Thursday, March 19, 2026

The Joe Kent Story Goes Deeper Into The Weeds

There was an initial hint in the morning's news that there might be more to the Joe Kent story:

According to Semafor, Joe Kent, the top counterterrorism official who just resigned in protest of the Iran war, is under FBI investigation for leaking classified information.

The investigation predates Kent’s departure, Semafor’s White House correspondent reported.

Joe Kent resigned on Tuesday and said the US started the war against Iran due to pressure from Israel.

That immediately fed my instinct that anyone who resigns in that sort of public fit is likely about to be shown the door and knows it. It does appear that Kent had been a behind-the-scenes source for Tucker Carlson at least since the runup to Operation Midnight Hammer on June 22, 2025:

On Wednesday, Fox News’ Mark Levin accused Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in protest of the Trump administration’s ongoing operation on Iran on Tuesday, of telling Tucker Carlson about a meeting Levin had with President Donald Trump last summer.

On June 4, 2025, Carlson tweeted that “Mark Levin was at the White House today, lobbying for war with Iran. To be clear, Levin has no plans to fight in this or any other war. He’s demanding that American troops do it. We need to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons, he and likeminded ideologues in Washington are now arguing.”

Farther down, the link quoted from Levin's Wednesday post,

“I know for a fact Kent leaked to Tucker Carlson a meeting the President had with me, at the President’s request, which Carlson in turn used on the internet. No President should be treated like that,” revealed Levin. “Apparently, there were more. Not good. And the appalling antisemitism in Kent’s public letter deserves judgment, which is why so many of all faiths are condemning it.”

This strongly suggests that the investigation of Kent's leaking had to do with Tucker Carlson, and the axe was likely to fall. But Kent's ties aren't just to Carlson, and they don't just involve Iran: The tweet goes on to say that Joe Kent was investigating allegations that Charlie Kirk was assassinated because he was going to turn against Israel, and the FBI was preventing him from looking into it:

On October 1, 2025, Candace Owens said she was “very aware of what’s going on” and claimed that “about 48 hours before Charlie Kirk died, Charlie Kirk informed people at Turning Point, Jewish donors, as well as a rabbi, that he had no choice but to abandon the pro-Israel cause.”

. . . The New York Times reported on October 28 that Joe Kent, while still serving as director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center, had:

“examined FBI files in the last several weeks to investigate whether the man charged with assassinating Charlie Kirk had support from someone else, a foreign power, or another entity, according to multiple people with knowledge of the matter.”

Which, according to the Times article:

“alarmed Kash Patel, the director of the FBI. Mr. Patel and other senior officials believed Mr. Kent was overstepping, treading on FBI responsibilities, and potentially interfering with the investigation and the prosecution of the suspect, Tyler Robinson.”

After resigning from his role as director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show today. Speaking about the Charlie Kirk investigation, he said, “there’s still linkage for us to investigate,” and pointed directly to the group chat text messages that Andrew Kolvet had handed over to the US government - and that Candace Owens had used on her show - as evidence of that.

So all of a sudden, via Joe Kent of all people, we're drawn into the Candace Owens-Erika Kirk feud, of the specifics of which I had known almost nothing. I asked my AI oracle to fill me in: "What is the basis for Candace Owens's complaints against Erika Kirk?" It answered,

Candace Owens’s complaints against Erika Kirk, the widow of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder Charlie Kirk, primarily stem from Owens's refusal to accept the official account of Charlie Kirk's 2025 assassination. Owens has used her podcast to launch an "investigative series" titled "Bride of Charlie," accusing Erika of personal dishonesty and complicity in a broader cover-up.

. . . Owens disputes that the charged gunman, Tyler Robinson, acted alone or was even the real killer. She has alleged the murder was an "inside job" involving TPUSA employees and foreign governments, including Israel, France, and Egypt.

. . . In episodes like "EXPLOSIVE! What Erika Kirk Was Doing In Epstein's Orbit," Owens attempted to link Erika to Jeffrey Epstein based on tenuous connections to a modeling agency, though no evidence of direct contact has been provided.

Ah, so the idea that Tyler Robinson had a trans furry boyfriend is completely irrelevant, Robinson wasn't even the shooter, it was done by World Jewry via Epstein, who was years in the grave but no matter, because Charlie Kirk was going to break free of Erika's manipulation and out the Jewish connection with TPUSA! And Joe Kent was investigating this on Candace Owens's behalf, except Kash Patel doesn't want him overstepping!

You know what? My respect for Kash Patel just went zooming upward. But this also goes to the overall nuttiness behind the so-called war within MAGA. There seems to be a real strain of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory at the heart of the rift, except that MAGA itself so far hasn't bought in:

I have no problem believing that Joe Kent had been kept out of the ODNI loop for months, even if he was still in the office. I would also surmise that Tulsi Gabbard and the others at ODNI hadn't pushed Kent out sooner simply because he was kept from doing more harm, he was basically a nut, and they had a lot of other higher-priority stuff on their plate.

