tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819171679782646832024-03-18T20:49:18.717-07:00MilPubFDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comBlogger1011125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-79029626999417212742023-02-04T13:14:00.005-08:002023-02-16T14:27:25.227-08:00Gasbags<p> So I'm kind of intrigued by this whole <i>"eeeeeevil tricksy Chinese spy balloon"</i> thing.</p><p>Apparently the Chinese are having a hoot with it, too:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3CefFUj-MDsDLdc5P2zSl8XfJIygG8mtCtN3Ay0N9ffQOzV5dqCisbJ5yB7EEAJmDeT9LypssHWVnKQN4pJWxsIcZw0n2Jk_iZlng4hFHJ-e_tXwKiGTi43pOVbdkBRkAbQqdY96i21jjAT6Hrm6ZGlPYJHQEEFNuxfULZh57Z1t93p3XV9VC6HIG/s1273/Chinese%20balloon%20cartoon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1273" data-original-width="1080" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3CefFUj-MDsDLdc5P2zSl8XfJIygG8mtCtN3Ay0N9ffQOzV5dqCisbJ5yB7EEAJmDeT9LypssHWVnKQN4pJWxsIcZw0n2Jk_iZlng4hFHJ-e_tXwKiGTi43pOVbdkBRkAbQqdY96i21jjAT6Hrm6ZGlPYJHQEEFNuxfULZh57Z1t93p3XV9VC6HIG/w334-h395/Chinese%20balloon%20cartoon.jpg" width="334" /></a></div><p>I mean...I guess it seems deeply weird. The oldest "reconnaissance overflight" thing in the world seems to be "when you see the enemy hide under a bush".</p><p>How hard would it be to hide from this party favor?</p><p>The PRC obviously knows that the U.S., a hugely militarized nation bristling with surveillance gadgets would track this. Was it some sort of way of drawing aerial surveillance fire? Getting the U.S. to give away it's ability to track, umm...a big fat slow moving object?</p><p>And the PRC obviously has reconnaissance satellites, too - possibly not as sexy as the USAF/Spaceies have - and those are perfectly capable of looking down at the continental U.S.</p><p>Like I say...the whole thing just seems truly, deeply weird. I'd love to know what the fuck this goofy thing is and what it's supposed to do. Is it just stupid? Or, as my old drill sergeant used to say, if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid.<br /></p><p>And speaking of deeply weird and stupid, this is the Republican U.S. Senator from Ohio, J.D. Vance...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqRNBYnMJMTnktgyZXrUbuQVUAlQm-7NU2zU6156GSIJ2WQ6mVh4VEbbFou6sZHrMcdh7fSDemVVL5ThUk_iUAXTWty-veasV587NNP9oZ7un5RJNmxCv-pveCGfgcF0DjJ0aweS99A3jvTzgEM0BMWBtOtykg_ZLFbCHmRgN-cr63ilh3BNxtb5dv/s900/Vance%20the%20Dumb%20Fucker.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="675" height="399" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqRNBYnMJMTnktgyZXrUbuQVUAlQm-7NU2zU6156GSIJ2WQ6mVh4VEbbFou6sZHrMcdh7fSDemVVL5ThUk_iUAXTWty-veasV587NNP9oZ7un5RJNmxCv-pveCGfgcF0DjJ0aweS99A3jvTzgEM0BMWBtOtykg_ZLFbCHmRgN-cr63ilh3BNxtb5dv/w299-h399/Vance%20the%20Dumb%20Fucker.jpg" width="299" /></a></div><p>...apparently guarding his woodpile from a Chinese balloon that is floating at something like 9 or 10 kilometers of altitude with an AR-15 knockoff that has a maximum effective (horizontal!) range of about 400 meters.</p><p>Don't look at me. I sure as hell didn't vote for this nimrod.</p><p><b>Update 2/4/22:</b> Andy (in the comments) suggests this gasbag was basically a SIGINT thing...which sounds as reasonable as anything else. Kinda hard to go completely radio silence for the whole time this birthday party favor floats by, but who knows? </p><p>Apparently this is a sort of thing; several more of these rascals over <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/05/politics/chinese-spy-balloons-trump-administration/index.html">flew over</a> the Trumpies' heads, too, but (I suspect) the biznay was kept on the downlow so Donnie didn't look like he was being cucked by his pal Xi.</p><p>Anyway...just kind of funny and kinda cool that here we are - flying faster and higher than anyone in the 18th Century could have imagined - but the Montgolfier Bros tech still works.</p><p><b>Update 2/16:</b> Wins the Internet for today:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu2s692l2skyWr_z0EnGjvhEn6DA0eScsSPF0tpftB6AdL3LnDC-m44xPstI9Lq1r_74Pv4woBjSS0fMuq-zCqVp1eftHFdg0WrIakQA7J31JXmfW2ilBAkhQQr-JRrVP7WdIJznQWDBZaktyFbo9xDwkSEumo6FUO7Ctc10dRmZK-584chME1A2lS/s704/Balloon%20Wars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="704" data-original-width="598" height="530" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu2s692l2skyWr_z0EnGjvhEn6DA0eScsSPF0tpftB6AdL3LnDC-m44xPstI9Lq1r_74Pv4woBjSS0fMuq-zCqVp1eftHFdg0WrIakQA7J31JXmfW2ilBAkhQQr-JRrVP7WdIJznQWDBZaktyFbo9xDwkSEumo6FUO7Ctc10dRmZK-584chME1A2lS/w451-h530/Balloon%20Wars.jpg" width="451" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-40031735740350070102022-12-30T20:40:00.004-08:002022-12-30T20:40:37.029-08:00Last Call<p> I think it's time to officially turn out the lights.</p><p>Unless there's any demand from whatever remains of the readership - and since we (well, I, since there is effectively no one left here other than me) haven't posted since April my guess is that's not much - to continue I think I'll see if I can delete this blog altogether. </p><p>It's painful to see it just drifting here, there's nobody but me writing here, and if you want to hear from me you can stroll over to my personal blog <a href="http://firedirectioncenter.blogspot.com/">Graphic Firing Table</a>, where I still post about military affairs occasionally.</p><p>So.</p><p>Time, please. <br /></p><p>Drink up, folks. It's...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzmu_1l0NkXc2UparKpRk0dY7nII9xjqxS8Ntr-E77ip9otDryELVgaYkqlIRGYzrSLI8-BMWBTTja8_y2Ws23ULMisdMWyJ0IUT1F2hzfSiYsb-ZKRfdp5QFmGzHq0XJGGEJABlI65akz7WJcixiZ_UUcWdQFjwvjD6EbmoBJ7aAxQfihYHBB035o/s499/Closing%20time.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="264" data-original-width="499" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzmu_1l0NkXc2UparKpRk0dY7nII9xjqxS8Ntr-E77ip9otDryELVgaYkqlIRGYzrSLI8-BMWBTTja8_y2Ws23ULMisdMWyJ0IUT1F2hzfSiYsb-ZKRfdp5QFmGzHq0XJGGEJABlI65akz7WJcixiZ_UUcWdQFjwvjD6EbmoBJ7aAxQfihYHBB035o/w479-h253/Closing%20time.jpg" width="479" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-90748724329725101962022-04-16T06:55:00.007-07:002022-04-16T18:42:15.626-07:00Naval makeover! (cruiser-to-submarine)<p> The cruiser <span lang="ru"><i>Москва</i> has </span>passed on. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifEIgpl3qVxt9v7SHNnvtrNqjUg6A4zBu6NZiWtAgrRJljd-s0pmnzeyBMOSxxPdhn1Ix7mCGwgW5bLaq_65qmK-yBmfaxllKBJBA2UA15FNT3T6ktv40CnSmJulvOLL_z68tIeHDEnVR5EmDklQJFbz_5k7FTaui5o3u6W_jne7SlwolvY88/s1080/Mockba.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="636" data-original-width="1080" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifEIgpl3qVxt9v7SHNnvtrNqjUg6A4zBu6NZiWtAgrRJljd-s0pmnzeyBMOSxxPdhn1Ix7mCGwgW5bLaq_65qmK-yBmfaxllKBJBA2UA15FNT3T6ktv40CnSmJulvOLL_z68tIeHDEnVR5EmDklQJFbz_5k7FTaui5o3u6W_jne7SlwolvY88/w395-h232/Mockba.jpg" width="395" /></a></div><br />He is no more. <p></p><p><i>(Russian naval vessels are by tradition "he's" rather than the "she's" of English or American sailor tradition) </i></p><p>He has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet his
maker. Bereft of life, he rests in peace, has shuffled off his mortal coil, rung down the curtain
and joined the choir invisible.</p><p>Okay. <br /></p><p>Rule
#1 of war is "Shit happens", and the fact that this vessel is now full
of water is not in itself either shocking or particularly interesting. </p><p></p><blockquote><p>If
one was in a snarky mood one might make the same sort of observation
Bismarck might have made about continental powers like Germany or Russia
wanting (let alone "needing") large capital ships: <i>"...the <u>fuck</u>?" </i>(only in the original German, of course...). </p><p><i>If</i> one was in a snarky mood.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>To me there <i>are</i> two interesting parts about this, though.</p><p>The
first is that the Russian official line is that the cruiser was lost
"under tow in heavy seas after an internal ammunition explosion". </p><p>Not
because nasty enemy missiles turned him into a flaming pyre, no, no!
Just your basic head-on-collision-twenty-car pileup of fucked-up
munitions handling and/or storage, piss-poor damage control, and
incompetent seamanship.</p><p>I kind of get the dictator-grade level of
"not wanting to admit that your enemy hurt you" propaganda. But to want
to make the story "our sailors are lethally incompetent" seems...a bit
louche' at best. Tell me...how does that make things in your navy
sound...<i>better?</i><br /></p><p>Now, that said; damage control at sea
is goddamn hard. It requires constant, repetitive, realistic training
led by good petty officers and planned and overseen by competent and
demanding officers.</p><p>Even the best navies have their bad days; we saw that back in 2015 when we talked about <a href="http://www.shippai.org/fkd/en/cfen/CB1011023.html">the loss of HIJMS <i>Taiho</i></a> during the <a href="https://firedirectioncenter.blogspot.com/2015/09/decisive-battles-philippine-sea-1944.html">Battle of the Philippine Sea</a>. </p><p>The <span title="Japanese-language text"><span lang="ja">日本海軍</span></span> <i>Nippon Kaigun - </i>the
Imperial Japanese Navy - was one of the best-led (at the tactical
level, at least...) and best-trained in the world in 1944. But that
didn't prevent the sinking of one of their newest carriers because of
poor damage control after a single torpedo strike.<br /></p><p>On the other end of the military scale, though? Damage
control is one of those massive-training-fail issues that seems to be endemic
in "gangster" military organizations. Think Idi Amin's or Saddam's
"armies" if you want a model. </p><p>If nothing else this Russo-Ukrainian War has done a pretty good job of throwing a nastily
bright light on exactly how fucking brutally bad the Russian armed services are. As bad as the Ugandans or the Iraqis. <br /></p><p>Turns
out that when your national model is "kleptocracy" your national military is just
about as good as you'd expect based on that. </p><p>When your soldiers
and sailors are "led" by people - from petty officers and NCOs through
general officers to their political masters - whose whole mode of
thought is <i>"steal what you can, neglect what you can't, and lie about everything to everyone both above and below you"</i>
and those troops are either not trained for shit (or completely
untrained) and their "leaders" are often incompetent, either because the
system is designed to ensure the leaders are piss-poor, or unable to
demand they aren't, to find that the entire organization those soldiers
and sailors are part of ends up being criminally incompetent at the
difficult business of war, including the difficult task of naval damage
control, should hardly be shocking.</p><p>If you choose shitty crooks to "lead" you, you shouldn't be shocked when they "lead" you into shitty crookedness. </p><p>Which leads me back from the shores of Ukraine to the shores of North America.<br /></p><p>Because you'd <i>think</i>
that this sort of military clusterfuckery would be a cautionary tale
for those of us here on the sidelines in the United States about the
whole business of being all enthusiastic for dictators because, say,
they hate homosexuals and you do, too. That getting your dream of
"leaders" hating on liberal soy-boys and darkies and uppity women isn't
worth the sort of incompetent "leadership" that ends up getting your
sailors killed and their capital ships sunk. </p><p>Even for the most foaming-mouthed-rabid MAGAt groupies of Tubby and his crooked little weasel pals.</p><p>But, no.</p><p>They won't believe that.</p><p>Ever.</p><p>And that's a problem, a problem deeper than the bottom of the Black Sea, where the <span lang="ru"><i>Москва </i>now rests.</span></p><p><span lang="ru"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span lang="ru"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNEd7_SN0FvP07D0n6huUyxbwMRWz8I38USc-zqq3fx5bCf1xWFjmHq3nJtGp1EZNsCcKJoHjNuKsh7Ow5C2G_RxFbFzTXHqcsEU-SVX-OQqG1UwkjLzQS4KYo_IkAQ01bD5wchhQO6juuuUbAjXVO1uSD4Rga4cQHF_PrIPFMv8YFAqHD_NDKBMzg/s1024/Stamp_of_Ukraine_s1985-1024x750.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1024" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNEd7_SN0FvP07D0n6huUyxbwMRWz8I38USc-zqq3fx5bCf1xWFjmHq3nJtGp1EZNsCcKJoHjNuKsh7Ow5C2G_RxFbFzTXHqcsEU-SVX-OQqG1UwkjLzQS4KYo_IkAQ01bD5wchhQO6juuuUbAjXVO1uSD4Rga4cQHF_PrIPFMv8YFAqHD_NDKBMzg/w417-h305/Stamp_of_Ukraine_s1985-1024x750.jpg" width="417" /></a></span></div><span lang="ru"><br /> </span><p></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-891081188102256952022-03-20T17:56:00.006-07:002022-03-21T10:51:13.911-07:00Lessons learned in blood and fire<p>I've been kicking this around for a while, and wanted to get it down before I wander away from it.</p><p>What have we learned from what's been happening in Eastern Europe over the past month or so?</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEid6OalVIdvkhwL7wntX_ZiBvJI49_Dt_Lhx6xpMYfiyuyUpqdEOazYmJnUtWv2U3App1JPFBzUNg0RCvpnPoVPuOD6hKHE4AbVRF6JFYVqwZ9OoAYR7CLb-D9-b8VUzabwfPY9tmZSAPfv3myS9ut0f1bz0TuSrhgWvW4-XBJvdSlAEaI582o=s511" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="511" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEid6OalVIdvkhwL7wntX_ZiBvJI49_Dt_Lhx6xpMYfiyuyUpqdEOazYmJnUtWv2U3App1JPFBzUNg0RCvpnPoVPuOD6hKHE4AbVRF6JFYVqwZ9OoAYR7CLb-D9-b8VUzabwfPY9tmZSAPfv3myS9ut0f1bz0TuSrhgWvW4-XBJvdSlAEaI582o=w436-h245" width="436" /></a></div> <b><br />1. Thucydides is still correct: the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.</b><p></p><p>We
like to think, we pampered wealthy white Americans, that there is a
"justice" that transcends simple brute force. If we're Christian we like
to think that there's a "God" (and his kid) who cares about people and
sort of wants them to do justly and love mercy.</p><p>And then comes something like Ukraine, where the ugly reality is impossible to hide.</p><p>So
