Tag: war

Speaking out vs shooting

Sarah Hoyt is rightly concerned about what she sees as the growing prospects for Round II:

I’m hearing more and more “It’s going to come to shooting.”  I have a sinking feeling in my water that it might very well come to that.  I’d prefer not, though.  Look, I have sons.  Also, we do not live in a nice world.  If our world were really the black-and-white world the liberals believe in, where the USA is the big bad wolf and everyone else is a sweet little lamb who wouldn’t hurt anyone but for fear of the wolf, a civil war might not be a bad idea.

Of course if the world really were like that, we’d be dealing with a species other than human and perhaps communism would work.  Who knows?  May be worth an SF story.

But the world is not like that, and the US even if it is rapidly flushing generational wealth down the toilet is still much wealthier than most of the world, and is way wealthier than most of the Americas.  (This btw is taken by the communists as proof of malfeasance.  It’s a religious dogma.)

While we are involved in a civil war – and let’s assume it’s only half as bloody and half as long as our last one – do you think the other nations of the world will sit still?  Forget a Chinese invasion (though G-d knows you shouldn’t) or Russia getting involved on one side or another with a  view to ruling portions of our country when all is done (and if you dismiss that, you should study the roles of France and England on the past civil war) and just think about the people who hate us and who think (and our media has HELPED this perception) all their woes are our fault, and who  think they’re accumulating virgins in heaven – and prestige on Earth – by hitting us with acts of terrorism writ large.

How many cities do you think we’d lose to random acts of revenge?

What I mean is that it might very well come to that.  But do you want it?  Talk about setting us back generations.  Yes, I know you’re furious and I’ve heard the “we have all the guns” boast.  It’s not true, okay?  Yeah, we have most of them.  And sure, we probably could win in days.  Except that you forget how many third world armies would gladly fight on the other side, once it got started.  And would be promised everything they want if they do.

Oh, sure, they’d probably still lose – but I’m predicting we’d all be wading in blood to our ankles before it’s said and done, and parts of the country would be radioactive for a century.

Again, it might still come to that.  And I think the other side wants that – probably more than even the nuts on the “right” – because part of their religion (don’t fool yourself it’s not one) is the belief that history has favorites and that they’re it.  They think in the end they win.  (They might perhaps want to consult the Norse legends, to figure out which said was believed to win in the end.  Never mind.)

But before the shooting starts – in this moment in the heart of the storm – perhaps those of us to the right of Lenin should try something we haven’t tried before.  Perhaps we should try speaking out.

Look, I’m as cowardly as the rest of you.  I spent more than twenty years, between breaking in and finally losing my mind, listening to digs about “the rich” from people who could buy me and sell me outright; I spend years at parties and meetings listening to Marxist pap and not pointing out how stupid it was; listening to public figures on the right being denigrated as “stupid” when it was obvious they weren’t, etc.  And I shut up.  Because I wanted to make a living in my chosen profession.

I’m still not half as brave as I’d like to be, though I try to speak out if I’m present.  And yes, I know I’ll pay a monetary price.  But I don’t go out of my way to look for fights, because I’ll pay a monetary price.  And also because, frankly, I know many good people on their side.  I don’t want to upset them.

But consider….

Every time our silence gives consent, what we’re giving consent to is the inevitability of eventual shooting.

You know those massacres that have happened in every communist paradise?  Here the would-be victims are armed.  To quote the title of some Baen anthologies There WILL be War.

Unless we stop it now.  Unless we’re as brave with our words as we eventually will have to be with our guns, if we stay silent.

I understand her concerns. The problem is that words aren’t going to stop anything now. For every Sarah Hoyt who immigrated and successfully managed the transition to American traditions and values, there are ten or more who did not and five native Americans who have abandoned the ideals and traditions of their forefathers in favor of one flavor or another of secular progressivism.

