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Anti-War Blog – Apparently, not evil. Just War.

Anti-War Blog – Apparently, not evil. Just War.

In the past those of us distant from war could only see it in the print media and television. It was curated with the intent to gain sympathy, or conceal the brutality of those who we were supposed to be sympathetic for. As censored as it was at times graphic, though it was just in fragments. Now, we have an endless stream of images and video. If we dare to see them.

War is a peculiar thing, it allows for the most horrible to occur on a grand scale. It is precisely because of the scale of such acts and who is committing them, that the insufferable horror continues on. Despite the savagery and suffering, it’s articulated to have great meaning. In the parliaments, lecture halls, on television panels, on podcasts and in the comment sections of social media, it’s given context or debated. The suffering, the innocent, those in pain, the dead and the mourning victims or deserving, depending on ones narrative. Online it’s usually content, watermarks of @accounts, phonk sountracks, AI slopovers narrating and X threads turning the footage lifted from another’s telegram channel into a revenue post.

A human being or entire populations, forfeit. They don’t matter or simply are described to be deserving of their suffering. These opinions and views are not held or spoken by brutes, but by elected officials, common people, bots and bot brained posters a like. It’s not a pariah opinion, in most cases it’s an allowable one. An opinion that is rewarded. An opinion of mature sophistication, considerable delicacy of intellect but also one of base tribalism. It’s both, depending on whose espousing it. To be antiwar, not pacifist but opposed to the slaughter of the innocent, to collective punishment of regions or groups, is devalued as childish, immature. Unsophisticated. Naive.

Beyond the voyeur, in a distant field.

A lone Russian man, young, tired. Resigned to his fate as a drone hovers around him. The open grass field he is in, cold and empty. He has nowhere to run, even if he could. He can’t surrender because the suicide drone has one mission, to kill. The man sits, his head lowered. There is no mercy, no humanity. The distant drone operator steeled by idealism, or revenge or maybe apathy, is far away. The drone lingers. Hesitation from the killer? Or maybe torment? Perhaps a conversation is being had, to kill or not? The man waits. The decision is made. The drone detonates. Another life gone. A dead man. A son, A brother, A lover, A friend, A comrade. Now Dead.

On that same social media feed, a young boy with a bullet hole punched through his chest, lays limp. Palestinian, barely ten. Shot by an Israeli soldier. The parliaments, lecture halls, podcasts, television, comment sections discuss, debate, cheer and condemn. They can afford to, it’s not their child. It’s not them. The civilised conjure up definitions of genocide, whether the child deserved to die or who is really to blame. The soldier pulling the trigger, had no choice it’s claimed. The child is dead. Murdered. Except in war, when nation states wage them, murder is an ugly word that gets contextualised away. A little boy, among thousands more, remains dead.

You see, it’s not immoral or even a war crime, whatever that means, when it’s them dying. The Russian man, maybe still a teenager, is an invader. A Russki. The Palestinian boy, belongs to a pariah group according to the civilised West and it can be figured, is close enough to fighting age. Ten year old male, old enough to arrest, torture and kill. Soon, it’s argued, he will be a terrorist. Radicalised, a threat. Better to snuff him out now. Argues some in parliaments to podcasts to comment sections. He’s just a child under any other context.

There is nothing to be gained in appealing to reason or consistency. Invader! It’s easy to mention the allied and US invasions of foreign lands. That’s meaningless. That is how exceptionalism works. This soldier, is not an American, or doesn’t speak English at least. Therefore his participation in an invasion or police action, is illegal, immoral. He is the enemy, there is no mercy. The purported values and dignities of Western civilisation, they don’t matter. Or they only matter when an enemy is revealed as brutish, inhumane, lacking in such values.

