Tag: war

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.

Palestine is a recognized state

I’m sure the David Frum, Jon Podhoretz, and other advocates of open immigration will be eager to defend the right of the world’s newest nationals to freely immigrate to Jerusalem now:

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas Sunday promised someday the PA flag would
fly over “Jerusalem, eternal capital of the state of Palestine.” Thousands of people greeted Abbas rapturously upon his return from
the United Nations, where the General Assembly granted the PLO,
representing the PA, upgraded status as a nonmember observer state.

It seems strange that so many people are obtaining the right to self-determination around the world, with US support, with the noticeable exception of Americans.

Petraeus starts talking

Two interesting bits of news to surface today:

1.  “Representative Peter King stated that former CIA Director David Petraeus
stated that he knew the Benghazi attack was terrorism and that the
talking points given to Ambassador Susan Rice were different from the
ones prepared by the CIA. Petraeus stated Rice’s talking points were
edited to demphasized the possibility of terrorism.”

2.  “Reports from those who listened to recordings of the pleas
for help coming from the Benghazi Consulate on September 11 that caused Marine
Ty Woods to disobey orders and fight to defend the consulate suggest that the
tapes are “damning” proof of the Obama Administration’s mishandling of the
attacks.”

I’d provide the links, but that’s all there was.  It looks like Obama could be a lame duck a lot sooner than his two-term predecessors were.   There are going to be a lot of people interested in discovering who edited the CIA notes and why.

The diversity dilemma

Thomas Friedman can be a clueless buffoon at times, but the one thing he does know about is the Middle East.  What I find fascinating about his nightmare scenario is the way it shows how left-liberals who clearly recognize the structural problems in other countries can nevertheless turn around and advocate the continuing construction of the same sort of problems in the United States:

Ever since the start of the Syrian uprising/civil war, I’ve cautioned
that while Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Tunisia implode, Syria would
explode if a political resolution was not found quickly. That is exactly what’s happening.  The reason Syria explodes is because its borders are particularly
artificial, and all its communities — Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Kurds,
Druze and Christians — are linked to brethren in nearby countries and
are trying to draw them in for help.

 That’s an astute observation, Tom.  Now, guess what’s going to happen when the various communities inside the United States, the Mexicans, the Colombians, the Muslims, the Chinese, and the Jews, can’t make any more headway in collecting resources from the central government and start battling it out amongst themselves as is already taking place in places like south central LA, which the Aztecs have 65 percent ethnically cleansed already.

Now, why isn’t all that diversity making Syria stronger?

The poison is the antidote

Or so numerous pundits, a number of whom actually voted for Obama in 2008, would have us believe given their advice to the Republican Party:

It was a crushing defeat.  Despite
an economy as underpowered as a cheap flourescent light, Mitt Romney
somehow failed to unseat Barack Obama.  And now it is time for the
Republicans to rethink their platform in order to attract new voters–or
doom themselves to permanent minority status.

I
think the obvious place to start is with immigration reform.  Increase
the number of visas available.  Explore guest-worker programs.
 Establish a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who were brought
here as children and have never known any other home.  This not only
gives the GOP a shot at the Latino vote, but also softens their image in
the eyes of the professional class, who might be willing to give the
party another look if it didn’t seem so committed to deporting poorer,
darker skinned people who just want a shot at picking fruit, trimming
lawns, and cleaning houses.

The
GOP would also help itself with those people by embracing gay marriage.
 To be sure, this might cause them some problems with the evangelical
base whose organizing support is crucial to Republican get-out-the-vote
efforts.  But the GOP could assuage that tension by promulgating a
hard-core, Republican version of gay and straight marriage.  That’s why
they should pair it with making marriage mandatory, and eliminating
no-fault divorce.  The message should be that if everyone can get
married, then there’s no really excuse not to be.   Oh, I know, the
divorce changes might cause friction with the kind of Republicans who go
through wives the way other men go through undershirts, but this seems
like a small price to pay for a shot at the 1-3% of the electorate that
is eligible for gay marriage.  

The frightening thing here is that McCardle attempts to portray herself as an economist.  My suggestion is that one never take either political or economic advice from an economist, however tall, who cannot figure out that 20 percent is larger than 2 percent….

Regardless, there is only one viable long-term solution for the Republican Party, indeed, for the survival of constitutional America throughout the current territorial limits of the United States, and that is a repeat of Operation Wetback on a vastly larger scale. Such an action would require the banning of all dual-citizenships, mass deportations on an unprecedented scale, and likely inspire violence of the sort that has not been seen in America since the riots of the 1960s.  And, needless to say, it is clear there is now no chance that it is ever going to happen.

Which is a real pity, because it would actually have been the lesser of the two probable evils.  What is going to happen instead is some sort of civil war following the next major stage in the ongoing economic meltdown.  How big it will be and how it will turn out, I don’t pretend to know.  But it is as easily predictable as the wars in the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, and the former British empire in India, because war is how diverse groups of people usually negotiate imperial divorce.  The USA has not truly been a single nation since imperial rule was forcibly imposed upon the southern states in 1865, but the difference is that it is no longer possible to plausibly pretend that it is still one any longer.

It’s not a question of hate, race, or religion.  It is the simple historical observation that the Kuomintang will not voluntarily live under the same governance as the Chinese communists.  Pakistanis will not voluntarily live under the same governance as the Indians.  Americans will not voluntarily live under the same governance as Mexicans, Chinese, Indians, or Arabs.  They just will not do it, and to pretend otherwise isn’t so much foolish as insane.

It doesn’t matter what you do.  It doesn’t matter what you think.  Winter is coming.  The only question is whether it will take you by surprise or not.  And there really isn’t much excuse for being surprised when the temperature has been dropping and the leaves have been falling for quite some time now.

Soldier boy is BETA

I usually keep the Game-related content for Alpha Game, but this intersection of Game and current events simply demands comment:

At some point after Petraeus was sworn in as CIA director on Sept. 6,
2011, the woman broke up with him. However, Petraeus continued to pursue
her, sending her thousands of emails over the last several months,
raising even more questions about his judgment.

It doesn’t only raise questions about his judgment, but about his socio-sexual rank as well.  Petraeus superficially appears to be a handsome, successful warrior, an obvious Alpha in every way, but in addition to being unimpressed by his military performance since 2001, I’ve long felt that he carried himself more like a man dressed up like a soldier than a military commander.

I’ve met a number of top military commanders, including three that were members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Such men exude dominance and a palpable sense of command even when they are wearing a t-shirt and shorts while washing the car; you get the impression that they could successfully invade a small South American country with no more than a BB gun, a wrist rocket, and the staff of the local McDonald’s restaurant.  For all his fruit salad, Petraeus always struck me as being much more akin to Hollywood’s notion of a general than an actual fighting man.

What sort of socio-sexual loser sends THOUSANDS of emails to a married woman who has indicated she is done with him?