Bill Murray - Where are you, buddy?

All you new people are making life tedious.  I have been teaching this course for twelve years and one can always hope that some lessons are absorbed but then a new wave of you come on the scene, asking questions like "what part of the defense and intelligence establishment is worthwhile?"  If you want to ask me questions or anyone else at SST please look first in the archives of the blog and don't expect someone here to write you a summary course on government organization.   I have quit working but I used to collect a reasonably high fee for such a task.

There are a few mildly interesting things in the news today:

1.  The LA Times referred to Adam Schiff today as an "attack labradoodle."  This adequately conveys the impression of a person straining to be fierce when it just ain't in him.

2.  It seems that regime change in Syria is no longer the policy of the US.  Well, thank God.  Syria is infested with various kinds of jihadis and everyone needs to concentrate on exterminating them. 

3.  Fariid Zakariya had on his newsie today a pair of film makers who have generated a documentary that is clearly AQ propaganda,  These two, a man and a woman had jihadi written all over them.  If she had been any more covered up she would have been invisible and the man was glowering mass of beard and smoking eyes.  These two claimed that the Syrian government had never fought against jihadism.  They claimed that it is only against the freedom loving FSA that the dastardly bastards of the Tiger Forces, Syrian Marines, etc.  have been fighting all this time.  This was particularly funny given their clear visual representation of the jihadi ideal way of death.  BTW if you are a non-troll and don't know that the SAA and friends are fighting IS out along the dusty trail to Deir al-Zor , as well as AQ derivatives in northern Hama, then you are ill informed.  Ah, yes, there are also the SAA troops fighting their way eastward south of Lake Assad against IS.  One can only wonder if Zakariya believes this drivel himself.  I sure hope they had that woman searched before they let her on the set.  You could hide anything under all that loose cloth.

4.  And then there is the Gorsuch caper.  McConnell made it very clear on FNS today that Gorsuch will sit on SCOTUS by the end of the week.  He pointed out that it really only requires a majority for confirmation on SCOTUS.  The 60% thing is a recent requirement for cloture to shut off debate in order to have a floor vote.  OK Democratic Base!  Go for it! 

5.  We killed a lot of civilians in Mosul as the R+6 killed a lot civilians in East Aleppo?  Well, pilgrims, there is moral equivalence.  Civilians get killed in war.  Sometimes they are deliberately killed as in Hamburg, Tokyo and on 9/11.  Sometimes they are killed per misadventure.  War is a savage business.  Sherman, whom I detest, had it right.  It is not possible to avoid such horrors.  Only civilians think it is possible to fight wars that are not murderous affairs. 

pl

Comments

[helenk3]

If my post bother you. I am sorry. I can here because your blog was recommended by a friend.

[Chris Chuba]

1. I can't stomach Fareed Zakaria anymore. A year ago he would at least assemble a panel where 1 or possibly 2 out of 4 actually had different views rather than push a narrative but ever since Trump got elected he has become unhinged. He hates Trump so bad that he hates anything that Trump seems to like, Trump said he wanted to reboot relations w/Russia so Fareed is all in on Putin is a NAZI. Trump says that he is out of the regime change business, so now Fareed is all in on demonizing the Syrian govt. It's too bad, while Zakaria was always a Neocon, he has taken a turn for the worse.

2. It's great that we are out of the regime change business but I find Nikki Haley insufferable. She has given exclusive interviews w/FOX calling Assad a war criminal who must be brought to justice for at least three chemical weapons attacks (10 fatalities?). She is now President of the Security Council for a month and channeling Samantha Power. Of all of the things in the world that she is concerned about, she worries about the anti-Israel bias at the U.N. and wants to teach the world U.S. values. She is not concerned about the KSA's starvation blockade of Yemen but about a non-binding resolution that Obama pushed in his final days. How do we produce such people?

[Prem]

The March for Women in DC was led by a woman called Linda Sarsour who extols the virtues of shariah law and the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. She is lionised in the likes of Slate and the Huffington Post.

The love-in between feminists and Wahabism is very strange phenomenon. I can see why Israelis might have a tactical alliance, but what on earth do these people hope to gain?

[LeeG]

Dear Pat, you have an open blog for correspondence and are complaining about getting participants with an elementary understanding. The solution is pretty obvious.

[turcopolier]

LeeG

You think I should shut the thing down? pl

[Sam Peralta]

Helen

I find the quantity of your posts with just links annoying. IMO, it would be better to focus on just a couple that are germane to the discussion and your opinions & analysis of what was written on those links.

[Sam Peralta]

Col. Lang

One problem that we have is that those civilians who make the decisions to go to war, have limited personal loss, if at all, as their kids are highly unlikely to serve. This of course can be solved with a draft or mandatory military or national service for all kids including those of the big muckety mucks.

