Moose

Trump might get the off-ramp he wants via domestic politics. Senate has actually voted in favor of advancing a WPR barricade for Iran requiring the Admin to make its case. This is not me cheerleading the Senate, which is easily the most derelict in modern times. But it might give Trump a way to quit while blaming someone else.

Changes in tone are natural and expected in the fullness of time. Organisms that don't adapt to a changing environment become too dissimilar from that environment to extract organic essentials and survive. They die. So yes, in the decade of enshittification preceding this latest war of choice, my tone has become more serrated. That doesn't make me an impostor. Nor does it supply the foundation for suggesting I was dishonest in the first place. I'll agree I could have been more constructive in some of my previous comments. But let's not get excited about painting "f***" on an airplane that is dropping napalm on thatched hut villages. We're discussing war crimes, jus ad bellum, and other profound subjects. None of us is dismounting a Higgins Boat. So maybe we can thicken up enough to punch and counterpunch enough to break through the patina and learn something.

Sounds like you sat on the wrong uncle's lap or tortured too many house pets as a child and now struggle to escape the distortions of your own psychodrama. Do you hear your own theme music when you walk from your pontiac to the commissary door? Do you have nightmares about track select and wake up clutching your big blue wooby? Devaluing the service of a fellow veteran to enhance your own sense of worth is desperado territory. And if you need me to agree with you to feel better about yourself, then you don't even believe what you're saying. Maybe because you know deep down, in places you don't talk about at post-midnight interstate rest stop parties, you know it doesn't deserve belief. I know I argued it's best to prioritize substance over source. But once a source proves they have no substance, ignoring them becomes a useful shortcut. Something tells me you get ignored a lot, so maybe this will help you get why. Granted a lot of time passed between my visits to this place, but I can't stop being astonished at the sheer enshittification of dialogue. There used to be more balance. Defining oneself by MDS used to get someone kicked in the pills so hard their dead grandpa's wingman would cry out from the grave in pain. Now it's, like, what the cool kids do. It's normal to define yourself by residual inadequacy when you're young and still figuring things out. To still be engaging in popping your polo collar at this stage of life suggests a deeper vein of psychic sludge. Good luck with it, we're all counting on you.

I do speak for myself. Unfortunately, the president speaks for all of us. When he uses his power to shield child rapists, we all become complicit, because he has no power apart from that which we grant to him. When SecDef invites to the Pentagon someone who openly says slavery was cool, we all become complicit in that too. Bad news: we are no better than our enemies, and at our current rate of closure will turn them into the good guys very soon. Direct intervention might prevent Iran getting a nuke, at least for now. But this isn't a single-move game. It's an infinite game. What helps now might work against us later. Or it might not even help us now. I'm struggling with why, if the case for this war was such a slam dunk, it didn't get made in the manner required by law. I'm struggling even more to understand why a bunch of USAF officers don't think laws are important. If you can explain to me why we needed to conduct MCO to re-obliterate something we just obliterated, it would provide a theory at least as promising as us being captured by a foreign government, which is currently the leading theory. I think I asked it before, but I'll try again: what evidence would change your mind? I needn't argue that both Iran and the USA are immoral nations. We've been proving that to ourselves and the world for a while now. But moral sufficiency isn't the reason to go war, and representative republics that don't fight to keep their voice in matters of war don't stay representative for long. I'm not saying that applies to us. We haven't had representation for a long time. Elections are not about us or policies. They're about money and propaganda, which was again proven in yesterday's weaponized Kentucky primary.

If only you knew how many times I've argued exactly what you're arguing. But being effective at your job does not require you to fantasize false applications of the law of war or embarrass yourself or the service by proving you slept through LOAC and sniffed glue before taking your oath. You don't need to kill non-combatants to be tough. You don't need targeting to be convenient or unconstrained. Which is good, since it isn't, and that can't be interpreted away.

The details of my life are quite inconsequential. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring, we would make meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty typical really. When I was in the Air Force, I wasn't supposed to talk about it because we don't do that. When I was out of the Air Force, I wasn't supposed to talk about it because I wasn't in it, so what did I know. It's a great recipe for zero discussion about anything, leading to decelerated learning, a sludged OODA loop, and the exact institutional entropy we've watched unfold under "leadership" that made the same noises you do. Very few people have combat experience. But everyone is eligible to care about it and discuss it. Better to judge the substance of an argument than get caught up in who is making it. Or worse yet, cultivate unwarranted doubt about their credibility to marginalize them and avoid contending with the substance altogether. When you attempt that with me, it tells me you're Winchester. You have nothing else effective to argue. That makes me feel better about the merits of what I've argued. Not a lot better, because hey, it's you. But a little. So thanks for that. But as a bonus, yes, I have plenty of experience downrange. 500 hours in the air, a tour on the ground, and many instances of TF integration as a planner. Commanding a squadron in combat and bringing them home safely was the cherry on top. I don't need any of that to the sort gnat shit from the pepper in your BS, but it doesn't hurt.

