Tactical Operator Quotes

The receiving radio operator immediately said, “Please tell Sunray Delta Six that Sunray Six is being located and informed immediately. Expect his answer very soon!” A short time later, Harry Smith was summoned to the HQ Delta Company radio. He went to it and was told, “Sir, Lieutenant Colonel Townsend is waiting to speak to you.

US General Mathew Ridgeway was speaking about “Operation Vulture”. He said, “When the day comes for me to meet my maker and account for my actions, the thing that I would be most proud of is the fact that I fought against and perhaps totally prevented the carrying out of one of the most hare-brained tactical schemes that would have cost the lives of thousands upon thousands of men!” (A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)

It takes our breath away when we see how many cards some people have got up their sleeves. Using deceptive or manipulative tactics, they are out to gain our confidence or take advantage of our inattention. “Chicanery” operates in the dark net but is often also undisguised. Its maneuver ground is so impenetrable and the strategy so unpredictable that it has, undoubtedly, become an arresting buzzword in our world. (“The infinite Wisdom of Meditation“)

Actions speak louder than words. In the days to come the Goddess of Victory will bestow her laurels only on those who prepared to act with daring.

As well, they used their B-52 bombers to drop thousands of tons of bombs which included napalm and cluster bombs. In a particularly vile attack, they used poisonous chemicals on our base regions of Xuyen Moc, the Minh Dam and the Nui Thi Vai mountains. They sprayed their defoliants over jungle, and productive farmland alike. They even bull-dozed bare, both sides along the communication routes and more than a kilometre into the jungle adjacent to our base areas. This caused the Ba Ria-Long Khanh Province Unit to send out a directive to D445 and D440 Battalions that as of 01/November/1969, the rations of both battalions would be set at 27 litres of rice per man per month when on operations. And 25 litres when in base or training. So it was that as the American forces withdrew, their arms and lavish base facilities were transferred across to the RVN. The the forces of the South Vietnamese Government were with thereby more resources but this also created any severe maintenance, logistic and training problems. The Australian Army felt that a complete Australian withdrawal was desirable with the departure of the Task Force (1ATF), but the conservative government of Australia thought that there were political advantages in keeping a small force in south Vietnam. Before his election, in 1964, Johnston used a line which promised peace, but also had a policy of war. The very same tactic was used by Nixon. Nixon had as early as 1950 called for direction intervention by American Forces which were to be on the side of the French colonialists. The defoliants were sprayed upon several millions of hectares, and it can best be described as virtual biocide. According to the figure from the Americans themselves, between the years of 1965 to 1973, ten million Vietnamese people were forced to leave their villages ad move to cities because of what the Americans and their allies had done. The Americans intensified the bombing of whole regions of Laos which were controlled by Lao patriotic forces. They used up to six hundred sorties per day with many types of aircraft including B52s. On 07/January/1979, the Vietnamese Army using Russian built T-54 and T-59 tanks, assisted by some Cambodian patriots liberated Phnom Penh while the Pol Pot Government and its agencies fled into the jungle. A new government under Hun Sen was installed and the Khmer Rouge’s navy was sunk nine days later in a battle with the Vietnamese Navy which resulted in twenty-two Kampuchean ships being sunk.

Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number. The other rule is, never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible.

It is my experience that bold decisions give the best promise of success. But one must differentiate between [strategic] and tactical boldness and a military gamble. A bold operation is one in which success is not a certainty but which in case of failure leaves one with sufficient forces in hand to cope with whatever situation may arise. A gamble, on the other hand, is an operation which can lead either to victory or to the complete destruction of one's force. Situations can arise where even gamble may be justified - as, for instance, when in the normal course of events defeat is merely a matter of time, when the gaining of time is therefore pointless and the only chance lies in an operation of great risk.

Failure in training identifies weaknesses so as to prevent them in the field, because as the common saying goes in the tactical community, “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.” We live by that code.

intermixed with an exceedingly high level of competence on the tactical and operational side was a complete inability to see a relationship between means and ends on the level of grand strategy.

Years ago, I was yapping to my mother about Buffy and Xena and talking about how great it is that we now have these TV shows about such strong female characters. My mother, who admittedly has never watched either show, asked me if these really WERE strong female characters, or if they were merely male characters with boobs. Having a blonde cheerleader save the world with her martial arts skills doesn't equal feminism, she said. That's a male tactic. How about her saving the day using tactics that aren't all about punching and kicking and killing? I didn't have an answer for her then. I still don't, even now. There's a whole debate to be had that I'm just not ready for, that I may never be ready for. My mother is a pacifist. I am not. We see the world differently, we operate differently, even though we want the same things. We both want equality and peace. My mother is the sort to talk her way to equality and peace. I'm the sort to talk to the point where I reckon more talk won't do any good, and then smash my way through to an understanding. It is not an enlightened viewpoint I hold. It is a crass, brutish viewpoint — but in a crass, brutish world, I believe my way is the way to go. Mum believes otherwise. And that's the difference, I think, between us. We live in a world carved by men, where fear and oppression and violence are a part of our lives. I can't even IMAGINE a world sculpted by women, where other values have taken hold. I'm limited in that way. I could try not to be, but I honestly wouldn't know where to start. That's kind of sad, when you think about it. For all my imagination, I can't even imagine that... ... (turns to stare hauntingly out the window).

