Liberty Bristles

All writing is a Rorschach blot to one degree or another. Less Rorschachiness is better for things like military strategy-making (that is, things with immediate material consequence). By Rorschachy, I mean a writing that is vague enough to allow the reader a good deal of personal interpretation based on the reader’s own predispositions, life experiences and other reading. A technical manual on how to operate a radio needs to be unrorschacky. A writing on military strategy isn’t a radio manual, but it should be closer to that (as to its Rorschackiness) than it is to political poetry. Clausewitz is way too Rorschacky for me. All that wonderous triangle stuff is dopey.

‘Willy OAM’ follows the Ukraine War.  Diligent, sincere, moral, a student of warfare. I wish he were not so abused by PoliSci and neocon thought. He likes to cite Clausewitz and Kissinger. He has also taken to making plaintive comments about international law, the laws of war and all that. Anyhow, because my legion of followers knows that I’m a lawyer and total expert, here is my take.

Wife and I live in relatively remote little neighborhood out in the woods. It’s grown from about twelve to twenty homes within the last three or four years. All of the home buyers signed a ‘deed covenant’ that had neighborhood requirements (home size, no renters, no steel sheds, etc.) that all of you would recognize as HOA rules. Thing is, the original developer had been the HOA administrator. He and family fell out of the picture several years ago after a variety of personal and financial events. There has been little enforcement energy since, and no neighborhood unity regarding the covenants. Those supposed rules have been broken by so many new builders and owners, and in so many ways without an effective response, that the deed covenants are all but a dead letter. They’re an interesting wish list. I kind of wish they had been obeyed and I’m simultaneously glad I don’t have to worry about them anymore myself.

The outcome of our November elections will influence the course of the war in eastern Europe, and the war will influence the outcome of our elections. I suspect that within the next six weeks, Russian advances and Ukrainian losses could paint another picture of American strategic error. As that would likely depress Democrat prospects, we are likely to be treated to a lot of not much coverage about the war from the major propaganda media. Or we might be bombarded by some straight-up lies about how things are going on the battlefield. Sad. It looks now that the whole “Kursk Invasion” gambit was a Zelensky play to create the opposite impression — a feeling of victory in time to help the Democrats before the elections. That gamble has evidently gone south. I could be wrong. Maybe the Ukrainian regime has some amazing 4-D chess move up its sleeve. Nah.

First Item: Julie Kelly says (Kamala Harris’ Likely Pick for Attorney General: Matthew Graves (declassified.live) that Kamala will likely pick Matthew Graves as her Attorney General; Second Item: Leading Democrat Kelley Robinson says people should “reimagine freedom and democracy beyond the Founders’ little piece of paper.” (Fox News). Third Item: The California legislature might approve lending illegal aliens $150 grand to cover down payments. (Fox News) These are just a few of the latest examples of the same irritating thing, right?! What moves me to comment on it today is the habit of Fox News to analyze such amazing things – to go into how the Democrat policy preferences or attitudes are wrong, and why they would be detrimental if manifested. All that sort of analyzing comes across as dopiness or red-herring shiftiness — maybe guileless negligence, but as likely intentional failure to address what should be the lede. I would like to think, hope, wish that these disturbing news items are just election year errors, mistakes, screw-ups on the part of silly Democrats. Nice if they were to help expose who the Democrats really are and drive more and more sane people away from the party. It is a comforting thought.

My other thought is not hopeful, it’s horrible. The other thought is that Democrats across the country are now just shoving the truth in our faces. The items are expressions of dominance. They are telling us that the leftist revolution is full upon us, they know the election fix is in, and that there is no need for them to hide anything. Not long ago we would have dismissed it all out-of-hand as absurd, disgusting, impossible – now they sneer and boast. The Overton Window has been blown out. We are to take it and like it, or not, doesn’t matter. This is the most frightening election season ever.

