traditionalRIGHT

The papers are full of reports that the Ukrainians have broken through on their southern front, opening the way for an armored offensive on the operational level.  Such an offensive could seek either to destroy the Russian army by getting between it and the Russian border, or go for a terrain objective such as the coast of the Sea of Azov.  From a maneuver warfare perspective the former is preferable, although I think the latter is more likely.  Aiming for the Sea of Azov is much easier logistically; rolling out behind the whole Russian army leaves Ukraine’s logistics train following in trace with whatever Russian units hold together on its left flank.

However, I question the reports of a Ukrainian breakthrough.  Much more likely is a break-in.  In other words, Ukrainian forces have succeeded in entering the Russian defensive lines – a break-in – but they still face more Russian lines ahead of them.  While that is a step toward opening the door to an operational offensive, it does not do so of itself.

Ukraine learned the hard way a lesson the Germans learned early in World War II: don’t try to make a breakthrough by charging headlong with tanks.  Neither Germany then nor Ukraine now could afford the tank losses, and the effort usually fails anyway.  Use infantry to make the breakthrough and then send in your armored units to turn a tactical success into an operational victory.  I think it likely the Ukrainians are employing the infantry infiltration tactics developed by the German Army in World War I; they still work against an enemy who employs a static, linear defense.

As I noted in previous columns, the Russians’ cordon defense is inherently weak.  It is likely to fail unless it is supported by a strong tactical and operational reserve, with the latter made up of the defender’s best armored units.  I do not know what the Russian Army has left to make up those reserves, but the outcome on the ground depends largely on the answer.

Meanwhile, on the strategic level both the U.S. and NATO are sleepwalking.  There is no apparent effort to address the central threat to the western powers, namely a nuclear war.  If Russia is defeated on the ground, she has no choice but to go nuclear; she cannot afford to lose this war.  If Putin refuses to escalate (the correct decision), he will be replaced by someone who will.  From this perspective, every Ukrainian victory moves us closer to the worst possible outcome, nuclear weapons landing on American and/or European cities.  That in turn can lead to a state collapse in Russia, Europe, and the U.S.

What the West needs most right now is an effort to end the fighting and begin talking with Moscow about peace terms.  That initiative will not come from the Blob, the Washington foreign policy establishment, where any departure from neo-con/neo-lib groupthink is a career ender.  The only potential sources in NATO for a push to end the war are France and Germany.  As usual, Germany’s worst enemy is her own foreign office, which is terrified of crossing Washington.  The French rather enjoy doing that, so Paris is the only hope.  God save us.

3b94d9f1206a533d3e336bd033699de0

No one familiar with the war in the east 1941-45 can fail to see parallels between events then and now.  The similarities are obvious.  Ukraine is smaller than Russia, its army is smaller, and it has less, although better equipment.  The Ukrainian army seems to be following the German way of war, maneuver warfare, or at least trying to.  It does appear to have developed the culture maneuver warfare requires, where results are more important than methods, decision-making is decentralized, initiative is desired more than obedience and it all rests on self rather than imposed discipline.  I find it interesting that a Slavic army seems able to do this; could the Russian army do the same?

At present it certainly cannot.  By 1944, perhaps 1943, the Red Army was equal to the Germans on the operational level.  It was never so on the tactical level, where the culture was strictly top-down.  Today, the Russians seem to have lost their ability on the operational level without improving on the tactical level.  I recall a conversation I had in the 1970s with John Ericson, the author of Road to Stalingrad and Road to Berlin.  He said to me, “Do you want to understand today’s Russian army?  Ask yourself what it was like under Tsar Nicholas I.”

All this would seem to leave Ukraine with good odds of victory.  But as we move from the board situation to specifics, the balance changes.  Having largely failed on the offensive, the Russian army has gone over to the defensive.  Clausewitz argues that the defensive is stronger than the offensive.  More, we know from military history that armies which are ineffective ont he offensive often fight much better on the defensive.  That was true of the Russians facing Army Group South in 1941, and may be true again today.  The Russians appear to have adopted a cordon defense, which is inherently weak, but they have built it in depth.  Much will depend on whether they have strong, mobile operational reserves that can counter-attack and encircle Ukrainian forces that break through; the dissolution of the Wagner Group may have hurt the Russians badly in this respect.

