The Intelligence Gap Gap

The present spectacle of President Elect Trump’s evasion of the daily briefing system used for the Presidency may appear to be pure arrogance, however, this gap is extremely common amongst the Insecure.  And insecurity in the Executive Pottery is very common to the point that all who read here, know of it personally.  One does not tell the spouse that the favorite attire is nasty, brutal and short.

The Gapped does not want to hear what does not fit the Gap’s Preconceptions particularly if already Tweeted. Hitler’s famous temper tantrums were his style to evading the issue of a challenge to omniscience.  Everyone is gapped in some way, boss or blue collar, but particularly in the ranks of the Corporate Eunuchs (Suits), the Assistant to Roaches (fake suits), and courtiers and courtesans of corporate courts (the dressed) thousands of years so far. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZZhhA87d6g   (Robocop Glitch Clip)

I fed my family for a decade when I was an IRM manager in the City of Houston on exploiting the Gap’s Gap, filling the Gap with Actionable Intelligence, instead of Glittering Gossip.  This was the continuation of a bad habit I learned in the Army, in Combat, and Behind the Green Door.  The trick was that the Gapped, could understand and intelligently use the data provided, and as such said actionable intelligence became addiction, and my paycheck was dependent upon said addiction.  

My mandate was called the “Chinese Lesson” based on the keen grasp of bureaucratic baffle noted in the Characters of the Chinese language

The "Chinese Lesson: about not building temples in my empire.

In the Case of the Donald, whose firm grasp of complex data is essential to effective management and leadership is a clear and present threat to his Suits, Courtiers, Dressed, Jackals and Roaches.  Powerful leaders know this game and keep the Gilded divided against each other.   FDR put two bureaucrats in charge of the TVA project requiring his interface.  Hitler divvied up propaganda between Goebbels, the Radio/movie studios and Leni Reifenstahl.  Stalin had his closest advisors dance like bears in his place late at night.

The real center of power in a Gapped Regime is often wielded by whomever has the Gap’s Ear, such as the Horse Master (Tudor), Body Guard (Capon), Pheromone Mistress, often the Spouse.   The position of Chamberlain was of the Golden Crapper Emptier, hence the name.  This is the position of the Trump team between rival egos, appetites, and billions where he thinks he can control by Firing. 

From Russia With Love

The principal problem facing the US electorate for principally the next election cycles is the polarization thingie.  And that goes back to Alexander Nevsky to the Oil Patch to the Rhine.

 

That we have AltRights crawling out from rocks long since forgotten is the direct result of AltLefties who failed to crawl back under theirs leaving choices with nothing in between, sounding like a domestic squabble between a stoked-up nag and a drunken braggart.  Even judging what was being argued over drowned out by the echo chamber on steroids. 

 

The Pro-VietCong of the Sixties and Seventies



The Bitch Cycle to Trade Psycho Stamps to Cash in on a Free Terror

The breach in the sanity cycle for this old soldier was when the Communists on Campus came out of hiding back in the Sixties and effectively sapped the will of the people to fight Communism over there where I was, and done with the same methods used on the French in 1940 to support the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Stalin and Hitler.  At that time, the commies in the US were sabotaging US war production and blocking shipments to Britain...which was suddenly reversed when Hitler invaded Russia. 

French PoW's policed up by the German in their invasion of France

 

Now the Communist and the Hippy Dippy Campus Commies have served their purpose to Soviets by supporting Russian Defense and Energy industrial sectors, but have left NATO on Moscow's doorstep, the need of the Russian state for Lebensraum and restore the borders of Mother Russia to those held in 1914 and again in 1946.  The shift of the NATO borders 800 miles to the Right from the Oder to the Dneiper restored Russian borders last held in 1654 when the Ukrainians seceded from Poland. 

I was one of the guys in the front rank of the 3rd Amored Infantry Bn, 36th Infantry, 3rd Armored Division (Spearhead)

The destruction of American resolve tied to the Anti-War Anti-Energy Anti-Anything "Libtard" Democrats has run its course, and as such created a storm of Anti-Anti-ism which provides the Russians with a two gun approach to restoring the glorious borders of Mother Russia to the Rhine this time long desired since Muscovy is has no defensible borders at its core.

 

 

A little history is never too late.