America didn't forget annihilation strategy, collective punishment, or burning down the village to save it. We did all that in Vietnam and it went really well. Love the soldier hate the war. Hate the lawyer, love the law. Despite the seismography of your philosophical brain detonation, the law defies you by continuing to exist. It binds us. It's a pain in the ass, but that's the point. Because absent limits, the enmity and vitriol of war careen into oblivion, eventually destroying whatever we were fighting to protect. I got that from Clausewitz. Or maybe it was a Cracker Jack box. With my margarita habit, there can be no way of knowing.

Because exchanges about important stuff should fit onto the back of a bubble gum wrapper to make life easier for dilettantes. This is a surface-skimming debate. If you can't chew sirloin, good luck with the rare rump steak of a real debate. What's that you say? You were merely pretending to care? Well, in the immortal words of Felix Barbosa, "you grew balls, now you have to wear them."

They're not disagreeing with me. If they think a house automatically becomes a valid target when a combatant shelters there, they're disagreeing with the law. In a just world, they be disbarred for incompetence or, if the advice given was knowingly unlawful, tried as war criminals. Lucky for them, we're not in a just world.

Now see, it's been awhile since I posted here. But I seem to recall a policy about refraining from personal attacks. Not that I expect it will be enforced, but you have to live with yourself. I hope your conscience can bear it. You're not too bright. But that's normal for USAF officers. The service stopped allowing us to make high-judgement decisions as CGOs, which prevented those of us with sufficient humility from getting things wrong, learning, and improving so we could exercise better judgement with time. Because who needs all that when you can issue micromanagerial directives from a CAOC and have your authoritarian wishes enforced by FGO toadies who live for your approval. It's that authoritarian acculturation which has led you to the mistaken idea that disagreement with you, Lord Rat, makes someone unintelligent. But you managed to wedge underneath your toxic upbringing by accusing someone of racism without proper foundation. That marks you as a low-rent piece of shit incapable of the shame you ought to feel for saying it. Not all animals are elephants, but all elephants are animals. Not everyone who criticizes Israel is an anti-semite, but all anti-semites criticize Israel. Not all idiots are lawyers, but all lawyers are idiots. I am a lawyer and an idiot. It's the one correct thing you've said. But it means I was able to sleep through LOAC and still grasp the law of targeting. Whereas you were allegedly awake and still missed the entire meaning. Let me help. When a combatant shelters in a civilian dwelling, the children who live there do not become fair game. The house becomes a lawful target and loses protected status only if/when it makes a substantial contribution to military activity. Like, it becomes a sniper's nest or a comm center or a storage facility for combatant munitions. The fact of a combatant sheltering in a building does not make it a valid target. If this is not what you extracted by drunk-clicking through your LOAC CBT after a Tuesday night Elmer's freebasing session, I'm sorry to make your mental process more complicated. But your obvious ignorance will not be a valid defense, nor does it clothe you in the glory you apparently self-entitle. But wait. There's more. Even if you determine a target co-opted by combatants is valid, you can only attack it if the anticipated military advantage outweighs the harm expected to befall non-combatants. This relies on good faith. That doesn't mean it's a free-for-all. Because you must also take all possible precautions to minimize civilian harm. Anyone in the chain of command who fails to do the above can be personally named in a criminal or civil proceeding. Which assumes a world of laws, and I know we're in a world of men. Which, amusingly, also disqualifies you from participating. 64,000 killed or maimed. 1,000 infants. You don't even think it's wrong. If it was your son, your daughter, your grandchild, you probably still wouldn't, because reptiles just lay more eggs and move on. Wrap whatever pretty bow you want around this turd. But if you want to pretend it's chocolate, you have to eat it. Here's a fork. Because if one thing is clear, it's that you deserve to be forked.

Everything you argue depends on non-combatants in Gaza and Iran being culpable for October 7th. They are non-combatants. They have no agency. Collective punishment is antithetical both distinction and necessity. You're answering the question "how can I justify this?" But the right answer to the wrong question is still the wrong answer. The right question is "why are pretending to be great while settling for being Israel's military gimp?"