From the Ukrainian perspective, they face one problem that greatly hampered the Wehrmacht and another the Germans did not face.  The first is that they have a hodgepodge of equipment drawn from anywhere and everywhere, or produced in an endless variety of models, each with different parts.  The result is a logistics nightmare.  That in turn feeds into Ukraine’s second problem, one not facing the Wehrmacht: insufficient operational depth.

As I have said before, for Ukraine to win it needs to turn the conflict from a war of attrition to a war of maneuver.  But that requires deep thrusts that encircle masses of Russians.  They don’t have the operational depth to do that because they cannot cross the border into Russia itself.  So they face a Russian defense that has operational depth without that depth being available to the attacker.

I can see only one way around this: break through the Russian defenses at one end and then turn parallel to them in their rear and drive to their other end.  This would be classic German Durchbruch und Aufrollen at the operational level.  With major Ukrainian forces in their rear, the Russian linear defenses might collapse in a rout. 

But here is where Ukraine’s dog’s breakfast of equipment becomes a serious problem.  Through the Aufrollen aspect of the campaign, Ukraine’s supply line would be slow and vulnerable.  It would also have to carry ammunition and spare parts for a wide variety of tanks, air defense units, artillery, etc., meaning it would be enormous.  If Russia’s cordon defense collapses, the Ukrainian supply line could be shortened.  But if it doesn’t, Ukraine’s army could be trapped behind enemy lines without ammunition and spare parts.  That would mean the end of Ukraine.

The Prigozhin putsch was a crack in the Russian dam, the dam being the Russian state.  So far, the dam is holding.  But behind it are the swirling, dirty currents of Fourth Generation war, in the form of all the non-state loyalties and entities that will flood over Europe and Asia if the dam falls.

The proximate cause of Wagner Group’s march on Moscow was an ultimatum to submit to the Russian state.  The June 26 Wall Street Journal reported that:

A key trigger was the June 10 defense ministry order that all volunteer detachments would have to sign contracts with the government by July 1, a move to bring Wagner under formal military control.  Prigozhin refused.

This alone shows how the authority of the Russian state has been undermined.  But the WSJ reported further that:

Prigozhin made his move after state support that once flowed to Wagner was diverted to a new private mercenary group established by state-owned companies such as Gazprom.

So now we see the Russian state is so weak that it must turn, not to the state’s armed forces, but to other mercenary units as alternatives to Wagner.

Then, when major elements of the Wagner group advanced on Moscow, covering about 500 miles with only 100 left between them and the Kremlin, they met almost no opposition from any state security forces.  Neither the police nor the Russian army intervened.  They were met with only a few attacks from the air, to which they responded by shooting down some helicopters and a jet, killing 13 Russian airmen.  And for that, President Putin was constrained to grant them amnesty from prosecution.

President Putin’s popularity within Russia is based on his restoration and maintenance of a strong state after the chaos of the Yeltsin years.  The Prigozhin putsch and the state’s weak response to it have undermined his reputation as a guarantor of order.  The June 26 New York Times quoted Sergei Markov, a Russian political expert and advisor, as saying,

What he (Putin) always took pride in is the solidity of Russian statehood and political stability.  That’s what they loved him for.  And it turns out that it doesn’t exist.

The blob and its NATO counterpart can’t wait for President Putin to fall.  But who or what will replace him?  He has no anointed successor waiting in the wings.  Nor does Russia have a political process that is clear, clean and widely accepted by which to find a new leader.  It is quite possible that if the man who has run Russia for almost a quarter-century falls from power, the succession process will bring chaos.  That, in turn, runs a risk of the RUssian state itself failing.  

I cannot emphasize enough how disastrous a failure of the Russian state would be.  We would face nuclear weapons and delivery systems that can reach America in the hands of, well, who?  The answer is anyone who can grab them.  It is not difficult to imagine a criminal enterprise getting hold of ICBMs, lobbing one minus its warhead at American soil, then telling us to hand over all the gold in Ft. Knox or they would take out one American city every week until we complied.  As a gang, they would have no return address.  The U.S. has no reliable missile defense, despite spending more than 100 billion dollars trying to build one, a scandal for which some people in the Pentagon and in the defense industry should go to jail.

