Surprise, surprise, Iranian weapons had been found in Iraq yet again. Color me surprised, you can read more that wonderful country known as Iran here. So my question is, when can we start covert bombing of Iranian Special Operations commands?

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/03/in_pictures_iranian.php

Odd that so many African Americans, such as Martin Luther King Jr, exhault Ghandi and his “non-violence” teachings despite the fact that Ghandi was a vehement racist and saw Indians as racially superior to people of African descent. Can’t say I’m really surprised, every non-violent beta male I’ve met was a closed minded know it all racist.

Mahatama Gandhi, during his stay in South Africa called native black Africans Kaffirs and did not like when they were moved near to his fellow Asian Indian inhabitants. In his letter to Dr. Porter (Medical Officer, Johannesburg) Gandhi writes, “Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian location should be chosen for dumping down all kaffirs of the town, passes my comprehension. Of course, under my suggestion, the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population, and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen”^[2] He considered Asian Indians as superior race than native Africans and opined that classification of Asian Indians along side the natives and so denying Indians possession of arms by the British is incorrect^{[3] [4]}. During one court case, Gandhi commented on the magistrate’s decision thanking him for his decision that now only “clean Indians” and “colored” people can have the right to travel on the tram and not the “kaffirs” ^[5]. Gandhi went onto stimulating his fellow Indians living in South Africa to join British forces against the Zulu Rebellion by writing columns in the newspaper The Indian Opinion ^{[3] [6]}.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaffir_%28ethnic_slur%29

Does pornography affect marriages? Does pornography destroy marriage or are marriages that are destroyed by pornography have preexisting issues that would eventually end in marriage anyways? It has been a quiet issue which has been heavily fueled by religious furor and ignorance but I chose to give a different perspective than most.

It is my belief that marriages are women and I will even explain why. For one, we have to establish a few “knows”. Anyone who doesn’t subscribe to these “known” facts simply won’t believe anything else I am about to state so if you’re a close minded know it all you can go ahead and stop now. For one, men are genetically pre-programmed to spread their seed to (or into) as many fertile woman as humanly possible. However in order for this evolutionary trait to continue sex must be enjoyable, thereby providing a positive response. Since men are naturally more interested in sexual activity they would thereby enjoy sex more often (or it would occupy their minds more often) and as such they would have a deeper interest in sex, sexual activity, and sexual interest than their female counterparts. 

Now for the topic of marriage, people get married for a variety of reasons but in the western world one of those reasons has been and continues to be sexual activity. We even have laws and local statues that can nullify a marriage if it has never been consummated or one member chooses to willingly withhold sex for whatever reason. Now that we have established one of the western’s world’s primary reasons for establishing the institutes of marriage we can further delve into how pornography supposedly destroys marriage.

It is no secret that men are more interested in sexual activity than women and this presents a problem within marriage. A man’s needs are not normally satisfied within the confines of marriage and pornography is just one of the many means of supplements one’s sexual needs. One such way is the viewing of pornography and the other is the incorporation of pornographic themes into marriage. Some of themes manifest themselves in sexual practices such as engaging in anal, ass to mouth, oral, fetish, water sports, fisting, BDSM, or other sexual activity which may seem as taboo. As males have more of a interest in sexual activity theses sexual activities may be seen as acceptable while to many females they may seem as deplorable. Therein lies the problem, in the information age in which all mankind lives mankind is exposed to a plethora of sexual interest, content, and views that may be in direct contradiction to the “moral” turpitude of the feminine population that has no such interest. As such, the institution of marriage may be called into question if it fails to fill the needs and desires of the male populace. Merely denouncing material, actions, or themes as deplorable does not make them go away or change the opinions of those who feel there is no fundamental problem with engaging in sexual activity or viewing sexual themes within the confines of their own homes or practicing alternative sexual practices with their partner (namely their wife). 

We must keep in mind that people have historically left localities, countries, and even continents due to failure to express their own personal beliefs, opinions, or values and the institution of marriage is not immune to cultural abandonment.

This article definitely makes you think in ways the mainstream media doesn’t. However it appears as though the author has a slight bias against almost any African-American becoming an elected official, but his concerns are still valid.