 

FAKE OFFICERS AND FUBAR IN THE PENTAGON

Fake Officers & FUBAR in the Pentagon

 There is a malignant growth in the Pentagon of several generations and many administrations that has effectively neutralized the combat power of at least the Army.  And weakened the links between it and the other services, to the point that after its most successful land operation in its history, failed to defeat a fractious but rabid irregular foe, and failed to stand up effective governance in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Something it had done successfully in Japan and Germany.  And the entire misadventure has been managed by fake officers not confirmed by the Senate as Officers of the United States.

1

The Transformed by the Fake

(The President) shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The fact that these fake officers have not been confirmed by the Senate breaks the Constitutional limits and controls over the military, judiciary, and executive personnel in critical positions considered expressions of the sovereignty of these United States.  All such “Officers of the United States” include ambassadors, consuls, cabinet members, federal judges, and all military officers down to Butter Bar.  As such, each Officers’ word is law, enforceable in court as such. 

Survival Imperatives Differ - Officers vs Civil Servants

The survival imperatives of Civil Servants vs military officers differ dramatically between the Job Description vs the Efficiency Report (OER) on file.  The Personnel File, once called the 201 File, contains the list of assignments and schools together with associated OER.  One slip, and late in one’s career it can end under the Up or Out policy.   This hits usually in the Second Decade of service with odds as low as fifty percent for survival, depending upon the current SWAG.  Been there, done that. 

The Officer’s career assignments are determined on a competitive and centrally controlled process.  The end result is the selection of officers in senior grades, usually O-6 (Colonel and Navy Captain) who has the expected preparation and performance.

2

The Civil Service Job Description and table of organization gives authority and territory upon which continued employment is grounded. This is dependent upon connections, favors, and a strangle hold over processes.  The assignments of Civil Servants are principally under the control of the Servant, with the selection and promotion process subject to compromise and manufacture. It is rigged, and with few external set of standards applied to selections for promotion or assignment.  Been there, done that.  

This lack of objective standards of performance or experience, taken collectively and protectively, mandates that military expertise by the military becomes a clear and present danger to civil service survival.  Complementing this banality is that the officers caught up in Civil Service traps must play the part of a puppet on a string.  This is how we lost the Middle East. 

WE KNEW THE CULTURE BEFORE

The current flap over ISIS, and of the diminished capacity of Iraq and Afghanistan to dealing with irregular and peer enemy forces, despite over fifteen years of US military effort and trillions of dollars, were preventable had the effort been fought by Officers of the United States, without the fatal influence of Fake Officers of the SES and their crony contractors.

The post mortems posted about the prewar estimates and post war operations has been laid at the door of cultural arrogance and incompetence at the level where the difference between Shia and Sunni was dismissed, in favor of a turnkey Kansas under the baleful gaze of Neo-Conservatives.  The blame has been shifted in-house to denounce stability (nation building) as a righteous military mission.

The problem with that assessment is that it ignores that the US Army had trained for decades in Rear Area Combat Operations (RACO), Civil Affairs and Military Government, and Psychological Operations all of which I had extensive exposure to during that training effort which filled the time between Vietnam and 9-11.   Likewise, the capacity to operate at Field Army level with multiple corps and divisions was destroyed. 

In order for an officer to get his or her Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) prior to 9-11 approved in CA and PSYOPS, one had to submit a PSYOP or Civil Affairs Estimate of the Situation that necessarily covered such niceties as Shia and Sunni.  Or Pashtunwali.  Where did these estimates go?

3

Draft of What Was Known in CA and PSYOP

Why were the capacities to fix and administer devastated and/or conquered territories for which preparations long precede D-day, H-Hour deleted?  Instead of Civil Affairs brigades and PSYOP groups prepping the battlefield, only a handful of Army Reserve Officers were given a back seat at the briefing. 

TENURED (SES) AND THE TEMPORARY (Officers)

Rumsfeld has long left the Pentagon, but the programs that he advanced had been long in the plotting, going back to, at least, Desert Storm.  It occurred to a number of my fellow veterans that the “Regular Army” was at fault proceeding with policies that guaranteed their promotions in a competitive fashion, over the necessities of actually winning in war.  Military officers’ tenure in the Pentagon, however, rarely exceed four years, and usually run three.  It is not possible for a decades long military doctrine run from inside the Pentagon be done with the connivance of commissioned officers of the United States.  They then are the hand puppets of those permanent employees (Civil Service) welded to their desks.

COMBAT SERVICE SUPORT

The glue that held Field Army and Corps operations together was the force structure in the US Army Reserve, and to a large extent the Army National Guard with counterparts in the Air Force and other services.  The glue came about due to the unglamorous role that glue, as in logistics and service support did not facilitate competitive promotions in the Active Components.  The result was the massive transfer of unglamorous activities (service support and combat service support) to the Reserve Components. 

Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait brought a sudden and traumatic shock to the Pentagon that the US Army, nor other services, could go to war without the Reserve Components. 

4

ARFORGEN

http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2015/10/arforgen-death-of-army.html

Once Baghdad had been secured, however, the glue was dissolved as was the corps along with the core of logistics, combat service support, which was banished from the Army dictionary as defunct and obsolete.  Since then, large scale maneuvers became problematic at best with maneuver replaced by rotation under ARFORGEN (Army Force Generation) designed to provide equitable opportunity to participate in combat for promotion and career development purposes. 

5

Likewise, while all units in the Armed Forces had been aligned to war time plans, the new “transformation” mandate under Rumsfeld, replaced any coherent defense strategy with blizzards of “snowflakes” from his imperial orifice.   Rumsfeld had taken the measure to transfer senior military officers to the field where they could be more useful, and replaced them with senior civil servants aka Senior Executive Service aka SES.  Then abolished the field commands these military officers might have been assigned to.  

6

Under Transformation, the Corps was abolished and along with it the well-oiled close air support system was broken from the days when a request for an airstrike was monitored by the Air Force and silence was approval.  Too many Medals for Valor including the Medal of Honor have been awarded due to a failure of approval of immediate airstrikes due to the abolition of the Corps.

7

PREPLANNED  AND IMMEDIATE AIR SUPPORT

Such was the case of the “transformation” process that proceeded to create a collection of “units of action” (instead of companies, battalions, regiments and brigades) that would be perfectly suited for future combat, the shape of which was to be determined by magic crystal ball.  Said crystal ball being ensconced in the Office of Net Assessments, which was designed to destroy the Services’ pet projects.  And “verified” by war gaming but not validated by the Schools or the Field.

8

Any policy that has a life of over three years is not likely from a military staff in the Pentagon. In previous years, the Army was divided into “branches” (Armor, Artillery, Military Intelligence, etc) which branches governed doctrine and training and was active in procurement.  Branches have been abolished, and the dominance of doctrine and equipment has been sucked up into the Pentagon, and away from the Service Schools that melded field experience with national requirements.  The operative model for Transformation was to turn the Army into modular units like ships in the Navy. 

Rummy was Navy. 

9

TASK ORGANIZATION TOO COMPLICATED FOR REMFS

The Senior Executive Service (SES) which operates as if it were consisting of Generals and Colonels, are not “officers of the United States”, and their directives should not be considered “orders” in the military sense as they do not convey the sovereignty of these United States.  The oath of enlistment or office for service members requires obedience to the “officers” appointed over them, which Civil Servants are not.

10

TRANSFORMED INTO TABLES FROM ON HIGH

While a purge of those fake officers is not practical, the severance of the malignancy from the chain of command is easily obtained by the Senate saying that it will not consider any efficiency of fitness report by other than an Officer of the United States” in the process of confirming the promotions of military officers.  This will instantly produce a REMF stampede from the Pentagon of officers seeking real units to serve in.  These can be readily funded by the shredding of the payrolls of the SES. 

11

If need be, those whose services are essential can be presented to the Senate for approval and concurrence.  In that manner, the Senate regains control over a Pentagon run wild. In addition, lateral entry of personnel and units as has been the wartime custom since before George Washington, can be set up.  

A UNIFORMED GENERAL STAFF CORPS!

And, finally, the Army needs a General Staff Corps trained to run things from the top, to provide the linkage between brass and field.  After WW 1, the concept of a General Staff was denounced as too Germanic.

12

In addition, and foremost, the present efforts of the Army to reconstitute itself must be supported in defiance of those whose payroll depends upon its demise. Corps and divisions are being reassembled along with the necessary combat service support (logistics).  

Gordon S Fowkes, LTC USA RET, KCTJ

Pork or Hogwash, the Voter's Choice

Pork or Hogwash, the Voter’s Choice

Pork is some concrete benefit to the voter’s district, job, family, and community.  Pork is honest, something useful in the cultural survivability strategy from Food & Family by Roles to Nurture and Protect, in accordance with Rules regarding Social Status and Tools to make it happen, leading back to dinner and a date, feeding and breeding, or not.  There is a direct link between survival and the pork.  Pork is honest. It means jobs, contracts, benefits, and infrastructure.

