Category Archives: Military

On the same day that Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad, a mainly Uzbek jihadist group, swore allegiance to Al Nusrah Front, it claimed an attack on Russian forces in

Source: Al Qaeda brigade claims attack on Russian forces in Syria | The Long War Journal

Note: September 30, 2015 story

Ahrar al Sham claims to have launched Grad rockets at the Hmeimim airbase in the Latakia province of Syria earlier today. Russian forces are stationed at the

Source: Ahrar al Sham claims rocket attacks on airbase where Russians are stationed | The Long War Journal

Note: October 2, 2015 story

Prepare for another LB ramble on Syria.  Yesterday, I felt anger at the American military being humiliated by the way the Russians began their air campaign in Syria.  That 3-star general showing up at the US embassy in Baghdad with démarche orders was meant to humiliate.  We have no leadership in America, only bloviating political hacks – President Obama in the White House.  mealy-mouthed generals at the Pentagon, and the media’s perennial favorite Republican foreign policy “expert”, Senator John McCain.  They put the US military in this humiliating position, not Putin.

Propaganda campaigns run amok and sad to say a lot of what the US reports will be as deceptive as the Russians.  For the record, keep in mind all the assurances of the US training and aiding “Syrian moderates”, who turned out to align with ISIS as soon as they had US weapons.  Then there’s the stream of intelligence reports from  CENTCOM under investigation for allegedly being doctored.  And our weak, feckless President, the “Syrian moderate” mouthpiece in the Senate, John McCain and even some in the Pentagon will work hard to cast all Russian actions in a bad light.  John McCain will quote his sources “in the know” and perhaps someone should ask him on whom he relies – is it his aide O’Bagy and her contacts in Syria?  Remember his 2013 fact-finding trip to Syria – he was photographed with alleged terrorists.  We should get the answers to that before we trust McCain and his “reliable” sources. We expect propaganda from the Russians, but watching the mountain of lies from our own government makes me hesitant to believe we’ll be getting honest information as the Obama administration and the “Syrian moderate” cheerleaders try to save face. Russia assuredly has grand strategic aims.  We have no strategy.

Whether the Russians will be able to use the force necessary to defeat ISIS remains to be seen.  Yesterday, when the Russians initiated airstrikes the US government railed about Russian bad manners for how they informed the US of these impending  Russian airstrikes.  The Russians aimed to humiliate the US, of that I have no doubt, but the US response amounted to sniveling. While the Russians orchestrated a rather masterful diplomatic and military effort to assist Assad, the US Secretary of Defense rambled on about the Obama social engineering and budget cuts that will diminish American military might.  That message is not lost on the rest of the world and frankly, Ash Carter may be a nice man, he may be well-studied on military matters, but here’s the truth – he comes across as a weak squish.   John Kerry, Mr. pink bicycle rider, comes across as a weak squish.  Obama, our leader from behind, comes across as the weakest squish of all.

What Putin’s ultimate aims are remain to be seen, but it’s clear he isn’t afraid to act.  G. Murphy Donovan penned an excellent piece at the American Thinker today: “Putin, the Indispensable Man?”  Donovan writes:

“We remember great men because, as Pericles prophesied, great men do great things and then live on in the hearts of other men. “The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.” Reputation is immortality indeed.

A great man, alas, is not necessarily good or popular. History is not kind to necessary villains. Stalin might be the best example from the WWII pantheon. Good and necessary are very different virtues. Josef Stalin was nonetheless one of those indispensable men who made victory and Russian national survival possible. Ruthless men make good soldiers.

Vladimir Putin may be such a man. Just as surely, Barack Obama is unlikely to be remembered for much beyond strategic inertia.”

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/putin_the_indispensable_man.html#ixzz3nKSWUW5J
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John McCain and President Obama will keep mentioning Ukraine in every other breath talking about Putin, but here’s the truth – the US was trying to aid and abet a soft coup there, relying on fools like Victoria Nuland, from the US State Department, whom the Russians intercepted her phone conversation with the US ambassador in Ukraine – discussing which leader the US wanted in Kiev.  The Russians leaked that phone conversation in western media.  Some of the factions the US was cozying up to in Ukraine were neo-nazi thugs, not “freedom fighters”.  The US seems to have become a stickler on the international law and agreements when it comes to demonizing some countries, but with our “regime change” democracy projects, we’re rather lax on following those rules ourselves.  Putin made some fascinating comments in that CBS Charlie Rose interview (part 2 of the interview start about minute 14).  Someone should pin down President Obama on our actions around the world, from Ukraine, Libya (Benghazi too), Iraq and what in the heck our strategy really is in regards to defeating ISIL.  Putin laid out his position clearly.

Putin did offer the rules correctly when he spoke to the UN – Assad does represent the government in Syria and Assad invited the Russians in.  Ash Carter offered up this version of the Russian’s failed logic on propping up Assad, stating that the Russians went after the Free Syrian Army and not ISIL (as the administration refers to them).  Carter, McCain and the administration spend more time arguing for removing Assad than they do talking about how to defeat ISIL.  My main questions for them are: If Assad goes before ISIL is defeated, how is the US going to insure some stable, non-radicalized government emerges in Syria?”  Will it look like Iraq once Obama was in charge of US policy?  Do they plan to help install another regime?  What is their plan to keep ISIL or other jihadists from filling that power vacuum?

If Libya and the Obama pull-out of US troops from Iraq are any indication, they don’t have a plan.  The pretzel logic falls on the US side in this mess.