Another problem is that Congress never actually declares war and gets the whole society behind that war as we did during WWII. They weasel out with the AUMF which is now enabling the third president to intervene whereever.

[Sam Peralta]

Is Nikki even in the loop? She seems to be saying whatever.

[MRW]

Re: #1.

Adam Schiff strikes me as a sanctimonious whiny SOB. He always seems as if he’s on the verge of tears because he isn’t being accepted or believed. sniff

[Jonst]

Please go away now. This forum is wasted on you.

[Ghostship]

Then it'll be interesting to see what happens in Ecuador. Will there be a "color revolution" or will Lasso be "told" to go home and wait for the next election. The only fly in the ointment with the latter, is if the Democrats in their hatred of Julian Assange suggest that Trump is not starting a coup in Quito to protect his dear friend and ally, the man who put him in the White House, Julian Assange.

[The Porkchop Express]

Smug self-satisfaction?

[C L]

I would recommend:
Introduction email sent to for 1st time posters with the loose rules of commenting on this blog laid out.

[The Porkchop Express]

Their bizarre symbiosis always reminds me of a great, old Internet post:

"Another thing worth noting is that the threshold for being offended is a very important tool for judging and ranking white people. Missing an opportunity to be outraged is like missing a reference to Derrida-it’s social death."

https://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/05/28/101-being-offended/

[The Beaver]

Colonel

The latest this morning:

Jared Kushner is in Iraq with General Dunford this morning. SoS Tillerson has not even been to Iraq yet.

[calicochris]

Col Lang, kindly don't shut the thing down. I come here for a warrior's perspective and this is my 2nd comment only after years of reading. You give me that warrior's perspective although I frequently do not like your answers. But truth is truth and you give that. Kindly don't shut the thing down.

[Lee A. Arnold]

What if Sen. McConnell cannot get a majority vote to overturn the filibuster?

If the filibuster is ended, the GOP may not like it the next time that the Democrats control the Senate.

[Priam's Crazy Daughter]

I have a terrible time searching the Internet for stories that might interest me about politics and foreign affairs. No matter what people suggest to prevent the computer screen from making my eyes hurt, those things just do not help.

So, I appreciate the stories you point out on those topics. Thank you.

[Lars]

According to information available online, you seem to have gotten several facts wrong. There was a smear campaign by right-wingers on the Internet and you seem to have accepted their fabrications.

I briefly attended that march and it was barely led by anyone. It was largely organic and the only organizing aspect was the use of social media that stated when and where and who planned to attend.

[confusedponderer]

CC,
re"Trump said he wanted to reboot relations w/Russia so Fareed is all in on Putin is a NAZI"

Well, a sober man would openly accept that Putin is a lot of things - but not a nazi.

Amusingly, it was, of all people, one Mr Trump who made one grumpily Richard 'Hail Trump' Spencer - his speaker. An unwise choice IMO.

Sometimes you recognise who you have in front of you by judging what they do, what they say and what friends they have. To get my idea:

"Mr Spencer is banned from the UK and 26 other European countries, after he was deported from Hungary for organising a conference for white nationalists."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/richard-spencer-white-nationalist-leading-alt-right-movement/

A notable achievement - and only a small part of his glory. Speaking at a US event Mr Spencer ...

"... railed against Jews and, with a smile, quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the “children of the sun,” a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of President-elect Donald J. Trump, were “awakening to their own identity.”

As he finished, several audience members had their arms outstretched in a Nazi salute. Mr. Spencer called out: “Hail Trump! Hail our people!” and then, “Hail victory!” — the English translation of the Nazi exhortation “Sieg Heil!” The room shouted back."

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/alt-right-salutes-donald-trump.html

Ok, re 'what they do, what they say and what friends they have' - what precisely do we have in front of us with Richard Spencer? Just a troll?

re: "How do we produce such people?"

Suggestion: By hitting an innocent wall with their heads a lot?

[Morongobill]

The love in will last until one of them gets whipped by the religious police over in Saudi Arabia.

[Lefty_Blaker]

Lars,

I was about to make the same comment, but you beat me to it. How easily an activist like Sarsour but s smeared and then have it accepted as "fact" when he left view is indeed far more nuanced. In fact according to Wikipedia she " in February 2017, Sarsour worked with other Muslim activists to launch a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to repair the damage and restore the gravesites. More than $125,000 was raised, and Sarsour pledged to donate any funds not needed at the cemetery to other Jewish community centers or sites targeted by vandalism. She said the fundraising effort would "send a united message from the Jewish and Muslim communities that there is no place for this type of hate, desecration, and violence in America." Hmmm.

