Tag: war

When nukes are inevitable…

Relax and enjoy the decline of total war. Jerry Pournelle discusses the inevitability of Iranian nukes with a reader:

Assuming that we were to bomb Iran, how long could we expect to set back their nuclear program?


Let’s
assume, for the moment, a “surgical” strike whose targets are all
nuclear facilities. Comments I’ve read from people who ought to know
something maintain that we’d probably set back the program two or three
years; with the predictable consequence that Iran would immediately
begin the best financed and most clandestine program it could to produce
nuclear weapons *immediately*.

Here, I think, we run into the North
Korea quandary. It is already possible for any tyrant to make the case
that, however appalling you are, if you have nuclear weapons the United
States will leave you alone; whereas if you do not have nuclear weapons
you live on sufferance. That’s awkward. While I certainly wouldn’t want
to encourage nuclear proliferation, I’m not sure it’s helpful to
persuade tyrants that they *really, really need* nuclear weapons.

Now,
of course, the problem could perhaps be “solved” by strikes aimed not
at nuclear plants but at destroying Iran as a civilization. At which
point we really would have become a Satan. Or, at least, an apocalyptic
Babylon.

So my question to Mr. Stephens would be: short of becoming
monsters, there is probably no permanent way to prevent Iran from
getting nuclear weapons. In consequence, do we really want to pursue a
strategy whose likely result would be to urge them to get the bomb
*really quickly?* Or are delaying tactics more likely to produce useful
results?

Buying time is always a useful purchase. And perhaps the horse will learn to sing.
 
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

Allan Johnson puts the case well and compellingly. Our choices are
few, and our technical capabilities are uncertain. Strikes at Iranian
nuclear capabilities will be bloody given their locations. Commando
style raids would make the destruction more thorough but would be far
more costly. The Iranians have been clever in their designs and
location. Uncertainties about the success of a surgical denuclearization
attack are quite high for the US or any conceivable coalition working
with us.

Of course that is doubly, triply, true for Israel; to assure the
attack’s success might require nuclear weapons, and I am quite certain
that at least some IDF generals have said this to the War Cabinet. First
use of nuclear weapons has so many devastating diplomatic and domestic
political consequences that I doubt Mr. Netanyahu would seriously
consider it.

Buying time may be all that is possible.

And buying time is pointless except for the small minority who benefit from the delay. In some cases, such as the Federal Reserve’s decision to delay the inevitable bankruptcies of the indebted, buying time has made the situation observably worse for most.

The real question is if Israel genuinely feels itself threatened by a nuclear Iran or not. Considering that Martin van Creveld has been very clear about the fact that it does not, we can safely discount the likelihood that Israel will do anything, much less nuke Iran. I don’t doubt that Israel would do so if they perceived a legitimate  existential threat, but the fact that they have not done so already suffices to indicate that they do not.

After reading several of van Creveld’s books from THE TRANSFORMATION OF WAR to A HISTORY OF STRATEGY and TECHNOLOGY AND WAR, it has become very clear that the primary military function of nuclear weapons is to take 20th century total war off the table. This does not mean that war will not take place, but rather, that it will take place on a scale more similar to those wars prior to the mass mobilizations of entire populations and the targeting of enemy civilians.

Remember, war has historically almost NEVER been primarily about killing the enemy, but rather destroying his will to fight by demoralizing him. And that should be of considerably more concern to an utterly, and literally, de-moralized West than one more nation possessing weapons it has no intention of using unless attacked.

Sun Tzu and the SJWs

In the podcast interview last night, I made a comment about how SJWs have been able to apply one element of Sun Tzu’s strategic recommendations to great success throughout the culture. And, when I thought a bit more about it, I realized there is also a second element that their deceitful nature allows them to successfully implement reliably without even being aware of it.

