In war, the stronger party prevails.
Asymmetric warfare only works when the weaker party has political protection. Perhaps like the Taliban, the weaker party is fighting soldiers required to operate as heavily armed nursemaids. Perhaps like Mao after the long march or the communists in Greece, the weaker party is launching raids from across a border that the stronger party is reluctant to cross.
The usual scenario where asymmetric warfare works is that the State Department fears the Pentagon more than it fears America’s enemies, and requires US troops to operate by police rules, while those the Pentagon is fighting operate by the laws of war.
When Russia intervened in Syria to rescue their ally and preserve their Mediterranean base, the usual suspects, in particular President Obama announced Russia was getting into a quagmire. Instead Russia has, as I predicted, been decisively and thoroughly winning, largely through shelling, bombing, blockade, and siege – slow but thorough tactics that deny the weaker party any opportunity to do even a small amount of damage to the stronger. Less sweat that way than taking strong places by storm.
The Turkish controlled parts of Aleppo and west of Aleppo have now been cut off from Turkey, and are now already conserving food and ammunition. Short of an open land and air intervention by Turkey, short of open non proxy war between Russia and Turkey, will wither on the vine and fall in a few months.
Russia is also bombing the hell out of Islamic State’s Turkish supply lines, but has as yet made no attempt to cut them off on the ground. Once Aleppo falls to siege, will probably turn its attention to laying siege to Islamic State.
The current peace talks illustrates asymmetric warfare in a nutshell: The weaker losing side rather than the stronger winning side is laying down preconditions and making demands, the primary demand being that Russia stop advancing.  In other words, they are asking the State Department to stop the Russians from winning in the same way the State Department has so regularly stopped the Pentagon from winning. The State Department indignantly blames Russia for the failure of the peace talks, which supposedly failed because the weaker side is getting hammered so hard and is suffering so badly.
“Perhaps like the Taliban, the weaker party is fighting soldiers required to operate as heavily armed nursemaids.”
Not exactly. The Taliban is a Pakistani creation and asset, and has been operating out of Pakistani soil since before the Americans arrived. Mullah Omar the Emir of the Afghan Taliban was also killed in Pakistan. BTW, the Bush administration and the Pentagon have known this from Day 1 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunduz_airlift – This is where they allowed the Pakistanis to evacuate top Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters because they were Pakistanis. Lol.
That’s your war on terror in a nutshell ->
1) Saudis attack America, planned from Afghanistan, with the help of Pakistani assets.
2) America shields Saudi, and gives Pakistan more money, while letting it run a double game.
3) America attacks Iraq.
Ah.
Putting the ‘ass’ in asymmetric warfare with asymmetric thinking, LOL.
I sometimes think we should hang these stupid old hippies from the lamp posts and use their bloated corpses for bayonet practice – but they do offer some comedic relief from the day to day realpolitik…
These old people built careers during Morning in America or maybe whined about the stagflation and lined up for gas because they had nothing better to do and weren’t used to budgeting gas as a significant cost of a car. They married women who could count their sex partners on one hand and had normal families.
Then the economy fell apart and the government said its goal was to improve the economy for everyone but White men, while the teachers in the ’90s inculcated feminism into the White boys, leading to the consent culture that feminists of today call rape culture.
What holds back the predatory instinct in men is decency, which comes from having a wife and children to take care of. This is why everyone recognizes that bachelors are inherently untrustworthy.
Too many White men don’t know how to get a woman and can’t get a career going to support a family. Their seething apoplectic fury is currently ignored and ridiculed by hippies. When it comes time to do something about it, hanging them would be decent, but isn’t visceral enough. I’d want to stab and kill if I didn’t have a woman and a career.
The asymmetric phase of the Syrian Civil War, where one side had a lot of tanks and planes and helicopters and so forth, and the other side had pickup trucks and light infantry weapons, passed several years ago. Since then, it’s been a conventional slog.
Looking at the map of the front lines in Aleppo, it is obvious the regime has long, exposed flanks. How long the city can hold out is a question, depending on whether its defenders are willing to go the full Sarajevo, which probably depends on the kind of deal the besiegers are willing to offer them.
