War

Black PSYOP Part IV: Rudy Giuliani’s European OANN Adventure is the Black PSYOP’s Sixth Line of Operation

by Adam L Silverman| December 4, 20196:53 pm| 126 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Information Warfare, Open Threads, Politics, Russia, Silverman on Security, War

Ken Vogel at The New York Times has reported that Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal attorney, is in Kyiv via Budapest. Vogel’s reporting clarifies Giuliani’s tweet from yesterday about a collaboration he is working on with One America News Network (OANN), which is a niche, far right news outlet.

Working on an important project with @OANN, intended to bring before the American people information Schiff (recently disclosed investor in Franklin Templton) “Star chamber” proceedings have covered up. Stay tuned.
— Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) December 3, 2019

From The New York Times:

Even as Democrats intensified their scrutiny this week of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s role in the pressure campaign against the Ukrainian government that is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, Mr. Giuliani has been in Europe continuing his efforts to shift the focus to purported wrongdoing by President Trump’s political rivals.
Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, met in Budapest on Tuesday with a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who has become a key figure in the impeachment inquiry. He then traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday seeking to meet with other former Ukrainian prosecutors whose claims have been embraced by Republicans, including Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, according to people familiar with the effort.
The former prosecutors, who have faced allegations of corruption, all played some role in promoting claims about former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a former United States ambassador to Ukraine and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in 2016.
Mr. Giuliani is using the trip, which has not been previously reported, to help prepare more episodes of a documentary series for a conservative television outlet promoting his pro-Trump, anti-impeachment narrative. His latest moves to advance the theories propounded by the prosecutors amount to an audacious effort to give the president’s supporters new material to undercut the House impeachment proceedings and an eventual Senate trial.
The European trip was organized around the filming of a multipart television series featuring Mr. Giuliani that is being produced and aired by a conservative cable channel, One America News, or OAN.

OANN has very little actual platform presence. It is not carried by most of the major cable providers and Nielsen doesn’t provide ratings for it. But that’s not the point of making and airing this documentary. The actual purpose of the documentary is to get it made so that it can be aired, in its entirety or in snippets, on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. This is the sixth line of operation in the domestic Black PSYOP to launder misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop about what actually happened with Russia’s act of war against the US by interfering in the 2016 presidential election in order to blame Ukraine for conspiring with Secretary Clinton, her campaign, as well as the Director of the FBI, the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of Central Intelligence, the Democratic National Committee, Vice President Biden, the mainstream media, and Alexandria Chalupa to steal the election from the President and to frame Russia for doing so. This is, of course, a lie. It is factually inaccurate. And it has been debunked repeatedly.

43% of Americans get their news from Facebook, 21% from YouTube, and 12% from Twitter. And 61% of those who get their news from Facebook are women and 62% of those who get their news from Facebook are white. That’s the primary target for the Black PSYOP’s sixth line of operation. The secondary targets are everyone they share it with and everyone who sees it once it is picked up and covered by mainstream news media outlets. Once OANN makes and broadcasts the video, the video in its entirety, as well as the soundbites edited for the most informational influence and effect, will be weaponized through Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to promote this misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop.

The real problem in trying to deal with this evolving Black PSYOP is that everyone keeps responding as if Walter Cronkite was still anchoring the nightly news. So the Black PSYOP is being conducted without actually discussing and understanding how information, especially news as a type of information, is experienced by Americans in 2019 as opposed to 1974! The news media, the candidates, and their campaigns need to get their heads around this reality. And they need to come up with strategies for dealing with it, as well as with the Black PSYOP campaign and its various lines of operations that are exploiting it so that Americans aren’t so misinformed that they cannot determine what is and is not true, factual, and real.

Open thread!

* I have chosen this image because it is an inversion of the actual Psychological Operations Regimental Crest – the knight is facing the wrong way and the colors are black. I have done so to symbolize the inversion and misuse of psychological operations against Americans. Propagandizing American citizens by members of the government is illegal under The 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act.

The actual crest for the US Army Psychological Operations Regiment is a golden knight rampant to dexter (in profile and facing left) with two golden thunderbolt bladed swords crossed behind it surrounded by a laurel wreath. The motto is “Persuade, Change, Influence”. The crest is described as:

The laurel wreath symbolizes honor and achievement. The center device is adapted from the Psychological Operations collar insignia. The chess knight represents the ability to act obliquely and influence all types of warfare. The lightning bolt swords denote speed and the ability to strike anywhere. The silver gray, white and black represent the three types of Psychological Operations. White represents the overt processes, black is for the covert and gray for the hidden. The Insignia was authorized November 18, 1998.

Black PSYOP Part IV: Rudy Giuliani’s European OANN Adventure is the Black PSYOP’s Sixth Line of OperationPost + Comments (126)

Meanwhile in Ukraine

by Adam L Silverman| December 3, 20199:41 pm| 68 Comments

This post is in: America, Election 2016, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Military, Open Threads, Politics, Russia, Silverman on Security, War

While everyone is focused on all the President’s, his political appointees’, his personal attorney’s, and the variety of post-Soviet state oligarchs’/post-Soviet state mobsters’, and various other riffraffs’ ongoing attempts to screw around with and screw over Ukraine until President Zelensky announces an investigation into the Bidens, which he’s not going to do, and Guiliani and the various post-Soviet state oligarchs/post-Soviet state mobsters he’s working with to shake down the Ukrainian natural gas industry, life actually goes on in Ukraine. And that life is one where part of Ukraine has been scarfed up by Vladimir Putin and another part has been invaded by Putin. And, as a result, Ukraine is at war with Russia in order to preserve its territorial integrity.

As a result of all of this, President Zelensky has learned some hard lessons in his short time in office. His views below are just one of those lessons.

I don’t trust anyone at all. I’ll tell you honestly. Politics is not an exact science. That’s why in school I loved mathematics. Everything in mathematics was clear to me. You can solve an equation with a variable, with one variable. But here it’s only variables, including the politicians in our country. I don’t know these people. I can’t understand what dough they’re made of. That’s why I think nobody can have any trust. Everybody just has their interests.

He also knows that at least for right now, he’s largely on his own despite the US’s international agreement obligation to preserve Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

“If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us,” he said. “I think that’s just about fairness. It’s not about a quid pro quo.”

Ukraine has just reached an unfortunate milestone, for lack of a better term.

Since the beginning of the fighting in the Donbass, human casualties from explosive objects amount to more than a thousand people. Mine killed 300 civilians, including 27 children. About it reports ArmyInform with reference to management of ecological safety and mine action of the Ministry of Defense.
According to preliminary estimates, the area of areas contaminated with mines and explosive objects is about 7 thousand square meters. km controlled areas and approximately 9 thousand square meters. km of occupied territories.
Infrastructures are in a critical condition because sometimes they cannot be accessed through shells and improvised explosives.

This is a humanitarian nightmare and is going to take decades to fix even if a ceasefire was put in place immediately and was quickly followed by the withdrawal of Russian and Russian proxy forces and the reestablishment of Ukrainian sovereignty over the occupied territories in Donbass.

This is the actual effects on the Ukrainian citizenry not only of the occupation and the war, but the mine fields:

Baba Masha’s neighbors say that because of the danger of entering the village of Opytne at night (it sits on Ukraine’s front line and is accessible only by a dirt road through a mined field) fire trucks were unable to respond. Her house is still smoldering as I type this.
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) December 1, 2019

Here’s more from Christopher Miller at Buzzfeed (emphasis mine):

When he’s not engaged in gun battles with Russian-led forces on Ukraine’s eastern front line, Stas, a scruffy 26-year-old soldier, likes to cozy up in his bunker and brush up on his English skills by watching Stephen Colbert and Saturday Night Live. He cracks up at Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of President Donald Trump.
Watching political satire on American TV — when he’s able to get a strong enough signal on the battlefield to access YouTube — is also how Stas learned that Trump had frozen $391 million in US security aid meant for the Ukrainian armed forces over the summer. The news made him angry. The fighting was hot at the time, and he and his fellow soldiers were stuck with mostly crappy, old gear.
“Look at this. It’s old and falling apart,” he complained of his Ukrainian government–issued bulletproof vest in accented English. It was barely stitched together and slouching on one side. “It’s a piece of shit.”
There’s one thing Stas and the soldiers in Ukraine’s 72nd Mechanized Brigade positioned in the village of Novooleksandrivka do have, which they say has helped them spot enemy soldiers who creep within grenade-throwing range of their trenches at night: a pair of US-made night vision sights.
The only problem? They don’t fit on the Ukrainian rifles.
He explained that “they would definitely be more effective if we had them on our rifles,” which is impossible without a special adapter. He demonstrated how he has to hold the sight in one hand, pick a target, lower the device from his eye, and try to remember where he was looking as he aims and fires his weapon. Despite all this, an extra pair or two would be good, he said.
He wondered: Would his brigade have gotten at least another sight if the security aid hadn’t been held up? If only Americans knew how much the equipment would help…
“Nobody in your country knows what’s happening here,” Stas continued, waving his arms in frustration. “They don’t know how we are fighting for our lives with almost nothing.”
Fought for more than five years in trenches cut through some of Europe’s most fertile farmland, Russia’s war in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas has killed around 14,000 people and brought under its control a chunk of a territory larger than the state of New Jersey. Yet — despite it being fought with $1.6 billion of US help in the form of military aid and training since 2014 — the war had largely been forgotten before it was catapulted into the headlines amid the House impeachment inquiry against Trump.
“While they were playing with our aid, I wonder, did they know we were dying out here?” asked Oleksandr, a sergeant in the 14th Mechanized Brigade who goes by the call sign “kuvyrok,” or “somersault.” As we crept through trenches outside the village of Krymske, 40 miles northwest of Stas’s position, careful to keep our heads down and out of Russian snipers’ sights, Oleksandr said at least two soldiers were killed at the position over the summer.
According to statistics from the Ukrainian military, at least 46 soldiers have been killed since July 18, when word spread throughout the Trump administration that the president had secretly frozen aid for Ukraine. Around 19 of those deaths came during the window of time in which the aid was delayed. While there’s no way of tying those deaths directly to the lack of new US aid at the front line, more than two dozen Ukrainian soldiers — located at four fighting positions, a tank base, and a military hospital — told me they were disappointed by the news. Their morale suffered, and they felt vulnerable and abandoned by their biggest supporter.
The soldiers, whom I met over the course of a week this month while traveling along the snaking 250-mile front line in eastern Ukraine, painted a clear picture of just how important US military assistance is for Ukraine in its war against Russia. The soldiers spoke on the condition that their surnames not be used for security reasons. In what many described as a David-and-Goliath-like fight, they shared several stories about how the US aid has helped level the battlefield and stop the larger and more powerful Russia from grabbing more of their land.
They also said that any aid freeze — even a temporary one — jeopardizes not only themselves but perhaps the very future of Ukraine.

