Combat Advising: Midwifery

Great article on the Strategy Page entitled "Why Iraqis Still Fight Like Arabs" (H/t: Mudville Gazette) The article highlights the (ofttimes seemingly insurmountable) cultural gap between the US and Iraqi militaries. We (the US military) are hostile and resistant to change; we are pikers compared to the Iraqis, though. The article examines Iraqi military culture through their ineptness at dealing with IEDs, but the traits revealed are true across the spectrum of military endeavors. I find the article reinforces most of my personal findings over the years in dealing with Arabs (and we all know how wonderful it is to find external validation for our preconceived notions). While I find the article is accurate in general, I thought it interesting comparing and contrasting with my current experience with the Federal Police, here and now, specifically:

Article:

Islamic schools favor rote memorization, especially of scripture. Most Islamic scholars are hostile to the concept of interpreting the Koran (considered the word of God as given to His prophet Mohammed). This has resulted in looking down on Western troops that will look something up that they don't know. Arabs prefer to fake it, and pretend it's all in their head. Improvisation and innovation is generally discouraged. Arab armies go by the book, Western armies rewrite the book and thus usually win. Despite years of American advice on this matter, many Iraqi police and military personnel stick with the old, less effective, traditions.

Me: This seems pretty accurate. We've found a decent success rate with pre-loading our counterparts with books/manuals, although we'll usually simplify products to the subject at hand down to just a checklist or handout, and distribute and carry ourselves checklists in both English and Arabic. We then, over time, condition our counterparts that on any given topic, they will see the same checklist over and over again. Initially, exposing them to any form to which they will have to commit an answer or fact (in ink, for the love of God!) on paper generates a great deal of stress. After a while though, they get into their comfort zone and can be reasonably relied upon to generate the information required or follow the established checklist sequence--especially if the form/checklist has enabled them to be perceived as "successful" before.

Article:

There is no real NCO corps. Officers and enlisted troops are treated like two different social castes and there is no effort to bridge the gap using career NCOs. Enlisted personnel are treated harshly. Training accidents that would end the careers of US officers are commonplace in Arab armies, and nobody cares. This is slowly changing, with the steady growth of a proper NCO corps and better officer attitudes towards their troops. But the old ways often return, with disastrous effects on troop morale and effectiveness.

Me: There is an NCO corps in the IFP, and some of our NCO shurta are actually pretty good. However, the NCOs get paid the same as the privates, so one of our biggest obstacles is getting shurta NCOs to stand up and take charge (and inherit all the headaches inherent in leadership) when there is no remuneration for doing so. When the chips are down, though, the enlisted leadership--both formal and informal--will usually step up and take charge, often on the basis of "because I'm bigger and stronger and I say so." Also, while the unit gets deplorable support from higher, unit leadership evinces strong, genuine concern for the shurtas' health and welfare. This has resulted, at least in the Knights' Raid Brigade, in relatively high unit identification and morale.

Article:

Officers are despised by their troops, and this does not bother the officers much at all. Many Arab officers simply cannot understand how treating the troops decently will make them better soldiers. This is another old tradition that dies hard.
and
Americans are taught leadership and technology; Arab officers are taught only technology. Leadership is given little attention as officers are assumed to know this by virtue of their social status as officers. The new generation of Iraqi officers and NCOs have been taught leadership, but for too many of them, this is an alien concept that they do not understand or really know what to do with.

Me: While the officers definitely have a different relationship to the troops than anything we're used to, I've got to say that my guys understand and value the role of the officer as leader. The Brigade Commander hails from a tribe with strong Beduin roots, so his idea of "leadership" definitely reflects the desert raider mentality (in line with the brigade's name, which literally translated is "the Raid of the Knights"). His leadership style (and expectations of his subordinates) is akin to that of a medieval warlord, who treats his men well but expects absolute loyalty in return. Rather than being "despised by his troops", he has established within the unit a cult of personality--which of course presents its own problems.

Article:

While American officers thrive on competition among themselves, Arab officers avoid this as the loser would be humiliated. Better for everyone to fail together than for competition to be allowed, even if it eventually benefits everyone. Still a factor.

Me: My guys are not real big on failure. Instead of "all failing together," they will marginalize weak or incompetent leaders, and while continuing to pay full deference to their rank, keep them out of the decision making/mission execution cycle. There is definitely a preference for "all winning together" over "all failing together." For example, in the operations shop, I have one O6 (full colonel) whose sole job is to take written orders from the "current operations" stack and, upon completion of the mission, bind them into notebooks for historical record keeping. Meanwhile, a young and extremely competent lieutenant colonel runs operations. Because of his proven history of success, he has the latitude to make and implement decisions far above what any O6 in the unit has. Within well-defined limits, of course.

Article:

Initiative is considered a dangerous trait. So subordinates prefer to fail rather than make an independent decision. Battles are micromanaged by senior generals, who prefer to suffer defeat rather than lose control of their subordinates. Even worse, an Arab officer will not tell a US ally why he cannot make the decision (or even that he cannot make it), leaving US officers angry and frustrated because the Arabs won't make a decision. The Arab officers simply will not admit that they do not have that authority. The new generation of army commanders and staff officers have been sent to Western staff and command schools, but there's still not a lot of enthusiasm for initiative (which is seen as a decadent and dangerous Western import.)

Me: Absolutely. I have seen division- and corps-level commanders huddled over a map, deciding where each individual vehicle will go in the cordon of a search operation. One of the values of the US Combat Advisory chain of command is that we can often reach up, through US advisors, and influence a more senior Iraqi commander to make a necessary decision and push it down before demanding an answer from a subordinate makes the top of his head explode followed by spontaneous combustion. We've discovered that, for example, if 1st Platoon is searching streets A through F, but has only received orders to search A&B, he will not move until ordered to do so. Even if the platoon leader knows he is going to eventually have to move to C,D,E, and F, he is rooted at the Street B limit of advance until he is ordered forward. This can be ameliorated through comprehensive discussions during rehearsals, but too many branches and sequels (still comprising a pretty basic set of instructions) will lead to confusion, doubt, and ultimately the same inaction we were trying to preclude. The key is knowing the partner unit well enough to know who is capable of making what level of decisions, and ensuring that you know how to reach that guy. It is better to leave a junior leader in place and spend 20 minutes to an hour hunting down the "right guy" for a decision than to try to berate, cajole, or threaten a junior leader into doing his job. If the guy is lower than battalion commander, the less you make him think, the better.

Article:

Lack of initiative makes it difficult for Arab armies to maintain modern weapons. Complex modern weapons require on the spot maintenance, and that means delegating authority, information, and tools. Arab armies avoid doing this and prefer to use easier to control central repair shops. This makes the timely maintenance of weapons difficult. Still a problem in Iraq, and throughout the Middle East.

Me: Uh, Federal Police don't have complicated weapons systems. Kalashnikov series weapons are about as high speed as they get (barring ad hoc weapons). Where we bump into maintenance issues is primarily with vehicles. Especially the Humvees. Especially the Humvees that we told them not to buy. Especially the Humvees that we told them not to buy because they don't have the parts on hand or logistics to maintain them. However, the Humvees considerably increase the survivability of the average shurta, so I can understand their ardour for the vehicles. Still, since they don't have the system to maintain their vehicles, but we do, then obviously we could square them away if we wanted to (when in fact, we would go to jail). When we don't square them away--i.e., increase their chances of living through the operation--even though we could "if we wanted to," this generates some real resentment. I think they would maintain their fleet better if they had the systems in place to do so, but the question is academic since their logistics apparatus is totally--what's the word? oh yeah--fucked.

There are some good points I didn't touch on in the article. While my experiences here and now are a little different, the article does a great job of describing the difficulties involved in trying to midwife a modern security capability in the Middle East. And just think, the Iraqis are waaaay more modern and sophisticated than the Afghans...

Getting Technical

Take a Soviet-made ZSU 23-4 anti-aircraft gun. Split off one of the four 23mm guns, mount it on the back of a Dodge pick-up, and you've got a "technical" that is a Somali warlord's wet dream. Contrary to what I initially thought, when the boys test-fired this thing 1) all the windows didn't blow out, 2) the pintle and mounting pylon stayed secure, and 3) the truck didn't flip over. While the whole set-up is ingenious, I have nightmares about what'll happen if my guys ever let rip inside the city with this thing...

16 AUG Street Scenes

Are posted over at the Team blog.

