Careercow William S. Lind - Crazy Pentagon Reformer & Paleoconservative. The man behind cultural marxism. No, seriously.

[Techpriest]

My first thought for a return to this site would be a thread on Mike Sparks, the man behind the Aerogavin, or maybe finishing off a read through of Otherverse America to cover more of Chris Fields, but instead, I stumbled upon something far, far more glorious than either as I happened across a comment about T-34/85's being able to BTFO an M1A2 Abrams. This lead me down an interesting rabbit hole about the Pentagon Reformers I'd like to possibly make a sort of comment on later down the line, but really they only matter right now in the context of our hero, the man who popularized 'Cultural Marxism' as a term and an enemy of right wing nutjobs all over the internet and IRL.

Meet William S. Lind, a Cleveland native and Baby Boomer. He writes several columns for various websites, and is a light rail enthusiast according to his Wikipedia page. I think he's holding a knife in this picture, I'm not 100% sure. On the surface, this guy seems pretty standard white collar Americana rah rah rah military theorist who hasn't understood this newfangled technology (A common theme among the Pentagon reformers) but oh no my friends, this goes far far deeper.

His life is pretty easy to summarize for the most part on the surface as well. He's an Ivy Leaguer, having graduated from Dartmouth, and gotten a masters in History from Princeton. Following that he ended up as part of the Pentagon Reformer movement, basically a group of theorists and skeptics in the Department of Defense that protested the increase in high tech high cost weapons systems like the Bradley, Abrams, F-15's, and such. Hell, he's basically got my dream career path there, getting into the Pentagon through a Masters in history. He coasted through most of the standard Pentagon Reformer objections and theories, finding a lot in common with a personal lolcow of mine, Pierre Sprey, and after the First Gulf War basically took a giant steaming pile of crap on all the Reformer's talking points, was poised to enter the realm of obscurity like so many others.

Except he didn't, thankfully for us. See, Lind made a few friends in his time in Government, serving as a legislative aid to two senators and writing a rather interesting treatise on Maneuver Warfare (I assume it's interesting because I haven't read it yet but if it's like some of his later works... whoo boy) and ended up active pushing for infrastructure like light rail across America. He also sort of stated a, to put it mildly, fucking stupid concept of future warfare called "Fourth Generational Warfare" that proposed warfare was moving away from a state central focus and into a cultural realm.

So what does this have to do with making him a lolcow?

Because he totally went off his rocker after his ilk were thoroughly discredited by Operation Desert Storm's hilariously lopsided performance in favor of all the high tech toys they complained about, and in classic lolcow fashion, Lind refused to admit he could ever, somehow, possibly be wrong about anything, and this was all a conspiracy against America.

By the mid to late 1990's, he was publishing shit like this, blaming the, and I am dead serious here, "The Establishment", and quote: "the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness." And this is the tip of the crazy iceberg here people. The Southern Poverty Law Center has three separate articles from around 2003 featuring Lind, including him implying that the jews are behind cultural Marxism, that cultural Marxism - which was and still is really vaguely defined as 'Anything I don't like' - would destroy western civilization, and in general the crazy train would keep rolling throughout the Bush years, and then entered hyperdrive once Obama entered office. Lind's since published his general manifesto 'Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War" which honestly made me kind of sick just skimming a review of it (and I'll actually dig more into the details once I get my grubby mitts on an e-book of it so stay tuned) which also features the strangest cover art of hyperreactionary screeds I've ever seen.

Yes, she's wearing a grenade as a necklace and Mr. Cover Guy has no trigger discipline.

The long and the short of it is that I'll get to more of Lind's ramblings later on today and this week after I catch up on my classwork.

 

[Tranhuviya]

Lind also has a major hard-on for Prussia, despite it neither being a liberal or conservative state. Like, in Victoria, I think he mentions it every other chapter.

 

[Honeybunny]

He's actually holding a pipe in that picture, which only serves to make him look like even more of an exemplary 'enlightened' sperglord

 

[Male Idiot]

He's actually holding a pipe in that picture, which only serves to make him look like even more of an exemplary 'enlightened' sperglord

You don't hold onto the pipe silly you smoke it!

 

[Tranhuviya]

Lind's inability to recognize guerilla forces as the latest in a long line of irregular soldiers is idiotic, and this idiotic assumptionbasically forms the crux of his "4th generational warfare" theory. Victoria, in addition to being right-wing fantasy, is also a tract on the virtues of said theory as written by Tom Clancy's retarded cousin.