Some folk anticipated a big airstrike against targets inside Ukraine for Saturday the 23rd of August, that being a sort of independence celebration day (the ‘sort of’ is deserved, BTW). The attack came Sunday (yesterday), and as of this post, I have not read any real damage assessments. My guess is that the Ukrainian energy grid took another body blow, but that nothing much has changed. More significant is the Ukrainian regime’s public worrying about armored forces massing in southern Belarus. Maybe those forces are Russian? Dunno, but the Ukrainian Kursk offensive may or may not be stalled at this time. Meanwhile, the Russians’ grinding advance from the east continues. I think the Ukrainians have done well on the ground to this point but may have made their last-gasp play in Kursk. OK, so here is my prediction: By November, the Russians will have taken Pokrovsk and will continue eastward against decreasingly effective opposition. The Ukrainian regime will not have solved its manpower problem, that is, will not be able to change the huge imbalance in warfighting capacities. Donald Trump will win the election in the United States. The lame-duck regime in Washington will do what it can to delay the Ukrainian regime’s demise, but seeing the future more clearly, will be trying to establish golden parachutes for select regime members, trying to destroy evidence, killing witnesses, and maybe laying the psychological-political foundation for a big virtuous Ukrainian rebuild money cow. Within three months after President Trump’s inauguration, the warfare in Ukraine will be over, the future borders of Ukraine clarified. Ukraine will be smaller, not in NATO, not in the EU, and not getting much US money. It will still have Odessa, however, and probably Kharkiv. Anyone?

The Israeli Defense Forces just struck what early news reports claim to be “thousands” of targets to preempt a Hezbollah aerial attack against Israel. News about the engagement has been sparse. That absence of reports and opinions all by itself is worrisome. Tim Walz could release a queef in the library and it’d be all over the news, but a thousand-target airstrike? Anyhow, an item at America First Report suggests that the Israeli operation might have delayed a much larger conflagration across the Mideast. I haven’t the insight or data to grade the quality of that take, but it sure seems as though the Persian mullahs and their underlings were knee capped. I hope the Israelis can reload quickly and well. If America First Report is correct, the Israelis just doused one variety of possible October surprise.

After a brief summer pause, we’re gonna get back on track here at Liberty Bristles. Let’s start with the war in Ukraine. This month the Ukrainian regime made a bold move. It attacked into Russia with some of its best units. It’s still too early to say much about its prospects. Information has been sparse about losses, and information about the front lines has been variable and questionable. Still, the Russians continue to advance in the east, if slowly, and I don’t think the Kursk offensive has changed the overall strategic picture much.  More than likely, the Ukrainian regime only sped its demise with its Kursk maneuver. We’ll probably know within a couple of weeks. One interesting highlight – the Russian advance in one area has run up against a series of coal mines, which seems to be daunting as a defensive structure. The mappers haven’t so stated, but I bet this is because of deep interconnecting tunnels. A vast inverted castle?

Now seems like a good time to take a chance and to make a prediction. This is a Sunday afternoon, and the newsfeeds say that Iran could launch some kind of a direct military attack on Israel as early as tomorrow. The Democrat Party saddled itself with a dim candidate and are probably busy calculating whether their cheat machine can produce enough fake votes to carry her. They gotta be dancing around painfully trying to figure out how to seem to support Israel and to not support Israel at the same time. The Democrats cannot allow Easy-K to come away looking like a push-over. They also don’t want to lose their pro-Islamist base, or do they want to lose what remains of their progressive Jewish support. Tough position to be in. Not sure who any of that helps more, the Israelites or the Mullahs. The latter might try taking out some Israeli boat, tourist concentration, embassy or something else away from Israel, perhaps as a diversion or perhaps as the principal revenge. They might launch a rocket or a bunch of them, but I bet they are not ready technically or psychologically to fail at a nuke attempt just yet. As for Hezbollah chiefs, it makes sense that they stand up and implement some part of what they have been preparing for years. As for them, however, their leadership might be concentrating on how to stay alive. Which brings us to a point about military strategic theorizing, my being the greatest living military strategy theorist and all. (The Israelis have neither been studying my work nor feeding me guidance, but it just as well could have been.)  I’ve never been an enthusiastic participant in military debates about the “center of gravity.” Let’s not say that no such center exists or that it isn’t a worthy thing to consider and look for. It is profitable, however, especially in the context of multiform warfare or all-forms-of-struggle struggles, to highlight and address the enemy mens rea — which might be a mind of technical management, inspiration and encouragement, intelligence, logistical wherewithal — whatever. The mens rea of an enemy organization might reside inside the skull of one man or the corporate skulls of the nucleus of a party vanguard, or of a bishopric, military staff — whatever. The mens rea skulls might be unique, irreplaceable and hidebound or might be the product of a sophisticated training, selection and normalized replacement process – whatever. Whatever, the mens rea should be targeted if it can be reached. What does it matter how many Persians exist, how many hostile Moslem countries there are, how many enemy tanks the Israelis might have to face or how feckless a US administration can be? Well, OK, all that matters a lot, but if the Israelis can show they can range and hurt their enemies’ mens rea, said cogitatin’ matter will think twice, think poorly, think too late, think again. Some Israeli citizens will suffer this week, but their government made the right play.

