Honorable Service

Mark NoonanLeave a comment

Vladimir Sukhomlinov (1848-1926) was a Russian army officer. He entered service 1867 and remained until 1915. As a young officer he served bravely and was decorated multiple times. But he left the service in 1915 because he was War Minister and Russia had suffered some catastrophic military defeats. These defeats could be traced to the Russian army not being well equipped with modern weapons and being badly organized logistically for war (ie, men going into battle without proper weapons and clothing, food being insufficient, so forth). And here’s the thing: he was a senior member of Russia’s armed forces from 1886 onwards. That is, for nearly thirty years he was high up, eventually rising to the highest rank, Minister of War who was de-facto Commander in Chief of the Russian army. During all this time at the top he was repeatedly praised, promoted and decorated…but when the test came, it was found that the army he commanded wasn’t in any way ready for war. In other words, he failed…and had failed for decades.

How was he able to rise so high? I mean, after a while someone should have figured out that whatever qualities Sukhomlinov had, he wasn’t fit to be in charge. Well, he was protected and advanced by the Russian system…which was corrupt to the core. All errors and rumors of corruption were covered up. He was protected. Heck, he was protected even after he fell from power – he should probably have been shot but he ended up spending only a few months in jail before his powerful friends in the Imperial government got him released. To be fair, he ended up dying in extreme poverty as an exile in Germany after the Russian Revolution…but this doesn’t change the fact that for decades a man in no way fit to hold power exercised such power…and untold numbers of Russians ended up dead because of it.

I bring this up because of Robert Mueller, who passed away the other day. We are told that his Bronze Star and combat performance in Vietnam is the defining thing about him and thus any condemnations are not just wrong, but wicked. This all in response to Trump posting that he was glad Mueller was dead. But as we can see in the case of Sukhomlinov, bravery in combat as a young man doesn’t mean that everything which comes after is good. At some point in his career, Sukhomlinov observed how the system really worked – it wasn’t bravery and ability which got you ahead in the Imperial Russian army, it was connections and connivance. Make the right friends and then do whatever is necessary to help those friends, and you’ve got it made…though you are mentally incapable of exercising command, they’ll put a general’s insignia on your shoulder and have you command soldiers in battle! Nobody cares about how many of them die, or if the country wins or loses the war…its all about place. Position. Prestige.

Mueller saw the same thing in our government. The path to advancement in federal law enforcement wasn’t paved with dedication to the rule of law…but in getting in and getting on. Finding out who had the power and then stroking that person or group until they let you in…and, of course, once in you have to keep things up for everyone else who is in. Cover up crimes and failure for the in crowd, ruthlessly hound – even if it means breaking the law – anyone the in crowd identifies as an enemy. Given the overall arc of Mueller’s career, this decision point came to Mueller fairly early on…perhaps not even more than a few years after he hung up his uniform. Whatever beliefs he had a boy, young man and combat officer were set aside in favor of career advancement. Mueller reached the decision point and decided he would do what it took to advance – in the end, his final public act was to lend his name to the Trump-Russia con…a transparently false attempt to frame Trump and force him out of office. Complete degradation…all honor entirely lost. It is sad, when you think about it. We can pray for the repose of his soul and hope he repented before he died, but the bottom line is that his entire career in government was a malevolent blight upon the Republic. We’d have been better off if he had never lived.

And it is right and proper to be pleased that he has gone to his final judgement. That he cannot in any way, shape or form harm our Republic again. A bad man has died. His fate is now up to God – but his memory must be damned by all decent people. None of this pretending he was an honorable man or public servant…he was a corrupt apparatchik for a disgusting, inhuman Ruling Class. We must condemn his memory because we want the rising generation to know that being a Mueller is a disgrace and even if it doesn’t land you in jail, it will lead you to a dishonorable grave.

One thing our nation must recover is a sense of decency. Not the “decency” of the Ruling Class – their idea of decency is that they are treated with kindness and respect no matter how nauseating they are. No: we want real decency. Men and women who do the right thing, all the time, no matter the consequences. People who aren’t looking for career advancement, but to do what is best. Pissing on Mueller’s gave is where this starts, crude as that may seem – but, then again, real decency is a bit brutal. All true things are like that – sort of in your face, insulting you a bit by their existence, because one thing all decent people know instinctively is how far short of excellent they fall. Contrast with our Ruling Class which is convinced of its moral and intellectual superiority while they wallow in ignorance, lying to themselves and to us while the steal and kill. Mueller probably never had a doubt. Hillary. Obama. Comey: all like that. Stupid. Liars. Corrupt. Cruel. But convinced they are better than everyone else and that any criticism of them is perverse. They get to do this because our system continues to protect them…but under Trump, we might be getting back to a system where garbage people do get what’s coming to them…and honorable people get to be in charge.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan38 Comments

Trump may be playing a much deeper game than even his supporters suspect – that the Iran conflict is just one piece of a global puzzle designed to make NATO useful, or no more while at the same time imposing American dominance not just in the Naval sphere, but in the whole of global maritime commerce. Think about what he’s concentrating on – Panama, Greenland, Hormuz…some of the major choke points for global seaborne trade being taken under American power with a US President who wants a massive revival in American shipbuilding (once again, all true strategists concentrate on logistics…the movement of people and goods…Trump wants us in control of it). The NATO aspect is, crudely, poop or get off the pot…is NATO of any worth at all? Can NATO do something as simple as control a maritime trade corridor? If it can’t or won’t do that, what is the point of it?

