Tag: war

Fuck the Police

Thus sayeth the United States Marine Corps after the Oakland police attack on Marine veteran Scott Olsen:

As God is my witness. I will fight tooth and nail to restore the decency this country was founded upon. The politicians, banks and large corporations have ruined this country. I find it difficult to notice any sense of politeness on the streets anymore. But it goes farther. As a Marine and a citizen I am outraged. I am sick to death of the world my children are being raised in.

So I ask all of you, can you too sense the tipping point? When will enough be enough? If not now, when? I feel the problem is that the average Joe citizen is ignorant and comfortable. These, in addition to selfishness have become the standard for the majority of the population. As long as people are comfortable they remain silent. Well, I’m really fucking uncomfortable and I’m sick of seeing this sort of shit happening. The Occupy protests that are going on are our first glimmer of hope. If we can take this and move it further, get every lazy ass off their rocker and open their eyes; then maybe, just maybe we have a chance.

Semper Fi brothers, and remember who you are. Protectors of a great nation, not politicians or wealthy money grubbing bankers and the like. When it comes time, I know we’ll stand strong.

So, the Washington-Wall Street Axis of Corruption have the police, the media, and the Mexican gangs to whom they are selling guns and with whom they are laundering drug money. We the People only have the angry veterans of the USMC on their side.

I like their odds.

The U.S. Constitution is to be defended against ALL enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC. And there isn’t much question about who the domestic enemies of the Constitution are.

Arab Spring in Libya

Once again, the neocons have supported the expansion of popular and democratic Islam:

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council and de fact president, had already declared that Libyan laws in future would have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its “basic source”….

Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree, one law from Col. Gaddafi’s era that he said was in conflict with Sharia – that banning polygamy. In a blow to those who hoped to see Libya’s economy integrate further into the western world, he announced that in future bank regulations would ban the charging of interest, in line with Sharia. “Interest creates disease and hatred among people,” he said.

So, how is this in the American national interest, exactly? And actually, if you think about it, what is the real difference between formally banning interest, as Abdul-Jalil has directed, and reducing the interest rate to zero, as Bernanke, King and Trichet have done.

Obama gets it done

Give credit where credit is due. Obama is pulling the troops out of Iraq and leaving no US bases there:

President Obama announced Friday that the United States will withdraw nearly all troops from Iraq by the end of the year, effectively bringing the long and polarizing war in Iraq to an end.

“After nearly 9 years, America’s war in Iraq will be over,” said Mr. Obama. He said the last American troops will depart the country by January 1 “with their heads held high, proud of their success, and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops.”

It would seem there is a silver lining in every failed presidency. And notice how the “Tea Party” candidate, Michele Bachmann, actually opposes the pullout. Because foreign occupations are so eminently consistent with small and frugal government.

Incompetence and the art of war

The Obama administration offers a lesson in how not to do it. First, we have the strategic incompetence with the new invasion of Uganda, which marks the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s sixth war in three years. At this rate, if he somehow manages to win reelection, the USA will be fighting 16 wars by the end of his second term.

Offhand, what do you think the dumbest damn place in the world to deploy US troops would be? Why guess? Just watch Obama. Our modern Clausewitz has picked the absolute craziest, most futile, most counterproductive place in the world, central Africa…. Whenever we invade some godforsaken place, we always end up with thousands of new immigrants from that place. Check out Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia, for example. So I suppose this idiotic invasion will, sort of, benefit these new refugee-immigrants which the welfare establishment is already smacking its lips over. So if you think that what this country needs is some more immigrants from central Africa, cheer Obama on!

But it’s not enough that the Commander-in-Chief is strategically challenged, the forces he has at his disposal are tactically given to literally shooting themselves in the foot.

A Marine and a Navy medic killed by a U.S. drone airstrike were targeted when Marine commanders in Afghanistan mistook them for Taliban fighters, even though analysts watching the Predator’s video feed were uncertain whether the men were part of an enemy force.

Now, if one considers how much collateral damage has taken place thanks to no-knock raids in the War on Drugs, imagine how badly awry things are likely to go once Hellfire-equipped Predators are ordered to patrol American skies. I wonder how long it will be before these trends come together and the first Ugandan “refugee” is accidentally killed by a Predator intending to attack domestic terrorists in the United States.

Game theory and the US-China war

I’m not what you would call a devotee of Generational Dynamics, but it’s an interesting perspective and I have read it from time to time. However, I was a little troubled after reading his post last month concerning the recent Pentagon report on China:

There’s never been any doubt that China has been focused for years on invading and taking control of Taiwan. They said that themselves many times, as I’ve reported in dozens of reports on this web site. Furthermore, the Chinese consider a preemptive invasion of Taiwan to be a “defensive” military action.