no. There's no arc of history that bends towards justice. If people
want justice, they need to defend it, by force at times, with their
lives if they must.</p><p>That lesson is bolded by the actions of Russia
in Ukraine. But it should resonate with us here, since we have
steadfastly refused to take action against <a href="https://firedirectioncenter.blogspot.com/search/label/Malheur%20morons">those who have already attempted</a>
once to use force to "do what they can" thinking that they were the
strong and we are the weak. If we do not, then we ARE the weak, and they
will do with us what they can.</p><p>Putin isn't the only leader of authoritarian goons in the northern hemisphere. <br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEixgq80f7Pot2VfXqrxYIqXKRFQVS1_HslprxTG9Y_Q8D9Gqoqx6izFRIl7DKE0gQBpD1MEBENFkQAySSL2joW20nt0QH-_IgCajpn8zM9stk-fr2W1FGfMtMhiJmm1EYpSlNDLq0nAMUMFiuVTOC9h7Yn4DnbbRoQOxD7nkIIitiqhN6qeyCo=s640" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="419" data-original-width="640" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEixgq80f7Pot2VfXqrxYIqXKRFQVS1_HslprxTG9Y_Q8D9Gqoqx6izFRIl7DKE0gQBpD1MEBENFkQAySSL2joW20nt0QH-_IgCajpn8zM9stk-fr2W1FGfMtMhiJmm1EYpSlNDLq0nAMUMFiuVTOC9h7Yn4DnbbRoQOxD7nkIIitiqhN6qeyCo=w399-h262" width="399" /></a></div><br /><b>2. When someone tells you what they are, believe them.</b><p></p><p>Vladimir Putin has said one thing consistently since <i>loooong</i>
before he was Donald Trump's mancrush; that the devolution of the USSR
was the Worst Thing EVAH and that if he could he would get the band back
together.</p><p>Well, because the successor state to the Soviet Union
looked like a shitshow and its' dictator seemed full of shit like many
other dictators, a lot of us got complacent about how serious he was.</p><p>Ask the resident of Kyiv how serious.</p><p>If
I was a Latvian or and Estonian right now I'd be hugging everyone who
insisted that the Baltics scurry into NATO as soon as the <span title="Russian-language text"><span lang="ru">Сове́тский флаг came down.</span></span></p><p><span title="Russian-language text"><span lang="ru">Now
the NATO countries - including the U.S. - need to accept that those
former Soviet republics are all on Putin's list. That means taking
Article 5 seriously. Is Riga worth Manhattan? We might find out sooner
than we like, because...</span></span></p><p><span title="Russian-language text"><span lang="ru"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgDtMYmrx1gqPKdaG3Qe53NaJnyOsCqQPUntq5C2FKBXwdkSMKlK2M47M20vT85H5A3vkrfsWWQEkto6JAkVkoMhbXgEiA-Ha0-kmF_8A2IbEZYY8JmxOPT_Vv8grmIH3iSlYEA-cBkJE0KaIwis61iXLi8gKdw7YTw9TWdbrpXpL6vZj9CYaU=s870" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="489" data-original-width="870" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgDtMYmrx1gqPKdaG3Qe53NaJnyOsCqQPUntq5C2FKBXwdkSMKlK2M47M20vT85H5A3vkrfsWWQEkto6JAkVkoMhbXgEiA-Ha0-kmF_8A2IbEZYY8JmxOPT_Vv8grmIH3iSlYEA-cBkJE0KaIwis61iXLi8gKdw7YTw9TWdbrpXpL6vZj9CYaU=w455-h256" width="455" /></a></div> <br /><b>3. The Russian military is proving what a bad fucking idea personal autocracy is.</b><p></p><p><span title="Russian-language text"><span lang="ru">We
in the Western militaries listened to and, often, believed the tales
the Russian media and government told about the modernization and
professionalization they'd done with the successor to the old Soviet Red
Army.</span></span></p><p><span title="Russian-language text"><span lang="ru">I'm not sure if they were fooling us, or themselves, or both, but boy fucking howdy were they full of shit.</span></span></p><p><span title="Russian-language text"><span lang="ru">Turns out that the Russian conventional forces are bad. Reeeeally bad. "Iraqi Army" bad.</span></span></p><p><span title="Russian-language text"><span lang="ru">It's
hard to imagine that Putin kicked off this war knowing that Saddam's
Republican Guard made his regulars look like an anime goon squad. So I
suspect he's been fed the diet of bullshit and flattery that people who
can kill you whenever they please tend to get. His military advisors
told him what he wanted to hear, not what he needed to hear.</span></span></p><p></p><blockquote><i>"Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude,
dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they
foster idiocy."</i> ~ Jorge Luis Borges</blockquote><p></p><p><span title="Russian-language text"><span lang="ru">But
the bottom line is that modern warfare is goddamned hard to do, and the
Russians are no better at it than you'd think given the open
kleptocracy and brutal autocracy that permeates Russia the country.<br /></span></span></p><p><span title="Russian-language text"><span lang="ru">That's...actually kind of a Bad Thing for us as well as for them.</span></span></p><p><span title="Russian-language text"><span lang="ru">Because if the Russian armed forces would get waxed in the first 48 hours of combat with a Western military?<br /></span></span></p><p>All Putin has to swing is his nukes.</p><p>And that should worry all of us at least a little bit.</p><p><b>Update 3/21:</b> Someone named "Kamil Galeev" has <a href="https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1502703937471881223">an interesting thread</a> discussing one of the main reasons that the Russian ground force is so damn bad; <i>it's designed that way</i>. It's a feature, not a bug. Long read but worth a look to think about why a putative Great Power would want to handicap its military in the way we've seen in Ukraine.<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg8ij3byJomNOWl-GycgDFIjuQttXSN8ItEVZa9rE-nTiNQfngOXouRbwHuLvPe5HFcMjYi_RpS9xhdICHoHSKxeRqNomKvf6eOAa53uOSqdi1FROjfwKX93qsMoZTgQcscsH0YCxPdhbAX7ByxWigtOfsaxQnq9HE7xM40-ZaHBgiYQOtWr9s=s1090" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1090" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg8ij3byJomNOWl-GycgDFIjuQttXSN8ItEVZa9rE-nTiNQfngOXouRbwHuLvPe5HFcMjYi_RpS9xhdICHoHSKxeRqNomKvf6eOAa53uOSqdi1FROjfwKX93qsMoZTgQcscsH0YCxPdhbAX7ByxWigtOfsaxQnq9HE7xM40-ZaHBgiYQOtWr9s=w415-h305" width="415" /></a></div><br /><b>4. Smedley Butler is still right, too; war was a racket and still is.</b><p></p><p>No
matter the outcome in Ukraine, everyone involved is likely to be the
worse for it. Obviously the dead, but those wounded, or homeless, the
refugees, the prisoners, those impoverished by war or sanctions or
economic collapse. Those who have lost family, friends. The citizens of
Russia's "near abroad", who must now fear that success in Ukraine will
make them next in line for death and mayhem.</p><p>Of course, the
Russian leadership is likely to be insulated from all that. War
"leaders" -unless they make the mistake of losing war and being
captured by the victors - are seldom punished, no more than the
"leaders" here that committed the identical war crime of waging
aggressive war in 2003 were punished. </p><p>It's always the "ordinary"
people who suffer when the Great and the Good amongst us choose to use
force to get - or try and get - what they want.</p><p>So, like most rackets, it's the bosses that profit and the footsoldiers - military and civilian - that die.</p><p>I wish I had a happier conclusion.</p>But,
just like Ukraine today, there is no lightness; only ruin and hatred,
the strong doing what they can and the weak, well, suffering.FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-88794318803366901402022-02-20T16:37:00.018-08:002022-02-26T09:35:12.380-08:00The lights are going out...<p> It appears that it's extremely likely that there will be <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/20/politics/us-intel/index.html">war in Eastern Europe</a> for the first time since 1944. While there is obviously no "legal" grounds for Russia's decision, it appears that the Russian leadership has decided that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. It seems clear that Moscow has decided that to use the mere threat of force to win political gain will not achieve their political aims.<br /></p><p>How - or if - the rest of Europe, and the world, responds will have a great deal to do with the way this plays out<br /></p><p>Consider this an open thread to discuss.</p><p><b>Update 2/21:</b> Fred Kaplan <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/02/why-putin-held-off-ukraine-invasion.html">has some ideas</a> about why the attack didn't happen Sunday.</p><p>Interesting political note; in case you're wondering why the response from the U.S. Right seems so peculiar, consider that while Putin polls at about 75% negative amongst self-identified Republicans, Biden polls at minus-90%.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgiyawVjgqR7GYBYimjyCBShWVywZJqA3SXHGIowjgonoaJUFzJs4N0L8naw4Oo5eS6hSZ43Skem7MQFKW9RBGq_Mu7wbV5XAk7ZZQUTHGEhk5jkmzkkPANUjrZjgGcRiFK8U28PvWwe1N3nDuZVXHkHz_F1wqgZ3rJpPohZWM3U1xask2N9aZACZK3=s1024" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgiyawVjgqR7GYBYimjyCBShWVywZJqA3SXHGIowjgonoaJUFzJs4N0L8naw4Oo5eS6hSZ43Skem7MQFKW9RBGq_Mu7wbV5XAk7ZZQUTHGEhk5jkmzkkPANUjrZjgGcRiFK8U28PvWwe1N3nDuZVXHkHz_F1wqgZ3rJpPohZWM3U1xask2N9aZACZK3=s320" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>Hmmm.</p><p><b>Update 2/21pm:</b> Max Seddon (Financial Times Moscow bureau chief) <a href="https://twitter.com/maxseddon">live-tweeting</a> Putin's speech:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgzAK4yMxpY_X81-VKe9rWOWoijLEviKZZlhdTgcc3JRIdwUz1wovRLgpPN-SBoKBYdaB7Kvpd9ZIxf8s7qYRtrYL4fOavRWlQOAMbBYLjxujc1eBDDuNs8Wge6ttxjKVeqA_BJEzPJq2Kox3H-BIzEbrlGAioL97jbRNzXXdfbSVdOV0-dUvqbmlgd=s603" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="317" data-original-width="603" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgzAK4yMxpY_X81-VKe9rWOWoijLEviKZZlhdTgcc3JRIdwUz1wovRLgpPN-SBoKBYdaB7Kvpd9ZIxf8s7qYRtrYL4fOavRWlQOAMbBYLjxujc1eBDDuNs8Wge6ttxjKVeqA_BJEzPJq2Kox3H-BIzEbrlGAioL97jbRNzXXdfbSVdOV0-dUvqbmlgd=w450-h236" width="450" /></a></div><p>Not promising. Worth a scan of the whole thing; sounds like Putin is taking his "I alone can fix Russia by making it the old USSR again!" for a long walk.</p><p><b>Update 2/21 p.m.:</b> I'm reading that Russian maneuver forces are moving into the two eastern oblasts, and particularly towards the city of Donetsk. This is consistent with Putin's speech identifying the eastern regions as part of Russia. Presumably these will complete the takeover of the entire Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts from the Ukraine government.<br /></p><p>The real crux of the biscuit will be if the forces along the southern border of Belarus strike towards Kyiv. The distance between the border and the Ukraine capital is relatively short, and the lure for Putin and the Russian Army leadership of a "decapitation strike" must be very strong...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi14-0NoCTBJJjOE8UsC8paUDatb0sPavXMbU7eJRbVT-SVoR9J0i_ZyLrS_Taq5jbC2yOG6A9tGUXvuc2FBym5Z6oA_9raLgrzPp5aeO0Br5H3bENzfrFdMb0QZvZWe6gOqkSErlX-B6pF6Ep0x2VPPJsl02GCKU3dbeNkU5pa7gkwGtd00Ze2fET2=s1600" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="901" data-original-width="1600" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi14-0NoCTBJJjOE8UsC8paUDatb0sPavXMbU7eJRbVT-SVoR9J0i_ZyLrS_Taq5jbC2yOG6A9tGUXvuc2FBym5Z6oA_9raLgrzPp5aeO0Br5H3bENzfrFdMb0QZvZWe6gOqkSErlX-B6pF6Ep0x2VPPJsl02GCKU3dbeNkU5pa7gkwGtd00Ze2fET2=w550-h310" width="550" /></a></div><br /><p><b>Update 2/24:</b> It now appears that Putin's goal is full-on
subjugation of Ukraine. </p><p>I'm not sure if this will involve prolonged
Russian occupation; if Putin doesn't, I'll bet his military chiefs
remember both the Chechen and Afghan nightmares as well as the post-WW2
Ukrainian resistance. But the actual conquest is pretty much guaranteed;
the relative strengths of the two militaries all but ensures that T-90s
will be parked in the Maidan fairly soon.<br /></p><p>My guess is that after a brief occupation and <i>ratissage</i>
of Ukrainian nationalists the Russians will leave behind a Quisling
government including a mini-KGB/FSB and antipartisan militia to hunt the
resistance. I could see this working at least well-enough to get by in the eastern regions.<br /></p><p>How well this will work in Ruthenia is anyone's guess. But "not so well" would be mine.<br /></p><p>Now...my
further, and more worried, question is whether the success of this move
will embolden Putin to go after his other lust-objects, the pieces of
the former USSR. </p><p>The Baltics? Georgia? One of the lessons of the fascist
1930s is that once a fascist dictator is on a roll he's often unwilling
or unable to stop himself. </p><p>For a long time I thought that Putin was too
canny to go full-on Hitler.</p><p>Now? I'm not convinced he has. </p><p>But I'm not so sure he hasn't, either.</p><p><b>And...it's worth noting</b> that if there are any "good options" here I don't see them. </p><p>Sanctions on Russia? Ask the Cuban government how well that works. Military action? Against a nuclear power run by what increasingly appears to be an aggressive dictator who DGAF? </p><p>The brutal reality that young Mr. Putin is reminding us is that in international relations the strong <i>CAN</i> do what they please and the weak <i>WILL</i> suffer what they must.</p><p>I don't have to like that and neither do you.</p><p>But that changes this atrocity not a whit.</p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><b>Update 2/25:</b> Juan Cole <a href="https://www.juancole.com/2022/02/credibility-enabled-invasion.html">observes</a>
that Dick n' Dubya's Excellent Iraqi Adventure "enabled" the Russian
invasion of Ukraine. Over here our reliable commentor Sven makes
pretty much the same point.<br /></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">I
have a fair amount of respect for Cole's opinions on the Middle East,
and Sven's opinions overall, but I think they overstate the case.</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Reassembling
