OK, Babylon Bee...

... are funny. I mean it.  

U.S. Tanks In Ukraine Already Destroyed After Being Easily Recognized By Their Rainbow Camouflage "These tanks are state of the art, boasting the latest and greatest in firepower, mobility, and of course LGBTQ-affirming camouflage," said Biden's Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Like this:

OK, jokes aside. But many people do get anxious about the situation and the anxiety is strategic, not tactical. 80 or 81 promised tanks for 404 will change absolutely nothing but many naturally are worried about real WW III which evolves into the full blown nuclear exchange. Even Irina Alksnis, writing about the West getting caught in its own trap, notes:

На что пойдет Запад, чтобы удержать, продлить привычный статус-кво? Есть подозрение, что на все.Он выбрал инструментом своего спасения военную победу над Россией. Сейчас Запад катится по выбранной колее и все сильнее нервничает, потому что события разворачиваются не так, как он ждал, планировал и хотел. Уже в скором времени ему придется отвечать на вопрос, готов ли он к встрече лицом к лицу на украинском поле боя вермахта, то есть, простите, бундесвера, и других вооруженных сил НАТО с российской армией.

Translation: What will the West do to keep and prolong the usual status quo? There is a suspicion that everything. It chose a military victory over Russia as an instrument of its salvation. Now the West is rolling along the chosen track and is getting more and more nervous, because events are not unfolding the way they expected, planned and wanted. Soon he will have to answer the question of whether he is ready for a face-to-face meeting on the Ukrainian battlefield of the Wehrmacht, that is, excuse me, the Bundeswehr, and other NATO armed forces with the Russian army.

 

I have the answer, which I spelled out for many months now--NATO doesn't have a required force to go in and fight Russia conventionally without sustaining catastrophic losses and, thus, defeat. The challenges of even assembling such a force are so immense that the only tool the US (the rest of NATO are merely lapdogs) has left at its disposal is nuclear arsenal. But we discussed this before, but even most possessed hawks in the US have a desire to live. Is there serious "underground" in the US among military, intel and other relevant communities who keep an eye on those homicidal maniacs, just in case? I don't know, but at least some people in Pentagon have an idea, unlike ti is the case with civilian "strategists" abusing their sinecures in State Department, think-tankdom and other decision making and "influencer" orgs. 

 

As the intermediate results of SMO and 404 debacle for the combined West have shown, we can now confidently state that West and its military cannot do serious strategic and operational planning. Evidently, explaining to many graduates of the USMA at West Point a colossal difference in terms of scale, scope and severity between Patton's 3rd Army Lorraine Campaign and, say, tank battles on the Eastern Front is a tall order. But I spoke on the issue of military schools of thought and how they are formed on very many occasions. We also can confidently state that Western intelligence on a strategic level is simply inadequate, to put it mildly. After all, it is manned by people who are products of primarily humanities field of higher education in the West and we all know what an academic disaster and fraud it is today. So, no wonder we are talking about the same level of miscalculation as was done by Napoleon, Hitler and his planners and now, naturally, the same song sang into the ears of uncultured and unsophisticated US "specialists" by Kiev Regime's propagandists, such as this, from Jamestown Foundation.

Colossus With Feet of Clay

So, when looking at all this today and taking it all in, ine begins to suspect that even the brightest of the brightest from the West's "intellectual" class, including very many from the top brass have no clue about the meaning of the big words they use. Evidently, the meaning of strategy, operational art, operational planning, combined arms, echeloning, calculation of required force, political and military objectives et al, are things most in the West simply have no grasp of. It is a terrifying discovery until one gets everything into proper perspective. Recall this again:

Washington Post in a rare, albeit politically sanctioned, feat of actual journalism provided us with an astonishing insight into military, diplomatic, intelligence and economic incompetence of Washington.

The Lessons Learned interviews contradict years of public statements by presidents, generals and diplomats. The interviews make clear that officials issued rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hid unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. Several of those interviewed described explicit efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public and a culture of willful ignorance, where bad news and critiques were unwelcome.  

We are talking about the country stuck in the middle ages and its mujaheddin armed with AK-47s, RPG-7s and IEDs. How these losers in Washington thought they can take on the nuclear, military and economic superpower defies imagination. Washington is afflicted with learning disability, forget plain simple incompetence across the board. Does this sound familiar?

Dozens of U.S. and Afghan officials told interviewers that many of the U.S. policies and initiatives — from training Afghan forces to fighting the thriving opium trade — were destined to fail because they were based on flawed assumptions about a country they didn’t understand. 

