Will's Good Idea for the Week of 9/12/21 with Measured Commentary on the NFL and Joe

Baaaaaa, virtually no sleep. Don't get us started on the things.

We've thrown out just about everything we can throw out. Remediation people are coming on Tuesday. 

And like that, autumn is here. As we write it's about 55 degrees. We won't bother translating that into fru-fru Euro numbers. Metric system...what are we? Canadian? What's next, football fields that are 120 yards long? Speaking of which, it's a sports ball day. No. Hell no. Lift this voice, motherfuckers. 

One of the quirks about the Northeast is that aside from Notre Dame (for obvious reasons), college football isn't very big up here. Okay, Rutgers is kinda, sorta a thing in New Jersey. One does see a lot of Scarlet Knights gear. 

Mrs. Stroock comes from a Penn State family (that's where her folks met) and is devoted. She grew up with a cat named Nittany. We watch Penn State together, and over time we find we like the college game better than the league whose name shall not be spoken. Penn State is in the Big Ten Conference, as is Rutgers. Mrs. Stroock thinks Rutgers should be kicked out of the Big Ten. She's right. They're pretenders. Rutgers is not now, nor has it ever been ready to compete with the big boys. New Jersey's big high school football stars usually choose...Penn State. See for example, Newark's own Sequon Barkley. 

Foreign readers, don't trust anybody in the low down, dirty, no good South Eastern Conference. Imagine a futball league comprised of Argentina, Italy, Brazil, Germany, Spain and England, all cheating their asses off, all stealing the best players from around the world, virtually ignoring FIFA and just doing whatever the hell they want. That's the SEC. Folks down there became militantly pro-integration once they saw what black players could do for the football programs. One has to admire the SEC's brazen ruthlessness. Bastards.    

What Will's Watching, Voyager: We are becoming annoyed with the writers of this show. There's always 'interference' with the transporters, or the sensors or some such. We don't recall USS Enterprise having these constant technical issues. It's weak, contrived. Also, and we're far from the first to say this, the holodeck is dumb. In Voyager they hang out in a turn of the 20th century French dive bar. Why not use the holodeck to recreate something from the 22nd century? That's a hell of a missed opportunity. 

We looked over The Final Storm a bit yesterday and we have the Aussies and Vietnamese in a military and diplomatic stalemate. You know, maybe we should have the Australians drop the SAS and some paratroopers on Hanoi. That'd be a good short story at least. Post war, or post Final Storm.

Joe completely fucked up Afghanistan so he could have a moment on 9/11's 20th anniversary. Instead he didn't even speak yesterday. Good. Joe is...what's the word? [Unworthy?-Ed]. Yeah. [Disgrace?] Uh-huh. [A lying dog-faced pony soldier-Ed] For certain. It is hard to put into words our contempt for the man and his 65 million or so voters. Joe has no business being anywhere near a 9/11 commemoration. 

We didn't watch any of those. We're cynical and bitter about the whole thing. For 20 years the governing class from W through Trump failed us. The War on Terror is over and America's current situation is analogous to that of Britain in 1945, exhausted and broke. Don't believe me? Look who's president. Take heart America, you did not elect this man. 

In Which Will looks at his Watch

Greetings from the Jersey Shore. The weather should be splendid today but we're slated to get the remnants of Hurricane Ida on Thursday. We may also have a ton of rain Wednesday. There is talk, just talk mind you, of heading home Wednesday and returning Thursday night. The drive is only an hour and half. We'll see.

Well look at this, one of our articles was translated into French:  'Lors d’une conférence de presse la semaine dernière, le président Biden a déclaré qu’il n’avait pas été critiqué par les alliés américains et a affirmé qu’Al-Qaida n’était plus en Afghanistan. Selon ses termes, Al-Qaida avait « disparu ». Ces deux déclarations sont manifestement fausses. En juin dernier, l’ONU a publié un rapport détaillant la présence d’Al-Qaïda en Afghanistan. Le propre département de la défense de Biden est d’accord. Le porte-parole du Pentagone, John Kirby, a déclaré à la presse : « Nous savons qu’Al-Qaïda est présent, ainsi qu’ISIS, en Afghanistan et nous en parlons depuis un certain temps ».' Hmmm....maybe our aborted quest to learn French wasn't so futile, as we can tell what that says.