To head off the catastrophe of Russia falling into the sort of stateless chaos we see in Syria or Libya, the U.S. and NATO need to act now to support the RUssian state.  What Russia needs most is a golden bridge over which it can retreat from its botched war in Ukraine.  That means Russia has to get something out of it, at least international recognition that Crimea is Russian and probably also the Donetsk and Luhansk regions held by pro-Russian statelets before February of last year.  Stupidly, Washington has said it will not accept any peace terms rejected by Kiev, which itself cannot agree to the loss of any territory.  This faces Russia with two unpalatable choices, continuation of the war or a humiliating peace.  The last time Russia faced this choice, in 1917, the result was civil war and a Bolshevik takeover.

After the war ends, we need to do what should have been done in 1990 after Communism fell in Russia, namely reintegrate Russia into the Concert of Powers.  This is what Metternich did with France after 1815, and it gave Europe a century of relative peace.  It is late in the game to do this with Russia, but perhaps it is not too late.  Henry Kissinger is the right man for the job, and at just 100 years old, I think he would say yes if asked.  No one knows better than he the price state collapse, like that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, can bring.

As almost everybody knows, a black swan is a new term for an unexpected event that has major consequences.  Like avian black swans, such events are rare.  But when they hit, panic, overreaction, and demands for safety at any price tend to follow.  Think of Wall Street in October of 1929.  

A number of potential black swans have been circling over the last year or so.  One landed: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The consequences of that black swan are still unrolling, but they already include recession in Europe, large refugee flows (refugees from Ukraine are people we should welcome in large numbers), a rising risk of nuclear war, and, if Russia loses, a possible break-up of the Russian Federation and the spread of Fourth Generation war in the vast region between Ukraine and Vladivostok.

But what if black swans mate?  In Ukraine, imagine the consequences if Russia employs nuclear weapons.  What would happen to world markets?  The West has been doing its best to destroy Russia’s economy, without much success.  But Russia could return the favor, with interest, by popping some nukes.  As the possibility of nuclear war, always present in the background since 1950, suddenly became real, it is not hard to imagine a rush for safety in markets of all kinds that would leave only gold and dollars standing, and maybe only gold.

Imagine that happens, and the world’s eyes all turn to the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington.  A story in the June 8 Wall Street Journal illustrates the touching faith in the Fed that was once reserved for pieces of the True Cross.  The article, “Big Influx of T-Bills Threatens Volatility” by Eric Wallerstein, discusses potential market effects from a deluge of Treasury bills soon to be dumped on the market following the raising of the Federal debt limit.  The article states, “But even if banks pull back from short-term funding markets, history suggests Fed officials would quickly extinguish any fires. . . ‘It’s that unintended, unexamined, event that causes a clogging up of the financial plumbing,’ said Joseph Brusuelas, principal and chief economist at RSM US.  ‘That doesn’t mean the doomsayers are right – if a hiccup occurs, the Fed will step in.’

Just a few years ago, when inflation had been low and steady for a decade, the Fed could indeed step in and pump out more liquidity.  But now inflation is running, not at the Fed’s desired 2%, but between 4% and 5%.  If the Fed increases liquidity, it will also increase the rate of inflation.  Imagine the effect on, well, everything if the United States faced even a realistic possibility of hyper-inflation.  That is exactly what can happen when black swans mate, in this case the two birds labeled “worthless dollars” and “nuclear war.”

The Chinese economy is already dealing with at least a gray swan in the form of a collapse in its property market.  Add in the black swan of an attack on Taiwan that fails, coupled with an American distant blockade of raw materials to China.  China’s greatest historic weakness is its own centrifugal tendencies.  Would several catastrophic policy failures by the Chinese Communist Party lead to another break-up of the Chinese state and the rise of new warlords, some with nuclear weapons?

The consequences of black swans mating are potentially so dire that each Great Powers’ leaders, those of the U.S, Russia, and China, should have a joint policy of stability at any price.  Regrettably, at present all three are pursuing adventures at any price.  Those adventures are decoys for black swans, drawing them to land and make themselves at home in ways that suggest mating season is at hand.  Their progeny will be ugly.

Ukraine and its allies have been prepping the propaganda battlefield for months about Kiev’s big spring offensive, or counter-offensive if you prefer.  The ghosts of Kursk have been gathering over the scene, warning about attacks which are predictable and made where the Russians have been able to prepare extensive defensive positions.  This time, will the Leopard tank be what the Tiger Elephant was last time?

That is a small question which leads to a big question: will Ukraine’s offensive be of operational or just tactical significance?  The U. S. military has but a small understanding of the operational level of war, which comes between the tactical and strategic levels and connects the two.  In essence, it is deciding what to do tactically in order to strike as powerfully as possible at an enemy strategic “hinge,” something on which the enemy depends and which, if destroyed, collapses him.

