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http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1623  | archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–  |  | | | ← previous | December 24th, 2009 | next | December 24th, 2009: It's true, Dinosaur Comics got personified last night and wished everyone an awesome new year. I do too!
This is where I take my MINI CHRISTMAS VACATION: there'll be no new comic Christmas Day, and I'll be running Klassik Komicks until January 1st, 2010 (next Friday!) So it's really just four Klasik Komix. I keep spelling "Klassick Kowmics" differently each time because they're that classic!
Have fun, everyone, and thank you for making 2009 one of my best years ever. It's still amazing that I get to do this comic instead of having a real job, and it's all thanks to you guys. – Ryan |
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http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/23/2010_the_real_test_year_for_obama
Proven provider John McCreary predicts that next year will
provide the real test of the Obama administration's foreign policy:
Yemen-US-al Qaida:
Yemeni casualty reports are that the US missile attack in Abyan Province killed
one senior al Qaida leader and suicide bombing planner plus a dozen of his
followers, but the commander of al Qaida in Yemen escaped. Four al Qaida are wounded and in custody from
the US missile attack on the training camp in Aden Province.
The attacks might give pause to the
terrorist web posters and cause some analysts to rethink their assessment of
the strength and determination of the US Administration. The NightWatch view
remains that what comes next will be the true measure of the Administration,
now that the year of attempted reconciliation initiatives is ending with little
to show for it.
If the missile attacks are any
indication, North Korea, Iran and others need to pay closer attention and not
close the ledger just yet.
I think he is right. We'll have a good sense by the end of
the year where post-American Afghanistan and Iraq are going. Pakistan may
provide some fireworks. Iran and North Korea will have been weighed in the
balance and found wanting.
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http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/23/a_marines_afghan_aar_v_learn_how_to_patrol_dammit
Here CWO2/Gunner Keith Marine gives a memorable lecture on
patrolling, and nearly runs out of letters in making his points. Read it now
and believe it later:
We have to get back our patrolling
capabilities. Ninety percent of
everything we do is patrolling but we aren't good at it. The Iraq experience has done some good things
for our Corps but it has diminished our patrolling capabilities. Our NCOs' experience in Iraq has fostered a
sure knowledge that the double column is the preferred formation and moving
along roads is acceptable, which are exactly the wrong things to do. Right now we operate at an acceptable level
but with some focused training we can limit our casualties, while killing more
of the enemy. Everyone can spout 5-3-5
rules but few know what it is and even fewer practice it.
A) Each
patrol needs a viable mission that accomplishes a needed task. Going here because we went over there
yesterday is beyond stupid and you are failing as a leader with that reasoning.
B) Go through the orders process in
its entirety when able. At a minimum do
route planning and brief an order covering Situation (past 24 or 48 hours and
other patrols) Mission (what, where and purpose), Execution (intent, where you
expect to make contact or find IEDs and actions when that happens, IA drills
for contact, IED strike, Medevac, and cover formation types - where you will
satellite/guardian angel, wedge echelon etc).
C) Do a confirmation brief with the
platoon commander.
D) Conduct Initial and Final
Inspections.
E) Use an Initial Rally Point
inside the wire to conduct your final inspection, do last minute rehearsals or
rehearsal of concept drills, final com checks, get in your initial combat
formation and be counted out of the wire by the APL - use your APL, most of the
Marines now days don't even know what that is.
F) Point men need to be trained
along with flanks. Use a dual point
system - one guy looking close for IED threat and one far scanning tree
lines. Walk at a pace that facilitates
your mission, not which gets you back to the patrol base quicker.
G) Take security halts and observe
your surroundings frequently. Have one
of your patrol elements set up in observation covertly while the other element
moves into the village. Watch the
actions the locals do. Want
atmospherics, see if there are runners or people move towards the patrol to
greet them. If something happens, this
observation team is already set as a base of fire.
H) Investigate what is
happening. Marines often see locals
doing routine tasks, like pumping water or kids playing, when if they
investigated vice just continuing to patrol on by, they would see the hole
perfectly shaped for an IED amongst the playing children dug by the guy with a
pick axe being shielded by the pretty kids playing in the road. The Taliban are masters at using the obvious
to deploy IEDs right under your nose.
I) Use deception. Send out two patrols at a time in different
directions, and then have one circle back.
All too often we rotate patrols in and out. The Taliban quickly figure out that if the
patrol just went west, he has complete freedom of movement to the East.
J) Use Satellites, traveling and
bounding over watch and a variety of formations to match the threat.
K) Do not set patterns.
L) Stay the fuck off of roads and
trails. I believe that every casualty
our battalion has taken from IEDs, with the exception of two incidents, has
been on a road or trail and it has been at times when the Marines were not
required to be on the road or trail as part of a sweep/clearance mission.