The little boy, he belongs to a pariah race, a people that are the other. He may as well be a ‘Gypsie’, another group still mostly allowed to be hated and despised, suspect. He may as well be a Jew in Europe’s own past. In these examples he is a savage, not a boy or child. Another creature. That is how it’s possible to kill so many, make sure that enough of the world agrees. Enough of the influential, powerful agree or don’t care. It’s how you can starve millions to death from Yemen, Iraq to last centuries Germany in that first Great war. It’s how you can carpet their bomb cities, or stuff them into carriages to be gassed, bayoneted or shot to death. They are subhuman, vermin. The civilised and those with values, often declare it as such.

One can as easily find the denials. It’s not really happening. It’s fake. Manufactured. The moral side is that precisely because it claims to be. The same Nazi German government that invited the Red Cross and Allied POWs to inspect the mass graves of the Poles massacred by the Soviets at Katyn, were themselves responsible for countless other massacres, genocides. Grandstands of moral virtue signalling. Countless commies will claim that the Katyn massacre never occurred or that the Soviets themselves were never that bloodthirsty and oppressive. Jew-haters will also claim that the Nazi’s were incapable of mass genocide, even one of such a scale that the term holocaust has now become Holocaust,inc. Denial is a form of enabling. The dead children in Palestine, some claim that’s not happening as well.

Arguments and debates become digital wallpaper, entertainment. Comment sections polluted by bots and paid posters blending with the ideological and trolls. The definitions of morality and right and wrong or good and evil, ever fluid. Non-binary-moral. Ever in transition depending on who does it, and who is killed. Everything is fluid, especially murder.

Soon there won’t be a human peering through the screen while operating the drone, guiding it to hunt and kill. Will automation change anything? Indiscriminate and intentional murder of the innocent is ancient, technology and institutions of civility, laws and religion only seemed to have enhanced it. The gladius wielding Romans could commit a genocide as easily as the National Socialist empire of Germany with 20th century science. If the human killers and those distant humans, lack empathy, compassion and a regard for human dignity, how will a machine be any worse.

Maybe the machine with it’s logic and reason and rationales, a lack of ideological vileness, no religious contradictions, no sociopathic desire and greedy incentives, will be less evil? Who knows? The question remains, what does it say about us? Despite so much literature, achievement, apparent love of a creator or ages of reason, and atheistic morality that embraces justice and rights. Here we are.

And when they were in the field, Cain stood up against his brother Abel and killed him.”

May as well be Johnny Reb bayoneting Billy Yank or a distant drone operator steering an exploding drone into a man in a grass field. It seems that despite all of these faiths, ideological versions of control, Utopian coercion’s and monopolies of order, the result is the same.

Maybe evil never existed. It’s just us. Humanity invented the devil and moral frameworks to satiate our spirit for murder with alibi, and excuse. God Wills It! or the Devil steered a hand, To kill for empire, nation or as a reaction to empire, nation. To kill for conquest, for freedom. To kill for spiritual nirvana or economic Utopia. To kill for jealousy, greed, hatred, lust, or just because. The reasons may vary, the killers always there. The State makes it legal or illegal. To murder is immoral regardless of the States reasons.

The soldier, his body in a field, ripped to pieces. That little boy, held by weeping family members. Another lost. I want to say it’s pointless, but it isn’t. Not for the killers and advocates of the killing. There is a goal, an ambition. Whether it’s policy or conquest. That is what drives them. The victims, they are not allowed to exist or live in peace. That should be understood as evil. But we are educated to understand it’s complicated. The benefactors decided.

The purity of evil gets washed, domesticated and civilised. Many may say they hate war, most believe that they are not evil. Some even do everything in their ability to not be like that, to reject it. We need the idea of good-evil to exist to pretend we are capable of being better, to believe that we can be good, are good. But most seem to only believe in the lesser evil, that being their side. They also believe that the end, justifies the means. That being whatever nationalist, ideological, cultural, political or religious end or simply put whatever satisfies greed and comfort. Or, they don’t care.

The soldier is dead. The little boy, dead. More to follow. That’s evil. But apparently it’s not.

