Category: Political Commentary
Russia and China: The Nightmare Scenario

Russia and China: The Nightmare Scenario

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Imagine this scene: A week or so after the closing ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Russia invades Ukraine, its forces quickly rolling across the country, taking its capital city. At the same time, China launches a full-scale attack against Taiwan, intent on taking back what it views as a renegade province. The U.S. is then faced with three unsatisfactory choices: Engage in a two-front war, on opposite sides of the world, to counter Russian and Chinese aggression; pick one theater or the other, Eastern Europe to prevent Russia from moving past Ukraine and threatening its NATO allies, or the South China Sea to honor its commitments to protect Taiwan; or do nothing except bluster without effect in the U.N. and other fora as China and Russia reveal an ineffectual America to the world.

It’s what I call the Nightmare Scenario, and it’s not entirely implausible. I envisaged it independently, but a cursory review of informed opinion reveals it’s far from a unique view of what might ensue in coming days or weeks. And there really is no waking up from this nightmare, should it unfold. Regardless which of those unsatisfactory choices the U.S. makes, the world becomes a much more dangerous place, the threat of wider war, including the threat of nuclear war, grows exponentially, and a new power axis combining two of the world nuclear super powers, China and Russia, possibly augmented by Iran, emerges as a monster threat to the rest of the world.

While the U.S. re-positions a small number of troops, 3,000 compared with the 100,000-plus Russia has put in place, virtually encircling Ukraine, and China brazenly flies hundreds of sorties into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, the real problem is that it has already lost, strategically. Beginning with the Biden administration’s catastrophic surrender and evacuation from Afghanistan, and continuing with its focus on such demoralizing distractions as vaccine mandates and gender and race training within the ranks of the military, the country’s enemies have methodically evaluated Washington’s weakness.

Checkers v. Chess

Both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are masters at assessing and sizing up their opponents. Both know that Biden isn’t quite there, doesn’t have a clue of his own what to do when faced with a crisis, has a back field of losers carried over from the Obama days, who for eight years oversaw American power being inexorably pushed back, and is seriously compromised in both Kyiv and Beijing. While Biden plays a feckless game of checkers, Putin and Xi are playing a high-level game of chess.

It’s been said so many times by so many observers that a weak America spells a dangerous world, and seldom has this been more apparent than at present. Any realistic assessment of the former Trump administration showed a real and determined show of American power that no one, least of all Putin and Xi, could easily dismiss. That all changed with the change of administration, and any doubts that might have remained in the minds of America’s enemies evaporated with the fall of Kabul last August. The events currently unfolding in the snows of Eastern Europe and over the waters of the Taiwan Strait, while in both cases anchored in decades of history, can be traced in the instant directly to America’s massive fail in Afghanistan and its feckless leaderless wandering since.

A relevant question, not one that can easily be dismissed, is why Biden is more concerned about Ukraine’s border than America’s own border. While every ilk of border jumper, including known terrorists, drug runners, sex traffickers, and a range of other criminals, is allowed across a virtually undefended Southwest Border and then sent, at taxpayer expense, all over the country, Biden emptily trumpets his commitment to the sanctity of Ukraine’s border, even to the point of alarming the country’s president, raising fear that Biden’s rhetoric might in fact invite a Russian attack.

Not the First Time

With Russian tanks and troops virtually encircling Ukraine, not just in Russia itself on Ukraine’s eastern border, but also to the north in Belarus, the south in Russian-annexed Crimea, and the west, in Moldova, it’s hard to imagine that it isn’t Putin’s plan to invade and crush the country. I don’t adhere to the idea that history repeats itself, but there are some lessons that can be learned from history.

Many of us remember the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and how Soviet tanks (the Russian war vehicle of choice) and 200,000 Soviet troops crushed Hungary’s push for independence from the Soviet sphere. After encouraging Hungarians to seek their liberation through incessant broadcasts on America’s Radio Free Europe, then-President Dwight Eisenhower, no dithering fool like the current occupant of the White House, fresh off the Korean War, decided it was fruitless to do anything to help the Hungarians and risk a nuclear confrontation, leading the freedom-seeking Hungarians to feel betrayed by America. Lyndon Johnson, already on his way out of office after his Vietnam fiasco, made a similar calculation in 1968 when the Soviets again used tanks and 200,000 troops, including those from several other Warsaw Pact countries, to crush the Prague Spring uprising in then-Czechoslovakia. And here we are again.

The Bigger Threat

With so much attention directed at Ukraine, the much bigger strategic threat posed by China has largely flown under the radar. China has increasingly made it clear its intent to take back Taiwan. Along with ratcheting up its rhetoric, it has taken increasingly provocative overt actions, including holding naval war games not far from the island and flying hundreds of military sorties over the course of recent months, including by fighter jets, H-6 strategic bombers, intelligence-gathering aircraft, and air freighters, into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. And just last Friday, Jan. 28, China’s ambassador to the U.S. warned that Taiwan’s continued push for independence would “most likely” lead to military conflict between the U.S. and China.

“If the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the United States, keep going down the road to independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in a military conflict,” Ambassador Qin Gang told National Public Radio.

