Tag: war

US defeat in Ukraine

Waging war by proxy runs the risk of being defeated by proxy too:

In less than a year, the United States has toppled the democratically-elected government of Ukraine, installed a Washington-backed stooge in Kiev, launched a bloody and costly war of annihilation on Russian-speaking people in the East, thrust the economy into a downward death spiral, and reduced the nation to an anarchic, failed state destined to endure a vicious fratricidal civil war for as far as the eye can see.

Last week, Washington suffered its greatest military defeat in more than a decade when Ukraine’s US-backed army was soundly routed in the major railway hub of Debaltsevo. Roughly, 8,000 Ukrainian regulars along with untold numbers of tanks and armored units were surrounded in what came to be known as “the cauldron.” The army of the Donetsk Peoples Republic led by DPR commander Alexander Zakharchenko, encircled the invading army and gradually tightened the cordon, eventually killing or capturing most of the troops within the pocket. The Ukrainian Armed Forces suffered major casualties ranging between 3,000 to 3,500 while a vast amount of lethal military hardware was left behind.

According to Zakharchenko, “The amount of equipment Ukrainian units have lost here is beyond description.”

Additionally, the US-backed proxy-army saw many of its crack troops and top-notch units destroyed in the fighting leaving Kiev unable to continue the war without assistance from allies in the US or Europe. The full impact of the defeat will not be known until angry troops returning from the front amass on the streets of the Capital and demand Petro Poroshenko’s resignation. The Ukrainian President is responsible for the massacre at Debaltsevo. He was fully aware that his army faced encirclement but ordered them to remain in order to satisfy powerful right-wing elements in his government. The disaster is even more terrible due to the fact that it was entirely avoidable and achieved no strategic purpose at all. Extreme hubris frequently impacts outcomes on the battlefield. This was the case at Debaltsevo.

Most people outside of Eastern Europe aren’t paying much attention to this, but the fact of the matter is that Russia is militarily obliterating Ukraine and they are mostly doing so by the same sort of war-by-proxy in which the USA is engaged. The DPR is a Russian proxy, but then, the Ukrainian army is a US proxy, and so far, the Russian proxies are winning.

That’s why you’re not seeing much about it on the US news.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there is soon another coup and the US puppet Poroshenko is thrown out of power, whether it is by Right Sector or someone else. The Russians have won on the moral level and now their Novorossiyan proxies are winning on the material level as well. Poroshenko’s failure to withdraw his troops from the Debaltsevo Pocket was a strategic mistake of the sort one usually only sees labeled Fuhrerbefehl; to the left is an image of what the Pocket looked like back on 25 January when 8,000 troops still had the chance to retreat from within that yellow peninsula in the middle.

From Reuters: The loss of Debaltseve is so huge only because Kiev turned it into a symbolic redoubt, said Gustav Gressel, a specialist on Eastern European defense policy and a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. Poroshenko’s biggest mistake was not to withdraw earlier, according to Gressel. The battle for Debaltseve is reminiscent of the futile struggle for the Donetsk airport, which Ukrainian forces finally gave up in January after months of bitter fighting.

#GamerGate and 4GW

Mendicant Bias has clearly read his Lind and correctly applied it to #GamerGate and society alike:

We have seen the most important and fundamental values of our society torn down and destroyed by vandals who used the tactics of cultural Marxism to subvert our society. We have seen abominations like gay “marriage”, no-fault divorce (read: his-fault), government-subsidised abortion and freely available birth control, and universal suffrage become “acceptable”—as if these cultural freak shows could ever possibly be considered “normal”. We have seen our most fundamental rights of conscience, association, freedom of thought, free exercise of religious belief, and freedom of action circumscribed, shrunk, and destroyed before our eyes. And we let it happen.

The self-aware man who looks at how this happened will come away with a certain cold appreciation for the tactics of those who imposed this ashen, burning Hell upon us.

When it comes to gaming, we have repeatedly seen how SJW tactics work. They have used the fundamental decency of the average Western gaming consumer against him, by browbeating him into believing that he is sexist if he wants “believable” (i.e. non-ridiculous) women in games, or that he is “racist” if he doesn’t want games to become some sort of absurd paean to multiculturalism, or that he is a misinformed idiot if he thinks that women can’t be just as strong and effective in an FPS game as men.