Obama’s Anger

By Ed Kaitz

“The anger is real. It is powerful, and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

- Barack Obama

Back in the late 1980s I was on a plane flying out of New Orleans and sitting next to me was a rather interesting and, according to Barack Obama, unusual black man. Friendly, gregarious, and wise beyond his years, we immediately hit it off. I had been working on Vietnamese commercial fishing boats for a few years based in southern Louisiana. The boats were owned by the recent wave of Vietnamese refugees who flooded into the familiar tropical environment after the war. Floating in calm seas out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, I would hear tearful songs and tales from ex-paratroopers about losing brothers, sisters, parents, children, lovers, and beautiful Vietnam itself to the communists.

In Bayou country I lived on boats and in doublewide trailers, and like the rest of the Vietnamese refugees, I shopped at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of rice. When they arrived in Louisiana the refugees had no money (the money that they had was used to bribe their way out of Vietnam and into refugee camps in Thailand), few friends, and a mostly unfriendly and suspicious local population.

They did however have strong families, a strong work ethic, and the “Audacity of Hope.” Within a generation, with little or no knowledge of English, the Vietnamese had achieved dominance in the fishing industry there and their children were already achieving the top SAT scores in the state.

While I had been fishing my new black friend had been working as a prison psychologist in Missouri, and he was pursuing a higher degree in psychology. He was interested in my story, and after about an hour getting to know each other I asked him point blank why these Vietnamese refugees, with no money, friends, or knowledge of the language could be, within a generation, so successful. I also asked him why it was so difficult to convince young black men to abandon the streets and take advantage of the same kinds of opportunities that the Vietnamese had recently embraced.

His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of a razor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way during election season:

“We’re owed and they aren’t.”

In short, he concluded, “they’re hungry and we think we’re owed. It’s crushing us, and as long as we think we’re owed we’re going nowhere.”

A good test case for this theory is Katrina. Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and assorted white apologists continue to express anger and outrage over the federal response to the Katrina disaster. But where were the Vietnamese “leaders” expressing their “anger?” The Vietnamese comprise a substantial part of the New Orleans population, and yet are absent was any report claiming that the Vietnamese were “owed” anything. This is not to say that the federal response was an adequate one, but we need to take this as a sign that maybe the problem has very little to do with racism and a lot to with a mindset.

The mindset that one is “owed” something in life has not only affected black mobility in business but black mobility in education as well. Remember Ward Churchill? About fifteen years ago he was my boss. After leaving the fishing boats, I attended graduate school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I managed to get a job on campus teaching expository writing to minority students who had been accepted provisionally into the university on an affirmative action program. And although I never met him, Ward Churchill, in addition to teaching in the ethnic studies department, helped to develop and organize the minority writing program.

The job paid most of my bills, but what I witnessed there was absolutely horrifying. The students were encouraged to write essays attacking the white establishment from every conceivable angle and in addition to defend affirmative action and other government programs. Of the hundreds of papers that I read, there was not one original contribution to the problem of black mobility that strayed from the party line.

The irony of it all however is that the “white establishment” managed to get them into the college and pay their entire tuition. Instead of being encouraged to study international affairs, classical or modern languages, philosophy or art, most of these students became ethnic studies or sociology majors because it allowed them to remain in disciplines whose orientation justified their existence at the university. In short, it became a vicious cycle.

There was a student there I’ll never forget. He was plucked out of the projects in Denver and given a free ride to the university. One day in my office he told me that his mother had said the following to him: “M.J., they owe you this. White people at that university owe you this.” M.J.’s experience at the university was a glorious fulfillment of his mother’s angst.

There were black student organizations and other clubs that “facilitated” the minority student’s experience on the majority white and “racist” campus, in addition to a plethora of faculty members, both white and black, who encouraged the same animus toward the white establishment. While adding to their own bona fides as part of the trendy Left, these “facilitators” supplied M.J. with everything he needed to quench his and his mother’s anger, but nothing in the way of advice about how to succeed in college. No one, in short, had told M.J. that he needed to study. But since he was “owed” everything, why put out any effort on his own?