But what does this say about Tucker Carlson and the others, like Megyn Kelly, on Tucker's side of the putative MAGA rift?

posted by test @ March 19, 2026   0 Comments

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

All Of A Sudden, We Get A Pretty Boy In A Bad Toupee

We're in a strange slow-news period: media, both legacy and alt, had to work for a couple of weeks following the Iran attacks, but around the time the gayattolah story broke, they all left for spring break, and we're back in a silly season. Hormuz? Blip. More dead mullahs? Blip. Cuba? Blip. Instead, we get a big story all gift wrapped with a cute bow on it featuring a jut-jawed special forces type straight from central casting but with retro 70s sideburns and an incongruous wavy hairpiece, Joe Kent:

Donald Trump's top counterterrorism official has resigned over the war in Iran, urging the president to "reverse course".

In a letter posted on X, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent said that Iran posed "no imminent threat" to the US and claimed the administration "started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby".

. . . Kent, 45, is a US special forces and CIA veteran whose wife, navy cryptologic technician Shannon Kent, was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2019.

The father-of-two deployed 11 times overseas with the US military, including with the US Army's special forces in Iraq.

He later became a paramilitary officer at the CIA, before leaving government service following his wife's death.

Kent cited his military service and his wife's death in his letter, saying that he "cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives".

Before yesterday, I'd never heard of the guy, but I saw he'd run twice for a Washington House seat and lost. Looking at his photos, I surmised that he lost because everyone saw he was a big phony. Apparently it was slightly more complicated than that, according to Commentary:

In 2022 he saw an opportunity when Washington state’s six-term Republican representative, Jaime Herrera Beutler, voted to impeach Donald Trump. Kent ousted Beutler in the primary and then lost the seat to the Democrats. His general election loss to Marie Gluesenkamp Perez came after revelations that he “courted prominent white nationalists and posed recently for a photograph with a media personality who has previously described Adolf Hitler as a ‘complicated historical figure’ who ‘many people misunderstand.’”

Kent took a second shot at Perez two years later and lost again. His loyalty to Trump at the expense of the Republican Party was rewarded with a federal job close to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. While Gabbard has been able to temper her isolationist leanings, Kent apparently had had enough.

His resignation letter is a remarkable document, perfect for the right-wing’s podcast-bro laziness and Jews-on-the-brain paranoia.

The administration's reaction is in line with that assessment: somehow he was given the sort of patronage job that's given to losers in the last election, but it sounds like it was also what the Japanese call a "window seat" -- no real duties. The Commentary link continues,

It’s as if somebody wrote a resignation letter twenty years ago and then put it on ice for just the right moment.

. . . Kent is applying for membership in the microphone muftis, the conservative podcasters obsessed with Israel.

In other news,

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson will interview Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, on Wednesday evening.

“Joe Kent, live on TCN at 6:00 pm EST,” Carlson wrote on X.

So it's starting to sound like this wasn't arranged by legacy media, it was set up by Tucker Carlson. I asked my AI oracle, "Do Joe Kent and Tucker Carlson have the same toupee dealer?" It replied,

There is no public evidence or credible reporting to suggest that Joe Kent and Tucker Carlson share a "toupee dealer" or that either man wears a toupee.

While they are close friends and political allies, their connection is based on shared ideological views rather than hair care.

Are you kidding me? I asked a follow-up: "What are typical tells that a man is wearing a hairpiece?" It gave me several links, including this:

A hair density that does not match your own on the back and sides or a density that is not age-appropriate can be one of the biggest giveaways that you’re wearing a hair system. It’s important not to get too ‘greedy’ when it comes to your hair system. The chance to have hair again can encourage men to choose a density that is too heavy or thick to pass as their own hair. Generally speaking, the younger you are, the denser your hair will be.

Kent is 45, Carlson is 56. Both are trying to look like they have the hair of 22-year-old hipsters. The link continues,

You can’t just position your hair system anywhere on your head. Position it too low or too high and it will just look off. It should be positioned exactly where your own natural hairline starts.

. . . To find your hairline take four fingers and place the bottom finger at the bottom of your eyebrows. Your hairline will begin at the top of the top finger.

So I asked another follow-up: "Where can I get a hair system that makes me look like Tucker Carlson?" It quit shilly-shallying and told me the truth:

To achieve a look similar to the thick, voluminous hairstyle of Tucker Carlson, you can purchase high-density hair systems from specialized retailers like Lordhair, New Times Hair, or LaVivid. His signature style is characterized by a stable side part and a medium-to-high hair density that maintains its color and volume without graying.

