04.25.15
Posted in Bombing Moe, Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror at 12:28 pm by George Smith
From the New York Times:
He praised the intelligence professionals for their work even as he reflected on the costs. “This self-reflection, this willingness to examine ourselves, to make corrections, to do better, that’s part of what makes us Americans,??? Mr. Obama told them. “It’s part of what sets us apart from other nations. It’s part of what keeps us not only safe but also strong and free.???
Leon E. Panetta, who served Mr. Obama as C.I.A. director and then as defense secretary, said the president was especially engaged in counterterrorism operations and wanted regular briefings, always asking about civilian casualties. “You hit some of these targets, and you get a lot of people in a shot, and what you wind up doing is asking yourself, ‘Is every one of those guys you get a bad guy?’ ??? Mr. Panetta said.
I bet. Bad guys. Always with the good guys and bad guys thing.
“We came, we saw, he died,” Hillary Clinton joked about Mo Ghaddafi after B-2 bomber strikes took out the rivets holding his military together.
Now Libya is a failed state with a local chapter of ISIS. But we bombed the paupers and got the bad guy.
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04.22.15
Posted in Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle at 2:43 pm by George Smith
You will appreciate the perverse twisting of language employed in the US military’s proxy war in one of the most desperate places on the planet. Naming a bombing campaign Operation Renewal and Hope is something that could only spring from the secretive US Africa Command, running America’s many special operations and Predator assassination strikes against Yemen out of a base in Djibouti. Only freedom-haters and the patently insane could find fault with the claim that bombs, made in America, generate renewal and hope wherever they are dropped on poor people in the world.
From the New York Times, yesterday, a story on how international condemnation had caused a halt to the Saudi bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen.
For years, Yemen has been the prime target of US Special Forces operations and drone bombings run out of Camp Lemmonier in Djibouti. Eventually, giving the country the treatment in the hunt for terrorists set off a civil war.
So the US’s toady in Yemen was overthrown when a tribe called the Houthi took over the capital. The Houthis continued their assault and now control most of this very poor country.
Subsequently, we have used the Saudis and a couple other little slimy US-equipped militaries from the southern side of the Persian Gulf to crank up bombing campaigns.
“Why, would one say, are we obviously behind it?” is the question.
Because the Saudi air force, trained by Americans, flies American-made planes, drops American-made bombs and is aimed using American targeting.
The NYT reports:
Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that it was halting a nearly month-old bombing campaign against a rebel group in neighboring Yemen that has touched off a devastating humanitarian crisis and threatened to ignite a broader regional conflict.
The announcement followed what American officials said was pressure applied by the Obama administration for the Saudis and other Sunni Arab nations to end the airstrikes. The bombing campaign, which has received logistical and intelligence support from the United States, has drawn intense criticism for causing civilian deaths …
When asked why the bombing campaign had been momentarily stopped an anonymous American official told the newspaper: “Too much collateral damage.”
Civilians, as it were.
The operation is called “Decisive Storm,” informed the newspaper.
It sure sounds familiar, something an American military command would come up with. I bet they almost broke their arms patting themselves on the back over the coinage.
Yemen’s “health services had collapsed,” added the newspaper helpfully.
The bombing halt seemed to have lasted not even 24 hours.
Because today:
Warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition conducted airstrikes Wednesday in the southwestern Yemeni city of Taiz, hours after Saudi officials had announced they were ending a nearly monthlong military operation against the Houthi rebel group in order to focus on a “political process.???
It was unclear whether the new strikes represented a resumption of the original operation under a different name — the Saudis are now calling it “Renewal of Hope??? — but there was little evidence of change in the nature of the combat on Wednesday.
Personally, which do you prefer? Operation Decisive Storm? Or “Renewal of Hope” for a bombing campaign built, trained, engineered and guided by the US Africa Command.
Who knew 2000-lb. bombs, made in America, were filled with so much compassion?
A made-in-America guided bomb of renewal and hope smashed this building in Sana plus some of the neighborhood, probably crushing people under the rubble.
Another rhetorical question that arises: How do the New York Times reporters cover these stories without becoming physically sick?