So we must not refer a history of sexuality to the agency of sex; but rather show how "sex" is historically subordinate to sexuality. We must not place sex on the side of reality, and sexuality on that of confused ideas and illusions; sexuality is a very real historical formation; it is what gave rise to the notion of sex, as a speculative element necessary to its operation. We must not think that by saying yes to sex, one says no to power; on the contrary, one tracks along the course laid out by the general deployment of sexuality. It is the agency of sex that we must break away from, if we aim – through a tactical reversal of the various mechanisms of sexuality – to counter the grips of power with the claims of bodies, pleasures, and knowledges, in their multiplicity and their possibility of resistance. The rallying point for the counterattack against the deployment of sexuality ought not to be sex-desire, but bodies and pleasures.

The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.” •

Unfortunately, the operation altered his genes just enough so he could temporarily change into large versions of mammals which shared a large portion of their DNA with humans. It made for some pretty impressive party tricks, but ended up having absolutely no tactical use.

For the same reason there is nowhere to begin to trace the sheaf or the graphics of differance. For what is put into question is precisely the quest for a rightful beginning, an absolute point of departure, a principal responsibility. The problematic of writing is opened by putting into question the value of the arkhe. What I will propose here will not be elaborated simply as a philosophical discourse, operating according to principles, postulates, axioms, or definitions, and proceeding along the discursive lines of a linear order of reasons. In the delineation of differance everything is strategic and adventurous. Strategic because no transcendent truth present outside the field of writing can govern theologically the totality of the field. Adventurous because this strategy is a not simple strategy in the sense that strategy orients tactics according to a final goal, a telos or theme of domination, a mastery and ultimate reappropriation of the development of the field. Finally, a strategy without finality, what might be called blind tactics, or empirical wandering if the value of empiricism did not itself acquire its entire meaning in opposition to philosophical responsibility. If there is a certain wandering in the tracing of differance, it no more follows the lines of philosophical-logical discourse than that of its symmetrical and integral inverse, empirical-logical discourse. The concept of play keeps itself beyond this opposition, announcing, on the eve of philosophy and beyond it, the unity of chance and necessity in calculations without end.

Although the NYPD frequently attempts to justify stop-and-frisk operations in poor communities of color on the grounds that such tactics are necessary to get guns off the streets, less than 1 percent of stops (0.15 percent) resulted in guns being found, and guns were seized less often in stops of African Americans and Latinos than of whites.

Senior officers in First Army would spend the rest of their lives trying to explain the tactical logic behind the Hürtgen battle plan. “All we could do was sit back and pray to God that nothing would happen,” General Thorson, the operations officer, later lamented. “It was a horrible business, the forest.… We had the bear by the tail, and we just couldn’t turn loose.

Although these actors and their views were part of the strategic landscape, our strategic planning still seldom factored them into the equation. Third, at an operational, even tactical level, the battlefield was now global. An enemy group could plot and plan on one side of the planet and execute on the other side in days, if not hours. In cyberspace, impact could be measured in seconds. If these emerging and converging factors were changing the nature of warfare, then what was the role of intelligence? How would we identify and discern these micro-actors with macro-impact bouncing around a global battlefield, burrowing into the human terrain and employing deception and denial tactics? Intelligence seemed to be getting harder even as it was becoming more important.

The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.’” To put it perhaps a little more clearly: any attack or other operation is CHENG, on which the enemy has had his attention fixed; whereas that is CH’I,” which takes him by surprise or comes from an unexpected quarter. If the enemy perceives a movement which is meant to be CH’I,” it immediately becomes CHENG.”] 4.    That the impact of your army may be like a grindstone dashed against an egg— this is effected by the science of weak points and strong. 5.    In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory. [Chang Yu says: “Steadily develop indirect tactics, either by pounding the enemy’s flanks or falling on his rear.” A brilliant example of “indirect tactics” which decided the fortunes of a campaign was Lord Roberts’ night march round the Peiwar Kotal in the second Afghan war.76 6.    Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhausible as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more. [Tu Yu and Chang Yu understand this of the permutations of CH’I and CHENG.” But at present Sun Tzu is not speaking of CHENG at all, unless, indeed, we suppose with Cheng Yu-hsien that a clause relating to it has fallen out of the text. Of course, as has already been pointed out, the two are so inextricably interwoven in all military operations, that they cannot really be considered apart. Here we simply have an expression, in figurative language, of the almost infinite resource of a great leader.] 7.    There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. 8.    There are not more than five primary colors (blue, yellow, red, white, and black), yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen. 9.    There are

The academic literature describes marshals who “‘police’ other demonstrators,” and who have a “collaborative relationship” with the authorities. This is essentially a strategy of co-optation. The police enlist the protest organizers to control the demonstrators, putting the organization at least partly in the service of the state and intensifying the function of control. (...) Police/protestor cooperation required a fundamental adjustment in the attitude of the authorities. The Negotiated Management approach demanded the institutionalization of protest. Demonstrations had to be granted some degree of legitimacy so they could be carefully managed rather than simply shoved about. This approach de-emphasized the radical or antagonistic aspects of protest in favor of a routinized and collaborative approach. Naturally such a relationship brought with it some fairly tight constraints as to the kinds of protest activity available. Rallies, marches, polite picketing, symbolic civil disobedience actions, and even legal direct action — such as strikes or boycotts — were likely to be acceptable, within certain limits. Violence, obviously, would not be tolerated. Neither would property destruction. Nor would any of the variety of tactics that had been developed to close businesses, prevent logging, disrupt government meetings, or otherwise interfere with the operation of some part of society. That is to say, picketing may be fine, barricades are not. Rallies were in, riots were out. Taking to the streets — under certain circumstances — may be acceptable; taking over the factories was not. The danger, for activists, is that they might permanently limit themselves to tactics that were predictable, non-disruptive, and ultimately ineffective.

