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New Book Is A Must Read For Iraq War 2 Enthusiasts

Iraq War 2 is ancient history, like Athens’ defeat at Aegospotami or the NATO-Russia Founding Act. But for some of us, it seems like only yesterday we were being lied into one of the greatest geopolitical disasters of the Western imperial order.

There’s a new book about that pivotal catastrophe: Deadly Betrayal, by Dennis Fritz. It pairs well with the Institute’s Enough Already and Israel Winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War.

And all these books pair well with Moon Does Artisan Coffee, official caffeine dealer of the Scott Horton Show.

So, buy the books. Buy the coffee. Drink the coffee. Read the books. And then you’ll be wide awake and safeguarded against being lied into Iraq War 4.

It’s a Crazy World

What’s to be said about people who grieve over the deaths of Palestinian children in Gaza at the hands of the U.S.-backed Israeli military while simultaneously cheering the Mengele-style wrecking of children’s lives in America and elsewhere at the hands of “transgender” fanatics? And vice versa.

Fat Amy Can’t Catch a Break

f35$

Fat Amy is a nickname for the F35 Lightning II. As long as an F16 and comparable in weight to a heavy class F15, the F35 isn’t necessarily a light aircraft.

Flying cost per hour may have been reduced to $34,000 per hour. Maybe.

The mission capable rate, the percentage of time during which the aircraft can fly and perform at least one of its tasked missions—and the full mission capable rate—the percentage of time during which the aircraft can perform all of its tasked missions—are key measures of the health and readiness of a military aircraft fleet.

Lockheed-Martin just built the thousandth F35 in January 2024.

These graphs show you two things; first, the full mission capability rate for 2008-2011 production F35s is effectively zero.

Zero.

Second, the Navy and USMC F35B/C variants built between 2012 and 2023 never achieve a full mission capability rate that exceeds 30 percent. Mind you, the maritime environment and structural differences between the variants is a large engineering problem. Keep in mind this is also the first time in recent history the DoD has chosen to make the USAF and the maritime services use the same air-frame.

Take look at these readiness graphs from in Appendix III: U.S. Fleet Mission Capable Rates in a GAO report:

screenshot 2024 06 13 at 16 06 08 gao 23 105341 f 35 aircraft dod and the military services need to reassess the future sustainment strategy gao 23 105341.pdf

screenshot 2024 06 13 at 16 06 24 gao 23 105341 f 35 aircraft dod and the military services need to reassess the future sustainment strategy gao 23 105341.pdf

screenshot 2024 06 13 at 16 06 40 gao 23 105341 f 35 aircraft dod and the military services need to reassess the future sustainment strategy gao 23 105341.pdf

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105341

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Consensual Dueling: Bring Back Single Combat

josh harrison single combat 005

I happen to think that consensual dueling has many positive aspects for civilized societies that would make our lives better.

Politicians especially liked to take part in these martial contests, the possibilities in the contemporary milieu are delightful.

For those who characterize this is as murder/suicide, you’re wrong. Murder begins where self defense ends. Honor is a gift a man gives to himself.

Jane is one of my favorite contemporary commentators on history from a liberty perspective.

Her Pearl Harbor controversy essay was a first rate exposition in the now online Liberty magazine (RIP RW Bradford).

Historians and others have struggled to explain the prevalence of dueling. To begin with, dueling was more prominent in the South, especially after the 1804 duel between Burr and Hamilton. That mortal combat (which took place in New Jersey) seems to have troubled people in the North, and public opinion there turned away from acceptance.

That was not the case in the South, however. So why?

First, the South was simply more violent, some historians say. While dueling per se was conducted among the elite, there was a noticeable tendency toward what historian Troy Kickler calls “wielding of bowie knives and the finger-gouging of eyes” among the more common people. [4] (Don’t even ask me about eye-gouging; you can look it up if you wish.)

Second, during this period, protecting one’s honor helped men distinguish themselves from the people they considered “beneath” them. A gentleman’s “power to command himself as well as others,” writes Harry L. Watson, “set him apart completely from those who allegedly lacked these attributes the most: poor whites, slaves, and women, who were known as the ‘weaker sex.’”[5]

Third, politicians were especially prone to dueling because of the personal nature of politics before the Civil War, says C. A. Harwell Wells.  Furthermore, he writes, “By participating in a duel, specifically a duel with a political opponent, a politician displayed to his followers that he valued his principles more than his life.” [6] 

 

Dueling: A Gentleman’s Duty or a Nasty Habit?

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Up Against The War – Anti-War Blog

In her 1970 book, Up Against The War, Norma Sue Woodstone gives voice to those who refused conscription and campaigned against the US war in South-East Asia. Men who refused the draft were tarred by polite society as being cowards, ‘Draft Dodgers!’ A slur to be thrown against them. Those who begrudgingly went to fight a war that many of them did not understand came home wounded physically or morally to a public that wanted to pretend it all never happened. Millions of South-East Asians die, many continue to do so even generations later as bombs, mines and chemicals randomly take lives or mutilate what remains.

The US government was desperate to push men into uniform so that they could fight in Vietnam or fill the ranks of a military that spanned the globe. The US was to oppose communism, then it was a bi-polar globe with the twin super powers peering down at one another to the point of frequent brinkmanship. Now it’s destiny is to retain the monopolar world of one superpower. Even then, when the Soviet Union was at it’s most exaggerated in power communication occurred. The channels were open. Information was exchanged, envoys met, trade even occurred. There were the boycotts and chilly periods but the Cold Warriors of the 20th century attempted to balance proxy wars with the risk of a nuclear one.

