Liberty Bristles

Winning Insurgent War, Winning Irregular War and On Multiform War all bored their dozens of readers with what a big deal roadblocking is. Roadblocks will be a featured layer in our coming GIS War for America Map. Roadblocks have been in the news recently in the form of anti-Jewish protests on major bridges. These protests were neither spontaneous nor coincidental. Sadly, roadblocks like these succeed most when local law enforcement structures are coopted, compromised or neutralized. Soon, on the Long Prompts page, I’ll post a ‘remastered’ version of the roadblocks section of On Multiform War. On Multiform War uses the word roadblock or a derivative about 87 times, about 33 of those times in ‘Section 78, Roadblocks and Checkpoints,’ 25 in cross references to Section 78, and the rest spread out into about fifteen or sixteen other sections. It probably could have fit usefully into more than a hundred sections, but hey, On Multiform War is a geography book, so of course everything is shown to influence everything else. Roadblocks have been a mappable thing in all kinds of warfare, very much to include multiform. They are today basic-basic, used effectively by all sides from Antifa (identity which these days paradoxically includes anti-Jews) to Belgian vegetable farmers (who by the grace of God have large tractors). As I like to repeat over and over again and again, we realize the full value of things only if they are moved, so reducing movement always threatens value. Where to block is therefore a central focus of a leader’s coup d’oeil.

1. There is no friendly, safe or peaceful intention to what the mullahs just did;
2. They launched a big test;
3. The test had the extra benefit of using up some Israeli air defense;
4. The United States government is feckless and deceitful in its attitude toward the Israeli position. The notion that Israel should make no offensive response (calling such a response an escalation) is evil nonsense. The only effective defense is to defang and declaw the enemy. Our administration’s policy is to deny Israel an effective defense. The Obama/biden stance is pro-mullah. Tell Israel they can only use the shield and not the sword? The Democrat Party has been trying to abandon Israel and is now succeeding;
5. Our legacy propaganda outlets paint Iran’s swarm drone and missile attack as a ‘reaction’ to and ‘retaliation’ for Israel’s bombing an Iranian military HQ in Damascus. That characterizing is disingenuous. Iran has been attacking Israel all along, and everyone knows it;
6. The Iranian attack had to have cost a lot less money than did Israel’s air defense effort;
7. The attack on Israel, as well as what’s going on in Ukraine, show us that industrial manufacturing capacity still greatly influences a county’s prospects in a war;
8. Enough low or medium-tech weapons can overcome top-end technological advantage;
9. The United Nations is of no friendly use in any of this, it is an enemy organization;
10. Our pushing Russia into alliance with both China and Iran is mega-geostupidit (or just treasonous). The American deep state/Democratic Party seems to have busied itself secretly aiding the regimes in Iran, China, Brazil, etc… (also aiding the anti-America United Nations) Our rulers keep giving advantage to these foreign entities in part due to a common leftiness and in part to pure corruption.  Those foreign dictators and clerics who our rulers help then ally with the leaders in Russia. Meanwhile, our regime sends money and weapons to corruptionists in Ukraine who are losing that space to the Russians anyway. It is all maddeningly dumb and evil and wholly anti-America.
11. Are we doomed?  Yes, if we don’t make a change pretty soon.

It’s Friday, which means it must be time to make a few more idle Ukraine war comments. Here are several, briefly.

