Oh help. As I write, the mumbling egg plant in the White House shovels money and arms into two wars, neither necessary, and he and Lockheed Martin prepare for a third, also unnecessary, over Taiwan, which is none of their business. Since in the Federal Bubble on the Potomac there is chatter at the mental level of water-dwelling marsupials of sending American troops into these, perhaps a bit of thought might be a good idea.
Begin with the dismal record of the American military in actually fighting wars. Go back a way. In Vietnam,, American forces, with enormous superiority in air power, artillery, armor, and helicopters–lost. In Afghanistan, with even greater superiority over peasants with rifles and not much-else, the American military–lost. Just now in the Red Sea an aircraft carrier and several destroyers have for months tried to keep ragtag Yemenis from blocking traffic to the crucial Suez Canal and–failed. After more than two years of of pushing the war in Ukraine, America’s puppet army is–losing.
And now Washington wants to fight…China.
Why undertake anything so obviously cockamamie? The reasons are several. Start with the insular complacency of a city long accustomed to immense international power and unable to see that it no longer has it. Many who hold the reins in the city are old men who remember the world of decades ago when an aircraft carrier could intimidate almost any country, including China. This isn’t then, but the old have difficulty noticing. Add a Congress incontinently ignorant of anything but the politics of Washington and of their home states There is nobody on the House China committee who reads, speaks, or writes Chinese. Yet Congress inveighs fiercely against Beijing like a swarm of feral hamsters.
We have all heard repeatedly that America is the Indispensable Nation, Exceptional, the Sole Superpower, the Shining City on a Hill that other countries want to imitate. I will hope that most of us take this as the forgettable political boilerplate that it is. But there are many in Washington who actually believe it. They are smug, self-assured, and unable to think beyond the walls imposed by belief. Many are highly intelligent, making it easy to ignor the opinions of lesser mortals. They read each other, talk to each other, and drink together.
The sense of superiority, even invincibility, leads to disasters. If you are the Sole Superpower, you don’t really have to ask what other countries can do, think or want. You don’t have to plan realistically or ask What If?
What if, for example, the Russian fleet shows up in support of China? If North Korea seized the chance and invades South Korea, giving Washington two major wars at once? If China sinks tankers going to Japan and Taiwan, neither of which has oil? If Washington insouciantly bombs the Chinese mainland, which it will, and China or Russia hits the Pentagon and Capitol with sub-launched missiles? What does the sole superpower then do?
Consider the war in Ukraine. Washington went into it (the rest of the country didn’t know where it was) sure that losing was impossible. After all, Russia was backward, technologically primitive, and (as we heard over and over) a gas station pretending to be a country.” If there was an effort actually to understand what Russiacould do, no sign of this appeared.
Washington was, however, sure of many things. Russia could not withstand a long war. It has. Its currency would collapse. It didn’t. (Remember Field Marshal Joe in the White House chortling that “The ruble is rubble?” It wasn’t.) The Russian public would rise and oust Putin. It didn’t. The rest of the world would rally around Washington and isolate Russia diplomatically. It didn’t. The sanctions would collapse the Russian economy. They didn’t. NATO’s superior weapons and tactics would crush Russian forces. They didn’t. Russia would run out of artillery ammunition and missiles. It didn’t. NATO did.
All of this demonstrates a catastrophic failure of the intelligence agencies, an ignorance of, among other things, Russia’s economic structure and capacity, will to fight, motives, and weaponry. For this we pay billions.
So: Washington has painted itself into a corner. If it negotiates, this will amount to a surrender. The gargantuan inflamed egos will not easily acceptthat the Sole Superpower has just lost in a war it concocted itself. A loss would disastrously reduce Washington’s military credibility. NATO might realize that it had been taken for a ride and decline to do it again. Taiwan might figure out that it was being set up to fight China, a short distance across the water, as a second Ukraine.
Possibilities Washington didn’t foresee, smugly regarding Russia as an enlarged Guatemala. A desperate Washington is capable of fathomless stupidity. There is talk of provoking a Europewide war, even attacking Russia itself. Oh good.
Here I offer Fred’s Fourth Military Law: Military stupidity comes in three levels: Normally stupid; really, really stupid; and invading Russia. It isn’t good for you. Charles XII tried it, as did Napoleon and Hitler. With identical results.