There is a powerful correlation between economic contraction and war, although the causality is complicated. Even so, it is readily apparent that the relative peace of the last sixty years, and the civil peace inside America for the last 148, is largely a byproduct of the explosion of the economic growth that took place, first in the USA, then later in the world, followed by the post-WWII Pax Americana that ensued from the American industrial infrastructure being the only advanced one left standing.  But success invariably plants the seeds of its own destruction. Since the long moratorium on immigration ended in 1965, the post-1962 mass apostasy that followed Vatican II,  and the great Hispanic invasion began in the 1980s, the inevitable national fracturing is rapidly approaching and will likely become more evidence with the next phase of the current economic crisis.

There no longer is one American nation, there are at least four. There are the Reds of progressive, secular America, there are the Whites of traditional religious America, there are the Browns of third world America, and there are the Blacks of feral America.  These colors should be understood to be symbolic in the sense of the Russian Reds and Whites, not literal, as there are blacks whose allegiance is to White America and Hispanic immigrants who are far more Red than Brown.

Hoyt is primarily concerned about an eventual war between Red America and the giant government is both its inspiration and its weapon, and liberty-loving White America. But Brown America is the X factor; its political support for the Reds has been leased for the short term by state and federal largesse, but the Browns have little interest in either the progressive secular ideals of the Reds or the political and cultural traditions of the Whites.  And Brown America is perfectly capable of starting the fireworks by virtue of its own innate irredentism, which will only become stronger as Red America’s ability to transfer resources to it wanes.

Anyone who has followed the history of warfare knows that wars seldom begin directly between the two primary powers. There is usually the Archduke’s assassination, the invasion of Manchuria, or something similar on the margins before the war begins in earnest. This is why Sarah’s plea for speaking out in preference to shooting, however sensible, decent, and heartfelt, is, unfortunately,  largely irrelevant. I’m not saying it is not worth doing, quite to the contrary, I would similarly encourage others to speak out. I merely caution against putting any faith in its success.

There will be war, whether anyone truly desires it or not. There has always been war and there always will be war, the arrogant pretenses of the totalitarians and their self-serving promises of peace on Earth notwithstanding. As Vegetius wrote: Si vis pacem, para bellum.  The Union cannot be saved because it no longer exists in the hearts of men.

“Twenty-nine percent of registered voters think that an armed revolution
might be necessary in the next few years in order to protect liberties,
according to a Public Mind poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University.”

Mailvox: combatting ignorance

Phoenician, in his imitable style, can’t even understand Wikipedia when he quotes it:

“The 2000 Equality amendment to the Military Service law states that “The right of women to serve in any role in the IDF is equal to the right of men.” As of now, 88% to 92% of all roles in the IDF are open to female candidates, while women can be found in 69% of all positions. […]

A combat option for women is the Caracal Battalion, which is a highly operational force that is made up of 70 percent female soldiers. The unit undergoes training like any combat infantry. The IDF commando K9 unit, Oketz, also drafts females as elite combat soldiers.”

You’re a moron, Dipshit.

I do so enjoy when Pharyngulans comment here.  All they ever manage to do is publicly demonstrate that their IQs are at least two standard deviations below mine.  In this case, he clearly fails to understand the significance of the fact that 8 to 12 percent of the roles in the IDF are closed to women; those are the actual combat roles.  Women in the IDF are simply not permitted to serve in any combat role.  They haven’t served in them since 1948. They are allowed to train for combat, but they are not permitted to actually perform any combat role for the very reasons I originally cited and more.

“Women serve in support and combat support roles in the IDF, recently they have been allowed additional options but they still do not serve in active combat.  Around the world there has been some discussion about whether or not women should serve in active front-line combat. In Israel it is clear that despite the vast contribution of women in the military, active combat is not an option. This decision is based on the physical and biological differences between men and women but also for moral reasons. As Michal, a combat fitness instructor in the IDF, says, “No one wants to even think of the possibility of an Israeli girl falling into the hands of the enemy.” Our history is already filled with too many such stories of atrocities.