I think the asymmetric phase is starting again now. As the Syrian regime (/the Russians/the Iranians) reconquers land and population, it will lose the advantage of inner lines, lose the advantage of a cohesive and loyal population base, be forced to administer a basically hostile population full of insurgents, have its supply lines exposed to constant attack and sabotage. How hyped up are the regime’s soldiers about the extended struggle involved? Well, the Iranians just lost another general in Aleppo today. The fact that Iranian generals are having to lead from the front suggests that the guys they’re advising are not very interested in doing the job.
Meanwhile, oil prices are through the floor. Russia and Iran have economies running on oil. The whole adventure is a constant, massive drain of money.
I don’t think so. Islamic State is Chechnya in exile, and these tactics worked on Chechnya exactly as they are working in Syria.
Plus the behavior at the talks fits beautifully with the State Department backing model of “asymmetric” warfare.
Chechnya took an extended occupation and administration by large amounts of Russian conventional forces before it was pacified to the point that Chechen proxy forces could hold it by themselves. Russian SWAT teams from police departments all over the country were rotating through for years and years (meaning that the regular army didn’t have enough operators to do the job.)
And Chechnya is tiny.
Syria is huge. And the Russians in Syria are casualty-adverse, meaning that they have to use the local proxies for administration and pacification right away. You can’t run a checkpoint from a Mig-27. The Iranians also won’t do-there are not enough of them, there is a language barrier, and it’s boring, shitty, risky, demoralizing work.
so basically, since the terrorists have been given weapons by my government and support by your government, they are a conventional army, and this has nothing to do with asymmetric warfare…
…which means that now that they lost Aleppo, they’re going to start fighting back.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia appear to think they are losing the war.
http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_ypg-advances-in-n-syria-ankaras-red-lines-crossed_411278.html
http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20160204/1034244705/saudi-ground-troops-syria.html
“The whole adventure is a constant, massive drain of money.”
A whole 1.9% of Russia’s military budget according to some estimates. We’ll see who rusts first.
>According to CIA estimates, the war in Afghanistan ate up 2-2.5% of the USSR’s military budget.
A whole 1.9% of Russia’s military budget according to some estimates.
>since the terrorists have been given weapons by my government and support by your government, they are a conventional army, and this has nothing to do with asymmetric warfare…
No. Since the terrorists have established conventional front lines and have been fighting as conventional militaries do, they’ve had nothing to do with asymmetric warfare.
>…which means that now that they lost Aleppo, they’re going to start fighting back.
They have not lost Aleppo. Aleppo has (according to some reports) been cut off. Big difference. Sarajevo was cut off for 3 years and didn’t fall.
I suggest you read up on “inner lines” and the difference between taking land and holding it.
It’s a matter of time and everyone involved knows it. Which is why Turkey is preparing to go in and Saudi Arabia is signaling support. Their problem is that they still haven’t figured out a way to drag the US into it.
“Well, the Iranians just lost another general in Aleppo today.”
Possibly related:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/05/are-u-s-missiles-taking-out-high-ranking-russian-military-officials.html
I’m not saying it’s aliens, but…
Yeah, those ATGMs are a bitch, aren’t they?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M133_Kornet#Combat_history
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htarm/articles/20080827.aspx
Well, either you adapt or eat TOWs. Probably hanging out in a visible group and discussing important things in plain sight is not something you want to be doing when they might be around.
Visible group, plain sight, TOWs just happened to be around, right. Who are you kidding? We both know that was American intel.
A TOW has an effective range of 4KM. “Around” is a pretty general term.
As far as I can tell, the Americans can’t even keep their patrol boats in the gulf from being captured by the Iranians. I am skeptical of the idea that they are passing real-time SIGINT or HUMINT to Al Nusra. And if the Iranians can’t take the proper OPSEC measures to keep their generals from showing up on the Americans’ screens right now, when there are relatively well-defined frontlines, they will really be screwed when it comes to occupying the place with no frontlines.
Well, you could be right and they could have just gotten lucky. It’s not a smoking gun by any means. We’ll see if their luck persists.
They’ve been killing Iranians left and right for quite some time.
I think it’s mostly because in order to get the Alawites to fight worth a shit, the Iranians have to put their “advisors” up front.