Inside the Beltway, “American boots on the ground” sounds scary, even decisive. No. American weaponry, its chief purpose being to funnel money to the arms industry, has performed poorly in the Ukraine. The vaunted M1 tank burns like any other. Russia has a large advantage in missiles, both in numbers and sophistication, including hypersonics. The F16 fighter, apparently thought of as a sort of hypergalactic Star Wars craft, first flew in 1976, though it is not actually a biplane. The enlisted ranks in particular are rotted by low recruiting standards, diversity hiring, sexual curiosities and homosexuals. One thinks of the 35th Squealing Demons Regiment, or the frightful Tranny Berzerkers.
Bear in mind that a military is less a fighting force than a psychological condition, an element of this being pathological optimism. An army will not fight if it is told that it consists of mediocre infantry, poorly trained and led, and not really as well armed or led as the potential enemy. Consequently they are regularly assured that they are the most formidable, death-dealing troops in this or any nearby universe.
This makes for misjudgement, as does the fact that wars, whatever there alleged causes, are actually consequences of secretions from those parts of men that women say men think with. Countries fight war after war after war after war, not because it is a good idea but because it is what men do, like packs of wild dogs.
This is why wars so seldom turn out as the aggressors expect. In 1914 Germany started wWI, and lost. In 1939, it started WWII, and lost. In 1941 the Japanese attacked America, and lost. After this, the French re-invaded Vietnam, and lost. Then the Americans invaded Vietnam, and lost. The russians invaded Afghanistan, and lost. Then the Americans invaded Afghanistan, and lost. Then the Americans started a war in Ukraine, and are losing. Now they want a war with China.
I’m going to change my phylum. This one doesn’t look to have much future, and anyway it is embarrassing.
The recent past has been a tale of sending American kids, men and lately a few women into stupid wars. In those wars strategies demanded battles for objectives that were tactically meaningless, quickly abandoned only to be fought over again. In all those battles our soldiers and airman fought bravely, relentlessly and won. I can’t remember a battle we lost. Yet we lost the wars. How do you win battles and lose wars? That takes a new kind of stupid and careless waste of blood and treasure. I’m not sure our present military can even win battles, but I am sure we can still find the way to lose wars. Let’s stop.
‘How do you win battles and lose wars?’
When the politicians do not give permission to win.
Germany didn’t start WWI. Perhaps Germany could have kept it from starting but it didn’t create the situation in Serbia or the over-reaction of Russia to Serbia.
My thought too, John. Like several other belligerents, the Germans weren’t snow-white innocents either: after all, they had built up their armed forces to a very high level in the expectation of gain, or at least averting loss. The causes of WW1 were “systematic”, in that all the belligerents behaved in ways that led almost inevitably to war.
But Fred’s diagnosis strikes me as spot on. WW1 happened because of men trying to think with their glands. The Germans reasoned that their armed forces had always saved them and helped them prosper; Frederick the Great saved Prussia by continuous fighting, and Germany came into existence because of the wars with Austria and France (both started by the other power). But the French were desperate to get revenge and show that they were Top Power after all. If Sir Edward Grey had been properly impartial towards France and Germany, the balloon might well never have gone up.
This ancient history is vitally important, because WW2 was just the second half of the match begun in 1914. The Versailles Treaty of 1919 furnished the world with copious casus belli for a couple of centuries – which are not over yet.
The polar opposite of foolish Sir Edward Grey was Bismarck, two of whose reputed declarations (at least) should be familiar to every high-school student:
“Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal … A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all … I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where … Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off”. (Unauthenticated but sounds like him).
“The secret of diplomacy? Make a good treaty with Russia”. (“And observe it scrupulously”, can be heard hanging in the air).
I fear Mr Reed does not read the Western media: US/UK/EU, all of it say that NATO weapons have more than twice the range of the outmoded and inept Soviet weapons that are all the Russians have, and very little ammunition, while NATO has unlimited supplies of ammunition. Putin sent an army to take Kiev, but that entire army was wiped out. Putin sent a second army, but it was also totally destroyed. Then he sent a third army, also wiped out. Russia have lost more than 500,000 men while the Ukraine have only lost 31,000. Sanctions, we were told by Secretary Yellen and the Western media, totally destroyed the Russian Economy, so Russia have to buy as many weapons from the DPRK, Iran, and the PRC as they can, on credit.
Please never read any of the people actually in the Russian Federation (which now includes the Crimea and the Donbass), since they all say it is the Ukrainians who have lost more than five times as many troops as the Russians, with some estimates as high as ten times.
And don’t even think of looking at World Bank estimates that put the Russian economy 4th largest in the world at PPP.