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02.08.15
Posted in Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle at 2:33 pm by George Smith
Being one of this country’s national security professionals isn’t much of an accomplishment. It means you exist as a convenience to any of the vast machines — the intelligence community, the arms manufacturers, the Pentagon. Your only purpose is to serve in the furtherance of them.
And it doesn’t matter how disastrous the outcome. It’s obvious being wrong or failure are words which no longer hold any meaning.
Here’s Kenneth M. Pollack in the New York Times this week:
The good news right now is largely on the military front. Iraqi, Kurdish and American forces appear to be turning the tide against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
American air operations have inflicted heavy losses on the group — killing its fighters, destroying its equipment, disrupting its command and impeding its movements …
American military officials in Iraq tell me they are confident that a smaller, revamped Iraqi Army will be ready to begin big operations to retake Iraq from the Islamic State in the next four to eight months. Kurdish and Iraqi forces have largely secured Baghdad and its environs, made gains in the cities of Baiji and Samarra, cut off the road by which the Islamic State was supporting its garrison in Mosul from its base in Syria, and are encroaching on Mosul itself. In six to 18 months, the Islamic State may be driven out of Iraq altogether.
Sound familiar? It should. Six to eighteen months equals one to three “Friedman units.”
“Kenneth M. Pollack, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is the author, most recently, of ‘Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy,’ ??? reads the Times’ description of the column’s author.
Publishers have done very well by Kenneth M. Pollack of Brookings. Even though he’s been one of the most spectacularly wrong “experts” on the necessity of war with Iraq and on everything else, he suits the needs of the American war machine so nicely, whatever he writes tends to get a lot of publicity.
And it has never mattered that it has little relationship with reality.
The US government, under the Bush administration, made him a best-selling author for “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq,” a book that can accurately be described as an elaborate rationale for war crimes.
Its existence, and continuing books, are also an indicator that the Brookings Institution, once alleged to be a think tank of some repute, is nothing more than a retirement home for circus clowns who, on occasion, are dragged out to be of use to the country’s war-making apparatus.
Here’s Ezra Klein, alleged to be another person of considerable intellect, trotting out ol’ Evergreen Ken as late as 2013:
Pollack comes off much as he did in his original book: curious and questioning. He worries openly about what he got wrong and what he could have done better.
And here’s my take, one that noted The Threatening Storm was then worth a penny a copy on Amazon. Which seemed and seems high.
I said Ken Pollack is a symbol for our time. I wasn’t fulsome enough. He’s a terrific symbol, the best money can buy.
If you ever read The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam’s famous chronicle of the Vietnam War and the Johnson administration, toward the end he frequently writes about the superciliousness and mocking laughter that came out of the press corps when faced with prognostications and estimates on the enemy and how the war would turn the corner in another few months, or a year, or something.
Pollack writes of the “revamped Iraqi army.” It reads just like numerous claims about the ARVN in the mid-Sixties.
Without a spectacular bombing campaign against the usual enemy with no anti-air capability, it would be just as good.
There are big differences between now and then. Vietnam effectively destroyed the Johnson administration. The Democratic Party was taken down by collateral damage.
In the intervening period the US military learned that to conduct “partial war” at any time, it had to remove itself from oversight and make the number of people who would actually wage war only a fraction of the populace.
It was successful in this. It can wage measures of partial war anywhere it wants around the globe with little or no risk of domestic unrest.
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01.19.15
Posted in Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror, WhiteManistan at 3:41 pm by George Smith
I’m not surprised Clint Eastwood’s movie about Chris Kyle, American Sniper, broke box office records this weekend.
Are you?
Only a minority of Americans have been involved in the forever war. But reverence to the military and service is a deep part of WhiteManistan’s character, I’d say strongly influenced by a universal nagging guilt.
So when a movie on the forever war comes along, particularly one made by Clint Eastwood, it has a great chance of success.
WhiteManistan hasn’t had many war movies to stir a righteous enjoyment in the last decade. I skipped Zero Dark Thirty but did see Lone Survivor which I didn’t think was anything special.