the old Soviet Union has been an obsession of Putin's for as long as
I've known about Putin. I can't believe that some sort of move to
re-absorb Ukraine wasn't on his bucket list for a <i>loooong</i> time; the recent
Ukrainian move to try and become more closely integrated with its
western neighbors rather than Russia probably moved it up the list as
well as making armed force more plausible.</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></p><blockquote><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><i>(and,
while we're on the subject, who the hell would WANT to be a "Russian"
given the current conditions in Russia? Life as an American wage-slave
sucks pretty big ass. Throw in open kleptocracy for the discreet
American version along with shittier living conditions? Ugh. Our
return-to-the-Gilded-Age economy may make life pretty grinding for the
99%, but I can't see voluntarily wanting to swap that for life in the
post-Soviet Russia. There's frying pans and there's fires.)</i></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Anyway,
I agree with Cole that American foreign policy makes it harder for the
U.S. to oppose other's military fucktardry. I agree with Sven that the
U.S. and the West has done badly, both in general and in Eastern Europe.</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">But
I disagree that Putin needed any help to decide to kill Ukrainians, or
that anyone else deserves to go directly to Hell for that decision.</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">The
U.S. was wrong in Iraq, just as it's been wrong all over the world in
places like Nicaragua and Vietnam. Iraq is and was a war crime, making
aggressive war, the crime for which the victorious Allies hung Nazi
leaders. Dick and Dubya should be in jail, not enjoying a comfy elder
statesmen's retirement.</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">But that simply makes Putin just as guilty. </span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">They
all should be sharing a cell in SuperMax, and We the People of the
United States should be ashamed for letting them do otherwise.</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">To
those Russians who are trying to stop Putin...I have no words, and
doubt I have that kind of bravery. I wish I thought you could succeed. I
hate what I know will happen to you<br /></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">And I'm just sorry, sorry for this sorry world that has so much wrong in it.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhlCKwp_lP6KGCVwMA5opbhRKufoBuycRDGuFvSdrnYHwFa-OmKdgk6g0emsXgBH5LsAhQFPOI-D5nTd0HtEJO7FRHJUhpNlBkDH3n2YmJbh-7sgHjB8BvDjT_05V0Tcp9_L1yCr8n5wDxc7i1jxJujzvVEIQnNpBizrEXc9qUkI45m7bImDcQ=s2000" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1334" data-original-width="2000" height="324" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhlCKwp_lP6KGCVwMA5opbhRKufoBuycRDGuFvSdrnYHwFa-OmKdgk6g0emsXgBH5LsAhQFPOI-D5nTd0HtEJO7FRHJUhpNlBkDH3n2YmJbh-7sgHjB8BvDjT_05V0Tcp9_L1yCr8n5wDxc7i1jxJujzvVEIQnNpBizrEXc9qUkI45m7bImDcQ=w487-h324" width="487" /></a></div><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><b>Update 2/26:</b> The fighting continues in Ukraine, with the Russian forces doing surprisingly poorly (relative to the preponderance of weight-of-metal on the Russian side...). I still doubt the outcome is in play - poor or not, quantity has a quality all it's own (just hard on the people in the "quantity"...).</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">My opinion remains unchanged. As much as the U.S. has been a bad actor globally that doesn't excuse this. In the last words of the guys on Snake Island, <i>"Russian warship, go fuck yourself."</i> <br /></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Krugman has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/opinion/russia-ukraine-sanctions-offshore-accounts.html">a column</a> that makes a good point, though; for all that fingers are pointing at Putin and Russia right now, there's a mote/beam problem related to our own plutocratic/kleptocratic economies and the malefactors of great wealth therein that emphasizes the degree to which We the People have casually let the very sort of corruption endemic in Putin's Russia become less blatant but almost as endemic all over the West. </span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">That makes even economic war problematic.</span></p><p></p><blockquote><p><i>"There are two uncomfortable facts here. First, a number of
influential people, both in business and in politics, are deeply
financially enmeshed with Russian kleptocrats. This is especially true
in Britain. Second, it will be hard to go after laundered Russian money
without making life harder for all money launderers, wherever they come
from — and while Russian plutocrats may be the world champions in that
sport, they’re hardly unique: Ultrawealthy people all over the world
have money hidden in offshore accounts.</i></p><p><i>What this means is that
taking effective action against Putin’s greatest vulnerability will
require facing up to and overcoming the West’s own corruption.</i></p><p><i>Can the democratic world rise to this challenge? We’ll find out over the next few months."</i></p></blockquote><p></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Remember the "<a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/">Panama Papers</a>"? The revelation of the vast coterie of Western vulture capitalists that were thieving and cheating right alongside the cartoon Latin <i>caudillos</i>, African "strongmen", and Russian oligarchs? Remember how many of them we prosecuted, convicted, mulcted of their stolen lucre, and sent to the Crossbar Hotel?</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Yeah, me neither.</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">I'm not saying "Oh, we're just as bad as Russia, so we can't point fingers." Sure we can - we just need to be willing to point fingers at our own when they go wrong. We haven't done that. The fact that people like Dubya and Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney and a gajillion Wall Street thieves and, yes, Trump are still walking around free is living testimony to the degree we've failed.</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Putin is still a sonofabitch. <br /></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">We really need to use this occasion of naked kleptocratic criminality, though, to think hard about how much rope we want to give our <i>own</i> oligarchs.<br /></span></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-80266353735244335402021-12-10T12:21:00.002-08:002021-12-10T12:21:25.730-08:00End of an Era<p>Some eighty years ago the Battleship Era ended in a flurry of bombs and torpedoes that <a href="https://www.19fortyfive.com/2021/12/80-years-ago-today-japan-ended-the-battleship-era-forever/">sank</a> the two capital ships of the Royal Navy's Force Z.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmp0SXlajZ_VKRl65esShaayNevh7Rzs6LWhhbt6zfEJqRvEKnW9j9Md8S-Vsi1n_2qH4oLTLeJOruFTu7Kat0p4f3KA8GNwEZ6r3Jd5w7Z4LyflRT48LPLIHlb_PvEgf_ojTD3bDaJaE/s1200/Force+Z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="1200" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmp0SXlajZ_VKRl65esShaayNevh7Rzs6LWhhbt6zfEJqRvEKnW9j9Md8S-Vsi1n_2qH4oLTLeJOruFTu7Kat0p4f3KA8GNwEZ6r3Jd5w7Z4LyflRT48LPLIHlb_PvEgf_ojTD3bDaJaE/w519-h151/Force+Z.jpg" width="519" /></a></div><p></p><p>Yes, aircraft had been involved in sinking the most capital of capital ships prior to December 10, 1941. But the circumstances allowed battleship fans to temporize. </p><p>An aerial torpedo ensured the doom of <i>Bismarck</i>, but the actual sinking occurred during a surface gun action. Battleships were sunk by aircraft at Taranto and Pearl Harbor, but those were surprise attacks on unsuspecting moored warships.</p><p>There was no gray area on December 10. Aircraft found and sank two of the Royal Navy's heavy units, one, <i>Prince of Wales</i>, one of the newest and most powerful British battleships extant.</p><p>The "moral" I've always been told that this story taught was that in the 90 minutes it took the air attack to sink both <i>Prince of Wales</i> and <i>Repulse</i> the battleship era ended and any naval organization that pursued heavy gunpower rather than carrier airpower was foolishly incompetent. </p><p>What's kind of intriguing about one "counterfactual" is that Force Z had come within five miles of an IJN task force consisting of "six cruisers" - I've been unable to discover which six these were, but at least one was <i>Chōkai</i><span style="font-weight: normal;"> (<span lang="ja" title="Japanese-language text">鳥海</span>), a Takao-class heavy cruiser.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: normal;">Neither task force was using radar effectively. The Japanese because IJN <a href="https://firedirectioncenter.blogspot.com/2012/11/decisive-battles-second-naval-battle-of.html">radar technology</a> was crippled throughout the Second World War, the British because <i>Prince of Wales</i>' radar had gone down earlier in the mission, supposedly through overheating in the tropical heat and humidity.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: normal;">(Worth noting that in this the <i>PoW</i> lived up to her reputation as a "hard-luck ship"...)<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-weight: normal;">Let's assume that at least three or four of the other "six cruisers" out that night were also heavies. The Japanese heavy cruisers were beasts, especially heavily armed with the big 24-inch torpedoes, and the IJN trained extensively in night gun and torpedo action as the encounters off Guadalcanal the following year proved.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: normal;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqIJ5pell4w-l7F8a3NyItftJ9tOPadF8_tQfVqZugYytZvK9tKf7p9h9XqksMDYi0-Lbwo_lZ2XEfKyD92TbtG2e8-PtG9_KZzzrY0BJWsXmB_bKNaFNJ-WRAvsc6bfsAVTE_1Hacstw/s900/Chokai.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="413" data-original-width="900" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqIJ5pell4w-l7F8a3NyItftJ9tOPadF8_tQfVqZugYytZvK9tKf7p9h9XqksMDYi0-Lbwo_lZ2XEfKyD92TbtG2e8-PtG9_KZzzrY0BJWsXmB_bKNaFNJ-WRAvsc6bfsAVTE_1Hacstw/w451-h207/Chokai.jpg" width="451" /></a></div> <br />Let's suppose that the two task forces had, instead, bumped into each other in the night.<p></p><p><span style="font-weight: normal;">The British weight of metal would probably have torn the Japanese cruisers apart, but the IJN night fighting and torpedo tactics might well have either sunk or badly damaged the British capital ships to the point where their sinking by aircraft the following morning could be written off the same way that the battleship aficionados wrote off <i>Bismarck</i>, Taranto, and Pearl Harbor.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: normal;">The "end of the battleship era" might now be attributed to the naval and naval air actions off the Philippines in 1944.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: normal;">No real point here other than to consider how things we take for received wisdom often turn on small, nearly insignificant events, like the failure of the British radar the night of December 9/10.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: normal;">Thoughts?<br /></span></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-7431635218880930932021-12-09T11:48:00.005-08:002021-12-09T11:48:50.179-08:00Posse Stupidtatus<p> So it turns out that sending U.S. soldiers to be ersatz Border Patrol was a <a href="https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2021/12/08/death-drugs-and-a-disbanded-unit-how-the-guards-mexico-border-mission-fell-apart/">pretty stupid idea</a>.</p><p></p><blockquote><p>"Leaders initiated more than 1,200
legal actions, including nonjudicial punishments, property loss
investigations, Army Regulation 15-6 investigations and more. That’s
nearly one legal action for every three soldiers. At least 16 soldiers
from the mission were arrested or confined for charges including drugs,
sexual assault and manslaughter. During the same time period, only three
soldiers in Kuwait, a comparable deployment locale with more soldiers,
were arraigned for court-martial.</p><p>Troops at the border had more than three times as many car accidents
over the past year — at least 500 incidents totaling roughly $630,000 in
damages — than the 147 “illegal substance seizures” they reported
assisting.</p><p>One cavalry
troop from Louisiana was temporarily disbanded due to misconduct and
command climate issues — an extremely rare occurrence."</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Gee. I wonder? Where did we have the occasion to learn - and <i>recently </i>- that soldiers are usually good at soldiering, usually not so much as domestic - or foreign - policemen.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHlJihx-nANSRmmJzTzaOTe5icibFn3_Mng6Vjqba4IZ-V8ULBC8PDFO5XXbkoO_8USCW0yIcD2ve_Lj3qn5SUV_tcaMOtnI4t0dg0PohJJ8_bf4wb-B-AwN9dfvWMANAX7mlwrskj0vo/s900/505th+Fallujah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="803" data-original-width="900" height="341" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHlJihx-nANSRmmJzTzaOTe5icibFn3_Mng6Vjqba4IZ-V8ULBC8PDFO5XXbkoO_8USCW0yIcD2ve_Lj3qn5SUV_tcaMOtnI4t0dg0PohJJ8_bf4wb-B-AwN9dfvWMANAX7mlwrskj0vo/w382-h341/505th+Fallujah.jpg" width="382" /></a></div><p></p><blockquote><p>"Tensions were ignited on April 28, however, when soldiers from the
325th Airborne Infantry Regiment opened fire on a group of protesters in
front of a school, killing 15 and wounding more than three dozen
others. Although the military said the soldiers fired in self-defense
under attack from Baathist provocateurs, residents said many of the
demonstrators were unarmed.</p> <p>The
shooting set off a cycle of violence that wracked the city for weeks.