And yes, I know I double tapped a pic. I am just a simple caveman; this whole internet thing can be very confusing

Walking Back The Naked Man Snark

Okay, I've frequently--and rhetorically--asked the question: so what are the odds I'll ever have to fight somebody when one or both of the combatants is already sweaty and nekkid. Apparently, this scenario, while improbable, is not impossible.

They were forced to strip off their clothes and told to perform sexual acts when the male victim, described as a physically fit member of the military in his mid-30s, wrestled the gun away.

"He beat him until the stock broke over his head and then continued to beat him until he thought he had him incapacitated,"

via Drudge

Of Metal and Meat

Great article dissecting the pro's and con's of various combat calibers.
The 5.56 mm round comes off rather well. I'm not so sure, for all the reasons listed in the article. I'm not a huge fan of the 5.56.
One comment that piqued my interest was

Much experimentation has taken place to develop the "perfect bullet" and at present it appears to be something between 6mm and 7mm.

Word on the street from Huggy Bear is that USSOCOM is fielding new upper receivers for the M4 that chamber a 6.68 mm round. Would love to hear the feedback on those.
One important point on round development is that, in this blogger's humble opinion, you cannot discuss the "goodness" of various calibers in combat without acknowledging the revolution in optics that the military provides its servicemen. Most sights now are "aiming dot" type optics, in which the aiming point is the focus of a parabolic lens. Used to be, soldiers had to line up the iron sights of the weapon, and had to have the correct "sight picture" in order to actually hit the target. In fact, "sight picture" was one of the three fundamentals of shooting (the other two being breath control and trigger squeeze). So, the soldier's eye, the rear sight aperture, and the front sight post all had to be in line for the soldier to hit the target. And the soldier had to do it the exact same way every time, with his head in the exact same position in relation to the sights of the weapon. Now, when the troop puts the aiming dot on the target, that is where the round will strike (given that he doesn't hork up breathing or trigger squeeze) no matter what the relief of his eye to the sight is. This makes potentially problematic rounds, like the 5.56 mm, extremely more effective, since round placement on the target (nice word for "bad guy") is going to be consistently better.

Making The Best of The Worst Case Scenario

I've seen a theme on internet sites featuring classical martial artists and reality-based martial artists that denigrate Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or groundfighting altogether. Most bring up some valid points:
-groundfighting on a hard surface is significantly different than doing so on a mat.
-groundfighting against multiple opponents (especially if some of them haven't hit the ground yet) is a lost cause.
-groundfighting strategies reduce mobility to unacceptable levels.
-in a real fight, reducing one's opponent and while remaining on one's feet is a winning fight strategy.

All of these are good points. And Lord knows, I've groused about the shortfalls of strictly BJJ or even MMA skills in a real fight. But--

-I don't plan on getting in a real fight. I've got pretty good people skills (okay, I've been well-trained in de-escalating a potentially violent situation, how's that?), a well-managed temper, and nothing to prove to anybody. So why would I ever get in a fight?
-If I do get into a fight, I definitely do not plan on being unarmed, whether I'm carrying a firearm, a knife, or any of a wide range of less-than-lethal tools that I own and with which I have extensive training.
-If the planets align for that once in a lifetime kismet induced situation where I do get into a fight and I am unarmed, I certainly do not plan to "go to the ground." I do plan on 50% of the participants in the fight going to the ground (ballistically), but not me.

So, if all of that has gone wrong, and I'm in a fight mano a mano (heaven forfend), why would I assume that I'm not going end up on the ground?
A lot went wrong if I'm in a fight.
A lot went wrong if I'm unarmed.
A lot went wrong if I'm on the ground.
At that point, how important is it that I can acquit myself well?
"Ah," says the gimlet-eyed skeptic,"but you have created a slippery slope coursing down which one can rack up all kinds of training requirements, and at the end of the day you don't have enough time to train every skill you'll need to defend yourself through the gamut of worst-case scenarios."
This is true. But I don't need as much time on the rifle and pistol ranges to build proficiency as I do on the mats. Bullets are wonderful things, and there's no training to "counter" a bullet. The first rule I learned for knife-fighting was KISS; again less training time required. Striking and throwing skills are more training/technique intensive, so yes, I dedicate the appropriate percentage of training time to them.
The survivability training paradigm I'm trying to articulate is: firearms, a couple of hours per month (I know, it should be more, and has to be for real pistolero status, but I'm talking survival, here). Blades (and kinetic/ballistic non-lethals), a couple of hours per week. Unarmed, a couple of hours per day (of which groundfighting is a significant percentage).
Thing is, while I spend more time on the unarmed (least likely/desireable) scenario, it is my considered opinion that a significant portion of the efficacy of those hours translates up, and helps with the other skill sets.
For example, shooting: proper breathing is of paramount importance--make that "proper breathing under extreme duress" is of paramount importance. I can guarantee that regular, quality groundfight training will improve the breath-control dimension of one's shooting game. Knife fighting: kinesthetic awareness is extremely important; you have to know--without necessarily being able to see--what your opponent is doing at his extremities, and what he is capable of doing given the relationship of his body to yours. Striking and throwing: same deal, plus one has to remember that economy of force and economy of effort is key if the fight is going to last more than 17 seconds (remember, you started your day believing there was no way you'd get in a fight, period). Pepper spray: okay, I'd have to think for a while to come up with a crosswalk from jiujits to pepper spray, but you get the picture.

So, What Do We Call It Now?

Haven't seen whether there is a DOD-approved replacement moniker for "The War on Terror." So what do we call it, now?
Seems like there might be a little more going on than just Iraq and Afghanistan, is all I'm sayin'.

Terrorist News Network

You may notice that every now and then I'll pull from Al Jazeera's English language news site.
Hate to say it, but on US domestic reporting they are as (or more) impartial and well-reasoned as any of the US mainstream media. So, I give them as much credence as the rest of the mainstream media on most of its reporting.

Granted, that isn't much.

Bullshit Flag II

Looks like Britain may be releasing the convicted Pan Am 103 bomber from prison.
Seems to me, the guy is either innocent--in which case you absolve him and set him free with damages paid--or his conviction stands, and his ass rots in prison (pun intended).
If he is indeed a mass murderer (or conspirator to mass murder) releasing him on compassionate grounds due to his terminal prostate cancer is ridiculous.

Bullshit Flag

Apparently Human Rights Watch is accusing the Israelis of murdering 11 white-flag-waving Palestinian women and children during its incursion into Gaza. So, let me see if I've got this right. The Israelis spend thousands of man-hours and what must have been millions of dollars surreptitiously mapping and data-basing the cell phones of every person in Gaza, so that when they attack any given building they can call all the non-combatants in the building to tell them to get the hell out of Dodge, only to shoot them down when they egress the buildings waving white flags. Okay, makes sense to me.

Hmm, Human Rights Watch. Hey, wasn't that the outfit that accused the Israelis of war crimes in the "massacre" of Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp in 2002? Why yes, I believe it was, and that accusation was thoroughly discredited. In fact, the Israelis did more to protect Palestinian innocents than the Palestinians did themselves:

Dr. David Zangen, chief medical officer of the Israeli paratroop unit that fought in Jenin, has reported (and his report was confirmed) that not only did the Israelis not perpetrate a massacre, they worked to keep the hospital in Jenin open. They even offered blood to the wounded Palestinians.(9)

The Palestinians refused the blood because it was Jewish.

In response, the Israelis flew in 2,000 units of blood from Jordan by helicopter. They also made sure that additional units of blood reached hospitals in Ramallah and Tulkarem, and they facilitated the delivery of 1,800 units of anti-coagulants brought in from Morocco.(9)

Yuh. Okay, these sound like the guys looking for a chance to gun down women and kids waving white flags.

Hmm, Plagiarizing the Mungadai Business Plan

Okay, this competition has all the elements that make it a Mungadai favorite: lasers, beef jerky, and Frank Franzetta pictures. Obviously, the recession and unemployment must be higher than reported if this many people have time to compete.

-Beef Jerky business cards, it's a beautiful thing...

H/t AoS newsbar

What Would've Happened If He Farted?

There is a fine line between being a hard-ass vs asshole. Can't tell which side this judge falls on from the article. Still, I'm leaning toward respecting the guy.

Bizarr-O in Brazil

Okay, this is probably the most bizarre story I've read in a while. Whether the guy is getting framed or is guilty, it's disturbing on several levels.

via Drudge

Good On Ya, Irish

An Irish wedding party extends its hospitality to US troops on their way to Iraq.

