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Strange Daze: The Machine Must Be Prevented from Working At All

“Middle-class America is no less violent than any other people. They seem passive because they’re results-oriented. They rise not out of blood frenzy but to solve the otherwise insoluble. Their methods of choice are goodwill, cooperation, forbearance, negotiation, and finally, appeasement, roughly in that order. Only when these fail to end the abuse do they revert to blowback. And they do so irretrievably. Once the course is set and the outcome defined, doubt is put aside. The middle class is known, condemned actually, for carrying out violence with the efficiency of an industrial project where bloody destruction at any scale is not only in play, it’s a metric. Remorse is left for the next generation, they’ll have the leisure for it. We’d like to believe this is merely dark speculation. History says it isn’t.” – – Ol’Remus

Yeah, gas is like $5 a gallon in the cheap areas of Califrutopia. Tell you what, we need a wall built between THAT particular fucking abortion and the rest of the US, along with a Bounty on shewtin’ critters that done try to escape that fucking colostomy bag of a State. Jes’ Sayin’

GOT US A CONVOY !

SHUT UP.  SHUT UP. JUST SHUT TF UP.

Think New Zealand and Australia. Exactly how different are we from them with our

  • relentless, dishonest purges of the military,
  • maniacal pushing of a useless secret sauce with frightful short-term effects and absolutely unknown long-term effects,
  • medical journal fraud,
  • dishonest suppression of alternative, cheaper treatment alternatives,
  • demonization of dissenting medical professionals,
  • attacks on people’s employment,
  • destruction of tens of thousands of small businesses, and
  • vicious attacks on free speech?
  • Ready for that sixth booster shot, comrade? Good doggie. There’s a free latte in it for you.

The guy with power commands more attention than the guy with no power. Every Soviet filmmaker thought first of what Stalin would like and then what the party would like in the same way that Hollywood frets about what the cultural commissars are thinking. The reason is the people who insure and underwrite films care about those things too. The “me too” movement revealed that Hollywood is an effect, not a cause of culture.

 Biden as Ed Wood’s Bela Lugosi  That gaga husk in the White House pretending to be President should remain in his basement in Delaware. Every time he appears, we have six more weeks of winter. He reminds me of poor old demented, drug-addled Bela Lugosi in his final years in some of those Ed Wood films–here and here–trying to remember his lines, then ad-libbing in a rambling incoherent manner. Pure but dangerous gibberish in a world in which our non-woke opponents watch carefully for signs of weakness, incompetence, and incoherence. Biden exudes all three. “Pull the string! Pull the string!” and “Bevare of the green dragon! Bevare! Bevare!” Sadly funny to see Bela ramble like that, but the “President” of the USA? Sad, but not so funny. Ask Ukraine.

Fading away : Essays in Idleness  In this time of the Batflu, the falsity of the prevailing view becomes increasingly obvious. The liberal knows that public safety is so important, that even our health must be sacrificed to preserve it. The most recent estimate, delivered under a response to a “freedom of information” request in the United Kingdom, tells us that only one-eighth of those reported dead with the Batflu lacked various other items on their death certificates and that the average age of these deaths was decidedly greater than the national figures for life expectancy. I had already seen the revised numbers for Italy, and verily, it will prove everywhere the same. The fearmongering to sustain the (fading) universal panic required systematic manipulation of numbers — in a “scientific spirit.” That means that direct lies were avoided; the message was simply massaged until it conveyed the opposite of the truth.

Democracy and capitalism are very clever ways for the elites to drug the masses into thinking they have a say in how society is managed. There is always someone in charge of every human group and America is no different. Those people have embraced this weird religion we call wokeness and they intend to impose it on society. The marketplace is not going to magically protect you from this madness.

As the sound of war drums grows louder …the real enemy remains hidden behind the curtain – Here is a partial list of the lies now being exposed:
1. That “elections” as they currently exist in most Western nations are legitimate.
2. That every human being is at risk of dying from a coronavirus if they don’t get the experimental treatment.
3. That if you do get the treatment you are protected from the virus and won’t be able to spread it.
4. That masks and lockdowns help “slow the spread” of the virus.
5. That small businesses are non-essential, and we can survive just fine by relying on a few big-box stores and Amazon to supply our needs.
6. That churches where people assemble at least once a week for fellowship and spiritual nourishment are also non-essential.
7. That people don’t need to assemble together in person for much of anything. Just do it “virtually” online, in the metaverse.

