Haiti – Essence of Decision – Operation Unified Response

In attempt to establish a framework for discussion of the many facets of the Haiti disaster, and as a precursor  to addressing the question – What kind of a community or organization –or indeed, group of organizations – can survive and thrive in unconventional, uncertain and severe crisis environments? - multiple articles from varying perspectives on Operation Unified Response  are being posted on  DaVinci's Horse,  the Facebook Page.

•  Note:You do not have to be a Facebook Member to view the page and follow the links to articles.Facebook may present an interim page with requirement to click  Continue.  To go to DvH , after following a link click the page tab rather than using the back arrow.

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

 As stated previously this site is not specifically focused on war and warfare, and most specifically, it has never been intended as one providing political commentary.  The "kind of war" – as essential element of  information- series is being extended because today's war,  how we define it, and how we defend our country in that defined context is a critical element of survival in our tightly coupled system in unstable equillibrium  world. (PWH Edition #8, DaVinci's Horse 5 by Dag von Lubitz)

To whatever extent you  believe or not von Clauswitz's "war as extension of politics by other means," the political arenas of the world and war are certainly intertwined beyond separation.  In this kind of war – whatever "this"  is -  a critical difference beween kinds is noted by the fact that there is no political entity on the other side to negotiate with to come to terms for cessation of conflict.  The war then continues so long as one side desires to carry out attacks. This is very distinctly different from the kind of war of Roosevelt's World War II or Lincoln's War Between the States.  How then do we win in the "war on terrorism", how then do we make this end?  What are the boundary conditions of victory, defeat, co-existence, survival?

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010, The Washington Post Writers Group. He is a noted conservative writer and the Townhall.com article below  is very obviously a political OPED, but no matter your political affiliation or opinion on the current administration's action, his points of distinction about "kind of war" need to be considered critically.

War? What War?

The Obama administration refuses to admit that we are at war.

By Charles Krauthammer

Janet Napolitano — former Arizona governor, now overmatched secretary of homeland security — will forever be remembered for having said of the attempt to bring down an airliner over Detroit: "The system worked."

The attacker's concerned father had warned U.S. authorities about his son's jihadist tendencies. The would-be bomber paid cash and checked no luggage on a transoceanic flight. He was nonetheless allowed to fly, and would have killed 288 people in the air alone, save for a faulty detonator and quick actions by a few passengers.

Heck of a job, Brownie.

The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration's response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism "man-caused disasters." Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management.

And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term "war on terror." It's over — that is, if it ever existed.

Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term "asymmetric warfare."

And produces linguistic — and logical — oddities that littered Obama's public pronouncements following the Christmas Day attack. In his first statement, Obama referred to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as "an isolated extremist." This is the same president who, after the Ford Hood shooting, warned us "against jumping to conclusions" — code for daring to associate Nidal Hasan's mass murder with his Islamist ideology. Yet, with Abdulmutallab, Obama jumped immediately to the conclusion, against all existing evidence, that the bomber acted alone.

More jarring still were Obama's references to the terrorist as a "suspect" who "allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device." You can hear the echo of FDR: "Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor."

Obama reassured the nation that this "suspect" had been charged. Reassurance? The president should be saying: We have captured an enemy combatant — an illegal combatant under the laws of war: no uniform, direct attack on civilians — and now to prevent future attacks, he is being interrogated regarding information he may have about al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Instead, Abdulmutallab is dispatched to some Detroit-area jail and immediately lawyered up. At which point — surprise! — he stops talking.

This absurdity renders hollow Obama's declaration that "we will not rest until we find all who were involved." Once we've given Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, we have gratuitously forfeited our right to find out from him precisely who else was involved, namely those who trained, instructed, armed, and sent him.

This is all quite mad even in Obama's terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.

The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.

The president said that this incident highlights "the nature of those who threaten our homeland." But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as "extremist(s)."

A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali, and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and they are openly pledged to wage war on America.

Any government can through laxity let someone slip through the cracks. But a government that refuses to admit that we are at war, indeed, refuses even to name the enemy — jihadist is a word banished from the Obama lexicon — turns laxity into a governing philosophy.

