Neil Armstrong

A good man, a great American, a Navy fighter pilot (VF-51) and the first man on the moon; died August 25^th, 2012.  About 25 years ago I ran into Neil Armstrong – or sort of did.  I was sitting in an airport lounge waiting for a connecting flight.  A man and his family walked in and several people recognized him and immediately a small crowd gathered around him.  The man was the head coach of a professional football team that had won the Super Bowl the year before.  I sat and watched the light flurry of noise around this man.  After several minutes I noticed another man, sitting against the far wall, watching the scene, a slight smile on his face.  I stared at him for a second and realized it was Neil Armstrong.  I was about to get up and walk over to him when a small ‘voice’ inside told me to stay seated: something told me that he was enjoying the idea that he was ‘unrecognizable’ while the coach of a football team was nearly instantly recognized.

It is far too easy, at this distance in time, to think that the entire Mercury – Gemini – Apollo effort was a ‘given,’ that of course it would work.  What the NASA spaceflight team, and the astronauts did, was remarkable by any measure.  And the men who flew and led those missions were exceptional characters.  And in listening to them and reading their various books one thing stands out again and again: they all had the highest regard for Neil Armstrong.  We need to remember him, we need to remember what they all did, and we need to consider what they did as an example of what we are capable of if we put our minds to it.

His family said it best:

"Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."

NEIL ARMSTRONG - RIP

General Dempsey, OpSec and Citizenship

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs thinks that “If someone uses the uniform, whatever uniform, for partisan politics, I am disappointed because I think it does erode that bond of trust we have with the American people.” This is in response to some citizens – all of whom have served the nation either in uniform or as intelligence officers, none of whom are now working for the government – who castigated the Administration for what they believed was using the actions of military personnel (and in particular the raid on Abbottabad that resulted in the death of Usama bin Ladin) for political gain, while leaking operational details that they believe place at risk US personnel.

There are several points that need to be made.  The first is that whoever was advising President Obama to say what he said, and use the phraseology that he did, in regard to the raid, belongs on Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour.  Every President gets the chance to shine in the glow generated by the deeds of others – it goes with the job.  But if they want to take advantage of it to best effect, the answer is to say a whole lot about ‘them’ and ‘those guys’ and point at a bunch of folks around you who did all the real work, and use the word ‘I’ as little as possible.  When someone asks you “What was your role in all this, Mr. President?” you shrug and say “Me, I didn’t do anything, I just sat there and signed the order they put in front of me.  These guys did everything.”  And while that is, for the most part, true in every case, everyone will nod and say “Damn, he’s humble, but they couldn’t ‘a done it without him.”  So, for the buffoons in the White House who let the President do this, go back to high school – you need to start all over.

Second, while the security and OpSec issue is serious - glaring, the guys who are running the video suffer from a similar – though not as egregious – problem: simply put, they look petty by focusing too much on the President.  Forget the President for just a second; if you hate him, fine, that’s politics and democracy, we are all free to love or hate our elected officials, and I certainly don’t have any love lost for the President or many in Washington.  But the issue is OpSec – not the President.  Stick with the issue, focus on the facts and the events, and if there is ‘stink’ that should belong on the President or someone else in the administration, it will eventually find its way there.  Your credibility rests on your professionalism, so, stay professional.  You can call for better Opsec, you should call for better OpSec, you can call for the President to do a better job providing OpSec, but you maintain the ‘high ground’ by focusing - as a friend of mine says - ‘like a laser beam on OpSec.'  As for the President (and much like the President’s own statements), sometimes, understatement of some facets of an issue is the best way to make an impact.  In this particular slice of the issue, less is more.

That being said, you need to show that the issue is OpSec.  The word has now come out in the press that a member of the raiding party has written a book about the raid.  Further, it has not been cleared by either the DOD or CIA, as it must per the documents that everyone must sign.  If these reports are accurate, that is a violation of the rules and shouldn’t be tolerated.  Further, assuming that the book contains additional details of the raid, it too constitutes a breach of OpSec and you should condemn it as well (again, assuming that the facts released in the paper are correct).

