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4chan, America, anti-tank missiles, Assad, Britain First, Caliphate, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, Hezbollah, IS, ISIS, Islamic State, Lebanon, Obama, Russia nuclear, Russians, Serbs, Syria, Terrorists, Ukraine, US, War, War with America, War with Islam, War with Syria, War with Turkey
The terrorist ‘rebel’ forces of Syria, who – even if combined – number less than 25,000 men, have fought the million-man army of the Syrian State to a bloody stalemate. Despite the thousands of tanks, APCs, missiles, chemical warheads, fighter-bomber jets, and trained soldiers at Assad’s command, he has failed to prevent massive swathes of his nation falling into the hands of a rugged, relatively disorganised opposition.
In Iraq, another terror group, ISIS, has held its ground against the US, Saudi and Jordanian air forces, the Iraqi army, and various Kurdish paramilitaries.
And finally, in Ukraine, the pro-Russian separatist militias of the Donetsk People’s Republic have held off the armed forces of NATO-backed Western Ukraine whose ranks, even accounting for Russian counter-measures, dwarf the resources and technologies of the opposing side.
What does this tell us about our world?
For me, it raises the vitally important question as to whether the power of terror groups are evolving to a state of parity with national armies. It certainly seems that way, looking at the evidence.
Much of the improvement in guerrilla warfare over the past ten years is due to the development of one particular weapon – the mobile anti-tank missile. Once so large, they had to be hauled about on wheels, modern variants of these weapons are so small they can be carried like a rucksack.
It is a well-grounded fact that anti-tank missiles are cheaper to produce and more efficient in operation than the vehicles they destroy. If they are effectively designed and accurately deployed, 1000 anti-tank missiles can theoretically go against 1000 tanks and triumph.
The Israelis don’t need to be told this. Their brief and unsuccessful war against Lebanon in 2006 is judged in retrospect to be a Hezbollah military victory (a military victory, I emphasise, not an abstract ‘ideological’ or ‘moral’ victory – a military victory by Hezbollah over the Israeli army). How did the Lebanese movement achieve this? In the main, it was via anti-tank missiles, the latest, most upgraded type used by the Russian military. Hezbollah is rumoured to possess many thousands more.
To understand this requires counter-intuitive reasoning. We naturally assume that a huge, hulking Israeli tank is more likely to triumph over a single Shia terrorist, however well he is armed. But that’s not what happened on many occasions.
It is suspected that the Syrian state has passed more varieties of Russian equipment on to Hezbollah since the beginning of the Syrian implosion. This fact, along with the ghost of the 2006 war, goes some way to explain why Israel has not displayed enthusiasm for a rematch.
By way of conclusion, there is no reason, no reason at all, why a terror group cannot triumph over a modern nation state, and we are seeing them do so in many parts of the world today. That these groups are often only 10 or 20 thousand man strong, should give us all cause for concern, especially at a time when Muslims flow into Europe by the million.
D, LDN.
Defend the Modern World 
Are these ‘rebels’ not the same ones that William Hague urged us to support to depose Assad? As for the general issue, the Mujahadeen overthrew the secular pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan and the place has been run by Islamic fundamentalists in one guise or another ever since. One can also argue that some modern nation states owes their origins to terror groups, the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and carried out the Deir Yassin massacre.
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Yes, the very same ‘rebels’.
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I found this article both interesting and troubling. As you rightly say, a small but highly-motivated terrorist force, if they have equipment of suitable quality can make a great impact against larger forces. I think it quite likely that in decades to come, in Muslim ghettoes across Europe, such organisations will emerge. Gaining access to lethal weaponry in the UK will take them a lot of effort. But in other parts of Europe easier access to guns and dodgy arms dealers will mean that terrorist groups, assisted by funding from the Middle East, will have little difficulty arming themselves.
Another factor is the morale of those forces opposing these fanatics. Israeli troops, used to comfortable lives in now-affluent Israel, were not especially keen to risk those lives in the badlands of south Lebanon. Might not the same be true of most Western Europeans? If it comes to a choice between further appeasing the Muslims or putting their lives on the line, how many Western Europeans might not prefer the former option?