On September 11, the evacuation was real. A fireball erupted in the nearby tower, and all of Morgan Stanley's employees were making their way down and out of the other tower. By the time the second hijacked airliner hit the south tower at 9:07 a.m., most of the company's employees were out. But Rescorla's work was not finished. Three employees were missing. Rescorla and two assistants went back to look for them. Rescorla was last seen on the tenth floor of the burning tower. He died when the building collapsed a short time later. But he had saved thousands of lives. Out of 3,700 employees, Morgan Stanley lost only six, including Rescorla.

Rescorla continued his concern and planned for and forced Morgan Stanley employees to practice evacuation like school children. Almost 3000 died on September the 11th, 2001, but 3700 lived because Rescorla ignored the Port Authority's direction to stay in place after American Airlines Flight 11 impacted the first tower, and evacuated his people. He had managed a crisis before it became a crisis – a disaster.
Please read Rick Rescorla's story – a story of the DAY - The Real Heros Are Dead

08:46:40

September 11, 2001

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

"Man is a peculiarly constructed animal who cannot read the handwriting on the wall, until his back is up against it." Unknown

 TAMPA - Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, speaking at the America Association of State Troopers Law Enforcement Training Conference asked law enforcement officials Monday if they're ready for a hurricane.

 From the St. Petersburg Times:  (Inpart) Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, the man widely credited with restoring order to a chaotic post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, has a word of warning for Floridians who believe they have hurricanes figured out.

"The people in Florida think they're smarter than the people in Louisiana," the retired Army general who commanded Joint Task Force Katrina said Monday, addressing law enforcement officers at Tampa Airport Marriott. "No, you're not. You just haven't been hit by a Katrina."

 Speaking before the National Law Enforcement Training Conference, which goes through Wednesday (August 12, 2009), Honore said complacency is the greatest challenge communities face when it comes to disaster preparedness.

 His new book, SURVIVAL: How a Culture of Preparedness Can Save You and Your Family from Disasters, (Atria Books, 304 pages, $25.00) – part memoir, part how-to manual – focuses on the responsibility of the individual to be ready in the face of disaster.

"My concern with Florida is the last time you really got smacked hard was Andrew," Honore said."I'm telling you," Honore said, "there's an a—whipping coming for Florida."

Besides raising the flag over hurricane readiness, Honore predicted the H1N1 flu, or swine flu, will pose an increasingly significant challenge to the United States in the coming months and year, especially as football season begins, drawing large crowds together on a regular basis.

"We're not ready," he said. "I don't think we've spent the time getting the country ready and I don't think the country has spent the time getting the states ready."

Local governments, he said, need to start warning citizens now about how they will administer vaccinations to various populations and age groups once a high-demand vaccine is developed and, more than likely, is in short supply.

Additionally, there needs to be a culture shift in the American workplace, he said. Employees who experience symptoms associated with the pandemic strain should be encouraged to stay at home without risk of being penalized by their bosses.

 "We've been talking about this for years," he said of the pandemic. "This is no stranger to people familiar with pandemic scenarios. But what we haven't done is talk to the public.

In The Resilience Doctrine, we argue that globalization is both unstable and inevitable, and that governments have little choice but to build collaborative platforms to manage risk. We conclude with a dozen guidelines for building an international system fit for the 21st century.

The introduction …

In a Time of Crisis – In the past year, we have witnessed a global emergency, with the world experiencing the worst economic meltdown since the 1930s. This crisis will not be a one-off. Over the next 20 years, we will be confronted with a series of systemic and interlocking risks that will cross national borders with alacrity. As a result, the divide between domestic and international policy will largely be erased.

To carve out a strategic response to these risks requires huge effort. Our assumptions about the world were formed in another age and are ill-suited to contemporary challenges. The international system, meanwhile, is inveterately short-term in its outlook, national governments are myopic and complacent, and the media is unforgiving towards politicians who fail to conform to the dictates of an increasingly frenetic news cycle.

Leaders therefore need a new lens through which they can view the task of creating security in the 21st century. The projection of power, and attempts to balance the power of others, no longer provides a useful perspective. Instead, the concept of resilience should be at the heart of a new doctrine for managing transnational risk and global instability.

Resilience offers a guiding principle for informing strategy and animating alliances. It also provides a yardstick for measuring success. At present, much of what governments do internationally inadvertently increases vulnerability. This must change if globalization is to be saved from itself.

