Category: War

Touring a German U-boat in Chicago

by philg

I know that everyone here has tickets to visit The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago (don’t forget to show ID if you want to pay the Illinois resident rate). While visiting this celebration of our greatest president, don’t forget to walk a few steps to the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry and see U-505, one of only two German U-boats captured and towed away by the Allies intact during WWII.

First, why did Ken Griffin abandon Chicago due to crime and disorder and then give the museum, renamed in 2024, $125 million? The gift was in 2019 and Griffin began moving during coronapanic and the mostly peaceful BLM protests of 2020. Proving just how wrong Griffin was about crime and disorder in Chicago, the police send three officers, each with a firearms and explosives-sniffing canine, to the museum all-day every day:

The sub, launched in 1941, is enormous (251′ long):

The torpedoes are also huge and, unlike U.S. WWII torpodoes, weren’t incompetently engineered. The German torpedoes were undersea Teslas, powered by batteries, and were guided by acoustic homing.

If you want to feel better about your job, the U.S. Navy guys who forced U-505 to surface off Cape Verde raced into the sinking vessel as soon as the Germans had evacuated. They expected 12 timed explosive charges to be set and also a massive pipe letting in seawater. Their heroism is explained in Codename Nemo. A big part of the solution, after the pipe hatch was closed and the timed charges were diarmed, was to let the propellers spin while the sub was being towed. This charged the batteries and, thus, enabled the sub’s own pumps to clear out the water.

After some years in now-tax-free New Hampshire, the sub was towed past Maine on her way to Chicago and they picked up some Graham Platner campaign items:

The museum also has a good exhibit, including original artifacts, of Enigma machines.

Capturing a submarine turns out to be a great way to start a birdwatching club:

What’s it like inside? Photos from the guided (by Jessie, who was awesome!) tour:

One thing that we learned on the tour: the U.S. violated the Geneva Convention by not allowing the captured crew of U-505 to send letters back home nor notifying their relatives that U-505 had been captured rather than sunk. The Red Cross was not allowed to visit the 58 prisoners in Ruston, Louisiana. We wanted to keep the June 4, 1944 capture a secret so that the Germans wouldn’t know that we had their codebooks, etc.

Where did the museum folks get the money to build an underground bunker big enough to preserve the submarine from the Chicago weather? From a foundation established by Robert R. McCormick, founder of the Chicago Tribute and famously opposed to U.S. involvement in Europe’s second huge war within one generation. The bunker celebrating U.S. involvement in WWII is named “the McCormick Tribute Foundation Exhibition Hall.”

You can spend an entire day in this museum. I’ll write some more about it.

Loosely related… the 2020 Tom Hanks movie Greyhound, about the poor chances that Allied convoys had of crossing the North Atlantic in early 1942.

See also Baltimore bridge destruction reading: a biography of Rudolf Diesel for some history regarding the man (and MAN, the company that Diesel first worked with and the company that made the engine for U-505) who made modern submarines practical.

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Celebration of the B-1 Bomber (BONE) at Oshkosh

by philg

One of the talks at Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture) that we enjoyed was by Kenneth Katz, author of The Supersonic Bone: A Development and Operational History of the B-1 Bomber, John Chilstrom (B-1 pilot), and Fred Swan (B-1 Wizzo).

They reminded us that the B-52, which first flew in 1952, was considered a temporary aircraft that would hold us until we had a full fleet of supersonic bombers. The requirements that turned into the B-1 (“B-ONE” or “Bone”) were first set forth in 1955. The B-1 evolved so slowly, changing from a very fast high-altitude machine to a barely-supersonic low-altitude machine, that Jimmy Carter, running for office in 1976, was able to promise to strangle it in its crib. During the Carter administration, the USAF managed to continue some testing of the prototype B-1s against Russian radar systems that Israel had captured in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. (Oshkosh is pretty much the opposite of New York City; speakers referred to “our friends in Israel” when mentioning various forms of military cooperation, e.g., Israel providing the U.S. with MiG fighters to seed a secret training and testing squadron in Nevada. Nobody enthuses about river-to-the-sea liberation, Queers for Palestine, or anything else that is sacred in the Mamdani Caliphate.) The B-1s got through much better than the B-52s.

