PhD Candidate in Defence Studies, KCL. Strategic Victory in theory and practice. Lessons from Wars of 9/11. Purveyor of Mission Accomplished banners
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Scharnhorst is spinning in his grave. But lets face it, this is the inevitable outcome for a series of institutions that have refused to reform in the face of continued strategic failure. AI is the great dodge as a means to avoid accountability for losing multiple wars.
Nothing will ever beat the Goldeneye game dance www.youtube.com/shorts/0k23d...
You think they'll even care to wrap such an act around any legal justification? Or just announce it by saying 'Trump's unlimited power, etc.'
Iraq broke the Blob's brain and they've never recovered. They're so afraid of escalation because we don't have the means to actually defeat an opponent, they're doing this magical thinking to convince themselves a China war will end in a week after a missile salvo or two, with no casualties.
Churchill had a small heart attack while staying at the White House in 1941, and everyone kept that under wraps for a long time, and he lived another 25 years with multiple other health problems. I wouldn't be surprised if it was something similar here, and they kept him in bed for 3 days.
This is what happens with an Admin driven by a dolchstoss. All they know are internal enemies that have to be defeated by the use of force. The problem is, precisely because they believe the dolchstoss, they have no idea what they're doing. They're just gorillas with over-active pituitary glands.
What? You don’t know that multi-lateral meetings are only for (((globalists)))? Meeting with non-whites as equals is for cucks and communists. I hate the fact I’m going to have to point out I’m being facetious here because this is the literal mindset of those making decisions.
Not a Brit. Not living in the UK. So which house should I focus on even though I’m no longer living in the US, but my academic work, my thesis, and my family are all US-based?
Yes, now, a hyper-cynical element exists. But like always, if you want to end that, you gotta give people a reason to believe. Why show up to vote for someone who will just relentlessly attack you for helping them win???
My point is that they weren’t nihilists to begin with. Cynical, yes, because they’d all been burned by past experiences. It was the failure of the est. to even defend itself against Trump while attacking anything left that crushed many peoples spirits. Chapo is just a public face on that.
Yes. And the Harris campaign proved that. Even a small number of policy declarations probably would have gotten the requisite number of people out to vote her in. But she refused, so we all lost.
It’s the left. They never go in one direction.
So that’s literally one of the things my thesis is about—how the language of nat sec affects the ability to actually win. How it distorts reality and causes failure. My problem is that most non-Blob discourse is just an inversion of Blobish nonsense, masquerading as alternative thought.
Yes. But those people always exist While the ‘dirtbag’ aesthetic worked for many more because it felt like someone was talking to people in their own vernacular. Which got them in and allowed them to develop from there Moreover, it was a response to the Pod Save bros, that had no answers to Trump
Myself, I’ve always hated their foreign policy takes and think their Nat sec stuff is brain rot. But there I’ve always enjoyed their media analysis and making fun of the hogs in America. But mostly, they were a starting point for many, and a weathervane for a segment of American politics.
Nah. I’m just saying that they had a mobilising effect on a lot of people. Especially those under 30. And I give them credit for it. They were a way a lot of people managed Trump 1. And offered people an entree into left literature and theory. Most went different directions after that.
Nope. Try again.
I’m not living in the US any more, so autocorrect does its thing against my will.
Yes. I did notice. I also noticed how little effect it had. I noticed how no one cared about what was done. I noticed all the barriers put up that no one did anything about or caved to. And I noticed the lack of action to stop Trump. And I noticed how those people said it was everyone else’s fault.
Once again they’re proving CRT is completely correct. And that the only way to fix this problem is to literally burn every semblance of the confederacy from history.
The depression Chapo displayed as the Dem estab. and MAGA got worse was felt by everyone. Everyone burned out eventually because there was so little to feel positive about. And the complete lack of retribution against Trump for anything only made it worse. Why be positive about a negative state?
