Tag: war

Air strikes still don’t work

The failure of the American air campaign against 4GW forces will not be news to anyone who has read William S. Lind’s ON WAR:

The Islamic State continues to gain new recruits in large numbers despite weeks of airstrikes and other military efforts by the United States, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said the group’s ability to attract new recruits to replenish their fighting ranks is an indication of the its mass appeal. U.S. strikes have thus far not degraded IS’s ability to grow its forces, Kirby said.

It would have been more than a little remarkable if they had. Some relevant quotes from the newly released book; note that the most recent one was written more than six years ago.

  • Air power works against you, not for you. It kills lots of people who weren’t your enemy, recruiting their relatives, friends and fellow tribesmen to become your enemies. In this kind of war, bombers are as useful as 420mm siege mortars.  – “Incapable of Learning”
  • The Israeli high command continues to express its faith in the foxfire of air power to destroy Hezbollah, but, as always, it’s not working. Lebanon is taking a pounding, to be sure, but Lebanon is not Hezbollah. – “Welcome to My Parlour”
  •  Air power failed, as it always does against an enemy who doesn’t have to maneuver operationally, or even move tactically for the most part. – “Beat!”
  • The U.S. Air Force recently announced it is developing its own counter-insurgency doctrine, precisely because some people are suggesting air strikes are counterproductive in such conflicts. Well, yes, that is what anyone with any understanding of counter-insurgency would suggest. The Air Force, of course, cares not a whit about the realities of counter-insurgency. – “The Perfect (Sine) Wave”
  • Air power always promises more than it can deliver. – “Operation Cassandra”

The vanishing borders

Post-WWI borders are dissolving, and not in the way that the globalists were anticipating:

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon gave a wide-ranging and
provocative interview to NPR earlier this week. Of particular interest
was his recognition that the national borders that were created after
World War I are dissolving:


The borders of many Arab states were drawn up by Westerners a century ago, and wars in recent years show that a number of them are doomed to break apart, according to Ya’alon, a career soldier who became Israel’s defense minister last year. “We have to distinguish between countries like Egypt, with their history. Egypt will stay Egypt,” Ya’alon, who is on a visit to Washington, tells Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep.
In contrast, Ya’alon says, “Libya was a new creation, a Western creation as a result of World War I. Syria, Iraq, the same — artificial nation-states — and what we see now is a collapse of this Western idea.” Asked if Middle Eastern borders are likely to change in the coming years, Ya’alon says: “Yes, absolutely. It has been changed already. Can you unify Syria? [President] Bashar al-Assad is controlling only 25 percent of the Syrian territory. We have to deal with it.”

Ya’alon is right. As our own Adam Garfinkle concluded in June about
Iraq: “The Iraqi state in its historic territorial configuration is
gone—solid gone, and it ain’t coming back.” The region’s other
“artificial nation-states” aren’t going to return to the status quo ante
bellum either. Whatever comes out of the current war, it won’t look
like the old landscape, and we shouldn’t imagine that there are natural
nations waiting to be created out of the ethno-tribal-religious anarchy
that the Middle East is witnessing.

However, it isn’t merely in the Middle East that the dissolving borders issue can be observed, as anyone who lives in the southwestern United States will know. As William Lind, author of the Castalia House book ON WAR (which will be officially released tomorrow) pointed out in “The Canon and the Four Generations”:

4th Generation war is the greatest change since the Peace of Westphalia, because it marks the end of the state’s monopoly on war. Once again, as before 1648, many different entities, not states, are fighting war. They use many different means, including terrorism and immigration, not just formal armies. Differences between cultures, not just states, become paramount,and other cultures will not fight the way we fight. All over the world, state militaries are fighting non-state opponents, and almost always, the state is losing. State militaries were designed to fight other state militaries like themselves, and against nonstate enemies most of their equipment, tactics and training are useless or counterproductive.

The effects of 4GW can already be seen in the Middle East. But the same forces are actively at work right here in the United States, and, to a lesser extent, in Europe as well.