By Captain Charlie Meinema

Tacoma Washington Police Department

Disasters may be local, but few are.  Even local disasters are not local, as Yogi Berra might say.   This is often because criminals, explosions, terrorists and fires fail to respect jurisdictional borders, and / or because the crisis – even if inside one geographical or jurisdictional boundary – is too big for any one agency to handle with troops available at the time of the incident.  We staff according to anticipated 'normal' work load.  Any major event immediately stresses the system, because we have to send pretty much all we have and that leaves everything else insecure.   We just can not staff to crisis level unless we are SURE the crisis will occur – and when do we know that?  After it has happened.  

>> This is one problem constantly besetting the Israelis.  In the period 1969 / '73, the Arab nations – especially the short lived United Arab Republic of Syria and Egypt – practiced a policy of 'no war / no peace' toward Israel.  There was – like today – constant agitation, raids, small incidents, and every fall large 'war game' exercises in western Egypt and Syria.  Israel routinely activated a significant percentage of reserves when raids reached a certain frequency and / or to offset the potential of the large annual war games, since Israel knew that their neighbors were only waiting for the right moment.  However, the cost of such heightened levels of activation became overwhelming to Israel.  Israel stopped the raised activation level during the fall 'war games,' due largely to the cost of the deployments.  

This of course was what the Arabs were awaiting and in 1973 the 'normal war games' were held on the west bank of the Suez Canal.  The Israelis did not make significant additional activations of reserves, because 'they do this every year.'  1973 was different.  On Yom Kippur the Egyptians cut through the berms on the east side of the Suez Canal and the Yom Kippur War was launched.   Israel simply could not afford to keep staffing to a level appropriate to meet the threat unless they KNEW the threat was real on a particular occasion.

 We are all in this situation.  We live our lives day by day and the Devil waits for but a moment – but his moment spans far beyond our lifetimes.  The threat is always there, but we can not afford to staff sufficiently to address it on a daily basis.   

The 'normal' crisis (e.g. Lakewood, a suburb of Tacoma, just experienced a homicide / robbery of an armored car guard inside a major department store.) may be local to Pierce County, Washington, but may span 05 police jurisdictions and as many fire districts. 

One result of the 'squad' or 'all crisis is local crisis' mentality is 'chasing the pain.'  Post operative pain medications are meant to be taken on schedule to PREVENT pain from becoming disabling (help me out here, Dr. von Lubitz).  People are told not to wait until they hurt – get ahead of the pain, don't chase the pain – to take the pain meds because the meds take some time to begin to work.   If someone / agency thinks, 'I can handle this,' and he / they find they can not 'handle it,' the unnecessary delays in obtaining, briefing, deploying the help can result in a greatly increased level of 'pain,' as in New Orleans.    

If we experience a disaster in just one jurisdiction, we still likely have to deal with multiple departments within that one jurisdiction to handle it.  The problem still may require seeking outside help in the future of the event.  We would always be ahead if we not only trained to work together but also had an automatic briefing / notification system to alert nearby agencies of each other's big issues as they emerge.   This would allow the groundwork for effective interaction when and if it is needed.  (e.g. On the small scale compared to the nation, the county wherein Tacoma dwells was 'host' to a large gathering of an outlaw motorcycle gang at one of their taverns.  This was an intentional display for turf and for recruiting – the bikers were in full colors and the party was in the parking lot of the tavern next to a major street.  Although the tavern hosting the event was 02 – 03 miles outside the city, the swing shift commander for TPD contacted his opposite number for Pierce County to determine how we would provide assistance if something were to erupt, such as another gang driving past the tavern and shooting – a plausible issue given motorcycle gang turf and dominance issues in the state recently).

Further, the contact gave the TPD commander a direct line from county on where the group was going when it left the tavern.  'tis always good to know if 40 – 60 bikers in full colors are motoring into your town before they get there.  However, had this gone badly, we would have had officers from other cities and the state patrol arriving to help in short order.   We do not have any automatic incident notification system that would tell ALL nearby agencies of the situation and which could be updated to include direction for responders.   Working on it.).  

A problem that probably hits us all is the scope of the disaster and appropriate assessment of crisis.  "How bad is it, really?"   Inevitably, after some major debacle we have reports of people who DID accurately predict the incident, attack,…., but could not get a serious hearing from anyone in position to make a difference.    Sometimes this is because the predictors – like the seers of old – said there would be an attack, but could not say where or when with any degree of certainty.   They only attain prescience in retrospect – and we have all probably met a few of these folks.   By contrast, sometimes disasters happen and the initial reports are accurate, but are not given sufficient weight.  The response is insufficient and the disaster – which might have been contained – grows out of control. 

