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. 

Russians to the Left, Russians to the Right, into the Election we charge

Russians to the Right, Russians to the Left, into the Election We Charge

By Gordon S Fowkes

While the card carrying Sanders Left is often a stooge for the Russian Energy and Defense industries (Polar Bear Scam and the Depleted Uranium Mirage),

 I find it damnable that Donaldian supporters of "National Defense" now, are conducting an assault on NATO and are in support of traditional Kremlin Imperial Russian geographic ambitions. These ambitions, once blocked by NATO at the East German to Italian to Turkish borders, now blocked from Estonia to Romania, are to be given license to finish the job of the conquest of Europe. 

Quotes from the Trompista Front......

“Gordon Fowkes well now was Russia supposed to hand over warm water Port entry to Soros and gang? If Soros wasn't funding opposition in Ukraine and responsible for how many deaths? At the time Ukraine signed deal with Russia and all was good. Compared to serial killer Hillary, trump is a saint in that sense”

“Gordon Fowkes Interesting you only mention Ukrainians and yet attack Putin about Crimea, how many Russians died during revolution and including my family members and Stalin's repressions and let’s go one step above Ukrainians helped Hitler during world war 2 and when realized they are losing joined Russia again but this is not the geopolitical/ historical thread”

The statements I read of how Crimea is traditionally Russian should remember that it was traditionally Greek or Turk for thousands of years until the Charge of the Light Brigade.

The Fulda Gap and the Fish Hook

As one who froze his ass guarding the Fulda Gap

and have it shot at by Russian made rockets, mortars, machine gun fire, and detonations of the 24" directional mine in sunny South Vietnam, and served for over thirty years, and unaccustomed as I am to the written word, I cannot find the proper sense of outrage, anger, and betrayal to describe the most treasonous proposals since before Benedict Arnold.  

Arnold only wanted to give up the West Point fortifications, the Donaldians apparently want the Atlantic Coast our eastern frontier and give up Alaska on the West.

The Russians, it appears, now have us in  a pincer movement from Right and Left. A Cannae on a global scale.  The end result if carried to logical end recreates as it was in the Fall of 1940 to Operation Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor.  

The Year that Churchill Saved the West

Jaw/War

Capturing Moscow didn’t help Napoleon, and in fact, set him on a downhill slide that ended in Paris. Capturing Paris was a fleeting victory for Hitler. Capturing Philadelphia and New York didn’t help the British either. Certainly capturing Baghdad didn’t help us, and in fact was about as useful as stomping on a Texas ant hill. Battle may be like capture the flag, but war isn’t. Battle may have it’s odds like craps, or poker, but war is more like 52 pickup with three incomplete decks of cards from different games.

While battle is often waged not only to smash something, or grab something, it is also used to make a statement. The Thirteen Days in October 1962 recognized the notion of negotiating with displays of kinetic force, like a blockade and a saber rattle. The Alamo made a statement about Texian resolve. The Doolittle Raid made a similar statement about American resolve, and in fact prodded Admiral Yamamoto into losing four aircraft carriers. Bombing Ghaddafi’s home in the desert seems to have brought him into a reversal of his support of terrorism regardless of stripe.

Sometimes, however, the other side isn’t listening. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor to induce us into negotiations, which negotiations were completed on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Hirohito listened and pulled a coup to overthrow military control of the Japanese government when faced with the real possibility of Soviet Occupation and American nuclear annihilation. Hitler didn’t listen at all, and died in his bunker. Ho Chi Minh didn’t listen either. It remains an interesting “if” if we had taken the Plain of Jars by 1968 and seen whether Ho Chi Minh would have let the Chinese come into Vietnam like the Chinese in Korea.

Occupying Richmond and defeating Robert E Lee ended the War Between the States, but only temporarily freed the slaves which slavery continued under other guises until Brown vs the Board of Education, and with Affirmative Action action. The resentment of the white Southerner to Reconstruction wrecked Reconstruction, and the resentment of the white Southerner to heavy handed Federal aka Yankee interference in local events still plays out in our elections.

It is probably useful to be able to establish some form of military doctrine about the non-kinetic effects of battle which itself has kinetic and non-kinetic means. Psychological Operations has a history of interesting effects of non-kinetic energy.

