Project White Horse Forum » Learning

Day is Done – September 11th 2011

Ed Beakley — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:20:47 +0000

As the day closed on September 11 2001, we began the process of "doing what we know"- we had been attacked – strangely suprising to some in other lands, Americans strike back hard when treaded upon – so we went to war in the way we know how. The events of September 11, 2001 were of such magnitude, shock and so far outside the norm of how we perceived warfare, and our whole intelligence process was so much still Cold War mind set, we didn't "know what to do" ...really. We attacked, we fought, we used B-52s and smart bombs with special forces guys doing the targeting and riding with Afghans on horses. We learned, but we were still doing what we know not knowing what to do.

After the invasion of Iraq, that became apparent - who exactly were we fighting, how many groups, were they connected? We learned, the hard way. Army General Petraeus and Marine General Mattis rewrote the counterinsurgency manual – many had long fought even using the term insurgency. Americans fought, Americans died, some learned. But it has been a tough think. What kind of war have we been fighting: guerrilla warfare, non conventional, unconventional, fourth generation, irregular? Is the answer counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, what? The debate on whether what applied in Iraq applies in Afghanistan still ebbs and flows – below the surface for most Americans.

It's gets hard when the protagonist stop wearing blue and red uniforms to understand the true nature of warfare. Yet, old principles still abide, Clausewitz's trinity does indeed still hold:

primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force;

the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam;

element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason...."

(This set of elements is usually labeled "emotion/chance/reason"; sometimes "violence/chance & probability/rational calculation"; or, even more abstractly, "irrationality/nonrationality/rationality.")

So questions still persist; Are we better off ten years later, have we gained the imagination so lacking pre 9-11, are our leaders really prepared to make the decisions necessary in a world so ill defined, indeed, are we capable of knowing what to do rather than doing what we know?

Like most Americans over the past week I've searched the blogs, read the opinion pieces, the stories of the folks most directly involved, watched hours of commentators and ceremonies and dedications. I've searched and struggled to find words for this blog, given the focus on decision making in severe crisis.

Below are three articles and links to the originals that surround the idea of learning and focusing so that we as a people – top to bottom – can know what to do. They are well worth your time.

One introductory comment, then the rest stand on their own needing no help from me. The first article is about Rick Rescorla. His story has been featured here before. (See Sheepdog of Morgan Stanley) He may be the only person who knew what to do on September 11 2001. Learning from the first WTC attack, he prepared those at Morgan Stanley for what he was sure would be another attack. Ignoring Port Authority notice to remain in place after the attacks, he evacuated Morgan Stanley employees. Were it not for him, the losses at the twin towers would have been not 2800 but 5300.

Knowing what to do is possible – it takes constant learning and the will to stay the course. Day is done, what next?

Rick Rescorla, Hero: Vietnam to 9/11

By: Bud Alley Date: September 11 , 2011

Late Sunday, June 1st, 2001, my wife, Caroline and I pulled into the front of Rick and Susan Rescorla's condo. In keeping with his ebullient personality, Rick had hung his signature First Cavalry jacket on the porch light. Always larger than life, he bounded down the steps with a welcoming smile and bear hug.

He was that kind of guy, absolutely fearless and totally selfless.

A singer of songs in the face of the enemy, he calmed his men on Landing Zone X-ray as they awaited a North Vietnamese attack at dawn–and later after the attacks of 9/11.

That was Rick. Big guy–must have been over 6'2", Bunyanesque in life. He was a hero to all of us, fellow lieutenants and enlisted.

In Vietnam, while serving with the 2nd Battalion 7th Cavalry in 1965, he invented what became officially known as the LURP team. And later, he was featured on the cover of We Were Soldiers Once…and Young.

In later years, I got to know Rick as a man of insatiable scholarly curiosity and intellect as well as a father.

We occasionally exchanged small tokens like knives or articles with one another. All who knew him were amazed at his generosity. As we left following dinner that June night, Rick handed me something in an expensive cloth bag. He knew I had spent my career in the box business. He said, "Look at it later."