Ivan? The Ukraine? Where the majority of what equipment, supplies and troops that we have left in USAEA is located in Germany. And this time the Krauts seem to be wanting to sit this one out. There’s the Airborne unit in Vicenza Italy, and scattered onesies-twosies like everywhere else, but the bulk of what we have left in Europe is in Krautland. Got a little bit of stuff and folks in Poland, but pray tell just where and how the fuck are we going to get MASSIVE shit to the Ukes if Vlad decides to roll his now rumored 120,000 troops, of which approximately 50,000 of them are Shooter Looters and Scooters (SpecOps, Infantry and Armor), nevermind the fucking Arty, which Ivan does have in spades.

Add into the mix that word that sometime earlier in the week? weekend? a fucking Ivan Ballistic Launching Nuke Sub surfaced off the coast of the Untied Statz, not that you’d hear a fucking word of it from the Ministry of Propaganda and Lies. Now mind you it did come from Pravda, so yeah, Rooskie dizinformazon? Tough call but man, if they DID manage to get one of their Boomers right off the coast, that’s like a serious middle finger thrown at us.

Even the frogs got onboard: “…France are vowing they’ll always be willing to sit down dialogue and negotiate with Russia. “We will never give up dialogue with Moscow,” French President Macron said Tuesday.” Between the Lines: “‘Murica is a has-been country with the current Regime of Glorious and Harmonious P&PBUH (Plus 10%) Orifice of The (p)Resident, The Dementor-in-Chief, Emperor Poopypants the First, Chief Executive of the Kidsmeller Pursuivant, Good Ole Slo Xi-Den, A.K.A “Tater Joe”, “Joey Depends” and or as that asshole little frog-pimp, Maricón calls him, “Joe the Fucktard” running the show. We no longer feel the need to ‘bend at the knee’, ‘cos let’s face it, ‘Murica is fucked up from the neck up. Give us a call if you ever let an Asshole like OrangeManBad be in charge again… we may have hated his ass, but we respected him and, not more than a little, feared his unpredictable ass. Dis current fucking Corpse-Puppet you got? Nah, not very fucking likely. Eat shit, bark at the moon and die in a fire. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. NOT!”

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Richard January 26, 2022, 11:26 AM

    Tough call but man, if they DID manage to get one of their Boomers right off the coast, that’s like a serious middle finger thrown at us.****
    And a great deal more of it can be expected. I can only imagine the utter satisfaction Putin must be experiencing as he considers the illegitimate, dissipated creature, with whom he’ll be contending.
    What a gift, from his perspective.
    As the war drums are beating, this could become a very big deal:
    https://tinyurl.com/yckryd74

    Oh, and that’s a majestic picture of that mountain lion.

  • jake January 26, 2022, 11:43 AM

    I miss ol remus
    FJB

    • John G Condon January 26, 2022, 12:47 PM

      Dang.
      http://www.woodpilereport.com/

      Another good one gone.

      RIP ‘Ol Remus

      • Bear Claw Chris Lapp January 26, 2022, 2:21 PM

        I go back on occasion and re-read here.

        https://web.archive.org/web/20110101000000*/http://woodpilereport.com/

        If memory serves me Ole Remus commented here one time long ago but I think an old nic was used.

        • ghostsniper January 27, 2022, 4:26 AM

          You are correct and his handle was 2 words and I think one of them was Marcelius or something like that.

    • Lew January 26, 2022, 5:35 PM

      Remember what he always said: Avoid crowds.

      • Mike Austin January 27, 2022, 12:04 PM

        Always. Everywhere. And its corollary: Never go unarmed anywhere at anytime.

