By Fred Reed 

November 05, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - The United States seems to be contemplating war with Russia, Iran, China, or all three Washington pushes NATO ever closer to Russia, leaves the nuclear-missile treaty and tries to destroy both countries and China economically. Why the push for war?

Simple. Asia is awakening. China (from which I have just returned) grows economically at a scorching pace–and all power rests on economic power. China is a large country, America a mediuj-sized one. America’s roughly two hundred million whites do virtually all of the scientific work on which national power depends. China has a billion increasingly educated Han Chinese, a five-to-one advantage. China’s stated aim is to united Eurasia among othr places in one vast commercial union. Washington’s pugnacity has pushed China, Ira, and Russia together. The chain of nations, Pakistan, Afghanistn, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey all totter between looking east and looking west. If Washington doesn’t stop this growth, the American Empire will be marginalized within decades.

This doesn’t threaten the Amercan public. It threatens the Empire and Israel.

What would a war with Russia look like, even assuming that it didn’t go nuclear? A great military thinker–me, actually–ññonce said that military stupidity comes in three levels: normallly stupid; really really stupid; and invading Russia. From Chuck XII to Adolf I it hasproved a poor career move.

The US military has not won a war since 1945, with the exception of the First Gulf War, which the LAPD could have won. It lost decisively in Vietnam. It got run out of Lebanon with 241 dead Marines as its only accomplishment. After seventeen years it shows no signs of defeating barely armed Afghan peasants. Iraq has been a complete botch, achieving none of its goals, control of the oil, permanent bases, and a puppet government. Just now the military is losing in Syria.

Nothing short of genius can account for losing so consistently given the enormous resources available to American forces. In light of this very low level of military competence, maybe wars are not our best choice of hobby.

What sort of war is envisaged? The United States cannot fight a sizable land war. Iran can. Russia can. The American military means air power and little else.   The Army hasn’t fought a serious war since 1973, the fleet since 1945. In long periods of inaction, things deteriorate because they do not seem important. Crucial supplies cease to exist, spare parts aren’t there, the logistics train quietly becomes inoperable.  Money goes instead to pricey weapons of little practical use.

The Army recruits from a soft millennial population. America is no longer a country of tough rural kids. Social engineering has rotted the ranks. The military has suffered years of feminization, SJW appeasement,  affirmative action, lowered physical standards, and LGBTQ insertion. Conscription is politically impossible. The Army cannot defeat Afghans even with the advantages of unlimited air power, artillery, gun ships, medevac, helicopters, and drones, It would last a very short time if it had to fight the Afghans or Iranians, on even terms.  Muslims are more virile than today’s Americans and have proven tenacious.

A military that never fights a war that it has to win, that never encounters an enemy that can dangerously hit back, inevitably deteriorates. 

Militaries come to believe their own propaganda. So, apparently, do  the feral mollycoddles in the White House and New York. The American military’s normal procedure is to overestimate American power, underestimate the enemy, and misunderstand the kind of war it is getting into. Should Washington decide on war with Iran, or Russia (unless by a surprise nuclear strike) there will be the  usual talk of the most powerful, best trained, best equipped etc., and how the Ivans and towelheads will melt away in days, a cakewalk. Bet me.

Militaries have a very poor record of predicting outcomes of wars. This might provoke thought. The American Civil War was expected to be over in an afternoon; this was wrong by 650,000 dead and four years. When Napoleon invaded Russia, he did not expect Russians to occupy Paris. Germany thought that WWI would be a war of movement over in weeks; in fact a ghastly war of attrition lasting four years. When Japan attacked Pearl, it was not intentionally inviting GIs to the geisha houses of Tokyo. When Germany invaded Poland, occupation of Germany by Russia and America was low on its list of expectations. When France re-invaded Vietnam, it did not foresee Dien Bien Dien Phu and utter defeat by les jaunes. When America invaded Vietnam, it did not expect a decade-long losing war. When Russia invaded Afghanistan it did not expect to lose to Afghans in sandals. When America invaded Afghanistan, having seen what had happened to Russia, it did not expect the same result.

We do not know what a war with Iran, or Russia, or China  would look like or what the Iranians might do. An overconfident military and an inexperienced government in Washington will predictably predict a short war and speak of precision weapons and surgical strikes. The Navy will guarantee that it can keep the Straits open, and speak of its advanced technology. The expectation will be that there will be nothing unexpected. The white House will believe that  Iran will lie there and be bombed without response. Russia? The nukes will fall on the European countries from which the attack came. Germany might ponder this carefully. 

America could of course destroy much of Iran and kill millions of the defenseless. This is what America now calls “war.” It would be amusing to see what would happen if the Air Force had to fight an enemy that could fight back, but this would mean only Russia or, perhaps, just possibly, barely, to some extent, China. It is a coward’s way of war and, to judge by South Vietnam and Afghanistan, not very effective. Killing lots of people and winning a war are not the same thing.

What if Iran did stop petroleum traffic in the Persian Gulf with, say, missiles mounted on pickup trucks. Is this possible? I don’t know. Neither, I suspect, does the Navy–which will insist that it can handle mere pickup trucks with its superb this and that, its best trained, best equipped, the only hyperpower, and so on. But tankers are not going to run even a small risk of going up in flames.

How long would the Straits have to be closed with the world screaming for oil before Washington, desperate, its vanity bruised,  full of huge egos, would have to do something stupid to save face?

Further, American leadership is of dangerously low quality. An essentially absentee Congress, the sordidness and criminality of the Clintons, Trump’s utter crassness and shady past, the submission to Israel, the widespread and never punished corruption. In this sorry brew no one seems interested in the wellbeing of the county, only unseemly grasping at benefits for the arms industry, big oil, Wall Street, Tel Aviv, and the Empire. Note that wars generate huge profits for the arms makers and the longer the war can be kept going, neither winning nor losing, the greater the profits. War against Iran would be a magnificent profit center. Since American casualties are extremely low , permanent war has few downsides.

At the top of government we have an unprepossessing bunch that would make Kaiser Wilhelm’s court seem wholesome. Their chief characteristics are pathological aggressiveness and a severe case of Beltway Bubble Syndrome. There is Trump with his weird eruptions. The ever-combative Nikki Haley. Steve Bannon, prophesying and hoping for war with China. Mike Pompeo, threatening Iran, threatening, Venezuela, threatening North Korea. John  Bolton of the codiece mustches, always counseling a war he won’t fight in, like Trump a drat dodger with something to prove. 

The life of millions depends on this freak show? I need a drink.

Fred, a keyboard mercenary with a disorganized past, has worked on staff for Army Times, The Washingtonian, Soldier of Fortune, Federal Computer Week, and The Washington Times. https://fredoneverything.org