64,000 children killed or maimed in 2 years. That includes 1,000 infants. For the sin of being born in the wrong place. That's what you're championing. And people are still mystified when I explain that the USAF is not a dependable firewall vs genocidal political intent or unlawful orders. With that comment, you demonstrate that the door to your mind is closed and effort to pry it open will fail unless you are somehow de-radicalized, which usually only happens with mortal shock. Just remember, anything you let your government do to someone else, it will eventually do to you.

The international community is divided on whether Israel's actions in Gaza constitute genocide. But the fact scholars and institutions we built for the sole purpose of preventing genocide say those actions meet the legal definition means there is at least enough ambiguity to make an open-minded person less certain. Indiscriminate bombardment of non-combatants and destruction of life-supporting infrastructure are what occurred. If you're cool with us supporting that, my question is simple: what evidence would change your mind? What would you need to see to reconsider your support? US strategy isn't usually keyed to an orderly NSC principals process. It is keyed to Presidential statements. The entire Desert Storm plan and legislative proposal campaign was written based on GHWB's public statements. The first meeting came after we'd already briefed Congress. All to say Presidential rhetoric is taken as national policy. You can say you're not a Trump guy, but we all are. Which is the whole point. When he threatened genocide, you lost that argument until he retracts it or is no longer in charge. I said morality matters in war. You imply it does, but you define it subjectively. The closest we get to international morality is the expressed limitations of international law, which bind us in the treaties we sign or sometimes even if we don't sign. If one belligerent is adhering to the law and the other is not, you can credibly call one immoral. If both are derogating from the law, both are immoral, which makes morality irrelevant. When morality becomes irrelevant, it's anything goes, including genocide. Maybe you begin to see the circularity of your reasoning, or maybe not. No one wants Iran to have a nuke. I'm with you there. But no one has argued this was about preventing Iran getting a nuke. The path to preventing is not to make Iran even more insecure. If you think 93 million people are unified in a radical Islamist cult, you're not thinking at all. Be more curious. Ask more questions. Learn about Iran. Distinguish between radicals and the general population. Because the first step in genocide is what you just did -- lumping 93 million people together and demonizing them all. Next step, dehumanize. After that, gas chambers. Distinguish also between the Israeli State and the Jewish people. Opposing the actions of the former is not antisemitism. That kind of insinuation cheapens the term, which is one of many reasons 70% of Israelis don't trust their government and 55% disapprove of Netanyahu. I'm not sure if you're trying to be ironic, but framing Iran as a hive of religious extremists before justifying current Israeli State action with reference to Isaac and Ishmael got a chuckle out of me. When it comes to your closing line, I've got bad news for you. Aside from our twin penchants for slavery and child sexual abuse, we share no DNA with Sparta. We are Athens. Iran might be our Sicily.

I'm not sure from which obscure propagandist sludge pit you've mined the conclusion that Iran had any direct or indirect involvement in October 7th. No one else is as certain as you, including our own intelligence community and Israel's -- both denied it. The evidence is that Hamas tried to get Iran involved and Iran declined. October 7th didn't do Iran any favors. They lost sanctions relief and had to divert more money to military spending in anticipation of what is happening now. Yes, Iran has been funding Hamas since the 1990s. Funding irregular warfare is a rational and often effective tactic to harass and interdict a more powerful adversary without engaging in a direct confrontation. Signed, George Washington. But funding/supporting a terrorist militia doesn't grant control over that militia's future actions. Signed, Charlie Wilson.

