How to understand war
After the Read More! -- a military manual with principles so secret they are never discussed in public. But they may be discussed around the water cooler. (Hat tip: S)
FM 3-0 Operations for SAMS Students
1. The world is full of bad people. Mind you, not everyone is bad, but there are
enough of them out there that we have to arm ourselves. Over the years, we’ve
done a pretty good job of that. When the bad people scare us or hurt us, we have
to whack them. This is hard, because you want to try and whack the bad people
where they live and not where we live. Naturally, the bad people don’t want to
get whacked, and they feel pretty smug because we aren’t mean enough to whack
all of them at once. So we have to go over to where they live and whack them
carefully. That’s why we have an Army and not just a Navy and an Air Force
with trillions of dollars worth of super weapons. We don’t get such expensive
weapons, because we break them a lot more rapidly. Even worse, the bad people
can get close enough that they can whack Soldiers even though they get whacked a
lot more.
2. Whacking bad people is dangerous. It’s also hard. It’s easier and safer
to whack the bad people if you do it from the air or the ocean. That’s because
the bad people can’t afford the super weapons that do stuff from there.
That’s why we have to be nice to the Navy and Air Force; so they will whack
bad people with great enthusiasm. Unfortunately, sometimes the Navy and Air
Force get too enthusiastic at whacking people and they hurt Army Soldiers and
other not so bad people that ended up in the wrong place. That’s why we have
to spend a lot of effort telling them where we are and what we need them to do.
We also try to stay out of their way when they are too busy whacking cities and
countries and stuff. We also have to do a lot of explaining to civilian
bureaucrats about what they need to do to clean up after the bad people get
whacked. This is called “unified action” but it’s really like going over
to the neighbors to apologize for breaking their window.
3. What makes this really hard is sorting out the not so bad people from the bad
people. We try to whack the bad guys and miss the good guys. Of course, the not
so bad people are all upset that we are over there whacking people. They want us
to go back to where we live and leave them alone, unless the bad people are
whacking them as well. They tend to go postal unless we help them keep their
families alive and well. The best way to do that is to let their politicians and
police do it while they stay out of our way. Unfortunately, their politicians
and police screw this up a lot so we have to take time out from whacking the bad
guys (or tricking the Air Force and Navy into doing that) and help out the not
so bad people around us. Even though they won’t like us, sometimes they help
us to find the bad people. This also helps us calm down the Air Force guys who
would whack everybody at once. This is called “full spectrum operations.”
4. Even though we don’t get the super weapons that the Air Force and Navy get,
we still have a lot of stuff and Soldiers. This is called “combat power.”
None of this stuff is worth a nickel if somebody isn’t in charge. Hopefully
they know what they are doing. When they do, it’s called leadership and it’s
really important because most Soldiers just want somebody intelligent to take
charge and get them back home in one piece. Inside the Army, we squabble about
which part of the Army gets the most stuff. After a while, some really important
general comes down and tells us to knock it off and “cooperate”. If we
don’t, the bad people will whack us and even the Air Force won’t be able to
bail us out. This is called “combined arms.”
5. The Army has a lot of processes that it is still trying to figure out.
Don’t worry about these things. Just be happy if somebody actually gets you an
order that you can understand in time for you to do something about it. If not,
at least you can blame the higher headquarters. Most of the time, Soldiers are
happy if they get fed, occasionally get some sleep and a shower and things
aren’t too SNAFU. Soldiers also tend to be lazy unless they are motivated.
This is “battle command.”
6. Really important generals are Soldiers too. They just get less sleep than the
ordinary Soldiers. They have to try and figure out how to straighten out the big
mess that all the politicians made. At the same time they have to decide how to
whack the bad people and keep the not so bad people from going postal. If they
do a good job, they get sent to the Pentagon. You don’t want to be one of
them. This is called “operational art.”
7. Dealing with information is hard. The bad people don’t play by the rules
and they lie… a lot. One screw-up on our part and all the not so bad people
get all upset because the bad people make a big deal about it. We need to spend
a lot of time telling the not so bad people why we are different than the really
bad people. Usually they don’t get it. Meanwhile the media people are busy
trying to uncover the giant government conspiracy that we are supposed to be
running. Also every hacker and pedophile out there is trying to screw up our
computers and radios. This makes it really hard. Meanwhile the Air Force and
Navy are wondering what’s wrong, since it’s not so hard for them. Once in a
while, somebody on our side figures out what we should be doing. This is called
“knowledge Management.”
The End
Glossary
Bad People: People that need whacking.