A state of war

Dmitry Orlov considers the current state of US-Russia relations on Zerohedge:

So far, this all seems like typical economic warfare: the Americans want to get everything they want by printing money while bombing into submission or sanctioning anyone who disobeys them, while the rest of the world attempts to resist them. But early in 2014 the situation changed. There was a US-instigated coup in Kiev, and instead of rolling over and playing dead like they were supposed to, the Russians mounted a fast and brilliantly successful campaign to regain Crimea, then successfully checkmated the junta in Kiev, preventing it from consolidating control over the remaining former Ukrainian territory by letting volunteers, weapons, equipment and humanitarian aid enter—and hundreds of thousands of refugees exit—through the strictly notional Russian-Ukrainian border, all the while avoiding direct military confrontation with NATO. Seeing all of this happening on the nightly news has awakened the Russian population from its political slumber, making it sit up and pay attention, and sending Putin’s approval rating through the roof.

The “optics” of all this, as they like to say at the White House, are rather ominous. We are coming up on the 70th anniversary of victory in World War II—a momentous occasion for Russians, who pride themselves on defeating Hitler almost single-handedly. At the same time, the US (Russia’s self-appointed arch-enemy) has taken this opportunity to reawaken and feed the monster of Nazism right on Russia’s border (inside Russia’s borders, some Russians/Ukrainians would say). This, in turn, makes the Russians remember Russia’s unique historical mission is among the nations of the world: it is to thwart all other nations’ attempts at world domination, be it Napoleonic France or Hitleresque Germany or Obamaniac America. Every century or so some nation forgets its history lessons and attacks Russia. The result is always the same: lots of corpse-studded snowdrifts, and then Russian cavalry galloping into Paris, or Russian tanks rolling into Berlin….

[W]hy has war been declared now, and why was it declared by this social worker turned national misleader? Some keen observers mentioned his slogan “the audacity of hope,” and ventured to guess that this sort of “audaciousness” (which in Russian sounds a lot like “folly”) might be a key part of his character which makes him want to be the leader of the universe, like Napoleon or Hitler. Others looked up the campaign gibberish from his first presidential election (which got silly young Americans so fired up) and discovered that he had nice things to say about various cold warriors. Do you think Obama might perhaps be a scholar of history and a shrewd geopolitician in his own right? (That question usually gets a laugh, because most people know that he is just a chucklehead and repeats whatever his advisers tell him to say.) Hugo Chavez once called him “a hostage in the White House,” and he wasn’t too far off. So, why are his advisers so eager to go to war with Russia, right now, this year?

Is it because the US is collapsing more rapidly than most people can imagine? This line of reasoning goes like this: the American scheme of world domination through military aggression and unlimited money-printing is failing before our eyes. The public has no interest in any more “boots on the ground,” bombing campaigns do nothing to reign in militants that Americans themselves helped organize and equip, dollar hegemony is slipping away with each passing day, and the Federal Reserve is fresh out of magic bullets and faces a choice between crashing the stock market and crashing the bond market. In order to stop, or at least forestall this downward slide into financial/economic/political oblivion, the US must move quickly to undermine every competing economy in the world through whatever means it has left at its disposal, be it a bombing campaign, a revolution or a pandemic (although this last one can be a bit hard to keep under control). Russia is an obvious target, because it is the only country in the world that has had the gumption to actually show international leadership in confronting the US and wrestling it down; therefore, Russia must be punished first, to keep the others in line.

Empires always fall. The most powerful military is always eventually surpassed by its rivals. These are lessons of history that the average individual, especially the average American, never takes into account. And very, very few individuals in a society in decline ever recognize that it is in decline at the time. However, the USA is presently showing many signs of decline that have previously been observed in imperial societies of the past, including both democratic Athens and republican Rome.

Obama’s plan to open the immigration floodgates and give out 34 million green cards on top of the 60 million immigrants already in the country may mark the final nail in the coffin, but such things are merely consequences of the country abandoning its original identity as a white Christian Anglo-Saxon nation. There is no mechanical fix for that, and it should surprise absolutely no one that an empire that is no longer predominantly a white, Christian, Anglo-Saxon nation does not abide by either the traditions or the values of white, Christian, Anglo-Saxons.