 

Fat Amy Performs as Expected

the pentagon, cropped square

The F35 continues to shine as a boondoggle and taxpayer nightmare fuel.

Taiclet’s boasts to investors about the program were quickly tempered by real world events the same day when video circulated of an out of control Air Force F-35 tumbling to a fiery crash in Alaska, after its pilot ejected. An “inflight malfunction” led to the crash, said Col. Paul Townsend, commander of the 354th Fight Wing, at a news conference. Townsend promised “a thorough investigation in hopes to minimize the chances of such occurrences from happening again.”

Even aside from the doubts raised by the crash, Tuesday’s claim by Lockheed CEO James Taiclet, doesn’t hold up to scrutiny and actually highlights the serious problems with the F-35 program that is estimated to saddle U.S. taxpayers with a $1.7 trillion bill over the project’s lifetime.

Dan Grazier, a senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center, flagged that Taiclet may be engaged in sleight of hand by touting the effectiveness of the Israeli variant of the F-35, known as the Adir, and the American variant used everywhere else in the world, in his earnings call claims.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/f-35-crash/

The Continuing Erosion of US Dominance in Peer Combat

The predominance of Western military superiority in weapons systems is unraveling and the increasing dissonance in the US military complex coming to grips with existential changes in how peer competition in war is evolving is causing tremendous reduction in both both confidence and orders placed for US aircraft.

Western arms are expensive and stuck in a doom loop of anachronistic 20th century warfare techniques and materiel that are dead and buried.

A war with Iran would be vastly more complex than the Iraq or Afghanistan campaigns. Iran is well-armed, deeply networked, and battle-hardened through proxy conflicts. Its missile program has already proved capable of hitting U.S. bases with precision. China, on the other hand, has scaled its military-industrial capacity to levels the West cannot match in a short war. The J-10C is only one example of this: a domestically produced, cost-effective, and combat-capable fighter that is already shaping the regional air power balance.

The global arms market is shifting, not just economically but ideologically. Countries are starting to believe, with growing evidence, that they don’t need Western weapons to win wars or defend sovereignty. They are witnessing cheaper, faster, and sometimes more effective systems coming out of China, Iran, Russia, and even Turkey. These countries are offering not just weapons, but independence from Western political strings.

Western military doctrine is built around assumptions that no longer hold. The belief in total technological superiority has created an overconfidence that is now unraveling. Real war exposes real capability, and right now, the J-10C and its counterparts are showing that the West may no longer hold a monopoly on high-performance warfare.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-164232959?source=queue&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

163rd Anniversary of Stonewall Jackson’s Victory in the Battle of Front Royal

This is reprinted from Jim Bovard’s blog and expands on a post originally from 2023.

Today is the 163th anniversary of the battle of Front Royal, Virginia (the town near where I was raised). On May 23, 1862, almost all the Yankee soldiers in Front Royal were captured, killed or wounded during a surprise attack by Jackson’s “foot calvary.” Both sides fought valiantly, but the northerners were greatly outnumbered. Their commander, Col. John Reese Kenly, was my great-great-uncle and the source of the first name that my father hated. According to the Civil War historical marker by the courthouse in Front Royal, Col. Kenly was mortally wounded in the battle. In reality, he was badly wounded and captured. After he was exchanged for a Confederate POW, he rose to the rank of Major General.

John Reese Kenly

Jackson’s victory may have saved Richmond, since it spooked Lincoln into canceling plans to send 40,000 reinforcements to the Army of the Potomac, which had penetrated to the outskirts of the Confederate capital.

The best thumbnail summary of the battle I found was on Wikipedia. (Most other accounts were tangled or semi-obscure).

