Forgotten Weapons
Published May 4, 2024When the US entered World War One, the country had a grand total of 1,453 machine guns, split between four different models. This was not a useful inventory to equip even a single division headed for France, and so the US had to look to France for automatic weapons. In June 1917 Springfield Armory tested a French CSRG Chauchat automatic rifle, and found it good enough to inquire about making an American version chambered for the .30-06 cartridge. This happened quickly, and after testing in August 1917, a batch of 25,000 was ordered. Of these, 18,000 were delivered and they were used to arm several divisions of American troops on the Continent.
Unfortunately, the American Chauchat was beset by extraction problems. These have today be traced to incorrectly cut chambers, which were slightly too short and caused stuck cases when the guns got hot. It is unclear exactly what caused the problem, but the result was that most of the guns were restricted to training use (as best we can tell today), and exchanged for French 8mm Chauchats when units deployed to the front. Today, American Chauchats are extremely rare, but also very much underappreciated for their role as significant American WWI small arms.
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August 18, 2024
.30-06 M1918 American Chauchat – Doughboys Go to France
August 17, 2024
Forgotten War Ep1 – Witness the Rising Sun
HardThrasher
Published Aug 14, 2024In January 1942 the Japanese Army poured over the border with Burma, and pushed back the Indian and British Armies to the border with Burma. Today we look at how that disaster came about, why and the first phase of the campaign
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“The notion of a pre-existing Palestinian state is a modern fabrication that ignores the region’s actual history”
Debunking some of the common talking points about the Arab-Israeli conflicts down to the present day:
Arab attacks in May and June 1948.
United States Military Academy Atlas, Link.
Before Israel declared independence in 1948, the region now known as Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was part of the British Mandate for Palestine, which was established by the League of Nations after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War.
Under Ottoman rule, the area was divided into various administrative districts, with no distinct political entity known as “Palestine”. The concept of a Palestinian national identity emerged in the 20th century, largely in response to the Zionist movement and increased Jewish immigration in the area.
However, there was never a Palestinian state, flag or anthem. The notion of a pre-existing Palestinian state is a modern fabrication that ignores the region’s actual history.
The modern State of Israel’s legitimacy is rooted in international law and global recognition. On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181, known as the “Partition Plan”, proposing two states — one Jewish and one Arab.
The Jewish community accepted the plan, demonstrating a willingness to compromise for peace. However, the Arab states rejected it, refusing to recognize any Jewish state, and instead launched a military assault on Israel following its declaration of independence on May 14, 1948.
Another pervasive myth is the “Nakba” or “catastrophe”, narrative, which claims that Palestinians were forcibly expelled by Israel in 1948. This version omits the critical context that it was the Arab nations that invaded Israel, causing many Arabs to be expelled or flee their homes.
Rather than absorbing the displaced population, the surrounding Arab countries kept them in refugee camps, using them as pawns to pressure Israel. Organizations like UNRWA perpetuated this situation, keeping Palestinians in limbo rather than encouraging their integration into their host countries. This contrasts sharply with how other refugee populations have been handled, where integration and resettlement are the norm.
The land referred to as “Palestine” has always been inherently Jewish. The Jewish people have maintained a continuous presence there for thousands of years, long before Islam or the Arab conquests.
Caesar Marches on Rome – Historia Civilis Reaction
Vlogging Through History
Published Apr 23, 2024See the original here –
• Caesar Marches on Rome (49 B.C.E.)
See “Caesar Crosses the Rubicon” here –
• Caesar Crosses the Rubicon – Historia…#history #reaction
August 16, 2024
“Operation Dragoon … was described by Adolf Hitler as the worst day of his life”
The “other” D-Day landing in France that few people know much about: Operation Dragoon.
Southern France, 15-28 August 1944.
West Point Military Atlas.
Often referred to as “the other D-Day”, Op Dragoon ran until 14 September 1944 and was a pivotal turning point in the Second World War.
