Episode 703: Midrats Pre-Halloween Spooktacular!

to talk with you about. But if you have better ideas, we already got Paul in there standing throw the cordette checking IDs and hey, besides that, we're ready to go, and we're not having a show next week, so some of the pre show stuff about the spooptacular, but we cannot go. Let the high holidays go have recognition. You know Mark I's speaking about you know what? The call today is free for all. And when I thought out because my neighbor has the eight hundred foot tall skeleton

up in his yard. Now, all's Halloween spooptacular. But sometimes I think most all of our shows are kind of spooctacular, So I guess it was just the normal show.

mostly themselves and others in the Red Sea. So that's another conflict we can say that has been going on for a while. It hasn't ended. That's the war we've had for the last year. And what Mark and I

were talking about, I was like, well, let's roll that in to talking about the war that we might have in the next year. And if you haven't been paying attention to the last week with what's officially called by the People's Republic of China is Joint Sword twenty twenty four is they have as you would expect them to do, and as you would do too if you were in their shoes. They've turned the knob up, put the ratchet a couple of spots.

started the show. But I'm looking at that and I'm going, Okay, if if I'm China and I don't want to send thousands of troops across the Strait of Taiwan, how do I make it so it's really difficult for anybody to do anything about what I'm doing. And I look at them, I go, well, there it is. You set up these coastguard things, you enforce. You declare that since Taiwan is really your territory and it's surrounding seas, are it are

your seas? You declare that you're going to hould customs inspections, You're going to prevent bad guys from entering your waters Latti doa di DA and then you bring in your non military assets. Theoretically non military assets, your bear time militia, your fishing fleet, and if nothing else, you just get in the way of everybody that's trying to get in there. And the best case is you stop shipping into Taiwan and in that way you effectuate a blockade without necessarily

to clary a blockade. And so my question to you was earlier and I'll ask it again now you're you're you're the strategy kind of guy. How does this look to you? Is it has a strategy given the options they have.

one of their provinces. They just haven't regained control over it. And with that higher direction of guidance, I could see their planning staff coming up with, you know, three or

four different courses of action. They could take a different different le everything from a the People's Republic China do their version of D Day, full scale military assault straight out of coss Fits, you know, do whatever you want to do to describe what is kind of interesting to look at if you or if you're writing action novels, what that would look like, all the way to something that would be really really low key, which is pretty much what they've been doing the last few decades, just

with a little more emphasis, kind of like what we saw with twenty twenty four and what they're doing in the South China. See, we're just going to slowly turn up the heat bit by bit, but we really don't want to get in a shooting war with anybody. We had enough with Vietnam and seventy nine. We would rather just intimidate and bribe and corrupt our way to power. But in between those two steps is is kind of

what you've outlined here. One thing that China has been very good at is they have continually and regularly using various levers of influence and power they've been. The number of nations out there that actually recognize Taiwan as an independent nation, and the amount of nations that can actually do anything about it is pretty much down to one us. By narrowing that, they've created the conditions where they can all of a sudden say that we're doing with their Coastguard,

their maritime militia. They have enough units to do it without putting any of their warships to see. They can say, we are just going to be exerting control over our territorial waters, and we have customs requirements and inspections requirements, and we're just going to start implementing.

are whales as independent nations. And for too long we've tried to do this the easy way, But this is our province or we're going to take it back, and they'll this course of action that doesn't involve large landing fleets, doesn't belong taking car ferries and fulling them up with tanks and armored personnel carriers. It's basically strangling slowly Taiwan's

ability to sustain itself. And then the Taiwanese people will have to come to a decision point on what they want to do, and a lot of that will determine upon what messages and support they're getting from the US over on the eastern side. And the argument's going to be and the United States has not helped itself, especially with what we did in two thousand and three in Iraq, with our reputation internationally about interfering in the internal affairs

of other nations, and China positions itself very well. If in the course of trying to exert what they believe is sovereign power over their territory and addressing police issues with violent insurrectionists on their territory, why is the US seventh Fleet coming west of Wake Island to interfere in our internal affairs? If they couch it well, they can be clumsy on the diplomatic side of the House, but I think she's been very direct about what he wants

to accomplish. And if they're setting the conditions to do what you outlined earlier, I tip my hat to that is a really solid course of action. If you want to end this decade long story in a relatively short length of time without losing much face, without potentially going to war, or more importantly, not having to bomb your way through that island at all of its valuable economic

infrastructure that is in place there. If your National Command authority says that we need to do this by twenty twenty seven, which I believe he said in one context, now, how do you prepare that over the course of the next two to three years. If this is roughly the course of action that they've chosen to take, I don't think, regardless of what happens on the US side of the equation of political wise, how the Chinese could not succeed

if they're willing to take the short term hit of doing what they need to do with with Taiwan. If that's the path they're taking again, I'll tip my hat to them. That's pretty darn smart. And if you really back up and look at the big pixels. That's kind of in the finest traditions of China for the last few thousand years, when they're at their prime. This is how they went.

