Category Archives: War

UPDATE III: Can General (Stanley) McCrock (Chris’s Episode)

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Military, Neoconservatism, Republicans, War

BHO ought to accept General Stanley McChrystal’s resignation. He must. If he doesn’t, the president will be in even more trouble than he already is.

The Telegraph:

The US commander in Afghanistan was ordered to fly back from Kabul for a carpeting after he and his aides were quoted in “Rolling Stone” magazine mocking the president and senior officials. … Although the worst barbs came from the lips of aides, they indicated that the general did not respect Mr Obama. One was quoted as saying Mr Obama appeared “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the military and “didn’t seem very engaged” when he first met Gen McChrystal.

What is it about the American memory? It’s non-existent.

What is it about the Neocons-cum-Republicans? They have no core principles other than to line up behind their man and against Obama. They cheered this McChrystal chap when, in October of 2009, he sojourned to London to lobby for more troops.

At the time I wrote that, “It’s got to be obvious that the general knows nothing about the chain of command. He lacks discipline or a code of conduct. McChrystal’s a lobbyist in fatigues, guarding his fiefdom.”

As is my habit—it hasn’t rubbed off on our valued blogger James Huggins, who carries the torch for GOP fraudsters—I reminded my readers at the time that “Gen. David Petraeus conducted himself similarly. Although he didn’t lobby abroad for his cause, Petraeus assumed a decidedly political role. However, back then, Republicans and their Bush boy were on board with Petraeus’ push for more war.

The difference between Petraeus and McChrystal is that the first was successful in establishing the illusion of a successful surge in Iraq—quite a feat given that the Democrats were not yet in power. So useless is this McChrystal that he has not even been able to win the PR war, and persuade the ruling Obamamaniacs that his war wank is working.

It goes without saying that both O’Reilly and Hannity have already dictated received Republican opinion: BHO must forgive McChrystal and let this loser win their war. (And BHO’s war)

UPDATE I: “I think it’s clear that the article in which he and his team appeared showed a poor — showed poor judgment,” the president said in his first comments on the matter, surrounded by members of his Cabinet at the close of their meeting. “But I also want to make sure that I talk to him directly before I make any final decisions.”

UPDATE II (June 23): “The Runaway General: Stanley McChrystal, Obama’s top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.”

That’s the title of the Rolling Stone article. What would a crappy Stone feature be without the expletives? So raw and real. The cussing is all the “writer’s” repertoire; he’s not even parroting the army men, whom you’d expect to cuss. Clearly a requirement of a job with RS. Imbibe from the masters: “Fuck this; fuck that, be shit-faced, piss-off.”

McChrystal is molding the military into a cross between the “Green Berets” and an “armed Peace Corps”—killing tempered by nation building—with a view to carving out a permanent place for himself over there, and taking his showcase war on the road, when the gig is up.

The guy is as evil as he looks. Not as stupid as McMussolini, who finished 894th out of 899 at the Naval Academy and lost five jets, but a serious underachiever, “ranking 298 out of a class of 855.”

This man McChrystal is a riot of fuck-ups to use Rolling Stone lingo. Hey, this is easy. I think I’ve got it, Enry Iggins.

UPDATE III (June 23): CHRIS HAS AN EPISODE. This is the second momentous time Chris Matthews felt an-Obama induced thrill up his leg. Although Chris spends his days in sexual delirium over BHO, like in a boy who reaches maturity, the thrill manifests only on very special occasions. Emasculated left-liberals don’t often allow themselves to revel in the masculine—it represents oppression. But when an all-round good guy like the president shows a bit of that manly magic, “girlie boys” get giddy.

Obama sacking Stanley: now that was a good day for Chris, who managed to disguise arousal with folderol about the act instantiating the genius of the Constitution; the beauty of our country’s landscape, blah, blah.

Here’s the wreck himself:

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UPDATE III: An Act Of War? (Reuters Doctors Images, Allegedly)

Iran, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Jihad, Journalism, Media, Terrorism, War

Is it a prelude to an act of war? If I didn’t know better, that’s what I’d call the threat Iran has issued to send its Iranian Revolutionary Guard to escort ships attempting to break through the blockade of Gaza. Were I a resident of Israel, I’d be nervous.

But of course, I know better. After all, it would be perfectly proper, and in keeping with US sovereignty, were Turkish “activists,” escorted by the Iranian military, to wash up on American shores. I’m glad I got that straightened out in my own mind.

FOXNEWS:

Israel will do “whatever it takes” to defend itself from terrorism, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. said Sunday, without elaborating what actions would be taken in the face of a potential Iranian Revolutionary Guard escort of ships to break through the blockade of Gaza.
Ambassador Michael Oren said Israel is “open to any ideas to somehow deal with the Gaza situation” but dropping the blockade is unlikely since that would mean allowing thousands of rockets to arrive in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

UPDATE I (June 7): WINNING THROUGH WEAKNESS. Daniel Pipes’ keen analysis of the strategy involving the “Amity Armada” is particularly insightful:

“One of the most important rules for a strategist is not to be put on the defensive. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, developed this concept into a doctrine of forward defense that brilliantly served his state in its early years.

