Day: December 13, 2019

US Troop Deployment

Closing Thought–13Dec19

The US has troops all over the globe…..from Far East to Iceland……I a era when we no longer need to worry about the USSR and Russia has a friend in the White House why do we need a massive troop deployment for Europe?

I understand why we needed the massive amount of troops in Europe to thwart a Soviet attack…..but why these days?

The US is sending massive amount of troops to Europe in 2020….

In 2020, the US Army will be carrying out its biggest deployment in 25 years into Europe. The deployment will send 20,000 US troops, and 13,000 pieces of equipment across Europe for wargames beginning in May and running through June

US Gen. Christopher Cavoli would not define the operation as aimed at Russia, but did tie it to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, saying it “changed everything.” The large deployment will be difficult.

That’s because as with most recent operations, the US will be sending forces largely into former Warsaw Pact countries, and those countries have railroads incompatible with Western Europe. Moreover, the bridges in those countries were built without envisioning having to support the heaviest of US tanks.

According to Gen. Cavoli, the large deployment of US troops is meant to “demonstrate the US military’s ability to quickly deploy a large force.” This comes amid constantly escalating rhetoric against Russia.

(antiwar.com)

I would like someone in the government to walk out to the cameras and ask why……

Why does this world need that many more US troops to hold the line (so to speak)?

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Those Military Disasters

There have been some marvelous military victories and successes…..and on the other hand there have been some major disasters that our military has participated in……

Nations often linger on their military defeats as long as, or longer than, they do on their successes. The Battle of Kosovo remains the key event of the Serbian story, and devastating military defeats adorn the national narratives of France, Russia and the American South. What are the biggest disasters in American military history, and what effect have they had on the United States?

In this article, I concentrate on specific operational and strategic decisions, leaving aside broader, grand-strategic judgments that may have led the United States into ill-considered conflicts. The United States may well have erred politically in engaging in the War of 1812, World War I, the Vietnam War and Operation Iraqi Freedom, but here I consider how specific failures worsened America’s military and strategic position.

The first disaster in this article is the Invasion of Canada…..

At the opening of the War of 1812, U.S. forces invaded Upper and Lower Canada. Americans expected a relatively easy going; the notion that Canada represented the soft underbelly of the British empire had been popular among American statesmen for some time. Civilian and military leaders alike expected a quick capitulation, forced in part by the support of the local population. But Americans overestimated their support among Canadians, overestimated their military capabilities, and underestimated British power. Instead of an easy victory, the British handed the Americans a devastating defeat.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-biggest-disasters-american-military-history-11536

This is the five most disastrous actions according to the article’s author….

Do you have others that should be in this list?

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

NDAA: War Hawks Win Again

The National Defense Authorization Act has been approved to move to the House, the Senate and then to the President…..and the warmongers get another win by taking all antiwar tone out of the Act.

The House version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) set aside an irresponsibly large amount of money for military spending, but it also added some antiwar amendments and other very basic limitations. The House and Senate versions have now been reconciled into a final bill, and materially all of the limitations that the House voted on and approved have been stripped away, in favor of a $738 billion bill that continues spending, but makes no attempt to rein in the military in any serious way.

The House bill had included the latest attempt to use the power of the purse to end US military involvement in Yemen, something that both houses had attempted to do in a War Powers Act resolution that was previously vetoed by President Trump. That language will not be in the final bill.

At its core, a lot of the language in the House bill was aimed at giving Congress more specific say on how the military is to carry out certain operations, and more importantly certain things that it is absolutely not to do. This was presented as necessary because Congressional Democrats were worried about President Trump acting unilaterally.

In the end, more or less all of this was stripped away, even backing away from border wall restrictions that were one of the first things put in place in the House bill.

The expectation is that this final NDAA will be voted on in the House on Wednesday, and in the Senate some days later. It will almost certainly be signed by the president, since anything remotely objectionable to him has already been forgotten.

(antiwar.com)

US support for the Saudi war on Yemen will continue…..

The 2020 Pentagon budget will not end US involvement in the war in Yemen as some Democratic lawmakers had hoped. 

The Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives in July approved amendments to next year’s military budget legislation that would have halted US assistance to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

But an advanced version of the bill – released late on Monday – excluded the provisions, effectively ending the push to use American military spending to help end the devastating war in Yemen.

Progressive members of Congress, several of whom have lobbied against US support for Saudi Arabia, were outraged by the final draft of the budget, known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

“Voters would be appalled to know that instead of seizing the opportunity to end illegal US participation in the horrific Saudi-led bombings of Yemen, Congress will continue to fund Trump’s unconstitutional war,” the legislators said in a joint statement. 

Earlier this year, Donald Trump vetoed a bill passed in Congress with bipartisan support that would have halted US support for the coalition.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/push-end-american-support-yemen-war-blocked-us-defence-budget

So no chance of any antiwar policies with the renewed NDAA…..looks like our endless wars will continue to be endless.

Dems pretend to be against our endless wars when it suits them in elections but fold under the pressure and show their true warmongering policies…..

