We maintain and continue this committee of correspondence in memory of our founder and mentor, Colonel W. Patrick Lang. The image to the right is Marcus, a character from William S. Burroughs’s “The Coming of the Purple Better One.” Colonel Lang would refer to Marcus sometimes in clever jest, sometimes in biting social commentary and sometimes simply because he liked Marcus. May everyone who corresponds here do so in a similar spirit.
Essential Writings on History, War, Religion and Strategy
From the Introduction:
“In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Col. Lang created his own blog which to this day still serves as a committee of correspondence for a large network of former military and intelligence officers, diplomats, and scholars of international affairs.
Since its launch in 2005, the Turcopolier website has had over 40 million unique visits.
Since leaving the government, he has also authored five books, including a Civil War espionage trilogy, a memoir of his years in government service, and a primer on human intelligence.
This present volume—his sixth book—is an anthology of some of his most important writings. The content speaks for itself. So have at it.”
Whatever blows your skirt up.
Big geomagnetic storm hit today. Too bad it’s cloudy and rainy in Virginia today. Might have gotten a glimpse of the Northern Lights. First time I saw them was on an ROTC winter survival weekend on a frozen lake in the Great North Woods. Magical.
TTG
On Thursday Russia will celebrate Victory Day, its commemoration of the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. Domestically, this is nostalgia. In the 1970s, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev created a cult of victory. Russia under Putin has continued the tradition. Abroad, this is intimidation. We are meant to think that Russia cannot lose. And far too many of us, during Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, have believed that. In February 2022, when Russia undertook its full-scale invasion of its neighbor, the consensus was that Ukraine would fall within days.
Even today, when Ukraine has held its own for more than two years, the prevailing view among Russia’s friends in Congress and in the Senate is that Russia must eventually win. Moscow’s success is not on the battlefield, but in our minds. Russia can lose. And it should lose, for the sake of the world — and for its own sake.
The notion of an invincible Red Army is propaganda. The Red Army was formidable, but it was also beatable. Of its three most consequential foreign wars, the Red Army lost two. It was defeated by Poland in 1920. It defeated Nazi Germany in 1945, after nearly collapsing in 1941. (Its win in that instance was part of a larger coalition and with decisive American economic assistance.) Soviet forces were in trouble in Afghanistan immediately after their 1979 invasion and had to withdraw a decade later. And the Russian army of today is not the Red Army. Russia is not the USSR. Soviet Ukraine was a source of resources and soldiers for the Red Army. In that victory of 1945, Ukrainian soldiers in the Red Army took huge losses — greater than American, British and French losses combined. It was disproportionately Ukrainians who fought their war to Berlin in the uniform of the Red Army.
Today, Russia is fighting not together with Ukraine but against Ukraine. It is fighting a war of aggression on the territory of another state. And it lacks the American economic support — Lend-Lease — that the Red Army needed to defeat Nazi Germany. In this constellation, there is no particular reason to expect Russia to win. One would expect, instead, that Russia’s only chance is to prevent the West from helping Ukraine — by persuading us that its victory is inevitable, so that we don’t apply our decisive economic power. The last six months bear this out: Russia’s minor battlefield victories came at a time when the United States was delaying Ukraine aid, rather than supplying it.
Today’s Russia is a new state. It has existed since 1991. Like Brezhnev before him, Russian President Vladimir Putin rules through nostalgia. He refers to the Soviet and also the Russian imperial past. But the Russian Empire also lost wars. It lost the Crimean War in 1856. It lost the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. It lost the First World War in 1917. In none of those three cases was Russia able to keep forces in the field for more than about three years.
In the United States there is great nervousness about a Russian defeat. If something seems impossible, we cannot imagine what could happen next. And so there is a tendency, even among supporters of Ukraine, to think that the best resolution is a tie. Such thinking is unrealistic. And it reveals, behind the nerves, a strange American conceit. No one can guide a war in such a way. And nothing in our prior attempts to influence Russia suggests that we can exercise that kind of influence. Russia and Ukraine are both fighting to win. The questions are: who will win, and with what consequences?
If Russia wins, the consequences are horrifying: a risk of a larger war in Europe, more likelihood of a Chinese adventure in the Pacific, the weakening of international legal order generally, the likely spread of nuclear weapons, the loss of faith in democracy.
It is normal for Russia to lose wars. And, in general, this led Russians to reflect and reform. Defeat in Crimea forced an autocracy to end serfdom. Russia’s loss to Japan led to an experiment with elections. The Soviet failure in Afghanistan led to Gorbachev’s reforms and thus the end of the cold war.
