The View From Olympus: Can the Russians Do What We Cannot?

At the moment, the joint Russian-Syrian-Iranian offensive in Syria appears to be succeeding. That may change. But if Russian intervention does succeed in doing something at which the U.S. has consistently failed--returning an area lost to 4GW to state control--why might that be the case?The most important reason is strategic. Russia is supporting an established state, not trying to create a state. The Syrian state retains substantial legitimacy. It is strongly supported by virtually all non-Sunni Moslems in Syria and all non-Moslems. Why? Because if the Syrian state disappears, their choices will be conversion, flight, or death. A "democratic, inclusive, pluralistic" Syria can exist only in the minds of the fools who make America's foreign policy.I suspect a growing number of Syrian Sunnis would also at least accept, and perhaps welcome, the return of the Syrian sate, even under its current government. Tyranny is preferable to anarchy, and the Assad family's tyranny is mild compared to that of ISIS. To enable Sunnis who have rebelled to again accept the state, the Syrian government will need to offer them generous terms, i.e., forgive and forget. I suspect Moscow, run by realists, knows this.Operationally, the Russians have shown they can still design a campaign. By 1943/44, they were as competent at the operational level as the Germans. The U.S. remains as operationally incompetent as it always has been. Its campaign plans in Iraq and Syria were hopelessly warped by Washington's insistence on democracy. As one Marine battalion commander, recently returned from Afghanistan, said at a Boyd Conference, "Talking to a 14th century Afghan villager about the government in Kabul is like talking to your cat about the back side of the moon. You don't know what it's like and he doesn't care."But even with the politics removed, the U.S. military does operational art at the kindergarten level. After the First Gulf War, the U.S. Army preened and said it had shown the Russians it could now do operational art. It looked that way for a couple years, until it came out that the Republican Guard had gotten out of the Kessel largely unscathed. Frank's "left hook" attack was classic French methodical battle, meaning it was too slow. Schwarzkopf had just one operational decision to make during the whole campaign, to switch the Schwerpunkt to McCaffrey after Frank's fatal slowness was evident. He failed to make it. In the end, the Iraqis carried out their operational retreat better than the U.S. carried out its operational advance.Tactically, Russian tactics are easier to learn and more effective than American tactics. We know that from the Army's National Training Center; the Soviet-model OPFOR was quite open about it when I visited there.At this remove it is difficult to determine, but Russian tactical air power may also be more effective than American. The main reason is, again, that Russia is supporting an existing state, which offers an effective (by local standards) army with which Russian aircraft can work. The U.S. lacks that in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, except for the Kurds.There may be another factor at work: Russia doesn't care much about civilian casualties. In 4GW that is usually disastrous, but the Russian/Syrian offensives we are now witnessing look largely conventional. Strategically, they may be part of a Hama model approach to 4GW, which can work if it is over fast (and Russian tactics are based on speed). Tactically, Russia traditionally uses firepower massively, without regard for collateral damage, which is what they seem to be doing around Aleppo. U.S. airpower, in contrast, is used "surgically", which means in a war of pinpricks that goes on forever. At the moral level, that may be more disadvantageous than the Hama model, which is brutal but fast.International opinion, of course, is howling about Russian aircraft pouring it on. Washington would be paralyzed by such howls. Moscow, run by realists, doesn't give two kopeks for them. How many divisions has "international opinion"?If, in the end, Russia does succeed where we have failed, what will be the lessons? The main lesson is an old one. The Russian military, devastated by the dissolution of the Russian Empire (the USSR was merely an overlay), started thinking creatively. They have learned quite a bit. The senior levels of the U.S. military think only about money, not war.

Ted Cruz, Constitutional Conservative?

In the past few years I have noticed an increase in the use of the term "constitutional conservative", usually to describe a candidate or politician who is associated with the Tea Party or is otherwise generally considered more conservative by some degree. I have seen this term used a lot lately to describe Senator Ted Cruz, the recent winner of the Iowa caucus. Perhaps I am wrong, but I don’t recall this term being used much prior to a few years ago, which is why I noted it with some curiosity as it began to appear more frequently. Jack Hunter also notes the newness of the term in this article from 2012.

Presumably, a constitutional conservative is one who believes the U.S. Constitution should be strictly interpreted and abided by as originally intended by the Framers. Quaint notion, I know, but what confuses me about the sudden appearance of this term, is that there already exists a perfectly workable term to describe this political position. Such people have previously been called Constitutionalists.Now it must be conceded that there is some room for confusion here, because almost every pundit and politician believes or at least pretends to believe that the policies he promotes are within the bounds of the Constitution. Few American politicians announce their intentions to willfully ignore the Constitution or articulate any qualms with the Constitution. Both opponents and advocates of gun control, for example, generally believe the Constitution is on their side. The same is true of the abortion issue and on and on, but issues-activists don’t usually describe themselves as Constitutionalists either. Even people and organizations who place a particular emphasis on the Constitution, such as the ACLU, are not commonly called and don’t self-describe as constitutionalists. ACLU types might call themselves civil libertarians, for example, and they come to conclusions regarding the Constitution that are quite at odds with people who identify as Constitutionalists.

Despite some opportunity for confusion, "Constitutionalist" has over time come to mean a pretty specific set of beliefs, especially among people who identify themselves as such and use it to favorably describe others. Constitutionalists believe that the Constitution should be interpreted and followed as originally intended by those who wrote and ratified it. They reject the idea that the Constitution is a “living and breathing” document. Unless it has been specifically amended otherwise, they believe, the Constitution means now exactly what it meant in 1787 – 1789.

For the Constitutionalist, the Constitution is not primarily a document that outlines what the federal government can’t do, but is rather a document strictly describing what the federal government is authorized to do. The sine qua non of Constitutionalism is the belief in “enumerated powers” which flows from the determination that this was the intent of the Framers and state ratifying conventions. Along with this belief in enumerated powers, there are other beliefs that generally travel together, some to a greater or lesser degree. Constitutionalists reject the broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause and the General Welfare Clause. They reject judicial supremacy with regard to who has the “final say” in interpreting the Constitution, and some reject the practice of judicial review outright. (This is a bit of an intra-constitutionalist feud.) Constitutionalists do not automatically defer to the most recent Supreme Court decision to settle the constitutionality of a matter because they believe many such decisions are in error since they were not reached by originalist methods. Rather, they appeal to the original intent of the Framers each time a Constitutional question arises. They reject “incorporation”, meaning they don’t believe the Bill of Rights was originally intended to be applied to the states, and most reject that this was the original intent of the 14^th Amendment as well. Constitutionalists also tend to be open to the idea of state nullification and interposition and even secession as remedies for an overreaching federal government.

These beliefs can be, especially when taken as a whole, rather jarring to the modern consciousness which has come to accept the conventional wisdom on such matters. Nevertheless, they represent a consensus that serious Constitutional thinkers arrive at by the consistent application of the originalist methodology.

So how do so-called "Constitutional conservatives" differ from Constitutionalists proper? My hunch from the start has been that its original popularizers wanted a term that invokes the good feelings most people and especially conservatives have for the Constitution without all the baggage associated with "Constitutionalist", which has truly radical implications by modern standards, and this appears to be how the word is generally used. I searched “define constitutional conservative” and what I found were a lot of vague invocations of Constitutional “principles” and other general principles (fiscal responsibility for example) with very little explanation of how the Constitution was any more than a totem in this formulation. One article revealed by my search introduced the concept and then proceeded to define it by quoting...the Declaration of Independence? (The article did, however, confirm my impression that this is a term of relatively recent origin.) 

Constitutional conservatives seem to cherry-pick their application of strict constructionist principles to suit their needs. They invoke the Constitution to oppose the Obamacare mandate, for example, but are seemingly untroubled by the fact that a similar argument could be made against Medicare and Medicaid, the FDA, etc.  I don’t require that every candidate I support fall on his sword by inveighing against Medicare and the FDA or whatever on enumerated powers grounds. Dismantling the 80 – 90% +/- of the federal government that isn’t actually constitutionally authorized isn’t politically or logistically feasible at this time, but I do ask that if the Constitution is invoked to describe your politics, you not rhetorically concede the Constitutional legitimacy of such programs.

The aforementioned Ted Cruz and his supporters demonstrate well this disconnect between Constitutional conservative and Constitutionalist. For example, if you want me to take seriously your claim to the title "Constitutional conservative", you have to at least attempt to address the eligibility question from an originalist perspective. You can’t cite current law or a recent court case or conventional wisdom and pronounce the matter settled. While I think there is a growing consensus among serious originalists that Cruz is not eligible, an originalist case can arguably be made that he is, but you at least have to attempt to make that case. The original intent of the Framers with regard to the “natural born citizen” requirement seems not to have even occurred to many Cruz supporters I have interacted with, and they often seem perturbed by the mere suggestion that they need to address it. Perhaps if you want me to accept your professed devotion to the Constitution, maybe you shouldn’t swear your fidelity to a far off foreign country in your rather ungracious Iowa victory speech. Where the heck is standing with Israel in the United States Constitution?