$279 and up. But it seems like MAGA isn't buying anything Tucker has to offer, Joe Kent, phony hair, or politics:

Polling throughout the nearly three-week U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran has consistently shown near-unanimous backing for President Donald Trump’s decision to launch Operation Epic Fury among the MAGA base and overwhelming support among Republicans, while a new Rasmussen Reports survey released Monday finds that a majority of likely voters overall say the operation has been succeeding.

The Rasmussen poll found that 61 percent of likely voters say the military operation against Iran has been successful so far, including 35 percent who describe it as “very successful.”

Also, If you want to see an example of a good toupee, check out William Shatner:

He has always denied that he wore a wig, but almost all William Shatner pictures have one, and the story is that he has been spotted in hair replacement centers in Los Angeles. In fact, one particularly persistent rumor suggests he paid approximately $25,000 for a high-quality William Shatner hair system. Indeed, his hair has become such a cultural phenomenon that dedicated blogs discuss its history and significance, with one of his Star Trek hairpieces now being auctioned starting at $2,801.

One of the problems both Carlson and Kent have is they're too cheap to buy convincing toupees, and that bleeds through to the rest of their message.

posted by test @ March 18, 2026   0 Comments

Tuesday, March 17, 2026

How Does She Know?

Via the AP,

The social media feud between former Fox News colleagues Megyn Kelly and Mark Levin hit a new level Sunday with Kelly hitting her rival below the belt — literally.

Sunday’s back-and-forth began when Levin called Kelly an “emotionally unhinged, lewd, and petulant wreck.”

“She’s completely revealed and destroyed herself,” Levin continued. “She’s everything people say she is, but much worse. Never an intelligent, thoughtful, or substantive comment. Utterly toxic.”

Kelly hit back by writing, “Micropenis Mark @marklevinshow thinks he has the monopoly on lewd.”

“He tweets about me obsessively in the crudest, nastiest terms possible. Literally more than some stalkers I’ve had arrested. He doesn’t like it when women like me fight back. Bc of his micropenis,” Kelly added.

I asked my AI oracle, "How does she know?" It replied,

Kelly's comments appear to be a rhetorical insult rather than a claim based on firsthand physical knowledge. She framed the remark as a response to what she described as his "obsessive" and "crude" posting about her, which she claimed exceeded the behavior of stalkers she had previously had arrested.

On March 16, 2026, she further taunted him, calling him a "SMALL MAN" after President Donald Trump posted a message on Truth Social defending Levin.

This is just one episode in the food fight that's broken out on the right since even before the attacks on Iran. From Nicole Russell not long ago in USA Today:

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's horrifying assassination on Sept. 10, I hoped that at least something good might come from it. I did see a renewed energy among conservatives, revival among young people and a message of forgiveness, the heart of Christianity, on the national stage for all to see.

But in the months since he died, something else has risen up, too: Candace Owens, a former colleague of Charlie Kirk, and her ever-spiraling grift. At first, I was saddened by the grip she seemed to have on everyday conservatives, caught up in her bombastic storytelling and bizarre tendency toward conspiracy theories.

. . . But I actually think it's far worse than this. I don't think Owens actually questions Kirk's grief, marriage or life story: I think she knows there is a conservative influencer spot to fill so she can earn followers, clicks, likes and money. She's good at one thing – manipulating people − and she's doing this very well right now, to people who presumably call themselves conservatives.

From The New York Times,

As the joint U.S.-Israeli military action against Iran rolls into its third week, leading figures of the MAGA movement have attacked each other with increasing vehemence over the wisdom of the war, and more broadly, what the American relationship to the Jewish state should be.

The debate reflects a widening rift within the American conservative movement. For decades, conservatives were stalwart supporters of the Jewish state, but over the last few years, some have grown disenchanted with Israel and its role in American politics. The disagreements have only intensified since the attacks began on Feb. 28.

. . . Tucker Carlson, the well-known podcaster, has been selling ball caps, T-shirts and coffee mugs emblazoned with messages like, “Neocons are Gay For Israel” and “AIPAC An Offer You Can’t Refuse,” crude and unsubtle and attacks on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobbying group, and other defenders of Israel.

Mr. Carlson has called the strikes “absolutely disgusting and evil” and said they occurred because “Israel wanted it to happen.”

Similar anti-Israel sentiments have been expressed by other far-right figures, including the podcaster Alex Jones and former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well as by more moderate voices like the podcaster Joe Rogan and the influential conservative intellectual and Trump critic Andrew Sullivan.

One of the most recent developments in this feud is a lengthy X post by "insurrection barbie" that was endorsed by Sen Ted Cruz. It's an indication of how ignorant the attacks have become:

For most of Christian history, the dominant theological position regarding the Jewish people was supersessionism — Replacement Theology: the belief that the Christian Church has superseded the Jewish people as inheritor of God’s covenant promises. Under this view, the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now fulfilled in the Church, and the Jewish people have no ongoing special covenantal status.