There is much more at the link.

14,000 Ukrainians – Soldier and civilian alike – have been killed in Ukraine’s attempt to resist Russia’s incursion into Donbass. And to establish enough of a position of strength so that Ukrainian officials can negotiate a ceasefire and peace agreement that maintains Ukraine’s territorial integrity and gets Crimea back as well. That isn’t going to happen without the US backing it up. Which means it isn’t going to happen until, at least, January 2021 and despite the US’s international obligations to preserve Ukraine’s territorial integrity. What the US would need to do today is much harder than it would have been in 2014 and in 2021 any response will be that much harder than it would be today. And throughout it all Ukrainians are dying – Soldiers and civilians – because Putin has decided that he gets to draw the borders of eastern Europe wherever he likes. And that cannot be allowed to stand. However, because Ukraine has now been turned into another partisan issue, just as trade, Israel, healthcare, education, climate change, and so many other issues, as long as there is a Republican president and/or at least one chamber of Congress in Republican hands, stepping up and doing the right thing for Ukraine, as well as for the rest of our European and NATO partners is going to be a very heavy lift. Because it is going to be a partisan lift.

When you see the domestic news reporting on Ukraine, where Ukraine is simply a sort of funny sounding part of the horserace coverage of domestic American politics, keep in mind that the real focus here should be Ukraine; should be on the fact that Ukraine has been invaded and been occupied for going on five years; should be on the fact that the US has an actual international obligation to safeguard Ukraine’s territorial integrity; and that it isn’t just another partisan football so the talking heads on the news shows have something to stroke their chins about.

Open thread!

Meanwhile in UkrainePost + Comments (68)

Black PSYOP Part III: The Fifth Domestic Line of Operation is Now Operational

by Adam L Silverman| December 1, 201910:13 pm| 94 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment, Open Threads, Politics, Russia, Silverman on Security, War

On 25 October and 12 November I defined what a Black PSYOP is, how it differs from normal Psychological Operations, debunked the conspiracies, misinformation, and agitprop at the root of the Black PSYOP that the President and his surrogates are trying to perpetrate on the American people, and delineated the four lines of operations up to mid November. The President’s surrogates, specifically elected Republican officials like Senator Kennedy (R-LA), have now rolled out the fifth line of operation in this Black PSYOP.

This fifth line of operation is to launder the completely debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, through its elected and appointed officials, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election in the attempt to get Secretary Clinton elected by conspiring with Secretary Clinton, her campaign, the Democratic National Committee, the Obama administration, the DOJ’s National Security Division, the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of Central Intelligence, the Director of the FBI, the Director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, MI6 and other elements of British Intelligence, other allied intelligence services, and Alexandra Chalupa to subvert the election and prevent the President from being elected. And that Russia had nothing to do with trying to subvert the 2016 presidential election. Or, if Russia did, it was ineffective and no one in the President’s campaign, his businesses, or among his surrogates and supporters was involved in whatever it was Russia might or might not have been doing in 2016.

We know that this conspiracy theory and misinformation is NOT TRUE! IT IS A LIE! A fabrication of Russia’s leadership and intelligence services put out in an attempt to muddy the waters around what happened in the 2016 presidential election, further obscure Russia’s actions in and against Ukraine, make Ukraine the villain to justify the actions in and against Ukraine that Russia is trying to obscure, all so that Russia can get out from under the US sanctions against it. We know it’s a lie because last month US intelligence officials briefed members of the Senate and told them it was a lie and delineated its origins. We know it’s a lie because we have a transcript, posted by the Kremlin on the Kremlin’s outward facing English language website, of Putin making these claims in February 2017:

Second, as we all know, during the presidential campaign in the United States, the Ukrainian government adopted a unilateral position in favour of one candidate. More than that, certain oligarchs, certainly with the approval of the political leadership, funded this candidate, or female candidate, to be more precise. Now they need to improve relations with the current administration, and using a conflict to do so is always a better, easier way to draw the incumbent administration into addressing Ukrainian problems and thus establish a dialogue.

We know it is a lie because of materials brought to light by Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation and the prosecutions that resulted from it, which clearly indicate that Paul Manafort was fed this information by his Russian handler, Konstantin Kilimnik, and was pushing it within the President’s campaign in 2016.

The fifth domestic line of operation of the Black PSYOP to remove the blame of interfering in the 2016 US presidential election from Russia and place it on Ukraine is to have presidential surrogates like Senator Kennedy (R-LA) go onto legitimate, mainstream news shows, such as the Sunday talk shows, and launder this misinformation and agitprop. The laundering of the information occurs once it’s been said on CNN, the three broadcast networks, and/or MSNBC. Then follow up reporting has been done on those networks about the claim, as well as in the major mainstream print and digital media. And even though this follow on reporting is all debunking, the misinformation and agitprop has been laundered through legitimate sources. Once that happens it is ready for weaponization on Facebook, Twitter, and the conservative digital and social media sites that Senator Kennedy and the other surrogates pushing the same conspiracy theory, misinformation, and agitprop were originally referencing as their sources. All that matters in this line of effort are the video clips of Senator Kennedy or other GOP elected and appointed officials above the CNN or MSNBC or broadcast network symbols looking into the camera and stating the agitprop. Once those exist they can and will be weaponized across social and digital media like Facebook and Twitter, as well as conservative social and digital media sites. And, of course, they’ll be picked up by Russia’s state media outlets like RT and Sputnik and spread to a whole different audience.

On average 2.3 million Americans watch the Sunday news talk shows on the three networks and Fox News Sunday. That’s not a lot. However, 43% of Americans get their news via Facebook. And among that 43%, 61% are women, and 62% are white. So if you can edit the footage of Senator Kennedy and other surrogates down to them just stating this conspiracy theory, misinformation, and agitprop on one of the Sunday news shows on NBC, ABC, CBS, and/or Fox News Sunday and put it out on Facebook, you’ve gone a long way to effectively weaponizing this misinformation and agitprop. From there it will get picked up and rebroadcast through a variety of different platforms and means. And, ultimately, the purpose isn’t to change anyone’s minds. It is to both reinforce the already held positions of the President’s supporters and to so confuse the actual, factual record of what happened in the 2016 presidential election that anyone who isn’t a political junkie or a committed political partisan just throws up their hands in disgust because it has been made impossible to tell the truth – that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to elect the President and ensure that Secretary Clinton would not and could not be elected – from the lie – that it was really Ukraine who interfered in the 2016 election by conspiring with Secretary Clinton and others to try to prevent the President from being elected. The point of this line of operation is to make it so that since nothing can be clearly demonstrated to be true, then anything and everything is possible.

It really doesn’t matter if Senator Kennedy (R-LA) believes the lies he’s peddling or if he knows that it is conspiracy theories, misinformation, and agitprop. I think he knows it is bullshit and the tell is his asserting that he never got the briefing that senior US intelligence officials provided to US senators last month. If he didn’t get the briefing then he really has no official information to rebut the less than reputable sources he’s citing. By being purposefully uninformed, by not taking the briefing, he’s able to say he doesn’t know which is true.

We have reached the point where elected US governmental officials are attempting to propagandize American citizens for partisan political purposes. It is illegal for government officials to propagandize Americans, though I highly doubt anything will be done and anyone will be held to account. But that is where we’re at. The real question has to be why Senator Kennedy has decided he needs to do this. Is it just fear of mean presidential tweet? Is it fear of being primaried or being voted out of office? Or is it fear of something else? Until or unless we get answers to those questions the only thing we can be certain of is that Senator Kennedy (R-LA) is promoting Russian misinformation and agitprop, which has been debunked by the US Intelligence Community.

We are off the looking glass and through the map!

Open thread.