They are exquisitely good at shutting down dissent. They’ve had forty years to entrench themselves and become institutionalised. And they have succeeded. They did this by capturing the single most important and powerful level of war. The Moral Level of War

He also explains why #GamerGate has been uniquely successful in resisting the SJW onslaught when everything from the US Army to the churches have been overrun like France in 1940:

The cultural Marxists who brought us to this point have used the moral level of war brilliantly, up until now, by bludgeoning anyone who disagreed with them into submission through the threat of being branded sexist, racist, and other double-plus ungood things. To the SJW set, any deviation from “acceptable” modes of thought was and remains Badthink. Hell, they even have their own programming language! (Note the satire.)

But they grew overconfident, and made a huge mistake—giving us everything we need to destroy them, root and branch.

Until recently, gaming “journalists” had a lock on how the consumer viewed the products that they paid for. Games that promoted “social justice” narratives were given high reviews—but when the rest of us actually tried playing them, we often found them to be unplayable garbage, because they sacrificed absorbing gameplay and great storytelling for smarmy preachiness and painfully stupid messages about “tolerance”.

When #Gamergate first broke, the reason for this appalling state of affairs became perfectly clear: the gaming media were in bed, literally, with the very same game developers whose work they were reviewing.

Overnight, they lost their moral high ground in the eyes of thousands of gamers all over the world. And they have continued to lose that support as gamers have mounted a vicious backlash against their immorality.

This is a very, very important lesson to absorb. You cannot win at the moral level of war when crippled by ambiguous values and a lack of moral confidence. This is why the Christian churches that compromise their principles and turn against their own historic values rapidly collapse. Defeat at the moral level of war destroys an institutions raison d’etre; once robbed of its core reason to exist, an institution ceases to grow and rapidly begins to decline.

Mr. Lind and I had a conversation about #GamerGate. He recognized it as an obvious manifestation of 4GW, so it’s interesting to see that the students of 4GW see it clearly as well.

Red with the blood of Christians

The Middle East is red with the blood of Christians. The atrocity by Islamic State sympathisers in Libya highlights the worsening persecution of non-Muslims all over the Middle East – violence that is driving them from their Biblical homelands. The beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya by forces sympathetic to Islamic State over recent days is sadly not an isolated case. On the contrary, it is the latest of countless outrages perpetrated against Christians in or near the Church’s Biblical heartlands over many years. 

It is time to end the long and suicidal Western experiment with religious tolerance. Tolerance is evil. Tolerance is “the sin of Jeroboam”. Tolerance is the death of civilization.

“As we mourn with the families of those 21 martyrs, we’d better take this warning seriously as these acts of terror will only spread throughout Europe and the United States,” warned Rev. Graham.

The 21st century is about to learn that far from being the epitomes of evil, the Crusades, the Reconquista, and the Spanish Inquisition were all right, necessary, and above all self-defensive reactions by Western civilization against aggressive Islamic expansion. The battle for the West will begin within the next two decades, and the Men of the West had better be ready for it.

The media certainly isn’t:

The morning after the much anticipated Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary special, NBC’s “Today” Show gave the SNL special more than 10 times the coverage during its first three hours Monday than the brutal beheadings of Egyptian Christians by ISIS…. “Today” thought the SNL special was of vast importance, covering the
humor-filled three and a half hour-long affair for 15 minutes and eight
seconds (908 seconds in total). Meanwhile, coverage of the ISIS
beheadings totaled a meager one minute and 28 seconds.

Go to Israel. Now.

I’ve been saying it for a while, but Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is beating the drum even more strongly:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday urged European Jews to move to Israel after a Jewish man was killed in an attack outside Copenhagen’s main synagogue.

“Israel is your home. We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe,” Netanyahu said in a statement, repeating a similar call after attacks by jihadists in Paris last month when four Jews were among the dead.

The cabinet later on Sunday submitted a plan to encourage the absorption
of Jews from France, Belgium and Ukraine, and would discuss immigration
from other European countries at a later date. 