Beneath the Russian particularities, history offers a more general and still more reassuring lesson about empires. Russia is fighting today an imperial war. It denies the existence of the Ukrainian state and nation, and it carries out atrocities that recall the worst of the European imperial past. The peaceful Europe of today consists of powers that lost their last imperial wars and then chose democracy. It is not only possible to lose your last imperial war: it is also good, not only for the world, but for you.
Russia can lose this war, and should, for the sake of Russians themselves. A defeated Russia means not only the end of senseless losses of young life in Ukraine. It is also Russia’s one chance to become a post-imperial country, one where reform is possible, one where Russians themselves might be protected by law and able to cast meaningful votes. Defeat in Ukraine is Russia’s historical chance for normality — as Russians who want democracy and the rule of law will say.
Like the United States and Europe, Ukraine celebrates the victory of 1945 on May 8th rather than May 9th. Ukrainians have every right to remember and interpret that victory: they suffered more than Russians from German occupation and died in huge numbers on the battlefield. And Ukrainians are right to think that Russia today, like Nazi Germany in 1945, is a fascist imperialist regime that can and must be defeated. Fascism was defeated last time because a coalition held firm and applied its superior economic power. The same holds true now.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/05/08/opinions/victory-day-russia-war-ukraine-snyder
Comment: Timothy Snyder is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University and the author of “Bloodlands” along with many other books and articles. He also conducted an online course, “The Making of Modern Ukraine” in the Fall of 2022. The lectures are still available online. I watched all seven lectures back then and, if you haven’t watched them yet, I strongly recommend them.
In this essay, Snyder holds no illusions that Russia will disintegrate if she doesn’t prevail in Ukraine. He sees it as an opportunity for Russia to rise above her current imperialistic tendencies. It’s an optimistic and hopeful thought for the future of Russia and the Russian people.
There’s nothing here I disagree with beyond Snyder’s point that Russia is a new state. Technically it is, but I see immense continuity between the pre and post 1991 Kremlin. I know for a short time the apparatchiki fled the organs of power in Moscow and many academics from the former soviet Academy of Sciences moved into offices to keep the machinery of government working. It could have been a true time of change, but the old Soviet apparatchiki and the rising siloviki soon pushed the academics out. They just had to wait until one of their own moved into the top spot.
It’s possible and even likely that Russia will not get the victory she desires. Maybe the Kremlin can spin whatever outcome occurs into a victory, at least for internal consumption. in that case, I don’t see Russia changing at all. Only if the Kremlin has to accept a loss will there be an opportunity for the change that Snyder envisions.
TTG
https://snyder.substack.com/p/syllabus-of-my-ukraine-lecture-class
After years of delays and a dizzying array of setbacks during test flights, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is finally set to make its inaugural crewed launch. The mission is at last closing in on its historic astronaut launch attempt, with NASA officials giving the green light for liftoff at 10:34 p.m. ET Monday. Starliner will carry NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station, marking what could be a momentous and long-awaited victory for the beleaguered Boeing program.
“Design and development is hard — particularly with a human space vehicle,” said Mark Nappi, vice president and Starliner program manager at Boeing, during a Thursday news briefing. “There’s a number of things that were surprises along the way that we had to overcome. … It certainly made the team very, very strong. I’m very proud of how they’ve overcome every single issue that we’ve encountered and gotten us to this point.”
If successful, the Starliner will join SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft in making routine trips to the space station, keeping the orbiting outpost fully staffed with astronauts from NASA and its partner space agencies.
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/boeing-nasa-longtime-partner-may-232303275.html
Comment: This has been a long time coming for both Boeing and NASA. I wish them well, especially the two astronauts who probably had at least a passing thought about going up in a spacecraft built by Boeing. NASA is quick to point out that Boeing Spacecraft is a totally different entity from Boeing Aircraft, but it will surely be the source of some dark humor.
SpaceX is also scheduled to launch a Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral today. Unlike the Starliner launch, Starlink missions have become routine. But I am looking forward to the next Starship launch. That’s going to be exciting no matter how it turns out.
I also saw a nice little story about the Mars Ingenuity helicopter yesterday on CBS Sunday Morning. I was surprised to see how that project was treated like a red headed step child by the NASA Perseverance team. It’s worth a look.
TTG
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/ingenuity-nasas-remarkable-martian-helicopter
An orangutan named Rakus hit a rough patch in the summer of 2022. Researchers heard a fight between male orangutans in the treetops of a rainforest in Sumatra, Indonesia; a day later, they spotted Rakus sporting a pink wound below his right eyelid. A chunk of flesh about the size and shape of a puzzle piece was missing. When Rakus, who is most likely in his 30s, belted out a long call, the researchers noticed another wound inside his mouth.