Ten years ago on September 11th, at about 6:30 pm, I made the hardest phone call I ever made in my life–to Rick Rescorla's wife Susan.

I hoped against hope that he had not gone to work that day in the World Trade Center. I hoped he and Susan had taken the opportunity to enjoy one of their day trips to the Jersey countryside. But somehow deep down inside, I knew I had lost a friend.

Inside that bag he had given me that June was a beautiful wooden box, the kind you keep on your dresser, with your watches, your precious jewelry, and your memories. His box is still on my dresser and not a day goes by that I don't thank God for the privilege of counting Rick Rescorla as a friend.

Later that winter, I visited Susan and she took me to the Raptor Center to show me the living memorials she had endowed in Rick's memory. There were two American Bald Eagles that had been rescued from injury. How perfect and magnificent they were–sitting proudly on their perches, so like Rick. Survivors. Poised. Erect. Unbroken. The message in their eyes: "We Will Never Surrender."

Rick, head of security for Morgan Stanley, managed to evacuate the 2500 employees of the South Tower on 911. There are photos of him singing to calm the evacuees. Rick was last seen climbing back up the stairs to make a final sweep before the building collapsed.

Rick's physical remains have never been recovered but his spirit will never die.

His statue is now permanently placed on the grounds of the National Infantry Museum along with a piece of steel from the building.

Ten years ago a petition began to circulate calling for him to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It went viral and garnered thousands of names. Conversations with the White House staff were held, but nothing ever came of it. Now, as we pause to recall those who stood up on 911, there is a pall cast by the lack of recognition of Rick's valorous sacrifice.

Those of us who knew Rick and served with him in combat are still trying to see that he gets the national recognition he deserves. He has been honored in his native England, his hometown of Cornwall, and by his friends who contributed to the Columbus Georgia memorial.

The man who saved more people on one day by his actions has not been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

If he had been fighting on foreign soil, he would have received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Damn shame ten years later, our leaders have not honored this immigrant citizen who so magnified our American values.

CP Note: *Watch "Voice of the Prophet," an interview with Rick Rescorla, done with Robert H. "Bob" Edwards' son Robert Edwards, who fought at Ia Drang with Rick. In the interview, Rick all but predicts the attacks of 9/11.

The Nine Eleven Century?

By Mark Safranski at ZENPUNDIT

Ten years ago to this day, almost to the hour of which I am writing, commercial jetliners were highjacked by al Qaida teams armed with boxcutters, under the direction of Mohammed Atta, were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, believed to be headed to the US Capitol building, crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers led by Todd Beamer heroically attempted to stop the highjackers. The whole world watched – most with horror but some with public glee - on live television as people jumped out of smoke-engulfed windows, holding hands, to their deaths. Then, the towers fell.

From this day flowed terrible consequences that are still unfolding like the rippling shockwave of a bomb.

We look back, sometimes on the History Channel or some other educational program, at the grainy, too fast moving, sepia motion pictures of the start of World War I. The crowds wildly cheered troops with strangely antiquarian uniforms that looked reminiscent of Napoleon's day, march proudly off to the war that gave Europe the Somme, Gallipoli, Passchendaele and Verdun. And the Russian Revolution.

After the armistice, the victors had a brief chance to reset the geopolitical, strategic and economic patterns the war had wrought and in which they were enmeshed. The statesmen could not rise to that occasion, failing so badly that it was understood even at the time, by John Maynard Keynes and many others, that things were being made worse. World War I. became the historical template for the short but infinitely bloody 20th century of 1914-1991, which historians in future centuries may simply describe as "the long war" or a "civil war of western civilization".

There is a serious danger, in my view, of September 11 becoming such a template for the 21st century and for the United States.

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, as we remember the fallen and the many members of the armed services of the United States who have served for ten years of war, heroically, at great sacrifice and seldom with complaint, we also need to recall that we should not move through history as sleepwalkers. We owe it to our veterans and to ourselves not to continue to blindly walk the path of the trajectory of 9/11, but to pause and reflect on what changes in the last ten years have been for the good and which require reassessment. Or repeal. To reassert ourselves, as Americans, as masters of our own destiny rather than reacting blindly to events while carelessly ceding more and more control over our lives and our livelihoods to the whims of others and a theatric quest for perfect security. America needs to regain the initiative, remember our strengths and do a much better job of minding the store at home.

