Tag: perpetual war

Why Military Conscription Is Worse Than Slavery

Libertarians understand — or should understand — that military conscription is a form of slavery or involuntary servitude. In fact, everyone should understand this. And yet conscription has been employed by the U.S. government for the past 161 years, ever since Abraham Lincoln signed the first federal conscription act into law in March 1863, enslaving thousands of American men.

For those who are killed in battle or executed for desertion, conscription is worse than slavery because it robs them of their very lives. To this day, one of the penalties for desertion in wartime is death. At various times in history the U.S. government has shot deserters in firing squads, and it has even imprisoned or shot civilian conscription protesters.

Even if one volunteers for the military, one immediately becomes a slave to the state because it is illegal to leave. The penalties for desertion apply to both volunteer recruits and conscripts. In “Desertion During the Civil War” historian Ella Lonn writes that after the conscription law was passed, draftees were held like “veritable prisoners … so as to prevent their untimely departure.” And there were many, many “untimely departures” from Lincoln’s army.

Examining “The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies,” Lonn documented that some 200,000 Northern men deserted from the Union army in 1862, about 14% of the entire army. More than 90,000 Northern men deserted on the eve of the Battle of Antietam, she wrote, and there were over 100,000 more deserters the rest of the year.

According to Lonn, a policy of mass execution of deserters was implemented after a Feb. 3, 1863, cabinet meeting because Gen. George Meade asked why the executions took so long. Lonn describes the execution method, which is documented in the “Official Records,” as follows: “A gallows and shooting ground were provided in each corps and scarcely a Friday passed during the winter of 1863–64 that some wretched deserter did not suffer the death penalty in the Army of the Potomac.”

Soldiers were forced to watch the daily executions of their friends and comrades: “The condemned men marched out between the two ranks of the regiment, preceded by the musicians, playing a funeral march. … The victim was conducted to the edge of the grave, which had already been dug. … He was seated, blindfolded, and placed upon a board at the foot of the open coffin, into which he fell backwards when the firing squad had discharged its duty.” Lonn adds that deserters were sometimes hanged, although shooting was the most common execution method.

Hence in the Civil War the precedent was established that all military personnel are slaves to the state in wartime and that death is the penalty for trying to escape from this form of slavery. Deserters weren’t physically punished for running away as chattel slaves were. They were killed.

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Kyiv’s Russia incursion plan required Western intel, meaning the U.S. knew in advance what Ukraine was going to do

Washington keeps getting caught in lies as the Western establishment pretends to not be backing Ukraine with its incursion into Russia.

A senior U.S. intelligence officer acknowledged this week that Kyiv had access to a consortium of satellite imagery that the Zelensky regime used to plan and execute their invasion into Russia’s Kursk Region, a claim that Washington denies as false.

According to the powers that be here in the United States, nobody knew in advance that Ukraine was planning the invasion, even though it has already come out that both the U.S. and Great Britain “provided Ukraine with satellite imagery and other information,” to quote a New York Times report.

The Times included a caveat claim that the satellite imagery and other intelligence was not meant “to help Ukraine push deeper into Russia, but to allow its commanders to better track Russian reinforcements that might attack them or cut off their eventual withdrawal back to Ukraine” because it was supposedly delivered after the start of the incursion.

Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth, who directs the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), commented that the Times may be confused. The paper’s sources could have been referring to the commercial satellite imagery that the U.S. has been giving Ukraine access to for years through the Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery (G-EGD) portal, operated by the space company Maxar.

“There were over 400,000 accounts in that particular portal,” Whitworth said at a recent discussion panel hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. “And so, the availability of commercial imagery is sustained.”

“If that is what they are using for purposes of this particular campaign, this limited campaign in Kursk, then I’ll defer to them to confirm that. But the availability is always there.”

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‘Jenin Is Just the Beginning’: Israel Planning More Escalations in West Bank

Israel is planning more significant escalations in the West Bank, and the Israeli military now considers the occupied territory the second most critical front, immediately after Gaza, Israel Hayom reported on Tuesday.

Israeli security officials told the outlet that while the directive for the West Bank is in its initial stages and that changes on the ground will take time, a new series of operations across the territory are imminent.

Last week, Israel launched its largest attack on the West Bank since 2002, with raids focused on Jenin and Tulkarm in the north. “The Jenin operation is just the beginning,” a security official told Israel Hayom.

The Israeli assault on Jenin continued for the seventh day on Tuesday as the city remains under siege. According to the Jenin municipality, the Israeli military has destroyed 70% of the roads and infrastructure in the city, and about 80% of the water has been cut off to residents.