Taking cities by storm is well known to be hazardous to one’s health. It is not an indication that asymmetric warfare works. If they lost high ranking iranian officers holding cities that would be an indication asymmetric warfare works.
Could be, although it seems a bit odd to me that the Iranians don’t have lower-ranked “advisors” to put up front.
» Americans can’t even keep their patrol boats in the gulf from being captured by the Iranians.
those are deliberately provoking the Iranians, if they’re not getting captured they’re not doing their job of harassment
» I am skeptical of the idea that they are passing real-time SIGINT or HUMINT to Al Nusra.
everyone knows the US supports Al Nusra, the question is whether the US has the information, I think it’s likely
B has already claimed that asymmetric warfare is not currently occurring, but rather conventional warfare in which Iranian generals are needed on the front lines because Alawites are Hezbollah are feckless.
While Al Nusra and ISIS apparently worship the devil who gives them special powers of unit cohesion.
The Syrian government is occupying recently conquered areas in order to lay siege to unconquered areas. If asymmetric warfare is not happening right now, it is not ever going to happen.
There was not much of an insurgency in Afghanistan in early 2002, Iraq in June 2003, or in the occupied parts of the USSR in late 1941.
Give it a few months.
Put a date on it. When do we see asymmetric warfare in regime occupied Syria?
4 months to a year after the regime consolidates (meaning, all those red blobs become one big red area, no other colors right in the middle.)
One man’s “regime occupied” is another’s “legitimate government liberated”, and it seems to me that the population, having experienced the alternative, tends to prefer the latter formulation at present.
What about the Soviet experience in Afghanistan?
Were the French in Indochina hobbled by politics or did they just simply lose (not a rhetorical question; I’m not familiar with that history)? What about Algeria?
French in Algeria won, were defeated in Paris, not Algeria.
Russians in Afghanistan suffered logistic exhaustion – a crap socialist economy supporting too many foreign wars at once. Too busy stealing food to fight.
The Soviets had food stockpiled for WW3. There was no question of not having enough food. If you read the memoirs left by Soviet soldiers who’d fought in Afghanistan, for instance at artofwar.ru, nobody was starving to death.
The Soviets left Afghanistan because there was no point in them being there, and it was massively expensive (economically, politically and in terms of sick, wounded and killed) to stay. They’d invaded it looking for a reprise of Czechoslovakia, 1967. The idea was to get in quickly, kill the satrap, put things in order, put another satrap in and get the hell out (except for advisors and such.)
The only problem was that Afghans are not Czechs or Slovaks, and Afghanistan is not Czechoslovakia. Their installed satraps could not govern, and their puppet army would not hold ground. So the Soviet Army had to step in and do it.
Well, this is always a constant drain. Guys manning a checkpoint get drive-by’d, bases get mortared, roads get mined, supply convoys get ambushed. It’s not that you can’t hold any particular given piece of land as long as you’d like. It’s that you can only hold it as long as you’re standing on it, and the rent the enemy can impose on you for holding it are much higher than what he has to pay.
And for what? Afghanistan’s value, occupied by a Soviet satrap, was that it was a buffer client state between Pakistan and Soviet Central Asia. Afghanistan occupied by the USSR was a geopolitical bridge to nowhere, with very high maintenance costs and zero perspective for future improvement.
So they left. It had nothing to do with a lack of spam and bulgur to feed the troops with.
But they where not exterminating the populations of insurgent areas. All successful conquerors from Julius Caesar ro Genghis Khan will tell you that is necessary.
Not so.
I can give you a bunch of examples of successful conquest without extermination. For instance, the Brits in Egypt.
The Soviets killed a million or so Afghan civilians, and ran off another 5 million.
Wars are bloodless when it is clear who will win. Brits could conquer Egypt bloodlessly because French conquered Algeria bloodily.
Well to reprise your own thrust, afghans are not Egyptians or Indians either.
Could it be said that the muslims were the only successful conquerers of Afghanistan?
How was that done?
British repeatedly conquered Afghanistan. Were defeated in London. Much as the Khmer Rouge were victorious in Washington.
>>Could it be said that the muslims were the only successful conquerers of Afghanistan?
Probably yes.
>>How was that done?
Slowly.