As for the Chairman – he sounds like he’s ready to retire.  Maybe he hasn’t kept up with US history but one or two soldiers have run for office in the past, and their comments on military duty have figured in their campaigns.  Some of them were fairly senior officers: Eisenhower, Grant, Jackson, Taylor, etc.  All were supported by other military personnel as they ran their campaigns, using their professional reputations for political purposes.  Others who served include Kennedy, Truman, Roosevelt, and well, you get the picture.

And one other point: the guys who are commenting are not on active duty.  They are citizens.  General Dempsey: do you think that folks who leave active duty shouldn’t be involved in politics?  Or that folks who were in the military and who are now engaged in public life shouldn’t refer to their military careers to establish their bona fides?  It makes me wonder what planet you are from.  And what Constitution you swore to protect.

Here’s a little something from some other general who led the army in wartime, a fellow who knew a little bit about ethics, and leading men and a nation through difficult times.  Maybe General/Citizen Dempsey has heard of him:

“When we assumed the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen.”  - George Washington

Oscar Pistorius, Ray Kroc and President Obama

He didn’t do it.  He didn’t perform the surgery, he didn’t make the prosthesis, he didn’t force him to go outside and play with his brother, he didn’t change the rules of the International Olympic Commission, he didn’t pick the South African track team, he didn’t make the uniforms, or the blades, or fly the airplane that got the team to London.  In fact, once you consider it all, Oscar Pistorius didn’t do much of anything.  At least if you use President Obama’s logic.

Because that is exactly President Obama’s argument about business.  Substitute mentors, parents, business partners, infrastructure and joint ventures and you have precisely the same argument.  Let’s face it, that’s a pretty goofy argument.

The simple truth, and one understood by everyone who watched even a few minutes of the Olympics or read even one or two articles about it, is that Mr. Pistorius is a remarkable guy, with a lot of grit, and we should all tip out hat to him.  What he has done is remarkable.  And HE did it. 

Every step has been a struggle, every step a challenge, every step an opportunity to quit.  No one else kept him from quitting, no one else did the training, no one else ran those races.  It is an example we need to take to heart, and no one more than President Obama.

The fact is, the market place is as unforgiving as the running track.  If you don’t put in the time, don’t train, don’t watch your diet, then you won’t win, you won’t place, you won’t even show. We all know that the small businesses fail at alarming rates: 50% fail after 5 years, 70% fail after 10 years.  But here is a better statistic: the average billion dollar per year business lasts 12 years.  Only 12 years.  Of course, there are some that get bailed out by the government, and some get absorbed by other companies or merge with other companies, and in some of those cases the stockholders do well.  But many just unravel, and fade away – even when everyone is working hard some don’t make it.

Consider that of the original Dow Jones 30 Industrials of a century ago, only one remains on the list – General Electric.  The others are gone.  Or consider how many aircraft companies were in business in the US in 1945 and how many remain today.  Airlines, shipping firms, steel corporations, etc., etc., etc.  They get started, some survive, some thrive, and then many unravel and die off, their remains bought up by their competitors.

What part of that did the government help in?  What part of that was a ‘gimme,’ a term with which the First Golfer should be familiar?  The problem with many politicians is that they have so little exposure to the real world and the real economy that these facts mean nothing to them.  For many in the White House, the idea of a Ray Kroc risking every dime he had, and committing every waking moment for years and years, to buy five hamburger restaurants from the McDonald brothers is an alien concept.  More disturbingly, they don’t seem to see that Kroc’s acceptance of risk, his willingness to not accept things as they are, but to act on his own despite what anyone else might think or say or do, is the essential foundation stone of progress – economic, technological or cultural.

Oscar Pistorius would understand Ray Kroc, and vice versa.  The problem is, President Obama and his staff understand neither of them.

Syria

The situation in Syria is going to get worse before it gets better.  We all need to accept that it will also go in directions we have not anticipated.  And we need to accept that we – the US – are now involved, and in a major way.

We saw in the press that a White House source announced that the President approved support to the Syrian rebels and, in one way or another supports the ouster of President Assad.