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US prepares to provide Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles to target deep into Russian territory

The United States is close to an agreement to provide Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles that could reach deep into Russia, but Kyiv will have to wait several months as the United States works through technical issues before delivery, said U.S. officials.

The inclusion of joint air-to-surface standoff missiles (JASSM) in the weapons package is expected to be announced this autumn, three sources told Reuters news agency, although no final decision has been made. The sources declined to be named.

Sending JASSMs to Ukraine could significantly alter the strategic balance of the conflict by putting more of Russia within range of precision munitions — a major concern for the Biden administration.

Military analysts say JASSMs, which are stealthy and can strike further than most other missiles currently in Ukraine’s inventory, could push Russian staging areas and supply depots hundreds of miles back.

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Stand Up to Zelensky: A Plea for Sanity

It is understandable that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is asking the West for all the help they can deliver. It is the primary responsibility of a nation’s leader to protect the citizens of his nation. But by the same accounting, it is the primary responsibility of U.S. President Joe Biden to protect the citizens of his country.

It is partly for that reason that the Biden administration has, from the beginning, formulated its goal in Ukraine as protecting its territory and sovereignty while avoiding direct conflict with Russia that could lead to a larger Russia-NATO war.

But, from a Russian perspective, the recent incursion into Kursk inside Russia’s borders with Western tanks, American mobile Patriot missile batteries and U.S. provided HIMARS rocket launchers looks a lot like a NATO attack on Russia using Ukrainian troops.

Assuaging that perspective is not helped by the lack of condemnation of the invasion from the United States, the absence of any visible attempt to rein it in, the assessment that Ukraine’s invasion into Russian territory with Western weapons does not cross any U.S. red lines and the now evident American cooperation with the provision of “satellite imagery and other information about the Kursk region” to help the Ukrainian invading force “to better track Russian reinforcements that might attack them or cut off their eventual withdrawal back to Ukraine.”

The American stance on the Ukrainian invasion puts Biden’s primary responsibility at risk. And it puts that responsibility on a slippery slope to even greater risk.

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U.S. To Track Moving Air And Ground Targets Via Space By 2030, But Aircraft Will Still Play A Part

The U.S. Space Force second-in-command has provided updates on plans for the service’s introduction of space-based ground moving-target indicator and air moving-target indicator (GMTI/AMTI) capabilities. Also discussed was the U.S. military’s need for a layered surveillance network, including to deal with the expanding breadth of enemy ‘kill webs,’ something which TWZ has discussed in the depth in the past.

Speaking today at the annual Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia, Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, the Vice Chief of Space Operations, U.S. Space Force (USSF), said that the first parts of a satellite-based GMTI/AMTI capability should start coming online in “probably the early 2030s.”

Importantly, however, Gen. Guetlein said that he expects the U.S. military’s future surveillance network to involve multiple assets, both in the atmosphere and in space. “I see it always being a layered set of capabilities to increase survivability, first and foremost,” he said.

While a layered surveillance network — one including space-based assets, alongside crewed aircraft, drones, and potentially other platforms — has been discussed for some time now, it was only last month that the design baseline for Space Force’s new satellite system was certified, meaning that it can now progress into the formal development phase.

In the past there have also been repeated suggestions that space-based surveillance assets would increasingly take over from the aircraft that have traditionally undertaken surveillance of targets on the ground, at sea, and in the air. In particular, satellite-based surveillance assets offer the advantages of greater persistence and — at least in the past — enhanced survivability. It is also worth noting that the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is reportedly acquiring a constellation of hundreds of intelligence-gathering satellites from SpaceX, with a specific focus on tracking targets down below in support of ground operations. Its relationship to the USSF program is unclear, but there is certainly some crossover regarding capabilities.

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Netanyahu Can’t Win, So He’s Trying to Pull the U.S. Into a Wider War

Israel cannot defeat Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or Iran, so it is trying to pull the U.S. into an all-out war with Tehran out of desperation — similar to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s efforts in Ukraine, Jeffery Sachs, the Columbia economist, said in an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano on Tuesday.

He noted that the U.S. has been an unconditional supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu throughout the war, and the AIPAC-bought Congress even embarrassed itself by giving the war criminal over 50 standing ovation during his recent address.

Sachs noted that Washington is so committed to Israel, that the first message posted by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin after the illegal assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran was that the U.S. has an “unwavering commitment” to Israel’s security.

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US military officials doubt Kiev’s version of F-16 downing

Ukrainian Lt. Col. Oleksiy Mes was paraded as someone who could change the war in Kiev’s favour by piloting the F-16 fighter jets but was quickly killed when engaging with the Russian military, as expected by all respectable sources. The official story is that he was killed in friendly fire from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, however, the New York Times reported, citing US military officials, that this was most likely not the case.