Keep in mind, as I’ve discussed in this space before in my reviews of the novels 2034 and Ghost Fleet, every simulation of conflict between those two “big countries” run in recent years shows China handing the U.S. its ass on a platter. This is not encouraging, even less so if the U.S. is pulled into a global two-front war, for which it is not prepared.

Especially given the controversy swirling around the Olympics, now under way, with Putin and XI shoulder to shoulder in Beijing, I tend to believe that any conflict, either in Ukraine or Taiwan, is unlikely to begin until after the Olympics. Of course the Olympics didn’t stop Putin from invading Georgia on the very eve of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics or taking Crimea from Ukraine shortly after the 2014 winter games, held in Sochi, Russia, or planning cyber attacks to disrupt the postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympics. China has denied U.S. claims that Xi asked Putin in December not to invade Ukraine during the current Beijing Olympics, and given the growing affinity between the former rivals Putin may not wish to take any glory away from Xi. But that doesn’t preclude action immediately after the games.

A Dangerous New Reality

Regardless whether the Nightmare Scenario I postulated plays out or not, it is clear we’ve entered into a new and dangerous reality. We can expect to see growing coordination between China and Russia, and especially expanding Chinese economic and political influence and presence on a global scale. We’re already seeing its stifling influence on American corporations, universities, sports leagues, and other institutions, the culmination of a process more than three decades in the making.

Meanwhile, Biden’s green lighting of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, to carry Russian gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea, makes Germany dependent on Russia for a major source of energy, enabling Putin’s threat in Eastern Europe to drive a wedge between NATO allies. And, if all that is not worrisome enough, we have a world-class grifter in the White House thoroughly bought off and compromised to China.

It is hard to imagine a more dangerous and precarious time than the one into which we’ve entered.

Featured image: A Chinese H-6K bomber is seen from a Russian aircraft during a joint patrol over the Western Pacific, Dec. 22, 2020. Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via Associated Press. Used under Fair Use.

Russian tanks on the move in Belarus. Copyright Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via Associated Press. Photo taken from video and released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. Used under Fair Use.

Chinese Navy conducts live-fire exercises in waters near Zhoushan Islands north of Taiwan, August 2020. Associated Press. Used under Fair Use.

This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Subscribe here, and there, and share the piece.
Ruining America: It’s By Design

Ruining America: It’s By Design

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If you think the image above is a scene of squalor from some Third World country, you’re right. The name of that country is the United States of America, and what you see is the ideal that many seek to turn the country into.

Recent events clearly dismiss any notion that what is being done to the country is in any way the result of incompetence or misjudgments. At this point, it is unmistakable that all this is being done by design, and is intended to ruin the country. Just take at face value the words of Homeland Security (sic) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in his Congressional testimony on Sept. 22: “We are following our plan.” And indeed, they are. That part was the truth. The phrase that preceded it, “The border is secure,” is such a demonstrably bold-faced lie it needs to be, but won’t be, prosecuted.

Unrestricted illegal immigration is perhaps the most obvious and visible manifestation of this administration’s push for the country’s ruination. But there are lots of other examples: Disgracefully abandoning Americans and our allies in a hostile and deadly Afghanistan. Allowing — even encouraging — terrorists to regain all the territory that American troops died, over two decades, to push them from, and arming them with more than $80 billion worth of the most sophisticated weapons. Encouraging crime to spiral upward across the land. Fostering racial divisions, setting back race relations a half century. Pursuing fiscal profligacy that feeds inflation and impoverishes future generations while feeding wealthy Democratic donors. Restoring the country to dependence on foreign sources for petroleum. And that is to name but the most prominent features of what this current crowd in Washington and across the land is pushing, full speed ahead.

No level of incompetence can explain or excuse such an across-the-board abandonment of American values, disregard for the rule of law, or the wholesale destruction of the country’s well-bring. No, dear reader, this is part of a grand plan, and what you think, if you don’t like what is happening, doesn’t matter one bit to the current administration or the elites who support it and helped put it in power. And Joe Biden is the perfect vehicle for them to accomplish their goals: A valueless, demented tool whose sole interest is, always was, his own power, aggrandizement, and greed, ripe for the true power brokers to use as they wish, the American public or his oath of office be damned.

Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase, used by many in the administration, in the Democratic Party, and on the fringe left, “Profoundly transforming America.” A favorite word used by those same people is “dog whistle.” And that’s what that phrase is, a dog whistle for “Destroying America.” Whatever went before, what made America America, its values, its history, even its laws and Constitution, are detested by these people, and they now hold the reins of power to accomplish what has been their objective for a very long time. And things may already be past the point of no return for saving what is left of the country since their intent is to make it into a one-party state where opposition to their orthodoxy is meaningless. Unleashing unrestricted illegal immigration is a cornerstone of accomplishing that.

In this post I’m going to look at just two aspects of this plan — unrestricted illegal immigration and upwardly spiraling crime — and also the utter disregard in which those promoting these policies hold the American people.