  • RedBeard January 26, 2022, 12:15 PM

    More news about the diseased monkeys the CDC was transporting in PA that crashed and got exposed to the public–
    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/cdc-releases-statement-following-pennsylvania-crash-involving-100-test-monkeys/

    The CDC seems to be ‘concerned’ about it now. They are asking people who got within 5 feet of the crash to monitor their health for 31 days.

    Nothing to be suspicious about, right?

    • Denny January 26, 2022, 12:39 PM

      Be still little children, probably only carrying an experimental Gain of Function Ebola virus.

  • John G Condon January 26, 2022, 1:26 PM

    ““Middle-class America is no less violent than any other people. They seem passive because they’re results-oriented. They rise not out of blood frenzy but to solve the otherwise insoluble. Their methods of choice are goodwill, cooperation, forbearance, negotiation, and finally, appeasement, roughly in that order. Only when these fail to end the abuse do they revert to blowback. ” ~The Late Great Ol’ Remus

    Ahhhh…. its posts like this one, Gerard, that put me in the mood for some good ‘ol fashioned Haiku:

    Here’s one from Redleg
    https://twitter.com/USArmy/status/1483485089770188815/photo/1

    As one great poet we both know puts it: “Politics is easy, its the poetics thats hard ”

    Yes… this kinda brings out the poet in me. Thanks Gerard!!!!

  • Bear Claw Chris Lapp January 26, 2022, 2:24 PM

    “They rise not out of blood frenzy but to solve the otherwise insoluble”.

    Until it’s not.

  • Donald Sensing January 26, 2022, 3:01 PM

    I wrote in 2008 – with numerous follow-up posts – that NATO was now worthless. And all the evidence shows it is now even more so. Putin absolutely knows this.

  • Mike Austin January 27, 2022, 3:42 AM

    “Think New Zealand and Australia. Exactly how different are we from them…” Well, let me think: How about 150,000,000 well-armed citizens? Duh. Who writes such nonsense?

    “Even the frogs got onboard: “…France are vowing they’ll always be willing to sit down dialogue and negotiate with Russia.” France has always been willing to prostitute herself. Vichy anyone? For hundreds of years France aided and abetted the Ottoman Turks in their assault upon the Christian West. Nothing at all new here. France resembles a gaudy and venereal whore.

    Cheering on those Canadian truckers does nothing but make you feel good. I have a better idea: Give each trucker an AK with 1000 rounds of ammo. End of problem. Oh…are you worried that the Canadian Army will stop you? Ok then, send 50 Boy Scouts with sticks against it. Again: End of problem.

    Come to think of it, there are not many problems in the world that could not be solved with AKs and ammo. We could air drop 100,000 of them into Australia for example. Or New York City.

  • KCK January 27, 2022, 7:09 AM

    There’s no doubt that we are 8 kinds of fukt and will soon face the music for being aggressively stupid, militarily speaking. I don’t doubt for a moment that our rank and file military have backbones of steel, but they are too few (I’ve argued my whole adult life for a bigger military). Worse than anything is the shitty civilian and military leadership in the US and in NATO. Bad leadership not only fails to get you what, where and muchly where you need to be, but it actually delivers death blows back at itself in a stupefying manner. You recall: Afghanis falling out of the wheel wells of USAF planes taking off in Kabul.

    WWII and WWI were both fought by our initially unprepared military. We had something like the 17th ranked army going into 1942. We arose and delivered the hardest blows, and even Putin and Xi know this. The serious trouble with contemporary warfare is that it goes way faster and if nukes are involved, it goes split-seconds of fast. Being initially underprepared for a war, nowadays, is…well, you may as well phone in the surrender. I have written the how-to win for the Ukrainians and NATO if Russia makes war in Europe. It is based on a well-organized and led military and nations with common sense. That probably ain’t us.

    Russia thinks it’s the new Rome? When I went there, I learned they have long felt over-classed by the Europeans, culturally and technologically. Compared to America? Forget about it. They suck.

    We can lose a war and find our way back, just because we are an incredible people, but I keep remembering Casey’s Axiom: never, ever, ever lose a war. Don’t fucking do it.

    Boomers off our coast? You might recall the USA has some boomers.