Please Uncle Hugo, Make Christmas Come Early

Please kick off against the Colombians so we can watch you get, as my counterpart would say, beat like a dog in mosque.
Hugo doesn't have the stones to do it, though, because he knows what would happen.
I remember after the Colombians smoked FARC-ster Raul Reyes on the Ecuadoran side of the border reading that Hugo had ordered "21 tank battalions to move to the border." Unless a tank battalion in Venezuela consists of two up-armored golf carts, he was blowing smoke.
The Colombian Army has been gaining expertise through the expenditure of blood, sweat, and tears fighting the FARC, the ELN, and to some extent the AUC. While none of these are conventional opponents, the resultant capability would mean that Hugo would get to reap what he's sown. Oh, and throw in the fact that Prez Uribe doesn't back up at all, ever.

Shark Jumps Into Fisherman's Boat...

...and starts beating hell out of everything. Right off the FL coast near Miami. Great. Can't wait to go home and go fishing.
The shark that jumped into the boat is a bull shark; they are the most aggressive and are responsible for more attacks on humans than any other shark.

Sounds About Right

The Washington Times reports that the ingredients for a civil war in Iraq are present, and possibly starting to brew. The article focuses on a report by Najim Abed al-Jabouri, former Iraqi mayor and the Police Chief that "cleaned up" Tal Afar, who claims that the biggest contributor to a possible civil war right now in Iraq is the ethno-sectarian splits within the Iraqi Security Forces. Says Mr. al-Jabouri:

"U.S. efforts to rebuild the [Iraqi security forces] have focused on much needed training and equipment, but have neglected the greatest challenge facing the forces' ability to maintain security upon U.S. withdrawal: an ISF politicized by ethno-sectarian parties," he wrote.

"These ties pose the largest obstacle to the ISF in its quest to become genuinely professional and truly national in character. A professional military force holds the best prospect of gaining and keeping the trust of the people, but a force riven with destructive sectarian and ethnic loyalties is a recipe for civil war."

Obviously, I've got a limited view from my perch hear in Mosul, but this sounds about right. My counterparts in the Iraqi Federal Police (until very recently known as the Iraqi National Police) have a vehement, visceral distrust of the Iraqi Army. The IA, far more robust in its training and logistics systems to date, have a multitude of capabilities that the IFP don't. American commanders constantly defer lending a hand with US capabilities to help my guys out, stating that we need to "coordinate" with the IA and have them come on over and help out. Here's the deal: my counterpart would rather tear an eye from his face than ask for or recieve help from the IA. To the point that a couple of weeks ago, after the IFP had a fruitful day of harvesting IEDs, which they--gulp--happily brought back into their own headquarters, US forces refused to send EOD out to take control of and reduce the IEDs. Instead, I was told, tell them to get the IA to do it, natch. My counterpart's response to my entreaties to use the IA EOD was that he'd rather keep them for "later." So the explosives got to sit there for an extra day while we figured out an alternative means by which to dispose of the ordnance. There have been more than a couple of times that I thought the IA and IFP might go all "Hatfield-McCoy" on us. Thankfully, we've managed to calm those situations and have yet to have an incident that is both serious and sustained. Still, internecine security force hostility is always simmering just below the surface. Even within the IA there are fault lines:

The majority of these divisions are under the patronage of a political party," he writes. "For example, the 8th [Iraqi army] division in Kut and Diwaniyah is heavily influenced by the Dawa Party [of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki]; the 4th IA division in Salahuddin is influenced by President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan; the 7th IA division in Anbar is influenced by the [Sunni] Iraqi Awakening Party, and the 5th IA division in Diyala is heavily influenced by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a Shi'ite political party with some ties to Iran.

As I've posted previously, most of the ISF and civilians I speak to think that when the US pulls out, there will be a bloodletting, but then things will settle down and people will live the "Iraqi way." As bad as that sounds, almost unanimously the Iraqis I speak to say that they will never again suffer a despot. Most will point to their satellite dishes and cell phones and say, "because of these, we have learned to say no."

Tactics vs Strategy

Starbuck is generally the go-to guy for Military/Web 2.0 interface. He keeps his finger on the pulse of the military's adaptation of new and emergent information technology (for example, see his posts here and here)--although he seems to have a much harder time keeping his fingers on his ID card. Heh.
I thought that this article was more up Starbuck's lane to comment on, but figured I'd have a go at it. To wit, it seems as though the Air Force, which blocks its members from using social networking sites, also monitors these same sites to guage public opinion and then advise the supported Commander how best to "craft his message" in response (or maybe even proactively). I think that this is a viable technique, and that this sort of information mining cell could someday be more accurate and reliable than public opinion polling. In this particular instance, the monitors were deployed to observe, assess, report, and make recommendations to counter the negative publicity of this spring's Air Force 1 flyover of Manhattan. The consolidated conclusion of this crack cell of cyberslueths was "No positive spin is possible."
[Gee, do ya think? Maybe I should pitch some military department to set me up with a cush job guaging the public perception of future events with my incredible ESP.
-We are going to make an unannounced flyover of Manhattan Island with a jumbo jet and a couple of fighter jets, what do you think will happen, O Amazing Mongo?
-the public will have a raging case of the ass and you are retarded. Next question.]
I'm not real big on web-based social networking, probably because I'm not real big on social networking, probably because I'm not real social.
Personally, I have no issues with educating soldiers on "do's" and "don'ts" of social networking and then letting them have at it. But the debate over social networking, which is sort of a collateral information operation, kind of misses the point, in my opinion.
The point is that we suck at information operations.
Because The Brass is 1) making "perfect" the enemy of "good enough to accomplish the mission," 2) afraid to piss off anybody, anywhere with impolitic language or viewpoints, and 3) distrustful of their subordinates' ability to articulate the command approved message (or at least not torpedo it), we get our asses kicked worldwide when it comes to disseminating information in such a manner as to forward the national interest.
Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace are, if you will, tactical media that will be replaced by or evolved into something totally different in a few short years. The military departments will either adapt to the proliferation of social media and personal information technologies or not, but I sincerely doubt that they will adapt to the point that they can successfully leverage and exploit them; that's just the nature of bureaucracies. Even if there are some titanium stovepipes of excellence built--such as the Combat Information Cell at Tyndall-- that can leverage networking media to great effect, the capability will be diffused by the bureaucracy.
As I said, though, these media are tactical. What we truly lack is not only an information strategy, but an even higher ordinate set of organizing principles for information operations, information management, and information exploitation (doctrinally, you could probably roll all these into "Information Operations," but like our IO execution, our IO doctrine sucks).
While we fritter over Twitter, we are losing sight of the requirement to forward a national strategic message--and to influence those of our competitors and thwart those of our enemies.

10 AUG, or "Why I Love Aviators"

Scenes from today's operation posted over at the team blog.

A couple of posts down, I spent some time articulating my gratitude for the aviators that cover our asses every time we go out. Our air cover performs two vital functions: close air support--i.e., firepower, which is pretty much what everyone thinks of when they think of air cover, but more frequently and as importantly, they provide invaluable Situational Awareness. I often can't see two or three blocks away. The air guys tell me what's going on around me, whether we have any "squirters" trying to escape if we hit a building, suspicious vehicles approaching our formation, groups of military aged males congregating in our general vicinity, and even where our counterparts went if they haul ass and leave us to lumber behind (this frequently happens on night operations). And, they give us the heads up on trains. From today:
-Mungadai 6, this is BlackJack 5.
-Go ahead BlackJack 5.
-Be advised you've got a train headed your direction. Should be there in a minute or two.
-Thanks, BlackJack 5.
-Uh, Mungadai 6, that train is on the same set of tracks that you're traveling on.
-Roger. Stand by...
Hilarious hijinks ensue.

Duty, Honor,...Diversity?

I've read two articles on the US Naval Academy (one of which is here, the other's link expired), the general import of which are that at USNA, diversity is now the priority for admissions.
I've got nothing against diversity, per se, but once a service academy starts prioritizing diversity over other indicators for military leadership potential, I think you are courting danger.
I'm sure some young Seaman is going to think "Well, the ship is going down in flames, and we're all going to die, but at least my Captain is (black/asian/hispanic/female/Pacific Islander) like me."
I would think that in selecting young men and women to be educated, trained and inspired to lead our nation's soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines in battle and bring them home again, the content of one's character would be more important than the color of one's skin.
This would usually set off my perennial Army chauvinism, and I'd make some remarks about how the Navy is suffering PC-induced lameness, but the same day I read the article the Army posted its own accolades to diversity. On to AKO, the Army portal through which we get our official e-mail and perform various and sundry administrative tasks, the Army usually posts a motivational, scene-from-the-force picture that you can look at for the ten minutes it takes to log on. These are usually topical and there is a rotation, so that you see a different picture from the same pool every time you log on. So in celebrating the new West Point class' graduation and matriculation into the Army, I saw a picture like this with the following caption:

U.S. Military Academy graduates toss their hats during commencement ceremonies at West Point, NY, May 23, 2009. Of the 970 cadets, 144 are women, 63 African Americans, 62 Asian/Pacific Islanders, 74 Hispanics and 15 Native Americans. The majority of the class, which also includes 17 foreign students, were commissioned second lieutenants.

