Last year US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said that Russia poses an existential threat to our country. What did we do about it? Nothing. What did the Arab League do about it? They handed Vladimir Putin such a thorough military defeat in Syria that the Russians have been reduced to performance art. Putin gets…
Consequences of refusing to face reality
April 23, 2016
It may not seem like it to you, but pretty much everyone who needs to be smashed is being smashed. For a variety of reasons, really bad people were allowed to forget that actions have consequences. Well, it’s now clear that those who thought they could do whatever they want are paying dearly. Believe me….
Russian war plan for Syria explained. It’s already a failure
March 5, 2016
This piece describes the Russian war plan for Syria, even though author Jamie Dettmer is wrong about fortunes being reversed. The overall strategy — to crush the more moderate armed factions in the opposition, leaving the extremists — is straight out of the Chechnya playbook, say military analysts. So too are the scorched-earth indiscriminate tactics…
Posturing staves off disaster in the Middle East
February 3, 2016
One of the reasons that westerners can’t solve the problems in the Middle East is that we can’t distinguish between genuine threats and posturing. I admit that I myself have this deficit. It’s not possible for me to tell what’s real and what’s a performance. However, Middle Easterners understand what’s actually going on. There’s always…
Iran’s fake ballistic-missile tunnels
October 15, 2015
If the Iranian mullahs and their lackeys weren’t so evil, I’d feel sorry for them. However, they’ve made thirty-six years of choices that add to up a richly deserved demise. In a pathetic attempt to ward off this fate, Iran has released a fake video of what it says are tunnels used to store their…
Russia throws Iran under the bus
October 9, 2015
The phrase “thrown under the bus” likely has its origins in minor-league baseball, according to William Safire. Players were bused to “away games.” In fact, its original meaning could be have been quite literal: be on time for the bus, or you will be thrown underneath it, into the storage bays. He says the metaphor…
The ruin caused by political orthodoxy
August 8, 2015
I’m completely apolitical. The bug in the system is humans. Voters and politicians make it impossible for me to care about politics. Although I vote, I do so with the same excitement that I feel when I take my cats to the vet to be treated for fleas. Some political philosophies are magnificent on paper,…