I believe that under near-universal Christian theology, there are actually several different covenants that cover the Old Testament period. The Mosaic Covenent, instituted under Moses, is just one of them, based on the law but fulfilled by Jesus Christ, and it is no longer binding on Christians. However, the Abrahamic Covenant, established by the visit of the three figures to Abraham, is eternal. It promises a homeland for the Jews, and the word "eternal" is used several times in Genesis to describe it. It is separate from the Mosaic Covenent and is not replaced by the New Covenant, but it applies only to the Jews. This position is standard in Catholic and Main Line Protestant theology.

"Insurrection barbie" is incorrect if she attributes either to Catholics of any tradition or Evangelicals generally the view that the Abrahamic Covenant is superseded by the New Covenant. On one hand, though, there are Catholics who openly question either the validity of the Second Vatican Council or the authority of recent popes, who may also find reason to question basic Catholic catechesis as a result. There are figures like Edwwrd Feser who seem to tend towsard this sort of error -- if, as he says, recent popea are wrong, for instance, about the death penalty, where else might they also be wrong?

And of course, there are radical Evangelicals like the YouTuber Mark Dice who claim that you don't need to be baptized to be a Christian. The only thing to say there is that not everyone who wears a big cross on their chest is a Christian, and it's important to be careful. The view that all the Old Testament covenants are superseded by the New Covenant is not mainstream and by no means universal among Christians.

These are some of the mistaken positions that are finding their way into the current debate over Israel. On the other hand, there seems to be a reluctance to recognize that many traditional US allies have become incapable of actually supporting the US in a major conflict, even if they had the political will to do this. This includes the UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, while Israel has both the capability and the political will. This is a major recalibration that the US hasn't necessarily seen the need to undertake, and it's probably at the root of some of the current anti-Israel talk.

I think the takeaway here is that making a big deal of publicly opposing the Iran attacks, whatever else it may be, is clickbait, and many people, like Megyn Kelly or Tucker Carlson, who do this have either lost their legacy media platforms or want to increase their reach, and their motives aren't idealistic. And hey, even Edward Feser has acknowledged that he's spending a lot more time on X lately, which I suspect may be taking away from time even he might devote to peer-revied scholarship.

Crepituum sacra fames!

posted by test @ March 17, 2026   0 Comments

Monday, March 16, 2026

That's Not A Bug, It's A Feature!

It's hard to tell if the latest reports on Mojtaba Khamenei were dug up after diligent search by US and Israeli intelligence, or if they were deliberately planted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard -- the cumulative effect is the same. As of this morning, for instance,

President Trump was stunned to learn last week that US intelligence indicates new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may be gay — and that his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, feared his suitability to rule the Islamic Republic for that reason, The Post can reveal.

Trump couldn’t contain his surprise and laughed aloud when he was briefed on the intel, according to sources.

So OK, Mojtaba's gay, but he's in a coma, so it doesn't matter -- and who benefits from this state of affairs? The Revolutionary Guard, who reportedly pressured the Assembly of Experts to name him Supreme Leader on his father's death. They wanted a non-entity in that role from the start. And in another wrinkle over the weekend,

Several international reports now claim that Mojtaba Khamenei may have been secretly transported to Russia for medical treatment after sustaining injuries during early strikes in the conflict. According to these claims, he could be recovering at a private medical facility connected to one of Vladimir Putin’s residences.

However, neither Iranian nor Russian officials have confirmed these reports, leaving the situation surrounded by uncertainty and speculation.

Or he could be just plain dead.

With speculation rife, even Donald Trump is unsure if Mojtaba Khamenei is dead or alive.

“I don’t know if he’s even alive. So far, nobody’s been able to show him,” he told NBC.

Gay, in a coma in Iran, in a coma in Russia, or dead -- it's all the same, he's a cipher, a Great Pumpkin in the constitutinal scheme. If he's gay, he'll be out if he ever wakes up. If he's in Russia, it means he's alive, but he's beyond anyone's ability to take him out with bunker busters, while it's also convenient to have him effectively in exile, and he'll likely stay there. If he's dead, the Revolutionary Guard seems in no hurry to replace him.

However, although the usual blatherers explain Iran's constitution as a limited theocracy (or something like that), what they say bears no resemblance to reality. Here's how it's supposed to be:

After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the position and office of supreme leader was created by the Iranian Constitution. It is based on the concept of the Guardianship of the Jurist, or “Velayat-e Faqih.”

. . . According to articles 57 and 110 of the constitution, the supreme leader sets domestic and foreign policy and supervises all branches of the government, including the executive, legislature and judiciary. Through the Guardian Council, he has the power to vet electoral candidates and veto parliamentary laws.

. . . While the supreme leader is the head of state, the president is the head of the government. After the supreme leader, the president is the second-in-command of the executive branch. As such, he answers to the supreme leader and executes his decrees.

