@ Herschel Noted military theorist and historian William Lind has written that excellence in the tactical and operational military arts cannot overcome a flawed grand strategy. The two most-commonly cited examples for this are Nazi Germany in the Second World War, and the U.S. and her allies in Vietnam. Many military historians rate the German Army (Heer) of the Second World War as being without peer in terms of its grasp of the tactical and operational levels of war. Man-to-man, the German soldier consistently inflicted disproportionate casualties upon the Allied troops he faced, whether Anglo-American or Soviet. Whether contested upon land, on/under the seas or in the skies, the German warrior proved extremely difficult to defeat. To provide one example, the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) produced not one but two fighter aces (or “Experten” as they were called) who scored more than 300 confirmed air-to-air victories, namely Eric Hartmann with 352 kills, and Gerhard Barkhorn with 301. In contrast, no Allied ace – whether Soviet or Anglo-American or other – could claim 80 confirmed victories. The closest was Russian ace Ivan Kozhedub, with 66 confirmed kills. The highest-scoring American ace was Major Richard Bong, with 40 kills to his credit, whereas the top British-Commonwealth fighter pilot was South African Marmaduke “Pat” Pattle, also with forty, with James Edward “Jonnie” Johnson with 38. Now, there are many factors beyond the scope of this discussion which led to this disparity, but the overarching point is that all of this excellence in shooting down Allied planes, knocking out Allied tanks, sinking Allied shipping, etc. did not lead to victory in the war. Why? Because Germany’s grand strategy was too badly flawed to be compensated for by excellence at the operational and tactical levels. Perhaps the ultimate betrayal of the U.S. fighting man has been the utter failure of his leaders, political and military alike, to formulate a cohesive grand strategy, one grounded in reality and which properly identifies our nation’s enemies and how best to defeat them. With reference to the 9-11-2001 attacks, the whole undertaking of the so-called “global war on terror” was badly-flawed from the start, as it did not include an accurate appraisal of our nation’s enemies, nor did it outline a coherent grand strategy for defeating them. Almost twenty years, our leaders can’t even bring themselves to name the enemy properly – or even admit that we are fighting him. A conspiracy of silence has surrounded this enemy whose name cannot even be said publicly. In some European nations, speaking badly of these particular people can land one in prison. I am referring, of course, to the Islamic world and the Muslims within it who have been waging jihad against non-Muslims for nearly 1,500 years. The Muslims themselves, if you read/listen to what their imams and leaders say, are quite open about their cause, what they are doing, why and to whom. They are waging jihad – Arabic for “holy war” – against the infidels and kafirs, just as… Read more »

(Part 2) As far as the U.S. military is concerned, consider the following question: Why has the U.S. fought so many wars and interventions in the greater Middle East and environs over the last forty years, when it had seldom if ever done so before? The answer lies in the petrodollar agreement,which was arrived at in the early 1970s in the wake of the collapse of the Bretton Woods economic agreement. In brief, the Nixon administration, chaffing under the spending restraints necessitated by the remaining ties of the USD (U.S. dollar) to the gold standard, severed the last remaining link between the paper (fiat) dollar and gold. If the USD was not to be backed by gold any longer, what would back it? The answer, the central bankers and diplomats answered, was oil. After a period of intense negotiation, the Nixon administration and the OPEC nations – led by Saudi Arabia – concluded an agreement which has since become known as the petrodollar agreement, whereby the Sunni Arab oil monarchies agreed to transact OPEC’s business only in US dollars, and then “recycle” the bulk of those revenues through U.S. central banks and the federal government proper in the form of purchases of Treasury Bills and other securities. The catch, however, was that the U.S. was henceforth obligated to defend the Saudi Arabian kingdom and its Arab allies from all threats, foreign or domestic. The old saying says, “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer…” At the stroke of a pen, and at the cost of a few billion dollars (which they could spare), the Arabs effectively seized control over the entire U.S. foreign policy apparatus – including the most-powerful military in the world at the time – simply by reading the weakness of the federal government: it’s insatiable appetite for revenue, and proclivity for using debt to fund its its operations. Like a drug pusher who discounts his product, or even gives it away for free, in order to hook-in new “clients” – new addicts – the Arabs addicted the U.S. federal government to the easy money they would provide. And in so doing, got a hand on the tiller of our foreign policy. If the Saudi King called the White House and said “Jump!,” whoever was President would have to ask “How high?” and then do it – or risk having all of that easy money and the petrodollar system disappear. The Arabs have an extremely well-funded and powerful lobbying presence in Washington D.C., and now – since Riyadh and Tel Aviv are now strategic partners, the sizeable Israeli influence can added in as well. In recent months and years, the near-constant drumbeat of war drums in Washington for us to go to war against Russia, Iran, or Syria, has grown not only out of the imperatives of our foreign policy establishment, but out of those of the Arabs and Israelis as well, both of whom regard Shiite Iran as a mortal threat, and would much rather the… Read more »

