Here are some more of those motivational posters, Army grunt style!
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Motivators
Most of you have seen those inspirational, motivational posters decorating offices throughout the country. They exhort us to be determined, to be righteous, to dream, to exercise, to lead.
Here are a few you probably won’t see in your boss’ reception room:
Targeting Difficulties
Have you ever wondered why no one in their right mind makes fun
of the intelligence of today’s American military Soldiers, Sailors,
Airmen, and Marines?
Try interpreting the following while taking 7.62 rounds from multiple directions!
Posted in "Downrange", Military Affairs
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Iraq in Detail
Travis Patriquin wrote a pretty in-depth explanation about the difficulties fighting the insurgency. His earlier, more famous PowerPoint slide gets to the point quickly and humorously. This article was recently published in The Military Review (Hat tip: Mr Patriquin and Matthew B).
Based on my own experience downrange, and the experience of some of my Airmen who were deployed with special forces, I tended to marginalize "Former Regime Elements" in favor of wanting to go bash the Jayesh al Medhi and the foreign fighters. It looks like I wasn’t giving the Saddam loyalists their due for the trouble they’ve caused in Iraq.
Using Occam’s Razor to Connect the Dots: The Ba’ath Party and the Insurgency in Tal Afar
Posted in "Downrange", Military Affairs
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The New ASAT Race
According to reports, China successfully tested and anti-satellite missile last week. This barely seemed to get the media’s attention. We as a nation are going to have to figure out quickly what our response will need to be to this capability. Assuming a regional war pitting US forces in defense of Taiwan against China, Chinese ability to knock down critical satellites without needing to resort to bombing our spacelift facilities here on the mainland will have grave strategic ramifications for us.
I wish I could explain more about this. Suffice it to say we’re seeing the early potential for that "Space Pearl Harbor" former Secretary Rumsfeld spoke of in 1999.
Posted in Military Affairs, Rest of World Military, Science
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CNN’s HMMWV Supports Troops
I awoke to some interesting news from Scottsdale, AZ this morning. It turns out the CEO of ReMax Realty bought the HMMWV CNN used during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM for $1 million at this year’s Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction. The proceeds will go to the Fisher House Foundation, which is a series of houses that give recuperating military folks and their families a place to live during medical treatment.
Surprisingly, this effort appears to have been headed by Wolf Blitzer! It looks like he may have taken Lynn Cheney’s chastisement to heart when she asked him if he and CNN wanted America to win the War on Terror.
One has to wonder if this is just a stunt from CNN, or if they really mean there’s a sea-change going on from the Ted Turner-Eason Jordan era?
I’m hoping for the best. If I see more moves like this out of CNN, it will help.
Other useful moves would be firing Jack McCafferty, and returning Lou Dobbs to the business section and out of the opinion section.
Posted in Media
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We Can Still Win
It’s not over ’til it’s over. For more good news from the Ready First Combat Team’s AOR, check out today’s Stars & Stripes.
Here’s a link to another heart and mind we won, and it paid off in spades!
Posted in "Downrange", Military Affairs
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More Good Stuff from VDH
If you’re not regularly reading Victor Davis Hanson, you’re letting some of the best commentary on the War on Terror pass by. If you disagree with him, at least he makes you think.
Here’s some good thinking to get your 2007 underway.
The Legacy
I ran across this article in Stars & Stripes today. It’s nice to see Travis Patriquin’s famous slideshow being vindicated in al Anbar. (The link is to another page of this blog where you can click to view the presentation).
The Ready First Combat Team will be rotate out of Anbar before too long. The next brigade in will have large shoes to fill.
I hope this trend continues. All the way to Baghdad.
It’ll still take a couple years. Diplomacy with the Sunnis means winning the locals one local leader at a time. There are a lot of locals still there.
There are also still Shi’ite militias and foreign fighters to deal with. And there’s only one way to deal with them. We’ve tried diplomacy with al Sadr before. We’re crazy to try again. The Jaysh al Medhi knows only one thing: When defeated, sue for peace, and regroup later. It’s time to smash it (and it’s leader) once and for all. We won’t need to do diplomacy with an organization that doesn’t exist anymore.
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Click here for info on how to make a donation to Travis’ kids’ trust fund.
Posted in "Downrange", Military Affairs, US Army
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Ski Okunakayama (or as I Say, “Not Appi”)
Christina and I took the day off and went skiing again. Christina is going to try to become a skiing instructor, and the instructor course starts soon, so she wanted to get in a day of good practice with her favorite student, me!
Okunakayama was a little closer than Appi resort, and it had half as many runs. Three of those runs had near-black-diamond equivalent slopes.
One new thing I learned on my own while Christina was chiding me for not facing down the mountain and putting too much weight on my uphill ski was that as humiliating as it is, I still have to do a warm-up run on a green slope. Otherwise, something interesting will happen. I might get onto a narrow path that’s too steep to snow-plow and I’ll have to face a choice of going too fast off a ledge or into a snow-bank/side of hill (I wisely chose the hillside, following the old maxim that if you must crash, make sure you hit the softest thing you can as slowly as you can). In any case, I can’t quite just hop off the lift and ski a black slope. Not yet, anyway.
Another thing I learned is that enough snowboarders sliding down the mountainside will uncover roots. Don’t try to cross over the roots on your skis. Roots bring pain.
Otherwise, the snow first thing in the morning was pretty good. It kept snowing off and on all day, which led to the hiding of ruts, bumps, areas of powder, etc. It was a little challenging for me, but I managed to get down two of the black slopes without falling (out of about twelve attempts). There were two wild-card falls on blue slopes.
Overall it was a good day. I can’t wait to get back to Kitzbuehl someday now that I really feel like I know what I’m doing.
Since when, though, did I consider skiing on a Saturday "Taking the day off?"
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16 Jan 2007 Update: It turns out there was an earthquake north of here on Saturday, it measured 8.2 on the Richter scale. I’ve chosen to lay the blame for all my falls on the earthquake (except the root, that was the snowboarders’ fault).
Posted in Asia/Pacific, Family & Friends, Fitness & Health, Travel
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