The machine that first flew in 1974 (more than 50 years ago) is still in use today, e.g., as part of our gradual surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran (maybe Jimmy Carter was right; he surrendered to Iran in 1979 and if our foreign policy is to surrender to anyone tougher than Grenada then why do we need the B-1 or, indeed, an air force?).

The WSO (“Wizzo”) talked about bombing Iraq in 1973. Bombs and missiles are loaded into a rotating carousel and if conditions change, e.g., someone thinks there is a chance to drop a particular bomb on Saddam’s head, it is necessary to jettison other items in order to get to the desired munition. Here’s how this is loaded up:

A couple of B-1s made low passes, but none stopped to visit this year (2018 was the last time?).

It was common in airshows and talks at Oshkosh for those who’ve served in our military to be praised. Of course, a percentage of these folks exhibited remarkable bravery and took significant risks. Guess who didn’t receive any praise, though? The taxpayers who made it possible for the machines on display to be designed, built, and operated! Eighty percent of federal income tax receipts come from roughly 20 million tax returns (Tax Foundation). Even assuming that over half of these are joint returns, that’s just 10 percent of the U.S. population that is dumb enough to work and pay significant tax. Would it be so difficult to say “If you paid tax on more than $150,000 in income last year, thank you for your service and for enabling us to have F-35s, F-22s, B-1s, aircraft carriers, and all of the other amazing stuff that we’ve been using as part of our surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran”? Speaking of the F-22, here’s one parked at the FBO:

Circling back, so to speak, to the B-1… what is a likely role for the aircraft in a world of ever-more-advanced drones?

How much do attendees at Oshkosh love bombers? Have a look at the simulated bombs that are an essential part of every airshow at EAA AirVenture:

Somewhat related,

“The destruction of Germany’s great war industries was accomplished almost entirely from the air. No one can stand among their ruins without a feeling of awe for the devastating power of such attacks. The courage and skill of our pilots and their crews in these operations is legendary. They deserve the highest tribute of our people.”

— The Honorable Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War

Found on the cover of a book about the B-24 at the Aeromart within EAA AirVenture:

(We seem to have chosen the opposite approach with the Islamic Republic of Iran, i.e., allow them to continue as an industrial power and ask them nicely not to use their industry to make weapons.)

Boeing now takes credit for the B-1B, which was entirely developed and built by North American Rockwell. Boeing lost the design competition circa 1970 and acquired Rockwell in 1996, 22 years after the B-1’s first flight. What else does Boeing take credit for? At the Boeing pavilion’s gift shop, the Black Americans who won World War II:

ChatGPT, regarding the Tuskegee Airmen:

  • the display in your photograph is best understood as modern corporate and cultural messaging
  • they did not fly Boeing aircraft operationally (the Stearman was used for primary training, though)
  • No Tuskegee Airman officially qualified as an ace during World War II (vs. 1,279 non-Tuskegee pilots)
  • The group encountered enemy aircraft on only 35 of its 179 Fifteenth Air Force bomber-escort missions, partly because it entered that campaign relatively late, as German fighter opposition was declining.

Elsewhere on the field, we are informed that the “fearless” pilots who fly the B-29, an actual Boeing plane, were not the men who plowed through 16 hours of thunderstorms round-trip to Japan, but rather “fearless women” who operated the B-29 over the Continental U.S.

ChatGPT:

Many male test pilots, instructors and crews were already flying the B-29. [Enola Gay pilot Paul] Tibbets himself trained the women, and a male instructor or aircraft commander was involved in their qualification. The aircraft could not have been developed, tested and fielded otherwise.