More than 180 House Democrats joined a nearly united Republican caucus Wednesday night to pass a sweeping $738 billion military spending bill that gives President Donald Trump his long-sought “Space Force,” free rein to wage endless wars, and a green light to continue fueling the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/12/atrocious-188-democrats-join-gop-hand-trump-738-billion-military-budget-includes

That is 180 cowards!  1slugs!80 people that has prostituted themselves to M-IC……all for the love of the high dollar donors…..pathetic pack of  slugs.

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Terrorists: Will They Go Or Will They Stay?

The evacuation of Kurds and US troops from Northern Syria left “many many” (a Trumpian term) ISIS prisoners in limbo…will they stay of will they go?

SecState has demanded that countries take their terrorist back,,,,,,

European and other members of the international coalition fighting the Islamic State group must take back and prosecute their nationals detained in Iraq and Syria to help keep IS from regaining territory, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday. Pompeo told foreign ministers and senior officials from some 30 coalition members that it’s imperative that they hold thousands of detained foreign fighters accountable for atrocities committed while the Islamic State held swaths of territory in the two countries. Many of the detained foreign fighters are from Europe, the AP reports, but countries have been reluctant to take them back and officials acknowledged there are still differences of opinion among coalition partners about how best to deal with them.

The meeting came amid concerns about the US commitment to the fight against IS remnants. Those concerns have increased as President Trump has pressed to withdraw American troops from Syria. It was also the first meeting at such a senior level since IS was driven from the last of its major strongholds in March and the first since the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed himself during a US raid last month. Pompeo said bringing the foreign fighters to justice in their home countries is critical to preventing IS from resurrecting its caliphate and exporting its ideology. “That work begins with carrying out justice against those who deserve it,” he said. Recent court rulings in Europe have required the governments to repatriate their nationals, per the Washington Post. The governments “are fighting a losing battle,” one lawyer involved in the cases said.

I found a wrinkle in Pompeo’s demands/ultimatum…….it begins in Alabama……

A woman who moved from Alabama to Syria, pledged allegiance to ISIS, and burned her American passport will not be getting a new one. A federal judge ruled Thursday that 25-year-old Hoda Muthana, who is currently in a refugee camp in Syria with her 2-year-old son, is not an American citizen, the Wall Street Journal reports. Judge Reggie Walton of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in the support of the State Department’s decision that Muthana should never have been granted US citizenship, despite having been born in New Jersey, because her father was in the US as a Yemeni diplomat when she was born. Her passport was revoked by the Obama administration in 2016.

Muthana, who grew up in Alabama, was detained by Kurdish forces in Syria earlier this year. She says she was “brainwashed” by ISIS members she encountered online, reports the AFP. After she moved to Syria, she married three different foreign fighters, all of whom were killed in combat, and urged the group’s supporters worldwide to carry out terrorist acts against non-Muslims. Her lawyers say they plan to look at further options. Muthana says she regrets “every single thing” and is willing to face prosecution if she is allowed to return to the US with her son. “Anyone that believes in God believes that everyone deserves a second chance, no matter how harmful their sins were,” she told NBC in a recent interview.

Will the US let her return to her country of origin?  Will they disobey a edit issued by SecState Pompeo?

Just a thought?

More information on these people……https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterranean/syria/208-women-and-children-first-repatriating-westerners-affiliated-isis

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

The Mystic Land Of Chindia

China has been on the rise for decades it is now an economic power as well as a military power…..and on the rise is India….looking to become the same rise star as China.

Could the 21st century give us a new super power with the marriage of China and India…a “Chindia”?

As a foreign policy geek I get to read dissertations from those seeking advanced degrees in international relations……and this one makes some interesting points as the “power” of the US seems to be waning….

A significant global development in the first decade of the 21st Century has been the rise of several nations hitherto not considered key players in the international scene. The following up and coming nations have recently been grouped respectively as BRIC and BASIC: Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC); and Brazil, South Africa, India, and China (BASIC) (Wilson & Purushothaman, 2003). Noticeably, the two nations featured in both these groupings are China and India. China’s and India’s meteoric rise to the global arena, and the sheer magnitude of their populations, has led some scholars to assert that there is an ‘irresistible’ shift of global power toward Asia, dubbing this as the ‘Asian Century’ (Mahbubani, 2008, p. 43). And some scholars have gone so far as to coin the portmanteau ‘Chindia’ to signify the ascendency of these two Asian giants (Ramesh, 2005; Sheth, 2008). In this article, I begin by examining Ramesh’s (2005) and Sheth’s (2008) definitions of the term Chindia. I then proceed to situate Chindia according to classical international relations theory of how global peace and prosperity have been historically attributed to a few strong nations in the world. I then undertake an historical overview of China-India relations, followed by a brief summary of the commonalities and differences between the two nations. Finally, I make an assessment whether Chindia is a dream or a possibility.

Sheth (2008) contended that with the rise of China and India, a fusion may take place between these nations. Hence Chindia may usher in a new world order, replacing the USA:

The Prospect of ‘Chindia’ as a World Power

I am old enough to recall the short armed conflict between China and India, 1962…….and for those not old enough to remember….https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/india-china-war-of-1962-839077-2016-11-21

I have a problem of these two coming to terms with the other…..they have fought before and those issues are not really resolved….so until they are the idea of a super bloc, Chindia, is just wishful thinking.

Plus greed and ambition will prevent these two from being more that acquaintances….at least for now.

Just my thoughts…..

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”