Speaking of the French...or Cubans* anyway, Hot Air reports that Justin is in real trouble. We remain skeptical as the Conservative Party leader, whom we won't bother to name, is a moose eating version of Jeb Bush with even lower testosterone. Our man on the ground in the nation with the world's largest beaver dam agrees. This blog urges all of our Canadian readership to vote for Maxime Bernier's People's Party. This blog predicts Canada will have more Prime Minister Man-Child. However, in California, Gavin Newsom is also in trouble (don't get excited, they're just gonna steal it). Exit question, if Brexit then Trump; if Newsome then Justin?

So, we're out of Afghanistan. Stop laughing. Seriously, yo. Stop laughing. We're going back, you realize that don't you? We probably should. This blog has always stood with Tucker, Steyn, et al about forever wars. But the last few weeks should give one pause. Is this blog wavering? Just a bit. We had 2,500 troops in the country and hadn't suffered a single death in 18 months. 

And by the way, the poo flinging monkeys who planned the withdrawal and are trying to spin this disaster into the Berlin Airlift and Dunkirk rolled into one, are telling us the war is over. Which should give everyone pause. The enemy** gets a vote too, idiots. So no, the war is not over. 

*Justin's real dad is Fidel Castro. Not joking. Google it. 

**For any State Department loose-stools reading this, that's the Taliban.

Shore Monday

Good morning from the Jersey Shore. It's raining.

Tragedy struck yesterday as we actually bought a six pack of beer but didn't like our selection.

You know, driving down here we passed Maguire AFB. We'll be damned. There was a gigantic C-17 making its approach. You don't think...? We guess we could learn to like Afghan food. 

Look, folks, this blog understands your concern. A bit of Afghanistan is coming here. Remember, we are surrounded by Hindus. Yes, we hear a half dozen Indian languages. The women wear saris when going to Hindu temple. Diwali is as jammed packed with explosives as July 4th. At this point we're basically a British East India outpost on the Northwest Frontier. 

The kids in Chindia are American as any other. Our gym is packed with young Indian men lifting weights. Afterwards they go to the local deli for coffee and bagels. You don't get much more American than that. 

Oh, and Afghans are about as likely to become a reliable Democrat constituency as Cubans and South Vietnamese. 

The Times of Israel reports border clashes with palestinian rioters. This blog has a few thoughts on what the Israelis should do about it. We'd call it Operation Rachel Corrie. Simultaneously, Prime Minister Bennet met with Joe in Washington. Did Joe really fall asleep while the PM was talking? It sure looks like it. Go on, Dems. Prove it isn't true. 

An Ole Miss fan asked about the New York Giants. You see, Eli Manning, the most successful Manning* ever to play quarterback in the NFL, went to Ole Miss. We haven't been paying much attention to sportsball. I mean, damn, we don't even listen to sports talk radio anymore. But we feel the Giants should be in good shape this year. They better be. It's been a decade since Eli won their last Super Bowl. 

*Payton was .500 in the big game. Eli .1000.

Your Saturday Update on Friday

We are getting ready for a glorious week down the shore. Can't wait. 

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Biden's illegal eviction moratorium was, illegal. This week they also ruled the remain in Mexico policy must be reinstated. There will be disappointments from the court, but over the long haul...

That speech yesterday was something. It's perfectly normal for the president to make a speech, eyes bloodshot, iris impossibly large and barely blink, while speaking, two words, at a time, as if someone is relaying those words to him through an earpiece. JFC. The man actually broke down when Fox News' Peter Doocy asked him a tough question. Powerline as is their wont, takes the measure of things perfectly.

Mark Steyn calls this America's Suez moment. This is worse. Is (are?) our ruling class the Bourbons? Romanovs? Maybe they're Jeff Davis attending church just as a messenger from Lee arrives notifying him that the Army of Northern Virginia is retreating from Petersburg, only they stuff the message in their pocket and say, 'Things are fine.' You tell me. 

We still have some unread Civil War books from last summer, maybe we'll just bring those to the beach. 

Did we write an Afghanistan piece for Inforos? Does our KGB handler have kompromot on us? To ask these questions is to answer them: 'The Biden Administration has been acting like the fall of Kabul was simply a bit of bad news that they had to spin till a new news cycle began. In a press conference last week, President Biden said he hadn’t been criticized by American allies and claimed that al-Qaida was no longer in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida was ‘gone’ in his words. Both statements are demonstrably false. Last June the UN issued a report detailing al-Qaida’s presence in Afghanistan. Biden’s own defense department agrees. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told the press, ‘We know that al-Qaida is a presence, as well as ISIS, in Afghanistan and we've talked about that for quite some time.’ Click it. *

We didn't know how to end the article till we heard about the ISIS suicide bomb. Thanks Joe...I guess. That article would be an interesting writing tutorial. The piece wasn't really going very well. We kept having to update. We seriously considered scrapping it altogether. At first the end was up front and the front was at the end. Only when we reversed did the piece come together. Writing is hard, but fulfilling, one of the reasons why we like cranking out Soviet propaganda. 