The reluctance concerned a troublesome new aircraft, not a universal refusal by men to undertake danger.

The women were selected partly because Tibbets expected the gender comparison to embarrass reluctant male crews. The stunt depended upon the period’s assumption that a man ought to be ashamed if a woman undertook a flying risk he avoided.

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The most beautiful warbird at Oshkosh this year (PBY Catalina)

by philg

Fresh out of a 7-year restoration in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, this sub-killing PBY Catalina is my pick for the most beautiful warbird of EAA AirVenture 2026:

(Also a very welcome sight in 1945 for sailors from the USS Indianapolis who were abandoned to exposure in the Pacific Ocean.)

The 35,000+ lb. plane belongs to the American Heritage Museum in Maskachusetts (their press release), but will live for a year at the EAA Museum in Oshkosh. Some details on the plane’s history:

Credit to the folks in New Smyrna Beach, Florida who handled the 7-year restoration:

In other seaplane news, as soon as we got to the EAA Seaplane Base, a 30,000+ lb. Grumman Albatross flew over our heads and splashed down. A bit later, a Grumman Mallard took off and then did a fly-by:

We encountered the plane on wheels a few hours later, back at KOSH, and the owner invited our boys to climb up into the cockpit and then down through a tunnel into the bow:

Any other fun warbirds? A Boeing B-52 in Boeing Plaza next to the Boeing pavilion:

A couple of B-1s flew by. Some additional aggression, but apparently not enough to stave off surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran:

The A-26 Invader and Al Franken:

EAA AirVenture also has some hardware related to potential civil war. Suppose, for example, that Ayatollah Mamdani’s Red Guards come to your house to arrest you for being part of the bourgeoisie. You might be able to flee down I-95 in the $465,000 BEC Defense Renegade APC, built on a Ford F-600 4×4 chassis:

It’s perfect for “family protection”:

If you prefer speed to armor, Piper is ready with a Corvette:

(Parked in front of the “Fury” makes sense since anyone in South Florida would be furious that this isn’t at least a Z06 version. 495 horsepower is insufficient for the trip to Publix.)

Just don’t try to flee the Mamdani Caliphate in a Joby. As in previous years, they showed up with something that does everything except fly:

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A Navy of seaplanes for a world of drones and hypersonic missiles

by philg

One of the many interesting talks at EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) 2026 was by James Schreiber, a U.S. Navy veteran-turned-IBM-patent-lawyer with a passion for seaplanes.

First, there is no reason that seaplanes can’t be part of a modern navy. The ShinMaywa US-2 is a four-engine monster with tremendous range in service with Japan (source):

Here’s the radius of search and rescue action:

Contrary to what we tell MIT students, a seaplane actually can land in real waves (up to about 10′ in this case):

(If the Canadians weren’t sending so many of their tax dollars to Hamas, they could have purchased water bombing versions of this magnificent 120,000+ lb. beast and preserved U.S. air quality.)

We learned that one of the most interesting periods of our U.S. Navy was the 1950s. The USAF had gained ascendancy in government and the doctrine was to destroy our enemies via strategic bombing from land-based airplanes, such as the then-new B-52 (considered a short-term solution at the time, a stopgap until the glorious age of supersonic bombers), and ballistic missiles. The Navy’s funding requests for new aircraft carriers were denied and, thus, the Navy tacked (so to speak) toward submarines and sea-based airplanes. The Navy had designs for jet-powered fighters, bombers, and transport seaplanes. The Convair F2Y Sea Dart is the most famous example, a supersonic fighter that first flew in 1953. For raining down destruction on our enemies (back when we actually wanted to win wars!), the Martin P6M SeaMaster first flew in 1955. For moving troops and vehicles from harbor to harbor, the Convair R3Y Tradewind, which first flew in 1954 (a little heavier than the above-mentioned Japanese seaplane and, therefore, potentially even better for our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters trying to fight fires in Canada with whatever funding scraps they have left over from serving as the Palestinians’ logistics arm).