Exchanges of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenade attacks started to
occur almost daily."</p></blockquote><p></p><p> Oh, shit, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/11/04/the-battlefield-for-all-iraq/fe45e6b8-7177-408e-a2c5-a8078a5d48eb/">yeah</a>. That.<br /></p><p>I swear, we're the fucking 21st Century Bourbons. We learn nothing but we forget nothing. <br /></p><p><br /></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-33560600643604320022021-12-08T11:22:00.000-08:002021-12-08T11:22:03.207-08:00New York for Kyiv? Boston for Taipei?<p>Now that the United States doesn't have bodies coming home from the lesser paved parts of the world (the bodies we're <a href="https://www.cfr.org/report/reforming-us-drone-strike-policies">generating</a> tend to be locals and remain where we drop them...) the U.S. public can go back to sleep regarding it's foreign policy doin's around the world whilst the foreign policy nabobs can go back to the sort of stuff <i>they</i> enjoy; pondering Great Power rivalries.</p><p>And current events have had a way of bringing those rivalries up in the nightly news. </p><p>First back in October we had worries that the People's Republic of China was - at least - <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/30/taiwan-china-threats-invasion/">thinking</a> about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/09/world/asia/united-states-china-taiwan.html">forcibly</a> <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58812100">re-uniting</a> the island of Taiwan with the Motherland.</p><p>Now the focus has shifted to eastern Europe, where Russian <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/12/07/1062092373/why-russia-ukraine-tensions-have-again-reached-a-boiling-point">military</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/russia-ukraine-invasion/2021/12/03/98a3760e-546b-11ec-8769-2f4ecdf7a2ad_story.html">moves</a> appear to be directed against Ukraine.</p><p>The larger questions that arise from these potential conflicts are the same ones that have been in place since the end of WW2, namely that 1) as the Western hyperpower the United States is, effectively, the Western "big stick" in Great Power confrontation, but 2) there is always the question of the degree to which a United States would be and will be willing to risk escalation with the other big nuclear powers - Russia and China - over threats to the U.S.'s non-nuclear allies.</p><p>Some "allies" don't believe the U.S. is willing to do this at all; one of the prime drivers of the Israeli nuclear program was the desire to be independent of U.S. political will. France much the same (with a heaping helping of post-1940-defeat-shame). </p><p>My understanding is that the U.K. was the only Western nuclear power who hung on to the "special relationship", developing their nukes purely as a way to avoid sitting at the geopolitical kid's table.</p><p>There's also the issue of diplomatic linkage.</p><p>The European nations are militarily bound up with the U.S. in NATO. You nuke Berlin, it's going to cost you. Israel, too, has always had a (in my personal opinion an unhealthily) close relationship with the U.S. </p><p>In theory those polities can depend on U.S. military power to back their integrity if threatened. They can act as if they had a portion of that power, which gives them a certain degree of geopolitical freedom and international influence beyond their inherent military strength.<br /></p><p><i>(At least that was the c.w. until Trump; now the GOP is full-on ethno-nationalist and "America First" and, frankly, if I was Berlin or London I'd be hesitant to make plans based on the notion that Uncle Sammy had my back 24/7/365. President Trump 47 (or Tom Cotton or Marjorie Taylor Greene) may very well be most unwilling to go to the mat for latte-sipping socialist Eurotrash.)</i> </p><p>Smaller states with relations short of full alliance like Ukraine and Taiwan don't have those options. They pretty much <i>have</i> to design their relationships with their larger neighbors based on their assessment of the willingness - or, particularly, potential <u><i>un</i></u>willingness - of the Land of the Big PX to risk a bigger fight rather than give their rivals the win. <br /></p><p>And that means that the U.S. itself has to - or, at least, <i>should</i> - think hard about the degree to which it's willing to risk that fight for those polities. </p><p>After twenty years of lies, damned lies, and delusion the current U.S. administration finally admitted that there was nothing in Afghanistan worth the bones of a West Virginia grenadier. </p><p>Will a non-America-First administration be willing to risk that, and more, to ensure that Taipei remains free of PRC occupation? To keep the Donbass as part of the Ukraine?</p><p>What frustrates me about this, and the only reason that I'm writing this post, is because of the combination of indifference, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/07/the-less-americans-know-about-ukraines-location-the-more-they-want-u-s-to-intervene/">stupidity,</a> and <a href="https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/research/public-opinion-survey/first-time-half-americans-favor-defending-taiwan-if-china-invades">hubris</a> that seems to characterize the U.S. public and most political discussion about these topics.</p><p>The U.S. press spends about five or six more times the amount of talking nonsense about "critical race theory" than it does these potential collisions. The degree of public literacy about the risk-versus-rewards of an aggressive Taiwan policy in the linked article above is appalling; if damn near 70% of the U.S. public want their government to recognize Taiwan as an independent nation? </p><p>They've been face-down in the edible weed far too long.<br /></p><p>There's discussion to be had - and, potentially, arguments to be made - for resisting Chinese and Russian aggression in places like the West Pacific and eastern Europe. </p><p>Those discussions are difficult and complex...<i>and are not going on</i>. </p><p>Instead the public and, it appears, most media and political talking heads, are trying to reduce the issues to simple us-versus-them jingoism.</p><p>Yes. I realize that's how a lot of "geopolitics" gets done here in the Land of the Freedumb.</p><p>But, frankly, after the twenty-year-long disaster that has been the Phony War on Terror?</p><p>It's really time that We the People grew up and started putting away these childish things.</p><p>A collision with China or Russia may, indeed, be inevitable (or, as Andy will remind you in the case of China, is already happening...)</p><p>But I'd like to think that if it happens it will happen for sound geopolitical reasons. For U.S. national interests. </p><p>I'd like to think that the systems of supposed self-government - the "free press", the representatives of the People in Congress, the foreign specialists in the Departments of State and Defense - would have conducted a thorough discussion and analysis of the potential gains and risks <i>before</i> it happens.</p><p>But.</p><p>That would mean thinking geopolitical strategy and, as former friend of the blog Seydlitz would tell you, the United States don't do "strategy".</p><p>We do the shit out of "critical race theory", though, so there's that.</p><p>Jesus wept.<br /></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-48627245784927589712021-11-11T08:11:00.009-08:002021-11-12T08:05:13.422-08:00Into the Darkness<p> Our longtime friend-of-the-blog Sven (from <a href="https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/">Defence and Freedom</a>) dropped by to ask what the hell was wrong with us? Why hadn't we had any content here for so long? And it took me a while to consider that, yes, I should say something, rather than let this place just drift along into the darkness.</p><p>So.</p><p>First, we've taken massive casualties. Look at the right-hand column. There, under "bar staff"? Seven names.</p><p>Well, here I am.</p><p>Lisa and jim, from <a href="http://rangeragainstwar.blogspot.com/">Ranger Against War</a>) left us after the 2016 election. Lisa, largely because (so far as I can tell) she went headfirst down the Trumpkin rabbit hole. She had been Trump-curious during the runup to the 2016 election and by that autumn had completely bought into the idea of Trump as a "rulebreaker" and "iconoclast" that was what was needed to shatter the corruption and oligarchy that had and has overtaken the United States.</p><p>She's right about the problem...but there was a massive dustup over her choice of solution, and we "parted brass rags" as theBrits used to say, and she decamped.</p><p>Jim, sadly, seems to have just given up in disgust. If you go to the RAW site and go to the comments on the last post, the second comment is jim's, and he says: <i>"I cannot take fire from inside the perimeter.<br />If Lisa wants to write
about Trump then i'd respectfully request that she start a new blog and
not use up the RAW that we built so artfully."</i></p><p>And that's it. Radio silence since then.</p><p>We lost PF Khans some time shortly after that. He was already getting quiet, and I have to reach our to him and say how grieved I am for him. The ending of the Umpteenth Afghan War is hard for those who gave their youth and their strength in fighting it. I'm still certain that it had to end and that the ending we got was as good as ever possible...but that doesn't change the grief and loss that comes from seeing that end. I'm sorry, PFK, and I hope you and yours are bearing up.</p><p>Mike has just got too much else going on, and has largely (as so many others have) moved over to Twitter and the other short-form social media.</p><p>Seydlitz (of the immortal memory!) had moved on long before 2016. I miss his insightful wisdom and should be better about looking for him where the runs these days.</p><p>Sheerahkhan was a very rare poster and is evident (when he is) only in the comment section these days.</p><p>So it's just me.</p><p>I've - as everyone does - got a lot going on, too. Work. Home. Family. Other interests outside geopolitics. Knee surgery - I had both knees replaced at the end of the summer and I'm still achy and tottery on the new parts.</p><p>And I'm also sick and sad at what I'm seeing here in the Land of the Big PX.</p><p>But to explain that I have to go back a bit and give you some dreaded backstory.</p><p>I was born in Whittier, Califormia, in 1957 - yep, Dick Nixon and I are homeboys - to a chemical engineer of the 1951 postwar Cornell crop and his buxom redheaded HomeEc major wife. I was raised in what was a stereotypical Father Knows Best Fifties and Sixties middle-class white Protestant household in Chicago and outside Philadelphia as his big company moved my father around in classical Mid-Century Big Company fashion.</p><p>The old man was a poster child for Mid-century Middle Class White Guydom. Golfed. Smoked a pipe - an actual no-shit serious pipe (I still remember the smell of his favorite bowl, something called "Heine's Blend" that came in a big blue-and-white faux Delft tin...).</p><p>And was Republican because...of course he was.</p><p>So I was.</p><p>We stood for all things that Mid-century Republicans stood for. Prosperity. National greatness. Low (but fair) taxes. "Personal Responsibility" - sure, we accepted the New Deal, because nobody wants their granny to die in poverty, but you had to pull yourselves up by the bootstraps, goddammit!</p><p>We were "Rockefeller Republicans"; "liberal" on social issues - we didn't care who you screwed or what you did so long as your fist stayed away from our noses - but "conservative" on fiscal and geopoltical ones. <br /></p><p>I think the beginning of the end came in the Civil Rights era and Vietnam.</p><p> One thing that my parents, lovely complacent white folks that they were, couldn't deny was that the Land of the Free was kind of a tough place if you weren't...well, what they were. And they wanted to see that change.</p><p>They were also pretty smart people, and as such refused to fall for the classic blunder of supporting a land war in Asia.</p><p>And so it hurt them - my father most - to see the Dixicrats peel off and become Republicans, and to see Nixon cynically manipulating the war for political gain. While no fan of LBJ and the Democrats...these were the first cracks in the marriage.</p><p>Then came Reagan - who my father had seen and distrusted in the embryonic stage back in California - and his "voodoo economics" and his magical thinking and the goofy foreign policy adventures (Iran-Contra disgusted him and GHW Bush's pardons made him furiously angry; treason was treason and should be punished, the public be damned...).</p><p>And then came Newt Gingrich and the movement that metastasized first into the "Tea Party" and then into the real lunatic fringe, the QANuts and Three Percenters and the whole freakish shitpile of imbeciles and bigots that we have today running the rest of the GOP scared.</p><p>Thank God he died before Trump. That alone would have killed him, seeing that we both knew Trump from his shenanigans in the Tri-State area back in the Eightes and knew him as the ridiculous, egomaniac, corrupt buffoon he is...</p><p>And that's not even to take into consideration the mad rush on the American Right to return to the economic ways of the Gilded Age and Lochnerism. Tom Jefferson had some pretty goofy political ideas, but he was right about this - a democratic republic cannot be governed by a polity of wage-slaves. If your livelihood depends on the largesse of your patron - whether that patron is the Duke of Sandringham or Jeff Bezos - you cannot act against the patron's interests. </p><p>You can have a concentration of great wealth, or democracy. Not both. We Rocky Republicans were totally jake with the 90 percent top marginal rate, remember? </p><p>Today's GOP does not. <br /></p><p>Anyway...that was my road to Santiago de Compostella - through my father's eyes, watching his beloved GOP become the party of Critical Race Theory and January 6th and the Bundys and Taylor Green and - even more terrifying - Tom Cotton, who has all the right Falangist genes and none of Trump's insane emotional problems.</p><p>Why am I telling you all this?</p><p>Because I see this country as poised on the edge of desuetude.</p><p>We have 30-40% of the U.S. public who, in the face of a pandemic, insists in fantasy "treatments" like equine dewormer while spurning effective vaccinations.</p><p>That insists that perfectly normal elections have been "stolen".</p><p>That is willing to believe, and act with violence to support, in the craziest things that their "leaders" say.