Larry On David Petraeus.

Frankly speaking, by now somebody should have told David Petraeues that he embarrasses not only himself, which is fine, but that his rants reflect extremely poorly on the US Army. As Larry notes, Petraeus was...

... interviewed by the Georgian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and confirms, by virtue of his responses, that he is either one of the dumbest men to ever pin on four stars or one of the most intellectually dishonest. Perhaps both.

After that Larry proceeds to methodically demolish Petraeus' "arguments", which even a lieutenant fresh from a combined arms academy would simply reject as pure military amateurism. And Larry is spot on when he points out: 

I have two words for General Dave — Iraq, Afghanistan. What major victories did he achieve in those two theaters? The answer is none. And he was not up against entrenched forces, with artillery and HIMARS, and tanks, and he failed to defeat guerrilla forces armed with assault rifles and an occasional mortar. He has never been in charge of a battle against forces using combined arms. This is just one more example of his arrogance and lack of critical thinking skills. I am not shocked by the shallowness and ignorance of Petraeus. It is those qualities that enabled him to earn four stars through his skilled practice in the art of sycophancy. And I assume that some of his proteges, who are gifted with the same degree of incompetence, are in command positions ready to lead U.S. forces into disaster.

Exactly! No American military leader has been in real combined arms war for ages. Beating the crap from backward, bought out and demoralized Saddam's Army in 2003 is NOT a combined arms, it is beating the crap from grossly, if not grotesquely, inferior opponent--nothing more, nothing less. But even here we know the result. Read Larry's excellent piece at his blog.

Which brings us to this. The American Thinker magazine noted six days ago:  

The West’s sanctions, the most severe ever imposed on a country, were meant to teach Russia the lesson that “aggression does not pay,” in the words of NATO’s Stoltenberg.  The ferocity of the sanctions, the subsequent cancellation of Russian artists and athletes in the West, and expectation of an end of the Russian Federation by political and military elites such as Former Commanding General of the US Army in Europe, General Ben Hodges, shocked Russia out of its complacency, and led it to learn very different lessons: That the West was determined to destroy it, and that its existence required it to arm itself to the teeth and end its economic interdependence with the West. The sanctions on Russia awoke the sleeping giant that had been Russia, and the West may soon be faced with the consequences.

Meanwhile, Li Shangfu is having a great visit in Russia, all against the background of Russia's Pacific Fleet showing the support for this visit. Yes, both events are coordinated, so stay tuned for the results of this visit, which, I suspect, will be extremely fruitful for both sides. Do not forget--the US cannot fight China on land, it is rather risible proposition due to its total... impossibility. But naval affairs in the region will be heating up and there is opinion out there that soon Taiwan will have issues with its chip products due to China closing the gap very fast. This has major geostrategic ramifications. Excellent Russian Sinologist Ruslan Karmanov thinks that the US is very interested in getting Japan (and ROK) into the actual shooting war with China. 10 years ago it would have been 50/50--today, no chance. As Chinese curse goes--let you live in interesting times. We sure as hell do.