And what, then, the point of the UN?

Things are moving on a deep level here…and I’m interested to see how Trump wraps it all up. The war with Iran will probably finish up to at least the main elements in the next seven to ten days. But the long term ramifications of it might be quite surprising and take some months to shake out.

There’s a non-zero chance that in the California jungle primary it is two GOPers who face off in November for governor. Naturally, Democrats will do all they can to ensure against this – but the seven Democrats in the race are all morons and egotistical…they might not be able to get enough of them to back out.

Latest propaganda line out of Tehran is that the more Mullahs we kill the stronger Iran gets. This is like me winning a fight by letting the other guy bash my face in. Its a bold strategy, we’ll see if it pays off.

The late Cesar Chavez – of United Farm Workers fame – appears to have been a guy who liked to abuse young girls. It isn’t all confirmed but it does look pretty bad for his reputation…and if it is true, then we have to keep in mind that everyone – and I mean everyone – around him must have known it was going on and kept their mouths shut because, at the time, Chavez was doing the Ruling Class’ bidding. Why tear him down now, years after his death? Because he was opposed to illegal immigration…and so the Left is unpersoning him posthumously.

Biden’s CIA identified “motherhood” and “homemaking” as indicators or racist extremism.

But it wasn’t just a brand new thing – essentially, since 1945, the things of the West have been considered by our Ruling Class as the markers for evil. They’ve been at war with them since the end of World War Two…it is just out in the open now.

America Comes Back

Mark Noonan24 Comments

We knew, of course. We’ve watched since 1969 how the Democrat party – and the overall American Left – have wanted America defeated. As soon as Vietnam became “Nixon’s war”, American defeat was the Democrat goal. But for the longest while they managed to hide it, at least a bit. They’d make statements about love for the troops or the desire for peace or some such…but what they’ve wanted is our defeat. The Democrat Party wants America to lose.

Some of this stems from the infiltration of the Democrat party by out and out communist traitors: that is, people ideologically committed to our destruction. But most of it stems from a sick calculus on the part of the Democrats – if America loses, Democrats can justify ever more spending, ever more control and, starting with the “boat people” ever more mass migration (though, of course, they picked wrong on the “boat people”…they are ardently anti-Communist to this day, as are the Cubans…and this is why you never hear of Democrat groups trying to bring more Vietnamese and Cubans in). There is more grift to be made, that is. In other words, the Democrats can steal more from a dying, defeated America than they can from a vibrant, victorious USA.

But now the mask is fully off – since the first moment of our righteous war against the wicked regime in Tehran, Democrats have been issuing flat out Mullah propaganda. Whatever absurd lies are issued, Democrats pick up on them. It is abundantly clear that Democrats are hoping for a high US (and Israeli) casualty rate as precursor to ignominious American defeat with a revived and triumphant Mullah regime. Keep in mind that they’re doing this when by every metric the American-Israeli alliance is winning an astonishing victory. That even as the Mullah regime is pushed to the edge, Democrats are still trying to pull their fat out of the fire.

Why?

Because the Global Establishment is a house of cards – with the central support for it being a weak, blind and blundering USA. That is, the whole system is based upon the requirement that the United States not be the United States.

We won World War Two. Not the Russians. Not the British. Not the United Nations. We did. Without American participation, there was no victory coming over the Axis. Without American support, there was no means whereby the UK and the USSR could remain in the war. We not only equipped twelve million of our own, but millions more around the world. This isn’t to denigrate what the UK, Russia and others did – within their very limited means, they did what they could. We did everything. All at once. With no detriment to any aspect of our national power. The Global Establishment (which, of course, including many Americans) looked at this on September 2nd, 1945 and shuddered in fear…what if these American hicks fully understand how powerful they are? What’s to stop them?

To which the hicks would have answered – if they had ever been asked – nothing, but we aren’t going to do anything like that because we’re Americans. The good guys. As long as everyone lives and works in peace, we don’t otherwise care what they’re up to.But the Establishment couldn’t see that…all they could see was Americans from obscure places like Kansas and Alabama ruling over the ruins of their world. They became determined to tie down this leviathan…to drug it. Put it to sleep. Make it doubt itself. Weaken it in every manner possible. Such an America provided two things for the Establishment – cannon fodder to keep the Establishment in power and a ready source of money to steal. And they were determined to keep on going to the end of time…just keep America down.

And my goodness they almost succeeded! At least forty percent of Americans are in favor of American defeat right now (though I’ll be bound that of Americans descended from those alive in 1945, the number is down around twenty percent – the newcomers and their immediate progeny weren’t imported just for the heck of it, after all). We are drugged – literally and figuratively. We are – or at least, were – very much asleep.

But all through this time – right from the start in the late 1940s – there was a restive element in the United States. The people again and again showed they didn’t like what the Establishment was doing. They didn’t want us in the UN. Didn’t really want is in NATO, either. Didn’t want a gigantic military-industrial complex (we hadn’t one in 1941 and it proved entirely unnecessary that we should). Didn’t want mass immigration. Didn’t want welfare bums (differentiated from helping people out through a temporary rough patch). We wanted criminals smacked down. Didn’t want endless wars with no victory. But no matter how we registered our displeasure at the polls – no matter how many times we revolved the doors between Democrats and Republicans – nothing changed…except for the worse as the Establishment just gave us ever more of what we never wanted.