So far as I can tell, Ted Cruz isn't even trying to represent the original intent of the Constitution or the spirit of the American Founders.

The View From Olympus: How Not to Do It

The protestors who took over the aptly-named Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Oregon have garnered a fair amount of conservative empathy. Their issue, the Federal government's ownership of vast tracts of western land, is a legitimate one. As a story in the January 29 New York Times, "And Then There Were Five, or Four, Occupiers", put it, "the standoff did put into sharp relief a question raised time and again in American politics: Is the government us, or is it them?" Most conservatives know the answer is "them".None of that changes the fact that the occupiers offer a wonderful example of how not to fight the federal government. They blew it on every level: physical, mental, and moral.Physically, the idea of taking on the federal government with a handful of hunting rifles is beyond absurd. Such an effort can have only one result: defeat. Any armed challenge to the government must and will end in failure. Since early World War I, the battlefield has been dominated by crew-served weapons: machine guns, artillery, tanks, aircraft, etc. In theory, a movement could launch a guerrilla war against the U.S. government, but the result would be the destruction of the country, as we see in places like Syria. Armed resistance is not the way to go.When the current political establishment falls, it will fall of its own weight. No outside force can bring it down, much as I would like to see Trump, or even Cruz or Sanders, do so. It is already on the skids, although it doesn't know it. A combination of serial policy failures and adherance to an ideology, cultural Marxism, which seeks to destroy the common culture is undermining its legitimacy.If the Establishment takes the state itself with it--a possibility no conservative welcomes--then armed citizens may have to take over the job of establishing and preserving order. That is the scenario in Thomas Hobbes' book Victoria. But the goal of those armed citizens should be to restore a state, or states, as soon as possible. As Hobbes warned us in his earlier book Leviathan, life without the state is nasty, brutish, and short.On the mental level, the Oregon protestors failed to connect their somewhat obscure cause to broader themes lots of Americans could relate to. They appeared to represent merely a parochial interest. That appearance resulted in their own isolation. Any cause that isolates itself, or allows itself to be isolated, loses. Success requires building connections to as many other power centers as possible.The protestors also failed on the mental level in their planning. Their plan did not go beyond their initial action. Once they established their occupation, they had blown their wad; they had no further plan.Morally, the occupiers made the fatal error of alienating much of the surrounding community. A commemoration of LaVoy Finicum, the protestor who was killed (a blunder by both the protestors and the Oregon State Police), in Burns drew only about 20 people. Protests (which should not be armed, much less violent) can only succeed if they rally an ever-broader circle of support. That circle must normally begin with the local community. Alienating the community again means isolation and defeat.It is evident that the feds have learnd from past failures to handle armed protestors. At Waco and Ruby Ridge, the federal government won physically but suffered huge moral defeats. This time, they wisely expended time rather than ammunition. With the protestors having no plan beyond the first move and progressively isolating themselves, time was on the Feds' side. Inaction, if deliberately chose, is also a form of action.In the end, the Oregon protestors offer an almost perfect model of what not to do and how not to do it. The moral level is decisive, and to win morally a protest must almost always be unarmed. We may sympathize with the Oregon occupiers' cause, but no conservative should follow their example.

The View From Olympus: How to Defeat ISIS

With Washington and European capitals wrapped tightly around the ISIS axle, which is a larger victory for ISIS than any massacre, I thought and Olympian perspective might prove useful. Here's how the whole mess looks from on high.The inevitable American response to anything from mass murder to hangnails, airstrikes, are again failing. They do inhibit ISIS's movements of large numbers of men on roads, something air power has historically done well. They may stiffen the backbones of whatever allies we have on the ground. But they have little chance of achieving a decision, at least as presently employed.In such cases of frustration, it can be helpful to turn to the work of Colonel John Boyd. Boyd advised that in any conflict, you want to pull your enemy apart, not help him cohere. How might we pull ISIS apart?I previously made one suggestion, namely to offer an alliance with the former Baathists who enable ISIS to function. The Baathists and the religious fanatics are uncomfortable bedfellows. If not pushed toward coherence by our policies, they would be likely to cut each others' throats. The throats we would like cut are the fanatics', which should make the Baathists (most of whom were in Saddam's security services) our natural allies. We could offer them money, plus what is likely anyway, a new Sunni state made from eastern Syria and western Iraq. Our determination to uphold the borders of 1919 has no strategic basis.Another way to pull ISIS apart is by encouraging all civilians to flee any area occupied by ISIS. Many are doing so; encouraging more should not be too difficult. ISIS cannot function without civilians, who represent its tax base and logistics train. Again, money is the best weapon; offer, say, $1000 to any Iraqi or Syrian who leaves ISIS territory for those portions of Iraq and Syria still in government hands.Here, air power might play a useful role. After the next ISIS-inspired massacre in Europe or the U.S., give 72 hours warning to all civilians to leave ISIS-controlled areas. Then, bomb Raqqa flat. No "precision" strikes: good old fashioned carpet bombing, where the objective is to leave not one stone upon another. If we don't have the guts, the Russians do. Then start hitting other ISIS-held towns the same way. The civilians will flee.I'm sure others may come up with more ways to disaggregate ISIS. But here is where the view from Olympus changes the picture. Our main mistake is obsessing over ISIS.Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, all will come and go. When one Fourth Generation entity fails, others will arise to replace it. The problem is not any one or several of these organizations. The problem is Fourth Generation war itself and the threat it poses to the state system.Meeting that threat requires an alliance of all states against non-state forces. War between states is obsolete. Its outcome will usually be the creation of one or more failed states, each of which represents a victory for the Fourth Generation.That alliance of all states, in turn, should usually seek to isolate, not engage, 4GW opponents. Isolation means stopping refugee flows into First World countries, blockades, financial measures both positive and negative (paying civilans to flee; cutting the 4GW entities off from outside finance), and doing our best to encourage 4GW forces in a given area to fight each other, something they are prone to do. If we think of 4GW just as states vs. non-state entities, we see only part of the picture. As Libya illustrates, 4GW elements also fight each other. This is especially valuable to states in place such as the Middle East where demographics make war a certainty (what I call supply-side war). Far from seeking peace, we want to stoke the fires of such wars until they consume all the available fuel. Only then is peace a real possibility in any case.Let me re-emphasize one point. It is essential for the survival of the West that refugees from other cultures fleeing 4GW not be let in. If they come, they will bring 4GW with them, turning our countries into hell-holes like the ones they have fled.So, the view from Olympus suggests we fight ISIS very differently from the way we are fighting it now. It also suggests we stop our obsession with this or that bogeyman and focus instead on the bigger picture, namely 4GW. If Washington ever gets to the point where it can do that, it will find President Putin already there.

The View From Olympus: His Majesty's Birthday

The time of year again is here when I telephone Germany's last legitimate ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who also happens to be my liege lord and reporting senior. Were he still in charge, the Fatherland would not be drowning itself in a sea of racial and religious sewage. Unlike Hausfrau Merkel, Kaiser Wilhelm could tell the difference between Shinola and that other stuff.His Majesty picked up the phone promptly. Regrettably, it was hard to hear over the roar of the drinking songs, crashing tankards, shattering crockery, and general bedlam that rang out from whatever shindig he was attending. It sounded more like a place for the Great Elector than for Kaiser Bill.After offering His Majesty my congratulations, I asked what the revelry was all about."Well, I suppose it's in part about my birthday. But that's just an excuse. These 17th century guys really know how to party. I don't come here often, but whenever I do it's what you hear. Cannon should be going off soon.""May I ask Your Majesty who else is in attendance?""Everybody who matters, or did. Gustavus Adolphus, Tilly, Wallenstein, the Emperor, the Count-Duke of Olivares, endless Electors, Margraves, Freiherrs, the whole bunch.""And is this great feast perhaps connected to the Thirty Years' War?" I enquired."You're as spot-on as U-9's torpedoes," His Majesty replied. "It's all coming back again, this time in the Middle East. The clock is running backward. What vanished when the state arose is returning as the state declines. The old gang is singing 'Happy Days are Here Again', in Latin of course.""Well, I hope the food is as good as the drink seems to be," I ventured."Depends on how you like the Diet of Worms," His Majesty said."Might it be possible amidst all the revelry for me to ask those who fought Europe's Thirty Years' War what they would advise us for Islam's Thirty Years' War?" I asked."I think I can manage that," the Kaiser replied. "Let me ask Kaiser Karl to fire off one of his 30.5 cm Skoda guns."Luckily, I was holding the telephone's receiver at some distance. Even so, I was stunned by the sound. It did get everyone's attention.The Kaiser said in the silence, "I've got a Herr Hofkriegsrat from the 21st century on the line. What would you advise Europe, Russia, and America do in the new Thirty Years' War among the Saracens?"After a brief pause, all the assembled worthies shouted with one voice, "Keep it local!"Olivares explained. "If you want to understand America today, look to the Spain I knew. Spain went from the greatest power in the world to a defeated, bankrupt wreck in 50 years. America is on the same course, and about the same timetable. When Spain and the other Catholic powers won at Nördlingen, I proclaimed it 'The greatest victory of the age!' That was rephrased in your time as 'Mission Accomplised.' In both cases, it was the beginning of disaster. If you would learn from us, stay out! Let the worshippers of Mohammed kill each other. It need be none of your affair."Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden chimed in. "I agree with the distinguished Count-Duke. But I would add, if outside powers insist on getting involved, as they are doing, make sure the clashes between them occur on someone else's soil. That is something we did fairly well. It wrecked Germany, but it did not wreck all of Europe, except of course financially. Confine your duels to the lists. For outside powers, it is all a joust anyway.""If I may add something"--the voice was Wallenstein's--"what you are seeing in your time is the return of Real War. Real War is what we knew; your pretty little armies know it not. Real War comes riding with Plague, Famine, and Death. Populations sink to a fraction of their pre-war size. Civilians are targets as much or more than soldiers. You will discover reasons for the cry, 'Magdeburg quarter!' You will have its equivalents--'ISIS quarter!' is a start."Kaiser Wilhelm said to me sotto voce, "The Holy Roman Emperor is about to speak!""Fellow Christians," he began. "Let us set our revels aside for a moment, if we may. What faces Christendom now is grave. Our Thirty Years' War began as a war of religion and ended up a war among states. That was a very good thing. States, motivated solely, as they should be, by raison d'etat, can act rationally. They can compromise. They can limit war. They can count the cost of war, in thalers or dollars, and keep the peace because war does not pay.""In the 21st century, the movement is in the other direction. What begins as wars between states, as in President George W. Bush's war with Iraq--America, your presidents are a powerful argument for monarchy!--turns into wars of religion. Men believe their eternal salvation is at stake. In such a matter there can be no reason, no compromise, no counting of costs. Wars of belief are by their nature unlimited. As my servant General Wallenstein said--remember, Wally old chap, you are my servant--such wars are Real War. God help those peoples upon whom Real War descends."Through Kaiser Wilhelm, I offered my sincere thanks to his distinguished company. I asked him whether he had anything to add."In Heaven, I have learned when not to talk," His majesty replied. "Europe's Thirty Years' War tells your time all it needs to know."