</p><p>That supports a Supreme Court that appears poised to throw out not just the most sensible firearms regulation but the legal concept of "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/29/supreme-court-just-took-case-epas-authority-its-decision-could-undo-most-major-federal-laws/">nondelegation</a>" that will undo the Twentieth Century. <br /></p><p>And I despair.</p><p>The U.S. needs a "conservative" political party (and the electoral reality of the US means that there will be only two large parties, one "liberal/left" and one "conservative/right").</p><p>But it needs a sane conservative party.</p><p>And it doesn't have one.</p><p>Right now we - all of us - are confronted with perhaps the single most massive issue we will face over the next century; the way we are heating up the Earth's atmosphere.</p><p>It's not a mystery. C'mon! About 200 years ago we the human race started burning stuff - first wood, then coal, then oil - and all that smoke had to go somewhere. The receipts are impossible to ignore. It's going to push us close to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum if we don't do something, LOTS of somethings, and that is a world unlike anything we know.</p><p>And the mantra of one of the two political parties we allow ourselves in the US is "Crisis? What crisis?"</p><p>Confronted with that...well, spending three or four hours writing a post about field artillery seems...louche, at best.</p><p>I'm sitting here as almost half my country becomes something I don't even recognize. Or, worse, that I recognize as a bad dream from earlier times; No-Knothings, Klansmen, Birchers. All the whackaloon things that I thought that We the People had outgrown.</p><p>Is the Left a treat?</p><p>Christ, no. Idiotic things like "Defund the Police" ensure that my impatience with the American Left has not grown any lesser.</p><p>(Mind you, the Portland Police Bureau is still an incompetent shitpile of ignorance and arrogance just as it always has been; we'd be better off to replace it with a troop of sentient raccoons...)</p><p>But what the hell is a democratic republic going to do when damn near a third of it's citizens think - and act - like wearing a piece of fabric over your nose and mouth is an intolerable assault on Freedom?</p><p>That's just not supportable.</p><p>Look at the Congress this past summer?</p><p>A bill to fix all the things we know are breaking or broken - bridges, electric lines, roadways - and to help people and to bring some change to the warming climate - has been deadlocked despite massive support from the public largely because a handful of the notional "Left" - Manchin and Sinema - have been bought by big money - and the Right would rather own the libs than help out (although 13 of them finally did - good on you, Baker's Dozen! - and are getting pilloried all over the conservative airwaves for doing it).</p><p>We can't even fucking govern ourselves anymore. Geopolitics? How the hell can we hope to do that when we can't even rule ourselves? <br /></p><p>So I'm looking around me and seeing an end to the nation and the people I thought I lived among and grown up in .</p><p>And I feel like Smokey the Bear standing helpless, with my dungarees and shovel and hat, watching all the trees in the world burn down around me.</p><p>Because watching a politically-indigestible minority of my supposed-fellow-Americans cheer enthusiastically for a New Gilded Age and home-grown Franco- or Peronism? </p><p>The only response I can come up with is an inarticulate roar of rage and anguish. </p><p>And who wants to read that?<br /></p><p>Which is why I've been so silent.<br /></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-44308867091686502472021-08-17T11:20:00.003-07:002021-08-17T11:20:20.204-07:00The Dreamers Wake<p> <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuz8FHsHBeVJDrrLIq5Fy1PHhyphenhyphen_mpfuYzvl-KUyqhNfU4vw2RIfF3yUj5T0E3MCoARVkGbJOStPuWZr3gjhATgQd5BH9NskQLebPHQZLsd1sSWExhOJwjITUYIYMZNX1_LKnQgPaLf9ew/s1920/Brydon+1844.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1097" data-original-width="1920" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuz8FHsHBeVJDrrLIq5Fy1PHhyphenhyphen_mpfuYzvl-KUyqhNfU4vw2RIfF3yUj5T0E3MCoARVkGbJOStPuWZr3gjhATgQd5BH9NskQLebPHQZLsd1sSWExhOJwjITUYIYMZNX1_LKnQgPaLf9ew/w502-h287/Brydon+1844.jpg" width="502" /></a></div><p>This poor bastard is one Dr. William Brydon. He's arriving in British-held what is today Pakistan, the sole surviving escapee of the British Afghanistan expedition of 1844. He could probably have told you what it's like in Kabul today.</p><p>It's kind of pointless to refight all the fights we've had over this slow-motion disaster. Largely because we knew, or should have known, that the people who were supposed to be running this goat rodeo <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/">knew and have known for years</a> that they were building nothing; that the ridiculous pile of blood and treasure had gone completely to waste.</p><p>The only point left to make is the point the GIs in Vietnam used as their summary of the clusterfuck: <i>"Don't mean nothin'."</i> That there was no point at which that rock was going to roll uphill, and the only question was who'd be left standing when the music stopped.</p><p>Of course this is a human tragedy. Thousands of people are going to suffer, many of them will die, because of all of this; the initial bizarre "constitution" doped out in Europe that tried to make a conventional Westphalian state out of Afghanistan, Rumsfeld's refusal to accept Taliban terms in 2001, the unwillingness to face the reality of what was happening to the place and the people, the constant insistence that just a few more months and a few more lives would change things.</p><p>To me, anyway, the truly "tragic" part - in the classic meaning of the term - is the fate of the poor Afghan sods that worked with and for the occupation. The images out of Kabul are horrifying...and yet...how else could this have ended?</p><p>To have ramped up an evacuation program six months ago, say, would have been as much as announcing to the Afghan government and the ANA that the U.S. had no confidence in their ability to hold. That lack of confidence would have been and is, obviously, fully justified. But it would have likely resulted in this disaster happening in February instead of August.</p><p>And I honestly can't see a way - short of slamming in a full division complete with heavy artillery support - to have held a perimeter around Kabul long enough to get everyone out. If it was my call to make I might have made it. But it wasn't, and I can see why it wasn't.</p><p>So the fever-dream of hustling the East ends, as such dreams so often do, in blood and heartbreak.</p><p>Will the waking dreamers learn from this?</p><p>Sadly...my guess is that not only will the Western foreign and military organizations not learn, they will refuse to even accept that there <i>is</i> a lesson to be learned here. There will be a brief search for scapegoats, and then the entire episode will be shoved unceremoniously down the memory hole so the next time we need to slay Afridis where they run.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCvVCq2oEeS6XSm7sHMo0GOzCOJYmIWFa5N8SszERWy1nvaWxpAtMb9i-0xNbWTXdU6yQPlHNHao89Oedd4n_LGO42X90kIvds9fwU7j_hcT8ckOULHmPYtbooOlkcPKzs9XqofcmbH7A/s960/Brydon+2012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="636" data-original-width="960" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCvVCq2oEeS6XSm7sHMo0GOzCOJYmIWFa5N8SszERWy1nvaWxpAtMb9i-0xNbWTXdU6yQPlHNHao89Oedd4n_LGO42X90kIvds9fwU7j_hcT8ckOULHmPYtbooOlkcPKzs9XqofcmbH7A/w454-h301/Brydon+2012.jpg" width="454" /></a></div> WASF.<br /><p></p><p> <br /></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-42835745296478039342021-06-29T17:16:00.001-07:002021-06-29T18:01:20.955-07:00The Swinged Cats Strike!<p>And those dusky border ruffians are put on notice! The Mount Rushmore State Mosstroopers - a whole <i>platoon</i> of the hardened veterans! - will fan out and become The Wall! <i>No pasaran!</i><br /></p><p>Seriously. Some Republican fatcat is paying for a whole platoon or so from the South Dakota Guard to <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2021/06/29/private-donation-will-fund-cost-of-sending-south-dakota-national-guard-troops-to-texas/">TDY down to Texas</a> to stop the Brown Hordes. </p><p>Be assured that now the Republic is safe from <i>La Raza</i>.</p><p>Hey, Abbot? Hey, Noem? I seem to recall we tried this once. It didn't go all that well.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCREFTvhenGS6MlyJkO101P3RJ5mUgYkk6Q7kjyh-SAEQNfoGdVuEeMoqcBWkU0H-PwbLQT2Sc5jQSg-suwKaOOFWBiHTKGxdo23VHxAwRkwGYks3hfbvt13tZ1nQpYrjhk_PQvpAVWpA/s768/Pancho_Villa_Expedition_-_Infantry_Columns_.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="768" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCREFTvhenGS6MlyJkO101P3RJ5mUgYkk6Q7kjyh-SAEQNfoGdVuEeMoqcBWkU0H-PwbLQT2Sc5jQSg-suwKaOOFWBiHTKGxdo23VHxAwRkwGYks3hfbvt13tZ1nQpYrjhk_PQvpAVWpA/w518-h299/Pancho_Villa_Expedition_-_Infantry_Columns_.jpeg" width="518" /></a></div><p></p><p><i>"We left the border for Parral<br />In search of Villa and Lopez, his old pal.<br />Our horses, they were hungry,<br />And we ate parched corn.<br />It was damn hard living<br />In the state of Chihuahua<br />Where Pancho Villa was born."</i></p><p><b>Update 6/29:</b> Dan Nexon wins the Internets:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ISJ09ng8_5mF-3TBaWPkbRUVNGn6X0dWfLZZUq6UaNYHn8ON8v1nCI3JFjpDTgY1h6PwKdBSYT9_lvmO-5zMelg8B0r0_E4gp7qxJeS70baqwAxuVEm2_L7D3JxHzPGOv5e-Yy2QtK0/s601/Nexon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="601" height="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ISJ09ng8_5mF-3TBaWPkbRUVNGn6X0dWfLZZUq6UaNYHn8ON8v1nCI3JFjpDTgY1h6PwKdBSYT9_lvmO-5zMelg8B0r0_E4gp7qxJeS70baqwAxuVEm2_L7D3JxHzPGOv5e-Yy2QtK0/w487-h321/Nexon.jpg" width="487" /></a></div><br /><p><br />
</p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-33067677031035266842021-06-18T05:43:00.002-07:002021-06-18T05:58:48.202-07:00Unloading Chekov's Gun<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQgcgh8Q1mbBL1earj2Svg2ZSFXvQRybbCcJHCtRZWPprbdg65tOw71aAcSOv7DBYY1P4ggn4wxiUUalRy0UeZ-MSS9NzVTW3Uz7ZJbBscxl1R6_CliZZqY8q9EF34-D8Tci6HPDrJMg0/s1120/iraq-1623952184.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="1120" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQgcgh8Q1mbBL1earj2Svg2ZSFXvQRybbCcJHCtRZWPprbdg65tOw71aAcSOv7DBYY1P4ggn4wxiUUalRy0UeZ-MSS9NzVTW3Uz7ZJbBscxl1R6_CliZZqY8q9EF34-D8Tci6HPDrJMg0/w566-h285/iraq-1623952184.jpeg" width="566" /></a></p>The U.S. Congress has, in the usual scatterbrained and dysfunctional way that body seems to work, taken up the issue of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/aumf-repeal-congress/2021/06/17/1bd1ec70-cf76-11eb-a7f1-52b8870bef7c_story.html">repealing </a>the 2002 "Authorization to Use Military Force" that was the legal cover for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the mess-o-potamia that followed.<p></p><p>I trust that no one who regularly visits this place has forgotten the appalling clusterfuck that resulted from that cynical bit of Great Power stupidity, so it's obvious on its face that it is time and past time to flush the boneheaded and dangerous thing, full of more lies than nuts in a fruitcake, and I wish they'd 86 the 2001. 9/11, version while they're at it.</p><p>The notion of having a political rule just lying around that provides any U.S. government who wishes the "legal" authority to start throwing projectiles around the globe seems dangerously stupid. It's not like illegality will stop a cabal that wishes to do that, but to give them a sort of real-life <i>"C'est par mon ordre et pour le bien de l'Etat que le porteur du
present a fait ce qu'il a fait."</i>?</p><p>That 's a Bad Idea. <br /></p><p>Both of the 2000's AUMFs are Bad Ideas spawned by my country's weird and ugly combination of geopolitical hubris and laziness, the sort of mindless aggressive response to any sort of provocation that makes every problem a nail to be militarily hammered.</p><p>It's unfortunate that the mindset that produced them cannot also be repealed. But at the very least - given the lessons that the mindless ruin and merciless hatred that the two have spawned should have taught us - these two loaded guns need to be unloaded.</p><p>We'll see if there's enough political sanity left in the U.S. capitol to do that.<br /></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-34811711593716791422021-03-21T08:05:00.003-07:002021-03-21T18:30:25.235-07:00Sunk Cost and Lessons Learned?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGljkH3c8m0sGt0_-OqzT8EjK3ZY3GZXV9pMDWa49cA2EQXBlz0uSvP18_HAyeYiHq8W09Ljgk_eZeOjTcYiBrphfDpfzRkrfJM1kPdIetZ__ROmY7m_YROwjfHK6xUwKt32fXwXQ9DhM/s1000/Afghanistan.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="763" data-original-width="1000" height="338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGljkH3c8m0sGt0_-OqzT8EjK3ZY3GZXV9pMDWa49cA2EQXBlz0uSvP18_HAyeYiHq8W09Ljgk_eZeOjTcYiBrphfDpfzRkrfJM1kPdIetZ__ROmY7m_YROwjfHK6xUwKt32fXwXQ9DhM/w444-h338/Afghanistan.jpg" width="444" /></a></div>We had a fairly long discussion here about the "lessons learned" - or, rather, whether lessons that seem obvious in hindsight were, in fact, too difficult for the military boffins of 1914 to discern - in the first catastrophic war of the 20th Century.<p></p><p>Now the NY Times discusses a pointless (and "catastrophic" in the sense of "blood and treasure wasted for no geopolitically valid objective") war of the 21st Century, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/opinion/biden-afghanistan.html">the mess</a> that the United States has made in the Grave of Empires:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>"It’s not as if Mr. Biden is being pressured to stay in Afghanistan
with a cogent argument; most analysts freely admit that the United
States has no <a href="https://www.vox.com/22295257/biden-afghanistan-war-leave-extension-forever-troops" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">plausible path</a> to <a href="https://time.com/4911492/trump-afghanistan-military-victory/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">victory</a>, that the military isn’t trained to <a href="https://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol11_2/11n2PWS.pdf" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">midwife democracy</a> and that the Afghan government is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-corruption-government/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">grievously corrupt</a>.</p><p>Rather,
the national security community cannot bear to display its failure.
