EWR Archive Reprint: The Invincible Secret Weapon

The Invincible Secret Weapon

A reprint from MAY 1998 and JUNE 1998 EWR
Written three years before 9-11, this two-part article is one of the most important Mr. Maybury has ever written. It demonstrates that investors who understand the war can reap huge profits, and those who do not, run the risk of huge losses.
READ this and other important issues of EWR in the Complete EWR Archive

The Invincible Secret Weapon, Part 1
This is Part One of a two-part article. Part Two will appear in the next issue.

The world's stock markets are a huge bubble, and Chaostan is a huge pin factory. The October Asia crisis was the first pin, and a lot more are coming.
   An important tactic for successful investing is to keep a file of articles that remind you of the Big Picture. Labeled "Read Every January," the file keeps you from being distracted by temporary manias and fallacies. Last month's article on the MCCPI is one such article. "Chaostan, The Full Story," is another, and this two-part article will be another.
   For a half century the US armed forces have been the most powerful ever known. Yet, during the 1960s and '70s, they were beaten by rice farmers armed mostly with light shoulder weapons.
   In 1994, in Somalia, they were again beaten, by small bands armed mostly with shoulder weapons.
   For a half century the Russian armed forces have been the second most powerful ever known. In the 1980s they were beaten by primitive Afghan tribesmen armed mostly with shoulder weapons. In 1996 they were beaten again, by small bands of Chechens with shoulder weapons.
   Rag-tag groups of rebels have discovered a secret weapon that strikes fear into the heart of every modern army. The Pentagon is terrified of it, but never speaks openly about it, so the American public remains in the dark.
   The weapon is unstoppable, the US has no way to counter it.
   I have been writing about this weapon for 15 years, but have never done a complete explanation. This article will pull together and summarize all my previous material.
   The weapon is already affecting your investments and will continue to do so, more every year.

High-Tech vs. Low-Tech

The icon of the computer age is Microsoft's Bill Gates. The Pentagon has fallen in love with its new Gatesian weapons, expecting them to be the "force multipliers" that will enable its shrunken battalions to impose the will of the UN wherever the White House decides. This faith in high-tech is touching, but Gatesian weapons are nearly useless against the secret weapon.
In any war, the big problem to solve is not invasion, it's occupation. Invasion is easy. A troop of Canadian boy scouts could penetrate deep into the US before the US Army could muster forces to stop them. The boy scouts can pick their time and place to cross the border.

Covering more than a third of all the land on earth, Chaostan -- "Land of the Great Chaos" -- is the part of the world that never received fundamental legal principles that make modern civilization possible. Its hundreds of nationalities and ethnic groups have fought each other continually. From the beginning of history until the creation of the Soviet Empire, it has been a vast sea of blood and destruction. Then, for 70 years, the Soviet Empire sat on this area like a lid on a pressure cooker. Now that lid is gone, and the explosion has begun. The area is returning to its original condition of war and proverty.

   The real problem is, once you are in, how do you stay in? Ask anyone who was on Omaha Beach in 1944. Getting there was easy, it was staying there that was the problem.
   And, staying there is the only way to win. If we invade and conquer, and then leave, the enemy just starts over. In 1996, the US fired 47 cruise missiles at Iraq. All the targets were immediately rebuilt or replaced.¹ The missiles cost $1 million each.
   We must occupy the territory, destroy the government and wipe out any resistance, including anyone suspected of helping the resistance.
   Resistance means guerrillas. The secret weapon the Pentagon refuses to discuss is guerrilla warfare.
   Guerrillas prevent occupation.
   A guerrilla is not a uniformed soldier who lives in a barracks and follows orders from a central command. He is a farmer, merchant or taxi driver by day, and a free lance sniper or saboteur by night.
   The guerrilla operates on the very simple principle that you cannot shoot what you cannot find.
   Gatesian weapons are helpless against the guerrilla, they do not know who or where he is.
   The guerrilla is not much interested in killing privates or corporals, unless he can get a lot of them; he wants colonels and generals. And, he has no intentions of making his move unless he can do it and slip quietly away. His wife and children are nearby.