I’ve said this before, but Chapo isn’t the problem here. Matt, by his explanatory talks alone, did more to build a left movement than most others. The nihilism came from the fact every time people rose, the Dem centre crushed it, did performance nonsense, and offered nothing in return.
“The Seasteading Institute”—groypers all the way down.
I’d also offer that Arrival is what every academic wants to happen to them.
In a way, every conspiracy movie is technically about a historian.
You’d also assume that at least one of them was going around demanding everyone call him Grand Moff.
The Civil War proved that the Slavocracy would gladly destroy America to ensure equality was considered treason against nature.
Tom Clancy’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
It would be helpful if people in academia begun to collect, tag, and archive all this data for said future trial.
We tried that. It was the Biden Admin and look where it got us.
“You’re either with us, or you’re with the trash”
What happens when you expect Godfather and get Captain America instead?
The uniqueness of Trump himself, the circumstances, and the poor quality of the opposition put him where he is. Without some external force making it happen, I don’t think we’ll see a demagogue get this much power for a time on the right. I don’t doubt they’ll try. But they’ve blown their load.
So when he dies, what happens to the electoral map?
I would love that. But I fear they might hold it together for a time. The worse things get, the more likely a decade-plus of irrelevance occurs for the party.
This is why Trump dying might save them. It’ll allow them to claim to have a spine again, blame every mistake on Trump, and do similar policies while claiming their moderates. All while Vance looks like a scared fat child on the global stage. But in the meantime, Dem outrage collapses without Trump
Just. So. Much. Lethality!
At the end of the day, ending the War on Drugs will have the highest impact on ending immigration from C and S America. Its just hard to know whether saying that out loud, now, will change the debate, or make it worse? Will the Confeds already against drugs be worse ending the war, or accept it?
It’s his inherent abuser/rapist logic on show. I don’t think we should consider it a ‘stupid comment’. We should treat it as intrinsic to his worldview.
A little random thought here. But much 2A gun rights approved by the judiciary is based on ‘protection from tyranny’ arguments. If the US has slipped into an authoritarian government, can we use the fact those same people who use this argument are not engaged in rebellion to justify Anti-gun laws?
Which is why, when he hopefully dies soon, the coalition his awful personality keeps together, collapses almost immediately. Especially if the damage done by his policies is extremely high, and people are begging for an alternative.
I have some significant problems with the book, which was only released a few months ago, and wish it was better. But its also an easy read about how all the surrenders occurred at the end of WW2 (mostly Europe). For those interested. www.amazon.com/Victory-45-h...
They’re trying to get Ukraine to surrender. Both generally, or at least on the Eastern parts. They’re allies of Russia because Putin is anti-woke, while Ukraine wants to integrate with the EU, that bastion of bureaucracy and equal rights that requires corporations to pay people living wages.
Iraq got 3 articulated visions from the Coalition. Iran never said what their goals were and most agree they won. It is more that our ideas were just bad and wholly unexecutable. Which is what Trump etc are so angry about—everything we did in early GWOT that failed is being imposed on us now.
And to note that Versailles was a peace treaty that was forced on Germany, but it was negotiated amongst the victors first, who still took Germanys views into account on elements. I’m not vouching for Vance here in the slightest. Just offering the general point has some validity.
The Cold War was the prime reason most wars post 1945 ended in ceasefires and not agreements. After that, many more peace treaties got signed, often because both sides became exhausted and accepted the lines and changed populations—Yugoslavia. And in other cases, like Sri Lanka, they won totally
He’s not entirely wrong on the general point. Some forms of negotiations always happen, even for unconditional surrender. Because conditions are written into the agreements and the previous statements on the end game—emperor can stay for Japan in 1945 as example.
Ascended: can the US military actually win a war for once?
It was losing the GWOT, not the GWOT itself, that helped create this situation. As with all dolchstoss stories, those who create them are the ones responsible for the failures in the first place. Trump and Hegseth are the avatars of every reason America constantly loses wars.