Opening the flood gates

Take the situation at the southwestern border, for instance, though at this point it is a misnomer to refer to it as a border. The photos above tell the story of what is going on there. What you’re seeing in the first is an encampment of Haitians under the International Bridge at Del Rio, Texas — more than 15,000 at one point, and they just kept coming, 30,000 in the past three weeks, literally walking like a stream of ants across the Rio Grande, as in the second image. Not coming direct from Haiti, but Haitians that have been living all over South America, in many cases for years, some having been granted political asylum in those countries. And there are another 30,000 or many more following, coming up through Central America and Mexico. All coming at the personal invitation of Joe Biden. Like the other 2 million illegal border jumpers the country is on target to receive this year, a new all-time record. And those are just the ones that get apprehended, and then sent wherever in the country they want to go. It’s solely a matter of speculation how many “got aways” have, and will, make their way into the country.

With this wave of illegals come the drugs being trafficked across the border by the Mexican cartels, which have earned billions of dollars on the illegal trade. And the women and children being trafficked. And the terrorists mingled in with the others, coming from more than 100 countries all over the world. Add to the total tens of thousands of Afghans of all ilk and stripe — few are those who assisted the U.S. in Afghanistan, most of whom were left behind by Biden to be tortured and killed by the Taliban — flown in and released, and you begin to get an idea of the scope of what amounts to a staged invasion of the country. And while Biden dictates COVID vaccination mandates for law-abiding Americans, the border jumpers and others are let in without vaccinations or even much testing. If you think any of this is not by design, you’re deluded and misled. Biden inherited a secure border — perhaps the most secure in our history — from Donald Trump, and on Day 1 of his administration he blew the doors off it. And the flood of migrants quickly followed and has not abated since.

Why, you ask, would a president seek to inflict this on his own people? Simple. The left, which controls Biden, doesn’t believe in borders. They believe people should go wherever they want, and if millions of people from around the world want to come to America, they think that should be their right. They also are looking ahead for when they can finally push through an amnesty act — one is embedded in the monster $3.5 trillion spending bill Nancy Pelosi wants to get passed — that would lead to citizenship for all these millions of illegals. They’re counting on most of them then voting Democratic out of some sort of gratitude to the party that invited them in. And if they do that — the numbers, just this year alone, eclipse the populations of more than 14 states — that will finally realize their dream of a one-party state.

Meanwhile, Biden is in blatant violation of his oath of office, a key part of which is to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Article II, Section 3 of that Constitution says that, among his other duties, the President “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed . . .” One must wonder why this President has not been impeached for his utter failure to faithfully, or in any other way, execute the country’s immigration laws, among others.

Spiraling crime

Another key element of the drive to destroy America is spiraling crime. Beginning with the death of George Floyd in May 2020, crime began rising unabated in many of the country’s largest cities — almost all of which are Democrat ruled and have been for a very long time. As violence tore apart cities from coast to coast, the movement to defund the police took root, and despite many billions of dollars in damage done, and numerous innocent people killed, few people were charged with crimes and fewer prosecuted. Contributing to the problem, a number of jurisdictions across the country, including New York, New Jersey, Illinois, New Mexico, California, and Alaska, abolished or limited their cash bail systems. Add so-called “progressive” prosecutors, helped into office by massive campaign contributions by radical billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, and reduced charges and penalties for a number of crimes, even decisions not to prosecute certain offenses — leading to scenes such as in the photo above, as thieves walk out of an Apple store in California with thousands of dollars of merchandise — and you have a perfect storm of what seem to be unintended negative consequences. But are they unintended?

You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that demoralizing and reducing the number of police, letting criminals walk free with no inducement not to re-offend, and letting people commit crimes with little or no threat of consequence, is going to lead to an increase in criminality. But like letting illegal immigrants enter the country at will, giving criminals freer and freer rein is going to have negative consequences, especially on the most vulnerable in the society. Thus, we have the latest FBI report that is expected to show a 29 percent increase in murders in 2020, eclipsing the next largest increase, 12.7%, in 1968. And that trend is continuing and accelerating in 2021. Meanwhile, while at least 25 cities have either cut funds, or are contemplating cutting funds, from their police forces, Forbes Magazine found that in 20 of the cities cutting police funding mayors and other city officials are protected, at taxpayer expense, by special police details. And all — I stress, all — of those 20 cities are run by Democratic mayors. So, those mayors and other officials consider their constituents expendable, but they get personal protection since, after all, they’re special, and you’re not.

As Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, clearly one of America’s most useless mayors, put it, “I think that residents of [Chicago], understanding the nature of the threats we are receiving on a daily basis, understand that I have a right to make sure my home is secure.” She, not you, have a right to a secure home. And in Minneapolis, where the 2020 violence originated, leading to a billion dollars in damage to that city alone, three of the city council members who voted to defund the police have private security details costing taxpayers $4,500 a day. And this is going on in at least 20 Democrat-run cities.

Hypocrisy no longer matters

You might remember a time when being accused of hypocrisy actually carried some weight. Well, those days are over. Now those who will dictate our morality to us while flaunting their own profligacy and privilege don’t think even once about being accused of hypocrisy. They know there are enough gullible sheeple, “informed” by a corrupt lackey media, out there that they can get away with just about anything, up to and including outright lying and corruption.

Take the unofficial leader of the so-called Squad of radical left activists in the Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That’s her up there in that dress, emblazoned with the words “Tax the Rich.” Such a (to some) seemingly noble thought, something to wear to the $35,000 a plate Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala, where not many poor people likely would be in attendance. But AOC is right in her element, having graduated from the life of a barista to membership in the nation’s elite, lording it over those who can’t pony up $35,000 for a roast beef dinner. Hypocrisy? What’s that?