The first is this:

It has been said aforetime that he who
knows both sides has nothing to fear in a
hundred fights; he who is ignorant of the
enemy, and fixes his eyes only on his
own side, conquers, and the next time is
defeated; he who not only is ignorant of
the enemy, but also of his own resources,
is invariably defeated.

The second is this:

War is a thing of pretence: therefore,
when capable of action, we pretend disability;
when near to the enemy, we
pretend to be far; when far away, we
pretend to be near. Allure the enemy by giving him a small
advantage. Confuse and capture him. If
there be defects, give an appearance of
perfection, and awe the enemy. Pretend
to be strong, and so cause the enemy to
avoid you. Make him angry, and confuse
his plans. Pretend to be inferior, and
cause him to despise you. If he have superabundance of strength, tire him out;
if united, make divisions in his camp.
Attack weak points, and appear in unexpected
places.

Remember, SJWs ALWAYS LIE. Deceit is not second nature to them, it is their first and most reliable instinct. They will lie when they do not have to. They will lie when there is no reason to. They will lie when their lies are easily detected. They will lie when their lies are bound to be exposed. They will lie and and dissemble and exaggerate and spin with such shameless abandon that the average individual will find it almost impossible to believe they are doing so.

And because war is a thing of pretence, their deceitful nature makes them very successful in conflict as long as their enemy does not realize how deceitful they are, anticipate their inevitable pretenses, and take advantage of them.

Sun Tzu says: “victory is to the side that excels
in the foregoing matters.” That means that if you do not anticipate SJW deceit, if you are not proactively prepared to penetrate, expose, and defend against their lies, you will lose to them.

But defeat is not inevitable, it’s not even likely, given the first element. Due to their deceitful and self-deceptive natures, SJWs neither know themselves nor their enemy. I’ll have a post later today demonstrating this: their descriptions of me and my motivations are risibly far off the mark. Because they are emotional and for the most part limited to the rhetorical level, no amount of information is capable of changing their minds, so SJW failure tends to reinforce itself rather than be corrected. (That’s why they always double-down right up until they give up.)

This ignorant self-delusion is significantly to our advantage. The problem conservatives have is that while they know themselves, they fix their eyes only on their own side and remain ignorant of the enemy. Thus the conservative “conquers, and the next time is defeated”. The conservative knows himself and mistakenly assumes that his enemy is just like him.

Because they know neither themselves nor us, the SJWs will be “invariably defeated” so long as we identify them and see them for what they are: liars and self-deceivers. We have the ability to win every conflict with them, and yet we will inevitably lose everywhere we refuse to see them for what they are or refuse to take the field.

And, by the by, this is why reading books like A HISTORY OF STRATEGY is so often useful. One simply never knows how the intellectual seeds planted by the author will sprout in one’s mind.

UPDATE: Case in point:

神乃木荘龍 ‏@SoryuKaminogi
.@voxday You’re abysmally stupid and yet somehow disturbingly malign. Like a crocodile or a cancerous hangnail. 

Notice how their rhetoric is incoherent. They have to cling to the idea that their enemy is stupid – to do otherwise would risk harming their fragile self-esteem – but somehow this “abysmally stupid” opponent is a dangerous risk. This can only be explained by attributing the danger to evil that goes well beyond the pedestrian variety, and reaches the level of disturbing malignity.

So, they choose to believe in a very stupid, very malignant enemy rather than an intelligent opposition. Needless to say, this violates the first principle mentioned above, which is to know your enemy. They simply don’t know themselves well enough to permit them to do that.

Post-trinitarian levels of war

I’ve been reading Martin van Creveld’s excellent Technology and War, and this struck me as pertinent in light of the discussion we’ve been having about whether the problem with the Western militaries is at the Physical, the Mental, or the Moral level:

Once the politicians and commanders decided to mobilize their male populations, in one sense they overshot the mark. In 1914, and to a lesser extent in 1939, the instinctive reaction of the military to the unexpected prolongation of hostilities was to put everything and everybody into uniform. As the war dragged on, it became increasingly clear that this was a mistake. The same technology that made military mobilization possible also demanded that it remain incomplete. It was not enough for machines to be deployed on the battlefield. For them to do useful service, it was first necessary to have them designed, developed, produced, and supplied with fuel and spare parts. War itself extended its tentacles deep to the rear, spreading from the trenches into the fields, the mines, and the factories. Not content with the mobilization of those, it reached further into the design bureaus and, ultimately, into peaceful university laboratories where the most esoteric work was done and the potentially most powerful weapons were developed.