In a fit of despair after failing most of his classes, M.J. wandered into my office one Friday afternoon in the middle of the semester and asked if I could help him out. I asked M.J. about his plans that evening, and he told me that he usually attended parties on Friday and Saturday nights. I told him that if he agreed to meet me in front of the university library at 6:00pm I would buy him dinner. At 6pm M.J. showed up, and for the next twenty minutes we wandered silently through the stacks, lounges, and study areas of the library. When we arrived back at the entrance I asked M.J. if he noticed anything interesting. As we headed up the hill to a popular burger joint, M.J. turned to me and said:

“They were all Asian. Everyone in there was Asian, and it was Friday night.”

Nothing I could do, say, or show him, however, could match the fire power of his support system favoring anger. I was sad to hear of M.J. dropping out of school the following semester.

During my time teaching in the writing program, I watched Asians get transformed via leftist doublespeak from “minorities” to “model minorities” to “they’re not minorities” in precise rhythm to their fortunes in business and education. Asians were “minorities” when they were struggling in this country, but they became “model minorities” when they achieved success. Keep in mind “model minority” did not mean what most of us think it means, i.e., something to emulate. “Model minority” meant that Asians had certain cultural advantages, such as a strong family tradition and a culture of scholarship that the black community lacked.

To suggest that intact families and a philosophy of self-reliance could be the ticket to success would have undermined the entire angst establishment. Because of this it was improper to use Asian success as a model. The contortions the left exercised in order to defend this ridiculous thesis helped to pave the way for the elimination of Asians altogether from the status of “minority.”

This whole process took only a few years.

Eric Hoffer said:

“…you do not win the weak by sharing your wealth with them; it will but infect them with greed and resentment. You can win the weak only by sharing your pride, hope or hatred with them.”

We now know that Barack Obama really has no interest in the “audacity of hope.” With his race speech, Obama became a peddler of angst, resentment and despair. Too bad he doesn’t direct that angst at the liberal establishment that has sold black people a bill of goods since the 1960s. What Obama seems angry about is America itself and what it stands for; the same America that has provided fabulous opportunities for what my black friend called “hungry” minorities. Strong families, self-reliance, and a spirit of entrepreneurship should be held up as ideals for all races to emulate.

In the end, we should be very suspicious about Obama’s anger and the recent frothings of his close friend Reverend Wright. Says Eric Hoffer:

The fact seems to be that we are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about. Vehemence is the expression of a blind effort to support and uphold something that can never stand on its own.

Yet again I got into it today with some self-proclaimed know it all on military tactics on the subject of Insurgency. It seems that books like “Learning to eat soup with a knife” are politically correct compared to what actually works in REALITY. What really surprises me is the large number of brain washed senior leadership that can’t see all the glaring contradictions and fundamental problems in this way of thinking.

I must be hard headed or dumb. I don’t get it. Why do thinkers in the US military present so-called counter-insurgency operations as, basically, finesse type actions? Again, I bring attention to the highly successful wars of occupation waged by the USSR, from 1919 to 1956. I’ve made several comments in the past referring to this aspect of military history, so I’ll spare a rehash. Let me just say that wars of occupation require overwhelming tactical power and a willingness to absorb casualties, in addition to purposely placing tremendous strains on the indigenous populations. That said, successful military operations performed as such usually require months, not years and years. In American history, I draw your attention to the wars fought by General Tecumseh Sherman, against the Confederacy and the the Native American nations of the MidWest. How is it that, looking back on this history, Americans find a sense of nostalgia and national honor, while today such lessons of military history are considered out of vogue, and dishonorable if applied today?

The Army’s new manual on counterinsurgency operations (COIN), in many respects, is a superb piece of doctrinal writing. The manual, FM 3-24 “Counterinsurgency,” is comparable in breadth, clarity and importance to the 1986 FM 100-5 version of “Operations” which came to be known as “AirLand Battle.”

The new manual’s middle chapters that pertain to the conduct of counterinsurgency operations are especially helpful and relevant to senior commanders in Iraq. But a set of nine paradoxes in the first chapter of the manual removes a piece of reality of counterinsurgency warfare that is crucial for those trying to understand how to operate within it.