    • Mike Austin January 27, 2022, 7:32 AM

      Austin’s Corollaries to Casey’s Axiom:

      1. Never start a war you are not willing to do whatever it takes to win.
      2. Get it over quickly, doing whatever needs to be done to do so.
      3. If your enemy retreats into Hell, go after him.
      4. Unconditional surrender.
      5. Run up the US flag on his capital, take a bunch of his shit, hang his leaders and go home.

      • Casey Klahn January 27, 2022, 9:42 AM

        Refer to von Clausewitz. Your summary is fine. But vC tells the truth when he says that the friction in war keeps them from going full Total War. It is evident that if Putin actually does threaten us with nukes, those beautiful missile subs gliding under the waves are our best friends. Double their pay, and cold-store the trans seamen in the first couple of missile tubes. Fire most of the commanders until you get the right deck of leaders in charge. Free the NCOs to make these vessels the winners they certainly can be From this box to God’s ears. Amen.

        • Mike Austin January 27, 2022, 10:56 AM

          Nothing at all against Clausewitz, ol’ “War is the continuation of politics by other means” himself. Nothing at all against Jomini either. I have no idea who reads them today. “On War” was not even finished at Clausewitz’ death. It is for certain that modern military analysts use both men to justify whatever strategy they come up with. There are today so many interpretations of Clausewitz as to make an understanding of the real man and his theories well nigh impossible. One can use Clausewitz to support any military doctrine whatsoever. Those who claimed to be influenced by the old Prussian run the gamut from Patton to Mao. Like the Bible, one can make Clausewitz say anything to support any cause.

          My “Corollaries” to your Axiom ignore such philosophical and interpretive problems and dive right into History, always asking the question, “How did nation X achieve victory in war?” I used both the wars of the Roman Republic and the Mexican War among hundreds of possible examples.

          It is not Clausewitz’ “friction” that disallows “total war” but the will of the nation involved. America’s only “total war” was waged against the Comanches and the Kiowas. And we had plenty of “friction” to overcome: proper horse breeding, firearms unsuited to the plains, capable logistics to keep various cavalries in the field for months at a time, the reluctance of politicians to support such a policy, and so on. In spite of this “friction” those Indian nations were exterminated.

          Going from where the US – Russia – Ukraine business is now to Putin threatening the US with nukes is quite a stretch. Even if such a thing occurred only a few in Moscow and Washington would know of it. Biden wants to send 8500 troops to the Ukraine to face off against 120,000 Russian forces. Sound like a winner to me.

          What would Clausewitz say?

  • 'Ol Dave January 27, 2022, 9:05 AM

    Biden moves 8500 troops to Europe? Not a good fight against 130,000. Maybee he forgot how to count as well. What is that in hexadecimal-?

    • Casey Klahn January 27, 2022, 9:47 AM

      In this event, they are light fighters (82nd Airborne Division/ one brigade of,) who will be positioned on the shoulders of the conflict, in nations such as Poland. They aren’t there to fight or win the Ukraine War.

      Someone mentions above how the US can’t really get a large army to Europe, for many reasons that include time and space. NATO has enough troops to fight, but a serious lack of testicles.

      • Mike Austin January 27, 2022, 11:01 AM

        Any military force, no matter the quality or number or capability or weapons, that lacks the will to fight—“a serious lack of testicles”—has already lost the war.

        • Casey Klahn January 27, 2022, 4:23 PM

          Absolutely fuckin right.

  • RedBeard January 27, 2022, 12:57 PM

    Proof that not all Democrats are bad–
    A Maryland Democrat Mayor shot and killed an evil black sodomite pedophile who had ‘adopted’ two young boys, (most likely for molestation purposes) with a single shot to the head. Although he was an outspoken advocate for ‘gun control,’ he (for some reason) owned a gun.

    Let us hope that all Democrats will do the right thing, and follow his example.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/maryland-hyattsville-mayor-kevin-ward-dies-suicide/

    • Jack January 27, 2022, 4:51 PM

      Just another poser. Too bad was so thoughtless and didn’t take the rest of his little ‘family’ with him.

