Why the internet has milblogs and Spencer Ackerman can’t be one of them
I’ve heard people I respect rave about how brilliant Spencer Ackerman is, and I’ve always thought he was a bit of an empty shell and this POS he wrote today with Noah Schachtman proves I was right. The piece is entitled “U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam“. The two stooges start out with their attention grabbing first paragraph;
The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.”
Shocking, huh?! But the “documents” that they obtained are a power point presentation to set up a scenario for officers to use for their war planning in a seminar at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College. Ackerman and Schachtman take lines totally out of the context of setting the guidelines for the discussion and use them as declarative statements that seemingly present the world as the author of the slides sees the current situation. For example;
“We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam,’” Dooley noted in a July 2011 presentation (.pdf), which concluded with a suggested manifesto to America’s enemies. “It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.”
Yeah, a manifesto. It’s a phase of the war game, dickbrains. Here’s the slide he’s talking about;
See, where it says “Phase I”. That means that this is the second phase of the discussion. Phase I theoretically failed, so officers are asked to consider what the appropriate reaction to the conditions to Phase II are. But Ackerman and Schachtman think that it’s a propaganda piece to convince officers that we have no choice but to wipe out Islam.
Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, the guy who wrote the slide presentation, doesn’t, nor do the people he lectures, have the influence to formulate national defense policy. Anyone with more than half-a-brain would know that this is merely a scenario for discussion and not the policy of any defense institute.
I urge you to read the whole breathless piece and look at the slide show and see if you arrive at the same level of alarm that these two dilwads reach.
Thanks to Daniel for the link, but I’ve been thinking about this all day.
Category: Dumbass Bullshit, Media
An old trick.
Typical BIG LIE !!
This out-of-context misrepresentation — was explained to me in High School.
I don’t think I want to read the rest of it…
I’ve liked some of what Spencer has written in the past, but this one was waaay off base.
So they’ve taken a theoretical multi-stage war gaming exercise and cherry picked it to make it seem like the military is advocating for total war against Islam? Classy.
Jonn, the slide you put up is written in language so far over the heads of Ackerman and Schachtman, they literally didn’t understand what they were reading. They had no idea what it was when they saw it.
Or they hate the military, they know exactly what they have, and they’re trying to stir up a hornet’s nest for political reasons and personal gain.
Possibly a combination of both?
This link is also at HP and has over 1300 comments already, a majority talking about the horrible war mongering military. Hornets nest effectively stirred up.
Why isn’t this brainiac on the first panel of the milblog conf? He fits right in!!
This reminds me of the venerable Herman Kahn. Due to his willingness to articulate the most brutal possibilities regarding nuclear war, Kahn came to be disliked by some. He was known for analyzing the likely consequences of nuclear war and recommending ways to improve survivability; a notoriety that made him an inspiration for the title character of Stanley Kubrick’s classic black comedy film satire, Dr. Strangelove. Sequel?
Ah, the guy who tips us off about his own insecurities by calling himself “Attackerman”. He’s the literary and intellectual equivalent of the infamous “Mall Ninja” that you might encounter at a local shooting range or airsoft event.
Lets see here…Logic (applied) tells us that Spencer Ackerman is an *asshat* to the inth degree…
@ #8 Jeff – OHHHHHHH! Man, I got it! How about Doctor Blueglove? Foresnic Sequel?
The more I think about it, Jonn should be first in the blogosphere to bestow the moniker of “intellectual mall ninja” upon Mr. Ackerman. That could also be the Irish beer talking, not too sure.
Interesting that they (S&A, not the military), would use Hiroshima & Nagasaki as examples of attacking a nation’s population.
Both Hiroshima & Nagasaki were intentionally targeted BECAUSE they had massive amounts of military targets, and NOT because they were population centers.
The two cities had been left off of prior bombing target lists in order to have a “clean” target for damage assessment after the atomic bombings. Each had large areas of munitions, aircraft and weapons factories, and, in Hiroshima’s case, a large Japanese Imperial Navy presence, as well as HQ of a Japanese Army Group.