As war expanded in this way, both the meaning of strategy and its scope underwent a subtle, and at first imperceptible, change. Instead of being merely a question of concentrating the maximum force at the decisive point at the front, as Jomini and Clausewitz had taught, strategy now acquired the added dimension of an exercise in correctly distributing one’s total resources, both human and material, between the fighting front and the rear. Instead of being concerned with waging military operations, it became occupied with the overall coordination and integration of a country’s military effort. To cope with the new reality, a new term—grand strategy—was coined by the theoreticians and sometimes applied by those in charge.

For a variety of reasons, both ideological and structural, grand strategy was a field where Germany lagged behind the Western Allies during both World Wars, and for this, of course, she paid the ultimate penalty of defeat.

The levels of war aren’t difficult to understand once you grasp that there is NO DIFFERENCE between “the military” and “the politicians” or “the brave soldiers” and “society”. This is not new, it’s the framework with which military strategists and theorists have worked since Clausewitz wrote his famous dictum: “War is a mere continuation of politics by other means.”

I provided the example of Fabius Maximus in the previous comments, apparently to little avail. But I will repeat it in light of the quote above and perhaps it will help shed some light on the matter. Now, after Hannibal slaughtered 50,000 Romans and Italians at Cannae, the first thing Fabius Maximus did in taking charge was go back to
Rome and shore up public support for the war against Hannibal.

When word reached Rome of the disastrous Roman defeat under Varro and Paullus at the Battle of Cannae, the Senate and the People of Rome turned to Fabius for guidance. They had believed his strategy to be flawed before, but now they thought him to be as wise as the gods. He walked the streets of Rome, assured as to eventual Roman victory, in an attempt to comfort his fellow Romans. Without his support, the senate might have remained too frightened to even meet. He placed guards at the gates of the city to stop the frightened Romans from fleeing, and regulated mourning activities. He set times and places for this mourning, and ordered that each family perform such observances within their own private walls, and that the mourning should be complete within a month; following the completion of these mourning rituals, the entire city was purified of its blood-guilt in the deaths. This decree effectively outlawed competitive outdoor mourning, which could have had a devastating psychological impact on the survivors.

Only after he had secured the Moral level did he change Roman strategy. And there we see the interaction of the
different levels of war.

1. Moral.
2. Strategic.
3. Operational.
4. Tactical.
5. Physical.

Because
Fabius Maximus took care of the Moral level first, he was able to adopt a better
Strategy, which he knew would require a considerable amount of time, hence his nickname Cunctator, or “delayer”. Because that superior strategy was designed to affect the Operational
level, he put himself in a superior Tactical position as Hannibal’s
supplies and reinforcements dried up, thereby forcing Hannibal to retreat to Africa.

This is an amusingly ignorant statement from Wikipedia: “Fabius’ own military success was small.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. In the end, thanks to his superior Moral and Strategic generalship, Rome found itself in a position
to win on the very Physical level that Hannibal had previously
slaughtered them on at Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae. Fabius Maximus drove Hannibal out of Rome despite never seriously engaging Hannibal on the Tactical or Physical levels, something Varro and Paulus were unable to accomplish with 86,400 brave, well-drilled, well-armed Roman legionaries.

