Month: September 2017

Lessons Of Vietnam

After I served my tours in Vietnam and returned to college I studied international relations and conflict management….while studying I came across a list of lessons that were learned from that war (some lessons are never learned)…..

After we left the country in shambles there were many analysts that took a good look at the war and how it was fought……by doing this these people hoped that a good hard look at our failings would prevent the US from making the same mistakes again (anybody that knows anything about the Vietnam War may begin their laughter now and avoid the rush)…….

In 1980 a group of several hundred analysts got together to prepare a report for the Pentagon to avoid any further missteps that are involved in fight a war.

The first thing that came out was….”Don’t Get Involved In Civil Wars”…..after WW2 Vietnam became a civil war and we chose sides.  (What would you call the Balkans in the 90’s, Syria, Libya and Yemen of today?)

Second, “Don’t Micromanage The Troops”….Vietnam was fought by the president and carried out by those around him.  (Keep in mind the Trump has said that he knows more than his generals)

Third, “Let The Military Run The Military”…..Congress has taken upon itself to dictate to the military….Congress calls the shots on recruitment, training and disciple.

Fourth, “Do not get into a war you do not intend on winning”…..sound familiar?  Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

Fifth, “Incrementalism does no work”…..Really?  You mean like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan?

Sixth, “Telling The Truth”…….in Vietnam the government would never admit just what were the goals intended…..oncve again, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc.

And finally number seven, “Ignoring History”……..just like a grasp of history would have kept the US out of Vietnam…then same can be said for Afghanistan and a small part Iraq….

After a special study was done to see what went wrong…..we flushed down the crapper and kept doing the same stupid crap war after war.

Lessons were not learned or better said…ignored.

So because of that we keep making the same mistakes over and over…..

In Kabul, Afghanistan, American Embassy personnel who want to meet with their counterparts at the nearby U.S. military base have to travel a mere 100 yards. But they don’t make a practice of walking or driving. They go by military helicopter, reports The New York Times. The space between is too dangerous to cross on the ground.

It’s the sort of bizarre fact that might have emerged in Ken Burns’ new PBS series on the Vietnam War, illustrating our inability to turn South Vietnam into a safe, stable place. But it’s not the past; it’s the present.

The Vietnam War was the greatest U.S. military catastrophe of the 20th century. A conflict begun under false pretenses, based on ignorance and hubris, it killed 58,000 Americans and as many as 3 million Vietnamese. It ended in utter failure. Never in our history have so many lives been wasted on such monumental futility.

Source: The Vietnam Syndrome: How We Lost It and Why We Need It Back – Reason.com

But wait!  The Pentagon has a new analytic tool that will improve the way we fight wars our future wars…..

An emerging analytics tool may assist military leaders in making better decisions on the battlefield by predicting the motives of adversaries.

Known as abductive reasoning, the concept takes advantage of advancements in machine learning, said Rick Pavlik, director of analytics and machine intelligence at Polaris Alpha, a defense and intelligence agency contractor.

“Abduction is all about having a set of observations or evidence and trying to come up with the … root cause or an explanation that would describe the observations that we’re seeing,” he said.

Humans have used abductive reasoning since the beginning of mankind, but there is now a large demand to automate it, Pavlik said. “There appears to be a lot of momentum.”

Source: New Analytics Tool Could Help Military Leaders

Seriously, who do they think they are kidding?

The Pentagon will spend the money for the study and then do what they always does….the same stupid shit they always do.

Who’s Got The War?

All the news about this nuke versus that nuke coming out of North Korea…..all, the rhetoric back and forth…..all the threats fired in the others direction….the situation is spiraling…..

Just how long has North Korea been wanting a nuke?

North Korea has always been an enigma to the western world. They are coined the “Hermit Kingdom” by many Western cultures because of their almost complete shut-out of foreign media. Nevertheless, North Korea makes headlines across the world, and lately, those headlines involve one thing; Nuclear weapons.

There have always been efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear program through many acts of diplomacy, but North Korea would typically go back on the pacts they made with any country. It was becoming a trend and a tool that they would use to garner leverage in negotiations: fuel, food, or aid of any kind. But now, they have a working nuclear arsenal, and are threatening the very existence of our planet. So how did they get here? Here’s a brief history of North Koreas Nuclear Program.

Source: A Brief (and Terrifying) History of North Korea’s Nuclear Testing

So North Korea has been testing and doing all the research to acquire a nuke since the 1950’s……they have come to the point now where they are testing nukes regularly and now the research on a delivery system.