[In the recent terrorist attack in Mumbai, I am sure initial intelligence reports / assessments were confusing.  Responses were not in scope to the level of attack.  Worse, the troops responding were using weapons they had almost never shot and suffered problems in coordination, …    I do not disparage Mumbai Police / military.  Any one facing what Mumbai faced is going to have a very bad time of it.  However, getting a handle on how big / bad the problem is as soon as possible is critical.]

For every legitimate disaster we have multiple Chicken Littles yelling 'The sky is falling. The sky is falling,' in regards to relatively minor issues.   We have to develop the ability to make rapid and accurate determinations of the level of crisis to trigger the appropriate level of response as quickly as possible.  . 

The military analogy to the above is having a plan for incorporating reinforcements / augmentations into the battle without loss of coordination.  Each squad has to fight as a squad (and often each man in the squad only knows what the squaddie to his right or left is doing at best), but it needs to be aware of at least what the squad on either side of it is doing, in case it has to defend a flank if their neighbor is overrun or has to detach a couple of riflemen or machine gun / mortar crew to reinforce a squad getting hit hard next to it.   No officer should go into battle without knowing some idea of what will need to be done, how do we proceed to the forward edge, where do we go, what do we need to prepare, how will we exploit a sudden opening, where is the rally point,.. ,if the enemy fails to react as expected – something the unpleasant enemy has a habit of doing.

All this is a lot of coordination even if we are on the attack.  'tis all that much harder when adversaries attack us.  If we fail to assess enemy strength and assume an assault is only a probe or the famous 'reconnaissance in force,' we are courting disaster.  The penny packet reinforcements sent will be gobbled up as they arrive and the crisis will only get worse.  If we make the right assessment and an effective deployment of reinforcements in strength coupled with combined arms support, we can – hopefully – stop the attack or at least minimize the damage.

In the civilian world, we are almost always on the defensive.   We can not eradicate a threat before it strikes.  We can not plan to attack a specific problem – we can and must develop the best possible plans for general responses.  In the modern world, such plans would not be old fashioned plans as we know them, but effective preparation for and use of the 'teams of leaders' concept and related ideas. 

In our world we have done a better job of determining generally what is available and how to request it in the past few years.  Alas, we still tend to await the actual crisis to have any serious work on what is needed at that moment in that situation, and how to integrate it effectively into our reaction without unnecessary loss of time and effectiveness.  We are still.'chasing the pain,' and the patients often suffer..

The goal of emergency and crisis response is to reduce output variability in a context in which inputs are highly variable; to that end, crisis response is, in part, about creating an orderly arena within a chaotic environment. ... research on High Reliability Organizations (HROs) has suggested that some complex, hazard-managing organizations, for which failure is not an option, can do precisely this through a process of relentless preoccupation with failure and ongoing training for the unexpected … Observations of HROs provide an important bridge between traditional organizational leadership and decision-making under complex conditions and the extraordinary complexity of the transboundary event such as a pandemic or a natural or anthropogenic disaster.

>> What follows is a portion of the introduction to Transboundary Crisis, Transboundary Thinking, and the Team of Leaders (ToL) Approach: The H1N1 Case, by PWH advisor Dr. Dag von Lubitz of MEDSMART, and Dr. M. Jude Egan, Stephensen Disaster Management Institute, Lousisiana State University. (PWH Note: Opening quote from concluding remarks)

The typical transboundary event distributes impacts over multiple jurisdictions at once such that simply drawing a wider command ring around the impacted areas cannot "contain" its location. Transboundary events are, thus, by definition, multijurisdictional and nonlocal; they often involve "whole of government" response..

 In turn, as demand outstrips the county units' capacity, the incident commander sends out a request for assistance to neighboring counties, each of which faces its own similar wind and fuel conditions. They respond and serve under the Santa Barbara County incident commander. As the fire and conditions intensify, the county calls for state help and it establishes unified command composed of local, county and state fire, law enforcement and government officials. The Governor declares a disaster and reaches out, if the situation overwhelms state resources, to the President. Ultimately, the President brings federal resources to bear under the unified command structure, until they extinguish the fire. This same command structure may also be applied to similar localized events that may turn into disaster – such as earthquakes, weak hurricanes, and floods – layers of responders serve under the local incident command, command remaining local because local officials know residents, capacities and terrain best.  (PWH emphasis added)

But disasters are growing increasingly large and urban areas are at once growing increasingly dense and dispersed, meaning that the impacts of a single event are likely to be felt in multiple jurisdictions at once. These events have been called "transboundary" (PWH -see original footnote as inset below) crises (Boin and Egan, in press) because they trigger parallel responses from parallel jurisdictions that may call upon the same layers of outsiders for support, including state, federal, private and NVOAD entities.