Prepare to be disappointed

The Western media’s blind faith in democracy and magic negroes would be almost touching if it wasn’t so… blitheringly stupid:

Nothing invigorates democracy more than an incumbent’s defeat. In that and other respects, challenger Muhammadu Buhari’s win over President Goodluck Jonathan represents a potentially transformative moment for Nigeria — a victory by the opposition in Africa’s biggest economy. It may begin Nigeria’s first peaceful transition of power between political parties since independence from the U.K. in 1960.

The aftermath of Nigeria’s last presidential election, also between Buhari and Jonathan, was marred by violence that tapped divisions between north and south and Christians and Muslims. Thankfully, this time, President Jonathan has already called Buhari to congratulate him. That said, the first task facing Buhari, a former Muslim general from the north who had taken power after a military coup in the 1980s, will be to persuade Jonathan’s supporters that his campaign pledges to fight corruption and crime and restore growth are not a cover for settling old scores. One of Buhari’s former critics, the writer Wole Soyinka, believes Buhari when he says that he has shed his authoritarian past and become a “born again” democrat. Let’s hope they’re both right.

This reads as if it’s written tongue-in-cheek. A country with a Muslim insurgency just elected a Muslim who formerly led a military coup and we’re supposed to anticipate a positive outcome here?

I’m not saying it’s impossible, merely that it is unlikely. After all, the violence after the last election was because Mr. Buhari lost.

Why Western troops can’t win

Martin van Creveld, the author of The Transformation of War, Technology and War, and the newly published Castalia House books A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind and Equality: The Impossible Quest, explains how the technological transformation of war has ruined the effectiveness of modern Western militiaries despite their massive technological advantages over their opponents. From his essay entitled “Pussycats”:

For several decades now, Western armed forces—which keep preening themselves as the best-trained, best organized, best equipped best led, in history—have been turned into pussycats. Being pussycats, they went from one defeat to the next. True, in 1999 they did succeed in imposing their will on Serbia. But only because the opponent was a small, weak state (at the time, the Serb armed forces, exhausted by a prolonged civil war, were rated 35th in the world); and even then only because that state was practically defenseless in the air. The same applies to Libya in 2011. Over there, indigenous bands on the ground did most of the fighting and took all the casualties. In both cases, when it came to engaging in ground combat, man against man, the West, with the U.S at its head, simply did not have what it takes.

On other occasions things were worse still. Western armies tried to create order in Somalia and were kicked out by the “Skinnies,” as they called their lean but mean opponents. They tried to beat the Taliban in Afghanistan, and were kicked out. They tried to impose democracy (and get their hands on oil) in Iraq, and ended up leaving with their tails between their legs. The cost of these foolish adventures to the U.S alone is said to have been around 1 trillion—1,000,000,000,000—dollars. With one defeat following another, is it any wonder that, when those forces were called upon to put an end to the civil war in Syria, they and the societies they serve preferred to let the atrocities go on?

By far the most important single reason behind the repeated failures is the fact that, one and all, these were luxury wars. With nuclear weapons deterring large-scale attack, for seven decades now no Western country has waged anything like a serious, let alone existential, struggle against a more or less equal opponent. As the troops took on opponents much weaker than themselves—often in places they had never heard about, often for reasons nobody but a few politicians understood—they saw no reason why they should get themselves killed. Given the circumstances, indeed, doing so would have been the height of stupidity on their part. Yet from the time the Persians at Marathon in 490 B.C were defeated by the outnumbered Greeks right down to the present, troops whose primary concern is not to get themselves killed have never be able to fight, let alone win.

Thanks to many of you, A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind is the #1 bestseller in History>Military>Strategy. The reviews are excellent; even the single 3-star review concludes: “Belongs of the shelf of every person who is interested in the theory and practice of warfare.” 

Another review says: “A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind earned five stars from me for being so readable and packed with content, despite being so brief. This is the first book of Martin van Creveld’s I have read and I look forward to delving into his catalog. In addition to being a good read, Martin van Creveld’s svelte A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind is a wonderful way for those not well read in military strategy to begin their self-directed study. Martin van Creveld discusses all the notable war theoretician authors more or less in accord with their significance as well as some of the war artisan authors. Creveld also provides a “Further Readings” section to aid those so inclined. Given the limitations imposed on him (low page count) Creveld does a fine job covering the material.”