Early on May 23, Turner Ashby and a detachment of cavalry forded the South Fork of the Shenandoah River and rode northwest to capture a Union depot and railroad trestle at Buckton Station. Two companies of Union infantry defended the structures briefly, but the Confederates prevailed and burned the building, tore up railroad track, and cut the telegraph wires, isolating Front Royal from Banks at Strasburg. Meanwhile, Jackson led his infantry on a detour over a path named Gooney Manor Road to skirt the reach of Federal guns on his approach to Front Royal. From a ridge south of town, Jackson observed that the Federals were camped near the confluence of the South and North Forks and that they would have to cross two bridges in order to escape from his pending attack.

A detachment of 250 Confederate cavalry under Col. Thomas S. Flournoy of the 6th Virginia Cavalry arrived at that moment and Jackson set them off in pursuit of Kenly. The retreating Union troops were forced to halt and make a stand at Cedarville. Although the cavalrymen were outnumbered three to one, they charged the Union line, which broke but reformed. A second charge routed the Union detachment. The results of the battle were lopsided. Union casualties were 773, of which 691 were captured. Confederate losses were 36 killed and wounded. Jackson’s men captured about $300,000 of Federal supplies; Banks soon became known as “Commissary Banks” to the Confederates because of the many provisions they won from him during the campaign. Banks initially resisted the advice of his staff to withdraw, assuming the events at Front Royal were merely a diversion. As he came to realize that his position had been turned, at about 3 a.m. he ordered his sick and wounded to be sent from Strasburg to Winchester and his infantry began to march midmorning on May 24.

The most significant after effect of Banks’s minor loss at Front Royal was a decision by Abraham Lincoln to redirect 20,000 men from the corps of Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell to the Valley from their intended mission to reinforce George B. McClellan on the Peninsula. At 4 p.m. on May 24, he telegraphed to McClellan, “In consequence of General Banks’s critical position I have been compelled to suspend General McDowell’s movements to you. The enemy are making a desperate push upon Harper’s Ferry, and we are trying to throw Frémont’s force and part of McDowell’s in their rear.”

Here are a couple maps illustrating the day’s fighting:

The National Park Service did a nice analysis comparing the 1862 battlefield to the modern layout of the town and area.

The New York Times, in an excellent recent online article entitled “Stonewall in the Valley,” captured the dynamics preceding Jackson’s surprise attack at Front Royal:

Jackson’s small army faced immediate challenges to the north and west: Banks’s main force of 19,000 men was to the north at Harrisonburg, while Frémont had 20,000 men only 35 miles to the west of Banks’s encampment. But the Union generals lacked Jackson’s tactical genius,
still celebrated today, which rested on two maxims: “Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy” and “never fight against heavy odds” if you can “hurl your own force on” the “weakest part of your enemy and crush it.”

Jackson put both strategies to use in the valley. Confederate reconnaissance made sure he always knew where his opponents were, but his whereabouts very often proved a mystery to them. On April 28, for instance, Banks assured his superiors that “Our force is entirely secure here. The enemy is in no condition for offensive movements. … I think we are now just in condition to do all you can desire of us in the valley — clear the enemy out permanently.” Two days later Banks wrote again, saying he had more or less scared Stonewall away: “Jackson is bound for Richmond. This is the fact, I have no doubt.”

Jackson and his troops were indeed in motion, but not toward Richmond. On April 30, Jackson set his men marching south from their position in the Elk Run Valley. Spring rains had created a quagmire, trapping his troops in an exhausting, muddy hell. It took them two days to travel 16 miles to Port Republic.

Thinking quickly, Jackson resorted to the sort of maneuver that confounded his enemies and just as often surprised his own troops. “Heaven only knows where he is bound for now,” recorded one Confederate infantryman in his diary. “I know that ninety-nine out a hundred of his men have no more idea of where they will turn up than the buttons in their coats.” Jackson turned his troops to the east and marched through Brown’s Gap to Mechum’s River Station on the Virginia Central Railroad. Once there he loaded his weary and disheartened troops, who thought they were abandoning the valley to the Union forces, onto trains and moved them west to Staunton, the strategically positioned southern anchor of the Shenandoah Valley. “We are retiring and advancing at the same time,” wrote another of Jackson’s men, “a condition an army never undertook before.” A few days later, Jackson won his unexpected victory at McDowell.