Op Dragoon was a huge and complex operation by land, sea and air that liberated nearly two-thirds of France by linking up with troops from the Normandy invasion on 11 September and pushing the German forces right back to their frontier.
It also secured the ports of Marseilles and Toulon so Allied troops could flood into France.
This was a bitter blow for Hitler, who during conversations with his generals that were discovered in records written in shorthand, said: “The 15th of August was the worst day of my life”.
Dr Peter Caddick-Adams, a military historian and defence analyst, spoke to BFBS Forces News about Operation Dragoon, a largely French/American operation with support from countries including the UK and Canada.
He said: “It set the victory over Germany firmly on its way — and the end of the Second World War couldn’t really have been achieved without Operation Dragoon.
“This is the D-Day that you’ve never heard of.
“Originally there was planned to be two invasions of France on the same day — in Normandy and on the south coast of France along the Riviera.
“It was found that we didn’t have enough landing craft to do both at the same time simultaneously.”
It also didn’t help that Winston Churchill was against the idea and tried to cancel the operation.
The Prime Minister wanted the Italian campaign to remain dominant and was worried Dragoon would take troops and other resources away from Italy.
However, despite his best efforts, the Americans and French prevailed and Operation Dragoon went ahead.
Initially, the operation was given the codename Anvil, because Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, was originally going to be called Sledgehammer.
The plan was for Germany’s armed forces to be smashed between the hammer and the anvil.
Churchill never changed his opinion about the operation despite its eventual success, as Dr Caddick-Adams explained: “At the last minute Churchill had the name changed to Dragoon and, legend has it, because he felt he was being dragooned into an operation that he didn’t want to undertake”.
August 15, 2024
Yet another revisionist history of World War II
In the latest anonymous review at Astral Codex Ten, the book to be considered is How the War Was Won by Phillips Payson O’Brien:
To a first approximation, there are a million books about World War II. Why should you care about How the War Was Won (hereinafter “HtWWW”) by Phillips Payson O’Brien?
- It provides a new, transformative view of the conflict by focusing on production of key goods and what affected that production instead of the ups and downs of battles at the front.
- That particular lens used can (and should) be applied outside of just World War II, and you can get a feel for how that might be done by reading HtWWW.
- I have lectured about World War II and read many, many books about it. I have never texted friends more excerpts of a book than this one.
I have some criticisms of HtWWW, but if the criticisms dissuade you from reading the book, I will have failed. These complaints are like tut-tutting Einstein’s penmanship.
The Wikipedia-Level Story of World War II (and O’Brien’s Counterargument)
To understand why O’Brien’s argument is so novel, you need to know the modern-day conventional understanding of the story of World War II. Here is my summary of the conventional narrative of World War II:
- Germany conquered Poland and France. It tried to bomb the UK into submission/maybe enable an invasion. That effort failed when Germany was defeated in the Battle of Britain, thanks largely to the plucky efforts of British airmen (memorably summarized by Winston Churchill: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”.)
- Stymied in the West, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, won a bunch of crushing victories, but then got turned back at the gates of Moscow. The Soviets moved all of their factories east of the Ural Mountains and produced a vast tide of T-34 tanks that overpowered the Germans.
- The Germans suffered a catastrophic defeat at Stalingrad and a bloody strategic defeat at Kursk, after which the Soviets relentlessly pounded Germany to defeat.
- The US and the UK sent a lot of material help and eventually fought the Germans too, most notably in the D-Day invasion and the Battle of the Bulge. However, most of the fighting was done by the Soviets.
- It is very difficult to say how important the aerial bombing campaigns of the Western Allies were in defeating Germany. The Germans moved much of their production underground, insulating them from truly disastrous effects.
- The U.S. mostly fought alone against Japan, which won a series of impressive early victories (e.g., Pearl Harbor, the conquest of Singapore) until the decisive Battle of Midway, after which the vastly larger US industrial base outproduced Japan into oblivion.