The title of a highly regarded book on how to conduct counterinsurgency warfare, “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife,” tries to convey in a sound-bite metaphor the com¬plexity of counterinsurgency operations. The new COIN manual takes this premise further with its “paradoxes” of counterinsurgency warfare in the first chapter. These paradoxes, such as “the more you protect yourself, the less secure you are” and “tactical success guarantees nothing,” are intended to wrench soldiers and Marines out of their Cold War-conventional-military-operations mind-set and thrust them into the world of complex counterinsurgency operations. The reader can imagine the authors of the manu¬al sending them this pensive, subliminal message: “Hey you, American soldier or Marine. We know what you are thinking. We know that you want to go out and fight large-scale battles with tanks on tanks and infantry on infantry. But those days are over, and if you want to win in a counterinsurgency fight like Iraq, you must start thinking otherwise. So ingest the obvious contradictions in these paradoxes, embrace them, and you will have moved from the dark side into the light and will be ready to execute full-spectrum counterinsurgency operations in Iraq or Afghanistan and thus will be able to eat soup with a knife.”

Yet the paradoxes actually deceive by making overly simple the reality of counterinsurgency warfare and why it is so hard to conduct it at the ground level for the combat soldier. The eminent scholar and strategic thinker Eliot Cohen noted that counterinsurgency war is still war, and war in its essence is fighting. In trying to teach its readers to eat soup with a knife, the COIN manual discards the essence and reality of counterinsurgency warfare fighting, thereby manifesting its tragic flaw.

I was not one of those combat arms commanders who only wanted to kick in doors and kill al-Qaida. I was not a tactical commander in a counterinsurgency fight who did large-scale raids at the expense of other logical lines of operations such as essential services and governance. I also acknowledge up front what one of the primary writers of the COIN manual told me recently: Too much negative attention has been given to the first chapter’s paradoxes and not enough to the middle chapters, which offer sound doctrine. However, the paradoxes are intended to frame the thinking of the reader for the entire manual. They are the theoretical framework that informs the entire manual. In this sense, they are crucial to the manual and for how our Army approaches and understands coun¬terinsurgency operations. Two of the paradoxes especially stand out as emblematic of all the paradoxes and the theoretical framework of the COIN manual. They are: “Tactical success guarantees nothing,” and, “The more you protect yourself, the less secure you are.”

These two paradoxes now especially permeate the thinking of many in our Army and its operations in Iraq. The ongoing “surge” operation in Baghdad, with its emphasis on the tacti¬cal method of establishing combat outposts in the neighborhoods and countryside, is a logical extension of the paradox that the “more you protect yourself, the less secure you are.” Also, as I was close to completing my relief in place in West Baghdad in late 2006 with another combat battalion, a senior officer in the Brigade Combat Team that was relieving my unit showed the influence of the “tactical success guarantees nothing” paradox. He characterized for an embedded newspaper reporter the nature of counterinsurgency operations that he and his brigade were beginning to conduct by saying “if we are shooting, we are not having a good day.”

And it was my sense of the permeating effects of these paradoxes on our Army coupled with my personal reading of the paradoxes when I was still in combat in Iraq that produced a reaction in me. It was not at all a reaction of approval and agreement with the theoretical premises of the paradoxes and the COIN manual. Instead, it was a reaction of anger mixed with bewilderment because the paradoxes just seemed too darn chic, too obviously simplistic in their clever formula¬tion of contradictions. But most importantly, I was angry and bewildered because the paradoxes, through their clever contradictions, removed a fundamental aspect of counterinsurgency warfare that I had experienced throughout my year as a tactical battalion commander in Iraq: fighting. And by removing the fundamental reality of fighting from counterinsurgency warfare, the manual removes the problem of maintaining initiative, morale and offensive spirit among combat soldiers who will operate in a place such as Iraq.

