocons attack Paul, the sequel

Now the people who brought you failure in Afghanistan, failure in Iraq, a puppet government in Ukraine and the Islamic State are gunning for Rand Paul because he is willing to tell the truth about them and the foreign policy failures of the last Republican president. Roger Simon is running around claiming that Paul has “shown his true colors” and “destroyed himself”:

Alas Rand (I had higher hopes for him), like father Ron, has a mega-chauvanistic view of the world.  The USA is so big and strong it causes everything, including, at one point, 9-11, and now ISIS, if you can believe that. Never mind that the Islamic State is just another avatar of Islamic imperialism’s desire for a world caliphate that has been going on for centuries, long before our country was in existence — the Battle of Tours (732), the Siege of Vienna (1683) and on and on. The violence has been there forever, too.  As any literate person knows, it’s in the Koran and the Hadith.  Beheadings were part of Mohammed’s game plan. It’s what he did and what he called for. This was not invented by a cabal of neocons in Chevy Chase, Maryland, in 2003.

And of course ISIS is part of a straight line that goes from the Muslim Brotherhood (founded in Egypt in 1928, long before the current crop of Republicans were even alive) to Al Qaeda via Zawahiri and on into the modern age with ISIS, all working from the same ideological playbook, as are Boko Haram, Hamas, al Shabab, al Nusra, etc., etc.

Rand, again like father Ron, is essentially racist in blaming this on America and not recognizing other cultures have belief systems to which they truly adhere and that those belief systems may be dangerous, even evil.  America did not evolve Islamist ideology anymore than it did Nazism, but the Islamists have the potential to wreak just as much havoc if they are not stopped.

And what did Paul actually say?

The freshman senator from Kentucky said Wednesday that the GOP’s foreign policy hawks “created these people.” . . .  “ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately,” Paul said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” He continued: “They created these people. ISIS is all over Libya because these same hawks in my party loved – they loved Hillary Clinton’s war in Libya. They just wanted more of it.”

That’s absolutely true. Simon and the other neocons can sing and dance all they like, but the fact is that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq created ISIS. Military experts like William S. Lind even predicted it back in 2003:

The current phase of the war in Iraq is driven by three different
elements: chaos, a war of national liberation (which is inflicting most
of the casualties) and 4th Generation War. In time, the 4th Generation
elements will come to predominate, as they fill the vacuum created by
the destruction of the Iraqi state.

He then pointed out how it would proceed in  2004:

An article in the Friday, March 29 Washington Post pointed to the long-expected opening of Phase III of America’s war with Iraq. Phase I was the jousting contest, the formal “war” between America’s and Iraq’s armies that ended with the fall of Baghdad. Phase II was the War of National Liberation waged by the Baath Party and fought guerilla-style. Phase III, which is likely to prove the decisive phase, is true Fourth Generation war, war waged by a wide variety of non-state Iraqi and other Islamic forces for objectives and motives that reach far beyond politics.

    The Post article, “Iraq Attacks Blamed on Islamic Extremists,” contains the following revealing paragraph:

    In the intelligence operations room at the 1st Armored Division’s headquarters (in Baghdad), wall-mounted charts identifying and linking insurgents depict the changing battlefield. Last fall the organizational chart of Baathist fighters and leaders stretched for 10 feet, while charts listing known Islamic radicals took up a few pieces of paper. Now, the chart of Iraqi religious extremists dominates the room, while the poster depicting Baathist activity has shrunk to half of its previous size.

The article goes on to quote a U.S. intelligence officer as adding, “There is no single organization that’s behind all this. It’s far more decentralized than that.”

Welcome to Phase III. The remaining Ba’athists will of course continue their War of National Liberation, and Fourth Generation elements have been active from the outset. But the situation map in the 1st Armored Division’s headquarters reveals the “tipping point”: Fourth Generation war is now the dominant form of war against the Americans in Iraq.

The neocons are desperate to avoid responsibility for their failures because they want to keep doing the same stupid shit that caused the current problems. Far from destroying himself, Paul is telling Americans what is necessary just to begin saving what is left of their nation. Ron Paul was right back in 2001. Rand Paul is right now.

No reason to react

There are more reports of ISIS atrocities in Syria:

Islamic State militants have executed at least 400 mostly women and children in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra. Eye-witnesses have reported the streets are strewn with bodies – the latest victims of the Islamic State’s unrelenting savagery – on the same day photographs of captured Syrian soldiers have emerged.

It follows the killing of nearly 300 pro-government troops two days after they captured the city, now symbolised by a black ISIS flag flying above an ancient citadel.

However, keep in mind that false reports of atrocities have been used to whip up support for war for centuries. That doesn’t mean the reports are inaccurate, particularly in the electronic age when it’s easier to document events, but it’s important not to rush to judgment.

In my opinion, there is no reason to even contemplate military intervention in the Islamic world as long as Muslims reside in the West. This is the third great wave of Islamic expansion of a form that long predates the Westphalian system of nation-states and any policy that is based on Westphalian or post-Westphalian principles is bound to fail. Remember, a significant percentage of Muslims in the West openly sympathize with ISIS, and perhaps more importantly, it was Western governments that made the Caliphate possible:

A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad. The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these “supporting powers” desired the emergence of a “Salafist Principality” in Syria to “isolate the Syrian regime.”

Yet another strike against the principle of foreign intervention. The devil you don’t know is often considerably worse than the one you are trying to cast out.