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Notes -
New week is here, it is time for some more random culture (and kinetic) war news, sourced from various parts of internets via xitter.
1/ Middle Eastern issues, and general strategy, tactics, law and customs of war in the current millenium.
About half of US deployable air power is ready for Iran boogaloo 2.0. It would be very symbolic if it began exactly at 4th anniversary of three day special operation to desatanize Ukraine.
How it will start? As massive decapitation strike on enemy elite human capital.
An underrated change in modern warfare is the rise of “man hunting” - targeting of individuals, especially generals and other key personnel.
It is fascinating to see how something that was absolute NO in traditional rules of war "Generals do not take pot shots at each other" became normalized in the rules based order.
First organized crime bosses, then leaders of terrorist/freedom fighter groups like Al Qaeda, Hamas or Hezbollah, and now leaders and VIPs of internationally recognized states as Iran or Venezuela. And not only uniformed personnel, but leading scientists are now fair targets too.
This tactic became prevalent, because the targets are completely unable to reciprocate.
US and Israeli high ranking officers are not so well protected, professional sleeper cells should be able to get at them, but there is no evidence that these cells exist outside of Tom Clancy novels.
The highest ranking Israeli person killed was minister of tourism 25 years ago.
True war of assassins is yet to come.
What would be long term results? Being general is not any more cushy job with spiffy uniform, only people who believe in their cause and are ready to die will strive for such positions. Do the forces of freedom have plan B for case when decapitation strike succeeds, all targets are elliminated, but the enemy still refuses to surrender?
It is important to always have plan B. ready.
2/ More Middle Eastern issues
US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said in Tucker Carlson interview that "it would be fine" if Israel took over all of Middle East.
Angela Price Aggeler, US ambassador to Macedonia, so far hadn't commented whether Macedonians should take back all lands given to their ancestors by Zeus.
3/ Yet more Middle Eastern issues
Israeli ultra-orthodox revived ancient European tradition of burning cats and dogs alive as part of celebration.
Very based and trad pilled.
4/ Woke and also military issues
Ft. Bragg kindergarten teacher who identifies as trans wolf 'Lilith Deathhowl' was fired
It looks like story from 2021, as if celebrations were premature and wokeness hadn't perished yet.
5/ Epstein issues
Epstein before his ultimely demise hid his secrets in storage units. Good news, the whole sordid saga can be prolonged into infinity. At any time, mysterious storage unit can be opened and new Easter eggs rolled out for the eager public.
6/ Now, the thread connecting all issues of the day together
The subway question is again the hottest debate on Xitter right now:
Are homeless drug addicts peeing and pooping in public transport reactionary lumpenproletariat or progressive freedom fighters? Is shitting in New York subway the best way to defeat American imperialism and free Palestine?
Do you happen to have a source for that? I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just curious. To be, that would be fascinating if at some point in the past there was a norm against these sorts of attacks.
I can definitely imagine a norm against attacking senior officers under a banner of parley. But if the lines are drawn and the battle is ready to go, if one side has a sniper who can take out the other side's leader, I would have thought they would take the shot.
For a fictional example, I remember a samurai movie where a senior officer in one army is shot and killed by a sniper while he is playing the flute. As I recall, this wasn't presented as a violation of any kind of norm.
"Traditional" is perhaps putting it a bit strongly, but yes this was a real norm in real warfare. In European Culture. From around 1750-1915. So there are definite book-ends and caveats. The quote OP was referring to is, probably apocryphally, by Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces, Seventh Coalition. Okay the last two are modern terms retroactively applied but the point stands. At Waterloo, 1815, Wellesley was told that his artillery had sighted Napoleon, and that he was within range, requesting permission to fire. Wellesley icily replied that:
Now the only source for this quote is from a book written in 1860, so there's reason to doubt it was ever said. But the fact that such a quote could be applied to a General of the time, and believed or was intended to be believed, probably suggests an existing norm. There's a story from the American Civil War about Grant at the Battle of Chattanooga, where he accidentally rode out beyond the Union pickets and came across the Confederate picket line. The Confederate troops recognized him, and called out a muster of the picket to... present arms and render honors to the commanding general. During the Atlanta Campaign, Confederate General Leonidas Polk was killed by Union artillery, which had been ordered to fire by General William Tecumseh Sherman. In his autobiography, Sherman took great pains to note that he didn't want to kill Polk! He was just trying to scatter the Confederate officers, and appeared to regret Polk's death.
There was, at the time, a feeling that officers and gentlemen (but I repeat myself) were necessary for not just the prosecution of a war, but its conclusion. As the quote from "By Dawn's Early Light" (1990) goes:
The fear of European officers, beyond simple self-preservation, was the idea of giant masses of leaderless armies scouring the countryside, despoiling everything in sight, clashing in titanic battles to no greater purpose than bloody-minded destruction. This fear was, to be clear, not unfounded. Warfare has a long and ugly history of bands of deserters doing just that. Roaming the countryside, raping murdering and pillaging, and occasionally (though rarely) fighting pitched battles to keep possession of a prime piece of looting real-estate. This was especially bad during the Peninsular Campaigns during the Napoleonic Wars, in which bands of deserters sometimes numbered in the hundreds.
Then of course you have to remember that the idea of even being able to target a single man before the proliferation of rifled firearms was functionally non-existent. You could send an assassin to poison him or knife him in his sleep or ambush him along a highway, but that was about it. You couldn't point at one man and say "shoot that guy in particular" from any distance of more than say 150 yards with a longbow, or 50 yards (realistically less) with a musket. It wasn't until rifling became prolific that you actually could target an enemy officer, and by the time European powers clashed in a truly existential struggle again after Napoleon... well... the Somme did not lend itself to Gentlemanly conduct.
The Romans made a custom of using their artillery to target chiefs in particular when in small-scale sieges; thé ninjas were basically assassination specialists, thé historical assassins weren’t terribly mainstream but Islamic sources seem to be more upset about them being alawites than their mode of geopolitics. This is a very European custom driven by the medieval custom of ransoming high value captives- Hundred Years’ War era English armies actually funded themselves by doing this.
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