Friends, U.S. and Israeli military power is making short work of the mighty Iranian Navy, pictured above back when it was afloat. Indeed, our military operations are proving extremely successful, but it's the political piece of the puzzle that counts: the formation of an organized, viable opposition movement that can take control of the country and install a new government. Of course, Rome wasn't built in a day... Neither was Persepolis.
In other news, France is extending its nuclear umbrella, ambiguously but adamantly, over several of its European allies, in a gesture that underlines, as per usual, its pusillanimity. It's unclear what France is promising to do, or if indeed it would even have the gumption to use nukes to defend itself, and it's extra unclear why this declaration matters when ALL the relevant countries are in NATO, and thus already enjoy a total security guarantee from every NATO member state, including the United States (and France). Of course, to be fair to the French, NATO's strength and integrity, over the years, has been buttressed by the fact that no one has ever dared challenge it. The same could be said for France's nuclear deterrent as well. What we know for sure is that France, and every European country, refuses to deploy even conventional military forces, in miniscule amounts, to defend the people of Ukraine, who they regard as part and parcel of "the West", even if they lack membership in the EU or NATO. Bottom line: the Europeans' record of fighting (and dying) for their sovereignty and their freedom, at least since 1945, doesn't bear much scrutiny.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4zlnezrl7o
Finally, almost every poll, except this one, agrees that the dastardly Dems have the edge going into the midterms. The margins matter a great deal, however. If the Dems squeak by with a slim popular vote majority in the House, they might fail to capture the majority of seats. If they win by 5 points or more, then even the Republican Senate could be in jeopardy. Will Iran play a role in determining the outcome? It's way too early to tell.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Persepolis ehh? Perhaps we need only , with the cooperation of the Greeks, lure the Persians back to the plains of Marathon. Failing that, Macedonian intervention on our side would no doubt bring immediate Persian capitulation. It's interesting that the highly "adventurous" and indiscriminate Iranian missile barrage has not included Greece. I mean, 7th century AD or 4th century BC? Whatevah!
ReplyDeleteI've read that Iran can use small furtive vessels to lay mines in the Strait. No doubt our Navy is prepared for that. But even those clumsy Iranian missiles might have a good chance of hitting a big tanker. Those Persians have a few subs too; I think they are conventional and noisy. I'll look it up. These days even the destroyer types like we just wrecked have the fire power to mess up much larger ships. No full size American carrier has been sunk in action since 1942 and the ones we have now incorporate the lessons learned from the kamikaze onslaught. One of them is the use of armored flight decks, one of which I resided directly under for 4 years.
Whatevah!
the second "whatevah" was not intended. Jack
ReplyDeleteDr. Wady from Jack: Ehhh, vive Le Gloire Francais ! (pardon moi my ignorantly presumptuous parle vous).Oh who would think of gainsaying France's demonstrated puissance?
ReplyDeleteLets get out of Nato and make such concerns relatively academic for us. The French and Brit nukes should give Ivan pause about embarking on the Polish plains. Would France dither if it happened? Has France renounced DeGualle's "force de frappe", which I understand he declared to be subject only to French command? Maybe only a Red Army approach to the Rhine might quicken France's resolve?
Or could it be that France's move is meant as a "warning" of sorts to us?!
I think though that the Brits showed their traditional feistiness when the jack booted Argentines violated their sovereignty.
DeGaulle rather , my bad. Jack
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Oh boy, the touchy feelies are in high rage at the militaristic aggressiveness displayed by our country. One thing is for sure, they are not opposed to the use of military power per se. After all, they celebrated and hastened to lend aid and comfort to the ehh, "inconsiderate" North Vietnamese and VC in their forceful efforts. They blasted high decibel rock music outside the White House and interfered mightily with President Bush's sleep when he was directing our forces against hellhound Saddam during Desert Storm. I'm sure Saddam perceived in their heartfelt efforts his expected reprise of aid and comfort from our domestic America haters. He had heard about Vietnam, even in his voluptuary enjoyment of graphic torture in his palaces. Might have done him some good since our "nonjudgemental" President backed off from sending him back to hell, after having brilliantly commanded Desert Storm.