But it doesn’t end there. See the woman standing next to AOC? She’s Aurora James, an established tax deadbeat with dozens of state and federal tax and other warrants lodged against her in a number of states — mostly to do with not collecting or paying the payroll taxes due on her workers, or not carrying required worker comp insurance — and whose employees have accused of harassment and running “a sweat shop” full of unpaid interns. She’s also stiffed her company’s landlords while scoring a $1.6 million residence for herself in L.A. and collecting $41,666 in federal pandemic relief funds.

James — whom AOC terms a “working class” designer — lent her that hypocritical dress, likely worth thousands of dollars, and others contributed the bling AOC wore during the gala. Oh, and did we mention? AOC’s long-time boyfriend, web developer Riley Roberts, also got comped, bringing the total to $70,000 just to get in the door. If all this doesn’t make you want to vomit, what’s wrong with you?

Now one has to wonder, doesn’t all that — from comping the dinner tickets to the dress to the bling — constitute bribery of a public official? Why isn’t there an official corruption investigation being done of the congressperson, who would pick everyone else’s pocket to support her extravagant Socialist schemes while dancing the night away among the uber-wealthy? Can you spell “Democrat,” which seems to provide a pass to the most egregious acts of not just hypocrisy, but blatant corruption?

You see, she’s AOC, and you’re not. And as she and her party go about ruining the country as best they can, you, me, all of us, get to pay for it, in so many ways. If you voted for any of this, if you voted for Joe Biden, AOC, and the rest of their ilk, this is what you voted for. Maybe this isn’t what you were signing up for, but this is what you’re getting, and it shouldn’t come as any surprise to you. But the rest of us, those of us who didn’t vote for this, or had our vote stolen through the fraud of the last election, are paying and suffering for it, too. And when the ship goes down, we all go down with it.

Featured image, Haitians at Del Rio, Texas, by John Moore, Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

Haitians Cross Rio Grande, Agence France-Presse, via BBC.com. Used under Fair Use.

Thieves Robbing Apple Store, Yahoo News. Used under Fair Use.

Aurora James and AOC at Met Gala, New York Post. Used under Fair Use.

This piece also is posted on my Substack in my community there, Issues That Matter. Subscribe here, and there. And if you like the piece, please share it. Links below.
Stranger Than Fiction

Stranger Than Fiction

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If you feel you’re living in an alternative universe, you can be excused. By all normal standards, up has become down and down has become up. Some of us have seen this coming for a very long time, but for others, it has crept up on them, slowly, slowly, but surely, surely. And still others persist in thinking things remain normal, which says how readily people can be misled by a slight of hand while the other hand of those in power is busy about creating the black magic, assisted by more than a little deceit by their lackeys in the corrupt mass media.

The alleged revelations that came out this week in the new book by professional “It’s Worse Than Watergate” profiteer Bob Woodward and long-time Washington Post reporter Robert Costa help cement the idea that up and down have been reversed. The book’s title, Peril, may be accurate, but for reasons other than the authors intend.

Now let me say at the outset that I am not assuming that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley is guilty of the things he’s accused of, given Woodward’s spotty record in some of his more sensational claims and his use of 200-some (!) unnamed sources in writing the book. And there have been comments made by knowledgeable people who have come down on both sides of the issue. But I do think there should be a full Congressional investigation of Milley and the allegations in an effort to get at the truth. Now do I believe there will be any real accounting? No, I don’t. Already Milley has denied any wrongdoing, without denying the allegations, and Jello-O Joe Biden, looking like a deer in the headlights, has pledged his full support of the general. So much, once more, for respect for the Constitution or the well-being of the country or the truth or the rule of law in this administration, much less the need to perform proper oversight.

I can’t be alone in relating the allegations against Milley to the 1964 Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb. In the film, a renegade general, Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper (shown in the featured image above, played by actor Sterling Hayden), goes mad and takes over a bomber wing and launches an atomic attack against the Soviet Union. If — and I stress if –the allegations against Milley are true, fiction and reality certainly have merged.

The Milley Plot

So what is this all about? Assuming you haven’t been ensconced in an ice cave in Antarctica the past several days, you’ve heard the shocking claims the book makes. Among other allegations, it says that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley actually called his Chinese counterpart in the waning days of the Trump administration and assured him that America would not launch an attack and, if it did, he’d alert him in advance. According to reporting on the book by the Washington Post, Milley made two calls to Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, the first on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the presidential election, and again on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the protest at the Capitol.

“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley is reported to have told Li. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”

Milley, the book alleges, went on to assure Li that he would alert him in the event of a U.S. attack.

“General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise,” Milley is said to have told his Chinese counterpart.

Milley, according to the book, also inserted himself into the chain of command in ways neither constitutionally nor otherwise permitted. The book says he demanded pledges of allegiance to himself by senior military officials in the National Military Command Center, insisting that they not take orders from anyone if he was “not part of the procedure.”