Over the next several days, researchers followed Rakus at a distance — and saw something so surprising they wound up reporting it in great detail in the journal Scientific Reports. According to their study, published Thursday, Rakus was observed repeatedly chewing on the leaves of a particular liana plant over several days. The climbing vine is not a typical food for orangutans, but it is known to humans as a pain reliever. On at least one occasion, Rakus made a paste from the chewed leaves and applied it to his face. It’s the first time an animal has been seen applying medicine to a skin wound.
“It’s the first documentation of external self-medication — the application of leaves, I would argue, as a poultice, like humans do to treat wounds and pains,” said Michael Huffman, an associate professor at the Wildlife Research Center at Kyoto University in Japan, who was not involved in the new study.
Rakus’ wound never showed signs of becoming infected, and it closed up within a week.
The discovery is new evidence that orangutans are able to identify and use pain-relieving plants. A growing body of research suggests other animal species also self-medicate, with varying levels of sophistication. The researchers behind the study think that great apes’ ability to identify medicines and treat wounds could trace back to a shared ancestor with humans.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/orangutan-treated-own-wound-medicinal-plant-rcna150230
Comment: Reading this story, I was reminded of the time my platoon spent in the jungles adjacent to Subic Bay undertaking jungle escape and survival training with the local Negrito tribesmen. They gave each of us a fairly crude bolo knife and led us into the jungle for five days. One of the things we learned was how certain plants would prevent infections, heal wounds and even treat snakebites. I imagine most of that knowledge was gained the same way that Rakus learned his use of a certain liana plant to treat his wounds. We’re not that different.
BTW, the Negritos let us buy those bolo knives upon completion of the five day training course. It was a way for them to supplement their income.
TTG
Russian forces have gained tactically near Ocheretyne and Chasiv Yar, and have attempted a large assault towards Sivers’k. Frontelligence Insight provides a concise analysis of the current situation in this thread.
According to on-the-ground reports, occasional Russian groups have temporarily crossed the canal at Chasiv Yar but didn’t establish a bridgehead. A geolocated video by @giK1893 shows that Russians tried to set a position in the south of Chasiv Yar at the landbridge crossing. Considering that Russians gathered superior means and forces in the area, it’s a point of concern. It opens an opportunity to advance into the forest on the west side of the canal. If successful, this would provide them with the freedom to choose further assault directions. Losing control of the southern part of Chasiv Yar would be negative, opening the road leading to Kostyantynivka, with the small village of Stupochky being the only obstacle in the way. However, we are not currently close to that situation.
Russian forces continuing to make tactical gains in the Ocheretyne area. Their advancing direction suggests an objective to reach Novooleksandrivka and then Vozdvyzhenka, potentially allowing them to cut off the road connecting the vital towns of Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka. If the @Deepstate_UA’s reported territorial gains are accurate, it indicates that Russian forces have captured fortified positions.
In the Bilohorivka-Siversk direction, over the past 48 hours, the enemy has launched multiple assaults from various directions, supported by a series of KAB strikes. Ground reports indicate that approximately 8 KAB hits occurred within 30 minutes. These assaults were repelled.
The frontline situation remains complex, but efforts are underway to stabilize it. The arrival of Western ammunition is expected to improve the situation. While Russian forces are making gains, there is no sign of a frontline collapse.
These tactical gains may appear minor, but accumulation can lead to operational success. The goal is to form a multi-echelon double-pincer move. The smaller pincer aims to isolate forces south of Bakhmut, while the larger pincer seeks to encircle the entire grouping of forces.
Ukraine can slow down and even stop the Russian advance, but not without losing several settlements. Despite shortcomings in strategic and operational planning, senior officers and soldiers at the tactical level are demonstrating personal initiative to fix the situation. For instance, individual officers and soldiers have taken the initiative to get machinery from charity funds and volunteers to build defenses. They also established ad-hoc training to train new soldiers who did not receive adequate training in the official training facilities. Most of these assaults have been countered thanks to infantry, supported by FPV drones, whose ammunition is still being produced in improvised workshops. Innovative ways to bypass EW or enhance FPV flight range are being developed and implemented at the individual level. Overall, thanks to ground-level efforts driven by the personal initiative of brigade officers, soldiers, and sergeants, along with the arrival of Western aid and stabilization measures that we can’t disclose, the situation may improve.
An important detail that I forgot to add. There is a risk posed by Russian control over Ocheretyne. This control opens up more opportunities besides Novoolekasndirvka, as it allows access to a road that runs north towards the south of the Kostyantynivka area.
