Tag: war

 An interview with the author of the highly recommended Stalin’s War:

This is what I think one of the key discoveries that I made, although a few other historians have again tried to kind of guess at this they haven’t actually seen most of the files. The final break between Hitler and Stalin prior to what we now call Operation Barbarossa occurred over Balkan questions.  

There was this summit that has long been known about in Berlin, in November 1940. This is when Molotov went to meet with Hitler and Ribbentrop, and he also met Rudolf Hess, and Himmler, and all the other leading Nazis. It turned out that in fact the Germans thought the meetings had gone relatively well. They hadn’t agreed on everything, but they thought the meetings had been friendly.

We now know from Molotov’s own real-time telegraphic communications from Stalin that he and Stalin had in fact decided to break with Hitler even before the Germans broke with them. Stalin laid down what was in effect an ultimatum. Hitler had invited the Soviet Union to join the Tripartite Pact – they had restyled the old anti-Comintern pact with Italy, Germany, and Japan – so it’s now going to be restyled and the Soviets are invited to join.

Stalin insisted as a price of joining the Tripartite Pact that the Germans withdraw all of their troops from Finland and Romania, including military advisers, that Stalin be allowed to invade Bulgaria and to station troops at the Bosporus and the Dardanelles – that is to say the Turkish Straits. He was afraid of the British, he still saw the British as the enemy.

That’s one of the other really fascinating things that you see, if you actually read the real correspondence, is that Stalin before Barbarossa, and even to some extent after it and towards the end of the war, continued to view the Anglo-Saxons, as he called them, as his enemy. As he told Matsuoka, Japan’s foreign minister in April 1941 and also in their first meeting in March, he’d never viewed the Anglo-Saxons as his friends and he did not intend to befriend them now.

Now strangely enough, they had been wary of Stalin too, but then when Hitler does make this decision to invade, in part because of this break over the Balkans, in part because of Hitler’s own ideolog,  racial obsessions about Lebensraum and cleansing room for the German settlers in the east, it’s sort of like this act of almost diplomatic magic. There’s kind of a public relations miracle. To give you an idea of what I mean, even the Roosevelt administration, which had been relatively friendly vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, in the days before Barbarossa they had been about to expel Soviet spies, including aviation spies and experts who would actually burrow deeply into the U.S. aviation sector and were scheduled for deportation, relations were about to go into a deep freeze, suddenly – poof – everything vanishes!

Stalin is a hero, his peoples, they are heroes. Secretly at first, later, a fter November 1941 openly, Roosevelt opens the spigot of Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union and lavishes vast amounts of war materiel, industrial inputs, foodstuffs, boots, uniforms, you name it, it’s all given effectively for free to the Soviet Union.

I very much recommend reading this book. The author apparently isn’t equipped to draw some of the obvious conclusions from his own observations and he doesn’t usually ask the obvious follow-on questions – for example, inquiring as to precisely which individuals in the USA were responsible for making that public relations miracle happen and how they did it – but that doesn’t lessen the importance of those well-documented observations in the slightest. 

Technology can be created on demand, as Stefan Possony and I showed in The Strategy of Technology. This does not mean that all technologies should be created, merely that once something is possible, it is only a matter of time before it becomes real. There will be war; there will also be technologies that can only be deterred, not defended against.

Jerry Pournelle, Editor’s Introduction to: SEVEN KILL TIGER by Charles W. Shao

Six years ago, I worked with the great SF writer Jerry Pournelle in reviving the There Will Be War series by publishing There Will Be War Vol. X. Below follows an excerpt from the short story “Seven Kill Tiger”, which serves to demonstrate that the concept of a country creating a two-part genetic weapon that utilizes a purported vaccine as part of its delivery system was neither unthinkable nor unanticipated prior to COVID-19 and the not-vaccines.

“They tell me your most recent test of Huáng Hu was successful.”

“Yes, Director. The terminal rate is now in excess of 80 percent. Based on the most conservative spread models, the pseudo-epidemic will cross the Angolan border within two weeks. Within nine months, the continent is expected to be clear of all undesirable populations. The task of disposal will obviously be enormous, and will create considerable additional health hazards, but I would expect that it would be safe to begin the settlement programs within 18 months of zero day.”

“Zero day?”

“The date upon which any opposing forces will be unable to stop the virus from going terminal in the target population. The estimates vary, but the average indicates zero day is D-day plus 28.”