Black PSYOP Part III: The Fifth Domestic Line of Operation is Now OperationalPost + Comments (94)

DisOrder & UnDiscipline: An Out of Control E7, an Out of Control Fox & Friends Weekend Loud Mouth, and an Out of Order Chain of Command

by Adam L Silverman| November 24, 20198:29 pm| 154 Comments

This post is in: America, Crimes against humanity, Domestic Politics, Military, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, War, War on Terror

The Secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, has accepted being terminated (no one told me you could ignore that sort of thing, but what do I know…). His resignation letter is below.

At this point it is unclear what actually has transpired with Secretary Spencer’s termination. The initial reporting was that he’d made an end run around Secretary of Defense Esper, which led Secretary Esper to ask the President to fire him. In this recounting of events, Secretary Spencer is accused of going to the President and ensuring him that if the President let the Naval Special Warfare review board convened by Rear Admiral (RADM) Green, commanding admiral of Naval Special Warfare, play out, then Secretary Spencer would ensure that Eddie Gallagher would retire shortly at the rank of E7, as a member of the SEAL community/with his trident, and with his full benefits.

All of this occurred after several days of reporting that Secretary Spencer and RADM Green had made it clear that if the review process regarding Gallagher remaining a SEAL, as well as three officers in his chain of command at the time of the crimes he’s alleged to have committed, was not allowed to play out, then they’d both resign. This was quickly followed by Secretary Spencer stating he’d never made this ultimatum. So if you’re confused, that isn’t surprising. Until the all too predictable leaks occur over the next several days to fill out the narrative, we won’t really know how this all went down.

We do, however, know that a major problem here is that the President is, as usual, not listening to the people he actually hires and/or promotes into the positions to advise him on issues and manage those issues for him. This leaves the President susceptible to influence by those with their own agendas. In this case Gallagher himself, as well as weekend Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth. Hegseth hosted Gallagher this morning on the Sunday weekend edition of A Blonde with Two Boobs on a Sofa, D/B/A Fox & Friends Weekend. Hegseth honorably served in the US Army National Guard for 11 years, served in Iraq and Afghanistan, earned the rank of major (O4), and has basically been influencing the President’s views on the US military and the VA from both his weekend perch at Fox, in private meetings, and on calls with the President on the President’s unsecured cell phone (Estonia, if you’re listening, and we know you are…) since the President began his campaign. During his appearance with Hegseth this morning, Gallagher publicly went after his chain of command, especially RADM Green, accusing him of being derelict in his duty by trying to suborn the clear orders and guidance of the President, as Commander in Chief of the US military, regarding Gallagher’s case.

I cannot express not only how irregular what I’ve just recounted is, but how BATSHIT FUCKING INSANE it is as well! Serving US military personnel, and to a lesser extent DOD and the Service civilians (civil servants) do not speak to and/or engage with the news media unless it has been approved by the Public Affairs Officer at their command. And they certainly don’t go on a cable news talk show program and publicly accuse their commanding officers of being derelict in their duty and insubordinate. If you were wondering if Gallagher was a disciplinary problem waiting to happen and a real impediment to good order and discipline, wonder no more. What he did this morning should dispel any doubt. And if you were Gallagher and trying to show the review board and the commanding admiral that you weren’t either or both of these things, going on Fox & Friends Weekend and making these statements is a really stupid way to demonstrate that you’re not a problem child and a shitbird.

Even before Gallagher made himself the poster boy for an out of control culture within the SEAL and Naval Special Warfare community, Rear Admiral Green had already begun a commander’s strategic initiative to try to understand the problems that have developed within the Naval Special Warfare community’s culture and develop specific ways and means to address and correct them. His initiative is inline with those of GEN Clarke, the Commanding General of US Special Operations Command, who has instituted a similar strategic review. GEN Clarke, as well as RADM Green and GEN Clarke’s other subordinates at the Army, Air Force, and Marine special operations commands are rightly concerned that the corrosive nature of war, especially a war in it’s 18th year, that is poorly defined at the strategic level, and that is overly reliant on Special Operations at the tactical and operational levels, has done major harm to America’s Special Operations Forces. And the effects of the corrosion that this ongoing war has caused on US Special Operations culture and those within that culture needs to be assessed, analyzed, and understood so that corrective measures can be developed and put in place.

What we’ve seen with the way Gallagher behaves, obviously empowered because he feels that his advocates like Hegseth have the President’s ear and, therefore, the President has his back, is a very public example of the cultural corrosion that GEN Clarke, RADM Green, and their peers in the Special Operations community are concerned with. Just for his actions today, Gallagher should be facing an Article 15 hearing, popularly known as a captain’s or admiral’s mast, first thing tomorrow to answer for his public insubordination. What he did today on Fox & Friends should make whether he keeps his trident the least of his worries.

At this point, however, I have no idea what is going to happen. RADM Green, GEN Clarke, ADM Gilday the Chief of Naval Operations, GEN Milley the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary Esper, and RADM (ret) Braithwaite, the announced nominee to be the next Secretary of the Navy all know by now they have both a good order and discipline problem and that the public face of that problem’s name is Gallagher, who thinks he’s untouchable. The President’s undue command interference in Gallagher’s trial and the post conviction handling of him as a personnel matter, as well as several other military prosecutions and disciplinary matters all involving accusations of or convictions for war crimes, has created a good order and discipline problem within the ranks. Leadership knows that if they don’t make an example of Gallagher, then any Soldier, Sailor, Airman, or Marine who gets in trouble and can get to Hegseth or anyone else who has the President’s ear, has the ability to short circuit the military justice system. And unless that notion is quickly disabused, then good order and discipline is going to become nothing more than a hollow slogan. And this problem is as dangerous as the message the President’s interference in military justice for Gallagher and others sends both our allies and adversaries about the behavior that will be tolerated by the US military because it will be tolerated by the President of the United States. That makes our allies uncomfortable and provides aid and comfort to our adversaries by giving them seeming approval to conduct war however they like, regardless of the Law of Armed Conflict, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the Rules of Engagement for any specific operation.

Open thread!

Full disclosure: I served as a Senior Special Operations Fellow at SOCOM’s Joint Special Operations University from May through August 2015.

DisOrder & UnDiscipline: An Out of Control E7, an Out of Control Fox & Friends Weekend Loud Mouth, and an Out of Order Chain of CommandPost + Comments (154)

Some Thoughts On the Campaign Before Tonight’s Debate

by Adam L Silverman| November 20, 20193:45 pm| 173 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, War

Earlier today Norm Ornstein published a really thoughtful piece in The Atlantic about what the candidates should actually be asked at tonight’s debate. I highly recommend you all take a few minutes and read it. Full disclosure: I know Norm, he’s a friend and senior mentor, and he occasionally tweets out my posts here to his very large social media following.

However, I want to take a different direction in discussing the campaign, which includes the debates, before tonight’s debate in Atlanta. The Democratic candidates, every single one of them, whether they know it or not, recognize it or not, or want to recognize it at all, are not involved in a normal or traditional campaign cycle, nor in a normal or traditional presidential election year. The 2020 US election – from the presidential election to the senatorial and congressional elections to the state gubernatorial and legislative elections to local elections – are all being contested within an information and political war that has expanded from an unconventional Russian hybrid active measures operation to a largely non-violent and non-kinetic world war. This is the reality for the United States and Americans as the Democratic presidential primary grinds on towards the first election and caucus, as candidates register to run before state filing deadlines, and as people sign up to volunteer for campaigns or to work as election officials.

The Democratic presidential primary candidates, as well as every candidate regardless of party up and down the ballot, are now enmeshed in a war. And because it is a political war – politics including other means to use the Clausewitzian formulation- that largely relies on diplomatic, information, economic, intelligence, and legal warfare while downplaying the use of military power. It is a war that is going largely unremarked and largely uncommented on. The war has multiple fronts and not all are in the US. Brexit is one front and the now sequestered counterintelligence report on Russian financing, support, and interference in Brexit, by order of the Prime Minister and/or his senior staff, is a Damoclean sword hanging over the upcoming British elections. Russia’s ongoing low intensity kinetic, information, and political warfare operations in Ukraine is another front. As are Russia’s similar operations in Syria and Libya. The PRC’s Belt and Road initiative is a diplomatic, information, intelligence, and economic warfare operation, as is their information, intelligence, and economic warfare operation against the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong is part of this new world war. The President’s ongoing unearned fulfillment of items on Bibi Netanyahu’s wishlist is another front.

The US front, however, has one very specific center of gravity: the President and the Republican Party. Or, perhaps, more accurately stated, voting the President out of office in the 2020 election, holding the majority in the House, flipping the Senate majority, maintaining the state houses and legislatures currently in Democratic hands, and flipping as many as possible is the strategic objective of the 2020 elections. That’s it. Everything else, from revising how health care is funded and delivered to how college is paid for to fixing the tax code to repairing our relations with our allies and partners to seriously addressing climate change to shoring up the aging post World War II and post Cold War global system, are all, at the Federal level, dependent on limiting the President to one term, maintaining the majority in the House, and flipping the majority in the Senate.

All of the sturm and drang about how to fix health care and health insurance in the US, rebalancing the powers between the branches of government, rebalancing the Federal courts, repairing the tax code after decades of abusive revisions in pursuit of validating economically bankrupt theories, repairing our relationships with our allies and partners, seriously addressing climate change, and shoring up the global system WILL ONLY HAPPEN IF THE PRESIDENT IS LIMITED TO ONE TERM, IF THE DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY IS MAINTAINED IN THE HOUSE, and IF THE DEMOCRATS FLIP THE MAJORITY IN THE SENATE!

