A real love for the hard battle, knowing it offers the opportunity to be at your best when the best is required.

Competiveness: John R Wooden

 More reading about Coach Wooden and his "pyramid of success:"

The Official John R. Wooden site

Biography at Wikipedia

Pyramid of Sucess (PDF printable)

 "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail"  in his own words follow the "Favorite maxims" tab to "never stress winning"

There was a time when Americans seemed to view suicide attacks as a sign of the complete conviction of the enemy, an immutable dedication to their cause that many people found terrifying and cause for soul-searching.  "What could we have done to provoke such anger?" Yet with time, American views of suicide attacks have matured and become more grounded. 

Firstly, Americans in particular are far less afraid of suicide attackers and extremely unlikely to capitulate with anyone who attacks on American soil.  Suicide attackers hit American soil.  In Iraq and Afghanistan, they have become commonplace. 

Secondly, most importantly, wild use of suicide attackers is seen not as evidence that we are attacking the "wrong people" whose dedication to their cause is unstoppable, but as concrete evidence that we are attacking the right people and that they should be destroyed. ... Overuse of suicide attackers does not appear to cause Americans to cower, but to evoke Americans to want to kill the perpetrator. (March 25, 2010 – Michael Yon)

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, civilian casualties cause the people to turn against the side perpetrating the casualties. This photo was taken after a suicide bombing in Mosul, Iraq, in May 2005. The neighborhood had been pro-insurgent. After this bomb in the midst of children, the neighborhood turned against the terrorists. The little girl's name was Farah. She died shortly after this moment. (Michael Yon Photo)

*****************************************************

While asking "what kind of war is it?" it's important to reflect on the old adage "you may not be interested in war, but WAR is certainly interested in you!" if you're not a follower of Michael Yon, you should be. (From his site) "Michael Yon is a former Green Beret, native of Winter Haven, Fl. who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004.  No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars.  Michael's dispatches from the front lines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation.  His work has been featured on "Good Morning America," The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world."

His 25 March, 2010 "dispatch" from Afghanistan on suicide bombers closes with:

In 2009, one report indicated there were 148 suicide bombings or attempts in Afghanistan.  Suicide murders continue to occur a short drive from here that are not meeting the above requirements.  Taliban continue to hit all manner of targets, and regularly slaughter non-combatant men, women and children.  Within a week subsequent to the publication of this dispatch, suicide murderers will likely kill innocent people here.  The Taliban's efforts at repackaging themselves as kinder, gentler mass-murderers is failing.  Their suicide bombing campaign is backfiring.  The Taliban are losing their cool.  Something is in the air.  The enemy remains very deadly, yet the scent of their weakness is growing stronger while our people close in. (emphasis added)

For further reading on the issue of cults read Hakim Hazim's American Realism Revisited: Lethal – maybe enlightening -Minds & Latent Threats ("There is no shortage of militant cults, and, unfortunately, those who are eager and willing to follow them. Hazim invites you to take a journey and gain insight into lethal minds and latent threats facing our country today.")

We continue to discuss the idea of "team of leaders."  This video well worth your time. Thanks to John Robb at Global Guerrilllas.  See his site for comments.

But let's take this one step further into the context of  "What kind of war"  determination as impacting how we approach "the war" once we have determined "what kind."  Consider the comments from  the Blog – Challenge COIN; Perspectives on the evolving U.S. Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism doctrine. What works, what does not, and what we think we know: "COIN/CT Lessons from drug induced dancing."

... The main lesson to walk away with is how crucial it was to easily mimic the dance. Were this a difficult dance, the originator would have been nothing more than an observed solo performer. Also the role of the first follower made it acceptable for a few more people to join. Once the first follower's friends join in, the tipping point is then reached at 1:15. From then on, people join in groups and the originator or "leader" is irrelevant as the movement has a life of his own. Only the music ending stops everyone from dancing, not the "leader."

