Posts Tagged ‘war’

Israel: I Advise General Sherman’s War Unless You Want a Replay in Years to Come

Posted: October 8, 2023 by datechguy in Israel, middle east, war
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Spock: Captain, you took a big chance.
Kirk: Did I, Mister Spock? They’ve been killing three million people a year. It had been going on for five hundred years. An actual attack wouldn’t have killed any more people than one of their computer attacks, but it would have ended their ability to make war. The fighting would have been over permanently.

Star Trek A Taste of Armageddon 1967

Our friendly neighborhood terrorists of Hamas have launched their boldest and bloodiest attack on Israel in decades and have put icing on the cake by the targeting and kidnapping of civilians, slaughtering families and killing and kidnapping not just Israeli’s but Americans and at least one German as well.

They caught Israeli intelligence completely off guard and US intelligence completely off guard as well, but that is understandable. Apparently just as US intelligence is busy going after Catholics at mass, Parents attending school committee meetings and Trump supporters Israeli spooks were more interested in going after their Prime Minister.

According to the leaked documents, an assessment attributed to a Central Intelligence Update from March 1, leaders of the Mossad “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest against the new Israeli Government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli Government.”

These documents were part of a huge leak of Pentagon documents that Hotair has covered, but what’s more important is this move by Israel to formally declare war.

Israel’s cabinet invoked Article 40 Aleph and formally declared war against Hamas after the terrorist group launched the worst attack on the Jewish nation in 50 years.

Over 600 Israelis have been killed, more than 2000 are wounded, and 100 are confirmed to have been taken captive by Hamas since the war began.

This is, in my opinion a very good sign, all you have to do is watch the arab world cheering and even in America as Americas are killed and kidnapped people organizing to support Hamas publicly to understand that you can’t just retaliate a bit and defeat Hamas. You have to destroy them.

Israel in my opinion needs to prosecute this war without restraint, they also have to do it, I’m sorry to say, with the idea that all the people taken as hostages are expendable (If they get a chance to save some by all means do so but not at the expense of destroying Hamas.

And the only way to do so is to retake Gaza, annex is and give the people there a choice to stay or go.

Israel has left Gaza once, and did so without condition and this attack is the result. Israel must recognize that no amount of deals, or concessions or anything is going to change the attitude of either the Palestinians or the Arab world toward them. If the Arabs or Muslims around the world had a chance to slaughter the Jews they would without hesitation.

The only way to prevent this from happening again is to destroy their ability to make war. It will be messy and it will be horrible, but it will end the threat from Gaza once and for all.

They need to take to heart these words by General William Tecumseh Sherman

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. 

And those curses need to be poured out in Gaza to all those who aid abet and cheer Hamas’ actions in the same way that Sherman poured those curses on the people of Georgia and the Carolinas. What are your critics going to say that they aren’t already saying about you now? Sherman again:

 “We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and we must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.” The hard war was here for Georgia. “We cannot change the hearts and minds of those people of the South, but we can make war so terrible . . . [and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.”

The time for mercy is after the enemy is defeated and helpless at your feet, until then the war should be fought hard until it’s won.

Until and unless Israel takes these words to heart, this cycle will repeat and they will really be responsible for the next attack that comes because it will be made possible by not destroying the ability of those who will make it when they had the chance.

How About we establish a Few “No Loot Zones” & “No shoot zones” in the US before we move to No Fly Zones elsewhere?

Posted: March 7, 2022 by datechguy in war
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Pat Wheeler: Son, l asked you over here because the Sheriff’s a friend of mine. He’s got trouble. He can use a good man.

Colorado Ryan: To go against the Burdettes, Sheriff?

Sheriff Chance: That’s right.

Pat Wheeler: I told him you were one of the best.

Colorado Ryan: I’ll tell you what I’m a lot better at, Mr. Wheeler. That’s minding my own business. No offense, Sheriff.