Is Donald Trump a Conservative?

One of the raps against Donald Trump frequently trotted out by some of his conservative critics, often supporters of one of the more traditional conservative candidates, is that he is not really a conservative. Some even call him a liberal. Yet despite this charge, Trump continues to gain the support of prominent conservatives whose conservative credentials it is difficult to impugn.

For example, Trump recently garnered the support of former congressman Virgil Goode, who was the 2012 Presidential nominee of the Constitution Party. It’s hard to question the conservative credentials of a Constitution Party Presidential nominee. He has also landed the endorsement (or virtual endorsement) of prominent conservative scholar William Lind. Lind is a leading theorist of the concept of Fourth Generation warfare, and is arguably the primary person responsible for the increased recognition of the phenomenon of cultural Marxism that besets our modern discourse. Trump has also been endorsed by longtime conservative movement stalwart, Phyllis Schlafly, whose conservative credentials need no elaboration.  I could go on, but this should suffice to illustrate my contention. 

So is Trump a conservative, and if not, why is he racking up support from notable conservatives and continuing to dominate polls of potential Republican Party voters? Well, the answer is both yes and no. It depends on what you mean by conservative, but I believe Trump is a conservative in the most meaningful sense.

I attempted to explain Trump’s politics in a couple of past essays. His politics are really not as inscrutable as some believe. They just don’t fit tidily into our current Red and Blue boxes. Briefly, the key to understanding Trump’s politics is to focus on his economic nationalism. This has been a part of his rhetoric since he first became a public figure in the 1980s and is undoubtedly authentic. But Trump appears to view this as a common sense, tough minded position, not an ideological one. It is important to recognize that Trump is not an ideologue. His focus is on getting things done, and he is results-oriented. While he has long flirted with politics, he has not historically immersed himself in the conservative milieu, nor the liberal milieu for that matter. He has clearly tailored some of his current positions to fit the base of the party whose nomination he is seeking, such as gun control and abortion, but he has never donned the mantle of purist crusader for laissez-faire economics or government-slashing spending hawk because those positions would conflict with his economic nationalism and his focus on outcomes rather than pure principle.

Consider, for example, Trump’s past support of universal health care, a position often raised by his conservative critics. This was not likely a position he arrived at based on an ideological commitment to liberalism because that wouldn’t fit the known pattern. Rather it likely was an extension of his patriotic economic nationalism, something along the lines of “A great country like America can have a great health care system that takes care of all its citizens.” Remember that before the Affordable Care Act, universal coverage per se polled well. People just don’t seem to like the details when you attach a name to it, like HillaryCare or ObamaCare. The point being that Trump’s position on universal health care was likely not evidence of an ideological liberal disposition, but rather a roll-up-our-sleeves-and-get-it-done outcome based approach. What the conservative box checkers need to understand is that a lot of the electorate is similarly non-ideological. They may lean one way or the other and viscerally identify with the Blue Team or the Red Team, but they are not dogmatic ideologues.

Trump’s positions and rhetoric place him firmly in the category of Middle American Radical (MAR), as are many of his supporters. He just happens to also be a billionaire. MARs are a well described and relatively large demographic. It’s curious that so many journalist and pundits have missed this relationship and are still struggling to characterize Trump. Liberal columnist Ezra Klein was one of the first to pick up on Trump’s particular policy mix in this article he wrote for Vox, about which I thought at the time, “In other words, what (late conservative columnist) Sam Francis was saying 20 years ago.” Liberal John Judis expanded on the idea in this essay for the National Journal. Judis cannot resist a little PC finger wagging, but beyond that it is an insightful piece. Of interest, I was informed by someone who was familiar with the relationship that John Judis and Sam Francis were friends despite their political differences, so this may be a reason for Judis’ insights.

As a MAR, his conservative critics are correct that Trump is not your typical cookie cutter “three-legs-of-the-stool” modern conservative ideologue, but the problem for them is that what modern conservatism has become is generally a mishmash of policy positions that are often internally contradictory and as a whole have very little to do with actually conserving anything. The MAR position of opposition to mass immigration and opposition to international “free” trade deals, for example, both of which Trump has seized upon with great success, are more conservative in actual effect, in the most basic sense of the word, than is any amount of babbling about the “invisible hand” of the marketplace and cutting marginal tax rates. Trump’s supporters sense this. “Make America Great Again,” is an inherently conservative, reactionary really, sentiment. It speaks of loss for the worse and a need to restore.

As Russell Kirk reminded us, conservatism is not an ideology or hodgepodge of policy issues. Rather, it is a disposition, the desire to conserve what is or else restore something that has been lost. The angry masses in Flyover Country who are supporting Trump look around and see middle class manufacturing jobs going south of the border or overseas and their neighborhoods changing from mass immigration, more people they and their children and their children’s children will have to compete with for jobs, and they want it to stop. Contrast this to Rep. Paul Ryan’s foolish statement that Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration “is not conservatism.” Well, actually, yes it is. What is not conservatism is throwing open the doors of your country to masses of new dissimilar immigrants, including groups that are known to be hostile to us. Only a muddle-headed modern conservative ideologue could miss which one of these positions expresses a truly conservative sentiment.

With the rise of Trump, this election has taken on a meta dimension that it otherwise wouldn’t have had. Partisan stakeholders always attempt to cast every Presidential election as a crossroads, perhaps the starkest in history, but in truth we only really have a choice between Elitist Globalist Neoliberal A and Elitist Globalist Neoliberal B. Trump represents something truly unique in recent elections. He offers a real choice between the elitist post-national consensus embraced by the Establishment of both parties, and a patriotic economic nationalism that truly challenges this elite consensus.

So yes, Trump is a conservative in the sense that really matters. He wants to conserve and restore the nation state of America and not stand by as it turns into just another post-national administrative unit ruled by a globalist power elite. Virgil Goode, William Lind, and Phyllis Schlafly and many other conservative luminaries clearly get this. The conservative box checkers who are ticking off Trump’s fidelity to some laundry list of policy positions are missing the forest for the trees. They are on the verge of losing their country while they hand-wring about eminent domain.

The View From Olympus: My List for Santa

The real Saint Nicholas was less famous for giving gifts than he was for coming back from the dead to beat somebody up. That's my kind of saint. It is to that St. Nicholas I sent my Christmas list, viz.