We use the term "transboundary" in three ways: 1) impacting more than one political, geographic or legal jurisdictions; 2) impacting or requiring response from more than one agency, governmental or national sphere or silo of influence; 3) implicating two or more potentially conflicting legal rules or procedures, whether statutory, common law or procedural. Thus, a transboundary crisis is one that impacts multiple political or legal communities such as a hurricane that makes landfall at the Texas-Louisiana border, while transboundary response may implicate several traditional action "silos" such as FEMA, HUD, ICE, the US military and local law enforcement 

... Increasing social vulnerability to natural and human-made hazards expands the nature and character of response operations presenting a massive coordination problem: it can pit governmental response efforts against one another as they compete for zero-sum outside support resources – Texas and Louisiana, for example, competed for available private sector resources during the Hurricane Gustav and Ike response efforts (Egan, in press). In response, there is increasing need for a new readiness model that emphasizes both an increased flexibility and deployment readiness in local and particular environments while understanding and working toward realizing the overall mission (von Lubitz, this volume; Bradford and Brown, 2008). Because federal laws often conflict with state and local laws, and the goals of one agency may differ from others; these conflicts are areas where lawyers traditionally litigate, and the threat litigation is the ultimate in paralysis for response operations. Law may thus, in fact, increase social vulnerability by reducing public and private sector response capacity. Therefore, the presence of lawyers, from multiple jurisdictions, in a facilitative manner, is a key to avoiding the litigation mentality and its attendant paralysis.

Where a wildfire is the classic local disaster, a pandemic is the ultimate transboundary event. The pandemic originates in a single point of origin and becomes a global concern, outstripping local, state and federal resources, from the infection of "patient zero." Traditional ICS immediately becomes overwhelmed and may actually hinder efforts to limit the spread of the illness by requiring local responders to understand that their capacities are overwhelmed before they have identified the nature of the disease.

The need for expertise in a novel virus outbreak is immediate, but by the time local officials understand that an outbreak is the beginning of a pandemic, the disease will have crossed through many jurisdictions, as the H1N1 virus did in the first several weeks of its publicity, and all efforts to contain it locally are rendered moot.

The transboundary nature of the pandemic, thus, requires transboundary thinking from the outset; that is, it is not enough to develop a response plan based purely on containment through quarantine or treatment based on injection-delivered vaccines that suggest that officials could stay in front of a fast-moving virus, the planning must include the assumption that such a virus will already have spread throughout much of the world by the time patient zero has been identified.

Response strategies must engage the whole of government from the inception; this include thinking through legal ramifications, conflicts of laws, and developing approaches that are both flexible and adaptive and honor the rule of law.

________________________________________________________

Full article- white paper –  is one of 35 published in Collaboration in the National Security Arena: Myths and Reality- What Science and Experience Can Contribute to it's Success.

It is a product of the Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment (SMA) effort. For those not familiar with SMA, it provides planning support to Commands with complex operational imperatives requiring multi-agency, multi-disciplinary solutions that are NOT within core Service/Agency competency. Solutions and participants are sought across USG. SMA is accepted and synchronized by Joint Staff and executed by STRATCOM/GISC and OSD/DDRE/RRTO.

Culture:  The sum of attitudes, customs, and beliefs that distinguishes one group of people from another. Culture is transmitted, through language, material objects, ritual, institutions, and art, from one generation to the next.

This post is intended to set the stage for a new group of FORUM articles/discussions expanding on the recently introduced Culture of Preparedness thread.

Since first publication in Fall 2006, Project White Horse 084640 has focused on providing multiple and varied perspectives on severe crisis environments and the decision making processes required.  With the introduction of the "resilient community" concept as a major theme, we began usage of this FORUM to bring multiple discussions and articles between editions with intent to move beyond "perspective" to exploration of workable approaches for "survival on our own terms." (Boyd)

The latest edition offers that a culture of preparedness is the necessary link between the threat generated environment (whether by accident, acts of nature, or purfoseful acts of man) and the threatened community. We have offered multiple perspectives to assist in understanding the problem, but one must ask, what actually defines a resilient community, what are the quantifiable ingredients, what is the make up of this culture, we state that we need?