our international and national rights. And we've you know, we've long let it be known that we view Taiwan as our territory, and you know, it just I think it creates quite the conundrum for anybody who's trying to figure out how to respond to it, especially if they haven't been if they haven't when they weren't awakened by this going on in the last few weeks. Because if I'm sitting somewhere promised to be any kind of great strategic genius.

But I'm sitting in an office somewhere somebody walks in and goes, you know, what are they doing over there? I think I'd be going, oh my gosh, what what is our plan A and Plan B and Plan C for responding to this? Because there are a lot of options that don't look real good. Yeah.

of that because China is already off her feet. I'm sure that she is. Even if they try to do the soft they'll have the Coastguard and the People's Militia out front, but they'll have their military at a high readiness force and they'll through dipic diplomatic means, says, you know, well,

we'll work with our differences when we're done here. But everybody just needs to back off, and I think the international will back off because if you're the Philippines, India or Burma, regardless of what temporary issues you might have, Burma slash Maya and mar has plenty of internal issues,

external issues that everybody's going to do that. Nobody, nobody wants to go to war over a island that they don't recognize twenty milli million people that as long as they get their semiconductors, they don't care what country of

origin stamp it has on it. I think that the People's Republic of China has looked at it's timing and how it has prepared the international community space, the diplomatic space, whatever domain you want to call that, in such a way that they really wanted to have that twenty twenty seven date be valid. It's pretty smart, especially if the China Hawks in the United States have been primarily focused

on a military response. What if there is no military response to something that is a law enforcement and an internal security operation by everybody's definition. Europeans aren't going to stand up for Taiwan. Japan is not going to stand up for Taiwan. South Koreans have other issues going on right now.

et cetera. It seems that this is not a bad time in the next twenty four months to be able to take that route, if that's the route they want to have. I think perhaps or may have been a period of time that maybe in the first decade of this century that China might thought that they might they there might be a way to unify the two countries.

But I've seen people draw the line differently. Something changed in China around two thousand and five two thousand and six it decided to be less Pandamar and more dragon that they decided that probably wasn't the path that that was going to be successful for them. So they've been working on this path on their timeline, which they can do because they don't have elections every twenty.

the company. We we now control the South China Sea. We control everything that would be of any interest to anybody outsee because it's all our internal water, it's our nine dash line, and Taiwan is our terrritory. Anybody who invades this stuff is violating the international law by as you just said, I mean, they're going after our internal affairs.

It's our territory. And they have the benefit especially with Taiwan where they have you don't have to have armed forced, you don't have to have your big navy ships out there, because you've got the coast, you've got all their coastal batteries, all the all the the the airfields, everything else, and the and the long distance missiles, which would be you know, that's everybody. You're looking. Well, I'm gonna send my fleet

in there. Well, you know, what are you going to do about their d S twenty one's or wherever they are? And and and you know what are you gonna do about about the defense of Guam? And is it worth? This is where the question is going to come to the leadership of the West and the US in particular, what is it worth to challenge this if if they can't if they use this plan? What what? What is it? What's the what? At what point do we say the

cost is too high to fight against this? I mean we've had this discussion with an number of guests on the show that that somewhere along the line you begin to weigh these these decisions and what what the cost is against whatever the benefit is. And you know, the way they've the way they've to me, the way they've been setting this all up, is that it's it's you know,

nobody else is concerned, but theirs. And I, you know, I'm sure I'm not the only one that's that feels that this is an interesting strategy, but I see there's really a way to hamstring any kind of response against.

We're spending more on interest on our debt than we are on our national defense, and it's only going.

read of it, but the CNO's navigation plan that she came out with, which I it's it's a fine plan. I've seen worse. This is fine.