This is the same book that has the right-wing guerillas using spar torpedoes, like the CSS Hunley spar torpedoes, against modern warships.

 

[Techpriest]

He's actually holding a pipe in that picture, which only serves to make him look like even more of an exemplary 'enlightened' sperglord

He's a hipster too then? God save us all.

 

[Tempest]

I found a thread on Lind's book Victoria
,also we have a thread on his book https://kiwifarms.net/threads/victoria-a-tale-of-fourth-generation-warfare.22119/
we're actually mentioned in the thread:
https://forums.spacebattles.com/thr...a-novel-of-fourth-generation-what-the.360750/

 

[Techpriest]

Today I'll be taking a look through an article by Lind published about five years ago while he was still insane, but slightly LESS insane. The title itself already promises hilarity.

A Tea Party Defense Budget

I can't wait. Pretty much every Tea Party member of congress was pretty much screaming "WE NEED MORE MILITARY MORE MORE MORE" for the last six years, and I doubt Lind is of the same opinion.

Tea Partiers rightly fear national ruin unless government spending is reduced. The numbers quickly show such reductions must include the defense budget. The national-security state devours about half of all “discretionary” federal spending. Years ago, Sen. Charles Grassley said to President Ronald Reagan, “It’s great that you are going after the welfare queens, Mr. President. But when are you going to go after the welfare queens in the Pentagon?” The Tea Party, to achieve its goals, must answer, “Now.”

Fucking called it.

Bean-counting won’t do the job. For meaningful savings, we must begin by changing our grand strategy, which presently defines virtually everything that happens in the world as an American interest. Against the Founders’ advice, we are not only playing the great power game, we are attempting to be the globe’s dominant power.

...But we are the globe's dominant power. We're just maintaining that status, and every great power has in its history. And not all the Founders thought in the same way as Washington. Jefferson was very much for the US intervening in foreign affairs for example, and so was Madison. Also "welfare queens in the pentagon." What the utter fuck does he even mean by that?

In consequence, America does not today have a defense budget. It has an empire budget—perhaps the Tea Party should call it that. Derailing the neocons’ (and neolibs’) imperial ambitions and returning to the defensive grand strategy America followed through most of her history would save not tens but hundreds of billions of dollars.

We would no longer need a 3:1 “rotation base” for forward-deployed forces because we would no longer have forward-deployed forces. More important, we would have fewer enemies because we would not be inserting our nose into everyone else’s quarrels. That is true national security: reducing the threat by not posing a threat.

Except this doesn't work at all. We have treaty obligations, for one thing, and it'd be more expensive to deploy forces in support of those treaty obligations directly from the states than it would be to have forces already there we can add to as needed, which also acts as a deterrent. Not posing a threat never really works out because the United States is a threat in a grand strategical scheme of things because it exists. We're a large nation with a large population, abundant natural resources, a huge manufacturing capacity, a large nuclear arsenal, and a huge economy. There is no fucking type of reality where we are not a threat. We would still be considered an enemy because unless you want to withdraw from every fucking treaty of friendship the United States has, we'd still have allies. And allies who you break an alliance with are generally tomorrow's rivals.

A second large tranche of savings would come from designing and equipping our forces for tomorrow’s wars—those that are forced upon us—not yesterday’s. Almost all the ships, planes, and weapons we are buying are designed for conflicts against other states. They are useless or worse for Fourth Generation wars against non-state opponents. Why do we need the F-22 and F-35 fighter aircraft? To shoot down Taliban flying carpets.

Gee Lind, I don't know, maybe because we're still getting our airspace molested by Russian bombers. And also fighting in environments where SAM systems exist. Hell, we're fighting in a world where SAM's exist. As such, our fucking planes are starting to become stealthy so they can do their fucking jobs. Also, LOL at the Fourth Generational warfare being thrown out again. It's like he's pretending the Chinese aren't a threat or we might not have to go in and fuck up another state for fucking with I dunno, our shipping. Or we won't need to help out allies in interstate wars.

There's another reason we need the F-35, and that's because we've got a massive fleet of aging F-16's and F-15's that are going to need replacing from wear and tear over the coming decades, and the F-35's per unit cost is fucking incredible. They actually managed to get it BELOW what they originally predicted, not shitting you. Pretty good for a a trillion dollar (including acquisition, lifetime maintenance, and research) program.

