Tough To Bear

It's been a tough few days for the Army and Navy. The losses are more than we can bear.

Take a moment and breathe a prayer of thanks and well wishes for Americans - volunteers all - serving on the periphery of danger

6 Key Questions

The U.S. is at war in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere with ISIS, al Qaeda, and other Salafi-Jihadi groups.  Our strategy in that war, particularly in Syria, is incoherent and internally contradictory, however.  We must also demand answers to six key questions about how America can secure its people and interests against the large and growing threats from the Middle East.

How will we defeat ISIS?

The U.S. military has been briefing steady progress in the war against ISIS.  It highlights ground retaken by Iraqi forces in Mosul and by Kurds in Syria.  It suggests that ISIS will basically collapse once it has lost Mosul and Raqqa, in Syria.  Assessments by the Institute for the Study of War contradict that view. ISIS still controls Deir ez-Zour, a sizable city southeast of Raqqa, to which it has already relocated leadership and resources.  Our Kurdish partners cannot drive that far south through Arab lands.  Our reliance on Kurds and refusal to fight the regime of Bashar al Assad have severely hindered the formation of an indigenous Arab force against ISIS in Syria, moreover.  How does the U.S. imagine that success against Raqqa will lead to clearing the rest of the Euphrates River Valley?  And even if the U.S. finds partners to retake the cities, ISIS is already reverting back to the insurgent-terrorist mode it used before it had seized them.  What is the plan to continue the pressure on ISIS to stop it from continuing in this mode while preparing its next comeback?

How will we defeat al Qaeda? 

The U.S. has focused on ISIS in Syria, taking little action against the large and powerful forces closely associated with al Qaeda.  The Syrian al Qaeda affiliate has rebranded itself, but remains part of al Qaeda and pursues the same goals of establishing a global Caliphate.  It and its partners control Idlib Province in northwestern Syria and are strong elsewhere in central and southern Syria.  The U.S. military keeps saying that it will deal with al Qaeda after it has defeated ISIS.  What is the plan for doing that?  How do operations against ISIS support or hinder that plan?

How will we ensure that we won’t have to fight son of ISIS or son of al Qaeda?

Both ISIS and al Qaeda gained ground in Syria in response to the brutality of Bashar al Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies.  The sectarian policies of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki created the Sunni Arab protest movement in that country that opened the door to the ISIS invasion in 2014.  Military success against these groups will not resolve the underlying political grievances that created support for them in the first place.  Yet the U.S. has not done remotely enough to address this problem in either Syria or Iraq.  The failure to form a sizable local Sunni Arab force in Syria suggests that the Sunni Arabs do not believe that their grievances will be redressed.  What is the U.S. doing to press Assad and the Iraqi government to resolve the political crises that allowed ISIS and al Qaeda to arise?

How will we contain Iran? 

The Trump administration makes much of its plans to contain and pressure Iran.  Yet Iran is militarily stronger than it has ever been.  Tens of thousands of Iranian proxy forces, led by elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Qods Force, are the army keeping Assad in power and alive.  The removal of these forces without any replacements would open the door to al Qaeda and ISIS expansion.  The U.S. thus relies on the unprecedented forward deployment of Iranian military power to pursue its anti-ISIS campaign.  How can America depend on an Iranian-controlled army in Syria while containing Iranian military power in the region?

How will we come to terms with Turkey? 

Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a troublesome ally.  Erdogan supports Islamist groups in Syria closely associated with al Qaeda.  He fears Kurdish efforts to form an autonomous region in Syria and to create a larger Kurdistan that would reach into Turkey’s Kurdish population.  He sees American support to Kurds fighting ISIS in Syria as U.S. backing for Kurdish terrorism in Turkey.  Yet Turkey is still a NATO ally.  It is also an essential player in any settlement in Syria.  Unequivocal and unrestricted American support for Kurds in Syria is driving the U.S. steadily toward conflict with Turkey—we’ve already had to deploy U.S. forces to stop the Turks from attacking our Kurdish allies twice.  How can the U.S. reconcile our dependence on Kurdish forces with the need to get Erdogan to work with us, stop backing Islamist groups, and accept a stable outcome in Syria?

How will we reduce Russian influence?  

Russia has established a massive airbase in Syria, giving it a major military position on the Mediterranean for the first time in decades.  Vladimir Putin has used that base to constrain American actions in Syria, to threaten Turkey, and as a hub for further expansion in the Mediterranean.  The hue-and-cry about Russia’s interference in U.S. elections and the Russian threat to America has oddly ignored these developments.  How can the U.S. make the strong stand against Russia that many on both sides of the aisle now demand while tolerating this unprecedented expansion of Russian military power?  How can the U.S. hope to pressure Assad to stop his efforts to oppress Syria’s Sunni majority while Russia provides him an air force to do just that?

