Towards a General Line in Regards to US Political Reality

Another one of those Virginians, George Washington at Valley Forge

Recently I commented the following on Colonel Lang's blog:

"Let us not let the Zionists make fools of us in their pursuit of absolute security."

What a clear and yet profound statement Colonel! I can only agree, but at the same time, given the level of manipulation that seemingly pervades our discourse, how are we as a nation, as a political community, to see fit to identify our own political interests? Such a simple thing, yet so difficult in practice!

On various occasions I have taken the insights I have gained here and attempted to expand them further on the blog I share with others of like mind. We are all very much indebted to you sir as both a mentor and a source of inspiration. Whatever the outcome of this, there are legion out here that do hear and understand.

Notice that I have implicated all here in my statement, and without even having asked before hand! Was it the emotion of the moment?, the power of the vihno? or something else entirely, say something with nothing to do with US politics?

No, I think it none of these. Rather I wished to make a statement which brought together several different observations I've made over the last couple of years, these being:

* We Americans are in the midst of a profound political crisis, probably the most serious one we have ever faced as a political community.

* This crisis consists of a whole series of systemic failures which include the political, the economic, the strategic/intellectual, the moral . . .

* The current US elite holding de facto power, call them the "Empire Party" are anti-democratic, anti-intellectual, anti-Enlightenment, and radical in their views and intentions for the future of this country. They attempt to pass themselves off mostly as "conservatives" or even at times as "progressives", but their words are consistently betrayed by their actions. Their actions see the means of US government power as a tool to their own enrichment, they use public funds to enrich themselves and promote their own narrow interests.

* The Empire Party has a powerful propaganda instrument in their hands which is used effectively to confuse the citizenry. This propaganda has a significant ideological element which is especially "Libertarian" and Radical Right wing, yet most of those under the influence of this political propaganda do not gain anything through its goals or even benefit from the system in general, rather suffer under it in a variety of ways. The mass of supporters are essentially stooges to be manipulated at will for the interests of the cynical elite. Part of the propaganda mix is a pseudo-religious affiliation with Right-wing Israeli policies, although affiliation with other like-minded foreign interests is assumed.

These are my views, not necessarily those of anyone here or of Colonel Lang, although regarding the former I suspect that we barkeeps are overall in agreement for the most part. This would cover a significant amount of those who comment as well.

So why comment what I did on SST? In the title I use the term "General Line" and that refers to a concept from Marxist/Leninist thought although I use it differently. The General Line in communist terms was the general program of the party which had been decided on by the party leadership and had to be adhered to by all members. Not to do so was to deviate either to the "left" or "right" and face the possibility of being expelled from the party, at the least. My meaning here is not this, but more the nature of "a path forward" instead of a thoughtout program. Which means we could come from different points along the political spectrum and agree on certain current views and see (and follow) a similar path forward. Deviation is this case would be natural and sometimes enlightening, but rejoining the fold would remain a possibility, unlike in the communist system. Also there would be the sense of being part of a movement which is something the opposition to the Empire Party sorely lacks.

I have found the views expressed by Colonel Lang and his associated writers to be professional, thoughtful, insightful and roughly in line with my own views of the current situation, but possibly lacking the harder edge that exists in the four points I mentioned above (that is I may be more radical, although I make no claim of objectivity in that regard - it's more just a gut feeling). Colonel Lang has consistently shown me aspects of this reality I was either unaware of or lacking in the perception to take on and for that I am thankful. I will continue to comment on his blog and use what I have learned there to further expand here. In all I think we are all part of a movement to take back our country and to understand our current harsh political reality. If I have offended anyone by my actions I regret that, but can only add that was not my intention.

I'm very interested in ya'lls take on all this.

From Behind the Bar

I wanted to break in here to solicit some input from some of our more silent servers. Specifically basil, sheerah and Lisa have been very quiet lately. I've talked to jim about this, and he and I have agreed to take our feet off the bar rail for a little bit in hopes that we can get some more conversation from some of our staff who may have felt a little...overwhelmed by the volume that we produce.

Al and Publius, too, have been posting some good stuff, and, as always, more is better when the beer and the conversation is good.