Last pagan holdouts of Kafiristan (in eastern Afghanistan) were subjugated in late XIX century by Emir Abdur Rahman Khan.
so, the muzzies were forcing mudslimism on the afghans WHILE the british were invading?
those godforsaken cucks deserve every rape they get from pakis today
>>Could it be said that the muslims were the only successful conquerers of Afghanistan?
Alexander did OK. Ditto the Mongols.
In general, Afghanistan is remote, poor, harsh and populated by tough and warlike people living in narrow and treacherous mountain valleys and nasty, roadless deserts.
For a remote power, conquering it is quite possible, but very expensive and unprofitable. It’s easier to just make a deal with whoever is the baddest dude around-they are quite business-oriented there-and let him worry about the details.
Even Babur, who was a genius and a great builder and conqueror, mostly restrained himself to holding Kabul and occasionally punitively raiding various tribes when they got too uppity.
For completeness, America also won in Vietnam, but were defeated by the NYT.
OT for this post, but relevant to your posts on The Trumpening:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-03/president-trump-s-revolution-fear-not
This sort of symbolic fighting is very reminiscent of the eternal war described in Mr Orwell’s 1984.
The Syrians under Assad live there and have for a long time. They don’t view leaving as a real option. Tactics that work against a foreign occupier (make it sufficiently expensive that their will is exhausted) don’t work as well in a civil war like this one. Also the marginally committed population will look for the ‘strong horse’ in the absence of the knowledge that while one side will eventually go home, ISIS/US proxies/et al will always be there with a demonic energy.
>The Syrians under Assad live there and have for a long time.
The Alawi? Sure. And they’re willing to die for their coastal enclaves, where their families live. But they’ve lost a third of their young men. Are the rest willing to die to occupy central Syria with its largely Sunni population?
>Tactics that work against a foreign occupier (make it sufficiently expensive that their will is exhausted) don’t work as well in a civil war like this one.
From the perspective of the Sunni Arabs, Assad’s Alawites are a foreign occupier, and an infidel one at that.
And those Alawites can’t fight without Iranian “advisors” from the Quds force and volunteers from Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc. Who are very much foreigners. And of course the Russians.
>the marginally committed population
The marginality of their commitment remains to be seen.
“From the perspective of the Sunni Arabs, Assad’s Alawites are a foreign occupier.”
This sounds a bit odd. The anti-Assad forces are much more foreign. Literally foreign, not metaphorically foreign, at that. Syrian Sunnis don’t seem too eager to fight, judging by the refugee composition.
“And those Alawites can’t fight without Iranian “advisors†from the Quds force and volunteers from Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.”
Sure, because the other side has had no outside help at all.
>Syrian Sunnis don’t seem too eager to fight, judging by the refugee composition.
Of course, given the ability to loot Europe, with its castrated males and fair skinned females, many Syrian Sunnis will take it. But they were eager enough to fight that they wrecked all of Syria and that the Alawis had to retreat to the coast.
>Sure, because the other side has had no outside help at all.
All sides have outside help. That’s not the point.
The point is that Assad not being able to win against the United Forces of Evil on his own does not count against him in any way.
But the United Forces of Evil are not united. They are Arabs, which means that they can’t be united, unless someone like Saddam Hussein is terrorizing them (and even then they are not very united.)
And Assad’s Alawites may be united, but they can’t hold it together well enough to occupy land without lots of support from Russians and Iranians. And taking land it easier than holding it, unless you cleanse it of the population living there. Do you think Assad will be able to do this?
This is the myth of asymmetric warfare. When the Syrian government uses sieges, the tactic implies that holding land is easy.
The United Forces of Evil are Turkey, Saudi Arabia, to a lesser extent Israel, to a still lesser extent the US. Their proxies are indeed not very united.
Looking at the map:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Civil_War#/media/File:Syrian_civil_war.png
it doesn’t seem like Assad is that bad at holding territory, judging by the irregular form of the red blobs. But that’s somewhat of a secondary concern until the northern border is sealed.
TEST
Why did the Soviets lose in Afghanistan?
Before you say US aid, the Soviet army was still far stronger than goat herders with Stingers, even if goat herders with Stingers are stronger than goat herders with Lee Enfields. If the stronger party always wins, American aid at the historic level should have slowed Soviet victory but not prevented it.