Jews are neither Europeans nor Christians, neither are they Muslims, so they need to get the hell out of the way and stay safely out of the way of the coming wars. Too many of them have caused too much damage to themselves, to Europe, and to the USA by idiotically encouraging third world immigration in a foolish attempt to protect themselves against Christians who never had any intention of harming them.

Sam Huntington’s long-foreseen Clash of Civilizations (PDF) is approaching. Those who are opposed to Christian civilization are going to lose again; even the European seculars and pagans are beginning to understand the importance of Christian civilization. I’ve read one of his book and Netanyahu is a good student of not only history in general, but military history in particular, and he understands that if Europe’s Jews continue to stupidly stand in the way of Europeans defending their civilization against the Muslim onslaught, they’re going to be wiped out again.

That, incidentally, is why France’s prime minister is desperately arguing against the Israeli prime minister’s appeal to Europe’s Jews. Not because he loves Jews more than Netanyahu, but because he is cynically using them as a means of keeping the nationalist leadership that will replace him at bay.

Israel should no more stand in the way of Europe defending herself against Islamic expansion than Europe should interfere with Israel defending herself Islamic aggression. It appears that Netanyahu, for one, understands that strong Christian nations in Europe are considerably better for Israel than a Muslim-conquered Europe.

At the moment, I am editing a book by a brilliant Israeli military historian that will be available later this month to newsletter subscribers. And in thinking about how Man’s strategic thinking has developed, it is becoming increasingly evident that the modern militaries presently lack the theoretical means to grasp how events are taking shape or what to do with them. Forget the bromide about how generals are always fighting the last war, right now, the politicians and their military advisors are mostly caught up in entirely fictional theater based on a geopolitical structure that has very little relation to either the current reality or the global wars of the future.

Stealing honor

Now, I’m not privy to the details of either Captain Matt Golsteyn or the investigation of him, but this revoking of a Silver Star stinks of perfumed princes and their aversion to public criticism as well as the Obama administration’s hatred of the US military:

In 2011, shortly after a book by author and Marine Bing West came out that detailed Golsteyn’s heroism and quoted him making critical remarks about the American strategy in Afghanistan, I learned that the Army had launched a criminal investigation into his actions during the battle. (Again, full disclosure: I was also interviewed for that book, The Wrong War, and make a brief appearance in it.)

The investigation, apparently, had nothing to do with the acts of bravery that earned Golsteyn his medal. Instead, according to the Washington Post, which cited officials familiar with the case, it concerned “an undisclosed violation of the military’s rules of engagement in combat for killing a known enemy fighter and bomb maker.” The investigation stretched on for nearly two years, during which time the Army effectively put Golsteyn’s career on ice. In 2014, Golsteyn and his lawyer were informed that the investigation was finally complete. No charges were filed, but Golsteyn still wasn’t released from administrative limbo.

Alerted about the controversy by another Army officer, Captain Will Swenson, Congressman Duncan Hunter wrote last year to John McHugh, the secretary of the Army, asking about the status of Golsteyn’s seemingly endless career freeze. Apparently the secretary did not take kindly to the inquiry, as he responded in a letter last November that not only would he not be upgrading Golsteyn’s Silver Star to a Distinguished Service Cross, but would be revoking Golsteyn’s Silver Star entirely, a fact that Hunter revealed publicly in an article for the Daily Beast published on Tuesday.

The revocation of an award such as the Silver Star is extraordinarily rare, and typically would happen in the case of the recipient being convicted of a serious crime that in some way dishonored his service. But not only has Golsteyn not been convicted of a crime—he hasn’t even been charged with one.

McHugh would not reveal to Hunter specifically why he was taking his action beyond submitting the innuendo that he was privy to “derogatory information” regarding Golsteyn’s record. What could this information be? Who knows? Having, according to Hunter, spent years threatening Golsteyn’s men, searching for and failing “to find one piece of evidence to corroborate the allegation” that launched the investigation, the Army clearly decided to punish Golsteyn anyway, through publicly dishonoring him in a manner that allows him effectively no recourse or due process.

 It is remarkable that the US military can still find anyone willing to serve under the recent Commanders-in-Chief.

