Tag: war

No one is all bad

Say what you will about violent Mexican drug gangs, but you really can’t dispute their very sensible position on clowns.

Two street clowns were found dead in southeastern Mexico…. The clowns were found in bright costumes and makeup on a roadside Sunday in the city of Villahermosa, bearing signs of torture….

Speaking of clowns, both David Frum and Thomas Sowell have concluded that massive illegal drug-related violence with a body count in the tens of thousands in Mexico alone is not an argument for legalizing drugs, but rather intensifying anti-drug efforts and making use of the U.S. military. Masters of logic, they are.

Genocide is for blacks

I would say African-Americans, of course, only as one of my Nigerian sprinter friends had to point out more than once to one of our relentlessly PC acquaintances, they’re not Americans. Anyhow, Brendan O’Neill notices that African nations apparently do not engage in wars any more than the United States does. Except, instead of engaging in “police actions” and “global struggles against violent extremism”, they apparently just wage “genocide”.

When does war become genocide? When the protagonists are black people. That is the only conclusion one can draw from the unhinged claims that the Ivory Coast is on “the brink of genocide” following the disputed presidential elections and the stand-off between the incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo and president-elect Alassane Ouattara….

These discussions reveal rather more about the warped Western imagination than they do about realities on the ground. Seemingly incapable of making sense of contemporary political conflict, observers reach for sensationalist, one-size-fits-all explanations instead. These conflicts are like pornography for Western misanthropes who see in every African stand-off the potential for Holocaust-style horrors. It’s a PC rehabilitation of the idea that there is a divide between the civilised West and uncivilised Africa – only today we use the more acceptable-sounding terminology of “genocide preventers” (us) and “genocidaires” (them) to establish our superiority over the dark-skinned barbarians.

A pertinent observation on how even the most fervent equalitarians cannot successfully hide their own fundamental lack of belief in human equality. On a tangential note, I can’t help but note that many of the same people who are so concerned about overpopulation and global warming are also deeply concerned about preventing genocide and starvation. How, one wonders, do they think that what they believe to be the excessive human population is going to be reduced? Relying on material wealth, feminism and irreligious ennui to sap the reproductive instinct strikes me as having no effect on at least three-quarters of the human population, which leaves genocide, famine, and mass forced sterilization as the available options.

DIY drone

This makes me think that the security forces of the world must be getting more than a little nervous. The state no longer possesses air supremacy.

As Carroll Quigley noted, the power of the aristocracy over the masses has historically depended upon how great the divide between state and individual military power is. Once someone figures out how to turn these little RC planes with speeds of up to 130 kph and 27-mile range into delivery systems, pretty much all bets are off. And there’s no reason they can’t be effectively turned into cheap drones without too much trouble.

I suppose the obvious countermeasure is adding laser turrets to all the closed-circuit cameras. But it’s not hard to see the recon-related possibilities here either.

A fabulous military

No one cognizant of history would think to deny that homosexual men are capable of fighting effectively. The Sacred Band of Thebes alone would suffice to disprove that notion. However, one salient fact to consider about the Sacred Band was that it was a band, which is to say, it was a military unit that was set apart from other military units that did not share the particular predilection that made it such a remarkably cohesive unit.

The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which effectively permits the many closeted homosexuals in the U.S. armed forces to openly exhibit their abnormal preferences and presumably to act upon them, is therefore likely to prove less salutary to American military efficiency and effectiveness. While it is true that other Western militaries have eliminated their bans on homosexuals, it is also worth noting that none of them are presently capable of successfully invading Jerry Jones’s new stadium even if it were defended only by the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.

So, it is at the very least questionable to assume that there will be only minor negative consequences from this latest experiment in social engineering. Although the ambitious and politically correct general officers won’t admit it, the grand experiment of women in the military has been a massive failure whereas the integration of black soldiers was a success. Only time will tell if the result of this third great experiment will be more akin to the first one or the second.

Assassinate the fat kids

It is, apparently, a matter of national security:

First lady Michelle Obama plans to warn in remarks Monday that the nation is seeing “a groundswell of support” for curbing childhood obesity, and she is unveiling new ammunition from current and retired military leaders.

“Military leaders … tell us that when more than one in four young people are unqualified for military service because of their weight,” the first lady says in the prepared remarks, “childhood obesity isn’t just a public health threat, it’s not just an economic threat, it’s a national security threat as well.”

If this doesn’t lead you to start being more skeptical every time Washington rings the “national security” bell and expects you to begin salivating in acceptance of gate rape or whatever their latest crime against the citizenry is, you’re hopeless. But the logic is inexorable. If national security threats justify terrorist designations as we have been reliably informed by the judicial system, and a terrorist designation permits the president to assassinate American citizens as we have also been reliably informed by the nation’s courts, then based on clearly the White House would be justified in ordering Predators to begin raining Hellfire missiles down on playgrounds filled with obese little fatties.

For the pro-war “conservative”

An educational quote from George Will’s column today:

Two years ago this month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, when asked about U.S. objectives in Afghanistan, stressed creation of a strong central government.

Since intrepid Tea Partiers can’t seem to grasp the fundamental contradiction between their support for small and limited government and foreign entanglements, perhaps this statement from the Secretary of Defense will expose their incoherence in a manner they can understand.

How can you possibly claim to support a limited and decentralized government at home while simultaneously supporting the establishment of a strong central government abroad?