Let us speak plainly about the Middle East and idiots, among whom are many who think we’re doing great things there.

Pigs will not simply fly… pigs will win dogfights against F-16s before anything in the Middle East (Israel excepted) resembles what any sane person would describe as “a functioning 21st-century nation”.

Anyone who tells you that we will enlighten The Islamic World and bring them current is an idiot.

If they don’t themselves believe what they’re telling you, they think you’re the idiot.

If you believe them, you are.

Islam as an ideology is most comfortable in a medieval-or-earlier culture and technology. Left to their own devices, any ‘modern’ Islamic state would pretty quickly devolve to exactly that: feudalism or something akin to the Dark Ages. Saudi Arabia can get rich on oil only because of two things:
1. some technologically modern nation taught them how to drill for oil
2. several oil-dependent modern nations buy their oil
Saudi Arabia is a military power only because they can spend oil money buying equipment they simply could not develop on their own. If everyone stops selling Middle Eastern countries things they can kill with, peace (in a manner of speaking) will settle upon the land.

There is absolutely no reason for the U.S. to have a troop presence there, and many, many reasons for us to withdraw and never return.

Absent a thoroughgoing welfare state, there would be no appreciable Muslim population in any Western country.

@ penses False-flag ops are an extremely common means of starting wars when the deep-state wants them. Most people believe that events happen in the order of someone starting a war, and then the decision to go to war taking place afterwards, but in many – perhaps even most – wars, the train of events is reversed. Someone powerful (or a collection of powerful someone’s) somewhere has decided he wants war, and so a pretext for waging it must be found. If a suitable pretext can’t be found, it can be manufactured. Intelligence agencies have been doing it for a very long time. The Spanish-American War (April, 1898-August 1898) is considered by most scholars to be the start of America’s ascent to great -and ultimately world – power status. For some time prior to 1898, the U.S. ruling class – the “American aristocracy” – had been eyeing the Spanish Empire and its possessions. Spain was weakening and bankrupt, and the mandarins in Washington, D.C. saw an opportunity in Cuba, which was in the throes of revolution. With tensions rising in Cuba, newspaper owner and business tycoon William Randolph Hearst sent famed artist Frederick Remington to Cuba, with instructions saying, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Remington went,and to his credit, cabled back in January 1897, “Everything is quiet.” However, Hearst wouldn’t have long to wait: In February 1898, the battleship U.S.S. Maine – anchored in Havana Harbor as a show of U.S. power – blew up while riding at anchor. Hearst and other “yellow journalists” quickly seized upon the incidence as a casus belli, blaming a Spanish naval mine in the harbor for the explosion, even though no investigation had yet been conducted into the sinking. And with that, the war with Spain began. Years later, several investigations took place, both official and unofficial. Today, it is believed that the U.S.S. Maine exploded not because of a mine, but because of a design flaw which placed her powder magazines too-close to her boiler room. Her powder magazine had been ignited by a fire in her coal bunker. The Tonkin Gulf Incident marked the upswing of U.S. involvement in SE Asia; many observers and historians now believe this incident to have been at least partly-fabricated and/or exaggerated, in order to provide the Johnson Administration plausible cover for escalating the war in Vietnam. Nazi Germany invaded Poland – thereby starting the war in Europe on September 1, 1939, on the basis of the false-flag – the so-called Gleiwitz Operation, carried out by the SS-Gestapo. The operation was uncovered because of testimony at the Nuremberg Trials by SS Major (Sturmbannführer) Alfred Nujocks, who had taken part in its implementation. In the present, the oligarchs – the ruling class of the West – want to intervene in Syria very badly, and have for some years now. To that end, a string of false-flag ops has been carried out in an attempt to frame the Assad government for so-called atrocities actually carried… Read more »