“Is there any way to reduce the time to zero day?”

“Increase the number of transmission vectors, preferably in a manner scattered widely across the continent.”

Zhang nodded. “I will think on that.”

“If I may offer a suggestion, Director?”

“Please do.”

“There is an American foundation that has malaria vaccination campaigns running in every country in Africa. If a way could be found to substitute the substances injected, zero day could be reduced to a matter of two weeks or less.”

“Wouldn’t that increase the risk of detection?”

“Certainly.” The young scientist’s dark eyes were unperturbed. “But in light of how the vaccination campaigns are already regarded with a significant amount of local suspicion, detection would likely sow sufficient confusion to inhibit any effective response. Especially because the NGOs tasked with the response would be widely regarded as the guilty parties.”

“And combined with cutting the potential response time in half, it’s almost surely worth the risk as long as the substitutions can be made undetected.”

“I cannot speak to that, Director. It is outside my competence.”

Zhang thought a moment. “It’s too risky to interfere with the Americans. We don’t know their protocols. But Sinovac has a polio vaccine that’s already been prequalified by the World Health Organization and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has endorsed it as a substitute for their primary oral vaccine. It would be much easier to substitute that. We can even arrange to have the vaccines shipped in through Dar es Salaam.”

“As you say, Director.”

Zhang couldn’t help but smile. The young scientist could not have made his indifference to anything but the technical aspects related to his specialty any more clear. “The potential consequences do not trouble you, Dr. Gao?”

“Not in the slightest, Director Zhang. To the contrary, you have my deepest admiration. What you propose to accomplish will make the Great Leap Forward appear little more than a precursor to the true advancement. What began as a Cultural Revolution has become a Scientific Revolution. Soon China will stand astride the globe as the master of two continents, and the nations of the world will bow before her!”

Zhang found himself mildly appalled by the young man’s fanaticism. Did Mao ever feel similarly alarmed by the enthusiasm of his own Red Guards? But the sentiments Gao expressed were sound enough. Africa was wasted on the Africans. China had spent 50 million Chinese lives to become a 20th-century power, how could she hesitate to spend twenty times that many more African lives to assume her rightful place as the one true 21st-century superpower?

“Thank you, Dr. Gao.”

“Director.” The young man bowed and left his office.

Zhang reflected on Gao’s words. A Scientific Revolution. A Greater Leap Forward! The young scientist’s confidence in the project quelled any remaining doubts that it was time to move forward and let the Central Military Commission know about his plans for the Dark Continent. But one question still remained: to release Huáng Hu before or after General Xu’s scheduled visit?

It would be a shame, after all, if he were to be executed before releasing the spirits to seek their revenge.

***

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced the prequalification of a Chinese-made vaccine for polio. The new WHO pre-qualified vaccine is produced by Sinovac Biotech Ltd, and is an inactive-virus vaccine that is considered to be safer than the live-virus vaccines now widely used across Asia and Africa.

“WHO prequalification of the Sinovac vaccine is another feather in the cap of China’s growing vaccine manufacturing industry,” said Dr. Bernhard Schwartländer, WHO Representative in China.

“This is also very good news for the millions of children in low- and middle-income countries which cannot afford to manufacture or purchase their inactive-virus vaccines. WHO prequalification of Sinovac’s vaccine will add to the worldwide arsenal of anti-polio vaccines, assisting the global campaign to eradicate the disease. In doing so, it will help to save lives,” Dr Schwartländer said.

Sinovac’s polio vaccine is the second vaccine made in China to achieve WHO prequalification, following prequalification of a Japanese-made encephalitis vaccine in 2013 and Hualan Biological’s influenza vaccine in 2015.

Philip Thompson shook his head as he returned the printout to Scott Berens. “You don’t seriously imagine that the Chinese would use a weaponized vaccine as a vehicle for genetic warfare, do you? They could maybe get one hot lot into the distribution system, two at most, and I can’t imagine that could possibly be worth permanently trashing their ability to access the export markets!”

“No, of course not.” His subordinate shrugged. “You told me to dig up anything that might be related to possible launch vectors. This is the only one I found that could conceivably be connected to Chinese corporate activity in the last two years.”

“I’d use bird flu myself,” Thompson mused.

“What’s that?”