- The US bombed the Japanese into submission by destroying Japanese cities, ultimately by dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
By examining where the Axis focused their productive capacities and how the Allies disrupted those capacities, O’Brien challenges virtually every part of that narrative:
- The Battle of Britain was not a close-run thing. The fact that British fighter planes were flying over their own territory meant their attrition rate of pilots and aircraft were far lower than the Germans’.
- American and British bombing mattered far more to the war’s outcome than the battles of the Eastern Front, which consumed a much smaller portion of German expenditures.
- American and British airpower made German battlefield victories on the Western Front virtually impossible and dramatically limited the force Germany could bring to bear in the East.
- Japan (really, Japan plus the giant empire it conquered at the beginning of the war) was an industrial behemoth to rival the Soviet Union. However, the destruction of the Japanese merchant fleet by American air and sea forces wrecked Japan’s economy.
- The firebombing of Japanese cities and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had an ambiguous strategic effect. American air power played a much more important role in severing Japan from the natural resources it had conquered in the early part of the war.
August 14, 2024
The Korean War Week 008 – The First UN Counterattack – August 13, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 13 Aug 2024The first UN large scale counterattack goes off this week; this by the American Task Force Kean. It has both successes and failures, and it runs right into a new North Korean offensive. The fighting happens just about everywhere on the Pusan Perimeter this week, though. That’s the area into which the UN forces have been compressed, and it is particularly threatening at the Naktong Bulge. It is, plain and simple, a week of desperate and bloody fighting and that’s about it.
Chapters
00:47 Recap
01:27 The Pusan Perimeter
04:31 Task Force Kean
07:44 The Naktong Bulge
10:09 The Fight Around Daegu
13:45 Summary
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Madsen M50: From the Korean War to Star Trek
Forgotten Weapons
Published May 1, 2024During World War Two, Madsen (DISA) manufactured a licensed copy of the Finnish Suomi (see: Danish M1941 Suomi SMG). When the war ended, they wanted to replace this with a more modern, inexpensive design of their own. The result was the Model 1946 Madsen, a creative clamshell design of stamped parts. It is a very simple blowback, open-bolt 9x19mm SMG that perfectly fit the post-war era. The M46 version was sold to a few countries, and after some continued development and refinement the M50 version was demonstrated to a public audience in November 1950. This pattern was even simpler than before, and proved a popular gun for many unaligned countries in Central and South America and Southeast Asia — so much so that it remained in production until the 1980s. A bunch were imported into the US in the 1950s and 1960s, and they found a home in the movie industry, where they were often used in fantasy/sci-fi films to avoid having guns that would be recognized by American movie audiences.
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August 11, 2024
The US drops two atomic bombs on Japan – WW2 – Week 311 – August 10, 1945
World War Two
Published 10 Aug 2024This week atomic bombs are for the first time in history dropped on cities — Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. The bombs kill over 100,000 people and flatten large parts of the urban area. The Japanese government is actually meeting while the second bomb is dropped to consider their response to the first and to the demands for unconditional surrender. The response is not just to that first bomb, though, for on the 8th the Soviets tell the Japanese not only that they will not help them negotiate some sort of settled peace with the other Allies, they too are declaring war on Japan, and indeed invade Manchuria. With two atomic bombs and an invasion instead of mediating help, Japanese Emperor Hirohito cuts off any debate and says that Japan will surrender. This could happen next week.
00:00 Intro
00:17 Recap
00:44 Hiroshima Bombing
02:35 The Bombing Mission
04:19 Descriptions Of The Blast
06:38 The Nagasaki Bomb
07:37 The Tactics
08:31 The Japanese Response
12:55 Soviets Invade Manchuria
16:18 Splitting Korea
18:07 Operation Zipper
19:31 End Notes
20:08 Summary
20:30 Conclusion
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Canada’s long-standing issues with national defence won’t be fixed by merely spending more money
In The Line, Greg Quinn explains why meeting the 2% of GDP NATO target for military spending isn’t going to solve Canada’s problems with the military:
Canada isn’t pulling its weight on defence. Is that what Canadians want? Because it isn’t what its allies want. And the allies are more and more willing to say so.
