Mark Steyn: "The Very Model of a Modish Loser General Staff"

 Having failed to get anywhere with the Taliban, the Pentagon is now going after Tucker Carlson. Who ought, in theory, to be an easier target.

It began last week when Tucker noted that Joe Biden had emerged from his basement for "International Women's Day" and held a White House event touting the US military's recent achievements on that particular front - including such brilliant innovations as better maternity flight suits for pregnant pilots. (Do the growing numbers of pregnant males get paternity suits - or is that still just a courthouse thing?)

Given that the brass no longer even try to win wars (our present negotiating position with the Taliban has dwindled down to: "Whatever you want - as long as we're allowed to stay running around this barren sod for another decade or two"), one might suppose it's relatively unimportant (except to the grim toll of wounded and dead, and their grieving families) whether the twenty-first century's endless unwon wars are lost by male, female or transgender soldiery.

On the other hand, in what's supposed to be an all-volunteer military, I don't recall the unborn kid raising his hand to sign on to be up there in the cockpit. Accepting that it's obviously far better for us to lose two-decade wars as diversely as possible, it still seems a very weird thing to be boasting about - even for a military that spent much of the twenty-first century filling every soldier's kitbag with a preferred guide to Afghanistan that proved to be an utterly fraudulent book of total bollocks with a 501(c)3 racket attached.

In response to Tucker pointing out the bizarre priorities of the world's wokest military, the Pentagon went full shock-and-awe on him:

"I like generals!" enthused Trump at the dawn of his administration. After being on the receiving end of John Kelly and Mad Dog Mattis, he wouldn't say that today. Even so, the world's supposed most powerful military going to war on a supposed boomer who's never been with child might seem, even for the Pentagon, a complete waste of time. Yet, to look on the bright side, it could have the benefit of bringing into public discourse a long overdue conversation about one of the central issues of our time:

The American way of war doesn't work.

This is no reflection on the men and pregnant women on the frontlines (for whom Alan Clark's famous formulation of the Great War, "lions led by donkeys", might have been created) but on the fellows who run the joint, and have run it into the ground. We're supposed to be excited because the newly appointed Lloyd Austin is the first African-American to serve as Defense Secretary. Of more relevance is that until two months back he was a board member of Raytheon, the high-tech armaments contractor that develops ever more advanced technology to ensure that we lose to inbred goatherds with fertiliser even more expensively.