“If you’re going to weaponize something, an aerosol vector is the most effective. And the world is accustomed to bird flu coming out of China every few years. That’s what that vaccine from Hualan was, it was an H1N1 vaccine. You could even combine the two, put the bomb in the flu virus itself, then trigger it with the vaccine.”

“Now who is imagining things, Doctor?”

Already, nearly one-third of Americans either aren’t sure or believe that US involvement in WWII was a mistake. They’re absolutely right to doubt the wisdom or the justice of US military involvement, particularly on Memorial Day. WWII was a massive mistake for Americans, a far more catastrophic and costly mistake than Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan combined, with serious consequences that led directly to the decline of the American nation and the expected collapse of the USA as a political entity. 

I can assure you that if every U.S. citizen were to read Stalin’s War, which is an excellent and well-sourced revisionist history by Sean McMeekin that relies heavily upon Soviet records that were not available before 1989, that 32 percent figure would rise to at least 98 percent.

More than 75 years after the conclusion of World War Two, one third of Americans are questioning the country’s decision to send troops into battle. A new Economist/YouGov poll suggests that doubters believe it to be a mistake or are unsure if it was the right decision. 

The poll, which was timed to coincide with Memorial Day, asked people for their opinions were on the decision to send American troops to fight in particular wars.

The question was asked: ‘Do you think the United States made a mistake sending troops to fight in the following wars?’ 

The poll considered conflicts spread over more than 100 years including both World Wars, the Vietnam War and the more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Some 14 percent of Americans said they believed sending troops to fight the Nazi-led Axis powers during World War II was a mistake and an additional 18 percent weren’t sure, although the support for the decision to send troops to fight the Nazis received more support than any other war at 68 percent.

However, one third of Americans were still unsure if President Roosevelt made the right decision.

President Roosevelt didn’t make the right decision. In fact, it is now obvious and well-documented that both President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were very clearly taking orders from someone, presumably someone connected to the small group of Jews who declared war on Germany in 1933, and that both elected leaders were instructed to back Stalin without question, even to the direct and material detriment of their own soldiers, countries, and national interests. The treasonous subservience of Roosevelt, in particular, eventually resulted in the attempted mass murder of 28 million Germans by US Secretary of State Henry Morgenthau, and also created the industrial Soviet Union by propping up the Soviet economy for 40 years despite the intrinsic economic dysfunctionality of communism.

• Stalin’s looting battalions were able to cart off from Germany alone, by the end of 1946, 4.15 million tons of industrial, commercial, artistic, and intellectual property in 519,000 railway wagons-an operation that would ultimately net Stalin 9.991 million tons of industrial goods.
• If we include non-German countries, the Soviet intake of war booty totaled, by the end of 1947, the equipment, inventory, intellectual property, and records of 1.2 million separate factories or enterprises, including Siemens, BMW, and Allianz Insurance.
• So voluminous were American lend-lease shipments across the Pacific to the Far East in this period-during the climactic phase of the war against Japan-that they equaled the volume shipped across the North Atlantic during the entire war to support the Red Army against the Wehrmacht, rounding out a total shipped across the Pacific of 8.244 million tons, which did not even include the warplanes flown into Siberia via ASLIB along with the sensitive and often strategic cargo they contained.

The mass pillaging of Germany, Romany, Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia actually cost the Soviets more than the so-called “Lend-Lease” material did, because the Soviets didn’t get free shipping for their war booty. The Roosevelt administration not only gave the Soviet Union an unthinkable amount of industrial material, food, factories, and military supplies, it didn’t even charge the Soviets anything for the costs of transporting everything from Iowa and Ohio to Vladivostok.

However, Stalin not only double-crossed Roosevelt and Churchill, he also eventually betrayed their masters, which is one reason today’s neoclowns now reside in the United States and are still banging the drum for a revenge war with Russia as they try to redefine the concept of “the West” in the same self-serving way they redefined “America” as an idea instead of an actual people.

And, just to make matters worse, Roosevelt summarily rejected Germany’s attempt to surrender to the Western Allies in April 1943, despite the fact that Stalin was not only willing to accept an end to the war, but offered Germany a separate peace in two rounds of negotiations held in Stockholm through the spring of 1943 if Hitler would agree to the 1939 frontiers that had been originally agreed in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Of course Hitler, being an idiot, didn’t accept the Soviet offer.