World War 1990: The Weser is 56,000 words. We need to wrap up the Confederates, write some fill-in scenes, and the opening blockbuster (if necessary).  That'll get us to 60,000 +, 65,000? To put it another way, we're real close to The Weser going to the sit phase. That's it. That's the novel.

We admit to being tired. It's been a long distracted week brought on by overwork and lack of sleep.

We haven't looked at The Great Nuclear War of 1975 at all. Once again, we need to finish the Falklands chapter. That's like, two scenes. Maybe three. 

Autumn will be the season of World War 1990: The Final Storm. When we get back from the beach we'll dive into the research again. We have a vague sense that The Final Storm is going to be a bog book by necessity. There's a lot to wrap up. 80,000 words?

Idea. The Australian SAS plays a big role in World War 1990: Operation Tet. Why not? Maybe we should bring those Afghan books? [Are you a woman?-Ed] Excuse us while we go take a look out our liberry.

*Drop a comment below if you click the links and read the articles. 

Thursday Wide Awake

Good morning William Stroock dot BlogSpot dot com fans. We finally got some sleep last night by popping two of the thing we usually take before bed. 

After back to back days at the pool with the Stroocklettes, we are tanned, rested and ready. 

Starting Operation Tet right now is a bad idea. Doing so will leave us with another project we feel we have to finish so we can get to the things we need to finish. So we'll just switch back to The Final Storm beginning 8 September, which is when school starts here. 

First Afghansy question. When the Taliban took over in 1996 the place went dark. How will Taliban rule play out when people have cell phones? Will it matter?

Second Afghansy question. More than half the population was born after the Taliban took over in 1996. Meaning more than half of the population really doesn't remember Taliban rule. What does this mean for Taliban rule now?

So, you wanted out of Afghanistan. So did this blog. They still hate us, you know. Wutcha gunna do when the next mass casualty terrorist attack happens.

We are aware that some Afghan refugees are coming to Fort Dix. That's about half an hour away from us. This is fine. We assume these are intelligencia types with their families. [You fool. You absolute fool-Ed] Again, we are surrounded by immigrants so it just doesn't bother us.

What Will's Watching, Voyager: We're towards the end of Season-2. We'd call it, OK. Pretty good a solid B (so far). Voyager is basically TNG, but heading in the opposite direction. That is, producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga are doing a show similar to TNG, but in a different way. This is pretty much what we do with World War 1990 novels.

Will's Afghansy Round Up

Please stop comparing Joe to Neville Chamberlain. The Prime Minister was a patriot, scarred like the rest of Britain by the Great War. They took 60,000 casualties on the first day of the Somme. The UK has never recovered. Chamberlain did everything in his power to preserve peace. Reader(s), you would have done the same. 

Also please, no Carter references. Jimmy Carter was an interesting and accomplished man. Peanut farmer, nuclear submariner, governor. Should have been a preacher. And yes, we can think of some things Carter did right, warning Brezhnev against killing Lech Walesa, for example. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Carter understood things had changed and acted accordingly, pulling out the Olympics and SALT II.

Pajhwok News Network is still reporting, a source we've used on and off for years. This blog wonders how long they'll remain. Here's a report on the Taliban removing roadblocks in Kabul. The Biden Administration would call that infrastructure. Click on over while you can.

Our KGB handler in Moscow won't stop sending us obnoxious Afghanistan memes. He laughs, he mocks. In fact he's gone the full Samuel L Jackson on us. 'Charlie Wilson's War isn't so fun now, is it, Motherfucker!?' Then he went on at great length about Amy Adams.* 

The only reading project for which we have any juju is Afghanistan, and the shore is the perfect place to get things started. But doing so only makes sense were we to begin World War 1990: Operation Tet this autumn. That's a bad idea right? We need to finish The Final Storm, right? You tell us, people. We planned, but has god laughed?

*It's possible this paragraph may not be 100% true. We asked and our handler said no one in Russia is paying much attention. Then he did three vodka shooters and cursed at us in Russian. We couldn't really make it out, but we think we heard 'Stinger' a couple of times. Also, the Russian word for bitch.