Battle Command: Motivating Soldiers with a cigar in your mouth.
Combined Arms: Using all of your combat power at once and surviving it.
Full Spectrum Operations: Careful whacking combined with lots of explaining.
Operational Art: Getting the Air Force or Navy to deal with the bad people before Soldiers have to.
Not so bad people: Anybody in the area of operations that is not a bad person or a Soldier.
SNAFU: A Twentieth Century term for land operations.
Soldier: Individual speaking in expletives and wearing cool-looking digital camouflage that doesn’t blend in with anything.
Unified Action: The opposite of SNAFU
Whacking: The redistribution or impairment of biological functions intended to eliminate intercellular cooperation within a sentient organism.
Back Cover
posted by wretchardthecat at 2/29/2008 03:23:00 PM
54 Comments:
FM 3-0 INFORMATION ENGAGEMENT for Civilian Irregular Supporters
Shouldn't this stuff be classified? How did you get clearance? Are you really allowed to openly post it on a blog? What if the bad guys see it?
What if the bad guys even see the big board?
What if the bad guys even manage to widen the mine-shaft gap?
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
I did a google search on the KLA + al-Qaeda, and came across this:
Ever wonder how heroin gets from Afghanistan to the EU to the USA? Here's a clue:
Google:
Yasin al-Qadi + al-Qaeda + CIA + Turkey
Excellent. Do we call that sarcasm, parody or truth?
Bottom Line: we aren’t mean enough to whack all of them at once.
Give Peace a chance.
Besides, if the Air Force and the Navy don't get to shoot off all their stuff every couple of years, they can't buy any new stuff. That stuff gets old, y'know.
That was the great thing about Bill Clinton, he cleared out all our Cruise missile inventories on completely pointless attacks against Serbia, Sudan, Afghanistan, the former Iraqi Republic of WMD during Operation Desert Fox, used the previously secret Stealth technologies, the whole schmigigee. Bill showed the way - Gotta get that old inventory off the shelf!
I'm tell'n somebody.
That's your job.
When the bad people scare us or hurt us, we have to whack them.
Personally, Code Pink in Berkeley scares the hell out of me. When do we get to whack Berkeley?
I like this. I think I saw it on Blackfive or OP-FOR a while back though.
Very high interesting! http://www.spymac.com/details/?2348684
The Onion News Network chimes in with a parody video entitled "In The Know: How Can We Make The War In Iraq More Eco-Friendly?"
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_how_can_we_make_the?utm_source=embedded_video
Probably the best way to make the Iraq War more eco- friendly would be to move it out of Iraq, so our soldiers wouldn't have to travel so far from home to fight.
...
Haven't you wondered why we bother with F-16s, C-130s, and Humvees, when America is positively littered with battlefields better equipped to handle the philosophical, logistical and military needs of the 21st Century?
How many times have you asked yourself, why are we in Mosul, why are we in Diyala, why are we in Afghanistan, when we could just as easily be in New York, fighting for America: on subways, buses, bike-paths, sidewalks, cafes, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, and Central Park?
Why do we need to fight dirty wars in distant lands, when we can fight more cleanly and efficiently here?
America, in November, your answer to these questions will decide our future. Don't you think it is time to bring our brave men and women home?
(I am not your typical Democrat, but I did approve this message.)
A candidate's solution to bad guys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl32Y7wDVDs
talnik,
Thanks for that. I doubt the polit bureau could have written it better, even if it tried.
Wretchard,
Highrespectable and others have been spamming your blog. Your blog is among the best on the web. Please don't allow it to be over run with weeds.
Written so even Obama's lemmings could understand it. Well, except for the glossary.
Off topic: I just noticed that McCain is starting to beat Obama in some of the better general election opinion polls. Hillary's failure to manage the primary election might(?) be a blessing in disguise.
Dare we hope that Obama is about to do another McGovern in 1972?
It's still scary that the Democrat primary process has malfunctioned so badly.
Some good news: An extremely evil al Qaeda terrorist who used female suicide bombers has been captured, link.
The morality of torture confuses me. However it is difficult not to hope that this bastard is currently hanging by his balls and being poked with cattle prods (not improbable if the Iraqis have him).
eggplant said...
It's still scary that the Democrat primary process has malfunctioned so badly.
The whole primary process is broken. An awful lot of conservatives are extremely unhappy about being essentially forced to vote for McCain.
A two-year-long Presidential campaign is just insane. Only the candidates with the most financial backing could afford to stay in it. I couldn't believe how many candidates dropped out before Super Tuesday.