The undeniable historical fact is that D-Day was totally unnecessary, as Germany attempted to surrender more than TWO YEARS before its surrender was finally accepted in May 1945. In other words, every single American life lost in the campaign on the Western Front was a needless sacrifice and a tragic waste.

Happy Memorial Day.

The Saker pronounces his judgement of the most recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is interesting once one removes the over-the-top parentheticals. I don’t necessarily agree with his conclusions, but it is a more useful analysis than the mainstream’s “whoever kills the most civilians wins” metric:

The Israeli scorecard

The problem with Gaza now is the same that the failed invasion of Lebanon in 2006 has revealed: just like the Lebanese in 2006, the Palestinians of 2021 are not afraid of the Zionists anymore. Furthermore, with a great deal of help from Iran and others, Hamas in Gaza is now much, much better armed than in the past. True, some of its missiles are decidedly low tech and not very effective, but Hamas also has shown some pretty decent UAVs too. Most importantly, from now on for Hamas it is only one way: up the “quality ladder”.

The other major goal of the Israelis in this war was to prove to the world that their “Iron Dome” air defense network was the “super-dooper most bestest” in the world. It now appears that at best, the Israelis intercepted somewhere around 30-40{cc08d85cfa54367952ab9c6bd910a003a6c2c0c101231e44cdffb103f39b73a6} of the Hamas missiles. The way the Israeli hid this is by claiming that their fancy shmancy Iron Drone did not even try to engage missiles which were not deemed dangerous. But in the age of the ubiquitous smartphone, that kind of silly nonsense can easily be debunked. While the full Iron Dome air defense system probably works marginally better than the quasi-useless US Patriot, the Israeli air defenses are clearly at least a generation behind the Russian ones, including the S-300s the Russians sold to Syria.

It is crucial to remember that Hamas’ missiles are much inferior to those of the Houthis and the Syrians, and even more inferior when compared to Hezbollah or Iranian drones and missiles! In other words, the “invincible” IDF can’t deal with even its weakest, least sophisticated enemies and the grotesquely expensive Iron Done cannot protect the Zionists from any determined missile attacks by the Resistance coalition of Palestine, Yemen, Syria, Hezbollah, Iran and Russia…. In other words, far from showing how “invincible” the Zionist entity is, this latest war against the Palestinians has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the IDF cannot deal with any of its enemies.

The Palestinian scorecard

Let’s start by the obvious one: the Palestinians were not defeated. This victory can be further subdivided in the following:

• The Palestinian leadership has mostly physically survived, it still exists as a local authority. Plenty of Palestinians were murdered, but that did not affect the operational capabilities of the Palestinian forces any more than the IDF succeeded in affecting Iranian operational capabilities in Syria.
• The Palestinian leadership has also survived politically. It was not blamed by the “Palestinian street” for starting the war, nor was it blamed for how it executed it. As for Fatah, it is now, by all accounts, lost somewhere in a political no man’s land which, admittedly, it richly deserves for its incompetence, corruption and subservience to Israel and the USA.
• Militarily speaking, the Palestinian missile strikes were not nearly as effective than, say, Hezbollah strikes would have been, but, hey, they made huge progress and we can all rest assured that the Palestinians of Gaza will, sooner or later, catch up with the Houthis and, further down the road, maybe even Hezbollah.
• By many accounts, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have made major political inroads into the Palestinian political scene outside Gaza. Even in spite of a truly immense hasbara effort by the Israelis, the international public opinion was blaming Israel for the orgy of violence.

I think The Saker left out one obvious point in favor of the Israelis, which is that it was the Palestinians who asked for the ceasefire, not the Israelis. But the fact that the Israelis were afraid to risk the failure of a ground invasion is probably the most significant aspect of the conflict; as Martin van Creveld has pointed out, Goliath demonstrating that he is bigger than David is not a victory condition, since everyone already knew that from the start.

The other important point is that Israel stopped its air campaign after Putin told it to stop, not in response to any of Biden’s many requests. This tends to underline the idea that it is now Russia that is the primary outside influencer in the post-ISIS Middle East, not the USA, due to the way in which the Syrian war. 

Regardless, the fact that the Palestinians didn’t lose doesn’t mean that Israel did. A failure to win a clear-cut victory is not a defeat. Sometimes a failure is just a failure.