That’s why many who advocate continuing the war are left grasping for
illogical or far-fetched justifications. In a <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/3/4/22313380/afghanistan-nsc-milley-austin-biden" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">meeting of National Security Council principals</a>,
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, reportedly
made an emotional plea to stay in Afghanistan, after “all the blood and
treasure spent” there."</p></blockquote><p></p><p>This is the classic "sunk costs" theory that has been used to justify military shenanigans since the Peloponnesian War, and certainly we've seen modern Great Powers do this repeatedly (I'd argue that the real problem isn't that the U.S. foreign policy establishment was "traumatized" by the disaster in Vietnam but, rather, that the lessons IT taught were not learned, either...)</p><p>To me, the big question that the rolling clusterfuck that is the U.S.'s misadventures in the whole "land war in Asia" business is "is there a way for Great Powers - or, indeed, most polities - to make foreign policy decisions that are based on "national interests" that are, indeed, based on the interests of the bulk of the people in the polity"?</p><p>It's hard to see too many examples that prove that there is, so my question for the readership is "can you think of an example of a policy (or set of policies) or decision(s) that show that this sort of intelligent geopolitics IS possible?"</p><p>Is there (are there?) examples that, say, the "blobs" of various nation-states could look to for a way to see their way through to avoiding the very sort of complete clusterfuck on display when you look at the U.S. foreign policy camorra and it's work in Afghanistan since 2001?<br /></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-86159274424346781952021-02-24T16:37:00.001-08:002021-02-24T16:37:08.680-08:00Over the Hegemon<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_3Zit0YcO8hlddlwIc2SlAxqOrpf6unOdjGkWCdGd_2FdYiGvRRxV9Veg__IFwkUOytNa-WUOK29Snyp3Knv54a0Lb94Hbcjf6vfxUrUSDKgDhvI47ifMqHz4qaDDlmmYMMtHYq8Ahzw/s599/Rubio+PRC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="599" height="344" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_3Zit0YcO8hlddlwIc2SlAxqOrpf6unOdjGkWCdGd_2FdYiGvRRxV9Veg__IFwkUOytNa-WUOK29Snyp3Knv54a0Lb94Hbcjf6vfxUrUSDKgDhvI47ifMqHz4qaDDlmmYMMtHYq8Ahzw/w503-h344/Rubio+PRC.jpg" width="503" /></a></div>I get that there is a fairly large subset of the U.S. public (and the pundits that natter to it) that refuses to use the word "empire" for the United States.<p></p><p>Imperial is as imperial does, but, fine, whatever.</p><p>But I can't think that there would be any disagreement that the U.S. has been the global hegemon for quite some time.</p><p>My question for the readership would be, then, is this worth going to Cold War with the PRC over?</p><p>I won't even argue with Rubio's contention that the PRC wants to replace the U.S. as the global hegemon.</p><p>Would that, however, present "as great a threat as any in history"?</p><p>Threat of what?</p><p>Would it harm the U.S. public in a material way if the U.S. was no longer the premiere Great Power but, instead, the second behind the PRC?</p><p>Keeping in mind that mainland China has a fairly horrible human rights record, would that translate into a worse world in general if the PRC had the ability to conduct whatever they'd call the "Ledeen Doctrine" on regional powers? A worse United States?</p><p>I have some ideas, but at this point I'm curious to hear yours; is this an actual thing (or is it just scaremongering)? If it IS a thing, is it really the MOST scary thing ever? And if it IS...is it worth hatting up for a new Cold War (with the attendant sorts of small Hot Wars between proxy states and non-state actors of the sort fought between the US and the USSR between 1945 and the 1990s)?</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxYnkaMGgq8HG2U3PWklTNIzIubey6uZteOF0WsnBLIk5yzpJDopnYcu161LjcOGK-bcAFaO6SEeeclGI9Hszdnh0FzOtRR0tqcwqJEmWR18OTii1iFlkzMhVjPTLHDIoVQBgzivjB4bw/s512/The+East+Is+Red.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="512" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxYnkaMGgq8HG2U3PWklTNIzIubey6uZteOF0WsnBLIk5yzpJDopnYcu161LjcOGK-bcAFaO6SEeeclGI9Hszdnh0FzOtRR0tqcwqJEmWR18OTii1iFlkzMhVjPTLHDIoVQBgzivjB4bw/w453-h319/The+East+Is+Red.jpg" width="453" /></a></div>Let's discuss in the comments.<br /> <p></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-73467902500488963692020-12-25T15:10:00.000-08:002020-12-25T15:10:38.078-08:00Brusilov and the question of Lessons Learned<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj52NoDjA8NS4Q0ra9r7mTHfvFybntIXVfvD3Lq9Ev50eB-Rpr1hnSFXgnuKyygPd6mNbBax-AkMWD0aYOScmLxj1KdLF-PM7axHOk4opOyqodkQVurairzLLegCIu_bARfvctSTMuUgUs/s602/Brusilov.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="602" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj52NoDjA8NS4Q0ra9r7mTHfvFybntIXVfvD3Lq9Ev50eB-Rpr1hnSFXgnuKyygPd6mNbBax-AkMWD0aYOScmLxj1KdLF-PM7axHOk4opOyqodkQVurairzLLegCIu_bARfvctSTMuUgUs/w475-h316/Brusilov.jpg" width="475" /></a></div><p></p><p>My Bride (who is a terrific person for lots of other reasons, too...) was wonderful enough to gift me Tim Dowling's 2008 <i>The Brusilov Offensive </i>and I wasted no time curling up amid the wrapping debris to begin reading. </p><p>In the opening chapter I came across something that intrigued me a bit, and thought I'd throw it out here for the patrons to swill along with their Christmas nog.</p><p>On page nine, Dowling recounts a general consensus among what he describes as "...a great many people - most notably the Russian general staff - that technological advances would play a minimal role." in the coming war of 1914. </p><p>He then goes on to say that this "cult of the offensive" dominated most of the tactical to grand tactical thinking of the European powers. The paragraph concludes with a summary of the work of Austro-Hungarian GEN von Hötzendorf, as concluding that "Firepower was certainly beneficial, but its effectiveness was limited..."</p><p>I won't argue too hard against this; certainly there was a hell of an influential clique for the <i>attaque à outrance</i> idea in the French Army, and most of the other combatant army planners of WW1 seemed unwilling to abandon the notion that you could figure out <i>some</i> way to outrun a bullet or a shell and gain that elusive decisive victory if you just tried hard enough.</p><p>I get that part of that had to have been the lack of actual Great Power combat in the forty-odd years between the end of the Franco-Prussian War and 1914.</p><p>But, still...</p><p>You'd had the Russo-Japanese War just ten years earlier, and that had featured all the things that would kill all that "offensiveness" deader'n a Japanese rifleman hanging on the wire outside Port Arthur; deep entrenchment and obstacles behind machinegun beaten zones and heavy artillery. </p><p>Pretty much every other European power had observers with the combatants, and it sounds like a ton of them reported all the same problems for the attackers facing these defensive measures, it sounds like none of them - particularly the Russians themselves, if Dowling is correct - learned <i>anything</i> from the lessons of others.</p><p>That, in turn, makes me wonder; how often in history have we soldiers (or the civilian leadership that directs us...) done that - learned from the experiences either of our predecessors or others - versus how many times we've failed to learn those lessons? It seems off the top of my head that the failures seem more common than the successes, that it seems more likely that military organizations will <i>fail</i> to recognize critical changes in technical or tactical conditions rather than anticipate or adjust to them.</p><p>Is that really the case, though? Or am I just being influenced by a sort of military "recency factor" that occurs because those failures tend to be more spectacular than the less catastrophic effects when an organization does react and adjust appropriately?<br /></p><p>And is this something that tends to happen to all large military organizations at some point? Is there an example of an army (or navy, or air force...) tending to be uniformly decent at learning from the lessons around them rather than having to learn the hard way?</p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-75504781173410394492020-12-25T08:59:00.008-08:002020-12-25T08:59:55.411-08:00Christmas Day 2020<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHBD37E-rytj81i9iZsYmrxxueL4yGezKbvCFcTlBma1Gkt6MJthleQcH4qvpWj29xwJ9ArrcEnHpS7BTokYEE2ZocjDE1e9LPVWusCXzbgXQMVtJHFB4TZjg2r8PwXpYeSke_5To53LA/s2048/IMG_8367.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1117" data-original-width="2048" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHBD37E-rytj81i9iZsYmrxxueL4yGezKbvCFcTlBma1Gkt6MJthleQcH4qvpWj29xwJ9ArrcEnHpS7BTokYEE2ZocjDE1e9LPVWusCXzbgXQMVtJHFB4TZjg2r8PwXpYeSke_5To53LA/w562-h307/IMG_8367.JPG" width="562" /></a></div><p></p><blockquote>
<p>It rained when it should have snowed.<br />When we went to gather holly</p>
<p>the ditches were swimming, we were wet<br />to the knees, our hands were all jags</p>
<p>and water ran up our sleeves.<br />There should have been berries</p>
<p>but the sprigs we brought into the house<br />gleamed like smashed bottle-glass.</p>
<p>Now here I am, in a room that is decked<br />with the red-berried, waxy-leafed stuff,</p>
<p>and I almost forgot what it's like<br />to be wet to the skin or longing for snow.</p>
<p>I reach for a book like a doubter<br />and want it to flare round my hand,</p>
<p>a black letter bush, a glittering shield-wall,<br />cutting as holly and ice.</p>
<p><i>---”Holly”, from <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/station-island-heaney/1030164734?ean=9780374519353" rel="noopener" target="_blank">"Station Island"</a> by Seamus Heaney.</i></p></blockquote><p> (h/t to Lance Mannion, who has been <a href="https://lancemannion.typepad.com/lance_mannion/2020/12/holly-by-seamus-heaney.html">posting these</a> evocative Heaney poems...) </p><p>No matter your place, time, or creed, I hope you are enjoying a time of peace for you and yours. </p><p> I wish I could have said it as well as Charlie Pierce, but I can't, so I'll just add his Christmas wish to take me out:</p><p> <i>"...may you all have the rest and peace of this mid-winter holiday season. May all your whiskey be mellow and may all
your lights shine. And may there always be a candle in the window,
calling you home, calling you out of the storm, calling all of us home,
together, and home."</i></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-37508447546277735382020-12-18T14:57:00.003-08:002020-12-19T06:11:56.245-08:00Guardians!<p><a href="https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/12/18/guardians-of-galaxy-pence-announces-name-of-space-force-members.html"><i> To Infinity...and Beyond!</i></a><br /></p><p>From the link above:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>"Space Force members have an official new name: <u><b>Guardians</b></u>, Vice President Mike Pence announced Friday.</p>
<p>"Soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Guardians will be defending
our nation for generations to come," Pence said during a ceremony to
commemorate the Space Force's 1st birthday, coming up on Dec. 20."</p></blockquote><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOsEVJtDtjfYbH4eZHKxMMKEHBeYBtOOMWB1I88bRFlZZ54_Wc0x7AnTK4A47GnA84IYnQ8F8JP1jBGjBD04k2E4bJxGdJ3Ev4rT6vPaM9cxPWfX5Ho9cwxHdqCHFltmZd6mzjBkm4zEE/s1600/Guardians.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="601" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOsEVJtDtjfYbH4eZHKxMMKEHBeYBtOOMWB1I88bRFlZZ54_Wc0x7AnTK4A47GnA84IYnQ8F8JP1jBGjBD04k2E4bJxGdJ3Ev4rT6vPaM9cxPWfX5Ho9cwxHdqCHFltmZd6mzjBkm4zEE/w451-h601/Guardians.jpg" width="451" /></a></div><br /> Oh. OH. Now I'm SO sorry I retired before I got to have fun with this. <p></p><p>It's perfect as it is, but I know I can make it better. I feel the "Acting 1SG Lawes Reads The Morning Formation Announcements" typing itself already.</p><p><b>Update 12/19:</b> And, yep, <a href="http://firedirectioncenter.blogspot.com/2020/12/acting-1sg-lawes-reads-morning_19.html">here it is</a>.<br /></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-21023091261038323572020-11-22T13:57:00.001-08:002020-11-22T14:00:31.338-08:00Now what 2?<p>Interesting article @ salon.com regarding 10 things a President Biden could do immediately on foreign policy via executive order or reversing the lying-moron's most egregious executive orders.</p>
<article>
<p>1) End the U.S. role in the Saudi-led war on Yemen and restore U.S. humanitarian aid to Yemen. </p><p>2) Suspend all U.S. arms sales and transfers to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.</p><p>3) Rejoin the Iran Nuclear Agreement (<a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/JCPOA-at-a-glance" target="_blank">JCPOA</a>) and lift sanctions on Iran.</p><p>4) End U.S. <a href="https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/1604394496-72-countries-denounce-us-sanctions-against-icc-officials-at-un" target="_blank">threats and sanctions</a> against officials of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court" target="_blank">International Criminal Court</a> (ICC).</p>
<p>5) Back President Moon Jae-in's diplomacy for a "<a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2020/09/22/South-Korea-president-calls-for-permanent-peace-regime-in-UN-speech/8641600797657/" target="_blank">permanent peace regime</a>" in Korea.</p><p>6) Renew <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/NewSTART" target="_blank">New START</a> with Russia and freeze the U.S.'s trillion-dollar <a href="http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/162279" target="_blank">new nuke plan</a>.</p><p>7) Lift illegal unilateral <a href="https://www.codepink.org/us_sanctions_economic_sabotage_that_is_deadly_illegal_ineffective" target="_blank">U.S. sanctions</a> against other countries.</p><p>8) Roll back Trump policies on Cuba and move to normalize relations.</p><p>9) Restore pre-2015 rules of engagement to spare civilian lives.</p><p>10) Freeze U.S. <a href="https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2021/FY21_Green_Book.pdf" target="_blank">military spending</a>, and launch a major initiative to reduce it.</p><p><a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/11/22/here-are-10-things-joe-biden-can-do-immediately-to-create-a-safer-better-world/">https://www.salon.com/2020/11/22/here-are-10-things-joe-biden-can-do-immediately-to-create-a-safer-better-world/</a></p><p>I'm good with all ten especially the first. Regarding the second, I seriously doubt that Biden will suspend arms sales to the KSA and UAE. </p><p>On the third item with Iran and JCPOA: Biden can end the sanctions but Tehran may not want to rejoin. Khamenei has been Iran's
Supreme Leader for over 30 years and has seen the bipolar foreign policy
of Washington first hand. Why would he bet on a Biden second term? </p><p>Number five I think Biden will do with one exception. I don't see him ending Joint US/SoKo miltary exercises. And that will kill the deal for NoKo's Haircut Boy.<br /></p><p>And number six on renewing START depends more on Putin than on Biden. But hopefully he can at least get his SecState (who will that be?) to begin horse trading with Lavrov. </p><p>Item seven and eight, of course. Sanctions rarely work unless backed up by blockade. The only successful example I can recall was against apartheid in the RSA. But those sanctions were endorsed and backed overwhelmingly by much of the world.</p><p>For item nine, ROE, we should be adhering to the San Remo Handbook and/or to NATO ROE.</p><p>Number ten, I don't think Joe is going to freeze mil spending. He is definitely going to get major push from the house to reduce it.. But the Rent Boys in the Senate will have some pushback. They are NOT friends of America.</p><p><br /></p></article>mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123137206598163451noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-72661055035437665822020-11-15T10:05:00.001-08:002020-11-15T10:05:37.320-08:00Now what?<p>Despite the efforts of roughly 47% of the U.S. voters to ensure four more years of nonstop lies, the Plague, and the New Gilded Age Project it now appears that the executive branch, at least, will revert to the more typical sort of internal and external Great Power politics that has been the bog-standard operational mode for the United States since at least 1945. </p><p>Can we project what this might mean, at least in general terms? </p><p>Keeping in mind the Pathogen in the Room that is the COVID-19 pandemic, where is a Biden Administration likely to go geopolitically? </p><p>Away from Trumpian transactionalism, one suspects. It seems likely that the old ties to NATO and the Asian democracies will be tightened and tightened bonds to autocrats such as Erdogan and Mohammad Bin Salman will be loosened, and in particular the pay-for-play demands of Trumpian foreign policy will be discarded. As <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n22/david-bromwich/warthog-dynamism">Bromwich notes</a>;