Friday Sore and Groggy

Two days in a row at the pool with the Stroocklettes. That's plenty of exercise. We are sore and tired after yet another rough night. We doze off and have really intense dreams that last forever and awake to see we've been asleep for half an hour. It's almost as if this Kabala stuff doesn't even work.

Chindian update: Yesterday we saw a gaggle of 12 year old Indian-American boys playing cricket. Three more houses* in our immediate vicinity have been sold in the last 10 days. So we'll be seeing more cricket.  

Boy, we really should do World War 1990: Operation Tet next summer, no? The Soviets would be the sympathetic ones. One group holding on at the embassy, another at the airport...Da, da, Comrade. Nightingale Russia would think we're colluding. We'll flesh this out on the Sunday good idea.

This blog remains flabbergasted by Joe's incompetence. No, this blog is in awe. The screw ups are so bad one wonders if they're on purpose. It's the only explanation, no? Nobody is this bad at something. Look, Joe doesn't know what's going on. The administration is run by spinmeisters and flimflam boys. They thought they could talk their way through this as if the Afghan Crisis were just a bad jobs report. 

It isn't. This is a historic humiliation that will end with a hostage crisis and pallets of cash. The long term result will be more terror. Remember, OBL and company thought their victory in Afghanistan led to the downfall of the Soviet Union. They've been emboldened. Exit question: does anybody think the Feds could prevent another 9/11?**

The New York Post tells us about an American trapped in Kabul. Joe's fuck up is the Iranian Hostage Crisis and Hurricane Katrina rolled into one. At this point it's obvious that the marines and paras at the airport have been told not to do anything to antagonize the Taliban. That means Americans have been mistreated and abused within yards of armed US troops who could do nothing about it. In a Westminster country, Joe would have resigned in disgrace. 

Below, your Friday Flag:

Civis Britanicus Sum! An Empire that protected its citizens

*By our count that's seven home sales this year. 

**So it's up to us then. See something, say something. Stop laughing. Are you nuts? The next terror attack will go down because a bystander didn't want to be accused of and sued for racial profiling.

An Afghan for Thursday

Baaah...We awake sore and groggy. Another rough night. 

This blog calls on the Taliban to respect women's and LBGT rights in Afghanistan. Don't laugh. We said don't laugh.

How many of the Afghan refugees and so-called refugees do we take in? We've got to take some but not....oh who the hell are we kidding? This is going to be like the Mariel Boatlift. Another Biden disaster is in the offing. Via Instapundit, enjoy this tale of Afghan refugees in Germany...As for the solutions offered at the end of the article, yeah sure.

We are told there's already a resistance forming in the Panjshir Valley in eastern Afghanistan. It's led by Ahmed Massoud, son of Ahmed Shah Massoud, our main ally in the 80's.  Do we help? Looking at the map, we're not sure how. But why not, right? We have written about this. This is our base for World War 1990: Operation Tet.

Speaking of the Russians and Afghanistan, here's our latest collusion: 'On 8 July president Biden assured the press, ‘The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.’ Later that month, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared, ‘The Afghan Security Forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight and defend their country, and we will continue to support the Afghan Security Forces where necessary in accordance with the guidance from the president and the secretary of defense.’ Last Thursday American intelligence officials warned that Kabul could fall within 60-90 days. It took the Taliban less than a week to roll into Kabul.' Click on through to Kabul/Moscow nexus. 

What Will's Watching, Star Trek Voyager-Season 1.  We haven't watched Voyager since the 90's and stopped watching several seasons before the finale. Till this day we have no idea how Voyager ends. We'll go into more detail in other posts, but 15 episodes in Voyager pleasantly surprises us. Here's why Voyager works. Unlike TNG there's no kinks to work out. Everyone already knows what works and what doesn't. This is a series in top form from the get-go. Also, we think we like Voyager now because, frankly, we're 48 not 24. Lemme put it this way. In 1996 we though Janeway was gross. Not so much now. 3/4

Wednesday Wallow

A nice easy hour on the treadmill yesterday at 3.7 and 3.8. We just cruised. Nevertheless we awake cranky, tired and sore. A rough night overall, we don't know why. That's two in a row.  Might be Thursday Downer material. We get this way in the second half of August now. 

The Taliban is already shooting women in Kabul. Western Feminists are screaming like a pod of beached whales. For 20 years these unfuckables made common cause with Islamists in the Middle East and at home. Feminists harpies for peace took to the streets with Sharia touting Islamists to oppose victory in Iraq. The purple hairs thought the hijab was cool and empowering. They argued that the burkha could liberate women from the male gaze.  You helped make this happen, you skanks. Reap it, bitches.