The Confederate force’s weeklong slog from the Elk Run Valley to Staunton, while uncharacteristically slow, was a testament to the endurance of Jackson’s “foot cavalry,” who had quickly gained a reputation for showing up where least expected, thereby gaining a psychological edge that often offset the superior numbers enjoyed by the Union army. Jackson’s troops marched 177 miles during a single 17-day period in mid-May, for example, and in the third week of May alone covered up to 30 miles a day in their successful effort to deceive Banks’s forces at Front Royal, toward the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley.

This map illustrates the campaign discussed above:

The war became uglier as the years passed. In 1864, Gen. Sheridan’s troops sought to starve the civilian population into submission by burning all the crops, barns, and many of the houses in Warren County and elsewhere in the Shenandoah Valley. Such policies helped explain why Warren County’s population fell by 20% in the 1860s.   Gen. John Reese Kenly was one of the Union commanders guarding a massive wagon train of supplies to Sheridan’s Union Army in Winchester in August 1864. After John S. Mosby’s Confederate Rangers launched a surprise attack and captured most of the wagons, Kenly was transferred to the Maryland eastern shore for the rest of the war.

French artist Charles Edouard Armand-Dumaresq., 1868

Here is Col. John S. Mosby’s summary of that wagon train raid from his memoirs:

        Sheridan was obviously greatly solicitous about preserving his communications, for he knew that they were weak and a vital necessity for his army He evidently had some information which increased his anxiety about his rear. One night, when his headquarters were at Berryville, I sent my best scout, John Russell, with two or three men, to reconnoitre, intending to deliver a blow at Sheridan’s rear and thus cripple him by cutting off his supplies. John reported long trains passing down along the valley pike. I started for the vicinity with some 250 men and two howitzers, one of which became an encumbrance by breaking down. Through Snicker’s Gap we crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains after sundown and passed over the Shenandoah River not far from Berryville. I halted at a barn for a good rest and sent Russell to see what was going on upon the pike. I was asleep when he returned with the news that a very large train was just passing along. The men sprang to their saddles. With Russell and some others I went on in advance to choose the best place for attack, directing Captain William Chapman to bring on the command. About sunrise we were on a knoll from

which we could get a good view of a great train of wagons moving along the road and a large drove of cattle with the train. The train was within a hundred yards of us, strongly guarded, but with flankers out. We were obscured by the mist, and, if noticed at all, were doubtless thought to be friends. I sent Russell to hurry up Chapman, who soon arrived. The howitzer was made ready. Richards, with his squadron, was sent to attack the front; William Chapman and Glasscock were to attack them in the rear, while Sam Chapman was kept near me and the howitzer.

My scheme was nearly ruined by a ludicrous incident, the fun of which is more apparent now than it was then. The howitzer was unlimbered over a yellow-jacket’s nest. When one of the men had rescued the howitzer, a shell was sent screaming among the wagons, beheading a mule. The shot was like thunder from a clear sky, and the mist added to the enemy’s perplexity. This shot was our signal to charge, and we met little resistance. Panic reigned along their line, and I only lost two men killed and three wounded. Before the fighting ended, as I knew that the guard would soon recover from the panic, I had men unhitching mules, burning wagons, and hurrying prisoners and spoils to the rear. There were 325 wagons, guarded by Kenly’s brigade and a large force of cavalry. They had not stopped to find out our numbers. We set a paymaster’s wagon on fire, which contained – this we did not know at the time – $125,000. I deployed skirmishers as a mask, until my command, the prisoners, and booty were well across the Shenandoah River. We took between 500 and 600 horses, 200 beeves, and many useful stores; destroyed seventy-five loaded wagons, and carried off 200 prisoners, including seven officers.

If anybody has good sources or good links on the 1862 battle, please add them to the Comment Section.

Photo of the marker for Kenly’s Last Stand

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