M) Use rally points.
N) Use the appropriate formation to
be in the most advantageous position to immediately gain the initiative and
kill the enemy. We are very lacking in
this area and a lot of our squad leaders just don't get it. Use TDGs and a variety of training scenarios
to get them up to speed and understand a variety of terrain and tactical based
scenarios.
O) Crossing Linear Danger areas is
a lost art, especially when a patrol will walk three hundred meters along a
canal to find a foot bridge to cross it - terrible at setting patterns, just
walk through the water but set up near and far side security first and use a
variety of techniques so you don't set patterns.
P) Communication Procedures need
work. Rehearse them and have competent
Marines on the radio.
Q) Proper dispersion. Make sure it's enough to mitigate the IED
threat but not too much where you are not in a position to get combat power
where it needs to be. If you have to do
ten "I'm up they see me, I'm downs" prior to getting your weapon into action,
your spent before you go into the assault.
It's all fun and games when someone is shooting at you via pop shots at
300 meters, a completely different story when you have a few machine guns
hammering down on you from less than 100 meters.
R) Individual movement and actions
such as using available cover and making eye contact with the guy behind you
every ten steps or so.
S) Stay in zone a while. We have become too bogged down with
timelines. More often than not, the Iraq
standard of four hour patrols is the constant.
One platoon commander had his guys doing 12 hour patrols. Initially, when I heard about it, I thought
it was stupid. After visiting the patrol
base and going on some of his patrols, I realized he was a genius. He solved several problems at once. His Marines automatically set up to observe
areas because they had to in order to rest.
They spent a good deal of time speaking with locals, because it's
another way to rest. They moved slowly
and deliberately, because the Marines realized iPod time doesn't come until
that 12 hours is up. They covered their
entire AO almost daily and 24 hours a day.
Marines had enough time to focus on patrol prep. There is a lot of ways to accomplish your
mission and you have to try a variety.
Change things up and never count anything out.
MANPREET ROMANA/AFP/Getty Images
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http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/23/the_dangers_of_medals_ii_a_follow_up
Yesterday I carried a comment
questioning the awarding of medals to people who drive Humvees into bombs.
A few hours later, a reader pointed out that Maj. Neil Smith, an officer at the
Army/Marine
Counterinsurgency Center, on a Leavenworth blog earlier this year discussed this issue of whether medals sometimes
encourage counterproductive behavior:
. . . [A]re valor awards
potentially counterproductive in a COIN environment? Hypothetically, an
officer who does effective clear, hold, build, develops partner capacity, and
brings a sector to success will likely receive a BSM, if anything. A
lethal focused officer, who shoots his way through his deployment, will get a
BSM/V or Sliver Star for one of these combat actions. His sector will
often be coming apart, but guess who will get the respect at the next military
ball and promotion board?
I'm torn on this as a valor
award recipient - we must reinforce those that display heroism but it is not
uncommon for someone to go on patrol looking for a fight IOT get that CAB or
BSM/V.
Starbuck
points out in the comments that Boss Mongo also dove into
some of these depths.
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http://www.branchandroot.net/archive/2009/12/archimedes-lever-two/ http://www.branchandroot.net/archive/?p=585 Squalo bonds with Xanxus, and none too soon as Xanxus finds out some things the Ninth had kept from him. Drama with Angst and Sort-of Romance, I-4
Squalo strolled around the edges of the wedding crowd beside Xanxus, keeping an eye out for any unattended cake they could nail down. He didn't have all that much of a sweet tooth personally, but it was a way of keeping score among the kids. After all, twelve year olds couldn't rack up kills yet, or negotiations concluded in their Family's favor.
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http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/23/glasser_vs_feaver_on_tora_bora_who_is_right
Susan Glasser, who was there, says that one of the biggest
mistakes of the last 10 years was letting
Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora:
The disaster flowed
from one bad idea: that the United States could win in Afghanistan without a
"big footprint," using locals who wouldn't trigger the renowned
Afghan hostility to foreign invaders. Not to mention that deploying a small
contingent of special forces armed with cash would prove Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld's ideological point about the need to transform the U.S. armed
services from a lumbering Cold War conventional force into a leaner, meaner,
high-tech military capable of lightning strikes.
Rumsfeld may have
been right about the need for transformation. But Tora Bora was a case study
not in innovation but in the arrogance of a superpower that made bad decisions
in the face of overwhelming evidence that they wouldn't work.
Peter Feaver, who was on the staff of the National Security
Council, responds that she is wrong
wrong wrong. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan succeeded, he says, because of the
"light" approach used. Losing OBL at Tora Bora was the price of that light
approach, he concludes. "We had bin Laden within reach at Tora Bora precisely
because we were willing to try the very light-footprint approach they
denounce," he writes.
Interesting argument, made all the more so because both Ms.