Would Shapiro, Carlson and all the rest stop calling the Taliban 7th century barbarians? These guys used WhatsAp to coordinate their military campaign. They DM'd Afghan forces to talk them into surrendering. At roadblocks they search people's phones for evidence they work for the government. Their religion is from the 7th century, but they aren't. The Taliban are a lot more than goat herders. To quote one of the tankers in The Beast, 'They sure have us on the run.'

We submitted our collusion to the Ruskis late last night. It probably won't get published till afternoon our time. 

We finished our readthrough of '75 excepting the Falklands chapter. The one-off scenes are what they are. Their purpose is to show what's happening in various parts of the country and how people and authorities in these places are dealing with the aftermath of the war. To that end they work. Still, they lack a narrative thread. There's nothing to be done. This is it. This is The Great Nuclear War of 1975. 

Tuesday Gloom

We awake tired, cranky, and generally pissed off. We are almost done with the '75 readthrough. When completed we'll go back over The Weser. Doing two readthroughs at a time is suicidal. An author would have to be mad to attempt it. Mad, I tell you. Baaaaaah! In the meantime we write The Weser one scene at a time.

Hot Air reports on Joe's speech. We really don't have anything to add, but aside from the dorks at MSNBC, it seems the speech went over about as well as a hasty and unplanned withdrawal from a combat zone.  

OBL thought the Soviets leaving Afghanistan was the first in a sequence of events that destroyed the Soviet Union. More importantly the Taliban, al Qaida, Isis, Hezbollah, etc etc are all emboldened. Joe's actions will cause more terrorism, not less. The Muslim only understands force and he views restraint as a sign of weakness. 

Our GRU handler wanted us to write about this. At first we were reluctant. We didn't want to come across as bashing the US for a bunch of commies. We ain't no purple haired soccer weirdo.*  But we've found a way to write about Joe's debacle that should satisfy our KGB handler without bashing America. 

Disgraced Neocon John Podhoretz argues that Joe could have 'done nothing' and this fiasco would not have happened. That is, had Joe maintained our 2,500 troops in Afghanistan...J-Pod points out that we hadn't suffered a single death since March of 2020. This is what we used to envision, actually. A far more credible Ben Shapiro has just about said the same. 

*Bronze medal, skank.

Which is worse, the Fall of Kabul or Toby Keith?

This blog formally recognizes the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as the nation's legit government. Congratulations. 

Let's get things off on the right foot with an ironic yet timely Monday Metal:

Hahahahahahahaha! Aaaaaaahahahahahahaha! [Was that really necessary?-Ed] You have no idea how necessary it is.*

Steyn, as is his wont, has taken the measure of the moment and agrees with us that this is so much worse than Saigon. The Pentagon actually had a plan in 1975, look up Operation Frequent Wind. It's clear that the Pentagon had no plan for Kabul. Right now the airport in Kabul is swarmed with desperate people. How long till there's some sort of massacre? Bill Roggio gives CSPAN a long analysis of what went wrong and what's happening, and we think it's worth reader(s) time.

[You wanted out of Afghanistan too, knobhead-Ed]

That's right. We're not going to make the usual caveats. Maybe there could have been a more orderly retreat. It took the Taliban 6 years to oust the old communist government after the Soviets pulled out in '89. We always envisioned a couple of thousand US troops in Kabul securing the city and coordinating air strikes. In the end it doesn't matter. Twenty years was enough.

*Makes me sick to watch it.

Will's Good Idea for the week of 8/15/21

Everyone's back home. 

The intel types said 60-90 days. We said a week and even that was optimistic. The New York Post reports the Taliban is 'at the gates' and the government is trying to negotiate a peaceful transfer of power. If you're the Taliban, why not just wait for the US to leave? Why fight for the city? Unless you want a bloodbath to make a point. Isis would.

Of course Joe screwed up the withdrawal. Just a few months ago Joe assured the nation that the Taliban couldn't storm Kabul ala Saigon. Joe was wrong. Joe is always wrong. Never underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up, Obama said. In the end, Joe was completely unprepared for this situation and the boys in Washington have no idea what to do. 

The 'War on Terror' (even I'm using scare quotes now) is over. We lost, didn't we? It's debatable. As Zefram Cochrane once said, we'll just have to let history judge. So let's not hit the panic or despair buttons quite yet. However:

This.