Russia, China and Iran are systematically working to marginalize the US in the region. It bodes poorly for us. Both China and Russia worked out lucrative business deals in the region while we were bleeding on the ground trying to prop up national governments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wherever we try to operate, the Russians and Chinese can be counted on to be funneling arms in to forces trying to thwart our efforts. The Cold War era pattern never ends. I must say that Putin has perfected using the “international peace-seeking” language to a fine art and on top of that he cast himself as a defender of Christianity too – quite a walk-on-water feat for a tough former KGB man. Obama and Kerry ramble on offering nothing, as usual. Putin is building a large area of Russian influence. We are still hunting for elusive “Syrian moderates” – big picture thinking vs little picture thinking, you decide.

The truth is Obama left this gaping leadership vacuum, which Putin has decided to fill. Remember the surge in Afghanistan that he never fully manned? Well, at this point here are few warnings. The US should conduct our operations without getting enmeshed in Russian operations or plans. I believe the Russians will quickly launch a brutal campaign that falls well beyond the Geneva Conventions and the US should steer clear of being sucked into this. Plus any operation with the Russians will end up with the US being played for fools.

Setting up safe zones for Syrians in areas outside of ISIS and Assad control would be a good idea, but I doubt Obama will take that risk and the US lacks the credibility among regional leaders to get much assistance, especially when Obama will want others to take all of the risks on the ground.

Let’s face reality, more national humiliations of having our nose rubbed in it lie in store for America as long as Obama is president and much of it won’t be only from Putin. They always say look where people came from to figure out who they are. Putin is a former KGB officer. Obama and Valerie were weaned on Communist dogma from early childhood, before drinking the kool-aid of college campus radicalism.

I worry about the US military having its hands tied behind its back and US troops being put in bad positions by Putin pushing the envelope and Obama waffling and keeping overly restrictive rules of engagement.

#Hands up, don’t shoot Vladimir will be the Obama and girls at the White House response to Putin’s power plays or #Why can’t we all get along…. The national embarrassment continues!

P.S. Here’s the link to the Ralph Peters video

Russia made several more moves today that caught the Obama administration off guard again.  A longer post will follow tonight. So far the best analysis is Ralph Peters’ succinct take on FOX news today.  I’m in the middle of cooking stuffed shells, so the link will come later.  The short version is Putin has grand strategic aims to create a wall of Russian-friendly states. Putin intends to prop up Assad more than fight ISIS.  The Russian airstrikes hit Free Syrian Army targets, not ISIS.  Peters believes Putin will wipe out the other rebel forces first, leaving the US with a fait accompli – Assad or ISIS.  Oh, and Obama will chase pixie dust fairies and other magical solutions.

The Russians used masterful propaganda – all the West’s most cherished things – internatinal order, international law, the UN, humanitarianism, and last, but not least, Putin came bearing the cross, as champion of persecuted Christians.  All echoed with the old Soviet “World Peace” propaganda. Obama’s string of actions, leaving America at this low point, either are the work of a nincompoop or a traitor – you decide….

FOX News has a group of women and former US Senator Scott Brown on “analyzing”  Putin’s UN speech.  I’ll sum it up on for you, because they seem to be clueless – Putin stole the US’s moral high ground in the fight against the Islamic State.

Obama, the neocon think tanks/arm the Syrian moderate brain trust and McCain with his foreign policy legislative assistant, O’Bagy, to help keep him “informed” have bungled the American effort to defeat the Islamic State.

All of the regional leaders who were counting on the US have decided to talk to Putin.

So, when McCain tries to blame Obama and Obama blames the military, McCain or others and the neocons wail about how we need to ramp up the hunt for elusive Syrian moderates to be our boots on the ground in Syria – just remember, this is a huge American policy FAILURE, because the rest of the world doesn’t care about the internal partisan finger-pointing.  They see America!

It’s a very sad day when Russia is outlining a better policy than the US.  I am so disgusted with the lack of American leadership, which sad to say,  is the largest power vacuum in the world at the moment!

The NY Times is reporting on an intelligence-sharing accord pertaining to the Islamic State between Russia, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The Russians did not consult with the United States before initiating this accord, so once again Putin has done an end run around the Obama administration, highlighting the stark contrast between “leading” and “leading from behind”.

I sized up the characters and personalities of both men along ago and it felt odd for me, being a Cold War warrior about the evils of the Soviet Union, to find myself choosing Putin as a far better geopolitical strategist than President Obama and his lame narrative-writers. Sure, lots of western analysts cast Putin as just an opportunist, but I think they’re underestimating him.  Back in January 2013 I wrote “Putin By A Mile”, about who would you choose in a geopolitical match-up between Putin and Obama.   I think my call was right:

Taking “a walk a mile in their shoes approach” puts us on firmer strategic ground than all this suspect psychobabble our assessments often contain. To understand Putin all it takes is to view Russia from where he stands. George Friedman does this best (here). While Putin’s actions do remain diametrically opposed to ours and most assuredly will produce future friction points, his actions make perfect strategic sense from the Russian viewpoint. He aggressively has secured energy resources and engaged the US in nuclear arms wrangling where he certainly pushed and received the things that are advantageous to Russia.

Then we have Barack Obama where he refused to sign the Keystone Pipeline deal, he gave away too much in the nuclear arms dealing and he and Madame Secretary have made one after another terrible missteps, stabbing our allies in the back, while bowing and scraping to our adversaries. He’s put us on the path to not only universal healthcare, but to being a universal third-rate bit player on the world stage. If I were assessing how the strategic plane looks from others’ vantage points, I would wonder, “those stupid Americans, they don’t even have the national will to promote their own interests”. And truly, any administration that utters a phrase like,”leading from behind” is worthy of only supreme contempt, in my opinion.

The ill-mannered TV reality urchin, Honey boo boo can keep Barack Obama, but as for me I’d pick Putin by a mile.

Leadership is about character and sadly for us we have the Captain of the JV team in this match-up….