So, this is the best the Army can do? The most noteworthy attribute of this cohort of great young Americans who volunteered to compete to undergo a physically, mentally, and emotionally grueling four years in order to better lead our soldiers in a global war on terror*, which currently has two hot theaters of operation is: look, we're diverse!
The Army does these young leaders, and its troopers everywhere, a disservice by hawking the diversity of this graduating class, instead of recognizing the talent, motivation, and tenacity they have all demonstrated to get where they are.
*yeah, I know, I'm not supposed to say that anymore. When I get the new, approved brand name for this goat-fuck, I'll go back and amend the post.

Sounds Like He Deserved It, But Still...

She has been charged with causing bodily injury and endangering private property.

Well, duh.

Profile in Courage

So, we've got 18-year old kids risking their lives over here on a daily basis, going out the wire to do route-clearance, EOD- or VIP-escort, to check on US infrastructure projects, and any number of dangerous jobs.
And back home, as the health care debate heats up, we've got a report that:

A spokesman for North Carolina Rep. Brad Miller has told reporters that his boss won’t be holding town hall meetings this month after receiving a death threat.

Way to go, sir. Way to pay back your constituents and countrymen over here facing real danger to give you the right to cower in the corner. Schmuck.
(I took the guy's party affiliation out of the quote; gutless is gutless, I don't care what side of the aisle he's on)

The Security Blanket

"Alone and Unafraid" is the unofficial motto of the Transition Teams. The first part has never been more true since the retrograde of combat forces out of Iraqi cities. The second part is due, in large part, to the odds of looking up and seeing one's air support, as pictured here (you can click on the pic to enlarge). I make it a general practice to always give aviators a hard time--a habit that has stood me in good stead thus far. But, I gotta say, our ubiquitous, flexible, and always-accommodating aviation brethren not only let me sleep soundly at night (or day, whatever), but let me do so with a minimum of thumb-sucking and bed-wetting.

Interludio Colombiano

I might've actually been at this event. Uh, no recuerdo porque fui muy borracho.

A Rock For His Pillow

Street scenes from today's operations are posted over on the team blog.

One mentionable from today: we hung out for a while near the, ah, domicile of a propane vendor. Because the power grid is notoriously unreliable, most Iraqis cook with propane. Vendors drive their motorized mules around town hawking their wares. Propane tanks also make great IED canisters. So you can imagine our joy (and the little spritz of adrenaline) every time one of these babies turns the corner and starts ambling toward you. Good stuff.


The vendor and his family pretty much just own the mule, the propane tanks they sell, and the clothes on their backs. That's it. Here you can see the wire mesh pallet on which the family sleeps. Note the outdoor cradle for junior (as always, you can click to enlarge the picture).

Thug vs Warrior

The Urban Samurai asks whether MMA training is useless for street defense.
He makes some great points, and I agree with his overall assessment: an MMA fighter is better equipped to defend himself than someone who doesn't train at all, but MMA is definitely not the comprehensive solution to self defense. However, I think I came to that conclusion via a different route than the Samurai. I think he and I are at some variance as to our philosophical, technical and legal reasoning.
First, on the legal side, I think that there is something amiss in the UK right now. More and more, the courts are punishing individuals who defend themselves against violent criminals. One could even make the case that there is no inherent individual right to self defense in the UK right now (I know, I need to round up some links to back up this supposition. Later).
Here in the US, I'm thinking that you can reasonably expect to escape criminal sanction (although maybe not civil) if you can demonstrate under the "reasonable man" doctrine that you acted to negate the threat against yourself. So, unless your caught curb-stomping an unconscious assailant, you shouldn't be rolled up by the law. I'm not a big fan of martial artists who only aim to subdue or "control" an assailant, because I think they are underestimating both the danger, the consequences of screwing up, and the skill level required to only subdue a fully adrenalized, motivated attacker without injuring him. It can be done, but would you risk your life to spare your assailant a couple weeks/months in traction?
The problem with bringing MMA skills into a self defense situation is that the mixed martial artist is trained to fight. Your attacker isn't looking for a fight, he's looking for predation. So, as the US points out, your attacker isn't going to constrain himself to the "rules," pattern, or tempo of the fight an MMA guy has trained for. He's going to try to neutralize you as directly as possible. If a predator decides to target you, reduce his ability to do so by every means available. In most states, the use of lethal force is legal if it is employed to avoid grevious bodily harm.
Here are some more shortcomings of bringing your MMA game to a fight:
-As US points out, the environment will be different. Look at the significant difference in fighters' tactics and techniques between Pride and UFC, simply because one fight takes place in a ring, and one in a cage. To an extent, MMA fighters train and compete, over and over again, in order to perfect the same fight. Same cage, same matted flooring, same gloves, mouthpiece, rules and fight duration (excepting KOs).
-I've bitched here about gloves before; I'll do so again. The purpose of gloves in MMA is to protect the slugger, not the sluggee. The crowds love a good knockout, and the gloves allow a professional fighter to swing for the fences without endangering his livelihood. Swing for the fences like that barefisted, significantly amplifying your power through the hips and shoulders, and when you make contact with that punch you will reduce your punching capability by 50%, because you just broke your hand. That treasure trove of combative knowledge, FM 3.25-150 states that

The boxer is a better puncher than the traditional martial artist not because of the mechanics of punching, but because his technique has been refined through competition. (App B, Para 1)

Um, no. The boxer is a better puncher with gloves on than the traditional martial artist. After a barefisted fight, he'll have earned the appellation "Cast Boy."
-Fight Fashion: how wrong have things gone if you're in a no-shit fight with a sweaty guy wearing a spandex bikini? The ordinary street clothes that an attacker (and hopefully you) will be wearing make a distinct difference. Both participants have a wider range of fight options on a fully clothed opponent.
-Improvised Weapons: Original Japanese Jujutsu was developed to give a samurai who'd lost his sword the ability to survive on the battlefield until he could procure another weapon. If you are attacked when you are (for whatever insane reason) unarmed*, the odds are good that you will grab the first field expedient weapon to hand.
-Asphalt, gravel, and tarmac sort of change up the dynamic of groundfighting and "ground and pound."
-Targeting: an MMA fighter is, sure, defending himself as completely as possible. But his "muscle memory" doesn't encompass eyes, balls, kidneys, throat/larynx. Stick a thumb in the eye of the guy with even the best fight composure, and you'll generate an effect. Get kicked in the balls enough, and lo, you can learn to ride it out, but has a MMA guy been kicked in the balls enough? (I'm in the Army, so the institution takes care of that training requirement).
On the philosophical side, if someone is willing to attack me, then they are willing to kill me, even though that may be inadvertant. So, I'm fighting for my life and will use the most powerful response I can. Also, I will not try to reply with an unarmed version of escalation of force; there isn't time and my opponent faces no such restrictions. I am sure that some of the lessons I've learned in my MMA adventures will come in handy, but I definitely would not opt to rely on MMA as my sole source of skill sets.

*Yuh, looks like I've got to re-test the BATTLEMIND training.

Weather Update

Starbuck posts a great description of our recent meteorologic travails.
From a sensory point of view, it is kind of cool to look outside to see the world in what can only be described as sepia tones.
Otherwise, the weather sucks.

Suasion of the Battlemind

The Army starts us on our redeployment bureaucratic milestones about 100 days out from taking the freedom bird. There are all kinds of administrative tasks that needs be accomplished (evaluations, awards, follow-on orders, etc), property must be accounted for and prepped for turnover to the next team, and mandatory classes must be attended to ensure we're ready to assimilate back into "the world."
I'm posting on the training that the Mungadai did today because, for once, I was reasonably impressed by the Chain Training we were given by the unit Chaplain. The training centered on transitioning from the mental state required here to the mental state that you need to adopt when you get home (if you want to avoid jail, disciplinary proceedings, divorce court, etc). The training was centered on the keyword BATTLEMIND.
Keywords are basically mnemonic devices for finding the "key" to succeeding in different situations. For example: stuck in a cold weather survival environment? Don't forget keyword COLD (stay Clean, don't Overheat, dress in Layers, stay Dry). Screw up your knee yesterday diving for cover when Voodoo snuck up behind you and yelled "bang?" Keyword ICE (Ice, Compression, Elevate). Today was the first time I've seen BATTLEMIND, and I thought it did a good job of breaking down the dimensions in which returning soldiers need to adjust their mindset.