The next ninety years being molded by the last ten is not a future I care to leave to my children. I can think of no better way to honor the dead and refute the current sense of decline than for America to collectively step back from immersion in moment by moment events and start to chart a course for the long term.

Pull out the chocks. Let's roll

Posted on 10 Sep 2011 by Starbuck

Say what you will about the messenger, but "Courtney" was right. September 11th was a watershed event for an entire generation of Americans; one which would dominate their worldview for much of their adult lives.

Sure, some might scoff at the jubilant crowds gathered around the White House after news leaked of Osama bin Laden's demise at the hands of US Navy SEALs. But while September 11th may not have been as militarily significant as, say, Pearl Harbor, it was no less visceral: New York and Washington weren't mere US territories thousands of miles from the shores of the US, as was Hawaii in 1941. The Pentagon and World Trade Center were fixtures in the lives of everyday Americans; and in the 21st Century, live footage of the conflagration could be piped into every home in America in vivid color. And though only a tiny portion of America would serve in uniform in the decade to come, the effects of the attacks would permeate nearly every aspect of our lives: the economic downturn, terror alerts, airline security, even the ubiquitous news ticker, now a staple on nearly every cable news station.

But above all, there was the culture of fear.

Osama bin Laden, for all of his malfeasance, certainly didn't pose the same existential threat to the United States as Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Yet, his escape from the wrath of the US military, and his wraith-like presence for nearly a decade gave him the allure of a boogeyman. And, like many boogeymen, simply whispering "Osama bin Laden" or "9/11? could frighten and cajole Americans into rash and irrevocable actions: torture at Guantanamo, the invasion of Iraq, and trillions sunk into wasteful security programs.

Yet, for all our mistakes, al-Qaeda erred even greater.

The invasion of Iraq might have been a massive recruiting boon for al Qaeda and its Iraqi affiliate, but by the end of 2006, the organization had overplayed its hand. Local sheiks, and even former al-Qaeda members eventually joined US forces in a counter-offensive against al-Qaeda in Iraq, having been sickened by the violence unleashed by Zarqawi and his minions. The movement, dubbed "The Awakening", was seen by many as a turning point in the war in Anbar Province.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, remotely-piloted drones pounded away at the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, keeping senior al-Qaeda figures at bay. Finally, the organization was dealt a deadly blow when US Navy SEALs mounted a spectacular raid into a compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan, killing the former al-Qaeda leader who had spent nearly a decade presumably under house arrest, under the watchful eye of the Pakistani government. Months later, a fierce drone campaign picked off al-Qaeda's number two operative.

And though US officials are rightly cautious over alleged terror plots timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of 9/11, they're nowhere near the size or scope of 9/11.

Reduced to underwear bombs, al-Qaeda is a mere shell of its former self.

But though we may have crippled al-Qaeda, we've been weakened, too. Thousands of American troops have been killed in wars abroad, and tens of thousands more have been horribly wounded. Our national debt has surpassed fourteen trillion dollars–roughly our yearly Gross Domestic Product. Unemployment is rampant, and our collective confidence is shattered. Our public image has been bruised, and partisan rancor cuts so deeply that we cannot even agree upon a decent memorial to commemorate the victims of 9/11, even ten years later.

As a nation we can be shallow, petty, and selfish. But deep down, we can learn to sacrifice and cooperate.

Shortly after the attacks of September 11th, our rallying cry was "Let's roll": a call not just to punish the perpetrators of this odious act–rightly so–but also to rebuild.

Ten years later, it's time to start rebuilding. For nearly a decade, our national wheels have been chocked with pernicious emnity and fear mongering. It's time to finally pull out the chocks and roll.

