Is this another demonstration of America's imperial military might? Visual shock and awe? A political flex for Joe Biden?
War involving Islamic theology is no game. Russia has responded by commencing, over the waters of the Black Sea, around-the-clock rotations of MiG-31 interceptors armed with Kinzhal hypersonic anti-ship missiles, whose operational range extends to 2000 km.
Colonel Douglas MacGregor points out that warfare today is nothing like showing off military might prior to WWI or even in the Iraq War:
"The weapons have changed. The arsenal of rockets and missiles in the region is enormous. People are quoting numbers in the realm of a hundred and thirty thousand rockets and missiles from Hezbollah alone. We don’t even need to mention others in the region. That kind of arsenal is enough in and of itself to destroy much of Israel.
"Then you have a problem with Hamas and Hezbollah and the rest of the region, and that is the rest of the region is as sick of Israel as much of the world and Europe is sick of us. And what I mean by that is that we are on the threshold of total war.
"That's what no one seems to understand. If the Israelis march into Gaza—which I think would be a very unrewarding exercise for them but, nevertheless, they seem determined to do it—they will not only lose soldiers, they will fail to root out the thousands of Hamas fighters that are there. They'll get some, but they won't get them all. They will not improve their position at all with the people of Hamas or the people living on the so -called West Bank. And the rest of the region is prepared to go to war. Stop and think about it. It’s not just Iran. In fact, Iran has militias that can attack us and anyone who works with us in Iraq and Syria. That’s one part of the problem. The Iranians are not going to try to lob theater ballistic missiles at Israel because the Israelis have said they would use a nuclear weapon, but Turkey is different. And the Turks have an unhappy record with the Israelis.
"Just a few years ago, Turkey tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Israelis boarded their ship, killed some of their citizens, and turned back the aid. This kind of thing did not cultivate support and friendliness in Turkey. And remember, Mr. Erdogan is the de facto leading military power in the Sunni Muslim world.
"Finally, you have the Pakistanis who are very close to the Turks and have made it abundantly clear that the Turks will receive nuclear warheads and other capabilities from them if they need them in order to deter the Israelis from using a nuclear weapon."
"And finally, the Turks have the largest air forces and armies in the region. The Turks can put two million men in the field in the space of a little over a month. And the Turks are ferocious fighters.
"Now, all of this spells doom for the Israelis if they launch this attack on Gaza. What I just described is an unwinnable fight. Even the air power from the United States that we could commit is not going to be enough."
Map: relative range of new missile ordnance
“The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.”
-- Otto von Bismarck.
Zelenskyy can insult the President to his face in the Oval Office, and all Trump does is keep inviting him back. Relying on false intel about Russian casualties, the Russian economy, and the Russian polity, Trump keeps trying self-defeating, self-sabotaging escalatory tactics with Russia, playing Russian roulette but mistaking it for American poker.
Trump threatens 500% sanctions on Russian-oil purchasing nations today, threatens long-range missiles into Moscow that Russia could think are nuclear-armed, and sends arms to Ukraine laundered through NATO. All this does is enrage the Russian populace and get us closer to triggering a world war between two nuclear powers. As a Russian once advised me: “we’d rather eat dirt than surrender.” Russian history proves it, whether in dealing with the Mongols, Napoleon or the Nazis. Just revisit the history of how the people of St. Petersburg held out during what they called The Great War.
At the same time, Russia holds escalatory dominance...
Satanic social engineers have tried to starve the world of spirituality for 400 years (since the satanic “Enlightenment”) in order to turn us all into skeptical materialists, constantly analyzing ourselves, worrying, and diagnosing ourselves so that we lose sight completely of the Kingdom of Heaven and the job we have as servants. They want us to either abandon faith, or cling to the empty shell of “religion” instead of serving the Living God with fear and trembling. That way, once they reveal their parlor tricks, we’re supposed to be blown away by the acknowledgment that something more is out there.
Fear creates an altered state of consciousness, and that’s a key to Satan’s...game. Psychedelic drugs, brain chips, subsonic frequencies, DNA modification, hoaxes, cult rituals, everything to make us abandon a calm, rational, biblical worldview. It is a Christian’s duty to be unimpressed with this world, no matter how insane it gets.
-- Terry Wolfe