I think we have the reality of the budget being what it is. So if we're stuck at about two nine and a high percentage of that are platforms like lcs that are limited in their utility, and any type of fight against China, it's actually much smaller than that. For China's timing, it might be pretty good because in a way, because we've been talking big about what has it been ten years since our Pacific pivot that President Obama announced, and we've had Davidson and there's Davidson window,

and we had got Paparo out there. We're talking a pretty big military discussion. But in a way, we've we've balked for you baseball fans, we've balked on the Pacific pivot because we haven't backed it up with the resources for the fight in the Western Pacific, which is going to be a maritime and aerospace fight. We just we haven't done it out. See how we're going to do it with the present And this is not a political statement,

it's just a reality statement. It belongs to both political parties with the present leadership and philosophy underlying both towards national defense. I don't see how you're going to get any big change it will move that number. As such, if you've got a fight with what you got right now west of the International dateline.

stuff across the Pacific? You know, they we already know we were when we were talking to I think Dean Chang or Tean Chang I for somebody. But we're talking about the the Chinese have recognized. Maybe it was some of the Chinese, it was Toshi Toshi Yasha Hari, you know, wis we're talking about the Chinese recognizing World War two lessons. Well, you know the US is the logistics thing is what kept them in the war. And you're going, Okay, well,

what are we going to do about it? Well, they may have noisy submarines, but we don't have enough assets to protect our valuable logistics ships from noisy even noisy submarines. So there are a bunch of issues where we've shot ourselves on the foot before things get off the off

this start. So what you know, I think there are a lot of questions about preparedness and what we've done to as you say that the pivot to the Pacific, because I I'm having trouble figure out where we've other than putting some marines into the Philippines, I'm not quite sure where we've enhanced our abilities to fight anybody out in that area.

land power development. The People's Republic of China that used to be way behind us is if you want to look at an individual quant qualitative point of view, Yeah, we're still ahead of them, but that delta continues to shrink as they go iteration by iteration by iteration. You know, do they even have the equivalent of a SM two or an SM two alpha, much less an SM three. Somebody has that answer, but you can't get that answer

out of this gift. But I think it would be dangerous to assume that their missiles are low quality, are primitive for what they need. Unlike us, they don't have hundreds of short, short range and medium range, intermediate range ballistic missiles with USA written on it facing them unless you're going to get some high Mars in there, which good luck with that. So they don't have to have

those capabilities. What they'd have to be able to deal with is American cruise missiles and American aircraft, and that's a very different challenge and one that I think is well within their qualitative delta, whatever that is here in

twenty twenty four. And there was something that I think we talked about last week by bringing up again that I think plays in to the scenario you outlined earlier in the show as well as they have in serial production, like so many pieces of a Lego two dozen what we would call medium endurance cutters under production and just one shipyard. Tom Shugart had a nice little post on

that a blow over a week ago. That's the perfect vessel if you want to make sure that you have a customs inspection on every ship coming in and out of quote your ports unquote, that that would be a tremendous capability to have, especially new construction, because then you don't have to have one third of them in intermediate maintenance if they've all been produced in the same year.

So I'll know when those will have their shakedown cruises done, but they looked and such a production that if they really are motivated, probably by twenty twenty five, those twenty four ships will be up and ready ready to run. I don't know if we had the capability to put twenty four medium endurance cutters in the water inside of one fisc year, but the people are probably China share does.

have some interesting points here. He says ignorance and disinterest in the part of the US naval authorities and violence in the narrow seas is with several striking exceptions for verbial our continued unpreparedness for such warfighting results each time such emergency arises, in long delays before we're able to react effectively, and most recently and somewhat embarrassing call for help to reluctant allies. This will no longer do you know,

and he's pointing out the same thing. Later on in his book, he points out that we keep thinking of the way we design our fleet that we're talking about Mahanian, you know, we make fun of the Japanese. We're thinking we're the big battles of the major fleets fighting each other out there at sea somewhere, you know, but we see in reality that it's not that way now. In

the Red Sea is a perfect example, you know, the you don't have to have a navy in the narrow seas, as he said, given modern technology, shore based airpower, fast attack craft, submarines, missiles and minds can achieve sea denial without requiring superior surface naval forces. This has tended to deprive traditional sea power of its ability to command narrow

seas adjacent to enemy held lands. Guess what all that stuff around Taiwan, all the stuff around the Philippines, you know, those are that those fit the definition of narrow seas. You're not going to take your carrier battle group into the Strait of Taiwan to fight the war, there's no way. So what assets should we have to fight that war? And who's been thinking about that? The littoral Littal combat Ship was supposed to be one approach, but we all

know how that worked out. I asked them on X the other day, anybody's seeing any contracts for the fast attack craft that we're going to be needing to fight the Western Pacific. No, nobody's seen those contracts because there aren't any. And I don't know what's going on with The Congress has got to be aware of the limitations of the kind of navy we have. We are not built to fight close in to shore battles, no other

ways to do that. And you know, I think we've talked about that in the past, but I think this whole situation creates a it's a it's a real problem for us. You know, if we're always preparing for the last world, we better start preparing for the next one.