Since Trump came to the seat of power the rhetoric aimed at North Korea has become louder and louder…..more mike the Tweets than anything substantial….then Trump goes to the UN and delivers a speech that threatens North Korea with annihilation….now NK has turn the tables…..

In the escalating war of words between the United States and North Korea, the latter just fired a verbal bomb by way of Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho. The Independent quotes the official as telling reporters in New York on Monday that “the whole world should clearly remember it was the US who first declared war on our country. Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to [take] countermeasures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country.” It’s not the first fiery statement made by Ri in recent days. More on the situation:

  • Background: Ri was the one who previously likened Trump to a barking dog, and in a UN speech on Saturday, he called President Trump “a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacency” whose decision to call Kim Jong Un “Rocket Man” makes “our rocket’s visit to the entire US mainland inevitable all the more.” Trump responded, tweeting this Saturday night: “Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!”
  • Today’s response to Ri: Sarah Huckabee Sanders addressed the subject head-on in Monday’s White House press briefing. “We’ve not declared war on North Korea, and frankly the suggestion of that is absurd.” CBS News has more: “It’s never appropriate for a country to shoot down another country’s aircraft when it’s over international waters. Our goal is still the same: We continue to seek the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. That’s our focus, doing that through both the most maximum economic and diplomatic pressures as possible at this point.”
  • “How worried should we be?” That’s the question Joshua Keating asks at Slate. It’s “pretty scary” stuff, he admits, but he cautions against overreacting and explains why. He also points out that “in some sense the US and North Korea are already at war,” as the Korean War of 1950-1953 didn’t end with a peace treaty.
  • About those bombers: The AP reports America flexed its military muscle on Saturday as well, with US bombers and fighter escorts entering international airspace off North Korea’s east coast and flying to the farthest point north of the Demilitarized Zone of any American aircraft in the 21st century.
  • Who is Ri, anyway? According to a Sept. 16 article in the Atlantic by Joel S. Wit, he may be our “best chance for finding a way forward because of his close ties to the ruling Kim family”; Wit explains why here. The Guardian calls him the “diplomat who could defuse the crisis.”

As the two sides ramp up their rhetoric China has had to step in and sound like the adult in the room……

After a weekend of additional threats traded between the US and North Korea, a top official in Beijing urged both sides to rein it in. The White House and Pyongyang should “not further irritate each other and add oil to the flames of the tense situation on the peninsula at present,” says a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, per Reuters. The plea came after a North Korean official told the UN Saturday that a nuclear strike against the US is “inevitable” because of President Trump’s mockery of Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man.” Trump followed that up with a threatening tweet Saturday night: “Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!” (And that’s after Trump’s threat to “totally destroy” the North, and Kim’s reference to Trump as “mentally deranged.”)

Over the weekend, China said it would ban textile imports from North Korea and limit exports of refined petroleum products, but an analysis at the Washington Post asserts that Beijing is still “not prepared to do anything that might bring down the North Korean regime.” Specifically, that would mean putting a full stop to exports of crude oil to the North. “The North Koreans have figured out that the Chinese are genuinely in a bind,” says one expert from the Lowy Institute in Australia. “Having cried wolf for so long about having limited influence, the Chinese genuinely do have limited influence in North Korea right now. It’s not just weasel words.” Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated to British leader Theresa May in a phone call that he thinks the situation must be resolved through new talks.

Of course all this could just be a couple of playground bullies shoving each other….but I am not willing to take that chance.

Someone needs to step in and bring some sanity into the conversation.

America: Beacon Of Democracy

For decades now the US has been seen by the world as a shining beacon of democracy around the world….a champion of democracy and freedom….and many Americans still believe that is true….

But there is a stat that many people have NO idea about and they need to know that all is not as perfect as they think….

For decades, the American people have been repeatedly told by their government and corporate-run media that acts of war ordered by their president have been largely motivated by the need to counter acts of aggression or oppression by “evil dictators.” We were told we had to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. We had to bomb Libya because Muammar Gaddafi was an evil dictator, bent on unleashing a “bloodbath” on his own people. Today, of course, we are told that we should support insurgents in Syria because Bashar al-Assad is an evil dictator, and we must repeatedly rattle our sabers at North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin because they, too, are evil dictators.

This is part of the larger, usually unquestioned mainstream corporate media narrative that the US leads the “Western democracies” in a global struggle to combat terrorism and totalitarianism and promote democracy.

I set out to answer a simple question: Is it true? Does the US government actually oppose dictatorships and champion democracy around the world, as we are repeatedly told?

