Friday updates

Israel, Ukraine, a new Speaker of the House of Representatives, etc.

Happy Friday to the TAT family,

I certainly hope that your week has been as you wished and that the weekend welcomes you warmly. It has been a very busy week here and all across the world. There is plenty to talk about and I will try to get to the most important, regarding national security threats. After writing furiously the past week or so, mostly regarding the war in Gaza, a couple of family health matters took precedence this week. All going smoothly now, so let’s catch up a bit.

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First, Israel, and related issues.

Most media still covers the humanitarian crisis above all things. This does a significant injustice to the victims of Hamas’ evil and barbaric attack on Israeli civilians and to those who must root out the evil of Hamas. Every day, I wake up to this and have written extensively on the harm that the media, UN and others are doing to the dishonest divisiveness, that has perpetuated this conflict for decades. Let’s talk about this for a moment:

1. Yes, all possible must be done, to protect civilians on both sides of this conflict. This includes aid and extreme care in war-fighting. Obviously, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and many other extremist entities, don’t give a damn about Israeli civilians or their people, whom they rob aid from, ad nauseam.

2. Israel does both, along with primarily the western world, when it comes to delivering aid to the Palestinian people.

   

   Depending on the sources, all credible, support for the Palestinian people, has largely been provided by the US and Western world.

3. Urban warfare is brutal and Israel will sacrifice far too many of their soldiers in ridding the nation of this perpetual threat. It must be done.

4. For information from a professional military perspective regarding Urban combat, I highly recommend the extraordinary work done by John Spencer at West Point’s, Modern Warfare Institute. John is their Chair of Urban Warfare Studies.

5. Any nation would be derelict in their responsibilities, if they did not respond by removing the ability of severe threats, with the potential to stage the type of attacks perpetrated by Hamas. Terrorism can never be fully eliminated, but destroying the bulk of their fighters and infrastructure, plus due diligence afterwards, is the right and moral answer.

   

6. More to come on those immoral puppeteers pulling the strings of Hamas, IJ/ Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah etc. This means Putin, Xi and the evil theocrats in Tehran.

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Russia has pointed the evil Iranian theocrats at Israel, largely as a payback to Bibi Netanyahu for not toeing his line on Ukraine. Bibi has long courted Russian markets for a variety of products, including technology. Nations like India and the now expanding BRICS block do bow to Putin’s coercion and refuse to speak against Putin’s genocidal invasion of his sovereign Ukrainian neighbors. For the record, this is just one of the UN’s dysfunctional attributes that lead to their inability to take many of the steps necessary to curtail the very thing that they were created to do… drive stability and peace.

Don’t get me wrong, the overwhelming majority of the nations and programs at the UN are doing great work towards ethical goals. The structure of power within the UN is often self-defeating though and leaves serial aggressors/ thugs like Putin and Xi with far too much veto power and coercive influence.

Putin has been using conflicts and instability, that they have caused to occur, as a diversion from his counter-offensive in Ukraine and also, as a diversion from his ghastly failures in Ukraine. He is an indicted war criminal, and still committing war crimes as I type this. Most experts consider Putin’s war as a cultural genocide, overflowing with beastly atrocities on par with the Nazi regime during WW II.

There is no limit to what Putin will do to innocent civilians to achieve what he wishes and this includes towards the Russian people at home in Mother-Russia. Again, with most media scampering to the next “if it bleeds, it leads” system of reporting, it is almost as if they are incapable of focusing their attention on more than one tragedy at a time. Sure, even within what I consider credible media, front pages are dominated by one thing at a time, leaving the overwhelming suffering all around the world and in similar circumstances, barely known to anyone but people in my line of work.

CrisisGroup.org.

As you can see from the map above, the primary thugs in most of the shaded areas are Russia and China.

China is now the top dog in the new, Axis of Evil or as I have named them, “the beastly brutes of barbarianism.”

Both China and Russia share the same public statements about the situation in Gaza and announced support for a truce and two-state solution. This statement is not worth the paper that it’s written on. It has been almost exclusively the West that has been working towards this for decades, not Russia and China. Both have a hand in the current conflict for their own selfish purposes. As with the popular saying; “if their lips are moving, they are lying.” For the record, China under Xi, has long been committing genocide within China against the Uyghur people and other ethnic minorities, complete with brutality, murder, concentration camps, torture and even hunting down supporters in other nations, around the world. Somehow, big businesses and corporations from all over the globe, see no problem with doing business with genocidal maniacs, hellbent on global domination.