Under the leadership of Henry Kissinger, first as Richard Nixon’s national security adviser and later as secretary of state, the United States sent an unequivocal signal to the most extreme rightist forces that democracy could be sacrificed in the cause of ideological warfare. Criminal operational tactics, including assassination, were not only acceptable but supported with weapons and money. A CIA internal memo laid it out in unsparing terms:        On September 16, 1970 [CIA] Director [Richard] Helms informed a group of senior agency officers that on September 15, President Nixon had decided that an Allende regime was not acceptable to the United States. The President asked the Agency to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him and authorized up to $10 million for this purpose. . . . A special task force was established to carry out this mandate, and preliminary plans were discussed with Dr. Kissinger on 18 September 1970.

The answer was Stellar Wind. The NSA would eavesdrop freely against Americans and aliens in the United States without probable cause or search warrants. It would mine and assay the electronic records of millions of telephone conversations—both callers and receivers—and the subject lines of e-mails, including names and Internet addresses. Then it would send the refined intelligence to the Bureau for action. Stellar Wind resurrected Cold War tactics with twenty-first-century technology. It let the FBI work with the NSA outside of the limits of the law. As Cheney knew from his days at the White House in the wake of Watergate, the NSA and the FBI had worked that way up until 1972, when the Supreme Court unanimously outlawed warrantless wiretaps. Stellar Wind blew past the Supreme Court on the authority of a dubious opinion sent to the White House the week that the Patriot Act became law. It came from John Yoo, a thirty-four-year-old lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel who had clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas. Yoo wrote that the Constitution’s protections against warrantless searches and seizures did not apply to military operations in the United States. The NSA was a military agency; Congress had authorized Bush to use military force; therefore he had the power to use the NSA against anyone anywhere in America. The president was “free from the constraints of the Fourth Amendment,” Yoo wrote. So the FBI would be free as well.

Congress would later find that though bureau officials undertook COINTELPRO in the name of national security, its purpose was “preventing or disrupting the exercise of First Amendment rights.” The program took tactics developed for use against foreign adversaries during war and applied them to citizens: leaking phony allegations, sending anonymous poison-pen letters, interfering with jobs, having people arrested on drug charges, distributing misinformation, and encouraging violence. “In essence, the Bureau took the law into its own hands, conducting a sophisticated vigilante operation against domestic enemies,” the committee said. “Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that. The unexpressed major premise of the programs was a law enforcement agency has the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order.

Spinner parts, who do not themselves become dizzy, have the job of spinning internally to send out feelings or impulses to all the other parts, the main person, or a group of selected parts. Many of the “booby traps" or “fail-safe" programmes involve spinning. Often, when a programme (that is, a particular training) is in operation, the survivor feels dizzy, as though something or someone is “spinning" inside his or her head. If this is happening to you, you can speak to the spinner and ask that part to stop spinning or to slow down the spin. If this does not work, ask to speak with whoever is making the spinner part spin. This strategy, of working up through the chain of command, applies to mind control treatment recovery in general. Another tactic you can use is to ask the spinner to spin in the opposite direction, which will often put away whatever is being spun. If permitted by those in charge, a spinner can also replace whatever lesson is being spun with something positive, such as a feeling of calmness, taken from a positive memory.

You have probably noted a lack of “how to” instructions to this point. While some technical and tactical suggestions will be offered in the next chapter, the essence of maneuver warfare is its approach to tactics and operations. Rather than concentrating on formulas and checklists - with their inherent predictability - maneuver warfare emphasizes a thought process. It is a process of seeing your options, creating new options, and shifting rapidly among those options as the situation changes. Ultimately tactics in maneuver warfare require that you “out-Boyd Cycle” the enemy.

In less than two years, I gained a clear understanding of the doctrine and operational technique of Social Democracy... The tactics of Social Democracy consisted in opening, at a given signal, a veritable onslaught of lies and slanders against the man whom they viewed as their strongest adversary-until his nerves gave way... simply in the hope of being allowed to live in peace... Thus did Social Democracy learn the value of strength, and for that reason it attacks mostly those who are of a stronger nature... They have less fear of a man of genius who lacks will-power than of a vigorous character with mediocre intelligence.

Lind’s scheme has been widely adopted. Note, however, that it is based mainly on developments on the tactical and operational levels. It has relatively little to say about strategy, let alone grand strategy and the kind of political, economic, social and cultural factors in which the latter is rooted. In this it differs from some other schemes, including my own which is based on the distinction between “trinitarian” and “non-trinitarian” warfare. Here the assumption is that there are two basic kinds of war, i.e. those in which the distinction between government, armed forces and people is maintained and those in which it is not.

Decentralized Command was a necessity. In such situations, the leaders did not call me and ask me what they should do. Instead, they told me what they were going to do. I trusted them to make adjustments and adapt the plan to unforeseen circumstances while staying within the parameters of the guidance I had given them and our standard operating procedures. I trusted them to lead. My ego took no offense to my subordinate leaders on the frontlines calling the shots. In fact, I was proud to follow their lead and support them. With my leaders running their teams and handling the tactical decisions, it made my job much easier by enabling me to focus on the bigger picture.

When I heard of the shady tactics of the Moonies, my initial indignation was modified by empathy. I remembered only too well all the innocuous-sounding "fronts" operated by Evangelicals in order to witness to sinners, e.g., coffee houses, concerts, philosophical forums, religious surveys. None of these was ever billed for what it was. The idea was to hook the unsuspecting sinner and win an opportunity to tell him the gospel. Similar Machiavellian tactics govern various interpersonal contacts. A campus leader or foreign student may find himself the object of an Evangelical's friendly attention, not realizing he has been singled out for "friendship evangelism" because of his potentially strategic position.

Gazans hypothesized that the brutality of the offensive was a tactic to force them to turn against Hamas. In many instances this worked, particularly when Hamas showed its own merciless face. Under the heavy toll of bombing, Hamas used the chaotic environment of war to settle its own political scores and carry out extrajudicial assassinations of its domestic enemies, including members of Fatah who were held in its jails, as well as suspected collaborators or informants for Israel.40 More disturbingly, in the early days of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas’s Ministry of Interior called on citizens not to respond to evacuation orders by the Israeli army, asserting that these were only issued as a form of psychological warfare to create panic.41 Many in Gaza criticized Hamas, not least for its role in dragging the coastal enclave into another conflagration. Others were critical of Hamas’s governance record and its authoritarian streak.

Managerial abilities, bureaucratic skills, technical expertise, and political talent are all necessary, but they can be applied only to goals that have already been defined by military policies, broad and narrow. And those policies can be only as good as strategy, operational art of war, tactical thought, and plain military craft that have gone into their making. At present, the defects of structure submerge or distort strategy and operational art, they out rightly suppress tactical ingenuity, and they displace the traditional insights and rules of military craft in favor of bureaucratic preferences, administrative convenience, and abstract notions of efficiency derived from the world of business management. First there is the defective structure for making of military decisions under the futile supervision of the civilian Defense Department; then come the deeply flawed defense policies and military choices, replete with unnecessary costs and hidden risks; finally there come the undoubted managerial abilities, bureaucratic skills, technical expertise, and political talents, all applied to achieve those flawed policies and to implement those flawed choices. By this same sequence was the fatally incomplete Maginot Line built, as were all the Maginot Lines of history, each made no better by good government, technical talent, careful accounting, or sheer hard work. Hence the futility of all the managerial innovations tried in the Pentagon over the years. In the purchasing of weapons, for example, “total package” procurement, cost plus incentive contracting, “firm fixed price” purchasing have all been introduced with much fanfare, only to be abandoned, retried, and repudiated once again. And each time a new Secretary of Defense arrives, with him come the latest batch of managerial innovations, many of them aimed at reducing fraud, waste, and mismanagement-the classic trio endlessly denounced in Congress, even though they account for mere percentage points in the total budget, and have no relevance at all to the failures of combat. The persistence of the Administrator’s Delusion has long kept the Pentagon on a treadmill of futile procedural “reforms” that have no impact at all on the military substance of our defense. It is through strategy, operational art, tactical ingenuity, and military craft that the large savings can be made, and the nation’s military strength greatly increased, but achieving long-overdue structural innovations, from the central headquarters to the combat forces, from the overhead of bases and installations to the current purchase of new weapons. Then, and only then, will it be useful to pursue fraud, waste, and mismanagement, if only to save a few dollars more after the billions have already been saved. At present, by contrast, the Defense Department administers ineffectively, while the public, Congress, and the media apply their energies to such petty matters as overpriced spare parts for a given device in a given weapon of a given ship, overlooking at the same time the multibillion dollar question of money spent for the Navy as a whole instead of the Army – whose weakness diminishes our diplomatic weight in peacetime, and which could one day cause us to resort to nuclear weapons in the face of imminent debacle. If we had a central military authority and a Defense Department capable of strategy, we should cheerfully tolerate much fraud, waste, and mismanagement; but so long as there are competing military bureaucracies organically incapable of strategic combat, neither safety nor economy will be ensured, even if we could totally eliminate every last cent of fraud, waste, and mismanagement.

Another important slide shows how the Blitzkrieg—or maneuver conflict—is the perfect tactical application of the OODA Loop. Boyd asks: How does a commander harmonize the numerous individual thrusts of a Blitzkrieg attack and maintain the cohesion of his larger effort? The answer is that the Blitzkrieg is far more than the lightning thrusts that most people think of when they hear the term; rather it was all about high operational tempo and the rapid exploitation of opportunity. In a Blitzkrieg situation, the commander is able to maintain a high operational tempo and rapidly exploit opportunity because he makes sure his subordinates know his intent, his Schwerpunkt. They are not micromanaged, that is, they are not told to seize and hold a certain hill; instead they are given “mission orders.” This means that they understand their commander’s overall intent and they know their job is to do whatever is necessary to fulfill that intent. The subordinate and the commander share a common outlook. They trust each other, and this trust is the glue that holds the apparently formless effort together. Trust emphasizes implicit over explicit communications. Trust is the unifying concept. This gives the subordinate great freedom of action. Trust is an example of a moral force that helps bind groups together in what Boyd called an “organic whole.

So you don’t trust me: the guy who taught you everything you know. I’m guessing if you have her”—he jerked his thumb at Rae—“that’s no accident. Luke’s buddies sent her to trap you, and she thought she was doing the right thing, because, duh, she’s already proven she’s kinda gullible that way.” “Hey!” Rae said. “You are. Own it. Fix it. Now, you guys have her, which means you escaped whoever sent her after you. You didn’t escape without a fight, given that bruise I see rising on Daniel’s jaw and the scrapes on Derek’s knuckles. But you escaped, and you came back here, and you captured me. Who taught you all that?” “Daniel and I had already started learning,” Maya said, “during those weeks you were chasing us.” “Trial by fire,” he said. “Followed by hardcore, hands-on tactical training. You got away scot-free from these guys because of my lessons. And yet now you don’t trust I’m on your side?” “Nope,” Derek said. “Sorry,” Daniel said. Maya crossed her arms and shook her head. I shrugged. Moreno broke into a grin. “You guys do me proud. I’d give you all a hug, if that wasn’t a little creepy. And if I was the hugging sort. But if you survive the rest of this, I’ll take you all out for beer and ice cream.” “You don’t need to be sarcastic,” Rae muttered. “Oh, but I’m not, and they know it. This is exactly what I trained them for. Trust no one except one another. Excluding you, kid, because I don’t know you, and you have a bad habit of screwing up. But these guys are doing the right thing. Next step?” Turn the tables,” I said. “Capture someone who’s behind this and get them to talk.” “Mmm, yes. That would work. But even better?” “Stop them,” Derek said. “Don’t just take down one. Take them all down.” “Without running to the Nasts for help,” Daniel said. “Because in another year, some of us will be off to college, and we need to be able to look after ourselves.” “Starting with proving we can look after ourselves,” Maya said. Moreno beamed. “You guys are ace. See, this is what I told Sean. The best time to train operatives is when they’re still young and malleable. None of that shit about waiting until they’re eighteen and legally old enough to consent.” Maya shook her head. “I suppose you’d also suggest he have the Cabal terrorize them for weeks first, so they’re properly motivated.” “Exactly. Personal rights and freedoms are vastly overrated. And there’s nothing wrong with a little PTSD. I’ve always found mine useful. Keeps me on my toes.” Rae stared at him. “I’m kidding,” he said to her. “Mostly. Don’t you joke around like this with your instructors? Oh, wait. You don’t have any. Which is why you got tricked—again. And got captured by these guys.” “Can we tie him up now?” Rae said. “And gag him?” “Doesn’t do any good,” Derek said. “We could try.

Situation awareness means possessing an explorer mentality A general never knows anything with certainty, never sees his enemy clearly, and never knows positively where he is. When armies are face to face, the least accident in the ground, the smallest wood, may conceal part of the enemy army. The most experienced eye cannot be sure whether it sees the whole of the enemy’s army or only three-fourths. It is by the mind’s eye, by the integration of all reasoning, by a kind of inspiration that the general sees, knows, and judges. ~Napoleon 5   In order to effectively gather the appropriate information as it’s unfolding we must possess the explorer mentality.  We must be able to recognize patterns of behavior. Then we must recognize that which is outside that normal pattern. Then, you take the initiative so we maintain control. Every call, every incident we respond to possesses novelty. Car stops, domestic violence calls, robberies, suspicious persons etc.  These individual types of incidents show similar patterns in many ways. For example, a car stopped normally pulls over to the side of the road when signaled to do so.  The officer when ready, approaches the operator, a conversation ensues, paperwork exchanges, and the pulled over car drives away. A domestic violence call has its own normal patterns; police arrive, separate involved parties, take statements and arrest aggressor and advise the victim of abuse prevention rights. We could go on like this for all the types of calls we handle as each type of incident on its own merits, does possess very similar patterns. Yet they always, and I mean always possess something different be it the location, the time of day, the person you are dealing with. Even if it’s the same person, location, time and day, the person you’re dealing who may now be in a different emotional state and his/her motives and intent may be very different. This breaks that normal expected pattern.  Hence, there is a need to always be open-minded, alert and aware, exploring for the signs and signals of positive or negative change in conditions. In his Small Wars journal article “Thinking and Acting like an Early Explorer” Brigadier General Huba Wass de Czege (US Army Ret.) describes the explorer mentality:   While tactical and strategic thinking are fundamentally different, both kinds of thinking must take place in the explorer’s brain, but in separate compartments. To appreciate this, think of the metaphor of an early American explorer trying to cross a large expanse of unknown terrain long before the days of the modern conveniences. The explorer knows that somewhere to the west lies an ocean he wants to reach. He has only a sketch-map of a narrow corridor drawn by a previously unsuccessful explorer. He also knows that highly variable weather and frequent geologic activity can block mountain passes, flood rivers, and dry up desert water sources. He also knows that some native tribes are hostile to all strangers, some are friendly and others are fickle, but that warring and peace-making among them makes estimating their whereabouts and attitudes difficult.6

In the absence of expert [senior military] advice, we have seen each successive administration fail in the business of strategy - yielding a United States twice as rich as the Soviet Union but much less strong. Only the manner of the failure has changed. In the 1960s, under Robert S. McNamara, we witnessed the wholesale substitution of civilian mathematical analysis for military expertise. The new breed of the "systems analysts" introduced new standards of intellectual discipline and greatly improved bookkeeping methods, but also a trained incapacity to understand the most important aspects of military power, which happens to be nonmeasurable. Because morale is nonmeasurable it was ignored, in large and small ways, with disastrous effects. We have seen how the pursuit of business-type efficiency in the placement of each soldier destroys the cohesion that makes fighting units effective; we may recall how the Pueblo was left virtually disarmed when it encountered the North Koreans (strong armament was judged as not "cost effective" for ships of that kind). Because tactics, the operational art of war, and strategy itself are not reducible to precise numbers, money was allocated to forces and single weapons according to "firepower" scores, computer simulations, and mathematical studies - all of which maximize efficiency - but often at the expense of combat effectiveness. An even greater defect of the McNamara approach to military decisions was its businesslike "linear" logic, which is right for commerce or engineering but almost always fails in the realm of strategy. Because its essence is the clash of antagonistic and outmaneuvering wills, strategy usually proceeds by paradox rather than conventional "linear" logic. That much is clear even from the most shopworn of Latin tags: si vis pacem, para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war), whose business equivalent would be orders of "if you want sales, add to your purchasing staff," or some other, equally absurd advice. Where paradox rules, straightforward linear logic is self-defeating, sometimes quite literally. Let a general choose the best path for his advance, the shortest and best-roaded, and it then becomes the worst path of all paths, because the enemy will await him there in greatest strength... Linear logic is all very well in commerce and engineering, where there is lively opposition, to be sure, but no open-ended scope for maneuver; a competitor beaten in the marketplace will not bomb our factory instead, and the river duly bridged will not deliberately carve out a new course. But such reactions are merely normal in strategy. Military men are not trained in paradoxical thinking, but they do no have to be. Unlike the business-school expert, who searches for optimal solutions in the abstract and then presents them will all the authority of charts and computer printouts, even the most ordinary military mind can recall the existence of a maneuvering antagonists now and then, and will therefore seek robust solutions rather than "best" solutions - those, in other words, which are not optimal but can remain adequate even when the enemy reacts to outmaneuver the first approach.

William Blum, the former State Department employee who became one of its most severe and encyclopedic critics, drew up a disturbing balance sheet of American interventions since the end of the Second World War, and there are numerous cases of overturning democratically elected governments. He also emphasized Washington’s meddling in elections, as it has not hesitated to invest considerable sums and to use very dubious tactics—from misinformation campaigns and economic destabilization efforts to clandestine cia operations—to swing so-called democratic elections in a direction favorable to its own interests. In one of his most recent books, entitled quite simply America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy, he reaches the conclusion that the American administration, for which the question of democracy remains utterly secondary, aims above all at world domination. For the United States has shown itself to be hostile to any popular movement likely to contest its hegemony. It is in this vein that it has • endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically elected; • grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries; • attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders; • dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries; • attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries. Needless to say, such a performance inevitably calls into question the history of the spectacular blossoming of democracy. Numerous other specialists have corroborated Blum’s conclusions, often with detailed investigations bearing on individual cases of what Chomsky judiciously named “deterring democracy.

a young Goldman Sachs banker named Joseph Park was sitting in his apartment, frustrated at the effort required to get access to entertainment. Why should he trek all the way to Blockbuster to rent a movie? He should just be able to open a website, pick out a movie, and have it delivered to his door. Despite raising around $250 million, Kozmo, the company Park founded, went bankrupt in 2001. His biggest mistake was making a brash promise for one-hour delivery of virtually anything, and investing in building national operations to support growth that never happened. One study of over three thousand startups indicates that roughly three out of every four fail because of premature scaling—making investments that the market isn’t yet ready to support. Had Park proceeded more slowly, he might have noticed that with the current technology available, one-hour delivery was an impractical and low-margin business. There was, however, a tremendous demand for online movie rentals. Netflix was just then getting off the ground, and Kozmo might have been able to compete in the area of mail-order rentals and then online movie streaming. Later, he might have been able to capitalize on technological changes that made it possible for Instacart to build a logistics operation that made one-hour grocery delivery scalable and profitable. Since the market is more defined when settlers enter, they can focus on providing superior quality instead of deliberating about what to offer in the first place. “Wouldn’t you rather be second or third and see how the guy in first did, and then . . . improve it?” Malcolm Gladwell asked in an interview. “When ideas get really complicated, and when the world gets complicated, it’s foolish to think the person who’s first can work it all out,” Gladwell remarked. “Most good things, it takes a long time to figure them out.”* Second, there’s reason to believe that the kinds of people who choose to be late movers may be better suited to succeed. Risk seekers are drawn to being first, and they’re prone to making impulsive decisions. Meanwhile, more risk-averse entrepreneurs watch from the sidelines, waiting for the right opportunity and balancing their risk portfolios before entering. In a study of software startups, strategy researchers Elizabeth Pontikes and William Barnett find that when entrepreneurs rush to follow the crowd into hyped markets, their startups are less likely to survive and grow. When entrepreneurs wait for the market to cool down, they have higher odds of success: “Nonconformists . . . that buck the trend are most likely to stay in the market, receive funding, and ultimately go public.” Third, along with being less recklessly ambitious, settlers can improve upon competitors’ technology to make products better. When you’re the first to market, you have to make all the mistakes yourself. Meanwhile, settlers can watch and learn from your errors. “Moving first is a tactic, not a goal,” Peter Thiel writes in Zero to One; “being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you.” Fourth, whereas pioneers tend to get stuck in their early offerings, settlers can observe market changes and shifting consumer tastes and adjust accordingly. In a study of the U.S. automobile industry over nearly a century, pioneers had lower survival rates because they struggled to establish legitimacy, developed routines that didn’t fit the market, and became obsolete as consumer needs clarified. Settlers also have the luxury of waiting for the market to be ready. When Warby Parker launched, e-commerce companies had been thriving for more than a decade, though other companies had tried selling glasses online with little success. “There’s no way it would have worked before,” Neil Blumenthal tells me. “We had to wait for Amazon, Zappos, and Blue Nile to get people comfortable buying products they typically wouldn’t order online.

The First Amendment protects our freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to practice religion, to peacefully assemble, and the right to petition the government. This is true tolerance as defined by our founding documents. This is the right of all American citizens. Does the right of free speech end on college campuses of higher learning? Does it end when you step into a designated "safe space" at your local university? Does it end if your choice of words is construed to be a "trigger warning" when you walk into a classroom? The answer obviously should be no. Unfortunately, the answer today on most college campuses is yes. And take this warning seriously: it won't end there. The commentator Andrew Sullivan has noted the student anti-free-speech movement "manifests itself . . . almost as a religion". He continues: "It posits a classic orthodoxy through which all of human experience is explained--and through which all speech must be filtered. Its version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others. To overcome this sin, you need first to confess, i.e., "check your privilege", and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay. This sin goes so deep into your psyche, especially if you are white or male or straight, that a profound conversion is required. It operates as a religion in one other critical dimension: If you happen to see the world in a different way, if you're a liberal or libertarian or even, gasp, a conservative, if you believe that a university is a place where any idea, however loathsome, can be debated and refuted, you are not just wrong, you are immoral . . . your heresy is a direct threat to others, and therefore needs to be extinguished. You can't reason with heresy. You have to ban it". Ironically, Christians, and others committed to the free expression of ideas, are the ones who are often accused of trying to force our beliefs on others. But that's not the case. Because we believe in objective truth, we believe reason and a robust exchange of ideas, with good, healthy debate can guide us to the truth. It is the radical Left that denies objective truth and therefore always relies on forced compliance and fascist tactics.

By the time Jessica Buchanan was kidnapped in Somalia on October 25, 2011, the twenty-four boys back in America who had been so young during the 1993 attack on the downed American aid support choppers in Mogadishu had since grown to manhood. Now they were between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-five, and each one had become determined to qualify for the elite U.S. Navy unit called DEVGRU. After enlisting in the U.S. Navy and undergoing their essential basic training, every one of them endured the challenges of BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training, where the happy goal is to become “drownproofed” via what amounts to repeated semidrowning, while also learning dozens of ways to deliver explosive death and demolition. This was only the starting point. Once qualification was over and the candidates were sworn in, three-fourths of the qualified Navy SEALS who tried to also qualify for DEVGRU dropped out. Those super-warriors were overcome by the challenges, regardless of their peak physical condition and being in the prime of their lives. This happened because of the intensity of the training. Long study and practice went into developing a program specifically designed to seek out and expose any individual’s weakest points. If the same ordeals were imposed on captured terrorists who were known to be guilty of killing innocent civilians, the officers in charge would get thrown in the brig. Still, no matter how many Herculean physical challenges are presented to a DEVGRU candidate, the brutal training is primarily mental. It reveals each soldier’s principal foe to be himself. His mortal fears and deepest survival instinct emerge time after time as the essential demons he must overcome. Each DEVGRU member must reach beyond mere proficiency at dealing death. He must become two fighters combined: one who is trained to a state of robotic muscle memory in specific dark skills, and a second who is fluidly adaptive, using an array of standard SEAL tactics. Only when he can live and work from within this state of mind will he be trusted to pursue black operations in every form of hostile environment. Therefore the minority candidate who passes into DEVGRU becomes a member of the “Tier One” Special Mission Unit. He will be assigned to reconnaissance or assault, but his greatest specialty will always be to remain lethal in spite of rapidly changing conditions. From the day he is accepted into that elite tribe, he embodies what is delicately called “preemptive and proactive counterterrorist operations.” Or as it might be more bluntly described: Hunt them down and kill them wherever they are - and is possible, blow up something. Each one of that small percentage who makes it through six months of well-intended but malicious torture emerges as a true human predator. If removing you from this world becomes his mission, your only hope of escaping a DEVGRU SEAL is to find a hiding place that isn’t on land, on the sea, or in the air.