The Israeli military has always combined the practically of combat with the morality of our Jewish way of life. For political reasons women’s groups have tried to break down barriers but the simple fact is that physically women are not capable of doing the job men do. There was an attempt to integrate women in the Search and Rescue units but it was discovered that a great deal of physical damage was caused to them as a result of the increased effort. Even the girls who were integrated into the anti-aircraft unit suffered great physical damage during the long hikes. They suffered more than 30% more stress factors than the boys.”

Wake Up is dubious:

Congratulations on your exploits in Tekken.

Yeah, it wasn’t a video game, it was a similarly dubious active-duty Marine officer with significant combat experience.  He doesn’t mock the martial arts any more.  Nor would you if you tried to last even one minute against me or any other Dragon from my old dojo.  I’ve seen no shortage of doubters and mockers.  No one ever remained that way after stepping onto the mats and experiencing what a combination of speed, strength, experience, and training can do to the average tough guy.  We never did any choreographed fight demonstrations either.  We simply gave people a pair of gloves and told them to take their best shot.  Most of them did exactly the same thing.  Step-step-cock-grimace-BIG rear hand.  The rest tried the midsection tackle.

RealMatt, on the other hand, is simply misinformed:

The odds of a person trained in every single martial art ever known to man, with little to no real life fight experience, performing well in an actual fight, are very low.

Totally false.  It depends upon the school and the training.  The first time I got into an actual fight after I’d had a few years of training, it took me about ten seconds to incapacitate the guy with an arm bar after breaking his nose.  There is a very real difference between the fighting schools and the non-fighting schools.  I’ve been knocked out and had bones from my nose to my toes broken in training, whereas in the four real fights I was in, no one ever even managed to touch me.  In my experience, heavy contact sparring with someone who is trained is a lot harder than real fighting, as untrained brawlers not only tend to present a myriad of open targets, they advertise what they are going to do.

For example, they have a tendency to lead with their face, which is when the guy cocks his rear arm back as he leans or actually steps forward.  This is a very, very bad mistake against a trained fighter and usually results in eating a jab.  The instinctive grapplers, on the other hand, like to tackle at the waist.  That is how the aforementioned Marine managed to put himself in position to get his neck snapped so quickly.  Go with the flow, drop the arms, slide the left up and over, grab, twist, and lock.  Then ride to the ground, but carefully.

However, most men tend to start with punches, so my preference is usually to sidestep and catch the arm as it comes at me, pull it past and pivot to either a) slam the guy face-first into a wall if it is there, or b) keep turning and put him down on the ground in an armbar if it is not.  If the wall is there, I jam his arm up high behind his back while he’s stunned, then turn him and sweep his legs to put him down.  Then I put one knee on the back of his neck while keeping his arm pinned high. I also try to speak reassuringly, telling him to calm down, it’s all right, and so forth. They can’t do anything in that position, but you don’t want them to panic and cause you to break something.  The combination of the shock, the pain, and the helplessness usually causes them to relax in short order.

The only time this didn’t work without a problem was the second time, because I stopped with the guy pinned against the wall.  He seemed calm enough, so I stepped back and let him go, at which point he lunged at my bouncer friend.  That was how I learned not to stop until the guy is not only temporarily incapacitated, but down as well.

Flirting with Hultgreen-Curie Syndrome

Because I am in the midst of reading Terms of Enlistment, a new military SF novel, I found this USMC news to be more than a little amusing:

“The only two women to participate in the Marine Corps Infantry
Officer Course (IOC) failed ongoing tests to determine which infantry
positions should be available to women, according to the Marine Corps Times: 

‘The women failed the introductory Combat Endurance Test, a
punishing test of physical strength and endurance, officials at Marine
Corps headquarters said Tuesday. The latest class began March 28 at
Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., with 110 lieutenants participating.
Ninety-six men passed the initial endurance test. Twelve men and two
women — the only female Marines taking part — failed.’

The two women both volunteered to participate in the IOC. Two other
women had previously volunteered in September but also failed.”