About six years

That’s how much time the American can-kicking in Iraq bought. Of course, it is readily apparent that this was rather like going buying time in order to go from the frying pan into the blast furnace.  Another prescient selection from William S. Lind’s forthcoming ON WAR:

A piece in the December 27, 2007 Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Vote on fate of Kirkuk postponed,” by Tina Susman and Asso Ahmed of the L.A. Times, reported that: “Kurdish lawmakers agreed Wednesday to a six-month delay in a referendum on whether the oil-rich city of Kirkuk should join the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan or remain under Iraqi central government control….Also Wednesday, the head of the Iraqi parliament’s constitutional review committee, Humam Hamoudi, said he would request a three-month delay in rewriting the national constitution. That would mark the fourth time the target date…has been put off.”

As the Iraqis kick the can down the road, so do the Americans. The American-funded Sunni militia, aka the Concerned Local Citizens or the Awakening, has grown to 72,000 volunteers in nearly 300 communities in Iraq. They have been credited with reducing violence in some of Iraq’s most violent areas. But many people, including some Sunnis, worry that the groups could destabilize Iraq.

The concern is a valid one. With our usual charming naiveté, we seem to think the Sunnis have become our friends. But they are merely using us to help them get ready for the next round with the Shiites and, in the case of Kirkuk, the Kurds.

They were indeed, as “destabilize” is a mild way of putting it. That American-funded Sunni militia, aka the Concerned Local Citizens aka the Awakening aka the Islamic State, is now engaged in successfully fighting that anticipated next round with both the Shiites and the Kurds. They’ve not only taken Kirkuk and are pressing the Kurds hard in the north, but are also threatening to besiege a Baghdad ruled by a crumbling Shiite US-puppet government.

As in the case of al Qaeda, the Islamic State was directly subsidized by the American government. If this sort of repetitive blowback does not suffice to convince you that expansionist imperialism abroad is a fool’s game, then one can only conclude that you are one of those Aristotle characterized as impervious to information. We don’t always have to do something, especially when that something has the predictable probability of making matters worse.

A 4GW fiasco in realtime

You don’t have to be an expert in 4th Generation Warfare to know that the US decision to resort to air strikes against the Islamic State was going to backfire:

The U.S.-led air war in Syria has gotten off to a rocky start, with even the Syrian rebel groups closest to the United States turning against it, U.S. ally Turkey refusing to contribute and the plight of a beleaguered Kurdish town exposing the limitations of the strategy.

U.S. officials caution that the strikes are just the beginning of a broader strategy that could take years to carry out. But the anger that the attacks have stirred risks undermining the effort, analysts and rebels say.

The main beneficiary of the strikes so far appears to be President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces have taken advantage of the shift in the military balance to step up attacks against the moderate rebels designated by President Obama as partners of the United States in the war against extremists.

The U.S. targets have included oil facilities, a granary and an electricity plant under Islamic State control. The damage to those facilities has caused shortages and price hikes across the rebel-held north that are harming ordinary Syrians more than the well-funded militants, residents and activists say.

At the start of the air campaign, dozens of U.S. cruise missiles were fired into areas controlled by the moderate rebels, who are supposed to be fighting the Islamic State. Syrians who had in the past appealed for American intervention against Assad have been staging demonstrations denouncing the United States and burning the American flag.

If there is one person who desperately needs to read William S. Lind’s forthcoming ON WAR, it is Barack Obama. And it wouldn’t hurt if whoever is presently in charge of the US military response to the Islamic State would do so as well.

Islamophobia at the UN

I take personal offense at this reprehensibly Islamophobic comment by a UN official, who implies that devoted members of the religion of peace would allow anyone to come to harm after taking control of a Syrian city:

Thousands of people “will most likely be massacred” if Kobani falls to Islamic State fighters, a U.N. envoy said on Friday, as militants fought deeper into the besieged Syrian Kurdish town in full view of Turkish tanks that have done nothing to intervene.