All day. Every day. This. https://t.co/qrHsB2v06B

— Thomas Joscelyn (@thomasjoscelyn) August 14, 2021

Even Petraeus? We tweeted. Maybe even him. What happened to the Iraqi army after we left. Were these generals mere celebrities created by the media?

Now we come to Will's good idea for the week of 8/15/21. World War 1990: Operation Tet. The CIA and Special Forces work with the in A Muj to unleash a grand offensive in Afghanistan. Think about it. One Soviet force defending their embassy on the verge of being overrun. A relief convoy sent from the airport is ambushed. A major attack begins on the airport proper. The Soviets are the good guys, or at least the sympathetic ones. Note, Nightingale Russia, this doesn't mean we're colluding, it just means we're trying to write a novel that's a little different. The only time Afghanistan has ever been mentioned in the series is through Soviet officers who had been there. It's a thought. Of course, how much of this stuff can we write?

Last Day

Picking the womenfolk up at the airport tomorrow.

Just a great run at the gym yesterday. We kept the treadmill on 3.7 and cruised. Why not? The real goal of those hour long runs is time, not speed, not even distance. We are of course, sore. Weird though yesterday, as it seems it was the women's 50+ hour or something. [Don't even say it-Ed]. We won't. Ouch! [Knobhead-ed].

Our latest bit of Russian Collusion: 'A snapshot of America today. It was alleged last weekend that at a baseball game between the hometown Colorado Rockies and the visiting Miami Marlins, a fan shouted racial slurs at an African American player. Rockies management quickly tweeted their ‘disgust’. Upon reviewing the footage though, it’s clear that the Rockies fan was shouting ‘Dinger!’, the name of the Rockies mascot, dinger being a colloquialism for a home run. The accused wanted to get a picture of Dinger with his grandchildren. The grandfatherly fan remains anonymous as the mere accusation of racism is enough to ruin his life...' Click to continue colluding.

Afghanistan is collapsing. We are intrigued by these three infantry battalions arriving in Kabul to secure the embassy and airport. A big battle like that could make a hell of a short story. One of our World War 1990 ideas is Tet in Kabul, from the Soviet Pov. Anyway, The NY Post quotes an expert saying that the Taliban will be on the outskirts of Kabul within 30 days. Fools. They'll have the city way before that. This blog isn't calling for us to stay, but since they're out in the open, why not bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb the Taliban on the way out? Jesus, it's all gonna be over by September 11th, isn't it?

By now you've all seen the latest Hunter Biden expose. For the record, the Russians have never stolen one of our laptops. We used to be thankful that we didn't end up like Hunter, but now we wonder if we have what it takes*. An 18 day bender. JFC. When Joe says Hunter is the smartest man he knows, we believe him. What are they gonna do when he drops dead from a crack overdose? No, Viagra fueled sex binge.  [Prediction?-Ed]. Prediction. 

So Air Force ends with a titanic and entirely fictitious aerial assault on a Japanese fleet. The crew of the Mary Ann spot the fleet when flying to Australia and send out the word. There follows a well executed scene in which the Army Air Corps, Marine aviation and Navy get orders to scramble everything they have.** After that viewers are treated to a spectacle as dozens of American aircraft descend on the Japanese fleet. Everything that could be accomplished with models has been accomplished here and the result is a visual spectacle of destruction. It's almost as if Howard Hawks let a bunch of ten year old boys write and shoot the scene. We can see the writer's room now, 'Let's just blow the fuck out of everything.' It's glorious. 

Below, your Friday flag:

Timely

*Reference.

**Readers, in which novel did I recreate this?  

In Which the Coming Afghan Disaster Gives us an Idea

It's July 7th and it already feels like the dog-days of summer here. We're in the midst of a second heatwave in as many weeks. Would the sun just finish off our lawn already? We threw in the towel last spring, didn't even seed. Too much going on. Put the damn thing out of its misery. 

We did back to back gym days. Machines on Monday, a great session by the way, and an hour on the treadmill yesterday. We love our treadmill time. God help us we do love it so. 

 NJ.com reports: 'New Jersey on Tuesday reported no newly confirmed COVID-19 deaths in its daily pandemic update — the first time that’s happened in nearly 16 months as the state, a one-time coronavirus epicenter, marks another milestone in its recovery. The state also reported another 145 confirmed cases, while there were fewer than 300 coronavirus patients hospitalized statewide for the fourth straight day.' The Delta variant is here, but so far so good. Twice we thought we may have had the Wuhan Virus from Wuhan China. Last spring we believed a February 2020 cold might have been the Beijing Bat Bug, and we thought we may have had the Peking Pangolin Pox last November. Duh, it came from a lab, probably on purpose. 