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It’s crazy to think that in the last three years, there have been two attacks by Muslims in France and Belgium involving military grenades. Where on Earth do they get them?
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It’s simple really!
In a competition between a bureaucratic organization and a non-bureaucratic organization, the non-bureaucratic organization wins hands down. And nation states and modern armies are the biggest bureaucracies ever created.
The Centralised Soviet model with all its inefficiencies and waste, is being almost perfectly recreated in these bureaucracies. Replacing a single component or a spare-part of a truck, for example, in these centralized bureaucracies would involve written requests in triplicate and endless waiting times. The terror groups, on the other hand are your typical free-market enterprises. They can run circles around any large hierarchical bureaucracies.
The solution is to de-bureaucratize the armed forces. Bring the rules of the market- place and right incentives to the armed forces and they can easily defeat the terror groups hands-down. But, in doing so, you’d have transformed the nature of the armed forces and if its is a good thing? Only future can tell.
Some interesting and revealing articles by an Ex-U.S Army officer John T Reed
http://www.johntreed.com/OVUM.html
http://www.johntreed.com/process.html
http://www.johntreed.com/militarypensions.html
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“The terror groups, on the other hand are your typical free-market enterprises. They can run circles around any large hierarchical bureaucracies.” – Very true, but then militaries are hierarchical by necessity. If you mean, we should reduce the amount of bureaucracy, I’m all for that. There is too much ritual and pomp in Western armies.
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But didn’t BHO say at the UN last year that, “Might doesn’t make right!” ??
LOL. Either he is stupid or he likes seeing chaos.
And yeah, why would we comfy Westerners want to pick up arms and fight an enemy after seeing all those uncomfy things in the media about war? Esp when it’s easier to march with fists pumping in the air… better to pretend our enemies are merely misunderstood friends.
Hmm. Maybe these people do need to see a little action. Might grow ’em up a little, as they say in the south.
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I would certainly suggest less bureaucracy and more free market principles to be used in Western armies.
It can be achieved by the following.
1. Clear commands with specific MILITARY goals which need to be achieved.
No bullshit about ‘bringing democracy’ or ‘making the world a safer place’.
It’s not a soldiers job to do politics.
2. It there is a military task at hand, for example, if the mission is to capture or kill the top leadership of a terrorist organization:
Select 3-4 officers with proven ability and give them a budget of, say 100 million dollars and give them the freedom to purchase any weapons or equipment they want and the freedom to select any personnel from the armed forces they may want recruit for this particular mission.
3. Give all 4 the same mission objective and clear rules as to how to operate.
4. Penalize them if they fail to follow the rules.
5. The first group to achieve the objective gets to keep any remaining monies left over from purchase of weapons & equipment and a bonus of say 10-50 million dollars if the objective is clearly achieved.
An army operating on this principle will be very efficient, and because of superior access to weaponry and training will defeat any terrorist groups easily.
(I read somewhere that Genghis Khan’s Mongol armies had similar organization and the Mongols were almost never defeated on the battlefield.
Such tactics were also part of the German armies under Moltke the elder.
Of course, such an approach may not be suitable in all circumstances, particularly when air support is needed etc, but the essential idea that free-market strategies always are superior to hierarchical bureaucracies must be kept in mind, for, the ultimate objective of any military operation is victory.
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we don’t fight wars to win, tho. this has been evident since vietnam.
in that respect, the left has a point. however, they are maladjusted by thinking the remedy is to wage war on ourselves.
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Of course, re Israel, it should be borne in mind that when they went into Lebanon – not only in the war of self-defence against Hezbollah in 2006, but also before that when they were in Lebanon in the early 1980s – the Israelis were fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. Exactly as when they have gone into Gaza, the last two times. Everybody shrieking “war crimes” at them, the moment the first picture of a wailing muslimah pretending to be the madonna with her dead child turns up in the media, perfectly posed and lighted. And god alone only knows what pressure the US and the EU and a whole bunch of other hand-wringing dhimmi fools – scared sh*tless of the OIC and of their internal Muslim mob fifth column – exerted on the Israelis behind the scenes, to stymy their campaign and protect thrice-damnable Hezbollah – or Hamas, in Gaza, or before that, the vile PLO in Lebanon – from annihilation.