Canceling the programs—not just reducing the buys—would save tens of billions now and later. (The more complex the system, the higher its maintenance costs.)

Except that the other option is flying airframes until they fail, which will cost lives. And maintenance actually decreases on the F-35 in regards to man hours needed per flight hour compared to the F-16, the plane it is mainly replacing. The F-35 also benefits from a very very very modular avionics suite, allowing upgrades to be easier and cheapr. Over time, upgrading say an F-16 to have the same capabilities as an F-35 becomes more and more expensive, and performance goes down faster and faster as weight increases. Pods such as LANTIRN and Sniper are integrated into the F-35, along with jammers, meaning you don't need to spend time attaching and calibrating these pods while doing mission prep, or detaching them depending on the requirements. The lack of pods also increases overall performance, which is kind of important. The F-35 also has a fucking HILARIOUSLY long strike radius without needing external fuel tanks. This is part of the reason why the F-35C was requested by the Navy, rather than them going for an entirely new aircraft, as the Super Hornet (F-18 E/F) is notoriously short legged.

The Pentagon will howl, “How can you be certain we won’t fight other states?” It will furiously puff the dragon—the “Chinese threat.”

The answer, again, is strategic. We refuse to plan for wars against other states, including China, because the real winners are likely to be the 21st century’s main danger, nonstate elements. The defeated state in a war between nations is likely to collapse, like Iraq, creating a Petri dish for nonstate entities. If the price of victory is too high, the winner may go the same route. Our strategic preference, in a time when the main division will be between centers of order and centers of disorder, should be for strong, orderly states, including China.

Except... except that's entirely wrong. We've been planning for a war with China for decades, same with North Korea. They're potential threats in potential flashpoints. We don't outright state "Yeah, we have a War Plan Red Dragon Rising so we can fuck up China," anymore because it's the basic assumption by any fucking military nowadays that you have a general plan to fight against your rivals in development and being updated day by day.

Also, the most likely war between states in this day and age is likely to be limited, something akin to the Russia/Georgia war in 2008, where notably Georgia did not collapse afterwards.

A third source of savings arises from the fact that we have far too many support elements for our relatively few combat units. Called the “tooth-to-tail ratio,” Congress has investigated it for years, with small results. The reason is that Congress sees it as an efficiency issue, when it is actually a doctrinal one. Our armed forces remain structured for Second Generation wars—think World War I on the Western Front—where the guiding assumption is that almost all combat units are engaged most of the time. Each therefore requires a large, dedicated “tail.” If we shift to Third Generation doctrine, maneuver warfare, the new assumption is that most of the time most combat units are in reserve, waiting to maneuver. Dedicated tails are small; logistical support is given mainly to the few units in contact. The tooth-to-tail ratio rises dramatically.

What.

No, our current method of warfighting and doctrine is actually very maneuver based, look at Operation(s) Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. Here's a basic overview of the ground campaign for 1991. Multiple forces were held in reserve, and deployed to strike rapidly at any weak spots discovered by the probing attacks conducted earlier by recon elements. Encirclements and defeat in detail were major parts of the Coalition battle plans. This can even be seen in the end of the regiment as a notable division within military unit structure, as we've shifted to brigades as our main way of arranging maneuver elements. These sorts of changes were done while Lind was in the fucking pentagon. As an advocate for maneuver warfare he should have known this and been part of this.

Our doctrine is all about striking deep, hard, and ripping the head off of the snake before stomping all over his body after we find him. Air strikes and raids to disrupt logistics, destroy chains of command, and then hitting the confused and supply-restricted enemy with a fucking hammer was the basic strategy in Desert Storm. AirLand battle man. You were in the Pentagon, you should know this shit.

For that matter the generational theory is really fucking stupid to begin with. I'll state why sometime.

As the defense budget is cut, it will be important to insist that all reductions come from the tail. Combat units, especially ground combat, are few enough already. The Pentagon will want to do the opposite, mothballing front-line units while preserving the bureaucracy. The Tea Party must say “No.”

What would all this add up to? An achievable target would be a defense budget of around $100 billion. That would still be the largest in the world. But the Pentagon’s welfare queens would have to look for real jobs—not just the vast surplus of field grade and senior officers, but the DOD civilians, hordes of contractors, and best of all the lobbyists of Gucci gulf. Fear not, boys, there are lots of houses that need cleaning. Starting with yours.

