Great article, I really enjoyed it.I would add (as someone who served in the IDF) to your analysis: the insanity of what was happening inside the army was clear to everyone, the only places which worked as intended where the “elite”: the pilots and special units. low ranking officers were also alright, but there was a general feeling of abuse in the army: the people who worked the hardest would get compensated the least! There was a lot of faith in Modiin (because nobody knew what happened there) , but I guess that’s gonna change…
I'm working my way thru this slowly. But this: "The performance of its elite Al Nukhba force, which was fought off by some lightly armed community security teams in the Gaza envelope, suggests that its main force units in Gaza will not be able to stop the IDF or inflict crippling losses" doesn't relate to the fight in Gaza.
It is true that the civil defense teams fought bravely & well against the terrorist bastards (how much better could actual battalions have done?), but defending your home turf is one thing - attacking in a dense urban environment catacombed by tunnels is another. As I write it's Day 93 of the war and Hamas is still in control of central and southern Gaza. Even the north isn't 100% in Israel's control.
Imagine a Gaza surrounded by Jewish communities whose militias launch precision guided missiles with drone terminal guidance at every public gathering of more than 3 people. How long would it take for all the civilians to leave or demand a surrender from their leadership? No need for a ground invasion: that's only if you have the retarded Israeli idea that the militants and civilians of Gaza are meaningfully different.
It's a nice thought. It should happen & hopefully will.
But it doesn't relate to what I said.
Your point is that Hamas's best are overrated as a military force & didn't perform all that well in the atrocity raid. I agree, which actually brings up something even more embarrassing & outraging - that a few simple, common-sense measures would have deterred them.
My point is that things are different when Hamas is defending its home turf in a dense urban environment set up to ensnare Israelis. In fact, if you believe that the militants & civilians are one (and I do) that only reinforces my point. It's a lethal environment. A minefield. Israel will incur many casualties. That's the way of all war, especially urban warfare.
We agree on a lot Baruch. Don't grasp for straws to wrongfoot me.
Hi - I believe you - but links to “Israel’s independence was won by altruistic right wing insurgents” - ? That’s new, and I read history rather too much.
Independence was won from the British, who did not intend to leave but were forced to by years of attacks by Etzel and Lehi. When they announced that they were leaving, they specifically referred to the lack of cooperation and constant attacks they'd faced; this was only in reference to Etzel and Lehi, as the mainstream Zionists had collaborated with them almost completely.
The American government isn’t monolithic or in this matter particularly consistent.
It’s more accurate to say we inherited their Empires and de-established them in most cases.
The main focus was Europe and Japan never rearming (not really) and then rivalry with the USSR and Communism , the policy insanely starting in the 90s is to spread “democracy” east and everywhere.
I’m aware of the school of thought the USSR was a subcontractor- I think it overwrought.
Without massive and ongoing American industrial aid, there would have been nobody with whom to divide spheres of influence. For one minor example, the USSR won WW2 and fought a series of proxy conflicts using Ford trucks built under license in licensed plants, to the extent that US pilots over the Ho Chi Minh trail would sometimes get confused over whose trucks they were supposed to be bombing. For another, post-WW2 Soviet power was projected beyond Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia primarily through its merchant fleet, all of which ran on US-supplied or -licensed engines. It got crazier than that-Soviet ICBMs required precision grinders to create their targeting system's bearings. These were only to be had from an American supplier, the Bryant Grinder company. DoD objected to exporting the grinders, since there was only one thing the Soviets could need them for. State, led by Kissinger, overruled.
The US didn't "inherit" those Empires, but decided to disestablish them due to the post-Xtian ideology of its progressive apparatchiks. Of course, these never had total supremacy-there were periodic outbursts of opposition which would take time to suppress. Did I mention that I studied under the student of an academic specifically condemned by Owen Lattimore during the IPR scandal?
So, how did that work out for Lattimore's friends and enemies in the long run? And how did it affect the clients of those friends and enemies overseas? Was there every a case of a single nationalistic dictatorship consistently supported by the US in the second half of the 20th century?
This wasn't anything new. Even in WW1, the US took the side of the progressive countries against the reactionary ones. This made things a bit awkward when they happened to be allied, as was the case with Russia, but the US was undeterred and provided imaginative solutions, such as the 1917 Red Cross mission to Russia (two doctors, a dozen and a half Wall Street bankers, and provided critical funding to the Bolsheviks.)