. . . In 1979, the Assembly of Experts of Leadership, or Majles-e Khobregan-e Rahbari, was created in the new constitution and held its first election the same year. Article 111 of the constitution authorizes the assembly to appoint, supervise and, if necessary, remove the supreme leader.

. . . In essence, the supreme leader approves the candidates who are potentially elected to a body that oversees him. For this reason, as observers point out, the assembly has not been known to seriously supervise or overtly challenge him.

Except that reports from inside Iran indicate that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard told the Assembly of Experts to elect Mojtaba Khamenei, Ali Khamenei's gay and bumbling son who may be dead, Iran's new Supreme Leader. But as with everything else, Article 110 of Iran's constitution puts the Supreme Leader over the Revolitionary Guard. How does the Revolutionary Guard get to elect the Supreme Leader? I asked my AI oracle just that. It answered,

As of March 16, 2026, reports indicate that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) secured Mojtaba Khamenei's appointment as Supreme Leader through a combination of intense political pressure, physical threats, and strategic manipulation of the Assembly of Experts' emergency sessions following the assassination of Ali Khamenei on February 28, 2026.

. . . The IRGC Intelligence Organization allegedly threatened Assembly members and their families to ensure a vote for Mojtaba.

. . . Commanders applied "heavy pressure" through constant phone calls and in-person meetings leading up to the vote.

The IRGC insisted on a rapid decision, arguing that the wartime situation required immediate leadership.

Opponents were given limited time to present arguments, and some sessions were conducted online or in undisclosed locations to minimize dissent and outside interference.

So the IRGC, arguing that the wartime situation required immediate leadership, pushed through the election of a bumbling gay guy whom they already knew was in a coma. This might be desgnated a coup, but my guess is that it was already the case that the former Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was kept in power by the IRGC, which had been the de facto power running the state pretty much from the start.

Edward Feser argues that Trump's attack on Iran doesn't fit "just war doctrine" because it hasn't been undertaken by the proper constitutional authority (although he neglects to mention that the War Powers Resolution of 1973 gives Trump precisely the authorization he is using to conduct this operation). But if he insists that Trump observe all the constitutional niceties -- which in fact he is -- then what of the IRGC, which has put in place a puppet Supreme Leader who may even be unaware that his country is at war, when he would be expected to make national policy under Iran's constitution?

This goes to the basic quesiton of how a state can negotiate with a state that doesn't gtve its negotiators the power to negotiate in any practical way, because the source of state authority is so unclear.

It's worth recognizing that the victories over both Germany and Japan in World War II could be effected only when Hitler's suicide gave his designated successor, Dönitz, the clear state authority to order surrender. In Japan, the use of the second nuclear bomb in particular forced a cabinet deadlock in which the emperor finally had to assert his authority to order surreneder, and this was effective only after an attempted coup to remove him.

This suggests that some equivalent crisis of state authority in Iran will be needed to end the current war. It will likely involve a removal of the IRGC from de facto control of the state.

posted by test @ March 16, 2026   0 Comments

Sunday, March 15, 2026

The Dönitz Conundrum

One incongruity that "just war" theorists seem to miss is that while they claim an abstraction called "just war doctrine" has developed over millennia, examples of its practical application under law are few and far between. Using AI purely as a semi-omniscient reference librarian, I can come up with only a few "just war" tribunals before the post-World War II Nuremberg trials, such as the 1474 trial of Peter von Hagenbach for atrocities committed during the occupation of Breisach.

After that, we have to wait almost 500 years to reach Article 227 of the Versailles treaty, which "publicly arraigned" Kaiser Wilhelm II for "a supreme offence against international morality." However, he was never brought to trial as the Netherlands refused to extradite him, and he lived there until his death in 1941.

In other words, we baaically have only one solid example of applying "just war doctrine" in a quasi-jurisprudential environment anywhere in ancient or modern history, the Nuremberg trials, and like war itself, they're messy indeed.

As we gain more perspective on these trials, it becomes clearer how little actual justice was done. A good many of the worst actors simply escaped, including figures like Adolf Eichmann, who was ultimately kidnapped, tried, and executed in Israel, but many others were never tracked down. Albert Speer, a despicable figure who was handsome and charismatic, ran the Nazi war machine as armaments minister in the last years of rhe war, and as head of the Todt organization actually built the concentration camps.

But he saved his life by portraying hinmself as the repentant "good Nazi", and after 20 years in prison built a media franchise for himself in that role. And a whole range of rocket scientists were too valuable to both the US and Soviets to put on trial at all, like Wernher von Braun, who was able to use NASA's publicity machine to make himself a Cold War US national hero, although he used slave labor to assemble the V2 rockets.