Washington doesn't have government and academic mechanisms for understanding. Those, always subpar, have been completely hollowed out in the last 20 years by shysters from Military-Industrial Complex, think-tanks and grievance industry. We see the results today. It is not that Washington operates in the Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO) paradigm, while the model is correct. Nope, the model itself is garbage because is built around the only thing Western elites are capable of and that is PR. You know, in layman's lingo--bullshit.

The Phrase of a Day, or a Week.

Pepe Escobar wrote an excellent piece on Afghanistan and made a laconic but precise comment, which I personally name the Phrase of  a Day.  

On the Atlanticist front, the spectacle of non-stop self-recrimination will consume the Beltway for ages.  

Read the whole thing, this is how real journalism is done. 

They Don't Get It, As Always.

Reuters posts the news of the US trying to support Al-Qae..hm, sorry, Turkey by giving it "ammunition" and immediately runs into problems of a cognitive character.

The United States weighed in Tuesday (March 3) on a deepening standoff between Turkey and Russia in northwestern Syria. Saying it was ready to give Turkey the ammunition and military equipment it needs in the fight for Idlib, the last swathe of rebel-held territory. Russia, which supports Bashar al-Assad's forces, and Turkey, which supports the rebels, both say they hope to avoid a direct clash.

First, let's be very clear on that: Western media do support Islamic terrorism and people who they call "rebels" are the most radical jihadists and it takes a person of the scale of Tulsi Gabbard to call it as it is:

The corporate media needs to stop referring to Al-Qaeda and their affiliated groups in Idlib as ‘rebels’ in a deceptive effort to make them seem like freedom fighters. I and thousands of Americans enlisted after Al-Qaeda’s attack on 9/11. The media and the Trump administration’s continued labelling of these terrorists as ‘rebels’ is a disgrace and dishonor for all our men and women in uniform and our entire country.

Yes, Tulsi, I agree, but where did you see people of honor in, say, Department of State? Not to mention US MSM media whores. Sorry, actual whores, for insulting you by comparing you to journous. Here are some views from the insider in the so called Intelligence Community in the US--a rather grim picture. But this is not my point here, US always loved its jihadist SOBs and after formalization of a humiliating American defeat in Afghanistan, some big honchos, such as Mr. Jeffery, have an increasing urge, caused by acute butt-hurt, and military ignorance (what's new) to do anything at all to get back at those nasty Russkies. And here IS the point: Turkey and Russia are NOT in standoff. Not at all. Because if there would have been a standoff, a real one, between Russia and Turkey, the picture would look very differently. Obviously, so called ambassador Jeffrey doesn't understand those details and peculiarities of such a standoff, should it realistically exist, after all, he wanted desperately to supply Turkey with Patriot complexes, and one would expect sheer lunacy from petulant childish ignoramuses populating contemporary US establishment, but not to such a degree of ignorance. 

If there would have been a real standoff between Turkey and Russia, the first thing Turkey would learn almost immediately would be about appearance of some "new" formations on the front-lines and those formations would be those of Kurds. After Turkey would have closed straits, allegedly after declaring war on Russia--legal matter, nothing more--there would be immediately some very serious repercussions for Turkey starting from shutting down the construction of nuclear power station in Akkuyu, shutting down of all exports to Russia, immediate loss in excess of $3.5 billion in tourism and who knows what Russia would define as force majeure for Turkstream. You know, war and shit. Obviously Russians would have to start hauling their military cargo from St.Peterburg, around Europe, but one has got to do what one has got to do. But it would be military field where this standoff would have some interesting consequences. Let's start with what turned out to be already a very revealing fact. While, should SAA have been left alone to face Turkey,  Turkish Army probably would have won eventually, it turned out that they are not THAT good. I mean, of course, Turkish Army is large and all, and it has some shiny toys but dirty business of the combined arms operations, especially large operations, requires a little bit more than that, especially when SAA has Russians (and Iran) on its side. 

1. Evidently only since yesterday Turkey started to experience effects of ECM (EW--Electronic Warfare) with its drones dropping like flies, when not shot down by SAA AD. Do Turks even understand that in case of real standoff ALL their communications will be shut down? Unlike this Jeffery-dude, I think they do, actually, and as Semyon Bagdasarov stated couple of days ago "are terrified of war with Russia". No, not publicly, of course, but among people in Turkey who actually understand that casualties they sustained last week in Idlib could go up one order of magnitude.

