Free Republic

Five months into its counter-offensive, Ukraine has managed to advance by just 17 kilometres. Russia fought for ten months around Bakhmut in the east “to take a town six by six kilometres”. Sharing his first comprehensive assessment of the campaign with The Economist in an interview this week, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, says the battlefield reminds him of the great conflict of a century ago. “Just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he says. The general concludes that it would take a massive technological leap to...

Russia's air force has lost 90 planes since the start of the war in Ukraine and is becoming less formidable by overworking its jets, UK intelligence said. The British Ministry of Defence said in its latest daily intelligence update on Thursday that Russia is quickly depleting its fleet of warplanes through overuse because the conflict is dragging on for much longer than anticipated. "All aircraft have a projected lifespan, in flying hours," the update said, adding that it's highly likely that with the extra use, Russia is "eating into many of its airframes' lifespans" far more quickly than planned for....

MOSCOW (AP) — With Russia’s military action in Ukraine in its fifth month, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday warned Kyiv that it should quickly accept Moscow’s terms or brace for the worst, adding ominously that Russia has barely started its action. Speaking at a meeting with leaders of the Kremlin-controlled parliament, Putin accused Western allies of fueling the hostilities, charging that “the West wants to fight us until the last Ukrainian.” “It’s a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it looks like it’s heading in that direction,” he added. “Everybody should know that largely speaking, we haven’t even yet...

If there is a positive side to the rise of ISIS, it is that the West has had its head jerked from the sand and has been made to witness a bottomless, bloodthirsty evil: crucifixions, beheadings, enslavement of women, live burial of children, mass executions. But as one analyst writes, this violence is not “whimsical, crazed fanaticism, but a very deliberate, considered strategy” – one that seems to derive in part from a book called The Management of Savagery. In the spring of 2004 a strategist who called himself Abu Bakr Naji published online The Management of Savagery: The Most...

There are three subjects that Jews in my social circle never tire of: food, movies and the two-state solution. Consider me officially tired of the third. I began promoting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict long before it was popular. In 1986, when I helped organize a rally in Beverly Hills calling for Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians, no mainstream Jewish organization would have anything to do with us, and Jewish “patriots” shouted us down and disrupted the event. I believed then — and still believe — that establishing two states is the best, most just way to...

With the world melting down and the Bard semester heating up, I’ve fallen behind in my grand strategy posts; apologies to all and I hope to catch up with a post next week (during Bard’s spring break) on Machiavelli. But today’s business is still the Second Punic War, the conflict between Carthage and Rome that engulfed most of the Mediterranean world in what would prove to be the most important war in the history of what would, thanks to Rome’s victory, one day become western civilization. In the last post I wrote about how Rome had a grand strategy that...

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is doubling down on his defiance of the Feds. In November, the Department of Homeland Security stripped 100 Maricopa County deputies of their ability to make immigration arrests, amid a slew of complaints that the controversial sheriff was using racial profiling techniques to round up suspected illegal immigrants. But now, in what can only be described as a giant F.U. to the U.S. government, Sheriff Joe has announced that he'll train all 881 of his deputies to enforce federal immigration law, reports the AP. Arpaio said that, per federal law, his office doesn't need sign-off from Washington...

US President Barack Obama (R) speaks with top US General in Iraq, Ray Odierno, upon arrival at Baghdad International Airport. Obama said on a surprise visit to Iraq on Tuesday that the next 18 months could be "critical" and told the war-torn country that it would soon have to look after itself. President Barack Obama gestures while speaking to military personnel at Camp Victory in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, April 7, 2009.

Would-be immigrants may be staying home in significant numbers, a Mexican government survey says, a trend that analysts on Tuesday attributed to a crackdown on illegal border crossers, raids at employment sites and a slowing U.S. economy, particularly in the construction industry. The third-quarter survey, used to determine the employment rate because many workers are off the tax rolls, showed a 30 percent drop from the third quarter of 2005 in the number of people planning to work abroad or to cross the border. About 76,000 Mexicans were "looking for a job in another country or preparing to cross the...

INDIANOLA, Iowa -- At a campaign event Monday, Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson rejected the idea of allowing illegal immigrants to earn U.S. citizenship through military service. Anna Castaner, an Indianola resident, posed the question to Thompson during an event inside a coffee shop. Thompson drew applause from the crowd when he said he wouldn't support it. "They need to go back and abide by the law," Thompson said. The former U.S. senator from Tennessee said the country could have "enforcement by attrition." He called for securing the American border and stopping so-called sanctuary cities from blocking the enforcement of...

