Wars and Rumors of War, 2025. Part 5. Oh oh, it didn't work. Now What? The Pearl Harbor Edition.

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

Matthew, Chapter 24.

What do we mean by the defeat of the enemy?  Simply the destruction of his forces, whether by death, injury, or any other means—either completely  or enough to make him stop fighting. . . .  The complete or partial destruction of the enemy must be regarded as the sole object of all engagements. . . .  Direct annihilation of the enemy's forces must always be the dominant consideration.

Carl von Clausewitz.

I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.

Isoroku Yamamoto.

It didn't work.

The United States did not destroy Iran's nuclear program, it merely set it back several months.

That was, quite frankly, a pretty predictable outcome.  Indeed, I predicted it.

The question is, now what?

Iran has learned that its security is, in fact, in building a nuclear weapon.  It's going to do it.

The only way to stop that would be a ground invasion of Iran, which we don't have the stomach to do, and which Israel can't do.

Israel gambled that they could take control of the air, and that this was the time to do it. That set up the scene for the US to come in with the GBU-57A/B MOP, which they gambled we would.  

We committed them.

It failed.

Military gambles are always judged in hindsight.  Japan didn't take out the U.S. Navy on December 7, 1941, as the carriers weren't at Pearl Harbor.  If they had been, the story would be different.  The Germans didn't defeat the Soviets in Operation Barbarossa, but they came close.  If it had worked, it would be regarded as one of the greatest military feats of all time, rather than a disastrous miscalculation.

We'll see what happens here, but my guess is that by this time next year, Iran has the bomb.

June 26, 2025

United States and Israel v. Iran

The Trump administration is getting increasingly spastic over the developing facts that Operation Midnight Hammer didn't really work, or rather than it achieved minor success but failed to achieve its objective.

As per usual, the administration simply accuses everyone who disagrees with them of lying or insulting servicemen.  That's complete and utter nonsense. The objective was a tough one and the odds were against it.

Hegseth held a press conference today that was essentially a rant due to these questions being brought up.  It was pathetic.

The big difference here, as compared to other Trump counterfactuals, is that the Trump smokescreen will evaporate with a mushroom cloud.

The question is how soon.

cont:

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei  declared victory in the recent war and discounted the damage caused by American airstrikes.  His tone was absolutely defiant.

June 27, 2025

United States and Israel v. Iran

After criticizing ‘warmonger’ Liz Cheney, Hageman backs U.S. intervention in Iran

I"m quite certain that Donald Trump could declare war on the entire world and Wyoming's delegation would support it.

June 29, 2025

Israel v. Hamas

As its seemingly now become too routine to take notice of, we will note that the fighting is still going on in Gaza.   The humanitarian crisis carries on, and Israeli strikes this week killed 72 people.

June 30, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

The war in Ukraine, the one that Trump promised to end upon being nominated but then later stated that was "hard", is heating up.

Looks like Trump was full of crap about his magical negotiation powers.  Where's that "art" of the deal?

Anyhow, Russia launched its biggest aerial of the war so far, firiging a total of 537 aerial weapons at including 477 drones and decoys and 60 missiles. 249 were shot down and 226 were lost.

The Russians have amassed 50,000 troops near Sumy.

Israel v. Hamas

Israel has ordered evacuations from norther Gaza.

United States and Israel v. Iran

An interesting post:

The inmates are running the asylum! That is what it looks like to me. Their entire administration is not based on anything that resembles sanity. 

And on the same topic:

 Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinge· 12h

So what seems clear from the intel, is that we probably should have reloaded the B2s, and gone for a second round.  Instead the impulsive toddler was desperate to have a strong ending to the movie and declare a cease fire.

This is a show to him, entertainment, and he’s the “star”

July 8, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

Roman Starovoyt, age 53, who had been fired as Russian transportation minister just hours prior, was found dead from a gunshot wound in his car.  Russian authorities stated suicide might be a possibility.