How He Does It

    In the woods near an enemy base, place a mortar in a hole. Aim the mortar at the enemy's headquarters or barracks. Fill in the hole so that the muzzle of the mortar is exactly level with the ground. Place a flat rock over the muzzle. Scatter some leaves for camouflage, then go home.
   On a dark, rainy night a few months later, slip out of bed and return to the flat rock. Remove it, quickly drop in six mortar rounds, then replace it and run. If you are good at it, you can be safely away before the first round hits. Next morning you are back at work driving your cab.
   A few months later, do it again, and again and again.
   That's guerrilla war. The hit-and-run motif is limited only by the imagination of the guerrilla.
   Guerrillas can be especially creative about booby traps. They also like sniper rifles, and in recent years have acquired small anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, which the Chechens and Afghans used to such good effect against the Russians. (See the 8/96 EWR).

How To Fight Him

   It gets worse. Every Vietnam veteran knows that even a ten-year old child can hand you a Coke can with a grenade inside.
   In Vietnam in 1967 a journalist asked an Army sergeant if there was a way to win the war. The sergeant said, "Kill everyone over five years old."
   The point was that you don't know who the guerrillas are. To beat them you must go into every village and town suspected of supporting them and kill every man, woman and child. Fight house to house and room to room until they are all dead.
   Two years after that sergeant's remark, soldiers commanded by Lt. William Calley had been taking casualties day after day without even seeing the enemy, much less getting a chance to shoot back. They finally snapped, attacking and burning the village of My Lai. Some 500 men, women and children were massacred.
   Unless you've been there, you cannot know the frustration of seeing your friends die one after another while you never get a chance to hit back.

The Big Secret

   The Pentagon's big secret is that an occupation army must be a very different animal than an invasion army.
   An invasion requires well equipped expert warriors who can punch through the enemy's defenses and establish bases for the occupation.
   The occupation requires an army of cold-blooded homicidal maniacs.²
   American soldiers had no trouble getting into Vietnam. It was staying there and remaining honorable that was virtually impossible.
   I speak from experience. In the 605th Air Commando squadron in the 1960s, our specialty was anti-guerrilla warfare. We did not have a solution for it then and no one does today.
   For 30 years I have kept up a study on the subject. Americans lose guerrilla wars because we no longer have the stomach for mass murder. After My Lai, Lieutenant Calley was court martialed for doing the only thing a soldier can do to win that kind of war.
   He was not alone. In August 1965, three marines were wounded outside Da Nang. When their buddies arrived at a nearby village, they tore the place apart, then burned it, at one point threatening to use a flame-thrower on a ditch full of cowering women and children.

Wars are spreading, and all of them are guerrilla wars. The last conventional war was fought in Iraq in 1991.

   When the film ran on TV, the network received a flood of angry phone calls. But viewers were not protesting that the troops behaved badly, they were protesting that the incident must have been faked because American troops would never do such a horrible thing.³
   Six decades earlier, during the US conquest of the Philippines, the troops were faced with the same problem - now that we are here, how do we tell the guerrillas from the peaceful farmers, merchants and taxi drivers?
   They finally gave up trying. General Jacob Smith told them, "I want no prisoners. I wish you to burn and kill; the more you burn and kill, the better it will please me."⁴
   Some 220,000 Filipino men, women and children were slaughtered.⁵
   Smith was court martialed.
   Again, guerrilla warfare boils down to the iron law that you cannot shoot what you cannot find. The only way to kill guerrillas is to kill everyone, and Americans who do this have trouble living with themselves.
   Or living with anyone else. This, I think, explains much of the so-called Vietnam delayed stress syndrome. A lot of GIs did things they aren't proud of, and they don't know enough about real politics to understand what happened to them - their government put them in a situation where the only way to survive was to commit murder.
   I can think of nothing more Satanic than sending good men to fight guerrillas.

Kill Them All

   One of the great misconceptions about US military policy is that the Pentagon and White House are afraid of getting "bogged down" in another Vietnam.
   They are not afraid of being bogged down, they are afraid of giving the order that would prevent being bogged down. This order is the one General Smith gave in the Philippines but no one would give in Vietnam: kill them all. Americans, with their belief in ethics, would rather give any order than that one.
   The result is mass confusion. In a post-war survey of 108 Army generals who had served in Vietnam, 70% said US objectives were not clear, and 52% said the stated objectives could not be achieved.⁶
   Army War College instructor Colonel Harry G. Summers once talked with a former North Vietnamese colonel. "You know," said Summers, "you never defeated us on the battlefield." The Vietnamese replied, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."
   Against guerrillas, firepower is not much help. Historian Lawrence Engelmann tells the story about Nixon calling a meeting of war experts after he was elected in 1969. Nixon requested a comparison of the military and economic resources available to the US and North Vietnam, and a projected date for the US to win the war. Engelmann says all this was fed into a computer, which cranked out the answer: "US wins in 1965."⁷
   Summarizing, the only reliable way to win a guerrilla war is to use ethnic cleansing. If you are not evil enough to do this, you lose.
   In Somalia, US troops would not do it. They lost.
   This is a main reason US troops are in more than 100 countries now. They train foreign troops to do the anti-guerrilla dirty work that Washington will not do for itself.
   This training is one of the main reasons so many millions of foreigners hate the US.
   Anyone who thinks the spread of guerrilla war will not soon cause radical changes in the world economy and investment markets is living in a fool's paradise. This is major historical shift.
   And, no one talks about it because the Pentagon pretends it isn't happening.
   One of the very few things I am sure about is that the next three years will be some of the most interesting ever, you won't be bored.
   Warn everyone you care about.
Next month: Part Two, including what really happened in the Iraq-Kuwait war, and the great investment opportunity arising from guerrilla warfare.