Unlike Tokyo, Dresden, Hamburg and a couple others, all other Allied bombing targets were selected because of their military value, and NOT because of the desire or need to target civilians. Hamburg was a 50/50 on that list, inthat German railway yards there were targeted as they were a required interaction point for the movement of military supplies and personnel transiting to and from the Eastern Front.
But Hiroshima & Nagasaki were both valid military targets and NOT picked simply to see the impact on a civilian population.
I hope and expect our military to continue to game all sorts of scenarios, both probable and improbable. It’s our best hope to keep from fighting the last war all the way to disaster.
I wish we, as a nation, did go bat shit crazy on Mo’s kids. Where is our generation’s LeMay when we need him?
Mo’s kids talk a good game about being willing to fight and die to the last man woman and child but we all know they are not that serious. The Japanese on the other hand were deadly serious about fighting it out to the last man standing. It took fire raids, starvation and nukes to convince them that they too had a limit.
Today the worlds great powers (US, PRC, India and Russia) all have serious issues with Mo’s kids. Surely we can all sit down and agree that teh world is a far better place without them.
Wow, this is even more stupid than when the Ronulans start going off on Northwoods, which was also a wargaming exercise to provide unlikely courses of action.
There’s only 2 things in this world I don’t like; people that are intolerant of other peoples culture….and the Dutch!
You people are haters and I hate haters!!
Oh, and btw: Happy Friday!! 🙂
“The two cities had been left off of prior bombing target lists in order to have a “clean” target for damage assessment after the atomic bombings. Each had large areas of munitions, aircraft and weapons factories, and, in Hiroshima’s case, a large Japanese Imperial Navy presence, as well as HQ of a Japanese Army Group.”
Eh, not quite.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not really have large areas of aircraft production. This is why they, and the three other prospective targets, were not hit yet. The B-29s (of which we did not have a lot) had been almost exclusively concentrating on aircraft production first, and then strikes on oil production.
This is why they hadn’t been hit by May when targets were selected. And they were listed as “unlikely” to be attacked by August because nothing there was a current priority for the USAAF, even the very large troop concentrations moving through Hiroshima on their way south to set up defenses for the planned invasion.
In other words, they were already not on the bombing lists.
And Nagasaki was last on the target list. Nobody was really interested in hitting it, anyway. It only ate a nuke because they couldn’t hit Kokura due to weather.
Also, I’d watch your back now, Jonn. This post will probably infuriate Spence. He’ll probably track you down, take off his hipster glasses, and put you right through a fucking plate glass window.
#20 Spade; That’s why I’m always armed even this weekend. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who aren’t enamored with my blogging style.
By the way, there are several links in Memeorandum to Ackerman’s turd and mine is the only one telling the truth…the rest are just in the bag with Ackerman without a moment’s critical examination.
Ok I read through the whole slideshow. So lets state the obvious, this is one slideshow for an entire course so there is almost no context to what is going on. However, we can extrapolate a few things.
First, deterrence has failed. That means there’s been at least one or more major attacks have occurred on the united states, a capital attack. Since hey, everyone is jumping off the handle, I’m going to join in. Lets just say that a nuclear weapon has detonated in Washington dc.
Second, Al Qaeda has been superceded by the GSIJ, which stands for the Global Salifi Islamic Jihad. They are apparently some sort of Cobra-like super Al Qaeda that is supported by ALL Muslims in the world.
Third, the Saudi Arabian government is caught directly financing and directing the GSIJ. Attempts to halt this support through diplomatic means has failed.
Oh an i just realized that near the end of the article, they use(the totally not crazy) World Net Daily as a source. Wow, I’m shocked, shocked, to see HuffPoo and the BBC have sunk that low.
Jonn, more of a joke about this: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703724104575379200412040286.html
I can’t resist talking about it any time his name comes up.
Also, because this is Ackerman: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/spencer-ackerman-the-fishbowldc-interview_b3857
Heh. Spence and Noah would be appalled at the scenarios I wrote (to force interactions to achieve training objectives) when I was a WMD response planner.
Part of the job of a planner – to think the unthinkable.
[…] Army kowtows to Spencer Ackermann’s breathless ignorance June 20th, 2012 Last month I wrote about Spencer Ackerman’s piece at Wired which totally mischaracterized materials from a course offered at the Joint Forces Staff College. […]
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