Until Trump.

Is he a genius? We can’t judge: too close to the event. Is he some sort of force of nature? Also can’t know as its too soon. But he’s clearly seen something…he has a vision. He might put it in almost slapstick terms, but underlying it all is the America which launched dozens of fleet carriers over a four year period. That is, an America which only had to envision the goal and then set to work. Roosevelt called for 50,000 planes and everyone in the Establishment scoffed at him…but over the following four years the USA built more airframes than the rest of the world, combined. Something like nearly 500,000 of them. Americans did it. Because they could. Because Americans can do anything. Moonshot in eight years from the word “go”. If they are allowed to be Americans. If they aren’t…well, then, maybe we’ll get there in ten or twelve years…but it’ll be a diverse crew! Trump wants that America back…the America that even in the depths of the Great Depression was still outproducing everyone, was richer than everyone and was still building such impressive monuments as Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building. All of which, I’ll bet, cost less than even one Learing Center.

This is why the Establishments wants him dead. Vance, too. Why it has fever dreams of sending MAGA to reeducation camps: if Trump wins – if America wins – then it is all over for them. All Americans will want to do is win some more…and keep on winning and winning and winning. Getting richer and more powerful and more advanced and just enjoying the heck out of being free and happy. While the rest of the world stews in mediocrity…maybe pointing to an ancient monument…which I’ll bet if we can work out the genetics were built by people who’s descendants emigrated to America as soon as they could.

And, hey, don’t get me wrong – as people, person for person, we’re no better than anyone else. But as Americans, we simply are better than everyone. It stems from our attitude towards life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is wound around with our Declaration of Independence…it is sustained by our Constitution, the only one in the world which actually seeks to secure the rights of individuals (even great nations like Israel and Argentina still have those aspects in their laws which allow the government to suspend any and all rights if the government thinks it should – only our laws have the phrase “Congress shall make no law”). Until the rest of the world becomes like us, they can’t compete – and if they become like us then, well, they’re like us and so no problem. Can’t help it if it was our Founders who found the magic talisman or were specially blessed by God with wisdom…I can only see things as they are and realize that my Americans went from subsistence farming to global dominance in well under a century. That’s kinda amazing. That’s proof of our supremacy. And that supremacy is now coming back.

Yeah, Lies Are Still the Problem

Mark Noonan49 Comments

I’ve talked endlessly about lies but I want to talk about it again – because now more and more people are picking up on it. But not all. I still see all too many on the Right still saying things like “why would you say that?” or “do you not realize what you’re saying?” when they confront a Leftist or Never Trumper over a lie. That is, they aren’t just calling them what they are: liars.

You might remember the World Famous Expert, Tom Nichols: he was allegedly on the Right until the advent of Trump in 2015 and he’s now gone full Leftist Never Trump kook – he had a post on X saying, and I quote, “the people cheering the submarine attack on the IRIS Dena seem to forget that the US Navy has surface vessels that could have captured the ship, and held the crew (or allowed them to defect). But apparently, it was important to prove that the Navy can still torpedo a frigate”. Nichols’ claim to fame – his claim to be an Expert, that is – stems from his tenure at the Naval War College. In other words, he knows. He’s not some person with limited knowledge of naval affairs. You don’t seek to capture an enemy on the high seas. The capture of enemy vessels went out when ships went from sail to steam – you sight an enemy and you sink her, that is what modern naval warfare is about. When the Brits put down the Bismarck – and we put down the Yamato – the attack was merciless. The British fired 2,800 rounds at Bismarck scoring at least 400 hits…when her guns were silent, her decks awash and the crew trying to abandon ship, they fired one last torpedo at the hulk. For Yamato, we sent wave after wave of planes in to bomb, torpedo and strafe her…the only reason it was three waves is because by the time the fourth wave got there she had rolled over and exploded…more than 3,000 of her 3,300 man crew dying with her.

Keep in mind that both ships were pretty much helpless from the start – the Bismarck’s steering gear was jammed and so she could only steam in a slow circle: a complete sitting duck. Yamato had no air cover and our strafing massacred her AA gunners in their unarmored positions, allowing later waves to just come in, line her up in the sights and blow her all to hell and gone. That is modern naval warfare. The men on both sides didn’t ask for quarter and didn’t complain if they came in second. Guarantee you not one German or Japanese sailor who survived those actions had any rancor towards the British and American seamen. War at sea is a hard calling.

Nichols knows this. So, why did he say what he said? Because he’s a liar. Nothing more. And a paid liar, into the bargain. Perhaps even being paid – directly or roundabout – by foreign enemies to lie. And he is, of course, just one of thousands. People like him just pumping out lie after lie after lie. All designed to sap American unity and American will. To sow doubts. To get Americans fighting among themselves. To do anything but support America – and especially American victory. In Iran we have scored the most astonishing, lopsided victory America has had since Manila Bay in 1898. For very minimal losses, we have completely destroyed the enemy’s ability to impact the course of the war. How did we Americans view that? Like this:

Heroic. Resolute. Right into the fight without hesitation. You know: like Americans. Right now, we have the like of these men in battle…soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Of course, some women, too. But they are our heroes…we should be getting stories of their deeds…thrilling tales of how they took the fight to the heart of the enemy. What we get is lies…lies about bombed schools. Lies about closed straights. Lies about how wrong it is to torpedo an enemy.