  • Casey Klahn January 27, 2022, 4:22 PM

    Mike, you need to know that I read and matriculated on Clausewitz. While I don’t know every last thing about On War, I do know the philosophy, and the concomitant principles with which the US Army and modern forces adhere.

    It’s true that people get anything they want from old texts, but CvC did mean just what he wrote. In point of fact we did fight a Total War, in WWII (your point about the Indian Wars is interesting and worth a discussion). Also interesting to note that the Germans did not advance to a Total War profile until 1945 itself.

    • Mike Austin January 27, 2022, 4:47 PM

      I knew you were a scholar of Clausewitz for some time. Your writing showed that.

      We certainly avoided anything like total war against Germany. Bombing does kill indiscriminately but it cannot eliminate an entire population. One can argue that the US waged total war against Japan, but that was only because the Japanese refused to surrender. We had to kill all we found. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not examples of total war. And after those and the Japanese surrender, we rebuilt Japan and fed the nation. Hardly total war. The Eastern Front after Stalingrad was an example of total war, but we were not involved.

      The Plains Indians, long before the arrival of the white man and his horses, practiced total war against each other. Pueblos, Apaches, Comanches, Kiowas, Sioux, Pawnees, Arapahos, Lipans and Crows spent 1000 years killing and torturing each other. As Stone Age peoples their ability to engage in genocide was extremely limited. Once the horse arrived and was adopted by the Comanches as a weapon of war—unlike the other tribes, who used the horse mainly for transportation—the Comanches could slaughter Mexicans, other tribes and—after 1838 or so—whites mainly along the Texas border. The Comanche method of war was breathtakingly violent. It took Americans 40 years to defeat them, and an astoundingly bloody victory it was. No quarter was asked and none given. Total war indeed.

      Comanches exist today only in the pages of History books.

      • Jack January 27, 2022, 5:05 PM

        The Comanche and the Kiowa were the finest light horse cavalry that ever roamed anywhere and the military campaigns against them, the S. Cheyennes and S. Arapahoe tribes were the reason for the construction of Fort Sill. The army’s campaigns against those tribes pretty well ended after McKenzie wrapped things up with them in the Palo Duro Canyon in 1874 but that was by no means the end of things.

        Various Apache tribes took 12 more years to subjugate and that meant sending these Indians to Fort Pickens where even if they did escape, there was simply no place for them to go.

        It’s true, these native tribes were particularly cruel, violent and inventive when they dealt with their enemies…..the sobs who were destroying them, their families, homes and way of life. We might learn something from them.

        • Mike Austin January 27, 2022, 5:34 PM

          “The Comanche and the Kiowa were the finest light horse cavalry that ever roamed anywhere…” So very true. Faster and more lethal even than the Nubians of North Africa in the 1st century BC. Ranald McKenzie was the most efficient Indian fighter west of the Mississippi in American History. I camped and hiked where McKenzie defeated Quanah Parker and the remaining Comanches.

          One can argue—as many whites and Natives did—that if any people deserved destruction, it was the Comanche. What they inflicted upon other tribes, Mexicans and whites goes beyond anything imagined even by the Aztecs. It was a simple matter for the US military to enlist Apache and Cheyenne in its fight to the death against the Comanche.

          That being said, had I been a Comanche then I would have done just as they did. They lived a life entirely on their own terms. They roamed wherever they wished. Their way of life and the white way of life were absolutely incompatible. It was war to the knife. One had to die. One did.

          The whites finally finished them off through the reservation system, the Colt revolver, a true cavalry force—patterned after the Comanche— and the slaughter of the buffalo.

      • KCK January 27, 2022, 5:26 PM

        Your data is good but I think we’re quibbling on the term Total War, which is fine. It’s good to define words. Total War is the complete mobilization of a nation to make war, and it also allows for legitimate (by definition) warfare against any target. It is not specifically about who or how many to kill, although that is in the definition. This is why I beg you to understand Clausewitz’s theory. He said that war, by its baseline definition, flows logically towards totality. Nobody wants to lose a war (see: Casey’s Axiom), and therefore a nation or king will not want any limits to its efforts. Enter the definition of friction, which is misunderstood to be the action or difficulty produced by the fighting, but actually means the moral things that limit a war from becoming total. They include fear, cowardice, political disagreements, treachery, physical limits, and more. The actual conduct of war almost never evolves to its logical state (Total State).