The advice Ukraine seems to be getting from the U.S. military reflects the latter’s failure to grasp the operational level.  Most American recommendations suggest terrain objectives, either in the east toward Donbas or south to break the Russian-occupied corridor connecting the Donbas with Crimea.  But even a successful Ukrainian offensive in these places would mean little strategically.  Attacking toward the Donbas would just take back more Ukrainian land, which Russia could retake again later; shoving contests of this sort reflect attrition warfare, not maneuver warfare.  Attacking south towards the Sea of Azov would seem more promising operationally, but this is an illusion.  Even if Ukraine can break the Russian-held corridor and keep it broken, it will be at most a strategic inconvenience for Russia.  Why?  Because Crimea can easily be supplied by water.  In today’s world, people forget that transportation by water is the most efficient and least expensive way to move goods of any sort.  A Ukrainian offensive to cut Russia’s land links with Crimea would only have strategic effect if Ukraine controlled the Black Sea, which it does not and cannot.

What if we look at Ukraine’s situation from a German, not an American, perspective?  The German way of war focused on the operational level.  Ukraine has a strong German heritage in its approach to war, reflecting the facts that Germany and Austria-Hungary gave Ukraine its independence during World War I and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fought alongside Germans to defend their country and people from Stalin in World War II.  As best I can tell at this remove, Ukraine’s army has been fighting German-style maneuver warfare at the tactical level, which is one reason for its surprising successes.

From the German perspective (Kaiserheer and Wehrmacht, not Bundesheer), Russia has a critical strategic hinge Ukraine can attack.  What is it?  The Wagner Group and some allied Russian mercenary forces.  The performance of the Russian Army has been so poor that only these mercenaries have offensive capability.  With a handful of exceptions, Russian Army units seem to be fortress troops, Stellungsdivisionen who can only be expected to fight when defending, not attacking (and sometimes they cannot do that).  So a suitable operational goal for the coming Ukrainian offensive would be destruction of the Wagner Group.  That could be strategically decisive.

Furthermore, it looks to me as if the Wagner Group is wearing a large “kick me” sign on its back.  How so?  By deploying most of its forces in an effort to encircle Bakhmut.  All Ukraine’s spring offensive has to do is encircle the encirclers.  Moreover, because Wagner is attacking, not defending, it is unlikely to have built extensive defensive fortifications.  It appears to be a ripe plum, ready to be picked off.

Ukraine may already grasp this, which may be why it has been so focused on defending Bakhmut.  The city itself has little strategic significance.  But if Bakhmut is grabbing Wagner Group’s nose so Ukraine’s offensive can kick its tail, then Ukraine’s losses in Bakhmut would be worth it.

This is of course all conjecture.  But if Ukraine’s spring offensive is operational it its objective, then its long range prospects, never good, at least get better.  If it squanders its newly-built forces for mere tactical gains, that will tell us to move as quickly as possible towards a negotiated peace before Ukraine’s position deteriorates further.  So, Kiev, who are you going to listen to, Milley or Manstein?