The Marines will have no choice but to make the Combat Endurance Test more equal.  Which is to say easier.  Because, after all, everyone knows that actual military combat is considerably less difficult than an introductory fitness test.

What I’d love to see is for the Marine Corps to address the political pressure it is facing by creating an all-female combat battalion.  Give them the very best of training, the best equipment, and then put them right on the front lines.  After one-third of them suddenly fall pregnant before the deployment, another third flee at the first sound of gunfire, and the remaining third are captured and raped, there won’t be any need to continue the debate any longer.

When faced with lunatic nonsense, agree and amplify.  To be honest, I’m genuinely surprised that none of the four female pioneers managed to break their necks or otherwise get themselves killed during the test.

He is a madman!

North Korea reveals its plans to attack US cities:

The photos appeared in the state-run Rodong newspaper and were apparently taken at an “emergency meeting” early on Friday morning. They show Kim signing the order for North Korea’s strategic rocket forces to be on standby to fire at US targets, the paper said, with large-scale maps and diagrams in the background.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered strategic rocket forces to be on standby to strike US and South Korean targets at any time (EPA)

The images show a chart marked “US mainland strike plan” and missile trajectories that the NK News web site estimates terminate in Hawaii, Washington DC, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas.

What sort of complete lunatic plots an attack on the United States and leaves out New York City?  Especially when he has sufficient insight to put Austin on the list.  I mean, even the cartoon supervillains who kept the Justice League of America busy understood the importance of taking out New York City and the UN headquarters there.

We truly live in an age of tin.  Even the quality of Man’s reclusive supervillains has declined.  A missile launch at the USA by Kim is about as likely as the current Supreme Court overturning the judicial ban on Proposition 8.

Daniel Day-Lewis accepts the Oscar

Perhaps he didn’t give this speech, but really, he damned well should have:

Tonight I had the great honor of receiving the Academy Award for Best Actor for my performance in the film Lincoln. It is my immense privilege to receive an Oscar for the third time in my career, especially for portraying such an historic figure. And as I look back on this role, I can only feel deeply honored and humbled for the praise and respect I’ve received, even though I personally believe that Abraham Lincoln was an American traitor who deserved to die.

Honestly, this award truly is a tremendous thrill for me. And the fact that I’m being awarded for portraying a liar, a fraud, and an enemy of justice whose murder was fully justified doesn’t change that.

After all, just because you play a character in a movie doesn’t mean you have to agree with the views and actions of the character you’re portraying. Far from it! In fact, I saw this role as a real actor’s challenge considering my own deeply held belief that Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant and a hypocrite and that the South should have won the war. It has always been my strong opinion that the Confederate forces had a political and moral imperative to defeat the Union army and that America’s 16th president was a monster who deserved to be murdered in front of his wife, so just imagine what a test it was for me to try to humanize this repulsive figure. All of which makes this third Oscar win particularly satisfying.

It still amazes me that no one in the South ever stopped and thought, you know, since Lincoln is about the only one hell-bent on this war, and nearly everyone else seems to accept the Constitutional concept of allowing the various sovereign states to express their self-determination and go their separate ways, how about we shoot him instead of tens of thousands of immigrant German farm boys being forced to fight against us?  How is assassinating a single dictator somehow considered out of bounds when the alternative is butchering hundreds of thousands of innocents whose only crime was to get drafted into military service?

Striking back, ineptly

Darth Vader’s failure at the Battle of Hoth:

How did the Galactic Empire ever cement its hold on the Star Wars Universe? The war machine built by Emperor Palpatine and run by Darth Vader is a spectacularly bad fighting force, as evidenced by all of the pieces of Death Star littering space. But of all the Empire’s failures, none is a more spectacular military fiasco than the Battle of Hoth at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back.

