Lessons from World War II in the Pacific on multi-domain operations. I drew my own lessons from the Guadalcanal campaign in this Land Warfare Paper.
Good grief people, having some American military assets in Washington, D.C. on our Independence Day which was won by force of arms is not a symbol of potential tyranny and mass slaughter. Do liberals really think that the American military will participate in a plot to impose a Trump dictatorship--a coup which too many "liberals" earnestly called for after Trump was elected? I drove an Army truck in a parade once. Was I part of Bill Clinton's effort to be a dictator? Democrats like to protest that Republicans don't own the flag, yet now Democrats are protesting the Fourth of July! Stop reacting to the American flag the way vampires react to sunlight and Holy Water! Get an effing grip. Just ... stop. Or soon we'll be hunting down the man responsible for this racist display (tip to Instapundit):
And let me know when our national celebration gets this sophisticated and nuanced, okay? At long last will the people predicting on a daily basis the Trumptatorship get just a little embarrassed for their turn-the-dial-to-11 hysteria?
American oil output set a record in April. Good. It doesn't mean we don't need to care about the security of Persian Gulf oil exports because we rely on trade with countries who do rely on that oil. But it does mean that our military efforts won't be hindered by lack of fuel if someone tries to shut off that oil as a weapon against America. Tip to Instapundit.
Democrats on the American economy: 2017--Trump will wreck the economy; 2018--the good economy is really Obama's work; 2019: Trump's economy is so bad underneath the statistics that we have to put a Democrat in the White House. Got it.
The noble objective of helping people flee persecution has been expanded to include simply fleeing crime or poverty. There are no limits to who we have to accept under those definitions. The end point of that is that we will no longer be a refuge for anybody.
Why yes, that is a valuable capability that is spreading throughout the American military.
A war on a journalist. Alert Acosta. And the Trump administration defends press access. Alert Acosta.
Strategypage's mid-year update on global wars. The world continues to benefit from the fall of the Soviet Union, which had stoked widespread violence around the world.
How to make a mountain out of a mole hill. Tip to Instapundit.
Sometimes I am in awe of my ability to alienate people. Given how the Democrats are behaving insanely and given that on policy I'm broadly supportive of what Trump has done (and failed to do, like his supposed desire to kill NATO, an alliance I strongly support and never worried he'd pull out of, if only because of Republican and military opposition), I don't think I have a choice but to vote for Trump in 2020. Which alienates people who bizarrely see him as a secret Nazi figuratively born in Russia. Yet I dislike Trump and find his style and character problematic. Nor do I think he is playing 3D chess in policy. Which alienates people who have gone all-in on defending every aspect of Trump. Why is it so difficult to support Trump policies while recognizing Trump is a highly flawed vessel to achieve them? I'm willing to tolerate--not celebrate--the latter to get the former. But I want a smaller federal government rather than wanting my side in charge of the ever-expanding federal state. I thought Democrats could join me in that position after Trump's election put him in charge of the powers Democrats wanted a president they like to have. But no, the Democrats have just doubled down on their religious intensity toward politics to grasp that power again. Yeah, despite my long history of despising Trump, his vile and rabid "turn it to 11" opponents make it easy to back his reelection.
Oops.
It doesn't make sense? We did evolve to keep track of time that way. So there's that. If only we actually had that theoretical problem.
Nike is dead to me.
Well that's totally sane: "'If the U.S. attacks us, only half an hour will remain of Israel's lifespan,' Mojtaba Zolnour, the chairman of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy commission said on Monday, according to Mehr." One, Iran will attack a completely different country than the one that attacked it? Two, only nukes could achieve that objective, and I thought Iran didn't even have a nuclear weapons program--if you believe the Obama administration's Iran nuclear deal.
American forces carried out a strike on al Qaeda forces in northwest Syria. No word on what was used to attack the enemy.
The Saudi royal family takes internal security very seriously. Still, their long ill treatment of their Shia minority is an own goal that gives Iran an opening to foment violence.
Just a reminder that the 2015 Iran nuclear deal isn't so much a treaty as it is a common document that everyone in the room picked up and took home. As I noted when this became known, bravo State Department. Very impressive. So who is violating international norms? Someone who pretends some farcical document is a sacred international document; or someone who refuses to act like it is?
It is very puzzling that the media that is "raising questions" (not saying that, Heavens no! Just wondering ...) about Biden's racial views now didn't find anything to quibble with when Obama had Biden as his vice president. I guess Obama didn't notice Biden's racism any more than Obama noticed Hillary Clinton's non-State Department email address. Fortunately he can discover such things in the news.
Austin, Texas sees San Francisco's homeless addict problem and says "Hold my (craft) beer."
Bad Orange Man goes back in time to abuse migrant children. I know, I know, the Hope and Change made it all cool. But I guess a lot of things become bad once stripped of the Hope and Change.