The stronger party doesn’t always win; military history is replete with examples to demonstrate this.
However, that is immaterial to Jim’s point – a point which is, in-and-of itself, true. And that is that these Middle-Eastern wars, which our western governments have been claiming to have lost because of muh asymmetry, are patently winnable, and the Russians are proving this as we speak.
Whatever it is that the west has been doing for the past 20 years (and longer) has been at the behest of Israel. Why they would act in Israel’s interest and not in their own is a moot point, but most of us are familiar with the concept of the Zionist Occupied Government, a concept now so internalized that it is almost pedestrian in people’s minds….
Western governments won in Iraq and chose to withdraw because the prevailing ideology cares more about Iraqi “national” self-determination than Western interests.
All understood and true.
But if asymmetric wars are only ever in doubt because of muppetry within the stronger power, why did the Soviets lose in Afghanistan? Did peacenik CPUSSR pull the boys out while they were winning?
The USSR wanted a socialist government in Afghanistan, like how the USA wanted a democratic government in Iraq.
The only way Whites can rule muds is when they set out to rule. Whites can rule Whites with all manner of ridiculous ideologies, but the only ideology that has ever ruled mud people is ficki ficki.
Socialist Economics. USSR economy screwed. Had trouble feeding soldiers. Had trouble moving supplies long distances. Socialist economics.
USSR’s economy was less screwed than that if Afghanistan, a lot less
And our economies differ from the USSR only by degree, not in principle.
The USSR of 1945 was more socialist than the USSR of 1985, but was able to sustain much larger forces much further from its borders, no problem.
>The USSR of 1945 was more socialist than the USSR of 1985, but was able to sustain much larger forces much further from its borders, no problem.
Do you ever stop lying?
The USSR was living on American food, American trucks and even American gas in 1945.
>The USSR was living on American food, American trucks and even American gas in 1945.
So what?
Those American trucks, food and gas were coming in through Murmansk. How far is it from Murmansk to Khibin and Czechoslovakia? A lot further than from Kushka to Helmand.
In 1985, they were making their own trucks, much better than what they had in 1945 (KAMAZ, KRAZ, etc), and were exporting 600 million tons of oil per year. There was no shortage of either trucks or fuel. They were importing food, that’s true.
“The stronger party doesn’t always win; military history is replete with examples to demonstrate this.”
If they won, they were stonger by definition.
You meant that the number of tanks, of infantry men, etc. is not strength. Leadership is decisive, and cannot be quantified.
I was recently reading a very excellent book by a German staff officer about the 1940 campaign in the west, titled ‘the blitzkrieg myth’.
One thing that stuck out to me was how in many cases, the equipment the Germans were using in the early war was inferior to the frenches, in contradiction to exculpatory allied propaganda at the time.
The guns on their tanks could not penetrate the chars, infantry level ATA was often insuficient, in general there was a frequent lack of hard hitting ordnance across the board. Yet in contact after contact, the whermacht was coming out on top, thanks to the skill and daring of the officers and fighting men in adapting and overcoming hardened targets, and who’s dynamism and impetuous advances often exposed poor morale on the French side, turning any number of potential catastrophes in the making into improbable victories that seemed inevitable only in hindsight.
It just goes to show: demographics are destiny.
Demographics is not destiny. Destiny makes demographics happen.
And what is the Ashkenazi fertility in Israel?
I hear tell that Ashkenazi are heavy users of fertility treatments, donor semen, and donor eggs, which is not a good sign.
Not sure where you hear this tell from. What is “heavy”? No figures on specifically Ashkenazi fertility that I know of.
Anecdotally, family size is not at all correlated with community of origin, but with degree of religion. I work in a tech company where the top 3 are Ashkenazi Haredim in their early/mid-30s. They have 5/6/7 kids, and I doubt they’re done.
I suspect use of fertility treatments correlates mostly with degree of religious practice, insofar as lack of religion leads people to postpone having children until they are not at peak fertility.
Also religious people who can afford it might use fertility treatments to have more kids later. In Israel, the government covers fertility treatments (which are quite expensive) up to 2 kids, a boy and a girl. So if you have 8 kids and your wife is 40 and you want to try for 2-3 more, you’re gonna have to pay.
Asymmetric wars are simply proxy wars.