        Your argument for whom to target is another kind of argument. America got to a Total employment, as far as we were capable, of our production and resources. We did not target civilians except in certain events, and so you could say our Total War was not pure. But, you’ll never have a pure unfolding of the concept of Total war.

        BTW, the use of nukes is not exactly within the definition of Total War, but is closely related. The correct terms there are High, Mid and Low Intensity Conflict. Vietnam and Afghanistan/Iraq were Low Intensity Conflicts, and WWII was Mid Intensity (not quit High even with the 2 A Bombs employed).

        Whom and how many to kill is actually not a proper sum of war, because it doesn’t fit the objectives of the science and the art of war. It is, however, a motherfucker. Re: the Indian Wars.

        Good discussion.

        I noted to my family today that when the big aircraft movements go that way in the sky, then it means Taiwan, and another direction means Ukraine. We certainly live in interesting times.

        • KCK January 27, 2022, 5:43 PM

          Because there’s no edit function, I have to straighten out my contradiction. The killing of civilians in a Total War scenario is to make them lose all hope of winning and lose faith in their leadership and cause. It’s a shitty concept and doesn’t work well in contemporary times, and does hurt our moral sense. One would have to drill down specifically as to WWII aerial bombardment, and the use of the Atomic Bombs, to understand why the goal was not to kill all Japanese or Germans.

          The killing that is functional in Total War is enough to disabuse the enemy army from continuing the war. The phrase is: destroy his army. That is one of the most effective (I feel the most effective) objective in war.

          Killing all the Comanches (I’m not a scholar on the particulars of that war) must have been a function of how and where the Comanches fought. I will look into that with great interest. We did not mobilize every factory from Maine to Florida to Missouri to kill Comanches, though.

          Anyway, Total War is not defined as killing every Hans, Jimni and Larry on the other side. How many and whomst to kill is more of an operational or strategic question. That is what I meant to say above.

          • Mike Austin January 28, 2022, 4:24 AM

            Your knowledge of military theory and philosophy is deeper and far more extensive than mine. Everything I know about such things is derived from books. The only areas of my 68 years of life where I can boast an extensive working knowledge and praxis are: bread baking; Chinese cooking; backpacking; teaching; bikepacking; theology; hi-end audio; History; 3rd World survival and travel; Mayan and Incan archeology. That’s it. I was a Medic in the USAF but I have forgotten much of what I knew. Probably a good thing as everyone upon whom I performed CPR died.

            My own use of the term “total war” was too fluid and too general to be of much use as a guide or definition. From Wiki:

            “Total war is warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-combatant needs.”

            1. The wars waged by Revolutionary France (1792 – 1802).
            2. The 2nd Punic War (218 BC – 201 BC).
            3. The second stage of the Greco – Persian Wars (480 BC – 479 BC).
            4. America in World War II.
            5. Japan after Okinawa (1944 – 1945).
            5. Germany 1944 – 1945).

            A further definition:

            “A war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded.”

            This definition is the one that I adopted, though unknowingly. We see here that every resource of a society is not involved.

            1. The wars between Caucasians and Indians in North America (1608 – 1890).
            2. Caesar’s war in Gaul (58 BC – 50 BC).
            3. The wars of the Conquistadors (1519 – 1554)

            Yet another definition:

            “In the mid-19th century, scholars identified total war as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, the differentiation between combatants and non-combatants diminishes due to the capacity of opposing sides to consider nearly every human, including non-combatants, as resources that are used in the war effort.”

            1. The wars in the Balkans after the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
            2. The war of the whites on the American frontier against the Comanche and Kiowa (1838 – 1874).
            3. The wars of the Roman Republic in Spain (220 BC – 19 BC).
            4. The 3rd Punic War (149 BC – 146 BC).
            5. King Philip’s War (1675 – 1678).
            6. The Germanic Wars under Tiberius (6 BC – 16 AD).