He's also been the governor of Kursk relatively recently.

July 9, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did not inform the White House before he authorized a pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine last week. Currently it seems Trump will resume them.

Trump reports he's upset with Putin, probably for busting the bubble that Trump has any persuasion over him.  Trump's efforts at bringing about peace have failed.\

July 14, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

It appears that the US will be increasing military aid to Ukraine, funneling the new arms through other NATO countries.

Trump has indicated that if Russia doesn't end the war in 50 days he will impose 100% secondary tariffs.

Last edition:

Wars and Rumors of War, 2025. Part 4. The GBU-57A/B MOP Edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2025, 2025 Israel v. Iran War, Cynthia Lummis, Donald Trump, Harriet Hageman, Iran, Israel, John Barrasso, Predictions, Russo Ukrainian War, United States, War, Wars and rumors of wars, Weapons, You heard it here first

Frankly, even the proposed change really means a person can get a landowner tag with fewer acres than should really be the case.

Hundreds Of Landowners Angry Over Proposed Wyoming Hunting Tag Changes

Saturday, July 14, 1945. Verboten und Nicht Verboten

Eisenhower announced the closure of SHAEF.

Eisenhower also eased the fraternization rules between Allied troops and German civilians allowing Allied soldiers to chat and speak to German civilians.  

Nazi German poster recruiting women for for the Reichsluftschutzbund, i.e. civil defense.  Women, and teenage boys, later served on antiaircraft gun crews.  A few months after the end of the war, the same targeted audience was beginning to become friendly to US troops.

By September nearly all of the rules would be removed.

Fraternization in this context does not mean what people commonly assume it does, but it is more in line with the etymology of the word's origins, from Latin through French:  "to sympathize as brothers".  Eisenhower, who was first of all an administrator, and highly intelligent, recognized that contact between the Western Allies, and with Americans in particular, would help have a corrosive impact on Prussianized and Nazified German culture.  Bans on contacts had already been lifted as to contacts with children, which were impossible to prevent between oversupplied American troops and German children anyhow.  The British, contrary to what is often reported in regard to the development in policy, followed suit.

There was really no danger that French troops were going to fraternize to any significant degree with Germans, nor those of any country the Germans had overrun.  And of course in Russian controlled territory, where Eisenhower's orders didn't apply rapine Red Army troops simply terrorize and brutalized civilians, and not only Germans.

Be that as it may, the inevitable problem that existed with American troops in particular fraternizing in the wider sense was already there.  It had been a problem after World War One during which the American Army had taken steps to stop friendly contacts between Germans and Americans with limited success.  At that time, Americans already were noting in letters home that Germany looked more like the US than France did, in that it was more technologically advanced and cleaner.  By the end of World War Two this was much more the case, with Americans being shocked by what they deemed the primitive conditions the French and Italians lived in, and impressed with the more advanced state of German municipalities.  While its often little noted, a non insignificant number of GIs found themselves not really liking the French and outright horrified by the conditions Italians lived in.

With things being the way they are, even before the end of the war the U.S. Army had trouble keeping soldiers away from German women, which is not to say that all such contacts had only one thing in mind.  Having said that, the conditions that followed the havoc of the Eastern Front and the war in general were having a massive impact on German culture even without Eisenhower seeking to step in and direct it.  The German military had been huge with a very large number of German men in it.  Many of them were killed during the war and many were simply missing by 1945.

A vast number of German men were held as prisoners of war as well.  The Western Allies held over 3,150,000 by April 30, 1945.  By the end of the war that number was over 7,614,790,with the 425,000 German POWs in 511 main and branch camps. The Soviet Union also held at least 2,733,739, fewer than a person might suspect, actually, reflecting the nature of the combat in the east.

The Western Allies did not, and could not have, repatriated German POWS immediately.  The US held German prisoners until 1946 in the US, with it notably being the case that many went from disciplined Nazi soldiers to actually enjoying the last year of their captivity.  Reeducation proved unnecessary as they rapidly evolved into democratic Germans in the last months of their captivity.