2010: The Earth Strikes Back

Ed Beakley — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 18:54:40 +0000

Boundary Condition #1 (1)

The idea of Intersectional ideas – those resulting from combining concepts from multiple fields or areas of specialization gained through education and experience – has been previously introduced with it's own PWH section. This is the first of several year ending posts intended to set the stage for intersectional discussions for 2011. Seth Borenstein and Julie Reed Bell note that 10 natural disasters claimed a quarter-million lives in 2010. Discussion of resilient communities, developing a culture of preparedness, decision making in crisis, and next year's topic "unconventional crisis" seems most appropriate don't you think?

This was the year the Earth struck back.

Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 — the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.

Consider:

How deadly? Through Nov. 30, nearly 260,000 people died in natural disasters in 2010, compared to 15,000 in 2009

How extreme? After strong early year blizzards — nicknamed Snowmageddon — paralyzed the U.S. mid-Atlantic and record snowfalls hit Russia and China, the temperature turned to broil – the year may go down as the hottest on record worldwide or at the very least in the top three

How costly? Disasters caused $222 billion in economic losses in 2010 — more than Hong Kong's economy

How weird? A volcano in Iceland paralyzed air traffic for days in Europe, disrupting travel for more than 7 million people. In a 24-hour period in October, Indonesia got the trifecta of a deadly magnitude 7.7 earthquake, a tsunami that killed more than 500 people and a volcano that caused more than 390,000 people to flee. That's after flooding, landslides and more quakes killed hundreds earlier in the year. And in the United States, FEMA declared a record number of major disasters, 79 as of Dec. 14. The average year has 34. A list of day-by-day disasters in 2010 compiled by the AP runs 64 printed pages long

And put man in the equation, what then? It was also a year of man-made technological catastrophes. BP's busted oil well caused 172 million gallons to gush into the Gulf of Mexico. Mining disasters — men trapped deep in the Earth — caused dozens of deaths in tragic collapses in West Virginia, China and New Zealand. The fortunate miners in Chile who survived 69 days underground provided the feel good story of the year.

Please read "2010's world gone wild: Quakes, floods, blizzards" by Seth Borenstein and Julie Reed Bell from Associated Press, Sunday December 19, 2010.

2010's world gone wild: Quakes, floods, blizzards

By SETH BORENSTEIN and JULIE REED BELL, Associated Press Seth Borenstein And Julie Reed Bell, Associated Press Sun Dec 19, 5:31 pm ET

This was the year the Earth struck back.

Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 — the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.

"It just seemed like it was back-to-back and it came in waves," said Craig Fugate, who heads the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010.

"The term `100-year event' really lost its meaning this year."

And we have ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say.

Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes.

Poor construction and development practices conspire to make earthquakes more deadly than they need be. More people live in poverty in vulnerable buildings in crowded cities. That means that when the ground shakes, the river breaches, or the tropical cyclone hits, more people die.

Disasters from the Earth, such as earthquakes and volcanoes "are pretty much constant," said Andreas Schraft, vice president of catastrophic perils for the Geneva-based insurance giant Swiss Re. "All the change that's made is man-made."

The January earthquake that killed well more than 220,000 people in Haiti is a perfect example. Port-au-Prince has nearly three times as many people — many of them living in poverty — and more poorly built shanties than it did 25 years ago. So had the same quake hit in 1985 instead of 2010, total deaths would have probably been in the 80,000 range, said Richard Olson, director of disaster risk reduction at Florida International University.

In February, an earthquake that was more than 500 times stronger than the one that struck Haiti hit an area of Chile that was less populated, better constructed, and not as poor. Chile's bigger quake caused fewer than 1,000 deaths.

Climate scientists say Earth's climate also is changing thanks to man-made global warming, bringing extreme weather, such as heat waves and flooding.

In the summer, one weather system caused oppressive heat in Russia, while farther south it caused flooding in Pakistan that inundated 62,000 square miles, about the size of Wisconsin. That single heat-and-storm system killed almost 17,000 people, more people than all the worldwide airplane crashes in the past 15 years combined.

"It's a form of suicide, isn't it? We build houses that kill ourselves (in earthquakes). We build houses in flood zones that drown ourselves," said Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado. "It's our fault for not anticipating these things. You know, this is the Earth doing its thing."