By way of contract, Hogwash is washing someone else’s pork which leverages the roles of Rescuer, Victim, Protector vs Villainy, even when there is no pork benefit from the Hogwash.   Sometimes hogwash is often bullshit.  Sometimes it’s a warm blanket. 

By way of example in the current political imbroglio starting with the Democrats (liberals, progressives) with their demands for student loan deferments, schooling and medical care for the less fortunate constitute pork for the less fortunate, but hogwash for the affluent advocates seeking to play rescuer and protector to the stupid and unwashed. 

The Rainbow Coalition

Pollution from Russian industries in Siberia.

The latter Democratic Hogwash campaigns against fracking, offshore drilling, nuclear power and the Polar Ice Melt are camouflage for someone else’s pork, which is to say the Russian Energy and Defense Industries.  Long standing linkages back to the days of the Comintern of the Thirties theoretically in line with Communist World Conquest, but now are acting in the corporate interests of Gasprom, Lukoil and Uralvagonzavod. 

The flap over depleted uranium rounds in Leftish Academia after Russian built tanks were shredded by uranium depleted rounds from relatively small cannon. 

Inverse Attribution.

What simplifies the confusion is the application of the Law of the Inverse Attribution Reflex (LIAR). Inverse Attribution (Bragging & Blaming). Brag of one’s weakest virtue, blame with one’s biggest vice. http://gordonswar.blogspot.com/2016/01/liars-advertisers-and-true-believers.html

Bragging of one's weakest virtue - gas mileage

Accusations by the Left of Corporate Greed, Wall Street Avarice and Capitalist Excess fall under the category of inverse attribution (blaming with one’s strongest vice) as greed, avarice and excess are inherent in the offensive nature of the defense of pork.   Likewise, the Right’s accusation of the Liberal’s Class Warfare, is an example of the Right’s War against the “welfare cheat” and losers, and in favor of the protection of wealthy welfare (tax breaks, contracts, etc.).

The Thunderclap Coalition

Blaming with one's biggest vice

The other side of the political scramble this current election cycle is heavy into hogwash with links to pork not so clear.  Certain themes made by alleged Conservative punditry, if taken seriously, would call for the violent overthrow of the Constitution to be replaced by a designated dictator subject of back room manipulation.   These are some of the popular arguments:

1.       Courts are supposed to interpret the law, not make it. Since the Anglo-American legal and political systems are based on precedent, case law, and the Common Law which cases go back before the Magna Carta.  The term is “stare decisis”, let the decision stand, all cases with same facts and law should be treated the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law  

2.       Judicial Review is not in the Constitution despite Case Law going back to Marbury vs Madison in 1803.  Statutory law generally over rides case law except when the case law involves a Constitutional precedent such as due process of law, or when the law is arbitrary and capricious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison

3.       The Founders were Demi-Gods whose godly pronouncements have been blasphemed by all Amendments after the 12^th (The loser in Presidential Elections would not be VP). In fact, the Founders were brilliant and practical men who had just defeated one of the largest empires in the world, and knew the tragic history of abuses and misuses of political power as evidenced during the course of English history, particularly from the Tudors to the Stuarts with the English Civil Wars in between.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War

4.       Congress is irremediably corrupt, and should be purged of the politically correct. The essence of a republican form of government (guaranteed in the Constitution) is a legislature.  Anglo-American political systems are built around protecting the legislative function, Federal and State. This goes back to Queen Elizabeth’s barring the bishops during consideration of the Book of Common Prayer, and Cromwell’s purge of Parliament in 1648.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride%27s_Purge

Colonel Pride of Cromwell's Ironside Army purge the Parliament 

What is difficult in the case of Conservative Right Wing propaganda is the nature of the Pork of interest to the Right.   In part, the war over Pork is treated as a zero sum game, someone else’s loss is automatically your gain.  It is difficult, however, to see how a collapse of civil and criminal law benefits the Conservative base.  In short, the four points of how to do a coup should not be taken seriously, as such a coup would destroy the one percent even if the downtrodden stayed in their place.

Another way to purge a Congress

Donald Trump did not invent the current coup credo he is now stuck with.  The true authors of the coup credo are obscured by a maze of fake institutions and quack publishers.   Behind them, perhaps lurks the ghost of hippies past, as these techniques are Sixties familiar.  The Atlantic Monthly suggests that Carl Rove and his propaganda machine are lurking back there, perhaps.  http://www.rove.com/

Foreign Influence?