It is absolutely wonderful to have a talented, diverse field of candidates who demonstrate the depth and breadth of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious coalition that makes up the Democratic Party and spans from the center to the left of center. And in another time and another America, debating the minutiae of various plans, proposals, potential policies, and the strategies to achieve them would be a political junky’s dream. Unfortunately we DO NOT live in that time, nor do we live in that America. We are in an America at war. A war that is not formally declared, that our President, his administration, his allies in Congress and at the state levels of government, his surrogates, and his media supporters at Fox News, Sinclair, talk radio, and conservative digital news and social media have no interest in recognizing, let alone combatting. Our self governing democratic-republic is on the knife’s edge. We are in murabashi – facing our opponent across the log bridge over a deep ravine. We cannot retreat without being cut down, we cannot go to the right or left or we fall to our death, the only way out is through one’s opponent and across the bridge to safety.

The focus of the Democratic candidates and their campaigns needs to be on the reality of this existential threat. If the news media, and the debate moderators drawn from within its ranks, can’t get their heads around it and want to focus on the minutiae between various candidates plans and proposals because they are following the professional wrestling concept of controversy creates cash, ie people tune in to see a fight, then the candidates have a political obligation to bring every answer back to this reality: nothing, not a damn thing will be done on any of these issues until and unless the President is limited to one term, the House majority is maintained, and the Senate majority is flipped. Everything else is a distraction.

Elections with incumbent presidents standing for reelection are always referendums on the incumbent. The Democratic candidates and their campaigns need to adjust and focus on this reality. It is perfectly fine to state one has a plan or a proposal or a strategy for fixing anything and everything that ails the US and Americans, but it needs to be focused through the lens of it only happens if we elect a Democratic president, reelect a Democratic House majority, and elect a Democratic Senate majority in 2020. That is the real strategic objective of the 2020 election. Not health care reform, not tax revisions, not how to fund college educations, pay for child care, repair our alliances and partnerships, shore up the global system, take serious measures regarding climate change, and/or dozens of other too long neglected issues. Those are all lines of effort to be undertaken once the strategic objective has been achieved. But unless the strategic objective has been achieved those are just nice ideas that will never ever be attempted, let alone accomplished. The various proposals, plans, policies, and strategies are just good ideas presented by a dozen or so good idea fairies with no hope of ever even being seriously considered if the President is elected to a second term and if Senator McConnell maintains his majority in the Senate.

Open thread!

Some Thoughts On the Campaign Before Tonight’s DebatePost + Comments (173)

TAKE THE OIL!

by Cheryl Rofer| November 12, 201912:32 pm| 68 Comments

This post is in: Dolt 45, War

Donald Trump has wondered why the United States didn’t take Iraq’s oil to pay for our invasion. He has insisted that the United States must TAKE THE OIL!

The United States didn’t take the oil because pillaging, theft during war, is a war crime (more here). If a practical reason is needed, oil production and pipelines are extremely vulnerable to sabotage and military action. A continuing military presence would be needed to protect the seized oilfields. Trump seems to believe that the oil can be rapidly pumped from the ground and removed. It can’t.

Trump came into office promising to get American troops out of the Middle East. Many people support that goal. We have been in Afghanistan for eighteen years now. It’s not clear that our presence in the region has improved American security, and now our Saudi partners are dragging us into a war in Yemen.

But Trump knows nothing about military action or our relations with the countries in the region and refuses to learn. Nor does he care to use the decision-making aids available to the President. He has some longstanding prejudices, however, along with his willingness to make decisions impulsively.

After a telephone conversation with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Trump broadcast his decision via tweet to remove American troops from northeast Syria. The withdrawal leaves the Kurds vulnerable to the Turks, who want the Kurds out of the way. Trump assured us that Erdoğan would not harm the Kurds; he would punish Erdoğan with sanctions if he did.

Then Trump changed his mind and sent Erdoğan a letter that sounded like it came from a middle-school bully. Not all the troops were withdrawn. Some were sent to Saudi Arabia. And now the military is concerned that Trump may want to send them all back.

Trump’s ignorance and impulsiveness in this matter have caused problems from the logistical to the constitutional.

Trump’s tweet surprised the American military. They appear to have had no plans for withdrawal, although Trump has been talking about it since his campaign. A case can be made that withdrawal from northeastern Syria, particularly as abruptly as Trump required, is the wrong thing to do. But the military is subject to the civilian Commander-in-Chief, and they should have made a plan. It’s a bit puzzling, because the military is famous for having plans for actions as improbable as invading Canada.

Trump should have known that armies cannot withdraw from combat in the space of time it takes to send a tweet, or even over a few days. Trump could have instructed the military to make plans for withdrawal at the beginning of his presidency, since that was one of his promises. A plan would have dealt with how to protect the Kurds and how long a withdrawal would be likely to take under various circumstances. It could have even covered protecting the oil.

Military and other advisors seem to have used the idea of taking the oil to convince Trump to maintain a presence in the area after his tweet. Trump feels no obligation to the Kurds, and seems convinced that ISIS is defeated and cannot return. But he does want to take the oil. A National Guard unit from South Carolina is now guarding northeast Syria’s tiny oilfields with armored vehicles unsuited to dealing with ISIS.

This corrupts the chain of command. The President made a decision. The military is supposed to take his orders. But they and others have argued back and effectively rescinded the decision, although the troops now in place have a different mission than before. Trump began the corruption by ignoring the National Security Council process for decision-making that would have taken recommendations from the military, the State Department, and others before the decision was made.

Nobody seems now to know what the mission is. Protecting the oilfields is the stated reason the National Guard troops are there. Are there American rules of engagement for encounters with Syrian government troops? Turkish troops? ISIS? Russian troops? Is any of this consistent with the existing Authorization for the Use of Military Force?

Once upon a time, wars in the Middle East were cynically characterized as “blood for oil.” Now that charge is irrefutable, supported by the words of the President.

A Pentagon spokesperson says that the income from oil wells in the Kurdish areas will go to the Kurds. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the United States from “taking the oil.” Trump has said that he wants American companies to develop the oilfields, but they have no interest in doing that illegally, nor in a combat zone.

Trump knows nothing of international law, the geology of northeast Syria, the production of oil, or loyalty to allies. He sees the American military as a profit center. The number of American troops in Syria has remained constant since his pronouncement, but their mission has become less clear. Trump’s ego demands that he proclaim some sort of victory. His ignorance results in inappropriate decision-making by the Department of Defense. He can’t even achieve his own objective of removing the troops from the Middle East.

He is unfit to be president.

TAKE THE OIL!Post + Comments (68)

Veterans Day 2019: Veterans in Exile

by Adam L Silverman| November 11, 201910:47 pm| 71 Comments

This post is in: America, An Unexamined Scandal, Domestic Politics, Immigration, Military, Politics, Silverman on Security, War

Senator Duckworth is a national treasure.

I refuse to let them believe that everyone in government has forsaken them.
So I crossed the border to Tijuana to spend #VeteransDay with them, recognizing the sacrifices they made for the country they love. pic.twitter.com/JUyZNl9OBw
— Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) November 12, 2019

These are daughters and sons who are struggling with wounds both visible and otherwise, yet are unable to get the VA medical care they need because they’ve been deemed less important than partisan politics. pic.twitter.com/JZB3sEDL0I
— Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) November 12, 2019

We should be ashamed, heartbroken & furious by the treatment of these Veterans. I certainly am. But we should channel those feelings and use them as motivation to do better.
To be better.
These Veterans fought for us for so long.
It’s past time we start fighting for them too. pic.twitter.com/vc9DKpGbnx
— Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) November 12, 2019

And the President, the Vice President, Stephen Miller, DHS Secretary Kelly, DHS Secretary Nielsen, Acting DHS Secretary McAleneen, Acting USCIS Secretary Cucinelli, Acting Director of ICE Homan, Steve Bannon, and every single American that supports these officials and their actions is a national disgrace. And the next president, provided she or he is a Democrat, damn well better bring these veterans home and hold all of the above to account. I don’t care if some of these veterans have criminal records, I don’t care if some of them have serious PTSD or other issues from their service that led to those criminal records or otherwise somehow violating their immigration status. I don’t care if some of them are undocumented. They raised their hands, they took the oath, and they served the US, many if not most in harm’s way, which is something no one in the Trump family has ever done across five generations in the United States. These people disgust me!

Open thread!

Veterans Day 2019: Veterans in ExilePost + Comments (71)

Kristallnacht 81 Years Later

by Adam L Silverman| November 9, 20199:21 pm| 66 Comments

This post is in: America, Civil Rights, Crazification Factor, Criminal Justice, Domestic Politics, Foreign Affairs, LGBTQ Rights, Open Threads, Politics, Racial Justice, Silverman on Security, War, Women's Rights

Tonight is the 81st anniversary of the NAZI pogrom of November 1938 known as Kristallnacht.

9-10 November 1938 | #Kristallnacht – a pogrom against the Jews throughout Nazi Germany. Almost 100 killed, 30,000 men arrested, over 1,000 synagogues burnt, over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged: https://t.co/hrrnJUqR3e pic.twitter.com/m9K2AB7Wpu
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) November 9, 2019

In an article on the evening of 11 November, Joseph Goebbels ascribed the events to the "healthy instincts" of the German people: "The German people are anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the Jewish race."
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) November 9, 2019

Only three years after the Kristallnacht the physical extermination of Jews began in Germany & German-occupied European territory – first the murder was perpetrated in the East by shooting of the Einsatzgruppen & later in gas chambers of extermination camps, such as Auschwitz..
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) November 9, 2019

I’m not sure 81 years on what there is left to say. Especially that I didn’t say in a post memorializing this day last year and the year before and the year before that and the year before that… Or in the posts I’ve done on the Red Summer or any other number of atrocities.