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Here at home, I am perpetually amazed at the complete loss of ethics, morality, American values as expressed by politicians, almost entirely these days, by the Republican Party.

As we are all painfully aware of here in the States, the GOP is fiddling while the nation burns. They also lit the match. After three weeks of unprecedented dysfunction because the GOP is willingly dominated by MAGA insanity, they have finally elected a Speaker of the House of Representatives. Not only have they now elected an election denier but a WCN/ White Christian Nationalist, determined to curtail or remove the constitutional rights of minority Americans. To define this more precisely, the only Americans that he deems worthy of full citizenship are White, Anglo-Saxon men that believe in WCN. His historical record is there for all to see, despite a massive effort by the GOP to squash, eliminate or mask, his prior extremist stances. He was complicit in the planning of January 6th’s big lie attempt to take over the US government, punctuated by an armed insurrection at the US Capital building, January 6th of 2021.

Screenshot of the NCC policy statement on Christian Nationalists

It’s hard to tell which of his political views are the most harmful. In the immediate future, aid to Ukraine is a primary target that Johnson has in his sights. Of course his culture war politics are insanely oppressive, much like my home state Texas, if not worse. Like all military or government employees, including elected members of congress, he is sworn to protect and defend our constitution. His political views run exactly in the opposite direction. Undermining our full support to Ukraine, is a severe national security risk to the US and our allies. Putin and Xi, are the big winners if he manages to deny the aid required to protect NATO’s eastern flank from Putin and Xi.

Every single Republican in the House of Representatives, voted to confirm him as the Speaker. Not one of them deserves to be reelected. This is especially true for the dozens of Republican veterans elected to the House who are not only selling out their congressional oath of office, but their military oath of service as well. I have never been more ashamed of an entire party, fed a constant diet of false patriotic values and a violent extremist ideology, the precise opposite of American values. Selling out our national security, cruelty, bigotry and violent politics are NOT American values.

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Summary

There are so many severe national security threats to the US and our allies at the moment that I had to narrow down this Friday update, to what is written above. If we do not succeed in mitigating all of them, the severe threats will grow into imminent catastrophic changes to our national security posture. This is not meant to fear-monger but is an accurate, well supported statement, not just by me, but countless other national security experts. Russia and China are well on their way down the path, to global dominance. A MAGA controlled House of Representatives, only accelerates the timeline for failure.

All terrorism must be opposed vigorously and here at home, that means MAGA zealots. If you doubt this assessment, spend some time poking around some of my favorite sources like: CSIS, Brookings, START (Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at UMd.), Sadly, DHS and the FBI think they can cure these dangerous woes with technology alone. This is pure arrogance, ignorance and absurdity. I also know this because it is precisely in my wheelhouse.

Don’t look to the US government for support either. They have never been good at anything, but tracking and removing foreign terrorists outside the US. We are the gold standard in this effort. The problem with only killing and capturing these HVTs/ High Value Targets, is that it only buys us time to insert ourselves and make changes. This requires the expert application of narrative-centric, ethical influence campaigning. Our national security community has failed at this for decades, domestically and abroad. Tragically, the community still hires the same so-called experts that have nothing to show but failure for these lost decades. A quote, often but erroneously attributed to Einstein is accurate, no matter who gets credit.

 “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, is the definition of insanity.”

We have a great deal of urgent issues to work on as a nation. This requires that all citizens do what our prestigious founders required of citizens, to be well and accurately informed. So long as the faux news services on both sides, especially on the right insist on propaganda, rather than reporting with integrity exist, this is out of the question. This is why, I write TAT. It’s certainly not for money because I only ask for paid subscriptions for those that wish to comment. Like so many families, mine has a long history, of paying it forward and giving back to the greater good, motivated by religious and American values. For this reason, I often will ask for readers to share. It’s the only way we rid ourselves of fake news like FOX and worse. There is plenty of shame for these sides on all sides, but at this phase in our history, it is by far, the MAGA controlled right that is an acute threat to our nation.

Cheers for a great weekend,

Paul