On the other hand, we have the case of Karl Dönitz. From the start of the war until 1943, he was commander of the U-boats; after that, he was commander-in-chief of the navy. On his suicide on April 30, 1945, Hitler named him his successor, but over his short period as head of state, he saw his main job as constituting the authority to organize the surrender, as well as facilitating the surrender of as many German forces as possible to the Americans and British, rather than the Soviets. According to Wikipedia,

Following the war, Dönitz was held as a prisoner of war by the Allies. He was indicted as a major war criminal at the Nuremberg trials on three counts. One: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Two: planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression. Three: crimes against the laws of war. Dönitz was found not guilty on count one of the indictment, but guilty on counts two and three.

His defense strategy was unique: he argued that he'd done only what the Allies had themselves done in the prosecution of the war. In fact, his lawyers called US Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, to testify on his behalf. Nimitz testified via a sworn affidavit on July 2, 1946.

Nimitz acknowledged that the US had conducted "unrestricted submarine warfare" from the start of the war in 1941, the same charge made against Dönitz. He confirmed that U.S. submarines were also ordered not to rescue survivors if doing so endangered the submarine.

Because the Allies had employed the same methods they were charging Dönitz with, the tribunal ruled that although he was convicted on two counts of his indictment, his sentence would not be based on his breaches of international law regarding submarine warfare. He received a ten-year sentence, the shortest of any major defendant, a majority of whom were sentenced to death, and less than even Speer's 20 years.

Beyond that, After the verdict, more than 100 senior Allied officers, many of them high-ranking Americans, wrote letters to Dönitz expressing their disappointment and disapproval of his ten-year sentence. He served the full ten years and died at the age of 89 in 1980. Like Speer, he attempted to build a media career after his release, but his publicists apparently didn't have what Speer's had to work with.

Certainly the opinion of many US and Allied officers after the war was that many of the German admirals and generals were competent, professional military men who were simply doing their duty, and Dönitz, even if he wasa a committed Nazi, seems to have been an example on which they focused.

But the Nuremberg trials bring up a major problem with "just war doctrine". It's been developed by philosophers and intellectuals, or in other words, it was created in cloud-cuckoo land, a product of a fantasy that, as General Sherman would say, you can somehow refine war. Dönitz was able, even in a highly politicized show-trial environment, to advance as best anyone could that this isn't the nature of war, and by "just war" standards, each side is going to be found about equally guilty.

And of course, nobody put Truman, Oppenheimer, or General Leslie Groves on trial for crimes against humanity. After all, they won the war. "Just war doctrine" in the end is a propaganda tool and an intellectual exercise in self-congratulation; it promotes an unrealistic fantasy about the nature of war.

posted by test @ March 15, 2026   0 Comments

Saturday, March 14, 2026

Secretary Hegseth Channels General Sherman

Addressing the crash of a US KC-135 air refueling plane this past Thursday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth remarked,

War is hell. War is chaos. And as we saw yesterday with the tragic crash of our KC-135 tanker, bad things can happen. American heroes - all of them.

CENTCOM confirmed that while the crash involved an unspecified incident with two aircraft in friendly airspace, the loss of the aircraft "was not due to enemy action or friendly fire". So, what was it due to? All we really have is Secretary Hegseth's characterization: "War is hell. War is chaos."

As best as commentators with experience in mid-air refueling can surmise without other confirmation, two KC-135 tankers collided during some type of refueling maneuver. One was so badly damaged that it immediately crashed, killing all six of its crew. The other had less severe damage, it was able to return to its base, and its crew survived.

I've been ruminating on the idea I began to develop a week ago, that "just war doctrine" is a category error. Let's apply this to the KC-135 collision. On one hand, it was a wartime event. Accidents are common in wars. Someone lights a cigarette near an ammunition depot far behind the lines, it explodes, and many people are killed and maimed. It's neither enemy action nor friendly fire, it just happens in war.

Can we interrogate such an episode using "just war doctrine"? I don't see how. Just cause? The cause is basically absurd, it doesn't compute. Legitimate authority? Murphy's law, stuff happens. Right intention? Well, it was neither friendly fire nor enemy action, no real intention there. Last resort? No resort, it was an accident. Probability of success? Murphy's law, success not an issue. Proportionality? Shouldn't have happened at all.

It's just something that happens in war, a terrible accident. "Just war doctrine" is irrelevant. The only solution to the problem of wartine accidents is to eliminate war, but war is part of the human condition, and it won't go away. So there is a whole type of wartime event to which "just war doctrine" can't be applied, but they can't be separated from the nature of war.

In Gilbert Ryle's famous example, a category error is like a university president explaining to a visitor the function of the various departments, the registrar, the dining hall, the dormitories, the alumni office, but the visitor replies, "You haven't shown me the university". In the case of just war theory, a cabinet secretary might explain the various events in a war to a visitor, attacks, defense. medical care, logistics, accidents, war prisoners, and so forth, but the visitor replies, "You haven't shown me the justice".