Perhaps we just need to pay attention because the revanchist, neo-fascist, and neo-nationalist descendants of the NAZIs and the other fascists that set the conditions for and carried out the atrocities on Kristallnacht and the even worse atrocities during the Holocaust proper still need to be combatted. They need to be exposed whenever possible. Dragged out into the sunlight for all to see and, should it come to it, once again physically combatted until they are defeated on the battlefield as they were during WW II.

Just this past week a neo-NAZI was arrested for trying to blow up a synagogue in Pueblo, Colorado. A young African American man had to stand his ground in Georgia in the face of a racist attack from a now deceased white man.* And we learned that the President and his racist, white supremacist administration have actually separated an additional 1,500 migrant children from their parents and that number may still be an undercount. I’m sure there are more examples of the revanchist, racist, and fascist throughline that runs from Kristallnacht in 1938 to the President, his administration, his surrogates, his supporters, and the tyrants and dictators that he so idealizes with just a few minutes more searching, but I don’t think I need to belabor the point.

Also, the Auschwitz Memorial is trying to get 750,000 followers by the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in January 2020. So if you’re on Twitter, give them a follow!

We hope to get 750,000 followers for the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on 27 Jan 2020.
This will not be possible without your support & engagement.
Help us to honor all victims and preserve their memory online. RT & encourage others to follow @AuschwitzMuseum. pic.twitter.com/PDbTvDcOyg
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) August 23, 2019

Open thread.

* I’m actually surprised it has taken this long for a person of color to have to use force/lethal force to defend him or herself from a white racist’s attack. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the courts, given that Georgia is a stand your ground state, but the person who stood his ground this time is African American. As I’ve written here many times in comments, I expected this to happen. And I expect that once white people realize that the old maxim that “G-d made man, Samuel Colt made all men equal” doesn’t just apply to white people, they’ll freak out. I’m honestly not sure what the nature of that freak out will be. It might be a response similar to that of then Governor Reagan’s to Black Panther’s openly carrying unarmed long guns in the California state capitol building by signing gun control legislation. Or it may be more similar to the Tulsa Race Riot, the Red Summer, and the response to Forest Joe’s slave revolt in the 1820s among others. But if people of color exercise their statutory rights to self defense, and they are both justified in doing so and do so in response to attacks on their persons and property by racist whites, there will be a backlash. And we all need to be prepared for it.

Kristallnacht 81 Years LaterPost + Comments (66)

Mikhail Gorbachev, Hero

by Cheryl Rofer| November 5, 20193:22 pm| 23 Comments

This post is in: Russia, Something Good Open Thread, War

As the world watched the Soviet Union breaking apart in the late 1980s – early 1990s, there was much fear that things could go badly wrong and even escalate to nuclear war.

Mikhail Gorbachev, who had become the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, had introduced reforms that he believed would reinvigorate the Soviet economy. But movements in the satellites, like Solidarity in Poland, wanted independence. There were similar movements in the Soviet republics. Those movements used Gorbachev’s reforms for their own interests.

This month is the 30th anniversary of Gorbachev’s releasing the satellites – Poland, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia), Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and East Germany – from Soviet rule. Two years later, the 15 Soviet republics became independent countries.

Hard-liners in Moscow would have used force to prevent those outcomes. There were some clashes with the Soviet internal police, OMON, and military forces were ordered into some of the republics as demonstrations took place. But Gorbachev decided against major force and allowed the Soviet Union to dissolve, even though it was not the outcome he wanted.

The United States has become too accustomed to using force to solve problems. Russia has become an international spoiler, looking for ways to create chaos. With 14,000 nuclear weapons between them, this is unsustainable.

Gorbachev is speaking out.

And Don’t build a wall between Russia and the West.

He will always be a hero to me for handling the Soviet Union’s breakup peacefully. Not so much in Russia, where that breakup led to misery for many.

What he’s saying isn’t outstandingly new, but it’s always worth hearing, especially from someone who stared war in the face and walked away.

Mikhail Gorbachev, HeroPost + Comments (23)

Those Photos

by Cheryl Rofer| October 27, 20193:02 pm| 84 Comments

This post is in: Dolt 45, Trumpery, War, War on Terror, All Too Normal

A great many details are coming out about the raid that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS. It’s looking like (surprise!) not all the details that President Donald Trump gave at his statement this morning were accurate, but I’d like to let things settle out a bit before trying to work through them. Trump gave out a lot of operational information, as is his wont, so at this very moment people are sifting through that information to learn more, both in the open intelligence community and in national intelligence services.

The one thing I will note is a big contradiction between Trump’s recent retreat (and then return?) from Syria and his saying that this operation had been going on for weeks. To cover for an operation like this, the smartest thing would have been to continue US operations in Syria as they had been going. That would have meant turning down President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s desire to go after the Kurds – delay his operation at least. It’s not clear what role this contradiction played in the actual events, but I suspect it was significant.

So let’s look at what we have. Reports are coming out that Trump’s victory photograph was staged a couple of hours after the operation. It certainly looks staged. Let’s compare that photo and the photo of President Barack Obama’s team during the operation to kill Osama bin Laden.

The Trump photo contains only six people, all white men, all old except Defense Secretary Mark Esper. It looks like a seventh may have been cut out of the photo at the left, with a laptop in front of him. From left to right, they are National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, Vice President Mike Pence, Trump, Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and a military man I don’t know. Most obviously missing is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The Obama photo contains fifteen people, only two in full suit and tie.

The Obama photo is active – people are engaged with a screen to our left. The Trump photo is static, posed, about the men,particularly Trump. All of them are looking at the camera, hoping for a place in posterity, although Esper may be looking at something above the camera.

The mess of cables almost steals the center of the photo from Trump. A short red cable lies unconnected in the foreground. For a number of reasons, including security, I would have gotten those cables out of the way in the preparation for the photo. Notice the more economical arrangement of laptops in the Obama photo. Also coffee cups, which indicate an operation in progress.

The Obama photo is much more diverse – two women, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Audrey Tomason, Director for Counterterrorism for the National Security Council. Additionally, the clothes and manner of wearing them varies across the photo, as do the postures and facial expressions of the participants. Identifications of all the people in the photo at Wikipedia. It’s a team of people, each contributing something different to make the operation work.

Trump is, of course, at the center of his photo, the seal of the President of the United States just above his head, in case anyone might not recognize who this is.

Both photos show papers that may contain classified information. In both cases, I think the papers are too blurred to see much, but I am sure we will hear from the open-source intelligence folks if they can figure something out.

I’m posting this quickly to get ahead of the news flow. Already the New York Times has an article supporting my surmise about the contradiction between the retreat and this raid. It also looks like Trump was golfing rather than watching the raid, as he claimed. More later.

Update: The officer on the right is Brig. Gen. Marcus Evans, the Pentagon’s deputy director for special operations and counterterrorism.

Those PhotosPost + Comments (84)

The Vice President Announces a Ceasefire That Is Not a Ceasefire & the President Announces That Everyone is Happy With It

by Adam L Silverman| October 17, 20193:41 pm| 184 Comments

This post is in: America, Crimes against humanity, Domestic Politics, Foreign Affairs, Military, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, War

Earlier this afternoon, the Vice President, with the Secretary of State behind him, announced a ceasefire he had gotten Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to agree to. The President then did an impromptu press gaggle on the tarmac of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport where he ran with this news. The President spun the Vice President’s announcement of what Turkey supposedly agreed to as great for the Kurds, the Turks, the US, and civilization itself.

There's no apparent basis for Trump's claim just now that "everybody" has been trying to get this Turkey deal for "10 years," unless he means Turkey's government. (He habitually claims that previous administrations couldn't have achieved deals they never tried to achieve.)
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 17, 2019

Trump now says it was "more than" 15 years people have tried to get this deal. This is some of the fastest lieflation in recent memory. https://t.co/04GFSKQYaR
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 17, 2019

Trump concludes of his deal with Turkey: "Civilization is very happy."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 17, 2019

This comment about “having to have it cleaned out” is an excuse and rationalization for ethnic cleansing!

Referring to Kurds living along Turkish border in Syria, Trump says of Turkey, "they had to have it cleaned out." pic.twitter.com/W8J7IFctO3
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2019

TRUMP: "What Turkey is getting now is they are not going to have to kill millions of people." 😳 pic.twitter.com/JXKfam96hv
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2019

The Turks, however, have their own understanding of what was agreed to and it is not a cease fire.

#BREAKING 'Pause of Turkey's operation in Syria is not cease-fire, cease-fire can only happen between two legitimate sides': Turkish foreign minister
— ANADOLU AGENCY (ENG) (@anadoluagency) October 17, 2019

Cavusoglu added that a “safe zone” would need to be established at 32 kilometer (roughly 20 miles) depth from east of Euphrates to the Iraqi border. (Which is what Turkey wanted initially.)
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) October 17, 2019

The ceasefire that the Vice President announced at his press conference in Turkey is not one. Moreover, it doesn’t actually bind the proxy extremist groups that Turkey has turned loose in the area and who have been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in their fight with the Kurds. I’m honestly not even sure this binds the Kurds. And, as a result, we can predict what will happen.