so risk adverse and hide bound. It lacks the ability to respond, innovate and create in an appropriate cycle. Now, you look at the development of ships and aircraft from the nineteen twenties through the nineteen sixties, which if you do the map, that's just forty years. So back up forty years and go back to nineteen eighty four and ninety four. Excuse me, and you look at the No. Eighty four Yeah, there we go. You look at the

pace of development in the iterations. We are still producing F sixteens and F fifteens designed in the nineteenies, modern ning, et cetera. That's wonderful, that's nice. But even when we try to advance our systems no longer when not talking about systems, our acquisition systems, our development cycles that in theory should support the national security requirements, but it's been flipped. The national security requirements support the acquisitions. I think a

perfect example of that. Bravozulu to the folks and naw there who made this decision what the Air Force now calls the next generation air Dominance ingad what the navyes call it, F eighteen XX. We decoupled from the Air Force and said you do your thing. We're going to do our things because of the lessons that people that are like talking about Plight Company with the F thirty five, so we want to do our own thing. Well after untold billions of taxpayer dollars have already been expended on this.

The Air Force is called a full stop because they want to develop. They don't think that what they've been doing is affordable, which same problem we have with CGX. People lack program control and making hard decisions, so everybody got a trophy and you can't afford it when everybody gets a trophy, so it's unaffordable. In fact, they don't

think that it meets future requirements. Well, nobody knows what future requirements are, so it looks like they've gone they went down the exquisite route and realized it can't happen, just like CGX.

way to change. I don't know if there's a technical term for organizations that they know they have to change.

It's existential that they have to change, but it's so hard that they won't. I don't know what the right word to describe that, but I think that's kind of where we are.

And if we're going to fight in narrow seas in the literals, if and all that, we have all these options that people have presented us to have presented to the US over the years. We've looked at the the Visbee's, We've looked at other you know, frigate type or I'm not even sure what the the other word is for ships that size. And then we had, you know, these things like the M. E. D. Stiletto from Chips. We had the our own patrol hydrofoils heavily those those were sweet.

I mean, those were heavily armed, went fast, didn't draw much water. And you know, if you if you lose on how many people they had on them, eight ten, I don't know, you know, if that makes them more expendable. Reminds me of the of the World War Two torpedo boats. You know, they were expendable at least, but then you know, they provided They weren't great at the job, but that was a lot of problems with the torpedoes and and some of the other things, but some of the missions

they carried out we were quite important. You know, we

just need to get that. Certainly, during Vietnam, we had a lot of Riverine forces, and we're using things like minesweepers to do some of the interdictions from a time operations. I mean, I just think there are people, but it's not career enhancing. You know, if you're if you're the expeditionary force, what do you call that? The the guys who run the small boat operations?

I'm let's take some lessons from the from the as the Marines have done, the narcotics importers from South America. Let's let's think. Let's think some small, highly armed quick votes that can can can sneak through things. I mean, I just it's just it just amazes me that we are so limited and to if it's not from Boeing or Raytheon, it gets no votes. I mean, that's that's that's just absurd.

But I think part of our problem is in times of peace because you don't have real world examples, and the few that you have people like to ignore is your war game. And you'll find nobody that likes war games better than I do. But war games are very limited because your war games are shaped and bounded by, first and foremost about how you're doing war game, who your judges, what your entering arguments are, what your assumptions are.