Glasser and Prof. Feaver are friends of mine. Also, both are crackerjack
smart.
So who is right: the White House aide turned professor or
the foreign correspondent turned bigtime editor? I think Susan is, and not only
because she is my boss. My reasoning is that the CIA's Bernsten asked for a
battalion of Army Rangers (a light force, Prof. Feaver) to be deployed and was
turned down.
But I decided to ask someone who was in the middle of this
operation. His bottom line, I think, is that this was indeed a terribly screwed
up operation, but that Rumsfeld's philosophy was the least of its problems. So
he thinks Glasser's facts are correct but not her conclusion, and Feaver's
analysis is correct but it misses what was really the lesson of this
operation.
Here is his response:
A boy runs to his father and
breathlessly shouts, "Paw, come quick. The hired man and sis are up
in the haymow, and he's a-pullin' down his pants and she's a-liftin' up her
skirt. Paw, they're getting ready to pee all over our hay!."
To which the father replies, "Son,
you've got your facts absolutely right, but you've drawn a completely wrong
conclusion." That is, both authors do have some facts correct, though not
necessarily their conclusions.
With respect to Susan Glasser:
Yes, Bin Laden escaped. To make the leap from that fact to the many other
tidbits offered, such as it was a bad idea to think that we could win without a
big footprint and that this was about proving Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's
ideological points tells more than a little about her perspective (from amongst
the many journalists who outnumbered the U.S. Forces). Full disclosure, I
was not there at Tora Bora. But I was down the road a little at the
intersection where the collection of senior leaders from varying organizations
collided with modern technology (which as I recall were predominately venerable
LST-D's ... forgive me if a wax nostalgic for a moment). As such my
recollection of "what really happened" differs some from hers.
I would also argue that she misses the mark with the comment that we are still
suffering the consequences of the decision not to fight at Tora Bora. I
for one would not be willing to bet that much would be different today
regardless of a different outcome there.
With respect to Peter Feaver: I happen
to agree with his assessment of the options available, either deploy now with a
light 'more unconventional' force or wait until 2002 with a more conventionally
footprint. I also personally believe that we had multiple chances under
this construct to capture/kill Bin Laden.
Where I tend to differ from many is that I believe most critical observations
to be symptomatic of the command relationships at the time and not the ends
unto themselves. I think that our proverbial Achilles heel was, and
perhaps still is, unity of effort. Gary Bernsten and BG Dailey
"arguing" describes to a tee what I see as the Achilles heel of the
entire war at that point -- unity of effort. While Gary was the commander
on the ground the vast preponderance of resources being utilized at the time
were obviously military. When his request for additional resources was
denied (Rangers and others) I vaguely recall Gary offering to the military
leadership to take over the operation (at that time it wasn't just BG Dailey on
deck, but also BG Harrell and RAdm Calland - which no doubt helped simplify the
situation immensely). What has forever stuck in my mind was the
collective response: "Conditions had not been met for the military to
assume responsibility for the operation."
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http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/23/comment_of_the_day_time_to_end_the_cib
I was struck by this argument
made by "Hunter," who wrote a comment yesterday about the Combat Infantry Badge
and similar awards. They:
[H]ave outlived their usefulness and should be done away with. If you knew
the bureacratic nonsense and hoops that must be navigated to get just one of
your soldiers one of these awards you would agree. I do not exaggerate one bit
when I say the packets varied from .5 to 1 inch thick -- for each submission.
My soldiers generally laid low and didn't piss off the populace, we were
rewarded for their discipline. There were very few potshots against our gun
trucks and only 2 IEDs -- in total we fired 9 warning shots in 9 months of
operations. Meanwhile my brother Bn down the road unleashed 100 .50 cal rounds
in every engagement and (reasonably assuredly) gave insurgents and Iraqis more
to be pissed about. Their CIB/CAB rate was 7 times ours (~20 soldiers in my
unit versus ~150 in his).
Of course if we extrapolate further -- the Purple Heart should go away too.
All Army personnel get right shoulder patches -- it ought to be enough. End
the gamesmanship. Lots of guys get CIBS in Iraq, but the war effort would be
better served if they had never fired their weapons.
It hadn't occurred to me that these awards could hurt the
war effort -- interesting thought worth looking into. But I disagree with doing
away with the Purple Heart.
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http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/23/iraq_the_unraveling_xxxvi_the_lull_before_the_storm
Austin Grant Long, an assistant professor at Columbia
University and an expert on counterinsurgency, was moved by an upbeat
column by Fareed Zakaria about Iraq to write this comment:
I am not sure when the last time Zakaria was in Iraq, if
ever, but I am in transit back from a trip there and am a lot less
optimistic. The security forces are intensely politicized, Kirkuk is a
bomb waiting to go off, Baghdad looks like a mix of Mad Max and the Berlin Wall
zone (1,500 checkpoints in the city according to a couple of people interviewed
and various ISF gun trucks at brief intervals along main roads), and corruption
is endemic and massive at all levels of government. Many Iraqis are so
disillusioned with democracy that turnout may only be a 33% or less in the
upcoming election. The outcome of the election, with greater
fragmentation predicted, will likely make it harder not easier for the
government to take required action even as U.S. leverage is dropping quickly.