But the difference is that China now has the military capacity to do that, despite defense by the U.S., according to the report:

“Although the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] is contending with a growing array of missions, Taiwan remains its main strategic direction. China continued modernizing its military in 2010, with a focus on Taiwan contingencies, even as cross-Strait relations improved. The PLA seeks the capability to deter Taiwan independence and influence Taiwan to settle the dispute on Beijing’s terms. In pursuit of this objective, Beijing is developing capabilities intended to deter, delay, or deny possible U.S. support for the island in the event of conflict. The balance of cross-Strait military forces and capabilities continues to shift in the mainland’s favor.”

The reports describes deployment of thousands of missiles specifically directed as U.S. naval capabilities in defending Taiwan, including numerous ballistic and cruise missile programs that can attack Taiwan and attack and disable any aircraft carriers or other U.S. naval vessels in the region.

China has deployed dozens of surface and submarine naval attack vessels, supported early-warning aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and other surveillance and reconnaissance equipment, capable of launching nuclear missiles from the sea.

China has also deployed space and cyber warfare capabilities. China has developed the capability to attack and kill America’s communication satellites. Each week there are news stories about Chinese “hackers” stealing enormous amounts of military technology and defense-related secret information.

In addition, China is developing a number of capabilities that can directly attack the U.S.:

“China is modernizing its nuclear forces by adding more survivable delivery systems. In recent years, the road mobile, solid propellant CSS-10 Mod 1 and CSS-10 Mod 2 (DF-31 and DF-31A) intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs) have entered service. The CSS- 10 Mod 2, with a range in excess of 11,200 km, can reach most locations within the continental United States.”

This is the fulfillment of several threats made by China in years past. In 2005, top-level Chinese army officer General Zhu Chenghu threatened America with nuclear war if America interfered with Taiwan:

“If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond. We … will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian [a city in central China]. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds … of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”

In 2005, Zhu’s remarks were an empty threat. Today, they’re a real threat.

I was idly wondering why Generational Dynamics would read this report and conclude that “an attack within the next 12-18 months is a reasonable expectation”. So, as I usually do when contemplating these things, I put myself in the perspective of the players and mentally gamed it out.

USA: War makes zero sense. We’re already engaged in six smaller conflicts and are facing an economic depression and a financial crisis. Correct strategy: avoid if possible.

China: War makes zero sense. The long-term trend of the balance of power is in China’s favor. Why start a war now when one can be fought on more favorable terms ten years from now? Correct strategy: avoid if possible.

The problem is that there is a third player.

Taiwan: The ability of the USA to fight a war over the Straits peaked in the 1990s and is now rapidly trending downward. The relative military might of China vis-a-vis the Americans is increasing. Fighting a war now would be dreadful, and yet is probably much more winnable/survivable than fighting one five or ten years from now, especially if the USA ends up melting down due to its economic depression and loses its capacity to project power across the Pacific.

Correct strategy: provoke war as soon as possible.

Fortunately, it’s not up to Taiwan, right? They can’t just attack China to kick things off. However, they can declare independence, which China has always vowed will be met with a declaration of war. So, Taiwan presently holds both the means and the motive to launch a US-China war, and game theory suggests that they should do so as soon as possible. That doesn’t mean they will actually do it; the natural human tendency is to put off the unpleasant as long as possible even the prospects for the future look worse.

But if there are any influential game theorists in Taiwan these days, I tend to suspect that they have been observing events in the USA and China over the last decade and have advised a declaration of independence as soon as the defensive preparations for the promised retaliation are ready. I’m not making any specific predictions here, as I don’t have anywhere nearly enough information to do so. But I will say that the “reasonable expectation” of war in the Taiwanese Straits in the next two years is, in fact, alarmingly reasonable.

Blue Faction 1, Red Faction 0

There’s one ruling party, factions red and blue,
They’ve got so many Hitlers they don’t know what to do.
They gave them some press,
Invaded a few,
Whipped them with words and then bid them adieu.

Apparently, Nancy Pelosi and company were right. It appears Erdogan is the next Hitler after all, as David Warren informes us that he is the man who could trigger a world war!

The West is just watching, while Erdogan creates pretexts for another Middle Eastern war: one in which Israel may be pitted not only against the neighbouring states of the old Arab League, but also Turkey, and Iran, and Hamas, and Hezbollah.