But the conflict has also demonstrated that while the US public is still generally well-disposed toward Israel, the incessant anti-American provocations by the ADL and the anti-BDS movement, combined with a large and growing immigrant population immune to both Holocaustianity and Scofield churchianity, have noticeably weakened the strength of US support for Israel.

 It appears China is beginning to warn off the second-tier players in what looks rather like preparation for a move on Taiwan:

Australia’s military is ‘weak,’ ‘insignificant’ and will be the ‘first hit’ in any potential conflict over Taiwan, Chinese propagandists have warned.

The chilling message in the Communist Party mouthpiece, the Global Times, comes as Australian naval forces completed war game exercises with the US, France and Japan held between May 11 and 17 in the East China Sea.

The first ever training drill between the four nations called Exercise Jeanne d’Arc 21 – or ARC21 – practiced amphibious assaults, urban warfare and anti-aircraft defence – and was met with fury by Beijing.

‘The People’s Liberation Army doesn’t even need to make pointed responses to the joint drill since it’s insignificant militarily,’ the article said. ‘Australia’s military is too weak to be a worthy opponent of China, and if it dares to interfere in a military conflict for example in the Taiwan Straits, its forces will be among the first to be hit. Australia must not think it can hide from China if it provokes. Australia is within range of China’s conventional warhead-equipped DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile.’

Over the past year China has slapped more than $20billion worth of arbitrary trade bans and tariffs on Australian exports as an apparent punishment for calling for an independent inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic – which first appeared in Wuhan in 2019.

Tensions were further strained last month when various figures including the likes of Defence Minister Peter Dutton, Former Defence Minister Christopher Pyne and Home Affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo, all suggested the ‘drums of war’ in the region are getting louder.

Just in case the warning hasn’t been received, The Global Times has underlined the point in an interview with an Australian academic who is an expert on Sino-Australian relations:

Recently, the Morrison government has been constantly commenting on the possibility of Australian military engagement in a future US-China war over Taiwan. However, this was met with harsh criticism from former prime minister Kevin Rudd and numerous scholars. Is the Morrison government clear about the consequences of war? Why is Canberra standing close by Washington to confront China instead of striking a balance between the two like most other countries do? Global Times (GT) reporter Wang Wenwen talked to James Laurenceson (Laurenceson), director of the Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney, over these issues.

GT: How is the Morrison government’s hype of war dangerous and damaging? Do you think the hawkish officials from the Morrison government are clearly aware of the consequences of a military clash with China to Australia? Or is talking about war just an easy gesture to make for political expediency?

Laurenceson: Former prime minister Rudd’s criticism of war talk was mostly because he regarded it as being deployed by members of the current Morrison government for domestic political gain. But in the process, the chest-thumping rhetoric further damages Australia’s already dysfunctional relationship with China, nor did it inform the Australian public just how catastrophic the costs of such a war would be. 

This political tactic of hyping an external “threat” to induce a “rallying around the flag” effect occurs in other countries too, including China and the US. That said, the risk of a kinetic conflict over Taiwan has increased compared with, say, five years ago. This means it is appropriate for sober-minded analysis and planning within the Australian government’s Department of Defence, and in communicating to the public just what is at stake in terms of Australia’s national interests and values. But the priority must be avoiding a military conflict, not hyping the risk for domestic political gain, or regarding it as inevitable and now starting to treat China as a de-facto enemy. China is far more a friend to Australia than an enemy.   

GT: Most analysts would not deny that Washington can no longer expect a quick and easy victory in a war with China in the Western Pacific. Why has Australia under Morrison been boasting following the US and taking the risk?

Laurenceson: Within the Australian government, there is a significant gap between the key decision-makers and those more on the fringe. The reported hawkish comments by Minister for Defence, Peter Dutton, for example, were more qualified when you read the full transcript of what he said rather than just the version presented in the headlines…

GT: Although Australia and the US are allies, how much confidence do Australia’s political and strategic circles have toward the actual support and protection Washington will (or can) offer to Australia?

Laurenceson: I think there is a high degree of confidence within political and strategic circles that the US would support Australia in a military conflict. Of course, there are a lot of scenarios between where things are now and one where Australia is being attacked in a military conflict. And along that spectrum, my view is that Australia should be realistic and not be “doe-eyed” about what it can expect from America.