Consider the following, borrowed from Department of Defense definitions:

Essential Elements of Information:  The critical items of information regarding the enemy and the environment needed by the commander by a particular time to relate with other available information and intelligence in order to assist in reaching a logical decision – required to plan and execute an operation.

These next FORUM offerings will expand the original PWH theme-defining triangle of worst case events, time criticality , and leader team response by offering multiple "elements of essential information" that seem inherent yet not necessarily obvious – in the makeup of a Culture of Preparedness.

As always your thoughts and inputs on the elements and future inclusions will be most welcome at projectwhitehorseatroadrunnerdotcom.

I'm very pleased to announce that Project White Horse 084640 Edition #8 – A Culture of Preparedness and Intersectional Ideas  – is now on line.

The last two editions have provided perspective on "resilient communities" and leadership required. In Edition #8 we shift from providing "perspective" to creating actionable understanding and answers. The first part of the Edition #8 focus (and) title borrows from General Russ Honore's stated goal – developing a culture of preparedness. As Russ's words have been featured on the site, having "a culture…" seems to highlight the very essence of developing and nurturing a resilient community. As such, "culture of preparedness" can be seen to complete a "strong triangle" with the additional sides of "resilient communities," and Team of leaders. Faced with severe crisis, that model demands creative approaches. We must look beyond the norm to multiple fields and experience bases and find ideas and answers at the intersections.

Intersectional ideas are those resulting from combining concepts from multiple fields – areas of specialization gained through education and experience – as compared to those created traditionally by combing concepts within a field – noted as directional ideas. Success in intersectional idea generation is dependent upon breaking down barriers of association that would more than likely indicate a "non relationship" or at best limited context between or among fields.

To date, the site has consisted of the electronic magazine website and a Forum for posting of articles between editions. Based on the above, INTERSECTIONS now becomes a third element of PWH. This intersection will be created by providing the thinking of a group with multiple and diverse backgrounds, including medicine, first response, intelligence, academia, and military with experience from Great Britain, Israel, service in both Iraq and Afghanistan and on mean street USA. The content will be operational threads selected for potential to increase actionable understanding. The following two topics have been under discussion and the dialogue provided:

1. Actionable Intelligence and Resilient Communities
2. Training Decision Makers to the "Ace' Level

Please see the Editors Note and the article introductions for more detail and to put this edition in the context of actionable tools – useable by emergency responders, private sector organizations and citizens in the process of building a culture of preparedness. Most assuredly you will find perspectives and intersections. You will find understanding that can be acted upon. You will find answers.

A final note: Given the obvious, finding a picture of a leader on a white horse will surprise no one, but in this case there is more, there is purpose. While there are many representations of those who have been America's leaders throughout our history, including scores of George Washington as commander of the Continental Army and as our first President, the depiction of Washington with his troops, having crossed the Delaware and moving toward the attack at Trenton is, to me, iconic reflection of leadership in severe crisis, His adaptability and audacity after three major defeats saved not only the spirit of the Continental Army, it provided the underpinning that would remain through the victory at Yorktown. In so doing as General Nathanael Greene would say "he will be the deliverer of his own country." A century later, in a classic study of the Revolution, Sir George Otto Trevelyan stated "It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever deployed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world."

It was he who held the army together and gave it spirit through the most desperate of times… not a brilliant strategist or tactician, not a gifted orator, not an intellectual… (but) above all, Washington never forgot what was at stake and he never gave up … again and again in letters to Congress and his officers calling for unremitting courage and perseverance. 1776 by David McCullough

Noted as one of the world's 100 most decisive battles, the Battle of Trenton was most certainly testimony to General Washington's perseverance. He would not quit on the fragile American dream. In the sense of William Shakespeare's Henry V, I submit it is America's Agincourt moment – we few we band of brothers.

As stated in the previous edition, our forefathers by their actions in 1776 placed this country forever at the "dawn of victory." That victory demands perseverance in the face of great crisis and turmoil. It will be found in "a culture of preparedness."

Please join us at Project White Horse 084640

Ed @ PWH
29 April. 2009