2. A "trip wire" event similar to treacherous shooting down of SU-24 in 2015, this time around may mean shutting down any signal emitting equipment INSIDE Turkey thus rendering its C3 blind and deaf. Will it initiate Article 4 protocol? I don't think so.

3. First salvo of Russian stand-off weapons would be enough to incapacitate any Turkish Command and Control structure WITHIN Syria (say Idlib) and WILL disrupt operations not only of some brigade-size units but more on the corps level. 

4. In the end, it will be a free hunt of Russian VKS inside Syria for whatever Turkey will move there. Whatever Turkey will move there will be without air cover, because anything that enters Syria's air space will be shot down. 

Of course, these simple truths are beyond comprehension of most Turks who simply do not care about these details but people in Turkey who need to know, they know. Behind cringe-worthy boasting, bordering on lunacy (yes, 5, no 10 thousand SAA personnel and 3 million tanks have been annihilated) lies a torturous facing of the reality of Turkish Army sustaining heavy casualties and loss of equipment which is the main reason why Erdogan flies to Moscow trying to arrange whatever he will be able to arrange there. Mr. Jeffrey knows this and it hurts, badly. Especially since there is no actual standoff between Turkey and Russia, only between Syria and Turkey and even that didn't go well for Sultan Erdogan. The rest are merely details. This is not to mention this whole NATO "business", which, at this stage is not even of the main concern. Military facts on the ground are simple, no matter how much Turkey's leadership boasts of its military successes, it is plainly clear that Syria's territory is a forbidden zone for Turkey and there will be no compromises anymore on the so loved by the US establishment (and Turkey) Al-Qaeda derivative (I lost count of their titles) "humanitarian jihadists" who either give up or must be, and will be, annihilated together with their handlers, no matter their nationality or political affiliations. In related news, Taliban is set to "clear" Afghanistan, one way or another, from American "stooges" and who knows where it will all go after that.  

On This And That.

Colonel Lang posted today a good summary of events in Syria, which may help fight off all kinds of overly excitable readers about what is going on in Idlib now. I want to mention, however, a fact of those "swarms" of Turkish drones, which, according to some very impressionable people now almost control the skies over Idlib--they don't. I am not going to delve here into the explanation of how AD works under such conditions as are in Idlib now, but, unlike Turkish propaganda and bat-shit crazy statements, the only success of those drones was one munition carrying truck (the video is shown), one armored vehicle and one motorcycle. You can watch the report (in Russian) here. Now to Colonel Lang's piece. 

To the west nearly all of Idlib Governorate south of the M-4 east-west highway is within artillery fire of the advancing SAA and at the northern end of the al-Ghaab Plain the spearheads are apparently within 6 miles of the M-4.  Assuming that the M-4 is the Turkish Main Supply Route (MSR) out of Hatay Province to the west, an SAA interdiction of that major road will imperil the Turkish led force around  Saraqib.  The Turks will then either withdraw from Saraqib or attack any SAA blockage of  the M-4 or both. In classic militaryspeak, the Turks would be said to have been "turned out" of their position at Saraqib by the SAA move onto the M-4 to the west.  The resulting engagement would be a desperate fight.  In the midst of this situation the Russian Aerospace expeditionary force would be heavily engaged.  

So, if anyone wants to add anything to this NOT based on a click bait headlines or Turkish propaganda video-compilations, or statements about killing hourly thousands of SAA's soldiers or destroying hundreds of targets, you are welcome. Other than that, I can only express my condolences to people who, based on some few-seconds long videos, experience hysterics and panic. As per this: 

James Jeffrey, the U.S. special representative for Syria engagement, has been pressing the Defense Department to send Patriot missile defense batteries to Turkey to help it repel the Syrian government’s assault in Syria's Idlib province, the people said. But Pentagon officials are worried about the global ramifications of a move they see as reckless. 

This kind of posture IS EXPECTED from such creature as Jeffrey, especially against the background of today's US officially losing a war in Afghanistan by signing a "peace deal" with Taliban.  

U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban’s chief negotiator and one of its founders, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, signed the agreement in Doha after more than a year of on-off formal talks. Some in the room broke out in whoops, cheers and shouts of "God is Great" at the signing. The several dozen members of the Taliban exited the room after the ceremony beaming. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also attended the ceremony, but did not sign the "Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan," under which the Taliban pledged to enter into peace talks with Afghan government officials, representatives of the opposition, and members of civil society on March 10.

