UNFOUNDED OPTIMISM AMIDST THE RUINS

 It occurred to me as I listened to the latest on both the war in Ukraine and the disaster that swept over Maui that perhaps I am being unfair to the rotten string of Chiefs of Naval Operations that the Navy has endured for the last 20 years. Perhaps I underestimated their low cunning and guile. Perhaps they foresaw the wreckage that the neocons leave in their wake as they continuously seek every opportunity to make war on our former friends and allies and decided to castrate any potential war with China by disestablishing the Navy. It kind of makes sense since they have effectively gutted the Navy by their actions and failures and there is little doubt that the neocons and the big political donors and weapons makers are making money by the truckload fueling endless wars but I think the consensus is that any Pacific War requires a powerful navy to carry out. With no powerful navy on hand to make war it slides further and further away from their grasp and nobody can deny that the USN today is half the Navy it was in 1985.

40% of our submarines are offline for maintenance issues and our amphibious shipping takes hit after hit from the beancounters, saboteurs and shoddy shipyard work. I don't know what condition Naval Aviation is in but I have little doubt that it is in dire straits. Even at our height the Flying Hour Program was the first thing on the chopping block when it was time to economize. It probably doesn't help that F35s are making up more and more of the inventory and that there are few, if any pilots that have even so much as 1000 hours in the airframe.

The other nice side effect of making war on our friends and allies is that few of ours in the Pacific would stoop to pick up any gauntlets tossed at their feet. Nobody feels sanguine about going to war with the United States offering their firmest ever possible backing and support. They saw what happened in Iraq, in Afghanistan and they have long memories of what we did to South Vietnam when we decided we had enough and the democrat congress turned off the supply of arms and ammunition leaving the South to the mercy of the North Vietnamese.

Ukraine is finished as an American puppet state. It's out of men and tanks and APCs and cannot so much as. brush through the first line of Russian defenses and now it and the world know it. I won't be surprised if the generals take out the Ukrainian government in the next week or two and shoot them all out of hand or hang them upside down from lamp posts. Of course, the instant they start to make their move the apparatchiks will all flee to their villas in France and castles in Spain but we have become used to that.