THE TACTICAL SUCCESS PARADOX

To me, tactical success could guarantee a lot. The high points for my squadron in 2006 were when we achieved tactical success by conducting a small ambush team operation that resulted in killing either Shiite militia or Sunni insurgents who demonstrated hostile acts or intent. Those times were few, but they meant a lot and they guaranteed, at least for a time, the regaining of the initiative and increased morale among my soldiers. There are other forms of tactical success: raids that captured Sunni insurgents or Shiite militia; cordon-and-search operations that seized large caches of weapons; even operations that removed garbage from the streets could be all seen as tactical successes in COIN. But if the fundamental element of war is fighting, then the tactical success that means the most to the combat soldier is when he can engage and potentially kill the enemy. And the COIN manual’s paragraph that defines the meaning of the term “tactical success” as part of the paradox implies that “tactical success” revolves around “military actions” that involve fighting the enemy.

The logic of the contradiction that “tactical success guaran¬tees nothing,” though, tells the reader he should not be enamored with tactical success because if he achieves it without success in other areas of COIN operations, such as essential services and governance, then it accomplishes nothing. So the lieutenant or the lieutenant colonel preparing for operations in Iraq reads the paradox “tactical success guarantees noth¬ing” and comes away thinking that he has to move beyond tactics, he can’t just focus on raids, he can’t just focus on killing the enemy, because just doing those things and not the other important operations in COIN means he will ultimately fail. The reader of this paradox goes into the counterinsurgency fight in Iraq with the impression that tactics, in and of themselves, are just not that important. And because tactics become unimportant, the essence of counterinsurgency warfare that is still fighting — fighting that is done at the tactical level by killing the enemy — is removed from the reality created by the COIN manual’s paradoxes.

But if tactical success guarantees nothing, the results of tac¬tical failure in a counterinsurgency can be huge, especially on the morale and fighting spirit of the combat soldiers who daily operate deep inside insurgent-held neighborhoods and the countryside. Every time an improvised explosive device (IED) goes off or a sniper attack occurs and the enemy perpetrator of the act is not immediately engaged in response, the immediate tactical initiative is lost for the counterinsurgent unit being hit. Over time, as these types of events accumulate in a combat unit and soldiers die and are wounded as a result, morale begins to erode.

In more conventional wars such as the American Civil War or World War II, in which large battles between military formations are fought, there is a process of fighting by opposing forces against each other that is made up of actions, reactions and counteractions. The combat soldiers in conventional military operations experience this process in real time — often in matters of seconds, minutes and hours, in bits and pieces in front of their eyes. One side fires artillery, the other side reacts by assaulting with infantry the front lines of its opponent, and the opponent counteracts again with a cavalry attack against the side of the infantry line attacking it. Killing and destruction of the opposing side is quantified. Ground is taken or lost. The prospect of progress or lack thereof is a known quality to the combat soldier in conventional warfare. Think of the famous Civil War bayonet charge during the battle of Gettysburg down the face of Little Round Top led by Col. Joshua Chamberlain, where he defeated the Alabama infantry that was attempting to push him off of the hill.

In the Iraq war, like other counterinsurgencies, there is a similar process between the opposing sides that consists of actions, reactions and counteractions. But it is very different from the process in conventional warfare. The components of the process are not the same as in conventional war, and it occurs not in real time but in slow- to no-motion. The effects of the process are not usually seen in minutes, or hours, or even days by the combat soldiers fighting it. In a counterinsurgency war such as Iraq, progress to the combat soldier appears ethereal. At times, stasis seems existential.

To maintain a sense of momentum, of progress, the oppo¬site of the paradox that “tactical success guarantees nothing” is true: Tactical success in COIN guarantees a lot. And because the engine of tactical success, even in counterinsurgency warfare, is fighting, by diminishing the importance of tactical suc¬cess by stating it guarantees nothing, the paradox removes the essential reality of counterinsurgency warfare — fighting — from the pages of the COIN manual.

