Chain Of Command

Posted on February 13, 2018 by Luke Ford

I’ve watched the first five episodes of this National Geographic documentary series and it is amazing that the United States is so heavily invested in fighting something as subjective and amorphous as “violent extremism.”

This is an arbitrary moral category. To the extent that “violent extremism” represents something real, it is no more of a threat to America’s interests than non-violent decadence such as feminism.

Many of the regimes that America supports such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt could rightly be called “violent extremism.”

Fighting “violent exremism” is not Jewish. In the Torah, God drowns the whole world in the Flood. Later, God commands Israel to commit genocide against the Canaanites. Jewish prayers command Jews on a daily basis to remember their commitment to exterminate Amalek. The texts of the Jewish tradition are specific when they name Israel’s enemies, and they focus on fighting particular peoples and practices, and not on amorphous things like “violent extremism.”

I know ISIS does bad things, but at least they don’t celebrate same sex marriage, and they don’t allow trannies to use bathrooms not in accord with their DNA.

When America had a real enemy, it didn’t call him “violent extremism.” Instead, it called him England, Mexico, Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union and Al Qaeda.

Fighting “violent extremism” is what you do when you have no threats to your own sovereignty and no threats to your regional hegemony and you think you have no rivals to your world power.

The United States does have a rival to its world power, China, and the Chinese are not wasting their resources and lives fighting “violent extremism.”

So why is the United States fighting violent extremism? Because it’s exciting. It feels great. It provides work and the opportunity for false heroism to people who would be much better off getting a real life. Do you think anyone joins our foreign policy establishment to not intervene in other countries? That’s boring.

On the show, you see a husband and wife, Marines, leave their kids behind in America to go fight in Afghanistan. That’s insane. Afghanistan has no strategic interest to us. The country could go to hell and we would not be affected.

Women do not belong in the armed forces (except in secretarial and nursing roles) and they certainly do not belong in the Marines. What kind of country sends young mother Marines to fight in Helmand Province, Afghanistan? A country that has lost its mind.

From BroadwayWorld:

With incredible access inside the walls of the Pentagon and to the front lines of the U.S. military’s mission to fight violent extremism around the world, National Geographic’s new eight-part documentary series CHAIN OF COMMAND offers a new perspective on what has been dubbed “the war of this generation.” Filmed over 18 months and narrated by Chris Evans (“Captain America,” “The Avengers”), the global event series paints an intimate portrait of how men and women in the U.S. military handle authority and responsibility, as well as the sacrifices they make in their personal lives.

Chain of Command delivers extraordinary insight into a line of authority and responsibility as never seen before, including a rare on-camera sit-down with Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., the 19th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. From the halls of power at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., to the front lines in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Niger and South America, and to the surprising ISIS recruiting ground of Trinidad and Tobago – only 1,600 miles from the coast of Florida – viewers will see firsthand how decisions made at the Pentagon have a direct impact on our service members on the ground, fighting to protect Americans and our allies from radicalized extremists.

“What’s really important is that we have clear communications. And that clear communication runs from the president and the secretary of defense, who make decisions, all the way down to the Marine lance corporal or the Army specialist out there executing the mission,” says Chairman Dunford in the series, adding, “The No. 1 priority for us is to protect the homeland and the American people from an attack and also to protect our allies from an attack against violent extremists. This is a global challenge; we call it a trans-regional challenge, but it literally is in every corner of the globe.”

In a command post sheltered inside a school in Mosul, Iraq, Capt. Quincy Bahler of the 101st Airborne Division works hand in hand with Iraqi Security Forces on a range of issues. Together, they monitor live camera feeds from U.S. combat aerial drones, deciding when to drop missiles on ISIS fighters while also figuring out ways to stop ISIS-flown camera drones from dropping bombs on U.S. and coalition forces. Meanwhile, on the streets in Mosul, Iraqi forces undertake a civilian rescue, getting families out of the combat zone on foot and under enemy sniper fire. In a quieter moment, at the end of his nine-month deployment, Capt. Bahler savors the simple pleasure of a well-brewed espresso as he prepares to hand over the reins to Capt. Mark Zwirgzdas of the 82nd Airborne Division and return to his wife and civilian life.