Eventually, however, Israel’s enemies realized that they could not win a conventional war. Instead of launching planes, tanks, and ships at the Jewish state, they turned to other means – weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and (most recently) political delegitimization. Delegitimization turns the rules of war upside down: in particular strength is weakness and public opinion has supreme importance.

Israel’s command structure, having mastered the old ways of war (the ones that lasted to 1973), has shown utter strategic incompetence at the new ways of war (in place since 1982). The new rules require an agile sense of public relations, which means that a powerful state never physically harms, even inadvertently, its rag-tag political adversaries.”…

[snip]

Where Pipes and I depart is in that, finally, after decades of bumbling, I see an Israeli public-relations sea change. Michael Oren accounts for 90 percent of it.

UPDATE II: Nebojsa Malic’s take on the winning-through-weakness strategy:

“Israel has a powerful conventional army, navy, air force, and most likely even nuclear weapons (though not officially acknowledged). It has defeated Arab armies on numerous occasions in open warfare, and has successfully fought terrorism and insurgency through special operations. So those who wish it destroyed came up with a way of turning that strength into a weakness: cast themselves as innocent, unarmed, helpless victims and howl as loud as possible about being abused by that very Israel whose strength no one can dispute.”

UPDATE III (June 8): Fox News reports:

“In one photo, an Israeli commando is shown lying on the deck of the ship, surrounded by activists. The uncut photo released by IHH shows the hand of an unidentified activist holding a knife. But in the Reuters photo, the hand is visible but the knife has been edited out.”

The blog ‘Little Green Footballs’ challenged Reuters’ editing of the photo.

‘That’s a very interesting way to crop the photo. Most people would consider that knife an important part of the context. There was a huge controversy over whether the activists were armed. Cropping out a knife, in a picture showing a soldier who’s apparently been stabbed, seems like a very odd editorial decision. Unless someone was trying to hide it,’ the blog stated.”

Voices Of Collectivism & Exceptionalism

America, Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Fascism, Foreign Policy, History, Neoconservatism, The State, War

The concept of American exceptionalism has been hotly debated in connection with what kind of history “The Children” will be force fed in state schools.

My position : “the United States, by virtue of its origins and ideals,” was unique. But most Americans know nothing of the ideas that animated their country’s founding. In fact, they are more likely to hold ideas in opposition to the classical liberal philosophy of the founders, and hence wish to see the aggrandizement of the coercive state and the fulfillment of their own needs and desires through war and welfare.

Thus, I find myself in agreement with this one statement from Princeton’s Joyce Carol Oates:

“[T]ravel to any foreign country,” Oates wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in November 2007, “and the consensus is: The American idea has become a cruel joke, a blustery and bellicose bodybuilder luridly bulked up on steroids…deranged and myopic, dangerous.”

Andrew Roberts, on the other hand, is the Anglosphere’s “advertising agent,” whom some call a historian (most learned sources like the Times Literary Supplement question the value and veracity of his “scholarship”).

Roberts “has endorsed American exceptionalism in his own writings,” and thinks that to question it is to evince “psychiatric disorder,” or belong to liberal America (Rob Stove and I are rightists).

Yes, another learned source is our friend Australian historian Rob Stove, who detests Andrew Roberts (author of the best-selling Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945). Rob has called him a “Court Historian,” the Anglosphere’s greatest modern mythologist perfectly suited to sanitize the Bush presidency.”

In the eponymous essay Rob Stove writes that to Roberts,

“Not only must every good deed of British or American rule be lauded till the skies resound with it, but so must every deed that is morally ambiguous or downright repellent.”

“The Amritsar carnage of 1919, where British forces under Gen. Reginald Dyer slew 379 unarmed Indians? Absolutely justified, according to Roberts, who curiously deduces that but for Dyer, ‘many more than 379 people would have lost their lives.’ Hitting prostrate Germany with the Treaty of Versailles? Totally warranted: the only good Kraut is a dead Kraut. Herding Boer women and children into concentration camps, where 35,000 of them perished? Way to go: the only good Boer is a dead Boer. Interning Belfast Catholics, without anything so vulgar as a trial, for no other reason than that they were Belfast Catholics? Yep, the only good bog-trotter … well, finish the sentence yourself. FDR’s obeisance to Stalin? All the better to defeat America First ‘fascists.'”

[SNIP]

Last week’s column, “In Defense Of Obama’s Apologizing,” coaxed out of the woodwork some “exceptionals.”