From a military perspective, Hoth should have been a total debacle for the Rebel Alliance. Overconfident that they can evade Imperial surveillance, they hole up on unforgiving frigid terrain at the far end of the cosmos. Huddled into the lone Echo Base are all their major players: politically crucial Princess Leia; ace pilot Han Solo; and their game-changer, Luke Skywalker, who isn’t even a Jedi yet.

The defenses the Alliance constructed on Hoth could not be more favorable to Vader if the villain constructed them himself. The single Rebel base (!) is defended by a few artillery pieces on its north slope, protecting its main power generator. An ion cannon is its main anti-aircraft/spacecraft defense. Its outermost perimeter defense is an energy shield that can deflect Imperial laser bombardment. But the shield has two huge flaws: It can’t stop an Imperial landing force from entering the atmosphere, and it can only open in a discrete place for a limited time so the Rebels’ Ion Cannon can protect an evacuation. In essence, the Rebels built a shield that can’t keep an invader out and complicates their own escape.

When Vader enters the Hoth System with the Imperial Fleet, he’s holding a winning hand. What follows next is a reminder of two military truths that apply in our own time and in our own galaxy: Don’t place unaccountable religious fanatics in wartime command, and never underestimate a hegemonic power’s ability to miscalculate against an insurgency.

I’ve probably given the art of attempting to describe fictional battles in a realistic manner a little more thought than most, given the heavy military elements in my current series.  What I find interesting is how little thought goes into most such portrayals, and how obviously unfamiliar with the various military strategists most authors and filmmakers are.  Now, obviously some things are just there because they look cool or allow the hero to do something heroic; the Imperial Walkers are totally ridiculous in literally every single way.

Most “military” science fiction shows no sign of having ever encountered even the most basic military concepts such as unit cohesion, leadership, and morale.  This is fine in today’s SyFy world, where the readers are inordinately female and more interested in the vicissitudes of the romances of the beautiful and tactically brilliant United Nations of Earth major with naturally curly hair, who has never lost a sporting competition, a fight, or a battle, and is torn between her attraction to the handsome enemy general with executive hair and her affection for her rugged, loyal, African company commander.

The amusing thing is how these “military” writers don’t even pay attention to the most fundamental facts of militaries in the real world.  For example, over 10 percent of the women in the U.S. Navy have to be shifted to shore leave every year due to pregnancy, and then receive a one-year reprieve from ship deployments or combat zone assignments after giving birth.  But when is the last time you saw or read about a single female warrior getting pregnant in order to escape a deployment?

The worst example of pseudo-military action I can recall seeing was in The Return of the King, when Faramir leads a cavalry charge against Osgiliath.  Now, as a general rule, even the charge of the Rohirrim against Saruman’s Uruk-Hai at Helm’s Deep was more than a little dubious, since horses resist charging towards disciplined bodies of infantry bristling with long pointy objects.  But horsemen charging towards archers safely ensconced in a fortified position could only be topped by a naval invasion of Topeka by the Imperial Japanese Navy.  In military history terms, it is a straightforward category error.

One of the things I’m enjoying about writing A Rash of Blings is exploring the different military doctrines, especially in light of how the availability of magic and other elements affects them.  The Amorrans were obviously based on Vegetius, with just a dash of Maurice, but I will be very impressed indeed if anyone is able to identify the historical model upon which the elvish doctrine has been built.

A Turkish Arabian war

Lt. Col. Joel Rayburn sees a more widespread war on its way in the Middle East:

We can envision, then, a sectarian war raging across the whole of the
Fertile Crescent, drawing in all the former territories of Turkish
Arabia. The prospect will be a frightening one for the region’s major
powers. Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia could one day find chaos rather
than functioning states on their permeable borders. If Al Qaeda/Nusrah
can establish a base in Jordan, Saudi Arabia will find itself threatened
by Al Qaeda franchises on both north and south that will be
well-positioned to resume the pursuit of Al Qaeda’s core goal of
toppling the Saudi monarchy and “liberating” the holy cities of Mecca
and Medina.