Now take that template and apply it to al Qaeda in Iraq. What sort of impact would killing or capturing the leadership have today? This is precisely why the classic insurgency texts emphasized the need to destroy an insurgency at its onset. Otherwise it becomes an integrated part of a society for at least a generation if not longer. So how do we end the al Qaeda-styled movements? Find the music and turn it off…

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

Prior to Desert Storm, Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf created a small cell of four majors and a colonel to act as his intimate "brain trust" to plan his campaign. The group became known as the "Jedi Knights." All were graduates of the School of Advanced Military Studies, essentially the Army staff college's second year honors program. The success of SAMS was emulated by other services and became the model for a similar program at the Army War College focused on strategic studies.
Success of the SAMS model provides a good template for an advanced learning program for specially selected strategic staff officers.

EEI #5 – "The Big Picture"- The Nexus Between Education and Grand Strategy - begins with (Mark Safranski at Zenpundit) questioning our educational preparedness to deal with 21st century problems.

Why would our societal orientation in complex, dynamic, fast moving situations be good when our educational system trains people only to think through simplified, linear, sequential problems? Strategic thinkers need to be able to see "the big picture" and handle uncertainty, or they cannot be said to be strategic thinkers.

As a second offering (for the first, see EEI#5) on a thread of "learning, unlearning, relearning," as an Essential Element of Information for a Culture of Preparedness, this post provides an excerpt from Armed Forces Journal by retired Army Major General Robert Scales.  General Scales is a former commandant of the US Army War College, now president of Colgen Inc., a consulting firm specializing in land power, war gaming and strategic leadership, and is a  graduate of West Point, with a PhD in History from Duke University He served more than 30 years in the Army, commanding two units in Vietnam.

As a major theme he notes "The complexities of recent wars suggest that the reforms that dictated jointness, while necessary, are no longer sufficient. Today's conflicts demand officers who can lead indirectly and perform in an uncertain, ambiguous, complex, chaotic and inherently unpredictable environment. Our educational system needs to produce more men and women who can anticipate conditions that do not yet exist. They must be capable of dealing with unfamiliar cultures and an enemy who is unconstrained by Western values and methods of warfare. To be sure, the services possess many talented, and indeed some brilliant, practitioners of the strategic art. But the demand for strategists is greater than the supply. Our system of professional military education produces too few officers capable of understanding and dealing with the complexities of war at the strategic level."

To that I would add/ask  and is it not the same for all this country's leaders?

I highly recommend the full article at Armed Forces Journal, but here in part:

Return of the Jedi

They will fail because the services will not be able to attract the brightest and groom them through proper schooling for positions of responsibility unless the intellectually gifted are rewarded with selection for promotion and command. Unless intellectual excellence is tied to the services' personnel systems, true reform is impossible. Only once in the past century have powers of reform overcome the cultural glue that binds together the services' systems of professional rewards. In the mid-1980s, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., as part of the Goldwater-Nichols legislation, forced the services to learn how to operate efficiently – the essence of "jointness." Skelton's effort gained traction because of the failure of the services to fight together as a team during the invasion of Grenada in 1983. Skelton leveraged the law to hold the services' reward systems for promotion and command hostage to a meaningful commitment to jointness. To ensure that his reforms would last, Skelton legislated that staff and war colleges bring together student officers from all services to study joint as well as service-specific subjects.

The complexities of recent wars suggest that the reforms that dictated jointness, while necessary, are no longer sufficient. Today's conflicts demand officers who can lead indirectly and perform in an uncertain, ambiguous, complex, chaotic and inherently unpredictable environment. Our educational system needs to produce more men and women who can anticipate conditions that do not yet exist. They must be capable of dealing with unfamiliar cultures and an enemy who is unconstrained by Western values and methods of warfare. To be sure, the services possess many talented, and indeed some brilliant, practitioners of the strategic art. But the demand for strategists is greater than the supply. Our system of professional military education produces too few officers capable of understanding and dealing with the complexities of war at the strategic level.

We have too few of these officers because the services tend to accelerate the careers of officers who, early in their careers, show talent at the tactical level of war. Battalion, squadron and ship commanders habitually reward subordinates who mirror themselves. These subordinates tend to be officers who get things done, the go-to, can-do types who make their mark with managerial brilliance. The irony of the system is that the requirement for competence shifts from the tactical to the strategic at just the time in their careers when tactical officers leave command to move on to higher levels of responsibility at the colonel and flag level. As a result, too often we see skillful tacticians thrust into strategic staff jobs they are ill-prepared to perform.