</p><blockquote>"Biden has surrounded himself with the conventional advisers of the Clinton-Obama circle – Jake Sullivan, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Thomas Donilon, Ash Carter, Michèle Flournoy. It is hard to imagine any of them straying far from the Cold War groove of shepherding Nato <i>(sic)</i> against Russia and finding a field for occasional military exercise in a humanitarian war."</blockquote><p>The bit about "humanitarian war" elides that Biden himself - and to be fair Bromwich does note this - was against the Libyan misadventure from the start.</p><p>I've always been skeptical of the "conservative" insistence on the political influence of the "Responsibility to Protect" crowd on the Left. For a brief moment during the Clinton Nineties the notion that the U.S. could use Bullets for Good was kicked around in public, but the actual effects seem to have been very minimal. </p><p>Despite the UN resolutions of the Oughts Libya remains the only salient example; for all the talk about R2P nothing has been done in Syria or Yemen other than the usual Great Power politics by either the Obama or Trump Administrations. Given that, and Biden's antipathy about the Libya intervention, I don't see any real return to "humanitarian war" in the next four years. <br /></p><p>What about the "War on Terror"?</p><p>In 2009 Biden advised Obama to cut and run from Afghanistan. I suspect that a Trump-directed wrapup that might have begun this autumn has gone the way of everything else not golf-, television-, and Twitter-related now that the Grifter-in-Chief has no more fucks to give. </p><p>But will 2021 begin with a final shuttering of the neverending saga of "Operation Enduring Freedom"? And what will happen when the inevitable collapse of the Tajik/Uzbek government in Kabul occurs? Will this become a "who lost China" controversy?</p><p>The situation in the remainder of the Middle East seems like a perfect opportunity for American disengagement. There is no real reason to take sides in the Sunni-Shia civil war, or to favor the Saudi congeries against the Iranian-led Shia axis. Given its size and demographics Iran is going to be the regional power in Southwest Asia; the U.S. insistence on trying to hold back that tide looks increasingly foolish given the persistent bad-actorism of the Saudis.<br /></p><p>And, given the need to reduce the consumption of petroleum if we are to avoid a repetition of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the need for U.S. involvement in hoarding oilfields and the despotisms that surround them seems increasingly louche. Why <i>not</i> take the opportunity of a Biden foreign policy to wave goodbye and wish a pox on both their houses? </p><p>The real open question is can a Biden Administration DO this? Engagement in the Middle East has become engrained in U.S. policy since 1945. It seems to me that it would take a seismic shift to change that, and I don't see Biden as a "seismic" kind of guy. Unfortunately, I see the next four years as a continuation of the preceding 60-odd, with the U.S. unwilling to quit fussing around in the damned region but unable to devise an actual "coherent-with-national-interest" set of goals there, either. <br /></p><p>The other potential engagement point is the west Pacific rim.</p><p>There the North Koreans have quietly resumed their usual fuckery with atomic weapons and the means to deliver them. I cannot imagine how a Biden Adminstration will change that; the examples of Saddam and Gaddafi are too powerful for the Kims to ignore. There will be no "denuclearization" in Korea.</p><p>Can there be some sort of demarche that takes the ceasefire further towards a genuine peace treaty? Again...it seems difficult to imagine a way to get around the deep well of paranoia and defensiveness that Kimism has dug north of the 38th Parallel. Perhaps the status quo is the best we can hope for.</p><p>Collision with the People's Republic of China, however, seems both more threatening and more solvable, depending on how badly the PRC wants to be the regional power in the South China Sea and how badly the U.S. wants to prevent that and how badly both sides want some sort of liveable solution. </p><p>War between the PRC and the US would be...bad. But in a sense the two powers are <i>already</i> in an economic and political cold war, and the Trumpian attempt to combat PRC mercantilist war with its own version stumbled on Tariff Man's misunderstanding of how tariffs actually work. The other option that might have done some good - revising U.S. tax and fiscal policies to punish global corporations for capital flight and offshoring - seem to have been a nonstarter in the New Gilded Age. Unfortunately, I can't see enthusiasm for such policies in the former Senator from Citibank. <br /></p><p>That said, given the habits and mores of the Beijing regime, increased global power for the PRC <i>seems</i> undesirable for anyone outside Beijing. The U.S., however, can't really position itself as the Good Guy here unless it can develop a policy other than "Fuck you, China" and the other regional actors can be motivated to respond in concert with it. </p><p>But the actors themselves are such a disparate and rag-tag bunch, ranging from the relative stability of Australia and Japan to the whatever-the-hell-is-happening in the Philippines and Indonesia, that it seems difficult to imagine some sort of subtly-led-by-the-US alliance gently but firmly resisting PRC imperialism along the Pacific rim, and that's without the weird intraparty scuffling going on between the ROK and Japan.</p><p>In short, the west Pacific is a potential tarbaby for the U.S. and the incoming administration that I'm not sure how they either solve or disengage themselves from. To step away and let the PRC bully everyone along the Pacific rim seems fraught. But to confront the PRC seems equally, or more, fraught; I can see many ways it could go wrong, and going right will require a hell of a deft touch that the U.S. has been lacking since well before Trump.</p><p>Ending the rule of Know-Nothingism and incipient fascism - not to mention the even nuttier political nonsense like "QAnon" - is an unqualified Good Thing.</p><p>But what comes next seems, as always, full of questions and doubts...and the recent election results suggest that the United States is, still...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGhz9WhtsbqCZRAEgZa0FQAvdsZ_TMblgL1myhhCyPmuujck-_iRA121pOSj98m7UWwG4c44IQAv2FZPLTI2DQsCfNqwkftEUBYHXSIxLBemy206Mp8C_TuKdPfEmkZ3kappKxRHqizpI/s1600/Nuts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGhz9WhtsbqCZRAEgZa0FQAvdsZ_TMblgL1myhhCyPmuujck-_iRA121pOSj98m7UWwG4c44IQAv2FZPLTI2DQsCfNqwkftEUBYHXSIxLBemy206Mp8C_TuKdPfEmkZ3kappKxRHqizpI/w548-h309/Nuts.jpg" width="548" /></a></div><p>How that will play out over the next four years I dread to think.</p><p><br /></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-9801587617052109082020-11-04T13:38:00.000-08:002020-11-04T13:38:12.295-08:00220 Million Used-car Salesmen<p>I have no idea what to say after yesterday. Confronted between the
choice of a bland corporate technocrat who would put in place the sort
of commonsense public health measures that have tamped down a pandemic
disease in places as far apart as Germany and South Korea, and a raging,
thieving, lying dumpster fire of a bloated orange protohominid whose insane incompetence
has helped kill a quarter of a million of their fellow citizens, nearly
half of the U.S. public screamed <i><b>"FUCK YES!!! I WANT MORE PLAGUE!!!"</b></i><br /><br />I don't care how much you love your guns, or your God, or your tax cuts.<br /><br /><i><b>It's the fucking Plague!</b></i><br /><br />Half the goddamn US public can't vote to escape the fucking 14th Century.</p><blockquote class="body-blockquote">"This may be the year when we finally
come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that
we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all
the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing
anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The
tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and
all his imprecise talk about “new politics” and “honesty in government,”
is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in
this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the
best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we
could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like
Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they
seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every
day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect
expression of everything he stands for. </blockquote><blockquote class="body-blockquote">Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”</blockquote><p><i>~ Hunter Thompson, 1972 </i><br /></p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-36737784770404058632020-09-14T21:04:00.002-07:002020-09-14T21:04:24.445-07:00Greatest Threat to World Peace<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguj21YcVEICl9SXyWICYa0G_W0qLkxFycz0B0xFkxD8wo-cjuaYUuWUezfVurfIhPmKIaMzNWTyj126aAwjVGynHA2PgpLrAdE8X5nXtqsPJrECJ3nXiuLi8MnznuO5t28jNb_xyr1qiY/s750/world+peace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="434" data-original-width="750" height="361" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguj21YcVEICl9SXyWICYa0G_W0qLkxFycz0B0xFkxD8wo-cjuaYUuWUezfVurfIhPmKIaMzNWTyj126aAwjVGynHA2PgpLrAdE8X5nXtqsPJrECJ3nXiuLi8MnznuO5t28jNb_xyr1qiY/w625-h361/world+peace.jpg" width="625" /></a></div><br /><p></p>mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123137206598163451noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-90615548305541077662020-09-05T04:30:00.000-07:002020-09-05T04:30:05.009-07:00Chumps, Suckers, and Losers<p>We're now apparently supposed to be all aghast that the
Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military thinks that people who get
killed wearing a uniform are "suckers" and "losers".</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilpfcHeAF0C1Ngl6aKt9rTh9LeQY0ndXBO8W5Mve9UaG2IY0r-qLaBZHJ1sGFPkYBBFiA3apw_AHxVhAvesPGSH7KZEVKBdeTyd2cKs74WPkbkywzOQKt3sUPH3d-k4b4JXK0PSRgUQplb/s2022/me+in+1987+large.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1342" data-original-width="2022" height="331" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilpfcHeAF0C1Ngl6aKt9rTh9LeQY0ndXBO8W5Mve9UaG2IY0r-qLaBZHJ1sGFPkYBBFiA3apw_AHxVhAvesPGSH7KZEVKBdeTyd2cKs74WPkbkywzOQKt3sUPH3d-k4b4JXK0PSRgUQplb/w500-h331/me+in+1987+large.jpg" width="500" /></a></div><i> (pausing here to note that many of these same pearl-clutchers seemed <u>juuuust</u>
fine with the same individual when he was raging and threatening any
and all of his fellow citizens who happened to disagree with him
politically in fine caudillo style. But we're not here for partisanship
at the moment...)</i><br /><p> Here's the thing.</p><p>If you are a GI, or someone who loves or cares for a GI, or just
someone who “supports the troops”...at the very least be <i>honest</i>. </p><p>Those
of us who wear the tree suit are tokens in the Game of Thrones. I'm not
whining about that. That's the nature of the business. We knew that when
we took the re-up bonus. When it comes right down to it our job
is, at the final throw, to be used - and spent, if need be - gaining or
trying to gain some
geopolitical thing.</p><p> We can <i>hope</i> that those spending our health and lives and futures are doing that wisely, j<span class="text_exposed_show">udiciously, frugally, and for only the best and gravest of reasons.</span></p><div class="text_exposed_show"><p>
All the while knowing that the opposite is very often the case; we will
be thrown away for ignorance, pride, hubris, and foolishness. Our
lives, or some portion of them, will often be wasted.</p><p>That's what we get paid for. That's our bottom line. That's the bargain we've made.<br /></p><p> And if <i>you</i> don’t like that, or that saddens or appalls, or horrifies you?</p><p>
<i>You need to be better citizens.</i> Learn the issues. Question authority.
Support people and policies...or protest against them! <i>Vote</i>...and vote with your head, not with FOX or
Facebook or your old high school buddy’s latest email attachment.</p><p>Voting
for some trashbag or fool or madman, or not even bothering to vote when
there's a chance that trashbag of a human being might be elected, means
that you lose the privilege to be shocked, shocked, when that trashbag
trashes your precious "troops". <br /></p><p> We are
your responsibility. We the People are supposed to be sovereign in this
republic. So We the People are the ones who ultimately decide whether our futures are hoarded, or wasted.<br /></p><p>If
someone you helped vote into power - or someone you're not fighting
with all your might to keep from power - is disparaging, or mocking, or
wasting your
soldiers’ lives?</p><p> It’s not their problem.</p><p> It’s yours.</p></div><p> </p>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-44834962646690354912020-08-14T14:52:00.004-07:002020-09-02T18:51:12.264-07:00V-J Day<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpNmJ-FDQzE-QoEvRcZNkRXv3FSmV5_BaZY-N1oq1B6ONj1VOvbSADWG-uYsXSzOQskCZwTX3K9Gbvm5a-EKVh5rwSo1Ek8-CYyxdJezkB6Mc563N_nvuxbjhIhu3urI8jdscGpMi3mM0/s2048/vj+day.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1602" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpNmJ-FDQzE-QoEvRcZNkRXv3FSmV5_BaZY-N1oq1B6ONj1VOvbSADWG-uYsXSzOQskCZwTX3K9Gbvm5a-EKVh5rwSo1Ek8-CYyxdJezkB6Mc563N_nvuxbjhIhu3urI8jdscGpMi3mM0/s640/vj+day.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p>10 August??? I called Ed this morning (14 August), Ed is a 96-year old vet who had served at Okinawa during that time. He was in our local VFW chapter, but is now in a senior care facility near his children. He recalled that all hands had gotten the word on the tenth that Japan had offered to surrender. There was a lot of celebration. He said the wild firing into the air was a bad mistake as several men were killed and wounded.</p><p class="firstHeading" id="firstHeading" lang="en" style="text-align: left;">The US accepted on the 12th of August. The only exception to the Japanese
offer was that Hirohito could only remain
in a
purely ceremonial role and NOT as Japan's 'Heavenly Sovereign'. There was a delay in Tokyo for debate about acceptance of Hirohito's eclipse - or continuation of the war. So on 13 August (14 August in Japan) B29s from Tooey Spaatz Strategic Air Force Pacific resumed air raids attacking Iwakuni, Osaka, Tokoyama, Kumagaya, and Isesaki. The PM, the Navy Minister, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs all opted for surrender. The Army was more intransigent, or at least some firebrands there thought they could get away with a coup and continue the war. They murdered a Lieutenant General who would not go along with them. Hence the Kyūjō incident. <br /></p><p>But wiser heads prevailed. On the 14th (15th in Japan) Hirohito announced the surrender via radio to all in his nation so that they would know it was his personal decision to capitulate. He stayed in that ceremonial Emperor role for another 44 years. A good movie was made about the decision and the coup. Back in 1967 the great Kihachi Okamoto directed "Japan's Longest Day" aka "The Emperor and the General". Some dramatic license like all cinema, but well presented. <br /></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident</a></p><p> <a href="https://www.bestmoviesbyfarr.com/movies/japans-longest-day/1967">https://www.bestmoviesbyfarr.com/movies/japans-longest-day/1967</a></p><p><a href="http://www.midnighteye.com/features/a-tribute-to-kihachi-okamoto/">http://www.midnighteye.com/features/a-tribute-to-kihachi-okamoto/</a></p><p>There is a remake out titled "The Emperor in August" released five years
ago on the 70th anniversary. I have not seen it yet but hope too soon. <br /></p><p><a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/08/05/films/complex-portrayal-emperor-hirohito/">https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/08/05/films/complex-portrayal-emperor-hirohito/</a></p><p><a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/08/14/national/history/emperors-wwii-surrender-aired-amid-turmoil-wartime-regime/">https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/08/14/national/history/emperors-wwii-surrender-aired-amid-turmoil-wartime-regime/</a></p><p> I also called today and chatted with a elderly former Woman Marine who was stationed at Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay as a supply clerk during the war. She couldn't remember a lot. Said she was on duty when the announcements were made so missed all the partying in downtown Frisco.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYLQ9LYPANggfRreHzJ44r9OLVqrQJ94i5gtcvggoOdlCmwLGM9FL5AfQMs38G0xxQW26ZY1IoCjA_g48cEjBWntx2wnA_3eVqpBLVnD10tMDyhzTIk1B2n_WscxLz29yg7Ak1_3uj4ss/s418/flyover.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="120" data-original-width="418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYLQ9LYPANggfRreHzJ44r9OLVqrQJ94i5gtcvggoOdlCmwLGM9FL5AfQMs38G0xxQW26ZY1IoCjA_g48cEjBWntx2wnA_3eVqpBLVnD10tMDyhzTIk1B2n_WscxLz29yg7Ak1_3uj4ss/d/flyover.jpg" /></a></div><p>The formal surrender of course did not take place until two weeks later on board the U.S.S. Missouri on 2 September.</p><p> <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1303405">https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1303405</a></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: medium;">UPDATE: Much has been said about the estimated casualties if the Invasion of Japan, Operation Downfall, had gone ahead. In April 1945, a Joint Chiefs of Staff planning
paper assessed possible casualties based on experience in both
Europe and the Pacific given a troop list of 766,700 men and a 90-day
campaign. Based on the "Pacific Experience" JCS projected that the US Sixth Army could be expected to suffer 514,072 casualties (including 134,556 dead and missing)</span></span>. There were three problems with that this assessment: 1] it only included casualties up to X+90 on Kyushu and not for the later invasion of Honshu on the Kanto Plain; 2] it did not include personnel losses at sea from Japanese air attacks; and 3] Japanese were easily
able to accurately predict the Allied invasion plans and thus tripled their defenses on Kyushu from what the JCS estimates had been based on. There were other estimates, MacArthur low-balled it at 105,000 total casualties but again that was only for Kyushu. Mac had made a habit of underestimating enemy strength. He did it in Luzon twice, here, and later in Korea.<br /></p><p>Senior Navy admirals were against the invasion of the home islands. This was based on their experience at the lengthy and costly Okinawa Campaign where 368 Allied ships were damaged
while another 36 were