To be fair, it is much less violent than two years or even maybe a year ago but
given the astronomical levels violence got to in 2006-2007 I do not view this
as an achievement of epic proportions. Moreover, it is not clear this is
not merely the lull before renewed violence in a couple of years.
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http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/23/top_ten_terrorism_movies
 What are the top 10 movies on terrorism? I'd start with Battle
of Algiers, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and Michael Collins.
I'd include The Baader-Meinhof Complex, which my wife
and I watched the other day. It suggests something that had never occurred to
me, that there was a link between the gang and the murderous attack on the 1972
Munich Olympic games.
Dunno whether I'd include the movie Munich. I
disliked it the first time I saw it, but found that it stayed with me, which
for me is the real test of a film.
Also, from 9/11, United 93. (I haven't seen World
Trade Center -- Oliver Stone just gets on my nerves.)
That's only six, at most. Surely there are more good films
about terrorism.
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http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/12/why-all-lettering-is-getting-smaller.html posted by Neil
I'm flying out tonight to the UK. I'll hole up in the middle of nowhere with my children and ex-wife and my mother as well, and probably be off-the-internet the whole time. There will be no TV in the middle of nowhere, so I will miss Doctor Who and miss "Statuesque" on Sky1 (10 pm Christmas Day).
Trying to deal with the last things I have to do before I get out of here. (Also realised very late last night that the problems I've had reading comics for the next Year's Best American Comics that I'm guest editing has nothing to do with losing my love for comics and everything to do with the fact that somewhere in the last year I must have started needing reading glasses for small print and had not realised this. I found a pair of reading glasses and the world became one with good, easy-to-read comics in it once again... I suppose more things like this will happen as I age. How odd.)
I leave you with a handful of links...
Okay. Back to last-minute things...
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http://www.branchandroot.net/archive/2009/12/archimedes-lever-one/ http://www.branchandroot.net/archive/?p=584 What if Squalo had been taken in by the Vongola earlier, and met Xanxus much sooner? What change would that have made in both of them? Drama, I-3
In the end it all came down to Xanxus, Rafaele decided later. He didn't normally pay much attention to the mafia children until they were old enough to seek a real position. As both Gianni and Maria were wont to say, each in his or her own way, they had their fellow Guardians to satisfy any such urges. But having Xanxus running around the main house like a kid-shaped bomb, ready to go off at any second, would make anyone a little more alert. So when Tyr mentioned, after the sparring session when they were both wrapping their various cuts and bruises, that there was a promising new swordsman coming along among the children, Rafaele listened.
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http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/22/defense_spending_im_a_hawk_but_give_me_a_break
I believe in a strong national defense. But I don't think
buying jets, ships, and anti-missile systems is necessarily the best way to
improve the nation's security right now. In the long term, one of the best ways
to make the country strong is to spend more on national infrastructure and
especially education. Without the GI Bill, my father probably wouldn't have
gotten to college. As it happened, he wound up going from growing up poor in
rural Wyoming to teaching at Harvard.
I also understand that military operations are expensive.
Got it. I want to support soldiers, give them what they need. I am all for
building day care centers on military bases and buying good body armor. I can
even live with $1.2 billion being given to combat commanders for CERP money
(i.e., "walking around money").
But there is a whole lot of defense spending that simply
stuns me. Here are a few examples from the current FY 2010 defense appropriations
bill:
- $4.4 billion for two Navy destroyers and one littoral
combat ship. Yow. Maybe it is time to start buying warships from
South Korea, or at least invite competitive bids? Folks, this is billions,
not millions. Imagine what $4.4 billion could do to rebuild our highways, or
send deserving kids to college, or rebuild New Orleans.
- $2.6 billion for V-22 aircraft for the Marines and Air
Force. I wish the Marines had just gone with the UH-60 Black Hawk two
decades ago. Now the Marines have dug a hole that is killing the rest of their
aviation. It makes me wonder whether the Marines, the smallest of the armed
forces, should be in the business of technology innovation.
- $1 billion for Navy F-18s. Lots of money for an
airplane that is, well, yeeehh. Better spent on unmanned combat
aircraft?
This list makes me wonder just how out of touch with the
country's economy our military leaders are. This makes it more understandable
how they could think that that the
scandal over triple-dipping generals being paid millions of dollars to
"mentor" is no biggie.
(HT to National
Priorities Project for the spending summary)
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