In the Late Middle Ages, clergy were making disasters, thus Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. Today it is clergy’s seconds — professors, soldiers, and lawyers — making disasters and clergy themselves are among the disasters, just ahead of lawyers in the order of sorrows. Some Soldiers remain true to their profession.
Church : State :: Nation : Business
So goes the story as told by Wehrmacht historians and retailed in American schools. Stalingrad is far from Germany and Paulus, who lacked field experience, did not argue with Hitler for keeping mobility. Von Manstein, a better character of man than Paulus, and a superbly competent field commander, did argue with Hitler for mobility at Kursk, and earlier, and won each time. Kursk, the high-point of competent Wehrmacht proficiency in WWII, is near Germany. Your supply line argument is insubstantial.
In addition, Zhukov and his commanders were not junior or mid-grades. It is a modern weakness of Euro-American thinkers that they underestimate, nay, disparage Russian abilities and morale, the which are in plain view over a long course of history.
Borodino was a tactical success for Napoleon and a partial operational success. But it was a strategic success for Kutuzov. In the same way, Kursk was a tactical success and partial operational success for von Manstein. But it was a strategic success for Zhukov. Strategic successes are what matter in war.
Kursk was the turning point of WWII. Everything after that, including Normandy, was mopping up, a foregone conclusion against a defeated — by The Red Army — and ever-weakening Wehrmacht. Patton after D-Day, for example, faced German troops only slightly more proficient than the Ukrainian soldiers being slaughtered in daily hundreds by Russia today. Georgie took a military walkover.
Israel has never had a strategic success against an army of the ability of Napoleon’s or von Manstein’s armies. In fact, two millennia ago they met total defeat and dismemberment by the Army of Titus, one from which they have never recovered and never will, morally.
Wars are not won by junior and mid-grade officers. Nor are they won in the bodies of their troops, despite Hollywood’s make-believe. Wars are won in the minds of the opposing commanders. That’s just the way it is and always will be.
Even six months ago a Power Line Principal musing about abolishing FBI and maybe DOJ, and starting over with rebuilds, would have been unthinkable. What changed?
And even were that to happen, which barrel of rotten lawyers and drug-addled professors and pundits would be summoned for pulling out replacements for the rotten lawyers and drug-addled professors and pundits presently running FBI and DOJ? (And State, Defense, White House, and on and on.)
Or more to the point, who can and is willing to redesign those institutions for modern circumstances: two major political parties black as soot from criminal behavior of very long standing, one only slightly less odious than the other? All I hear are complaints. I hear no construction. Are there lawyers disposed to protect and build instead of fleece and discard?
Hurl bricks in any direction in Washington D.C. and vicinity and would any in ten thousand million of them hit a school or think tank supporting lawyers of character and ability sufficient to restore freedom and justice to Americans?
Perhaps lawyers were best counseled to clean their guild before they essay to add more harm to Americans’ serenity and sovereignty.
Are the theologians leading or following?
Leading, from the front, in very small numbers, and mostly out of view. It takes very little movement of the rudder to swing the bow very far this way or that. The vessel’s key position is the crow’s nest, the top look-out point, which holds at most two people and usually just one. That’s where one will find a theologian, way high up, nearly inaccessible and out of sight, most often alone. Their informations spin the servos.
Democratic and Republican propagandas come from the same cooks working the same kitchen. They whip up tasty treats to fix your consciousness pinging frantically back and forth between outrage and hope. This lets the D and R principals — who hire the cooks and build and stock the kitchen — achieve their desires without interference from you . . . or me . . . or any of us busybody nuisance nobodies. A frantic mind cannot serve cold vengeance, which is the only kind that gets the job done.
Totalitarianism is an overt terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary elements of the dominant ideology, which is established in order to destroy and suppress political freedoms when the ideologised regime proves incapable of governing through a democratic mechanism. — Rostislav Ishchenko
In the end, it is all about national unity in seeing problems.
Aurelian: What this suggests is that there will be increasing interest in subtle and flexible forms of regional cooperation based on objective economic and strategic interests.
Yes, and already happening.
Her neighbors’ high prosperity is the strongest guarantee of a nation’s sovereignty. Due regard for the divinity of humanity is the well-spring of prosperity. The force of history removes from political power them whats gotta have it all.
NYT Opinion
A Fateful Error
By George F. Kennan
Feb. 5, 1997
In late 1996, the impression was allowed, or caused, to become prevalent that it had been somehow and somewhere decided to expand NATO up to Russia’s borders. This despite the fact that no formal decision can be made before the alliance’s next summit meeting, in June.