I’m in the middle of reading van Creveld’s Technology and War myself, and I can say with confidence that the reviewer will find delving into that catalog more than worthwhile. As for the “Pussycats” essay, the observation by a military historian should cause some serious strategic rethinking on the part of those who insist on repeatedly sending unmotivated troops unsupported by popular enthusiasm into unwinnable military conflicts. It won’t, but it should.

Iran’s nukes: an Israeli perspective

Last week, a number of people were expressing their opinions concerning the prospects that Iran would obtain nuclear weapons as a result of the Lausanne talks and what this meant for the USA, Israel, and the Middle East. Most of those opinions, including mine, were largely uninformed, but then it occurred to me that Castalia House’s newest author, Martin van Creveld, was someone who has spent a good deal of time thinking about this very subject, and as Israel’s leading military historian, he is in a position to know considerably more about the situation than anyone else here.

Later today we will be announcing a second Castalia House book by Dr. van Creveld that I cannot recommend highly enough. Perhaps reading this response to my question about his perspective on the likely consequences of the prospective Lausanne treaty will help you understand why.

“More may be better” was the title of an article published back in 1981 by the redoubtable political scientist Kenneth Waltz. Going against the prevailing wisdom, Waltz argued that nuclear proliferation might not be all bad. Nuclear weapons, he wrote, had prevented the US and the USSR from going to war against each other; as, by all historical logic since the days of Athens and Sparta in the fifth century B.C, they should have done. Instead they circled each other like dogs, occasionally barking and baring their teeth but never actually biting. Such was the fear the weapons inspired that other nuclear countries would probably follow suit.

To quote Winston Churchill, peace might be the sturdy child of terror.
Since then over thirty years have passed. Though Waltz himself died in 2013, his light goes marching on. At the time he published his article there were just five nuclear countries (the US, the USSR, Britain, France, and China) plus one, Israel, which had the bomb but put anybody who dared say so in prison. Since then three (India, Pakistan, North Korea) have been added, raising the total to nine. Yet on no occasion did any of these states fight a major war against any other major, read nuclear, power.

And how about Iran? First, note that no country has taken nearly as long as Iran did to develop its nuclear program. Started during the 1970s under the Shah, suspended during the 1980s as Iranians were fighting Saddam Hussein (who invaded Iran), and renewed in the early 1990s, that program has still not borne fruit. This suggests that, when the Iranians say, as they repeatedly have, that they do not want to build a bomb they are sincere, at least up to a point. All they want is the infrastructure that will enable them to build it quickly should the need arise—a desire they have in common with quite some other countries such as Sweden, Australia, and Japan.

Second, the real purpose of the Iranian program, and any eventual bomb that may result from it, is to deter a possible attack by the U.S. Look at the record; one never knows what America’s next president is going to do. With another Clinton, who attacked Serbia, and another Bush, who attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, in the White House a distinct possibility, caution is advised. The Mullahs have no desire to share the fate of Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Khadafy.

The latter’s fate in particular gives reason for thought. In 2002-3, coming under Western pressure, Khadafy gave up his nuclear program.  As his reward, no sooner did the West see an opportunity in 2011 than it stabbed him in the back, waged war on him, overthrew him, and killed him. Leaving Libya in a mess from which it may never recover.

Third, Israel is in no danger. Alone among all the countries of the Middle East, Israel has what it takes to deter Iran and, if necessary, wage a nuclear war against it. What such a war might look like was described in some detail by Anthony Cordesman, an American political scientist a former member of the National Security Council. His conclusion? The difference in size notwithstanding, the outcome would be to wipe Iran, but not Israel, off the map.