Source: US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of World’s Dictatorships

The truth is the the US is propping up more dictators than democratic regime…..and for a year now it is getting worse…..

Closing Thought–27Sep17

Get Your Priorities Straight, Dipstick!

IST Factoid:  Puerto Rico is a US territory….ergo its residents are US CITIZENS!

The factoid was inserted because there seem to be many that did not know….

Nearly half of all Americans aren’t aware that Puerto Ricans are citizens, according to a new Morning Consult poll.

While 54 percent of Americans know that Puerto Ricans are citizens, 47 percent do not know that, according to the poll, which was first reported by The New York Times. Among Americans with a bachelor’s degree, 72 percent are aware of citizenship for people on the island.

The poll found a connection between knowledge of Puerto Ricans’ citizenship and a willingness to send emergency aid.

According to the report, 8 in 10 Americans who know Puerto Ricans are citizens support sending aid, while among those who do not know, 4 in 10 support sending aid.

It has been a week since Hurricane Maria roared ashore in Puerto Rico and demolished the island in all ways….infrastructure too the biggest hit….60% of the island has NO potable water….there is only spotty electric power and food is running ever so short.

The Island is a wreck and instead to making sure that the country stays laser focused on Puerto Rico Trump spend his Twitter time trying to ramp up some new form of division among us Americans.

After starting the shit storm about the taking of a knee he did finally Tweet about Puerto Rico……

Here are the tweets, in case you missed them:

“Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble…It’s old electrical grid, which was in terrible shape, was devastated. Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars…owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with. Food, water and medical are top priorities – and doing well. #FEMA”

Really?  All the compassion, empathy and concern for the people of Puerto Rico is just heart tugging….(complete sarcasm)……

I even saw a Tweet from a yahoo supporter of Trump addressed to some news anchor…..

“Trump is the president of the US….not Puerto Rico…..Move on”

The stupidity of these people is just amazing…..

Trump needs to MAN up and do more for Puerto Rico……why is the hospital ship. Comfort, NOT in Puerto Rico?  (word is leaking out the Comfort will be heading to Puerto Rice.  Why did it take so long?)

We have the perfect model for handling this disaster…..The 1948 Berlin Airlift….refresh your memory…..

Source: Berlin Airlift – Cold War – HISTORY.com

There should be planes landing at regular intervals and it should have begun mere days after Maria pushed through.

The president keeps Tweeting out that people think the US is doing a good job…..does not look like it….but please give me the names of those deluded individuals.

So far talk is cheap…..but talk does not feed, quench or shelter the Americans on the island of Puerto Rico.

Betraying The Veteran (Again)

For too long the American veteran has been a prop for the political parties….veterans are rolled out whenever they want to project this air of patriotism and then are quickly kicked to the curb and pushed aside.

And it has been that way for 50+ years and nothing ever changes….the vets are lied to, promised, used and discarded like broken tools….one of America’s biggest sources of propaganda.

This President and this Congress are NO different from the past…….

Despite vowing to support America’s veterans, President Donald Trump and congressional Republican leaders have put forth budget proposals that are poised to do great damage to the economic security of veterans and their families—all to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and corporations.1 In fact, new analysis by the Center for American Progress reveals that the tax cuts Trump wants to give corporations and businesses, which will cost $4.3 trillion over 10 years, amount to 28 times as much as the deep cuts he is proposing to services and benefits for veterans.2

And these cuts are just the tip of the iceberg.

Despite the common belief to the contrary, veteran-specific benefits and services fall short of meeting the needs of veterans and their families, many of whom struggle to meet basic needs even with Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) supports.3 More than 3.9 million veterans live paycheck to paycheck—meaning their family incomes are less than twice the federal poverty level, or less than $50,000 for a family of four.4 Yet new CAP analysis reveals that if Trump’s proposed cuts to key job training programs were applied directly to program participation, more than 340,000 veterans could lose access to critical employment services that help boost wages.

Source: 5 Ways President Trump and Congressional Republicans Are Betraying Veterans – Center for American Progress

Our veterans deserve so much more than this country is willing to give them….the country asked….they went…..now they are ignored.

Ignored that is until the powers need another prop to trot out to lather up the base.

Vietnam War: Who Was Right And Why It Matters

Ken Burns, a documentary film maker, is airing his 13 part series on the Vietnam War on PBS….so I thought that I would post a few articles about that war and how it pertains to today.

There are many these days that compare Afghanistan to Vietnam….that there are many similarities and lessons not learned……

The ghosts of the Vietnam War no doubt hovered over a recently assembled conclave of President Donald Trump’s advisers as they deliberated over the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.