The other day, Dima (The Military Summary Channel), took a stab at defining the war in Ukraine. He proposed that if we were to label 2023 as the year of the Greatest Ukrainian (failed) Counteroffensive, that maybe 2024 will become known as the year of the F-16, or the year of the Patriot defense system, or maybe the year of F-16 versus Mig 31. He frames the war as having become a competition over air superiority, that air superiority is the defining aspect. Maybe, I dunno. I’m wondering about the maps he and other mappers use. They have a zillion little black lines on them. I haven’t figured out who-all made those lines, but they reflect (with unknown inaccuracy) the locations of field fortifications. Some of the fortifications are visible as trenches in overhead photography, most of are not. Dima very often talks about the process of ‘digging in” and consolidating positions by digging in deeper. All the digging is in response to what-all is flying around above. The ultimate score remains on the ground level, though. Either people can walk around on the surface doing useful things or they cannot. I like my own theorizing; go figure. This war features a lot of aspects into which I invested lots of words in my longer writing. The underground plane of war one of them. “Air superiority” to include drones and helicopters. Large machines. All that. The many aspects are held together by reconsidering risk distances and aggregate tactics on a broad scale. The war in Ukraine highlights incessant localized efforts to outflank and envelope. Observers highlight artillery one day, FPV drones the next, field fortifications the next, prospects of air-to air combat, then the use of larger building-busting munitions, and on. So maybe go back to the maps and look at the little black lines. They seem a bit chaotic. No Maginot Line. But besides vertical depth, they have horizontal depth, at least in eastern Ukraine. They doubtless follow topographic factors, some geologic factors, some past human diggings including urban developments, and other influence we don’t think of, but the web they produce is a huge defensive structure. It has helped the Ukrainians slow down the Russians, just as a similar web helped the Russians defeat the Greatest Ukrainian Counteroffensive in 2023. The Russians enjoy great superiority in materiel of all kinds, but ground is ground and distance is distance. Go look at the ground defenses. The Russians grind on, strategy and tactics, tactics and strategy. They have made those words cooperate, not compete. They are slowly breaching the web of Ukrainian ground fortifications, a web that is not continuous west. When they do breach that complex wall, the little negotiating power Ukrainians have left will go up poof. The best time to negotiate is right now. Which brings me to JD Vance. I’m happy with the selection. He strikes me as a way, way better natural strategist than a Blinken, Noland, Stoltenberg, or…oooof, an Austin. Vance apparently intuits, correctly, that if the “West” would like Ukrainian nationals to have a homeland, it will have to be much smaller than was Soviet Ukraine, or not be at all. There is no need for it join NATO — the need for NATO itself a real question.

On the Long Prompts page, I’ll put a conversation I recently had with ChatGPT about the press. I’m pretty sure, after donning a small hat over my little Constitutional Scholar brain thing, that “of the press” refers to a category of freedom that we all enjoy as individuals. It does not recognize some collective identity of humans. The later (recognition of “the press” as a group of persons) did not congeal jurisprudentially until well into the 20^th Century, and then just barely. I bring this up because I was idly drawn to a headline about ‘Citizen Journalism,’ and ended up at the Wikipedia page on said notion. Sad that we have the term Citizen Journalist, as it serves to highlight the existence of a supposedly professional press. Heck, it’s sad that we have the term ‘journalist.” I’m a fan of The Citizen Free Press aggregator site, as I’m sure many of you are. “Citizen.” “Free.”  “Press.”  Nice. Journalist? Not so nice. In order to exercise the freedoms to explore, discover, question, and opine (especially about things political), nobody but nobody needs to have heard anything in any course with “journalism” in its title. Nobody at CNN or who works for the AP or UPI, or any of those organizations, has any enhanced freedom of speech or of the press beyond what you and I have. What they enjoy is a strength in resources that gained them some additional access to government. In this Internet age, it is no longer needed that government give favored access to specific organizations due to the latter having greater broadcast capacity on some electromagnetic bandwidths. Our access to the Internet enables us to delete “press” as a category of people with any special jurisprudential standing at all. We best do that. Too many organizations have turned the words “press” and “journalist” into synonyms for “propaganda” and “partisan” — anti-American at that.