Canada, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, likes to talk about how the country punches above its weight in NATO and global affairs more generally. It’s a cliché many countries have resorted to when put under pressure on one issue or another. (And I’ll confess that this includes my own United Kingdom, which I served as a diplomat for decades before my recent retirement.)
It’s also smoke and mirrors, which in Canada’s case on defence, hides an unhappy truth — Canada doesn’t pay its way.
Trudeau says Canada will meet the target of spending two per cent of GDP on defence in 2032. Some 18 years after NATO committed to it. At the moment Canada spends a paltry 1.37 per cent, or some $33.8 billion a year, on defence, damn near the bottom among the allies, in percentage terms. Ottawa claims this will increase to 1.76 per cent, or $49.5 billion, by 2030. If so, that will move Canada up a whopping two places to 25th.
Mind you, the Parliamentary Budget Office disputes even this, stating that Canada’s defence spending will peak at 1.49 per cent of GDP in 2025-26 before dropping (yes, dropping) to 1.42 per cent in 2029-30. Somebody is being economical with the truth.
[…]
The bottom line is simple — what does Canada (and the Canadian people) want its role in the world to be? Words are easy but they need to be backed by action. One of the most obvious demonstrations of action is spending on a defence force that is capable of deploying and acting on the global stage. More bluntly, of fighting and defeating a near-peer enemy as part of a coalition of allies.
If Canada doesn’t want to do that and prefers a defence force that is essentially a glorified local militia that focuses on domestic issues, well, fine. But let’s not pretend it is anything else. Let’s not talk about how much of a force for good Canada is in the world and let’s not try and fool Canada’s allies. They’re not as stupid as Canadian politicians want them to be.
And let’s not expect those allies to happily accept the situation and continue on as if nothing has changed. Canada already complains about being left out of AUKUS. Is it any wonder? More of that should be expected. If you don’t play the game and don’t pull your weight, then sadly, you don’t get the benefits of being in the grown-ups’ club.
Canadians owe themselves, and frankly owe their allies, an honest discussion about kind of role Canada actually wants to play in the world … and whether they’re willing to actually pay the bills required to play that role. Only after such an honest chat can Canadians, and their allies, calibrate their expectations accordingly.
M1 Thompson: Savage Simplifies the SMG
Forgotten Weapons
Published Apr 28, 2024The Thompson submachine gun struggled to find a market when it was originally produced, with the first batch of 15,000 Colt-made guns not finally all selling until the late 1930s. By that time, the clouds of war were gathering, and demand for submachine guns finally began to really grow. The US military had some Thompsons, and the British began buying as many as they could. The US wanted to increase production, and that meant simplifying the gun, both to reduce cost and to increase manufacturing efficiency. Talks to this end began in late 1941, and by February 1942 the engineers at Savage had a prototype of what would become the M1 Thompson.
This new version simplified almost every element of the gun, but most significantly it replaced the 3-piece Blish lock bolt with a solid one-piece affair that just worked as a normal blowback action. Unnecessary elements like the vertical front grip, Cutt’s compensator, quick-detach stock, and fancy contoured selector levers were discarded. The adjustable Lyman rear sight was replaced by a single metal tab with an aperture (quickly given a set of protective wings though, as the tab alone proved too fragile). The recoil guide rod was simplified, the oiling pads inside the receiver removed, and a simpler recoil buffer designed. The capability to use drum magazines was also discarded, and a new 30-round box magazine took their place.
The M1 was adopted in the spring of 1942, and July saw the first major delivery, of 48,000 guns. Simplification work continued, however, and by the end of October a yet-simpler M1A1 pattern was adopted. This model replaced the hammer mechanism with a fixed firing pin. As a result, M1 production lasted only about 5 months. A total of 285,480 M1 Thompsons were made, but most of these were retrofitted to M1A1 configuration by simply swapping in the simpler new bolt. Finding intact M1 configuration guns is rather unusual today as a result.