In the Vietnam era, as today, the United States found itself engulfed in a seemingly never-ending war with mounting costs, unclear goals and few signs of success, writes this Drake University professor.

Source: Vietnam War: Who was right about what went wrong – and why it matters in Afghanistan

Afghanistan has become a stalemate, a quagmire, just as Vietnam….and no one wants to admit it and they, the Pentagon, keeps throwing resources at a conflict that is going no where.

Some lessons are harder to learn than others…..I guess.

Forecast: The Syrian Theater

A normal person might think that our continuous war in the Middle East has hit upon a stalemate….the news about Russia, North Korea, health care, protests by athletes, etc…the Middle East is a place of quiet reflection right now.

Nothing could be further from the truth…..civilians are still dying, ISIS is still attacking in various ways, Kurds are demanding independence and so on…..and since this is the region that I focus most of my work on then I need to keep my readers up to date as much as possible…..

Unless you read blogs then you might think that all is well in the Middle East especially Syria…..

This is a report by the Institute for the Study of War……..

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The United States will continue to risk its vital strategic interests in the Middle East unless it changes its policies in Syria and Iraq. President Donald Trump and his administration inherited a weakened U.S. position, with Russia imposing constraints on American freedom of action and options. The Trump administration has taken initial steps to advance U.S. prestige in the region by reassuring America’s traditional allies and acting more firmly against its enemies and adversaries. The tactical tasks of recapturing Mosul and liberating Raqqa from the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) are complete and nearly complete, respectively. Nevertheless, its efforts to define and execute policies that secure America’s vital interests are moving more slowly than those of America’s enemies, adversaries, and spoilers who are more agile than the U.S. These actors include Russia, Iran and its proxies, Turkey, ISIS, al Qaeda, and some Kurdish elements, who are pursuing goals that threaten American objectives and are exploiting the current situation to make strategic gains as the U.S. champions short-term gains and tactical success.

The Trump administration has not yet broken with its predecessor’s approach to the Middle East, particularly in Syria and Iraq. It has prioritized conducting counterterrorism operations against ISIS to recapture ISIS’s territory. American military forces have accelerated this campaign by relying on the most readily available local forces, including Kurdish forces in northern Syria that are aligned with terrorists targeting Turkey. The administration has eschewed a U.S. role in addressing the regional war’s underlying drivers, including the role of the Bashar al Assad regime in Syria and sectarianism in Iraq stoked by Iran. The main effort of the counter-ISIS fight must become preventing the organization from reconstituting and its rivals from inheriting its leadership of the Iraqi and global jihad. ISIS re-emerged from a defeated al Qaeda in Iraq and controlled Iraqi cities only three years after American troops departed in 2011.

Read the full report (PDF).

AS the reader can see….there is more going on than the news media lets us mere mortals onto…..but thanx to my dogged desire to see that the situation in the Middle East remains in the forefront….and that my readers keep abreast of the situations that they will be paying for in the future with cash and blood.

Why Do They Hate So?

For decades now the Right has had a hard on for higher education.  They take every opportunity to degrade anyone with an advanced degree as some sort of elitist.

The burning question is why do conservatives hate higher education?  I have my thoughts but I am usual a bit harsh…..but someone has to have a good idea where higher education became such a negative force in our society.

Conservatives don’t like professors. When conservative Republicans were asked to gauge their feelings about college professors, over half gave a “cold” response, while only 24% were “warm”. I experience that disdain in the comments that conservatives make to my columns, where the word “professor” itself is a taunt, a curse.

Conservatives don’t like the institutions where professors work. A recent Pew poll found that only 29% of conservative Republicans thought that colleges and universities have a positive impact on our country.

Republican politicians encourage these views. Betsy DeVos, the new Secretary of Education, was explicit in her condemnation of professors as she was being confirmed: “The faculty, from adjunct professors to deans, tell you what to do, what to say, and more ominously, what to think. They say that if you voted for Donald Trump, you’re a threat to the university community.”

Source: Why Conservatives Don’t Like Higher Ed – LA Progressive

At what point will this continue?  There are many incidents in history where the first people to be deposed by an authoritarian regime are the educated and community leaders.

Hope do these people hope to gain by demonizing the educated?

Closing Thought–26Sep17

Throw Red Meat And They Will Come!

The Congressional investigations do not seem to be going well for the Pres. and his cronies……almost nightly something new and possibly more damaging is released in one form of another…. so how do you change the the conversation?

