Julian Macfarlane

J. MACFARLANE—It is obvious that Iran has been preparing for war with Israel for a long time.

While the Israelis hacked their electronic communications systems, essential to AD, which should have been down for 3 days, they were repaired in less than 10 hours, apparently with Russian help. They lost experienced commanders but they had a “shadow” command group that immediately took over. Their missile and AD systems were mostly mobile and remained intact. So far, the Israelis have lost several of their pricey, “invisible” F-35s, as I predicted they would if they flew them within range of S400 systems.

J. MACFARLANE—Today, Iran is better prepared than in 1980 —much more technologically advanced, with a lot of its resources underground and impervious to Israeli strikes. Whatever the Zionazis destroyed above ground is just a tiny fraction of what awaits below.

Israelis delude themselves that by killing commanders they can paralyze military activity; that by killing a few physicists they can stop research and development.

The IRGC command structure is not the kind of top-down system favored by the Israeli and American militaries, since top-down direction is qualified by bottom-up participation. It is both coherent and flexible.

JULIAN MACFARLANE—A good narrative has an evolving plot and so much depends on the “Big Bad” — in this case, Russia. With a supporting cast— North Korea, China. Putin, Kim, Putin.

So Ukraine got to play a heroic role, fighting the Evil Russian Monster, defending the freedom and rights of everyone, upholding democracy against the murderous dictator Putin. (sic)

THE BOBCAT—Where the US could do it — Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos — they did everything possible to destroy whatever they could not control. Whole nations were laid waste and tens of millions died miserable deaths, almost all civilians. The US used everything short of nukes (and considered nukes over and over again): biological weapons, chemical weapons, psychological warfare, economic warfare, starvation, terrorism. There were no limits. The famous My Lai massacre was a success — no one believes that it was actually business as usual.

JULIAN MACFARLANE—In the end, however, the Russians will deal with Ukraine as they previously dealt with Chechnya – which was also a conflict driven by foreign forces, including the CIA – with numerous bloody terrorist incidents that galvanized public support for Putin.

In those days, Moscow didn’t have the resources that it has today. The first Chechen war had been brutal. When the Second Chechen war began it was even more brutal but Putin was able to cultivate local political division, recruiting principled Islamic believers like Akhmat Kadyrov, whose son, Ramzan, now rules the Republic and whose forces are fighting for Russia in the Ukraine. Akhmat Kadyrov had fought the Russians in the first war, but he saw the wisdom of Chechen autonomy protected by the Russian Federation against jihadism from the South.