Tag: war

I don’t care how much the USA spends on its military. It’s all but guaranteed to lose its next major war:

The Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training. This week, 14 noncommissioned officers at Camp Zama took turns wearing the “pregnancy simulators” as they stretched, twisted and exercised during a three-day class that teaches them to serve as fitness instructors for pregnant soldiers and new mothers.

Army enlisted leaders all over the world are being ordered to take the Pregnancy Postpartum Physical Training Exercise Leaders Course, or PPPT, according to U.S. Army Medical Activity Japan health promotion educator Jana York.

Developed by the Army in 2008, the course includes aerobics classes, pool sessions and classroom studies on the physiology of pregnant women. The NCOs learn special exercises for pregnant women, who shouldn’t push themselves too hard or participate in high-impact activities such as snowboarding, bungee jumping or horse riding, York said.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this too, but it seems to be me it’s been years since I last heard some Republican attempting to justify the latest federal encroachment by babbling “we are at war”. In light of this nonsense they’d bloody well better hope we’re not.

It’s a great idea:

The Pentagon will maintain bans on women serving in most ground combat units, defense officials said Thursday, despite pressure from lawmakers and female veterans who called the restrictions outdated after a decade of war.

After taking more than a year to review its policies on orders from Congress, the Defense Department announced that it would open about 14,000 combat-related positions to female troops, including tank mechanics and intelligence officers on the front lines.

But the Pentagon said it would keep 238,000 other positions — about one-fifth of the regular active-duty military — off-limits to women, pending further reviews. Virtually all of those jobs are in the Army and Marine Corps.

Contra what you may assume, I am all for more women in the U.S. military. I not only want to see all 238,000 combat-related positions opened to women, I want to see the Pentagon create an entire combat battalion of female-only Marines. In fact, I demand it in the name of diversity and equality!

Then, after half the battalion gets wiped out in its first action by 25 Taliban fighters armed with an RPG and four AK-47s between them, and the other half surrenders, America can kick back and enjoy the many gang-rape videos that will be on the Internet about 24 hours later.

That’s the only way this nonsense is going to be ended once and for all. It doesn’t matter how often one walks an equalitarian through the inexorable logic of combat, they will never accept or understand it until they see a woman sitting on her ass, bloody and crying. Enough theorizing. The equalitarians say women can do it, fine, let’s put their theory to the test.

Keep this sort of thing in mind when you assume, incorrectly, that mindless support for foreign military interventions is synonymous with support for the American soldier:

During the incident in question, a Dustoff helicopter was approximately three minutes away, parked at Forward Operating Base Pasab. Both Dustoff and Pedro aircrews report being able to be airborne within roughly six minutes of receipt of orders.

However, because there were no Apache gunships available, the Dustoff flight for Specialist Clark was delayed. Official records state that he was delivered to hospital facilities 59 minutes after the MEDEVAC flight was requested by his unit—one minute from falling outside DoD standards, and within the “Golden Hour” from the moment of injury. But the military deceives here. Their fictitious Golden Hour does not begin at the moment of injury, but from the time the 9-line casualty report is received. This deadly deception was revealed in Golden Seconds.

Pedro helicopters also sitting at Kandahar Airfield could have completed this mission in less than 35 minutes. If Pedro or armed Dustoff had been stationed at Pasab, Chazray Clark could have been delivered to the trauma center in roughly 24 minutes.

The official record states that it took 59 minutes to deliver Chazray Clark to the combat support hospital. Video shot by Michael Yon provides conclusive proof that the military has deceived the Congress. Patient delivery took about 66 minutes from the time of injury, and about 65 minutes from the time of first report. There is no argument on this point. This clear deception brings in question all other military statements on this issue.

The death of Specialist Clark attributed to these delays is not an isolated incident.

It should be very obvious to anyone who is paying attention that the military itself does not appreciate being thrown into every hellhole that the Administration and various Members of Congress want to flex their muscle. And American soldiers are treated very, very badly by many historical standards; unlike Roman legionaries, few American officers can expect to retire wealthy as many centurions did.

I should say that the least Americans can do for their troops is ensure that their medical needs are being given priority over political concerns about long-abandoned aspects of the Geneva Convention. And any Pentagon officials who are proved to have been lying in order to play CYA games need to be fired at once.

An Arab Summer

As winter reaches an icy hand across the whole of Europe and the Egyptian elections show the media-spun hopes of the erstwhile “Arab Spring” to be as immaterial as they were imaginative, the world democratic revolutionists, who are more accurately described as Neo-Trotskyites than neoconservatives, are at it again.

A label can’t reasonably be described as a slur when it is both demonstrably true and accurately descriptive. This should suffice to explode the recent dishonest attempts of various neocons to hide blatant Jewish disloyalty to the USA under the guise of anti-semitism:

In a Jan. 13 opinion piece, Andrew Adler offered three possible options to ensure Israel’s security in the Middle East: a strike against the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, an attack against Iran, and having Israel’s U.S.-based Mossad agents assassinate Obama. Adler said “a hit” against the president would “preserve Israel’s existence.” He said Vice President Joe Biden would then be able “to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.”