“The death of a widely celebrated pilot and the loss of one of the long-coveted fighter jets so soon after their deployment cast a pall over the battlefield just as the giddy first days of the incursion into Russia’s Kursk region were fading away and concerns mounted over an advancing Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine,” the outlet reported.

On August 29, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine acknowledged the loss of an F-16 fighter jet transferred to Kiev and a special commission is investigating the causes of the accident. The Wall Street Journal previously wrote that the F-16 crashed due to pilot error, whilst Ukrainian lawmaker Mariana Bezuhla said that Ukraine’s Patriot air defence system shot down the F-16 due to a failure in coordination between units.

The New York Times reported that two senior US military officials said friendly fire was unlikely to have caused the F-16 crash. The publication did not specify what the statement was based on or mention their version of events of the fighter jet’s destruction. At the same time, the US military told the newspaper that American and Ukrainian investigators were considering many possible reasons for Kiev’s loss of the F-16.

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Russia Updating Nuclear Weapon Doctrine Due To Western ‘Escalation’ Of Ukraine War

In the latest worrisome saber-rattling sparked by the US-led proxy war in Ukraine, Russia announced it’s revising its doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons, saying a change has been necessitated by “escalation” initiated by the country’s Western adversaries. 

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told TASS that the update was precipitated by an analysis of  “recent conflicts” including “Western adversaries’ escalation course” in the Ukraine war. The revision is “in the advanced stage,” but Ryabkov said it was too early to project when it would be completed, given “we are talking about the most important aspect of our national security.” While there’s been no indication of the specifics, any revision seems certain to lower the threshold for nuclear weapon use — and increase the potential for a global conflagration.  

Per TASS, under current doctrine set forth in 2020, Russia may use nuclear weapons when:

  • An enemy uses a weapon of mass destruction against Russia or its allies
  • Russia has confirmation of a nuclear launch against it or its allies
  • An enemy attacks “facilities necessary for a response” to a nuclear attack 
  • Conventional warfare threatens the existence of the Russian state.  

That last condition of the current doctrine is particularly noteworthy in light of the Ukraine war. As foreign policy realist and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer recently told UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers, 

“There is all sorts of talk in the West about defeating Russia inside Ukraine, wrecking its economy, causing regime change and maybe even breaking up Russia the way the Soviet Union was broken up. This is a country that has thousands of nuclear weapons. If its survival is threatened, it’s likely to use them. So we have this perverse paradox here that most people don’t seem to realize…which is that the more successful NATO and Ukraine are against Russia, the more likely it is that the Russians will use nuclear weapons.”   

Russia launched its so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine in February 2022 with stated goals of “protecting people [in the country’s eastern regions] who have been subjected to bullying and genocide” by the Ukrainian government since 2014, and precluding Ukraine’s joining the NATO military alliance. Over time, the West’s backing of Ukraine has been characterized by gradual escalation in which one previously-ruled-out ratcheting after another has been realized.

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Kosovo’s Unknown Genocide

June 9th marked a little-known anniversary. On that day in 1999, Yugoslavia’s army withdrew from Kosovo, following 78 consecutive days of NATO bombing. In return for ceasing its criminal campaign, the US-led military alliance was permitted unimpeded, unchallenged freedom of movement and action throughout the province. The Yugoslav military’s exit instantly opened the floodgates for a genocide of the province’s Serb population to erupt, under the watchful eye of NATO and UN peacekeepers. To this day, the region lives with the cataclysm’s destructive consequences.

NATO’s March – June 1999 aerial assault on Yugoslavia was ostensibly waged to prevent an impending mass slaughter of Albanians in Kosovo. Yet, as a May 2000 British parliamentary committee concluded, all purported abuses of Albanian citizens occurred after the bombing began. Moreover, the alliance’s intervention was found to have actively encouraged Slobodan Milosevic to aggressively neutralise the CIA and MI6-backed, civilian-targeting narcoterrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with which Belgrade was truly at war.

The KLA had for years by this point sought to create an ethnically pure Kosovo via insurrectionary violence, in service of constructing “Greater Albania” – an irredentist, Nazi-inspired entity comprising territory in modern-day Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. Yugoslavia’s military departing the province at last provided the Al Qaeda-linked terror group with a grand window of opportunity to achieve that mephitic goal. There was a gap of several days before thousands of NATO and UN “peacekeepers” – known as KFOR – arrived in Kosovo, on June 12th 1999.

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