[A twitter comment] The initiatives on an individual level are worrying me. They are nice and may help, but they should be on a national level, shouldn’t they?
[Tatarigam’s answer] Yes, that indeed is the problem. These issues can be categorized as planning and management problems at the overall strategic and operational-strategic level. For instance, the construction of defenses and allocation of resources should be pre-planned rather than reactive action.
https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1785764798388404229
Comment: This is a twitter thread by a former Ukrainian military officer calling himself Tatarigami_UA. He’s the founder of the OSINT group Frontelligence Insight. He seems to have connections to both InformNapalm and various Ukrainian cyber resistance groups. I’m struck by his surprisingly sober assessments in spite of his background and connections.
I find his observation that it is the ingenuity and leadership at the junior level that is keeping the Ukrainian Army in the fight rather than any military genius at the higher levels of command to be . Given that the Ukrainian military was born of the Soviet system and the years of post-Soviet neglect and corruption, this observation does not surprise me at all. Once Western militaries began advising and training the Ukrainians after 2016, it is these lower levels that would see the improvements. That’s where Western training is always concentrated, not the higher levels. This has been the case in every MTT that I’ve been involved with. Besides, changing the habits of colonels and generals is damned near impossible in any military. It would be nice if we developed a way to effectively train higher levels of command and staff to be more innovative and effective, but I’m afraid that still eludes us. We have yet to figure out how to do that in our own military services. Unfortunately for Ukraine, they have to wait for the younger officers and NCOs to find their way into the higher levels of command and staff. That’s what happened to us in WWII. I hope the Ukrainian Army has time to do the same.
TTG
Happy May Day to those who celebrate. I fondly remember those celebrations and so many others in the cities and towns of Bavaria. Beer always flowed freely, except for the Glühwein at the Christkindlesmarkt.
Note: This is a guest post from our very own Barbara Ann.
This post (my first, and depending on how it goes maybe my last) concerns the Great Taking (GT) The Great Taking is a term coined by a guy called David Webb for what can only be described as the biggest planned heist in history. This post is a summary of David’s idea. If you wish to ask questions in the comments, please watch David’s video first (link below). I have no affiliation with David and just thought this it something the Committee would be interested in. What follows is my best attempt to reflect David’s views. E&OE.
So, who is David Webb? David is a retired hedge fund manager from Cleveland, Ohio. He was highly successful in his career and sets out his bona fides in the first 15 minutes or so of his video. I’d encourage everyone to form their own idea of the man and his motivations.
And what then is the Great Taking? Well, it is a conspiracy theory, but this hardly does it justice – in fact it could be termed a kind of Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory – to use a physics analogy. David says he has uncovered the plan to perform a controlled demolition of the global financial system. The result will be all securities assets, and pretty much everything else financed by debt being transferred into the ownership of the banks that comprise the central banking system (e.g. the Fed). David says the scope is global, although his evidence is limited to a focus on the US and EU. The legal and regulatory framework necessary to achieve the GT in a completely legal fashion has already been put in place over the last few decades. Here is an outline of the enabling steps (the ‘how’) I’ll explain David’s ideas as to the ‘who’ and ‘why’ below:
1) The “dematerialization” of stock certificates which began in the 60’s resulted in a legal concept called “security entitlement”. This means the legal owner of financial securities is actually the custodian. You, the beneficial owner, have a pro rated claim on the custodian’s pool of each particular security held either in your name or via a nominee (securities in “street name”). This is a distinction without a difference in normal circumstances
2) The legal owner is permitted to use the stock as collateral and all securities everywhere have been collateralized to underpin the gargantuan derivatives market, which dwarfs the global securities markets. Again, no real news so far
3) The fun starts in the event of a bankruptcy of a custodian. Financial organizations have an obligation to separate client assets from their own and in an ordinary bankruptcy situation you’ll get your assets back. But, as collateral is deemed necessary to support the too-big-to-fail institutions, rules are in place such that a “protected” class of banks are secured creditors above you, the beneficial owner. This is advertised as a safeguard in case of a systemic failure – i.e. a mechanism to capitalize the systemically important banks, should the need ever arise. This “safe harbor” legislation came in in the US in 2005
4) In 2008 the concept of client assets being used in this way was cemented into case law for the first time with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. JP Morgan won a suit brought by Lehman’s clients whose assets had been used to capitalize JPM – and were thus lost. Client money had never been ‘taken’ in this way before