But they are also very limited to the fact that there are certain things I don't care if you have it eight or twelve sized did die that you can't quantify. There are two maths driven for instance, you know, you're talking about the smaller ships, and everybody adds things on they're not smaller ships because they're not quote capable enough. But everybody loves to talk about Taffy three. Let's talk

about Taffy three for a little bit. Tappi three. Everybody who listens to mid Rats should know what that is, if not google it. I'm not going to spend twenty minutes explain it. But the Japanese Center Force had the battleships Yamoto no Goto, Congo, Haruna had the heavy cruisers and I can't pronounce Japanese Choki, Haruga, Karuma, Saruza, Shikuma, Tone and light cruisers. They had eleven destroyers. It was huge, and they got turned around by Tappy three that had

three destroyers. And it's a shame we don't have destroyers with these names today. The whole, the Harriman and the Johnson, and the destroyer escorts, the Dennis, the Butler, the Raymond, and the Samuel B. Roberts, the og and forget which book it was, but years ago I read where they

were talking about the destroyer escorts. And by this time of the war there were people in the Navy, who were you know, patting the destroyer escorts from the head says, you know what, you only have one battery of torpedoes.

a lot better than you think. And going back to some of the things we were talking about earlier on the show, I think the People's Republic of China has proven that where if you look since two thousand, if you look at the People's Republic of China's military and national security structures compared to the US, NATO, Japan and our allies, you would never have expected that they would have been able to advance as much as they have, But they have because of their focus and their leadership

and a little bit of up. And it's the same thing for those smaller units. People say a fast attack craft X y Z, we don't need ten of those, we need two more early burgs. And I can make both arguments, but if you don't have that tool in your toolbox, then you don't have those options. If the decision was made that those destroyer escorts didn't need to be configured to do anything but triple A, would Taffy three have turned out the way that it did and probably not.

you know, they had to stop the clock and restart because it was an embarrassment up to that. I mean, it's not like we don't know these things. It's like we just don't want to think about it. And when you know, when they do think about it, Okay, how are we going to stop a swarm attack? And you know that, then it gets into well, we're going to have these cool weapons here and this and that and such, and you know, until we get those things deployed, you

got you got some serious issues. And the other concern that people have about using smaller ships or smaller craft just getting them to where they're going to be used. And no matter how many times you give them a picture of a of a yacht carrier carrying uh, you know, several dozen yachts from through the Red Sea or wherever. You know, that gets ignored. How are we going to sustain them? And we can always go up with the

same answer. Way. You sustain them with the tenders we don't have, or you turn you turn some of the amphibs, which are otherwise useless ships as far as I can tell them an engagement with with China, you turn them into support vessels for these smaller craft. I mean, it's not like we have to rethink everything. We have hauls, we have assets we could use. It's just that we

have to have the somebody to make the decision. You know, it would be a really good idea if we had I don't know, one hundred PGG you know whatever the current version of a patrol hydrofoil missile would be. So, you know, and are they you know these some of these stealth things like the stiletto and the sea shadow and all those other cool things that came up when Sabrowski and Hughes and some of the other people who were really thinking about this problem. I mean, and how

long ago was that? Twenty five years? What have been when doing for twenty five years?

They don't want to stay in for twenty years. They want to serve their country and then get out, and they'd be more unhappy to have their last last year in the Navy as the person in charge of a fast attack craft. They'd be more unhappy to do that, and then they'll get out, and then you could have some special mission service warfare. Guy who didn't get a destroyer can then be part of the flotilla command whatever.

That and one thing we haven't looked at, And for me, if I'm wrong, I think we had some version of this with our riverine craft in Vietnam. But the US Army has some pretty impressive kit that is run by warrant officers, okay, kind of like the helicopters and some of their watercraft, which we talked about earlier this year.

We will talk about that debacle today. Okay, fine, I bet you've got lots of BM ones out there and Ian ones who would love to run one of these ships as well, and would probably do a damn fine job. You know, why can't we look at what other services do to access some of the intellectual and professional capital. And they're enlisted forces? Yeah, you know, you got yeah four of them. One of them has Lieutenant j. G on it and the other three have warrant officers or

senior chiefs are running them. Probably worked better that way. There are ways to look at that if you want that capability, but it has to get off the PowerPoint slide, it has to get off the podcast and actually get sponsorship program a record, which goes into our procedures as well. But it's the problem appreciation that we've been going on for a long time. We know the Imperial we we know what we need if we are going to be asked to fight west of international dateline, But are we

resourcing it or are we just running on inertia? It mostly seems to be the last even you know, like Paul I Believe mentioned early on in the show, and I promised him we'd back to it. He asked about something we talked about last week, which was the number of SM three's that we expended. I saw a real nice comment over my substackle like it, and I want to try to use this term or often is if you're only producing a dozen items a year, that's not

a manufacturing product, that's a craft project. So if we are crafting a dozen missiles that we will blow out in the course of one day against a fourth rate power that we're also attacking with B two to now, because we don't have other assets that can attack a fourth rate power, we've got to use B twos from Missouri. Okay, fine, then how do you transition from craft built to wartime production? That's a done good question, and I would love to

have a supply chain guy. Maybe we could get one of the guys who got paid in that four hundred million dollar research project that Bob Work was involved with to talk about the supply chain issues. Where are those those barriers?

many more himers, how many more systems that we can use SM three's how many x y zs Because as we've many times have discussed on here, the rate of expenditure of weaponry and work far exceeds. Hey, what anybody can believe unless they're actually have fought in war and it is I mean, I just look at infantrymen in World Wark too, and you know how many how many rounds of ammunition did they consider enough to go into battle?