Now the West, led by Washington, wants war with China, Iran, Yemen, Syria, North Korea and Russia. The Taliban send their best wishes. Confidently the world sleepwalks into a catastrophe that seems baffling. The political masters of the past were pricks, blood thirsty mass murderers who saw the map as a playground for death. Though they had a rationale that seemed, at times, logical. In the 21st century it now feels as though cosplayers want to re-enact the last centuries cold war and see what it feels like to add some heat. Though it’s never been a great game, its deadly.

A mother of a dead US soldier once asked, “what if they had a war and nobody turned up?”

There are those who will turn up because they are deluded by the religion of nationism and intoxicated with the honour cult that the military relies upon, others like the pay. There is a belief that constant aggression, forward pressure is the best defence. If Rome continues to expand it’s borders, it will be safe but as it expands its borders it meets new threats and enemies. The frontiers of US and NATO military bases are on their borders, they are the ones who feel threatened and because they are threatened they feel the need to push back. That’s how wars are waged.

“The war was wrong, so I burned by card (draft card),” Andrew Stapp said in Up Against The War. Democracies pretend to like referendums. Should conscription return, what would happen if most refuse? Should the war pigs squeal for more blood what would happen if the people refuse to pay the taxes that feed the beast of death? That is the radicalism of the past, though those radicals have died or like John Kerry who was once a champion for anti-war movements turned into a big government imperialist. Radicalism dies with a mortgage and career. The planet be damned, post-apocalyptic pension plans coming soon.

We can see clips in the Ukraine of males being abducted by government goons, fitted into a uniform, barely trained and forced to a front line so that life or limb may be ripped from them. It’s a war that the US is willing to support to the last Ukrainian boy. Negotiations are off the table. When the Soviets invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia, both sides still talked. When the US invaded Vietnam and Grenada they talked. And even as the USSR became bogged down in Afghanistan diplomats and leaders still spoke.

It turns out that Steve Gutenberg may have saved the world. After watching the 1983 TV movie The Day After starring a pre Mahoney, Gutenberg, President Reagan picked up the phone and spoke with his Soviet counter part. The dramatic events in the film sickened him, war was not fun and games especially with nuclear weapons. Even at the height of the Cold War between the USA and USSR, the leaders spoke and negotiated. They pulled back from the brinkmanship that only ever makes weapon manufacturers and military careerists rich anyhow. Now the current US retard in chief and the despot of Russia don’t talk, they speak and mumble indirectly at one another through the screen. Communist hating Dick Nixon went to China and shook Mao Tse Tung’s hand. Perhaps the greatest mass murder in human history. But Putin is the next Hitler or something.

In her book, Up Against the War, Woodstone gives us pages of letters from soldiers writing to their family from Vietnam.

Dear Mom and Dad, …I got hit with about 20 pieces of shrapnel from a mine explosion. The mine killed one man and wounded twenty others….We lost another man today, he was accidentally killed by another man in the platoon…

and the other letters from the Government once the soldiers are no longer of use to them…

Dear Mr and Mrs…

It is with great difficulty that I write this letter expressing my deepest sympathy over the loss of your son…

It’s not just the soldiers, but civilians who are ripped to pieces. In a war on a grand scale, like the one Ronald Reagan watched in The Day After, cities full of people are wiped out. And as Steve Gutenberg survives the initial blast, his body succumbs to the sickness of radiation. That’s war. That is the war the world sleep walks towards. In the Cold War and when Up Against the War was written the wider public had a greater awareness of the dangers of nuclear war. Now, it’s brazenly ignored. Because war has never really come home. It’s always those over there dying and suffering, the body bags returning back are few in comparison. Maybe it’s time to be Up Against the War, all of them. Maybe you don’t care, war doesn’t bother you, then again maybe one day it will.

June, 2024

Pentagon: Send More Money!

pentawaste1

You can’t make this up, the scale of incompetence and brain-dead planning on the part of the most expensive military paper tiger in the Earth’s history is breathtaking.

Best of both worlds from a government perspective: huge budgets and no accountability.

The Pentagon failed its sixth audit in a row last month.

But semantics aside, one major reason the Pentagon keeps failing audits is because it can’t keep track of its property. Last year, the Pentagon couldn’t properly account for a whopping 61% of its $3.5 trillion in assets. That figure increased this year, with the department insufficiently documenting 63% of its now $3.8 trillion in assets. Military contractors possess many of these assets, but to an extent unbeknownst to the Pentagon.

Last year, Congress allocated at least $39.5 billion to procure aircrafts, their spare parts, and other equipment, despite not knowing what the government already owned. But insufficient tracking of inventory property doesn’t just increase the risk of overbuying spare parts, it also inhibits the Pentagon from maintaining government property in the possession of contractors. In May, the GAO revealed that in the past five years, Lockheed Martin has lost, damaged, or destroyed over a million spare parts for the F-35 worth over $85 million. The government had visibility into less than 2% of those losses, since it relies on Lockheed to voluntarily report not only what and how much government property it possesses, but also the condition of that property.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-audit-2666415734/

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