Americans have the military they deserve, one that runs itself with little or no oversight. In payment we’ve been asked to stay out of its way, pretend to like it, swallow the ill will and tragedies that are the consequences years later, give it any resources it needs and keep believing that all of it [fill in the blanks with your favorite myths, received wisdoms and stuff].
Buy me a ticket and I’ll review it here.
It’s 20 dollars in Pasadena.
Good-looking commercial mythology, seen watching football on Sunday.
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12.10.14
Posted in Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle at 2:19 pm by George Smith
This is how we spend our money: Video promotions of big laser guns that can destroy a couple flimsy toys, floating or flying. Mounted on a giant naval vessel in the Persian Gulf. Oh, and set to a synthetic rock soundtrack that wouldn’t have made it on MTV in the Eighties.
The empire’s idea of cool brainlessly set to old shooter video game rock: So bad, virtually beyond words.
From the publicity:
“Laser weapons are powerful, affordable and will play a vital role in the future of naval combat operations,??? Rear Adm. Matthew L. Klunder, chief of naval research, said in a statement Wednesday. “We ran this particular weapon, a prototype, through some extremely tough paces, and it locked on and destroyed the targets we designated with near-instantaneous lethality.???
The laser performed flawlessly through a range of adverse weather conditions and took out moving targets both at sea and in the air, including small boats and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Operated via a “video-game like controller,??? the system is designed to go from non-lethal to lethal output to stun or destroy “asymmetrical threats??? like small ships and UAVs.
Asymmetrical threats, of course, meaning skiffs and plastic boats with a machine gun or a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on them, manned by paupers, preferably smaller and almost always not-white.
With the largest military in world history the US isn’t capable of winning wars anymore. And that’s because its war-fighting strategies, for all the firepower, manpower and money spent, are appalling to the rest of the world.
Sure, it can wreck things and reduce cities and infrastructure to rubble globally.
But you can’t win when the disdain of the entire planet is on you. Fritzing poor people with billion dollar extravagances in misused technology is always going to be a very public disaster. Almost as brilliant as adopting torture.
Keywords: Ponce, laser, gun, LAWS
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11.26.14
Posted in Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle at 12:47 pm by George Smith
From a couple weeks ago:
“Air power needs to be applied like a thunderstorm, and so far we’ve only witnessed a drizzle,??? said David A. Deptula, a retired three-star Air Force general who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
The campaign has averaged fewer than five airstrikes a day in both Iraq and in Syria. In contrast, the NATO air war against Libya in 2011 carried out about 50 strikes a day in its first two months. The air campaigns in Afghanistan in 2001 averaged 85 daily airstrikes, and the Iraq war in 2003 about 800 strikes a day…
ISIS/ISIL/whatever-paupers-we’re-trying-to-bomb-today aren’t particularly vulnerable to American air power, reads the NY Times today.
A guerilla army without much in the way of an infrastructure in an already impoverished and war-torn region is something that doesn’t offer a target rich environment.
Hmmm, it’s our country’s fifty-year-old program. It’s tough to bomb others into submission when they have very little to lose, don’t hang around waiting for you to do it, and won’t quit even when things are blowing up.
From the Times, excerpts:
SHAW AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. — The United States is shifting more attack and surveillance aircraft from Afghanistan to the air war against the Islamic State, deepening American involvement in the conflict and raising new challenges.
“When we target a nation-state, we’ve typically been looking at their capability for decades, and have extensive target sets,??? said Maj. Sonny Alberdeston, the targeting chief here. “But these guys are moving around. They can be in one place, and then a week later, they’re gone.???
Just as the Pentagon flies its wartime fleet of Predator and Reaper drones from bases in Nevada and elsewhere across the United States, this rear headquarters of the Central Command’s air forces carries out the bulk of the work to analyze and select planned, or deliberate, targets that allied warplanes strike in Syria and Iraq.
[Critics] complain that the air campaign is flagging against an adaptive enemy. “We need to have more targeting capability than they have right now,??? said Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, who recently returned from Jordan, where several countries are using a base to fly combat missions against the Islamic State.
