Thomas Wictor

Today I suddenly understood another aspect of the military genius that Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman is showing. The Arab League and its allies are fighting in Syria, using new weapons that I call EMPFAE munitions. They produce shock waves and nonnuclear electromagnetic pulses that wreck the enemy’s electronics. They also grant life, which is far more effective than wholesale slaughter.

Allow me to explain.

Life versus death

If the Arab League were fighting an existential war with its enemies, then I’d agree with Curtis LeMay.

But the Arab League and its allies are essentially an insurgency against Bashar al-Assad, Iran, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State. Saudi Arabia is in no danger of being destroyed. Therefore Mohammed bin Salman has chosen the very wise course of granting life instead of inflicting mass death. The Saudis and their allies must live with everybody when this is over. It’s not only more humane to grant life, it’s more practical in both the short and long runs.

Life on a World War I battlefield

In World War I, the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) used Choctaw soldiers as “code talkers.”

They spoke over the radio in a language that no German could possibly understand.

The Germans were obsessed with Native Americans due to the wildly popular novels of Karl May.

Although May never visited the American Old West, he used maps, travel accounts, guidebooks, anthropological and linguistic studies, and the work of other writers to create what seemed to be factual narratives of cowboys and Indians duking it out in the mesas and deserts.

German intelligence learned that the Americans had brought Choctaws to the western front; this caused panic that the AEF exploited. When Choctaws attacked, their war whoops made entire sections of German trench surrender without a fight. German soldiers screamed for mercy, holding up photos of their families. Such was the terror of Native Americans.

And yet the fighting went on.

The Germans themselves had a weapon that made the enemy meekly surrender.

And the French were in possession of their own terror-inducing weapon.

The Senegalese were armed with machetes instead of daggers. Germans simply fled rather than try to engage in combat.

But not only did the fighting go on, if a Choctaw, a German flamethrower operator, or a Senegalese were captured, they were usually bayoneted to death on the spot. The same with machine gunners. All sides had specialist, long-range machine gunners identified by their insignia. Woe to any machine gunner captured alive.

Although various groups of soldiers instilled great fear by their ability to kill, those men could themselves be killed.

So the fighting went on. Twenty years after the war ended, the same people went at it again, with even more violence. The Germans were specifically motivated by revenge.

Life on Vietnamese battlefields

Few people know that the Republic of Korea (ROK)—South Korea—fought on the American side during the Vietnam War.

The ROK Marines were so ruthless and skilled that the North Vietnamese gave up confronting them. When the “Blue Dragons” were assigned a sector, the enemy simply vanished. This was because the ROK Marines took no prisoners.

But the fighting went on.

Not only that, the US lost the war. Technically the American military defeated the enemy in every battle, but our troops were pulled out, and then aid was cut to South Vietnam, ensuring a communist victory.

Then the communists massacred millions in revenge.

Life on Syrian battlefields

What tipped me off that Arab League and allied strategic special operators are fighting in Syria was the overnight appearance of the Syrian Democratic Forces (QSD), which began immediately retaking huge amounts of territory from the Islamic State. The fighters at the “tip of the spear” were all masked.

A few videos here and there showed that new weapons were being used. They were tremendously destructive…and yet there haven’t been large numbers of enemy casualties. The weapons are granting life instead of causing death.

After much study, I’ve determined that this is the pattern: The Arab League and allied special operators attack a village, town, or city, and the enemy simply leaves. The only time that relatively substantial numbers of enemy are killed is when the Islamic State or other Islamists return and attempt counterattacks. The strategic special operators are giving the enemy the opportunity to depart or surrender. However, if the enemy wants to fight, he’s quickly defeated.

Think about this: Silent, invisible warriors destroy all your equipment, but they don’t bother to kill you. That means they don’t see you as even marginally threatening. You’re so far beneath them that they basically ignore you and get on with their business.

Can you imagine how demoralizing that would be, especially to a culture that places so much value on martyrdom?

What the Arab League and allied strategic special operators are doing is the equivalent of patting the enemy on the head and saying, “Run along now. That’s a good little fella.”

It’s absolutely brilliant. The enemy is denied this.

The coveted status as mujahid.

Yes, men are being killed, but not in the numbers you’d expect, given the nature of the fighting. There aren’t fields of corpses, even though Jaysh al-Thuwar—Arab allies of the Kurds—are fighting at all the red arrows below.

There’s no doubt that Jaysh al-Thuwar is comprised of professional Arab, African, Asian, and Central Asian strategic special operators with Syrian militia as support. The men below are not Arabs.

My guess is that they’re Indonesian.

When it comes to Islamic cultures, it’s not possible for non-Muslims to find the right balance between life and death. The Algerian War of Independence, the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the endless wars between Israel and the Palestinians prove this.

Somehow Mohammed bin Salman has created from scratch a war-fighting method that spares lives, destroys the enemy’s physical ability to resist, and devastates the enemy’s morale. The Saudi Minister of Defense used the Yemen war as the mother of all deceptions. Since Iran and the Houthis are the only sources of information, their hair-raising lies are reported as fact.

But there aren’t enough bodies. There simply aren’t enough casualties to bolster the claim that the Saudi-led Coalition is committing wholesale war crimes and fighting with reckless abandon. Precisely the opposite is true. All the battle-damage assessment shows stunning care and skill.

A weapons cache destroyed without even scratching the surrounding houses.

Inert bombs filled with concrete made these two holes.

They used only kinetic energy to destroy the target. There was no collateral damage whatsoever.

Life will go on

All wars end. The Arab League is making sure that their wars don’t create generations of vengeful relatives, clans, tribes, or sects. One way to do that is to grant life without appearing to even think about it. They’re not being theatrically magnanimous; the ethos of Arab League and allied strategic special operators is, “It’s all the same to me.”

Regardless of your choice, the outcome is guaranteed. These men will simply do their job, and you won’t be able to interfere in any way. They won’t take your resistance personally; they’ll just stop you. Then they’ll quietly move on to the next objective.

Fighting them would be like confronting a nightmarish machine. The emotion that utterly takes the wind out of everybody’s sails?

Indifference. It’s terrifying. And I can’t tell you how in the world the Arab League and its allies trained their men to be indifferent, but you can see it in the photos. All they care about is the mission. If you get out of their way, you’re granted life. If you fight, you’re killed.

It’s the strangest thing: Below is Jaysh al-Thuwar. Almost all are earnest Syrian militia support, and two are professional strategic special operators. I can identify the pros by their relaxed indifference.

Can you?