Foreign influence influences both influential influencer both affluent and articulate.  Moscow is fully represented in the Rainbow Coalition as they have been since the Thirties.  Tel Aviv has likewise fake institutions which have built a fanatic Thunderclap Coalition of Conservatives, and which leverage Christian eschatological interpretations of the Rapture and the Second Coming which will be triggered by the unification of Greater Israel…in which all but 144,000 Jews go to Hell half way through the Tribulation. 

From the Left Behind series of comics illustrating the Rapture 

See Nicolas Cage in the Left Behind Movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrXe8YDbzYs

and the website

http://www.leftbehind.com/

The historical roots of this twist go back to the English Civil War of the unreconstructed and unforgiving Puritans who still do not accept the Restoration or the Glorious Revolution in which Roundhead and Royalist cut a deal. 

Gordon S Fowkes, LTC USA RET, KCTJ

Winning the Peace

The Shogan and the Emperor

The Ideal Warfigher is one who fights when necessary to advance the cause of his polity (nation, tribe, family) in ways that support the process of survival.  This is fundamentally, the feeding and breeding of same in ways the nurture and protects the future, children who can cope as in sustained survival of children at puberty at a ratio of 2.1 per couple.  Failure to do so means the polity dies or dies out.

1

The Psychological Roles needed for Survival for players pro and con

The operative term is protection as in against those who would destroy the ability of the polity to survive.   This is the psychological aspect of nurturing and protecting against threats, often called villains. The process of protection has defensive and offensive sides one of which is directed at the villains own ability to survive. Hence one man’s hero is another’s villain.

2

Victory in any such conflict occurs when both hero and villain benefit from the arrangements post combat.  And believe it so.  The current imbroglio in the Muddled East is largely due to the inability for the combatants to get to a mutually satisfactory post combat arrangement. 

All the firepower, maneuver, and destruction of war that ignores this is a pure waste and a threat to the survival of all combatants to the party.

If you know your enemy and you know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

 If you know yourself but not the enemy for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.

If you know neither the enemy nor yourself you will succumb in every battle.

Sun Tzu’s advice applies to all walks of life.  Especially in divorce court.

Family Values

Knowing enemies, friendlies or those on the fence depends upon the array of psychological roles and attendant sociological rules that make up the substance of cultural or marker awareness. 

3

The Sociological Rules that support the Psychological Roles

For the professional warmonger, T.E. Lawrence’s 27 Articles is a brilliant case study sadly ignored in the late unpleasantness.  Rules such as these change with each culture. 

1. Go easy for the first few weeks
2. .Get to know their families, clans and tribes, friends and enemies, wells, hills and roads
3.   In matters of business deal only with the commander…. of the army.   Never give orders to anyone at all. 
4.    Win and keep the confidence of your leader

5.       Remain in touch with your leader as constantly and unobtrusively as you can
6.       Be shy of too close relations with the subordinates of the expedition
7.       Treat the sub-chiefs of your force quite easily and lightly
8.       Your ideal position is when you are present and not noticed
9.       Magnify and develop the growing conception of the Sherifs as the natural aristocracy…

10.   Call your Sherif 'Sidi' in public and in private

11.   The foreigner and Christian is not a popular person in Arabia

12.   Cling tight to your sense of humour. You will need it every day.

13.   Never lay hands on an Arab; you degrade yourself.

14.   While very difficult to drive, the Bedu are easy to lead.

15.    Do not try to do too much with your own hands.

16.   A well-placed gift is often most effective in winning over a suspicious sheikh. Never receive a present without giving a liberal return,

17.   Wear an Arab head cloth when with a tribe. Bedu have a malignant prejudice against the hat,

18.    Complete success, which is when the Arabs forget your strangeness and speak naturally before you, counting you as one of themselves,

19.   If you wear Arab things, wear the best

20.   If you wear Arab things at all, go the whole way.

21.   Religious discussions will be frequent. Say what you like about your own side, and avoid criticism of theirs, unless you know that the point is external.

22.   Do not try to trade on what you know of fighting. The Hejaz confounds ordinary tactics

23.   Allusion is more effective than logical exposition: they dislike concise expression

24.   Do not mix Bedu and Syrians, or trained men and tribesmen

25.   Avoid too free talk about women. It is as difficult a subject as religion, and their standards are so unlike our own

26.   Be as careful of your servants as of yourself

27.   Bury yourself in Arab circles, have no interests and no ideas except the work in hand,

4

Lawrence at Aqaba

Psychological Operations.