• All American military officers will read the canon, the list of seven books which, if read in the correct order, will take the reader from the first to fourth generation of modern war. Without the roadmap the canon provides, our officer corps will continue to stumble around in the dark, losing one fourth generation war after another.
• The Marine Corps will face the fact that it remains a second generation military. Its formal, written doctrine is third generation, i.e., maneuver warfare. But what the Marine Corps says and what it does are two different things. Its culture remains second generation: inward-focused, centralized, preferring obedience to initiative, and relying on imposed discipline. Such a military can talk about maneuver warfare but it can't do it. The Corps is the only American armed service with the potential to join the third generation. It's time to turn potential into reality.
• The foreign policy establishment will realize that war between states has become obsolete because the losing state will often disintegrate and become another stateless region, a petri dish for 4GW elements. That is more of a threat to us than is any other state. What we and all other states need is an alliance of all states against 4GW forces. At stake in the 21st century is nothing less than the state system itself.
• All women seeking to join the combat arms will insist on serving as comfort women, the one useful role they can play.
• The F-35 program will crash and burn, saving the taxpayer around a trillion dollars and freeing our fighter pilots from having to fly a real dog. The aircraft already ordered can be sold to the Chinese, thereby wrecking their fighter force for a generation.
• The CNO will realize a real littoral combat ship is a converted trawler and start buying some. Shallow waters are the important waters when facing 4GW enemies. We can safely leave blue water warfare to dreadnoughts and zeppelins (I'd like the movie rights, please.).
• Congress will order the Air Force to reopen the production line and buy more A-10s, the only combat aircraft we have that can do something useful.
• The Army will dry up and blow away. It is beyond reforming. All it can do for the country is offer up more defeats. Put the money into the National Guard, which is our land force of the future, useful in peace and in war.
• All police departments will start using the grid. The grid (available in the FMFM-1A here or in The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook) allows police to understand the likely effects of their actions at the mental and moral levels, not just the physical. At a Boyd conference a couple years ago, some cops from Massachusetts told me their department now uses it for all operations. If other police departments were to do so, it would take away much of the ammunition the Left uses in its war on cops.

That's probably enough to keep Santa busy for a while. Since by politically correct standards I have been very naughty this year, I expect to get everything on my list. Anyone who comes back from the dead to beat the crap out of somebody likes political correctness about as much as I do. Merry Christmas!

The View From Olympus: Donald Trump and Fourth Generation War

Donald Trump's recent proposals to register Islamics living in the United States and to bar more Islamics from entering this country until we can determine how to separate the dangerous ones from those who are not dangerous show that he is the only candidate who understands what a Fourth Generation world will be like. The hysterical denunciations from all other candidates except Senator Cruz demonstrate they don't get it. While that alone may not be enough to indicate Trump would be a good president, it strongly suggests none of his opponents are fit to hold the office. Whether they like it or not, or understand it or not, Fourth Generation war is what they and this country are facing.In 4GW, primary loyalties shift away from the state--someone's native state or one to whch they have immigrated--to a wide variety of other things, including religions, races and ethnic groups, and cultures. Immigrants who do not acculturate are especially likely to become Fourth Generation threats, because they probably will not give their loyalty to a state whose culture is not their own (and to which they may be hostile).Measures such as those Trump proposed vis-a-vis Islamics will be routine in a world of Fourth Generation war. Any state that wants to survive will have to take them, and stronger actions as well. If a population becomes a base for 4GW on a state's soil, that state may have to expel them. There may be no other way for the state to perform its primary duty, maintaining order. Any state that cannot maintain order--safety of persons and property--will disappear.Cultural Marxism forbids us to acknowlege any of these realities, which is why culturally Marxist politicians (Democrats actually believe the stuff; Republicans are too cowardly to challenge it) and institutions such as the New York Times editorial page have frothed at the mouth over Mr. Trump's entirely reasonable proposals. Cultural Marxism says all cultures are wonderful, peaceful, "vibrant" sources of enlightenment, except our own culture, Western culture, which is evil and oppressive. Defend ourselves against another culture? The very notion horrifies the cultural Marxists; we are instead to embrace it even as it cuts our throats. Cultural Marxism's goal, after all, from Gramsci and Lukacs onward, has been the destruction of Western culture and the religion from which it grew, Christianity.Mr. Trump's proposals do not indicate he has studied 4GW. I would guess he has probably never heard the term. His reactions are instinctive. But they are sound. They reflect reality. If elected, he can leave the theory to the leaders of his Defense Department (we can hope he chooses leaders who do know the theory). He would need only to keep the same instincts under the barrage of conemnation they will bring from the establishment. So far, he seems pretty good at that.The degree to which the establishment has abandoned all grasp of reality was shown last week in Time magazine's choice of Angela Merkel as Person of the Year. Merkel will go down in history as Germany's poisoner, the person who flooded what was a safe, orderly country with carriers of the 4GW bacillus. That, of course, is exactly what cultural Marxism demands, so she is a hero to Time and the rest of the establishment.Meanwhile, the more Trump insists on confronting cultural Marxism, a.k.a. political correctness, and urges us to face reality, the more his poll numbers go up. The  public, it seems, both here and in Europe, want leaders whose feet are planted in the real world. No wonder the shrieks and cries of the cultural Marxists sound ever more shrill. Ideology has no deadlier enemy than reality.

The View From Olympus: The SECDEF Lied

In announcing that all positions in the U.S. armed forces would be opened to women, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter lied. According to the December 4 New York Times, he said,

They'll [women] be able to serve as Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALS, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force parajumpers, and everything else that was previously open only to men.

That statement is false. Women will not be able to do those things. Their bodies are not designed to do many of the tasks those positions entail. So long as realistic standards are maintained for those specialties, women will not be able even to qualify for them much less perform adequately in them. Men and women are different, physically and mentally, and their traditional social roles reflect their inherent differences.Had the Truth Fairy landed on the SECDEF's tongue as he was about to make his announcement, he would have said,

We are opening all positions in the armed forces to women. Women will not be able to do many of the duties entailed especially in the combat arms. We--the Obama administration--don't care about that. Our ideology of cultural Marxism demands we pretend men and women are interchangeable. We will do whatever is necessary to maintain that illusion. In this case, if women cannot meet the standards, we will change the standards. If not enough women make it into the combat arms, we will establish quotas.If, in combat, women cannot perform the mission, that's not our problem. If it means lost engagements and unnecessary American casualties, what is that to us? Our ideology comes first. Get with the party's program--or else.

Here again we see the slide of state armed forces into history's wastebasket. Playthings of a political establishment that knows nothing of war, they exist for every purpose except fighting. Many of those inside them have figured this out. An Army study done at least ten years ago found that two-thirds of the Army's women and one-third of its men disagreed with the statement, "The Army's main purpose is to fight." Most state armed forces produce so few fighters from their total manpower that they could not fight if they wanted to, not against any serious opponent.So why do we keep them around, at immese cost? Mostly from habit. Few politicians know enough to see their obsolescence, and fewer still would take the political risks involved in pruning them back to budgets that reflect their military utility. The public, wallowing in the usual "Support the troops" rhetoric, cannot see their uselessness, and the air shows are fun to watch.For the establishment, state militaries remain highly useful. They provide jobs and money that can be steered to political allies. Defense companies are big political donors. If you vote right, when you leave office many will offer you paid seats on their boards, plus lobbying contracts.Senior officers feed from the same troughs, not to mention pensions that most people can only dream about (paid for by those dreamers). Once you make it to lieutenant colonel, the pay is great and the duties are easy, so long as you don't object to working on vast staffs that produce nothing but contentless briefings which you must pretend to take seriously. If you hope to keep moving on up the career ladder, don't forget the knee pads and the vaseline.So to this dysfunctional and militarily impotent stew let's now add women. Why not? Can anything make it worse than it already is? Actually, in this case yes, because putting women in combat units undermines the basic reason why they fight, unit cohesion. Instead of forming a band of brothers, the men fight each other over the women. When I asked the captain of an amphib with a male/female crew the fraternization rate, he replied, "100% of course. I have male sailors in knife fights over women officers."But in the end, it doesn't matter much. These institutions are finished. Every time they take on non-state, Fourth Generation opponents they get their butts kicked.4GW forces are about fighting. They don't have much gear and their technical skills often aren't great. But they and the men in them want to fight. Most of their personnel are fighters. Senior officers regularly get killed. Some of them seriously study war, a practice virtually unknown among our officers.So the wheel of fortune turns. The fat, dumb, and happy careerists in their pressed camis are on the way down, and the lean and hungry believers with their AKs and IEDs are on the way up. Unserious, womanized state armed forces will vanish with the states they cannot protect and their ideologies not worth defending.

The View From Olympus: Register Moslems? Good Idea.