Just stick to Western media, the war is going very, very well, and in a few more months (if NATO just send Ukraine the money) the Russians will be totally vanquished, Putin will be handed over to the Hague, all Russian mineral resources will go to the US to ‘administer’ for the Ukraine as war reparations, and Russia will be broken up into 30 small, unarmed countires that can no longer threaten US hegemony, and all without the loss of a single American life.
(Those sources actually in the Russian Federation note that several Americans have been killed by Russian rockets as they were helping train the Ukrainians, but you won’t read any such news in the Western media.)
The US and NATO do not have unlimited supplies of ammunition. Both are at dangerous levels and will take 6 years to replenish.
https://reason.com/2024/06/28/why-cant-americans-have-an-honest-foreign-policy-discussion/
War seems irrational, but is it? Take the Cold War. At first, it seems irrational that the Soviet Union and the United States would spend so much time and money on the arms race. But, from a Mathematical Game-Theory perspective, even with slight cooperation, its logical and rational to escalate a cold war because of the consideration of all probability-outcomes of the prisoners’ and other game-theory dilemmas (non-cooperative games). Passive non-defense is a poor choice. Both the Soviet Union and the United States knew we were playing a non-cooperative game throughout the Cold War. With Canada, we didn’t need to do this, because our decisions with Canada were based on full cooperation (a cooperative game). Cooperative game outcomes are much better than non-cooperative games, but that’s only possible in high-trust societies. Here is where it gets interesting. If we were to make first contact with an alien civilization, our most logical and rational decision would be to escalate a cold war with them, if we had equal technology, even if they showed some cooperation, because the cooperation could be feigned. Trust has to be earned in a game, to evolve to cooperation. The consideration of all possible outcomes forces us into that non-cooperative game with aliens. Given this, it would be foolish to make first contact, because logically and rationally, it would likely lead to severe risks. But, if either side is more advanced, then the passive non-defensive choice would be best for the weaker party and the more advanced party wouldn’t have to escalate. This whole game scenario is what we see in dog and wolf encounters. Essentially, we need to approach every new alien encounter and any hostile nation encounter like snarling wolves.
“One thinks of the 35th Squealing Demons Regiment, or the frightful Tranny Berzerkers.”
Well, I hadn’t, but after tear inducing laughter, I won’t forget. Thank you
Reagan went on about “the old men in the Kremlin” over 40 years ago.
It was true then but being a Washington politician means never having to get your clocks checked. Now it’s the old weird guys in DC who are leading us to ruin and the Kremlin — or anyway the Russian leadership — is in pretty strong hands.
We changed place with the Russia of the 1980s. Can we pull off what they did at the end of that decade? Peaceful dismemberment of the United States. State control over who is a citizen and who is not. State laws keep work and industry close to our own people — and state immigration officers keep strangers out.
For starters that would help. Let us devolve as the USSR did, and win.
Peaceful dismemberment of the United States. Wow! What a concept. Peaceful dismemberment was thought about once beginning in 1803 for the New England states but decided against at the Hartford Convention (15 DEC 1814), then thought about again and even tried in 1860 but was not allowed to happen. The attempted peaceful dismemberment was turned into a massively bloody, armed prevention of each state’s unwritten right to secede, then the self-dismembered states were forced back into the so-called voluntary union that they had unthinkingly joined 40 years earlier. All the people in 1776 could think about was no more English slavery. In 1865 they discovered that once again they were slaves to a foreign nation. I have often mused about a single state’s secession, but it never occurred to me that a Constitutional Convention of all 50 states might also end up with 50 different new nation-states, none of which would be beholden to any central authority. I believe this approach is much more likely to succeed than an attempt to patch up the decrepit Constitution which only superzealous patriots seem to want now. It seems obvious to me that any attempt to make major changes to the Constitution would have its Convention invaded and manipulated by those who want it changed in a way that would please only the anti-Constitutionalists. But each of the 50 new nation-states could have any Constitution that they wanted, which they now have anyway except that each state’s Constitution is subject to being over-ridden by our Federal Constitution and Supreme Court.
So by all means, bring on the Constitutional Convention!
The US has started wars and can lose them without a care in the world knowing that the US certainly had no chance of getting any damage from any enemy the damage will all be done to other countries . Of course there is one scenario where the US gets damage, for the first time since 1812, is it, and that’s WW lll which it seems they feel they can survive with little if any damage. With Obama running things that might be in the offing.
