FRESNO, CA – It’s summer, you’ve got a little more time off, so you can read up on war instead of trying to live in whatever boring suburb you live in. Lawns, neighbors, dogs, kids—it all sucks and the best thing you can do is get as far out of it as you can. A lot of war fans do it by logging into the game world, where we’re all seven feet tall and bulletproof.
But I’m old school. I still actually read those book things, about actual wars where people die and stay dead, magic amulets just get you killed, and elf princesses are few and far between. The only way to stay on top of this game is to keep inhaling a lot of info, so after a while you get a taste for B.S. That means you have to study up. You know when the Bible says, “They shall study war no more”? Well, I’m not one of the they’s they were talking about. Here are some of the war books I’ve been chowing down on lately. Hopefully they’ll help you get through your hot dull summer too:
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| Iraq Police Academy 6: Doin’ The Mosul Shuffle! |
FRESNO, CA — OK, we’ve just gone through a really exciting time in world military moves, so let’s test your strategic IQ. What’s the relation between these three recent developments:
1. On May 9, Hezbollah took over West Beirut against feeble resistance.
2.
The Iraqi Army, such as it is, is now moving into Mosul in a major anti-al Qaeda operation.
3. At the end of March, the Iraqi Army attacked Sadr strongholds in Basra and East Baghdad, and got its ass kicked.
If you want some clues, you can read my account of event #3 in detail from my April 2nd column:
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=18297&IBLOCK_ID=35
The other clue that might help is that Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Iraq is totally based on Nasrallah’s Lebanese Hezbollah, so—to kinda give it away a little—in just over a month’s time, you’ve got two Shia militias stomping the better-armed and -funded old-style powers in Arab countries a thousand miles apart. Kind of a trend. (more…)
A map of Zhukov’s attack on Japan’s Imperial Army bears a strange resemblance to the inner jaws of those giant sandworms in Dune
How the Japs got served with the 3,000-mile long Stalin Roll combo
Everybody knows about the Fall of Berlin. You Russians will be out in the streets next week doing your Victory Day thing commemorating the capture of the Reichstag, Hitler eating Luger lead, and—on a sadder note—the end of the long, sweet rape-fest Russian soldiers enjoyed on their triumphant march through Prussia.
Yes, their happy thoughts of home and hearth were tempered, as the preachers say, by the realization that their big Woodstock of free, forced love was about to come to an end.
What most people don’t know is that the Red Army had another huge triumph still to come: a crushing strategic victory on a front 3000 miles long, with 1.6 million Soviets annihilating a force that, on paper at least, totaled more than a million battle-hardened Axis troops. I’m talking about Operation August Storm, the Soviet invasion of Japanese-held Manchuria on August 9, 1945—exactly three months after the surrender of the Nazis.
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This is the cover of The eXile Issue #288, published in May 2008.