Conventional warfare is different. At Little Round Top, Chamberlain’s soldiers could see the immediate effects of their bayonet charge: They counted the number of enemy killed; they stood on the hill they retained. In Iraq, conversely, a much slower and disconnected process of action, reaction and counteraction occurs. A roadside bomb goes off against an American patrol and maims or kills a soldier, but the insurgent who set off the bomb is nowhere to be found, and the soldiers cannot take immediate action against him. Instead, a few days or weeks later, after intelligence has been gained, an insurgent cell is raided and a few insurgents are captured and sent to prison. Or on that same road where the bomb went off, a week or two later, a civil works project is conducted to clean up the garbage off the road that concealed the bomb. Or just maybe the combat soldier gets lucky and a few days after the roadside blast that killed or maimed his buddy, he is part of a small kill team in hiding that catches an insurgent attempting to emplace another bomb in the same spot, and they shoot him dead.

The longer the soldier stays in Iraq and the more casualties taken by a combat unit, the more the discernable links between these actions, reactions and counteractions that demonstrate progress get fuzzy. The paradox that tactical success guarantees nothing makes things even fuzzier and tells the combat soldier that tactical success through fighting just isn’t that important — the exact opposite of how he feels. For instance, putting a bullet through the head of an insurgent emplacing an IED indicates fundamental success to the combat soldier.

COLD LOGIC

A poll of combat soldiers in Iraq during 2006 showed that at least 40 percent believed that torture of Iraqis was justified. Part of the rationale for a soldier condoning the use of torture of Iraqis is the mistaken belief that torture will produce information on other enemy activities that will protect the soldier and his buddies. But there is also another component to the large number of soldiers who condone the use of torture. As troubling as this poll result is, there is a cold logic to it. Because soldiers need tactical success to guarantee the maintenance of their morale and offensive spirit, and because tactical success in Iraq — killing the bona fide enemy — is so elusive, the idea of torture in the minds of combat soldiers fills a void, psychologically, in their desire to regain the initiative. Think about it like this: The IED goes off and kills and maims members of an American patrol, but the enemy who emplaced and triggered it cannot be engaged as an immediate response. Days and weeks go by, and other operations are conducted, but the ability to respond in an immediate and proximate way to the IED attack — a response that would be, in its essence, an act of fighting — did not exist. In the minds of soldiers, the idea of torture replaces the desire for immediate response to hostile enemy acts, albeit in a more generalized, temporally extended way. If one could capture the hatred, anger and desire for killing the enemy of Chamberlain’s soldiers as they bayoneted the Alabama infantry in front of them and turn it into an object for view, it would resemble the idea of torture in the minds of the American soldiers who took the poll in 2006.

So the lieutenant, the lieutenant colonel, the senior commander who has internalized the idea that in a counterinsurgency “tactical success guarantees nothing” is not prepared for the hatred and passion of his soldiers. He ends up quickly coming to the realization that to maintain the morale of his men, the tactical success involved in the just killing of the bona fide enemy through fighting can and does guarantee a lot.

A supreme irony coming out of the “surge” operation in Iraq is that its success, both in the polit¬ical and strategic realms, rests squarely on the back of tactical combat soldiers carrying out the tactical method of trying to secure the people through the use of combat outposts in neighborhoods and the countryside. Tactical success now in Iraq can potentially guarantee political resolution of the conflict.

The “surge” operation is also a logical extension of the COIN manual paradox that states “the more you protect yourself, the less secure you are.” The idea is premised on the theoretical proposition that the primary objective in any counterinsurgency operation is protection of the people. If you can establish security for the people, then the thinking goes that the people will separate themselves from the insurgents and side with the counterinsurgent and government forces. As a corollary to this thinking, the only way to secure the population is to do it with the tactical method of establishing small combat outposts throughout neighborhoods and the countryside where insurgents hold sway. Protection of the people, therefore, comes from the counterinsurgent force being distributed into many small combat outposts among the people. If the counterinsurgent force concentrates on large bases for the presumed fetish of self-protection, it therefore violates a principle of COIN by not protecting the people. Hence the paradox — the more you protect yourself by concentrating in large bases, the less secure you are because you cannot be out with the people improving their security and separating them from the insurgents.

