Go Big or stay home

I know that I'm not alone in thinking that as a civilization (Western part, anyway) we've lost the will to win. The linked article by Angelo Codevilla is well worth your time as a description of the gap between the "Ruling Class" and the bulk of the population in the USA. There are symptoms of that up here too, but we started from a statist position so this isn't as big a problem in Canada.

This part however is the most on-message with AotF, so I'll block quote it here:

Because our ruling class deems unsophisticated the American people's perennial preference for decisive military action or none, its default solution to international threats has been to commit blood and treasure to long-term, twilight efforts to reform the world's Vietnams, Somalias, Iraqs, and Afghanistans, believing that changing hearts and minds is the prerequisite of peace and that it knows how to change them. The apparently endless series of wars in which our ruling class has embroiled America, wars that have achieved nothing worthwhile at great cost in lives and treasure, has contributed to defining it, and to discrediting it -- but not in its own eyes.

No better summary of those actions/wars is necessary. Countries that fall into the clutches of their "progressive" elements lose all sense of themselves and thence have nothing to cling to as a National Interest.

National Interest can be well served by short/sharp wars, assuming that all more reasonable options have been exhausted first. Note that I do not say "in the last resort" because sometimes a smackdown is what is called for sooner rather than later. For example I'll use Afghanistan 2001; the Taliban were given a choice about turning over OBL, and they chose poorly. The SOF/Northern Alliance campaign that followed was exactly the right way to do it but the nation building/insurgency after the fact has been and will ultimately be a failure, an expensive and embarrassing one at that.

As long as the lily-livered run foreign policy we must hope that we don't face an existential (external) threat, because the "elites" won't let us win.

Speaking Truth from Power

I can' say that I was ever hoping for a world where more people learned to speak German, but I guess enough water is under the bridge for me to appreciate this:

BERLIN (AFP) – Germany's attempt to create a multi-cultural society has failed completely, Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the weekend, calling on the country's immigrants to learn German and adopt Christian values.

Merkel weighed in for the first time in a blistering debate sparked by a central bank board member saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.

This is not the first time that Merkel has said this but this time the media isn't ignoring it, and I of course bring these things the attention of, well, whoever still reads this. Multiculturalism is a crock, and it's finally being recognized in some quarters as such.

Anecdotally I was aware of this policy three years ago in Afghanistan; one of our translators had scored a German visa to get out of there, and was complaining that he didn't want to learn German. As he already spoke English very well, I assume he was using it as a springboard to an Anglo country, but he wasn't the target of this German crackdown anyway.

You want to live under Sharia, stay in or move to Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, etc. . If you want to be part of the culture that has given us all of our modern conveniences and the technology that is our only hope for a future, keep your religion for the church/mosque/synagogue/temple and work to fit in.

A recent study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think tank showed around one-third of Germans feel the country is being "over-run by foreigners" and the same percentage feel foreigners should be sent home when jobs are scarce.

Nearly 60 percent of the 2,411 people polled thought the around four million Muslims in Germany should have their religious practices "significantly curbed."

Far-right attitudes are found not only at the extremes of German society, but "to a worrying degree at the centre of society," the think tank said in its report.

Is it "far-right" to not want to your way of life to be changed unrecognizably by immigrants who can't stand your culture? This is how certain people keep the engines of Western self effacement running, by tarring anyone who wants to stand up for it as some sort of Nazi. It looks like Germany is starting to shed its' fear of it's past, and between this and the Wilders acquittal the tide may be turning in Europe.

There's hope for us yet

The public prosecution department on Friday afternoon stated that Geert Wilders is not guilty of discriminating against Muslims. Earlier on Friday it announced he should also be found not guilty of inciting hatred.

If you don't know who Geert Wilders is, look him up. This was a hugely important case in the Netherlands and in Europe, as the chilling effect a conviction would have had on free speech (especially of the politically incorrect type) would have been devastating to protecting Western ideals.

Dealing earlier on Friday with incitement to hatred, Van Roessel and Velleman said some comments could incite hatred against Muslims if taken out of context, but if the complete text is considered, it can be seen that Wilders is against the growing influence of Islam and not against Muslims per sé.

I can splice pretty much anything into meaning whatever I want so this is merely common sense, which alas is none too common. Now we have to rein the Human Rights Tribunals in Canada under control. If it's against the law it should be dealt with in court. If not, kangaroo "tribunals" to muzzle people are no part of a free democratic society. Hopefully this moves the Dutch in that direction.

