Of leashes, muzzles, and chains
Anybody surprised at all by this revoltin’ development? Anybody? Bueller…?
Israel Delays Ground Invasion Because US Is Unprepared to Defend Itself
Israel has been prepared to enter Gaza to eliminate Hamas, but the ground invasion keeps getting delayed. The reason why?The US is unprepared to defend US military installations in the area.
This is pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. However, I am not sure that the Biden Administration isn’t just pressuring Israel to delay for other reasons as well, given their neverending expressions of concern for Gaza.
Israel has agreed, for now, to a request from the U.S. to get its air defenses in place to protect U.S. troops in the region ahead of an expected ground invasion of Gaza, U.S. and Israeli officials said.
The Pentagon is scrambling to deploy nearly a dozen air-defense systems to the region, including for U.S. troops serving in Iraq, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to protect them from missiles and rockets. U.S. officials have so far persuaded the Israelis to hold off until those pieces can be placed, as early as later this week.
Israel is also taking into account in its planning the effort to supply humanitarian aid to civilians inside Gaza, as well as diplomatic efforts to free more of the hostages held by Hamas, officials said.
The new excuse by the Biden Administration looks utterly pathetic because it is an admission that despite decades of having troops and assets in the region, our military is not prepared to defend our interests.
That is quite the reality if true, and quite the message to our enemies if either true or false.
WhoawhoawhoaWHOA there, big fella! Ixnay on the oosetalk-lay, if you please. Surely you must know that, according to the Progressivist catechism, Amerika v2.0 HAS no enemies, only “friends” who haven’t been appeased, bribed, beseeched, and groveled before sufficiently yet.
In fact, the word “enemies” itself is strictly verboten, reserved exclusively for domestic use to describe violent ÜberUltraMegaMAGA insurrectionists; non-“liberal” Whypeepuh; the traitor Trump and anyone who has ever spoken with, seen, and/or been closer than ten (10) statute miles from him bodily; all Republicans; and assorted Christians, Normals, rednecks, slope-browed ridgerunners, and cishet-binary Breeder freaks. In matters of foreign policy, this ugliest, most foul of epithets must never be uttered by more enlightened, evolved, sophisticated beings such as ourselves.
Fortunately, we have our Chinese friends to help guide us on the Path To Peace For All.
Tracking major warship movements in response to the developing situation in Gaza and beyond has been interesting. Most people have focused on the comings and goings of the US Navy in or towards the Eastern Mediterranean. Even the USN itself seems to have taken its eye off other potential flashpoints, as something has happened which never normally would: the most powerful naval force in the Gulf is Chinese.
Just fourteen days ago, US Navy movements were being passed off as ‘business as normal’. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Gerald R Ford was in the Mediterranean anyway. The Dwight D Eisenhower (Ike) carrier group deployment was planned anyway, just brought forward.
About ten days ago this changed. Ford’s stay in the Med was extended and it was stated that Ike was going to join the Ford. Two super-carriers in the same place – that’s big medicine. Articles were written noting this, by me among others. We armchair admirals also noted that the USS Bataan and USS Carter Hall, amphibious ships carrying the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) were dispatched from the Gulf to the Red Sea and the command-and-control ship Mount Whitney, complete with a 3* Admiral and his staff, was pulled off Nato duties and sent to take charge in the eastern Med. This could no longer be passed off as ‘planning adjustments’.
The only way to work out what’s going on is to take away the drinking straw through which you are looking at Gaza and zoom out, a long way out.
One thing jumps out straight away. The US Navy, for now at least, is not the preeminent naval force in the Gulf. That distinction now belongs to the 44th and 45th naval escort groups of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). The two groups, one of which has just arrived to take over from the other, have a total of six ships. Two are Type 052D destroyers equipped with YJ-21 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missiles.
No worries; I’m sure they mean well, no harm done. Carry on, Most Puissant Lords and Masters. As you were.
Back when I was playing wargames a lot as a staff officer, we found that if a war with Iran was going to start, the Bab el Mandeb strait at the bottom of the Red Sea and/or the Eastern Med were likely places for the Iranians to start it. This is partly because it exposes the problems of having three US Combatant Commands converging, but mainly because it draws assets away from the root of the problem – Iran. And now we have attacks happening in both places, launched by Iranian-backed organisations in both cases. Suddenly there are not many assets left near the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran menaces all traffic in and out of the Gulf. It all looks a bit like the beginning of some of those Iran-vs-the-West wargames.
Large naval deployments affect oceans and continents way beyond the coastlines off which they sail. Experts in land power and followers of land wars sometimes forget this. One has to zoom way out and look at all of the moving parts to even have the first idea of what effect things like carrier strike groups may have and even then, don’t be surprised if you are wrong or if it changes.
Winston Churchill got this when he said, “a battleship exercises a vague general fear and menaces all points at once. It appears, and disappears, causing immediate reactions and perturbations on the other side”. There will be many conversations along these lines in the corridors of Washington DC and Whitehall – and it’s to be hoped that the planners remember that Churchill used this phrase to compel the deployment of Force Z, with its battleships without air cover, against the advice of the Admiralty. More than eight hundred British sailors paid the price.
As is perfectly typical of D卐M☭CRAT administrations going all the way back to loathsome cockroach Woodrow Wilson, the Chaos Party has a nasty little habit of involving the US in needless, futile Tar Baby Wars, mismanaging them ludicrously, then leaving the next Republican president to shoulder the burden of finding some way of extricating the nation from the gooey, sticky mess—reviling said Republican as a “warmonger” the whole while, natch.
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