Part of the 1950s rationale for a fleet of sea-based aircraft was that they’d be more challenging for the enemy to find and target than runways and monster-sized aircraft carriers. Perhaps that rationale is even more, uh, rational today? Let’s consider our gradual surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran (can’t be called a “war” because we apparently don’t have any ambition of winning, in which winning would be defined as destroying the Islamic Republic’s oil and electricity industries so that they wouldn’t be able to rebuild and run weapons factories). The ships of the Iranian Navy that were larger than an aircraft were quickly destroyed by the U.S. On our side, our fixed bases, such as Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, have proved vulnerable to Iranian missiles.

Readers: What do you think about resurrecting the 1950s idea?

An awesome T-shirt from the Seaplane Pilots Association (not in their online shop yet):

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What Would Barnes Wallis (WWBW) do with Iran?

by philg

As the world’s aviation nerds gathering for EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”; July 20-26), let’s think a bit about the impact of aviation on human conflict…

The Dambusters Raid, one of the most famous uses of aircraft during World War II, was the brainchild of Barnes Wallis, an aeronautical engineer who sought a clean-sheet-of-paper answer to the question, “What’s the most effective way to reduce Germany’s ability to fight?” Sir Arthur Harris‘s plan was simple: kill as many German civilians as possible via firebombing of cities because a factory whose workers have been killed isn’t going to be productive (and the productivity of workers who survived would be reduced since they’d be homeless). Wallis settled on the idea of destroying hydroelectric dams in Germany’s industrial heartland, thus simultaneously denying German factories the electricity, coal, and water necessary to achieve full production. He looked at the inputs to German manufacturing, especially energy, and tried to destroy those inputs so that it wouldn’t matter how effective Germany was at dispersing factories.

The vulnerability of a dam seems to have been understood by both the Germans and the British, i.e., an explosion right up against the interior wall at a time when the dam was nearly full. As such, the Germans had strung torpedo nets in their reservoirs to prevent traditional torpedoes from being used. Barnes Wallis came up with the idea of a bomb that would skip along the surface of the lake impounded by the dam, roll down the water-side dam wall, and explode. A tremendous number of engineering problems needed to be solved to make this a reality. Paul Brickhill’s classic book is excellent, especially since the author was himself a WWII military pilot, but I recently listened to a 2013 book by James Holland that adds much interesting detail and makes it clear that Barnes Wallis wasn’t quite the lone inventor that we meet in Brickhill’s earlier work.

Arthur Harris was initially skeptical, to say the least: “This is tripe of the wildest description. There are so many ifs and buts that there is not the smallest chance of it working.” A combination of engineering persistence and incredible bravery and sacrifice by 617 Squadron, however, proved that Wallis had been on the right track. Revisionist historians later minimized the damage done to Nazi Germany by the 19 planes sent out on May 16, 1943 by noting that the Germans successfully scrambled to rebuild the dams, as well as many washed-out bridges and factories, before winter. James Holland points out in his book that forcing the Germans to divert tens of thousands of workers and perhaps $10 billion adjusted to post-Biden dollars. The breached dams had terrible consequences for German arms production just when they needed to support their campaigns against the Russians and against the Allies in Italy. The breached dams also took labor and money away from beefing up the Atlantic Wall against the invasion that actually happened in 1944.

Another passion for Barnes Wallis was precision bombing with 10-ton bombs that he designed. These pioneering “bunker busters” were used to good effect against various German installations, including for submarines and V-2 rockets, as well as to sink the battleship Tirpitz. Any time that we’re bombing fortified infrastructure in Iran, therefore, we’re channeling the spirit of Wallis.