[Priam's Crazy Daughter]

I am probably one of the offensive people who comment, but I am sincere in my desire to understand what is going on with our intelligence agencies. And I have always understood that war is hell. I have read and studied as much and probably more than many of my male friends about World War I and World War II. I have also studied the ancient wars of Greece and Rome. Of course civilians are killed in war time. Who but mindless snowflakes, as they call them, wouldn't know that? It doesn't mean, however, that my heart can't feel for those civilians caught in the middle of the conflict. During the GHWB war and the GWB war, I was reading and listening all the time to the news. I felt as torn up for everyone involved, soldiers and civilians. I was a bit concerned because I still hadn't figured out how exactly we (our intelligence agencies) had been dealing with Saddam Hussein as an ally against Iran and then was suddenly someone to hate. So, yes, intelligence agencies have always been a concern for me as a citizen because their job is to be secretive, and that makes me a little nervous. Of course I want to trust them, but at the same time they have been used in a way that I might not approve if I did know all that was happening. It's made me almost a libertarian no foreign interference sort of person.

The current political turmoil seems completely entangled in "intelligence" gathering agencies of our government. I will do my due diligence and search your archives.

But, at this time, the situation in regard to "intelligence" is causing more trouble than I think "intelligence" has before. There seems to be an obvious need to make some changes, clean out the bad actors from the agencies, or do some reorganization or retraining of some kind. Citizens try their best to trust our government, but lately I am afraid we have lots of young idiots who have been put in places they have no business being, and they've been put there for political reasons.

I did my best to figure out what was going on during Iran Contra. I read all I could in regard to Benghazi, knowing that a "secret" CIA compound was involved. I tried to figure out the Suxnet "incident." I've tried to figure out what in the world caused Comey not to file a case against HRC for her obvious belief that she was above the law in regard to handling classified information. The problem for me is that it sometimes seems that intelligence agencies would prefer we didn't know what they are doing and who is doing what, which is exactly why they are "intelligence" agencies. Btu at the same time, someone needs to be holding their noses to the fire in some way.

I have two boys--one did join the Navy, graduated from the Nuclear Power Program and served during peace time on a nuclear sub. He was at the time not very impressed with the captains he had to serve under. My son and his fellow "nuke" at first refused to carry out an order and as diplomatically as possible tried to explain They did this with with a certain hesitancy because the captain obviously had rank. What the captain was asking was something the nuclear powered engines could not handle. When the captain forced them to carry out the order, it caused an extremely embarrassing and completely expensive problem that meant the submarine had to be refitted with a new engine. (I am surely not using the correct words, but just trying to convey what happened.) My son finally chose to leave the service after this because this captain was just the worst of others he had served under. At first, my son felt he wanted a career in the Navy, but these experiences caused him to forget that idea. You may know how hard it is to get through the Nuclear Power School. My brother had also gone through that program during Vietnam.

So, despite the money the Navy had put into my son's training, the Navy lost my son because of some of the officers he had to take orders from. Think about being submerged in those boats with an officer who has no real understanding of how dangerous that is for the crew if the officer gives an order that could cause the boat to malfunction.

My father and many of my uncles--farmers at heart--served during WWII and Korea. I had many friends from high school who served in Vietnam, some were drafted and some volunteered. One died of Agent Orange years later after he endured horrors in that war. He came home, finally married and was raising two beautiful girls. Then suddenly the symptoms appeared and before anyone could take a breath, he died from fighting in that war. One classmate came home from Vietnam with a Purple Heart. He has lived as sort of a hermit since, when in high school he was probably the most fun, crazy guy to be around. My best male friend from high school was thankful that I finally--since I was the only one--asked him about his experiences in the war. I cried for days after reading what he wrote because he couldn't make himself tell me in person.

Just because Americans are not military families always doesn't mean we don't support the military.

My second son is the kind of person who would have come home with PTSD. He knew it and I knew it. It is only now that he is too old for the military to take him that he might be able to handle it. But it does not mean that he would not really care about what is going on and would not be concerned greatly for those who do join.

I am here trying to learn. But if I bother you, I will also leave. I read your last post on the fighting in Mosul. I really appreciated your taking the time to write it. I can still feel sorry for the civilians caught up in the mess. Every time I read those types of articles, I pray for those people and for the soldiers involved, and I thank God for the blessings I have experienced because I have never been caught up in war--yet.

[Priam's Crazy Daughter]

Well, as I recall, the democrats are facing the "nuclear option" only because they created the situation before when they were incontrol.

In crazy times, things happen that sane people wish didn't happen. No one is a true statesman during these times of deep division in our country.

[LeeG]

No, but the irritation and derision you express towards participants who do not come to the table with adequate backgrounds to contribute meaningfully to the dialogue suggests to me you'd be happier with some screening out or selection of participants. SST is a great resource but it doesn't make sense for a host to get pissed off with whoever comes in off the street when the door is always open.