As the Kurds move through this now supposedly temporarily pacified battlespace, to both collect the dead, the wounded, those trapped behind their enemy’s lines and to make it to the new lines 20 miles from the Turkish border, they will come into contact with the Syrian extremist groups that the Turks are using as proxies and a force multiplier. Those Syrian extremists, not bound by the agreement, will initiate hostilities with the Syrian Kurds and Arabs that make up the Syrian Democratic Forces because part of this Turkish operation was to colonize the buffer area they have just been granted by the President via the Vice President and Secretary of State. And the Syrian extremists that Erdogan is using as a proxy force are not going to want to have to let the Syrian Kurds and Arabs trying to get clear of the new buffer area take their property and possessions with them. Those are spoils of war that belong to those extremists who are going to set up shop in the buffer zone with whomever else Erdogan relocates there.

That’s right, you’re not crazy, you’re not hallucinating Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo, on orders from the President, just ceded 20 miles of Syria to Turkey. Land that Syria’s Kurds have long claimed as a homeland where they deserve self determination and recognition as a nation-state. This was done unilaterally. Without consulting with the Syrians. Or the UN. Or Congress. Or seemingly anyone else. I’m sure Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs got asked for their opinions though. The President definitely knows how to get a real estate deal done!

Once the Kurds and Arabs of the SDF come into contact with the Syrian extremists that Erdogan is using as a proxy force and force multiplier, those extremists will attack. And the Syrian Democratic Forces will defend themselves. And once they do that, the Turks will claim that the temporary cessation of hostilities was violated by the Kurds and the SDF, and the Turkish military will restart offensive operations. I give it 12 hours, tops, before we’re back to where we were before the Vice President’s press conference today.

But civilization is happy, so good job everyone!

Mr. President, please help yourself to a Nobel Peace Prize. Take it out of petty cash.

Open thread!

The Vice President Announces a Ceasefire That Is Not a Ceasefire & the President Announces That Everyone is Happy With ItPost + Comments (184)

President Obama & His Administration Did Indeed Have a Strategy for Syria: It is Not President Obama’s Fault if You Don’t Understand It and It is Not an Excuse for What the President Did Last Week

by Adam L Silverman| October 16, 20197:14 pm| 88 Comments

This post is in: Absent Friends, America, Domestic Politics, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Military, RIP, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, War

(Figure 1: Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve Campaign Design)

Since the President’s horrendous decision to pull US Special Forces, as well as the US Marine Corps artillery batteries supporting them out of Syria, a cottage industry has sprung up among the President’s supporters and defenders that this is really the fault of President Obama because President Obama and his administration either had no Syria strategy or they had a bad one. And that this is the ultimate driver of the President’s betrayal of our Syrian Kurdish and Arab partners in the Syrian Democratic Forces that has enabled Erdogan to begin a campaign that will likely include an attempted ethnocide of Syria’s Kurds.

Some of these defenders would not know, let alone understand, low intensity warfare and/or strategy and policy if it walked up and bit them. Some actually know better. But all of them are actually grappling with a strawman. President Obama and his administration had two different, but related strategies regarding Syria. The first was to quite simply not get sucked into the Syrian Civil War. Humanitarian assistance would be provided to refugees seeking shelter in adjacent states, internally displaced Syrians that made it to where the US was operating along the Syrian-Iraqi border or within Syria would be provided for and protected, but the US would not get pulled into the Syrian Civil War, and the underlying proxy wars by regional powers that had been partially driving it, and risk escalating that conflict as it would have regional consequences. Frankly, from a semi-informed observer as this was playing out, this drove a number of President Obama’s actual advisors and senior national security officials nuts as several of them wanted the US to intervene because of the humanitarian crisis being created by the Syrian Civil War. Instead President Obama opted for what was, essentially, a containment strategy of trying to keep the Syrian Civil War and the proxy wars being fought by Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran under its cover contained within Syria so as not to destabilize the rest of the region.

This strategy was really an assumption of risk strategy in order to buy time. The US, as the leader and largest and most militarily powerful member of the multinational coalition operating in the area, would assume the risk that the Syrian Civil War and the proxy wars for regional hegemony subsumed within it, would and could be kept within Syria. That they would not spill out and over its borders and negatively impact Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel. And that they wouldn’t negatively effect the two sets of high level diplomatic negotiations being undertaken in the region: the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative of 2014 and what we now know were the JCPOA+5 negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear energy and weapons programs. President Obama had decided to play for time. To assume the risk that either the Syrian Civil War, the proxy wars for regional hegemony taking place within it, or both wouldn’t blow up into a larger conflagration, spill over Syria’s borders, and engulf the entire region.

It is also important to remember that in 2013, when Bashar Assad’s chemical attack on his own citizenry crossed the red line that President Obama had unequivocally stated, there were calls for both a retaliatory strike to punish and deter Assad and for Congress to weigh in before any action was taken, President Obama did, in fact, seek Congressional approval for such a strike. The majority Republican House of Representatives refused to provide President Obama with the authorization to make that strike and enforce the red line he had set. Congressman Paul Ryan, the chair of House Budget Committee at the time, went so far as to assert that the called for strikes would not achieve US strategic objectives and that they would be “feckless show of force” that would “only damage our credibility”. A New York real estate developer and reality TV star named Donald Trump tweeted that “The only reason President Obama wants to attack Syria is to save face over his very dumb RED LINE statement. Do NOT attack Syria, fix U.S.A.” As a result of Congress denying him explicit military authorization to engage Syrian military targets outside of the Authorization for Military Force for the global war on terror, President Obama did not order a strike.

The Obama administrations’s second Syria strategy was for pursuing the campaign against ISIS. Specifically to apply low intensity and unconventional warfare doctrine to reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate that spanned Iraq and Syria’s shared border, and, ultimately, to reduce ISIS. This is the “by, with, and through” strategy that I’ve referenced here before and that you may have seen mentioned or referred to in news reports and other analyses. Simply put the “by, with, and through” strategy focuses on finding reliable host country partners who are willing to fight on their own behalf and then sending the US’s unconventional warfare specialists, the Green Berets (Special Forces) to embed with them in a train, advise, and assist mission. This is a very, very light footprint strategy. Small teams of US Special Forces known as Operational Detachments Alpha (ODAs), with specific enablers from other elements of US Special Operations Forces and, most likely some of the CIA’s paramilitary operators at the outset, as well as a small support element were sent into Syria to identify, recruit, and vet local Syrians that would then be trained, advised, and assisted with operations against ISIS. Eventually a small contingent of US Marine artillery were also moved into the US led Coalition’s theater of operations in Syria to provide fire support for the ODAs and their host country partners they were embedded with.

Train, advise, and assist has a very specific meaning here. Training means that the Soldiers on the ODAs would teach the Syrian Kurds and Arabs that are known as the Syrian Democratic Forces how to fight more effectively against ISIS. These host country fighters didn’t need to be taught how to fight, both the Syrian Kurds and Arabs have their own ways of war. What the Special Forces Soldiers on the ODAs did do was to teach them to fight more effectively at the tactical and operational levels against the specific type of enemy that is ISIS within the theater strategy that was established based on the US’s national strategy against ISIS. Training blends into advising and assisting, especially in regard to logistics and planning. As the Syrian Democratic Forces became a more effective host country fighting force, especially within the context of the type of campaign that had been designed to reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate, defeat them, and then retard their ability to continue to terrorize and destabilize the region*, the US Special Forces would do less assisting in the actual combat operations. Part of the assistance was also air support. The US led Coalition flew sorties day and night as necessary to degrade ISIS targets on the ground. Here is the link to the continually updated list of these sorties and strikes.

The US and its coalition partners had been trying to successfully adapt and implement a “by, with, and through” strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan since GEN (ret) Petraues’s revised Counterinsurgency Manual, FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency, arrived to great fanfare in the mid aughts. The key idea behind a “by, with, and through” strategy is to empower the lowest societal level you can work with, ie the population layer/element, work from that level up (work from the bottom up), and then reconcile the tactical and operations gains made with the state to state strategic efforts, such as diplomatic initiatives and the use of economic and information power, being made at the top end. This never really worked during Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom (OIF and OEF) because we didn’t actually institute a true “by, with, and through” strategy. Rather, we had US Conventional Forces and our Coalition partners, also usually Conventional Forces, trying to implement and realize something that is the specialty of US Special Forces. I’m not knocking the efforts put in or the actual tactical and operational successes achieved, as there were and are many, just that the size of Iraq and Afghanistan and the need to have Conventional Forces work outside their expertise by undertaking an unconventional warfare strategy, did not lead to theater strategic success. Often because of failures at the national and theater strategic levels and despite the tactical and operational successes.

The size, scope, and scale of OIF and OEF made it impossible to let Special Forces take the lead as we simply do not have enough Green Berets to work one entire theater the size of Iraq, let alone two with the second theater being the size of Afghanistan. Even if we pulled in all the other US Special Operations Forces – SEALs, Operational Detachment Delta/Delta Force, Rangers, Air Commandos, Recon Marines, the Intelligence Support Activity (Gray Fox/Field Operating Group), Civil Affairs, and PSYOPers – and had them pick up the slack while ignoring their own missions and mission specialty areas, we still wouldn’t have had enough Special Operations Forces to do the job. There is a reason that Marines and Special Operations Forces fight battles and conventional Armies fight campaigns and wars in the Land Domain; because the former do not have the capacity to scale to the latter.