There is a reason he keeps bringing up Ukraine suspending elections in wartime in public. One scenario is that he’ll use attacking Venezuela and the Mexican cartels as excuses to flood the streets with US troops and try to suspend 2026. Until he dies, American democracy is not guaranteed.
Just a reminder that every trump property needs to be bulldozed and replaced with wind farms when we get past this moment.
And he has no presence, power, or intellect, let alone personal savvy, EQ, or capacity. The cult will collapse once Trump dies, fragmenting into a dozen pieces. No bullying power to keep it all together. And everyone will look at the US shamefully and be open about it. JD in power is a lame duck
That’s been my hope. That he just straight up dies soon. And with it, so dies the cult. So dies the cowardice of others in power.
We’re going to have to build some tests for every GO should we survive this moment, to see who is a shill and a hack with loyalties only to Trump et al.
And this is a major reason why war crimes should be on the list of things that pardons cannot be allowed for in a new amendment.
Every positive step America makes is met with a generation of backstops until things become so bad it takes a great step forward because there are no other options left.
For the exact same reasons too
Because they lost multiple wars and blame everyone else for doing so. This is a dolchstoss Admin so they’re giving the institutional military what they want—someone else to blame for their incompetence, ineffectiveness, and unwillingness to reform. All the while getting a $1T budget and new enemies
America is functionally and cognitively incapable of winning wars.
It’s not that he was a genius, it’s just that he articulated something in a way that had long-lasting resonance. It also took him 30 years of hard experience and rewriting to figure it out. And he still died before it was properly finished, hence why so much analysis is muddled.
I never said anything about unilateral disarmament. What I want is Dems to tell Americans that the gerrymandering can and will end once the Rs accept MMDs and Proportional voting nation-wide. The status quo is unacceptable. Competitive gerrymandering is pre-civil war. And no future is articulated.
So what are we supposed to do with Confeds then? I’m genuinely asking here. And not just as a replay of choices made after, say, 2012, with regards to social media. What do we do now, should we survive the moment, with these noxious people who want violence against others?
Which is why it all has to be wiped clean with MMDs and proportional voting imposed via national agreement. Competitive gerrymandering can only work for so long before it becomes another thing that makes everyone insanely angry/disempowered/disenchanted, desiring an authoritarian solution.
I mean that with every discussion on what CA and others are doing, they always ended it by telling everyone how this charade can end. To tell low info voters there is a way out if the Confeds would just let them.
It would be a lot more effective if Newsom and other senior Dems announced that all gerrymandering would end with the national intro of Multi-Member Districts and proportional voting. To tell everyone how we get out of this mess, end the nonsense, and give people a sense their vote means something.
As a reminder, the ‘race realist’ community believes it knows the eternal truth to all societies, that force is the only thing that works, and no other knowledge is necessary. It’s not just about destroying the ‘Deep State’, it’s making sure no one is allowed to even think differently than them.
Crush the Clankers!
Totally. It is very strange that Iraq seemingly broke so many nat sec brains, yet always broke them in the exact wrong way. The Quincy types seem to be obsessed with learning all the wrong lessons and institutionalizing them, helping to guarantee the same mistakes will keep happening.
Not all of these are bad ideas, and will likely be considered in a final deal on current trajectories. Moreover, they’re not unprecedented. There’s a lot of Cuban Missile Crisis-style deal making here. The key problem is the original assumption that NATO is the problem, not Putin’s imperialism.
Not to mention the inevitable conclusion to having very large numbers of people in close proximity. Moreover, as he notes, things like this happened before the GWOT, meaning it’s more to do with the character of wars fought, than those wars specifically.
I’d also recommend Grice’s Maxims of cooperative conversation as a method to test their language against for their rapist logic. www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dr...
And this is why I always refer to the Trump Admin ideology as a dolchstoss. They are so angry that the Wars of 9/11 were a failure, they want to impose all the reasons they failed on America even harder. Because they refuse to accept their worldview is the key reason America constantly loses wars.