There will be war

Back in March, about a month after we launched Castalia, I contacted Jerry Pournelle with the idea of reviving his great military science fiction anthology series, THERE WILL BE WAR. He was entirely open to the idea, but he was busy and quite naturally had a lot of more important things to do than be pestered by an insignificant publisher who at the time published a single novella by Tom Kratman.

So, I gave up on the notion, contacted Tom, and we put together RIDING THE RED HORSE instead. That went rather well, as you know, and Dr. Pournelle became sufficiently interested in the project to graciously contribute two pieces to it, one fiction and one non-fiction. I was rather pleasantly surprised when, after he received a copy and had the chance to read a few reviews, he asked if I might be interested in having Castalia re-release the nine volumes of THERE WILL BE WAR in ebook format.

You can probably imagine that it didn’t take me long to indicate that, yes, we might be willing to contemplate the notion. I daresay we contemplated and cogitated at least a nanosecond or two. The result of all this cogitation was the suggestion that with war looming on nearly every horizon, it might be the right time to consider reviving THERE WILL BE WAR as an anthology series, since it had lain dormant since the end of the Cold War. Dr. Pournelle concurred, which made the timing of this Amazon review of RIDING THE RED HORSE more than a little ironic:

Should be called “There Will Be War Volume 10”, February 2, 2015
By Chris Gerrib “Author, Pirates of Mars”

Generally a very solid work, modeled after the old “There Will Be War” military SF anthologies. The difference is that there is a mixture of non-fiction and fiction in this work. I don’t agree with some of the ideas presented (others I do) but everything is thought-provoking and well-written.

On the full disclosure front, Jerry Pournelle’s contribution is “His Truth Goes Marching On” which is a classic but has been reprinted seemingly everywhere. Having said that, it’s probably Pournelle’s best short work. All in all, well worth the time and money.

I say ironic because on that very day, Dr. Pournelle agreed to revive the series with Castalia House, beginning with THERE WILL BE WAR Volume X. The two anthology series will remain entirely separate, as RIDING THE RED HORSE will consist of entirely new material while THERE WILL BE WAR, as before, will primarily consist of high-quality reprints. Tom Kratman and I will continue to edit RIDING THE RED HORSE, while Dr. Pournelle will edit THERE WILL BE WAR.

There have been a lot of military science fiction stories published since Volume IX appeared in 1989. We’re going to want to identify and feature the very best of them in Volume X, so if you happen to have any suggestions in this regard, or believe that you happen to have written one of them, please don’t hesitate to bring them to my attention.

As for the original nine volumes, we intend to release them in individual ebooks and as a set of three three-volume hardcover omnibuses, beginning later this year.

Unready for 4GW

No one serious believed that Obama was even remotely capable of handling foreign policy, but most erroneously assumed that he was smart enough to hand off responsibility for it to foreign policy veterans. That has not turned out to be the case, as Jerry Pournelle notes Peggy Noonan’s recent column in the Wall Street Journal:

No one thinks this administration is the A Team when it comes to foreign affairs, but this is unprecedented push-back from top military and intelligence players. They are fed up, they’re less afraid, they’re retired, and they’re speaking out. We are going to be seeing more of this kind of criticism, not less.

On Thursday came the testimony of three former secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger (1973-77), George Shultz (1982-89) and Madeleine Albrigh t (1997-2001). Senators asked them to think aloud about what America’s national-security strategy should be, what approaches are appropriate to the moment. It was good to hear serious, not-green, not-merely-political people give a sense of the big picture. Their comments formed a kind of bookend to the generals’ criticisms.

They seemed to be in agreement on these points:

  • We are living through a moment of monumental world change.
  • Old orders are collapsing while any new stability has yet to emerge.
  • When you’re in uncharted waters your boat must be strong.
  • If America attempts to disengage from this dangerous world it will only make all the turmoil worse.

Mr. Kissinger observed that in the Mideast, multiple upheavals are unfolding simultaneously—within states, between states, between ethnic and religious groups. Conflicts often merge and produce such a phenomenon as the Islamic State, which in the name of the caliphate is creating a power base to undo all existing patterns.

Mr. Shultz said we are seeing an attack on the state system and the rise of a “different view of how the world should work.” What’s concerning is “the scope of it.”