We're not arguing at all. Argument is a claim, reasoning, and evidence. You're making claims and partially sharing your reasoning. So far, I'm not even doing that. Ok, maybe I am doing so implicitly. So let me be more explicit. You're justifying a war of choice with analogical reasoning. But we're not 1930s Europe. Iran isn't our regional neighbor. Iran isn't industrially mobilizing. There is no relative balance of economic and martial power between us and Iran. Our national defense is not threatened by Iran. Only 28% of Americans can identify Iran on a map, even when given a zoomed map of the region. You try to make Iran different with the "violent, immoral, cult centered" label. Every powerful nation on Earth qualifies as violent and immoral by any working definition. Statecraft requires violence. Nations lie, cheat, and steal. We're all whores and there is no honor among whores. Cults of personality occasionally gain access to power. But if this is how your analogy works, it's the USA at the top of the global target sort. If you're going to justify American action with statements by foreign radicals, they're going to do the same by quoting US radicals. Our president threatened genocide. The instant he did that, we did a hard turn to 180 from any chance of valid objection to flammable rhetoric. If you think morality matters in war, then you're a supporter of the legal concepts of necessity, proportionality, and the protection of non-combatants. You also believe international aggression is only justified by self defense. We have defiled these principles. If you believe/feel (not think) we're behaving morally, you're not a supporter of any of these things. Not on this sample. You're a supporter of whatever the current US regime wants to do. Might makes right. There's nothing spinal going on here. It's morally amoebic, changing shape as required. No one believes the US or Israel are the underdogs. We're not doing this because we believe Iran seeks nuclear genocide, which would be national suicide. We believe Iran's regime makes rational decisions in their own interest. Otherwise we would not be negotiating with them. You don't negotiate with terrorists. We haven't been inactive on Iran for 47 years. This is a comment that almost unilaterally proves a lack of curiosity, which leads to a shortage of facts and an overage of certainty. We sold arms to Iran in the 1970s. We sold WMD to Iraq in the 1980s to strengthen them vs Iran. Then we gave more arms to Iran to manufacture a stalemate and lied about it. Then we shot down one of their airliners on accident and lied about that too, before paying the victims' families. Then we got the world bank to release their loans if they would vote in favor of UNSCR 678 so we could legally conduct Desert Storm. After 9/11, we put them in the Axis of Evil despite a CIA assessment of zero material involvement in those attacks. They they supported Shia militias in blowing us up in Iraq, and we made this a rational choice by occupying every country bordering them while threatening to wipe them off the map or help Israel do so. Then they elected a moderate president, and so did we, and a treaty was signed. Then we withdrew from that treaty and started assassinating their leaders. Then we bombed their nuke program and obliterated it, and told the world we had done so. Then we started a war with them to re-obliterate it with urgency so urgent that the Constitution and WPR were too slow. The re-obliteration went very well on all sides. And yet here we are, because Hegseth says we have to bomb their ambitions too. I'm not sure how one bombs ambitions, but hopefully it can be done with dumb bombs since we're Winchester on PGMs. Anyone who says we've had 47 years of constant antagonism vs Iran because of terrorism and/or nuclear ambitions is talking straight out of their ass. Which makes sense, since talking shit is the only way to support a shit operation based on shit justification being sold by shit salesmen who are even more shit at doing their jobs and even more shit than that at keeping their oaths. Since you like analogies, I'll offer one for consideration. In the 1970s/80s, the USSR sought to distract its general public from the economic failures of communism by engaging in wars of expansion on its Eurasian frontier. The US recognized an opportunity. Be a stalking horse. Support proxies. Bog the Soviets down and bleed them. So we did, and it worked. Eventually they were humiliated in Afghanistan and stalemated elsewhere. The distractions were played out. Their economy was collapsing and they had to choose between a bloody revolution and a peaceful breakup. The root cause of Soviet collapse was internal political dysfunction creating mass economic unrest. The Cold War was our way to accelerate it. You don't seem open to the idea that our internal politics and economy are pathologically ed at this moment. If you blank that, you can't build a clear picture. Wars are commitments. Once we're committed, adversaries have a way into those pathologies. They can accelerate them. Since 1972, Israel has pursued a strategy of using terrorist attacks as justification for disproportionate and indiscriminate responses that demoralize Islamic populations. After Munich, it became a clash of civilizations to them, and they have no interest in peace or conciliation. These things require trust, and they trust Muslim leaders like Kirk trusts Klingons. To support this strategy, they've courted US politicians, bought shitloads of US debt, and developed a peerless intelligence service that hoards kompromat and uses the resulting leverage to get our regimes to do things that are not in the US national interest. Americans don't understand why we're so dumb, so there is blowback. That blowback is accumulating. Whether we are the USSR 1989, Germany 1939, or hapless European states 1940 in this scenario is for you to ponder. Good talk.

Who says WWII is the right analogy? What is the objective definition of "immoral/evil"? Is Iran more/less/same as likely to pursue a nuclear weapon now than before this operation commenced? Is there any merit in the idea of Iran having the credible capability to deter an Israeli invasion in the future? Is the global security picture more healthy or less healthy if Iran, lacking a deterrent, feels sufficiently threatened by an Israeli power imbalance that it continues to support and sponsor irregular warfare and terrorism in attempts to unsettle the internal politics of Israel and its partners/allies/gimps? Final question: which is the bigger security threat to the US -- Iran with a handful of nukes or US presidents who no longer have a requirement to make the case for war with the Congress and general public? Is Iran's terrorist sponsorship more or less dangerous than the risk to our own political solvency if our government is permitted to lie under oath, make stuff up, mislead, have no plan, piss away trillions, and then blame the Avon Lady? There are lots of answers. The questions are more important, in my opinion. I ask them to illustrate the chasm of space available for reasonable people to disagree (or in some cases, unreasonable people to expose their disdain for the rule of law). The fact we can disagree about whether and how this should be done double red underlines why we have a process of securing consent and funding as soon as possible after hostilities begin, or before initiating them where possible. None of which applies when we're Israel's bitch and they own our defense policy.