What Would Barnes Wallis (WWBW) do with Iran? More or less the opposite of what the U.S. has been doing. Wallis would almost surely have recommended taking out the Iranian oil industry, a critical energy input to everything else that happens in Iran, and the industrial-scale electric power generation currently available to the Islamic Republic to run any factories that it still has and/or rebuilds. Wallis probably would also try to destroy Iran’s ability to move energy and materials, e.g., by taking out bridges, railroads, airports, etc. At a minimum, this would keep the Islamic Republic busy rebuilding and people who are busy rebuilding can’t put their energy into weapons production or military facility construction.

Maybe the U.S. strategy of slowly surrending to Iran will, in the long run, prove to have more merit. I hope so!

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How can the U.S. benefit from the proposed Iran peace deal?

by philg

We’re informed that a peace deal with Iran is coming any day now. Some of the terms seem worse than what Carthage had to give when they surrendered to Rome. For example, “Trump’s $300 billion problem on the Iran agreement”:

In an interview with CBS News Monday morning, Vice President JD Vance seemed to tacitly confirm the premise that Iran could be given “access” to a reconstruction fund worth as much as $300 billion.

Ever since that interview, the administration has strained to clarify things. It has emphasized that this money wouldn’t come from US taxpayers. Instead, it would be money from other Gulf countries that would only be available if Iran complies with a peace deal.

Vance said late Monday on Fox News that “we would invite other countries — not us, but other countries — to invest in” Iran. He echoed that Tuesday, telling Megyn Kelly that the US wouldn’t let the United Arab Emirates, for example, “invest in Iran, unless the Iranians change their behavior.”

When the Obama administration and other countries cut a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, it included giving Iran access to billions of dollars. In that case, it wasn’t money from other countries, but instead Iran’s own assets that had been frozen in foreign banks under sanctions. Estimates generally placed the dollar figure around $50 billion.

The Islamic Republic of Iran still officially hates the U.S., right? They’ve been chanting “Death to America” for 47 years. To the extent that they have money and sovereignty, therefore, won’t they use that money to build weapons factories? To the extent that they have electric power, won’t they use that power to run the factories 24/7?

One purported benefit is oil can flow through the Strait of Hormuz without interference from the Iranian Navy that, we’re informed, no longer exists. But if the U.S. is an oil exporter, how do we benefit from the ability of competitors in the Persian Gulf to export through the Strait?

Maybe Donald Trump is doing this for immediate political gain? The price of gasoline will go down a little and, therefore, Democrats who were previously climate alarmists and wanted higher gasoline prices to discourage consumption will stop their recent complaints about the higher gasoline prices that they previously advocated? This explanation seems implausible because surrendering to an enemy, even if you call it “winning”, doesn’t usually make a politician more popular. Wouldn’t Trump enjoy more popular support, at least among Republicans, with round-the-clock bombing of Iran’s oil industry (thus denying the ayatollahs the money they need to build weapons factories) and electricity plants (thus denying the regime the grid-scale electric power that it needs to run its weapons factories)?

Separately, if the goal is to keep the non-existent Iranian Navy out of the Strait, couldn’t we use robot submersibles to make the waters unfriendly to those whom we don’t like? Here’s an example from Anduril that can endure for 10 days:

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Memorial Day in Alaska

by philg

Reading to remember the sacrifices that some U.S. military personnel made during World War II: 81 Days Below Zero: The Incredible Survival Story of a World War II Pilot in Alaska’s Frozen Wilderness. When Seward bought the territory in 1867, nobody could have imagined that the interior would end up being useful for the yet-to-be-invented heavier-than-air military airplane, including the B-24 that Leon Crane was co-piloting in the crash that led to his fellow airmens’ deaths and his own remarkable survival.

Of course, most of the military deaths in Alaska occurred in the Aleutian Islands battles (see Justifying our total war against Japan for some Fairbanks museum exhibits on this subjectd). It’s tough from today’s perspective to see the military value of these fights, but we can still reflect on the memory of those who were willing to sacrifice their lives in the cold for the perceived value at the time.