What you say is true; now step back from ideology.
(I have read every post of Yarvin and perhaps 40%+ of UR comments, no need to rehash).
Step back and look at results.
Also look at the previous exercises- for example WW1.
>May 1940 FDR “This time we’re not leaving.”
Well of course not, we don’t want to be running over to Europe every generation, and playing the Chump for England didn’t work twice.
NATO was for : Keep them ALL down, decolonize them to avoid further friction, We have to stay in so the Russians CAN stay out.
Do you know that half of Vietnam was keeping the Communists from getting Indonesia and its vast resources and sea lanes?
No? Ask Obama.
Now it’s past time to retrench, go to space and the news good and bad - we are, should have in 90s.
What do you think is happening in The MidEast? We are LEAVING as we don’t need the oil (never did) and instead of overreaching on war overreached on Peace*.
Tried to loop Iran (🤣) which knows it can’t trust us ... and tried to buy the Palestinians-you can’t even rent them.
And yet the Abraham accords in some fashion will stand - peace with Saudi.
Don’t get trapped in ideology, it’s a mistake. Look at results- that’s the policy.
And NEXT TIME we 🇺🇸 try to leave oh world- all of you - better let us leave. 💀 I would kill you all oh foreigners just to never see or hear you again.
I’m just human 💀
You are foreign , ergo enemies.
Moreover you have nothing we need and we’ve 🇺🇸 decided we don’t like you.
I think anyone subjected to our increasingly bizarre ministrations would not want us back.
Ask Kabul.
🌍 wants 🇺🇸 to fuck off?
Good - we agree.
But it’s a package deal, we’re either in or out.
No freebies.
What an idiotic concept.
If world 🌎 you weren’t all low, scheming, grasping, greedy, lying user scum you’d realize how stupid the notion of a Charitable Empire was all along... but you are what you are...
We want out, and if you understood us 💀 at all you’d want us 🇺🇸 gone too...
I hope I’ve clarified our actual current and future foreign policy.
^^This is It ^^^
Now 🌎 let my 🇺🇸 people go..,
Before we kill all 🌎 of you.
The last sentence is completely in line with American history and policy on our very own lands.
More; there’s considerable obstacles to 🇺🇸 Empire;
1. The people weren’t told, in fact actively deceived on the matter and upon awareness are very angry over Empire.
2. The Empire just lost their fighting stock here (I’m one). It’s the same people from same families.
3. There’s no need of Empire for any reason- not strategic depth, not resources, not security.
4. America is a Federation- centralization isn’t possible to sustain. Every American political arrangement has been a Federation from Iroquois to Internet. This thwarted previous attempts at Centralization and has internally by own dynamics thwarted this one; which is an Emergency government by incremental degrees and decrees since the New Deal and WW2 - WW2 which is when this beast came into being. It’s time is up.
5. To keep the Empire the Constitution itself was overturned and soldiers used to install a fraudulently elected old man with dementia > he’s the only person who’s take the job on the figurehead conditions its offered.
6. Its over. DC lost the country to keep their Empire. They exposed themselves to do it, they aren’t fit and they lost their muscle.
7. There’s no feasible or even risible succession in view - whatever rises from the “sorting process” 💀 stay out of its way...
One of the oldest stories in the world is a country whose local success leads it to become an empire, at which point the interests of the upper and middle classes sharply diverge and the latter are sacrificed for the good of the former. You may not need the empire, but somebody obviously does. Every single time that the interests of the states have come up against the interests of the center, the latter has won in the long term.
The constitution was overturned? I did not know that. You are telling me this for the first time!
Of course the empire prefers/will have to replace its troops with barbarian mercenaries as the legionaries find themselves squeezed out of their farms, which are consolidated into latifundiae, and crowded into the big cities to live off bread and circuses and fentanyl. I wish you the best of luck in reversing this process. Its roots are spiritual.
Sure, DC would love for it to - but it’s not happening.
We 💁🏼♂️are the barbarian mercenaries, btw- and the newbie’s 👨🏽🌾assimilated to us.
I mean the Spanish, btw. I served with them for years.
It ain’t happening.
