It’s kind of depressing, reading the various stories linked here and there by various blogs and social media about pro-Palestinian/pro-terrorist orgies of protest on the grounds of various colleges and universities, and in the streets of certain big cities. This reminds me of the anti-war demos of the Vietnam War era. Massive turnout, lots of signs, lots of free-floating rhetoric … which turned out to mean absolutely nothing at all, in the long run. Much of the ruckus wasn’t motivated by sincere conviction about the welfare of the South Vietnamese, or the lives of our military troops. It was all just the followers of fashion, making a show of their fashionable conviction.
Vietnam
KAFCA
“… the final theme present… throughout the armed forces today is KAFCA, pronounced Kafca (since this is a military book I have made up an acronym.) KAFCA is Keeping the Able From Contributing to the Action. Inside the armed services, this problem is more politely referred to as “personnel mismanagement.” Arthur T. Hadley in The Straw Giant
I recollected reading that book and nodding in sober agreement when it first came out, A lot of what Mr. Hadley wrote in it was congruent to what I experienced as a member of the military, beginning in the mid-1970s, when the military was just beginning to recover from the demoralization of the Vietnam era. I was reminded, though, of that particular expression upon reading these two links, posted at Bayou Renaissance Man; the first which outlined what happens when the competent operators at any given company or organization decide to walk away, and the second outlining how the unending quest for a properly diverse workforce at the expense of competence, task knowledge and skill.
Day Five of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine.
The last five days have seen the Russian Army pushing into Ukraine from the North, South and East with multiple failed helicopter & parachute drops around the cities of Kyiv and Odessa in the Southwest, plus three amphibious operations in the South that has left Mariupol all but surrounded.
The Russian Army started with only 3-4 Russian division-equivalents (roughly the size of the Israeli forces in Sinai in the 1967 Arab-Israel War) entering Ukraine, which is about the size of Texas with twice Texas’ population. The Russians sent these units in five separate columns into Ukraine with the truck park sufficient to support three columns, a shortage of fuel trucks and very poor radio communications.
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3-4 division equivalents are insufficient to even attempt to occupy the Ukraine unless the Ukrainian people themselves give up, and they haven’t. The opposite in fact as there are about 150 battalion sized Ukrainian territorial militia being handed out weapons in addition to active & reserve Ukrainian ground forces.
The next three maps give a useful overview of the military events to date.
Down the Drain
Twenty years it’s been, as of yesterday. Twenty years and Afghanistan is down the drain, the Taliban back in charge. At least a comprehensive malignant menace like Bin Laden is dead, with his corpse supposedly dropped into the deep ocean, although I suppose that his organization staggers on, zombie-like, and possibly subsidized by Pakistan’s secret service. The dust of the fallen towers is settled, and the American troops are home, more or less. Still under a cone of silence as far as the US media is concerned, as are tales of hairbreadth escapes by American citizens, employees, and American-employed Afghan nationals … perhaps they were all made to sign a binding non-disclosure-agreement, as a condition of getting on that big Freedom Bird. Or our national establishment media is doing their bidding, as obedient handmaidens of the Dem party, and doing their best to disappear this latest disaster. Well, good luck with that. There are too many of us out there, and we have a voice, for at least a little bit longer.
I Seen This Movie Before
Indeed, I have seen this movie before. Only it was helicopters lifting off the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon, after a war which didn’t drag on for nearly as long as the hamfisted, ill-advised and ultimately disastrous attempt by an assortment of venial careerists in the DOD and State Department to make a functional country out of an Islamist-ridden tribal hellhole like Afghanistan. Now, it’s grossly overloaded airplanes and mobs in Kabul, Afghanistan. The suspicion now is that those high-ranking idiots, exemplified by General Milley and his boss at the head of the DOD, former General Austin didn’t really believe in that stated mission, they just wanted to ensure that the gravy-train went humming along; pots and pots of boodle for their pet projects, a nice pension, and a profitable post-retirement gig as a member of the board of whatever, or a nice gig as a media commenter. Oh, and instead of dealing realistically and honestly with Afghanistan a 7th century quarrel with borders, a fact which has been freely acknowledged for decades, if not centuries these shoulder-starred geniuses were off on a mad quest to hunt down and eliminate the Great White Supremacist Whale from the military services.