RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

Rogerjb comments:
God, are these Forever Wars in fact going to last forever? Syria is a country of no significance to American interests. But neocons are happy to see American boys deployed abroad eternally, with no end ever apparently.

From The Smithsonian Institution, January 2019

WHY?

David R. Graham replies to Rogerjb:
That’s about the size of it. And it’s indefinite because neocons have no strategic goal. Their actual goal is shilling for defense contractors.

Iraq and Afghanistan had strategic reasons even though Bushies did not see or execute on them clearly. Syria, Libya, Africa generally, none such, despite the minerals, which onshore here whether US troops are mucking about there or not.

A measure of how wrong-headed the foreign policy establishment and generals are about Africa is the late evidence of degeneracy among US SOF personnel there.

Watch the Pacific. USA’s strategic interests, almost all of them, are there.

It is a great day. The Europe First foreign policy/military establishment is being de-platformed at last.

howie comments:
I really like Hanson and power line, but a few casualties seems like a glib way to describe the deaths of Americans, each an individual. I know it is a volunteer service and all, and the US does have strategic interests outside our borders, and some of the loudest voices I’ve been those who served, but still, there seems something off-putting about the discussion of wars that so many of us don’t have personal connections.

David R. Graham replies to howie:
Eloquent. I asked about this recently here. Ten years ago I watched a Corps Commander, 3 Stars, welcome home an Infantry BDE and break down in tears on the podium as he recounted that less than 1% of the nation bore the burden of defense of over 99% of the nation. That bites. Yes, glib pundits here and elsewhere, so clever and smart, bite deep on the moral strength of the country, sapping it.

GWB subverted the nation when he told his charges to return to the malls after 11SEP01. Properly, he had declared full war footing and Congress had agreed. Then he had driven every mullah in the USA to sign a document surrendering to USA authority and renouncing Jihad and ditto in every country trod by US troops.

In other words, give Moslems to believe that they are not on their way to ruling the world with their idiotic, violent ideology.

Paul Mirengoff: Trump To Pull Troops Out Of Syria

I commented:

The GOs and ADMs have not been doing their job. They have deliberately ignored strategic realities and questions, focused exclusively on tactical successes, without solving the strategic problems. Several reasons they have done this, none salutary or honorable. Modern dereliction of duty.

Reynolds quotes M. B. Dougherty to the pertinent effect: It is truly astonishing, after the record of the last fifteen years, for the American foreign policy establishment to have a [no-no] fit about someone rejecting their counsel.

Flags up about SecDef Mattis months ago, fully expected. The C-i-C is the C-i-C. This is not 1945, 1955, 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, 2005, or 2015. SecDef Mattis is resigning in protest, the honorable course, no less expected of the honorable man.

See what Dunford does. He is a strategics man. Also Miley.

The issues are real and seminal. Everyone knows it. Must have rational strategic guidance. If not present, tactical proficiency and success are worse than useless. No matter what, a completely fresh track is being cut, a Washingtonian/Lincoln-ian track, and there is no turning back. Eyes on INDOPACOM.

The arrogant, stupid, sententious American foreign policy/military establishment is being replaced by the COCOMs, an auspicious advance, but hard. Look for pull outs from Africa and Afghanistan. The GOs and ADMs failed there, no strategy, just tactics, and they let themselves be driven about by children newly graduated from women and gender studies.

POTUS Trump’s MO: give the guy who says he can a chance to solve the problem you want fixed. When he fails to fix it, call his resignation or fire him. Happened before with Tillerson in re Korea. Now Mattis in re MENA and other things. That is a manly MO.

Syria pullback (not out) and Mattis resignation are fine Christmas presents for the nation’s sovereign freedom.

MostlyRight comments:
Paul, do you have a son? If so, would you have him in Syria this Christmas, just in case 15,000 ISIS started to reorganize?

6cwayne replies to MostlyRight:
Very good point. In many instances I find those who play loose with the lives of other people’s sons have never worn a uniform. They are, of course, entitled to their opinions. I just don’t pay them much attention.

David R. Graham replies to 6cwayne:
Yuppers, I touched upon this matter of being superficial and spendthrift with others’ lives while having no skin in the game here yesterday. Rubio, other politicians, and flocks of pundits — and par excellence the grinding American foreign policy/military establishment — fit that profile. And it is not written at Horeb that USA must oppose ISIS on the ground anywhere and everywhere outside USA territory.

USA assets of statecraft — diplomatic, financial, war-fighting — deserve deployment only to execute rational USA grand national strategic objective, which is, to maintain USA sovereign national freedom and drive down to unconditional surrender any threat thereto.

USA basing and expansion in Iraq appears underway. Kurds, especially Western Syrian, have been given chance to come up to sitting at the table with the big boys. Erdogan is angering everyone, a Moslem Brotherhood speciality.

Observe MENA/CENTCOM developments. Recommend, if not already known, Rantburg and South Front. But I think the spear tip points West, to INDOPACOM.

Βασιλεία του Θεού
Kingdom of God

Update 1: Kurt Schlichter: Trump The Disrupter Pivots Back To Trumpism – And The Establishment Freaks Out

Update 2: Leslie Eastman: Saudi Arabia and UAE sending troops to help Kurds in Syria

Update 3: Angelo Codevilla: Trump’s Syria Withdrawal Hinges on Turkey

Update 4: Pat Buchanan: How the War Party Lost the Middle East

Update 5: GEN (RET) B. B. Bell: Military Generals And Globalism – And Response

Update 6: Egyptian Islamists Fight Back on Screen

Update 7: This Map Shows Where in the World the U.S. Military Is Combatting Terrorism

Update 8: When Turkey Destroyed Its Christians

Update 9: Josiah Lippincott: America’s Generals Lied, Lost Wars, And Looted The People They Claimed To Serve

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA