A rank outsider?

Posted on 6 March 2010 by SJPONeill

Many moons ago, I mentioned how much I enjoyed District 9, both as a movie in its own right and for the deeper themes within it. I’ve been following the District 9 Facebook page for a few months now and was rapt to see last night that it has been nominated for Best Picture for the Academy Awards this weekend…

Congratulations to producers PETER JACKSON & CAROLYNNE CUNINGHAM on their Academy Award™ Nomination in the category of BEST PICTURE for DISTRICT 9!

Did you know? Peter Jackson was originally going to produce Director Neill Blomkamp’s vision of HALO, but when that fell apart, he offered Blomkamp $30 million dollars to make any movie we wanted. District 9 was that movie.

District 9 is also up for Oscars® in the categories of Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Visual Effects. Watch the 82nd Academy Awards™ THIS SUNDAY March 7th!

The FB item links to this article Oscar shocker: Could ‘District 9’ win best picture?

“It would be nice if the Academy surprised us. They don’t surprise us very often,” says Betsy Sharkey, film critic for the Los Angeles Times.

“If something unexpected walked away with an Oscar this year, particularly in the Best Picture category, it would say volumes to the industry,” says Sharkey.

“That Best Picture prize sets the tone for whole Oscar show. An unexpected win would get people talking and make the Academy Awards more relevant than they have been in a long time,” she says.

I, for one, would really like to see an adventurous enterprise like District 9 pip the big studios at the post this weekend – not only would it send a message to Hollywood (although whether Hollywood is actually listening is another issue) that we do actually want original innovative and entertaining movies not endless rehashs and remakes of someone else’s good ideas but it is another score on the board for the New Zealand film industry and the magic Mr Jackson. I haven’t seen Avatar – it been a while since I have been in a city big enough to have a 3D screening of Avatar with time on my hands to go to the movies and Carmen’s description of it as “…Fern Gully on steriods...” hasn’t really motivated me that much – or The Hurt Locker yet but I think my second choice for Best Movie would have to go to The Hurt Locker if for not other reason than its topic and setting.

Bridgegate totters toward resolution

Michael Yon Facebook ‘Bridgegate’ posts in the last 24 hours…

After the Monday attack, the Generals are avoiding responsibility for security of the Tarnak River Bridge. Worse, nobody is claiming responsibility for the bridge this morning. Tarnak River bridge, three miles from me, is a strategic artery. The Commanding Generals failed on Monday. They are failing today. Confidence in RC-South and TF-K leadership is plummeting. Dark clouds for the upcoming Kandahar offensive.

U.S, considers Afghan command structure changes. (While they are at it, they might consider getting some generals down to Kandahar who know how to secure a little strategic bridge.)

This item links to an article on “…The United States and its allies are considering setting up an American-led command in southern Afghanistan to oversee operations in a key battleground province, U.S. officials said…” This is interesting and aligns with comments made when I was in the UK last year that the US war machine is very powerful and superbly organised to operate with itself and when you get right down to it, it doesn’t really need (from an operational perspective) much help from anyone to get the job done. Blistering coalition elements into US organisations often only creates unnecessary and drag-inducng friction, more so when those elements do not or will not (hello, UK, are you there?) read from the US playbook. While sharing command across other coalition members may make for a nice stand of flags in the higher headquarters and a strong ‘feel good’ factor for senior coalition staff, it is not an efficient nor an effective method of WARFIGHTING…”We’re not in PSO-ville now, Toto…”

Got a call out of the blue from the office of Brigadier General Ben Hodges. We will meet in 90 minutes at his office.I have only two questions. 1) Which Coalition partner was responsible for the security of Tarnak River bridge on Monday, before the explosion. 2) Which Coalition partner is in charge of security at Tarnak River bridge now.

That’s it. If the answer is fuzzy, the answer is that nobody was in charge of a vital bridge. Otherwise, the answer will be that X was in charge on Monday while X1 is in charge today. Simple questions, simple answers. We’ve got 20 minutes. Should take less than five.

It’s been astonishing that it has taken from Monday to Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, there remain combat leaders whose soldiers cross that bridge every day, who do not know who is in charge of not letting their soldiers get blown up.

Summary of meeting with Brigadier General Ben Hodges: The result was unexpected. General Hodges courageously accepted full responsibility. My respect for him doubled in about 30 seconds. Henceforth, Strykers will “own” the bridge. Bottom line: problem solved. BREAK. Something very important came up tonight, so will give accounting Friday. The accounting will include an apology from me to General Menard.

Working on dispatch with more details about the Tarnak River Bridge. There are many assumptions flying in comments — often talking (incorrectly) about assumptions made here. Surprises are coming. Suggest cease fire until facts are presented. Some folks are wedging into corners by making assumptions about ‘assumptions.’The detailed dispatch will contain email traffic. After facts are presented, it will be a simple matter for pros to check the trail. (Many pros on this FB.) Remains amazing that MSM missed the fact that a strategic bridge was hit, and instead focused so much on hockey.

Have meetings today with Special Forces and others re ongoing matters. Further details on Tarnak River Bridge will not be published today. Will present ASAP.

Yon’s final Dispatch on this topic should be released today and I expect that it will make for interesting reading…

Travels

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I was on the road the last couple of days on job-seeking activities: had what certainly felt like a very good interview in Taupo on Thursday, and a very interesting day yesterday exploring some alternatives that are closer to my heart, including a couple of left-field initiatives that had me buzzing the whole drive home.

I stopped for dinner, well, fish’n’chips anyway, at the Fastlane Takeaways in Waiouru which we used to frequent regularly when we were living there: sorry, guys, but that was YUK!!! Even the dogs weren’t too sure about the muddy-tasting fish…so you’re OFF the Eating Out list and I’ll be transferring my allegiance to the shop in Ohakune next to the Information Centre…

Hitting the target

Posted on 4 March 2010 by SJPONeill

Dartboard

Ironically, the Intentional Development website (edit 4 Feb 13: removed the link as it was dead as the proverbial door nail – managed to recover the image via the power of the Wayback Machine) from which I took this image specialises in…

Freeing the embedded wisdom of an organization’s most valuable assets (human resources) currently constrained by titles, roles, politics and procedures.

Mobilizing personnel at all levels to truly participate, become involved, and internalize objectives as their own so they willingly and eagerly contribute to solving their organization’s challenges.

Creating the circumstances and the environment to facilitate change.

Possibly there’s a job for them in Kandahar…?

The Canadian National Post has published Canadian Forces comment in response to Michael Yon’s criticism this week of security arrangements around an important bridge that was damaged in an attack near Kandahar this week. Interestingly, it is Michael Yon who disseminated the link to this article via his Facebook Page.

The release points out that “…all the land surrounding the airport has long been the responsibility of the Royal Air Force Regiment, a British infantry unit that specializes in protecting airports from attack. Most road checks in the area are carried out by Afghan National Police while sweeps for improvised explosive devices on the major highways in Kandahar are done by a U.S. Army Stryker brigade or by U.S. combat engineers attached to them...”

Although a whole three people have commented on the National Post Article, hundreds have offered comment on Yon’s items on his Facebook page, including this one on the RAF regiment in Kandahar…

Never seen this bridge Michael, but as a lowly British Inf NCO, am I making a fair assumption that as a natural/man-made choke point, this should have been identified as a weak point, in oh I don’t know…2 seconds? Therefore reinforced/defended accordingly?

On a slightly related note, there was some talk of the RAF Regt and their role. I personally have no love for them, being Infantry, but they do carry out a role that frees up our Army reservists who can get out and do their jobs. The RAF Regt’s mission is base/airfield protection and security up to 8km from the airfield. I believe this bridge was 10 miles out or something? Far from passing the buck, it should be asked then why this was not identified as an issue, and who was responsible for providing the security for a known high value choke point?

The article then goes on to link the Yon items with “…a growing frustration on the part of some Americans that NATO has put four U.S. battalions under Canadian command in Kandahar…the Americans answer to a Canadian who answers to a British major-general who in turn answers to an American. This is coalition warfare at its best…” At its best, huh? Sounds like an overly-complex recipe for buck-passing and gaps you could drive a LAV (or a VBIED) through…one mother’s comment on Yon’s Facebook page “…This was coalition warfare at its worst…a bridge was blown up! They should have to place the calls to us mothers…“

Funnily enough, after presenting the current command and control environment around Kandahar as hunky-dory, the National Post concludes “…the issue of who commands what in Kandahar is particularly sensitive at the moment, with NATO planning a major offensive in the province later this spring…“

Meanwhile back in Kandahar…Michael Yon remains on the offensive… submitting two questions yesterday to Task Force Kandahar regarding the Monday bridge attack:

1) When will the bridge become fully operational?

2) What measures are being taken to prevent such attacks in the future?

A few hours later…Task Force Kandahar just answered the two questions I submitted yesterday. The TF-K answers beg for follow-up, which has just been submitted. Will publish in full when this is over. Something fishy going on.

And about an hour ago (all times are pretty lose as the Facebook clock leaves a lot to be desired)…

Bridge Update: Much information flowing. Just went through long conversations with key people. BLUF: the bridge has become an Orphan. TF-Kandahar says TF-K is not the father. We are waiting for U.S. Brigadier General Ben Hodges to say who is responsible for the bridge. BG Hodges is the Deputy Commander for RC-South. The British command RC-South. The Commanding General is Nick Carter.

My gut, based on what am seeing all over, is that this is between RC-South and TF-Kandahar. TF-K clearly has responsibility, as does their parent command RC-South. While the British command RC-South, the Canadians TF-K. The US is just sort of here under an obtuse command structure that can’t guard a strategic bridge ten minutes from the front gate of one of the biggest bases in Afghanistan.

Bridge situation — This smells like rotten fish. At a bare minimum, someone(s) at General Officer level dropped the ball. Going to take more time to sort this out and get the facts straight. One certainty: it’s not pretty.

A few minutes later…

Menard vs. Carter

Bridge failure heating up: TF-K has, for all intents and purposes, blamed RC-South for allowing the bridge to be attacked on Monday, resulting in the death of a US soldier and serious damage to a vital bridge. The controversy has reached the respective Generals at TF-K and RC-South. For those who understand the dynamics here, Brigadier General Daniel Menard (TF-K boss) has shifted the blame to Major General Nick Carter (RC-South boss).

This has become a dinosaur fight — Menard vs. Carter — wherein little people can get crushed.

If nothing else, ‘Bridgegate’ sends a clear message to ISAF that it needs to seriously up its Information and Influence Operations game…it is probably too broad a stretch to imagine that the Taliban planned or even anticipated this spatting between coalition partners but they must be loving it. It is a pretty simple question: who is responsible for the security of this bridge? Surely it must be in a clearly defined Area of Operations assigned to a specific formation or unit? That ISAF has resorted instead to bureaucratic tap-dancing and not released any comment on the issue is perhaps indicative of deeper rifts within the coalition. Jim Molan recounts in Running the War in Iraq that, prior to the final battle for Fallujah GEN Casey directed him “…in no uncertain terms to ensure that there was no more than a one-hour turnaround between an allegation appearing in the media and our response being fired back…the information fight required less physical courage and sacrifice, but was just as important as the combat on the ground…”

Certainly from many of the comments on Yon’s Facebook posts, there is considerable anger in the US at Canada’s stated intention to withdraw from Afghanistan and at those NATO partners who do not pull their weight (which would probably be most of them). This latter issue was a theme in Yon’s posts last week before the bridge attack and I do wonder if the US, or some in it, are not running their own IO campaign to expose those who are not holding up their end of the stick…?

New word of the day

Thanks to Dean at Travels with Shiloh for today’s new word ‘fobbit’, replacing ‘poug’ and ‘REMF’ as a term of endearment for those personnel that spend the larger proportion of their deployment in camps and bases. This is not to say that these personnel do not perform valuable and vital functions in support of operations nor that it is their fault that higher minds decide to introduce as many home comforts as possible into these facilities. I do think however that it behooves such individuals to always remember where they are, why there are there and who they are supporting before bemoaning the quality of the GoatBurger at BK-Kandahar…

Edit: Oh, the joys of working in the information age!! Just as I was writing up ‘fobbits’ and hit the publish button, Michael Yon posted this link to a great description of the Life of a Fobbit in Afghanistan. Although humorous in nature, it is a reminder of the vital role that ‘fobbits’ play and I think that this blog, on the adventures of staff in a currently deployed Forward Surgical Team will be well worth watching…

Acronym of the day

From Michael Yon’s posts, BLUF = Bottom Line Up Front, not to be confused with that ultimate hearts and minds tool, the BUFF:

BUFF

A Bridge Too Far?

Posted on 3 March 2010 by SJPONeill

On Facebook, Michael Yon continues to raise concerns regarding the security on the Bridge near Kandahar that was the target of a suicide bomber attack a couple of days ago, and the disproportionate emphasis given to rear area comforts in the base itself…

Turns out the commander in charge of the bridge is General Daniel Menard (linked inserted by me). Have sent questions to his office. Receipt has been acknowledged. Meanwhile, missions continue to be cancelled due to failure to secure that bridge. While troops were glued to the Olympic Hockey, the enemy was closing in on the real goal: That Bridge.

While some troops were wasting time fixated on the Olympics, 10 minutes away a major target was left vulnerable. If we can persuade the Taliban to play Hockey, or if we can learn to play their sport — Guerrilla Warfare — maybe we can score some points.

Our combat operations have been severely hampered. Confidence in this General cannot be high. If he cannot protect nearby targets of obvious significance, what next?

(to date 79 comments)

Fire the Task Force Kandahar General

Yesterday at 0735 local, a suicide car bomb attacked a US convoy crossing a bridge only about ten minutes from the major base called Kandahar Airfield. The car bomb blew an MRAP off the bridge, killing a US soldier and injuring several others. Another bomb had been planted under the bridge. This bridge is easily defensible and of great significance.

Yet while some troops go weeks or longer with no showers, fighting in rough conditions with no amenities, many troops on this base play hockey or, just the night before, had stopped nearly everything to watch the Olympics. Meanwhile, a bridge of strategic importance sat thinly guarded just minutes down the road. And so now, the bridge is damaged and large military vehicles and fuel trucks cannot use it. There is no reasonable way around.

Today we talk about an offensive in Kandahar, yet there is a General here who cannot guard a single bridge just outside the gate. That bridge is our LINK TO KANDAHAR. Meanwhile, soldiers who are doing six month easy-tours complain about R&R and morale boosters, while many soldiers who serve full-year combat tours don’t take showers.

Why are live bands streaming into here? What is this, an Amusement Park or a War?

That General needs to be fired. Dead weight at the top cannot be tolerated.

(to date 76 comments)

This is interesting…here we have am embedded reporter publicly criticising the Canadian one-star responsible for security around the Kandahar Base. This is the third post on this topic that Michael Yon has made in the last 24-36 hours yet it does not appear that the US forces with whom he has been working have taken much, if any, action to curb his comments. One might wonder if there is a more subtle IO plan being executed here, that the US simply don’t care, or that this is an indication of a new maturity in the US military’s engagement with the information militia, in that they are comfortable with this style of robust discussion as opposed to the more traditional Public Affairs-fed party line…?

The whole Starbucks, Olympics, BK, etc etc issue really begs the question: is this a War, or merely a war….?

Calgary Herald journalist Michelle Lang with Chief of Defense Staff Walt Natynczyk in a military vehicle in Afghanistan on Dec. 25, 2009. Photo by Gary Lunn. Michelle Lang was among the casualties that marked the deadliest day for Canada in Afghanistan since 2007.

In Bing-ing for some more information on BG Menard, I came across an article Death of an Embed on blogs.aljazeera.net…some interesting comments on Canadian involvement in the w(W)ar and the conflict itself… [PDF]

Understanding Islam

Neptunus Lex carries a link to an interesting read [PDF} explaining apparent hypocrisy in the application of Islamic values, specifically “Is it inconsistent for Muslim “holy warriors” to engage in voyeuristic acts of lasciviousness?”

It concludes”…in this context, the problem is not Muslims frequenting strip clubs, but misplaced Western projections that assume religious piety is always synonymous with personal morality…”

Once again, we need to understand the environment and our adversaries if we ever hope to be able to manage them – not blindly seek to inflict Western culture, values and systems onto environments in which they are alien…

Getting it together?

Posted on 2 March 2010 by SJPONeill

Afghan police officers and the U.S. soldiers, bottom, gather at the scene of a suicide attack in Kandahar south of Kabul, Afghanistan on Monday, March 1, 2010. A suicide car bomber attacked a NATO convoy Monday outside the major southern Afghan city, killing one NATO service member and four Afghan civilians, officials said. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan)

On Michael Yon’s Facebook page this morning:

Sad and Sickening: A General Officer should be fired.

This morning, we lost a soldier to a suicide bomb on a bridge just a short drive from this massive military installation called Kandahar Airfield. The bridge, which is important to us, was badly damaged and remains impassable to military traffic. Meanwhile, on this bustling base, under-employed soldiers from various nations crowd around hockey games, live bands, and coffee shops. The damaged bridge is just a bicycle ride away from soldiers who are too busy celebrating Olympic medals to safeguard this bridge. The bridge is so close that I felt the explosion and saw the mushroom cloud. Our mission, and no doubt others, was cancelled because we could not get over the bridge.

The General in charge of security for this bridge should be fired.

Coupled with another attack in Kabul involving NZSAS troops, one wonder if there might not be something to the idea of secondary effects of the surge in Afghanistan?

On ‘science’

Coming Anarchy discusses the ‘science’ of global warming, a topic that has also been slammed by Neptunus Lex. Portable Learner while covering another example of misapplied science, “…In an interview for On The Media, The Lancet’s editor Dr. Richard Horton weighs in on the state of open scientific debate:

We used to think that we could publish speculative research which advanced interesting new ideas which may be wrong, but which were important to provoke debate and discussion. We don’t think that now. We don’t seem able to have a rational conversation in the public space about difficult controversial issues without people drawing a conclusion which could be very averse….The 19th-century days where you could sit in the salon at the Royal Society and have a private conversation amongst your fellows just doesn’t exist anymore. So I think yeah, too much information in this particular case is a bad thing, which seems to go against every kind of democratic principle that we believe in. But in the case of science, it seems to be true.

But it is not. I can’t help but wonder if we had had this conversation, in public, ten years ago when the study was still “speculative research” we may well have averted the flawed decision to publish it in the first place. We need more information, not less, and more inclusive conversations, not narrowly confined to the medical community. The public may well have to engage the medical community in the public space “difficult conversations without drawing a conclusion that could be very averse…“

I tend to agree – far better to have the discussion early and draw out all of the available information out to make as informed a decision as possible than to disregard potentially relevant stakeholders and abdicate responsibility what may be perceived as an overly-elite group.

‘The people’ can be really dumb at times…

The Strategist comments on the ignorance and stupidity of those who opted to ignore tsunami warnings along New Zealand’s coast after the earthquake in Concepcion. One might argue that this is only natural selection in action and I might have agreed if it were not for the risks implicit to those who might have to attempt to rescue these losers and to the children they took to the beach with them; at best, it is wasting Police time, at worst, manslaughter. An interesting discussion at NZ Herald here and I wonder if this naivety and complacency is linked to the questions asked in the Timings paper mentioned above? Are we a nation that only learns the hard way…after a punch in the nose…?

People ignore tsunami warning at Mount Manganui. Photo/ Christine Cornege.

A good way of doing business

Peter also has an interesting item on the Byzantine Lessons Learned process…1500 years ago, the Byzantines developed theatre-specific handbooks for each of their current and likely mission spaces…if they could do it then, it really makes you wonder why it appears so hard today. I’ll have more on this when I complete my paper on GEN Mattis’ comments re obsolete thinking.

Progress

I made my first pastry ever yesterday afternoon and my first all homemade pies last night…some tuning still required but very YUM!!!

The plot thickens

Posted on 26 February 2010 by SJPONeill

The Strategist has released Part III of The Doomsday Machine…this story just gets better and better – I think Peter may be once of those hidden talents about to be discovered…

Holding the High Ground

Travels With Shiloh has a very insightful piece on torture…for me the quote from MAJ Nathan Hoepner says it all…

As for ‘the gloves need to come off’…we need to take a deep breath and remember who we are…Those gloves are…based on clearly established standards of international law to which we are signatories and in part the originators…something we cannot just put aside when we find it inconvenient…We have taken casualties in every war we have ever fought–that is part of the very nature of war. We also inflict casualties, generally many more than we take. That in no way justifies letting go of our standards. We have NEVER considered our enemies justified in doing such things to us. Casualties are part of war–if you cannot take casualties then you cannot engage in war. Period. BOTTOM LINE: We are American soldiers, heirs of a long tradition of staying on the high ground. We need to stay there.

Drop ‘American’ from his bottom line and this statement applies across the Anglosphere.

Dumbing Down

Neptunus Lex carries a disturbing item on a US initiative to reduce the number of common tasks that all soldiers must be capable of doing.. if it is as stated, it represents a major setback for the US Army – the list of tasks referred to is a distillation of lessons learned the hard way since 2003. For a long time it has been clear that there are two parts to US TRADOC – the hard-charging sharp thinkers in Ft Leavenworth and ‘the rest’ who produce bland corporate speak. Unfortunately there are probably those who will latch onto this as an excuse to slash back training, probably based on the false premise that they can always play catch up in PDT. So much for the non-contiguous mission-space and if we are not careful, the training pendulum will swing back to the good old days of the 1990s and the Fulda Gap…

Mattis on thinking

Meanwhile, back at this ranch, I am working up an essay on GEN Mattis’ comments last week on the need to revitalise the American officer corps…unfortunately the weather is too good and the nice folk at ITM Taumarunui dropped off a load of wood for Phase II of the man-cave so I am somewhat distracted…

Mattis: Obsolete Thinking Worse Than Obsolete Weapons

By John J. Kruzel

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Feb. 19, 2010 – The only thing worse than obsolete weapons in war is obsolete thinking, a top U.S. commander cautioned in remarks on revitalizing America’s military officer corps.

Marine Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, yesterday emphasized the role education plays in enabling military officers to adapt quickly to strategic and tactical changes they encounter.

“It’s opening the aperture,” he said, describing the value afforded through education. “Once you stretch the mind open, it’s hard for it to go back to how it was before.”

Mattis delivered his remarks at an event hosted by the Center for a New American Security, a policy think tank, in conjunction with a study by the center on improving the way military officers are trained, evaluated and promoted.

“The U.S. military must develop a model that trains and educates officers for the complex interactions of the current threat environment while being agile and versatile enough to adapt to a swiftly changing world beyond,” contributors John Nagl and Brian Burton wrote in the CNAS study published ahead of yesterday’s panel discussion. Mattis underscored the importance of complementing experience operating as part of a coalition on a battlefield with study of history and wars of the past.

“Through education built on an understanding of history and through experience gained on joint coalition operations, and probably commencing earlier in officers’ careers,” he said, “we can create an officer corps at ease with complex joint and coalition operations.”

Mattis stressed the need for a new “strategic reawakening” among military officers, making an apparent reference to the design in place before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

“By setting the problem first and spending a lot of time up front getting it right, you don’t invade a country, pull the statue down and say, ‘Now what do I do?’” he said, in an allusion to the iconic image of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein’s likeness being pulled down by a U.S. military recovery vehicle.

Focusing on the culture of the senior military officer corps, Mattis bemoaned that senior-ranking military members aren’t allowed ample time to reflect critically on important issues.

“I believe the single primary deficiency among senior U.S. officers today is the lack of opportunity for reflective thought,” he said. “We need disciplined and unregimented thinking officers who think critically when the chips are down and the veneer of civilization is rubbed off — seeing the world for what it is, comfortable with uncertainty and life’s inherent contradictions and able to reconcile war’s grim realities with human aspirations.”

First thoughts are that the mind is more like a rubber band – you can stretch it open but if you don’t maintain the tension, it will snap shut again; and as I said in the previous item, there are places like Ft Leavenworth that are already well down this path…

Shared Experiences

Posted on 25 February 2010 by SJPONeill

: Toby and Granda – Christmas 2009 – Transforming Bumblebee (c) SJPONeill

The title of today’s post is drawn from Christopher Stasheff’s novella of the same name that was included in the Bolo anthology, The Unconquerable. The story is of a small group of Bolos fending off a horde of harpy-like adversaries; as each Bolo is overwhelmed, it passes on its lessons of combat against this foe to the surviving Bolos. In this way, the enemy is finally defeated. It is that ideal knowledge transfer that prompted this post.

Observant visitors may have noticed a new addition to the Blogroll (on the right →) last week, Portable Learner – this is one of those sites you just stumble across sometimes when you click accidentally on the wrong link. The first thing that caught my eye was the definition of Portable Learner…”Portable Learner, n. An individual who carries their knowledge and skills in their memory or in their social networks, spec. so that it can be employed in all sorts of circumstances…” This struck me as being similar to that ideal sought in knowledge management “…the right information to the right people at the right time – and ensuring that they know what to do with it…” especially if reworded ever so slightly to “…an individual who carries their knowledge and skills in their memory or in their networks so that it can be employed in all sorts of circumstances…” and this is reinforced by the quote at the top of the home page…

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.” — T.H. White, The Once and Future King

The first post I read on Portable Learner was Knowledge is Out, Focus is In, and People are Everywhere which is short enough to repeat here in its entirety:

“David Dalrymple thinks that in the net age, filtering, not remembering is the most important skill. In his response to Edge’s annual question for 2010, How is the Internet changing the way you think?, he says that those who are able to resist the distractions posed by a deluge of unrelated information and focus on what is important are better equipped than those who are knowledgeable. “Knowledge was once an internal property of a person, and focus on the task at hand could be imposed externally, but with the Internet, knowledge can be supplied externally, but focus must be forced internally.” The idea that an external information repository can replace human memory is interesting, but the dichotomy strikes me as a little extreme. We can’t turn off our memories, and there is value in serendipitous findings. Focus and distraction work in concert in any undertaking. We’ll just have to be more mindful of which one is leading the quest for knowledge.”

This was a one of the themes of our discussion with the Centre for Defence Studies at Massey on Monday – how do you filter the deluge of contemporary doctrine, publications, reports, commentary, opinion, PowerPoints, etc, etc, etc in order to deliver timely, practical and relevant training. It is simply not reasonable to expect force elements to train themselves, or worse, figure ‘it’ out for themselves as a twisted form of empowerment and mission command. This is an easy out for doctrine staffs, too often employed as an excuse for failing to step up to the plate and accept some responsibility for what is taught. There was a general feeling that there is a need for an organisation that sits above doctrine and training staffs to filter the deluge, in accordance with national policy and mission-specific criteria, to ensure what is passed on for doctrinal development and delivery and development in training is actually contemporary, relevant and practical.

During the Great COIN Doctrine Review of 2007-08, all but formal doctrine publications were specifically excluded from the review. This step was partially in recognition of our own depth of COIN knowledge (or lack of thereof!) and also an acknowledgement of the amount of work involved even in the reduced publication list that this decision left to be reviewed. Things have changed since those days and now our primary source of catalysts for change in contemporary operations is the surging sea of the information militia, the blogs, commentaries, media reports, articles, discussion boards etc etc etc. In attempting to quantify the work involved in keeping pace with the daily flows of COIN-related information, the best we could do was reduce the load to a minimum of two hours a day for at least four days every week – and that was without any attempt to distil any information into any form of product other than the most basic reading list.

I agree totally with the point from Portable Learner “…Focus and distraction work in concert in any undertaking…“. Focus is great for progressing a large workload but runs the risk of missing that serendipitous find that may greatly influence your area of interest – distraction is often good, when married up with discipline, as means of stumbling across those nuggets. The WordPress Dashboard is an example of this as it lists (way down the bottom of the page) the latest, and the hottest blogs – certainly I’ve found the odd gem when scanning this list; similarly tag clouds offer a similar distraction attraction to oft interesting journeys.

The downside of focus is that inexperienced or unadventurous or simply lazy staff apply focus lists too dogmatically. Critical Topic Lists (CTL) may sound like a top tool in Internal Audit and Organisational Learning classrooms but their utility in the real world, especially in the Lessons Learned field, is limited at best. Time and again, such lists are over-long (our rule was no longer than 20 items but I’ve seen them bloat out into 100s of items), rife with hobby horses, and lack relevance to actual need. a key finding of CLAW 1 in 2005 was that there were scarily few similarities between the issues identified by the CLAW, based up operational reports, and the CTL that they were meant to reinforce.

So, anyway, this is why I’ve decided to add Portable Learner to the blogroll. As with the other members of the blogroll, feel free to visit them and draw your own conclusions, contribute where you can, and share back into your own communities…

Local news

Posted on 24 February 2010 by SJPONeill

Paper Modelers is back up again but has lost 2-3 weeks of contributions…

Carmen and I visited the big smoke of Palmerston North on Monday. I had an assessment test as part of a job application at 9AM which made for an early start – and a longish drive as there was quite thick fog along the route, made more interesting in some parts by the various resealing projects along both highways: nothing quite like a grey-out when suddenly you loose your points of reference to the side of the road due to the fog, the road markings have yet to be repainted…and you can’t only hope you are still heading to where you should be going and not the ditch or oncoming traffic…The assessment test was a breeze_ I had hyped myself up about it…can I make a credible effort on 80 questions in 40 minutes? As it turned out, 25 minutes was all it needed, giving 15 for checking and changing my minds on a couple…don’t want to get too cocky yet til I get the debrief though.

Bit the bullet and invested in a proper Freeview decoder to replace the crappy one I got off Trademe before Christmas – it craps out on a regular basis, especially during must-watch programmes like Coro…so after resetting it every couple of minutes during Bones on Sunday night we decided to spend the money for peace of mind – just wish we had UHF coverage here for so we could have the HD option as well…think twice before buying a DS200 satellite TV decoder – that there are no contact details anywhere for the manufacturer should have been a warning for me…

Had a brief catch-up with the lads at Hawkeye UAS and then an interesting chat at the Centre for Defence Studies at Massey University – Carmen is still rubbing it in that I got lost finding the right office on campus whereas she found it first time when she when to look for me after I missed our RV in the car park…didn’t help my case for GPS though…

In November 2009, I along with many others, was less than impressed when it was announced that the NZ Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) had a NZ$12 billion + deficit and planned to increase levies to cover the loss. I am a big believer that if things like this annoy you, then in order to have a right to bitch about it you need to be prepared to say your piece and state your case more broadly than just whining into your latte with your mates. I raised my concerns with Dr Nick Smith, the Minister for ACC, via the Parliamentary email system and was most impressed to find a response in the inbox when we got home on Monday night…and a lot more than ‘thank you for raising your concerns and we will take them in to consideration‘: a two page letter no less, with some additional information. I can only imagine who the Minister’s inwards files must have been like over that period so more power to him for making the effort to acknowledge correspondence on this difficult and contentious issue. Good on you, Nick Smith, and more power to you!!

Take the blue pill

Posted on 20 February 2010 by SJPONeill

It must be blue pill day.

A friend in the US is undergoing cancer treatment at the moment and commented on her Facebook page yesterday that the blue pills she has to take as part of her chemo have a very “blue pill” side effect…

This morning while sifting through comments in the blogs spam trap, I followed up one trackback to an interesting site that harvests articles and posts relating to Afghanistan – it is chock-full of advertising but had some links to interesting articles….including this anti-Olympic rant. While the guy does note the irony that 30 years ago we used the Moscow Olympics as a platform to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; and points out at great length the gross over-commercialism of the Olympics the total loss of the ideals they once represented. But often more is less and this article would be way more effective if it was half the length.

Another site I followed from the spam trap took me to this great item from the Wall Street Journal Health Blog, based on an article in the Washington Post in 2008. The CIA found that Viagra was a great form of incentive payment for informers in Afghanistan, especially those who might be feeling the effect of advancing years and numerous young wives…certainly it shows that someone is thinking a bit out of the square over there.

The usual bribes of choice — cash and weapons — aren’t always the best options, Afghanistan veterans say. Guns too often fall into the wrong hands, they say, and showy gifts such as money, jewelry and cars tend to draw unwanted attention…“If you give an asset $1,000, he’ll go out and buy the shiniest junk he can find, and it will be apparent that he has suddenly come into a lot of money from someone,” said Jamie Smith, a veteran of CIA covert operations in Afghanistan and now chief executive of SCG International, a private security and intelligence company. “Even if he doesn’t get killed, he becomes ineffective as an informant because everyone knows where he got it.” Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, December 26, 2008.

Viagra is probably allowed under Islamic law. A book I read (can’t remember who or what) a couple of years back commented that while alcohol was specifically forbidden in the Koran, along with a great many other pleasures, tobacco is not mentioned and therefore generally accepted:

The general underlying principle of Islamic law is that everything is permitted, except that which is explicitly prohibited, and since there is no direct mention of tobacco smoking in either of the primary sources of law (the Koran and Sunna), jurists have historically regarded tobacco smoking as an acceptable sociable activity. www.tobacco.org

While there have been various calls for smoking to be banned under Islamic law, the majority of these have been from the medical profession and a number of Islamic nations have implemented anti-smoking laws similar to those in effect across the Anglosphere. The British Medical Journal has interesting study on the influence on smoking in Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities in the UK which concludes “…Although there are some culturally specific contexts for smoking behaviour in Bangladeshi and Pakistani adults—notably the influence of gender and religion—there are also strong similarities with white people, particularly among younger adults. Themes identified should help to inform the development and appropriate targeting of smoking cessation interventions…” However this study does identify that “…the Koran does prohibit intoxicants and addictions…” and tobacco certainly qualifies as the latter. What would the effect be upon the nutjobs and troublemakers of the Islamic world is smoking was declared haram (forbidden) under Islamic law?

Getting back to our blue pill, perhaps there is scope for this ‘aid’, being neither intoxicating nor addictive (never proven in court) to become a key enabler in the hearts and minds programme in Afghanistan…after all, we are trying to fight a nice war and what could be nicer than spreading the ‘love’…? New Zealand’s next PRT contingent has just commenced predeployment training – perhaps a couple of pallets of NZAID blue pills should accompany them when they deploy…?

Such was the case with the 60-year-old chieftain who received four pills from a U.S. operative. According to the retired operative who was there, the man was a clan leader in southern Afghanistan who had been wary of Americans — neither supportive nor actively opposed. The man had extensive knowledge of the region and his village controlled key passages through the area. U.S. forces needed his cooperation and worked hard to win it, the retired operative said. After a long conversation through an interpreter, the retired operator began to probe for ways to win the man’s loyalty. A discussion of the man’s family and many wives provided inspiration. Once it was established that the man was in good health, the pills were offered and accepted. Four days later, when the Americans returned, the gift had worked its magic, the operative recalled. “He came up to us beaming,” the official said. “He said, ‘You are a great man.’ And after that we could do whatever we wanted in his area.” Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, December 26, 2008

Scooped

Posted on 19 February 2010 by SJPONeill

But in a good way.

Like 14,691 others, I have been following Michael Yon’s Facebook page as he reports from Afghanistan and had intended to promote him again yesterday as a great example of the Information Militia in operation – Tom Ricks beat me to it with Learn how to be a war correspondent. His website is Michael Yon Online. I’ve commented on him a couple of times before in Doing the Business, following an item on Neptunus Lex on pararescue teams operating in Afghanistan; and slightly later when I thought he was a well-intentioned meddler pressuring US DOD to release a Haitian-born Army officer from service in Afghanistan to deploy to assist in Haiti.

So who is this guy, Michael Yon?

Michael Yon was born in Florida in 1964 (a good year for writers) and joined the US Army when he was 19. He remains one of the youngest soldiers to pass the Special Forces selection process. He left the Army in 1987, after only four years. This is not that unusual and is somewhat typical of what many young men were doing at the time in joining the Army and leaving once they had gotten it out of their system, and/or to take advantage of other opportunities, many of which may have resulted from that military service. I saw many good soldiers in the same period who joined up, completed basis recruit and infantry corps training, spent 6-12 months in 2/1 RNZIR before deploying to 1 RNZIR in Singapore for two years. Many of them left the service at the conclusion of that posting, older, more mature and with much broader horizons.

He drifted through various activities until he began writing in the mid-90s. However it was not until the War in Iraq began that his name came to the fore as a correspondent in December 2004. from that point he has gone from strength to strength as an embedded reporter although his relationship with the military has not always been that smooth. He “…supports embedded journalism over traditional reporting, believing that the closer writers are to events the less likely they are to repeat military public relations spin…” and this one of two common themes in his writing today. The other is an extremely strong compassion for soldiers and this comes through very strongly and effectively in his reports.

“Happy news for the Left was that U.S. soldiers were demoralized and the war was being lost… Happy news for the Right was that there was no insurgency, then no civil war; we always had enough troops, and we were winning hands-down, except for the left-wing lunatics who were trying to unravel it all. They say heroin addicts are happy, too, when they are out of touch with reality.” Moment of Truth in Iraq, Michael Yon, 2008.

The War in Afghanistan has truly begun. This will be a long, difficult fight that is set to eclipse anything we’ve seen in Iraq. As 2010 unfolds, my 6th year of war coverage will unfold with it. There is relatively little interest in Afghanistan by comparison to previous interest in Iraq, and so reader interest is low. Afghanistan is serious, very deadly business. Like Iraq, however, it gets pushed around as a political brawling pit while the people fighting the war are mostly forgotten. The arguments at home seem more likely to revolve around a few words from the President than the ground realities of combat here. ~ Michael Yon Online

His 2006 article in The Weekly Standard, Censoring Iraq summarises his views well although it led to a major falling out with the US military. He has been criticised often for an apparent naivety in some of his releases, which I think could be attributed to his short period of personal military service, his habit of launching into text-based upon misleading or incorrect information (hence my comments re Haiti), and releasing the names of casualties before next of kin have been properly notified. This last point is interesting as Michael Yon has been accused of doing this during the current operations in Afghanistan however has come back strongly, supported by others, stating that the in-theatre information has been that notifications had been completed.

There is some confusion within the military regarding timing of releasability of names of the fallen. This confusion stems from apparently contradictory sentences within the embed guidelines. The guidelines are being clarified to avert misunderstandings with media, and within the military…Yes. This stems from the Garcia episode. The PAOs, through no fault of their own (other than Garcia blowing a gasket and talking publicly), have some confusion about the embed papers. CPT Adam Weece showed me the sentences and I agreed that the sentences are confusing and seem contradictory. Insofar as my release, I was completely cleared and broke no rules. Was well within the guidelines and what’s right, but the episode revealed some rough spots that need to be ironed out. And so the military is on it and will get it fixed. Should be good soon. ~ Michael Yon Facebook, Feb 10.

This latter point is interesting as it may have uncovered a lag between what happens in the theatre and the actual notifications in the US. While casualty notification is not an easy nor a pleasant task, it has to be sharp – quite simply there can be no fumbles or ball drops – and possibly this is an area that could be put under the Lessons Learned spotlight to make sure we have got it right. One would like to think that the process has come a long way from the Western Union telegrams in We Were Soldiers….Like so many things in the military, this is a function that must be regularly wargamed to ensure that we have it right – and it IS one of those areas where metrics CAN be set to define the standard e.g. family notification in XX hours by XX means by XX individual(s), media release(s) in XX time (relative to family notification) by XX individuals, etc etc.

In Running the War in Iraq, MAJGEN Jim Molan discusses how he and his staff had to meet very tight times lines to be ‘first with the truth’ or, if not, counter dis- and mis-information from any source. I think that the same onus rests with the public affairs staffs everywhere. Embedded media like Michael Yon offer great potential to conduct our own information operations – a function we have historically be very weak in – but they come with risk. Michael Yon’s great attraction is that he comes across as ‘the truth’ and not as PA-spin – if you try to take away the ‘on the edge’ ‘right here, right now’ pulse of his work, you defeat the whole purpose of having an embed. Yeah, sure, there’s this OPSEC thing but I’m not sure how far you can go down that path when the official mouthpieces are telegraphing pinches a week ahead of time. One of the strongest criticisms of the current wars is that ‘truth has become the first casualty’ again – pragmatic shepherding of embeds like Michael Yon can go a long way to mitigating this perception…

A crew from the United States Air Force spent Saturday night and Sunday morning airlifting different groups of wounded soldiers from Kandahar to Camp Bastion to Bagram, back to Kandahar, then back to Bagram, and back to Kandahar. These patients were from Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Here, an Air Force nurse caresses the head of a wounded, unconscious Canadian soldier while whispering into his ear. (c) Michael Yon Online 2010

Hoping, wishing, praying…

Posted on 18 February 2010 by SJPONeill

In More on Risk-based decision making in Homeland security, Dean introduces hope-based decision-making “… Hopefully the most significant threats are the ones you’re already focused on. As long as they are, you’re ok. When they aren’t, you stand by…and say to everyone who will listen ‘No one could have predicted this’.”

Remember that time when you were four, and that big plate glass window in the lounge kinda got broken and even though you were the only person in the lounge playing with Dad’s golf clubs, you still hope a whole lot that your invisible friend is going to materialise and take the rap? Fast-forward thirty years to when your boss says ‘we’ will carry the risk – you really hope that he really does mean ‘we’ and not ‘you’? Or that time you decided to invade Iraq and hoped that a. a lot of WMD would turn up really quickly and b. that the UN would get over itself and follow-on with civil aid and reconstruction programmes? Each of these scenarios has three things in common:

You have a nagging feeling how things are really going to turn out.

Those consequences are probably going to hurt.

When you think about it, you really knew better.

This week, Neptunus Lex published an item for aviators The ‘Possible’ Turn which discusses the options available to a pilot when an engine fails on take-off. The commonly held truism is that any attempt to turn back to the recently departed runway is doomed to fail – doom in the worse possible sense of the word – one of those manouevres based more upon hope than physics. Lex argues in aviation speak that this might not actually be the case for a suitably experienced pilot – equipped with an ability to make practical decisions fast. Also in the mail this morning was an article discussing the proposed shift in focus of the PRT in Afghanistan to a more civil focus at a time when surge-inflicted chaos may boil over into other provinces. I wondered about this too In the Ghan.

When we established our joint headquarters in 2001, many suggested that each external door should have a big sign ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. For different reasons, they were probably right: hope has no place in any organisation where lives are at stake.

So why do we do it so often? There are three factors:

Partly it is simple laziness – we’ve always done it like this and it’s always been OK before.

Another part is simply sticking with what we know – after decades of peacetime engagement and peacekeeping, it is difficult to shed that mindset for that necessary for operating in and around a warfighting environment where the threats are very really and unlikely to be assuaged by an umpire with a blue rag tied around one arm.

The third factor is that making good decisions has to be practiced regularly – and that includes being able to quickly sift through all the available information to extract the key points, digest them and then make the call.

Supporting good decisions is a firm ethical and cultural foundation based upon three key qualities:

The Competence to understand the environment and the issues.

The Courage to promote an unpalatable or unpopular line of reason.

The Integrity to see the issue through when the going gets tough.

Regularly we see news items when agents of government at all levels fail to display one or all of these qualities. And every time, the parent agency trots out its Code of Conduct, duly signed by all employees “Hey, look – it’s not our corporate fault!” And why isn’t it ‘our’ fault? Because it’s too hard for the HR Nazis to snap out of their nice objective competencies and consider applying some subjective qualitative assessments on potential recruits? It is interesting to note that those agencies where people are more likely to work collectively as opposed to as individuals are more likely to have a sound organisational ethos and culture – the two that spring to mind immediately are the military and the Fire Service; law enforcement to a far lesser extent because they tend to function as individuals not collective teams (STG, HRS, SWAT, etc being exceptions but only a small percentage of their respective agencies.

But developing, fostering and embedding an ethos and culture based on these qualities into an existing organisation is doable. We’re running an interesting ‘experiment’ here where the new Head of Customs is a highly-regarded former two-star who is doing exactly that. But what he’s brought to Customs is not so much thirty odd years of military experience – it is too easy to fall into the trap that ex-military staff have all the answers; they can have a lot of the problems too – but good old-fashioned command and LEADERSHIP.

So in terms of our discussions regarding decision-making in homeland security, the very first thing that we need to consider is raising the bar of competence. That means introducing more than just training, more than just practicing what we preach; it means that we need to set and conform to some basic standards of performance, weed out those who are more social than team members. I was once posted to a base that is quite isolated and where there was some institutional resistance to being posted there. Most of this was of the “well, everyone says it’s a bad place so it must be a bad place to go” variety and as a result, anyone volunteering to be posted there was usually snapped up. When I arrived, there was some debate raging over this posting policy and after about two weeks on the job, I feel firmer in to the camp of “‘it’s better to have a gap than to fill it with a warm body that does nothing; at least when you have a gap, you know you have a gap and can work around it. When the chair is filled, you keep kidding yourself that the incumbent may one day surprise you and actually do something useful – but it never happens”.

The flip side of competency is training, training that is relevant and current for the job at hand because it takes knowledge to fend off hope – yep, that’s right, Hope, we don’t want you here!! and this is where doctrine, lessons learned, organisational learning, knowledge management and all those other good things come together…to…get the right information…to the right people…at the right time…and ensure that they know what to do with it…

It all comes back to that…