Operation Moolah in Korea was an offer of a payment of $30,000 to any Chinese or North Korean pilot that flew a Mig-15 to South Korea. While we did get a Mig, the real effects were the stripping of Communist air cover over North Korea for several weeks while the Communists grounded their planes for fear of the defection of any of their pilots. The Poles caused the Germans to lose one full day of war production by issuing a fake proclamation allegedly by Nazi headquarters giving Hitler’s birthday off for Polish war workers.

The analysis of this apparent anomaly leads us to make a serious change of how we define victory and how to get it. What separates a Hitler from a Hirohito? What separates the successful occupations of their lands from our attempts to Reconstruct the South or of Iraq? How do we know we have won?

I suggest we define victory or success in war is when the other side enforces our wishes with their own police and courts and other agencies of political, economic and social power. I suggest that victory comes when the other side sees a long term advantage in their own interests in cutting a deal.

Germany and Japan benefited from our occupation and were a non-belligerent ally in the Cold War. The South took over a century to recover from Reconstruction economically. In both those cases victory was dictated from the barrel of a gun. What would have happened if Lincoln had missed the play, and what would have happened if we had flooded Germany and Japan with Carpet Baggers and Scalawags?

The approach to a victory, then depends on the carrot and stick offered to those in the opposing side’s structure who have a dog in the game. Sometimes this isn’t the Boss, but someone willing to sell him out, or culling the Boss to cut and run. And it is often those closest to the Boss who are his weakest point. Himmler tried to pull off a coup and cut a deal with the Allies, Hitler wound up appointing Admiral Doenitz as Fuhrer, while Doenitz wasn’t hard core Nazi.

When it gets down to defeating the enemy, however defined, it is the informal structure of power, and the role of personality that counts.

Some leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam were brilliant practitioners of the art of survival by divide and control within, but not so hot in managing combat forces. Each of these three applied the Law of Inverse Relevance by touting their military infallibility which, if a virtue, was the least of them. The confidence of nations under leadership of this nature is based on a lie.

Incurring defeatism and division in the enemy’s ranks is the most popular way to achieve non-kinetic victory. Accordingly, President Wilson took no chances with pro-German elements in America nor was he tolerant even of the slightest hint of defeatism. Wilson established the Committee of Public Information (CPI) under George Creel to operate as a de-facto ministry of Propaganda. Wilson’s Sedition Act banned “uttering … any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States government or the military” (this from Goldberg’s book ‘Liberal Fascism’). Breaking into this form of psychological control is a tough nut to crack.

The trick is to identify the segments of the other side who are willing to cut a deal and who are willing to implement our policies afterward.

These segments aren’t always the same bunch. We reduced Germany and Japan to smoking wreckage in hopes of inducing them to kick their leadership out for it was assumed that killing civilians would be a positive motivator for the civilians. That didn’t work in bringing down the regime in charge, but it certainly made a splendid motivator to keep out of the business of conquest afterward. Likewise, the Russians didn’t venture into hot wars until Afghanistan.

It is popular to demonize the demon in charge of the enemy as a snake. Cutting the head of the snake is also a popular sound bite in planning for victory, but sometimes you don’t have a snake, but a can of worms, or an ant hill … like in the Muddle East. It might have worked if Hitler had been killed on July 20, 1944. But killing Osama Bin Ladin isn’t likely to end Islamic terrorism as this movement grows heads as fast as they are cut off. Snake analogies don’t help when there is no snake.

Since Secretary of Defense Gates has taken charge, there is less of Rumsfeldian bombast, and a ripple of curtains behind which deals are being cut. In this current drama, fuss and fury are theatre. Helzbollah was suckered into dropping it’s cloak of invisibility and showed it’s hand as a meddler in Lebanese politics than a partisan of Palestinian liberation. Syria is talking to Israel about peace while calming the Iranians and Palestinians with promises not to be kept.

In short, I hope that it is the Gates paradigm that appears to be positively engaged in engaging the key players of the Muddle East with the traditional mix of jawing and warring at the same time. Call it Jaw Wars. It’s also as deeply engrained in Chinese government and politics as it is in the Muddle East, or in Chicago.