The essence of war, even counterinsurgency war, is fighting. Prussian war theorist Carl von Clausewitz used the metaphor of a match between two wrestlers to describe at a theoretical level the nature of war and its essence of fighting. In Clausewitz’s wrestling match, there is an action and reaction process, an offense and defense on the part of the wrestlers. The paradox that states “the more you protect yourself, the less secure you are” removes the component of the necessity of defense of one’s own forces through protection in counterinsurgency warfare, and hence Clausewitz’s wrestling match becomes a one-sided affair. The wrestling match ends up being not a wrestling match at all but something else; the element of fighting is gone.

So we go back to the lieutenant or lieutenant colonel preparing for operations in Iraq. The paradox tells him in a boiled-down way to not seek protection of his forces if he wants to be successful. OK, but imagine another subliminal message by the writers of the COIN manual in response. “No, no, you miss the point here. You will get security by giving up the protection of large compounds and move into the cities through the use of combat outpost, which will bring about more security because the people will naturally come to your side because you are there with them, and they will turn the insurgents over to you.” Then, the reality of Iraq hits the officer. In being forced to dog¬matically employ the method of combat outposts in areas such as Baghdad without even close to the required ratio of troops to people, the outposts quickly become tactically vulnerable. Routes leading into the outposts are attacked, as are the outposts themselves. Numbers of casualties rise. Frustration in the minds of soldiers builds.

The natural instinct for a combat soldier when attacked is to protect himself and his buddies. Yet the paradox that “the more you protect yourself, the less secure you are” becomes counterintuitive to the soldier. It does not make sense because he experiences the essence of war fighting almost every day. So the paradox creates cognitive dissonance in the mind of a combat soldier in Iraq because it essentially tells him to do something that is unnatural to him and his environment — to not fight.

TACTICAL VULNERABILITY

I am not arguing that a counter insurgent force should hunker down on large bases and focus solely on force protection. But the “surge” plan for securing Baghdad tries to replicate as a tactical method what the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment under Col. H.R. McMaster did successfully in Tal Afar, Iraq, in 2005 without the requisite number of combat soldiers to do it. And in trying to replicate Tal Afar in Baghad, without adequate forces, we have produced supreme tactical vulnerability to the combat soldiers in these combat outposts. In these outposts, they now experience viscerally the opposite of the paradox that “the more you protect yourself, the less secure you are.” They see things now as “the more I protect myself in these combat outposts, in terms of tactical security, the more secure in them I actually become.”

Not only has the security paradox created cognitive dissonance in the minds of combat soldiers fighting on the ground in Iraq, it has also pushed our approach in Iraq into a noncreative, dogmatic box. Arguably, our current operational approach is too little and too late. It does not take into account the reality of conditions on the ground in Baghdad, the fact that there is civil war occurring, and those 25,000 additional combat troops simply are not enough to solve militarily what is essentially a political problem. To replicate Tal Afar in Baghdad — and, make no mistake about it, that is exactly what we are trying to do — it would take 120,000 American troops, not 25,000. Yet we are so confident of our newly released counterinsurgency doctrine — a doctrine that is premised on the paradoxes in Chapter 1 — that we apply it dogmatically in Baghdad. “Dogma” means adhering to a set of principles and tenets and applying them in an over¬powering way without considering alternatives. The COIN manual paradox that states “the more you protect yourself, the less secure you are” has helped frame us into this dogmatic box.

So maybe we should stop, in a metaphorical sense, trying to eat soup with a knife in Iraq and instead go back to the basics and try eating it with a spoon. War is not clean and precise; it is blunt and violent and dirty because, at its essence, it is fighting, and fighting causes misery and death. The authors of the Army’s 1986 AirLand Battle doctrine premised their manual on fighting as the essence of war. Fighting gave the 1986 manual a coherence that reflected the true nature of war. The Army’s new COIN manual’s tragic flaw is that the essence of war fighting is missing from its pages.

I often wonder that when I die, will there be a God? Would he care, would he have remembered my upbringing, how I was, who I was, what I did and why I did them. Would he remember my actions in light of this, or would I simply be held accountable for my actions? Would hell consist of fire and who would be there? These things I often wonder.

I’m not sure when I will die but death is always with me, watching me, keeping me, holding me. Perhaps it’s just my line of work that keeps me constantly at death’s door. I hope one day I can just make pastries or perhaps become a florist. I’m getting far too old for all of this.