The campaign against ISIS in Syria, however, was different. The theater of operations was limited in size. We had been able to identify, recruit, vet, and then train reliable host country partners that we and our Coalition allies could work “by, with, and through”. A limited number of Operational Detachment Alphas, plussed up with personnel from other SOF elements, with a small support element and a small amount of Marine artillery batteries for fire support were tremendously successful! Perhaps beyond anyone’s legitimate expectations based on the mixed results from trying to apply the “by, with, and through” strategy during the latter portions of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. And that success carried over to maintaining the peace in the area of operations once ISIS’s physical caliphate had been reduced. About 1,000 US Special Forces and Special Operating Forces, working with the SDF, had been able to reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate to nothing because the SDF, as the host country partners, did the hard, dangerous, and deadly work. Which is why the SDF suffered over 10,000 killed in action and the US Special Forces partnering with them suffered zero KIA in this campaign.

What the President has thrown away with his rash and ill considered pull out and betrayal of our Syrian Kurdish and Arab allies, and what his defenders and supporters don’t understand in their rush to defend him by blaming all of this on President Obama and his administration, is just how successful this campaign against ISIS has been. How much reward we reaped in exchange for the amount of blood and treasure wagered and risk assumed. And how well it was working to maintain the peace in this area of Syria by preventing ISIS from reestablishing a stable physical ground base of operations from which to try to reestablish the physical caliphate.

There wasn’t one single Obama administration strategy for Syria, there were two distinct and specific strategies. The first was to assume risk by not intervening in the Syrian Civil War in order to buy time for what were considered to be other regional priorities – the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and the JCPOA+5 negotiations and the reduction of ISIS. The second was an unconventional warfare strategy to degrade and reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate and reduce ISIS’s capacity to continue to terrorize and destabilize the region. While the first strategy’s efficacy is debatable, the second strategy to counter ISIS has been successful beyond all possible expectations. And the President has thrown away all of that success and by doing so betrayed our Syrian Kurdish and Arab partners, weakened and diminished the United States power and ability to project power, and degraded our moral standing. He has further destabilized the region. He has handed the Russians, the Syrians, the Iranians, and the Turks a victory without them having to actually contest for it. And he has most likely set the conditions for Erdogan to try to finally solve his Kurdish problem.

Open thread!

This post is dedicated to the late Sergeant First Class (ret) Terry Caldwell. Terry was my Area Specialty Officer (ASO) and taught me everything I know about small team operations and the practical realities of asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare. Rest well Old Man!

* Interestingly enough the chart at the previous link is based on the four phases of conventional warfare, not the seven phases of unconventional warfare used by US Special Forces, which is the result of the commend element of CJTF-OIR being a conventional 3 star Corps headquarters. There is also a full description of the campaign at that link.

Disclosure: In May 2015 I was on site to present the kickoff and keynote briefing of XVIII Airborne Corps’ strategic assessment week and was on site throughout the week as the cultural subject matter expert/cultural advisor as their preparation for assuming command of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve. The briefing focused on the regional strategic and geo-strategic considerations of the Levantine problem set and the campaign against ISIS. It was specifically prepared for the Commanding General, Command Group, senior staff, as much of their staff as could be jammed into the auditorium, and a variety of attendees by secure videoteleconference at a number of outstations. Also in attendance were several senior leaders (general officers) from our Coalition partners who were on the Coalition senior staff. In the weeks after the briefing I prepared a strategic assessment on how to leverage the campaign against ISIS to set the conditions in the theater of operations to secure the peace after the termination of military operations. My work for XVIII Airborne Corps was as a private consultant being paid on contract. I was asked to do this work by the then Corps’ G5 (Officer in Charge of Plans), who I’d both previously worked with at III Corps and who was a student at USAWC when I was the cultural advisor at both. My civilian mobilization/appointment as a senior civil servant at both USAWC and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Security Dialogue assigned to US Army Europe were not political appointments. I was not then, nor have a I ever been, part of President Obama’s appointed foreign policy, national security, and/or defense policy team, though I did provide significant support to a number of those appointees during my civilian mobilization from 2010 through 2014.

President Obama & His Administration Did Indeed Have a Strategy for Syria: It is Not President Obama’s Fault if You Don’t Understand It and It is Not an Excuse for What the President Did Last WeekPost + Comments (88)

A Few Thoughts On the Betrayal of the Kurds: I’m Ashamed and We Should All Be Ashamed

by Adam L Silverman| October 9, 20199:47 pm| 117 Comments

This post is in: America, Foreign Affairs, Military, Silverman on Security, War

In 2008 the Georgian battalion that was part of the Coalition Forces of Operation Iraqi Freedom was attached to the brigade combat team that I and my teammates were assigned to. When Putin invaded the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of Georgia under the excuse of a border dispute and protecting ethnic Russians, the Georgian battalion was immediately ordered to return home and fight. The Georgians had only been part of the coalition because the Bush 43 administration had intimated that if the Georgians helped us in Iraq, then the US would support them joining NATO. The Georgians wanted to join NATO as protection from Putin’s interests in reestablishing what he believes is Russia’s rightful sphere of interest and historic near abroad. In reality, the Bush 43 administration wasn’t really going to push for them to join NATO and didn’t.

The brigade’s job was to help facilitate the Georgians’ movement home. To ensure they got from the combat outpost they had been operating from through the command forward operating base and on to one of the two large US bases adjacent to Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) from which they’d fly home. As they transited through many of us thanked them for working with us, wished them well, told them we’d be thinking of them. Some were stoic. Some wanted one last group picture with my female analyst – a former student of mine (frankly one of the best students I’d ever had undergrad or grad) who I’d recruited to my team and who was also an olympic class athlete who also did fitness competitions, which explains the enthusiasm for the pictures. And some asked us the question that will haunt me forever:

You’re coming, right? We came to help you, you’re coming to help us? Right?

I’d never before been embarrassed to be an American. And even though my service at that time was as a supervisory contractor, because all the civilians in the experimental Army program that had sent my teammates and I to Iraq had to be contractors by regulation because it was an experiment not a program of record, I have never been so embarrassed and so ashamed to be both an American and in service to America as I was that day. Because I knew, we all knew, that we weren’t coming. That these men, from a battalion that had suffered more KIA’s in our operational environment/area of responsibility than we had, were on their own. We weren’t coming. No one from US Army Europe or the South European Task Force or EUCOM or NATO was coming. We’d, or rather our national command authority both elected and appointed, had asked them to fight and die with us and we would not return the courtesy or repay the debt.

Today I read a Twitter thread by a reporter with a source from the Syrian Democratic Forces on the ground in Syria who is in harm’s way. That thread reported what her source was telling her, which was that the SDF in Kobani, as well as the civilians there, were not going to stand and fight this time as they had previously against ISIS. Instead they were all pulling out and heading to an American military base in the area in the hope that the Americans were both still there and that the US commander at that base would allow them to seek shelter and sanctuary there from the Turkish assault that the President’s rash decision has made possible. And when I read that thread I had two reactions. The first was that same sense of shame I had on that August day in 2008 as all I could do was wish Georgian Soldiers the best as they went back home to fight falsely hoping we would soon arrive like the cavalry coming over the hill in the nick of time in an old western.

The other feeling was amazement. Amazement that even though they knew that the President of the United States had betrayed them, had given approval for Erdogan to try to obliterate them in his ongoing ethnocidal and genocidal campaign against the Kurds under the cover of a counterterrorism operation, they still believed that if they could get to where the American flag was flying they would be safe. It is stunningly mind and emotion boggling, to the point that I am actually having trouble typing it out, that knowing that they had been betrayed by the President of the United States, the belief of these men and women is that if they could get to territory held by the United States, in this case a military base, that if they packed up what they could, grabbed their families, and drove hard through an hours and miles long traffic jam of their friends and neighbors and fellow SDF in the middle of what is now a very hot war zone, that at the end of that exodus was hope. At the end of that exodus was safety. Because at the end of that flight from danger, through danger, was a berm and hescos and a gate with a guard tower where the American flag would be flying. In the face of this cruelest, most pointless betrayal their thoughts were to run to those wearing uniforms that bear the American flag – the flag of their betrayers. Because that flag, despite the betrayal, symbolized to them their last best hope for safety.

I have no idea if the base they are trying to reach is still there. I haven’t seen any follow on and follow up reporting, but I would like to believe that the commander of that base would open the gate and provide refuge to our erstwhile allies to lessen the betrayal and pay the moral debt that the President has now created for all of us Americans. And I’d like to believe that most will make it. But belief and hope are not strategies.