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QotD: Greek and Roman notions of courage
That understanding of courage [of First Nations tribes of the Great Plains] was itself almost utterly alien to, for instance, the classical Greeks. While Greek notions of military excellence had their roots in Homer (on this, see J.E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity (2005)) and an ethic of individual combat where honor was gained by killing notable enemies, by the fifth century this had been replaced by an ethic almost entirely focused on holding position in a formation. As Tyrtaeus, a Spartan poet, writes (trans. M.L. West):
I would not rate a man worth mention or account
either for speed of foot or wrestling skill,
not even if he had a Cyclops’ size and strength
or could outrun the fierce north wind of Thrace;
I would not care if he surpassed Tithonus’ looks,
or Cinyras’ or Midas’ famous wealth,
or were more royal than Pelops son of Tantalus,
or had Adrastus’ smooth persuasive tongue,
or fame for everything save only valour: no,
no man’s of high regard in time of war
unless he can endure the sight of blood and death,
and stand close to the enemy and fight.
This is the highest worth, the finest human prize
and fairest for a bold young man to win.
It benefits the whole community and state,
when with a firm stance in the foremost rank
a man bides steadfast, with no thought of shameful flight,
laying his life and stout heart on the line,
and standing by the next man speaks encouragement
This is the man of worth in time of war.This is not a daring courage, but a stoic (in the general sense) courage – the courage of standing a place in the line. And note for Tyrtaeus, that courage is more important than skill, or strength or speed; it matters not how well he fights, only that he “bides steadfast” “with a firm stance”. There is no place for individual exploits here. Indeed, when Aristodemus (another Spartan), eager to regain his honor lost by having survived the Battle of Thermopylae, recklessly charged out of the phalanx to meet the Persian advance at the Battle of Plataea, Herodotus pointedly notes that he was not given the award for bravery by the Spartans who instead recognized those who had held their place in line (Hdt. 9.71; Herodotus does not entirely concur with the Spartan judgement).
This was a form of courage that was evolving alongside the hoplite phalanx, where either shameful retreat or a reckless charge exposed one’s comrades to danger by removing a shield from the line. While, as Lendon is quick to note, there was still a very important aspect of personal competition (seeking to show that you, personally, had more bravery to hold your position than others), this is a fundamentally collective, not individual style of combat and it has values and virtues to match. Indeed, the Greeks frequently disparaged the fighting style of “barbarians” who would advance bravely but retreat quickly as cowardly.
And so the man who holds his place in the group and does not advance recklessly is the bravest of Greeks, but among the Crow Native Americans would seem a coward, while the bravest Crow who cleverly and daringly attacked, raided and got away before the enemy could respond would in turn be regarded by the Greeks as a reckless coward, unworthy of honor. These notions of courage aren’t merely different, they are diametrically opposed demanding entirely different actions in analogous circumstances!
The translator will call both of these ideas “courage”, but clearly when one gets down to it, they demand very different things. And these are just two examples. As Lendon notes (op. cit.), the virtus of the Roman was not the same as the andreia of the Greek, though both words might well be translated as “courage” or “valor” (and both words, etymologically mean “manliness”, lest we forget that these are very gender-stratified societies). Roman virtus was often expressed in taking individual initiative, but always restrained by Roman disciplina (discipline), making that system of military values still different from either the Crow or the Greek system.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: The Universal Warrior, Part IIa: The Many Faces of Battle”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2021-02-05.
August 10, 2024
“Heavy casualties” in a modern western army might count as “a skirmish” in earlier conflicts
I sent a link to Severian a few weeks ago, thinking it might be an interesting topic for his audience and he posted a response as part of Friday’s mailbag post. First, my explanation to him about why I thought the link was interesting:
I know that Edward Luttwak is what the Brits call “a Marmite figure” … people love or hate him and not much in between. I’ve read several of his books and found he had interesting things to say about the Roman and Byzantine armies in their respective eras but I haven’t found his modern analysis to be anywhere near as interesting. This time, however, he might well have found that acorn … is the dramatic casualty-aversion of western nations going to be a key element of future, shall we say “adventurism”?