Assad is a butcher, and the world would be better off without him.  But we need to be clear as to what the President just did: he de facto declared war on Syria.  And he declared unlimited war.  Calling for the removal of the current government is the true definition of unlimited war.  Simply put, there will be no negotiated settlement.  All well and good if you are prepared to pay for the costs.  But what that effectively does is remove any inhibitions on the part of the other party in the fight.  It means the fighting is going to get dirtier, and it means that if the other side can strike at you he will.

Syria of course, is not acting alone.  Syria has a strong ally in Iran, and, Russia and China have both found it politically expedient to back Syria if for no other reason then it is of low (Russia) or no (China) cost to them, and it is of significant political cost to the US.  But it also speaks to what may be happening in the region: the political maps are breaking down.

Over the past nearly 200 years the world – and the west in particular – has become quite fond of the boundaries as drawn on the map.  In the few cases where they have been changed the change has usually been accompanied with some reference to the borders having been ‘drawn by British politicians sitting in London with no regard for the people who live here.’  But the simple truth is that throughout history boundaries have always been drawn by generals and politicians with as little regard as possible to the people of the region at hand.  From Ramses II and Hattushilish III through Alexander, Julius Caesar, Hadrian, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, all the Mogul emperors, up through Saddam Hussein, borders have been regarded as things to be crossed and then redrawn.  Syria in particular is perhaps the most redrawn parcel of land in history, with nearly every great or want to be great empire in history occupying that land.  The land itself is currently occupied by a patchwork of people who view themselves not as ‘Syrian’ but Sunnis, Shias, Alawites and Druze, as Arabs and Armenians and Turks, Palestinians, Kurds, Assyrians, and Circassians.

In fact, much of the Middle East is a similar patchwork, which upon close examination is further splintered into tribes, huge family networks in which people have real allegiance to their extended families ahead of any allegiance to country.  If you have closely followed the events in Libya over the past several years you have probably seen tribal names such as Awaqir and Misurata and Obeidat – tribes that had major roles in the power structure of the Qaddafi government.  But these tribes can trace their heritage back in time for centuries and centuries, many to before the founding of Islam 1400 years ago.  And it is important to recognize that for many of these people there is little real devotion to nations or boundaries, particularly when that nation, such as Syria, was physically ‘constructed’ by treaty after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, ruled by France, and then gained independence 66 years ago (1946).

But, there is much more to this current problem.  It would seem, in fact, that the violence is already spreading across borders.  There have been intimations that the governments of one or more regional powers played a role in the attack on Assad’s cabinet meeting on 18 July, which killed the Syrian minister of defense and at least 3 other senior members of the cabinet and pushed Assad to seek sanctuary outside the city.  (For the record, this should not be labeled as terrorism; these men were all legitimate military targets as they are all parts of the command and control process of the government.  War may be ugly, but whoever did this didn’t target civilians, they attacked the government.)  Just several days later there was a similar attack on Saudi Intelligence headquarters in Riyadh.  Was it retaliation?  Was it coincidence?  That hardly seems likely.  Was it done by the Syrians?  Or did they have assistance?  If so, who?  Iran would seem to be a good bet, though certainly not a given.

The point here is that the situation is escalating.  And spreading.  The US needs to be well thought out and deliberate.  Perhaps covert aid to the rebels in Syria is appropriate.  But, the US needs to have a clear plan.  One of the problems with wars is that they seldom go the way you want them to go.  And the less your investment on the battlefield the more likely that is to be true.  When you try to fight wars cheaply and through proxies you have essentially no control as to the course of events, you are simply adding gasoline to the barbecue.  And so our ‘plan’ needs to have enough ‘branches’ that there are well thought out – and ‘executable’ – options in the event this war takes a different direction then the one we want.  And if we haven’t done that planning, or there are branches we can’t execute – for whatever reason – then we shouldn’t be doing this.

Politics inside the ‘Beltway’ is fine, but wars require professionals and clear assessments of real risk, not ‘hip-shots’ and stories leaked to friendly reporters so that the administration can look tough for voters.

And meanwhile we have a White House staffed by people who can’t seem to keep their mouths shut, who don’t appreciate the value of secrets, and really seem to believe that it’s all just a game being played in newspapers and TV news shows.  At a time when we clearly need some professionals in the White House we appear to be watching the recreation of ‘Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour.’