Quotulatiousness

October 12, 2023

Considering Israel’s potential courses of action in Gaza

Filed under: Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

CDR Salamander puts on his Operational Planning hat and sifts through what Israel may decide to do in light of open source information from Israeli and other sources:

This isn’t going to make anyone happy. It doesn’t matter if you are on the “cease fire and de-escalate” left or the “Linebacker III” right — none of my COAs will be quite what you are looking for … though the Linebacker III crowd might be OK with COA-B and COA-C … but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Cut this ‘ole Operational Planner some slack, and a few caveats:

  1. I’ve had to rewrite 85% of this from its first draft over the weekend as we now have Commander’s Intent (CI) and higher Direction and Guidance (D&G). That had me discard two of my three Courses of Action (COA).
  2. I am quite sure the Israeli Defense Forces had appropriate draft Operational Plans (OPLANS) on the shelf with all sorts of Branch Plans and Sequels waiting to be updated and providing enough once dusted off to get things in to Phase I.
  3. I don’t have a Planning Staff or even a Core Planning Group, intel support, or even some Italian colleagues to remind me to take my 10:00 and 15:00 coffee breaks, but I’ll do my best anyway. As anyone in crisis response planning can tell you — as opposed to advanced plans types — you have to be comfortable enough to accept that you don’t have enough time, staff, or information to produce a great OPLAN, but you’ll come up with a good enough plan anyway. You’re happy to be wrong about a detail or two, and are open-minded enough, secure in your ego, and content to change what you thought was perfect — some or all of your plan — the moment you get better information, changes in CI or D&G, or the situation develops in unexpected ways … as they do.
  4. If you are looking for a detailed Tactical OPLAN or a sweeping Strategic OPLAN, you’re at the wrong substack. I’m an Operational Planner and what I am about to do is an “elevator speech” level Preliminary COA Decision Brief with the principals (J2, J3, J4, J5, and the Chief of Staff) where they get to weigh in and refine what the Planning Group I am the Chair of has produced (OK, I’m a Planning Group of one and I made myself Chair … I don’t care, it’s going on my FITREP anyway). Following the Principals’ input — especially from the Chief of Staff who has had better one on one time with the Commander and as such has the nuance no one else does — I’ll beg for a day and will be told I have two hours to make changes and then well brief the Commander.

Working from open-source information, we have CI and D&G from the Prime Minister and the Minister for Defense.

If you go to YouTube you can get the script, but we’ll use this statement from the weekend as a close approximation of POLMIL-level guidance from Prime Minister Netanyahu;

As a Planning Staff, what do I need to take away from this?

  • Israel is at war.
  • Israel will finish it.
  • We will exact a price that will be remembered by them (Hamas) and Israel’s other enemies for decades to come.

From Defense Minister Yoav Gallant we have:

  • Gaza won’t return to what it was before.
  • We started the offensive from the air, later will also from the ground, and that’s how it will end.
  • Gaza will never return to what it was.

Like I said … that had me ditch two of the my three COA from this weekend. If you wanted to know how it shifted, my most dovish COA is gone, and my most harsh COA is now the center of my Overton Window. A planner must try to align with CI and D&G as it is understood — not how he wishes it to be.

Canada, “a country with short arms and long pockets”

Filed under: Americas, Cancon, Government, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In the National Post, John Ivison recounts Canada’s continuing inability to live up to expectations internationally, especially militarily:

US President Joe Biden talks to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, March 2023.

On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mark Norman, the former vice-chief of defence, made a prediction that sounded overblown at the time.

“I really think the Americans are going to start ignoring us because they don’t think we are credible or reliable. They are not even putting pressure on us anymore,” he said in a January 2022 National Post interview, based on his conversations with contacts in Washington.

It turns out he was absolutely right.

Since then, leaked Pentagon documents have confirmed that sense, indicating that the U.S. believes “widespread defence shortfalls have hindered Canada’s capabilities, while straining partner relationships and alliance contributions”.

Canada left little room for doubt about its diminished capabilities when it took a pass on NATO’s largest-ever air exercise last summer, because its jets and pilots were involved in “modernization activities”. That absence left the impression that this country might not be able to show up in certain circumstances.

