Liam

I was in ROTC when when the original torture memo came out, and still remember officers and NCOs dismissing the findings as “playing in the water” or “getting a bit hungry”. This stuff doesn’t go away unless there are active repercussions.

Not to be overly blithe but as a former SOF guy, SOF needs to have their entire population reduced by at least half while the remainder goes through re-education camps to 1)remove the influence of Iraq and Afghanistan and 2)build mission sets that actually support the joint force in LSCO

They’re wearing masks so they can’t be prosecuted later. As long as they think they can’t be prosecuted, their crimes will intensify. They will torture, starve and kill, as they have already, on greater and greater scale.

Signed, someone who’s covered the unaccountable War on Terror for 23 years.

Immigration and naturalization services vs Lopez-Mendoza, 1984. Ruled that 4th amendment protections do not extend to immigration law.

I now realize that for my entire adult life, I've had a very narrow conception of what "supporting and defending the Constitution" means. Standing on business when armed agents of the State are knocking on your door is way more important, by a country mile, than anything I did overseas

“Magical Thinking” etc

aaand we are officially in the hide-your-neighbors stage

There is something to this in that soldiers always seem to believe the enemy’s equipment is better. So even though the Sherman is by far the superior family of tanks, you can still find comments about their supposed weakness throughout oral testimonies from US and British tankers from the war.

the pope remains Catholic.

I also doubt that our defeat in Afghanistan had anything to do with service members being too fat.

That entire speech felt like a re-litigation of 20-teens era online military squabbles.

National Defense Ministry Honors 11 Soldiers for Refusing Illegal Orders National Defense Ministry Honors 11 Soldiers for Refusing Illegal Orders Honored for rejecting illegal orders during martial law, Marine death probe

The South Korean Ministry of Defense has awarded medals of merit to 11 officers for disobeying direct orders of superiors during the martial law fiasco, orders that they deemed to be contrary to the constitution and endangerment to democracy.
www.chosun.com/english/nati...

Listen Gen Z not going on routine combat action badge safaris is starting to hurt them on promotion points

Putting aside the legality or morality of any of this, it's deeply funny that the Trump administration seems to think that a drone campaign is going to have any material effect on drug flows. Yeah, buddy, we couldn't defeat Al Qaeda, but we're gonna stop a $650 billion industry with a few hellfires.

Charlie Kirk, Happiness, and American Messianism. Observations on the sanctification of a movement

open.substack.com/pub/liamlap/...

Technically Japan was not unconditional - the Japanese accepted terms provided that the Emperor remained the Emperor. It’s an important distinction to make, as if we had countered with a demand that Hirohito abdicate, I doubt we would have seen a Aug 15th ceasefire date.

I was very surprised to find out that she had come out vocally in favor of the internment of Japanese-Americans in 1942. Another lesson that excellence in historical knowledge does not necessarily translate to excellence in current-day judgement, I suppose.

Minor note, but that is a JLTV, not a MRAP. They are both vehicles that have no business on public roads, visibility is extremely poor from the armored passenger cabin

I'll say it a thousand times -- any account of the past that only celebrates the good parts of a nation without reckoning with the bad is not what we call "history"

It is propaganda, pure and simple.

we need to teach the 1930s properly so that people know the Reichstag Fire was exactly this stupid

I believe the Witcher does this a bit with some limited digressions on how Magic in Nilfgaard is completely controlled by the crown, while the Northern Kingdoms still have a guild system which is much more concerned with expanding its on power than assisting with crop yields

I’ve wandered fairly far from the Catholic Church in my day but takes like these make me want to become the most ardent papist who ever went to confession

It’s also just a horrible movie from a good or bad movie perspective

this is literally the single best thing about reading as a hobby

no matter how much you love books, no matter how fast you read, there are always - always! - more books

you'll never be able to read them all and that's a sad and wonderful thing

Being right wing is so hard bc you’re not allowed to acknowledge any actual phenomena that shape the world, so when you try to describe something you just end up sounding like if a person speaking in tongues worshipped the internet instead of god

What really annoys me about the Wehrmacht admiration both institutionally and individually is the American army executed operations, offensively and defensively, at a pretty goddamn high level from 1944-1945, why not really admire that?

Came here looking for the Ivanhoe connection and was not disappointed

Tbf the Soviets developed a method of warfare that was extremely materiel dependent and not dependent on an NCO corps. No one said it was efficient from a manpower perspective though.

napoleon constantly writing to the wives of his dead officers how much more he'd miss their husbands than they would was a pretty good bit. you have to give him that one