Donald Trump apparently was misquoted when he reportedly called for registering all Moslems in the U.S., but the idea is a good one. We are going to have to do it eventually, so we might as well get started now.Moslems will not be the only non-state element fighting Fourth Generation war on American soil. Other entities, such as gangs, are already doing so. But the spread of puritanism within the world of Islam, which continues to gather strength, means Moslems will increasingly be a source of 4GW, here and abroad. At some point politically correct Washington will be forced by events to acknowledge reality and act.A registry of all Moslems in America, if properly done, could benefit both the state and American Islamics. How? It would allow the sate to focus on those Moslems most likely to be violent, leaving others alone. For example, any Moslems registered as Sufis could and should be left undisturbed. Why? Because alone among major Islamic sects, the Sufis present no threat of violence. For that sin (the Koran commands violence against "unbelievers"), the Sufis are persecuted by both Sunnis and Shiites.As is the case with violent crime, most Islamic Fourth Generation fighters are young men. A registry would allow security efforts to focus on them, assuming it asked for both age and sex. Children, women, and older men could be ignored, although many young Islamic women are now acting as suicide bombers.A registry should indicate what mosque an American Moslem regularly attends. Presumably, the FBI is keeping watch on mosques where Islamic 4GW "jihad" is preached. People who attend such mosques should be prime suspects. On first thought, such mosques should be closed and their imams deported. But second thought suggest we might want to leave them open to serve as candle flames to draw the jihadis so they can be identified.While political correctness gasps in horror at the idea of registering all American Islamics, the spread of Islamic puritanism suggests that may not be sufficient. The reason the state came into existence was to provide order--safety of persons and property--and if it is to retain legitimacy, it must do whatever is required to that end. If a registry and other security measures are not sufficient to prevent Islamic 4GW on American soil--from the state's perspective prevention is everything; all first response is too late, because the peace has been broken and the state has therefore failed--stronger measures will be needed, including the option of exile.Consider this scenario: A suitcase nuke goes off in, say, Seattle. It was brought in on an ordinary sailboat that came up from Mexico, where some of the drug gangs may have a relationship with Islamic 4GW entities. One of those entities--al Qaeda, ISIS, take your pick--credibly takes responsibility for the strike. An American city lies destroyed and casualties are in the tens or hundreds of thousands.The little stage play that routinely accompanies Islamic massacres on Western soil--empty bluster from politicians, a few more useless airstrikes, blaming guns, women weeping and lighting candles--will not satisfy public anger. Across the country, mosques are being burned and Moslems strung up from lampposts.At that point a Moslem registry might save Moslems' lives, because it would allow the government to move quickly to send them into exile. For good reason, the age-old punishment of exile has been considered less severe than its alternative, death. Given the choice, American Moslems would probably rather leave than die. With Seattle still glowing, the public would probably not accept any lesser action.Islam wants to have it both ways: at the same time it condemns civil society, demanding Sharia replace it, it seeks all the benefits civil society provides. The public, both here and in Europe, is beginning to perceive the contradiction. Each new incident of Islamic violence on Western soil will make that contradiction more clear. At some point, the state will have to resolve it or lose its legitimacy. A registry is a good, and rather moderate, place to start.

The Turkish-ISIS Alliance

Why did Turkey shoot down a Russian fighter-bomber? Tactically, the Russian Su-24 may have crossed briefly into what they Turks consider their airspace. That area, now controlled by Turkey, used to be part of Syria and is still claimed by Syria. If the Russian pilots were using Syrian maps, they thought they were still in Syrian airspace. But to the Turks, they were flying over Turkish territory.Operationally, the Turks may have shot the plane down in Syrian airspace because it was attacking Turkmen rebels in Syria. Turkmen are ethnic Turks who live outside Turkey. They are found in an arc that runs from the Mediterranean to China. Turkey claims a special right to protect Turkmen wherever they are found.That claim ties into the real reason Turkey shot the Russian jet down. Following the islamic bombings in Paris, French President Hollande set out to form an American-French-Russian alliance against ISIS. Russia is eager for such a grand coalition. Turkey did not want it to happen. Why not? Because at the strategic level, Turkey is allied to ISIS.The shoot-down pulled NATO and the U.S. away from Russia, because both felt they had to line up with a fellow NATO member, Turkey. Behind closed doors, they read Turkey the riot act, but in public they had to blame the Russians. Just at a point where, thanks to the French, the U.S. and Russia might have come together against ISIS, the Turks pulled them apart.Turkey's de facto alliance with ISIS has been visible for some time. ISIS's supply lines run through Turkey, which they can only do with the approval of the Turkish government of President Recep Erdogan. Recent ISIS bombings in Turkey have been directed against Erdogan's political opponents and the Kurds. Turkey regularly carries out bombing missions in Syria aginst the Kurds, America's only effective ally on the ground and ISIS's most dangerous opponent. ISIS in turn fights the Kurds, Turkey's most hated enemy.Note that Russia now has an opportunity to put an end to those Turkish airstrikes on the Pesh Merga. It can declare any Turkish warplane found in Syrian airspace a target on the grounds that what goes for (claimed) Turkish airspace also goes for Syrian airspace. Russia is openly Syria's ally; why shouldn't it help Syria assert its sovereignty in the air?Why has Mr. Erdogan's Turkey allied with ISIS? His goal is nothing less than re-establishing the regional place and role Turkey had when it was the core of the Ottoman Empire. At home, he has overthrown Ataturk's secular state and is re-Islamicizing Turkey. In so doing, he has had strong (and idiotic) support from the U.S. and the E.U. The guardian of Ataturk's secularism was the Turkish military. The U.S. and the E.U. demanded it surrender that role because it was not "democratic". Both did nothing when Erdogan arrested hundreds of Turkish officers on trumped-up charges of planning a coup. That broke the power of the military domestically. Once again, the West screwed itself by its worship of its totem, "democracy".Abroad, Erdogan seeks to re-establish Turkey as the leader of the region's Sunnis. That is why Turkey is so bitterly opposed to Assad's governemt in Syria: it is Alawite, a Shiite off-shoot. Turkey's support of Turkmen throughout the region is also an element of its strategy to regain its Ottoman role. Protection of Christian minorities was a reason often used by European Powers in the 19th century to justify intervention in Ottoman internal affairs. The Turks now play the same game using the Turkmen.ISIS is useful to Turkey as a tool to re-establish Sunni dominance over large parts of what used to be Syria and Iraq. The more territory it can take from the Shiites, the better. Again, ISIS is dependent on Turkey; it dare not threaten Turkey, other than Turkish Kurds and Erdogan's political opponents. Erdogan may well have calculated--rightly, in my view--that the puritanism ISIS and al Qaeda represent will burn itself out, leaving Turkey to pick up the pieces. Those pieces, once parts of the Ottoman Empire, come home to mama. Perhaps Erdogan even sees himself becoming caliph, a title the Ottoman sultan used to hold (it still rightly belongs to the House of Osman).Is our foreign service too bloody dumb to see all this? Yes. So we continue to act as Turkey's ally, which is ISIS's ally, which makes us...? That's what happens when you intervene in someone else's Thirty Years War. It gets complicated. Wise men stay home and tend their own fire. Don't miss William S. Lind's latest book, co-authored with Lt. Col. Gregory A. Thiele USMC, the Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook. A follow-on to Mr. Lind's well-known Maneuver Warfare Handbook, the new Handbook is a practical, action-oriented guide for all soldiers and Marines facing 4GW opponents. Now available as an e-book (the paperback will come out in early 2016).You haven't yet read Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes, the famous author of Leviathan? Not just entertainment, Victoria offers a series of 4GW tactical decision games as Americans confront the break-up of their country later in the 21st century. It also points the way toward the recovery of our traditional culture and the defeat of political correctness. Start reading here and order a copy from Amazon today!

What's Behind Murray Vs. Trump?

Prominent conservative scholar Charles Murray has caused quite a bit of consternation on social media with his seemingly highly personal Facebook and Twitter crusade against Donald Trump. I suspect many people are not taking Murray’s opposition to Trump well because they don’t view Murray, who got in PC hot water for his book The Bell Curve, as your typical PC signaling think tank denizen and therefore, expect different from him.

Angry people make angry accusations, so many were quick to accuse Murray of signaling to his fellow AEI scholars and the rest of the respectable set, that, while capable of wrongthink, he is not far enough off the ranch to support Trump. I don’t know for certain that Murray is not signaling this, but I think his opposition to Trump can be understood based on another dimension. I believe this because I have observed the same tendency in others who policy wise seemingly have reasons to be sympathetic to the Trump campaign.

Certain political commentators, of which Murray is an example, undertake their commentary in a very high minded and serious manner, and they likewise take the political process very seriously. For these folks, Trump, who does not play by the normal rules of decorum, is an affront to the process and should be opposed on those grounds alone. Opposition to Trump seems to be to them a defense of the very system, and if it signals anything it is this seriousness and respect for the process aspect as much as anything else.

This sort of visceral opposition to Trump could come from the left, the right or the center. I believe it reflects to some extent the old money vs. new money distinction, both actually and metaphorically. While Trump did not come from a poor family, his family wasn’t that rich, so Trump behaves like new money - the brashness, the ostentatiousness, the conspicuous consumption, etc. As I mentioned in another article, I think a lot of Trump’s presentation and appeal is that he is in essence just a guy from Queens who made good for himself, and who may still have a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Trump’s Flyover Country supporters see a kindred spirit who happens to be a billionaire, but for those significantly concerned with propriety, they see an intolerably boorish lout. 

While this opposition could come from all points on the political spectrum, it presents a particular dilemma for high minded sorts of a traditionalist and conservative bent. Traditionalists and conservatives have always placed great emphasis on manners and codes of behavior, for good reason. Such things foster good order and are inherently conservative in the most basic sense of the word.

From this view, comments about your female opponent’s appearance or alleged references to your female antagonist’s bodily functions are ungentlemanly. Repeatedly calling people stupid or engaging in back and forth with your critics on Twitter is pedestrian and below the dignity of the process and the office he seeks.

Charles Murray’s opposition to Trump strikes me as primarily coming from this perspective. John Derbyshire attributed it to Murray’s “Midwestern niceness,” but herein lies the disconnect between Murray and many of his usual fans.