Australia would be insane to place any trust whatsoever in the increasingly incomptent US military, which at this point would be more likely to send them a transgender dance troupe to twerk defiance at the Chinese than risk the chance that an aircraft carrier group would end up on the bottom of the Western Pacific. South Korea appears to understand this, as it certainly doesn’t want any part of the Taiwan question.

I am too, although for different reasons.

People will tell you that nothing can be done about the 2020 election.

Why do they say that?

Because they haven’t thought it through.

Trump knew LONG beforehand that the election would be stolen.

Why didn’t he stop it?

Because it was in his interest to let it happen.

It was a trap.

For ALL of his enemies, foreign and domestic.

Clearly Trump’s enemies know this.

Yesterday, there were people AGAIN telling us that he was going to prison.

No evidence of this offered.

And we have hysteria and chaos among Trump’s enemies.

Where’s the hubris of Obama? Remember his cockiness after he won?

Biden and Co. and almost sheepish. Everyone’s hardly bothering.

But the press is suddenly hysterical.

Tons of stuff is being revealed, and the Democrats are being sabotaged on every front.

The Trump and Pence families have virtually disappeared. They can travel when and where they want undetected.

Electronic warfare aircraft and spy planes are in constant use.

Biden has zero influence at home or abroad, except at the border.

And THAT is a massive blunder. 

Trump is saying in plain language that HE will do something before 2022.

He means legally and constitutionally.

REMEMBER:

Precedent means nothing to Trump.

Neither does difficulty.

One of the great mistakes people make is believing that something can’t happen if THEY THEMSELVES didn’t think of it.

Trump uses that to his advantage.

Trump does things in a way that makes it impossible for him to not get coverage by the mainstream media.

Therefore he’s got something HUGE planned.

He told us before he “left office” that our story was just beginning.

Then he began acting in ways that no other former president has.

I hope that he is right about Trump still being in control. I don’t know about that, as I don’t see any actual evidence of it at the moment. Nor does the 12D Chess theory align particularly well with what we saw in action during the first Trump term. What I do see, however, is plenty of evidence that Biden is not in control, Harris is not in control, and all of the foreign leaders know that the fake administration is not calling any shots.

It’s pretty obvious that the USA is presently under some form of interregnum, although whether it is legal or not from a Constitutional perspective, I have no idea. Nor am I convinced that it is the US military, in the form of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who are calling the shots. I simply don’t know. And that’s fine; it’s not as if the average farmer on the Italian Peninsula had any idea who was making decisions in Rome while Caesar and the Senate were at war either.

Just remember, the one thing we absolutely know to be false is what the mainstream media declares to be true, which is in this case is that Joe Biden is the duly elected President of the United States. He obviously wasn’t elected and he clearly isn’t presiding.

But I’m certainly curious to see what comes next.

This diplomatic gesture has the potential to mark a major turning point in the Middle East, if Russia is able to intervene and impose a resolution a second time after repeated US failures:

If even half the information contained in this portrait of President Trump and his generals is true, we cannot escape two conclusions. First, Trump never had what it took to cross the Rubicon. Second, both China and Russia will destroy the US military in the next major conflict. Forget Afghanistan. Forget Iran. Forget the Mexican cartels. These inept so-called generals are capable of losing a war to Canadian lumberjacks armed with axes:

Trump had come to rue the August 2017 speech in which he had announced a new troop surge into Afghanistan. He thoroughly resented Mattis, McMaster and the others who had urged him to adopt a strategy that he considered a waste of time, money, and more American lives.

McMaster was replaced in March 2018 and Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton, was a notorious advocate for U.S. military interventionism. But even he believed the generals had pushed their luck too far. That became clear when on Dec. 19, 2018, Trump tweeted out a video claiming victory over ISIS and announcing the unilateral withdrawal of all U.S. troops in Syria, another campaign promise he was itching to fulfill.

That move set off a firestorm in Congress and in the media, and led to Mattis’ resignation the following day. Mattis thought Trump had contemptuously abandoned America’s allies, and he said so with diplomatic understatement in his resignation letter. And yet for all the drama, Trump’s demands would again be stifled.

Bolton credits Trump’s visit to Al Asad Air Base in Iraq on Dec. 26, 2018, his first overseas trip to a combat zone, as the single most important moment in preserving the U.S. presence in Syria. Generals there told Trump that the ISIS caliphate could be finished off in two to four weeks, and — at Bolton’s urging — stressed the importance of retaining an outpost in southern Syria to deter Iran.