And, my friends, it really has to stop. We’re robbing ourselves of our future by being nice to liars. The kids growing up today deserve to know their nation is great and is the home of heroes…and that we are the good guys, fighting for decency in a world gone mad.

I still do not know exactly how we do it…but until we find a way to make a liar pay – and I mean with the literal skin off his back – then I don’t know how we will survive.

Glory to Those Who Do

Mark Noonan18 Comments

That is a picture of a man who is pretty much universally denigrated in the history books: Joseph Joffre, Marshall of France. He was in command of the French army for the first two years of World War One and the massive slaughter of those two years is laid at his feet and condemns him before the bar of history as a man who pointlessly sacrificed French youth for nothing. And, indeed, he made his mistakes. On the other hand, who hasn’t? Even when we consider the greatest commanders, we still have Napoleon blowing it at Waterloo and MacArthur being caught with his pants down hours after receiving word of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

You can’t get past the number of French soldiers who died and that will always remain a horror but in judging the actions of people, one must always first place yourself in their shoes. Joffre was an experienced officer with a background in engineering and logistics. In other words, on paper exactly what you want. He was also a man who was impossible to panic – no matter how bad things were going, he was going to remain calm and rapidly issue decisive orders. Anyone who knows history – especially military history – knows that calmness plus the willingness to act are crucial in war. History is filled with generals who either lost their nerve or simply became paralyzed with indecision. Better a bad decision gets made than no decision at all. In sum, Joffre was not an idiot, nor in inhuman monster. He was presented with a puzzle and did his best to solve it.

His first puzzle was trying to figure out the best way to deploy his armies at the start. Can’t use hindsight! He only knew for certain that the Germans were coming and would likely make a significant effort in Belgium. But in those days of armies moving no faster than marching feet, he knew he’d have time to watch any such move develop. He could have deployed his main armies along the borders with Belgium. But what if the Germans then decided to advance south of Belgium? It is like that in war: trying to guess through a fog what is best. Taking one thing with another, Joffre’s decision was to launch the French attack in what amounted to the center of the German line – the idea being to split that line and flank the Germans marching into Belgium. This is, actually, a pretty good plan. There was only one major flaw: the power of defense.

The French hadn’t fought any major military action since 1870 – when machine guns were unknown, field artillery was much less lethal and the primary firearms were single shot rifles. The French had, of course, kept abreast of military developments but reading a report isn’t fighting…and they just had no conception of the power of a dug in enemy. The Russians knew it as they had fought the Japanese in 1905. The Brits knew it as they had fought the Boers in 1901. The French had no idea. Of course, neither did the Germans, who also hadn’t fought a major engagement since 1870. They were, together, military babes in the woods…and they both launched their armies right at each other and both got a massive and bloody wake up call. But the Germans were able to keep advancing because, as it turns out, they had placed almost their whole army into Belgium and simply had overwhelming weight of numbers. Given this, the French and their British allies were compelled to retreat…but only until they got themselves reorganized to stop the Germans. Which they did, at the Marne.

Whole libraries have been written about that battle which marked the highwater mark of German advance in 1914 and their forced retirement after the French counterattack. Who did what, which orders were given by whom are matters of deep study; mostly trying to show that someone other than the commander, Joffre, had been decisive. What was it, really? After the war, Joffre was asked who had won the Battle of the Marne and he answered, “I cannot say for certain, but I know who would have lost it, if it had been lost.”

After that, Joffre’s puzzle was how to expel the Germans from France – which is of course what you want to do if you’re a French officer and German’s occupy about ten percent of your country. Joffre tried this method and that – each time modifying the program a bit based on lessons learned. But, in the end, under Joffre’s tenure, the magic talisman to break a line defended by barbed wire, trenches, magazine rifles, machine guns and artillery was not discovered. Various important steps were taken – including the development of aerial bombing while the first French tanks were created in 1915 – but the total mechanism for crossing a bit of ground swept by enemy fire and breaking through an entrenched enemy force was not found by the time Joffre was kicked upstairs in the aftermath of the Battle of Verdun in 1916. Naturally, the efforts Joffre made were costly in lives and this, as noted, is laid at his feet and used to condemn him…make him out to be some sort of insensate monster fruitlessly sacrificing French lives.

But what else was he supposed to do? Just leave the Germans alone to build their strength until they could attack? Surrender? The enemy had to be expelled…Joffre and every other officer involved had no idea how to do it. You can only think it over, come up with ideas and then try them out. And, in the end, the ideas tried out by Joffre (massive heavy artillery – which Joffre had wanted pre-war but was denied the funds to procure – tanks and planes) were put together by his ultimate successor, Foch, and the deed was done – the Germans were defeated and expelled from France.

I bring all this up because I think we have a problem in our society in that we tear down those who do – and honor the guys in the peanut gallery who never do anything. Especially in light of the response to our campaign against Iran we’re seeing this. For forty seven years everyone sort of sat there and left the mullah regime alone – there are probably lots of reasons for this (all bad) but the bottom line is that today we have those who let this cancer fester upset at the man who proposes to excise it from the global political situation. The past forty seven years show what you get when you aren’t willing to at least try. If the fact that getting the Germans out of France was to be a bloody business prevented French action, then the Germans would still be there…the war might have gone on much, much longer with an ultimately higher cost in lives. Something had to be done both back in 1914 and here in 2026. And all honor to those who are willing to do something, even if they make mistakes doing it. Better to have a mistake than to have a drift.

