Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

It was, in fact, named Jelly.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

This fight is for everything.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

The willow is too close to the house.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

No one could have predicted…

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

I really should read my own blog.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Cillizza, who will never be asked to bring the noodle salad to the mensa picnic…

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War on Terror

Finally Pulling Out

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Betty mentioned this earlier, and I am hoping Adam will have a long discussion about it because he will know more than me, but it looks like we are FINALLY withdrawing from Afghanistan:

President Biden will withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan over the coming months, U.S. officials said, completing the military exit by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that drew the United States into its longest war.

The decision, which Biden is expected to announce Wednesday, will keep thousands of U.S. forces in the country beyond the May 1 exit deadline that the Trump administration negotiated last year with the Taliban, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters Tuesday under rules of anonymity set by the White House.

While the Taliban has promised to renew attacks on U.S. and NATO personnel if foreign troops are not out by the deadline — and said in a statement it would not continue to participate in “any conference” about Afghanistan’s future until all “foreign forces” have departed — it is not clear whether the militants will follow through with the earlier threats given Biden’s plan for a phased withdrawal between now and September. The Taliban has conducted sputtering talks with the Afghan government, begun under the Trump deal, since last fall. It was also invited to an additional high-level inter-Afghan discussion in Turkey later this month.

We’ve been there for 20 years. We have been there longer than this website has existed. Colleges and universities are filled with juniors and seniors who have lived their entire lives while we have been at war in Afghanistan. We have been there so long that stories of fathers and their children both being deployed at the same time are common.

In 1941, Hitler invaded Russia as Operation Barbarossa started. The Russians were decimated, knocked back on their heels, but in less than two years they rebuilt multiple armies and defeating the Nazis at the two most important battles in World War II, the battle for Stalingrad and the defense of the salient at Kursk.

We’ve had 20 years. Bin Laden is dead. Call it a win and leave.

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(No) Horrorshow Open Thread: An Unlamented ‘Victim’ of the Pandemic

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There’s just no media headspace for an aspiring young terrorist seeking political martyrdom. Per the Washington Post, “Suspect in New Zealand mosque shootings unexpectedly pleads guilty to 51 murder charges”:

Surprise, relief and a “mix of emotions” greeted the news Thursday that Brenton Tarrant, the man who had carried out New Zealand’s worst peacetime atrocity, had reversed his not-guilty plea and was convicted on all charges.

Tarrant killed 51 worshipers and injured dozens at two mosques in Christchurch on March 15 last year. The first of the attacks was live-streamed on the Internet.

The Australian national was charged with the highest number of murder counts brought against an individual in New Zealand’s history, to which a terrorism offense and 40 counts of attempted murder were added.

The reasons behind Tarrant’s surprise move to switch his plea to guilty remain unclear; he had previously denied culpability, and a trial had been scheduled for June. The news broke as New Zealand began a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Appearing in Christchurch High Court on Thursday by video link from an Auckland prison, a gaunt Tarrant, 29, listened to the court registrar read out the charges and the names of the dead. Two senior members of Christchurch’s Muslim community were present, although victims’ families and other survivors did not attend.

Tarrant, who could face life in prison, was remanded into custody by Justice Cameron Mander, the presiding judge, until May 1, by which time a date for the sentencing would be set. Attorneys for Tarrant, New Zealand’s first convicted terrorist, did not respond to a request for comment…

Graeme Edgeler, a Wellington-based lawyer and legal commentator, noted that a guilty plea, however belated, might open the possibility of a sentence with parole.

“In New Zealand, a person pleading guilty is usually entitled to a reduction in their sentence for the guilty plea, so there may be a hope that a guilty plea will mean there will only be a life sentence with a very long nonparole period, instead of a sentence of life without parole,” he said.

The offense is so serious, however, “that even with a guilty plea, a life-without-parole sentence must still be likely,” Edgeler added…

Anjum Rahman, a spokeswoman for New Zealand’s Islamic Women’s Council, said that while the guilty plea did not deliver closure, “the main thing is that we do not have to sit through a whole court case and hear a defense of atrocious acts.”

New Zealand has been conducting an official inquiry into the massacre, with agencies such as the intelligence services questioned about the circumstances leading to the atrocity. But much evidence had been subject to suppression orders to avoid jeopardizing Tarrant’s right to a fair trial.

With Tarrant’s guilty plea, Rahman called Thursday for the inquiry evidence to be made public…

I suspect this sad little manling dreamed of the ‘celebrity’ he’d achieve when a sensation-hungry press picked through every detail of his miserable life and semi-literate manifesto, but COVID-19 is a mass murderer no mere incel racist can hope to compete against.

He’s ready to (unfortunately, some might say) get on with the rest of his life, under state supervision, rather than face the tedium of listening to a bunch of lawyers drone to an empty courtroom as if he were some mere shoplifter.

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Late Night Open Thread: When Narwhal Tusks Are Outlawed…

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… Actually, as far as I can tell from a cursory google search, because the narwhal is a protected species, only pre-1972 narwhal tusks are legal in the U.S. (The one spontaneously repurposed in London was a pub ornament, date of its collection unspecified.) And given the legal ones are hella pricey, there’d probably be fewer stories like this…


I’m not fond of unannounced drop-ins either, but jeez.

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

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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.

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“Bring Me the Head of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi”: Early Reviews, Not Promising

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Publicity-grab sequels seldom match the success of the originals. Title of this post from a Christopher Dickey article in the Daily Beast, “Trump Turns Baghdadi’s Killing Into a Reality Show”:

PARIS—President Donald J. Trump wants you to see his new movie: “Bring Me the Head of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”

At a special Sunday morning press conference in Washington D.C., Trump described the way U.S. Special Operations Forces attacked Baghdadi’s compound and killed him in such graphic and explicit detail that some intelligence professionals worried he may have revealed, again, too much about sources and methods.

But Trump knows great television when he sees it, and he was enthusiastic about the images he was watching from the White House situation room Saturday night. “It was absolutely perfect, as though you were watching a movie,” he said…

The reasons such a video of the 2011 Osama operation was not released are the same ones that the intelligence community will use to argue against dissemination of the Baghdadi death: because such images could compromise so much about the operation.

But quite apart from Trump’s worthy desire to undermine the messaging of the still virulent ISIS organization, there is also his unworthy inclination to gloat. Remember when Trump tweeted a highly classified high-resolution image of a failed Iranian missile launch earlier this year for little more reason, it would seem, that smug self-satisfaction?

Trump hates it when the fast-turning news cycle that he uses effectively to obscure his failings also works to push his accomplishments into oblivion…

He’ll be tweeting obscenities — not dirty words, but actual graphic images & descriptions — no later than tomorrow morning. And that’s only if the Fox News prime-time lineup lathers sufficient Kim-Jong-un – style propaganda all this evening.

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Those Photos

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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.

 

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Looking Ahead

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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.

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