Many of Trump’s supporters support him precisely because they no longer respect the process. They see the process as rigged and inherently hostile to them and their interests. For this reason, Trump’s brashness and willingness to say things the typical politician would not is not a liability, but an asset. While they don’t necessarily value rudeness, they’ll tolerate it or even consider it a necessary evil, in light of the current state of affairs, and they positively value his combativeness and willingness to engage the enemy.  When Trump supporters are questioned, they consistently cite this aspect of his presentation as a major reason for their support. Trump’s previous celebrity and sheer force of personality allow him to get away with saying things that ordinary political candidates cannot.

Contained in this disconnect, is another related dimension. Trump’s supporters tend to view the current situation as dire and near the point of no return. For them, opposing a candidate because he engages in Twitter battles is akin to fretting about the arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. For many Trump supporters, our dire situation requires extraordinary measures, not appeals to the sanctity of the system that got us here in the first place.

While I appreciate Murray’s and others’ support for traditional norms of behavior, as a Trump supporter, albeit a somewhat nuanced one, I agree with my cohorts that it is much too late in the game to allow his at times less than decorous behavior to disqualify him. I would suggest that the process Murray et al are attempting to protect is no longer the sacrosanct process they suppose, but is in fact a largely rigged game of political theater. Perhaps what we need at this time is not a statesman but a performance artist who can engage the system on its own terms and maybe just beat the Powers That Be at their own game.

The View From Olympus: Learning Russians

There is an old saying that Russia is never as strong as it appears to be, and Russia is never as weak as it appears to be. According to the lead story in the October 15  New York Times, "Russian Military Uses Syria as Proving Ground, and West Takes Notice," the pendulum is swinging from focusing on Russia's weakness to seeing her again as strong and threatening. Much of the latter is threat inflation, an old Pentagon practice during the Cold War. (After lecturing on military reform many years ago at the Air Force's Squadron Officers' School, an Air Force intel captain came up to me and asked, "Does military reform mean we can stop inflating the threat?")But it does seem the Russians have learned. The Times story notes that Russian jets in Syria are now conducting as many airstrikes in a day as the U.S. and its allies have been carrying out in a month. Sortie rate is an important measure of an air force's effectiveness, and ours has long been abysmal, except for the A-10. The newer our equipment, the worse the picture, because each new aircraft we buy requires more maintenance hours per flight hour than the one it replaced.But the real importance of President Putin's military reform program lies not in equipment but in ideas. As American military reformers used to say, quoting Col. John Boyd, "For winning wars, people are most important, ideas come second, and hardware is only third." The Times noted that Russian reforms have included tactics and strategy, not just equipment. And they included the all-important "people" category:

Mr. Putin . . . began a military modernization program that focused not only on high-profile procurement of new weapons . . . but also on a less-noticed overhaul of training and organization that included reduction in the bloated officer corps and the development of a professional corps of noncommissioned officers.

As any visitor to an American headquarters quickly sees, Russia was not alone in having a bloated officer corps. But ours keeps growing.We here witness an old military phenomenon: the loser learns while the victor goes to sleep on his pile of trophies. Russia was one of the twentieth century's big losers, along with Austria and Germany. The defeat in World War I, the Red Revolution, Stalin, Communism's murder of 60 million Russians, the immense destruction inflicted by World War II, and, with the fall of Communism, Russia's retreat to roughly the borders she had when Peter the Great came to the throne, add up to a catastrophe Americans cannot grasp.But Russia is now recovering under President Putin, and her defeats and failures have taught her some things. Among those learning are the Russian military. Several decades ago, the Soviet Army historian John Erickson said to me, "Do you want to understand the Russian army today? Ask yourself what it was like under Nicholas I." I think that is no longer true.The laggard now is the U.S. military, happily vegetating in the Second  Generation of modern war, content to lose wars so long as the money keeps flowing, led largely by generals and admirals who are interchangeable in their skills and attitudes with Soviet industrial managers. The quality of the product is not important; what matters is acquiring and justifying resources.That self-satisfied (at senior levels) and sleepy military is in turn employed by a foreign policy elite that lives in Disneyland, a place where the whole world is to be reduced to a nursery run by themselves and their European counterparts. All the children will play nice because they tell them to.Among the consequences of this departure from reality is a failure to ally with both Russia and China in defense of the state system against Fourth Generation war. In Syria, while a reality-based Kremlin acts in support of the remnants of the Syrian state, we bleat about Russian air attacks on our "democratic allies" who do not exist.As I said, this is an old, old story. It always has the same ending: yesterday's winner is tomorrow's loser. Regrettably, that's us.

The View From Olympus: The Enablers

At the same time that Islam has brought terror and death to the city of Paris, France's new Jeanne d'Arc, Marine le Pen, is on trial. Her supposed crime? "Hate speech". If you tell the truth about Islam in France, i.e., that it is and always has been a religion of war, you will be arrested.Nowhere else do we see so clearly the relationship between Islam and cultural Marxism as in France. Cultural Marxism gives cover to Islam while Moslems kill Frenchmen. As French blood flows in the streets of Paris, French cultural Marxists stand guard, ready to bring "hate speech" charges against anyone who dares answer the question, "why?" Why, because the Koran explicitly calls for violence against unbelievers and Islam considers forced conversions legitimate. Anyone who converts under duress and later says "I didn't mean it" is under automatic sentence of death as an apostate. Islam's war against French men on French soil will continue until France submits to Islam. Moslems do the killing, but cultural Marxism is their enabler.Meanwhile, next door in Germany, that country--the anti-German Germany that is the Federal Republic--is importing more of what just happened in Paris. Frau Merkel says her "vision" is at stake. What is that vision? A deracinated world where an Afghan or an Arab has just as much right to enjoy the benefits of life in Germany as does a German. Hausfrau Merkel isn't deep enough to be a cultural Marxist. She's just their dupe. That's okay with them, so long as she continues to import Islamic Fourth Generation war into Germany.Why does cultural Marxism welcome people who will kill cultural Marxists as enthusiastically as they kill Christians? Because, as the members of the Frankfurt School make plain in their writings, cultural Marxism has no positive vision to offer. It is about "negation", i.e., bringing everything down. It will ally with any force that aids its struggle to destroy Western culture and the Christian religion. Islam has been doing that since it first emerged out of the Arabian desert. What could be a better tool for the cultural Marxists?Because of the rate at which Islamics are pouring into Germany and murder in the name of Allah is occurring in France, Frenchmen and Germans are beginning to see beyond the conditioning cultural Marxism has used to entrap them. More and more, as they face the truth about Islam, instead of seeing "Hitler" when they look in the mirror they see Charles Martel and Friedrich Barbarossa.In France, Frenchmen have an option denied Germans. They can vote for a party, the National Front, that will compel Islamics either to acculturate and become French or to leave. If the culturally Marxist French Establishment keeps the National Front from power, well, French men then have another option, one for which they are famous: riot in the streets and hang every Moslem they can lay hands on from the nearest lamppost ("a la lanterne!").The good news in all this is that Europeans' revolt against Islam and its inherent violence endangers the rule of the cultural Marxists. European publics know that something is wrong with thier traditional political parties. They don't know exactly what--few have heard of the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School--but they know those parties insist on leaving the door to Islam open and denounce anyone trying to close it as "fascists" and "racists". Once Europeans turn forcefully against Islam--and they are moving that way--they may also turn against those who invited the murderers in. So we may hope. If it happens, the victims of the Paris massacres will not have died in vain.

The View From Olympus: The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook

The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook, co-authored by Lt. Col. Greg Thiele and myself, is now available on Amazon. At present, it is only an e-book; the real book should be available early next year. The publisher is Castalia House Press.The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook is a follow-on to my Maneuver Warfare Handbook, which was published in 1985 and is still in print. The new book's origins lie in the Fourth Generation Warfare seminar Lt. Col. Thiele and I taught for some years at the Marine Corps' Expeditionary Warfare School. That seminar wrote a number of field manuals for 4GW, published as manuals of the K.u.K. Austro-Hungarian Marine Corps. Greg and I distilled the content of those manuals, added a good bit of material of our own (especially on true light infantry, normally the most effective force against 4GW opponents) and have published it in a form we think will reach more readers than have the field manuals.The new book presumes the reader is familiar with the framework of the Four Generations of Modern War, although it does offer a summary of the first three generations in an appendix. After a discussion of the theory of 4GW which focuses on the dilemmas it poses to state armed forces, dilemmas which usually lead state militaries to defeat themselves, it turns to the practical problems 4GW presents. This is consistent with its nature as a handbook: its purpose is not academic discussion but providing useful ideas to those serving in state forces.One of the potentially most useful tools it offers is the grid: a nine-box square with the three traditional levels of war, tactical, operational, and strategic, on the vertical axis and Col. John Boyd's three new levels, physical, mental, and moral, on the horizontal axis. State armed forces (including police) can use the grid to evaluate planned missions by asking what results the mission is likely to bring in each of the nine boxes.At present, most missions are evaluated in only one box, the tactical/physical. These are the two weakest levels of war. The blowback the mission brings at more powerful levels, especially the most powerful box, strategic/moral, helps explain why state militaries usually lose Fourth Generation wars. By using the grid to anticipate negative results at higher and more powerful levels, it may be possible to avoid those negative effects by changing what is done tactically and physically.European readers of The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook may wonder why much of the latter part of the book is devoted to true light (or Jaeger) infantry. The reason is that the U.S. armed forces mis-define light infantry as line infantry with less equipment. This false definition leads the Americans to think they have light infantry when in fact they do not. Because true light infantry are usually 4GW forces' most dangerous opponents, this leaves the U.S. largely disarmed in this kind of war. Its fall-back of massive firepower literally blows up in its face at the moral level, ensuring its defeat. (The closest thing the U.S. has to true light infantry is probably the Marine Scout/Snipers. According to one report from Afghanistan, the Taliban refer to the Scout/Snipers as "The Marines who are well-trained." The Pashtun are, and long have been, some of the world's best light infantry.)For Americans, the Handbook's chapter on how to convert line to light infantry may be its most important. Many infantry battalion, company, and platoon commanders would like to make the switch, but don't know how. Now they will.My hope is that the The Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook will prove as useful to members of sate armed forces a has the Maneuver Warfare Handbook. 4GW is a more difficult challenge than 3GW, maneuver warfare. Because only those state armed forces that have made it into the Third Generation have any chance of winning in 4GW, both books are likely to be around for a long time.