5) A process of “harmonization” has been underway in Europe to replicate this legal and regulatory model, such that it is now in fact impossible to hold securities in a way that ensures you have a higher claim than the “protected class” of banks, in the event of the insolvency of the legal owner. In the US this legal owner is the DTCC. In the EU the term used is “Legal Certainty” (that is, certainty for the protected banks, not for you). All barriers to cross border transfer of collateral have been removed in recent years
6) In the event of another financial crisis, the capitalization of the key institutions holding the system together (e.g. the DTCC, or in Europe the Central Clearing Counterparties) is wholly inadequate to prevent a systemic collapse. In such an event, hedging risk (with derivatives) is impossible – as your counterparty will have gone bankrupt
7) The “everything bubble” with all asset prices inflated by years of zero interest rates, means there is a great risk of another crisis. The Fed is only preventing a collapse now through ongoing – since 2008 at least – ‘emergency’ monetary policy. The next systemic crisis will be a collapse leading to all collateral passing through institutions in a cascade of failures, all the way up to the protected banks. Your 401k, savings etc, will all be gone. The end result will be a very few financial giants owning pretty much all publicly traded assets
David’s most important claim is that the system as described above has been built over a period of decades with step 7, the Great Taking itself, as the purposeful end goal. The architects are the (private) owners of the central banks. The culmination of their plan is to be the transfer of all securities to the ownership of a small group of privileged banks resulting in these banks’ shareholders’ control over, essentially, everything. David’s most controversial assertion, I guess, is that the power behind this banking elite transcends nation states and that, effectively, they run the world and have done in a dynastic sense, for at least a century.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and David sets out both in his video (72 minutes – stiff drink in hand advised). Alternate link. Check the usual internet archive sites if the video has been taken down. David has a free downloadable book on the subject on his website: https://thegreattaking.com. There is also a paperback version. The book includes much detail on the legal and regulatory changes referred to above and I’d recommend it for anyone seriously interested in the subject.
So, there you have it. Is David just another a crazed conspiracy theorist or is he a very smart guy who has rumbled a diabolical plot to engineer the greatest concentration of wealth and power ever seen? I ask the Committee to decide.
Eaton Builds His Own Army
Before he could start his campaign, Eaton needed an army. Hamet had arrived with roughly 100 followers, whose actual fighting ability was dubious at best. Eaton had requested a contingent of 100 marines from Barron, but his request had been denied. This left him with only the eight marines who had accompanied him on his search for Hamet. They were led by an able young lieutenant named Presley O’Bannon who, along with Leitensdorfer, would become one of Eaton’s most valuable commanders. O’Bannon and Eaton immediately set about recruiting mercenaries in Alexandria and soon assembled a rogue’s gallery of Turkish, Greek, French, English, Spanish, Indian, and Eastern European mercenaries.
While Eaton was busy rounding up mercenaries, Hamet was attempting to rally disaffected Tripolitans, Egyptians, and other Arabs to their cause. His efforts met with a modicum of success. Together, Eaton and Hamet managed to amass a force of roughly 400 men. It was not enough to accomplish their lofty goals, but it was a start.
Their polyglot army set out for Tripoli on March 8, 1805. Their first target was Derna, the second largest city in Tripoli. The original plan of attack had been to approach Derna by sea, but Hamet insisted on taking the overland route to remain close to his followers. The overland route to Derna was long and arduous, leading across hundreds of miles of scorching desert populated by hostile Bedouin tribesmen. The expedition was for an ungainly sight as it crossed the desert. Arab cavalry, scores of polyglot mercenary infantry, and nearly 200 camels stretched as far as the eye could see. The varying nationalities made communication difficult, and the equally various religious affiliations threatened to splinter the party along doctrinal lines. It took all of Eaton’s, O’Bannon’s, and Leitensdorfer’s joint efforts to keep the rival groups from killing each other.
On the fifth day, a rider approached Eaton with the welcome news that Derna had revolted in favor of Hamet. The Arab riders at the front of the column immediately began firing their guns in celebration. The noise startled those in the rear of the column, who feared they were under attack by Bedouins. The frenzied European and Arab mercenaries nearly attacked each other in the resulting confusion before Eaton and his commanders managed to regain control and avert a bloodbath. Ironically, the expedition had nearly self-destructed over nothing—the rumors of an uprising at Derna turned out to be false.
A Long, Contentious March to Derna
As the march wore on, both funds and supplies began to run low. It had cost Eaton nearly $100,000 to assemble, equip, and supply his force. That amount was over twice his proposed budget, so he had little left over for contingencies. Two weeks into the march the Arab camel drivers revolted, claiming that they had not been paid for the entire journey. They demanded the rest of their money, or they threatened to abandon the expedition. Eaton’s coffers were dry and he was forced to take up a collection among the marines and other men to mollify them. His efforts were wasted when most of the camel drivers deserted during the night.