Netanyahu has Iran in his head and effectively used it to win the elections. Yet truth to say, no Iranian leader has ever directly threatened Israel. To be sure, neither Iran’s presidents nor the Mullahs like the Zionist Entity. They do not stand to attention when Hatikvah is played. They have even had the chutzpah to deny the Holocaust. Yet all they have said is that, if Israel attacked them, they would respond in kind. Also that “rotten” Israel would end up by collapsing under its own weight. All this serves to divert attention away from their real purpose. That purpose, as I just said, is to deter the U.S. And to draw as much support in the Moslem world as verbal attacks on Israel always do.

Finally, morality. Are the Iranians really as bad as some people claim? Taking 1981 as our starting point, we find that in the three and a half decades since then the U.S has waged war first against (or in) Grenada; then Panama; then Iraq; then Serbia (in Bosnia); then Serbia again (in Kosovo); then Afghanistan; then Iraq again; then Libya. In some of these praiseworthy enterprises it was supported by its allies, the Netherlands included.

The Iranians are not angels—far from it. They have meddled in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, as they still do. They have also assisted terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas. But everything is relative. They have not waged large-scale warfare against any other country. Let alone bombed it or invaded it.

And that, in the final analysis, is all that matters.

Now, Martin van Creveld is the very opposite of an innocent on this subject. He knows more about war, the history of war, and the strategy and tactics of war than nearly anyone on the planet. And so when a world-famous military expert, who lives in the heart of the land that is most threatened by Iranian weapons, contradicts the neocons living in the USA who have been beating the war drum for a decade and claiming that the mad mullahs are simply slavering to hurl nuclear-tipped missiles at Israel the moment they have them, I suggest that it is wise to listen to the former, not the latter.

A shot across the bow

At this point, given recent steps like these, I think it is eminently clear that the US government has told the Israeli government to take a hike and is going to reach an agreement with Iran that will permit it to become an acknowledged nuclear power:

In a development that has largely been missed by mainstream media, the Pentagon early last month quietly declassified a Department of Defense top-secret document detailing Israel’s nuclear program, a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the US until now has respected by remaining silent.

But by publishing the declassified document from 1987, the US reportedly breached the silent agreement to keep quiet on Israel’s nuclear powers for the first time ever, detailing the nuclear program in great depth.

The timing of the revelation is highly suspect, given that it came as tensions spiraled out of control between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama ahead of Netanyahu’s March 3 address in Congress, in which he warned against the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program and how the deal being formed on that program leaves the Islamic regime with nuclear breakout capabilities.

Another highly suspicious aspect of the document is that while the Pentagon saw fit to declassify sections on Israel’s sensitive nuclear program, it kept sections on Italy, France, West Germany and other NATO countries classified, with those sections blocked out in the document.

The 386-page report entitled “Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations” gives a detailed description of how Israel advanced its military technology and developed its nuclear infrastructure and research in the 1970s and 1980s…. Declassifying the report comes at a sensitive timing as noted above, and
given that the process to have it published was started three years
ago, that timing is seen as having been the choice of the American
government.

This appears to be a clear message to the Israelis that since they have nukes themselves, they have absolutely no grounds to complain about anyone else obtaining them. I do find it somewhat amusing that the article claims the US has breached a nonexistent agreement.

If an agreement of the sort that appears to be in the works does in fact take place, it should be interesting to see how all the “Iran is the New Hitler”
neocons explain the complete failure of a nuclear Iran to immediately
launch the attack on Israel that they have been telling us is imminent for at least the last
decade.

Given what is presently taking place in Yemen and Iraq, I would think it is Saudi Arabia that has a lot more to be concerned than the Israelis.

The Clausewitzian Congress

One would think that the experience of Napoleon and Hitler would be sufficient to convince anyone that getting into a land war with Russia is something that you simply do not do. But apparently the military geniuses in the US Congress know better:

Yesterday, in a vote that largely slid under the radar, the House of Representatives passed a resolution urging Obama to send lethal aid to Ukraine, providing offensive, not just “defensive” weapons to the Ukraine army – the same insolvent, hyperinflating Ukraine which, with a Caa3/CC credit rating, last week started preparations to issue sovereign debt with a US guarantee, in essence making it a part of the United States (something the US previously did as a favor to Egypt before the Muslim Brotherhood puppet regime was swept from power by the local army).