Everyone on this series tells us the same story — that they’re blowing up “violent extremism” in countries that have no strategic interest to America and this will make us safer. Then they bring women into the Pentagon to lecture on human rights.

Everybody becomes violently extremely when their interests are extremely threatened. “Violent extremism” is simply a severe reaction to a severe conflict of interest. “Violent extremism” is not an enemy, it’s a visceral reaction. This series shows America at war with a basic and necessary human emotion.

Every form of life has a strong visceral reaction to that which “f***s with my s***.” We all know when when our lives are threatened and we all react extremely to extreme threats.

It’s pointless for America to try to prop up the ruling powers in Afghanistan and Iraq. ISIS and Al Qaeda are, in all likelihood, far more authentic to who these people are. Counter-insurgency never works, as the Netflix movie War Machine showed, because people don’t side with their invaders.

The only person in Barack Obama’s foreign policy team in his first term who opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq was Barack Obama. He couldn’t find anyone else because all of our foreign policy elites love intervening overseas and there’s no meaningful difference between liberal internationalists (Democrats) and conservative internationalists (Republicans). People join the foreign service to intervene, not to leave well enough alone.

Many people in the Alt Right will say this is the Jews’ fault. I grant that organized Jewry has long favored an internationalist American foreign policy to protect Jewish interests, just as the East India Trading Company needed the British Navy bomb the hell out of people who got in the way of their flourishing heroin trade to the Far East (run by the Sassoon family, yes the biggest drug kingpins in history were Orthodox Jews, and the biggest legal drug racketeers in history have been the Sackler family who gave us the opioid epidemic). But American Jews were substantially less supportive of the 2003 invasion of Iraq than American gentiles (by about ten points in polls). I don’t primarily blame the Jews for America’s unnecessarily interventionist foreign policy. I blame the goys (though I don’t think it would have happened without AIPAC lining up behind the war, I remember even this left-wing Modern Orthodox rabbi in LA supporting the war publicly because he thought it would be good for Israel).

Alexander Solzhenitsyn comments on my Youtube video:

Oh c’mon!!!!!!!!!!
Why do you think Saddam went down? Mubarek? Kaddafi? Why do you think the entire ME has been WRECKED? Do you think that white people wrote “Clean Break.”
Did white people run PNAC?
Do you think that white people want Assad out?
Do you think that white people want war with Iran?
C’mon.

It wasn’t Jews who had the power to decide whether or not to invade Iraq in 2003. The most important people making that decision were gentiles (George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, etc). It was Hillary Clinton who was the prime mover behind America’s intervention to get rid of Khaddafy. And she’s not Jewish.

Alexander comments:

No Luke, it isn’t absurd to say the system is run by Jews.
A simple analysis of political donations proves that Andrew is right.
In fact, this is the ONLY way to understand ANYTHING that is happening……the only way to understand open borders in every white nation……the only way to understand wars in the middle east.
C’mon, some people have studied this issue.
The white shabbos goy are frontmen like Paul Ryan, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, etc.

Does Congress give Netanyahu 40 standing ovations because he’s such a great guy?
No.
They do it because of the (((donors)))

Jews make up 1.7% of America’s population. They don’t have the numbers to run the country against the will of gentiles.

Dennis Prager offers this impressive analogy that just as your neighborhood needs a policeman, the world needs a policeman, and that role has fallen to America.

My response is that no country, including America, can effectively act as the world’s policeman, and to the extent it tries, it will end up doing at least as much harm as good for the world and will inevitably sap its own strength. It was in America’s interest to intervene late in both world wars to ensure an outcome that suited our interests. I am not for withdrawing from the world. I just see this Chain of Command documentary series and I have no faith that the lives and treasure we are expending in fighting “violent extremism” is doing us and the world any good. Did our intervention in Vietnam make America safer? The world safer? All the major realists opposed the intervention in Vietnam and the 2003 invasion of Iraq and they have been proven right.