This story is from USA Today, which can't be quoted, so I'll just provide a summary and a link... http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-26-moving_N.htm In short, states cracking down on illegal aliens and enforcing the law are seeing unmistakable results....schools are seeing the children of illegals packed up into trucks and shipped off. Enforcement is making a difference. Read the whole article. Enforcement and attrition works. Not only are illegal aliens going to sanctuary states, many are just going back to their home countries (or to Canada). So much for the "we have no choice but Amnesty" crowd.

...The first consequence of stepped-up enforcement is attrition of the illegal population -- a steady decrease in the total number of illegal aliens as more people give up and go home. Attrition is the real alternative to amnesty, and we're seeing it work. The Arizona Republic ran a story last month explaining how migrants were leaving the state in anticipation of tough new immigration rules. Public radio station WBUR in Boston reported that "in the midst of the debate about immigrants coming to America, something unusual is happening in Massachusetts: Brazilian immigrants are quietly packing up and leaving." And the...

tain’s frontline troops in Afghanistan are being killed at such a rate that, were it to continue, one in 36 would not survive a six-month tour of the country. In Iraq, as many as one in 100 of all service personnel could die during a six-month stint if the death rate there continues as it has in the past month. The Ministry of Defence confirmed that a serviceman from the 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment was killed on Saturday during an attack on a patrol base in Helmand province. His death brings to seven the number of British troops...

Conservative Republicans working to block a compromise immigration bill risk endorsing a "silent amnesty" by insisting on unfeasible mass deportations, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in an interview published on Thursday. In remarks to USA Today, Chertoff also criticized liberal immigrant rights advocates, saying they could prolong the anguish of immigrant families by withholding support for legislation that could give them legal status. Chertoff spoke to the newspaper's editorial board in a preview of a Bush administration media campaign to build support of broad immigration legislation being debated by the U.S. Senate, USA Today said. The compromise bill...

There’s a new study out by Duke University challenging the belief that a common reason businesses go to China and India for engineers is because the United States doesn’t graduate nearly enough of them. The main reason businesses offshore outsource, the study concludes, is because the salaries are lower. Well, no $#*&! I’m not criticizing the work of the researchers of this interesting study. In fact, I’m glad they’re debunking numbers thrown out by the Department of Education and in reports to Congress: that India graduates 350,000 engineers each year compared with the United States' 70,000, and China graduates 600,000....

Most Americans favor guest-worker program: poll Tue Nov 21, 2006 11:25 AM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - Most Americans believe illegal immigrants should be allowed to become guest workers and eventually U.S. citizens, but Congress should do more to close the border to stop more illegals entering the country, according to a new poll published on Tuesday. The nationwide poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University, found that by a margin of 69 percent to 27 percent, American voters say illegal immigrants should be allowed into a guest worker program with the ability to work toward citizenship over a period of several...

April 10, 2006: The enemy in Iraq is having a manpower shortage. This is noted by the reduction in the number of attacks on American troops, and the smaller groups of attackers involved in things like ambushes. This is one of the reasons for the new American policy of fighting it out with ambushes rather than hitting the accelerator. Because of money and recruiting problems, most ambushes in Iraq are conducted by a very small number of attackers. Unlike Vietnam, where the communists might deploy a hundred or so gunmen for an ambush, in Iraq ambush teams are most frequently...

We’ll soon have 150,000 U.S. troops stuck in the ever-expanding Iraqi quagmire, a number that will probably grow even larger before Iraq holds elections presently scheduled for the end of January ’05. Maintaining such a force is a logistical and personnel nightmare for every grunt in Iraq. And according to several Pentagon number crunchers, it’s also driving the top brass bonkers. Meanwhile the insurgents continue cutting our supply lines and whacking our fighting platoons and supporters, who attrit daily as soldiers and Marines fall to enemy shots, sickness or accidents. Empty platoons lose fights, so these casualties have to be...

Is Iraq worth it? We find ourselves fighting Islamists there on an attritional front that Bush opened up. The United States have fought with Islamists before, in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, and in Bosnia/Kosovo in the 1990’s. Of course, 9/11 changed all of that. I myself do not believe that Clinton’s unilateral action in Kosovo was worth it. Milosevic, Serbia's leader, lowered himself to the Islamists he was fighting: They were doing to Serbia what we see in Iraq today {kidnappings, neck sawyering, bombings} but Serbia responded by reverting to tactics used by their own Nazi occupiers in the 1940's...

“Who dares to call the child by its true name?” — Goethe, Faust In our military, the danger of accepting the traditional wisdom has become part of the traditional wisdom. Despite our lip service to creativity and innovation, we rarely pause to question fundamentals. Partly, of course, this is because officers in today’s Army or Marine Corps operate at a wartime tempo, with little leisure for reflection. Yet, even more fundamentally, deep prejudices have crept into our military—as well as into the civilian world— that obscure elementary truths. There is no better example of our unthinking embrace of an error...