iphone 14 colors starlight, frederic marq boat, queens bridge murders, gwendolyn rogers obituary, strike estate agents doncaster, how to change lg oven from celsius to fahrenheit, town of cotuit ma assessors database, lobster in negril jamaica, kate fleetwood jaw surgery, stromedy kyle phone number, csea salary schedule 2023, can’t change location of documents folder windows 10, james edward coleman ii dead, relation between yahya and maryam, caliber collision storage fees,Related: wild planet tuna recall, masha odessa catacombs picture, california department of justice bureau of firearms phone number, ranch wedding venues california, detective steve owen underbelly, unfurnished house for rent in st mary jamaica, right buttock twitching superstition, why did dominic keating leave desmond’s, jumbo plastic easter eggs, oregon noise ordinance hours, gold bond cornstarch plus baby powder discontinued, classic car show syon park, watertown ma police scanner, what percentage of ppv do boxers get, how much does gambas al ajillo cost in spain,Related: import qualtrics survey to redcap, currys paypal dispute, frank rothman lawyer biography, dublin rec center membership, brashears funeral home, dream zone half human all pictures, bay county jail inmates mugshots 2021, be proactive activities for middle school, age difference between castle and beckett, http www tiktok com legal report feedback, tokunbo salako family, 366919537c3283778db31edfb038a694 kia dealers selling tellurides at msrp, r plot two histograms side by side ggplot, james baines clipper ship, alan pardew daughters,Related: dr jenny harries obe married, rory and tristan fanfiction, louisburg nc town council, brian regan eye doctor, sonny osborne funeral, speak for yourself cancelled, truck foundations part 2 quizlet, a starch molecule is to glucose as, puff daddy and the family tour 1997 lineup, willie lloyd net worth, how accurate is a 8 digit grid coordinate, 5 letter words with l second to last, the knack film locations, rachelle waterman 2020, can a bobcat kill a dog,Related: carbon county, wy arrests, vintage wooden thread spools, venture capital part time jobs, watertown daily times police blotter, no such export getdiscordroles in resource badger_discord_api, alfred state football coaches, dr joe dispenza qualifications, aer lingus business class a330, funny fake news names, harry pushes child away in harlem, mary ellen trainor cause of death, where is sonya heitshusen now, wolf creek pool membership, dawson county schools board minutes, elephants deli carrot cake recipe,Related: wonka og strain, restaurant argyle street, glasgow, next barrow manager sky bet, betrayal legacy haunt 37, earls court road, london, sammy hagar wife cancer, gotz puppe identification, ron ansin obituary, carpet dye bunnings, st louis city mechanical license, wilson middle school staff, asl to3 prenotazioni vaccino covid, can you put poshmark packages in your mailbox, heathers veronica’s parents, hawkers delray beach reservations,Related: a christmas carol (1984 script), what to wear in sicily in october, car accident in abbotsford yesterday, positive letter to deadbeat father from a mother, what happened to captain fraker on nypd blue, how many steam locomotives are left in the us, 6770 garfield street covid testing, joe ‘d amore net worth, geometry dash texture pack sunix, solar radiation calculator excel, montgomery county business services, how do i check my reader digest subscription, on the town character breakdown, annulation du mariage code civil, military accountability quotes,Related: alexander funeral home recent obituaries, houston youth soccer tournaments, old bars in glendale colorado, southern hills fireworks tulsa, advantages and disadvantages of mean variance analysis, verapamil nosebleeds, significance of animals in mayans mc, twosret accomplishments, thomas holmes obituary, is wake up montana filmed in spokane, nyct terminal container availability, michael rubin attorney paymaster, benji weatherley brother, east fishkill town attorney, ruger vaquero montado,Related: scammed on vinted, modot traffic cameras, lindt chocolate halal or haram, mesh coil vs ceramic coil, td garden loge 16, mccormick v devry university settlement, was dennis farina in the sopranos, stealth cam wildview trail cam, trodaire pronunciation, jake odorizzi parents, hampton yacht club membership fees, pet friendly homes for rent by owner in florida, stephen amell heartland, self service strategy, what rewards do you get in contender league fortnite,Related: famous st paul saints players, fire in fruita, colorado today, are andrea canning and amy robach related, microsoft teams code snippet keyboard shortcut, kevin keegan wife jean, ch3cl atom closest to negative side, why do snakes turn upside down when they die, quail hunting ocala national forest, wyatt james car accident ct, combat warriors private server commands, book pcr test phuket airport, cumberland street car park leicester, the colored museum permutations, claralyn balazs photo, reinforcement learning example matlab code,Related: is jesse tyler ferguson deaf, ark spawn blueprints, master’s seminary board of directors, , jackson county, ms grand jury indictments, hermione game of thrones fanfiction, what color amethyst is most valuable, capital university football, isabelle daza and bongbong marcos, janice nicholls what happened to her, how to get to louisville project zomboid, devil’s johnson strain leafly, how does the creature feel about the cottagers, are peacocks protected in australia, how much is the family fund clothing grant,Related: iva middle school schedule, ford oakville plant shutdown 2022, lansdowne primary academy uniform, is cripple a slur, why is chad played by a woman, best gel like nail polish, who is the girl in the new alexa commercial, rude bear jokes, drew lynch stella cancer, east st louis high school football roster, chicago electric 10” miter saw replacement parts, how to rotate camera in microsoft teams, strobel gunsmithing tools, 3 kings and the emperor in a tarot reading, hillsdale county accident reports,Related: maggie’s farm ant killer safe for pets, agile scrum inspirational quotes, richard t jones weight loss, does tom die in meet my valentine, addrine gaskins barnes, andrew cervantes nuestra familia, baby fussy after chiropractic adjustment, saludos de buenas noches y bendiciones, what happened september 10th, 2001, average edpt score, valerie hill winery entertainment schedule, carlton hotel bournemouth menu, frank fiala sammy gravano, brett goldstein net worth, gordon ryan guard passing part 1 entering seated guard,