I don’t know yet, and I’m not sure we ever will know, how to properly assess the damage that will happen as a result of the President’s decision to betray the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurds and Arabs, Muslims and Syriac Christian alike, who had been decisively instrumental in successfully achieving our and our other allies’ strategic objectives of reducing ISIS’s physical caliphate. The SDF suffered over 10,000 Killed in Action and I’m not even sure the total number of wounded in action as the host country component to the by, with, and through strategy we’ve been using against ISIS since 2015. I know that as many ISIS detainees that can go into the wind will. And that they’ll scatter throughout the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, and Europe, which will increase both discreet acts of terrorism and instability in all of the states and societies in those regions. We’ll also see increased refugee flows as both SDF and non SDF from the areas now or soon to be under attack by Turkey flee looking for safety. This will increase instability in adjoining states like Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. It will also create even more problems for our EU and NATO allies as many will try to flee there because the neo-nationalist and neo-fascist parties and movements in the EU member states, all funded overtly or covertly by Putin, leverage refugee flows from the Levant as part of their anti-governmental and anti-EU political activities. I don’t know how many US and Coalition military personnel, let alone civilians, will be hurt or killed because of the President’s rash actions, and I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to directly tie those injuries or deaths back to this decision to betray the SDF in specific and the Kurds in general, but they will occur nevertheless. And I have no way to quantify or qualify what this will do to our ability to find partners and allies in the future, but I’m sure, despite the President’s glib assurances this afternoon that “alliances are easy”, that it will make it much, much, much harder for the US to partner and ally with other state and non-state actors to achieve our national interests in the future.

The events of the past three days may likely be the worst national security and foreign policy decision ever made by a US president. Which, given the long rich history of bad national security and foreign policy decisions made by US presidents, is saying something. Based on the reporting it was made without any formal or even informal decision making process. Without any input or recommendations by the senior military advisors on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the senior leadership of our Intelligence Services, by either the Geographic Combatant Commander or the Coalition Commanding General in the theater of operations, or by any of our allies in the Coalition. It is a rash, short sighted, stupid, self defeating, self harming decision. It is a decision that betrayed our host country allies; allies who have fought valiantly and suffered significant casualties as a result because they were willing to fight for their own chance for self determination. And it is a decision that shames all of us who are Americans, even those unable to recognize that they should be ashamed because the slavishly support anything and everything the President does.

Today, for the second time, I am ashamed to be an American. And I am also amazed that those we’ve betrayed still flee from danger through danger in the attempt to reach a base where the American flag may still fly because they believe, despite the betrayal, that at the end of that dangerous journey is hope and safety. And from that, in my shame, I take a small amount of hope.

Open thread.

Full disclosure: I served from October 2007 through November 2008 as the Cultural Advisor to the Commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team/1st Armored Division and was deployed with the brigade in Iraq in 2008. I have also served as the Cultural Advisor to the Commandant of the US Army War College (2010-2014), the Cultural Advisor (Temporary Assigned Control) to the Commanding General of III Corps (January – October 2012), the Cultural Advisor (Temporary Assigned Control) to the Civil Affairs Branch Chief (October 2012 – November 2013), the Cultural Advisor (Temporary Assigned Control) to the Director of the Institute for NCO Professional Development and the Commandant of the US Sergeants Major Academy (November 2013 through June 2014), the Cultural Advisor (Temporary Assigned Control) to the Commanding General of US Army Europe (December 2013 – June 2014), and a senior subject matter expert at the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Security Dialogue in the Middle East assigned as the Cultural Advisor to the Commanding General of US Army Europe (July – August 2014). I served briefly as a Senior Special Operations Fellow at the Joint Special Operations University Center for Special Operations Studies and Research at US Special Operations Command (May – August 2015). In May 2016 I provided the keynote and kickoff briefing on the regional and geo-strategic considerations of the Levant problem set for the Commanding General, Command Group, and senior staff of XVIII Airborne Corps prior to their deployment as the command element of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve. In November 2018 I delivered the keynote address at the US Army Psychological Operations Regiment’s 100th anniversary regimental dinner. I currently work as a national-security consultant. The views expressed here are my own and do not reflect those of any of the commands, elements, or offices that I have ever advised and/or are currently supporting.

A Few Thoughts On the Betrayal of the Kurds: I’m Ashamed and We Should All Be AshamedPost + Comments (117)

Band Aid on a Sucking Chest Wound

by 15 flush mistermix| September 19, 20191:09 pm| 78 Comments

This post is in: War

Let’s think about this before we start another war:

At the Veterans Crisis Line in Canandaigua, New York, the calls come in all day and night. Every day, 1,700 calls come in from veterans on the brink. […]
Twenty veterans take their lives every day in America, or 6,000 a year. Personal finances, broken relationships and loneliness are all factors. […]
Responder Terrence Davis, a Navy veteran himself, said he always tries to answer by the second ring.
“It’s highly stressful. Just knowing that you have someone else’s life in your hands,” Davis said.
Former Sergeant Danny O’Neel knows that feeling. Santa Cruz, California, may be a long way from the battlefield, but for him and his men, Sadr City, Iraq, is close by.
“It was hell on Earth. It was the most dangerous place at the time,” O’Neel said.
In 2006, his unit lost nine men in the fighting. But back home, 14 have died at their own hands.
“The guys started isolating and drinking and doing things that they thought were helping them cope. And it, and it led to depression and suicide,” he said.

Suicide hotline operators, and every other healthcare provider trying to heal these vets, are doing some of the hardest work there is. But their labor is a tiny fraction of what’s needed to stop these preventable deaths. We need more research, more providers, and more money spent on providing care for vets and others. More broadly, we need to expand our concept of a casualty of war, and understand the true long-term cost of wars that DC armchair warriors are constantly pushing.

Band Aid on a Sucking Chest WoundPost + Comments (78)

Looking Ahead

by Betty Cracker| September 11, 20191:18 pm| 108 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, War, War on Terror

The little town downriver from us scared the shit out of me about an hour ago by blasting an air raid siren I never knew existed until today. I only heard it faintly because of the distance, but it was alarming, as it was designed to be.

I’m speculating it was sounded at a noon observance of the 9/11 attacks? Here’s my personal observance of 9/11, and I think it will be the last one I ever share here or anywhere else.

Our daughter was three years old on 9/11/2001. Now she’s 21, and the war that started that day is still going on.

Our nephew was 18 years old on 9/11/2001. Today he’s 36, the father of two small children, and an officer in the US Army serving in Afghanistan. (He’s also done tours in Iraq, including leading foot patrols through Baghdad during the most dangerous period for US service members.)

Last week, Trump apparently mistook diplomats engaged for months/years in peace negotiations for an annoyingly balky reality show production crew and stepped in to personally speed things up for a glitzy Sweeps Week finish. Because he is and always has been an epic fuck-up, Trump fucked that up too, so now the war in Afghanistan will continue for at least another 14 months.

Enough of this fucking bullshit.

Sometimes I wonder how much “Never Forget” gets in the way of “Get the Fuck Out.” Fascist shit-birds like Rudy Giuliani, Karl Rove and Donald Trump will hump the 9/11 attacks until their wizened scrotums pass into dust because they (correctly) perceive it as a path to power.

Their role in extending our national trauma for power and profit has been obvious since the beginning. Joe Biden, God bless him, called Giuliani out on it more than a decade ago.

But even our good politicians feel obligated to issue solemn statements and speak in hushed tones every September 11. Here’s what I wonder: Does fixating on that horrendous day all these years later perpetuate its power and contribute to its potential to cause even more suffering?

I honestly don’t know, but personally, I’m done with “Never Forget,” at least in the prescribed way that the dishonest tragedy-humpers wallow in on this day every year.

Instead, I’ll look ahead and work toward a future where my daughter can consciously live in a country that isn’t “at war” (accursed phrase!) for the first time in her life, and my nephew can come home to his wife and children.

Open thread.

Looking AheadPost + Comments (108)

Jim, Foolish Literalist on Cool Cat Open Thread (Dec 12, 2019 @ 10:16pm)

JaySinWA on How Did They Do It? (Dec 12, 2019 @ 10:16pm)

Another Scott on How Did They Do It? (Dec 12, 2019 @ 10:16pm)

Kent on How Did They Do It? (Dec 12, 2019 @ 10:16pm)

🐾BillinGlendaleCA on How Did They Do It? (Dec 12, 2019 @ 10:15pm)

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

We can agree to disagree, but I’m right.

A snarling mass of vitriolic vicious jackals

Militantly superior in their own minds…

Mission Accomplished!

Just a few bad apples.

It’s a tarp!

Women: They Get Shit Done

Verified, but limited!

Wetsuit optional.

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Screw the Judean People’s Front. Splitters.

An army of rabid, anonymous commenters

I showered with Rahm and all I got was this shitty blog.

Gastritis Broke My Calculator

We still have time to mess this up!

The Math Demands It!

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

Word salad with all caps

Not all heroes wear capes.

Black PSYOP Part IV: Rudy Giuliani’s European OANN Adventure is the Black PSYOP’s Sixth Line of Operation

Meanwhile in Ukraine

Black PSYOP Part III: The Fifth Domestic Line of Operation is Now Operational

DisOrder & UnDiscipline: An Out of Control E7, an Out of Control Fox & Friends Weekend Loud Mouth, and an Out of Order Chain of Command

Some Thoughts On the Campaign Before Tonight’s Debate

TAKE THE OIL!

Veterans Day 2019: Veterans in Exile

Kristallnacht 81 Years Later

Mikhail Gorbachev, Hero

Those Photos

The Vice President Announces a Ceasefire That Is Not a Ceasefire & the President Announces That Everyone is Happy With It

President Obama & His Administration Did Indeed Have a Strategy for Syria: It is Not President Obama’s Fault if You Don’t Understand It and It is Not an Excuse for What the President Did Last Week

A Few Thoughts On the Betrayal of the Kurds: I’m Ashamed and We Should All Be Ashamed

Band Aid on a Sucking Chest Wound

Looking Ahead