The point, however, is that with over 10,000,000 German men in captivity, and with millions of German men killed during the war, and with the German citizenry in the east put to flight, nature began to play a role in things very quickly.  Hundreds of thousands of German women were left without support in a country that had largely resisted imposing female labor on its citizenry during the war.  Man young women knew at an instinctive level that the normal path of finding a lifelong mate had been destroyed.  And the collapse of the Nazi system proved to be a bit like tearing a scab off a wound as even the Nazifield population proved capable of abandoning Nazi propaganda pretty rapidly, even if only superficially in some instance.  

Added to this, the war itself had damaged domestic life globally.  This has been noted in the context of World War Two marriages in the US on this site already.  While the German situation was different, it was found that after the war an appreciable number of Germans, both male and female, simply changed identities up to and including abandoning a spouse, missing or not.  In some instances German women became outright disgusted with German men and blamed them for the war and the fate they'd suffered, something that was also the case with Japanese women.

By June of 1944, Life magazine was noting:

There’s one blonde Fräulein with braided hair who always walked past two MPs every day on her way to do shopping, swinging her hips from side to side even more noticeably than usual. As she passed she would look slyly at the MPs, tap one hip and utter the word, ‘Verboten.’ […]

In Germany fraternization is officially a matter of high policy. But for the GI it is not a case of policy or of politics or of going out with girls who used to go out with the guys who killed your buddies. You don’t talk politics when you fraternize. It’s more a matter of bicycles and skirts waving in the breeze and a lonesome, combat-weary solder looking warily around the corner to see if a policeman is in sight.”

Ultimately somewhere between 14,000 to 20,000 German women would marry American soldiers after the war, something that stands in remarkable contrast to the French, as only 6,500 French women married US soldiers.  Between 10,000 and 100,000 Italian women married U.S. soldiers. 70,000 English women did the same.

Late war German poster celebrating Maria Schultz.  The poster states; "A German Girl! 'Germany will endure all suffering and create a new world', said Maria Schultz on the 12.February 1945, awaiting her death sentence"  Schultz, whose actual last name may have been Bierganz, was arrested when her diary was discovered, which was fanatically pro Nazi and full of fantasies about killing U.S. troops, but she was just let go, not executed.  German women would help rebuild Germany, but not in the way she imagined.

If all of this seems a bit odd, it's probably a lot more human than people might suppose.  Germany had been heavily propagandized during the Nazi era, but the era was a lot shorter than people like to recall, which is frightening in that Germany descended into madness so quickly.  Be that as it may, DNA tends to rule at the end of the day and the Japanese and German examples tend to show that, with the German one perhaps being the most consequential.  Nazi Germany had very distinct concepts of what women were to do, which were more than a little perverse.  Germany itself was, of course, a Christian nation which the anti Christian Nazi party was seeking to transform into something else, and which it was surprisingly successful in doing in its short period of rule.  

Recruiting poster aimed at teenage girls for the Hitler Youth.  The female variant of the Hitler Youth, the League of German Girls would prove to be downright perverse, encouraging a radical pronatalist view of their role.

The Nazis were heavily invested in an exaggerated martial concept of manliness which failed.  By late 1944 the Allies were on Germany's doorstep.  Fairly soon German soldiers in the East would outright be fighting to the last man to try to protect German civilians from the Red Army, which is much of the reason that the fighting in 1945 was so much worse in the East than at any time prior to that.  German troops did in fact go down fighting in many instances to attempt to give German civilians, including women, the chance to get away, but to a large degree they failed.  German men, in other words, were unable to protect German women from rape and death in the East.

In the West, the German military failure had less severe physical consequences, but German manhood failed there too.  Cities were destroyed and lives wrecked.  The irony, however, was that in the West, the Allies themselves became the protector, and indeed the liberator, of German women.  By making them temporarily Verboten, they gave them independence in a way that they had not had since 1932, if ever.