Clearly, [Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu] can still get their legions moving when they feel they need to, but could [insert current US President here] get the 101st Airborne into a high-casualty environment (let’s not pretend that Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer could or would, and Macron’s posturing is nearly as bad as Baby Trudeau’s total lack of seriousness)?
Anyway, here’s the Marmite Man’s latest – https://unherd.com/2024/06/who-will-win-a-post-heroic-war
Sev responded:
US Army soldiers assigned to 2-7 Cavalry, 2nd Brigade Combat Team (BCT),3rd battalion 1st Division, rush a wounded Soldier from Apache Troop to a waiting USMC CH-46E Sea Knight helicopter during operation in Fallujah, Iraq, during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM.
Photo by SFC Johan Charles Van Boers via Wikimedia Commons.
I’ve often said that, from what I can tell — and bearing in mind my entire military experience consists of a .500 record at Risk! — AINO‘s entire force philosophy amounts to “zero casualties, ever”.
Note that this was true even in the 20th century, when America was still America. “Stupendous casualties” by American standards would hardly rate “a spot of bother” by Soviet. Wiki lists the bloodiest American battle as Eisenborn Ridge (part of the Bulge), with approximately five thousand fatalities.
A Soviet commander who didn’t come home with at least five thousand KIA could probably expect to be court-martialed for cowardice.
That same Wiki article separates “battles” from “campaigns” for some reason. There’s an entire “methodology” section I’m not going to wade into, but even looking at “campaigns”, the bloodiest (by their definitions) is Normandy — 29,204 KIA. That’s an entire campaign, which might rate “a hard week’s fighting” by Soviet, German, or Japanese standards.
Please understand, Americans’ unwillingness to take casualties was greatly to their credit. You want to know about “meat assaults”, ask the Germans, Russians, or Japanese (or the British or French in WWI). George Patton might not have been the best American commander, but he was the most American commander — the whole point of battle is to make the other stupid bastard die for his country. I am 100% in favor of minimal losses, for everyone, everywhere.
But “minimal” does not mean “none”. People die in wars. People die training for wars. People die in the vicinity of the training for war, because it’s inherently risky. It doesn’t make one some kind of monster to call these “acceptable” losses; it makes one a realist. One could just as easily say — and with the same justification — that a certain number of car crash fatalities, or iatrogenic deaths, etc. are acceptable losses, because there’s no way to have “interstate commerce” and “modern medicine”, respectively, without them.
The Fistagon seemingly denies this. Forget human losses for a moment, and consider mere equipment. You read up on, say, Air Force fighter planes, and you’re forced to conclude that their operations assume that all planes will be fully operational at all times. Again, saying nothing of the pilots, just the airframes. The Navy seems to assume that all ships everywhere will not only be serviceable, but actually in service, at all times. Just recently, they shot off all their ammo at Houthi and the Blowfish … and seemingly had no idea what to do, because as Milestone D walked us through it, it’s impossible to rearm while underway.
Think about that for a second. How the fuck is that supposed to work in a real war? Can we just put the war on pause for a few months, so all our ships can head back to port to reload?
In fact, I’d go so far as to speculate that that’s the origin of the phrase “meat assault”. What The Media are calling a “meat assault” is simply what was known to a sane age as “an assault”. No qualifiers. You know, your basic attack — go take that hill, and if you take the hill, and if enough of the attacking force survives to hold it, that’s a win. People who absolutely should know better, though, don’t see it that way.
Since we’re here … I remember having conversations with some folks in College Town re: the Battle of Fallujah, while it was happening (technically the Second Battle of Fallujah). Now, obviously quite a few of my interlocutors were ideologically committed to the position that this was senseless butchery. And in the fullness of time, I too have come around to the position that the entire Operation Endless Occupation was senseless butchery. But leaving all that aside, the point I was trying to make was a simple one: Total US casualties were 95 killed, 560 wounded.
