Syria and the pith helmeted bombardiers
- February 28, 2012
- by
- Matt
On 2 September 1898 a British expeditionary force in Sudan defeated the armies of the Caliph Abdullah al-Tashi, the successor to the ‘Mahdi’ Muhammad Ahmad, who had overwhelmed the British garrison at Khartoum thirteen years before. Armed with artillery, Maxim machine guns and Lee-Metford magazine rifles fitted with dum dum bullets, British troops killed more than 9,000 of the Caliph’s soldiers in a single day.
It was, wrote the young Winston Churchill, who was present at the battle, ‘ the most signal triumph ever gained by the arms of science...
It’s Raining Threats, Hallelujah
- February 23, 2012
- by
- Matt
Is it time to start scraping the moss off those decommissioned nuclear bunkers left over from the Cold War, or dig my own? Should I stockpile food with a view to staying indoors for the next twenty years? After all it’s bad enough, as William Hague warned last week, that the UK is within...
Peter Beaumont on the Folly of Good Intentions
- February 19, 2012
- by
- Matt
With the new post-Gaddafi order in Libya disintegrating into violent chaos, Peter Beaumont examines the pitfalls of ‘humanitarian intervention’ in today’s Observer. He quotes from an article by former State Department official Stewart Patrick in Foreign Affairs last September, which described the fall of Tripoli as “the first unambiguous military enforcement of the Responsibility...
Into the Abyss: Israel and the West Prepare the Next War
- February 18, 2012
- by
- Matt
In the last few weeks the prospect of a war with Iran has begun to assume a terrifying inevitability. It is now clear that Western politicians, with the support of the mainstream media, are preparing public opinion for the military option, using the same techniques that preceded the Iraq war.
As in Iraq, the current propaganda...
If You All Love Special Forces Clap Your Hands
- February 14, 2012
- by
- Matt
The New York Times had an interesting piece yesterday which reveals a great deal about how the world works, or rather how the U.S. military believes the world should work. The subject of the article was a proposal from Admiral William H. McRaven ( Joseph Heller eat your heart out for that name), the head...
His Master’s Voice: the Media and the Afghan war
- February 12, 2012
- by
- Matt
Lieutenant-Colonel Daniel L. Davis will not be a very popular man in the Pentagon or the White House right now. His report on the Afghanistan war Dereliction of Duty II, which has just been leaked by Rolling Stone magazine, is a lucid, compelling and ultimately devastating analysis of the discrepancy between what politicians and generals...
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