Correct diagnosis, wrong prescription. Observe that these foreign policy experts are more than a decade behind William Lind, who described these extra-state upheavals in both ON WAR and FOUR GENERATIONS OF MODERN WAR.

And Lind is also correct to assert that America MUST disengage from “this dangerous world”, as the very danger is primarily the result of disastrous Anglo-American meddling in the Middle East. Islam is what it is, but it would not not be resurgent and aggressively expansionary if the British, followed by the Americans, had not made it possible through their insanely inept Middle East policies.

The West needs to adopt a siege mentality, expel the non-Westerners, and let the fire burn itself out. Continued engagement only guarantees that it will be necessary to fight an indefinite number of fires within the West itself.

The Iron Law in the USAF

Jerry Pournelle posts an informative and timely explanation of the US Air Force’s self-assisted decline into military irrelevance:

The heart of the USAF’s institutional culture was Strategic Air Command (SAC). It was where the pilots that learned how to do teamwork, logistics and (nuclear) strategy. That was where officers were groomed for senior flag rank command slots.

When SAC was stood down, Tactical Air Command (TAC) took over in the form of the renamed Air Combat Command (ACC). We are talking fighter jocks, the prima donna’s, the cowboys. The anti-intellectuals who are scared to death of people smarter than they are. Look what happened after the Gulf War when ACC was in charge.

Col. John A. Warden, the architect of the Gulf War air campaign was black balled by Gen. Horner. He retired a thrice passed over Col. at the Air Command and Staff School.

Gen. Corder — the man who put together the 1980’s USAF SEAD doctrine used so well in the Gulf War — was effectively sacked by the USAF chief of Staff (CoS) for disobeying a “strong suggestion” to lie to Congress about the need to retain the F-4G Wild Weasels. (The then CoS was trying to retain more F-15C’s in the force structure.) His efforts to deploy a missile warning system** to protect USAF planes was cancelled partially in retaliation.

When Corder’s allies in Congress started making noise in 1993 about the draw down of F-4G Wild Weasel and EF-111’s, the USAF put the recently retired Corder on a special six month SEAD study to satisfy them. Then the Air Staff sat on the results for close to three years. Corder, under the legal restrictions of the Reagan era secrecy laws, was thus effectively silenced while the deed was done. The downing of Capt. O’ Grady in Bosnia was a direct result of the purging of F-4G Wild Weasel and EF-111 Spark ‘Vark’s from the USAF force structure and senior ACC staff’s willing EW incompetence.

USAF CoS Fogleman, for all his faults, recognized the lack of institutional professionalism. His support of the Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, Alb. and attempts to create a USAF doctrine codifying entity like the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) were what was needed.
Unfortunately, Fogleman could not delegate and his reforms died with his military career. The inability to delegate is a defining fault of USAF fighter pilot culture. Fogleman’s successors haven’t tried to address these core institutional issues since then. The F-22 budget wars and the real wars since 1997 have left the USAF CoS no time for anything else, assuming they were interested.

Jerry adds: The Iron Law even in the military, dammit. The purpose of warriors is to
win wars.  It takes one force to gain and keep air supremacy, another
to support the ground army.  The army can win without ground support if
the other guy also has none, and we used to plan Cold War battles in
which neither side had supremacy.  That was tough and the obvious
conclusion is that air supremacy is vital; but that does not mean that
support of the ground forces is not important. If the Air Force won’t
give it, take the mission away; and if USAF blocks that, abolish USAF
and bring back USAAF.

There is real evidence surfacing that the Iron Law has taken over to such a degree that the bureaucrats in the USAF are literally more loyal to their bureaucracy than to the country they are sworn to serve:

The Air Force is investigating allegations that the No. 2 commander
at its prestigious Air Combat Command told lower-ranking officers that
talking to members of Congress about the capabilities of the A-10 attack
aircraft is tantamount to treason.

The alleged comment by Maj.
Gen. James Post has stirred concern in Congress about the Air Force
muzzling officers in violation of their legal rights. “This is
very serious, to accuse people of treason for communicating with
Congress,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-New Hampshire, told Gen. Mark Welsh, the
Air Force chief of staff, who testified Wednesday before the Senate
Armed Services Committee.