The Saudis showed great resiliency in defeating a serious Al Qaeda
insurrection in 2004-2008, but that was a strictly internal threat that
lacked a real foreign base. Simultaneous Al Qaeda bases in Jordan and
Yemen would pose a more serious, if not an existential, threat to Saudi
rule. If watching the fall or near-fall of half a dozen regimes in the
Arab Spring has taught us anything, it should be that the Arab states
that appeared serenely stable to outsiders for the past half century
were more brittle than we have understood. The implosion of Turkish
Arabia would test those regimes to the limit, and we cannot assume that
the rulers of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait would be any better
equipped to defeat the potential challenge than Muammar Qaddhafi and
Bashar al-Assad were.

The rulers of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran are surely not
blind to this nightmare scenario. As the situation in Turkish Arabia
continues to unravel, those regional powers will be compelled to become
ever deeper involved in an attempt to keep the tide of war from breaking
on their own lands. This conflict could very well touch us all, perhaps
becoming an engine of jihad that spews forth attackers bent on bombing
western embassies and cities or disrupting Persian Gulf oil markets long
before the fire burns out.

And what of Turkish Arabia in the long run? One eminent scholar of
the Middle East assures me that the borders drawn by the British and
French were artificial, yes, but now have staying power. The people of
the region are too used to the lines to erase them, even if they don’t
love them. I don’t doubt him, and I am sure that whatever else happens,
there will continue to be a Syria, a Lebanon, a Jordan, and an Iraq. But
those countries are about to pass through a crucible, a painful test in
which their peoples will be sorted by sect; driven from traditional
homelands; starved, taxed, or pressed into service by warlords;
terrorized by militant Islamists; forced to witness their ancient
heritage destroyed by bombs; and live without the rule of law. It will
be terrible to watch, and we will not be left unsullied in our watching.

 If it weren’t for the oil of the Middle East, this would be a solution, not a problem.  As it stands, I can’t help but wonder if the potentates of the EU are praying for just such a distraction, as it would allow them the freedom to aggressively address their own Muslim problem.  The principle of Distract, Divide, and Conquer would indicate that once the war got started, there would be no coherent force supporting the Muslims of Europe, who for all their press make up less than 5 percent of the European population.

I tend to doubt that the atheists in Brussels, Paris, and Berlin are any fonder of Muslims than they are of Christians and the ideological and demographic forces of Islam are already much more troubling to the godless potentates in the various capitals than the weak and toothless version of Christianity that is perhaps best exemplified by the ex-Archbishop of Canterbury.  The grandees may be afraid of conflict with the Ummah now, but that fear will likely vanish should war erupt throughout the House of Submission.

And Israel would certainly be delighted to see the Islamic world tearing itself apart; one tends to imagine it will do what it can to light whatever fuses might be on hand to help set its enemies at each others’ throats.

Winning is not the point

Keoni Galt points out the obvious: winning is not the objective of the various wars being waged around the world:

Not only is War Big Business, it is THE BIGGEST Big Business in the world.

We are not stationed and fighting all over the globe to “WIN” any war, let alone a War on an Adjective.

We are not fighting to win. We are fighting to keep the gravy train rolling…and it’s one hell of a giant gravy train. To WIN brings this lucrative gravy train to a halt.

That is the last thing those giving the orders to the guy in the conductor’s booth of the Gravy Train want.

This is why so many things are done to stifle, hamper and hinder the supposedly stated mission of our “global force for good!” While Dalrock is certainly correct in his assessment of feminist and elite motives for emasculating the military to socially engineer the culture and society at large, most people fail to ask the right questions as they rage at the supposed madness and insanity of a war machine hampering itself with such social engineering lunacy.

That is because most are still operating under the mistaken assumption that the military is fighting to win the war and “defend the nation.”

The good news, to the extent that there is any to be found of late, is that the recent move to make combat troops out of women tends to indicate that either a) the government has no intention of making war on the people, or, b) the government is, ala Stalin, totally uninterested in the professional opinion of its military leadership.