Relations between Eaton and the Arabs worsened as the group drew closer to Derna. Rumors that Bey Yusef was sending an army to reinforce the city terrified the Arab cavalry. Their leader, Sheikh El Taiib, refused to continue and had to be repeatedly coerced. The rumor of Yusef’s approaching army became so pervasive that it threatened to destroy the expedition. Even Hamet, the centerpiece of the plan, became so frightened that he refused to proceed. After a heated argument, Eaton took his marines and mercenaries and continued marching across the desert. He hoped that Hamet’s shame at being left behind would overcome his fear of Yusef. The ploy worked, and the deposed bey sheepishly caught up with Eaton a few hours later.
The march to Derna was not all hardship and turmoil. Along the way, Hamet managed to recruit 80 Arab horsemen and 150 infantry soldiers. These forces significantly added to the expedition’s ranks, as well as to Eaton’s growing debt. The motley army began attracting more followers when they finally entered Tripolitan territory. The expedition soon ballooned to over 1,000 people, including baggage train drivers and the families of the Bedouin horsemen.
By April 8, the expedition’s supplies were nearly gone and the Arabs were once again refusing to continue. Eaton argued that American vessels were waiting to resupply them at the nearby Bay of Bomba, but that failed to convince them. Hamet did not help the situation when he announced that he was returning to Egypt. Furious, Eaton ordered that no more supplies be distributed to the Arab cavalry. He hoped that their hunger would compel them to move forward, but it only added to the growing tensions inside the expedition.
These tensions nearly boiled over into outright violence when a group of irate Arabs attempted to storm the supply tent. Anticipating such an action, Eaton had positioned O’Bannon and Leitensdorfer, along with the marines and other non-Arab mercenaries, in front of the supply tent. Both groups stared at each other with weapons drawn. The vastly outnumbered mercenaries held their ground, although they knew that the slightest provocation would result in a massacre. Eaton nearly provided that provocation when, in his usual blunt manner, he began insulting the Arabs and claiming that they were afraid to fight. He hoped that his taunts would shame them into backing down, but it nearly resulted in catastrophe. It wasn’t until Hamet rode between the two groups and announced that he was staying with the expedition that cooler heads prevailed.
The Battle for Derna
The expedition reached Bomba a few days later and was resupplied by the waiting American vessels. After a week of rest, Eaton and his army set off to cross the final 60 miles to Derna, a city of roughly 10,000 inhabitants that was defended by a garrison of 800 troops. It would be a tough nut for Eaton’s force to crack. The expedition took up positions outside the city on April 26 and prepared for battle. Eaton attempted to avoid a conflict by writing to the governor of the city and offering him a position in Hamet’s new government if he would resupply the expedition and allow it to pass through Derna unmolested. Eaton concluded the letter with the line, “I shall see you tomorrow in a way of your choice.” The governor’s response was brief and to the point: “My head or yours.”
Although storming the city was going to be difficult, Eaton was excited. This was the moment he had dreamed about since he was a boy. Hamet, on the other hand, was not pleased—the thought of assaulting a fortified city terrified him. Adding to his fear was the rumor that Yusef had dispatched a 1,200-man relief force to Derna. Eaton snidely remarked that Hamet “wished himself back in Egypt.” Eaton’s plan called for a two-pronged attack. An assault force of 60 marines and mercenaries, led by O’Bannon, would attack the city’s barricades while Hamet and 200 Arab horsemen attacked the city from the south. The rest of the Arab cavalry would remain to the south of the city to act as a reserve and prevent any relief forces from reaching Derna. The operation would be assisted by covering fire from three American vessels: Argus, Hornet, and Nautilus.
The battle began the next morning when Derna’s shore batteries fired at the American vessels in the harbor. The ships responded with broadsides and soon the air was filled with cannon and musket fire. The opening rounds of the battle went well for Eaton’s forces. The American ships succeeded in silencing the shore batteries, and Hamet’s Arabs managed to capture an old castle on the outskirts of the city. However, O’Bannon’s strike force was pinned down under heavy fire from the city’s defenders. Eaton knew that the undisciplined mercenaries would flee if something wasn’t done immediately. In typical grandiose fashion, he decided to charge.
Amazingly, even though the defenders outnumbered the attackers by nearly 10-to-1, they retreated in the face of Eaton’s audacious assault. The strike force stormed the barricades and took possession of the shore batteries.