Yes, Taliban was also asked: please, pretty-pretty please, be nice boys and do not immediately overthrow Kabul government once we leave. I am sure Taliban, who in accordance to statements of US military and especially US "diplomats" was constantly on the verge of being defeated in the last 19 years and should not exist by now at all, obliged and promised by crossing, ah, I mean whatever they did, their hearts and hoping to die, that they will absolutely follow the letter of this "peace deal". After all, America's great "diplomat" and strategic "thinker" Mike Pompeo assured all of us that: 

Speaking to reporters, Pompeo said the United States was "realistic" about the deal it signed, but was "seizing the best opportunity for peace in a generation." He said that while he was still angry about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. will not "squander" what its soldiers "have won through blood, sweat and tears."

It would have been widely appreciated if Pompeo would disclose what exactly US soldiers "won" in Afghanistan? Try as I might, I cannot identify a single thing which was "won" there and, quite to the contrary, I can easily identify a growing number of threats which become actualized for the region as the result of the United States sustaining a rather humiliating defeat in Afghanistan. It is clear that the mood in Department of State now is not very good, hence a bunch of lunatic statements, including in "support" of Turkey, which faces a rather calamitous future near Syria because Turkey can now officially be identified as a sponsor of terrorism at least de facto. Turkey, realistically, needs a truce badly, because the going, as was expected, proved to be not what was expected by Turks, and  Turkey's Foreign Minister Cavusoglu today tried to downplay the situation when stating that Russia supports Damascus but "doesn't seem to be targeting us" (in Russian). For now, I may add. A lot will be decided between Putin and Erdogan and my gut feeling is that this time around Erdogan will have to face some very unpleasant realities. 

G-8 Russian Poll.

Russian daily Vzglyad positions itself as a business daily. It does, indeed, attract many comments from all kinds of public ranging from uber-liberal loonies to normal people to armies of mostly Ukrainian trolls. I use Vzglyad merely as news aggregator and, once in a while, source of either decent or, opposite, down right stupid opinion pieces. In all, I don't take it too seriously. Yet, Vzglyad does provide good feel for public opinion in Russia (granted very roughly approximate) and here is one from two days ago regarding possible Russia's return to G-7, or G-8, if one wishes. 

25, 576 people were polled on-line and 92.3% of those responded negatively to the question if Russia should return to Great Eight. Here are slightly updated results--nothing changed. To interpret these results is really easy for anyone who knows Russia not from pages of NYT or WaPo, or Moscow Times, or Kommersant, but knows Russia's and Russian people. Russia doesn't want to deal with the so called West and doesn't see herself as a part of it, she sees her future in Eurasia. Modern West lost any value for overwhelming majority of Russians and this is not the heat of the moment poll--it is a well defined long term trend which has massive geopolitical ramifications. Why? How about this little piece of news: Russia and China signed new package of documents on military cooperation, which allowed Sergei Shoigu to call it (in Russian) a new stage of Russian-Chinese cooperation. This somehow coincided with Igor Korotchenko, who is one of Russia's main insiders on defense, stating three days ago at Solovyov's show, that Russia should extend her anti-missile umbrella over China (in Russian).

So, something is up and who knows what we will observe in coming months. Chinese meanwhile are moving people and hardware to Russia for Center 2019 military exercise. These are very big maneuvers and they also are designed to address some issues with inevitable exit of the United States from Afghanistan and a shitstorm which will happen there once US leaves. Somebody needs to clean up the mess, once the Taliban scourge starts pouring over the borders. I wish Zbig was still alive to see the fruits of his policies. 

    

Not Really The News, Actually.

Just the confirmation of what everyone with a half-brain knew all along: 

The Saudi-funded spread of Wahhabism began as a result of Western countries asking Riyadh to help counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told the Washington Post.Speaking to the paper, bin Salman said that Saudi Arabia's Western allies urged the country to invest in mosques and madrassas overseas during the Cold War, in an effort to prevent encroachment in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union.

Well, duh. What this "encroachment" really was no one knows but sure, let's call it that. Islamic radicalization of Fergana Valley and spread of Islamic militancy all along Soviet Middle Asian borders outside and inside in 1970s, obviously, do not count. Now, let Europe and, ahem, Minnesota (among few other places in US) enjoy the rich fruits of their activity in promoting Wahhabism and all those wonderful offsprings such as Al Qaeda, ISIS and Al Nusra, just to name a few. I think it is a healthy and long overdue process in reevaluating Soviet War in Afghanistan once one takes a look at the results of West's promoting the most radical, militant versions of Islamic religion knowing damn well that Islam, in the words of late Sam Huntington, "has bloody borders". Russia sure as hell knows this first hand.