Every one of them a senseless crime, I now believe, but considering Fallujah strictly as a military operation, that’s amazing. House-to-house fighting in a heavily urban area, against a fanatically committed opponent who was willing, indeed eager, to use every dirty trick in the book … and US forces took 655 total casualties. That’s about as well as it can possibly be done. The Red Army probably lost 655 men on the train ride getting to Stalingrad. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to learn that 655 is the daily casualty figure across the entire front in Ukraine … hell, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are lots of individual sectors in Ukraine taking those kinds of daily losses. 655 is pretty damn good …
… but I was called every dirty name they could think of for suggesting it. I was called dirty names by people who called themselves conservatives, who were such ostentatious “patriots” that they’d embarrass Toby Keith.
Fallujah was fought in 2004, a time that seems like the Blessed Land of Sanity compared to now. AINO simply won’t take casualties. The Pentagram won’t — lose a tank, and you lose your job. (In battle, obviously. If you abandon it to the Taliban, no problem. And of course if you lose an entire war, it’s medals and promotions for everyone). And because the high command won’t, the field commanders won’t either. And because they won’t … well, “desertion” is an ugly word, but let’s just say Tim Walz won’t be the only guy who suddenly needs to be elsewhere right before it’s time to ship out. And as for the guys actually shanghaied into whatever foreign fuckup … well, “mutiny” is an even uglier word, but does anyone want to bet against it?
August 9, 2024
A crisis of competence
Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds on one of the biggest yet least recognized issues of most modern nations — our overall declining institutional competence:
Almost everywhere you look, we are in a crisis of institutional competence.
The Secret Service, whose failures in securing Trump’s Butler, PA speech are legendary and frankly hard to believe at this point, is one example. (Nor is the Butler event the Secret Service’s first embarrassment.)
The Navy, whose ships keep colliding and catching fire.
Major software vendor Crowdstrike, whose botched update shut down major computer systems around the world.
The United States government, which built entire floating harbors to support the D-Day invasion in Europe, but couldn’t build a workable floating pier in Gaza.
And of course, Boeing, whose Starliner spacecraft is stuck, apparently indefinitely, at the International Space Station. (Its crew’s six-day mission, now extended perhaps into 2025, is giving off real Gilligan’s Island energy.) At present, Starliner is clogging up a necessary docking point at the ISS, and they can’t even send Starliner back to Earth on its own because it lacks the necessary software to operate unmanned – even though an earlier build of Starliner did just that.
Then there are all the problems with Boeing’s airliners, literally too numerous to list here.
Roads and bridges take forever to be built or repaired, new airports are nearly unknown, and the Covid response was extraordinary for its combination of arrogant self-assurance and evident ineptitude.
These are not the only examples, of course, and readers can no doubt provide more (feel free to do so in the comments) but the question is, Why? Why are our institutions suffering from such widespread incompetence? Americans used to be known for “know how,” for a “can-do spirit”, for “Yankee ingenuity” and the like. Now? Not so much.
Americans in the old days were hardly perfect, of course. Once the Transcontinental Railroad was finished and the golden spike driven in Promontory, Utah, large parts of it had to be reconstructed for poor grading, defective track, etc. Transport planes full of American paratroopers were shot down during the invasion of Sicily by American ships, whose gunners somehow confused them for German bombers. But those were failures along the way to big successes, which is not so much the case today.
But if our ancestors mostly did better, it’s probably because they operated closer to the bone. One characteristic of most of our recent failures is that nobody gets fired. (Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle did resign, eventually, but nobody fired her, and I think heads should have rolled on down the line).
August 8, 2024
The Korean War Week 007 – The Pusan Perimeter – August 6, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published Aug 6, 2024The UN forces are withdrawn this week across the Naktong River into a new defensive zone in the Southeast corner of the Peninsula — the Pusan Perimeter, but already as the week begins they are in great danger from the right hook near the coast by the North Korean 6th Division, that threatens to upend everything, taking Chinju and aiming for Masan. There are also machinations afoot with the Chinese in Taiwan, and the fear that a larger war could erupt if things aren’t handled right concerning the Chinese; it’s a week full of tension.
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