December 30, 2006

The War Nerd gets the Christmas Spirit

Writing last week, before the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia:

So here's my positive helpful hint, to the men who have the power. We have a great chance right now to see how to settle Iraq, and all we have to do is let the Ethiopian Army invade and occupy Somalia in force. In fact we have to insist that the Ethiopians go in full force. Right now they're doing it CIA style, maybe 8000 troops with one foot sort of flirtatiously over the Somali border. That's no use to us at all. We need them to occupy the entire country so we can use it as a no-cost lab to see what works.

Because as soon as Ethiopian troops are in the streets of Mog, all Hell will break out. And when it does, we have to make it clear to the Ethiopian elite (which is actually Tigrayan at the moment) that they have a free hand. And we want to see that hand develop RSI from machete chops. We want those trigger fingers to ache. We want those shoulders to get bursitis from AK recoil syndrome (ARS, leading cause of complaints in the Horn of Africa).

The guys running Ethiopia killed 500 people in their last election campaign, when they were being democratic. Let's see what they can do with an armed, Islamic population in rebellion against them. We won't lose a man. We just keep the ammo and propaganda support comin' and they'll do the rest. We'll see whether going all-out in Iraq would actually work or not. (And by the way, that's not as "obvious" as amateurs think. Large-scale massacres are not easy, and they often backfire. The logistics alone are scary, and the effect on enemy morale can be very dangerous. Frankly, I don't think any genocide-based strategy short of nukes can solve our little Mesopotamian jock-itch at this point, but after a few months of Ethiopian hijinks in Mog, we'll know for sure.)

There. How's that for being positive? I feel all proud and Xmas-time, like a mass grave with red and green lights all over it. [More]


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

5 comments:

James said...

He's a nihilist, dude.

Anonymous said...

The War Nerd is fun to read, but he really sucks ass at predictions. All hell will break loose as soon as they step into Mog? He's already struck out before the article was published.

hans gruber said...

I have never really read this guy. I spent an hour or so reading a bunch of his columns today.

He's a snarky bastard, worth a few laughs. I can't say I'd recommend him, though. Why does Sailer link him so much? Entertainment value, I guess.

Anonymous said...

It's not exactly Bill Lind's "On War", but I find the War Nerd's analysis pretty incisive compared to most of what you see. There aren't that many reality-based commentators on the realities of 'brush' warfare.

Lind:
http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_archive.htm

Anonymous said...

He's ok at pushing past some of the more obvious self-deulusions of the Bush team or of Wilsonian Democrats. But he's nothing special and I get pretty sick of his level of insight. Want more. More thinking. More knowledge. More insights. His level of snark only gets you so far. Unless, you really are a Civ-player, WW2 geek.

Try Westhawk, for a better blog.