___________________________________________________________________________

If you’re troubled by the mess the Biden administration left behind in Afghanistan, and the thousands of Americans, LPRs, SIV holders, our allies’ citizens, and their families abandoned under Taliban control, this group is doing what it can to evacuate them from the country:

Project Dynamo

The group has gotten more than 20,000 evacuation requests and could use donations to help support its efforts. There is a donation link at the top of the site. I’ve given, and you might, too.

Read more about the organization and its evacuation effort

See the interview of Project Dynamo’s Jen Wilson on Steve Hilton’s The Next Revolution

___________________________________________________________________________

Now if these allegations are accurate — as the authors insist they are — then Milley should immediately be removed from his post and face charges as serious as these allegations indicate. While the crime of treason can only be charged in time of war, there are other laws — possibly sedition, or, if there was a real insurrection, this would be it — that apply. Further, one has to ask, given the seriousness of the allegations, why did Woodward and Costa sit on them all these months and not pass them to the appropriate authorities? There is the crime known as misprision of felony, which would appear to apply in this case to the authors.

Naturally — need we wonder? — these acts, again, if true, which in wartime would be considered treasonous, were inspired by the rampant, if unfounded, view that the Orange Man in the White House was off his rocker and would use a nuclear strike on China as a way of — what? — securing his place as President. Milley, according to the book, was egged on by none other than Speaker Nancy Pelosi — speaking of unhinged — who is said to have called the President, and Commander-in-Chief, “crazy.”

The Nexus of a Coup d’Etat

“What I’m saying to you is that if they couldn’t even stop him from an assault on the Capitol, who even knows what else he may do?” Pelosi is reported to have said. “And is there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt all over this? You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time.”

The book says Milley agreed with her “on everything.” And if Milley took his cue from Pelosi, that would implicate her in whatever crimes Milley may have committed.

Never mind that others who were present in the White House at the time, and otherwise in close contact with the President, say the idea that Trump was not in full control of his faculties or planned some sort of nuclear attack is utter nonsense. Notably, among others, another general, retired Lt. Gen. Joseph “Keith” Kellogg, who served as Chief of Staff of the National Security Council, has said Milley “needs to resign or he should be removed.”

Until the facts are sorted, including a full review of the transcripts of the calls and testimony under oath by all concerned, those would be reasonable expectations in a constitutionally ruled nation which, by any means, wishes to avoid governance by military coup. Given the further incompetence and malfeasance shown by Milley and others, from Biden (who, as Commander-in-Chief bears ultimate responsibility) on down, in the recent disastrous withdrawal — surrender is a more apt term — from Afghanistan, resignations or removals would be warranted for that alone. But as I said in a recent post, there seems to no longer exist any sense of shame, disgrace, or even admission of failure in this country, and so far no one responsible for this debacle has indicated any acknowledgment of the massive failure they designed and oversaw.

As troubling, if not predictable, is how those on the left and in the corrupt media, who normally, one might think, would be opposed to military rule, have circled the wagons around Milley, as if he’s some sort of national hero. It’s impossible to add insult or exaggeration to the degraded state of most of the American media, and if the country’s democracy further recedes until it no longer is recognizable, as it might, they bear a large part of the responsibility for it.

If you thought military coups were solely the province of Third World countries, or that a renegade general could take things in his own hands only in 1960s black comedies, welcome to the reality of the new America.

Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper, played by actor Sterling Hayden, from Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb. Used under Fair Use.

Gen. Mark Milley, source unknown, from senegal24news.com. Used under Fair Use.

Nancy Pelosi, source unknown, from americanconservativeherald.com. Used under Fair Use.

This piece also is posted on my Substack in my community there, Issues That Matter. Subscribe here, and there. And if you like the piece, please share it. Links below.

 
Review: Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

Review: Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War

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It’s back to world war again. Last month I reviewed 2034: A Novel of the Next World War. Now I’ll review Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War. What’s that, you ask? Both books have the same subtitle? Yup. Apparently world wars sell books. Since Ghost Fleet came first, it would be the 2034 authors and publisher poaching the subtitle. Originality, anyone?

Anyway, the same Foreign Service buddy who suggested I read 2034 suggested that I read Ghost Fleet, too. It’s one more of those books that is reputedly all the buzz inside the Beltway. This is because, as mentioned in my other review, every war-game simulation run shows the ChiComs winning and handing us our ass. This is basically the premise of Ghost Fleet, that we’re at a disadvantage in a confrontation with China, and the book takes us through the ensuing conflict.

Foreign Policy had this to say about the place the book held in the Pentagon in 2016:

“It’s on the desks of four-star generals and junior naval officers, and it has found its way on to the recommended reading lists for every branch of the American military . . . At a time when commanders and intelligence officials are worried about retaining America’s technological edge against resurgent great power rivals — crystallized in Friday’s of the Defense Department’s annual report on China — the book has captured imaginations and sparked debate inside the Pentagon. Ghost Fleet has landed at an auspicious time: After 15 years of grinding ground wars against elusive insurgents armed with homemade bombs, the U.S. military is both yearning to get back to its roots in high-end conflict and wondering how to counter old adversaries with new hi-tech tools.”