Is the Middle East better off because of American intervention? I can’t see any evidence for that.

I am not arguing that Jews are 100% innocent in America’s foreign policy blunders. No group is 100% innocent. Due to their energy, high IQs, and focus, Jews have played a disproportionate role in America’s successes and failures, at home and abroad.

I think it is a massive mistake for America to subsidize Israel (there never would have been a 9/11 attack on the USA without it). I think both countries would be better off going their separate ways. They would both have more room to operate in their own interests.

The foreign policy realists I admire include John J. Mearsheimer, Steve Sailer, Carl von Clausewitz, George Kennan, Brent Scowcroft, Hans Morgenthau, Martin van Creveld, Michael Scheur, and Carl Schmitt.

Posted in Afghanistan, Alt Right, America, Iraq, Jews | Comments Off on Chain Of Command

Josh Alan Friedman Interview

Posted on February 11, 2018 by Luke Ford

Starts here.

I’ve known Josh for about 17 years. His website.

From the Observer last January:

Josh Alan Friedman: The White Guitarist Who’s ‘Blacker Than You’

Josh Alan Friedman is the most multi-talented musician you’ve probably never heard of. Why? He sings the blues, that’s why.
Honing his talent for storytelling as a journalist, Friedman made his name writing non-fiction books, a novel, and even a musical that never made it to stage. Covering the Times Square beat for a decade gave him a unique perspective on New York City, and growing up as a white kid in at New York’s last segregated public school gave him a unique perspective on basically everything else, as evidenced by the diverse influences on his new album, Sixty Goddammit.
Boasting a rippin’ cover of the theme from Blaxploitation classic Shaft as well as provocative original blues numbers (“I’m Blacker Than You,” for one), Friedman never shies away from pushing buttons, which should make his February 3 appearance at The Cutting Room one of the week’s most interesting concerts.
More than happy to talk about his new record when we spoke over the phone recently, Friedman revealed his thoughts on the state of the music industry in 2017, why the blues are at an all-time low, and why much of music today has become worthless.

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Post Game: The Andrew Anglin vs. Sargon of Akkad Debate

Posted on February 10, 2018 by Luke Ford

Listen and listen and listen.

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Where Does Judaism Differ From Christianity?

Posted on February 9, 2018 by Luke Ford

Dennis Prager writes:

Ethical monotheism means two things:

1. There is one God from whom emanates one morality for all humanity.
2. God’s primary demand of people is that they act decently toward one another.

If all people subscribed to this simple belief – which does not entail leaving or joining any specific religion, or giving up any national identity – the world would experience far less evil. Let me explain the components of ethical monotheism…

Christians and Ethical Monotheism

While the challenge to making ethics primary in Judaism is largely one of Jews rather than of Judaism, the challenge to Christianity is more rooted in the religion itself. Within Christianity, the doctrine developed that correct faith, not correct works, is God’s primary concern.

Paul articulated this view in the New Testament: If good deeds could lead to salvation, he reasoned, “Christ would have died in vain” (Galatians 2:21). For that reason, he continued, “We conclude that a man is put right with God only through faith, and not by doing what the law commands” (Romans 3:28).

True, Catholicism holds that faith alone is not sufficient, that some works, too, are necessary for salvation. But between faith in Christ and goodness in behavior, the Church has, until recently, nearly always taught that faith is more important. Thus the Church held for nearly two millennia that even the kindest non Christians were all doomed: “Outside of the Church there is no salvation.” In a major move toward ethical monotheism, the twentieth century Catholic Church has reinterpreted this statement, and now teaches that while salvation will come through Jesus, it is not necessary for an individual to assert belief in Jesus by name in order to be saved; only God judges who is saved, and Catholics cannot declare who they are.