¹ NAVY TIMES, February 9, 1998, p.11
² Assuming the enemy resists. In 1945, Germans and Japanese did not. In history, non-resistance is the exception not the rule.
³ TV GUIDE, May 6, 1989, p.8
⁴ ALMANAC OF AMERICA'S WARS by John S. Bowman, Brompton Books, Hong Kong, 1990, p. 101
⁵ WALL STREET JOURNAL, "Death Toll," Nov. 19, 1997, p.1
⁶ WALL STREET JOURNAL, January 14, 1985, p.8
⁷ SACRAMENTO BEE FORUM, April 30, 1995, p.1

The Invincible Secret Weapon, Part 2
This is Part Two of a two-part article about the new wave of guerrilla warfare. Before reading it I suggest you refresh your memory by reviewing Part One from last month, especially the map on page 8 (WARS of 1998).

The Death of Heroism

   In Vietnam one day an American GI carved a toy boat out of bamboo for three Vietnamese youngsters. Later he wrote in his diary, "Made friends with those three scared kids - and burned their home today."¹
   When you are fighting guerrillas, you don't get to be John Wayne leading the cavalry over the hill to rescue the women and children. You get to be the thug who is terrorizing the women and children. Not good for morale.
   A key point the Pentagon will not discuss is that almost always, guerrilla troops are defensive not offensive. Civilians by day, they are mostly amateurs operating alone or in small groups. It is nearly impossible to induce them to leave home and family to invade someone else's country.
   This means that, in nearly every case, if you find yourself fighting a guerrilla, you are on the wrong side. He is not in your country, you are in his, and it is a safe bet your government lied to you about why you are there.
   In response to the My Lai massacre, officers and NCOs today are required to take courses in ethics, most of which are taught by chaplains.
   The prohibition on murdering defenseless civilians means the US cannot win a guerrilla war. Rarely is it possible to separate guerrillas from civilians.

The Deadly Ratio

   Another reason the US cannot beat guerrillas is arithmetic. The rule of thumb among military experts is that conventional troops need a minimum six-to-one numerical superiority over guerrillas. Some would say ten-to-one, in addition to helicopters and all the other technological advantages.
   I learned this 30 years ago. In the 605th Air Commando Squadron our job was anti-guerrilla warfare, politely called counter-insurgency warfare. As far as I know I never killed anyone but I helped train a lot of foreign troops who probably did and I'm not proud of it. We worked with the CIA's notorious School of the Americas which cultivated the likes of Manuel Noriega. Washington's sleazy use of US troops to train foreign thugs is probably even more common now than it was then. This is another reason millions hate America.
   The experience taught me that guerrillas have a tremendous advantage over regular troops. They know the terrain, can choose their time and place to strike, and rarely do strike unless they are sure they can escape.
   Using air power over Vietnam, it took three B-52 bombers and 80 tons of bombs to kill one enemy. This one enemy needed nothing more than a $300 sniper rifle to keep a whole battalion of Marines tied up for days.
   Hanoi calculated that if they could get just twenty supply trucks of ammunition and supplies per day through to the guerrillas in the South, the US could not win the war despite all its aircraft carriers, bombers, tanks and artillery.
   This, incidentally, is why the Second Amendment was included in the US Constitution. "A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state..." it says. Militias are civilian soldiers who can fight as guerrillas. The American founders knew that the most effective defense is one that focuses on making the country difficult to occupy, and a well trained and equipped militia does this superbly.
   In the invasion of Normandy, Eisenhower estimated that 2,800 French guerrillas trained by three OSS agents were worth 15 infantry divisions. A division is 5,000 to 10,000 troops.
   As you read this, the Turkish government has 200,000 regular troops committed to fighting 1,200 Kurdish guerrillas.