Sheriff Chance: No offense.

Pat Wheeler: I never expected that.

Sheriff Chance: He showed good sense.

Rio Bravo 1959

There has been a lot of talk about a No Fly Zone in Ukraine enforced by NATO. The president of Ukraine lobbied congress for such a think and the Ukrainians have been doing their best to shame the west into this kind of direct confrontation with Russia.

Now the Ukrainians are in the process of being invaded and that being the case I have no problem with them doing all they can to get allies in the fight, in fact they would not be doing their job if they didn’t, but something occurred to me as the echoing gong of intervention has been going out.

Where are the calls for US Intervention in Chicago and Baltimore?

We have people being shot there on a regular basis and innocent bystanders being killed and wounded including children, yet we don’t have anyone talking about sending forces to control the violence there nor are there outcries for intervention in Chicago or people putting the Chicago or Baltimore city flags or seals on their twitter feed.

War is a messy thing. There is shooting, there is violence. And when civil authority breaks down you can see arson, you can see looting which begs the question.

Where are the calls for US intervention in San Francisco, or Portland or even New York City?

We’ve had wholesale arson, we’ve seen people take over streets and threaten others, we’ve seen looting and theft with impunity, yet the very suggestion that Americans should be sent to a part of America to protect Americans from these things in any of these cities is practically beyond the pale and it seems odd to me that so many Americans are all gung ho about getting involved in Ukraine but don’t seem to give a damn about what is going on here, not just ordinary crime which you might say is a local matter but crime and violence of a type that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago.

Am I saying that what Putin has done isn’t wrong, not at all. Putin should turn his armies around, head back to Russia and stay there.

But we’re not Poland, or Finland or the Baltic states, all of who have a history with Russia and have a legitimate worry about an aggressive Russia in their neighborhood and might decide it’s in their interest to get deeply involved . I submit and suggest it would show a lot of good sense to think long and hard before we go and get ourselves deeply involved in a war in eastern Europe that doesn’t involve a NATO ally that’s we’re committed to defend.

Ukraine War Fallout: Toxic Masculinity & Microaggressions are SO last week

Posted: February 27, 2022 by datechguy in culture, war
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In peace we can make many of them ignore good and evil entirely; in danger, the issue is forced upon them in a guise to which even we cannot blind them. There is here a cruel dilemma before us. If we promoted justice and charity among men, we should be playing directly into the Enemy’s hands; but if we guide them to the opposite behaviour, this sooner or later produces (for He permits it to produce) a war or a revolution, and the undisguisable issue of cowardice or courage awakes thousands of men from moral stupor.

C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters #29

One of the most interesting side effects of the war in Ukraine is the sudden shift in the left on several things.

Last week the left was telling us that armed citizens are dangerous and no regular person needs a gun

This week the left suddenly deciding that civilians armed with military weapons as a good thing.

Last week “Toxic Masculinity” was a curse that universities needed to purge using tools like Critical Race Theory to get this poison out of society.

This week the Masculinity of standing up to Tanks, Air Bombings and Fleets demanding surrender is something to produce awe and admiration.

Last week running away from Truckers who were honking horns at people was a good thing as US democrats overwhelmingly supported Trudeau

This week not running away from bombs etc and declaring “I don’t need a ride I need ammunition” is the template for how leaders should act.

This week you see everything from the Simpsons to Hollywood stars to members of congress celebrating the brave Ukrainian people.

But last week if you took the average Ukrainian now fighting the Russians, a white Christian who doesn’t believe in gay marriage, defines a woman by her sex and if asked tells you there is only two genders in the US, those same people celebrating them today would demand they be cancelled and or fired from any public position they hold.

The optimist in me would like to say this is because reality tends to trump woke stupidity and the realty of an actual war causes one to brush aside all the foolishness that people insulated from danger embrace.