This is what is called an “existential threat” to Israel, unfolding in live time. It could leave the West with a choice between defending Israel, and permitting another Holocaust. In other words, we are staring at the trigger for a genuine world war. With Recip Erdogan’s twitching finger on it.

I’m rather curious about the reason Americans are supposed to give any more of a damn about Israel than we do about Uruguay or Andorra these days. The old excuse about Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East is obviously out of date; Erdogan is far more democratically legitimate than any of the revolving coterie of Israeli presidents and prime ministers. Besides, given that we are assured that democracies don’t go to war with other democracies, Israel clearly can have nothing to fear from Turkey and its democratically elected prime minister.

Moreover, Turkey is formally allied with the United States. Israel is not, nor has ever been, an ally. Unlike Israel, Turkey has never attacked a US warship with air and sea forces or killed 34 US servicemen. In fact, if Turkey and Israel ever go to war, the USA may even be obliged, by virtue of its commitment to a fellow NATO member, to attack Israel itself. In light of these facts, I’m sure America’s Jews will be vastly relieved that they didn’t vote into office a president named Hussein who used to attend an Islamic madrassah and sympathizes with Arabs.

Ironically, David Warren’s description of Erdogan as a politician who combines “efficient, basically free-market economic management, with a puritanized version of the religious ideals of the old Ottoman Caliphate”, tends to make Erdogan sound more palatable than about nine-tenths of the current collection of American politicians.

Neocons worry about future credibility

Or rather, the lack thereof. Didn’t anyone ever read them the tale of the boy who cried wolf?

In itself, the Libya intervention was “small.” Yet coming in the wake of two substantial wars that have stretched our military capacity to its limits, Libya felt to many like the straw that broke the camel’s back. Our military was skeptical about this war from the start. A palpable public shift of sentiment against interventions, even among conservatives, has been precipitated by an action in Libya that seemed only loosely tied to America’s security interests.

This is a shame, because the transformations in the Arab world are taking a decidedly dangerous direction. Quite possibly, we will someday face the need to intervene in situations in which our security really is under threat. Let’s hope the public hasn’t been so exhausted by then that it hesitates to support what must be done.

Translation: dammit, we’re not going to be able to sell America on invading Iran! Anybody around here speak Chinese?

The logic of neocon rage

John Podhoretz, who has advocated war against Iran and Iraq, is outraged by the evil in Norway:

The monstrous events today in Norway—as of this writing, word is that a gunman slaughtered at least 30 kids at a youth camp who had gathered to hear about the earlier bombing of government offices in Oslo—have stirred in me a kind of rage I haven’t felt this viscerally since the days after 9/11, when my apartment in Brooklyn Heights looked out directly on the violent purple gash in the sky that hovered over the wreckage like a demonic counterimage of the holy cloud that followed the Jews through the desert in the aftermath of the Exodus. Perhaps it is that my own daughter is, as I write, at her own day camp outside New York City, and so there is something visceral, primal, in my sense of connection to the dead and dying and their parents. This rage, which is accompanied by all manner of violent thoughts about what should be done and could be done to the living body of the depthlessly evil monster who committed this Satanic act, is disturbing in its intensity. I would like it to go away. But it won’t, and it shouldn’t, because without it–without a stark response to something so purposefully awful–we are unilaterally disarming ourselves. The monster and his comrades have the passion to commit their foul deeds. If we respond with dispassion, we are ceding to them part of the animating force that makes us human. If we decide to intellectualize our emotions rather than allow them to influence us, we are turning our back on our responsibility to those whose lives were stripped from them.

So, it’s evil for Saudis to kill Americans, it’s evil for Norwegians to kill Norwegians and nominal Norwegians, but it is a moral imperative for Americans to kill Iraqis and Iranians. Got it? Let’s compare the bodycount to date:

9/11: 2,996 deaths. VISCERAL RAGE!
Oslo: 92 deaths. DEPTHLESS AND SATANIC EVIL!
Iraq: 135,369 deaths. NOT ENOUGH DEAD SUNNIS! (1)
Iran: ???? deaths. KILL AMALEKITES FOR ISRAEL! (2)

(1) “What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn’t kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn’t the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?”

(2) “If Barack Obama wants Israel to pull back to the 1967 borders, a position that could not be politically achieved today. If he thought that would solve everything, the best way for him to do that is to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities. If the US takes out Iran’s nuclear capacity and Obama goes to Jerusalem and says, ‘I have saved you from Amalek, I have saved you from the revival of the greatest threat to the Jewish people, you do something for me.”