bob’s red mill polenta vs cornmeal, ammika harris and chris brown married, gretna high school principal, how did roberto nevilis die, mission cafe fraserburgh, restricted view seats, l’immortale borges testo, ticketmaster mobile ticket no qr code, next level hospitality services lawsuit, what happens if you ignore a detective, 2010 camaro v6 engine removal, jersey shore, pa police news, ocean vuong aubade with burning city analysis, columbian death notices, dazn boxing presenter female,Related: brent garden waste collection dates 2021, 3 bed houses to rent in wellington, telford, notre dame athletics staff directory, second hand wedding dresses christchurch, that enough aria don’t be blind nyreen, stewart’s iced coffee recipe, tom petty walls harmonica, christopher duffley biological parents, what is a colonial animal the pearl, chicago police exam dates, justin mcquown bio, country club of charleston membership initiation fee, las plaquetas bajas pueden causar la muerte, st john the baptist parish mugshots, ,

Over the years I’ve accumulated a large collection of plaques given to me by various military units and schools I have visited.  All but one reside in the attic.  The exception, which has pride of place in the imperial Library, was presented to me by the Marine Corps’ Scout/Sniper School.  Why is it special to me?  Because they didn’t buy it, they made it. 

That typified the Scout/Sniper School and program.  Run entirely by Staff NCOs, it trained Marines to a far higher standard than do other Marine schools for infantry.  That’s not just my opinion.  In Afghanistan the Taliban called the Scout/Snipers, “The Marines who are well trained.”  Those Marines were the closest thing the Corps had to a true light or Jaeger infantry.

Headquarters, Marine Corps just killed the school, the program, and the MOs.

The rationale is that the Scout/Snipers will be replaced with “scouts” who will mostly be drone operators.  Once again, the Corps is being led into quicksand by the foxfire of “hi-tech,” copying our other armed services instead of offering an alternative to them.

This decision is bad on several levels.  First,while drones offer the great advantage of being able to see over the next hill, they do not replace human eyes on the situation at eye level.  The view from above and the view on the ground are different and can show different things.  A scout on the ground can also employ more senses than his eyes; ears and noses can also reveal activities the enemy is trying to conceal.  Example: if a year from now a Russian scout smells jet fuel, he can know his unit is facing Ukrainian M1 Abrams tanks.

Supposedly, the new school to be established for training scouts, mostly in how to operate drones, will also train them in ground scouting.  If that is the case, why did the Corps not just refocus the existing and very effective Scout/Sniper School on less sniping and more scouting?  Because it will be starting from square one, the new scouting school will take a long time to reach the level of the old Scout/Sniper School, if it ever does.  No armed service has so many effective schools that it can afford to disband one with little thought or care.  But that’s what HQMC has done.  In effect, the Marine Corps has sniped itself. 

The immediate driver here, I suspect, is that DOD has drone fever, which means money for any new program that features drones.  Again, drones offer some important advantages.  But those advantages are in degree, not in kind.  Since aerial scouting developed in World War I – I’m proud to say the first case of aerial control of gunfire was by the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Navy – manned aircraft have given ground commanders that all-important look over the next hill.  Radio contact between the plane and the ground commander can make that information immediate.  If all you have for air recon is F-35s, then yes, you need drones.  But if your recon aircraft is something between a World War L “C” type and an OV-10, then drones are less necessary and you can get the advantage of human eyes on the situation rather than just cameras.  Drones currently have the important advantage of being cheaper, but just as with manned aircraft, their price and complexity will increase because that will justify higher budgets.

There may be something else going on here.  Headquarters, Marine Corps has been stuffing women into every nook and cranny, including places like the infantry where they will be large net disadvantages.  The only type of war women can fight is hi-tech, push-button war.  While the number of women who could graduate from the Scout/Sniper School would have been small, women can operate drones as well as men.  Is the womanizing of the Marine Corps bringing yet another distortion?

In any case, the Scout/Sniper School is gone, and with it the creation of Marines who are well trained.  When the enemy gives one of your own units or commanders a compliment, you can safely believe it is true.