Targeting was also a major topic last week, when more than 200 military officials from 33 countries completed an unusual battle-planning conference at the Central Command’s headquarters in Tampa, Fla. The goal was “to synchronize and refine coalition campaign plans designed to degrade and defeat ISIL,??? the command said in a statement.
That would be the> James Inhofe, one of the most stupid men in Congress, global warming denier and genuine full-time American villain.
Readers will notice that the war-planning and targeting is essentially done at the country club, Shaw AFB and at conventions held at Central Command HQ in Tampa, Florida.
The Times goes onto state the military is considering hiring “private contractors” to fly more spy drone and spy plane missions over Iraq and Syria.
It is also said the military continues to be obsessed with the decades old belief that by hitting the enemy’s petroleum resources, they have a winning strategy.
It did not work against North Vietnam. And ISIS/ISIL/whatever has even less, the military stymied by the small nature of its gasoline distilleries and the desire not to hit truck drivers, taken from the civilian populace, people just trying to make a living.
It’s hard to read without smirking. Oh rats! Bombing isn’t working like it should because we can’t hit enough of them! They won’t stay in one place.
America’s military leaders are appropriately described as apparatchiks of war tech, pushing the buttons and levers of military action from afar, men who never lose and are never replaced. Indeed, they cannot lose because they have nothing to lose in waging a remote war against an enemy with neither the resources or power to retaliate in any meaningful way against the force being called down on them.
From Pulitzer winner Malcolm Brown’s Muddy Boots and Red Socks: A Reporter’s Life:
“From the time of World War II, Americans have been brought up to believe that bombers can crack the toughest nut and bring any nation to its knees. Disney wartime cartoons portrayed air-power as well nigh invincible. But I don’t believe airplanes have ever been quite the wonder weapons we are often told, and although laser guidance and other innovations have improved bombing accuracy, an army of guerrillas is hard to hurt. When bombs were dropped on targets as dispersed as those in Vietnam, a prepared enemy could usually cope. I myself survived attacks by MiGs in Pakistan a couple of times by sheltering in shallow ditches…
One of the most impressive things I saw when I first visited Hanoi in 1973 … was the speed and apparent ease with which the North Vietnamese repaired bomb damage.
All the technology and money in the world can’t change it.
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11.11.14
Posted in Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle at 3:47 pm by George Smith
From the New York Times, over the weekend, an appropriate quote for the end of Veteran’s Day:
“Air power needs to be applied like a thunderstorm, and so far we’ve only witnessed a drizzle,??? said David A. Deptula, a retired three-star Air Force general who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
The campaign has averaged fewer than five airstrikes a day in both Iraq and in Syria. In contrast, the NATO air war against Libya in 2011 carried out about 50 strikes a day in its first two months. The air campaigns in Afghanistan in 2001 averaged 85 daily airstrikes, and the Iraq war in 2003 about 800 strikes a day…
Oh for the days of Rolling Thunder, Operation Linebacker and free-fire zones. Nothing changes.
Also today, posted to my Facebook timeline, where only one of my very white friends liked it, the drummer who played the snappy march.
The National Anthem — the song that actually should now be the national anthem.
Much of the tribe uncomfortable with their role in WhiteManistan are always ready to clutch their pearls over something published at the New York Times or from some name from the left. But acknowledge something that makes them feel uncomfortable on a day like today?
You’d have more luck trying to get a cat to eat a small dish of Brussels sprouts.
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10.01.14
Posted in Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror at 12:45 pm by George Smith
When the American bombing campaign opened against ISetc, early news announced the destruction of “refineries.” This was said to be hitting the caliphate in its pockets, depriving it of an unstated amount of money from oil revenue.
Well, what about those refineries?
From the Los Angeles Times, six days ago:
Making the first major push to choke off financing for Islamic State, U.S. and allied Arab warplanes bombed a dozen small oil refineries in eastern Syria on Wednesday that U.S. officials said were part of a $2 million-a-day revenue stream for the Sunni Muslim extremist group …
“These small-scale refineries provided fuel to run ISIL operations, money to finance their continued attacks … and an economic asset to support their future operations,??? [said a leaflet from US Central Command.]
