We live on the stupidest of all possible timelines, in which a newspaper publishes the least newsworthy story of all time, and people who know better use it to whip their social media followers into an outraged paranoid tizzy. I'm looking at you, Jesse Kelly and Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.).
So it's up to the guy who invented drunkblogging to provide a little reason and perspective — I told you we live in a stupid time.
The Daily Mail, in its typically breathless style, on Tuesday "Revealed [the] NATO plan to get US troops to the front line to fight RUSSIA."
And, well... so?
You should have seen what the U.S. and NATO used to do, and I bet more than a few readers have.
REFORGER (REturn of FORces to GERmany) was an annual exercise to demonstrate that we could rapidly move several divisions worth of soldiers based in the U.S. to their pre-positioned equipment sites in West Germany. We don't have anything like that ability today. But NATO does have new members — Sweden and Finland, due entirely to Vlad Putin's aggression — so the Pentagon and NATO have updated their plans for moving troops to protect them.
Nevertheless, some former military men who know better took the Daily Mail's non-story and used it to whip their followers into a frenzy over nothing. Most egregious was Macgregor, a retired army colonel who certainly knows better.
"BREAKING: NATO now planning to get US troops to the front-line to fight RUSSIA," he posted, pretending to need to know, "What are they thinking?"
They're thinking they're a defensive alliance and, if God forbid there's a war, they need an operation plan (OPLAN) for how to quickly move troops to where they're needed.
Dude is a retired O-6. He clearly knows that we have OPLANs on the shelf for all kinds of things.
— Tom Austin (@TFA303) June 4, 2024
When guys like him show this kind of mock outrage, it's an instant credibility killer.
Keeping Macgregor as a regular guest is one of the reasons I quit taking Tucker Carlson's show seriously.
"Looks like prudent military planning to me, building off of plans that have existed for A LONG time," milbogger and retired Navy officer CDR Salamander posted, "Generations of Americans have worked on this OPLAN."
Col. Rob Maness (ret.) added, "I even worked a version of it when I was 18... and again in my 40s."
Recommended: UKRAINE WAR: What the Hell Is a Turtle Tank — and WHY?
Before there was a Pentagon, the Department of War devised War Plan Red for invading Canada and shutting the British out of the Western Hemisphere in the 1920s and '30s. "It was a routine hypothetical exercise that neither required nor received presidential or congressional approval," Wikipedia noted. War Plan Gold was the same thing, only with France and her Carribean possessions.
Somewhere in the Pentagon right now, there are detailed plans — updated semiregularly — for invading Portugal and nuking the crap out of Burkina Faso. To ask "Why?" is to say, "I've never read anything about any military organization ever."
Militaries make plans the way dogs scratch themselves but more often.
Nevertheless, conservative radio host — and Iraq War vet — Jesse Kelly also took the non-story and ran with it. "My sons will not fight for the U.S. of Gay and I’m not alone in that thinking."
X's Community Notes remain undefeated.
None of this column is to say that I would encourage my sons to join today's military because I wouldn't. It also isn't a defense of Presidentish Joe Biden's foreign policy, which is a deadly shambles. But it is a warning not to let yourself get suckered by tabloid reporting or social media shysters.
If you fell for the hype, you have my sympathies. It happens to all of us from time to time.
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