Things must be done. Someone has to come up with the moral courage to act…and often act on very incomplete information and with no certainty they’ve come up with the right response. As Wellington put it, the whole art of war is getting at what’s on the other side of the hill – you don’t know what’s there, but you must do it. We’ve been half a century so fearful of that other side of the hill that we’ve essentially done nothing – and worse than nothing because we have killed a lot of people (had a lot of ours killed, too) and expended huge amounts of money while essentially cowering over on our side of the hill.

Trump is doing what should have been done on November 4th, 1979…and every day since. We’ve got a regime in Tehran which is mere social pestilence upon the global body politic. It had to go and must go. Trump just has the courage everyone else lacked (when they weren’t bought by Iranian or other foreign money – there is that, as well). The glory is his – he looked at the situation, realized it had to be solved and has decided to solve it. His opponents are in the wrong – not just on technical aspects, but in the larger moral requirements of being human.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Our enemies – foreign and domestic – are upset that an American sub sank an Iranian warship. It was sneaky!

Like, do you guys even know what a submarine is for?

For the record: it doesn’t matter if the ship was armed. Doesn’t matter if it was close or far from home. It was a warship – it was a target. It was sunk and that’s all there is to it…if you’re upset about it then I direct you to complain to the nearest Mullah hiding in an Iranian tunnel…they sent that ship to see in whatever condition it was. It should have been fully ready for war – warships are always supposed to be fully ready for war. If they’re not, then the commanders of those ships are the criminals, not the people who destroyed them.

Some people are saying that the Geneva Convention requires us to rescue the survivors of a torpedoing and to that I answer…what the heck are you talking about? The Conventions don’t mention submarine warfare and, indeed, it is the one area of warfare which has practically no treaty or legal coverage. Deliberately so: no nation which employs submarines would ever limit them…they are there to suddenly destroy, without warning and then sail away to find the next target. Warning the target or bringing succor to the survivors merely makes submarine warfare useless. This was disposed of as an argument by the Nuremburg tribunals where we tried to nail Doenitz for unrestricted submarine warfare – no less than Fleet Admiral Nimitz scotched that by pointing out to the tribunal that he had issued the exact same orders right after Pearl Harbor. Maybe subs should never have happened – but they did and in war time, their targets are anything on the seas. Anything. At any time.

We are being treated to a heavy dose of defeatist propaganda. Well, we are if we listen…as for me, I’ve muted most accounts on X which start off with “breaking” because I’ve found that what comes after is 99% nonsense. Merest clickbait unsupported by facts or even by common sense.

How is the war going? We’re sending B-52s. We don’t send B-52s into an environment where the enemy in any way contests control of the air. They are great planes. We’ll probably be flying them into the 2040s…but they are no match for anything like a modern air defense system, let alone a modern fighter. They go in when the skies are clear and we have a large target we want heavily degraded. That’s how the war is going. That is how we know we’re winning.

We’re re-establishing full diplomatic relations with Venezuela if you want a clue about how this thing in Iran will come out. Turns out that being America actually gets results. We haven’t tried to be America since Truman fired MacArthur.

Noem got the boot…and a new job with Rubio’s State Department. So, she clearly upset Trump a bit, but not all the way. She has a clear shot to get herself back into good graces. We’ll see how she does in the new role. Meanwhile, Senator Mullin is named as replacement and he figures that the babies of illegals need to be deported, too. So, Democrats may have semi-collected a scalp here, but they’re not going to like it long term.

Iran War

Mark Noonan36 Comments

It is getting a little funny, looking at the opposition: they are just shotgunning out every possible justification for opposition.

The 1953 coup!

US keeps bases in the Middle East!

Trump promised America First!

Israel is the bad guys!

Jews control Trump!

We’re running out of missiles!

Iran wasn’t a threat!

We killed a Mullah during Ramadan!

Blah, blah, blah.

The first thing for any American to consider in relation to Iran is this: what is peace?

Nobody in the opposition will answer it – nor even consider it. Because to consider it is to understand, and the opposition doesn’t want understanding…they just want it stopped. But the bottom line is that the Mullah regime is dedicated to destroying the United States. That they can’t and never will have the power to do so is neither here nor there – it is what they want and what they predicate their foreign and military policy on: destroying us. As long as this is Mullah policy, they will never cease to attack us. Sure, almost all attacks are by proxy, but that doesn’t change the reality. So, once again, what is peace? Where’s the compromise point? What is half a loaf for both sides?

There isn’t one. Unless the Mullahs surrender their dream, there can’t be peace. Trump tried to convince them to do so short of war – and with the example of Maduro as a test of both American capability and Trump’s will. The Mullahs ignored it. And probably with some justification – ever since 1979 in every confrontation it has been the USA which climbed down. Republican or Democrat, Left and Right, everyone was always on the side of an accommodation with the Mullahs. They probably expected that whatever Trump decided to do, it wouldn’t cut at the vitals of the Mullah regime. They bet wrong. And now there will be a change in Iran – we can’t say with certainty exactly what will emerge post-war…but it won’t be what came before. Some sort of compromise will be made by whomever emerges as Iranian leadership. Some modification away from “Death to America.”