But the realist tells me that the left understands that the fall of Ukraine would be a disaster politically for the left and their message worldwide and so they will jump with enthusiasm to defend them. That is defend them rhetorically, not in person of course That’s just as well a person who needs counseling for microaggressions is not likely to cope with battlefield conditions.

BTW if you are a true believer in the whole woke canon and are shocked and disgusted by this sudden volta face of the elites and their followers have no fear. Once the war is over and the danger to Ukraine the left’s political viability is past, all of those things that they are now celebrating will once again be beyond the pale.

Unexpectedly of course.

Review: The Liberator on Netflix

Posted: November 22, 2020 by John Ruberry in entertainment, media
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By John Ruberry

By John Ruberry

Lost among the fallout after the presidential election was the debut of a compelling four-episode on Netflix, The Liberator. It tells of exploits of the leadership of Felix Sparks (Bradley James), who eventually reached the rank of lieutenant colonel, of the 3rd Battalion of the 157th Infantry Regiment in the European theater of World War II. Yes, for the most part, this is a true story.

The series which began streaming on Veterans Day, is animated and it uses the new technique of Trioscope, which combines live action and computer and manually created images. The series is based on Alex Kershaw’s book The Liberator: One World War II Soldier’s 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau. It’s a huge improvement over rotoscoping, most famously, or notoriously used in the first feature film version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings, which was directed by Ralph Bakshi. The animation is grainy with a touch of sepia, the latter hue of course is common in films set in first half of the 20th century.

For the most part, The Liberator avoids hackneyed plotlines and characters of many World War II projects, other then sepia. There is no “Guy From Brooklyn” in it. But here is a soldier from Chicago, who of course is a Cubs fan. Fact: real and fictional characters from in television and movies are never White Sox fans, unless, as in Field Of Dreams, the South Siders are central to the plot. Oh well, to be fair it was the Cubs, not the White Sox, who played in the World Series in 1945.

When Lieutenant Sparks arrives at Fort Sill in Oklahoma shortly before America’s entry into World War II, he’s given command of “Company J,” which consists of soldiers locked up in the stockade. These ragtag men are a mix of Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and cowboys. 

It’s a tough command, “The Indians and the Mexicans don’t like each other very much,” a jail guard tells Sparks. “And they hate us more.”

But Sparks is looking for fighters, not divisiveness. He and molds them–even though the Native Americans and Mexicans can’t enter a bar off base in Oklahoma. In Italy a captured member of the Thunderbirds is confronted with this irony by a German officer. 

During its two years in Europe, in addition to the invasion of Sicily and the liberation of Dachau, but also the invasion of southern France, as well as the Battle of the Vosges near the German border, and finally fighting in Bavaria, the 157th Infantry Regiment encountered over 500 days of combat. Sure there are arguments and spats among the soldiers. People never always get along. But the soldiers form an effective fighting unit. 

The German troops are treated relatively sympathetically in The Liberator, but only up to a point as the Thunderbirds later of course liberate Dachau.

The supporting cast is superb, particulary the performance of Martin Sensmeier as Sergeant Samuel Coldfoot and Jose Miguel Vasquez as Corporal Able Gomez, two composite characters.

Originally The Liberator was intended as a live action miniseries for A&E Studios for the History Channel but filming such a project in so many disparate locales, the plains of Oklahoma, Italy, the Mediterranean coast, the Vosges, and Bavaria, proved financially impossible. Not so much with animation. Which is why The Liberator is probably on the cusp of what we’ll see soon on the big and small screens. And the use of animation in war dramas will spare us motion picture embarrasments such as the desert combat scenes in the 1965 box office flop The Battle Of The Bulge.

The Liberator is currently streaming on Netflix. It is rated TV-MA, although despite depictions of battlefield wounds and the frequent use of profanity–in English and Spanish no less–I’m unsure why. Oh, some people smoke cigarettes in it too. I’m mean c’mon. This is the 1940s!

Tune in and start watching. You’ll be glad for it. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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