Even before the unfolding tragedy in the Middle East, America was letting it be known that it felt overstretched and needed regional allies to share the burden.

When President Joe Biden visited Ottawa in March, he asked Justin Trudeau to lead a mission to Haiti, which had descended into mob rule. Since the Liberals were elected on a peacekeeping ticket in 2015, it was a logical request. However, Trudeau demurred, presumably on the grounds that Canada’s security forces were stretched too thin by operations in Latvia and fighting wildfires at home. The upshot is that Kenya is set to send 1,000 security officers to the beleaguered island nation.

The recent news that Canada now plans to trim its defence budget by nearly $1 billion — a total of $17 billion over 20 years, if savings are recurring — has reinforced the image of a country with short arms and long pockets.

Against that background, it was no surprise that on Monday Biden hosted a call with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. to discuss the crisis in the Middle East — and didn’t include Canada.

A statement by the G7 minus Canada and Japan (which has a negligible Jewish population) was issued saying that the five countries would ensure Israel is able to defend itself.

Over at The Line, Matt Gurney discovered that the federal government was actively trying to hide the fact that Canadians in Israel were not able to access Canadian embassy services by pretending that the word “operational” meant “open and functional”:

On Sunday evening (hours after we published our dispatch), I received a reply from GAC. This was the reply:

    Since the beginning of this crisis, Canadian officials have been working around the clock to support Canadians. The missions in Tel Aviv and Ramallah remained operational through the weekend and will continue to be. Our missions will open on Monday October 9th, unless security conditions do not allow for it. We will be assessing the security situation daily, in coordination with our allies.

Okay! That seemed fair. But not having been born yesterday, and being in a profession where people try to spin me all the time, I noticed something immediately. The distinction GAC was drawing between “operational” and “open” stood out to me. I replied at once seeking clarification, and heard nothing back. Not even an acknowledgement.

This word choice mattered. The government publicly used the “operational” messaging. Members of the government repeated it. This was what they were telling the Canadian people: all is well, ignore those nasty media people and members of the opposition. Of course the embassies were “operational”!

See that tweet? The one pasted above? I checked out who was retweeting it. Lots of people did! And that included a bunch of Liberal MPs, a bunch of Canadian diplomats, members of the media, and what I’ll politely refer to as a group of “usual suspects” I recognize from online as being proxies for the Liberal government’s messaging (or at least really devoted True Believer Liberal partisans).

On Monday morning, having heard nothing back about what “operational” meant as opposed to “open”, I asked for a specific clarification in the terminology. What was “operational” vs. “open”? I also asked for specifics on what services were available locally from Canadian diplomatic missions in Israel over the weekend in real time, and how that would change when the embassy “opened” on Monday. I asked about the staffing level at the embassy on the weekend, and how that would compare to a normal workday, and also to a normal weekend.

Rather than answer a simple question, our government would much rather obfuscate and prevaricate as a matter of policy. That, by itself, tells you everything you need to know about both our political leaders and the civil service organizations they control.

It’s not mere “activism”, it’s “AAAAAH-ctivism”!

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Critic, Charlotte Gill outlines the changes in activist tactics down to today’s utter hysterics on Every. Single. Issue.

“Just Stop Oil Activists Walking Up Whitehall” by Alisdare Hickson is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

“How many kids have to die?” were the apocalyptic words of a Just Stop Oil activist on Sky News last week. She grimaced and flung her hands out as she asked presenter Anna Jones, and others in the studio, what it would take for them to get involved in the fight against climate change. Would it be “until the water’s lapping at your ankles? Until your own kids haven’t got food?” Forget the British mantra to “keep calm and carry on”. Anyone watching would get the impression that the advice is now firmly to “PANIC!!”

Far from jumping on the nearest piece of furniture to protect myself from rising tides and who knows what else — sharks with Leave-Means-Leave-branded laser beams shooting from their heads, for example — I felt strangely immune to someone telling me the world’s going to end. Like the “boy who cried wolf”, there’s no shortage of middle-aged people ready to cry apocalypse. It’s no surprise one’s sensory reactions have resultantly dialled down a notch or two.