Historically, the thrust of Church teachings has not been that cruelty or unethical behavior is the greatest sin. As historian Norman Cohn wrote:

The sins to which the Devil of Christian tradition has tempted human beings are varied indeed: apostasy, idolatry, heresy, fornication, gluttony, vanity, using cosmetics, dressing luxuriously, going to the theater, gambling, avarice, quarreling, spiritual sloth have all, at times, figured in the list…. I have looked in vain for a single instance . . . of the Devil tempting a human being to cruelty.1

Some statements attributed to Jesus can lead a Christian to abandon the fight against evil: “Resist not evil” is the prime example. Others include: “Pray for those who persecute you,” “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44), and Jesus’ prayer on the cross beseeching God to forgive his murderers. Christians can interpret each of these verses in a way that does not detract from a Christian’s duty to fight evil. For example, the verses can be explained as applying only to an individual—i.e., the ideal individual Christian will not resist evil done to him, will love those who hurt her, etc., but this shouldn’t be taken to mean that believers won’t resist evil done to others. Such interpretations are certainly welcome. But it is difficult to imagine that the ideal Christian will lead a life of nonresistance to evil directed to self, and then strongly resist evil when it is done to others.

These verses of Jesus may explain why as prominent and personally fine a Christian as the Reverend Billy Graham, the most widely listened to Protestant in the world, failed to call evil by its name when he visited the Soviet Union in 1982. Indeed, true to Martin Luther’s teachings, Graham called on Soviet Christians to obey the Soviet authorities, and did not publicly side with perse cuted Christians. Rather than refer to the Soviet Union as an enemy of Christianity, the Reverend Graham only referred to “the common enemy” of nuclear war. At the time of the visit, George Will wrote:

Graham’s delicacy [about the Soviet Union] is less interesting than his “common enemy” formulation…. His language suggests a moral symmetry between his country and the soviet Union.

The Washington Post reports that when Graham spoke in two churches, both “were heavily guarded, with police sealing off all roads leading to them. Hundreds of KGB security agents . . . were in the congregation.” Graham told one congregation that God “gives you the power to be a better worker, a more loyal citizen because in Romans 13 we are told to obey the authorities.” How is that for a message from America;

Graham is America’s most famous Christian. Solzhenitsyn is Russia’s The contrast is instructive.2

Another area of Christian theology that undermines ethical monotheism is the belief that God saves human beings irrespective of how they act toward one another, just as long as they have the right faith. Millions of Protestants hold that believers in Jesus, no matter how many cruel acts they may perform, attain salvation, while nonbelievers in Jesus, no matter how much good they do and how much they may love God, are doomed to eternal damnation.

In spite of these teachings, two points need to be emphasized.

First, it is Christianity, more than any other religion, including Judaism, that has carried the message of the Jewish prophets, the clearest voices of ethical monotheism, to the world.

Second, Christianity, though not theologically pure in its ethical monotheism, can and does lead millions of people to more ethical lives. People do not live by theology alone. Theological teachings aside, the kindness and selflessness often associated with religious Christians and with charitable Christian institutions are rarely paralleled anywhere in the secular world—and infrequently in the religious world, either.

I yearn for the day when Christians will emphasize ethical monotheism as the most important part of their commitment to Christianity. I know from years of work and friendship with Christians of all persuasions that ethical monotheism is a value that many of them can easily and passionately affirm.

Muslims and Ethical Monotheism
During some of the Western world’s darkest periods, Islam was a religious light in the monotheistic world. The seeds of ethical monotheism are deeply rooted in Islam. For whatever reason, however, the soil for their nourishment has, over the last several hundred years, been depleted of necessary nutrients. Islam could be a world force for ethical monotheism, but in its present state, the outlook is problematic.

The Quran has numerous verses that emphasize belief in the one universal God who judges people according to their behavior. Like all religions, however, Islam contains xenophobic elements and doctrines that are incompatible with ethical monotheism. Unlike some other religions today, however, within Islam, xenophobia and hostility to ethical monotheism too often seem to prevail. For example, though the Quran states explicitly that in matters of faith there shall be no coercion, almost everywhere Islam dominates there is considerable religious coercion, whether by the state or by the community.

