Beat Navy! Beat Russia! Beat everyone!

(Pompaeus as Plebian)

" CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Thursday Russia has no plans to leave Syria and will continue to try to meddle in U.S. affairs to "stick it to America."

He reiterated his belief that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election and described the U.S.-Russia relationship as "complicated."

"I think they find anyplace that they can make our lives more difficult, I think they find that's something that's useful," he said

Pompeo also said he has seen only minimal evidence that Russia has pursued a serious strategy against Islamic State of Iraq and Syrica (ISIS) militants in Syria. He said any suggestion that Russia has been a U.S. ally in Syria is not borne out by what's happening on the ground."   CBS News

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Oh my!  Minimal evidence of Russia fighting IS in Syria?  Even CIA must know better than that.  This utterance at an Aspen Institute "fight rally" indicates to me that this fellow has a completely closed mind on the subject of Russia and undoubtedly Iran as well.  Clapper and Brennan expressed similar sentiments at the same meeting.  The great minds have met!  Clapper cannot keep himself from saying "Soviet" occasionally when what should be said is "Russia."  He was always a blockheaded group think schemer, so one should not be surprised.    As for Brennan it is easy to see Torquemada's spirit lurking behind the ruddy complexion and scowl.

When I was teaching at USMA (West Point) Pompeo's alma mater, I endured on a yearly basis the frenetic activities of the cadets as they prepared themselves emotionally for the annual titanic struggle against the USNA (Annapolis) football team.  There were rallies, building defacements with giant painted slogans "Beat Navy!"   There was a kidnapping of the Billy Goat which was USNA's mascot.  I seem to remember that some boy was dismissed for that caper. Good.

During one of these magic periods of anticipatory ecstasy, the Soviet military attaché came to visit.  He was the guest of the Russian language group in the Foreign Languages department.  I taught in the department and for some reason they asked me to the small dinner given for this general of the Red Army. 

We dined in the cadet mess where all the young ladies and gentlemen were fed together at one sitting.  This was in a cavernous space where centuries of re-modeling had freakishly produced an elevated platform between two buttresses  This was 20 feet or so above the floor on which the corps ate.  I think this place was called "the poop deck."  There was space  up there for a table that would seat ten or twelve while white jacketed waiters scurried around looking anxious overthe state of the napery, etc.  One could look over the stone rail at the masses below. 

During the dinner, various cadet cheerleaders were allowed upstairs in our sacred space to lead the corps in cheers against the US Navy (the navy undergrad school really)  The guest finally asked what all the noise was about.  I told him and he asked to lead the US Corps of Cadets in a cheer.  He took his place at the microphone where the cadets could see him, the very incarnation of the devil, and began. 

"Beat Navy!"  The kiddies cheered lustily.

"Beat Air Force!"  The cheering was more restrained.

"Beat Army!  Beat Everybody!"  After a moment's silence the kids began to boo him.  Since I was not an alumnus of this place I thought it was funny.

Former cadet Pompeo says that he has seen minimal evidence of Russia fighting IS?   Oh my!  Robert Fisk of the Independent has now reported (see link below) that he recently sat in a meeting in the dust bowl desert south of Raqqa, but hard by, in which SAA, and the YPG/SDF coordinated their joint fight against IS (ISIS).  A Russian Army colonel who called himself Yevgenii sat in the their midst as a full participant.  There were no Americans present.

The Soviet general took a great interest in what I was doing at WP.  IMO their biographic file on me started that evening.

Pompeo has a record of pompous (a sad linguistic joke) bellicosity.  He seems to desire enemies everywhere.  Perhaps someone should tell him that grown ups don't act like that.  pl 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Pompeo

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cia-chief-mike-pompeo-russia-loves-to-stick-it-to-america/

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-isis-russia-kurdish-ypg-happening-in-secret-a7857471.html

Comments

[Larry Kart]

Holding a deck of cards, you ask someone if they want to play "52 pickup." If they say, yes, you throw the whole deck on the floor and say "52 pickup." It goes over great if you're ten years old or so and haven't encountered that bit of nonsense before.

I assume that the person who mentioned "52 pickup" thought that the Soviet attache's "Beat everybody!" was akin to, in that context, shouting "52 pickup" while throwing a whole deck on the floor. However, I would say that the attache's act was a fair bit wittier.

[Chris Chuba]

LondonBob, I have been told that I get fixated on a topic. My current obsession is the 'Information War' and your link was like giving free Crystal Meth to an addict.
I love the excerpt below ...

"... This is something the Russians seem to not understand. Let’s assume a Color Revolution can be orchestrated by a foreign country, as attack. It can only happen if there is discontentment with the regime/government/political structures. Can you imagine a Color Revolution being staged in solid democracies like, for example, Denmark? It’s possible to use minorities to cause turbulence but not to overthrow the government. Syria was a different case. North Africa too. "

So what these people are basically saying is that the ability to create violence justifies the intervention that creates the violence. So it's impossible to actually make a situation worse than it should be. I can't believe that someone would write this without blushing.