The Stupid Party Elevates Paul Ryan

The late conservative columnist, Sam Francis, once quipped that the Democrat Party is the Evil Party and the Republican Party is the Stupid Party. This cannot be repeated often enough. The Republican Party has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no idea what is best for its continued viability and the people who actually vote for it.The persistent problem with the Republican Party is that every election cycle it pitches to the besieged middle class in Middle America and then goes to Washington and does the bidding of donor class fat cats. The flyover country middle class has continued to go along with this game because in our alleged “two party” system at least the Republican Party pretends to like them. The Democrat Party on the other hand, which is historically supposed to be the party of the working man, long ago gave up the pretense of actually caring about the economic interests of or even liking flyover country yokels. Instead Democrats by and large see such yokels as a major part of the problem due to their Bible-clinging and gun-toting ways and status as bearers of some mystical privilege. But the masses can only be expected to put up with this dynamic for so long before they’ve had enough and demand change. This appears to be happening, yet the Republican Establishment scratches its collective head in befuddlement. “Why are the plebs so angry?”What the success of the Donald Trump campaign should clearly demonstrate to the GOP leadership and its elected representatives if they are paying attention or care is that average Republican voters are not really motivated by the prospect of cuts in the marginal income tax rates of the rich. They believe the middle class is under siege from well-connected corporatists above and a permanent underclass below, and that the federal government works for the interests of both of these and against their own, and about this they are manifestly correct.So how does the Republican Party respond to this disconnect? It elevates to the House Speakership a man, Paul Ryan, who is a virtual caricature of all that is wrong with the GOP, and I might add, it does so with the acquiescence of a lot of the “Freedom Caucus.” What? Was the Monopoly Man not available?Donald Trump is resonating with the flyover base, much to the chagrin of the Establishment and their lackeys in the “conservative” punditocracy, on two issues in particular, immigration and trade. Both are near and dear to the heart of the base because both address two of the main things that have caused middle class fortunes to stagnate, economic globalization and the mass importation of cheap labor, both illegal and legal.In the midst of this rebellion in the heartland, the Republican Party keepers of the flame insisted on anointing Paul Ryan as Speaker, after their original choice crashed and burned, but Ryan could not be more wrong on these two issues at the heart of the base’s uprising.Ryan is a hard core amnesty supporter. By Republican standards he is an “extremist” on the issue. He also supports virtual open borders with regard to legal immigration, a policy that not only would perpetuate the problems of unemployment, underemployment and stagnant wages that already plague us, but would guarantee that the Republican Party will become a permanent minority party, virtually irrelevant on the national stage, within a few election cycles. Talk about the Stupid Party. Many of them appear to not be able to do basic math.On globalist managed trade deals (To call them free trade deals is a scandalous misuse of language.), Ryan is again the worst of the worst. Ryan is not just a casual supporter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the legislative gimmickry of fast track that enabled it. He co-authored (along with faux populist Sen. Ted Cruz, I might add) a blatant piece of apologia for fast track and the TPP in the Power Elite … err I mean … Wall Street Journal before said power elite ramrodded the fast track abomination through Congress. Way to represent the peeps there, GOP.What this shameful Ryan spectacle once again demonstrates is that the Republican Party is worse than worthless when it comes to representing the interests of the majority of people who actually vote for it. It’s recent history (since the '60s +/-) has been to serve as a sort of safety valve to diffuse periodic fits of anger from the masses when they wake up and realize they are getting screwed. People of good will may differ on whether this means the Republican Party needs to be reformed or scrapped and replaced, but what should be obvious to all who are not beholden to the donor class is that the current situation is intolerable. I suspect that for now the one most helped by the Ryan debacle is Donald Trump.

The Election

As is often the case in the hall of mirrors that is the Establishment, the election of 2016 is not what it seems. Officially, it is about choosing nominees from a wide variety of candidates, at least among the Republicans, then hearing them battle it out in policy-oriented debate.But that is just kabuki for the rubes out in flyover land. The Establishment knows the real game, or thinks it does. Each party will, in the end, choose an Establishment nominee, and which one wins is not important. The Establishment will remain in charge, and nothing will change.On the surface, that is probably what will happen. If there is a credible third party candidate, he will find the system is so rigged by the two parties that are really one party that he has small chance. The Establishment will remain in power, confident it will always do so.That confidence is misplaced. At a level deeper than the kabuki and the Establishment's rigged system, powerful forces are in motion. What the election is really about is these forces, their outlets, their prospects, and the likelihood that the Establishment, which is blind to them, is already living on borrowed time.Both here and in Europe, popular support for anti-Establishment candidates and parties is skyrocketing. Trump and Sanders are both troubling the Establishment by their levels of support and its staying power. The Establishment knows neither will become president, because it has rigged the game.Still, their popularity sends a message that has brought unease to the corridors of power. Who are these awful people? What leads them to dissent from the Establishment's combination of, on the one hand, cultural Marxism, and on the other, a fat cat world where one hand washes the other (Wall Street and Washington) and Establishment membership brings great wealth? I mean, don't they see there is no other possible way? Could there really be so many "thisists" and "thatists" out there, people who dare express views that would cause every door in Washington to slam in their faces? Seen dimly in the candlelight, angry faces are staring in the hall of mirrors' windows.What is driving this, both on the Right and the Left, is a growing understanding at the grass roots level that the Establishment's policies do not work. We start stupid "humanitarian" wars--Hillary loves them--and then lose. We flood America and Europe with immigrants who will never become Americans or Europeans. We praise every culture and religion except our own. In the U.S., the crime problem is discussed with no reference to the fact that most of the violent criminals are black or Hispanic.On Wall Street, the .1%, whose enormous wealth seldom comes from producing a product but rather from financial manipulation (which, when it fails, has to be bailed out by the rest of us) buy Congressmen and Senators by the dozen. Those Members of Congress make sure "free trade" continues to benefit the super-rich while the middle class, what's left of it, sinks into poverty. As the jobs vanish and the institutions ordinary people depend on fail, the Establishment, both its political and its financial wings, insulates itself from the failures. They take the lifeboats while everyone else goes down with the Titanic.Both here and in much of Europe, at least a third of the public knows the Establishment's policies don't work. That has put anti-Establishment parties, Right and Left, in places like Sweden, France, Switzerland, and Greece in power or within striking distance of power.Here, again, the Establishment is right in its confidence that both major parties' nominees will come from and represent the Establishment. One will almost certainly win.But here's an idea that would give them fits. When the conventions are over and the nominees chosen, an independent ticket emerges that can get itself on every ballot. What ticket? Trump for President, Sanders for Vice President, with both promising that Sanders will handle foreign policy and defense policy (only) and Trump domestic policy (only). Sanders would keep us out of more wars and begin defunding a military that can't win Fourth Generation conflicts. Trump would start stripping political correctness out of federal government policy and enthusiastically turn on his fellow billionaires and their dragon hordes.Would a Trump/Sanders ticket win? A plurality of the popular vote, maybe; the Electoral College, almost certainly not. But Left/Right coalitions against the center have potentially great power. And voters would have a choice, not an echo.