The administration, Congress, and their critics on all sides must answer these questions if we are to arrive at any strategy in the Middle East that has a chance of securing our people and interests.  We must stop focusing on our own internal dramas so much that we ignore the increasingly dangerous world around us.

Army Day

"This We'll Defend!"


Happy happy BDay (#242 in fact!) to Great Satan's all weather original voltiguerres - the Army!

Two hundred 42 years ago, our nation's leaders established the Continental Army, beginning a rich heritage of successfully defending this great country and her citizens. Today, we celebrate the continued strength, professionalism and bravery of our ready and resilient Soldiers in the all-volunteer force. Our Soldiers remain Army Strong with a lifelong commitment to our core values and beliefs.

Following more than 15 years of war, the Army remains committed to the readiness, training and advancement of the Total Army through the Army initiatives: Ready and Resilient, The Army Profession and Soldier for Life. This 238th birthday commemorates America's Army - Soldiers, families and civilians - who are achieving a level of excellence that is truly Army Strong. We also celebrate our local communities for their steadfast support of our Soldiers and families. We are "America's Army: Service to the Nation, Strength for the Future."

"...We are “America’s Army: The Strength of the Nation."


Pic "The American Army - Killing Our Enemies On Xmas Day Since 1776"

Military Omnipresence

Today, in the face of other nations’ advances and area-denial strategies, the U.S. Department of Defense is looking for the next set of technological breakthroughs that will allow the military to engage “at the time and place of our choosing.”

When the Royal Navy’s new steam-powered ships emerged victorious from the First Opium War in 1842, one British newspaper could barely contain itself: “Steam, even now, almost realizes the idea of military omnipotence and military omnipresence; it is everywhere, and there is no withstanding it.”

One hundred years later, Wernher von Braun, a German engineer who’d been secretly whisked away to the United States, suggested a different approach: an armed space station into low earth orbit. As he put it, “Our space station could be utilized as a very effective bomb carrier, and the nation who owns such a bomb-dropping space station…will have military omnipresence.”

Yet unlike steam engines or space stations, the technologies and supporting architectures that can actually establish omnipresence today are possible.

The strategy to regain our fighting edge has been called the Third Offset. But whether given this or some other name, one of its primary shortfalls is that it lacks a unifying concept. Many believe the present approach is really just a set of technology investments and is too focused on futurist technologies. And some scholars have argued that it seems to have “no clear purpose or urgency.”

Military, or operational, omnipresence is the answer to this dilemma.

Operational omnipresence is exactly what it sounds like: perpetual, networked presence that enables operations and awareness anywhere in the world. It consists of three primary interconnected components: physical assets, virtual capabilities, and information. It’s the culmination of where you are, where you can be quickly, and awareness of what is occurring everywhere else. In other words, operational omnipresence is superlative forward presence — a U.S. military preoccupation since at least World War II — accomplished by a variety of interacting means.

Execution of this concept is exceptionally difficult, but that’s how competitive advantages are realized.  

Making operational omnipresence a reality requires surmounting the tyrannies of time, distance, and information—the significant difficulties associated with operating across great distances and needing to be quick and sure-footed in doing so.

It can do so via its three essential components of presence: physical, virtual, and perceived.

Physical presence is the strategic positioning of military forces around the world such that they are always in relative proximity to contingencies. In addition to deploying ships and planes abroad, the U.S. military maintains more than 150,000 service members on 800 bases in 70 countries. This is the most expansive military footprint of any nation, and accounts for more than 95 percent of the world’s foreign bases. Further, the current presidential administration has articulated its goal to increase physical presence in a recent executive order. When coupled with unmanned and autonomous vehicles and aircraft, physical presence is remains a U.S. strength.

But there will be gaps, and virtual presence can help fill them. Previous conceptions of virtual presence have defined it as being physically nearby or having a passive presence via technology. But today, virtual presence exists where force can be applied quickly from a distance — within hours or even nanoseconds — and includes cyber, electronic, and space-borne warfare.

Whether moving at the speed of light from thousands of miles away to strike in cyberspace, reassuring allies and partner nations through the sharing of digital capabilities, or causing adversarial nations to adjust their decision calculus as these two things come fully online, virtual presence can be a true form of forward presence.

Perceived presence rounds out the operational omnipresence concept. Perceived presence is the use of technology to collect information and monitor events occurring in places in which physical and virtual presence aren’t possible. Though it doesn’t permit the application of force, the perception of being watched influences behavior — an insight that goes back to the concept of the panopticon introduced by 17th-century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham.