No one had to tell a mask-wearing Vera Savinova how bad it could get. She is a 52-year-old administrator in a dental clinic who in August took refuge from Moscow's record heat, smog and wildfires.

"I think it is the end of the world," she said. "Our planet warns us against what would happen if we don't care about nature."

The excessive amount of extreme weather that dominated 2010 is a classic sign of man-made global warming that climate scientists have long warned about. They calculate that the killer Russian heat wave — setting a national record of 111 degrees — would happen once every 100,000 years without global warming.

Preliminary data show that 18 countries broke their records for the hottest day ever.

"These (weather) events would not have happened without global warming," said Kevin Trenberth, chief of climate analysis for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

That's why the people who study disasters for a living say it would be wrong to chalk 2010 up to just another bad year.

"The Earth strikes back in cahoots with bad human decision-making," said a weary Debarati Guha Sapir, director for the World Health Organization's Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. "It's almost as if the policies, the government policies and development policies, are helping the Earth strike back instead of protecting from it. We've created conditions where the slightest thing the Earth does is really going to have a disproportionate impact."

Here's a quick tour of an anything but normal 2010:

HOW DEADLY:

While the Haitian earthquake, Russian heat wave, and Pakistani flooding were the biggest killers, deadly quakes also struck Chile, Turkey, China and Indonesia in one of the most active seismic years in decades. Through mid-December there have been 20 earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or higher, compared to the normal 16. This year is tied for the most big quakes since 1970, but it is not a record. Nor is it a significantly above average year for the number of strong earthquakes, U.S. earthquake officials say.

Flooding alone this year killed more than 6,300 people in 59 nations through September, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, 30 people died in the Nashville, Tenn., region in flooding. Inundated countries include China, Italy, India, Colombia and Chad. Super Typhoon Megi with winds of more than 200 mph devastated the Philippines and parts of China.

Through Nov. 30, nearly 260,000 people died in natural disasters in 2010, compared to 15,000 in 2009, according to Swiss Re. The World Health Organization, which hasn't updated its figures past Sept. 30, is just shy of 250,000. By comparison, deaths from terrorism from 1968 to 2009 were less than 115,000, according to reports by the U.S. State Department and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The last year in which natural disasters were this deadly was 1983 because of an Ethiopian drought and famine, according to WHO. Swiss Re calls it the deadliest since 1976.

The charity Oxfam says 21,000 of this year's disaster deaths are weather related.

HOW EXTREME:

After strong early year blizzards — nicknamed Snowmageddon — paralyzed the U.S. mid-Atlantic and record snowfalls hit Russia and China, the temperature turned to broil.

The year may go down as the hottest on record worldwide or at the very least in the top three, according to the World Meteorological Organization. The average global temperature through the end of October was 58.53 degrees, a shade over the previous record of 2005, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

Los Angeles had its hottest day in recorded history on Sept. 27: 113 degrees. In May, 129 set a record for Pakistan and may have been the hottest temperature recorded in an inhabited location.

In the U.S. Southeast, the year began with freezes in Florida that had cold-blooded iguanas becoming comatose and falling off trees. Then it became the hottest summer on record for the region. As the year ended, unusually cold weather was back in force.

Northern Australia had the wettest May-October on record, while the southwestern part of that country had its driest spell on record. And parts of the Amazon River basin struck by drought hit their lowest water levels in recorded history.

HOW COSTLY:

Disasters caused $222 billion in economic losses in 2010 — more than Hong Kong's economy — according to Swiss Re. That's more than usual, but not a record, Schraft said. That's because this year's disasters often struck poor areas without heavy insurance, such as Haiti.

Ghulam Ali's three-bedroom, one-story house in northwestern Pakistan collapsed during the floods. To rebuild, he had to borrow 50,000 rupees ($583) from friends and family. It's what many Pakistanis earn in half a year.

HOW WEIRD:

A volcano in Iceland paralyzed air traffic for days in Europe, disrupting travel for more than 7 million people. Other volcanoes in the Congo, Guatemala, Ecuador, the Philippines and Indonesia sent people scurrying for safety. New York City had a rare tornado.

