Yes. When was the last time that the American military truly used epic brutality against its enemies, of the kind that Genghis Khan employed? Or that the Romans used against Carthage?

Probably the last time was Sherman's March to the Sea, or the various wars against the Indian tribes. And that was a LONG time ago.

Furthermore – and this is not merely hair-splitting – I stated that the leadership doesn't have a clue how to fight a truly pitiless war. I stand by that statement because it is true. If it were not, both the civilian leadership in Washington and the military leadership in the Puzzle Palace would have realised around about, oh, year 5 of a 20-year-long military occupation of a foreign country, that their strategy wasn't working.

I did not say that the military does not know how to fight a truly harsh and brutal war. I'm well aware of the fact that a number of theorists and practitioners of warfare, at the level of LTC or below in the Army and Marines, understand full well the flaws in fashionable doctrines like "COIN" and "hearts and minds".

The problem is that those practitioners don't seem to last too long in the modern military. And I am sorry to see this, because I do believe that the US military is home to some of the best soldiers in the world – but they aren't being allowed to do what they are supposed to do, which is to win wars.

RE "I never wrote or said that the US military doesn't know how to fight with brutality. I simply wrote that it's not the American way of war."

I was referring to this statement:

"the American military and civilian leadership has no clue how to fight a truly ruthless, brutal – and therefore successful – war against enemies of their civilisation."

"… if the USMC or Army ever actually fought with that level of controlled savagery, the soldiers and commanders involved would be crucified by the media and hanged by the court of public opinion …"

Then the solution presents itself: the next major weapons platform implementation should move with such stealth and such speed that the media and public sentiment refuse to identify it as a form of warfare at all.

It's not as if this hasn't been seen before: the "Spanish Flu" of 1918 serves as a great example of the principle at work.

Even today, nobody's really sure whether it was a military camp "accident of convenience" in Kansas, something imported from China, the result of horrid British military hygiene in a French camp, and so forth.

This of course means that the emergent biowarfare platform of 1918 actually out-manoeuvred both the print media and public sentiment at the time.

Of course, once you see the pattern as a possibility, you're more likely to see the pattern as an actuality should it appear … or does exposure to information actually confer immunity to ignorance?

Politics by other means, warfare by other means — what follows next from Clausewitz?

Ultimately people choose to rely on naming these things by other means, because they can't countenance a monstrous possibility as an even more monstrous actuality.

Or, for that matter, a more monstrous Actualité, pardon my French. 🙂

What is the Washington Post but a print and electronic media regiment garrisoned in Washington DC?

And the caissons go rolling along.

When Donaldus Magnus said the Media was the enemy, he was not speaking in euphemisms or allegory. they ARE our enemy, and have been the boot on our face for a very long time.

Yes indeed. They are the enemy and the God-Emperor is the first President in a very, very long time – perhaps ever – to recognise them as such, call them by their names, and attack them on their own ground. The media are rapidly losing that war, but in their own hubris and folly, they don't recognise it yet.

These are very good points. Kennan's "Long Telegram" laid out a doctrine of "containment", but the core reality of the USSR's economic weakness was not noticed by anyone pretty much until Ronald Reagan came along. And he didn't need FOBs to destroy the evil empire – he used a four-pronged multi-layered strategy encompassing military reforms, economic pressure, political isolation, and paramilitary funding around the world to do it instead.

And in Reagan's War, Kennan's theory of containment didn't apply.

That same theory does not apply with fundamentalist Islam either. It can't be contained. It can only be submitted to, or destroyed outright.

Maintaining a large international network of FOBs in countries that are no longer under any kind of direct threat of attack from either Russia or China is sheer lunacy – and extremely expensive lunacy at that.

Or just drop a few containers of sex robots

It's Afghanistan. They would have to be sex-goats )).

steal all of their most fertile and beautiful women

A) They don't have any;
B) Even if they DO have any, it's impossible to tell under the burqas;
C) Recall "goats", above;

It would probably be much easier without politics in the way, but at the moment that is wishful thinking as well.

That reminds me of the old saying… "There are few problems in the world that cannot be solved through liberal application of napalm".

There's only one way to win a war. Crush the enemy's will to fight.

It doesn't matter if anyone KNOWS how to win a war. Because the Humanists own the media, and if anyone DARES crush an enemy's will to fight, the Media immediately crushes OUR will to fight. The Media forced us to lose in Vietnam, and the Media prevents us from smashing the enemies to our south.

When Donaldus Magnus said the Media was the enemy, he was not speaking in euphemisms or allegory. they ARE our enemy, and have been the boot on our face for a very long time.

You are, of course, wrong in thinking that the military doesn't know HOW to fight with ruthless brutality

I never wrote or said that the US military doesn't know how to fight with brutality. I simply wrote that it's not the American way of war.

I know that American warfighters and strategists understand the Laws of War very well. One of them, LTC Tom Kratman, reads this blog and has written extensively on how to apply those laws with maximum effect to actually win wars. The problem is that, if the USMC or Army ever actually fought with that level of controlled savagery, the soldiers and commanders involved would be crucified by the media and hanged by the court of public opinion – simply for obeying ancient battlefield rules concerning proportionality, lethality, and treatment of civilians versus enemy spies.

You are, of course, wrong in thinking that the military doesn't know HOW to fight with ruthless brutality (books about the Soviets in Afghanistan were on the pre-deployment reading list). We simply choose not to.

It's almost as if someone suggested to Trump that he read Chalmers Johnson's books on the "empire of forward operating bases" …

That's really what the American Empire amounts to these days: an empire of forward operating bases, several hundred of them in fact.

The roots of this American base empire come from the notion of projecting power in order to reduce the influence of "capitalist encirclement" by the socialist world, something referred to by Stalin in the 1920s and then made a part of American policy via George Kennan's "long telegram" in 1946.

But what has changed since then?

"… if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so …"

Indeed, the Russians still behave this way, and so do several other world powers, but this behaviour does not apply as a general rule.

And so rolling up with a few billion dollars worth of forward operating base so you may proceed to intimidate any would-be adversaries with your faith that you would rarely engage them with shows of force?

It's a breed of stupidity in the form of Zahavi's handicap principle, but with the plumage of barracks, air fields, and mobile surface-to-air missile regiments.

The Cold War is over, but America's been fighting The War On Terror as if it were a new escalation of the Cold War with a different set of adversaries, one that magically happens to behave like the previous set of adversaries.

What Trump understands is that you don't need an easily targeted empire of forward operating bases in order to counter an adversary that you may well be forced to destroy, and that his transition of forces away from the forward operating base empire puts forces more at the ready when it comes to dealing with these types of adversaries.

Kennan's "containment theory" doesn't work when you no longer intend to contain anything, but instead to extinguish the worst so that the others may learn à la Voltaire.

"… if situations are properly handled there need be no prestige-engaging showdowns …"

Because the new adversaries understand the ideation of operations that came from Kennan, they understand that the best way to engage their enemies with Cold War hangovers is to show them for the unprestigious drunks they really are.

Thus they are completely unsurprised that what once worked on the Soviets amazingly continues to work on the Americans today.

But Kennan's "long telegram" has a lot of wisdom that still applies today.

His observations about the use of "democratic-progressive" elements?

They're still absolutely spot-on, and the "projections of power" take a newer form through the so-called "mainstream media" which maintains a continued barrage of "democratic progressivism" through what it likes to call "the news".

Kennan couldn't have known it, but some of what he described could also apply to "spheres of influence" during the 2020s as the logic of deploying forward operating bases eventually circles back to America itself.

What is CNN but an electronic media mobile infantry unit operating out of Atlanta?