My own state primary isn't until April 22. At this rate my choices will be down to McCain and Paul. It's very frustrating for me to have to just sit here and watch it unfold, without being able to do anything about it until it's too late.
It's almost like the process was designed to cause people who actually have a life to lose interest in it.
Rickl said:
"It's almost like the process was designed to cause people who actually have a life to lose interest in it."
There's alot to be said for the Westminster system where Parliament can declare a vote of no-confidence and elections need to be immediately held. Mind you, I don't think the Westminster system is appropriate for a nation as large as the United States. The Australians may have hit upon the best formula. Their system is a hybrid between the British and American systems.
I'm a bit of a pessimist and suspect the United States is going to get hammered in the not too distant future. It'll either be due to an economic collapse or a demagogue like Obama will get elected President and the logical sequence that follows leads to a military take over. After the smoke clears and the dust settles there will be an opportunity for a constitutional convention and setting up a new political system.
Obama's 52 Second Plan for Whirled Peas
(talnik's link)
ynt"Israel’s threat to Gaza is really aimed at Egypt"
Katyusha launches from Gaza have been rare. By contrast, the Israeli town of Sderot, about five kilometers or so from Gaza, is an almost daily recipient of Qassam rocket fire, the Qassam being a crude short-range rocket manufactured in Gaza.
What do the Israelis intend to do about this escalation in the crisis, namely the threat of longer-range and more powerful Katyushas, smuggled into Gaza through Egyptian territory? The Israeli response has been to announce a possible ground invasion of Gaza , which may occur two weeks in the future:
As Israeli troops, tanks and aircraft went after Palestinian rocket operations, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio that Israel had "no other choice" but to launch a massive military operation in Gaza.
[…]
The Israeli military has completed its preparations for a major ground offensive and notified the government it is ready to move immediately when the order is given...
Them Crazy Aussies
Wretchard:
Sounds like he's describing some kind of water catchment system, but I can't really figure out the flow he describes.
Catchment systems are big on the Southern Tip of the Big Island of Hawaii.
He's remodeling, I guess you'd have to be there!
It's George Soros' and Howard Dean's Party of Jackasses now. Soros paid for it, and Dean pimped it. Whaddaya expect would happen if The Open Society Institute paid for all the gizmos?
I'd hate to see their revisions to FM 3-0.
Fear not, Fred!
(well, it was something to say)
---
Hillary Does SNL
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Did 'SNL' Go Beyond the Pale With Fauxbama? - SNL VIDEO!
Washington Post
Nobody much cared about Armisen's racial background (he is of white and Asian heritage) when he played Prince and Steve Jobs during seasons past of the NBC show. Nor did it seem to matter that "SNL's" Darrell Hammond, who is white, has impersonated the Rev. Jesse Jackson for years. Or that decades ago on "SNL," Billy Crystal played Sammy Davis Jr.
But in 2008, Obama isn't just any politician or celebrity. Which is why Armisen's DNA became something of an issue when he became "Fauxbama" in "SNL's" first show back since the writers' strike ended this month.
Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune put the question bluntly: "Call me crazy, but shouldn't 'Saturday Night Live's' fictional Sen. Barack Obama be played by an African-American?" Ryan went on to conclude: "I find 'SNL's' choice inexplicable. Obama's candidacy gives us solid proof of the progress that African-Americans have made in this country. I guess 'SNL' still has further to go on that front."
Hannah Pool, a writer for the Guardian newspaper in Great Britain, suggested the whole setup had "minstrel" overtones.
This comment has been removed by the author.
This lady makes Hillary look like a Capitalist Hawk:
Michelle Obama: Hussein the 'ultimate fear bomb'...
'Don't Go Into Corporate America'...
Obama Says Hillary Ad Scares Voters...
...and Mo Dowd offended Barry about his ears.
Boo hoo, hoo.
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What she doesn’t mention is that the helping industry has treated her pretty well. In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mrs. Obama’s compensation at the University of Chicago Hospital, where she is a vice president for community affairs, jumped from $121,910 in 2004, just before her husband was elected to the Senate, to $316,962 in 2005, just after he took office. And that does not count the money Mrs. Obama receives from serving on corporate boards. She would have been O.K. even without Jack’s magic beans.
Mrs. Obama also bemoaned the amount of money she has to spend — nearly one-third of the median household income in Zanesville — on piano, dance, and other lessons for her two children. But she was grateful for the concern her husband's supporters have shown for her. "Everywhere I go, no matter what, the women in the audience, their first question for me is, 'How on earth are you managing it, how are you keeping it all together?'" she told the women.
well i don't think that's fair. no roomsful of women are asking ME how i keep it all together. shirley there oughtta be a law.
