...Netanyahu didn't come there to get something from Obama because he knows the president will give him nothing. And besides the cupboard, truth be told, is probably bare. He came for old time's sake; with a sadness in his heart that Nancy Pelosi couldn't even begin to imagine; with the kind of grief that comes from seeing something once beautiful and powerful now broken down and grubbing at the level of the petty, malicious, lying politicians who dominate it. He came to warn anyone who would listen to wake up, though his words were doubtless wasted on the sleeping.
A general description of the evolution of warfare
The DoD and the Army have now inaugurated yet another iteration of the constant doctrinal battle to balance irregular warfare and conventional warfare. Since the beginning, the US armed forces have struggled to deliver on a force concept that could do either or both well. As William Lind has pointed out eloquently, the US and western powers have enunciated the generations of warfare, but failed to deliver on advancing through the sequence or even gleaning the wisdom they hold.
There are four generally accepted generations of warfare, and the succeeding generations that provide grist for the mill among the defense intellectuals and military-industrial illiterarti who constantly tilt at the next big thing. For the purposes of this introduction, we will stick to the four generations commonly accepted. The rest at the link
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Since the beginning, the US armed forces have struggled to deliver on a force concept that could do either or both well.
Yep, a hundred years on the frontier and it's experience didn't hold cotton with the big boys back in Washington.
Chapter3: The Problem of Doctrine. “Three special conditions set this mission apart from more orthodox military assignments. First, it pitted the army against an enemy who usually could not be clearly identified and differentiated from kinsmen not disposed at the moment to be enemies. Indians could change with bewildering rapidity from friend to foe to neutral, and rarely could one be confidently distinguished from another...Second, Indian service placed the army in opposition to a people that aroused conflicting emotions... And third, the Indians mission gave the army a foe unconventional both in the techniques and aims of warfare... He fought on his own terms and, except when cornered or when his family was endangered, declined to fight at all unless he enjoyed overwhelming odds...These special conditions of the Indian mission made the U.S. Army not so much a little army as a big police force...for a century the army tried to perform its unconventional mission with conventional organization and methods. The result was an Indian record that contained more failures than successes and a lack of preparedness for conventional war that became painfully evident in 1812, 1846, 1861, and 1898. - Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian 1866-1891 by Robert M. Utley
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The 2ACR reached back to its indian wars journals for some of the operations stuff they did. And 3ACR did as aell. Its how the Surge worked in Anbar. Only thing missing was political will to sustain it for a couple of decades.
[DAWN] THE Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. school massacre points to the surfacing of a new generation of Islamist gunnies in Pakistain. The country, in the last 13 years, has suffered more than 13,721 terrorist incidents (as per the National Counter Terrorism Authority) which left 56,156 dead and more than 200,000 critically maimed. Yet by far, the Peshawar school bloodbath left the deepest scar on the hearts of Paks. The gloves are now off.
Pakistain's plethora of Islamist terrorist groups can broadly be classified under two broad categories: the 'old' groups; and the new and nascent outfits.
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03/04/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] EVERYONE in Pakistain remembers the feverish, frantic moments when they heard the news of Benazir Bhutto ... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in... 's liquidation seven years ago. The intersection of national tragedy with personal reality -- where one was, what one was doing -- was hence etched into the collective and individual memory, a marker of what happened before and a question of what would come after.
But while the parade of national catastrophe has continued since that December of 2007, presenting a surfeit of tragic landmarks with which to calibrate the country's history, very little truth has emerged regarding what actually happened on that particular day and to that particular woman. What did emerge were a number of conspiracy theories many of which have still not been put to rest.
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[WAPO] The political paralysis in Washington is often ascribed, depending on partisanship, to Republican obstructionism or President Obama's arrogance. But there are deeper causes. Both parties have had a hard time creating agendas that appeal across ideological, racial and ethnic lines. There has been a fragmentation of power and purpose that transcends the defects of political leaders.
A partial explanation comes in a report issued last month that describes the changing nature of the American electorate. It's less white, more minority, older and less dominated by any one generation. Fascinating in their own right, these shifts also illuminate the larger origins of the political impasse. If democracy responds to voters, then voters preoccupied with their own narrow agendas inhibit the creation of durable coalitions capable of legislating.
The report, "States of Change: The Demographic Evolution of the American Electorate, 1974-2060," was sponsored by three think tanks of differing politics: the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the liberal Brookings Institution and Center for American Progress. The study identifies 10 transforming trends, which -- considering the overlap -- I've condensed to five.
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The real answer is the country is center right and has become even more-so in the last decade or so which puts the nation at odds with the politicians. This is slowly being changed election by election.
[Kanuk Free Press] A lot of people received attention during February because it was Black History Month, and many of them were very deserving. But you know how these things go: If you're an ABC (American Black Conservative) like I am, major media and activists tend to ignore you.
That's OK. ABCs do what we do because we love this country and the people in it, not because we're trying to get attention. Even so, I have some American black heroes who absolutely deserve more attention than they get for the good work they do, and I want to highlight them here:
Thomas Sowell. A fellow at the Hoover Institution, he is an economics professor and an intellectual. Most importantly, he tells it like it is even if it's not popular -- and he really doesn't care if the way he does it bothers some people? You want proof? He wrote a book titled Black Rednecks and White Liberals. Oh yeah. He went there. If you want to find out what a black redneck is, you'll have to get the book.
Professor Sowell plays a crucial role because so much of the liberal establishment just assumes those in poverty need big government to get them out. Those arguments don't stand too well when they come up against the facts, figures and analysis offered by Thomas Sowell.
Star Parker. Founding president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Much like Thomas Sowell, Star promotes market-based policy to fight poverty. And she should know. She had seven years of first-hand experience in the grip of welfare dependency. She got off government dependency, and got a bachelor of science in marketing and business from Woodbury University.
Star is a wonderful example of what I often talk about on my radio show. People who find themselves in difficult situations absolutely can change their circumstances if they have a plan and they work hard at it. Sitting around waiting for a politician or someone else to help you will only keep you in dependency. Star not only broke free, but having done so, she committed herself to helping others do the same.
Roy Innis. The long-time chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, Roy was a civil rights activists long before it was cool -- fighting for local control of schools in Harlem and advocating for the rights of innocent citizens to defend themselves against criminals. Second Amendment advocates have few better friends than Roy Innis, and that's because he understands what happens to people who are helpless to defend themselves against gun-toting criminals. He lost two of his own sons to gun violence, and he wants other to have the chance to defend themselves if they are ever so threatened. Very well done Mr. Cain. Send us more please, and by the way, add yourself and your many leadership and entrepreneurial accomplishments to this list. Great Americans all.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[DAWN] THE 
[DAWN] EVERYONE in Pakistain remembers the feverish, frantic moments when they heard the news of 