The Israelis are probably thinking long and hard about Hezbollah and its weapons cache, and the matter of tanks and missiles. And they are very smart, very focused people. I wouldn’t write them off.
If they recall the lessons that Orde Wingate taught them long ago…and one must also remember that some Jews in Israel in 1948 had been partisans in central Europe – and that in their deep history (read books of Samuel and Kings, or the book of the Maccabees) they have always used surprise, intelligence and terrain, then I think they have a fighting chance. And if they hang onto the Golan and the rest of the military high ground – the heights of Judea and Samaria, the Jordan valley (which forms a wall), and Jerusalem.
As for the rest of us infidels: one small glimmer of hope that I see is that there are young – actually, they look absurdly young – men, veterans of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are entering politics in the USA, and they are getting elected. They are Republicans. And some of them – notably an interesting young man called Tom Cotton – seem to have learned in the badlands of dar al Islam, at close quarters with the Enemy, lessons similar to what you learned in what you called Jihadi John’s swamp. I’d love to see Tom Cotton and Allen West teaming up.
That brings me to my final point: the Islamoaware civilians *have* to make contact with the younger veterans – all over the West. We *must*. To find those who have started to figure Islam out, or are willing to figure Islam out; those who despite all the nonsense they’ve been fed by their superiors, haven’t “bought” it and *know* there is something deeply wrong with Islam; *know* that it is The Enemy. These guys, in Australia, Canada, the USA, the UK, and not a few European countries, are the people who have *survived* combat with jihadis. To do that, they know how to fight them; and once they “get” jihad, properly, once they have read things like Mr Spencer’s “Onward Muslim Soldiers”, and Islamic texts like S K Malik’s “The Quranic Concept of War”, they will be able to work out a response. Well-informed veterans, both in politics and within the community, may be the West’s “ace in the hole”, the thing the jihadis may underestimate.
BTW, I find it interesting that Niccolai Sennel, a nice Danish psychologist, having come to the realization that Islam was dangerous, has gone straight off and volunteered for the Home Guard (or whatever it’s called, I might be misremembering). He’s found a little corner – officially approved of, and all that – where he is able to learn to *fight*. He’s acquiring the physical skills he may one day need to save his fellow citizens; all the while he still wears his psychologist hat and works away on the ‘psy ops’ front, in the meantime, to wake people up.
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Yes, the Israelis are somewhat constrained by the liberal media and UN, but even with that considered, Hezbollah’s deployment of anti-tank missiles was shockingly effective. They even managed to disable a Navy vessel that was blockading the coast. One wonders why Russia passes this advanced equipment on to them. Russia stands to lose from terrorism too.
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The irony is that the Shia Hezbollah are now facing an existential threat from Sunni extremists like ISIS, (Israel, however, is and never was an existential threat to the Hezbollah: The Israelis just want to be left alone, with safety within their borders).
Their effectiveness in the battle field with anti rank weapons etc is of no use against a hardened, fanatical guerrilla group like the ISIS and Hezbollah is supposed to have taken heavy battle field casualties in Syria.
Russia now considers the Shia to be a ‘safe’ and friendly pro-Russia and pro-Infidel type of Muslims compared to the Sunnis. They are right in this, as the Shia have no ‘Global domination’ ambitions like the extremist Sunnis.
(The Shias being a minority in many Muslim countries, mostly want to survive and, as discussed before, their animosity is directed primarily against the Sunnis.
All this anti-Israel bluster by Iran and Hezbollah is to claim legitimacy among the Sunnis as fellow-Muslims, in a common fight against a common foe, but the Sunnis couldn’t care less, and, for them the Shia are always the ‘Rafida’ and eternal backstabbers, always betraying the ‘True Muslims’ to the Infidels!)
Therefore, Russia arming the Hezbollah is more pragmatic and sensible than the U.S and U.K arming the Saudis and the Pakistanis.
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