Personally, I’m confident that Trump has this well in hand. For instance, in the FY 2026 budget was a big increase in missile procurement…after years of this being neglected, we suddenly did a big bump. Now we know why: Trump wanted the means in hand not just to attack, but to sustain an attack over the long term. This shows that Trump is thinking strategically (fake strategists concentrate on military moves…real strategists concentrate on logistics). Given this, I’d be shocked to find that we haven’t already assessed the situation on the ground in Iran…doubly shocked if we didn’t have special forces on the ground there by now trying to find if there are people willing to storm Iranian government offices. In the end, I expect a change in Iran…even if an alleged Mullah is in charge of the transition, it will be a Mullah who got the message and knows its time to wind up the Islamic Republic – sort of like in Venezuela where the regime is still technically in power, but the moves are already being made to allow for a successor government.

It is like waking up from a dream. Or a nightmare. That is, a world where we were a helpless, blundering giant – able to kill but never able to obtain our strategic ends. A world where a corrupt Ruling Class grew fat off of war while the world fell further into barbarism day by day. In a burst of military action, that whole thing came tumbling down. This could have been done at any time – a real, genuine aerial campaign to destroy the regime’s ability to wage war. We’ve had this ability all along. We built it in World War Two…and for all the bombs we’ve dropped since then, we’ve never done what we’re capable of (the closest was in the 1991 Gulf War…but even there we didn’t hit at the regime’s ability to control Iraq; it was still a half measure). The Mullahs never had a chance – our capability is so far beyond what they could comprehend, let alone build. China and Russia are now probably in a funk…realizing that any strategic assets they have only exist as long as we want them to…and that no matter how much they hurry up trying to match us, but the time they can stop us we’ve moved on to the next generation of capability (word is that the Israelis – and, therefor, us – had hacked into Tehran’s traffic cameras…we essentially knew where everyone was in real time…everything is tracked by camera in China…they now know they’ve merely built a system to let us know where everything is).

God bless our troops. God bless President Trump. May our victory be swift and peace restored.

Hitting Iran and Restoring the Real World

Mark Noonan14 Comments

Why? Well, here’s a couple reasons why:

There’s a lot more, of course. The mullah regime has been the focal point of terrorism in the world since 1979. They fund it. Arm it. Train it. Facilitate it across borders. They are a pestilence which needed to be squashed out the gate. But, we didn’t. Jimmy Carter was given full justification for war against Iran on November 4th, 1979 and he chose to negotiate with them…to play a game they set up where they were the aggrieved party and the USA had to offer reparations for its sins. And then President after President let it slide…mounting numbers of death, more and more terror and oppression and yet it was hands-off on Iran.

I don’t know why. Sure, there were bribes. Clearly to this day – perhaps even to this minute if we haven’t blocked all the Iranian bank accounts – people have been getting paid to toe Iran’s line. Also, there was idiocy. People built up a bizarre fantasy world where the West in general and the USA in particular was the cause of all the ills in the world and so any entity standing against the West and the USA were the good guys. I can’t adequately describe the level of insanity one has to have for this to seem like a rational idea…we’re dealing with savages who hang people for being gay and stone women to death for showing a little ankle. People who do this are obviously evil…but wash it through an Ivy League degree and all of a sudden a 73 year old coup in Iran excuses it all. But even with all that, I can’t see why we didn’t just take them out.

We are overwhelmingly more powerful. Not just a bit stronger – overwhelming. We have absolute aerial superiority. Complete command of the seas. Vastly more money, manpower and manufacturing capacity. It doesn’t matter how brave and dedicated the regime’s servants are – power is power and we have vastly more than Iran. There is no negotiation with this disparity of power – it is we say what we want, perhaps give them a bit of what they want (if it suits us) and if agreement is not made, the regime is destroyed. And any fool can easily see this is the outcome…but only if the Iranians know there is an American government which is serious. That has been the missing element. Again and again we have simply rolled over for the Mullahs. Republicans and Democrats, hawks and doves…everyone has been eager to kowtow to mullah bluster.

The mullahs decided we were still bluffing – the lesson of Maduro did not take hold. Just yesterday the mullahs were still full of shouts and threats. But this time, today, it was all different – because Trump doesn’t bluff. He’ll wheel and deal. He’ll move in a complex dance with alternate velvet gloves and iron fists..but in the end when he says “it will be thus”, that is what it will be – and he never demands something that is out of reach. The mullahs could have made a deal. Heck, per Trump the remnants still alive right now can make a deal…but the deal is no nukes, no more terrorism and the Iranian people get to run their own lives. However they want. Trump hasn’t said what sort of new Iran there must be – rightly so because it isn’t our call to make. Monarchy. Democracy. Heck, even Islamic Republic, if the Iranians want it. But it has to be what they want, and must never threaten America or American interests again.

This is yet more of Trump getting us back into the real world. A world where we simply are top of the heap. Hate it all you want, it is what it is. Even in our currently weakened state, we still outshine everyone, and by a lot. Trump is resetting the world: letting it know that you don’t want to defy us. Argue with us all you want. Hit us hard in the give and take of negotiations. Press for every ounce of advantage against us. Fine. And we’ll play the same game. But defy us? Threaten us? Attack us? Not a good idea. You will lose. And very badly.

And how are the Democrats responding? Other than Fetterman, even worse than you’d expect. They are condemning it. That is, condemning the effort to rid the world of a half-century old pestilence. We’ll see what judgement the American people render on it.

The State of the Union.