What interests me in the current debate (such as it is) over "just war doctrine" is that there is so little reference to the experience of professional military, who only now and then make what is essentially an argument that war is a category whose nature is injustice. General William Tecumseh Sherman, who was a general, not a philosopher, nevertheless made remarks on war as a category throughout his life, for instance in a letter dated September 12, 1864, to officials of Atlanta, including Mayor James M. Calhoun, advising them to evacuate the city, because he was going to burn it down.

War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. . . . You might as well appeal against the thunder storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable and the only way that the People of Atlanta can hope to live in peace & quiet at home is to Stop the war, which can alone be done by admitting it began in Error and is perpetuated in pride. . . . I want peace and believe it (can) now only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war partly with a view to perfect & early success.

This he finally did on November 11-15, 1864. He appears to have given the Atlanta authorities every warning that this would happen, along with every assurance that his army would provide cover and help for all those evacuating, but in the end, he would have to deatroy the whole city. The question of whether Sherman's burning of Atlanta was "just" is still open; the Georgia historical marker on the burning notes,

On Nov. 11, 1864, Chief Engineer Orlando M. Poe directed the demolition of stone and brick buildings using specially made battering rams. On Nov. 15, Poe's troops burned the wooden buildings in the downtown business district around the site of this marker. Though houses and churches were not targeted, some were burned nonetheless. Many houses had already been dismantled by both armies to make way for fortifications. Contrary to popular myth only forty percent of Atlanta was left in ruins.

I've alwaya thought that the Cathechism of the Catholic Church throws up its hands in uncertainty at the end of Paragraph 2309, which outlines one set of "just war" criteria. It enumerates them, with particular stress on avoiding "evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated" -- but in the end, it simply says, "The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good."

In other words, figure it out as best you can. Because, I'm increasingly convinced, war is its own category. You can't parse the good and evil out of it.

posted by test @ March 14, 2026   0 Comments

Friday, March 13, 2026

Iran Status Updates

I simply haven't been able to find any good single source on what's happening in the Iran war. Unlike the first year or so of the Ukraine-Russia war, when Oryx provided confirmed equipment losses, and the Institute for the Study of War provided overall updates. Now, legacy media is remarkably incurious, probably due to the refusal of most outlets to sign rhe October 2025 Pentagon media agreement. On the other hand, nobody in alt media seems up to the job of adding two plus two in any insightfiul way.

Instead, we get stories like US Intel: Iran Govt Not at Risk of Collapse:

U.S. intelligence indicates that Iran's leadership is still largely intact and is not at risk of collapse any time soon after nearly two weeks of relentless U.S. and Israeli bombardment, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

A "multitude" of intelligence reports provide "consistent analysis that the regime is not in danger" of collapse and "retains control of the Iranian public," said one of the sources, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence findings.

But how do we reconcile that report with this?

Trump appeared in an interview with Fox News' Brian Kilmeade on Friday [today], where he appeared to confirm that Khamenei is still alive but injured.

"I think he's damaged, but I think he's probably alive in some form," Trump said.

Other sources provide possible details:

Opposition groups in the diaspora have claimed that Khamenei is in a coma and is being treated in great secrecy in hospital, ignorant of both his elevation to the post of supreme leader and the devastating damage suffered by his family.

The failure of the government communications machine to publish a single photograph, video or even text from Mojtaba three days after his elevation led to the inevitable speculation that the assembly of experts, wittingly or unwittingly, had elected a corpse or cardboard cut-out to run the country.

How can this not suggest some level of potential instability in the country? And what about this? Or this? And another development mirrors what I learned during my tech career: a functioning society depends on bank data centers. Cash is available only as long as the ATMs work. If you can't process credit cards, you don't do business, and society collapses. So what did the Americans and Israelis do?

An Iranian bank data center in Tehran has reportedly been struck by a missile by US-Israeli forces.

The Jerusalem Post and London-based outlet Iran International report that a Sepah Bank facility was struck by a missile early Wednesday (March 11).

The facility, on Haghani Street, was reportedly a digital security center for the bank that housed its data infrastructure.

. . . The strike was confirmed by the Iranian armed forces, though not whether it was a data center. Bank Melli and Bank Sepah are both reportedly suffering outages, but claimed this was preventative.

A spokesperson from the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters told state media that an administrative building linked to ⁠Bank Sepah on Haghani Street was struck, calling the attack “illegitimate and unconventional.”

Owned by the Iranian government, Bank Sepah is reportedly the organization responsible for processing salary payments for Iran's military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

US banks are required to maintain backup facilities for their data centers; otherwise, recovering account and transaction records would be nearly impossible if data storage devices at a site are destroyed. In fact, this is a modern doomsday scenario that nobody mentions, but US and Israeli planners appear to be keenly aware of it: Social media speculation, as we see here, is that the regime has "frozen" funds, but a much simpler explanation is that the networks are down because the bank's computers are under rubble. But let's check in with the conventional wisdom. On Monday, I mentioned Prof Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, and his essay in Foreign Affairs. Yesterday, he provided an update via Substack:

The war began with a coordinated U.S.–Israeli strike on Iranian leadership and military targets. The opening campaign destroyed facilities and killed senior officials. In purely military terms, the operation appeared successful.