            It seems that various scholars have expanded upon Clausewitz’ definition of “total war”. One issue I had was that I added genocide to the definition, which certainly confused things.

            And yes, a good discussion. You have refined and tightened up my understanding of both Clausewitz and the concept of “total war”. I won’t be so careless in the future. And I am in your debt because of this.

            • KCK January 28, 2022, 12:57 PM

              Great research; I never have read a list of considered Total War conflicts. I’m going to study that. Note how the US fought a total war from 41 on, but Germany held back from doing so for various reasons of self-deception and public support. In an interesting note, the Nazis used badly needed military trains in order to transport Jews to death camps, even when their military needs became extreme. This illustrates the subject of genocide and annihilation. One may add the word: atrocity, and finally, war crime. All of these words are not tied to Total War conception, nor the continuum of Low-Mid-High Intensity conflict. Atrocities are not good for military purposes, and yet we all know they are tied-in historically. It can be described as blood lust. I don’t doubt that pre-European wars did involve utter annihilation of an enemy people, and de-coupled from the philosophy and art of war it can seem part and parcel of war.

              Good to know about war, given our current troubles. There was a cartoon in the 70s, remember it? One soldier stands in a landscape of nuclear aftermath, and says: “I won!” It is both true and not true; we need to set up a condition for Putin and Xi to fail. Trick them into setting national objectives that we can deny them. If Putin takes much of Eastern Europe, and re-establishes a Soviet-style contract with every country there, in the end he is still a Russian, and still smells of fish and cabbage. He is not on the guest list of Parisienne high society, and it burns him up. He is the actual center of gravity, and needs to feel humiliation. A good humiliation would be for him to lose a small handful of capitol warships.

              Next we’ll talk about theology; a favorite subject. I know, in this thread, I have sounded as much like Gen Turgidson and Dr Strangelove as possible, but it’s good to understand the ugly stuff of war.

              • Mike Austin January 28, 2022, 4:10 PM

                As part of my second degree, in Political Science, I had to take courses in International Security. One of the readings was by Herman Kahn, “Thinking the Unthinkable”. Kahn was one of the inspiration for Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”. Kahn postulated how the US could survive and win a nuclear war.

    • Dirk January 27, 2022, 9:28 PM

      Own all/ most those books on strategy, an impressive resource. The tricks not to memorize this stuff, no the wisdom is to know how to source these materials instantly. Owning them is simplistic for my needs.

      Been re-reviewing, The Bear Went Over The Mountain, these past few weeks, AND, War of the Flea. In the recent past I picked up the IRAs operational stuff.

      For me, a book by two Chinese Officers is magnificent. Titles Total War?.

      We have very very recent war models that kicked the US’s asses, the prize85 billion in leathal weapons, AND a seat at the big table..

      What a joke..
      Dirk

      • KCK January 27, 2022, 9:57 PM

        I hope that future Command & General Staff College students study and re-study Kabul Airport as required curriculum.

        Do you have On Strategy, by Col. Summers? Required for professional military. He details how America ignored Clausewitz but Gen. Giap applied it deftly, in Vietnam. Fast forward to Afghanistan/Iraq, and the reincarnation of McNamara, Sec Rumsfeld, (both aviators) deploys our troops sans artillery.

        Studying grand strategy is hard on the brain, apparently. I fukn hate any command or civilian authority who ignores military history and philosophy. Just imagine the stones it takes to fly civilians out of Kabul without a proper perimeter. I’d have lined those cocksucker generals up against the proverbial wall and rat-a-tat-tat. But, you know they told Biden not to do it that way (but then they covered their asses and went along with it).

        No, things don’t look good. Keep in mind that after the Milley Military crumbles, it’s just you & I and those like us, here in the US, who must stand. Actually, I’d much rather take on Russians than Antifa. At least Russians have military requirements to achieve; Antifa are revolutionary communists whose brief includes every dirty trick and surprise, and who will stop at nothing to get their way. They are essentially feral humans. I’m glad their numbers are currently small, but when they begin to replicate, we’ll have our hands full.

        Sleep well.