Buddies (Cohesion) vs. Withdrawal
In Combat: No one understand your experience except your buddies who were there; your life depended on your trust in your unit.
At home: You may prefer to be with your battle buddies rather than your spouse, family, or friends; you may assume that only those who were there with you in combat understand or are interested; You may avoid speaking about yourself to friends and family.

Accountability vs. Control
In Combat: Maintaining control of weapons and gear is necessary for survival; ALL personal items are important to you.
At home: You may become angry when someone moves or messes with your stuff, even if it is insignificant; You may think that nobody cares about doing things right except for you.

Targeted vs. Inappropriate Aggression
In Combat: Split second decisions that are lethal in highly ambiguous environments are necessary. Kill or be killed; Anger keeps you pumped up, alert, awake, and alive.
At home: You may have hostility towards others; You may display inappropriate anger, or snap at your buddies or NCOs; You may overreact to minor insults.

Tactical Awareness vs Hypervigilance
In Combat: Survival depends on being aware of your surroundings at all times and reacting immediately to sudden changes such as sniper fire or mortar attacks.
At Home: You may feel keyed up or anxious in large groups or situations where you feel confined; You may be easily startled, especially when you hear loud noises; You may have difficulty sleeping or have nightmares.

Lethally Armed vs. "Locked and Loaded" at Home
In combat: Carrying our weapon at all times was mandatory and a matter of life or death.
At Home: You may feel a need to have weapons on you, in your home and/or car at all times, believing that you and your loved ones are not safe without them.

Emotional Control vs. Anger/Detachment
In Combat: Controlling your emotions during combat is critical for mission success and quickly becomes second nature.
At Home: Failing to display emotions around family and friends will hurt your relationships. You may be seen as detached and uncaring.

MissionOPSEC vs. Secretiveness
In Combat: You talk about the mission only with those who need to know; You can only talk about combat experiences and missions with unit members or those who have "been there, done that."
At Home: You may avoid sharing any of your experiences with family, spouse, and friends; You may avoid telling your family etc where you are going or when you will get back (and get suspicious when they ask).

Individual Responsibility vs. Guilt
In Combat: Your responsibility is to survive and do your best to keep your buddies alive.
At home: You may feel you have failed your buddies if they were killed or seriously injured; You may be bothered by memories of those wounded or killed.

Non-Defensive (Combat) vs. Aggressive Driving
In Combat: Driving unpredictably, fast, using rapid lane changes and keeping other vehicles at a distance is designed to avoid IEDs and VBIEDs.
At Home: Aggressive driving and straddling the middle line leads to speeding tickets, accidents, and fatalities.

Discipline & Ordering vs Conflict
In Combat: Survial depends on discipline and obeying orders; Following orders kept you and those around you safe and in control.
At Home:Inflexible interactions (ordering and demanding behaviors) with your spouse, children, and friends often lead to conflict (ooh; apparently these guys know Mrs. Mongo).

The training presents templates for transitioning the combat skills into acceptably peacetime behaviors, with modification tips and mental health resources. I thought it was post-worthy because a) somebody obviously did a decent analysis of combat vs homefront mindset and behaviors and b) the Army is often portrayed in the media and popular culture as an uncaring monolith that views soldiers as expendable, disposable means. This is untrue and unfair, and I thought an example of our redeployment (mandatory, hours and hours long) training was a good counterpoint to that.
I'm not saying I agree with everything here (scan down for Mongo's Rule #1), but I'm saying a more than significant effort was made to help troops make the jump with the least amount of friction--and there always is friction. The first time you go to a mall or Walmart when you get home (excluding those adjacent to military posts) you are generally overwhelmed with a sense of "who the fuck are these people? Don't they get it?" As the keyword above intimates, tempers are pretty volatile, mostly because, for over a year, whenever someone absolutely needed a world-class ass whuppin', you By God administered a world-class ass whuppin'. From what I hear, that's generally frowned on in Walmart.

It's Time To Go, or Mr. Congeniality Has Left the Building, or Total Paranoia Equals Total Awareness

Some anecdotal proof that one year is about the tracer burnout for a combat advisor.

First, I do believe I'm getting a little cranky as my tour here winds down. Things that I should be taking in stride are irking the shit out of me, to the point where it is showing through my usually sunny disposition. Some examples:
-the DFAC: look, the Mungadai are really lucky to live on a large FOB with a large DFAC that has about everything you could want to eat (whether you should actually eat everything you want is a different story altogether, especially now that we're not spending fourteen hours a day burning calories by running around the ville in body armour). But, not all DFACs are set up uniformly, and you kind of need to know where you're going to get what you want. If you've never been in the DFAC before, step to the side, out of the human traffic flow, in order to do your recon. Don't stand in the middle of the "path" gawking. Otherwise, there is a very good chance (and getting better every day) that certain combat advisors will counsel you with a ballistic application of a food tray up against your damn head. Capische?
Next, the purpose of the DFAC is to allow you to grab and consume your chow and then haul your happy ass back to work. The fact that our DFAC is very large ups the percentage that you can find some food that you will actually enjoy consuming. But hey, all of our chow is line-hauled in. Which means that you don't stand at the salad bar trying to cherry pick the very best of the veggies, dumbass. All of the lettuce is slightly brown and wilty. All of the cucumbers are freezer burned. Either eat it or pass on it, but don't stand there holding up the line in pursuit of building the perfect salad. The rest of us have jobs and therefore don't want to stand there all damn day. Again: Tray. Head.
-Showers. I've been in the Army a long time. I've deployed a lot. So I've pretty much got the ergonomics of my morning ablutions down pat. But I'm not that good. There are 14 showerheads in two abutting trailers for about 167 swinging dicks. That means that there is not enough hot water to go round. If I can enter the trailer, brush my teeth, shave, shower, towel off, and exit the trailer and you've been in the shower the whole time, then you are a hot water Blue Falcon.
-Paranoia. I've been sitting with my back to the wall, scanning people's hands and eyes, and dodging every trash and rubble pile in the street for quite a while now. Total paranoia is total awareness. So maybe I'm just interpreting the news a little differently than I otherwise might. But does knocking out and hospitalizing 34 people with just a little spritz sound like a bad batch of froo-froo juice, or a trial run? And a Google-employed computer super genius gets bonked on the head by a 100-pound tree branch in Central Park? And all the trees in the area are healthy, even the tree from which the offending branch fell? C'mon, what world are you living in?
12 months, I'm good with. 24 months? That's stretching it.

And Now, From The Polio School of Handgunning

Got this video of a gangbanger accosting a skateboarder via Mr. Rummel at Hell in a Handbasket.
Couple of observations:
-Keep teaching gangbangers that this is how to hold/use a pistol.
-How lame do you have to be to approach an unarmed skateboarder whilst brandishing a pistol and still get your ass kicked?
-I'm amazed that no one was shot. Just goes to prove that sometimes it's better to be lucky than be good.
-The skateboarder in red board shorts--i.e., the intended victim--probably broke his hand while admonishing the gangbanger.
-If I was the 'boarder, immediately after this little donnybrook I'd whup my buddy's ass for a less than surgical application of his skateboard.

Well, then, I'll Just Take My Bat, And My Ball, And Go Home.

Holy Schnikes.
COL Timoithy Reece, who I think is the Baghdad Operations Center Transition Team Leader, just published a brutal strategic assessment of our post-30 JUN operating environment in Iraq.

The GOI and ISF will continue to squeeze the US for all the “goodies” that we can provide between now and December 2011, while eliminating our role in providing security and resisting our efforts to change the institutional problems prevent the ISF from getting better. They will tolerate us as long as they can suckle at Uncle Sam’s bounteous mammary glands. Meanwhile the level of resistance to US freedom of movement and operations will grow. The potential for Iraqi on US violence is high now and will grow by the day. Resentment on both sides will build and reinforce itself until a violent incident break outs into the open. If that were to happen the violence will remain tactically isolated, but it will wreck our strategic relationships and force our withdrawal under very unfavorable circumstances.