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Now that we’ve had most of 24 hours to sort of absorb it all and think it over, gotta say I think Trump’s SOTU was an unqualified triumph. He’s really getting very good at this – he even managed a bit of Reaganesque rhetoric in there, especially at the end.

He laid out a vision of a powerful, growing America…finally ditching Jimmy Carter’s “era of limits” which, to one degree or another, had been adopted by everyone, Right and Left, in the United States. The idea that we’ve peaked and all we can do is manage the decline and, hey, enjoy the time you’re in because the successor generations will have it worse. It doesn’t have to be like that. Never has to be for any nation.

People choose to decline – as Will Durant put it, no nation is destroyed from without: it is only from within that a nation can die. You think about the Poles and the Irish…for centuries under hostile, foreign rule. With their national identity often made illegal. But they endured and waited and worked and fought, and once the hostile foreign power withdrew, there was the nation. To be sure, Ireland over the past twenty years has opted for national suicide, but that is the choice of the people now…the people of the past felt the nation was worth preserving. The peoples we see today entering national degradation have chosen it as the easier course of action. No longer having to fight for their daily bread, they are ok with their nations dying as long as there’s free food in the fridge and something mindless to watch on TV or the internet. It is sad, but it is a choice – and they can choose at any time to reverse course.

What we did when we voted Trump in 2024 was reverse the course. 2016 was more of a last effort to just stop the decline – we’d allow things to be as they were as long as they didn’t get any worse. We found out that our Rulers insisted on things getting worse…and we also found that we can’t stand still. It is either advance, or retreat. In 2024 we chose to advance. The Left often asks us “is this what you voted for?” as they show us something that is supposed to make us feel bad. But we’re over here going, “I didn’t vote for that, exactly, but some months back Team Trump stopped doing what I voted for and started on things I wish I had voted for.”

The Democrats were walked to the chopping block by Trump in his SOTU and they eagerly did exactly what he had scripted for them. They could have easily taken the wind out of his sails had they just stood up and applauded when Trump said the primary purpose of our government is to serve the American people, not the illegal aliens. They didn’t. They couldn’t – or, at least, they felt they couldn’t. Everything they have done in their lives – all the lies, the insanity, the theft – compelled them to sit on their hands…or even shout their disapproval over this sentiment, which is probably a 90/10 issue among the American people. It was their chance to actually fight back against Trump…but it would also be good for Trump, so they refused: and set themselves up for defeat here in 2026 and 2028.

We’ll have to see how the vote goes, but I just can’t imagine a world where the American people vote into power those who clearly show they hate the United States. There is no offer of a better tomorrow from the Democrats…just a return to the past, but made worse. They promise us more illegals. More fraud. More freakish sociological experiments. More hatred. More death – all accompanied by spreading poverty as they sell the last of our capacity to China. The Democrats lack the physical capacity to cheat their way to victory…they have already secured all the power they can with voter fraud. If they don’t have a message that resonates, they’ve got nothing.

Having shrieking, hate filled aliens who are clearly on the take as the face of the Democrat party also doesn’t help them. The United States is not that – we don’t care about your homeland’s stone age barbarism and the complaints they make about being treated like barbarians. We see you up there, clearly hating our country and we know: you aren’t legitimate. You didn’t secure power by merit or by the vote…you were engineered into office by a corrupt political system which feels it must reserve a certain number of seats to your like. The broad majority is repulsed…and will punish the party which thinks it is good to have anti-Americans in Congress.

This still won’t be easy – the Democrats are still hoping their rhetoric will set off so many lunatics that one will be able to do the deed…both to Trump and Vance. The Democrats will still use their bogus federal judges to defy the law. They will still have the MSM lying for them 24/7. But I do believe we will win – that we ripped the bandage off in 2024 and we’re now healing, with the true America gaining strength and confidence by the day. We now know that we don’t have to just put up with it…we can actually stop it, reverse it, replace it with something better. And I believe the American people will just want more of this as time goes on.

Mexico and the World of Make Believe

Mark Noonan45 Comments

When Zachary Taylor marched his army into Mexico in 1846 along with finding Mexicans to fight, he also found Mexicans who wanted nothing to do with Mexico. That is, plenty of people in northern Mexico were desperate to be annexed to the USA – anything to get out of Mexico’s clutches. And even among the Mexicans who fought, it wasn’t particularly well. At Buena Vista, Taylor was outnumbered about four to one and he totally crushed the Mexican army – don’t get me wrong, Mexicans are as brave as any and there were some attacks pressed home with determination…but at the end of the day, the Mexican army at Buena Vista – fighting deep inside Mexican territory – was fought to a standstill and then had to be withdrawn because its commanders sensed that the men were about to desert en masse. In other words, it wasn’t a national army of patriots…but a conscript force of peasants who simply would not grit it out in defense of a country – and Ruling Class – they cared nothing about.

I believe this was because Mexico was a mistake. How did Mexico become independent? Well, Augustin de Iturbide – the commander of the Spanish army in Mexico – switched sides. It would be akin to us winning independence by putting Cornwallis in command of the Continental Army. In other words, pure farce. Why did Iturbide switch sides? Because he had been dismissed from command for cruelty and corruption. He got past that via influential friends but once reappointed to command, he looked for his first chance to betray Spain. After independence, he tried to set himself up as Emperor of Mexico but was swiftly overthrown and forced into exile. Returning a few years later, he was arrested by some of his opponents and shot after a bogus trial. But this doesn’t really get down to the nitty gritty – the fact that Mexico wasn’t fighting for independence in the manner the thirteen colonies had.

