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| 1949–1951 Mercury Eight coupe |
Sunday, August 30, 2026
Death to Iran
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| Peace Through Annihilation |
I hope it doesn't come to that, and I don't think it will, but Iran really needs to smacked down and smacked down hard.
Stolen entire from Bravo Blue:
HOW NOT TO GUARANTEE STRATEGIC DEFEAT by retired Colonel Jim McDonough
No sooner had the levers of economic sanctions against Iran been strengthened when cries from the left and the right turned up the volume to call for our surrender.
The left’s are better orchestrated, essentially an almost frothing set of talking points that the current engagement with Tehran has been a needless and unsustainable departure from what recent Democrat administrations had already solved with skilled diplomacy. The right’s positions, as usual poorly organized, offer a mixed bag of regrets that so much has gone badly (list of horribles to follow) it is now time to throw in the towel. Both, however, stem largely from political and ideological motivation.
Oddly enough, they have a common objective. They want to get out of the conflict – and to get out fast, at any cost. In essence this would be a guarantee of strategic defeat.
Bringing war to a conclusion is always dicey. Often, great slaughter is undertaken even when it is foregone how it is going to end. Consider the final months of the Civil War, the last day of WW I (more than a thousand doughboys were killed before 11 a.m.), and the closing campaign to take Berlin (by the Soviets) in WW II. How to end a war when you have the upper hand is always a problem for national leaders. They are torn between the temptation to increase the killing or to diminish the efforts to achieve the original goals of the war. Such is the tension today for us as the Administration faces a stubborn and fanatical foe in Iran determined to fight to the end. What is the road to surrender, and who surrenders?
Insights to the answer may lie in the final days of the war against Japan. By the summer of 1945, the allies were unchallenged in the skies (save for kamikazes), the Japanese navy was at the bottom of the sea, and the Soviets were about to unleash their armies into Japanese territories. Yet Japan’s military leaders were determined to carry on, mobilizing the entire population to fight on with whatever they had at hand. They ‘bravely’ referred to it as the One Hundred Million campaign, meaning the numbers they expected would die --most of them Japanese civilians (see Evan Thomas’s excellent book, Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II).
The Americans had their own estimates of military casualties it would likely suffer (hundreds of thousands to millions) and spoke in terms of facing endless replicated battles on the scale of Okinawa and Iwo Jima. In lieu of that, we elected the option of the atomic bomb, the first on Hiroshima on the 6th of August and Nagasaki on the 9th. Even then, the Japanese hardliners (read military leaders) held firm, advancing their plans for a political coup should the peacemakers (referred to as ‘traitors’ by them) prove dominant. Nonetheless, despite surrender terms offered that allowed for the emperor to remain in place unharmed, the Japanese would not budge.
This impasse led the Americans to begin moving forward to drop a third bomb (then being assembled), this one on Tokyo. Our leaders were reluctant to do so (aghast at the demonstrated destructive power of the first two) but saw no other option. The Japanese did not know we had only three bombs, so they expected more were coming. This threat of more atomic bombs and the continued saturation of fire-bombings mattered to Emperor Hirohito, however, and to aother peace advocate — Foreign Minister Togo. Both knew how terrible the war had been for Japan (its people now in the early phases of starvation, the military being the only ones adequately fed) and had had enough. Their military, however, was dismissive of the reality, and divorced from any empathy for the suffering of their own people.
In the end, as the third bomb was being uploaded, Hirohito and Togo gathered their courage, denied the generals and admirals their idiocy, and signaled their readiness to surrender.
We did not know then what was going on in the Royal Palace just as we do not know now what is happening in the corridors of power in Iran. But we do know that we have great leverage over the conditions that can influence their decisions.
The first of these is our military prowess amply demonstrated in Operation Epic Fury in the spring and in the Straits of Hormuz now. The second is the economic stranglehold which has been greatly enhanced in recent days.
We also know that the Iranian people are suffering. Their economy is staggering and the rial has become virtually worthless. Everywhere (save for the political elites) deprivation is worsening.
Containing the internal unrest that might otherwise rear up has been a major concern of the fanatical IRGC leadership. So far, they have repressed it after a short but bloody uprising in the spring, but have the seeds of that rebellion gone away? Only time will tell.
We need to take that time, using the threat (and actual use) of military power when necessary and the application of severe economic sanctions to continually increase the pressure on Iran and its leaders. Now is not the time to seek an ‘exit ramp’ and surrender the goals with which we entered this conflict. Iran’s efforts to become a nuclear armed nation cannot be allowed to continue. Its endless terrorism by its regional and worldwide operatives must be dismembered.
The arguments to cease and desist using the levers we have at hand — many of them motivated by short term political objectives — are not the way ahead. Patience, strength, and calibration are what is needed. Conditions will change constantly, the power centers in Iran will bluff and deceive endlessly, and factions within our own political structures will cry out “enough” repeatedly. None of these should become a call for retreat.
Many believe the IRGC is too fanatical to fold. That was also thought to be the case with Japan’s military leadership in 1945. But when the pressure becomes so great that it is impossible for leaders to demand that their subjects ‘bear the unbearable’ any longer, those leaders start to think about their own skins.
Stay the course; apply the pressure. That is a more certain path to bring strategic positives from this trying but necessary face-off.
StriX Japanese Satellite
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| StriX Synthetic Aperture Radar Satellite |
Sondrak's Gulch regularly posts about upcoming rocket launches. Today's post mentions StriX. Never heard of it so I go looking. It's a relatively small Japanese satellite. The central box measures about a yard on each side. Looks like it is going to in a LEO (low earth orbit), about one hundred miles up. It's going to be looking at the Earth.
