Military Affairs

My “I Told You So” Post

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I have been writing for years about the illegal immigration situation in the United States.

It seems that drug gangs based in the north of Mexico have grown enormously wealthy and powerful by using the same routes illegal aliens use to enter the US to smuggle their product. They were so flush with cash, in fact, that they were even able to bribe troops in the Mexican Army to act as bodyguards for some of the smugglers.

The government in Mexico decided to do something about this situation, and they went to war with the drug cartels two years ago. So far, things have not been going very well for the good guys. Assassinations and murder on a scale that boggles the mind.

Now, it would seem, things have taken a turn for the worse. The headline reads “US Military Report Warns ‘Sudden Collapse’ of Mexico Possible”. (Hat tip to Glenn.)

I’m wondering if the US is going to finally do something to help the democratically elected government of our southern neighbor. A good start would be to reduce the profits the drug gangs use to kill all those innocent people. We could do that simply by enforcing our own laws and secure our borders.

Something tells me that won’t happen.

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)

RIP, Col. David Smiley

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Colonel David Smiley, who died on January 9 aged 92, was one of the most celebrated cloak-and-dagger agents of the Second World War, serving behind enemy lines in Albania, Greece, Abyssinia and Japanese-controlled eastern Thailand.
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After the war he organised secret operations against the Russians and their allies in Albania and Poland, among other places. Later, as Britain’s era of domination in the Arabian peninsula drew to a close, he commanded the Sultan of Oman’s armed forces in a highly successful counter-insurgency.
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After his assignment in Oman, he organised with the British intelligence service, MI6 royalist guerrilla resistance against a Soviet-backed Nasserite regime in Yemen. Smiley’s efforts helped force the eventual withdrawal of the Egyptians and their Soviet mentors, paved the way for the emergence of a less anti-Western Yemeni government, and confirmed his reputation as one of Britain’s leading post-war military Arabists.
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In more conventional style, while commanding the Royal Horse Guards (the Blues), Smiley rode alongside the Queen as commander of her escort at the Coronation in 1953.

What a life, what a career.

(Via Brits at their best.)

Why California is No Longer a Paradise

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People are leaving California and the once golden land has begun to decay. [h/t Intapundit] What happened?

“We’ve lived off the investments our parents made in the ’50s and ’60s for a long time,” says Tim Hodson, director of the Center for California Studies at  California State University, Sacramento. “We’re somewhat in the position of a Rust Belt state in the 1970s.”

California has followed the grim path of the Great Lakes states.

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Clausewitz, On War, Book 1: Clausewitz on Military Genius

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I am reading Clausewitz because I fight as a profession. It is therefore my duty to heed my obligation to society that I read and understand my craft. Clausewitz, whether one agrees with him or not, has shaped the doctrine of all modern state-owned militaries. The capstone doctrinal document of the Marines, MCDP 1: Warfighting, is laced with Clausewitzian thought and terminology. Ask any Marine lieutenant what Friction is. He almost certainly knows!

On my road to professionalism I have wondered what makes a person a genius at the military arts and sciences. Fortunately Clausewitz provided me the Third Chapter of Book One of On War, where he dissects military genius into its component parts and discusses them. In doing so he provides a great starting point to discuss the nature of military genius. What is military genius? Where does it come from? What kinds of people are military geniuses? Do we make geniuses, or are they born?

Here I will digest the chapter and provide my thoughts, as well as questions for the Round Table.

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Superb Talk by Peter Mansoor

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This video is excellent. It is a talk by Col. Peter Mansoor about the Iraq war. Even the Q&A is good. Col. Mansoor was a brigade commander in Iraq, and he is now a military historian at Ohio State. He wrote a book about his experiences, Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq. After listening to this talk, I am going to read his book as soon as I am finished re-reading Clausewitz. The lecture is over 90 minutes, including Q&A. The video portion is just Mansoor standing at a lectern. So, it is easy to just have the audio going while you do other stuff. You lose nothing without the video.

Highly recommended.

UPDATE: The talk is extremely critical of the Bush administration, Rumsfeld and particularly Bremer. If you don’t want to hear that criticism, don’t listen.