I’m not metropolitan middle class, and there’s no metropole in America as DC discovers... as the Iranians observed- there’s no one to bomb. The Metropole is 3 zip codes around DC (Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Foggy Bottom).
Not enough.
Empire; There’s no need, nor anyone who believes in it.
You’re trying to fit the facts to the model- they don’t fit. Rome, Britain- none of them fit.
China which looks inward to an extent, to a lesser extent Russia.
The Russians from GO are in a tough neighborhood and need space, but aren’t very expansionist. Running a country
this large is a full time job.
Americans have more resources than anyone, we actually can do autarky if needed.
But we also have matchless strategic depth; Oceans East and West, tundra north, deserts-mountains-jungles to the south (not to worry, we’re absorbing Mexico, the Cartels looking more like Syrian democracy every day) ... and even if we weren’t absorbing them , South no threat.
Too fractious, fractured, disorganized all on their own, did you know the Pan American highway stops at Yaviza Panama? Its only ferries Panama to South America, except for a goat track.
They’re not stupid, we’d of course take them over (faster).
Any 🇺🇸 future expansion is South, maybe.
You’re making the mistake of cutting and pasting European Empires onto a large country that has no need of such.
The hard truth for DC is they lost America, which is millions of square miles.
You’re looking at the Old Buddha and seeing Alaric or Odaocer? Well no... it’s actually going to be the American Mao -the most fit warlord.
We out, we definitely out of MENA. Better for us, better for all.
Now please stop spray stenciling Rome on us... or Great Britain... it doesn’t fit and it’s so lazy.
Great article, I really enjoyed it.I would add (as someone who served in the IDF) to your analysis: the insanity of what was happening inside the army was clear to everyone, the only places which worked as intended where the “elite”: the pilots and special units. low ranking officers were also alright, but there was a general feeling of abuse in the army: the people who worked the hardest would get compensated the least! There was a lot of faith in Modiin (because nobody knew what happened there) , but I guess that’s gonna change…
>The great Turkish philosopher Heraclitus
Now that's just a clever line right there.
Great stuff, Baruch. Thanks
Also those aren’t militias;
They’re Rod and Gun Clubs.
Bring fishing poles.
Sandfish are elusive but tasty.
We don't have the hunting and fishing culture for the joke to work here.
What you need is an eccentric TikTok campaign to popularize sandfishing ...
How much do the 🇮🇱 5O give a 💩 anyway?
Yes, I was like this in war ... btw..
I'm working my way thru this slowly. But this: "The performance of its elite Al Nukhba force, which was fought off by some lightly armed community security teams in the Gaza envelope, suggests that its main force units in Gaza will not be able to stop the IDF or inflict crippling losses" doesn't relate to the fight in Gaza.
It is true that the civil defense teams fought bravely & well against the terrorist bastards (how much better could actual battalions have done?), but defending your home turf is one thing - attacking in a dense urban environment catacombed by tunnels is another. As I write it's Day 93 of the war and Hamas is still in control of central and southern Gaza. Even the north isn't 100% in Israel's control.
Imagine a Gaza surrounded by Jewish communities whose militias launch precision guided missiles with drone terminal guidance at every public gathering of more than 3 people. How long would it take for all the civilians to leave or demand a surrender from their leadership? No need for a ground invasion: that's only if you have the retarded Israeli idea that the militants and civilians of Gaza are meaningfully different.
It's a nice thought. It should happen & hopefully will.
But it doesn't relate to what I said.
Your point is that Hamas's best are overrated as a military force & didn't perform all that well in the atrocity raid. I agree, which actually brings up something even more embarrassing & outraging - that a few simple, common-sense measures would have deterred them.
My point is that things are different when Hamas is defending its home turf in a dense urban environment set up to ensnare Israelis. In fact, if you believe that the militants & civilians are one (and I do) that only reinforces my point. It's a lethal environment. A minefield. Israel will incur many casualties. That's the way of all war, especially urban warfare.
We agree on a lot Baruch. Don't grasp for straws to wrongfoot me.
Hi - I believe you - but links to “Israel’s independence was won by altruistic right wing insurgents” - ? That’s new, and I read history rather too much.
Independence was won from the British, who did not intend to leave but were forced to by years of attacks by Etzel and Lehi. When they announced that they were leaving, they specifically referred to the lack of cooperation and constant attacks they'd faced; this was only in reference to Etzel and Lehi, as the mainstream Zionists had collaborated with them almost completely.