I guess that was a time when our military — for lack of a better word — leadership was more concerned with defending the U.S. against real threats than superfluous things like promoting Critical Race Theory, gender equity, climate change, and combating alleged white supremacy. It’s pretty startling the changes that have taken place just in the past nine months in that regard, though I think the seeds of those changes were planted long ago. And now, with the debacle of our shameful Afghanistan surrender and withdrawal, the threat to this country has never been greater in many decades, and yet it is more clear, to friend and foe alike, that we are less psychologically prepared to counter any threats than perhaps at any time in our history. So whether one accepts the premise of the book or not, it is clear that through our exhibited fecklessness and weakness the temptation to our enemies has been magnified exponentially and entirely through our own unforced errors.

The Future as Seen from 2014

Ghost Fleet was written in 2014 and came out in 2015, so there are some clear anachronisms in it. One thing that jumped out was the widespread use in the book of smart glasses that are based on Google Glass, and we all know what happened to that idea. Technology plays a big part in the book and in the war, as one might expect. But one has to question some of that technology. For instance, a Chinese teenage girl is depicted just flicking her fingers to manipulate smart rings on her digital joints and create dire situations half way around the world. Call me a skeptic, but I don’t see where finger flicks could be deployed with sufficient precision to accomplish their goals. I mean, I have a hard enough time getting my tablet to do anything with my fingers on the screen. These things might make for colorful visuals, but I don’t see them working in real life.

Some things, like our dependence on computer chips used in sophisticated military aircraft and machines that are made in China, enabling the planting of spyware and tracking capability in them, is plausible, though others more knowledgeable of such things than I am have pointed out how shielding and other safeguards would largely make such things ineffectual. Peoples’ movements are tracked in great detail by a network of surveillance cameras, to the point where one can hardly take a dump without being observed, and then deadly drones, called quadcopters, come in to take out perceived enemies. Not totally inconceivable, but stretched to a point that challenges credulity. These scenes frequently reminded me of the 2016 – 2018 TV series Colony, which featured an alien invasion of Los Angeles.

As in 2034, technological advantages held by our adversaries help tip the balance toward them. But the question has to be raised whether the answer is simply more technology, more dependence on technology, or whether being smarter about how that technology is developed, built, deployed, and hardened against infiltration is the better approach. Ghost Fleet is almost like a clarion call for those at the top to pour more trillions into high-end technology while it’s also a dire warning against such an approach. The money game is at the heart of Washington politics, but how much does it further expose us to our enemies? And what role should more low-tech approaches play, undercutting our adversaries’ dependence on technology?

One disturbing element of the book is how virtually everyone, on both sides, has become essentially drug addicts. They rely on “stims” and implanted “pumps” to enhance their performance, do their jobs, even stay awake. This seemed superfluous to the overall story line, but it’s far from the only superfluous element.

The Ghost Fleet

The book’s title, and much of its action, centers on the mothballed fleet of ships — the Ghost Fleet — that have been taken out of service and are moldering at various places around the country. Once the war has started, China (actually, an updated version of China, something called “the Directorate,” made up of a mix of business moguls and military brass who overthrew the former Chinese Communist Party following the collapse of Indonesia) and Russia have disabled U.S. communications and surveillance capabilities. The Directorate also invaded, in a sneak blitz attack, and holds the state of Hawaii, where much of the action goes on.

With most of the U.S. Navy destroyed, the Pentagon resorts to putting the Ghost Fleet into action. Especially a high-tech, but mothballed, destroyer known as the U.S.S. Zumwalt — an actual vessel, seen in the image above in its sea trials. Mounted with a new and powerful weapon called a rail gun, this is going to be our answer to the mighty Chinese fleet. And like the lead characters in a TV crime drama running between the bullets but never getting hit, somehow the Chinese don’t see what is going on with its refurbishment and refitting, and then the Zumwalt manages to survive every attack launched against it once sent out on the prowl.

While serving up much of the dramatic and personal action in the book, these two elements — that we’d ever tolerate occupation of a U.S. state without massive retaliation, and how so much reliance was put on a single obsolete naval vessel — further stretched credulity. Throw in an eccentric billionaire who manages to take over a previously impermeable Chinese space station, after the Russians had taken over the International Space Station by locking out the sole U.S. astronaut aboard, and a sexy serial killer whose cleverly murderous ways are directed at the Chinese occupiers in Hawaii while feeding her own homicidal desires, and you have a mix more colorful than plausible.

Additionally, as a former intel analyst, I have to question how the Chinese and Russians could gear up for their attacks without us seeing what they were up to. We can identify specific cargoes being loaded on ships from our satellite surveillance and humint capabilities (assuming someone was watching, which they would be, before our satellites were incapacitated), and that just didn’t compute to me. Or how the Chinese wouldn’t see what we were up to refitting the Zumwalt at Mare Island.

The book has been criticized on literary terms, and I have to say I frequently found the book annoying. There are so many locations, subplots, and characters to keep track of — switching between them every one, two, or three pages throughout the book — there were times I was tempted to throw the book down. Rather than building my suspense, that got to be too much and just irritated me. I wound up spending an inordinate amount of time flipping back in the book to see who a specific character was or what was going on in a given subplot. Also, the book comes to a screeching halt in the middle of the most critical action, implying somehow we had prevailed without filling in the details how we did, and that also annoyed me.

While the book is a novel — at 404 pages, a rather long one — it also has 374 end notes meant to document every detail in the book and intended to lend credibility to it.