I’m sure the Turks are amused by the passive-aggressive criticism of their failure to defend the very Kurds who have been violently rebelling against their rule for decades, if not centuries. It’s one thing to wipe out your enemies. But one can hardly criticize a people who, upon seeing someone else doing it for them, shrug, look on, and say, “you know, defending those people is really neither our problem nor our interest.”

Anti-gun liberals would do well to keep this in mind come the day of the zombies. When they’re screaming “somebody, please do something!” I suspect there will be more than a few well-armed conservatives and libertarians who will look on with a faint smile and say, “now, weren’t you the very sort of idiot who a) brought the zombies to town, and b) tried to take my guns away?”

After all, did not the Bible say that the hearts of men would grow cold?

The State is losing

William Lind presciently anticipated which side would have the advantage back in 2006:

Among the critics and reinterpreters of Fourth Generation war, the bad is most powerfully represented by Thomas Barnett’s two books The Pentagon’s New Map and Blueprint for Action. Barnett divides the world into two parts, the Functioning Core and the Non-Integrating Gap. This is parallel to what I call centers of order and centers or sources of disorder, and I agree that this will be the fundamental fault line of the 21st Century. Barnett’s error is that he assumes the Functioning Core will be the stronger party, able to restore order in places where it has broken down. In fact, the forces of disorder will be stronger, because they are driven by a factor Barnett dismisses, the spreading crisis of legitimacy of the state. By ignoring Martin van Creveld’s work on the rise and decline of the state, Barnett’s books end up anchoring their foundations on sand.

The implications go far beyond the obvious regions of the Middle East and Ukraine. What we’re seeing in Spain, in Belgium, and in Scotland are the early phases of crises of the State which will likely result, eventually, in either a) a different, more decentralized order or b) disorder.
And the increasingly rapid growth of diversity in the USA is a distinct sign of incipient crisis of State legitimacy and eventual disorder.

Wargaming reveals weaknesses

A USMC ops planner’s experience explains the key benefit of wargaming:

Back in May of 2012, I was holding an Operational Planning Team for a Major Pacific OPLAN. This was a big event. We flew in over a hundred participants for almost three weeks of work. I fought with my boss, the G5, over several key points about this OPT and I eventually was able to do things how I wanted. I spoke directly with the CG everyday during the OPT, with three formal briefs to him. Because we were a Joint Force Land Component Command for this OPT, we had players from all services and Special Forces (which is basically it’s own service.) I had interagency players, a full Red Cell, Green Cell, and Red Team. This was the biggest non-exercise event I witnessed in my three years at the MEF. And it was my FIRST OPT and first opportunity to be on the dot for a critical event. I routinely worked bast 1900 and worked past 2100 twice during the three weeks. This was BIG and IMPORTANT and we only had one chance to get it right. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I am smart enough to get help from smart people. I leaned heavily on three key personnel who had been around awhile and knew what they were doing. And they were great. We got through Problem Framing and Course of Action (COA) Development and were ready for the COA Wargaming step. The CG had settled on one COA, and we were testing it to see if it worked. COA wargaming is another area I fought with Col XXXX on and one. He agreed to let me run it my way and get out of it what I thought I needed.

So, we started the wargame. On the second (SECOND!!!) turn, the Red player took his turn and we were all face with the extremely obvious and extremely uncomfortable realization that our one and only COA was untenable. The result of 2 1/2 weeks worth of intensive work had just failed catastrophically in front of the audience. In the middle of the uncomfortable silence, broken by teeth sucking, I looked to the three officers who had been helping my so much throughout. All of them slumped their shoulders and looked away. One of them actually walked out of the back of the room. I was faced with the uncomfortable realization: “No one is going to save me.” This is the real world. There isn’t an answer in the back of the book. There is no instructor stepping in to bail you out. You are on your own and it is all on your shoulders. I looked out at the OPT and realized that my reputation, this entire event, the time and energy of over a hundred people sat on my shoulders and had no opportunity to start over and fix it. This is what it means to be a planner. It is all on you.