This column is dedicated to Marine Scout/Sniper Ron Danielowski, a friend who died at age 54 from a massive heart attack.  In everything he did in life, he always hit the mark.

Last week, my favorite comic strip, Dilbert, disappeared from my morning paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  In its place was simply a gray box.  Had the Plain Dealer dealt plainly, it would have stamped “Censored” on the box.  Instead, it offered a joke better than those in the banned strip, saying the censorship was not an example of “cancel culture.”  Big Brother himself could not have told a bigger lie.

Other newspapers across the country joined in the auto-da-fe.  Showing the totalitarian impulse behind cultural Marxism, the ideology that demands “Political Correctness” in all things, the cancellations had nothing to do with the strip itself.  Rather, the slaughter was justified by saying the strip’s author, Scott Adams, had said something “racist.”

Here it is useful to remember that words have meaning.  The meaning of words such as “racist” and “sexist,” according to the people who created them, is that the thing itself, in this case race, is a “construct.”  A construct is a castle in the air, something with no basis in reality.  The building blocks of reality, in contrast, are facts.  That makes facts the opposite of a construct, which in turn means that something cannot be both a construct and a fact.  So to test whether a statement is “racist” or “sexist,” we need only ask whether it is factual or not.

I have not seen the whole of Scott Adams’ remarks.  But most of the howling about them seems to focus on two elements.  According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Adams, commenting on a recent Rasmussen Poll that found a small majority of blacks agreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white, said, 

If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people . . . that’s a hate group. . . I don’t want to have anything to do with them.  And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. . . because there is no fixing this.

In sum, the two elements Mr. Adams is in trouble for are that half of all blacks constitute a “hate group” and whites should avoid blacks.

So what are the facts?  I have not seen the Rasmussen Poll, but it is a respected polling firm.  No news account has disputed Mr. Adam’s claim that a small majority of blacks said whites are OK.  But Mr. Scott infers that the poll means a large minority of blacks are hostile to whites as whites.  Is that valid?

Clearly, a non-trivial percentage of American blacks are hostile to whites simply because they are white.  This is largely a product of cultural Marxism, which keeps telling blacks that all their problems are the fault of whites.  This both feeds black hostility to whites and tells blacks that they cannot help themselves; improving their situation must be done by whites.  The antidote to this is best found in the writings of Booker T. Washington, who argued, contrary to cultural Marxism (itself a product of whites), that blacks can and should depend on their own efforts to rise.  In sum, Mr. Adams’ assertion that a large minority of blacks are hostile to whites as whites is true to some extent, but the poll does not reliably define the size of the minority.

But are these blacks a “hate group?”  Here,Mr. Adams is using the word “group” differently from its usual definition.  In the phrase “hate group,” “group” normally means an organization.  There are certainly black organizations that are hostile to whites and therefore qualify as hate groups, just as those organizations have white counterparts.  But Mr. Adams does seem to be stretching the word “group” beyond its usual meaning, which makes his assertion open to question.

Finally, what about Mr. Adams’ advice to white to avoid blacks?  One powerful fact supports that advice, namely that the black rate of violent crime is twelve times the white rate.  Even though the majority of victims of black crime are also black, black violent crime is a real danger to whites, and everyone in his right mind seeks to avoid danger.  So the facts support Mr. Adams here.

But. . . as a conservative, I reject cultural Marxism’s demand that we see everyone as a member of one or another identity group.  I prefer to judge people as individuals, according to their works.  Black violent crime is almost all the product of young black males.  As the black mayor of Cleveland said recently, 90% of the gun violence in our city is a black male aged 19-29 shooting another black male of the same age group.  Do I avoid young black males?  Absolutely.  Guess what?  So do other blacks.

But I am happy to mix and socialize with older black people, including the black couple who come to my church and the family of black Jehovah’s Witnesses who live in my suburb (all Jehovah’s Witnesses are pacifists).  If I find myself in a crowd of blacks who are coming out of church, I am as comfortable as I am in a crowd of white church-goers.  In other words, I try to discriminate between good black people and possibly dangerous black people, just as I do with whites.  And my discrimination is based on facts.

The crime against facts and reason here is not committed by Scott Adams, even though some of his statements may stretch some facts.  The crime is the banning of my and most people’s favorite comic strip, Dilbert, for statements that never appeared in the strip.  That crime is committed by the cultural Marxists and the moral cowards afraid to challenge them in editorial rooms across America.  Collectively, they are the pointy-haired boss who killed Dilbert.