I have no problem talking to thug dictators. Liberals once defended this by saying "you make peace with your enemies."But no more. I have a problem with talking to thug dictators in order to grant them concessions that only benefit the thug dictators. So who talks to thug dictators matters and why we would talk to thug dictators matters. I did not trust Obama talking to thug dictators because I feared the point was to offer concessions. That said, while leaders who talk to thug dictators may have an excuse to downplay their thuggish dictator ways, there is little excuse for this kind of excuse making for thug dictators. Just as you can defend what Trump does without defending the totality of Trump, you can defend talking to a thug ruler without defending the totality of the thug ruler. It's not that hard. Try it.
Good Lord, on the issue of foreign policy I normally think Fareed Zakaria couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal, but he's basically right about dealing with illegal immigration. Stripped of the required attacks on Trump (which I guess I just did with my insult against Zakaria), we do need to restrict the ability of foreigners to claim asylum and--assuming we can control access to America by those claiming asylum--allocate the resources to process that reduced flow promptly. Just ... wow.
Science! Nobody would say vaping is better than not vaping; but arguing that vaping is just as bad as smoking tobacco is just blindly ideological.
Radar that learns.
Iran threatens to enrich Uranium to levels that could be used for nuclear weapons. Which is odd considering that Iran denies--and Obama went along with that fiction--ever having a nuclear weapons program.
I'd have no problem agreeing with liberals that debates should be based on "facts" if liberals didn't (tip to Instapundit) wrongly think that they own the monopoly on facts. Like this. And right before July Fourth. Liberals are wont to bitterly complain that Republicans "don't own the flag." But with examples like the one in the second link, they demonstrate that Trump is simply filling a vacuum.
Please God, let this be a smuggling issue and not a food court issue.
The Army is preparing to fight underground. Which is necessary in cities with underground passages and sewers. But I'd rather leave that battlefield to robots. I think that in open warfare the Army needs to go underground, too, given the heavy firepower that can be accurately and quickly directed at our troops. Being under armor or under heavy constructed shelters--if you can't constantly move--may be the only way to survive on such a battlefield. What are we doing with rapid organic engineering support to make sure we can do that?
Science! From the field of Obviousology.
A Russian deep sea espionage submarine (offensive and defensive) had a wee bit of a problem at sea. But the details are a Russian state secret (well, sure, it's not as if it is a "research" sub).
Well that's inconvenient.
If Nazism is such a huge problem in modern America, why do so many apparent Nazis settle for dog whistle-type symbols like obscure frogs or Betsy Ross flags when they could just go full Nazi openly? Much like micro-aggressions popped up as a thing once actual aggression receded, I think we now have micro-Nazi problems.
I find it almost cute that Europeans call soccer "football."
Russia's poodle parliament made Putin an honest man by formally getting out of the INF treaty, rather than just letting Putin cheat on it while America participated. So now both sides say it is dead.
Heh. Bravo.
It just came to me that I haven't been getting my OSAC email updates, which I've had for ages. I've been struggling lately with my email news flow and so its absence was lost in the noise of failing to read what I have been getting. I signed up again here. Sadly, instead of being convenient emails the process requires logging in each time to say their information. Bleh.
The American sale of 66 new F-16 fighters to Taiwan is proceeding. Good. Although I'll say again that I would not sell F-35s to Taiwan until Taiwan demonstrates a greater commitment to spending on their defense. I do not want intact F-35s falling into Chinese hands if Taiwan can't defend their island democracy from invasion.
It looks like we will secure critical parts of our electric grid with analog equipment that defies efforts to hack them. Because they aren't connected to the Internet. Interesting. Now do voting.
The situation on the ground overall in Libya:
The idea that the Betsy Ross flag is bad because some small number of white supremacists have allegedly adopted it (and I suspect this is not really true) is insane. Why don't the good reasons for respecting that flag by the other 300 million of us swamp that bad reason? Why let a tiny group determine the value of something for everybody? Embrace that flag proudly as a symbol of our liberty and democracy, and maybe the lunatic fringe that wants it to be a symbol of racism will discard it in embarrassment of its accepted meaning. Don't give the nutballs that kind of power! And no, I'm not sure if by "nutballs" I mean the alleged racist fans of that flag or the left-wing nuts claiming the flag is a symbol of hate.
Yeah, never truncate the words unless you are determined to cherry pick to prove the opposite of the real meaning.
The Nigerian military is getting hammered because Boko Haram jihadis are able to mass and overwhelm security force garrisons. I've long spoke of the need to atomize insurgents.
Western European prisons are scarily too much like jihadi breeding grounds. The leaders need to be separated from the rest or the inmates need to be held in prison until they are too old to wage jihad on the outside.
America is not leaving NATO. But it is perhaps useful if idiots raise the issue enough to get European NATO states to rebuild their military forces, as they agreed to do during the Obama administration.