We’ve heard that one before

About the only idea dumber than not sending Mexican immigrants back to Mexico is the idea of returning the favor and invading Mexico right back:

National pride is a good thing – until the water reaches your chin and your nation is still sinking. Mexico is not in that deep yet, but parts of the country are. Seven criminal cartels effectively control most cities and the drug trafficking lanes near the U.S. border, as well as their bases and production centers in the interior.

The Mexican government announced on Wednesday that it will send more troops and federal police to its northeastern corner near the U.S. border.

Yet the Mexican elite class and military remain too proud to do what they immediately should: Call in the Marines.

I say this a bit tendentiously to get Mexicans out of their nationalistic stupor. They, in fact, should call in the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force, too. But not in large units. Rather, Mexico is in dire need of American military specialists stationed within its borders to help the country build powerful electronic intelligence systems and train modern military and police forces to replace its suffocatingly hierarchical, outdated ones.

Just a few specialists, right. And then when a number of specialists are taken out by the armed cartels who presumably are capable of understanding why the American specialists are there, the Obama administration will either a) withdraw the specialists in which case they need not ever bothered sending them in the first place, or b) escalate American forces there. Regarding which notion Fred Reed, who lives in Mexico, has a few thoughts.

The ridiculous thing is that the possibility of some kind of violent conflict with Mexico became not only realistic but probable the minute that the immigration spigot was opened. The dangerous thing is that because of the Mexification of California and portions of the American Southwest, all of the fireworks aren’t going to take place south of the border.

Horatio spins in his grave

They might as well knock down the column in Trafalgar Square:

Britain and France will launch a broad defense partnership on Tuesday that includes setting up a joint force and sharing equipment and nuclear missile research centers, a French government source said. Treaties to be signed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron at a meeting in London will pave the way for an unprecedented degree of military cooperation between the two neighbors.

Theoretically, this should be a great sign of peace and progress. Why, then, does it feel so… alarming?

Proving MPAI

Most certainly including the neocon portion of the Tea Party:

The need to reinvest in the military is not an ideological sentiment but rather a baseline statement about urgent national-security needs. But don’t take my word for it. A recent blue-ribbon commission chaired by President Clinton’s secretary of defense Bill Perry and former Bush administration National Security Advisor Steve Hadley, released a report this summer that “represents a striking bipartisan consensus that the United States must do more when it comes to national defense if we are to continue to play the international role we have and pursue the interests that have animated American grand strategy since the end of World War II.”

American strength comes at a price, to be sure. But there is a price to weakness as well, one that the commission notes “in the long run would be much greater.” Thankfully, Americans are telling pollsters of all stripes they agree — cutting defense is not an option.

You’re bankrupt, you morons. Lofty and ambitious words about a historically illiterate grand strategery that has not only failed, but has actually weakened the American military position, aren’t going to pay many soldiers’ salaries or buy many guns. Talking about “national security” is absolutely and utterly ridiculous as long as millions of immigrants are permitted to invade the country at will, and no amount of bases in Afghaniraqistan are going to make the nation any more secure.

It’s pretty simple. More money != better. Conservatives seem to understand this when it comes to welfare, so why don’t they understand that government spending isn’t any more effective when it comes to defense?

Hearts and minds of hate

Nicholas Kristof underlines the intrinsic absurdity of the current line of neocon justification for the Afghan Occupation:

[I]t seems to me a historic mistake to justify our huge military presence in Afghanistan as a bulwark to protect the women. In fact, most women I interviewed favored making a deal with the Taliban — simply because it would bring peace. For them, the Taliban regime was awful, but a perpetual war may be worse. Take Pari Gol, a woman from Helmand Province whom I met here in Kabul. She despises the Taliban and told me on this trip that back in 2001, “I prayed that the Taliban would be defeated, and God listened to my prayers.”

Yet in the fighting since then, she said, her home was destroyed and her husband and daughter were both killed by American airstrikes. She is now living in a mud hut here — fuming at the Taliban, the Americans and the Afghan government. “I hate all of them,” she told me.

It is a huge mistake. The occupation of Afghanistan cannot be justified under any reasonable measure anymore. It should be obvious that the neocons are not going to win many of the required hearts and minds when their “liberation” of Afghan women comes via the deaths of their husbands and children. No doubt there are a few pro-abortion, anti-marriage feminists who would see this as a perfectly viable strategy, but should come as no surprise to sane observers that the violent military occupation of a country very seldom causes the occupiers to be loved.

Given that the latest Wikileaks documents prove that America’s occupation of Iraq has killed nearly three times more innocent and uninvolved civilians than all enemy “insurgents”, “terrorists”, or “violent extremists” combined, it is eminently clear that the Bush-Rumsfeld strategery has completely failed. And the Obama administration has been making a classic strategic mistake in stubbornly reinforcing failure; we are fortunate that it has not been successful in expanding the war to include Iran and Pakistan as well.

“The Iraq War Logs released by WikiLeaks on 23 October 2010, contain 54,910 records compiled by the United States military whose numerical fields register 109,032 violent deaths between January 2004 and December 2009. These casualty records contain four categories of casualties, ‘Civilian’ (66,081 deaths), ‘Host Nation’ (15,196 deaths), ‘Enemy’ (23,984 deaths), and ‘Friendly’ (3,771 deaths).”

Perceptive observers will note the way in which the views of the Afghan women are consistent with the theory of Game. The relative security of the Taliban are preferred to the risks of war and the nominal “freedom” it promises. The fact that they are almost certainly right in this case does not alter the fact that the inherent female preference exists.