I can definitely believe that a person who thinks like this would hire snipers to shoot demonstrators and police in a place like say, Ukraine because hey, it won't change anything unless it's a tinderbox anyway, or to not end violence in exchange for early elections.

[Kooshy]

He must be very politically ambitious , if the only reason he moved to Kansas was to find a US congress seat he could fill. Is rear to see people move from SCA to Kansas.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

In the sense that President Clinton's and President Obama's policies were also causative factors for the decline of US-Russia relations. The implication I took from Anna's comment was that she believed that the Bush 43 administration's policies were primarily responsible.

[Anna]

"On the other hand, the likes of Brzezinski and other anti-Russians from Central and Eastern Europe (who are not necessarily "anti-Bolshevik") might continue on happily with the tribe that can't tell between USSR and Russia--because these guys always hated the Russians for being Russians, whether they were Tsarists, Bolsheviks, or moderns."
It is not generally known that some of the most prominent persons in Russian history had rather complicated genealogy. Nabokov (writer, who believed that Russian culture was finished with the victory of bolsheviks) was more German by blood than Russian, and yet he belonged to a family of the outstanding Russian statesmen and he himself became the glory of Russian literary language. Rachmaninoff (composer) and Akhmatova (poetess) both had a good admixture of Tatar blood; Shostakovich (composer) was of Polish ancestry; Levitan (painter) of Jewish; Florensky (philosopher) of Armenian, and so on a so forth. Being Russian for them was to belong to Russian culture on the intimate level of the Russian language and Russian ideas as they were exemplified in the works by Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Dostoyevsky. It was Russian history - that is, the graves of the ancestors and the story of their victories and failures – that made people into loyal Russians. It is a shared memory, particularly an extremely painful memory of communal loss and suffering, that unites people. Even those who hated bolsheviks/soviets and left Russia, they still contributed money to the USSR during the WWII, because they still felt that the defense of Russian Motherland was the defense of their human essence.

[mike]

Colonel -

I think Leander answered his own question with the link to Jon Davis view on military intelligence.

BTW, I also met one or two Iron-Majors during my time. Rare, but perhaps the equivalent of the old British 'Brigade Major' that elaborated, allocated, and made sure of the implementation of the brigadier's plan and intent. Do those billets still exist in the Brit Army?

Or kind of like a really good XO on Navy ships - runs the ship, the crew, resupply, navigation, and much more while the Captain focuses on the big picture.

[mike]

Anna -

You did not mention the heritage of one of the founders of Russian modern literature, Pushkin. His mother's grandfather came from the area that is now known as Chad or possibly from Ethiopia, or Eritrea.

Extremely hard to read in English though. I've got a copy of Larissa Volokhonsky's translation of Pushkin's works on hold at the local library. Larissa is the translator that made Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and "Hadji Murat" more eminently readable and less of a burden to us poor dumb English-only readers.

[Yeah, Right]

Maybe, but it requires that Kurdish guy to indulge in a non-sequitur.

Here are his quotes:
"all of us are fighting in one campaign against Daesh [Isis], and that is why we have this centre – and to avoid mistakes"

"That [RuAF airstrikes] is why we set up our centre here 10 days ago,"

"We talk everyday and we already have another centre at Afrin to coordinate the campaign. We have to make one force that fights together."

If there is any logic to that train of thought then he is suggesting that the centre in Afrin exists to coordinate with Russian air power and SAA ground troops.

Or... maybe not. Maybe there is something wrong with Fisk's command of Arabic, though that sounds equally far-fetched.

[turcopolier]

Yeah, Right

Life is filled with non-sequiturs. Why are you surprised? pl

[turcopolier]

mike

Leander is a she. She thinks you are a Soldier. She understands nothing of the structure of military forces in general or US military forces in particular. She knows nothing o military history. She thinks the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments within the Army's 2nd Division won WW1. She has no idea what I am talking about, but she is a nice person. Brigade major? British Army brigades did not have a general staff so one man was designated to do all the operational staff work for the brigadier. pl

[confusedponderer]

... I post trying to kill the evil italic writing ...

What is being opened ought to be closed.

[Anna]

You are right. In my very sketchy overview I only mentioned the names of those who belonged to the second half of the 19th-beginning 20th century. Pushkin great-grandfather was from Abyssinia.

[Babak Makkinejad]

How could Russia and US be strategic partners?
What could be the objective of such a strategic partnership; keeping the non-Europenas down?
You know; the Han, the Iraians, the Tamils & Telegu & Bengali

[DH]

Maybe they play it differently where you come from, but the method I know is to hold the deck in your hand and riffle it so the cards fly up and land everywhere.

I think 52 is much easier on the tricked kid than the Russian's deflation of the undergrads' egos. But I guess it wasn't all that bad, if everyone at the head table laughed.

[Yeah, Right]

I am not surprised, merely curious.

I normally take the view that words are important i.e. if someone says *this* then they mean *this* and, therefore, what has been said is worth noting.

But maybe not, and in my reply to Leander I acknowledged as much.

Though in that case I fail to understand why Fisk thought it important to quote him.