Hey, sir, don't beat around the bush, tell us how you really feel. Actually, word on the street from Huggy Bear is that this was an internal memo/assessment that got leaked.

Digital Black Belt...or not

Man, does this new policy mean I can now finally run out an start MyBook and FaceSpace accounts? Cool...

True Friends, Capable Allies

This should be interesting: Colombia has ponied up to assist the US/Coalition effort in Afghanistan. Elements of Colombian SOF will be deployed in support of OEF.
Colombia, as I've stated here before, should be the preeminent model for COIN, and demonstrates what a determined, long-term (and often low profile) US counterinsurgency effort can achieve.

Turn Off the Good Idea Generator

I don't have the time to put on either the Cyprus Hill or RATM version of Pistol Grip Pump, crack my knuckles, and do a detailed takedown of this unsolicited recommendation from MAJ Smiley in the SWJ that Transition Teams need to extend their tours of duty to at/about 24 months. Let's just say that I disagree.
Hey, brother, turn off the good idea generator, euthanize the Good Idea Fairy, and get your head in the game.
Extending tours (or programming longer tours) for combat advisors may, in fact, be a good idea. But the Transition Team program is so rife with problems that the added "goodness" of extended tours is minimal.
Right now, Transition Teams have got bupkiss when it comes to the Army handing them the tools to do their jobs. All a Team has in order to influence its counterpart unit and build operational capacity is looks, brains, and personality. No money, no equipment fielding, no authorities, variable proficiency, and a host of execution problems minimize the effect a Transition Team can have on its counterpart. Fix all those problems, and then perform a detailed analysis on whether TTs are on the ground long enough.
Has it occured to the author that it is the profound lack of lickies & chewies/carrots & sticks that the Transition Team can bring to the fight that retards the growth of interpersonal relationships in the first place? After all, while shared danger on the battlefield goes a long way in US eyes toward building mutual rapport, our counterparts live in a constant state of danger. Being brave enough to share the dangers of the battlefield with one's counterpart, is--in his eyes--kind of an entry level requirement for the job. The first friction a TT leader gets from his counterpart stems from the question: what can you do for me, right now? Because of the dearth of tools at the TTs disposal, this quickly grows into the second, enduring friction point: what have you done for me lately?
From the counterpart's perspective, the TT is a bunch of guys who show up and operate with him--i.e., tell him continually where he's fucking up and what he needs to do better. But, often, we don't have the equipment or funds to escalate the rate of growth of his operational capacity, or even to ameliorate the problems that we continually point out. I will guarantee you that a TT that shows up with the money and equipment to inject a significant jump in operational capacity is going to build a stronger relationship more quickly.
Instead, MAJ Smiley recommends that we take the one asset we have dedicated to the Combat Adivsing dimension of COIN, and break it through over-employment. Instead, the Army needs to perform a no-shit analysis of its perfomance objectives for TTs, and then organize, equip, train, and empower the team to be a nested part of the Coalition campaign. TTs should be able to offer their counterparts more than just time.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

This guy should have extra years added to his sentence just for being a dumbass.

Twinkie Time

I'm a big fan of a "body weight" workout paradigm. Move your own weight, through space, in as little time and in as many interesting and varied ways as you can. And I usually think I'm doing well, until I watch someone like this guy. I suck


I'm gonna go eat a twinkie, now.

Punch, Kick, Choke, Twist, Snap

From Mr. Rummel, over at Hell in a Handbasket, is a link from which you can download the Army Combatives Manuel, FM 3-25.150

Let me preface my comments with the statement that, hey, I'm a Judo/Jiu-Jitsu guy. I have the utmost respect for both (as I've stated previously--and heretically--they are the same Martial Art, just different sports). My problem isn't with the art(s) as much as it is with the Army's interpretation of how to adopt, train and maintain them.
The Army re-vamped its Combatives system (and the training emphasis on Combatives) in the early- to mid-90's with the rise of the UFC and the greater American public's exposure to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu--and that is its problem. The Army system can basically be described as "The Ranger Regiment meets the Gracie Brothers."

At the time, Brazilian (read Gracie) Jiu-Jitsu was being hailed, based on UFC results, as the dominant form of unarmed combat. However, the fix was in. The UFC, before the name brand passed to Dana White, was initially started by the Gracie family in order to promote BJJ and to develop a market within the US (mission accomplished). However, as the original promoters of the event, the Gracies were also intimately involved in the selection of the competitors. Note that in the first couple iterations of the UFC (and as an aside, I was a huge fan of the tournament-style competition back in those days, not so much of the "card" system used today) there were no other practitioners of grappling arts entered in the contest. You didn't see, say, a broken-nosed scuff-eared hardass from the NYC Judo Club participating. This was a great marketing tool for the Gracies, and did a great job raising awareness amongst US martial arts practitioners that if you had no grappling skills, you were chum in a freestyle fight.

In the Army, astute Army Rangers figured that, since going live on a hand-to-hand combat scenario was a real possibility in the execution of their duties, they had better get in on this whole Jiu-Jitsu thing. (Cutting out a lot of detail) The program was eventually moved to the Infantry Center at Fort Benning and became the Army Combatives program.

One of the problems in the development of the Army Combatives system was that developers had to take the Jiu-Jitsu of the Gracies and, applying combat experience, reverse engineer a sport into a combative system. The result is a manual that contains "combat techniques" that are not plausible in actual combat.
Below, for your edification, are pieces of either the manual, or the system itself, that I find odious in a fighting system designed for combat

-In at least two instances, the manual declares that: strikes are an inefficient method of ending a fight. Really? Really? It seems to me that if I spend as much time striking as I do rolling on the mat (ah, and there's the rub) and I can put my fist through my opponent's skull at the temple, reach to the back of the rack, retrieve his medulla oblongata and show it to him as his eyes (well, probably "eye," singular, in this case) glaze over, that's pretty darn efficient. What would be more efficient than that? A triangle choke?
-The triangle choke. Need I say more?
-The only true throw in the manual is the hip throw (O Goshi). It's not a bad throw, but the deep entry required is problematic in a dynamic fight. I'd rather see (meaning I could justify better) the inclusion of Tai Otoshi and/or Osoto Gari (the latter especially if we are going to break down and include strikes in our training regimen).
-The manual includes single- and double-leg takedowns. Eh. In a combat scenario I'm a little leery of moving ballistically in a manner that, if countered, leaves me in such an inferior position. Wearing the basic issue kneepads helps, but shooting in on an opponent while wearing body armor and helmet, with the added weight and loss of mobility that entails doesn't seem real practical.
-Most practitioners of BJJ (and therefor, by default, Army Combatives) will emphasize the fact that "90% of all fights go to the ground." Maybe. I think the point is debatable and depends on how one defines "going to the ground." Still, even if we posit that the statement is accurate, there's no need to sacrifice a sound and reliable stand up position to get there, so expunge the sacrifice throw (rear takedown in the manual).
-I'm not a big fan of the courses developed to train instructors in Army Combatives (note: I have not attended any of these courses). In courses ranging from one week(40 hours of training) to four weeks (160 hours of training), the Army purports to generate instructors that will teach what it takes most practitioners years to learn to execute correctly.

Years ago, I was told to quite bitching during an Army tactics course. The course was chock full of (mostly computerized) simulations, and I disliked all of them. The turn-based sims were too constraining, the simultaneous sims were too slow and we sat around a lot while our virtual units were "in transit." On and on. Finally, the instructor made me delineate the positives of each sim, and asked why I wasn't solely concentrating on those tactical skills each sim would actually enhance.
I've taken the same approach to MA training. Whatever system or style you use, your training is only a simulation. It will have advantages to improve your performance in combat, and disadvantages that do not forward your combat ability. Being aware of these advantages and disadvantages has been key to progessing. There are good points to the Army Combative program: it builds an outstanding kinesthetic awareness, it is great PT, it has the potential to give Soldiers tools they would not have had without the program. After all, you can train a lot more frequently, and to a higher level of realism and intensity (I'm talking sparring, here) with a grappling based martial art than a striking based martial art. Training full speed on striking will lump you up pretty good and impede training for quite some time.
I just think the Army could well have done better.