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Sun Tzu

In short, winning wars that stay won requires knowing the right motivation for the right people in the right place with the right kind of power.   In Cold War terms, these are key communicators, as those who had links to people we could not talk to.  A two-step process.  And who were open to selected themes and symbols.  Of special note, these key communicators are those who may or may not hate out guts.

5

The Polish Underground in WW2 stopped war production for the Germans for one whole day by issuing a single official looking flyer announcing that all workers could take Hitler’s Birthday, off.  Better than a thousand bomber raid.

All Politics is Local and run by the Construction and Entertainment businesses.

As earth bound creatures, who goes where to do what is implicit in breeding and feeding.  Whether this be a fishing boat, a crib, or in one’s MacMansion in the ‘burbs is the domain of the General Contractor, Building Inspector, Hooker and Pharaoh.   As it is inferred in the Old Testament, Moses was a Building Inspector for the Pharaoh who crossed the General Contractor who got Moses tossed in the mud to make below code bricks (as in without straw). 

6

Making Brick with Straw ... Code Compliant

Terrain and trafficability analysis by Moses left the pursuing Pharaoh’s panzers swimming with the fishes. 

7

Moses Parts the Sea

All politics is local, and all local politics is about use and not use of the land.   Getting to local brings the best fruit.  All politicians above the local level succor the support of the construction and entertainment industries.  Therein lies the Achilles’ Heels. 

8

The Governator

Entertainment. Should one doubt the depth of sincerity herein depicted, it should be noted that Sun Yat Sen’s base of power in China were the Triads, Tongs, and other previously pro-Ming Anti-Machu gambling, prostitution and protection rackets.  Chiang Kai Check’s power base in Shanghai was the Green Gang.

Real Estate. The plantation owners of the Virginia Tidelands dominated US politics until they went South.  When Oil replaced Wool and Cotton, who drilled where and when runs deep in the political bedrock.  A necessary precursor to oil is the steel industry.   The present conflicts in the Ukraine are over the Soviet built Don Bass Iron and Coal triangle.  We call this industrial real estate. 

Highways and Byways, Rivers and Ridges

Commerce and war move along those routes where the going is easiest which normally includes rivers, high ground, and low ground approaches and restricted where high ground intersects such as passes, and cross corridors.  Generally speaking, towns will grow on the opposite side of a barrier, such as a mountain pass, river and big thickets.  This can be represented by a pair of hands:

9

Movement is best with the grain, opposed across

Whether by commerce, piracy, governance or war, the control of key pieces of ground by one or another goes to three levels of significance: Strategic, Operational, and/or Tactical.  This applies to marketing grapefruit as well as firepower:

10

Forking, the Indirect Approach.

Liddell Hart, in reaction to the carnage of WW 2, advocated the Indirect Approach, in which the enemy was placed on the horns of a dilemma, trying to cover more courses of action than could be handled:

From Liddell Hart. "In Strategy the longest way around is often the shortest way there. A direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, where as an indirect approach loosens the defender's hold by upsetting his balance".^[1]

From Sun Tzu: "In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory. In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack – the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers. The direct and the indirect lead on to each other in turn. It is like moving in a circle – you never come to an end. Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination?"^[2]

The Force

There are two kinds of warriors: Farmers and Hunters.  No combat ready force passes an inspection, and many inspection ready forces are doomed.  Farmers need directions, hunters need an incentive.

11

German Dead in Russia

The Chain of Command is no stronger than its weakest links.  Nor can it stand alone on the bottom link. Nor can it be separated from the whole of the endeavor. Train from the top down, not the bottom up. The smallest parts only work in the sense of the larger whole; the squad works in the context of battles by four levels up, no less.

12

Peace on Earth

All living creatures carry battle drill in the genes, often first shown as play.  Hide and Seek is an evasion drill as are hiding in dark or high places. “ Keep Away” is about being the dinner or the diner.  “Ring around the rosey” is about the Black Death.

13

Keep Away

Battles are won or lost in context of the whole sensory environment; sights, sounds, smells, taste and touch.  Of these, smell is the oldest and bypasses all others to the brain. 

14

Full Sensory Context of Battle

While once not too many centuries ago, technological change was slow, often centuries in the making. Now it is in the blink of an eye.  Knowing the range of shifting options of the Tactical Imperatives is critical in lasting until lunch.  These are extensions of the parts of the body in four modes which ricochet to create a kaleidoscope of options.

15

Faster than the blink of an eye

Despite the best efforts of your best, it is best to get the best deal for the standing. 

16

Home Again, Home Again

Hic finitur Lectio