So how about it?

Oh, and before I shut up, let me toot my little Portland horn a bit for my beloved Portland Timbers. We may be small, and we mayn't be able to do better for sister cities than Mutare, Zimbabwe; Ashkelon, Israel; and Khabarovsk, Russia, but how about Boca Juniors and Manchester City? In three months? To play our Boys in Green? We may be small, but in footy terms, we'll roar up yer lobby.We'll be coming, we'll be coming, we'll be coming down the road...when you hear the noise of the Timbers Army boys, we'll be coming down the road!

H&I

I have an odd sort of love-hate for Michael Yon.

He is one of the few journalists really willing to spend a LOT of time in some of the filthiest ass-end parts of the world finding out what's happening there. He also knows soldiers and soldiering in a sort of latter-day Ernie Pyle way, and I like that.

On the downside, he's a sort of dirty-boot Bob Kaplan, Tom Clancy with a notepad, a guy who's never met gee-whiz cool Aaaaaarmy training he didn't love. He's sort of a man-size eleven-year-old that way, and he commonly mistakes technical and tactical proficiency for strategic and geopolitical competence, and he always assumes that the GI's are the epitome of studly cool and the fuzzy-wuzzies are dirty rats.I love the fact that he has some great pictures and a nice little article about the gunners at FOB Frontenac (although, Mike? That'd be "Cobra Battery, 1st Battalion, 17th Artillery - the 17th Infantry are those guys walking around with the teeny little bullet launchers, remember?).

But as I'm enjoying the pretty night fire pictures I come across this:

"Sometimes the crews fire “H & I” or “terrain denial” missions. Harassment and Interdiction missions are fired at terrain known to be used only by the enemy at certain times, and so anytime the enemy feels like rolling the dice, they can move into that terrain. Such missions also provide influence for “shaping” the battlefield. If the commander is trying to flush the enemy into a blunder—maybe an ambush—or maybe to cut them off from an escape route, he can have the guns pound into a gorge, say, that is used as an enemy route. Or maybe he just tries to persuade the enemy to take a route where we have sniper teams waiting. The battery can be used in many ways that do not include direct attacks on enemy formations."

Yes, indeed.

When I was just a mere slip of a redleg, my FDC Chief taught me that H&I fires in a LIC were the worst way of substituting motion for direction, a bad excuse for shooting unobserved rounds at a grid coordinate, a waste of rounds and a good way of pissing off the locals at you.We did this shit a lot in Vietnam, where my Chief got sick of it. Typically you had no eyes on the "target", which could be a trail junction, the edge of a treeline, a river ford, anywhere. And since you were also typically in the middle of a farming district, these were also typically used by local Romeos slipping out to see their hootchie Juliets, woodcutters, farmers, enemy runners, monkeys, roebucks...just about damn near anything. But the point was that - despite what Yon thinks - you never really knew. It was a statistic, a way that the artillery battalion or brigade could say "We fired XYZ missions on Targets Able, Fox and Whiskey"

I have no idea if H&I fire is any better in A-stan than it was in Vietnam. But the fact that we're doing it at all...?

Hmmm.

MilPub: Barstool Warning Label

I wanted to ensure that, for all that this site and many of those posting here have a military connection, those of you interested in posting or commenting do NOT feel that some sort of armed service connection is required.

I have invited the brilliant and decidedly both delightfully feminine and thoroughly civilian Lisa (of RangerAgainstWar) to be one of the bartenders here. Here's what I wrote to her in regards to this topic.

"And I hope you don't restrict yourself from commenting on military topics. One of the most pernicious tendencies in this country in the past decade is the attempt, both by the military itself and those who idolize the military, to insist that a lack of military service or specialized military knowledge disqualifies one from assessing and analyzing military adventuring. It's the very problem I see at places like Abu Muquwama, where the so-called "qualified" military and ex-military types and military buffs spend huge quantities of bandwith debating and discussing techniques and tactics of eating soup with a knife without ever hinting that the soup might not be a nourishing or valuable food for the people funding the knife."

So drop trails and fire for effect. We'll tell you if you're way out of safe. But in a NICE way.