If you’re openly advocating the murder of a head of state in order to force that state to become the subordinate military arm of another state, it is totally obvious that you are placing the interests of the second state first. Assuming that Adler is an American, this is outright treason. Emotional appeals to the Holocaust no more justify Jewish treason against America than appeals to the Mongol slaughter in China would justify treason committed by Americans of Chinese descent.

Now, I have nothing against the Israel First position when it is expressed by Israelis. They should put Israel first; no one else is going to. But likewise, Americans are expected to put American interests first. This is only one of the many reasons why the USA should return to its longtime historical policy of outlawing dual-citizenship.

It is also worth nothing that the idea of assassinating the U.S. president in order to “preserve Israel’s existence” is a monstrously stupid one. If the Israeli leaders were ever so mindlessly arrogant as to to attack their country’s foremost supporter among the nations of the world in a manner that not even National Socialist Germany or the Soviet Union ever dared to attempt, most Americans would be more than willing to nuke Jerusalem.

To say nothing of the fact that Biden confuses things so often, he might accidentally order the invasion of Israel when he meant to attack Iran. Anyhow, here is exactly what Adler wrote:

“Well, here are your “Kobayahsi Maru” options. “Kobayahsi Maru” is a term used in “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan” to describe a no-win scenario or facing a solution that involves redefining the problem.

One, order a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah and Hamas, knowing that military and civilian casualties will be high, but not as high as they would be in 2017.

Two, go against Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s wish that Israel take a lethal bullet in the name of preserving a healthy, worldwide economic climate, and order the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities at all costs.

Three give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice-president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy include helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.

Yes, you read” three” correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?”

Now, I actually found the second option to be even more shocking than the third. I mean, on what planet does this “healthy, worldwide economic climate” Adler describes exist? But speaking of Israeli involvement in U.S. politics, it may be worth noting that one such Israeli citizen is presently keeping the Gingrich campaign afloat.

“A wealthy backer of Newt Gingrich will inject $5 million into a “super PAC” supporting his presidential bid, two people with knowledge of the contribution said on Monday, providing a major boost to Mr. Gingrich as he seeks to fend off aggressive attacks from Mitt Romney, his main Republican rival. The supporter, Dr. Miriam Adelson, is the wife of Sheldon Adelson, a longtime Gingrich friend and a patron who this month contributed $5 million to the super PAC, Winning Our Future. Dr. Adelson’s check will bring the couple’s total contributions to Winning Our Future to $10 million….”

Even Michael Yon has reluctantly concluded that it is time to get out of Afghanistan:

This war is going to turn out badly. We are wasting lives and resources while the United States decays and other threats emerge. We led the horse to water.

Importantly, there is no value in pretending that Pakistan is an ally. We should wish the best of luck to the Afghans, and the many peaceful Pakistanis, and accelerate our withdrawal of our main battle force. The US never has been serious about Afghanistan. Under General Petraeus we were starting to gain ground, but the current trajectory will land us in the mud.

The enemies will never beat us in Afghanistan. Force on force, the Taliban are weak by comparison. Yet this is their home. There is only so much we can do at this extreme cost for the many good Afghan people. We must reduce our main effort and concentrate on other matters. Time to come home.

Sincerely,

Michael Yon

It’s ten years late in my opinion, but nevertheless, he’s correct. Tim Lynch concurs:

There it is; Afghanistan is toast, and what the last 10 years has taught us is we cannot afford to deploy American ground forces. Two billion dollars a week (that’s billion with a B) has bought what? Every year we stay to “bring security to the people,” the security situation for the people gets worse and worse, deteriorating by orders of magnitude. Now the boy genius has announced a “new strategy”. A strategy that is identical to the “strategy” that resulted in a hollow ground force getting its ass kicked by North Korea in 1950; a mere five years after we had ascended to the most dominant military the world had ever known.

As usual, the culprit is historical ignorance and the “this time it’s different” crowd. Seriously, every time someone claims that “this time it’s different” or “today’s youth [fill-in-the-blank], they should be fitted with shock collars and zapped. Anyone who knows anything about military history or who has ever played a strategic wargame knows that it is much harder to hold onto territory than it is to grab it in the first place.

Vox’s first rule of war: if you don’t colonize, don’t occupy.

The United States has been utilizing what may prove to be the most historically inept strategy in the entire history of warfare, in which the enemy nations are occupied while allowing its own territory to be colonized.

Jonathan Tobin tries to claim that killing scientists isn’t terrorism:

As far as he [Glenn Greenwald] is concerned, if the U.S. or Israel are behind the killings, then both are “terrorist states” and President Obama may be a “a terrorist, a state sponsor of terrorism or, at the very least, a supporter of terrorism.”