It took far longer — until late March 2019 — to destroy the caliphate. By that time, Pentagon leaders had convinced Trump that the U.S. would need to contribute troops to an internationally monitored buffer zone in northern Syria to prevent Turkey from launching an offensive against Kurdish fighters who had assisted in the war against ISIS. The drawdown was delayed.

Trump would grow more and more frustrated. He had become convinced that the Pentagon was working against him, boxing him into staying in countries that he broadly viewed as terrorist-filled gas stations in a desert.

He would rant about “deep state” subversion, but those talking him out of his instincts were mostly people that he himself had appointed.

Seven months later, Trump again ordered U.S. troops to withdraw from northern Syria, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan notified him that he would be launching a military offensive against the Kurds.

Again, the move set off a public frenzy, and again, Trump was ultimately convinced to leave behind a residual force — this time in eastern Syria, ostensibly to protect Kurdish-controlled oil fields from ISIS. 

Hawks like Graham cynically used this argument — “stay there to protect the oil” — to convince Trump to keep forces in Syria. They were playing to Trump’s long-held view that the U.S. should have taken the oil from Iraq after the 2003 invasion to subsidize the war effort. That would have breached international law. 

But they knew that transactional arguments were more likely to resonate with Trump than human rights arguments about the plight of the Kurds or the fate of Afghan women. So they talked about the oil.

As passionately as Trump apparently felt about pulling America out of the Middle East and Afghanistan, he avoided giving an order to force the military’s hand.

Row of military stars to separate the story into pieces

When it came down to it, Trump was indecisive. In the view of top officials, he did not seem to want to own the consequences of a precipitous withdrawal.

This allowed the Pentagon to dismiss his tweets and rants and maintain the status quo. 

The good news is that it is clear an armed US population clearly has absolutely nothing to fear from the US military being turned against them. These perfumed pansies aren’t warriors. No wonder they’re perfectly happy filling the ranks with dancing boys, self-gelded eunuchs, and tattooed lesbians.

The latest developments in the Sino-Iranian alliance appears to mark a significant change in the Middle Kingdom’s military policy:

Beijing is preparing to transfer 5,000 Chinese troops to Iran to guard its $400bn investment in the country over the next 25 years. Military engineers are prospecting sites for their bases. This deployment was covered in the investment-cum-strategic accord signed in Tehran on March 27 by visiting Chinese FM Wang Yi and his Iranian counterpart Mohammed Javad Zarif.

Gulf and the Western intelligence sources report that this substantial Chinese military presence in Iran, the first in the Gulf region, will mark out the formation of a strategic axis linking China, Iran and Pakistan, two of which are nuclear powers. It will add another section to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project underway in Pakistan, as part of Beijing’s $8 trillion Border and Road Initiative projects for spanning Asia and Europe. The CPEC is to provide a safe passage and a shorter route for Iranian oil, gas and petrochemicals, sold at cut-rate prices, to reach China.

The 5,000 Chinese troops to be posted in Iran, DEBKAfile sources reveal, will join the rarely noticed presence of 10,000 Chinese military personnel in the east African port of Djibouti,, so topping up Beijing’s military strength athwart more than one sensitive corner of the Middle East to 15,000 troops.

The locations of the new Chinese bases in Iran are still under discussion. One is likely to be a seaport – either on Iran’s Gulf coast or at Chabahar, an outlet to the Gulf of Oman where the Revolutionary Guards Crops navy maintains a large installation. This location would strengthen the Iran-China-Pakistan connection. Also under discussion is a site close to Iran’s key nuclear facilities, which would seriously complicate any Israeli plan for an air strike against its nuclear program.

Despite or perhaps because of its size, China has never been an expansionary power. However, it appears that the Chinese have learned from their very unfair treatment by the British, Japanese, Soviet, and US empires that one is either the invaded or the invader.

This closer alliance with Iran may be particularly significant in light of Xi’s initial rejection of the great leap to China by the diasporans now in the United States, and as Debka notes, the presence of Chinese military bases in Iran will likely complicate future attempts by Israel to suppress Iran’s growing military power. The Israelis may rapidly come to regret the abuse of US military power over the last thirty years by the neoclowns.

It does not appear there will be lasting peace in the Middle East any time soon. And there is very little that the US can do about the way its lesser enemies are turning to China for protection.