I was in Juneau yesterday. Seward doesn’t look too happy about the future state that he purchased:

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New York Times: Family disintegration leads to military disintegration

by philg

The New York Times’s latest explanation for why we can’t win wars… “You Can’t Defend a Nation When Soldiers Don’t Have Child Care”:

After the draft ended in 1973, the composition of the armed services began to change. More women, people of color and lower-income Americans joined up. A steady paycheck became “the principal rationale to induce persons to join the all-volunteer force,” according to testimony given before a 1978 Senate subcommittee hearing on the Army. One unanticipated consequence was the growing number of families with young children living on Army bases. “At times of alert,” Representative Robin Beard, a Tennessee Republican who had written a report on the Army, told the subcommittee, “the battalion headquarters and company headquarters would be filled with children.” Soldiers with children had “no place to take” them.

The child care problem wasn’t limited to emergencies. As costs rose relative to incomes, more military spouses had to enter the work force, and child care gaps became constant.

From 1985 to 2022, the number of active-duty single parents in the military increased 67 percent…

We supposedly have a fertility collapse among native-born Americans in the aggregate, but a baby boom for unmarried (“single parents”) members of the military. Maybe this is because women who are deployed are highly likely to become pregnant? “Active duty servicewomen have high rates of unintended pregnancy” says this 2013 paper, which cites “difficulties faced by deployed women”:

I’m still waiting for our lavishly funded military to disable Iran’s oil production and electric power generation so that the country can’t rebuild and restart its weapons factories. Maybe the military is waiting for me to go to the nearest base and take care of a toddler?

Loosely related, a U.S. senator from Connecticut roots for the Islamic Republic of Iran:

He/she/ze/they previously said that the war was “illegal” (which means that anyone in the U.S. military can refuse orders to participate?) and said our military effort was “destined to end in failure” (due to lack of child care?):

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What could make us look weaker than going to Pakistan and negotiating with Iran as a peer?

by philg

Wall Street Journal, yesterday, “Iran Has Strong Cards Going Into U.S. Talks but Risks Overplaying Its Hand”:

The question now is whether Iranian leaders will overplay this critical lever at the planned meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan, with Vice President JD Vance by insisting on maximalist demands despite losing much of Iran’s military and industrial base during the war. This is something that President Trump, despite all his apparent eagerness to wind down the conflict, will likely find impossible to accept.

“From Tehran’s point of view, they think that they have Trump over a barrel. They think they have weaponized the world economy, have taken everything that America can throw at them, and came out standing,” said William Wechsler, director of Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council and a former senior Pentagon official. “Trump blinked first. Now, the Iranians won’t take a deal unless it is a deal in which Trump and Vance completely abandon U.S. national security interests in the Middle East.”

The playing field is clearly stacked in Iran’s favor after more than a month of warfare that involved a dozen nations in the region. This is largely because the crucial component of any negotiation—the time factor—now works for Tehran.

What could possibly make us look weaker and more pathetic than this? Maybe if the negotiations were held in the house in Pakistan where Osama bin-Laden resided and which at least some people in Pakistan had to know about?

I can’t figure out why we wouldn’t just keep disabling or destroying more assets of the Islamic Republic regime, e.g., oil production and electricity generation until either (1) they surrendered, or (2) they had so little industrial capability left that they couldn’t maintain significant military power. If we didn’t like high domestic oil prices we could simply reduce the U.S. oil market’s exposure to the world oil market, e.g., by limiting exports to whatever they were in January 2026. If the Europeans and Asians were unhappy about not being able to get oil through the Strait of Hormuz they would have been free to do something about that, e.g., send their own warships.