The resolution passed with broad bipartisan support by a count of 348 to 48.

According to DW,  the measure urges Obama to provide Ukraine with “lethal defensive weapon systems” that would better enable Ukraine to defend its territory from “the unprovoked and continuing aggression of the Russian Federation.”

“Policy like this should not be partisan,” said House Democrat Eliot Engel, the lead sponsor of the resolution. “That is why we are rising today as Democrats and Republicans, really as Americans, to say enough is enough in Ukraine.”

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. That’s the thought that ran through my mind when I read this.

Yemen falling to Shia

It looks like there is a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia being fought in Yemen. And Iran’s proxies are winning.

The Iran-backed ethnic Houthis that captured and occupied Yemen’s capital city Sanaa last year are following up from Friday’s announce military mobilization have seized much of the city of Taiz and the surrounding province. They’ve taken control of the airport and security and intelligence buildings in Taiz, and have set up checkpoints in the area.

Yemen’s internationally recognized president Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi was forced last month to flee Sanaa, which is Yemen’s largest city and is in in the north of Yemen, to Aden, which is Yemen’s second largest city, and is a port city in the south of Yemen. Taiz is Yemen’s third largest city, and it’s located about halfway between Sanaa and Aden, so it’s a critical waypoint on the Houthis’ planned assault on Hadi’s forces in Aden.

The Houthis have been using Yemen’s air force for bombing strikes on Aden every day since Thursday. Now that the Houthis have control of Taiz airport, it’s expected that further air strikes will be launched from there.

It now seems unavoidable that within the next few days there will be a sectarian civil war between the Shia Houthis versus Hadi’s Sunni tribal militias. This will be further complicated by the presence in Yemen of two Sunni terrorist groups, the Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The Houthis are now in control of the army and air force, and they’re backed by Iran which is suspected of shipping additional weapons to them. Saudi Arabia and the other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have expressed deep dismay at the Shia takeover of Yemen, but it remains to be seen whether they take any military action to counter it. If they do, then the result will be a sectarian proxy war in Yemen between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The National (UAE) and CNN and AFP and AP

Meanwhile, the US has been forced to retreat and evacuate Al Anad air base.

4GW coming to America

The USA is about to discover the distinct military disadvantages of permitting a massive Fifth Column of immigrants in its midst:

A division of ISIS published a ‘kill list’ containing the names, photos and addresses of 100 US military members online and called upon its ‘brothers residing in America’ to kill them. The list was posted online by the ‘Islamic State Hacking Division’. The group claimed it hacked several military servers, databases and emails to obtain the information.

The ISHD said it wants ‘lone wolf’ attackers to go after the military members and ‘kill them wherever you find them’.

The list did appear to match up with information which was available online, TheBlaze reported.

The posting read: ‘With the huge amount of data we have from various different servers and databases, we have decided to leak 100 addresses so that our brothers in America can deal with you. And now we have made it easy for you by giving you addresses, all you need to do is take the final step, so what are you waiting for? Kill them in their own lands, behead them in their own homes, stab them to death as they walk their streets thinking that they are safe.’

Notice how even ISIS recognizes that which neither the Democratic nor Republican parties are willing to admit. America is land that belongs to white Christian people of European descent, (only after being conquered and taken from my people, of course), it is not part of the Dar al-Islam, and it does not belong to the ISIS “brothers in America” who have invaded it or to the millions of other alien immigrants who presently reside in it. Not yet, anyhow. And perhaps not ever.

Perhaps after members of the US military begin dying in their own lands, Americans will begin to take the concept of defending their own lands, and their own people, seriously.