Asymmetrical warfare is too lose a concept. I suggest one discusses 4th Generation Warfare as it more precise in describing what is going on.
Dan Kurt
Simplify. When an apparently weaker party is winning, it’s because it’s being sponsored by a party stronger than the apparently strong party. E.g. Washington won because he was being sponsored by British Whigs.
Another scholarly lecture, Jim!
For me the take-away is this: any military venture that allows modern western liberals a say in how the conflict is waged – is doomed to fail.
Even when they are handed a conclusive victory as Obama got with Iraq – they still manage to fail and lose.
[…] warfare only works when the weaker party has political protection.” Cosmic evolution. Compressed […]
[…] warfare only works when the weaker party has political protection.†Cosmic evolution. Compressed exit. […]
In the current context in the West this conversation isn’t really about Syria.
Reference- Mass migrations into the West by enemies: If Progressive govts [EU/USG] are so strong why aren’t they doing their own dirty work?
So in the West who is stronger: The People and the Right or the Left wing governments?
War itself of course is such a game of chances and fate that while theories may be debunked the practice has many surprises.
In the West, the people truly have power.
Cathedral ideas win because the people support cathedral ideas.
The people support Cathedral ideas because culture is downwind of power.
But the people are always less extreme than the Cathedral’s priests and bishops, because they don’t care that much about political ideas, and don’t spend much time keeping up to date. They also are affected by other (albeit weaker) sources of reprogramming, such as their families and indirectly by Samizdat media like this blog, which priests and bishops are not.
In 50 years, if the Cathedral is still in power, mass immigration of as many Muslims as possible will be mainstream orthodoxy. It won’t happen, though, because either the Cathedral will have been deposed internally by then, or so many Muslims will be in the West that they will depose the Cathedral.
It’s not “the people” who have power, but the capable men.
In the ’80s, Rush tried to say what Trump says now, but the men he was talking to had families to take care of. The Cathedral could continue buying off capable men by letting them have families, even if they are constrained to two or three kids tops, and have to marry a Jewess or a Mexican.
Key positions in institutions have been given to the politically correct, where political correctness means institutionalized lying. These key personnel literally do not understand that they need to buy off capable men, and instead have been doing everything in their power to antagonize and alienate them.
The German government has antagonized the police and the media so much that the police and media have been leaking secrets. SJWs have antagonized Jew filmmakers so much that the Coen brothers said “four blacks, three Jews and a dog”.
Aleppo cut off from Turkey.
https://www.rt.com/news/331767-terrorists-supply-routes-turkey/
No end point, no exit strategy. The future looks very bleak for all sides to this conflict. Premature triumphalism may not be as appropriate as it is temporarily satisfying. 😉
Blood and money poured onto the sands in tribute to an indifferent and forgetful future. All is vanity.
End point and exit strategy is that Alawite rule continues. Victory for the regime is imminent. it has only been a few months and the Arab Spring in Syria has turned to winter.
That’s unimaginatively regurgitated leftist cant.
In reality, mud people can’t be ruled by ideology, but must be ruled by strength. Thus the US success and later failure and the USSR failures at ruling mud people. Can be ruled by strength, can’t be ruled by weakness, thus the British success and failure at ruling mud people.
The question isn’t why are mud people lactose intolerant, but why are Whites lactase persistent. The question isn’t why are mud people low trust, but why are Whites high trust. The question isn’t why are mud people incapable of being ruled by anything but strength, but why are Whites capable of being ruled by ideology.
The answer is the conditions under which Whites evolved and the subsequent co-evolution of our biology and culture.
Monogamy leads to high social trust collaboration. High social trust collaboration leads to the possibility of being ruled by abtruse ideologies that are far removed from the biological purpose.
Clicking through to your blog, that’s not the only leftist cant.
» As women have become more educated, more sophisticated and worldly wise, they have come to demand more wealth, accomplishment, and sophistication from their men.
http://imgur.com/Z8uqYYs.jpg
» Imagine such a sophisticated tutor housed within the realistic humanoid body of a sex robot. Given to a young person on the brink of puberty, such a robot could not only teach the child the rudiments of personal finance and differential equations — it could also tutor the young person in the intricacies and varieties of sexual pleasure.