The Russians surely tried to sow chaos in America by intervening in our election in 2016. That was standard operating procedure for Russia and the Soviet Union before it. And with Democratic Resistance cooperation, boy is that still working. But the Mueller report in its zeal to prove collusion, actually way overstates Russian competence and actions in 2016. Which makes the inability of this 2-year conviction machine to actually convict anyone of collusion--whatever that is--pretty damning of the entire premise that established the whole process. Look, Obama did nothing to try to stop Russian meddling in 2016. So tell me if you think Obama was justified in doing nothing because the Russian effort was pretty amateurish and small; or whether Obama should be condemned and vilified for failing to do anything about a massive and sophisticated effort to undermine our democracy? And will somebody please tell Biden who was in charge in 2016? As I've thought from the beginning, Russians who could read or polling data just as easily as our people assumed Hillary Clinton would win and they wanted to damage her assumed presidency while undermining the image of our democracy. Which is bad enough to justify our attention. All the rest is BS. Tips to Instapundit.
Sanity prevails.
Venezuela's inept socialist thug rulers weren't satisfied with just wrecking their country through stupidity and malice, and killed thousands. Hollywood condemnation in 3, 2, 1---abort, abort, abort!
I certainly hope we can get all this in a frigate for $800 million. We'll see if cost overruns don't apply to this class of ship. The bad news from the article is that we don't have any more Perry class frigates lying around that could be adapted to my armed amphibious transport concept that I raised in this Proceedings article (membership required). Maybe we could buy some allied frigates being retired to try out the idea.
I think the chance of America using nuclear weapons on Iran is virtually zero despite what these atomic "scientists" say; and defeating Iran will not require half a million troops--occupying Iran would require forces on that order. Actually, occupying Iran would require far more than half a million total troops (although American forces don't have to be all of them). And I think there is virtually no chance of America invading and occupying Iran. Any conventional campaign would center on capturing off-shore Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf and destroying Iranian military assets such as aircraft, naval craft, and missiles, on the mainland. Talk of nukes seems more intended to help Iran win its confrontation with America by making it seem like any military response to Iranian actions is too expensive or horrible to contemplate. Unless, Iran uses nukes, and then all bets are off. But Iran denies ever having a nuclear weapons program and the Obama administration believed that, right? The article seems to be the product of extreme Trump Hysteria Condition and is worth exactly zero in the debate on what to do about Iran. Please tell me that our atomic scientists aren't that blinded by ideology and that this is just the result of their bulletin being run by nutjob Resistance fighters.
Actual colonization and oppression of Moslems outside of a Moslem-majority country. Discuss among yourselves.
Ukrainians have snatched a separatists in an operation in Russian-occupied Donbas who may have been involved in shooting down the Malaysian airliner on Flight MH17, with the loss of all aboard, over the region early in the war.
Tridents and other nukes. I still don't like the low-yield "signal" nuclear warhead for our Trident submarines. Yes, the theory is that if we stop a small nuclear attack with missile defenses we could reply with a low-yield nuke rather than a big one as a form of demanding talks before we seriously strike. But what if the new small nuke doesn't work? Won't that call into question our entire submarine-based nuclear deterrent? Better to strike with a small air-delivered nuke, I think, if the target is someone like North Korea or Iran.
Oh, and President Trump's Fourth of July speech was just fine and not political. And despite this face plant, I fear we have yet to reach Peak Stupid. Tip to Instapundit.
And just a reminder that America really is the greatest country in the world. Hating America requires you to have just a little knowledge of only the bad things we've done in history, combined with massive ignorance that the rest of the world has been and often still is far worse. If my view isn't true, why do we have problems keeping people out? It is sad that polls show Democrats are far less likely to express pride in America. I have always been patriotic because my love of country doesn't depend on who sits in the White House. This is madness and surely a sign our federal government is too big and too powerful.
Fifty years of imminent doom. Their mental health issues bore me.
Yes, at this point America is not waging an "endless war"--we are simply standing guard in a dangerous world.
How do you know when weather is actually climate? When it is warmer than usual! That rule of thumb never fails.
If you have to ask "why the difference" you really haven't been paying attention.
Good God, but did Marianne Williamson just demonstrate she is the most lucid candidate in the Democratic primary when she warned that America could have an election without real choice? "It's kind of like countries like Iran, where you can vote for whoever you want, among the people that they tell you it's OK to vote for. And that's the kind of country that we're living in today." Oh, I'm not talking about the premise of the question concerning the state of American elections. We almost had Bernie versus Trump in 2016, for Pete's sake. And we did get Trump. You can't say we didn't have a choice far from accepted norms. But she actually recognizes that Iran is not a democracy despite the facade that so many Democrats see as genuine. I'm going to go to a darkened quiet room and weep in despair for the once great party that has descended to this level.
"The world" continues to condemn the Saudi-led effort to defeat Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen because "thousands" have died in the civil war; yet the world continues to yawn and look away at the hundreds of thousands who died in the ongoing Syrian civil war (or "multi-war" as I called it at its peak of diverse actors). The world is funny that way.
I'm not saying I wouldn't appreciate a trip through the Taiwan Strait by a German warship (if the Germans decide they can and should do it) as a signal to China, but I'd much prefer that Germany have the ability to send 30 warships into the Baltic Sea in a crisis to face Russia.
South Korea's submarine force is getting larger and more capable. They should help Taiwan with their submarine program but probably won't to avoid offending China.
