Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast Bill Buppert

This is a continuation of my "Storming America Series" where I will tease out and describe why the inevitable internal attack on America by external forces will be made real.
In this episode, I will examine what intelligence looks like from a professional perspective and why America and the West consistently engage in existential chaos avalanches that make the world a worse place.
The bureaucratic impulse in the West has been a significant factor in making the intelligence community (IC), like the military community, a paper tiger that is a far greater danger to the inhabitants of the west than an ally. Until the IC is restructured and made more effective, it will consume roughly 100 billion a year to produce shoddy analysis, inform bad policy and a Keystone Kops foreign covert operations history that is a national shame.
Like 9/11 and its existential failures, the next attack on America will have them simply asking for more money and more power.
If you leveled the FBI, NSA and CIA tomorrow morning, made each of their budgets one dollar and fired all their employees, you would still be safe as a country.
References:
Richard J. Heuer The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis
David Talbot The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government
Mortimer Adler How to Read a Book
Tim Weiner Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
John Prado The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA's Heart of Darkness
My Substack.
Contact me at cgpodcast@pm.me.

This episode will be an addendum to my initial coverage in October 2023 of the Gaza-Israel conflict in Episode 027 and riffing off the domestic implications in Episode 037 of a similar attack on CONUS. If you wish to listen to those before you do this one, you may but I have crafted this so that isn’t necessary.
The clock is closer to midnight than it was in October 2023.
References:
William Forstchen Day of Wrath
Kurt Schlichter The Attack
Matt Bracken:
Enemies Foreign and Domestic.
Foreign Enemies And Traitors.
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista.
The Red Cliffs of Zerhoun.
Castigo Cay.
Eric Frank Russell The Wasp
Michael Z. Williamson The Weapon (and the entire Freehold series)
Ernest R. May Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France
Robert Heinlein The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Robert Asprey War In The Shadows: The Guerrilla In History
My Substack
Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me.

I am reusing a previous episode I used in the now moribund Stoicism podcast I started, The Dash, which I ran out of steam on.
Applying Stoic values and discipline to the vocation and avocations we practice in life may be the hardest part outside of making a Stoic life a lived lifestyle. I find the management industry is a giant cargo cult that publishes books whose pages number in the hundreds but could simply be a page or two.
References:
James Clear Atomic Habits
Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Whitney J. Oakes (editor) The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers: The Complete Extant Writings of Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius
My Substack
Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me.

The concept of moral injuries for soldiers and non-soldiers alike, the gift of fear and being a dead man walking and how to handle regret and shame.
“As beasts are beneath human restraints, gods are above them... It would be foolish and untruthful to deny the appeal of exalted, godlike intoxication....We have seen the paradox that these godlike exalted moments often correspond to times when the men who have survived them say that they have acted like beasts....Above all, a sense of merely human virtue, a sense of being valued and of valuing anything seems to have fled their lives....However, all of our virtues come from not being gods. Generosity is meaningless to a god, who never suffers shortage or want. Courage is meaningless to a god, who is immortal and can never suffer permanent injury. The godlike berserk state can destroy the capacity for virtue. Whether the berserker is beneath humanity as an animal, above it as a god, or both, he is cut off from all human community when he is in this state.”
― Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
Those millions of men who have been in combat over the millennia have always brought home invisible scar tissue and regret that manifests in many ways but most of us take it to our graves.
“…or the pilots doing nine-to-five jobs at computer consoles in Nevada killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan with drones and commuting to and from their homes like any other commuters. Imagine the psychic split that must ensue from bringing in death and destruction from the sky on a group of terrorists—young men who have mothers and a misplaced idealism that has led them into horrible criminal acts, but nevertheless young and brave men—and then driving home from the base to dinner with the spouse and kids. “Have a nice day at the office, hon?”
― Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to War
References:
Karl Marlantes What It Is Like to Go to War
Bill Russel Edmonds God is Not Here: A Soldier's Struggle with Torture, Trauma, and the Moral Injuries of War
Clark Savage King of All Things: A Guide to Man's Martial Purpose
Dick Couch A Tactical Ethic: Moral Conduct in the Insurgent Battlespace
Andrew Bacevich Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America's Misguided Wars
Shauna Springer WARRIOR: How to Support Those Who Protect Us
Jonathan Shay Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
Jonathan Shay Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming
My Substack
Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.

The hybrid and gray zone fight will come to America in the next war. Once the declining American colossus shuffles into the next near-peer and peer conflict, the 21st century will see the continental US come under a unified attack by external forces for the first time since the War of 1812 and the Mexican border issues in 1916. How the 9/11/2001 events have not been replicated is a cipher to me. We need to war-game all the possibilities once a war is initiated with a near-peer or peer adversary. The kinetic forces on the ground will be sleepers, NOCs or recently arrived illegals in addition to cadres recruited over time and left in place.
The police have no duty to protect citizens.
Supreme Court cases per police protection:
Castle Rock v. Gonzalez
Warren v. District of Columbia
DeShaney v. Winnebago County
Per the attack on Israel out of Gaza on 7 October 2023, only 140,000 Israelis out of a population of 9 million, or under two percent, were allowed to own a firearm prior to October and that is restricted to a handgun only and ammunition was limited to 50 rounds.
I talk about William Forstchen's "Day of Wrath" and Kurt Schlichter's "The Attack".
References:
William Forstchen Day of Wrath
Kurt Schlichter The Attack
Matt Bracken:
Enemies Foreign and Domestic.
Foreign Enemies And Traitors.
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista.
The Red Cliffs of Zerhoun.
Castigo Cay.
Eric Frank Russell The Wasp
Michael Z. Williamson The Weapon (and the entire Freehold series)
Ernest R. May Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France
Robert Heinlein The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Robert Asprey War In The Shadows: The Guerrilla In History
My Substack
Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.

The direct action concentration of US Army Special Forces (SF) in the conduct of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan at the expense of the specialized and storied legend of what SF could do in non-permissive environments raising partisan forces behind enemy lines. The Army SF concentrated on perfecting a craft that numerous other combat organizations like the USMC 0311, .Army 11Bs and the exquisitely talented Ranger Regiment could do handily not to mention the legendary prowess of the Tier One units.
SF could capitalize on the rich heritage of a regional expertise harnessed to a deep cultural IQ and understanding of allied and coalition fighting organizations. In concert with the deep intelligence and actionable intelligence infrastructure in a naturally expeditionary mindset practice strategic compression: the employment of tactical means to achieve and satisfy strategic end-states.
SF needs to carve out their talent-stacks and showcase what makes them unique.
References:
David Maxwell Counter-Unconventional Warfare (2014)
Douglas Porch Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War
Ann Scott Tyson American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Grant
H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare
Mark Bowden Blackhawk Down: A Story of Modern War
Bob Scales Scales on War: The Future of America’s Military at Risk
Aaron B. O’Connell Our Latest Longest War: Losing Hearts and Minds
Hy S. Rothstein Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional Warfare
Robert Asprey War In The Shadows: The Guerrilla In History
Special Forces Detachment Mission Planning Guide HQDA January 2020
My Substack:
https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx
Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.