Italy declared war on Japan.

The French flag was formally unfurled at the summit of the Victory Column in Berlin.

The monument celebrated the German victory over France in the Franco Prussian War.

Japanese destroyer Tachibana was sunk in Hakodate Bay by aircraft of the U.S. Navy.  The battleships South Dakota, Indiana and Massachusetts, plus two heavy cruisers and 4 destroyers, bombarded the Kamaishi steel works in the first naval gunfire directed against the Japanese home islands.

The Simla Conference ended without a positive result.

Last edition:

Friday, July 13, 1945. Japan seeks a way out.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Australia, Diplomacy, Dwight Eisenhower, Germany (Berlin), Internment of Japanese, Japan, Luzon, Nazi Party, Racism, USSR, World War Two

Tuesday, July 14, 1925. Getting out of the Ruhr and trying to kick them out of Vietnam.

French and Belgian troops began to depart the Ruhr.

The Tân Việt Revolutionary Party, which advocated independence from France of a "New Vietnam", was founded by Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai.  It was not a communist party at the time, but by 1929, would become so.

It's notable in that its founder, Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai.was a woman.  She was executed by the French in 1941.

Last edition:

Monday, July 13, 1925. Pregnant lady.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Apostolic Christianity, Art, Cartoons, Christianity, Czechoslovakia, Greek Orthodox Church, Orthodox, Personalities, Prehistory, religion, Sex, Turkey, Women

Saturday, July 14, 1900. Taking Tianjin.

Tianjin was captured by Allied forces after a three-day battle, with the advancing parties lead by Japanese Colonel Kuriya.

A fire swept through the business district of Prescott, Arizona.

Last edition:

Thursday, July 12, 1900. McKinley learns he's running for a second term.

Labels: 1900, 1900 Election, 1900s, Old Age, the spoken word, William McKinley

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: As Yourself

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: As Yourself: See yourself in someone else.            https://youtu.be/dtVwIdNdC5Q         

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Kingdom of Heaven

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Kingdom of Heaven: Live for the next world and this world will make sense.            https://youtu.be/rhz-RAJxQ4k         

Impacts of Wyoming’s property tax cuts are just beginning

Impacts of Wyoming’s property tax cuts are just beginning: Small communities, without the reserves to smooth out the bumps that come with sudden revenue losses, will be hit first and hardest, argues columnist Khale Lenhart.

Friday, July 13, 1945. Japan seeks a way out.

US patrol on Luzon, July 13, 1945.

After a flurry of cables from Japan, Japan's Ambassador to the Soviet Union Naotake Sato met with Molotov in a peace feeler through the still neutral Soviet Union.

The Berlin municipal council confiscated all property held by members of the Nazi Party.

The U.S. took responsibility for the sinking of the Japanese hospital ship Awa Maru on April 1, but cited it as an error, which it was.

Gen. Eisenhower issued a farewell message to the AEF.

World War Two American internment camps were shutting down.

Today in World War II History—July 13, 1940 & 1945: 80 Years Ago—July 13, 1945: US War Relocation Authority announces all but one internment camp for Japanese-Americans (Tule Lake) are to close by December 15.

Ben Chifley was chosen as Australian Prime Minister

Last edition:

Thursday, July 12, 1945. Delivering plutonium.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, 1946, Australian Army, Battle of North Borneo, Bernard Law Montgomery, Borneo, France (Paris), Georgy Zhukov, Luzon, Manhattan Project, New Mexico (Los Alamos), Personalities, World War Two

Monday, July 13, 1925. Pregnant lady.

Archbishop Vasileios Georgiadis was elected by his peers as the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

A figurine of a pregnant woman was unearthed in Czechoslovakia that is believed to be 31,000 years old, one of the oldest examples of the same.