I won’t argue that Ghost Fleet doesn’t raise some questions worth evaluating, or that it isn’t entertaining enough in numerous places. But I wouldn’t get my ideas on how a future war might start, be fought, won, or lost, from the book. Or any work of fiction. I’d suggest that our military and political leadership get their heads out of their reading lists and get back to looking in a hard-headed way at world realities. Not that I have much faith that they will.

>>Click this link to buy the book on Amazon<<

Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War is by P.W. Singer and August Cole, an Eamon Dolan Book, published by Mariner Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Copyright © 2015 by P.W. Singer and August Cole.

P.W. Singer is a strategist at New America, a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and Principal at Useful Fiction LLC. He has been named by the Smithsonian as one of the nation’s 100 leading innovators by Defense News, as one of the 100 most influential people in defense issues by Foreign Policy to their Top 100 Global Thinkers List, and as an official “Mad Scientist” for the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command. Singer is the author of multiple best-selling, award winning books in both fiction and nonfiction, ranging from Wired for War to Ghost Fleet. Described in the Wall Street Journal as “the premier futurist in the national-security environment,” Singer is considered one of the world’s leading experts on changes in 21st Century warfare, with more books on the military professional reading lists than any other author, living or dead.

August Cole is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council. He is the director of the Art of Future War project, which explores narrative fiction and visual media for insight into the future of conflict. His fiction writing tackles themes at the core of American foreign policy and national security in the twenty-first century, including the privatization of military and intelligence operations and the future of American power in the Pacific. He is also writer-in-residence at Avascent, an independent strategy and management-consulting firm focused on the defense and aerospace sectors. From 2007 to 2010, Cole reported on the defense industry for the Wall Street Journal.

Photo of U.S.S. Zumwalt by U.S. Navy and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works, via Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

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Disgrace

Disgrace

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In a normal country in normal times, those responsible for such an enormous debacle as what those at the top in our country caused to happen in Afghanistan in recent weeks would resign in disgrace. And if they didn’t, steps would be taken by those charged with oversight to remove them from office, even try and punish them. But this is not a normal country and these are not normal times, and there seems to no longer exist any sense of shame, disgrace, or even admission of failure. Instead, as the alleged president just did, again, they take a victory lap and spew lies and distortions touting how brilliant and insightful they are, and hope everyone is as imbecilic and full of guile as they are.

Listening to Biden’s words a short while ago made me more angry than I can ever remember any political figure, in my entire life, make me. And that is saying something. I shouted out my anger, and I struck my head wondering how a single human being — as despicable and useless as this rotten excuse for a human being is — can be so profoundly stupid. And arrogant. Surely it has to be a team effort. And the ulterior motive a powerful one.

The insult I used as the title of my last piece on this subject — Ignorance With Impudence — barely touches the level of ignorance nor that of impudence put on full display today.

You see those hands in that photo above, showing a collapsing Biden last Thursday when he was challenged by Fox News’s Peter Doocy on his attempt to blame his Afghanistan catastrophe on his predecessor? Look carefully and you’ll see that they’re drenched in blood. The blood of 13 of our service people killed at Hamid Karzai International Airport last week. The blood of hundreds of needlessly dead Afghans in the same attack. The blood of the Americans, the blood of the Afghans who risked their lives to support us, deliberately left behind while surrounded by rabid terrorists intent on rooting them out and killing them. Also there is the blood of the hundreds, thousands, who will die in Afghanistan, in the United States, and elsewhere in the world as a result of the incredibly bone-headed and callous decisions made by this incompetent and those who allowed and facilitated him to make and carry them out.

If ever there was a time to say there is plenty of blame to go around, this is it. But since Biden is at the top of this heap of excrement and claims the buck stops with him — as if he actually means it, as Harry Truman did — he bears ultimate blame and responsibility for what happened, what will happen. To paraphrase the immortal 1988 words of Senator Lloyd Bentsen, back when Democrats still had some honor and a tad of sense, to vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle, Mr. President, I served with Harry Truman. I knew Harry Truman. Harry Truman was a friend of mine. Mr. President, you’re no Harry Truman.

Stalemate

Once more I find my post taking a different direction than I initially intended. The news continues to come in so fast, and it’s so awful, it’s impossible to keep up with it. I’m not a news service and this is not intended to be either daily reporting or a book. Any one with a fair mind and open eyes can see the reality, the actual events and people creating them, the results of those events and those people, and they don’t need me to continually point them out. My job, as I’ve executed it for more than four years now, is to put the pieces together, to analyze them, and to do what I can to bring people a clear view of the reality. To the extent many of my readers already have a clear view, they read my pieces and nod their heads and occasionally let me know they agree. And I try to give clear views to those readers who don’t see, or don’t want to see, the reality, and I hope I can bring some around to at least consider views other than those they are fed by what I’ve come to call the State Media, the corrupt and biased mainstream media and Big Tech whose lies and coverups in large part brought us to the terrible place we’re now at.