HOW TO DEVELOP STRATEGIC THINKERS
We have met the archetype strategic warrior, and his name is David Petraeus. He is joined by a remarkably successful cadre of leaders who have demonstrated exceptional talent in the chaotic environments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some names are familiar because they reached three or four stars: Chiarelli, Stavridis, Dempsey, Ward, Dubik, Eikenberry. Others are equally successful but less well known because of their lesser rank and profile. These are behind-the-scenes officers who have offered advice and insight to their flag officer bosses: Nagl, Yingling, McMaster and Mansoor, among a few others.

Most of these proven strategic thinkers share a remarkably common provenance. Very early in their careers they learned to think critically and communicate strategically by attending a government-financed graduate program at a top-tier civilian university. Later, most of them sharpened these skills by teaching at a service academy. They all share (along with fellow intellectual travelers such as Adm. Mike Mullen and Marine Gen. Jim Mattis) a lifelong obsession with reading history and studying the art of war. At some time in their careers, they ignored the caution of personnel officers about spending too much time in school while under scrutiny for command selection. Today, this is a critical period for upwardly mobile officers because those who are screened for command are on the fast track to flag rank. Those who don't command will not grasp the brass ring. The proclivities of service culture cannot be easily overcome. The reality is that educational reform hinges on the ability to create a path for the intellectually gifted to be promoted to flag rank. But the climate today tends to reward tactical rather than strategic excellence. This must change.

BEGIN AT THE TOP
Flag officers with highly developed strategic skills are needed principally in the key operations, planning, strategy and civil-military billets – a relatively small cohort that embraces conservatively about a sixth of flag and general officers from all services. Consider a reform scheme that establishes a Senior Strategist Program (SSP) that would identify key strategic appointments and fence them for officers educated in a program of demanding, selective advanced schooling and preparation. ... As in any profession, our young officers are ambitious and seek promotion. They will see that intellectual excellence has become a prized credential for promotion, and they will actively seek higher education and intellectual preparation as the surest means for achieving flag rank.

Promotion of these specially selected and accredited officers to flag rank would begin early in their careers … These officers would study the human and social sciences with particular emphasis on history, international relations, anthropology, economics, language and culture. Officer students would be expected to complete the course requirements for the Ph.D. A successful preliminary examination would waive the education and service requirements necessary to gain credit for joint service, thus leveling the career playing field by giving these officers the same amount of time to command as their conventionally educated peers.

CREATING JEDIS
Prior to Desert Storm, Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf created a small cell of four majors and a colonel to act as his intimate "brain trust" to plan his campaign. The group became known as the "Jedi Knights." All were graduates of the School of Advanced Military Studies, essentially the Army staff college's second year honors program. The success of SAMS was emulated by other services and became the model for a similar program at the Army War College focused on strategic studies.

Success of the SAMS model provides a good template for an advanced learning program for specially selected strategic staff officers. In this scheme, each service would be responsible for teaching their respective version of SAMS. The SAMS course would last two years with eligibility reserved principally for officers who completed the two-year program at civilian graduate schools. Others could be accepted provided they pass a very rigorous entry examination. During the course, SSP students would be required to finish their dissertations for the doctorate degree and demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language. Like today's SAMS, the course would be enormously rigorous. The curriculum would be history based. Students would follow the case study method and would be evaluated and graded by an experienced faculty, most of whom would be SSP program alumni. Graduates would then return to operational assignments and subsequent selection for battalion, squadron and ship commands…

MAKING THE CUT
.......The Skelton reforms have shown that often legislation is the only sure way to achieve what cultural friction cannot overcome. To be sure, no effort as culturally disruptive as this can be implemented quickly. At least five years would be needed to get it off the ground, and more than a decade would pass before SSP-qualified officers would advance to positions of authority. But if we are to create a body of gifted officers capable of dealing with the complexities of modern warfare, we soon must begin to break the stranglehold of the service personnel systems and offer the proper rewards to those young, talented and ambitious officers who are most gifted in the strategic art. AFJ

Complete article at AFJ