I think Keoni is actually understating things here, however.  I suspect they’re not so much trying to keep the giant gravy train going, I think they’re desperately trying to keep the entire system from collapsing upon itself.

Women to the front lines

Tell me again about how the People will never be able to resist the assembled might of the US military?

Women in all branches of the military soon will have unprecedented opportunities to serve on the front lines of the nation’s wars.

Leon Panetta, in one of his last acts as President Obama’s defense secretary, is preparing to announce the policy change, which would open hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war, the Pentagon confirmed Wednesday.

The groundbreaking move recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff overturns a 1994 rule banning women from being assigned to smaller ground combat unit

Between the reduced female capacity for fighting and the inevitable dissension and lack of unit cohesion that will result from putting women into front-line companies and commando units, I can only conclude that this is ultimately a positive development for long-term American freedom.  Give it enough time and the military will go the way of the Fortune 500 companies, HR commissars will be assigned to each unit, and the combat rifle will be replaced with a lighter .22 caliber carbine that comes in fashionable teal, mauve, and eggshell.

To be honest, I’d like to see the Obama take it even farther and make it an all-female military.  Somewhere, there is a Chinese general reading his tablet and laughing.

The last days of US empire

And both its soldiers and its enemies know it:

During lunch, as my hosts casually pointed out the site of the holly-oak barrier and other places in the village where the British had been massacred in 1842, we compared our respective family memories of that war. I talked about my great-great-uncle, Colin Mackenzie, who had been taken hostage nearby, and I asked if they saw any parallels with the current situation. “It is exactly the same,” said Jagdalak. “Both times the foreigners have come for their own interests, not for ours. They say, ‘We are your friends, we want to help.’ But they are lying.”

“Whoever comes to Afghanistan, even now, they will face the fate of Burnes, Macnaghten and Dr Brydon,” agreed Mohammad Khan, our host in the village and the owner of the orchard where we were sitting. Everyone nodded sagely into their rice: the names of the fallen of 1842, long forgotten in their home country, were still common currency here.

“Since the British went, we’ve had the Russians,” said one old man to my right. “We saw them off, too, but not before they bombed many of the houses in the village.” He pointed at a ridge full of ruined mudbrick houses on the hills behind us.

“We are the roof of the world,” said Khan. “From here, you can control and watch everywhere.”

“Afghanistan is like the crossroads for every nation that comes to power,” agreed Jagdalak. “But we do not have the strength to control our own destiny. Our fate is determined by our neighbours….”

The following morning in Jalalabad, we went to a jirga, or assembly, of Ghilzai tribal elders, to which the greybeards of Gandamak had come, under a flag of truce, to discuss what had happened the day before. As Predator drones took off and landed incessantly at the nearby airfield, we chatted over a pot of green tea.

“Last month,” said one tribal elder from Gandamak, “some American officers called us to a hotel in Jalalabad for a meeting. One of them asked me, ‘Why do you hate us?’ I replied, ‘Because you blow down our doors, enter our houses, pull our women by the hair and kick our children. We cannot accept this. We will fight back, and we will break your teeth, and when your teeth are broken you will leave, just as the British left before you. It is just a matter of time.”’

“What did he say to that?”

“He turned to his friend and said, ‘If the old men are like this, what will the younger ones be like?’ In truth, all the Americans here know their game is over. It is just their politicians who deny this.”

“These are the last days of the Americans,” said the other elder. “Next it will be China.”

Americans who still contort their minds and imaginations to justify their foreign empire are ignorant of history and blind to historical patterns.  Now what was obvious to a few skeptics like me is becoming increasingly obvious to everyone around the world.

The collapse of the Soviet Union led to an unwarranted hubris on the part of Americans, particularly the pro-empire ruling class, because the “Morning in America” of the 1980s was a false dawn funded by credit expansion, not genuinely increasing wealth.  In retrospect, the retreat from Vietnam and the Iranian hostage crisis appear to have marked the true inflection point.