Thoughts on decline, softness, and What is Necessary

JR Nyquist:

A few days ago a Pentagon specialist, Keith B. Payne, testified before a U.S. Senate committee that the administration's Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty offers numerous loopholes to the Russian side. ... Meanwhile, Russia is bolstering its road mobile ICBM forces, developing a new strategic bomber, new ICBM forces, and a cruise missile with a 3,000+ mile range. The U.S. doesn't even possess a road mobile ICBM, and has no plans to develop new strategic forces. How can this happen? Is it the stupidity of one party over another? Here is a reminder, however, that should be noted: Both parties share the same mentality, which was molded by television instead of books, and by the experience of shopping instead of war.

The logic of going downhill, the logic of decline, ... signifies a softening. It is known, as well, that soft people no longer have the stomach for what is necessary.

There it is, that's the line: Soft people no longer have the stomach for what is necessary. I would suggest (and JR does further on) that not only do soft people lack the stomach, they have lost the ability to discern what is necessary. Case in point, criminal gangs from another country are putting bounties on US law enforcement officers. Is this acceptable? What is the necessary action here? And yet a whole host of people will fail to discern a problem there.

What occurs is a form of denial, in which the realities of politics and war are cast aside in favor of fantasy substitutes, heavily laced with ideological logos of the kind that paralyze all thought....Here is a failure of imagination alongside a dismissal of the concept "enemy," done without any hesitation, with the survival instinct overridden by the daily corruption that attends absolute comfort. Those who are soft cannot see into an enemy that emerges from totally different conditions of life.

Cannot conceive of an enemy. Maybe that partially explains 'a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged' idea. Once the idea gets through that some people either actively have it in for you, or simply have no consideration of you except as a source of funds or goods, this precipitates some other changes in world view. Not that conservatives have a stellar record of choosing a path sans the rose-colored glasses. Remember 'compassionate conservatism'?

Well, that was easy for you to say

I love it when someone says something succinctly in one sentence that I couldn't describe in 10.

"Projects which must be protected from economics by special arrangements are suspect vehicles for long term development."

Yeah. But it was Richard Fernandez, who is pretty good at succinctly stating the correct, so I don't feel so bad.

Whole thing here.

General Petreaus and me

I've had an axiom for a while now that there are 3 jobs that come with being 'leader': 1. Possess and articulate The Vision. 2. Make decisions. 3. Be right.

Well, look what I just found quoted from no less a light than General Petreaus:

As I saw it then--and as I still see it now--there are four steps to institutional change. First, you have to get the big ideas right--you have to determine the right overarching concepts and intellectual underpinnings. Second, you have to communicate the big ideas effectively throughout the breadth and depth of the organization. Third, you have to oversee implementation of the big ideas--in this case, first at our combat training centers and then in actual operations. And fourth, and finally, you have to capture lessons from implementation of the big ideas, so that you can refine the overarching concepts and repeat the overall process.

His first two points pretty much exactly match my first point, and incorporate my third. He says 'implement', and I say 'make decisions'. Where I say 'be right' he says 'make the right choices, but then figure out where your implementation is deficient, and fix it', which is even better.

How cool is that?

The speech where those comments were made is here.

Organizational Design by McChrystal

I learned at JSOC,” McChrystal explained, “that any complex task is best approached by flattening hierarchies. It gets everybody feeling like they’re in the inner circle, so that they develop a sense of ownership. The more people who believe that they are part of the team and are in the know, the more you don’t have to do it yourself.”

Later in that same article, Brigadier General Scott Miller said about McChrystal and Rodriguez’s philosophy:

“Decentralize until you’re uncomfortable, then scrutinize, fix, and push down and out even further, to the level of the sergeants.”

Why does it work?

(B)ecause of the commander’s ability to reach down to the junior noncommissioned officers, a flat military organization puts—in the words of one admiral I interviewed—“performance pressure on everybody.”

Analogously, Cpt Roger Hill said

I have learned from working with good NCOs over the years that Soldiers come first. This is in spite of the fact that every Army school I have attended has preached mission first. If you take care of your men, the men will take care of the mission.

- empahsis mine. Yep, good stuff. It jives with my beliefs about management, as well as freedom and personal responsibility, and seems to work for the most successful military in the world operating in some very challenging environments. It would be interesting to see what the Israeli philosophy on these topics is.

Anti-americanism

Victor Davis Hanson: "By voluntarily backtracking — or being rebuffed — on almost all his initiatives, an idealistic Obama is reminding the world that anti-Americanism abroad is not caused so much by what the United States does, but largely by preconceived hostility to the values of liberty, free markets, and individual rights that the United States represents." - emphasis mine.

Marines leave Iraq - what they achieved

The question occasionally comes up from liberals of my acquaintance "well, if we weren't killing innocent Iraqis for fun or for their oil, what were we there for?"

Crunchie over at the Rott summarizes my response nicely, saying well in a few words what I try to say with many:

We defeated Saddam Husseins Iraq. In it’s place we sowed the seeds of a western style democracy in the heart of the Islamic world, right next door to the evil theocracy of the Iranian Republic, the birthplace and spiritual heart of the modern Islamo-fascist movement. And we drew in thousands of Jihadi’s into a battlespace of our choosing, where our tactics, techniques, and equipment could perform at their peak efficiency. And we slaughtered them. In our way, not theirs.

Well said. Read it all