You men wouldn't pass the Equal Rights Amendment, or there *would* be a law.
And don't call me Shirley.
LOL!
Doug,
Michelle Obama is scary. The woman is seething with contempt and rage, and I have a hard time understanding where this comes from. She came from a comfortable, middle-class background. She got to go to Princeton and then to Harvard. She's had very good paying jobs ever since. She married a guy who is smart and isn't doing too shabbily. The Good Lord has blessed her with a lot. On top of that, I really doubt that the kids at Princeton treated her like crap because she's black. She started college in the same year I graduated from college and I can tell you that where I went to school (University of New Hampshire)the minority students there were not treated like second-class citizens. I'm sure at Princeton she was not treated badly because she's black. C'mon, Michelle, you have it all: tall, beautiful, intelligent, and had access to a fine education. You are hardly an oppressed creature.
What fiction keeps playing in her head?
Fred, it's not so much that minorities lead the Democratic party astray, but that the party leads the minorities astray. Michelle Obama is merely filling the only space left open to her inside her party, where successful minority persons have to spend great effort disavowing themselves as beneficiaries of an oppressive system.
Isn't that the result of Affirmative Action, though?
To some people of color, there will always be a sneaking suspicion that no matter how much they have achieved, they didn't do it on their own merits, but because they got a free pass to the head of the line because of their skin color.
I'd bet, if somehow the total emotional weight of Affirmative Action could be quantified, the drag would be on the supposed beneficiaries.
In fact it could be seen as a cynical self-dealing interception, on the part of the Democratic party, of something that was already--as a result of a culture that on balance encourages the good side of individual human nature--happening anyway.
The object being, natch, to prevent selected people from breaking free of the Liberal Plantation.
The big problem of course is the one thing the Democrats won't ever even begin to admit exists -- that is, the majority backlash, which tho mostly expressed privately and kept within the bounds of attitude, is nevertheless widespread in greater & lesser degrees -- and works like a charm toward the ends of the party that needs the gratuitously-created new racialism to protect its people from.
You really think the Democrats are that smart to be able to think up such a plan that far in advance, and then institute it over a matter of decades?
I don't.
Nahnee, yes, i'm afraid i have two slightly contradictory thoughts on that -- one, that large organizations have minds of their own (the whole is greater than the sum of the parts), and two, that a lineage of brain-trusters actually does exist and actually does IMHO have those sorts of thoughts. Currently in the game, Soros springs to mind, and the Ickes clan(father gone but son high in Hillary camp), just for starters -- along with perhaps Rahm Immanuel, John Podesta, Carville & Begala, Terry McAuliffe, and the like.
Nahncee, re Ickes (toward your question about continuity) there was Harold L. and here is Harold M.
But no, I think these people do not intend that the liberal plantation be a bad place. I think they are in their minds doing well by doing good. I also think their results would be better for the people if they were worse for themselves.
It's a sad fact, Fred, that College has that effect on a significant number of students.
(although Michelle's might have been connected with 60's Black Victimology Studies too.)
In Calif, way back when I went to UCB and UCSB, it was already taking it's toll.
I would imagine places like UC Santa Cruz, home of Professor Angela Davis, turns "victims" out like hotcakes.
That's what so sad about even Republican politicians that act as tho they still believe that sending students from other cultures to our colleges will "Americanize" them in any way, when the reality is exactly the contrary.
I wrote that before reading Buddy and Nahncee just to see how they all came out.
"The object being, natch, to prevent selected people from breaking free of the Liberal Plantation."
Limbaugh, raised in a family of conservative lawyers, (dad a WWII Vet - P-51 Pilot) was taught from the beginning that the purpose behind FDR's programs was to establish and grow permanent control over the electorate.
My best friend's dad, first a truck driver in Oklahoma, then an Oil worker, explained Soc Sec to us in the '50's as a Ponzi Scheme.
That's going to become apparent to everyone in the not too distant future.
Re-reading my Angela Davis:
Rather obvious, it all comes straight out of the book! (Marx)
Hey, Buddy, I get a HT on Sid Vicious, I posted something about his dad here a while back!
"He obtained a law degree from the University of Chicago in 1907, but rarely practised. Instead, he became active in reform politics." (Ickes Sr)
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And Obama, after going to Harvard and Princeton (?) didn't become a Corporate Lawyer, but a "Community Organizer" studying under the same Commie Jerk that Hillary did!