Washington's enemies are Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea, China, Pakistan, Chechnya, Serbia, Sudan and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Other nations may be secretly joining, among them Clinton's "allies" in the Persian Gulf.

Back when the Second Amendment was taken seriously, the effectiveness of militia-guerrillas was understood. Lincoln once remarked that all the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with Napoleon as their commander, could not make a track on the Blue Ridge or take a drink from the Ohio.
America's Gatesian military does not know how to beat guerrillas, and so pretends they don't exist. The Pentagon concentrates on re-fighting the battles of Normandy and Midway where Gatesian weapons would have been decisive.

Their Greatest Strength

   The greatest strength of guerrillas is that they are private troops not government troops. Fighting covertly as individuals or in small groups, they must be found and destroyed one at a time, for they have no central authority on which you can concentrate your forces to compel a surrender.
   The mighty Russian army was defeated in Afghanistan and Chechnya because it had no pivotal target at which to aim its firepower, just thousands of dispersed and concealed snipers and saboteurs.
   If you must fight a lion, a heavy rifle is an excellent weapon, but it is useless if you have fallen into a giant ant hill. The Pentagon is so terrified of anthills that it prepares to fight only lions.

What Happened in Iraq

Prior to Desert Storm, the Bush administration referred to Saddam Hussein as the new Hitler. They accused him of trying to dominate the world, and spoke of war crimes trials.

I will give a Chaostan speech and workshop at Jim Blanchard's New Orleans Investment Conference, October 14-18, 1998. Other speakers include former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Nobel economist Milton Friedman, Jim Rogers, P.J. O'Rourke, Doug Casey, Harry Browne, Robert Meier and many more of the best. Call 800-648-8411.

   The orders given to the troops turned out mysteriously different. These referred only to removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The idea of going into central Iraq to remove this new Hitler had somehow vanished.
   Why? I think it was the threat of guerrilla war.
   Before the war began, General Schwartzkopf tipped his hand about the US weakness toward guerrilla war. In a September 1990 interview with U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, Schwartzkopf admitted, "If someone said, 'Go in and machine-gun a thousand civilians,' I'd say, 'Absolutely not!' Sorry, but I consider that illegal and immoral and I'm not going to do it."
   After the fighting ended in 1991, officials revealed that the battle plan had been laid out to keep US troops away from populated areas to avoid house-to-house fighting and civilian casualties. US troops were to fight only in the empty desert.
   Saddam Hussein was known to be an avid student of the Vietnam War, and I believe he had a two part plan. Part one would be the set up for part two which would be an endless guerrilla war in Iraq's cities, farmlands, mountains and swamps. Iraq is the size of California.
   The part one set up was to make Kuwait a killing ground where the West would slaughter tens of thousands of Moslem troops and trigger outrage throughout the Moslem world. In this Saddam Hussein nearly succeeded.
   First he stripped Kuwait of everything valuable, including the windows and plumbing, then filled it with poorly trained slave soldiers who were held in place by the elite Republican Guards. The US slaughtered these slave soldiers just as Hussein planned. One US pilot called it a "turkey shoot" as 100,000 Iraqis were massacred.
   Week after week the carnage dragged on, and the Moslem world began to rise up. If the slaughter had continued much longer, Bush's Arab "allies" probably would have had to switch sides or be assassinated by their own people. The next world war would have begun right there. Despite bribes to join the US, only 12 of the 21 Arab governments had lined up against Iraq, and many of these were wavering.
   King Hassan of Morocco would likely have been the first of the 12 to go over to Saddam. He backed Bush but his people were overwhelmingly pro-Iraq. In a February 1991 rally, 300,000 turned out. King Hassan began to speak of Saddam as his "dear Arab brother."
   As US forces rolled north, and the need for the occupation began, I think Bush lost his nerve. He withdrew before the guerrilla war could begin.
   Evidence supports this. After the war On June 12th, the Senate Armed Services Committee asked General Schwartzkopf why U.S. forces didn't go into central Iraq to eliminate the Iraqi regime. Schwartzkopf gave two reasons: (1) the UN hadn't called for it and (2) it would have been a "tarpit" for US forces. Colin Powell has used the same word, tarpit.

Attack but...