Post is reported to have told Air Force
officers attending a recent weapons and tactics conference in Nevada
that it is their duty to support the service’s budget priorities by
refraining from offering opinions inconsistent with those priorities.
Air Force leaders have proposed retiring the A-10 fleet but Congress has
refused, and some inside the Air Force have sided with Congress.

I see no point in a separate air force anymore. It has an insulated and myopic perspective on war that is entirely backwards, it is on the verge of being technologically irrelevant, and it simply cannot deliver the results it promises. Give ground support to the Army and Marines, give air and space supremacy to the Navy, and be done with it.

Abolishing the Air Force

Jerry Pournelle wants to get rid of the Air Force:

I also intend to do an essay on why we should abolish the Air Force
and return to an Army Air Force which is not a separate service. The
purpose of military forces is to win wars. The purpose of the Air Force
is—well, they no longer know. When we had SAC we knew – “Our profession
is peace” was not just a slogan – but that too is neglected in the
Modern Air Force. Deterrence and maintenance of nuclear weapons, being
ready to use weapons when your fondest wish is that they will never be
used – that does require a different kind of military. We once had that
in SAC but the end of the Cold War was the end of SAC, and the nuclear
deterrence force is, well not what it once was. It is subject to the
Iron Law now.

As to the rest of the Air Force, it is more interested in the Air
Force than winning wars, and considers supporting the field army as
beneath contempt. A slow old Warthog does a much better job, but there
is no glory in that. Best to use fast jets… which of course are
imprecise and cause a lot of collateral damage. Everyone knows that a
force of propeller driven P-47 fighters of WWII would be more effective
for supporting the field army than what we use. And the Army must be
crippled, not allowed to have effective air power in taking territory.
You must use modern jets at high speed.

Now the Air Force has a mission that the Army at present does not
have: Air Supremacy. And that is a different mission from supporting the
field army. It involves engagements with Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs)
as well as strikes against the enemy base of operations. The glory is
in air to air combat, but that is not the effective way to air
supremacy.

That is the main argument for an “Independent Air Force” and the
bitter fights that ended with creation of USAF. It is true, ground army
commanders tend to select the wrong targets to sortie against, and
endanger air supremacy; thus the argument for independence, which USAAF
eventually won (before SAC existed or any but a few knew would be
needed.) Hiroshima ended the debate. But now the Cold War ended and USAF
killed SAC as not glamorous – not career building any longer. As to the
Warthogs, give them to the National Guard! Real pilots don’t need them!

Sure, I exaggerate but not much: the Air Force keeps trying to get
rid of the Warthogs, but never by giving them (and the ground support
mission) to the War Department. Better that GI’s die than USAF give up a
mission even though it does not want it.

Drones will change all this, but why wait?

Actually, as Eric S. Raymond demonstrated in both “Sucker Punch” and “Battlefield Lasers”, the Air Force is very close to obsolete anyhow. My expectation is that they’ll try to survive by moving their mission upward, to space, in order to compensate for the vanishing ability of their planes to survive in the atmosphere.

Today Yemen, tomorrow the West

I have no doubt that the governments of Egypt, Iraq, and Yemen didn’t think it was likely that jihadists would manage to topple them either:

Shiite insurgents tightened their grip on Yemen’s capital Wednesday, seizing control of a missile base and keeping the president as a virtual hostage in a showdown threatening a key American ally in the fight against al-Qaeda.

Days of fast-moving advances by the Houthi rebel faction — believed to be backed by Iran — has left the Western-backed government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi backed into a corner with rapidly diminishing options.

Just hours after storming the presidential palace on Tuesday, the Houthi leader gave what amounted to an ultimatum: Hadi can either move ahead with reforms that include giving rebels more power or risk intensified attacks that could topple his government.

The brinksmanship and uncertainly has pushed Yemen closer to a full-scale political breakdown that could resonate deeply in Washington and among its key regional allies, including neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Fortunately, we’ve been assured that Islam is a religion of peace and jihad is a personal, spiritual struggle, so there is no chance that a second Islamic State will aggressively seek to foment jihad in its neighbors. And even if it did seek to so, what could be more stable than a neighboring monarchy ruled by a 91 year-old man?

It’s an Arab Spring in the making, it’s just not a secular Arab Spring.