A nearly 2-pound hailstone that was 8 inches in diameter fell in South Dakota in July to set a U.S. record. The storm that produced it was one of seven declared disasters for that state this year.

There was not much snow to start the Winter Olympics in a relatively balmy Vancouver, British Columbia, while the U.S. East Coast was snowbound.

In a 24-hour period in October, Indonesia got the trifecta of terra terror: a deadly magnitude 7.7 earthquake, a tsunami that killed more than 500 people and a volcano that caused more than 390,000 people to flee. That's after flooding, landslides and more quakes killed hundreds earlier in the year.

Even the extremes were extreme. This year started with a good sized El Nino weather oscillation that causes all sorts of extremes worldwide. Then later in the year, the world got the mirror image weather system with a strong La Nina, which causes a different set of extremes. Having a year with both a strong El Nino and La Nina is unusual.

And in the United States, FEMA declared a record number of major disasters, 79 as of Dec. 14. The average year has 34.

Through September, the 2010 disaster death toll had already surpassed such notable years as 2004, when the South Asia tsunami struck, and 2008, when Myanmar was hit by a massive cyclone and China suffered a devastating earthquake.

A list of day-by-day disasters in 2010 compiled by the AP runs 64 printed pages long.

"The extremes are changed in an extreme fashion," said Greg Holland, director of the earth system laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

For example, even though it sounds counterintuitive, global warming likely played a bit of a role in "Snowmageddon" earlier this year, Holland said. That's because with a warmer climate, there's more moisture in the air, which makes storms including blizzards, more intense, he said.

White House science adviser John Holdren said we should get used to climate disasters or do something about global warming: "The science is clear that we can expect more and more of these kinds of damaging events unless and until society's emissions of heat-trapping gases and particles are sharply reduced."

And that's just the "natural disasters." It was also a year of man-made technological catastrophes. BP's busted oil well caused 172 million gallons to gush into the Gulf of Mexico. Mining disasters — men trapped deep in the Earth — caused dozens of deaths in tragic collapses in West Virginia, China and New Zealand. The fortunate miners in Chile who survived 69 days underground provided the feel good story of the year.

In both technological and natural disasters, there's a common theme of "pushing the envelope," Olson said.

Colorado's Bilham said the world's population is moving into riskier megacities on fault zones and flood-prone areas. He figures that 400 million to 500 million people in the world live in large cities prone to major earthquakes.

A Haitian disaster will happen again, Bilham said: "It could be Algiers. it could be Tehran. It could be any one of a dozen cities."

Essential Element of Information for a Culture of Preparedness: They called him “Coach”

Ed Beakley — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:29:10 +0000

If one is to discuss leadership, what it requires to "decide and act" in severe crisis, the journey should start here.

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)

and finally

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

EEI#32 "What kind of a war…?" – The Scent of Weakness

Ed Beakley — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:08:41 +0000

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)

Yon is well worth following in general if you want something different/enlightening than that from our mainstream media, but today particularly so. Please go to "The Scent of Weakness."

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.")

EEI#30 Leadership – First follower

Ed Beakley — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:43:37 +0000

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

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…

EEI#14 Return of the Jedi

Ed Beakley — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:47:53 +0000

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.

From the beginning, a PWH continuing point of critical concern has been that our leaders – civil, military, and private sector had neither the experience nor education necessary and sufficient to match the problems presented, and were therefore un-prepared and "unready" on September 11, 2001, not only for the attacks themselves, but for either near term or long term critial policy, strategic or operational decision making in the wake of the attacks. With great hindsight (?) some now claim, the initial responses were the result of high level panic coupled with political motivation. Could it be that we responded in a tactical sense based on complete lack of understanding as to the nature of the problem and defaulted to what we knew – a 20th Century mix of two violent world wars and a fifty year Cold War?

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

MAJ. GEN. ROBERT H. SCALES (RET.)
It's that time again. About once a decade, the military services attempt to reform how they educate officers. This time, the catalyst is a series of Senate and House hearings on how well the services educate officers. The Defense Science Board will begin a study on military education reform soon. The defense intellectual blogosphere is electric with calls for reform. Other creative ideas for reform will follow in the coming days. And all will fail.

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