Chapomatic

Uh-oh–a draft post won’t allow itself to be revised or deleted. Total blog breakdown coming soon; if you see me go away for a few days, that’s likely the reason.

1. Retired Canadian general blasts NATO.
   

   If you add up the total regular army troops available to NATO, it comes to roughly 2.24 million soldiers. All we need in Afghanistan to reinforce the troops currently in theatre and win this thing is half of one per cent of that figure.

   Where the hell are they?

2. Lot of books being banned lately, and rather more effectively than the religious Christian school board types do. Take three guesses as to why they’re being banned.
3. Couple of days ago Hitchens got all snarls about the term “Al Qaeda In Mesopotamia”.
4. Michael Yon sounds optimistic. Maybe it’s the great photos he’s taking.
5. This guy sounds silly, and he’s a prof at ICAF for crying out loud. Writing in one of those freebie alt weeklies, he says (and of course this is the pull quote):
   

   Claims that Abu Ghraib and Haditha are unrepresentative do not hold up in the face of evidence.

   Riiiiight. It gets worse. The word “strategic” pops up like some kind of mantra to ward off spirits, without a background understanding of what that means for what he’s supposedly advocating. And for a guy supposedly teaching at ICAF he sure has a poor opinion of those he’s teaching:

   Is the military operationally competent? If by that we mean can it successfully accomplish all it is called upon to perform (from conventional combat operations to counterinsurgency to peacekeeping to disaster response)—without being disproportionately destructive, indiscriminately lethal, exorbitantly expensive or unduly escalatory—the answer is no. Iraq and Afghanistan are merely the latest examples of the military’s unyielding preference for a single way of war—conventional combat operations against conventional foes. These ongoing campaigns are also emblematic of the military’s resistance to seriously and permanently adapting to the unconventional operations (like counterinsurgency) against so-called asymmetric threats that characterize the global battlefield of today and tomorrow.

   Superimposed on this is the institution’s chest-thumping culture of machismo, with its incessant talk of “warriors” and “warfighters.” One need only observe news footage of the heavy-handed, culturally insensitive, firepower-intensive tactics of US troops in the field, frequently given to undisciplined individual behavior born of fear, immaturity and inexperience, to grasp the results.

   Yeah, silly us, talking about being “warfighters”. Don’t we know that Peace Studies is the way to talk, since we joined the Unicorn Fluff Club For Peace And Justice? What do we think we are, uniformed military or something?

   Apparently CDR Salamander laid into him once.

   Good.

6. Here’s the cover story for that magazine, by the way. It’s pretty interesting. Apparently the local POW camp in WWII was rather hush hush because it took the German scientists, including some who were being transported by submarine to Japan. One of the guys was an interrogator…
   

   The woman’s neighbor gave the rangers their first hint that very important activities had taken place at Fort Hunt. He told Bies and Santucci about a submarine that had been sent by the Third Reich, nearing defeat, to Japan to continue the war against the Allies. The sub was stuffed with some of the world’s most advanced tools of war: V-1 rockets – which had redefined the range and accuracy of missiles; parts for the best fighter jet in Germany; and a store of uranium oxide. More importantly, the sub also contained several high-ranking German technological experts.

   When the Nazis acknowledged defeat, the sub’s captains aborted their mission in favor of surrendering to the US, and the scientists on board were sent to Fort Hunt to describe what they knew of Germany’s war technology – which was superior to anything the US had, especially in terms of rocketry and submarines.

   “We had thought Fort Hunt was everyday interrogations,” Bies says. “We had no idea.”

7. Here’s a Middle East Quarterly article by Barry Rubin about Arab liberals arguing about America.
8. Darned if I can remember where I saw it, but someone wrote a good article about the Vietnam draft deferment for schooling, and subsequent distancing between the academy and military. This article today shows some exceptions to that general trend.

   It seems to me one could write an interesting essay showing how that distancing insulated the military from the current trend towards collapse in academia. It’s also worth considering how one aspect of a nation is effective at some times, and others effective at others…which is why, when Homeland Security and the state and local responses suck after Katrina, you don’t automatically shift policy to have the military do the job alone, because the military will not always be as on top of its game as it is these days.

9. By the way, not many Air Force guys are going Blue-to-Green (shifting to Army). But about 40,000 Air Force guys are going home. Wonder if anyone talking about “not enough troops” notices that rather large reduction in endstrength…
10. I’ve just lost my favorite pictorial satirists, our nation’s premier fumettists, perhaps. (Maybe it’s fumetti, maybe not; I’m sticking to it because I just wanted to say “fumetti” and “sock puppet elaborator” just didn’t work right.) Basil pays tribute in the most effective manner. We’ll miss you, Wuzzadem…

Okay, enough for now. Maybe I’ll write about house hunting, or TV watching…