An example of such state sponsored coercion is Saudi Arabia, where religious police monitor what Muslims drink and reduce women to childlike status by forbidding them, for example, to drive cars. Saudi Arabia also severely restricts the religious freedom of other faiths.

The Sudan, too, is ruled by devout Muslims, and it is one of the most cruel states in the world, especially to its large black non Muslim minority.

Muslims need what most Christians and Jews have experienced – separation of church and state; interaction with other faiths and with modernity; and reform. Islam needs to compete with secularism, not outlaw it, and to allow competing ideologies within Islam. In religion, as in politics, when there is no competition, there is corruption and intolerance.

There are some Muslim voices crying for reform and for ethical monotheism, such as that of Dr. Fathi Osman, the former Princeton historian of Islam and editor of Arabia. When their influence increases, Islam will be a world force for ethical monotheism.

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Tabletmag: ‘Eagles Fans, the NFL’s Most Notorious, Have an Important Spiritual Lesson to Teach Us – We need a little rowdy tribalism’

Posted on February 8, 2018 by Luke Ford

I think this is the first time I’ve liked anything Liel Liebovitz had to say.

He writes:

Why would anyone put up with this behavior, let alone revel in it? Why tolerate such boorishness, inflected as it is with violence and disdainful of all that is kind and beautiful in the world? There’s a good reason, I think, and it has more to do with theology than it does with athletics.

Aptly enough, I first stumbled upon this bit of religious insight in Jerusalem. I’m a fan of the city’s local soccer team, Beitar, and I was attending a game one day when the God of Vengeance soured on his hometown boys. Beitar lost, and the fans set out on a nearby mall, seeking revenge. Happening on a McDonald’s, they attempted arson, pouring their wrath on the Chicken McNuggets before the law swooped in and had the hooligans arrested.

Observing these men, my fellow fans, I felt a strange sort of pride that troubled me. Even though I could never partake in their shenanigans, and would, under any other circumstances, denounce them as vile little vandals, I was gratified to see them senselessly express their disappointment by behaving like a gaggle of Visigoths with clubs in their hands and pillage on their minds. In their own idiotic way, I understood, they were pledging their allegiance to their tribe. It didn’t matter much that their tribe revolved around something as trivial as soccer, or that their way of expressing themselves involved light eruptions of asocial behavior. What mattered is that these men wanted to belong.

And wanting to belong, these days, is a problem.

These days, you’re likely to be told that the only collective you can join without care or concern is the biggest one possible, that of the human race. Globalists are welcome, praised for their humanity, celebrated for their universal worldview that insists that all peoples and places and cultures are, at heart, the same. But say that you have an affinity for your nation, say, or for the particulars of your religion, and suspicions arise: Are you some sort of separatist? And isn’t your preference really a way to mask feelings of supremacy? Because isn’t belonging really about choosing, and choosing really about hierarchy, and hierarchy really about discrimination?

If Jews can teach the world that tribalism and nationalism are often good, they will be a light unto the nations.

Dennis Dale blogs:

Wanting to belong is only truly a problem for white Westerners. The author of this piece Liel Liebowitz has not only an exception from the compulsion to self-atomize, but the responsibility to resist it, as a Jew. Even the most secular Jew living outside of Israel can take his ethnic identity–a genetic and cultural lineage going back thousands of years–as such a normative given he doesn’t even see it. White Americans used to have this. The critique of “white privilege” is just the pathologizing of the normative values any nation is necessarily based on.

The tribalism of soccer hooligans and American normals is meaningless, except as another degenerate wasteful release of energy. From the elites’ perspective, having nationalist tendencies subsumed in sportsball enthusiasm, whether by design or happy accident, is a Good Thing.

Recently someone tweeted a photo of an impressive parade of German men turned out to support their soccer team, while their women are raped and seduced at home by men with a deeper sort of tribalism.

Nonetheless, Liebowitz is on to something, and perhaps even comfortable secular Jews are starting to worry about the post-national wonderland that awaits.

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