The View From Olympus: Futility

The United States is bombing in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, most recently a hospital in the latter. Russia is bombing in Syria. Saudi Arabia is bombing in Yemen. What do all these have in common? Futility.Bombing is now what a state does when it wants to appear to be doing something, but would really rather not. It is governments' easy out. A faction at court is whispering that our interests are being slighted in Karjackistan? The opposition in parliament is saying we are a "do-nothing" government? But, good sirs, we are doing something. We're bombing!Does this mean the people killed and maimed by the bombs, and the airmen who put themselves at risk, are doing so for nothing? Not at all. They are giving their lives to protect politicians' backsides. What cause could be more noble?There is a test to determine whether a government is serious or is just playing at war. Is the bombing integrated with actions of a capable ground force? In Iraq and Afghanistan, the answer is obvious.An aside: The U.S. Army, which has patches for everything, including digging latrines, designed a patch for the troops now back in Iraq. Regrettably, just before it was issued, some spoilsport noticed it was a virtual duplicate of the symbol for the Muslim Brotherhood. May I suggest an alternative? How about an American soldier desperately trying to rally a mob of fleeing Iraqi or Afghan troops?In some parts of northern Syria, our bombing, at least some of it, has been in support of an effective army, the Kurds. But the Kurds' reach is geographically limited, and the Turks are now bombing them. Were we serious, we would tell the Turks to stop, or if necessary give the Kurds some air cover.The Saudis and their Gulf State allies have put ground forces into Yemen, but they haven't attempt much, probably because the Houthis can kick their butt. The main effect of their bombing has been the usual one, i.e., make all the locals come together against them. When people are bombed by aircraft immune to any response, they get motivated to strike back in other ways.That brings us to the Russians in Syria. Diplomatically, Russia's bombing campaign has given her a seat at the table. The fighters she has deployed are a warning to the Turks and others not to bomb Assad's forces. But Moscow, unlike Washington, is run by realists. Realists know bombs alone do little to attain any serious objective. That suggests Russia will also send in ground troops the aircraft can support.As she appears to be doing. At first, the Marines, airborne, and Spetznaz the Russians sent into Syria seemed to be for airfield defense. That is certainly part of their mission. But reports suggest they are now entering into the ground fight. Moscow also announced Russian "volunteers" would be heading for Syria. The word "volunteer" has never had quite the same meaning in Russia as it does elsewhere.Not surprisingly, Moscow's realism is beating Washington's drole de guerre. Iran and Iraq (yes, the Iraq 5000 Americans died to create; thank you George W.) just signed an alliance with Moscow, leaving us out in the cold. Why? Because when Moscow says it will help, the help starts arriving next week. It does not come with absurd "human rights" conditions attached telling the Iraqi government not to employ its most effective forces, the Shiite militias. Russain weapons are simple enough for the locals to use and maintain. Maybe Russians can even provide trainers whose trainees fight instead of running. The Army's National Training Center discovered long ago that Russian tactics are easier to teach and learn, and more effective, than American tactics.The story in Washington and in European capitals is the same in everything: rule by an incompetent and disinterested elite that lives in Disneyland, can't make things work, and isn't serious about anything but remaining the elite. At some point, drole de guerre will yield to a bottom-up feu do joie. 

The View From Olympus: Invasion by Immigration

Were Russian tank divisions now pouring into Germany, it is safe to say Germany would be fighting back. As it happens, Germany and Europe are now suffering an invasion more dangerous than that would be. Yet all Frau Merkel can do is stand by the side of the road handing posies to the invaders.As I have pointed out for many years, in a world of Fourth Generation war, invasion by immigration is more dangerous--not less dangerous--than invasion by a foreign army. Why? Because unless the invaders are a Roman army, the enemy army usually goes home. He may permanently occupy a province--Silesia, Elsass-Lothringen--but an enemy state seldom swallows the whole thing and changes it into a place unrecognizable in both its people and its culture to those who lived there before. At least until Stalin did it to eastern Poland and Germany east of the Oder-Neisse line.But vast numbers of immigrants do exactly that. The reason Gaul, Spain, Britain, and Italy in the year 800 bore no resemblance to those places in the year 300 was mass immigration. The current invasion of Europe by Moslems from the south is actually worse, because while most of the barbarians moving in wanted to become Romans--their numbers were too great for that--Islamics have no desire to assimilate. They plan to Islamicize Europe.The September 18 New York Times quoted Marine le Pen of France's National Front as saying, "Unless the French people take action, the invasion of the migrants will be every bit the same as that of the fourth century, and could have the same consequences." Regrettably, the invasion of France has already succeeded, leaving that country occupied by millions of Islamic Arabs bitterly hostile to French culture.But the suicide of Germany and the rest of Europe that is welcoming the invaders must continue so long as Globalists remain in power. The notion that all peoples, religions, and cultures are wonderful and peaceful (except Western culture, the White  race, and the Christian religion, which are evil and oppressive) is central to Brave New World's ideology. That ideology is, of course, the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School. Its goal, from its initial conception in 1919 (independently) by Gramsci in Italy and Lukacs in Hungary, has been the destruction of the Christian West.In all the West, as of now only one country, little Hungary, is acting to halt the invasion. This role is not new to Hungarians, who fought the Turks for centuries. Not only has Hungary forcefully closed its southern border, it has rightly called for a joint European force to defend the borders of Greece. The best place to stop the invaders is on the beaches. If the Greek islands are easy for the migrants to reach, they are also easy places from which to send them back.Europe's and especially Germany's welcome to hostile invaders has its roots, as does so much evil, in World War I. As we commemmorate that awful tragedy, we should continually remind ourselves how deeply it still warps our societies, to the point where they commit suicide. The West's lost belief in itself and its willingness to become a doormat for other cultures and religions comes straight from the Somme, Ypres, and Verdun. The absence of any Western country beyond Hungary to stand up to the invaders is part of the price for the fall of the Houses of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern. It is not hard to envision Kaiser Wilhelm's orders to his troops in the face of today's invaders, nor his reaction to the fact of Germany being led by a Hausfrau.As I wrote recently, Germany's reaction to invasion is so detached from reality, so much a product of Wolkenkukusheim, that is may end up for the good. Frau Merkel and the rest of the anti-German Germany notwithstanding, the German people are starting to resist. The empty thrones in Berlin and Vienna await their Christian monarchs.

The View From Olympus: Puffery

A naive article in the August 26th New York Times raised the question of whether U.S. military headquarters were overstating the results of our campaign against ISIS. Of course they were, and are. How do I know? Because such puffery is standard operating procedure all the way up the chain of command.The Times reported breathlessly that

The Pentagon's inspector general is investigating allegations that military officials have skewed intelligence assessments about the United States-led campaign in Iraq against the Islamic State to provide a more optimistic account of progress...The investigation began after at least one civilian Defense Intelligence Agency analyst told the authorities that he had evidence that officials at United States Central Command...were improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments prepared for policy makers, including President Obama.

Yawn. The only surprise here is that the Times is, or acts, surprised. It may actually be surprised, because the quality of reporting on military affairs has gone to hell in the last three or four decades. One hopes President Obama and those close to him know most if not all intelligence estimates they are given are puffed to favor whatever the military bureaucracy wants to be true. That means whatever makes it look good and supports the case for more money.Americans who know the system may think it has to be this way; it is simply how military and intelligence bureaucracies work. It's no different in other countries. But here's the surprise: there was an exception.In a brilliant article published several decades ago, I don't remember where, Professor Williamson Murray told the story of a military that did the opposite. Titled "The German Response to Victory in Poland," it detailed how the Wehrmacht reacted to a stunning victory, in the first test of what is popularly known as Blitzkrieg, not by crowing on its dunghill as we do (Grenada, Panama, the First Gulf War, the initial stages of the Second Gulf War ["Mission Accomplished"]), but with intense self-criticism. The higher the headquarters, the more insistent were the demands for the bad news: what had not worked, which units and commanders performed poorly, where pre-war training had proved deficient. More, the German chain of command was able to meet those demands with honest reports and assessments. The result was a far-reaching program of reforms, implemented under forced draft, without which the 1940 campaign in France might have had a different outcome.Why was the German chain of command able to do what ours cannot? The answer lies in the characteristics the German Army looked for in its officers. First, it demanded complete honesty at all times. Not only was active dishonesty not tolerated, neither was passive dishonesty: keeping your mouth shut and letting something you knew was wrong go through. The sin of omission was considered worse than the sin of commission.Second, it despised careerism. The surest way to guarantee you would not get promoted was to show you cared about it. Of course, like any army that does not want to institutionalize moral cowardice and the Peter Principle, it did not have a rule of "up or out."Third, the characteristic the Wehrmacht valued most highly in an officer was strength of character, which it defined as an eagerness to make decisions, take responsibility, and get the result the situation required, regardless of orders, procedures, or obstacles.That yielded a chain of command that could both require and provide honest reporting.What about us? The picture is a diametric opposite. Trapped in our up-or-out personnel system, officers quickly learn to tell those above them what they want to hear. Doing otherwise could endanger their promotion. Lying is not only tolerated, it is expected. The Army recently did a study confirming this, which I referenced in an earlier column. It is no different in the other services.Second, obviously, with up-or-out everyone is compelled to be a careerist, and most general officers have become general officers by being careerists from day one.Third, consistent with its inward-focused, Second Generation culture, the U.S. military is frightened by officers who take initiative, violate procedures, and get results. Strong character upsets apple carts. Officers who show it are weeded out at every level of promotion, so few make it to or near the top. The percentage of military competent captains is a lot higher than the percentage of militarily competent generals.So we have a system that lies to the public, lies to the president, and lies to itself. The last may be the most dangerous.