Now that we’re the British I feel some sympathy for them.
In fairness to us we 🇺🇸 really wanted none of this, and our policies reflect it up until Clinton.
Yarvin is correct about 🇺🇸 being very actively anti-colonial after WW2.
People don’t perhaps realize that NATO was about keeping all of Europe- and England- down, so the Russians could stay out, so the Americans stayed in.
American anticolonialism was actually colonialism 2.0. British, French etc colonies were liberated in order to become clients of either the State Department or its subcontractor, the USSR. https://www.academia.edu/20090187/The_Best_Enemy_Money_Can_Buy_By_Antony_Sutton
Yes, to an extent.
The American government isn’t monolithic or in this matter particularly consistent.
It’s more accurate to say we inherited their Empires and de-established them in most cases.
The main focus was Europe and Japan never rearming (not really) and then rivalry with the USSR and Communism , the policy insanely starting in the 90s is to spread “democracy” east and everywhere.
I’m aware of the school of thought the USSR was a subcontractor- I think it overwrought.
More like a dance of spheres of influence.
Without massive and ongoing American industrial aid, there would have been nobody with whom to divide spheres of influence. For one minor example, the USSR won WW2 and fought a series of proxy conflicts using Ford trucks built under license in licensed plants, to the extent that US pilots over the Ho Chi Minh trail would sometimes get confused over whose trucks they were supposed to be bombing. For another, post-WW2 Soviet power was projected beyond Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia primarily through its merchant fleet, all of which ran on US-supplied or -licensed engines. It got crazier than that-Soviet ICBMs required precision grinders to create their targeting system's bearings. These were only to be had from an American supplier, the Bryant Grinder company. DoD objected to exporting the grinders, since there was only one thing the Soviets could need them for. State, led by Kissinger, overruled.
The US didn't "inherit" those Empires, but decided to disestablish them due to the post-Xtian ideology of its progressive apparatchiks. Of course, these never had total supremacy-there were periodic outbursts of opposition which would take time to suppress. Did I mention that I studied under the student of an academic specifically condemned by Owen Lattimore during the IPR scandal?
So, how did that work out for Lattimore's friends and enemies in the long run? And how did it affect the clients of those friends and enemies overseas? Was there every a case of a single nationalistic dictatorship consistently supported by the US in the second half of the 20th century?
This wasn't anything new. Even in WW1, the US took the side of the progressive countries against the reactionary ones. This made things a bit awkward when they happened to be allied, as was the case with Russia, but the US was undeterred and provided imaginative solutions, such as the 1917 Red Cross mission to Russia (two doctors, a dozen and a half Wall Street bankers, and provided critical funding to the Bolsheviks.)
What was the Ultimate Proxy conflict?
The Eastern Front in WW2.
Ahem.
What you say is true; now step back from ideology.
(I have read every post of Yarvin and perhaps 40%+ of UR comments, no need to rehash).
Step back and look at results.
Also look at the previous exercises- for example WW1.
>May 1940 FDR “This time we’re not leaving.”
Well of course not, we don’t want to be running over to Europe every generation, and playing the Chump for England didn’t work twice.
NATO was for : Keep them ALL down, decolonize them to avoid further friction, We have to stay in so the Russians CAN stay out.
Do you know that half of Vietnam was keeping the Communists from getting Indonesia and its vast resources and sea lanes?
No? Ask Obama.
Now it’s past time to retrench, go to space and the news good and bad - we are, should have in 90s.
What do you think is happening in The MidEast? We are LEAVING as we don’t need the oil (never did) and instead of overreaching on war overreached on Peace*.
Tried to loop Iran (🤣) which knows it can’t trust us ... and tried to buy the Palestinians-you can’t even rent them.
And yet the Abraham accords in some fashion will stand - peace with Saudi.
Don’t get trapped in ideology, it’s a mistake. Look at results- that’s the policy.
And NEXT TIME we 🇺🇸 try to leave oh world- all of you - better let us leave. 💀 I would kill you all oh foreigners just to never see or hear you again.
I’m just human 💀
You are foreign , ergo enemies.
Moreover you have nothing we need and we’ve 🇺🇸 decided we don’t like you.
I think anyone subjected to our increasingly bizarre ministrations would not want us back.