It wasn’t a matter that not everyone was on board (like here in the USA), but that people were fighting for completely different things…and it boiled down to various factions fighting for personal advantage. It was all just one very big mess and it was a ghastly tragi-comedy which persisted in Mexico until Diaz put down everyone and installed himself as President from 1876 to 1911. And in that period of stability he sort of crafted a story of Mexico and imposed it on the people – nothing like a couple generations of power to convince people that your justification for remaining in power is the actual story of your people. And then even that all fell apart and Mexico was consumed by ten years of civil war until the people who eventually created the PRI won control and set up a system to perpetuate themselves indefinitely in power under the guise of Democracy but with the elections fake and the outcomes predetermined. When the PRI started to fall apart in the late 1990’s there was a brief glimmer of hope that Mexico would finally get a government of consent…but then the rise of the Cartels in the early part of the 21st century nixed that.

And here we are – now there’s apparent Cartel war in Puerto Vallarta with the backdrop of a Mexican “government” which says it won’t use the army to fight the Cartels because that might violate human rights. In other words, the “government” of Mexico is no such thing – just a facade for the various Cartels who now battle it out to control territory and income…with the problem being the massive reduction in Cartel income following Trump’s closure of the border. My bet is that the Cartels, feeling the pinch, are now fighting over domestic income streams – and Puerto Vallarta with its huge influx of tourist dollars is a plum worth plucking…if you have the power to oust the current Cartel owners (don’t worry too much over stories that it was the Mexican military that zapped the Cartel boss…think of the Mexican military as yet another Cartel…it is certainly controlled by Cartels).

Why bring all this up? Well, outside the fact that we might have to intervene in Mexico for our own security needs, I think this needs to be said – and said again and again. That is: stop living in the world of make believe. We’ve maintained this pretense that Mexico has a legitimate government that we can deal with on the square. Never have we had such a thing. Now, this doesn’t mean we can’t be expedient about things, but let us have no illusions about it. We’re dealing with a clique, not a government – there is no legitimacy in it…it was engineered into power via shadowy forces and it will be replaced by the same sort of machinations.

So, too, it goes all around the world. Nigeria isn’t a country – its a colonial leftover encompassing at least five distinct peoples, most of whom hate each other with a passion. It is like jamming together France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Greece and calling it one country. The raids against Christians are carried out by Muslims…with the Muslims and Christians having distinct national identities, neither of which are “Nigerian”…but the fiction is kept alive – mostly by the Muslims – because the Christians hold the most valuable real estate (ie, that which has the oil). South Africa – not a country. Syria – not a country. Algeria – not a country (its borders and national identity are leftovers of French rule). And even some genuine countries – that is real peoples who’s borders roughly coincide with them – don’t have real governments; just like Mexico doesn’t. Iran – not a real government. Zimbabwe – not a real government. Sudan – not a real government. As for the EU – definitely getting deep into “not a real government” there…so much manipulation and fraud that we’re getting to the point where we can’t be certain any government there reflects the will of the people.

The world is not civilized any longer. I’ve seen posts on X from Canadians who went “elbows up” and decided to vacation in Mexico instead of the USA…to teach us Yanks a lesson. Hey, I used to love going to Mexico…but I haven’t been in about twenty years. Why not? Because when they start finding the bodies of dismembered people and nobody is arrested for it, I decide that place isn’t a good vacation destination. You’ve got to think about the people who go to Mexico – they’re betting their lives that the Cartels will keep them safe. To be sure, most of the time it is so…but if the Cartels decide its time for some death, then death is coming and there is no power in Mexico which can protect you from it. So, I’ll just have a taco here at home and keep Mexico as a fond memory of the past. I wouldn’t travel outside the USA these days if you paid me to do so – heck, even here at home barbarism is spreading, but at least here I’m on my own ground…I know the rules and can navigate my way through it. To be a foreigner? Heck no. Not even for a minute. There is no law out there – just power; and if power decides I gotta die, then dead I’ll be.

We need to take a long, hard look at things. These days, only a few foreign nations are in any way reliable – Japan, Argentina, El Salvador, Israel, UAE…maybe a half dozen others among the whole bunch. The rest of the world is a series of corrupt, cruel and increasingly incompetent factions fighting for control over dying societies. We are now faced with a battle to save ourselves – to Make America Great Again – and this will absorb the next twenty years. Our main foreign policy goal is to enforce as much peace as possible – mostly by a mix of force and persuasion. You know: sometimes kidnapping a foreign potentate who got on our nerves, other times offering them a deal which keeps them alive as long as they stop funding Hamas. But the purpose is to keep things as quiet as possible – as cheaply as possible – while we set our house in order and restore civilization here at home.

In light of this, what Trump will do with Mexico must be – and I believe it will be – in line with our needs. We don’t want a chaotic Mexico. But we can’t live with a Cartel Mexico, either. Something has to give…and it can’t be done with worries over offending Mexican national sensibilities which we can’t be sure even exist outside rent-a-mobs waving Mexican flags. So, too, our dealings with all nations comes into focus…and the Trump Doctrine emerges: we want peace. We will make a deal even if you’re just a mafia which took over a country. If you don’t take the deal…things will go badly for you.