Eaton was shot in the left wrist during the assault but still managed to raise the American flag above the fort at the Derna harbor. It was the first time in history that the Stars and Stripes had flown over foreign territory.
Eaton’s men aimed the fort’s cannon toward Derna and joined the American warships in shelling the city. Hamet’s force pressed the assault from the south and managed to capture the governor’s palace. With the fall of the palace, all resistance ended. The battle to capture the city had been brief, lasting only two and a half hours. It had also been relatively painless, claiming the lives of only two Marines.
The battle to hold the city, however, had just begun. It turned out that Hamet’s fears of a relief force were well founded. An army sent by Yusef was only a few days’ march away.
The anticipated attack came on May 13 when Hassan, the commander of Yusef’s relief column, led 1,200 men against Derna. They overwhelmed an outpost defended by Hamet’s Arabs and rapidly closed in on the city. Eaton pointed the guns from his newly renamed Fort Enterprise toward Hassan’s attacking column. Their withering fire, along with broadsides from the American ships, managed to drive back the attackers.
Eaton’s capture of Derna would become one of the most celebrated victories in American military history. It inspired the famous second line of the “Marine Corps Hymn.” The saber that Hamet awarded to O’Bannon after the battle became the model for all subsequent Marine officers’ swords. The victory was also lauded in “Derne,” a popular if not particularly accomplished poem by John Greenleaf Whittier that included the following bombastic stanza about Eaton:
“Dark as his allies desert-born,/
Soiled with the battle’s stain, and worn/
With the long marches of his band
Through hottest wastes of rock and sand,
Scorched by the sun and furnace-breath/
Of the red desert’s wind of death,/
With welcome words and grasping hands,/
The victor and deliverer stands!”
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/general-william-eaton-to-the-shores-of-tripoli/
Comment: Another good yarn. And it’s history. The full article fleshes out the life of William Eaton, soldier, diplomat, spy and one crazy-assed adventurer. In my opinion he’s a forefather of our Special Forces. I’m posting this today because it’s the anniversary of his assault on Derna. It was the beginning of our long history of foreign military adventures, the beginning of our long quest for monsters abroad to destroy.
Since my father was a former Marine, I was well aware of Lieutenant O’Bannon, his Mameluke sword and the immortal words of the Marine Corps Hymn. But it wasn’t until a few years ago when I read “The Pirate Coast” by Richard Zachs that I became aware of US Army Captain William Eaton and his leading part in the saga of the shores of Tripoli.
TTG
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/richard-zacks/the-pirate-coast
The 47th Mechanized Brigade is one of the Ukrainian army’s best brigades. Equipped with American-made armored vehicles and trained to NATO standards, it fights like the best NATO brigades fight: swiftly, violently and often at night. But this prowess is a blessing and a curse for the brigade’s 2,000 troopers. The Ukrainian command wants the 47th Mechanized Brigade to be wherever the heaviest fighting is. So the brigade helped to lead Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive back in June. And when Russian regiments attacked the Ukrainian garrison in the eastern city of Avdiivka in October, the 47th Mechanized Brigade redeployed from the south to the east and reinforced the city—delaying though not preventing the garrison’s eventual retreat.
The 47th Mechanized Brigade has been fighting for nearly a year without a break. Its soldiers are tired; its battalions are running low on their best M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles and M-1 Abrams tanks. The brigade needs a break—and it almost got one this week. But that planned break was an invitation for the Russian field armies around the ruins of Avdiivka—an opportunity to inflict on the Ukrainians the kind of major defeat the Ukrainians inflicted on the Russians farther north around the city of Kharkiv in late 2022.
As the 47th Mechanized Brigade was pulling back from the front line east of the village of Ocheretyne this weekend, the Russians attacked—and very nearly broke through Ukrainian lines into the 20-mile-wide ribbon of undefended terrain separating the free city of Pokrovsk from the front line. The Ukrainian army’s 115th Mechanized Brigade was supposed to take the 47th Mechanized Brigade’s place along the front line. But something went wrong. According to Mykola Melnyk, the famed 47th Mechanized Brigade company commander who lost a leg during the summer counteroffensive, “certain units just fucked off.”
Russian scouts and drone operators, surveilling positions once held by the battle-hardened 47th Mechanized Brigade, expected to find fresh troops from the 115th Mechanized Brigade in the same trenches. Instead, they found … no one. It was a chance for the Russian army’s 30th Motor Rifle Brigade to roll along a railroad track threading west from Avdiivka and capture a narrow salient that, on a map, looks like a five-mile-long knife stabbing into the Ukrainian line, its sharp point lodged halfway into Ocheretyne.