As an aside, the US had boots on the ground in Russia 1918-19. That didn’t stop the red menace then either.
The US Military doesn’t lose wars. The US Government does. If America ever wakes up, hangs a few thousand criminals who are in power and have been for decades things would improve. Add on all the media whores who aid and abet the treason and things would be even better.
Get rid of the Rothschild’s , the Schwab’s, the Soros clan etc. and life would improve dramatically.
At this point WWIII is inevitable, in fact it’s already begun. And we are all going to have to take a big bite of the shit sandwich heading our way. Anyone not prepared by now is probably too late.
“Inside the Beltway, “American boots on the ground” sounds scary, even decisive.”
I’d say that OUTSIDE the Beltway, this also sounds that way, but not for the same reasons….
One reason the US has lost the Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars (or being kind, not won them) has been because of the lawyers. I’m sure most posters here remember the Dresden bombing, as an example. Or the Tokyo fire bombings, both of WW II. Anything half as bad today or in recent wars, would have the US government and military leaders, strung up by the balls as war criminals. The military needs to tell the lawyers to go to hell, or maybe string them up by the balls.
“The enlisted ranks in particular are rotted by low recruiting standards…”
It is my understanding that the lowered standards are in part necessary because the demographic that has provided the fodder since post-WWII has slowly learned that they are being used. If the geniuses in DC start a war they will have to rely on immigrant conscripts to an even greater degree than Lincoln did.
Sadly, they seem to be preparing for that.
I quote an English infantry captain in Afghanistan when asked about American troops there. “Utterly, utterly useless” was his reply. Are we to believe he was just that jealous? Massive hubris exists among Americans, brought about by beating up badly armed peasants. The last war America won, on its own, was the civil war.
One could say that America LOST the Civil War, given the incredible damage, loss of life and incalculable loss of the potential of those lives.
The only winner was “The State.” Centralized, magnificently evil FedGov.
Thanks, Abe.
The last war America won, at all, was also the last war the Soviet Union (and its brainwashed, ideologically conquered, US-born idiot children) wanted us to win.
Ever since, the Marxist capture of Education, Finance, and Media (including “Journalism”) has neutered us. As an ex-military ex-journalist recently put it–incidentally demonstrating that one can’t spend a career swimming in a septic tank without it soaking in–“An army will not fight if it is told that it consists of mediocre infantry, poorly trained and led, and not really as well armed or led as the potential enemy.”
I take exception with our losing the war in Vietnam. We did but not from a military perspective. We lost due to social and political weenies incapable and afraid to face the need to actually prosecute the war. Our military could have flattened the NVA but thanks to Johnson and McNamara meddling/blunders and the utterly worthless American public nearly 60K of American lives were thrown away. I was a stupid kid then believing I was fighting for America and the greater good. Yeah, right. I am so angry at myself for volunteering for that debacle that I daily take a run head-first at an oak tree. America is no longer worth fighting for.
I feel your pain. Oak trees are rather unyielding, are they not?
In the ’60s the American Public was gaslighted beyond endurance by the Domino Theory–that, were we to not prop up and maintain the Republic of S. Vietnam, all of those adjacent SEAsian nations would fall to the dreaded “Red China” one after another.
Well, we LOST, we left Saigon shamefully (I vividly recall the video of the last Huey leaving the embassy); we failed in the mission to “Prop up” S. Vietnam, yet…………..the only thing that fell after that debacle was the Domino Theory itself.
May Walter Cronkite continue to roast in the 7th level of Hell).
Lies. All lies. The same lies told today by the Pentagram’s legion of admirals & generals–almost none of whom have ever felt the brush of supersonic lead flying by their faces.
War is a racket. Do not invest your sons/grandsons/daughters/granddaughters!
I am stuck with the line from _We Were Soldiers Once… And Young_ about the ROE. Specifically, the one prohibiting pursuing the enemy into Laos. This was in 1967, and even at that time LtC Moore (later MGen) opined that the war was unwinnable.
McNamara’s Morons and similar debacles did not help the situation.
If the insanity continues there will be a point where the “peasants with rifles and not much-else” will be pissed-off Americans. Unless of course the DC assholes manage to get us all nuked first.
The US lost the war in Vietnam for the same reason England lost the Revolutionary War: a basic misunderstanding of the motivation and the will-to-win on the part of the Vietnamese. Their reason was the same as ours. They wanted the right to exercise autonomy over their own society. The US thought it was all about Communism and “falling dominoes.” America has never been able to make these connections simply because in its blindly arrogant approach to foreign policy, it can’t accept any viewpoint other than its own. This imperialist attitude is the primary reason the US can no longer advance on the world stage. Either it changes with the times, or it falls by the wayside. That’s the only real choices left.