But the political objective—rapid regime collapse or capitulation—did not occur. The Iranian state remained intact, and the government quickly reasserted control.

I think this misstates the situation on the ground, which has been obscured by the fog of war. Yes, the opening campaign destroyed facilities and killed senior officials, but we still don't fully know the extent of the damage. The mullahs were eager to establish the impression of quickly reasserting control, but as best we can tell now, this involved replacing the Supreme Leader with a comatose, or at least severely disabled, successor.

The prewar contingency plan was to devolve decisionmaking to 31 separate Revolutionary Guard districts, who would continue to fight under independent commands. It appears that with a seriously compromised Supreme Leader, this will have to continue, meaning there is no longer a coherent national strategy. The prewar political structure of the state by definition no longer exists. Pape contines,

When early success fails to produce the expected political result, leaders often double down. Because the stronger side possesses overwhelming military power, decision-makers assume they hold escalation dominance -— the ability to climb the escalation ladder faster and higher than the opponent.

I asked my AI oracle to provide a definition of "escalation" in a military context. It replied,

In military and strategic contexts, escalation is defined as an increase in the intensity or scope of a conflict. It involves a shift from a lower level of violence or limited geographic area to a more severe or expansive state of war.

As far as I can see, the US and Israel haven't escalated the scope or violence level of the conflict, still not quite two weeks old. It began with all-out aerial bombing, missile, and drone attacks using conventional explosives against the Islamic Republic of Iran. It continues with all-out aerial bombing, missile, and drone attacks using conventional explosives against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The attacks continue to be carefully targeted to minimize civilian casualties. No nukes, no carpet bombing, no additional countries, no escalation.

The Mullahs had an intial strategy of "horizontal escalation" by the decentralized Revolutionary Guard districts, who would indiscriminately attack other Gulf states, including civilian populations. This stragegy has been not just ineffective, but counterproductive, driving those states into the US-Israel camp. But this wasn't really "escalation", it was a planned de novo first-stage retaliation, which hasn't worked.

Prof Pape's assumption in modeling the war begins with a historical error:

The fourth pattern concerns a central belief behind the strategy itself: the expectation that airpower alone can collapse regimes.

This idea has been tested repeatedly in modern war. In more than a century of airpower, it has never succeeded by itself.

I asked my AI oracle, "To what extent has collapsing the enemy economy been important in winning 20th century wars?" Citing World War II, it answered,

In the 20th century, economic collapse wasn't just a side effect of war—it was often the decisive factor that ended the fighting. While battles won territory, economic strangulation broke the enemy's ability to produce weapons, feed soldiers, and maintain domestic morale.

[World War II} was the century’s clearest example of "Industrial War." The Allies explicitly targeted the enemy’s economic vitals.

Strategic Bombing: The U.S. and UK focused on oil refineries, ball-bearing factories, and rail networks. By 1945, the Luftwaffe was grounded not for a lack of planes, but for a lack of fuel.

Submarine Warfare: In the Pacific, U.S. submarines sank the Japanese merchant fleet, starving the island nation of iron, rubber, and oil.

The Result: Japan’s economy had functionally collapsed months before the atomic bombs were dropped; they had the will to fight but no longer had the physical means to sustain a modern military.

What the US and Israel are waging is an updated version of World War II-style "Industrial War". Using the European version in particular, defeating Germany required Allied air superiority, which took several years to accomplish, because the two sides were technologically about equal. But by the end of the war, the German joke was, "If you see a silver plane, it's American. If you see a black plane, it's British. If you can't see the plane at all, it's German."

On the other hand, Germany wasn't able to prevail in its aerial war against the UK or the Soviet Union because, unlike the US in particular, it hadn't developed heavy bombers that could effectively carry out a full-scale aerial campaign.

In the case of Iran, air superiority was accomplished within hours, allowing the process of economic strangulation via aerial bombing to take place over succeeding weeks. This was a plan that was intended to be full-scale from the start, not an "escalation", and it was intended from the start to take several weeks. Every indication is that it's having the planned effect of strangling the Iranian economy, and strangling it good.

I think Prof Pate is simply unaware of what destroying a bank data center will do to disrupt an economy, especially if the bank either has no effective disaster recovery plan or can't activate it. If the soldiers or the Revolutionary Guard can't get paid, this thing is over. Closing the Strait of Hormuz will simply magnify the same effect. Prof Pate is reading the wrong history, as far as I can see.

posted by test @ March 13, 2026   0 Comments