Do you wish you had been married at puberty?
“As women have become more educated, more sophisticated and worldly wise, they have come to demand more wealth, accomplishment, and sophistication from their men.”
LOL.
Or to say the same thing in different words, women will only have sex with men of substantially higher status than themselves, which means that as affirmative action and degree inflation artificially raises the status of women, they find it harder and harder to find husbands.
http://imgur.com/Z8uqYYs.jpg
The saddest thing about this whole affair is that State doesn’t even seem to care all that much about this conflict she started. The effort has been led by naughty, fashy DOD clients Turkey, KSA, and Israel who they haven’t particularly liked for decades. According to Zaid from syrper, it’s been much more so the British who’ve helped Turks with intel and tactics, the American war effort has been haphazard at best. King Bongo even went as far as to halt the imminent and planned bombardment of Loyalist positions a few years back. Playing their lovely game of rapprochement, team Obongo enraged the entire Red Empire by penning the Iran deal, at the same time as they are losing to them in three theaters of conflict! There is less than zero grand strategy at work here, State is in obvious decline and is lost within her own madness.
Regarding the topic at hand, comparing this conflict to Afghanistan or Vietnam is erroneous because of terrain, there just isn’t the type of environment in Syria where guerrilla tactics can be utilized effectively. Though this is a great fact for the “asymmetry” theorists to ponder:- the area of the fastest regime advances are in the harshest environment, the forested mountains of Latakia. This false perspective is to be most found in the Iraqi urban fights where US military “advisers” have considerably slowed down progress according to local militiamen. American strategy is to be most honestly displayed by the Syrian Democratic Forces (we need to hate them way more), which is the Kurdish Communists finally getting that tasty demos imperium the always wanted. Their fights with ISIS have been victories through the use of decisive force but they have not occurred in any reasonable amount, especially since ISIS focuses the least on the Kurdish front. After the success at Tishrin Dam it’s been what, almost two months, since their last advance of significance? US air strikes have also been laughably small in frequency, it takes them a month to do what they did in one hour of Operation Desert Storm. This is what happens when you put pacifists in charge of war, extended brutality as the cowards are afraid of ghosts’ shadows.
[…] finally from Jim: Fall of Aleppo reveals that asymmetric warfare is bunkum. Confirmation of basic NRx […]
[…] Asymmetric warfare is bunkum. […]
[…] Asymmetric warfare is bunkum. […]
by the way, if you read Revilo Oliver’s book America’s Decline, you would find out that bunkum is supposed to be spelled buncombe. The word refers to an speech in congress in 1820 by the representative from Buncombe, who justified his insincerity by saying he was speaking for his constituents.
The loss of this word’s etymology is unfortunate for us anti-representative democracy types. Buncombe is the perfect word for the posturing as outsiders of senators Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, and governors Jeb Bush, Christ Christie, and John Kasich.
It is also the perfect word for the Administration’s position that we need to fight ISIS by arming Al Qaeda.
Another interesting point. Asymmetric warfare is based on the idea that a weak enemy can cause damage to a strong one out of all proportion to the investment necessary, and thus extract concessions.
Well, I can’t see any other reason for this to be going on: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/207888#.Vryt3vl97GI
The only reason that the Russians would be running a natural gas extraction plant for IS that I can think of is that IS can credibly threaten to inflict high costs upon Assad’s infrastructure.
An interesting data point is a blog by this guy, who seems to be a British Paki fighting (sort of) for Jabhat Al Nusra which shows the third side:
http://brothershaami.tumblr.com/
Another interesting data point is Israpil Yilmaz’ blog/twitter, but they seem to have been taken down. Interesting photography. A sort of glamor IS.
“Turkish officials” are not a reliable source. Islamic State is a reliable source, and they say they operate the plant without Russian assistance. They should know, and have no reason to lie.
“Turkish officials” are (at least recently) a reliable source of falsity, meaning that if you invert what they say, you’ll more likely than not have truth. In this case however the report seems entirely plausible. I’m not sure that it provides much of a support to the asymmetric warfare theory one way or the other though.
[…] enemy that it gets serious on. The only reason America loses wars is because America (purposely?) tries to fail. A loss of combat effectiveness simply doesn’t matter against foreign […]