A Russian breakthrough could have collapsed the entire Ukrainian line west of Avdiivka—and forced tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops and potentially hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee Donetsk Oblast. A Ukrainian breakthrough around Kharkiv in the fall of 2022 resulted in a major rout for the Russian army. The only reason the Russians didn’t advance deeper into the Ukrainian rear this weekend is that the withdrawing 47th Mechanized Brigade turned around and rejoined the fight. “The 47th Mechanized Brigade is back in business,” Melnyk wrote. Over the next couple of days, the Russians slightly widened their salient, but didn’t advance any farther to the west. Disaster averted for Ukraine, for now.
Comment: This was a close one and, as David Axe notes, the possibility of a major Russian breakthrough still exists at Chasiv Yar and beyond. The full story points out the unevenness of the Ukrainian Army’s brigades. Sure there are crack units like the 47th Mechanized Brigade and the 3rd Mechanized Assault Brigade, but there are other units lacking the Western equipment, manning and training of these crack units. For the last six months, they are also lacking ammunition. I find it amazing that they can hold a line at all. Axe points this out in an article on his fairly new Substack called “Trench Art.” He’s writing some good stuff there.
One point he makes is that it is too easy to blame the 115th Brigade for this failure. It is also wrong. A relief operation like this is planned at least one echelon above the brigades. That’s where the failure happened. Plans for a relief involve sending recon parties from the relieving unit to the positions of the unit being relieved to coordinate the handover down to the company and platoon level. Relieving units are guided into defensive positions as the relieved units are guided into assembly areas to the rear. In the best of circumstances, it’s a dangerous maneuver. But it’s a maneuver that the Ukrainian Army has to become better at quickly.
David Axe wrote a follow on article on the decision to order the 100th Mechanized Brigade to counterattack the Russian penetration at Ocheretyne. This brigade was only recently incorporated into the Ukrainian Army from being a Territorial Defense Brigade. It is still a lightly armed unit lacking the supporting armor and artillery of a regular brigade. Despite these shortcomings, the 100th counterattacked and succeeded in halting elements of the Russian 41st Combined Arms Army. Ahh, the light infantry. God bless them.
The fate of the 100th Mechanized Brigade brings to mind one of the missions of the 25th Infantry Division back in the late 1970s. We were to reinforce Europe in the event of a Soviet invasion. At the time we were a light division before that designation became official. We had three M-551 Sheridans in the entire division. We were comprised of six understrength active infantry battalions and three Hawaiian National Guard battalions. Hardly what one would expect to be facing the 3rd Shock Army as it pushed towards the Rhine. Yet we took the mission seriously and trained accordingly.
TTG
By Robert Willmann
Does a president have legal immunity for acts done in a president’s “official capacity” while in office? On the foreign policy, covert action, and targeted assassination fronts alone, one can imagine all sorts of situations in which a president’s directives and orders cause harm, or financial manipulation and corruption, or both, that would run afoul of common legal doctrines. The concept of legal immunity would shield a president from being charged in a court while in office. But what about a situation in which a president is no longer in office? Does the legal immunity follow the president when no longer in office to block criminal prosecution for an “official act” done while president? This issue is more formally stated as the subject of a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, at which oral arguments will be heard on Thursday, 25 April 2024 starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern time–
“… whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential imunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office?”
This is worth paying attention to because it comes out of the prosecution of former President Donald Trump by special counsel John L. “Jack” Smith, the man who has appeared with a scruffy-looking beard. If one or more of the federal criminal charges he got a grand jury to issue against Trump turn out to involve acts Trump did in his “official capacity”, then any such offenses in a pending indictment will be blocked and cannot be presented in a trial.
The case attracted 45 “friend of the court” briefs, called amicus curiae, which presented the viewpoint and analysis of persons who are not participating parties in the lawsuit.
The audio of the oral argument should be broadcast on the C-Span network, and perhaps by news organizations and Internet sites–
http://www.c-span.org/video/?534673-1/supreme-court-hears-case-president-trumps-immunity-claim
The court clerk’s docket sheet with public access to the filed documents and briefs is here–
http://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/23-939.html
This is the order granting the review of the issue–
presidential immunity_question presented-1
An oral argument before a court of appeals does not always telegraph how the case will be decided, especially since some questions to the lawyers are in the style of a devil’s advocate. But it often reveals that much of written governmental law consists of definitions and a debate about vocabulary. Former President Bill Clinton, a master of verbal tap dancing, made that perfectly clear in his testimony: “It depends on what the definition of the word is, is”.
RSS