...OK, first off, $100 billion is just... ok, retarded. A better number would have been something like $500 billion, which is still like a serious cut but doesn't totally fuck up everything. Here's why in a nutshell. One DDG that the Navy is requesting costs roughly $2 billion dollars to obtain. A carrier? $13 billion. Then there's the maintenance costs of all of this, then personnel. We're looking at close to about what, oh, $45 billion a year budget for operating and maintenance for the Navy alone. This includes the entire Marine Corps, and Marine and Naval aviation operating costs as well. That's nearly half of Lind's proposed budget. We'd have to cut the navy, the entire navy to even reach close to three or four times what Lind is suggesting. It gets worse for the Army and Air Force. Combat units are hard to come by yes, but that's because we've actually reduced the budget quite a bit over the recent years and have less active ones now compared to the glut of the Cold War, and we're planning on cutting excess personnel anyway.

Also, a large amount of our budget is devoted to funding internal and external research into new technologies. It's a crucial part of you know, maintaining a modern military force.

Then there's the officer issue. For some reason Lind views officers as like, useless. All of them. There's too many junior and senior officers. Except... the military is actually looking for more specialist officers, like nuclear technicians and engineers, along with trying to maintain the numbers of junior officers. Otherwise OCS (Officer Candidate School) and the like wouldn't exist, because we could just use West Point to supply the required load right? It's also important to note that the DOD civilians was the category Lind belonged to in the Pentagon as he never served in the military. Contractors and lobbyists are a necessary evil to keep loads of people both employed and also to you know, acquire things and perform services the military needs like off base electricians and supply movers.

For that matter, a functioning bureaucracy is hard to fucking build. And a high tail to tooth ratio also has the benefit of pretty much giving your troops the best logistical support possible. For as much as Lind and his ilk seem to idolize the Wehrmacht, it's notable that one of their crippling flaws was logistics. The US had the logistical ability to support two separate offensive theaters, not fronts, THEATERS, halfway across the globe and across two different oceans at the same time. A good chunk of our 'excess officers' are in the logistics corps making sure we can repeat that again and again, and entirely mobilize on short notice.

TL;DR Lind thinks we need to reduce our budget to a sixth of its current size, and get rid of the logistical support needed for

 

[Tranhuviya]

For as much as Lind and his ilk seem to idolize the Wehrmacht, it's notable that one of their crippling flaws was logistics.

tbf this was the flaw of every Prussian-derived military.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

This looks promising. Armchair generals are usually massive Walter Mittys and thus hilarious. I remember fondly the huge spergeout that sci-fi author S&M Stirling, sorry, S. M. Stirling, got into with a reader over the armour plating of the Rhino ground attack planes in his Draka novels.

 

[Techpriest]

This looks promising. Armchair generals are usually massive Walter Mittys and thus hilarious. I remember fondly the huge spergeout that sci-fi author S&M Stirling, sorry, S. M. Stirling, got into with a reader over the armour plating of the Rhino ground attack planes in his Draka novels.

It's a real pity we won't get Lind on here, but I might make a Kratman thread and see if he'll pop up. He's kind of easy to milk IMO.

 

[Tranhuviya]

It's a real pity we won't get Lind on here, but I might make a Kratman thread and see if he'll pop up. He's kind of easy to milk IMO.

Kratman actually served (with the Screaming Eagles, too) , though, so I actually respect him somewhat more than the armchair general Boyd Acolytes.

 

[Techpriest]

So I've been digging through the rather bonkers amount of writing Lind has done, and this article in particular stuck out at me because of what he was proposing: arm your standard beat cop with an RPG. Really though to dig into Lind I'm going to have to tackle his manifesto, Victoria. Strap yourselves in with a drink lads, because this shit is about to go totally fucking bonkers.

 

[Tranhuviya]

So I've been digging through the rather bonkers amount of writing Lind has done, and this article in particular stuck out at me because of what he was proposing: arm your standard beat cop with an RPG. Really though to dig into Lind I'm going to have to tackle his manifesto, Victoria. Strap yourselves in with a drink lads, because this shit is about to go totally fucking bonkers.

While certainly...a effective method...for stopping such attacks, an RPG-7 would be unnecessarily costly and lethal for such a task.