sunk, and the 5000 Navy dead exceeded Army KIA and USMC KIA. And probably based also on their experience at Iwo where Kamikazes sank an escort carrier<i>, </i>severely damaged a fleet carrier, and also damaged another escort carrier<i>,</i> an LST, and a transport. They preferred a blockade with continuation of a conventional bombing campaign. It might take longer but would save a lot of blood.</p><p>The Navy brass were also against the dropping of A-Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to Truman, Admiral Leahy called it "<i>the biggest damn fool thing we have ever done</i>". Admiral King called the rationale that the bomb would save American lives misplaced, because if Truman had been willing to wait a blockade would have "<i>starved the Japanese into submission</i>". Admiral Nimitz considered the bomb "<i>somehow indecent, certainly not a legitimate form of warfare</i>". Admiral Halsey, using military reasoning instead of humanitarian concern said "<i>It was a mistake ever to drop it. Why reveal a weapon like that to the world when it wasn't necessary.</i>"</p><p><u><b> UPDATE#2</b></u><b>:</b></p><div style="position: absolute; transform: translateY(0px); transition: opacity 0.3s ease-out 0s; width: 100%;"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-my5ep6 r-qklmqi r-1adg3ll"><div class="css-1dbjc4n"><article class="css-1dbjc4n r-18u37iz r-1ny4l3l" data-focusable="true" role="article" tabindex="0"></article></div></div></div><div class="css-1dbjc4n"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-18u37iz"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1iusvr4 r-16y2uox r-m611by"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-l4nmg1"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-18u37iz"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1iusvr4 r-16y2uox"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-18u37iz"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1habvwh r-16y2uox r-1wbh5a2"><div class="css-901oao r-hkyrab r-1qd0xha r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" lang="en"><a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao r-1re7ezh r-1loqt21 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" data-focusable="true" dir="auto" href="https://twitter.com/selectedwisdom" role="link"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 css-cens5h r-1re7ezh r-1qd0xha r-n6v787 r-16dba41 r-1sf4r6n r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" data-testid="socialContext" style="-webkit-line-clamp: 2;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" dir="ltr"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></span></span></a><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">David Sanger, NYT correspondent and author of a book on cyberwarfare, "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/The-Perfect-Weapon-David-E-Sanger-audiobook/dp/B07B7QPYGZ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=DAVID+SANGER&qid=1599096051&s=books&sr=1-1" target="_blank">The Perfect Weapon</a>", tells his father's story about V-J Day. His dad,</span> LTJG Kenneth Sanger was a CIC director on a destroyer. </span><br /><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Ahead of the surrender, he had to choose between two conflicting orders – one by McArthur instructing the fleet to allow Japanese officials to fly to Tokyo, and another from his captain, ordering him to blow them out of the sky. His Dad's account:</span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-hkyrab r-1qd0xha r-1blvdjr r-16dba41 r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" lang="en"><br /><i><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">“I relieved the watch in the combat information center. As was routine I just read all the dispatches that had come in since the previous watch. And one of them was a dispatch from General MacArthur’s headquarters in the Philippines saying that if we intercepted any </span></span></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Japanese transport planes that were flying a red pennant from the tail of the fuselage that we were to let the planes through, I presume because they were flying the Japanese generals from China to Japan to receive the surrender. Anyway, we were to let this plane through."</span></span></span></span></i></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-vpgt9t"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1awozwy r-18u37iz r-1wtj0ep"><div class="css-901oao r-1re7ezh r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-ad9z0x r-zso239 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" dir="auto"><i><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></span><span aria-hidden="true" class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1re7ezh r-1q142lx r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-ou255f r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></span><a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao css-16my406 r-1n1174f r-1loqt21 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-1jeg54m r-qvutc0" data-focusable="true" href="https://help.twitter.com/using-twitter/how-to-tweet#source-labels" rel=" noopener noreferrer" role="link" target="_blank"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><br /></span></a></i></div></div></div><div class="css-1dbjc4n"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1gkumvb r-1efd50x r-5kkj8d r-18u37iz r-tzz3ar r-ou255f r-9qu9m4"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1mf7evn"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-xoduu5 r-1udh08x"><i><a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao r-hkyrab r-1loqt21 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" data-focusable="true" dir="auto" href="https://twitter.com/SangerNYT/status/1301132080475254785/retweets" role="link"></a><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-xoduu5 r-1udh08x"><a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao r-hkyrab r-1loqt21 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" data-focusable="true" dir="auto" href="https://twitter.com/SangerNYT/status/1301132080475254785/retweets" role="link"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-vw2c0b r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-d3hbe1 r-1wgg2b2 r-axxi2z r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></span></a><a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao r-hkyrab r-1loqt21 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" data-focusable="true" dir="auto" href="https://twitter.com/SangerNYT/status/1301132080475254785/retweets" role="link"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1re7ezh r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></span></a><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-vw2c0b r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-d3hbe1 r-1wgg2b2 r-axxi2z r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></span><a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao r-hkyrab r-1loqt21 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" data-focusable="true" dir="auto" href="https://twitter.com/SangerNYT/status/1301132080475254785/retweets/with_comments" role="link"> <span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1re7ezh r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></span></a><a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao r-hkyrab r-1loqt21 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" data-focusable="true" dir="auto" href="https://twitter.com/SangerNYT/status/1301132080475254785/likes" role="link"> <span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1re7ezh r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></span></a></div></i></div></div></div></div><div class="css-1dbjc4n"><div class="css-901oao r-hkyrab r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" lang="en"><i><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">"And about 10 minutes after I had read these dispatches, we had picked up a bogie, an unidentified aircraft, on that course, and I had 16 marines in Corsairs – they were marvelous pilots – and dispatched one division of these 16 planes, which would have included four </span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">planes
including the flight leader. Marines being what they were all 16
marines went out to this intercept, and we intercepted this plane, of the type which was mentioned in the MacArthur dispatch. And it was
flying a red pennant from the fuselage.</span> </span></i></div></div><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1adg3ll"><div class="css-1dbjc4n"><article class="css-1dbjc4n r-1loqt21 r-18u37iz r-1ny4l3l r-o7ynqc r-6416eg" data-focusable="true" role="article" tabindex="0"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-eqz5dr r-16y2uox r-1wbh5a2"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-16y2uox r-1wbh5a2 r-1ny4l3l r-1udh08x r-1yt7n81 r-ry3cjt"><div class="css-1dbjc4n"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-18u37iz" data-testid="tweet"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1awozwy r-18kxxzh r-zso239" style="flex-basis: 49px;"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-18kxxzh r-1wbh5a2 r-13qz1uu"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1wbh5a2 r-dnmrzs"><i><a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-1dbjc4n r-sdzlij r-1loqt21 r-1adg3ll r-ahm1il r-1ny4l3l r-1udh08x r-o7ynqc r-6416eg r-13qz1uu" data-focusable="true" href="https://twitter.com/SangerNYT" role="link"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1adg3ll r-1udh08x"><div class="r-1p0dtai r-1pi2tsx r-1d2f490 r-u8s1d r-ipm5af r-13qz1uu"><div aria-label="" class="css-1dbjc4n r-sdzlij r-1p0dtai r-1mlwlqe r-1d2f490 r-1udh08x r-u8s1d r-zchlnj r-ipm5af r-417010"><br /></div></div></div></a></i></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></article></div></div><div class="css-1dbjc4n"><div class="css-901oao r-hkyrab r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" lang="en"><i><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">“And I ordered them not to fire, unless told to do so.
Grudgingly, the flight leader acknowledged the order. And I got on the squawk box and called the bridge and told them what I had done. And our commanding officer said, “Shoot the son-of-a-bitch down, Sanger.”</span></i></div></div><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1adg3ll"><div class="css-1dbjc4n"><article class="css-1dbjc4n r-1loqt21 r-18u37iz r-1ny4l3l r-o7ynqc r-6416eg" data-focusable="true" role="article" tabindex="0"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-eqz5dr r-16y2uox r-1wbh5a2"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-16y2uox r-1wbh5a2 r-1ny4l3l r-1udh08x r-1yt7n81 r-ry3cjt"><div class="css-1dbjc4n"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-18u37iz" data-testid="tweet"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1awozwy r-18kxxzh r-zso239" style="flex-basis: 49px;"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-18kxxzh r-1wbh5a2 r-13qz1uu"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1wbh5a2 r-dnmrzs"><a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-1dbjc4n r-sdzlij r-1loqt21 r-1adg3ll r-ahm1il r-1ny4l3l r-1udh08x r-o7ynqc r-6416eg r-13qz1uu" data-focusable="true" href="https://twitter.com/SangerNYT" role="link"><div class="css-1dbjc4n r-1adg3ll r-1udh08x"><div class="r-1p0dtai r-1pi2tsx r-1d2f490 r-u8s1d r-ipm5af r-13qz1uu"><div aria-label="" class="css-1dbjc4n r-sdzlij r-1p0dtai r-1mlwlqe r-1d2f490 r-1udh08x r-u8s1d r-zchlnj r-ipm5af r-417010"><br /></div></div></div></a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></article></div></div><div class="css-1dbjc4n"><div class="css-901oao r-hkyrab r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Sanger's Dad debated this in his mind, while the planes were in air. In the end,
<i>“I returned the planes to us without firing. I guess I made the snap judgement that I would rather be court-martialed by my commanding officer than by Gen. MacArthur. So the plane went through as intended.”</i></span></div></div>mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123137206598163451noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-24869508316427165592020-08-05T09:51:00.000-07:002020-08-05T09:51:53.517-07:00Beirut<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/8/5/d0c10cf295b5417ea81a19e44c03aa4d_18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" src="https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/8/5/d0c10cf295b5417ea81a19e44c03aa4d_18.jpg" /></a></div>My first thought on hearing the 70-plus dead was that they got off easy. As compared to Oppau 99 years ago where 560 died and Texas City 73 years ago where 580 died. Both, like Beirut 2020 were ammonium nitrate explosions.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion</a></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster</a></div><div><br /></div><div>But their search for the dead has just started, they may yet match Oppau and TC. A larger problem is the 300,000 people now homeless due to the blast. Plus food shortages and a destroyed port hindering aid relief.</div><div><br /></div><div>Authorities have arrested port officials for never moving the 2750 metric tonnes (3030 US tons) for the last six years. But will the original owner ever face justice?</div><div><br /></div><div>I saw a few twitter conspiracy comments that disbelieved the 2750 amount, saying that the Oklahoma City bomb (2 tons), caused almost as much damage. BS! Beirut damage is at least an order of magnitude worse. And they overlook the fact that at Oklahoma City the ammonium nitrate used was dosed with nitromethane. That turned it into ANNM with double the detonation velocity of ammonium nitrate alone. Plus ANNM has more capability to break concrete and cut steel, i.e. brisance. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09123137206598163451noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-8264746207622234372020-07-29T08:56:00.003-07:002020-07-31T10:41:06.482-07:00Passing through<div>Busy day today, but thought I'd throw out a couple of nutty clusters to chew on for the gang here.</div><div><br /></div><div>SecState Pompeo delivered <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/07/27/pompeos-surreal-speech-on-china/" id="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/07/27/pompeos-surreal-speech-on-china/" name="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/07/27/pompeos-surreal-speech-on-china/">a real tubthumper</a> of an address at the Nixon Library last Thursday about those tricksy Chinese. They're devious heathen devils, and apparently all the Western efforts to civilize them since "Nixon went to China" in the Seventies have gone for naught, so now it's time to muscle up and beef them around:</div><div><blockquote>(Pompeo said that)..."the U.S. will organize the free world, while
alienating and undermining the free world; he extols democracy, while
aiding and abetting its destruction at home; and he praises the Chinese
people, while generalizing about the ill intent of Chinese students who
want to come to America.
<p dir="ltr">Pompeo is also ultra-loyal to a president who cares not one
whit for democracy, dissidents, freedom, or transparency overseas.
Trump’s long track record on this is well documented, and it has defined
his personal approach to China."</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr"></p><p dir="ltr">As we discussed here a while back, I'm all in favor of treating the PRC with cautious skepticism. But the problem here is that, having made it clear that if you're a Trumpkin, you're "America First" all the way, this administration has little diplomatic throw-weight to actually mobilize any sort of large-scale pushback against Chinese geopolitical ambitions. And then there's the whole "you are, too!" problem:</p><p dir="ltr"></p><blockquote><p dir="ltr">"The Chinese Communist Party wants a tributary international system where
smaller countries are deferential to larger powers, instead of a
rules-based international order where small countries enjoy equal
rights. The CCP also sees no place for universal rights or global
liberal norms, and wants to ignore the principles of open markets to
pursue a predatory mercantilist economic policy. <br /></p><p dir="ltr">So does Trump."</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr"></p><p dir="ltr">All this will undoubtedly rachet up tensions in the East Asian littoral. What that means in practice? I'm not sure; right now the U.S. is too busy being devoured by the Plague to make anything as distant as the South China Sea fairly low on the priority list...</p><p dir="ltr">Meanwhile, half a world away the same U.S. administration has directed the USDOD to <a href="#" id="https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/06/24/logistical-hurdles-could-slow-us-troop-withdrawal-from-germany/" name="https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/06/24/logistical-hurdles-could-slow-us-troop-withdrawal-from-germany/">move about 12,000 military bodies out of the Federal Republic of Germany</a>.</p><p dir="ltr">This does not, in case you're keeping score, count as a "Donald the Dove" peace proposal. These people aren't going to become VISTA volunteers. Many are going to other parts of Europe, including Poland(?), Belgium, and Italy. But some of this may tie into the aggressive rhetoric against the PRC:</p><p dir="ltr"></p><blockquote>“Several thousand troops currently assigned to Germany may be reassigned
to other countries in Europe,” Trump’s national security adviser,
Robert O’Brien, said in an op-ed published Tuesday in The Wall Street
Journal. “Thousands may expect to redeploy to the Indo-Pacific, where
the U.S. maintains a military presence in Guam, Hawaii, Alaska and
Japan, as well as deployments in locations like Australia.”</blockquote><p></p><p dir="ltr">It's difficult not to be cynical about seeing this as a Trumpian revenge against the German government and his <i>bete noir</i>, PM Merkel, for being insufficiently fawning.</p><p dir="ltr">Anyway...interesting times.<br /></p><p dir="ltr"><br /></p></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.com26