Wrote Mom [don’t you hate it when women call themselves “mom”? I see these self-identifiers everywhere, when out on my running excursions. They occasionally swing a kid while talking incessantly on the cell, and are always sedentary and overweight. Sorry for that detour]:

“I do not agree with you at all.…I give this administration a D in foreign policy and public relations…Listen, yes we have made some mistakes in our 300 years, but on the whole, this is the best country on the planet and we are an exceptional nation….This administration’s aim is to diminish our greatness and our status on the world stage…for a One World socialist government…When Obama said we have no borders, I nearly fell out of my chair…if we diminish our borders, we will not have a country….How did he allow Calderone to bash our country? You know why, because he doesn’t think of our country is special…So, I don’t give any points to him, I want my country back…I do not recognize my country anymore….so for you to give this admin. points … that is a no no. Sorry…”

[SNIP]

In other words, even though she and I agree on immigration, I must never be fair to BHO when he is not wrong. Indeed, fairness and non-partisanship have gotten me nowhere.

Tangentially related is another letter received last week in irate response to “In Defense Of Obama’s Apologizing.” This time the “exceptional reader” informed me imperially that he was writing me off and would no longer be reading The Mercer Column because I FAILED TO ENDORSE HIS FAVORITE MASSACRE.

This particular reader was a relic from my years of writing against the Bush war of aggression in Iraq—you know, when all those “red-state fascists” kept trying to get me fired from WND.

Memories…

Voices Of Collectivism & Exceptionalism

America, Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Fascism, Foreign Policy, History, The State, War

The concept of American exceptionalism has been hotly debated in connection with what kind of history “The Children” will be force fed in state schools.

My position : “the United States, by virtue of its origins and ideals,” was unique. But most Americans know nothing of the ideas that animated their country’s founding. In fact, they are more likely to hold ideas in opposition to the classical liberal philosophy of the founders, and hence wish to see the aggrandizement of the coercive state and the fulfillment of their own needs and desires through war and welfare.

Thus, I find myself in agreement with this one statement from Princeton’s Joyce Carol Oates:

“[T]ravel to any foreign country,” Oates wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in November 2007, “and the consensus is: The American idea has become a cruel joke, a blustery and bellicose bodybuilder luridly bulked up on steroids…deranged and myopic, dangerous.”

Andrew Roberts, on the other hand, is the Anglosphere’s “advertising agent,” whom some call a historian (most learned sources like the Times Literary Supplement question the value and veracity of his “scholarship”).

Roberts “has endorsed American exceptionalism in his own writings,” and thinks that to question it is to evince “psychiatric disorder,” or belong to liberal America (Rob Stove and I are rightists).

Yes, another learned source is our friend Australian historian Rob Stove, who detests Andrew Roberts (author of the best-selling Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945). Rob has called him a “Court Historian,” the Anglosphere’s greatest modern mythologist perfectly suited to sanitize the Bush presidency.”

In the eponymous essay Rob Stove writes that to Roberts,

“Not only must every good deed of British or American rule be lauded till the skies resound with it, but so must every deed that is morally ambiguous or downright repellent.”

“The Amritsar carnage of 1919, where British forces under Gen. Reginald Dyer slew 379 unarmed Indians? Absolutely justified, according to Roberts, who curiously deduces that but for Dyer, ‘many more than 379 people would have lost their lives.’ Hitting prostrate Germany with the Treaty of Versailles? Totally warranted: the only good Kraut is a dead Kraut. Herding Boer women and children into concentration camps, where 35,000 of them perished? Way to go: the only good Boer is a dead Boer. Interning Belfast Catholics, without anything so vulgar as a trial, for no other reason than that they were Belfast Catholics? Yep, the only good bog-trotter … well, finish the sentence yourself. FDR’s obeisance to Stalin? All the better to defeat America First ‘fascists.'”

[SNIP]

Last week’s column, “In Defense Of Obama’s Apologizing,” coaxed out of the woodwork some “exceptionals.”

Wrote Mom [don’t you hate it when women call themselves “mom”? I see these self-identifiers everywhere, when out on my running excursions. They occasionally swing a kid while talking incessantly on the cell, and are always sedentary and overweight. Sorry for that detour]:

“I do not agree with you at all.…I give this administration a D in foreign policy and public relations…Listen, yes we have made some mistakes in our 300 years, but on the whole, this is the best country on the planet and we are an exceptional nation….This administration’s aim is to diminish our greatness and our status on the world stage…for a One World socialist government…When Obama said we have no borders, I nearly fell out of my chair…if we diminish our borders, we will not have a country….How did he allow Calderone to bash our country? You know why, because he doesn’t think of our country is special…So, I don’t give any points to him, I want my country back…I do not recognize my country anymore….so for you to give this admin. points … that is a no no. Sorry…”

[SNIP]

In other words, even though she and I agree on immigration, I must never be fair to BHO when he is not wrong. Indeed, fairness and non-partisanship have gotten me nowhere.

Tangentially related is another letter received last week in irate response to “In Defense Of Obama’s Apologizing.” This time the “exceptional reader” informed me imperially that he was writing me off and would no longer be reading The Mercer Column because I FAILED TO ENDORSE HIS FAVORITE MASSACRE.

This particular reader was a relic from my years of writing against the Bush war of aggression in Iraq—you know, when all those “red-state fascists” kept trying to get me fired from WND.

Memories…