Bleep the U.N.

Busy week for me here, since I've started working on the shorter posts. Anyway, today's topic is Canada getting dissed (again) at the UN. This has happened a couple of times in the last while, between people breaking for lunch when the PM went to make our pitch for a temporary seat on the Security Council and us losing to Portugal (wtf?) in the vote this week.

Fuck the UN. Not because of this, but because it's a useless bloated bureaucracy steered by a bunch of countries that have nothing to teach us about running a civilization. I don't mean the Security Council, I mean the voting block of Developing and Muslim countries that vilifies democratic Israel and hobbles women's rights at every opportunity.

Portugal is one of the PIGS that have (possibly fatally?) crippled the Euro Zone, and THEY beat us for a seat? That tells you what sort of company we'd be keeping, and more importantly who we'd have to impress to get the votes to win. Thank you, but we have better things to do. Of course our Foreign Minister didn't cover the government with glory asserting that it was the Liberals who spiked the vote, but what can you do?

It's too much to hope that we could resign from the "organization" but we could at least treat it with the same regard it has for Canada. Except when it needs us for something of course...

Back on track, but to where?

Officials say a shift in U.S. war strategy has begun to take place in Afghanistan, away from classic counterinsurgency (protecting the population, providing basic services, promoting good government) and toward the traditional business of killing and capturing bad guys.

Well about time, and they can't say I didn't tell them. Well, they can since "they" don't read this, but I still said it was the only way to go in that shithole of a country. And I can call it that since I was there and people were trying to kill me.

According to the latest unclassified Air Force data, U.S. warplanes and drones dropped or fired 1,600 weapons on Afghan targets in the last three months, nearly half of them—700—in September alone. In the same three months last year, just 1,031 aerial weapons were released, 257 of them in that September. (Though the data are not entirely clear, it appears this more aggressive strategy has not resulted in an increase of civilian casualties.)

Years of operating over there have honed the FACs, especially the American ones who've spent so much time over there, so they're a lot better at picking targets for marvelous precision weapons, with predictable results. This is the "stick" that also provides a "carrot" to the suffering populace. If they know that if they give us targets we'll kill them, they have a weapon to use against our common enemies. And to be realistic, some people they don't like who can be conveniently removed by heavily-armed foreigners, but that's life in that part of the world.

What kind of deal will these Taliban negotiate? One condition Gen. Petraeus has set is that any Taliban seeking reconciliation must pledge to support Afghanistan's constitution and elected leaders. If they do so, will they cross their fingers and soon break the deal? Although U.S. troops might stick around to help enforce such accords, the ultimate guarantor must be Karzai. Will he hold up his end of the bargain without either demanding too much obeisance or cravenly caving in?

Finally, in order for any deal to take hold and result in political stability, there must be economic growth, credible institutions of justice, and a steady flow of basic services to the population. In that sense, COIN theory is still valid—and that leads back to the original concerns that have made a COIN campaign so slow and difficult: How can growth, good government, and basic services develop if the regime lacks political legitimacy?

There's another wild card, rarely addressed in these sorts of discussions: the fighters of the Northern Alliance, the former insurgency group that helped U.S. special-ops forces overthrow Afghanistan's Taliban regime in 2002. These fighters disarmed when Karzai came to power, but some intelligence analysts—and Afghans—worry that they might take up arms again if the Taliban were to come back into the government as part of a power-sharing deal. If that happens, civil war could once again break out.

Likely in fact, but my "line of death" option is still workable; back the Northerners with light but powerful forces, and you can keep the place from spinning out of control, and possibly keep the Chinese from walking in and profiting from all of NATO's blood and treasure. That however is another post entirely.

If you're against us, you're against us

In order to breathe some life back into AotF, I'm going to leaven it with shorter aggregator-type posts. To whit:

The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood has endorsed (Arabic) (English translation by MEMRI) anti-American Jihad and pretty much every element in the al-Qaida ideology book. Since the Brotherhood is the main opposition force in Egypt and Jordan as well as the most powerful group, both politically and religiously, in the Muslim communities of Europe and North America this is pretty serious stuff.

By the way, no one can argue that he merely represents old, tired policies of the distant past because the supreme guide who said these things was elected just a few months ago. His position reflects current thinking.