But you need a particular form of moral myopia not to see that heading off a potential second Holocaust in the form of an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel or the nuclear blackmail of the rest of the Middle East is not a form of terrorism. Anyone who believes Iran should be allowed to proceed toward the building of a nuclear bomb has either lost their moral compass or is so steeped in the belief that American and Israeli interests are inherently unjustified they have reversed the moral equation in this case. Rather than the alleged U.S. and Israeli covert operators being called terrorists, it is the Iranian scientists who are the criminals. They must be stopped before they kill.

Given that terrorism is defined as violent acts which are intended to create fear, are perpetrated for a religious, political, or ideological goal, and deliberately target or disregard the safety of civilians, it should be completely obvious that murdering scientists for the purposes of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon is terrorism. Whatever state is responsible therefore is guilty of committing acts of terrorism, although I would not go so far as to call it a terrorist state because terrorist states typically make a formal policy of terror and direct terror against their own citizens. The First French Republic was a terrorist state, but I don’t think either Israel or the USA can be categorized that way even if they are responsible.

But does anyone doubt that if China started murdering scientists at Honeywell, Boeing, or Lockheed Martin who were working on the next generation of U.S. military weapons, it would be regarded as both terrorism and an act of war?

What Tobin should have done is to try explaining why intentionally targeting civilians for murder is justifiable and why it is a worthwhile risk considering that doing so exposes American and Israeli scientists to reprisals in the future. Now, I think that one could probably make a reasonable case for Israel to target the civilians of various Arab nations because their own citizens are already being similarly targeted and attacked. But the same is not true of Americans, so it would be a massive mistake for the USA to do it.

The problem is that the American media appears to be preparing the citizenry for more military action against civilian targets in friendly nations, such as took place already in Pakistan. For example, on Hawaii Five-O the other night, the intrepid heroes prevented planned assassinations against a SEAL team, then were permitted to watch the live video stream of a SEAL assault against a drug cartel in Mexico.

Regardless of how worried you are about Iran possessing nuclear weapons, history very strongly suggests that they will obtain them sooner or later. It wasn’t all that long ago that doomsday was prophesied if North Korea ever obtained nuclear weapons, and yet they now have them and nothing has happened except for the death of the North Korean leader… which does tend to raise a few more questions about the true extent of these targeted murders. Anyhow, the point is that the prospective justifiability of an action does not modify the substance of the action, and to insist otherwise is a particularly clumsy and counterproductive form of propaganda.

Andrew McCarthy actually appears to be surprised that the USA is finally following the example set by the Soviet and British empires:

The surrender is complete now. The Hindu reports that the Obama administration has turned to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, to mediate secret negotiations between the United States and the Taliban….

After thousands of young Americans have laid down their lives to protect the United States from jihadist terror, President Obama apparently seeks to end the war by asking Qaradawi, a jihad-stoking enemy of the United States, to help him strike a deal that will install our Taliban enemies as part of the sharia state we have been building in Afghanistan. If the Hindu report is accurate, the price tag will include the release of Taliban prisoners from Gitmo — an element of the deal Reuters has also reported. The administration will also agree to the lifting of U.N. sanctions against the Taliban, and recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political party (yes, just like the Muslim Brotherhood!). In return, the Taliban will pretend to forswear violence, to sever ties with al-Qaeda, and to cooperate with the rival Karzai regime.

It would mark one of the most shameful chapters in American history.

That’s an absurd claim. It only ends the shameful chapter that began when the USA didn’t immediately bring its troops home after exacting its revenge for the Taliban’s support of 9/11. From their surprise over the failure of the “Arab Spring” to their complaints about the “surrenders” in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with their collective refusal to confront Islamic expansion in the West, it is clear that the neocons have the collective strategic cognitive capacity of a slow-witted World War I infantry general. They genuinely believe that sending more troops forward is the answer to every military question.

Their strategic perspective is Hitlerian. The German Reichskanzler had the same inability to understand that retreat must always be an option if you don’t wish for your troops to be utterly destroyed every time there is a temporary setback.

The neocons don’t recognize that the clash of civilizations is much larger than a single nation here and there, and that each nation merely represents a single salient. And it is no more “surrender” to withdraw troops from places like Afghanistan or Iraq than it was for Von Manstein to extricate his troops from the Korsun Pocket in World War II. In fact, it is the exact opposite of surrender, because the withdrawal preserves the troops and allows them to fight another day.

McCarthy and his strategically ignorant colleagues quite clearly don’t know the first thing about military history, war, or how it is fought. And given the way in which the governments of the West still refuse to lift a finger against Islam in their own countries, but only fight it in lands afar, it is readily apparent that these are merely the opening skirmishes in the greater conflict to come.