Land Acknowledgments

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We stole your land. Sucks to be you. That’s what the Left’s precious land acknowledgments said at their core. As Kyle Smith put it in his WSJ Free Expression piece,

It’s as if a robber announced, “I took your jewelry and feel bad about it, but no way am I giving it back.”

Or, sucks to be you. Either way.

At any rate, it seems this particular bit of Leftist guilty bodice grasping (it’s not like they’re prepared to actually rend their YSL blouses) is beginning to fade to black. Some universities are quietly dropping them, and plays are making jokes of them in their preludes to their Acts 1.

Land acknowledgments, used so studiously by progressive do-gooder wannabes, were never more than expressions of contempt for the indigenes supposedly the addressees of the acknowledgments and insults to the intelligence of the rest of us, who also knew how we came into possession of lands that were variously bartered to us, taken by us, occupied by us where it was owned by no one. And especially those of us who recognized the arbitrary line in the dirt that the acknowledgments so carefully drew so as to ignore inconvenient history: that the indigenes whose land we’d allegedly taken had themselves bartered, taken, or occupied those same lands from their predecessor occupants all the way back to the original migrants coming across the land bridge connecting Siberia to Alaska those 10s of thousands of years ago.

Busy?

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Boeing’s 737 MAX has a software glitch that can cause an automated navigation feature to fail at difficult moments during an approach.

It emerged from a cockpit software update and can occur when flight crews alter their planned flight path following a missed approach. In a certain scenario, pilots may have to fly manually without some autopilot functions. That, some industry officials said, could overwork pilots while they are already busy, at low altitude and possibly dealing with situations like bad weather.

I have two comments about that. One is my usual: who tested that software update, in what scenarios, and with what test procedure?

The other concerns what constitutes “busy” in the cockpit. A single seat fighter pilot crossing the IP inbound to his ground target in a hostile environment is busy. Even a two-seat fighter crew approaching his airborne target(s) in a target rich environment is busy. In both cases, the busy-ness increases exponentially as the pilots begin actually engage their respect targets, a much more fluid situation than a go-around on a missed approach.

Airline pilots during a go-around, especially in low-altitude bad weather, do see their workloads increase, but they aren’t busy enough to be threatened with overwork.

It’s certainly true that “busy” is relative to what a fighter pilot or civilian aircrew are used to. That, though, is what time in the simulator—and there are very good ones extant for both military and airline pilots—is for. That includes failing the nav feature in the simulator to drill the aircrew on proper and timely responses until a fix to the software update—properly tested this time, hopefully—can be installed. Perhaps, also, this particular failure should be added to the unexpected and emergency drills in the simulator.

Talk about Conspiracy Theories

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Canada’s Liberal Party Prime Minister Mark Carney is no piker when pushing them.

…he suggested he has prepared for a possible military invasion by American forces. “I think you have a responsibility in these roles to look at extreme tail risk,” Carney said recently. “That’s just risk management. That’s not a base case, but it would be irresponsible not to” prepare.

Given that level of irrationality, how would it be possible to reach any sort of trade deal with Canada?

Later

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President Donal Trump (R) has correctly rejected Iran’s offer of a 7-day cease fire, during which the IRGC, the true power in the Iranian government, would pretend to negotiate a permanent end to the conflict, to do chit-chat regarding the IRGC’s nuclear weapons program, and to codify the fiction that the Hormuz Strait is an Iranian waterway. Even without the nonsense regarding the Strait, the offer was entirely disingenuous, since the IRGC uses all such cease fires and talks solely as periods within which to rest, refit, rearm, and resume fighting.

Trump’s responding plan, though, maintaining the current state of the conflict, is a serious error. He says he won’t resume bombing, if he does at all (he says he hasn’t decided), until after the November mid-terms. His abhorrence of the killing and destruction that war, or any shooting conflict, causes is laudable; however, he’s letting his abhorrence go too far; it’s seriously clouding his judgment in the present conflict. He’s fallen into a never do today what can be put off to tomorrow counterproductive loop.

As the conflict wears on, the destruction and deaths the IRGC inflicts on our Middle East allies and friends steadily increases. The privation the IRGC inflicts on the Iranian people steadily worsens as the IRGC diverts ever mote resources from the people toward its attacks on shipping and the infrastructure of the other nations of the Middle East. The costs to our military and its ability to respond to crises elsewhere in the world—viz., Russia’s growing threat to eastern Europe and the People’s Republic of China’s increasing threat to the Republic of China and the Philippines—greatly increase and is increasingly eroded, respectively. The costs to our military increases in the near term, especially. The repeated delays in serious bombing, the fits and starts, only requires far too many targets to be struck a second time, a third time, a fourth time,…. That just wastes our ammunition.

Domestically, as the conflict wears on, inflation will remain elevated, even if it is vastly reduced by Trump and Republican action so far from the Biden years, and in particular, the cost of gasoline to individual Americans remains high, the cost of diesel to shippers and farmers remains high and is increasing, and from those, the cost of food and cooling homes (and soon of heating them) remains high and is increasing.

Beyond that, Trump’s constant threats to Iran, ranging from harsh consequences to annihilation, are rapidly losing impact and costing credibility from his constant decisions to not act on those threats.

For all of those reasons, delay is strongly counterproductive.

Trump must resume heavy bombing and add heavy cyber attacks on Iran, and do them now, not tomorrow. The IRGC will never negotiate in any serious fashion. The only way to end the conflict and ease the Iranian people’s suffering with any hope of durability is to destroy the IRGC’s ability to fight at all and to eliminate the IRGC’s members altogether.

Coming Around?

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Many of the Arab nations that as recently as this summer had been pushing for negotiations with Iran to end the fighting between Iran and the US are now trying to persuade President Donald Trump (R) not to negotiate. This comes on the heels of Iranian attacks on Saudi oil tanker shipping in the Arabian Gulf and Iran’s Houthi satrap seizing islands in the Red Sea to cut off Arab shipping there, and attacks by the Houthis and by Iran’s Iraqi supporters on the Saudi oil pipeline to the Red Sea coast and on the Saudi port there.

They’re waffling on that, though. Don’t start shooting again, they’re also pushing. Just maintain the blockade and the economic pressure.

Other Gulf states, mainly Oman and Qatar, argue the region already has suffered significantly and say proposals for a phased reopening of Hormuz and a halt to attacks on Gulf states are the only viable way to end the conflict.

They need to recognize the suffering they’ll continue to experience with Iran still a military and terrorist threat, unless they kowtow to the murderous regime. There’s no need for a “phased reopening” of the Hormuz Strait. There’s only a need for the IRGC to stop shooting at Strait shipping and to acknowledge in writing and in public speaking that the Strait is international waters and Iran has no authority to change that fact.

That change in the IRGC is unlikely. The IRGC, which is the real power in the Iranian government, isn’t interested in ending the fight except on its terms: the Hormuz Strait is Iranian water, and shipping must pay an Iranian toll to pass through it; Iran must be able to resume its nuclear weapons development without interference; and the US must pay reparations to Iran in addition to lifting all sanctions.

The Arab nations may be starting to figure out the real world around their Iran fantasy, but they’ve a ways to go, yet. That path begins with those nations getting their collective heads out of the sand while finding enough backbone to get their hands dirty: taking back those Red Sea islands; getting serious about running the Houthis out of Yemen; joining with actual military force instead of stern words in renewed and expanded attacks on Iran until that nation is completely disarmed and has no means of rebuilding its military, including its missile, rocket, and drone inventory; it has no means of even beginning, much less resuming, its nuclear weapons program; and the IRGC has seized to exist.