Initially I was going to call this piece Stalemate — the point in a chess match where a player has no legal moves left that won’t land his king in checkmate. It’s a draw, and the game is over. As a nation, we’re now in stalemate, and there are no legal moves left that will get us out of it. As a nation, we’re forced to live in this stasis, which was engineered by the Dem strategists and whoever is calling the shots behind the scenes of the party, and one has to hand them kudos for that achievement, as despicable and dangerous as it is. We have a clearly mentally incompetent president who, by almost any measure, the 25th Amendment was written for. But then, even if he could be removed from office either through that amendment or impeachment, we have a poison pill, the repulsive and dangerous Kamala Harris, as vice president. We get rid of the top guy, and we’re left with what might be an even worse substitute. And below her is the power hungry and vicious Nancy Pelosi. So, three layers deep, we’re left with no good legal moves, and that was the plan all along.

Those same Dem power brokers counted on what they see as the stupidity of the American people, for whom they have no respect other than to use them for their own purposes, and then along came the gift that keeps on giving — the COVID pandemic — which allowed them to flaunt and just plain throw out constitutional protections of our vote. That fraud allowed them to engineer a victory for a doddering old fool you wouldn’t trust to drive your kid’s school bus, let alone head the most powerful country on earth. And they knew that, even in his dementia, given the chance to grab the top accolade of his long and feckless political career — the presidency — Jello-O Joe would put the interest of the country aside and go for it. For this he won my top Profile in Cowardice award.

As I point out in that piece, it wasn’t always this way in American politics, even among the Democratic Party. Read the piece and see, if you forgot or weren’t around at that time, how Thomas Eagleton — a far more capable figure then Joe Biden — stepped down from being George McGovern’s running mate in 1972 when details of some issues with depression Eagleton had dealt with came out. At that time, the good of the country took precedence. That now seems like a prosaic concept.

An Unmitigated Disaster of a Presidency

For anyone who voted for Joe Biden — and, to be perfectly frank, you have to bear some responsibility for this debacle — I defy you to name one single thing Biden has done, one decision he’s made, that has made life better for ordinary Americans. I’ll go one further, and defy you to name one single thing, one single decision, he’s made, that hasn’t made things much worse for this country and its residents. We are so far beyond fucked at this point, it’s hard to even find a suitable word to describe it.

Whether it is throwing open our southwestern border to every ilk of criminal, drug runner, COVID-carrier, and terrorist who cares to cross it, in thorough disregard for our laws and well being — now being augmented by thousands of unvetted Afghans arriving and being sent willy-nilly around the country — taking our focus from competence and merit to attempting to inculcate divisions and distrust in our military, in our corporations and other institutions, and in society at large, to flaunting the Supreme Court and the rule of law to undermine the ability of property owners to pay their bills and stay afloat, to creating what can only be described as confusion on the coronavirus front, this president and his puppet masters have done what they can to sew discord and disorder in the nation. Crime is allowed to spiral out of control, unbridled federal spending is driving inflation, and he took us from energy independence to once more being dependent on the Middle East for our energy.

On the international stage, he has now shown this country to be weak and untrustworthy, and as we’ve learned, weakness breeds instability and tempts bad actors to take chances they would not otherwise. Despite the lies Biden told today — and there is no other word to describe his ridiculous and readily disprovable assertions — we have now created a terrorist nation in Afghanistan, and given a safe haven to not just the Taliban, but their close allies, al Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, and ISIS, among others. Even more mind-boggling, by leaving behind $83 billion in military hardware, we’ve made this terrorist state the fifth best equipped military in the world. The Taliban now have more Black Hawk helicopters, as just one example, than Australia.

Make no mistake. The same bunch of misguided idiots — Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, child-moron Jake Sullivan who purports to be National Security Adviser, throw in Joint Chiefs Chairman and blowhard Mark Milley, and other members of the Obama foreign policy (sic) team — that brought us the ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq and the Iranian nuclear deal have now undone 20 years of progress, as difficult as it was, in Afghanistan, and created a mess and a threat that will be our nemesis for decades to come.

Perhaps most poignantly telling are the comments of the parents and spouses and siblings of the 13 slain service people, who spoke of Biden’s insensitivity, his self-absorption, his incessant talking about the death of his son Beau — who did not die in combat — his checking his watch each time, 13 times, a coffin came off the aircraft at Dover Air Force Base. I’ll end this piece with the words of Kathy McCollum, the mother of 20-year-old Marine Rylee James McCollum, killed in the attack on HKIA, who says it better than I ever could.

Calling in to a talk show Friday, McCollum said this:

“My son was one of the Marines who died yesterday. Twenty years and six months old — getting ready to come home from freaking Jordan to be with his wife and witness the birth of his son. And that feckless, dementia-ridden piece of crap just sent my son to die. I woke up at four o’clock this morning, two Marines at my door telling me my son was dead. So, to [have White House Press Babbler Jen Psaki on] right before me and listen to that piece of crap talk about diplomatic crap with frickin’ Taliban terrorists who just freakin’ blew up my son and no, nothing, to not say anything about, oh my god, I’m so sorry for families. So, my son is gone.”

McCollum’s son is gone. And as tragically, so is our national honor, and very possibly our security and our future with it.

Featured image, Biden’s Collapse, Al Drago, Bloomberg News via Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

Stalemate, from rutrackerpulse.weebly.com. Used under Fair Use.

The Three Heads of the Poisonous Serpent, Jim Watson, Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

This piece also appears in my Substack community, Issues That Matter. Please subscribe here, and there.