Today, cyber- and satellite-enabled surveillance, coupled with traditional forms of intelligence gathering and the ubiquity of the press and personal devices, means that a global electronic version of the panopticon is possible. The strategic use of acquired information could be employed to influence the decisions of competitor nations. What was thought to be in secrecy is now under a spotlight. From that point forward, this nation would assume it is being watched.

This, too, is a form of presence, and the essence of perceived presence.

Discombobulated Deutschland

After World War Two, there was much debate about whether Germany should have any armed forces. An end had to be made, it was argued, to a cycle which began with Prussian militarism and ended in Nazi war crimes.

While communist-ruled East Germany did create a People's Army following German military traditions, in democratic West Germany - occupied by Britain, France and the US - a very different armed services emerged.

The Bundeswehr, born in the mid 1950s, was a deliberately modest force, meant only to defend West German territory, not fight abroad. Its recruits were taught to think of themselves as "citizens in uniform".

Chancellor Merkel told Germans in May that "we must fight for our future ourselves as Europeans".

Yet Germany and Her Chancellor face a fundamental problem. Most Germans are very reluctant to go down this road.

They regard their own army with suspicion - an attitude reinforced by a recent scandal involving the Bundeswehr. Foreign deployments are tightly restricted by German law and parliament.

Above all, attitudes are shaped by the shadow of history.

So successful have outsiders been in demilitarising Germany - so sensitive are Germans about their warlike past - that today's greatest European power is likely to remain a battlefield weakling.

Germany currently spends only around 1.2% of GDP on defence. 

Germany will resist 45's calls for huge extra spending, but underfunding has been at times highly embarrassing, such as the revelation that during a Nato exercise in 2014 Bundeswehr tank commanders covered up their lack of machine guns by using broomsticks painted black.
So how far will Berlin go?

Werner Kraetschell, who knows Angela Merkel and her thinking well, says she wants a "strong German army able to take international responsibility". But her difficulty is that "the German people are against the army".

Perhaps the Germans will continue a unique historical experiment, trying to become a growing international power without significant military effort.

For the past still weighs heavily. Whatever happens, there'll be no brash marching into action abroad. Instead, Germany's military will tiptoe warily into a highly uncertain future.

6 Days Of War

"I'd love to. Turn. You. On"


Way back in the last millennium, the Summer of Love's soundtrack by those naughty Beatles wiped clean and drew again the face of popular music. Often hailed at times as  "a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization."  

It wasn't the only one that year!

Perhaps the best source from all sides on 6 Day War is penned by the "Most Dangerous Cat in DC" - Little Satan's American former ambassador - the super brainiac (he's kinda hot too) Dr Michael Oren

Mid May 1967 - Pyramidland's General Nasser initiated a state of war with neighboring Little Satan by kicking out UN's Sinai contingent and announcing a blockade of the straights of Tiran - the gate to the Aqaba Gulf.  UN's Sec Gen U Thant (not to be confused with certain lingerie) failed to defuse the hot hot hotness of the sitch and Pyramidland's Badgers, MiG 17's and 21's were taking a well earned break from xforming hapless Yemenis into living shrieking blisters courtesy of WMD and being redeployed to airfields in range of Little Satan's population centers

The Most Dangerous Cat in DC reissues choice cuts and why cause the 1967 jank is 44 years too little and too late:

"...Jets and tanks launched a surprise attack against Egypt, destroying 204 of its planes in the first half-hour. By the end of the first morning of fighting, the Israeli Air Force had destroyed 286 of Egypt's 420 combat aircraft, 13 air bases, and 23 radar stations and anti-aircraft sites. It was the most successful single operation in aerial military history.

"...As feared, other Arab forces attacked. Enemy planes struck Israeli cities along the narrow waist, including Hadera, Netanya, Kfar Saba, and the northern suburbs of Tel Aviv; and thousands of artillery shells fired from the West Bank pummeled greater Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem. Ground forces, meanwhile, moved to encircle Jerusalem as they did in 1948.

"...In six days, Little Satan repelled these incursions and established secure boundaries. She drove the Egyptians from the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, and the Syrians, who had also opened fire, from the Golan Heights. Most significantly, Little Satan replaced the indefensible armistice lines by reuniting J'lem and capturing the West Bank from Jordan. 

And:


"...44 years after Arab forces sought to exploit the vulnerable armistice lines, it remains clear that Little Satan cannot return to those lines. And 44 years after the United Nations, through Resolution 242, indicated that Little Satan would not have to forfeit all of the captured territories and must achieve "secure and recognized boundaries," the unsecure and unrecognized armistice lines must not be revived. Little Satan''s insistence on defensible borders is a prerequisite for peace and a safeguard against a return to the Arab illusions and Little Satan's fears of June 1967.

Pic - "And though the news was rather sad, I just had to laugh"

D- Day

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest -- until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them -- help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.

32 - June 6, 1944