Needless to say, Podhoretz the Younger is not only selective about what sort of deaths fill him with BOUNDLESS RAAAAGE and what sort he would like to see more of, but he also supports the very sort of immigration policy that appears to have led to yesterday’s lethal attacks in Norway.

“[A]s a Jew, I have great difficulty supporting a blanket policy of immigration restriction because of what happened to the Jewish people after 1924 and the unwillingness of the United States to take Jews in.”

So, Norway should permit Sri Lankans and Tunisians to settle in Norway because the USA didn’t permit Jews to settle in the USA in 1924. Got it? Podhoretz’s emotional histrionics are particularly ironic in light of the way the logic of his various positions suggests that the U.S. military should have attacked the Utoya Worker’s League camp and slaughtered everyone “between the ages of 15 and 35” in order to save Norway from Cush. The amusing thing is that there is a very good chance that at least one of the deaths that so outrage him now was that of a male Sunni between 15 and 35.

It also strikes one that perhaps the Iranians should consider rethinking their strategy vis-a-vis Israel. Instead of pursuing nuclear weapons, which is, per Podhoretz, bad, Tehran should simply order a few hundred thousand of its citizens to peacefully immigrate to Israel, which is, per Podhoretz, good. No doubt this will cause Podhoretz the Younger to abandon his call for war with Iran and joyfully embrace the new Persian-Israelis.

UPDATE – One wonders if Podhoretz will soon express similar rage over the death of a 35-year old youth who was gunned down in Tehran today.

The brilliance of U.S. strategery

Jim Lacey on the death of U.S. military strategy:

I teach strategy to Marines and other military officers for a living. The classes hear ad nauseam that if your plan does not include any directions as to how to carry it out, and how to obtain resources for it, then you do not have a strategy. You have an aspiration. The NMS has a lot of aspirations. There are several dozen of them in the first few pages alone. One has to wade through eight pages of aspirations before coming to: “The core task of our Armed Forces remains to defend our Nation and win its wars.” Wow! I would have led with that one.

Military strategists might wonder why the authors of the NMS made them wade through a third of the document before getting to the crucial reason of why we maintain a military in the first place. One might even wonder if the NMS authors really mean that winning wars is job number one, since elsewhere in the document you find: “Lastly, we will be prepared to act as security guarantor — preferably with partners and allies, but alone if necessary — to deter and defeat acts of aggression.” Lastly? Really? Since page one says, “Our foremost priority is the security of the American people, our territory, and our way of life,” one wonders what activities are so important that the military has moved defeating aggression to last in its order of concerns.

In related news, the U.S. Army recently reported that its officers will no longer utilize wargames as part of their military training, but will instead incorporate a rigorous program that includes The Ungame, “a non-competitive learning game of conversation that fosters listening skills as well as self-expression”, Dance Dance Revolution, and the popular teen party game Spin the Bottle. Two card games, Uno and Mille Bournes, were also given serious consideration, but the former was rejected as being “too competitive” while the latter was deemed to be a potentially negative influence on young officers due to its glorification of excess speed and failure to respect legal speed limits.

When asked for comment, Brigadier General Shaniqua Rodriguez expressed reservations about the new policy, saying: “The Ungame be cool and I rockin the hells outta DDR, but I ain’t kissing no mans nohow. I don’t play that shit. And what the White Man got against Uno? It be too brown and shit? They raciss!”

UPDATE: General Martin Dempsey, U.S. Army Chief of Staff, announced that “Uno, Chinese Checkers, and that African game where they clap and hop over sticks” would be added to the Army’s new training schedule, effective immediately. He also announced that he would not attempt to kiss Brigadier General Rodriguez even if the bottle pointed in her direction, commenting that “while she is fly, she is one crazy-ass Lebanese.”

WND column

The Rise of the East

Supporters of the ongoing Bush-Obama wars have often said that one of the reasons the United States needed to attack Afghanistan and Iraq (and now Libya and Yemen and Somalia) is because failing to do so would exhibit weakness and encourage our enemies. Now that the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan is into its 10th year, intrepid supporters of American empire are claiming that American troops must continue to occupy Afghanistan (and Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Somalia) because the post-withdrawal collapse of the indigenous forces presently being propped up by the U.S. military will exhibit weakness and encourage our enemies.

These childish arguments reveal that the bellicose neocons who have been pushing foreign military adventures for more than a decade are not only chickenhawks innocent of any military service, but also know nothing about military history or the military aspects of geostrategy.