When Courage Is the Job

Last night, while I was flailing myself against the Tire of Woe, the Engineers that live across the "quad" from us were performing their PCI (Pre-Combat Checks and Inspections) before rolling out on a route clearance mission. Imagine having a job in which you go out and drive the routes US Forces frequently travel, looking for IEDs. And, of course, once you find them you have to reduce them.
The route clearance teams usually go out late at night, after "IED hour" when the insurgents use the cover of darkness to emplace their ordnance. Because IEDs have to be distinguished from the trash, rubble, and refuse that litter every main thoroughfare in Mosul, the route clearance teams travel under white light. Actually, the team's vehicles are festooned with High-Lumen lights (that make them look like an extraterrestrial convoy in a John Carpenter movie) in order to better see the dangers. And, because they have to scan every inch of the road, gutters, culverts, pylons, and guard rails on their route, clearance teams move at about 3 to 5 mph. The combination of being lit up like a football stadium and moving at a snail's pace makes them a lucrative target for every jihadi, insurgent, and criminal out there with an RPG, a BKC (I know; I call it a PKMS, too), or an RKG-3--and did I mention that they're out there looking for bombs?
This is a job that I would not want. Unlike a lot of us who occasionally have a "spike" in the danger quotient of our duty performance, guys like the route clearance team have a job in which danger is an integral, significant dimension of the job, and risk assumption is as much a part of the day as putting on the body armor. When all military personnel and first responders join their respective professions, they know that risk is an inherent part of the job. Still, there are some for whom the danger is high, clear, and always present, and we owe a debt of gratitude to all of those who, knowing the risk, strap on their kit and roll out anyway. These guys are often anonymous and the jobs are frequently thankless, like the route clearance studs, EOD technicians (pull quote from the linked article: "[your job] is who you are, down to your DNA.") and the "meat shields" of the Secret Service (being the muttonhead that I am, I can't help but wish I could meet Mr. Mixon in his mat room, for, uh, a mutually beneficial, professionally edifying exchange of tactics, techniques, and procedures to enhance interagency cooperation and interoperability).

Guiness Makes You Strong

Guiness. One of the fundamentals of a life well-lived that I'm sorely missing at this point of the deployment.
Ah, Guiness...



H/t Boa2

What a Bargain!

Al Qaeda in Afghanistan has offered us a "peace plan": Convert to Islam or be ruled by Islam and pay the dhimmitude tax. Sounds like a bargain, eh? With good faith negotiators like this, we ought to have this whole War on Terror thing wrapped up in short order.
This same AQ leader is advocating using Pakistani nukes on the US., highlighting the importance of shoring up political, ethnic, and religious fault lines in Pakistan.

And from another part of the globe, a "mainstream" muslim cleric tells us that terror by Islamic extremists will continue unabated until we recognize the supremacy of Islamic law. Is terror really appropriate? I mean, does killing innocent women and children really advance the cause?

"People such as women and children who are not involved in the fight against Muslims should not be killed.
"But the problem is we don't know for sure that the victims weren't involved in the fight against Islam. Even the thought of fighting against Islam is involvement. Everyone that thinks like that is allowed to be killed."

Ah. So that kid in the corner playing with his Tonka toy, he might have been thinking about fighting against Islam, or he might've someday grown up to think about fighting Islam, so he's a legitimate target. And as for his mother, well, refusing to wear the hijab is fighting against Islam, so yeah, she's toast, too.

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting...

sounds so insensitive. Still, to say "everybody was Tae Kwon Do Fighting" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Ah, democracy.

Effective Information Operations?

Anyone who has been posted to Ft. Bragg knows that the appellation for the neighboring city of Fayetteville is "Fayette-nam." Apparently, Fayetteville is trying to give its reputation for exploiting soldiers a makeover, and is declaring itself a "sanctuary city" for the military.
Nice try, guys. But it'll take more than a cutesie commercial to make up for my evenings spent, uh, biding time in the Cumberland County Jail.

H/t AoS

Outreach, Dialog, and Engagement...

...is a reasonable way to modify these guys' behavior. And, hey, the downside is only that they'll get nukes. What could possibly go wrong?

Huffing and Puffing in Three Quater Time

I had the opportunity to go to the gym this morning (and it's looking like I may get a lot more of those opportunities) and do some grappling training with some of the boys. I'm rusty, but it was a good time. The lads with whom I was training were enthusiastic but not real experienced, so I just ended up staying on the mat, rotating guys in every two minutes. I learned a long time ago, that I'm pretty much responsible for training myself regardless of whether I'm the instructor or the student. So when there's a clear ability/experience gap, I try to put myself in the most vulnerable positions I can and then work through it. It takes a while to put ego aside and learn that "if you're not tapping, you're not training." With the guys today, I was coaching them along, trying to get them to polish their fundamentals. "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast" is an easy mantra to verbalize, harder to internalize.
After a couple of hours, I was the only guy that wasn't huffing and puffing and blown out, wind-wise. Part of it is just experience, and learning to relax during randori. When I made a jump in training from grappling-pure (Judo/Jiu-Jits) to MMA, I learned that I needed to achieve a whole new level of fitness, and I had to re-learn how to relax and breath. It is of note, though, because I really don't "train cardio."
I hate running. Running is da devil. Unfortunately, the Army is enamored of running its ass off, so I get to do it whether I like it or not. Fortunately, I'm usually in a job where I can dictate my own PT and as long as I excel at my PT test every six months, I'm left alone. And, I do do well on my run times. To paraphrase from Quigley Down Under, just because I say I have no use for running, doesn't mean I can't run. So, being that I get graded twice a year on my two mile run, in a good year I'll usually run a grand total of...four miles. I'm a big fan of sprint workouts, but don't count sprinting in my run totals.
Living so far south, in a tropical zone, even if I did want to run I'd only be able to early, early in the morning (when I should be at the DoJo) or late, late in the evening (when I should either be at the DoJo or drinking beer). There are other forms of "cardio" that I do enjoy, although my main goal is pursuit of a decent workout, not aerobic excellence. I'm a big fan of swimming, and all the canals and big blue open water around my house offers plenty of opportunity for both raw swimming and finning. Mongo's #1 Wife has started giving me grief about it though, ever since "Elvis the Crocodile" started making appearances in the canal.
I enjoy swimming, I don't love swimming. To each his own: while I can never, ever imagine getting up at 0330 in order to drive three hours to participate in a Triathlon (You want me to run, swim, and bike? Which circle of hell am I in?) I would and have done the 0330 wake-up to get into a decent fight.
The point of all this is just to posit that I think a lot of people mistake cardio/aerobic fitness for breathing discipline and the ability to employ relaxation techniques while under duress. Baseline aerobic fitness is pretty easy to achieve. If you can run linearly for hours without getting winded, that's great. But if you can do that but can't go two minutes on the mat, or diverge through some obstacles or hurdles without losing your rhythm and getting out of breath, you might want to expand your "wind training" beyond aerobic road work.

Kablooie

Another recurring theme on this blog is the friction between the individual and the bureaucracy. Especially as to how the nature of the bureaucracy is anathema to one trying to follow the warrior ethos.
I recently had a run in with the bureaucracy. I was in Iraq, minding my own business, and somehow got sideways of the bureaucracy. While the hit wasn't catastrophic, failure to resolve it appropriately would have mandated my separation from the service as a matter of conscience. As I've written before, the Military Departments are the best of our governmental bureaucracies. Not because we've cracked the code on organizational efficiency or efficacy, but because we take good, decent men and women and put them on the line for a number of years before making them transition to the functionary role of mid-level bureaucrats. These individuals are often imbued enough with the warrior spirit, and conscious enough of the linkage between their actions and effects on the troops, that they work until the job is done. A mid-level staff officer logs more hours by far than his counterpart anywhere else in the government. I've seen it. And yet still, when someone gets sideways of the machine, or doesn't quite fit within the cookie-cutter, the amount of work required to square away an individual at righteous odds with "the system" is daunting, sometimes even insurmountable, and always invidious. I owe a debt of gratitude to the multitudes of people, some who know me, many who don't, that put in the extra time and effort to get me unfucked. A significant reason for my recent dearth of posting has been that I was walking around ass-sore, and not sure that I was professional enough to keep it from bleeding over into my blogging.
I'm still going to endeavor to keep politics out of this blog, but I must admit that throughout my recent ordeal, I kept thinking "and this is how they want our health care run?"

Meditations on the 2nd Amendment

If you've followed this blog at all, you've seen Mongo's Rule #1: If you don't have a gun, you're chum.
The Motor City Madman himself expounds on this theory. What I find disheartening is that so many Americans consider this position to be extreme.

