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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
Many Republicans pride themselves on their chess-playing acumen. Dems write a tax increase bill, GOP players write one that doesn't increase taxes, and say, "We'll just checkmate these revolutionaries and WIN this one." Sometimes they do. But Since the Goldwater days, they've been whipped 90 percent of the time. So they study chess tactics harder.
In next three years, the Dems are rolling out an army of tanks. First mission: roll over every chess board and destroy them, leaving the elephants to wander around aimlessly, not knowing how to do politics.
How do we know this? Zoom calls over the last year. The Dems are done with chess.
Kunstler: "Democratic Party election ninja Marc Elias knocked himself out for two years registering new voters by the bale, as in manufacturing them. . . illegal aliens. . . homeless junkies. . . straight-up fictitious persons. . . in order to flood the zone with fake mail-in ballots, that is, in-your-face fraud. And the reason they did it was so ...
"No man is big enough to run this great Republic. There never has been one. Such domination was never intended. Tranquillity, stability, dependability—all are assured in party sponsorship. and we mean to renew the assurances which were rended in the cataclysmal war.”
Warren Harding, July 1920.