*Dallager But I agree with you otherwise. There is not a shred of principle in this man. He did more damage to the USAF than most, compounded because he made us believe in him.

The problem with being a political stooge is that eventually, you get caught playing both sides. Welsh's posturing would hit different if he hadn't been such an ardent DEI advocate previously. https://texasscorecard.com/state/texas-ams-interim-president-historically-promotes-dei/

Got it. Hey, for what's worth, I happen to agree with you. DoE is probably not constitutional. It's debatable. But I don't think a constitutional justification is going to persuade. Americans need to have a debate on substance and understand how little it's doing for them, how expensive it is, and how much more the states could do with the resources it's using. The fact it's arguably an unconstitutional intrusion into state matters is a decent footnote. The substantive arguments flooding into the thread now are the ones that have a chance to prevail. Ultimately there needs to be a strong popular mandate because a lot of people have their interests tied to DoE, including powerful lobbies and corporations that won't just give up. They'll give up when it's in their interest or when they are defeated legislatively. I happen to agree with you more generally that federal agencies are overgrown, we have too many federal laws, too many federal people, too much federal presence in day-to-day life. I don't even want to give a shit who is in a federal office and would love to go back to the quaint pre-WWII reality of most people not even being able to name the president. But unless we're going to have a constitutional convention and re-bake the cake, we have to figure out how to unbake this one. I think that'll take substantive arguments. Appeals to legality, while valid, are not persuasive.

Does this mean you also think the Air Force, also unmentioned in the Constitution, should be shuttered? I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you about the Dept. of Education. Just curious if you're thinking about the broader implications of this kind of reasoning.

This is totally fair. If I'm pushing stories that leave readers with the impression of inductive reasoning based on a single random email, I'm missing the mark. Appreciate the input.

Is "great dude" really the test you want to roll with? Mark Welsh was widely regarded as a great dude. James Post too. Brian Hastings -- great dude according to many people. Britt Warren can be a great dude overall and still be dead wrong to punish people for exceeding fitness standards but falling short of his pet standard. As for Laughlin ... I don't think I'll ever be over Macho Grande.

We just have a difference of opinion about the substance and importance of that article. Sorry you feel that way, but no apologies for the story itself. While I'm sure that CC has a fan club, his policy was punishing airmen who met the USAF fitness standard. It was worthy of a callout and was fact-driven. And the guy is a commander, not a random anonymous henchman who can expect zero scrutiny. It's OK to critique what he is doing with the authority he's been granted, and we don't have to agree about it. My one regret on that piece was not using a few more words to make it clear many CCs were/are doing similar things. Shouldn't be up to Britt Warren to carry all of the burden for a practice that exists in many other locations.

I suppose that's a fair take, even if I don't see it that way. We got some huge wins and moved the needle consistently for three solid years. We continue to get wins occasionally, but two things have changed. The first is that I can't personally dedicate the time to the blog that I was able to commit from '13-'16 (because as you intuit, I went to work) and have therefore grown to rely on others. The second is that I believe the USAF is genuinely trying to turn things around. As opposed to the season of darkness, when I felt Welsh and James needed to be called out on every valid example that came around the bend because they didn't even have the right intent, I'm interested in giving Goldfein and Wilson a bit of space and time to pursue their valid objectives. There was never a shift away from pursuing the vendetta against shit leadership. In fact, I caught hell for pursuing that vendetta further than many felt was wise or constructive. Likewise, I never shifted to making editorial decisions for the sake of generating clicks. Of course I want people to visit the blog, but it's because I want them to read what I'm writing. I don't get paid by the click and no one edits my work or decides what I will publish. I don't write click-bait headlines and I don't (purposely) bury leads. My writing is too clunky and complex to ever prevail in a click-for-cash environment. Honestly, if I wanted to get rich online, I'd roll with cat videos or a meme generator ... not a military affairs website only interesting to a tiny sliver of the population. Entering into business to make the site self-sustaining was a tough call, but on balance the right one. The site is still doing good things and the USAF still has to keep it in the cross-check. If it tars my image with some of you guys for the time being, I can live with that. Edit to add: meant to say that yes, there have been missteps and stories I wish I hadn't written or permitted others to publish. My response above shouldn't be taken as a claim that everything's been done perfectly. The intent has been right, but not always the execution.

TC here. Some fairly large judgements in the comments above. I won't go defensive and address them all, but feel free to ask questions if you're actually curious. Where applicable, thanks for the feedback. Fly safe.