If you weren’t inclined to believe everything that Baghdad Bob said about the great victories of the Iraqi military, you shouldn’t be stupid enough to take Jerusalem Joe at his word either. While more than a few philo-IDFites have swallowed the “we totally meant to do that” line of the announced ground invasion that wasn’t, and exulted in the “brilliance” of total destruction of Hamas’s elite forces though a press release, I was more than a little skeptical of US media Jews reporting on the astonishing cleverness of Israeli military Jews in outwitting a group of unsuspecting gentiles, who were totally defeated by little more than deceitful words.

Let’s just say the narrative struck me as a little bit… familiar. Also, the idea that enemy troops on the ground – indeed, underground – were completely destroyed by artillery and air strikes tends to be one that lasts right up until the moment that the ground troops actually go in. Let’s just say “no one could have survived that” is a concept that has been repeatedly disproven everywhere from Normandy to the South Pacific.

The Israeli military apparently used a brilliant deceptive maneuver to take out Hamas’s terrorist fighting force and underground tunnels — in a single blow.

In what could only be described as killing two birds with one stone, the Israel Defense Forces on Thursday night told news reporters that the Israeli ground forces were on their way to Hamas-held Gaza.

The news spread quickly through the mainstream media and affiliated social media accounts. Believing an Israeli ground invasion to be imminent, Hamas ordered its terrorist fighters to seek shelter in the tunnel network dug up under the Gaza city.

What followed the Hamas mobilization was a massive wave of Israeli airstrikes — comprising of 160 aircraft — on the Gaza tunnel network with the jihadi group’s top terror brass sitting underground, right where the IDF wanted them.

The fact that the failure of this “brilliant deceptive maneuver” was going to be apparent as soon as the next round of rockets were launched doesn’t seem to have occurred to any of the idiots who didn’t hesitate to celebrate Israel’s total victory through extreme cleverness by applied average 115 IQ. And indeed, while more sober and experienced Israeli sources dutifully stuck by the official “ruse” report, they were considerably less convinced about its results.

An IDF ruse was behind the “embarrassing leak” to world media on Thursday night, May 13, reporting the start of an IDF ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, It was denied early Friday morning and explained by an “internal communication problem.” DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal that this false story was in fact planted deliberately to bring Hamas elite forces out of their bunkers to confront the “invaders” – whereupon they were to be clobbered by Israeli warplanes. How far this trick worked has not been disclosed. A similar subterfuge was tried 13 years ago – in reverse. On Dec. 27, 2008, IDF sources leaked to world media that the military had been ordered to refrain from responding with ground action to a past Hamas rocket barrage, Its commanders were taken in and staged a police school graduation parade in Gaza in the open. They were bombed by Israeli jets.

For now, the IDF has not given up on a ground operation inside Gaza. Whenever it goes forward, it is planned to be a fast in-and-out raid for well-defined targets before pulling back. Up until Friday, May 14, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had exhausted no more than a quarter of their rocket stocks, dozens dropping short inside the enclave. The bulk, however, remained out of reach of Israeli air strikes, tucked away deep inside underground stores. Destroying this stockpile would be the main target of any Israeli ground operation.

Hamas has also kept its elite Izz e-din Al Qassam battalion safe and whole by dispersing its members among well-fortified bunkers, designed to withstand both aerial and ground assaults. In contrast, around half of the 15 ordinary units, split into four regional brigades, have been knocked out of action.

So, neither the leadership nor the elite were knocked out by the stunning ruse after all? What’s the real story? We don’t know yet, but we do know that the pace of the rocket launches by Hamas doesn’t appear to have slowed considerably, which tends to indicate that the Jerusalem Joe narrative was a false one.

For the fifth night running, Hamas and Islamic Jihad spread a barrage of some 190 rockets over large parts of Israel. 

Personally, I think it’s much more likely that someone in the IDF media department screwed up in the erroneous belief that the planned ground invasion had begun, but rather than simply admit the embarrassing mistake to the world press, they decided to sell it as intentional in order to support the increasingly creaky narrative of the invincible IDF, which took a serious hit in the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

In any event, remember that the only thing we can be absolutely sure did NOT happen is whatever the mainstream media is reporting.

UPDATE: Ahem….

Israel Defense Forces say false Gaza invasion report to foreign media was ‘mistake’ and not manipulation to lure Hamas into trap.