It's interesting that this comes when it does. America is staggering a bit, but that doesn't mean it can't come back. Of course the opposition's plan is to keep them on the ropes until they collapse (best case) or at least lose the strength to keep the MB under control in the Middle East and Europe. However this also comes at a time when Europeans are waking up and getting angry at their political classes for not representing their fears about Islam taking over European culture.

Multiculturalism is dead in Europe or at least dying, and Europe won't go quietly, at least not just yet. If we can stop this nihilistic self-loathing, we can take these MB mofos; there was a time when we knew what to do with a declaration of war.

Nobody expects the Climate Inquisition!

This will get zero mainstream media exposure, but I will do my small part to shine a light into the dark crevices of the "climate change" debate. I recommend that you read Prof Lewis' letter in its' entirety, but first his credentials and (more importantly) experience.

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President's Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

The rote rebuttal of the Luddite "climate" lobby is that "he's not a climate scientist". Just like Freeman Dyson, he will be conveniently judged an imbecile in all matters not his credentialed specialty.

The climate lobby is mutating itself and its positions as fast as it can to keep ahead of public outrage or at least disbelief. There is a relentless current of propaganda about how we'll all cook, freeze, drown, or starve because of simultaneous droughts and flooding wiping out our food production. It's all over the place as they try to push all buttons for all people to keep the fear up and the money rolling in.

The latter is the root of the evil over which Prof Lewis has resigned his membership in the American Physical Society. There are a LOT of scientists who will not toe the alarmist line on climate, but they are blacklisted and mocked if they speak their minds instead of parroting the Groupthink. Thanks to the Web though, there may be an eventual "death" by millions of cuts to the prevailing policy of scientists being excommunicated in their hundreds for not selling out.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

There are a lot of things we could productively address, but there isn't a lot of money in that for scientists and the political classes, so I guess that won't happen. That's something to actually be worried about, and don't say that nobody warned where this was going.

“If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers”

I've gone through the comments I've had in the last month, and I was gratified to see some people that I've not seen before. I have no idea how people stumble across this since I've stopped telling people to read it, but it's nice to have you (if of course you've come back). So what today?

Well, Rob Semrau has gotten the boot from the Army, further disillusioning me with the way we do things these days. The Military doesn't need as much proof as a civil court, so the lack of real evidence didn't stop the Court Martial from finding him guilty of something, and an example was going to be made. Once the chain of command decides you're getting it, you'll get it no matter what you try.

I've talked about Rob before here so I'll not beat it to death, but I hope that he lands on his feet. He's a good man with a family to support, and as sad as it is to say it, he may be better off out of an Army that considers ass-covering and political correctness to be more important than combat effectiveness. No news there unfortunately; I have bills to pay or I'd tell the CF where they can go when they'll dedicate these sort of resources to "making an example".

There are also some incredible travesties of justice toward American troops, in fact all Western countries vilify their own soldiers more than they'd ever think of doing to the enemy. Actual criminals, rapists, etc should be hanged from the highest tree, but guys doing what they're trained and tasked to do (fight bad guys) can't be worrying more about what the JAG will say than about what the opposition might do.

This began with a quote about where we are from Frederick II of Prussia (a.k.a "The Great), so I'll end it with one about where our troops need to be, although "the enemy" here is really the brass and the lawyers:

“Always presume that the enemy has dangerous designs and always be forehanded with the remedy. But do not let these calculations make you timid.”

1010 equals 100% FAIL.

Again I came close to abandoning this thing, as I've been feeling tapped out of comments and I seem to be repeating myself. Then I think about how everyone else does that too, so I just need something to grab my attention.

Voila, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDdkzjfUnJQ&feature=player_embedded
I saw a post commenting on it on Hot Air, and I couldn't figure out why the commentator was so bent out of shape about it; it was a brilliant kick at the radical Green movement. There was only one problem, which I realized from reading the comments on the post, which is the radical Greens MADE this video.

I don't excuse my ignorance of radical movements, because there are so many already on my radar that these media twits are the least of my immediate concern. That said, if I were to make a video to make them look bad I wouldn't change a thing. You'd think that they'd have enough on the ball to not quote Osama bin Laden to back up their point, but I guess someone had to plumb the depths of cluelessness.

That's all for now. I may restructure a bit, as my new job is a lot busier but for now as long as you have this on a feed you'll get whatever I come up with. Ideas are always welcome, too.