As a meme recently stated [photo of an alien craft doing a flyby above Earth]:
Alien 1: “Are they an intelligent race?”
Alien 2: “No, they have nuclear weapons–but aim them at each other.”
Why would China bomb the beating heart of stupidity, Washington DC ? There is the old maxim “never interfere with the enemy while he is in the process of making a mistake”. When their decision makers are inferior to your decision makers it would be better to leave them in place and concentrate on their military, leaving their decision makers in place.
Ragin’ Reptiles, Fred! This one turns-on all my bulbs! Bravo, Bravo, BRAVO! It needs to be in Biden’s’ “in-box” daily with copies to all Bidenistas as well as the New York Times and Washington Compost. You write gospel truth.
I sensed a flavor of BS by some people making comments e.g. We are winning the war in The Ukraine and Putin will be subsequently washed up as a source if trouble in Europe. The Dems would like to think that the threat of Putin will forever be gone – I put that one strongly in the BS column. Never rule the Russians out. While they have taken great losses in history, those people are TOUGH and will never be rubbed out – nor will Putin. This war is all about The Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. Take away this factor and the war will end. A neutral Ukraine is a good compromise for Russia as well as Europe that is becoming inflamed. Biden and his henchmen are indeed leading us to WW III.
Other comments say that The Ukraine has only lost 30,000 deaths. I put that in the BS category also and believe that this “meat grinder” is rapidly approaching casualty records of WW I with perhaps 500,000 deaths on each side. It’s got to stop for the sake of humanity. What a waste of young men and probably young women also – generations are being wiped out!
I don’t believe the Democrats understand or have ever understood the use of military force. General Eisenhower, at the end of WW II warned of the adverse effects of the US military/industrial complex. Those pigeons have come home to roost. World peace and a balance of world power under Donald Trump have been destroyed in three short years with the Bidenistas. The US (Biden) started the war in The Ukraine and probably the War in Israel as the result of weak US leadership. And Roger….(They) are now looking for a war with China. S-T-U-P-I-D. Not to mention that the US has created the new Axis of Evil by driving Russia to their old enemy China to produce the Axis of China, Russia, (loco) NoKo and (radical) Iran at a time we are experiencing record recruiting deficiencies. Patriotism is on the wane in America….. From where are US troops coming for WW III? From DEI and CRT brainwashed grads?
Donald Trump is the only man alive that can put the quell on all of the world chaos recently perpetrated by the Democrats, IMNSHO.
–JB
“The last war America won, on its own, was the civil war.”
A very good argument can be made that America lost that war, because it destroyed the Constitutional Republic, by giving the Federal Government power over the States.
Fred, normally you are spot on, but you don’t have a fucking clue about the war in the Ukraine. The USA did not start it, it is not running the war, and the Ukrainian government is not an American puppet. The USA has been noticeable mainly for its laggard response to the requests for help from the Ukraine, Modern tanks? Biden did nothing until the UK sent a squadron of Challengers. Newer planes and the missiles to go with them? Finally, they are arriving, but they would have made a huge difference.
Whether you consider the Ukrainian war to be optional depends not only on your point of view, but where you live. The Ukraine and its problems are a long way from the USA, and Mexico. I live in Poland (not close to the eastern borders, fortunately) and I have met a number of Ukrainians, including the women and children who left to avoid the random bombardments. Russia is conducting a campaign of terror, and especially in the areas that it has occupied. It is not a war that can be ignored.
The more so, because Putin has been trying to prise away bits of real estate over the years. Moldavia lost what is now called Transnistria, Georgia lost Abkhazia and North Ossetia (disputed, of course, in the typical Caucasian way) and the started nibbling at the Ukraine in 2014. The original war plan was to sweep through the Ukraine and gobble up Moldavia, not least because it is not in NATO. Putin would love to get back the three Baltic republics, and for the icing on the cake, subjugate Poland again. The latter four countries have unhappy memories of Russian occupation and a burning desire for it not to happen again. Being in NATO means that even Putin will think twice about attacking them.
In short, Fred, the perspective from Europe is different, and the people who live there, as I do, are really, really not keen on having a destructive war on the doorstep, or worse yet, in the house. Putin needs to be stopped. Unless he is going towards a window in a tall building.