ReplyDeleteTwo things our "American" far left traitors never erase from their elephantine memories : How they screwed us, our military and the tragically thus enslaved Vietnamese people AND ,how they "got" a President during Watergate. They live ever ready to reprise these gleeful triumphs. They are back out there now, hoping yet again for another telling blow against their despised country, working aid and comfort for the beleaguered 7th century style oppressors of a thus thoroughly disenchanted heretic Iranian people. But they are up against Donald Trump now, an American leader whose resolve is unlike anything they have smugly faced before!
I should have said: " . . . an American leader whose resolve and common sense is unlike anything they have faced before!" Jack
ReplyDeleteJack, the Iranians may soon be reduced to the sort of weapons they wielded at Marathon, and that's their main problem. All their fancy Soviet-style hardware, such as it is, is either defecting to the resistance or being steadily degraded by our airstrikes. Whatever capacity they have to endanger shipping in the Gulf won't last a week, if you ask me...
ReplyDeleteJack, France's "force de frappe" is still going strong! Well, maybe "strong" isn't the right word... It's still crying out for attention, anyway. I think you're right that British and French nukes would be more than enough to deter Russia from attacking any country in Europe, IF the Russians believed that the Brits and Frogs were willing to use them, which is about as big an "if" as I've ever iffed.
Pretty sad, Jack, that the Left would root for the mullahs over Trump -- heck, over the USA! As you've pointed out on so many occasions, their sympathy for Islamic fundamentalists wouldn't survive a five-minute interlude with a single one of them.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: A Persian warship has been sunk with a torpedo by an American sub. I fully expect the far left to bleat "How barbaric of our forces to engage is such infamous WWII cruelty. Our sub should have been constrained by rules of engagement requiring it to warn the Iranian ship of imminent destruction so that the crew could leave the ship in good order" Our sailors' consequent
ReplyDeletesafety would of course be of tertiary concern to these America haters
I endured a 5 minute excerpt of the "testimony " Mrs. Clinton granted to a House Committee. At one point she expectorated words to this effect: "Oh you can hold me in contempt until the cows come home . . . ! Chances are it was the most honest thing she said that day. Her withering contempt for her" insolent" inquisitors was quite apparent. How very lucky our country was in 2016 when we were delivered from the prospect of this imperious woman's rule ! Thanks again Donald Trump!
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Yeah, the Persians' subs are noisy diesel electric Russian Kilo class. Our advanced antisub warfare technology can probably detect them anywhere in our operating area abreast Iran.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: I'd suggest we could have a lot more confidence in traditional British resolve once PM Farage is seated.
ReplyDeleteRAY TO JACK
DeleteI don't count on the Brits for anything, or the Euro-Weenies for that matter. The Iran operation is U.S.-Israel, and that should take care of it, nicely. That "traditional British resolve" disappeared after World War Two. Farage can be seated as PM, or he can be seated on a toilet, and it won't make any difference. Sorry Jack, but that empire is gone.
RAY TO JACK
DeleteOne more thing on the Brits, and please understand that I am not taking you to task for being an Anglophile, but I have to say this, in case you did not remember.
When World War 2 started in 1939, the British Mandate of Palestine severely restricted European Jewish immigration to the mandate. The Brits did not want Jews and Arabs "getting into it more" with each other. This policy continued all through the war while the Jews were being exterminated in Europe.
In addition, the Brits didn't do much to restrict the leader of Muslim
Arabs in Mandate Palestine (Haj Amin El Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem), from meeting with SS Chief Heindrich Himmler, and assisting him in organizing Bosnian Muslims into foreign SS units to hunt down and kill Balkan Jews (and Serbs).
The above policy speaks for itself, and in fact, up to 1948 when the state of Israel was created, the Brits further did everything they could to restrict Jewish immigration.
No apologies Jack, but I have no great love for the Brits, and I'm not even Jewish. I know you are pro-Israel, as am I, but the Brits didn't do much to help establish the State of Israel.