I only really noticed the rise of AAAAAH-ctivism this year, after covering the war on cars. Whenever I have defended the petrol proletariat — those punished every time they drive a car — I am struck by the increasing number of people telling me I don’t care about “CHILDREN’S LUNGS!!” or “PEOPLE DYING!!” Last month Wales introduced 20mph speed limits, which vast amounts of voters have objected to. The counterargument to any perfectly pragmatic concerns is always “SO YOU THINK SPEED IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN LIVES?!” It is quite an effective way to close down debate, portraying it as a matter of being for or against death.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when AAAAAH-ctivism began. After all, fear mongering is nothing new in politics — one of the most disastrous examples being Tony Blair and George W. Bush’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” claims that led the West into the Iraq War.

Following some quiet(ish) years in Blighty, the hyperbole ramped up around Brexit, when Labour MP David Lammy compared the pro-Leave European Research Group to the Nazis, as well as advocates of South African apartheid. Elsewhere, militant Remainers repeatedly warned of the Hard and Far Right being on the march. Writing for The Guardian in 2018, Michael Chessum set the tone when he warned, “We are living through a moment of encroaching darkness and nationalist resurgence.” Nowadays, you could say that the “darkness” looks more like a £6 salmon sandwich at Pret.

KAMIKAZE: HMS Formidable, May 4, 1945

Filed under: Britain, History, Japan, Military, Pacific, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Armoured Carriers
Published 18 Apr 2020

It was the height of the invasion of Okinawa. Japan was throwing a last-ditch effort at unseating US Marines from their beachheads. Kamikazes swarmed the skies. HMS Formidable, part of the British Pacific Fleet interdicting attacks from Formosa (Taiwan), was to suffer a direct hit on her armoured flight deck. Here’s what happened — in the words of those who were there.
(more…)

QotD: America before identity politics

Filed under: Education, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Lest we’re tempted to make excuses for Leftists by putting all this down to their goldfish-like attention spans, note how fast they can change. I remember the Gay Nineties, when the one true way to be queer was to have as much anonymous sex as possible. […] And yet, by 2015, “gay marriage” was a sacred constitutional right because, we were told, all gay men really want to do is settle down in a strictly monogamous relationship. I found myself asking “Have you ever actually met any gays?” to actual gays, so bizarre was this sudden flip – surely you, of all people, know …1

Pick even minor items of their catechism (if so all-encompassing a creed as Leftism can be said to have “minor” items). It’s an article of the One True Faith, for instance, that seven out of every five college girls are raped the minute they set foot on campus. And yet … free college! Yeah, Bernie, let’s march a whole bunch of new rape victims straight into the frat house, on the taxpayer’s dime. Makes sense. And speaking of free college, y’all know how you love to wave your degrees around, because that’s how you win at Internet? How’s that going to work, now that everyone has a Gender Studies degree?

Yeah, ok, I know, if they could see the obvious consequences of their actions, they wouldn’t be Liberals in the first place. But still — all of this is so obvious, so determinedly cattywampus to reality, that it has to be by design. T.S. Eliot was right — it’s “gesture without motion”, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out how they pull that off. Which is why I suspect it’s actual, neurological changes in their brains, brought about by too much soy.

Severian, “The Hollow Men”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-12-19.

    1. Gosh, wasn’t The America That Was a hoot? If you’re under 35 you’ll just have to trust me on this, but there was a point in American history when homosexuals didn’t have to be 1000% gay all the time, to the exclusion of everything else. I know, I know, and it gets weirder – back then, you could even be friends with a homosexual and not have homosexuality come up for days, weeks, even months at a time! You and Steve went to different bars on Saturday night, but other than that, you pretty much just carried on treating each other like, you know, people. And I know this sounds crazy, but even when talking about relationships it wasn’t a big deal. “Hey, Sev, how are things with Becky?” “Pretty good, man, how’s it going with Todd?” And … that was pretty much it. Sounds like life on Mars now, but I swear to you, it happened.

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