"A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Obama worked as a community organizer, university lecturer, and civil rights lawyer before running for public office and serving in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004."
doug, re the Ickeses & the Blumenthals, yep, the hereditary communism family biz is just great, what with weak competition, supply monopoly, demand by coercion, captive customers, limitless pricing power, and zero cost of doing biz (besides coddling the muscle, of course).
And what's a few internal contradictions when the masses can't figure out how to complain?
Just came back to correct my Sid Vicious for Ickes error, but as you say, it works anyway.
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The NEA has done a tremendous job of programming a large segment to believe that govt is good and kind, and Corporations always evil.
And as you posted long ago, very little different from that list of Communist Goals. Where do we find those?
Speaking of Economic terms, Kudlow, who has consistently been very optimistic the entire time I have been listening, now fears we're teetering on the brink of a recession.
What's your opinion on that?
The most impressive aspect of the commentary on Buckley was the large number of people he took the time and effort to help personally.
Kudlow was the most surprising to me:
He said he was an Alcoholic, and had pretty well hit bottom, Buckley was there to guide him in turning his life around and turning (returning?) him on to the Catholic Faith.
I think we will see a mild, brief recession and might even just barely avoid it. The wildcard has never been the housing slump, since there are still plenty of jobs in other industries. With the falling dollar, our manufacturing is enjoying robust demand overseas. Europe's manufacturing and exports to the U.S. have fallen off the map.
The wildcard is energy/oil. More than any other factor this one is a killer right now. Plus, we are seeing prices climb as demand is falling. If I'm a rational investor - and I AM (I work in the investment business) - I would not invest in any asset with this kind of unfavorable supply-demand dynamic. So, the speculators are at work pushing prices up and hoping for the greater fool to come along to lap up the excess inventory at higher prices.
High energy prices, as we should have learned in the seventies, has a damaging effect on our economy. It deletes enormous amounts of discretionary income. Businesses have to raise their prices in order to cover their costs.
The cash flow is being sucked out towards Russia, Venezuela, and the Gulf states. Vladimir Putin is now the wealthiest man in the world. Somehow I think he had a plan going forward and is executing it now, just by cutting output and perhaps informally encouraging the same from other oil kleptocracies.
Just learned some details about NAFTA re: Oil.
--
Canadian Oil Exports to the United States Under NAFTA (PRB 06-33E)
...These four clauses apply only to Canada and the United States.
Mexico reserves the right to control its own energy industries in most cases and is explicitly exempt from the provisions of Articles 605 and 607.
Seems less than ideal.
doug -- re your query about Kudlow & confidence -- i can't give you a good opinion. I'm scared of the situation, however I'm also buying--not selling. I'm within a few percent of my all time high on Jan 03 08, and still buying selected oil, gold, and coal miners. Other end of the spectrum sectors, nibbling at XLF, NLY, and WFC on pullbacks -- which have been copious, alas -- but those are three good financials that are gonna pop if the GOP starts pulling ahead of the bolsheviks oops i mean democrats.
Yeah, well if you turn out to be right on oil stocks, it will be one more confirmation added to many of why I should never invest in individual stocks.
Best investment decision I ever made was buying Magellan (yeah, clear back in it's glory days) when the dow was 800!
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Here's an interesting piece on Steve Jobs:
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The trouble with Steve Jobs
Jobs likes to make his own rules, whether the topic is computers, stock options, or even pancreatic cancer.
"Jobs himself judges the world in binary terms. Products, in his view, are "insanely great" or "shit." One is facing death from cancer or "cured." Subordinates are geniuses or "bozos," indispensable or no longer relevant. People in his orbit regularly flip, at a second's notice, from one category to another, in what early Apple colleagues came to call his "hero-shithead roller coaster."
...I love that!
Stanford management science professor Robert Sutton discussed Jobs in his bestselling 2007 book, "The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't." "As soon as people heard I was writing a book on assholes, they would come up to me and start telling a Steve Jobs story," says Sutton. "The degree to which people in Silicon Valley are afraid of Jobs is unbelievable. He made people feel terrible; he made people cry. But he was almost always right, and even when he was wrong, it was so creative it was still amazing." Says Palo Alto venture capitalist Jean-Louis Gasse, a former Apple executive who once worked with Jobs: "Democracies don't make great products. You need a competent tyrant."
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Wozniak had a cool little gadget he was working on, but when Jobs found out it was in collaboration with some other (small) Company, Jobs grabbed it and smashed it against the wall!
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