According to Andy Ngo and the Post Millennial, the lovely ladies of the US Women's Soccer Team that turned away from the 98 year old WWII vet playing the National Anthem were facing a flag at the far end of the stadium. Some claim exoneration. Nonsense. This requires further investigation into the athletes themselves, their friends, associations both present and past. A thorough examination of their high school yearbooks for un-patriotic sentiments is called for. The allegation has been made, and it's up to Ms. Rapinoe and her gal pals to prove it isn't true. 

Hot Air tells us the Taliban is on the march: 'NBC News has been following some reporters who are embedded in various areas of Afghanistan and it turns out that our old negotiating “partners” in the Taliban have indeed been on the move. And they aren’t skulking around in the shadows, either. They have invited reporters to look at collections of weapons and military vehicles they have seized from the abandoned provinces and bases.' It's gonna get real fucking ugly real quick, isn't it? We're talking embassy helicopter evacuations, right? Personally, we'd be slamming Taliban concentrations from the air. Well of course we're going to attack Joe for the coming disaster, even though we want the hell out of Afghanistan.

[Cynical, Yank-Ed]

Sub thought: Lets say the Soviets are still in Afghanistan in the World War 1990 universe. Why wouldn't they be? A short story about the Soviets defending Kabul against a Tet like Muj offensive would be pretty cool, no? Exit question: who're the good guys? Right now, we'd have to say Ivan. 

Lovely Ladies of the Left

The cold is ravaging the Stroock family. All except us. Unless that scratchy throat we had yesterday was our lone symptom. Seriously, we should have been laid low by now. Yes, we're aware we're tempting both Kek and Jobu.

One tries to be positive. One tries to eschew mean words. But then one sees Mad Maxine Waters bashing the Declaration of Independence, and Cori Bush Tweeting, 'This land is stolen land and Black people still aren’t free,' and the lovely ladies of the US Women's Soccer team turning their backs on the National Anthem, racial shyster Nicole Hannah Jones gets tenure at UNC but choses Howard instead...One word comes to mind, and it rhymes with... 

Zerohedge says the Taliban is unstoppable: 'In recent days, the Taliban’s march through northern Afghanistan gained momentum with the capture of several districts from fleeing Afghan forces. More than 300 Afghan military personnel crossed from Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province as Taliban fighters advanced towards the border. The Afghan soldiers escaped to neighboring Tajikistan, saving their lives from the enemy. On July 4th, the Taliban was on the verge of taking Faizabad, the provincial capital of the Badakhshan province. Senior local officials have already taken a flight and escaped to Kabul.' This blog couldn't care less. There's nothing in Afghanistan worth fighting for. We hope people that worked for the US are getting out of the country. But seriously, 20 years and you folks can't get your shit together?

A very good day of writing. We went through the now 25,000 words we've written for The Weser and gotten things straightened out, explained, and making sense. We still don't have much of an idea how we're writing the British. We don't want this chapter to look like the American chapter, do we? We'll see. 

For that matter, World War 1990: The Weser is starting to feel like the battle scenes in World War 1990: Nederland. We're working with a lot of the same ideas and themes. Which is fine. When someone reads and likes the thing you wrote, they want another thing just like it. 

Then we went through the Falkland naval scenes in The Great Nuclear War of 1975 and came away pleased. We've been using A Carrier at Risk, about the ARA 25 de Mayo as a reference for the Argentine navy. This is part of the Latin America @War series. Yesterday we discovered there's a volume about Brit sub efforts. So it's in the mail. 

We have the Admiralty dispatch one sub only to the Falklands. Why not three? Seriously, why not? Because one lone sub makes for a submarine adventure. In other words, because the plot needs it. Ok, a throw away line about resource scarcity and needing to keep the sub fleet in the North Sea, Atlantic, etc to watch out for the Ruskis will do it. But still.

9/11 What Should have Happened

Eighteen years after 9/11, you're goddamn right we're angry.

As the great Ralph Peters said, after 9/11 we should have hit Afghanistan with everything in our arsenal, created a smoldering ruin - and left.

Instead we're stuck in this god awful quagmire in a god awful not-a-real-country that not even Pakistan wants full of closeted homosexuals and goat molesters.