A disposable, single shot purpose-built system for less lethal anti-vehicle work would be better.

 

[Jubileus]

Cow Connection: Vox Day AKA Theodore Beale is the guy behind Castalia House, the publishing "house" that actually put out his Victoria book. "4GW" and Lind in general are regularly lionized on Beale's blogs as gospel. Dig there and gold ye shall find.

Kratman is more conventionally successful in sci-fi publishing but has also associated with Beale since they're ideologically aligned in the "Puppy Wars" that have been waged over the Hugo Awards for the past few years now. He's not really as fun as the other two IMHO and is more a standard run of the mill Guns and Jesus conservative type. Going after him reeks of personal army BS.

 

[Techpriest]

Cow Connection: Vox Day AKA Theodore Beale is the guy behind Castalia House, the publishing "house" that actually put out his Victoria book. "4GW" and Lind in general are regularly lionized on Beale's blogs as gospel. Dig there and gold ye shall find.

Kratman is more conventionally successful in sci-fi publishing but has also associated with Beale since they're ideologically aligned in the "Puppy Wars" that have been waged over the Hugo Awards for the past few years now. He's not really as fun as the other two IMHO and is more a standard run of the mill Guns and Jesus conservative type. Going after him reeks of personal army BS.

The thing is that Kratman has... a very very petty nature. It'd be easy to make Tom Kratman, Author of A Desert Called Peace, appear in a thread about him simply because it is titled "Tom Kratman".

 

[Tranhuviya]

The thing is that Kratman has... a very very petty nature. It'd be easy to make Tom Kratman, Author of A Desert Called Peace, appear in a thread about him simply because it is titled "Tom Kratman".

I disagree.

Kratman is worth a thread, most definitely. Carrerra's Legions shows how much he really hates leftists, globalists and Muslims - factors that may be of use in trolling him. The possibility of him paying attention to our activity and entering into discussion would be interesting indeed.

 

[Techpriest]

I disagree.

Kratman is worth a thread, most definitely. Carrerra's Legions shows how much he really hates leftists, globalists and Muslims - factors that may be of use in trolling him. The possibility of him paying attention to our activity and entering into discussion would be interesting indeed.

We'd have to google boost it a bit, but I'd say we could easily make him come to us for some milking. You can make the thread if you want, I'll contribute what I can.

 

[Quail]

I've actually read a fair bit of that Victoria shit from a site I found it on (https://www.traditionalright.com/victoria/). It really is pretty shit.

Spoiler: Me spoiling a bit somewhat later on in the book

The second half of it ("book two: war") is supposed to be about the protagonists state from seceding from the US and having to face the full brunt of the US government. Except they spend at least one chapter at the start going over how actually the piddly state militia they've set up with barely any military training and 1000 or so T-34s shipped from Russia (which now has a Czar again and exists basically to give the protagonist whatever he needs for free, also apparently T-34s are great tanks) can easily beat any force the Government can muster.

The US government for its part debates what to send to put down these rebels. Initially it discusses a battleplan involving sending actual soldiers but then some random black woman hired explicitly to be black tells them that whites can't fight and every famous soldier was actually black so the Government decides to send a division of black gangsters they'd recruited in. Alone. With no support whatsoever. Down the most obvious line of attack. And the Protagonist had forewarning because it just so happened that there was a spy for the separatists at the meeting.

As you can imagine the actual battle itself was very tense and totally not just the author masturbating over how smart he is without being willing to actually have his heroes actually encounter a situation where they might not conveniently win with ease.

(If you're wondering, the first half isn't any better, just replace "the author masturbates about his military 'knowledge'" to "the author awkwardly attempts to justify using his military 'knowledge' to cover up for his comical lack of understanding about politics").

 

[Foltest]

Anyone who believe that a T-34 tank is able to stand up to modern arms is an idiot. Period. They would be destroyed by a lesser numbers of M1a1 Abrams, even the older models.
The newest models of t-34 are from 1944! Their cannons wouldn't be able to penetrate armour of an M1a1 abrams.
Also, if there was a separatist movement as described in the book with 1000 of tanks, they would sent in the airforce to bomb the shit out of them. A-10 would turn them into scrap metal.
Also, no sane army would send in a division of f******* gangbangers!
Remember, this guy as a master in history! He should know better!