The statement said the facilities produced 300 to 500 barrels of refined petroleum per day …
By Sunday:
Six U.S. and 10 allied Arab warplanes also bombed a dozen “small oil refineries” in eastern Syria, the Pentagon announced. The raids made headlines, but the facilities proved to be improvised stills used to produce total of only a few hundred barrels of gasoline a day.
More and more, the dilemma is how to package strikes against a group of people, an agency, an emerging country, that lacks the power to provide any opposition to bombing campaigns?
How do we always do this? By invoking the magical word — asymmetric!
As I’ve defined it previously, an asymmetric threat is a fancy term used only as a deception. It describes going to war with anyone who has less resources, money, manpower and technology than the United States.
Which is to say — everyone else — from the angry but poor rabble at home to emerging power in the Middle East.
An example of a press cheerleader, describing the asymmetric power of ISetc, last week with the headline:
Modern airpower versus tribal warriors
Someone named James Kitfield explains it for the non-participating American public:
In the annals of warfare there have been few conflicts as asymmetric as the United States against the Islamic State, which pits a global superpower at the head of an international coalition against a brutally ambitious terrorist group …
This taking and holding of territory is not textbook asymmetrical strategy for a weak combatant. To pursue it, al-Baghdadi relies on a deep connection and understanding of the disaffected Sunni militant groups and tribes who rose up to embrace his black banner. When IS fighters swept out of Syria into Iraq, it may have looked like a standard if daring military maneuver, but it was more akin to an organic uprising by viral flash mobs of locals, with Twitter the method of choice for tactical communications.
[He neglects to mention the big part about the America-trained and equipped Iraqi army running away and deserting.]
“The enemy will spread disinformation in hopes the media will achieve what they cannot, which is to put restrictions and limits on our use of airpower,??? said [retired USAF General Dave Deptula, who ran the Bombing Paupers campaign — bin Laden, notably, escaped — over Afghanistan in 2001]. “ISIL knows it has asymmetric advantages on the ground, but we have our own asymmetric advantage: we can project power from the air, without projecting vulnerability.???
“The key is using our advantage in airpower to apply unrelenting pressure that impacts ISIL and its allies psychologically as well as physically, because in 21st century military operations the most important battle space is your adversary’s frame of mind,??? said Deptula …
As Obama declared at the United Nations, such men understand only one language. And the message the United States and its allies are delivering from the air needs no translation.
Fine talk.
Nothing has inspired minds in the Middle East more than over a decade of no-translation-needed we’ll-beat-’em-into-bench-holes bombing campaigns and special operations. The result is probably not what Deptula had in mind when being consulted at Pebble Beach, or wherever he was.
As for destroying stills that provided “a few hundred barrels of gasoline a day,” we bombed the equivalent of a couple gas stations in LA County.
That’s some real strategy. Or delusion, depending on your choice in words.
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09.23.14
Posted in Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror, WhiteManistan at 1:14 pm by George Smith
It’s another great day in the United States of Security.
Where else in the world can you wake up to a press conference announcing the success of two or three military strikes on enemies capable of posing an existential threat to the digestion of Americans who don’t have to fight remote control war? One against a terrorist group you never heard of previously, but threatening to our homeland?
The President, quite naturally, thanked the troops for their duty, there being a slight hazard of repetitive stress injury when pushing the launch keys for 40 Tomahawks and a higher degree of risk in flying over a country in a new jet where no one has a hope of shooting back because, you know, a bird could fly into an intake or a part could malfunction. It could force an ejection into a territory where they would not be glad to see you.
In this great country, combat mission is now redefined as dropping bombs and missiles on territory against no opposition or as aptly described in the news: “the Syrian radar defenses were passive.”
Quote of the day, from a Syrian Twitter tweeting (we invented that!) near a target: “The sky is full of drones…”
Welcome to the United States of Security, we’ll check you now for purity. If you have gold and your ass don’t smell, we won’t bomb you straight to Hell.
We’ve got predator loans, iPhones and drones!
— The National Anthem, from Loud Folk Live
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