Until SOCOM does a mirror test, I’m willing to listen
Seth Harp has been making the podcast rounds for his new book, and it’s just brutal to listen to. America really does like losing wars.
You see the report about the AWC from today? That a lot of soldiers feel wrong about their service in Af for this reason. Because we were the ones supporting the child rapists and keeping them in power and rich.
Honestly, I don’t really expect these numbers to change. Remember W left in 08-09 with 35% approval.
Yup. This is what happens when no one cares about why America constantly loses wars. So all the worst people, who create stabbed-in-the-back narratives to blame the failures on everyone but themselves, get power to harm everyone else and enforce their failure on the country itself once more.
And we must all work to ensure @atunshei.bsky.social gets a role.
But their point isn’t to be literate. It’s to hide the horror to reimpose it.
They’re never going to stop proving CRT right
If nothing else, Trumps narcissistic desire to be surrounded by power means he would capitulate to any chance to be on TV with other leaders. The very same ineffectiveness that allows him to be easily manipulated allows others to do it back. And because he doesn’t care about details, others do.
Because Russia had proven so inept, all its existing military had been ground up, and was now reliant on conscripts, we all just kinda assumed that western trained and supplied troops would roll over them. It was a failed assumption, but you do have to realize we all saw Russia as pathetic then.
It’s really is amazing that ‘wehraboo’ is now commonly used on history podcasts.
Also, as always, name a single war that didn’t end in state-building, reconstruction, diplomacy, and statecraft. If you want to do ‘best military advice’ you have to understand this first before going kinetic. We should be keeping a list of all these statements as they’ll be useful for trials.
Well, I agree with Hegseth on one thing, a reborn Dept. of Foreign Affairs does need lead on a Service—a post conflict reconstruction Corps. If only he was capable of understanding the implications of his own brain farts
I think we also need to accept that ‘political’ to many officers just means something that is ‘left wing’, while anything right wing is just normal. And the more right wing the better because that’s a return to more normal. They likely believe they’re helping to ‘that their country back’.
Wow. It really is ‘this person isn’t an outright Confed’, so they must be fired.
Especially considering how small the FSO numbers were already. Just more CPA-style nonsense of putting incompetent cultists in positions of power to do what the Great Leader wants and nothing else.
Im guessing it’s the ‘move fast and break things’ mentality in Big Tech; the new idea or your fired management styles; attractive over functionality mindset; the need to scream GABBO! for attention over the smallest thing; and the generalized enshittification
We Were Interns
Initiating a war is a perogative. But authorization to maintain it is vital. I want that in explicit and voted-on terms. A short timeline also keeps Presidents in check if they start something few support, hence why an auto-impeach on POTUS is necessary too if they continue without an approved vote.
Exactly! Which is why I want Congress to be forced to vote Yes/No on all war authorizations. 'Present' is not allowed. And that all authorization must be given within 5 days of the initiation of battle. If Congress refuses to hold the vote, all majority leaders are auto-impeached from Congress.
Yup. At least Obama acknowledge it was among his biggest mistakes. And among the many reasons Hillary lost in 2016--its almost as if doing stupid wars that go badly has electoral consequences. It was Libya that radicalized me towards thinking about a War Powers amendment too, since reform was tepid
Fully agreed. Its sad we've all had to take these in-person courses on personality disorders this past decade just to understand the situation we're in. All the while Qanon and MAGA parents don't understand why their children don't talk to them anymore.
acsm.org/fittest-us-c... Arlington and DC are the fittest spots in the country. The everyday resistance of DC will just be people running from cops after throwing milkshakes at them.
Iraq broke a lot of people's brains, as did the failure in Afghanistan. Defeat always begins with a Dreamland. Since the large-scale regional conflicts are now over, the top-down IR scholars who don't understand anything about regions specifically are attempting to regain control.
Because he was terrible at his job. Everyone else is at fault because he is amazing, yet always failed. So he must whine constantly to soothe his constantly bruised ego.