Walt Disney married Lillian Bounds in Idaho.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 11, 1925. Spain and Morocco agree to cooperate.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Art, Norman Rockwell, Rif War, Sports, Teenagers, Women

Tuesday, July 13, 1915. Internment.

The Castle Mountain Internment Camp for Canadian enemy aliens was established in Banff National Park, Canada.

The Central Powers renewed their Eastern Front offensive and pushed the Russians back to the Bug.

Last edition:

Sunday, July 11, 1915. Garza enters Mexico City. Revolutionary ambush in Brownsville.

Labels: Battle of Rufiji Delta, Constitutionalist Army, German East Africa, German Kriegsmarine, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Mexico City, Plan of San Diego, police, Royal Navy, Sedicionistas, Texas, Texas (Brownsville)

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 9. Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. It's Donald Trump's economy now.

 

July 4, 2025

The headline from the CST:

HOUSE GIVES FINAL OK TO TRUMP TAX BILL

And indeed it did, bowing to Trump's timing demands, and the current demands of a lifelong Democrat who became a Republican populist and destroyed conservatism, and particularly fiscal conservatism, in the GOP.

It balloons the debt and cuts services, while shoveling money to the Armed Forces and ICE.

It'll wipe out the medical care of millions, kill thousands, and cause a fiscal crisis unlike any faced by the country since the Great Depression which will, in turn, require a massive tax increase, at a bare minimum, to dig out of, if not things more drastic.  It likely belongs to Grover Norquist and the National Conservatives, rather than Trump.  Trump, a demented old man, will be dead before the consequences really set in.

The sub headline:

President says he will sign measure into law today; Democratic leader likens House to ‘crime scene’

And indeed it is.  It takes from the middle class and gives to the rich, and benefits the elderly (who get a tax break) to take from the young.

July 7, 2025

Employment Boom: Wyoming Unions Say Thousands Of Electricians Needed

The Trump far right is having a fit over Larry Summers' comments on This Week.  Summers criticized The Big Ugly and stated directly that it will lead to deaths so that the ultra rich can get tax breaks.

July 8, 2025

The on again, off again, on again, tariffs are back.

Supposedly all sorts of negotiations were going on, but now we're informed that most countries just get a form letter.   Countries receiving the silly missive are Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Laos, Myanmar, Tunisia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Serbia, Cambodia and Thailand.

There's this:

Wyoming landed one of crypto’s biggest names. Here’s what that means for the state.: Country’s second-largest crypto exchange names Cheyenne its home base. Wyoming leaders believe their pursuit of digital assets is paying off.

Frankly, I wish Wyoming's leaders would back the crap out of crypto.  I can't really define it, but the entire thing sounds like a 1929 era pipedream combined with scams that will blow up in people's face.

And crypto isn't really Wyoming. 

July 10, 2025

A whole host of economic news.

a.  A penny for King Donny's mush brained thoughts.

Something really calculated to boost the price of everything.  King Donald is raising copper tariffs by 50%.  The US imports 50% of its copper.

On the plus side, King Donny recently had the government stop making something they actually weren't making, pennys.  The inevitable increase in the cost of copper might Make Penny's Great Again.

M'eh.

b.  Black sheep black sheep, have you any wool?

A local product advancing.

Knitting a future for Wyoming wool: Buffalo’s Mountain Meadow Wool operates the largest full-service wool mill in the West.

This is the sort of thing I've advocated for, for a long time.

The Pandemic and Food, Part Three. A Good, Affordable, Steak

Ranchers Form Co-Op to Address Meat Processing Bottleneck 

Lex Anteinternet: Issues In the Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue No. 1 (c). The Economy again. . . Agriculture 

The Wyoming Economy. Looking at it in a different way. 

Supply Chain Disruption and Other Economic Problems

This direction, rather than CyberQuackery, is what we really ought to look at.

c.  Socialism is bad unless it benefits you, in which case, it isn't socialism.