Ask Kabul.
🌍 wants 🇺🇸 to fuck off?
Good - we agree.
But it’s a package deal, we’re either in or out.
No freebies.
What an idiotic concept.
If world 🌎 you weren’t all low, scheming, grasping, greedy, lying user scum you’d realize how stupid the notion of a Charitable Empire was all along... but you are what you are...
We want out, and if you understood us 💀 at all you’d want us 🇺🇸 gone too...
I hope I’ve clarified our actual current and future foreign policy.
^^This is It ^^^
Now 🌎 let my 🇺🇸 people go..,
Before we kill all 🌎 of you.
The last sentence is completely in line with American history and policy on our very own lands.
Have a blessed Sunday.
More; there’s considerable obstacles to 🇺🇸 Empire;
1. The people weren’t told, in fact actively deceived on the matter and upon awareness are very angry over Empire.
2. The Empire just lost their fighting stock here (I’m one). It’s the same people from same families.
3. There’s no need of Empire for any reason- not strategic depth, not resources, not security.
4. America is a Federation- centralization isn’t possible to sustain. Every American political arrangement has been a Federation from Iroquois to Internet. This thwarted previous attempts at Centralization and has internally by own dynamics thwarted this one; which is an Emergency government by incremental degrees and decrees since the New Deal and WW2 - WW2 which is when this beast came into being. It’s time is up.
5. To keep the Empire the Constitution itself was overturned and soldiers used to install a fraudulently elected old man with dementia > he’s the only person who’s take the job on the figurehead conditions its offered.
6. Its over. DC lost the country to keep their Empire. They exposed themselves to do it, they aren’t fit and they lost their muscle.
7. There’s no feasible or even risible succession in view - whatever rises from the “sorting process” 💀 stay out of its way...
One of the oldest stories in the world is a country whose local success leads it to become an empire, at which point the interests of the upper and middle classes sharply diverge and the latter are sacrificed for the good of the former. You may not need the empire, but somebody obviously does. Every single time that the interests of the states have come up against the interests of the center, the latter has won in the long term.
The constitution was overturned? I did not know that. You are telling me this for the first time!
Of course the empire prefers/will have to replace its troops with barbarian mercenaries as the legionaries find themselves squeezed out of their farms, which are consolidated into latifundiae, and crowded into the big cities to live off bread and circuses and fentanyl. I wish you the best of luck in reversing this process. Its roots are spiritual.
Uh, the Rome rerun forever ain’t happening.
Sure, DC would love for it to - but it’s not happening.
We 💁🏼♂️are the barbarian mercenaries, btw- and the newbie’s 👨🏽🌾assimilated to us.
I mean the Spanish, btw. I served with them for years.
It ain’t happening.
I’m not metropolitan middle class, and there’s no metropole in America as DC discovers... as the Iranians observed- there’s no one to bomb. The Metropole is 3 zip codes around DC (Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Foggy Bottom).
Not enough.
Empire; There’s no need, nor anyone who believes in it.
You’re trying to fit the facts to the model- they don’t fit. Rome, Britain- none of them fit.
China which looks inward to an extent, to a lesser extent Russia.
The Russians from GO are in a tough neighborhood and need space, but aren’t very expansionist. Running a country
this large is a full time job.
Americans have more resources than anyone, we actually can do autarky if needed.
But we also have matchless strategic depth; Oceans East and West, tundra north, deserts-mountains-jungles to the south (not to worry, we’re absorbing Mexico, the Cartels looking more like Syrian democracy every day) ... and even if we weren’t absorbing them , South no threat.
Too fractious, fractured, disorganized all on their own, did you know the Pan American highway stops at Yaviza Panama? Its only ferries Panama to South America, except for a goat track.
They’re not stupid, we’d of course take them over (faster).
Any 🇺🇸 future expansion is South, maybe.
You’re making the mistake of cutting and pasting European Empires onto a large country that has no need of such.
The hard truth for DC is they lost America, which is millions of square miles.
You’re looking at the Old Buddha and seeing Alaric or Odaocer? Well no... it’s actually going to be the American Mao -the most fit warlord.
We out, we definitely out of MENA. Better for us, better for all.
Now please stop spray stenciling Rome on us... or Great Britain... it doesn’t fit and it’s so lazy.