1. I read how the US Special Forces are being taught Ukrainian. Typical I suppose that we are going to put some of our best soldiers off-line for weeks to learn a language the best use for which is already in the past. We should not bother. Have them learn Tagalog or Spanish or something, but Ukrainian? A bit late.
2. ‘US military experts’ are saying that Russia’s military is stronger now than it was a year ago. Wow. Credit to all who derided and rejected our government’s reasoning back then that it was somehow worthy or logical to help the Ukraine because it would weaken the Russians militarily.  That was too obviously dumb and now everyone who made or retweeted that nonsense will pretend they never said that.
3. Willie OAM is one of the best reporters and interpreters of the war. Catastrophic Blow, Completely Destroyed – Is It Too Late? – Ukraine War Map Analysis, News (youtube.com)  Today he reminded of the importance of relative distances and weapons-reach in a war that features indirect targeting. Yes, distance.  The Victoria Nulands of the world, whose strategic education is steeped in PoliSci but who have been spared having to spend any time on a battlefield, do not learn distance.  Also, I pray for Willie OAM’s health.
4. Willie also recently thought to opine about moral behavior in the Ukraine war. Both sides are committing what elsewhere and at other times would be deemed atrocities. Reports have been unmistakable and many. From conscription practices to the treatment of prisoners to the bombing of medical personnel to targeting civilians. The contest has not been pretty. Whatever your opinion about the value of the laws of war, it is amazing and disconcerting that the war’s moral hazard has been so ineffable – or so ineffed.  This compared to the hyperbolic moral outrage signaling against the Israelis, who have been relatively scrupulous.  The Israelis have shown admirable moral discipline as compared to the Ukrainians and Russians. Hamas, on the other hand, makes the Russian and Ukrainian fighters look like choir boys.
5. Zelensky, the big Z, Top Comedy, says he’ll totally launch another, much more successful offensive against Putin’s evil Ruskies in 2025 if the West just coughs up what Z says the West is morally obliged to give him. Putin, meanwhile, allows as how he is now looking for total capitulation from the Kyiv regime. Dima (I think that’s his name) at the Military Summary Channel recurs to the use of several endearing phrases during his twice-daily summary of what’s happening on the ground.  One of those catch phrases is “the days for (village name) are numbered” or “(village name’s) days are numbered.” Well, it’s not yet down to counting the days remining for Ukraine, but months? There might not be enough months left in 2024.
6. The lights are going out in Ukraine as the Russians proceed with their anti-infrastructure take-down. It sounds as though (reports unclear) that the Zelensky government is discouraging people from evacuating Kharkiv.  Why?  Because they will help resist the Russians?  I kinda doubt that’s the reason. More likely is the fear of a few hundred thousand more internal refugees into western Ukraine. That could deal another heavy blow economically. A flow of a few thousand Kharkivites toward Russia might be psychologically blow as well.

I offer this info in response to a couple of interrogatories from the legion of Liberty Bristles stalwarts regarding progress on this site’s development and fighting the war therefrom. The site is advancing full speed ahead, a tout vapor, volle kraft voraus, a toda estupidez. It’s just that ‘full speed’ is not giving the quite the rpms I’d like. As for the two-minute strategery videos that I promise, last month’s launch did not go quite as well as hoped. It turns out we do not have the optimal height of on-air talent.  In order to make up for what may be a lack of charismatic screen presence among the talking heads, I’m learning how to do video editing. It is a bit more of a mental slog, a steeper learning curve than expected.  Nevertheless, I promise to have at least several vids published before Independence Day. As for the War for America GIS Map, I only promise to have it up and running by the end of the year. I really think I’ll beat that, however, and should have a shell mounted and available for public comment before the elections – before my birthday. As for other-than-Liberty Bristles social media entries, I’ve improved slightly and am continuing to do some book advertising on a weekly basis. I assure everyone that all of my efforts will be made without the use of performance enhancing drugs (caffeine excepted, there might be caffeine). Also, my emotional, logistic and grammatical excellence support team is healthy and motivated. Ad Astra Per Awsomepera!

Warfare along the front line in Eastern Ukraine has been un-dramatic. In general, mappers record a slow, methodical advance by Russian Army units in about half a dozen sectors, but no big breakthrough, no uncontrolled route of the Ukrainians. The Ukrainian ground forces have done a competent job keeping the Russians at bay.  The Russians seem to be applying what I call a strategy of aggregate tactics, that is, no huge left hook sort of effort — no theatre scale advance across the steppe kind of thing — rather a composite of smaller actions seeking local weaknesses. The plan would be to overcome Ukrainian capacity to move reserves laterally or to universally maintain supply. Position and maneuver in the aggregate. Maybe it has worked, but Ukrainian coup d’oeil and underground castrametation have seemingly served well. That and cheap drones. The warfare has imposed a high price in materiel and lives on both sides. Now, however, the price paid by the Ukrainian civilian population has skyrocketed (so to speak), as the Russians started to dismantle the whole Ukrainian energy grid. Russian strategy-making always has deception built-in, and I won’t hazard guessing exactly what the deception is. But the basics remain and so the breakthrough is likely to come. Sadly, on the geostrategic level, it looks more and more as though the Russians have teamed up with the Chinese against the USA. A worse result for the USA I cannot imagine. I still predict a future Ukraine much smaller than shown in a 2010 world atlas.