The timing of this revelation — coinciding with the Presidential election and the pursuant changes in responsible personalities in Washington — did not make it easy for the outsider to know how or where to insert a modest word of comment. Nor did the assurance given to the public that the decision, however preliminary, was irrevocable encourage outside opinion.
But something of the highest importance is at stake here. And perhaps it is not too late to advance a view that, I believe, is not only mine alone but is shared by a number of others with extensive and in most instances more recent experience in Russian matters. The view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.
Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking. And, last but not least, it might make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to secure the Russian Duma’s ratification of the Start II agreement and to achieve further reductions of nuclear weaponry.
It is, of course, unfortunate that Russia should be confronted with such a challenge at a time when its executive power is in a state of high uncertainty and near-paralysis. And it is doubly unfortunate considering the total lack of any necessity for this move. Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?
I am aware, of course, that NATO is conducting talks with the Russian authorities in hopes of making the idea of expansion tolerable and palatable to Russia. One can, in the existing circumstances, only wish these efforts success. But anyone who gives serious attention to the Russian press cannot fail to note that neither the public nor the Government is waiting for the proposed expansion to occur before reacting to it.
Russians are little impressed with American assurances that it reflects no hostile intentions. They would see their prestige (always uppermost in the Russian mind) and their security interests as adversely affected. They would, of course, have no choice but to accept expansion as a military fait accompli. But they would continue to regard it as a rebuff by the West and would likely look elsewhere for guarantees of a secure and hopeful future for themselves.
It will obviously not be easy to change a decision already made or tacitly accepted by the alliance’s 16 member countries. But there are a few intervening months before the decision is to be made final; perhaps this period can be used to alter the proposed expansion in ways that would mitigate the unhappy effects it is already having on Russian opinion and policy.
Fear is paralyzing. Why would a clergyman want to stoke it?
Generals do not win wars out of fear. They win wars out of military competence put into practice.
Generals and clergy inspire their charges into heroic actions. They do not terrorize their charges with tales of woe.
What army ever won a war working from fear? Taking counsel of one’s fears used to be considered unmanly.
When someone tells me to Wake up or Be afraid, my first response is, You first. My second response is, On what authority do you tell me to wake up or be afraid? My third response is, Why should I want to shoulder your fear? Your fear is your fear, not mine, and I’m not carrying your fear for you?
Defensive warfare, not offensive warfare, is the one which succeeds. Defense kills an enemy in the largest numbers and to the most decisive Spiritual effect.
Russia wins her wars because she uses the inherent and indomitable advantages of defensive warfare. Russia is not an offensive nation.
Neither is The USA, by the way. We are at present hag-and harridan-ridden by a certain habitually offensive Ashkenazy ethnicity. This will end. POTUS Lincoln and The Tzar helped one another. Only since said ethnicity fully laid hands on her powers of government, since 1949, has The USA been taken to make offensive warfare.
Hotheads and fearmongers, the Spiritually dry and empty among us, counsel offensive warfare. They always go down in defeat. Righteousness, Who is wet and full, would allow no less. The harm hotheads and fearmongers do meanwhile, well, which of us does not deserve what we get, which of us has not made our own fate, and which of us has it not in us to be happy heroes rather than fearful failures come what may?
Surovikin and the Russian General Staff appear to me to be in the midst of defensive warfare succeeding superbly, especially in the Operational and Strategic dimensions and more importantly in the Spiritual (breath, love) and Theological (defense) dimensions. Wars are not won in the tactical dimension but they are fought there most dramatically.
When viewing current doings in Novorossiya, Malorossiya, and Galicia, keep eyes and mind on Operational and Strategic dimensions for sure but mainly on Spiritual and Theological dimensions. This will cause fear to subside. A man cannot live on fear or hate.
By Europeans we must distinguish between the so-called leaders of Europe and the ordinary people of Europe. The former are totally corrupt, bought-and-paid-for and in the pockets of the US neocons. The latter are largely clueless and brainwashed by their Mainstream media to adopt mindless anti-Russian hatred and bigotry.
By Americans we must distinguish between the so-called leaders of America and the ordinary people of America. The former are totally corrupt, bought-and-paid-for and in the pockets of the CIA-USAID acting as Control — by carrot and stick — of the US MICIMATT. The latter are largely clueless and brainwashed by their Mainstream media to adopt mindless anti-Russian hatred and bigotry.
Both Europeans and Americans are ruled by their state security agencies. This is, to say the least, upside-down. Put down to inducements dangled by their state security agencies that just about everything Europeans and Americans believe about themselves and Russians is false. So now what? What are you prepared to do?
Principle I
Principle II
Principle III
By Artists M and F Graham
At Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, India
Semper Fi !