So, I used my favorite OPT tactic and said, “Everybody take 10!” I grabbed my two trusted agents (LtCol XXX and Maj XXX who worked closest with me, LtCol XXX will come up again in three slides) and went into the back room to discuss what we should do. They were both a little shell-shocked and no help. So, I fixed it. The problem, as it turned out, was timing. I adjusted the timing and changed the character of one force and its mission. And we recocked the wargame with the new COA. And it worked. It worked so well that, with minor modifications, it went into the plan of record. We have since referred to that wargame as the most successful COA wargame ever, because it identified a critical flaw in the COA and we were able to adjust the COA to opvercome the flaw.

The challenge, of course, is that people have to be willing to accept the information produced by the wargaming session. In vast bureaucracies like the U.S. armed forces, they are much more likely to sweep any uncomfortable information thus gathered under the carpet and pretend everything is fine, because in most cases the real world test will never come and the planning flaws will remain undetected.

It is eminently clear that the Obama administration does not have anyone advising it who is well-versed in wargaming, or rather, it is not listening to anyone who is.

The cost of foreign interventions

Take these numbers and cram them down the throats of everyone who declares the USA absolutely has to intervene in the latest round of Levantine slaughter:

By the end of the year, Congress will have appropriated more money for Afghanistan’s reconstruction, when adjusted for inflation, than the United States spent rebuilding 16 European nations after World War II under the Marshall Plan.

A staggering portion of that money — $104 billion — has been mismanaged and stolen. Much of what was built is crumbling or will be unsustainable. Well-connected Afghans smuggled millions of stolen aid money in suitcases that were checked onto Dubai-bound flights. The Afghan government largely turned a blind eye to widespread malfeasance. Even as revelations of fraud and abuse stacked up, the United States continued shoveling money year after year because cutting off the financial spigot was seen as a sure way to doom the war effort.

As the Pentagon winds down its combat mission there at the end of the year, it’s tempting to think of the Afghan war as a chapter that is coming to an end — at least for American taxpayers. But, as things stand, the United States and its allies will continue paying Afghanistan’s bills for the foreseeable future. That commitment was solidified Tuesday as the American ambassador in Kabul and Afghanistan’s security adviser signed a bilateral security agreement that will keep a small contingent of NATO troops there for at least two years.

The United States and NATO partners recently agreed to spend $5.1 billion a year to pay for the army and police, until at least 2017. Western donors are expected to continue to give billions more for reconstruction and other initiatives, recognizing that Afghanistan won’t be weaned off international aid anytime soon. In fact, the government appears to be broke.

The actual figure is $109 billion. That is nearly $1,000 per taxpayer. And what did you get for your money? It’s one thing to say “we must do this” or “we must do that”. But then, recollect that it’s going to cost you over $1,000 in order to feel good about pretending to prevent one group of murderous foreigners from killing another group of foreigners, who not infrequently were previously murdering the other group.

And, of course, that doesn’t count the $42.50 you’ll be spending every year on the Afghan army and police. Or the social and economic costs of importing the inevitable allies and refugees to the USA and settling them there.

Brave women warriors

What was that again about women being capable of front-line combat?

The man who scaled the White House fence and was able to run through the front doors made it farther into the building than was previously reported, CBS News has learned. Secret Service Director Julia Pierson is scheduled to answer questions about the incident when she appears at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Tuesday morning.

The man, 42-year-old Omar J. Gonzalez, ran unobstructed for 70 yards across the front lawn of the White House before entering through the North Portico. On the way, he brushed by a Secret Service officer with a drawn gun, sources tell CBS News’ Bill Plante.

Gonzalez then proceeded to run through the entrance hall to the cross hall of the White House, past the staircase that leads up to the first family’s residence. He was confronted by a female Secret Service agent, who he overpowered, and made it all the way to the East Room, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told CBS News, citing whistleblowers.

If trained, armed Secret Service agents aren’t able to deal with unarmed lunatics, what chance do they have against battle-hardened ISIS soldiers and elite Spetsnaz special forces?

And just think, the people overseeing these jokers are responsible for dealing with the Ebola crisis….