In May I was in Europe during the signing of the euro agreement. Saw some revealing things. Among other important topics, next month I will give you the story, including how I believe the euro will affect the world economy and your investments.

   US military policy today can be boiled down into four words: attack but don't occupy.
   Because of the fear of guerrilla war, the US withdrew from Iraq and left Saddam Hussein in power. Hussein, Qadaffi, Assad, Khameini and all the other New Axis enemies of the White House understand this. The Iraq-Kuwait war exposed America's Achilles Heel.
   This is why I am so certain the US should declare neutrality and get out of Chaostan. The fact that the power junkies in Washington will not do so is why I am also certain we are headed for another war we will lose.

Military Forecast

All wars today are guerrilla wars, it's what works. One of the few forecasts about which I am highly confident is that in any case where the US faces guerrillas, the Pentagon and White House will run like scared rabbits, as they did in Somalia.
I believe all the weapons and tactics of the New Axis which appear to be for conventional war are really for the purpose of baiting the US into a guerrilla war. The US can beat anything they have except guerrillas.

   I am continuing gradual accumulation of natural resource investments, including precious metals, especially silver, because the natural resources may not crash along with the rest of the market.
   The spread of guerrilla war and economic turmoil in Chaostan could yield a competitive advantage for Latin America, causing Latin American natural resource stocks to attract money that flees Chaostan. This is by no means a sure thing but speculators should consider the possibility.
   Here is a list of Latin American natural resource companies that may benefit from Chaostan's turmoil. Antofagasta looks like the best bet.
   If you do not have a broker who knows natural resources, I suggest Global Resource Investments, 1-800-477-7853; they read EWR and know my thinking.
   Larry Abraham's newsletter follows Latin America. 800-528-0559.

   The New Axis strategy will be a one-two punch. The first punch will be conventional war to lure the US in. Then will come the haymaker, an endless guerrilla war. They know the US will always run from this haymaker.
   So, US armed forces are more than adequate to defend the American homeland, but as a global enforcer for the UN they are a paper tiger, all bluff.
   I do suspect that some in the Pentagon have begun facing this fact. Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters warns,

"The new century will be one of street fighting, uncontrollable masses, shortage, disease and immeasurable hatreds - all concentrated in the decaying urban landscapes in the world's least-successful states and regions. It is a kind of warfare for which our Army is unprepared. Worse, it is the type of warfare for which our Army refuses to prepare. ... It is a combat environment in which we cannot even identify our enemies."²

This hidden weakness of the US armed forces means the entire world political and economic structure is built on sand.

Effect On Your Investments

   Chaostan is a third of all the land on earth and it supplies a vast portion of all raw materials. Raw materials are used in virtually everything.
   This means all prices today, including the prices of investments, and interest rates, are based on the assumption the US armed forces will be able to prevent "rogue states" and "terrorists" from grabbing the oil and other raw materials.
   Wrong. "Scramble for Oil in Central Asia Hits Roadblocks," is the headline of a recent WALL STREET JOURNAL article. Readers of EWR saw this coming. Extraction does not equal transport. The ability to get the oil or other raw material out of the ground is not the same as the ability to get them out of Chaostan.
   The problem is not so much economic as it is military. How do you protect your supply lines?
   These transport routes - for personnel and equipment going in as well as the product coming out - must be militarily defensible, and few in Chaostan are, because of guerrillas.
   For instance, important oil pipelines stretch from the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan to the Black Sea. Armenian guerrillas are threatening to attack these lines.
   Try to imagine the cost of guarding thousands of miles of pipelines, rail lines and roads against attacks by hundreds of local groups, each of whom feels they should get a cut of anything traveling through their territory.
   Total guerrilla-imposed taxes on each truckload of goods crossing tiny Georgia is $1,500.³
   The key point is that prices of all raw materials coming out of Chaostan are presently based on the assumption the supply lines will remain secure and the raw materials will continue coming to market. They won't, or at least they won't at present prices. In the face of guerrillas, the forces of the US and NATO are all bluff.
   But the Pentagon won't talk about guerrillas, so investors haven't a clue.
   The next decade will be most interesting. Warn everyone you care about.
¹ SACRAMENTO BEE, May 30, 1989, p.B1
² Army Times, May 11, 1998, p.34
³ WALL STREET JOURNAL, March 3, 1998, p.A14

"Written three years before 9-11, this two-part article is one of the most important I have ever written. It demonstrates that investors who understand the war can reap huge profits, and those who do not are taking a big risk."
-Richard Maybury, June 2005 EWR

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