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| StriX Synthetic Aperture Radar Satellite |
Found this impressive block of bureaucratic psychobabble on the Synspective website:
StriX is a small, innovative, and low-cost Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite that was jointly developed by Synspective, the University of Tokyo, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The technology originated from the Impulsing Paradigm Change through Disruptive Technologies (ImPACT) Program, a Japanese government-led R&D initiative.
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| StriX Synthetic Aperture Radar Satellite |
10 Short Videos #6240
10 Short Videos #6240
- Why BGC NEVER Floods: The Giant Tank Under Burgos Circle! - Philippines
- The Genius Reason Chinese Farmers Bury Logs Underground - Fuling fungus
- Why Cats Walk in a Single Line of Tracks
- This Looks Miniature But It Isn't
- Watch This Craftsman Carve Your Entire Wedding Into Metal
- What flavor of autism did you get?
- Felipe Massa 2009 Crash๐คฏ - bit of metal hit his helmet at speed
- SMALLER DROPS, FASTER HEAT - Fire fighting
- ๋ฐ์ค ํ๋๋ก ๋ ๊ฐ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ์ฉ์ : ์ํ์ฒ๋งํ ์์๋ฐฉํธ ๋ณดํธ ์ฅ๋น - Welding blindfolded with just a box: Dangerous makeshift protective equipment
- ๐ Zeen vs. Traditional Mobility Aids ๐
Saturday, August 29, 2026
Western Civilization
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| Western Civilization |
Stolen entire from Patriot Post
What Is the Western World? by Gregory Lyakhov
Certain principles shaped the Western world, and the modern progressive movement, which so often feeds on emotion, is incompatible with those principles.
Western civilization is often defined by its accomplishments. Democracy, individual rights, religious liberty, and scientific advancement are all commonly associated with the West. But simply listing these achievements misses the more important question: What actually makes Western civilization different?
The answer cannot simply be that the West has been morally superior to every civilization that came before it. Western history includes slavery, war, persecution, and countless other injustices. But none of these things are uniquely Western either. Nearly every major civilization throughout human history has experienced slavery and other forms of oppression.
What distinguishes the West is not the absence of injustice, but the development of principles that allow injustice to be recognized and challenged.
We can see the beginnings of this idea long before modern Western civilization. The Code of Hammurabi, written nearly 4,000 years ago, begins with an extraordinary purpose: to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.
Hammurabi's laws were certainly harsh by modern standards. The famous principle of "an eye for an eye," also found in the Old Testament, hardly resembles our modern criminal justice system. Yet behind it was an important idea: punishment should be proportional and predictable. Justice could not simply depend on the arbitrary desires of whoever happened to possess power.
The code even attempted to protect people from false accusations and to establish responsibilities that extend beyond individual citizens. In certain circumstances, communities could be required to compensate victims of robbery or the families of those who had been killed.
But Western civilization eventually went considerably further.
Its development emerged from the interaction of two traditions, commonly represented by the cities of Jerusalem and Athens.
Athens gave the West reason. The Greeks developed traditions of logic and philosophy based on the idea that human beings could examine the world and discover truths about it. Reality was not simply whatever a ruler declared it to be. Through reason, people could investigate nature, politics, morality, and ultimately the proper purpose of human life.
Jerusalem offered something different but equally important: revelation.
The Judeo-Christian tradition taught that God exists independently of human beings and that man is created in the image of God. If human dignity comes from God, it does not come from government. A king cannot grant it, and a majority cannot take it away. The weakest person therefore possesses a dignity that even the strongest ruler is obligated to recognize.
Western civilization developed through the tension — and ultimately the combination — of these two ideas. Athens taught that human beings can discover truth through reason. Jerusalem taught that truth exists beyond human power and that every individual possesses inherent worth.
Religious tolerance, abolitionism, the scientific method, and eventually the expansion of legal and political rights to women and minorities did not emerge because Western societies were always tolerant or just. Clearly, they were not. They emerged because Western civilization contained principles through which its own failures could be judged.
One of the greatest threats to this tradition is the tendency to abandon either reason or religion. History shows what can happen when one is cast aside. Communist regimes such as the Soviet Union and China tried to build societies without religion, reducing morality to ideology and the authority of the state. The result was not liberation, but repression and death on an enormous scale.
The opposite extreme is no better. Iran shows what can happen when religious authority is allowed to operate without enough room for reason or individual judgment. And the history of the Muslim world itself shows that Islam is not inherently incompatible with reason. During periods when faith and reason worked together, Muslim societies produced major advances in mathematics, medicine, philosophy, and education.
But today, the West faces a different danger: politics increasingly governed by emotion rather than reason or religion.
We see it in debates over race, immigration, abortion, and economic inequality, where emotional stories are often treated as arguments in themselves. A society cannot decide what is just simply by asking which side produces the most sympathy or outrage.
The Soviet Union itself began with emotionally powerful grievances about inequality and resentment toward the ruling class, along with the promise that everyone could be made equal. Those concerns were not entirely irrational. But once emotion and ideology became more important than moral limits and reason, there was little left to restrain power.
Western civilization is imperfect because human beings are imperfect. But its greatest principles provide something extraordinarily valuable: a standard by which even the most powerful can be told they are wrong. If the progressive movement continues to radicalize across the Western world, however, those foundations risk being eroded by a wave of emotional politics — a system fundamentally incompatible with the principles that made Western civilization possible.
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