And you just you figure when you read the books that their idea of what they had to carry was a whole lot more than what the book said they were supposed to carry. So it just uh, some you know, maybe it's because we have a somewhat of a vacuum at the top where there'sn't anybody seeming to take charge

with any seriousness of where we're going with this. I mean, I know SECT now seems to be trying some, and c Ando seems to be trying some, but I don't know if anybody on the hill or in the executive branch is really paying attention to what the needs are if if we had to go fight a real fight.

remember off the top of my head. But you know, everybody was was able to properly engage when we do the percentages of say, okay, well what was your launch? There's your launch protocol? Shoot look shoot or shoot shoot look shoot. He just kind of looked at me and blink. He didn't say one way or another, which told me you didn't know. But you can run these games where you say everybody's going to go shoot, look, shoot, which

means you fire and missile. See if you hit your target, and if you miss, you fire again.

that you and I talk to always go back to VLS sells. If a decision has ever made that our fleet needs to go west of the International date Line to do stuff in the Western Pacific, is you're going to have, I assume, especially with our cruisers going away, it seems like every couple of months you're going to need a heavy teelam load out because you're going to

have to engage targets shore. And for every bank of mark forty one vs sls you fill up with the tee lamb, that's one that you can't put a aired air missile on. So how long do you go Winchester until you run out? And then how do you reload that? Where do you find those? How long does it take to get there? Do you once you have X number of ships with you use up most of their their long range anti ship missiles, but they still have their

their Tomahawk missiles? How long do you have them continue with you when they can only do point defense with their their c ram or their essms. They have got quad packed and a few of them. Now that's the real hard math that I don't think a lot of these war games are capturing, but there are some other

war games that do capture it. And that's when you talk to people who just they say, yeah, we got out of a war game and I can't talk about the details, but I need to drink, and that's I think those So there are people out there that are running what I think you and I would consider a real hardcore war game because they get they need a drink and they won't talk about it. But that's not what you hear up on the hill. You know, war games are like anything else. You can pick, pick and

choose what you want. But the math, the math is pretty harsh. If you look at when did the Hoofy shoot at the Mason?

say the Air Force involved with it, B two. That's great. I'm glad they you know, big ground penetrating whatever in there. But you know, has the problem been solved? Is it going to be solved?

the worst? This could get out of hand quickly? And the line from Red October.

can't deal with those people like you did with the kid who came in from San Diego when you're seventeen. And they are going to respond to power, what works, what doesn't work. And that's the whole essence of.

our perception of the world, I think is helpful. And a part of that perception of the world is to understand that Koreans, Russians, Chinese, Burmese, they don't think the same way do. They don't think better, they don't think worse. They're human beings just like you and me, but they have a different perspective on how you achieve your personal

and national goals. And we used to be able to spot weld other cultures onto this global international order that we've tried to put together, but I'm not sure those welds are holding as well as they should.

seventy two. Yeah, I don't know why that number anyway, it's you that is that, that is the that is the mindset you got to you gotta fight, and it's you know, we were never going to convert everyone in Afghanistan to be uh people who would like to live in They maybe would like to live in Scarsdale, but they're not the you know, that's that really is not part of their goal in life, which is to achieve status with such that they would get rewarded with seventy two of something.

it's downright hostile to it. When you look at the UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon, who were obstensibly there to promote peace. They promoted an incredible military infrastructure by Hesbla right there on the Israeli border. In the Israelis have basically told the un stay in your tower, don't get in our way.

of nations are. I always look at you know what, if we had something similar coming out of northern Mexico that all happened in a day, and you scaled up for population, would we do anything different?

people who support them. And you know, once you've done a certain level of that, you hope that they get the message and they quit doing whatever they were doing. But you know, to go in and then decide, well, yeah, and also we're gonna make sure all the goats are properly groomed and everything else that's head just just gets mind bodiling how much wastage there is and things that did really move the war forward at all, get us out of the situation we went into.