tdaxp

Son, we live in a world that has powerpoint. And those slides need to be produced by men with oak leafs. Who's gonna do it? You? You with a star? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for my briefings and you curse my formatting. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that my briefings, while drawn out, probably save lives. . . You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at meetings, you want my presentations. You need my presentations. We use words like diagram gallery, paste special, clipboard . . . we use these words as the backbone of a job spent briefing something. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain why I formatted an object to a man who briefs and gets promoted by the very presentation I make, then questions the way in which I format it! I'd rather you just said Thank You and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you make your own slide, and give the briefing. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think the slide should say.

 

http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2005/archive/061305btw.html

 

Phil joins Aaron as a guest blogger on tdaxp. Noted genius, Phil gives his bio as

I'm 37 now, when I was 20 I left college to pursue my dreams and have adventures. I spent a couple of years living my bohemian poet fantasy, writing surrealist poetry that apparently only I could understand. Then I spent several years in the Army as an infantryman, including a six month tour with the MFO mission in Egypt. After leaving the Army, I set out to pursue my dream of becoming an airplane pilot and earned a commercial pilot certificate and some other ratings. I then spent a few years finishing up college and after graduation rented a one room cabin out in the woods in rural Missouri for a year to read and reflect and live a version of the Walden dream. I was considering pursuing careers in history, international relations or journalism and eventually spent a year at Southern Illinois University in the journalism program and working at the school paper. But I was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and came up with an idea of starting an audio publishing company specializing in aviation and military history and have spent the past couple of years saving money and developing the idea while working as a tour guide in DC. I'm right at the beginning now of starting the business. I'm in the process of moving to Pennsylvania and spent this past weekend setting up my small home studio and hope in a couple of weeks to start recording my first audio book.

 

He'll post when he feels like it. Welcome aboard, Phil!

"Dan, thanks for responding...," by phil, tdaxp, 29 June 2005, http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/06/26/introduction_to_modern_warfare_for_seth_of_cck.html#c152828.

An exceptionally brilliant comment by tdaxp reader Phil appears below. My comments, which add so little to his clean summary, and interspersed

We are in a 4GW war with Islamic fundamentalists.

True. The Global War on Terrorism -- or GWOT -- is partially a 4th Generation War. It also appears to be a Global Guerrillas War. Add to that Operation Iraqi Freedom I, which was a Network-Centric War.

The GWOT is a full-spectrum war.

This is a state vs. a non-state actor. And this is not only a war that involves violent action, but it's also a war of ideas.

True. And because a the purpose of 4GW is to erode an enemy's will to fight, instead of just his ability to fight, the Global War on Terrorism is primarily a war of ideas.

The challenge that we face is in providing an alternative vision to what the jihadists are providing.

True. Dr. Tom Barnett calls this a "future worth creating" or a "happy ending." The Enemy gives full spectrum happy-endings, from the individual mujahid ("you will go to Paradise, where beautiful virgins are waiting...") to benighted Muslims ("the corrupt rules and hypocrite mullahs will be overthrown...") to the grand idealists ("the Caliphate will unite all..."). We also need a full-spectrum response.

As I wrote before, the Neocons and Theocons may be the seeds of one...

Now there's been a lot of talk on blogs about the inadequacies of American public diplomacy. The reality is that we don't have time to wait for the politicians and bureaucrats in public diplomacy to get with the program.

True.

Colonel John Boyd divided up action into the OODA loop -- Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. You can win if you get inside the enemy's OODA loop -- what people often call "getting into his head." If you can act while your enemy is orienting, you can move on to the next stage while the enemy needs to go back to observe. You can paralyze the enemy with doubt and confusion.

Politics has an extremely slow OODA loop. It is not fast enough.

So what if another level were created, another level made up of non-state actors within the US, that were designed to fight the ideological war (no violence that's the state's monopoly).

True.

In a perfect world, organizations like Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross would be our non-state allies against the enemy. But they other objectives...

These organizations would not be subject to the political and bureaucratic labyrinths, but would pursue the ideological war independently.

MEMRI is an example of such an organization...

They would be entrepreneurial and able to adapt and respond quickly as circumstances changed. Al Qaeda has adapted itself to take advantage of the characteristics of our free society. What if we marshaled the characteristics of the free society to our benefit? The entrepreneurship, decentralization, the "chaos" of civil society.

Brilliant comment. Absolutely brilliant.