I continue to be amazed by how our Republicans in Congress are all against expenditure except where it means a healthy does of everyone else's cash being hurled at Wyoming.  

I'm not against the $5.4B coming here, but where's all the Freedom Caucus cries of "Socialism!"

Lummis Wants To Give Wyoming More Control Of Investing Its $5.4B Education Fund

M'eh.

c. Flog that dead horse harder.

The CSD poses a question, to which the answer is no.

Trump Opens Floodgate For Wyoming Coal, But Will Producers Buy New Leases?

Coal is on a long term decline, as we've discussed here before.

Coal in the ICU

Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry

Legislative efforts on this from the right recall the lyrics of 19th Nervous Breakdown.

When you were a child you were treated kind

But you were never brought up right

You were always spoiled with a thousand toys but still you cried all night

Your mother who neglected you owes a million dollars tax

And your father's still perfecting ways of making sealing wax

e.  Donnie cries for Bosonaro.

I don't know if Donnie cried for Evita, but he is for Bosnoaro and threatening to hurt the US and Brazilian economy unless Brazil does his bidding by stopping his prosecution.  He's going to hit Brazil with a 50% tax.

Bosonaro is also a right wing figure.

This is corruption on the part of the US, plain and simple.

f.  Deseret Lee gets a break?

While the would be Senator of Deseret Mike Lee was screaming that Federal lands all over the West should be sold for real estate developments, his actual home state saw a 36% decrease in births.

Well, the far right is rather pronatalist, so we can expect Lee to demand Western couples get busy.

g.  The law of unintended consequences and marriage.

A headline:

Tariffs hurt bridal industry due to reliance on overseas market

July 11, 2025

And now Donny's going to hit Canada, our largest trading partner, with a 35% tariff.

Brazil promised retaliatory tariffs if King Donny's helping tariff hand goes out to his fellow right wing figure in Brazil who is facing a trial, as Donny really should have.

The Secretary of State, whose job in Wyoming is to be a Secretary, is once again criticizing the Governor, whose job is to govern.

Gordon Defends Energy Platform; Gray Says Wind, Solar A ‘Woke Clown Show’

Gray clearly can't stay in his own lane, and is clearly running for something else.  Wyomingites are pretty sharply divided on him, with the far right seeing him as some sort of brilliant crusader, and many others seeing him as a self serving buffoon looking for the spotlight to shine on himself.

The State Department is making layoffs in order to cut bloat, even though nobody really knows what the right size of government actually is.  It's a philosophical knee jerk thing that any government is too much government, unless the government helps me personally or fits with my ideology.

July 13, 2025

30% tariffs on the EU and Mexico.

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 8. The imaginary lost world edition (and also something about the color of pots and kettles).

Labels: Canada, Coal, Distributism, Economics, Electrical Power, inflation, John Kenneth Galbraith, Nostalgia, Petroleum, Socialism, Taxes, technology, The Second Trump Administration, Wyoming (Cody), Wyoming's boom and bust economy

Best Posts of the Week of July 6, 2025.

The best posts of July 6, 2025.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 94th edition. Portents? The problem of Evil.

?

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 95th edition. Making us a more barbaric society.

Can we stop pretending that ‘election integrity’ was ever a real problem?

Wars and Rumors of War, 2025. Part 5. Oh oh, it didn't work. Now What? The Pearl Harbor Edition.

Tuesday, July 10, 1900. Nipper.

Sunday, July 10, 1910. Tinkers ever to chance.

Where's the outrage?

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 96th edition. The Epstein Files.

Court Watch

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 9. Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. It's Donald Trump's economy now.

 

The 2026 Election, 2nd Edition: The early season.

Thursday, July 12, 1900. McKinley learns he's running for a second term.

Thursday, July 12, 1945. Delivering plutonium.

Extension denial leaves Wyoming ranch owner a week to convince SCOTUS to hear corner crossing case

Last edition:

Best Post of the Week of June 29, 2025. A turning point. The Big Ugly.