Over the weekend Trump did what he must……

Throw some red meat to the devout.

President Trump says NFL owners should fire players who kneel during the national anthem. And he’s encouraging spectators to walk out in protest. In an extended riff during a freewheeling rally speech in Alabama Friday night, Trump also bemoaned that football games have become less aggressive, the AP reports. “They’re ruining the game,” he complained. Several athletes, including a handful of NFL players, have refused to stand during “The Star-Spangled Banner” to protest of the treatment of blacks by police. Trump says those players are disrespecting the flag and deserve to lose their jobs. “That’s a total disrespect of our heritage. That’s a total disrespect of everything that we stand for,” he said, encouraging owners to act.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, you’d say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired,” Trump said to loud applause. Trump also predicted that any owner who went through with his encouragement would become “the most popular person in this country”—at least for a week. Trump, who was in Alabama campaigning for Sen. Luther Strange, also blamed a decline in NFL ratings on the nation’s interest in “yours truly” as well as what he described as a decline in violence in the game. He said players are being thrown out for aggressive tackles, and it’s “not the same game.” But Trump said the anthem protest was the top reason NFL viewership had waned.

Of course all eyes turn to the NFL and the Sunday games……

Even Carl Rove sees this situation as a losing fight for the president…….

Figures from the worlds of politics and sports took to the Sunday talk shows to weigh in on President Trump’s call for NFL players who protest during the national anthem to be fired.

  • Steve Mnuchin told ABC’s This Week that NFL owners should create a rule forcing players to stand for the anthem and that athletes “can do free speech on their own time,” Politico reports. The Treasury secretary said the issue isn’t race or free speech but “respect for the military and first responders.”
  • “I wish that some of these players that get on one knee to protest this country and all the sacrifices that make it great would get on both knees and thank God that they live in the United States of America,” Mediaite quotes Mike Huckabee as saying on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures. The former Arkansas governor said liberals only defend athletes attacking the country, not those praying for it.
  • Karl Rove told Fox News Sunday that Trump should have picked a better battle or at least a better tactic, Mediaite reports. “He could have come away the winner,” the former White House adviser said. “Instead, he is walking away from this a loser in the minds of the American people.” A better move would have been to be an “aspirational figure” reminding people what’s good about the country, Rove said.
  • Rex Ryan, who introduced Trump during a rally last year, said on Sunday NFL Countdown that the president’s comments are “appalling.” “Lemme tell you: I’m pissed off. I’ll be honest with you. Because I supported Donald Trump,” CBS Sports quotes the former NFL coach as saying. Ryan said he’s proud of the players he’s known and they aren’t “SOBs.”
  • “I’m not sure if our president understands those rights, that every American has the right to speak out and also to protest,” Sports Illustrated quotes Terry Bradshaw as saying on Fox NFL Sunday.

This accomplished what Trump intended….a diversion for awhile…..

Trump as usual cannot kind in mind that he is the president of all of the US not just his piddly 33%

The Votes Are In!

The Votes Are In!

Yesterday the residents of Northeast Iraq, Kurd region, went to the polls to vote for session from the country of Iraq…….and now the final results are in…..well not final for at least 72 hours……

Polls have closed in Iraqi Kurdistan, and while there are a lot of questions about what’s going to happen next, one thing that’s not in serious doubt is the results. With some 78% of voters having gone to referendum, the final figures are still expected with 72 hours.

Early counts show what everyone suspected though, that it’s not going to be close. The first 300,000 votes, admittedly less than 10% of the count, showed 93.4% voting yes. A wide majority was always expected.

Iraqi Kurdistan has long sought independence, as has the rest of Kurdistan, which spans Syria, Turkey, and Iran. The part in Iraq, however, was very clear about having a vote as soon as the ISIS war was over, and they’ve been basically on their way out the door since.

The referendum was just an up and down vote on secession in general, but questions about the specific boundaries, especially after Kurdistan seized substantial new territory in the ISIS war, remain to be resolved.

(antiwar.com)

They just voted for an extension of the chaos in Iraq…..this vote only implies to Iraq but their are Kurds in several other Middle East states…..Turkey, Syria, Iran……what will these set about doing?

AS an example of things to come was a few days before the vote……A few days ahead of the Kurdistan referendum on independence, an ethnic clash took place between a group of Kurds and Turkmens in Kirkuk on Sept. 19. Local police deployed in different parts of the city to prevent the development of the deadly clash.

Other minorities may want their place in the sun….so to speak…..the Assyrians, Chaldean, etc.