Until they started to decline, Rome never surrendered even after grievous battlefield losses, e.g., to Hannibal, and Rome wouldn’t negotiate with another power as a peer. They sent some low-level guys to Carthage to dictate terms for Carthage’s ultimate surrender, for example, not the equivalent of a vice president. And they didn’t call it a “negotiation”. Carthage was not their peer, nor their partner in peace, etc. Speaking of Rome… on the very day that J.D. Vance headed to Pakistan to surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran, plans for a triumphal arch in D.C. are unveiled:

Maybe we need a more muscular president? The NYT says that Kamala Harris remains available:

Loosely related…

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Why do Iranians who support the Islamic Republic regime stay in the U.S. and pay taxes to fund our military?

by philg

Here’s a guy whose profile says that he lives in San Francisco and works at Google. In other words, Iman Rahmati pays taxes to fund the U.S. military.

Iman Rahmati says “Every piece of international law, every moral code, every sign of dignity in a nation, in an army, has been broken by Trump, Netanyahu, and their minions. Bombing hospitals, schools, civilians, universities, infrastructure, factories, etc. The west has zero moral superiority from now on. International order is fractured and no nation has the guts standing up to them, well except the one that is right now.”

Iman (note that this means “faith in Allah” according to ChatGPT and is distinct from “Imam”) is upset that his alma mater was bombed, blaming Israel (the basis for saying that Israel did this vs. the U.S. is unclear):

As it happens, this university has been under EU sanctions since 2014 for its work in “ballistic missile production”:

Obviously, this isn’t going to change the opinion of the righteous Iranian immigrant to the U.S. regarding the legitimacy of the attack on his alma mater. Therefore, the question of why he would want to stay in the U.S. and pay taxes to support the bombing of his alma mater, as well as other targets in the Islamic Republic of Iran, remains a live one. If he is smart and productive enough to work at Google he could presumably transfer to a Google office in Canada (follow Barbra Streisand), the Islamic Republic of Great Britain, pro-Hamas Al-Andalus (Spain), or even work from home after returning to help defend his beloved home country.

There have to be tons more Iranians who are in a similar position. They support the Islamic Republic regime and live in the U.S. and thus pay taxes to help the U.S. military either (1) bring down the regime that they support, or (2) militarily cripple the regime that they support.

From the New York Post… “Niece, grandniece of slain notorious Iranian Gen. Soleimani arrested by ICE while enjoying lavish lifestyles in LA”:

The niece of slain Iranian terror mastermind Gen. Qasem Soleimani – who showcased her luxe LA lifestyle on Instagram while bashing the US as the “Great Satan” – and her daughter have been arrested by ICE agents, the State Department announced Saturday.

Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, who allegedly celebrated attacks on US soldiers and military bases, and her daughter Sarinasadat Hosseiny, have had their green cards revoked over their ties to the Iranian regime.

“While living in the United States, she promoted Iranian regime propaganda, celebrated attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East, praised the new Iranian Supreme Leader, denounced America as the ‘Great Satan,’ and voiced her unflinching support for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terror organization,” according to a State Department letter confirming the Friday arrests.

Afshar, 47, entered the US in 2015 on a tourist visa, was granted asylum in 2019 and secured a green card in 2021 from the Biden administration.

She made at least four trips back to Iran since receiving her green card, the Department of Homeland Security said.

(This is a great argument for eliminating asylum-based immigration in the U.S. Our government bureaucrats aren’t capable of distinguishing between members of a purportedly oppressive government and those who are actually opponents of said government. This makes sense since few government workers speak or read Farsi, Arabic, or the other languages prevalent in countries from which migrants claim asylum. And none of our government workers have first-hand experience with current events in all of the world’s most violent and dysfunctional societies from which, bizarrely, we have decided to prioritize immigration (the door is closed, however, to folks from Japan, Switzerland, and Taiwan!).)

I can understand why someone would hate what the U.S. government, including the U.S. military, does. And I can understand why someone who was born in the U.S. would stay in the U.S. under those conditions (few other countries will accept migrants as we do). But I can’t understand why someone who is at least a dual citizen and who has the right to leave the U.S. at any time would choose instead to stay and help fund the U.S. government.

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