H/t Pops Mongo

Heart-Broke (Hard-broke?) in Baghdad

This article from the Washington Post articulates the frustrations of senior commanders over the apparently shifting definitions of the tenets of the US/Iraqi security agreement. A classic example of an overly optimistic COA making ballistic contact with the cruel, real world. I guess Mosul isn't the only place where the Coalition feels like it had the rug jerked out from under its feet.
What flummoxes me, though, is the fact that no one saw this coming, or had detailed talks/planning sessions beforehand to "set conditions," or had bolstering, written, detailed agreements under the Security Agreement umbrella.
The catch phrase--dare I say, talking point--has been that the Iraqis don't like us, but they trust us. Well, they trust us to be predictable and to try to act like honest brokers. So who thought Iraqis want honest brokers? They want us to get out of the way so that they can roll up their sleeves (in a "get ready for a donnybrook" way vice a "let's get to work" way) and get their formal and informal power relationships established and settled. All of the power relationships within and between sects, tribes, clans, security forces, political parties, ethnic groups etc. are still nascent because the "honest brokers" have been there preventing the Iraqis from sorting things out "the Iraqi way." Now, they are getting ready to begin getting to it. We apparently aren't invited to the ball.
UPDATE: Just read the review for Steven Metz's Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy in SWJ. The reviewer states "Metz concludes that the United States has a long-standing, continuing problem 'developing sound assumptions when the opponent operates within a different psychological and cultural framework'.” Well duh...

Easing Back In

I haven't posted anything new in two weeks. Main reason is that I have some, uh, rage-inspiring events going on in two or three areas and I was not sure that I could keep it from bleeding over onto the blog. While blogs are a pretty good place to lodge a rant, I've found myself meditating on the correct and professional protocol for expressing criticism and/or skepticism when one is blogging on professional endeavors, standards, and OAAs (operations, actions, and activities).
First, as I stated on the very first posts of this and the team blogs, OPSEC is the primary consideration of any posting. Second, if a post has to do with events impacting me or the team, I've kind of taken the tack of "if you can't wring the emotionalism from the post, don't post." Finally, there is what I've been coming to think of as the "due diligence and notification" policy.
Long ago, when I was a very junior staff officer, my commander taught me that you don't blow someone out of the water in a public venue without going to him one-on-one to give him the opportunity to change his wayward behavior. Before announcing at a Command & Staff meeting "I couldn't accomplish my task because I didn't get input from Staff Officer X," you give Staff Officer X the courtesy of telling him privately--and in person, if at all possible--you are fucked up, and if you stay fucked up and refuse to do what the Army is paying you to do (i.e., your job), especially with regard to how it impacts my own duty performance, I'm going to brief it to the boss and let the chips fall where they may. Once you reach that point in your professional relationship with another officer then, as GEN Gary Luck once quipped, "a dime dropped is a dime well spent."
Blogging while deployed, though, is a little different. One is wholly consumed by the daily execution of OAA, and commenting on the always-ugly matriculation of plans into actions on the ground is often inappropriate. I have a very limited optic here, and am not always privy to the analysis and considerations that yield the decisions that are handed down, so better not to post.
So, anyway, with a little effort on finding subject matter that doesn't make me grind my teeth, I'll try to post more frequently (which, given my post-tempo over the last two weeks, shouldn't be too difficult).

Let's Do This!!

The TL for Team Viper just passed off this great article to me, the theme of which is: Leeeroy Jenkins and the American Way of Advising.

Great stuff, and wholly accurate. My only criticism to this article would be that it omits the parallel problem that external transition teams do not have the authorities or resources to do the job right, anyway.

Over To Starbuck

Okay, Starbuck has a good assessment of the 30 June shenanigans we can expect. Ordinarily, I'd jump on the band wagon. But I'm too close to the situation to write or assess without editorializing and getting out of my lane. And for a variety of reasons, I'm in a really, really bad mood, and that would probably bleed over. Maybe someday, when I'm in my dotage, I'll re-visit Mosul circa 30 JUN 09. Right now, I'll let Starbuck do the talking, which he does well.

Mosul: Post 30 JUN

On thinking about it, I'm not going to post squat on the 30 JUN withdrawal of US combat forces from urban areas in Iraq. Too easy to get crosswise with OPSEC, PAO, etc. Instead, I'll link to this article, which does a good laydown of the situation. One note, though: the Iraqi Police that the writer mentions as the "weak link" are the local police, or shurta mahlhauli, not the Iraqi National Police, or shurta wattaniya, with whom we (the team) are partnered.

100-lbs of Home Protection

James Rummel is a self-defense instructor who blogs over at Hell in a Handbasket. He's a reliable internet go-to guy for factoids on firearms--especially esoteric pistols, home defense, and self defense.

When asked about protecting the home without a firearm, he provides a slew of good advice. He recommends my personal favorite tip: get a dog. James suggests a basset hound for this mission. I'm thinking the Mongo Clan will stick with bark and bite:

Afghanistan Round Up

With LTG McChrystal taking over our efforts in Afghanistan, there are going to be some changes in the way we do business there. I try not to comment too much on Afghanistan, since I haven't deployed there (yet) and believe that you can't go far wrong when you don't know squat if you keep your cakehole shut.
Over at The Captain's Journal, there are some good observations on the ROE and other operational changes here, here, and here.
A reasoned overview of the new policy is also posted over at Just Barking Mad.

A Matter of Degree

Mr. Smith over at The Captain's Journal responds to my rant about putting SOF "under" Conventional Force control.
Given the caveats that he stipulates, I think that what he is proposing is already taking place. The "lag time" is caused by CF adapting their organizations to be able to maximize the capabilities that they are incorporating. I'm going to table this subject (or at least until I read another post on someone's blog that sends my blood pressure through the roof) until I can get smarter on SOF/CF integration. I think that a lot of the capabilities about which Mr. Smith writes are migrating, even if the personnel aren't. However, I'm not up on the exact "line and block" charts that would confirm or deny my suspicions. I'll try to degrade my ignorance before I climb back up on that particular soapbox. I know, it's a little out of character for me to try to "get smart" before opinionating.
One thing that I would add, though, is on Mr. Smith's comments about the ISF (of which, I work pretty much exclusively with the Iraqi National Police) versus the Sons of Iraq. While I can't quite agree that the conclusion he has reached on the ISF is wholly accurate, I think it comes down, again, to a matter of degree. A good analogy is the way US citizens feel about their Congress; while polls show that people have a very low opinion of Congress overall, most of these same people are relatively satisfied with thier own representatives.
First, the SoI is local, so they are fighting for their homes, their neighborhoods, and their extendend families. Second, leadership within the SoI breaks is grafted on from tribe/clan leadership. So the SoI leaders are, at least to some degree, comfortable with the mantle of leadership and already have established and enduring credibility and legitimacy. Finally, the SoI are a one-dimensional force. They really don't have to worry about their next assignment, or their next promotion, or the political considerations of doing their job.
The ISF, on the other hand, does not have immediate credibility or legitimacy with either its soldiers or the local people. In order to have, in the long term, a viable security apparatus that can represent all the people of Iraq, wherever it goes within the nation state, the ISF often have to eschew--or even operate counter to--local tribal norms. All of the things we take for granted about military service, and which are difficult to establish and maintain even in a highly functional organization, the ISF is struggling to matriculate.
The SoI fights, and then goes home. The SoI stands watch, and then goes home. And when he goes home, the Son of Iraq is in an environment where all of actions were known to and approved by his tribal elders. The Coalition really doesn't have to worry about sustainment for the SoI, because all of the "backside" support functions are handled by the SoI going home. On the other hand, the ISF is working hard to build a sustainment capability and finding it a significant challenge. This affects, as it does with every military force, the morale, performance, and reliability of its soldiers. Also, officers are a little more free to line their own pockets, because they are shortchanging "the government" as opposed to their local leaders, friends, and relatives.
I'm very proud of my own guys; they live in terrible conditions and are afforded little advancement or training opportunities, but are out there every day slugging it out. Sloth, negligence, and apathy do plague the force, but it is balanced by bravery (as I've said in other posts, a lot of my guys are crazy brave), loyalty, and sincerity. I do trust them, and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are shurta in my Brigade who would take a bullet for me without hesitation. Because the ISF is still in the "start up" stage, though, different units have wildly different capabilities and norms. While I'd have no problem sleeping in my guys' compound, or shedding my body armor while I'm there (which I do), there are other ISF elements out there in whose company I would not only keep my kit on, I'd make sure that the QRF new where I was going and how long I intended to be there, and I'd try to get them to monitor my freq, too.
The SoI is a great force that is performing exactly as it ought. But long term success will depend on growing a professional, capable ISF that can sustain itself. We have a long way to go, but I believe we can get there, despite the fact that there are days when I feel like suck-starting my own 9mm.