No hard feelings on this, Okay? Again, I am not taking you to task for being an Anglophile.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Perhaps the Iranians are preparing "stealth" 4th century war galleys to deploy(but not to Salamis, Cyprus maybe) They certainly have an ample selection of galley slaves serving terms for heresy. Might sound improbable but then the N. Koreans used biplanes to try to bollox up our jet fighters!
ReplyDelete4th century BC that is. (I know you know that). Jack
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: OK, an Iranian warship was sunk by an American sub launched torpedo, i.e. an aimed underwater missile. It apparently took at least 87 crew lives. Would the "American" "aid and comfort to the enemy" crowd have us believe that Iranian missiles are obedient to rules of engagement strictly enjoining them against the taking of more than 86 heretic lives in their free wheeling flights?!
ReplyDeleteWe do not celebrate the deaths of dutiful Iranian sailors. But gee, their regime is always mouthing off about "death to America and Israel"; what, of comfortable old age? They have been doing that for ever so long too. Since that's probably not their desired cause of death for us we must (gasp) assume they mean killing, which is an understood custom in wartime. Well, it is justified defensive war which has taken the lives of those Iranian sailors. "What goes around comes" back "around" , yes and in doing so takes, in war, the lives of many who are doing their loyal duty. It is the fanatically motivated , dictatorial neomedieval mullahs, who appear to hate everyone , including recently 30,000 of their subjects, who are culpable for those sailors' deaths. What , other than that insane surrender of completely bigoted minds to to so easily aroused antipathy accounts for the present Iranian assault on virtually all their neighbors?
But far be it for the reflexive"American" America haters to direct their well organized public excoriation to those who really deserve it and to accede to the , for them painful reality, that it was this or nuclear warheads on intercontinental missiles (perhaps not even of Iranian making) "aimed "even at American cities dominated by dimbulbed far left radical Islam "buddies".
Ray from Jack: No need to apologize. You have made a plausible argument and supported it with empirical evidence couched in creditable expression. Yes, Grand Mufti Haj Amin al Husseini was a Nazi admiring monster who would gladly have imported the Holocaust to the Middle East, had a triumphant Germany been free to export it. And I know of and second your description of the SS units recruited in the Balkans to savage native Jews all the more. The inadequately describable hellish Jew hatred of the Nazis and their avatars, - Al Husseini and the Iranian mullahs -survives in the latter as a detested, atavistic remnant of an age old EVIL. I rejoice that Americans and Israelis together are joined in a perhaps final onslaught on this ancient abomination.
ReplyDeleteIn considering British policy toward Palestine during and after WWII I can only offer my conviction that great nations must of necessity be judged on their on balance histories. I think It was one of Britain's most regrettable episodes . I have expressed to you already that I could not gainsay any Irish person who disagrees with my belief that the world has benefitted from British civilization and its extension (though the age of colonialism is over). Accordingly , your misgivings about the Brits ring considerable and plausible to me.
Britain was near desperation in the early part of the war and perhaps , under a PM Churchill who starkly demonstrated his willingness to do ANYTHING to save his country ( eg. firing on units of the French fleet), concluded that it could not deal with possible domestic chaos in the Middle East. That area was already under harrowing threat of German investment. But that a Britain which encouraged Jewish immigration into the former Ottoman Empire after WWI with the Balfour Declaration should have persisted in a stance which had it at bitter guerrilla war with Jews who had suffered outrageously and unforgivably, was a dark and tragic thing.
I still love Great Britain as I do our grievously 19th century flawed country but well supported doubts about them both must, in my opinion , be accepted for freely conducted
historical consideration. In my opinion, both countries are, on balance, consequently accredited by such scrutiny.
RAY TO JACK
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to answer my comments to you. Just want you to know that I still like The British better than the rest of the Euro-Weenies, although I suppose The British are careful to distance themselves from the continentals. And I still admire Churchill. Anyway, thanks for responding to my broadside in a gracious manner.
Speaking of The Brits, did you ever see a TV series titled "Island At War"? If you saw it, disregard. If not, its a drama about The German invasion of The Channel Islands in WW2. Guess you could say, in a way, The Germans did invade Great Britain, since those islands are part of Great Britain. It was not well received by Brit audiences, which if you watch it you will understand.