[Ok, so what would you have done?-Ed]

I would have irradiated Afghanistan with neutron bombs and then nuked it just to be a dick. I would have offered a million dollar bounty for the head of anyone named bin-Laden. I would have seized Saudi Arabia's oilfields. I would have surrounded the Saudi embassy in Washington and arrested the ambassador.

Then I would have gotten really mean...

Trump and Afghanistan

My latest over at Inforos:

On September 11th, 2001, this author lived (and still lives) in northern New Jersey, about thirty minutes from the Twin Towers. The September 11th attacks touched the author lightly. He spent the morning tracking down relatives in New York City. His grandfather watched the second plane crash into the Tower #2. Four men from his town were killed in the attacks.

That autumn, America struck back with righteous fury the likes of which had not been seen since Pearl Harbor. Using special forces and CIA paramilitary teams who worked with warlords friendly to the United States, in just a few months, the United States deposed the Taliban and triumphantly entered Kabul. The Taliban retreated to the mountains and, from there, Operation Enduring Freedom morphed into a nation building exercise and by 2006, a counterinsurgency.

W's Pet Aghanistan

This blog remains convinced W was a good president. One day they'll name an aircraft carrier after the man

However we take time out from our habitual defense of Bush the Younger to note Zero-Hedge's frightening, dismaying, depressing report on Afghanistan.

Nut graph, as the J-school suckers say, is that Afghanistan is a mess despite a generation of fighting and nearly $100 billion in spending.

Back in the day we thought George W. Bush made plenty of mistakes, the steel tariff, Medicare Part D, campaign finance deform, but Afghanistan was the worst mistake of all.

Even back in 2002 we wondered why we were investing all this time and money in the place.

Whose bright idea was it to stay behind in that crap hole and build a nation? The internationalists talked W into it, we suppose.

If the internationalists talked Bush into Afghan nation building, did the neocons talk him into liberating Iraq?

Was the man a clump of maliable Play-Do?

Exit question, is it time for Will to rethink his like for W?

The Middle East: What we Believed on 9-12

Reader(s) will recall that William Stroock dot blogspot dot com supports Trump's withdrawal from Syria and hopes he pulls troops out of Afghanistan, especially Afghanistan.

What the hell does victory in Afghanistan look like?

We're trying to recall our mindset in the first few years after 9/11.

The attacks brushed up against the margins of our life. The phones were jammed. We spent much of the morning tracking down friends and relatives both in the NY region and back in DC, from where we had just moved that July.  Our sister was on the subway when the planes hit. Our grandfather watched the second plane go in. From the Tappan Zee Bridge we saw the smoke cloud obscuring the mighty Hudson River.  Four men in our town (Peapack, NJ) were killed.

We were filled with righteous anger. We listened to Bruce Springsteen's The Rising. We really dug Toby Keith.

Till that point our foreign policy thinking was usually, 'Rubble does not make trouble'.

We stand by that slogan.

Like W we figured, 'You're with us, or you're with the terrorists'. We felt that the Middle East was a sclerotic hell hole. Nations were at best one party socialist states run by dictators (Egypt, Syria, Iraq) or theocracies run by religious nutters (Saudi Arabia, Iran).

We stand by that analysis.

The Middle East was very stable, said the stability fetishists; the likes of Madeline Albright, Brent Scowcroft, Mika Berezniki's father, etc etc. They argued that liberating Iraq would destabilize the Middle East.

To which we said, 'Great! Let's destabilize the Middle East!'

We stand by that argument.

In the wake of 9/11 we felt the Middle East must be changed and Iraq was a great place to start. We thought if we could establish a democracy in the heart of the region, those ideas would spread and undermine the surrounding regimes.

To sum up, we thought the liberation of Iraq would begin the transformation of the Middle East.

We don't think that's happened.

We're with him

Based Neocon gets his new War...

...or the old one, anyway.

So the president has had a change of heart. It sounds like about 4,000 troops are going to Afghanistan to supplement the 8,400 we already have there.

The good thing is that the strategy has changed from one of nation building, this was always stupid in Afghanistan, to counter-terror.

Personally I hope they revive the practice of daily enemy body counts.

Look, folks, no one gives a crap about Afghanistan or Afghanistanis. No one. But the simple fact is when we cut and run chaos follows.

Don't believe me? Look what happened when we bailed out of Vietnam, or Somalia, or most recently Iraq. Barry's early withdrawal from Iraq was a disaster. Talk about a paying a penalty.

We also liked the talk about India. We think they're our long term strategic partner. Besides, we live in Chindia.

At some point it comes down to trust, we suppose. Do you trust President Trump?