The tactical situation seems simple enough. Thanks to Marx’s prophecy, the Communists knew for certain that misery must soon increase. They also knew that the party could not win the confidence of the workers without fighting for them, and with them, for an improvement of their lot. These two fundamental assumptions clearly determined the principles of their general tactics. Make the workers demand their share, back them up in every particular episode in their unceasing fight for bread and shelter. Fight with them tenaciously for the fulfilment of their practical demands, whether economic or political. Thus you will win their confidence. At the same time, the workers will learn that it is impossible for them to better their lot by these petty fights, and that nothing short of a wholesale revolution can bring about an improvement. For all these petty fights are bound to be unsuccessful; we know from Marx that the capitalists simply cannot continue to compromise and that, ultimately, misery must increase. Accordingly, the only result—but a valuable one—of the workers’ daily fight against their oppressors is an increase in their class consciousness; it is that feeling of unity which can be won only in battle, together with a desperate knowledge that only revolution can help them in their misery. When this stage is reached, then the hour has struck for the final show-down. This is the theory and the Communists acted accordingly. At first they support the workers in their fight to improve their lot. But, contrary to all expectations and prophecies, the fight is successful. The demands are granted. Obviously, the reason is that they had been too modest. Therefore one must demand more. But the demands are granted again44. And as misery decreases, the workers become less embittered, more ready to bargain for wages than to plot for revolution. Now the Communists find that their policy must be reversed. Something must be done to bring the law of increasing misery into operation. For instance, colonial unrest must be stirred up (even where there is no chance of a successful revolution), and with the general purpose of counteracting the bourgeoisification of the workers, a policy fomenting catastrophes of all sorts must be adopted. But this new policy destroys the confidence of the workers. The Communists lose their members, with the exception of those who are inexperienced in real political fights. They lose exactly those whom they describe as the ‘vanguard of the working class’; their tacitly implied principle: ‘The worse things are, the better they are, since misery must precipitate revolution’, makes the workers suspicious—the better the application of this principle, the worse are the suspicions entertained by the workers. For they are realists; to obtain their confidence, one must work to improve their lot. Thus the policy must be reversed again: one is forced to fight for the immediate betterment of the workers’ lot and to hope at the same time for the opposite. With this, the ‘inner contradictions’ of the theory produce the last stage of confusion. It is the stage when it is hard to know who is the traitor, since treachery may be faithfulness and faithfulness treachery. It is the stage when those who followed the party not simply because it appeared to them (rightly, I am afraid) as the only vigorous movement with humanitarian ends, but especially because it was a movement based on a scientific theory, must either leave it, or sacrifice their intellectual integrity; for they must now learn to believe blindly in some authority. Ultimately, they must become mystics—hostile to reasonable argument. It seems that it is not only capitalism which is labouring under inner contradictions that threaten to bring about its downfall …

In the past, the Israelis complained that the Palestinians were so fragmented that no faction could deliver on any peace deal. Now Abbas had a controlling position. Washington and Brussels backed him. Everything was in place for a package to bring Gaza back under the control of Abbas, to disarm Hamas, to reopen crossing points to Egypt and Israel, monitored by EU observers, and to pour millions of dollars into Gaza's reconstruction as a precursor to a viable Palestinian state. But instead of welcoming this sign of growing moderation, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, resorted to his old tactic of divide and rule. In June, three Israeli teenagers vanished in the West Bank. Netanyahu ordered a "hostage rescue operation", despite intelligence that the youths were already dead, which escalated into the onslaught against Hamas.

FIGURE 5.20 The Sales Force’s DNA However, it wasn’t yet a full set of operating instructions. To make the code practically useful, we would need to understand how the framework should be applied to the task of managing any particular sales force. We had the “superset” of things leadership could measure and manage, but we needed clear guidelines to help cull from it the handful of activities and metrics that would enable leadership to focus on its own organizational goals. We needed to know how to apply these insights in a targeted and tactical way. Fortunately, we were on the verge of doing just that.

The Guardian’s Paul Vallely has given a decent account of how Cardinal George Pell, appointed by Francis, began a review of the bank’s operations. Pell had successfully overhauled the Church’s finances in Sydney and Melbourne. The Australian son of a former heavyweight boxer, Pell is a political and doctrinal conservative who speaks aggressively and does not believe in man-made climate change. He is a cult hero among conservative Catholics. You can imagine what the Lavender Mafia think of him. Vallely notes grudgingly that, “For all his conservatism, Pell had for years been a vocal critic of the Roman Catholic bureaucracy and its corruption.” Pell moved quickly, and made enemies. A straight dealer to the point of unbearable bluntness, especially in the delicately perfumed and gold-embroidered world of the Holy See, Pell probably didn’t anticipate getting tripped up by dirty tactics: in this case, stories leaked to the media about—you guessed it—clerical abuse. The press reports were coincidentally timed, arriving just as Pell’s reforms of the bank began to take hold. It was alleged that Pell was soft on child abuse, thanks to offhand comments he had made years before, in typically ribald and direct Australian fashion. It was suggested that he may himself have some questions to answer about covering up abuse. Then the allegations widened, to direct accusations of historic sex abuse, at which point Pell had to put his work at the bank on hold. Now Pell is back in Australia, trying to clear his name, and his reforms are stalling, just as the intriguers intended. This is how efforts to clean up the Roman Catholic Church usually end.

Personnel in the tactical arena should be thick skinned and ready for direct and frank feedback.

Choose tactics that are simple and safe to execute and will ensure the greatest chance of survival for your men. We do a dangerous job, and the team needs to understand this.

You need to be technically and tactically proficient with all your weapon systems and set the standard for the newbie on the team. They should aspire to be like you one day. If you live the example, you set the stage for success. You also take away all the excuses, should anyone want to fall back on one.

If the tactic of occupation, for example, is employed in order to create exemplars and temporary spaces of non-capitalist social relations, it will inevitably fail to achieve substantial change. If, on the other hand, it is understood as a mechanism to produce solidarity networks and mobilise them for further action, then it may still have use within broader counter-hegemonic strategies. But this sort of strategic reflection about the virtues and limits of any particular action is what is absent from too much of the left today. The numerous protests and marches and occupations typically operate without any sense of strategy, simply acting as dispersed and independent blips of resistance. There is far too little thought given to how to combine these various actions, and how they might function together to collectively build a better world. Instead we are left with actions that sometimes succeed but which rarely have an overarching eye to how this contributes to medium-and long-term goals.105

In the aftermath of Chickamauga, Forrest made a similar point to “a group of Confederate officers” as they discussed “the recent engagement and of military subjects generally.” Knowing the accounts of the “remarkable exploits” associated with their colleague, the “West Pointers, who were curious to know what tactics the great raider had used and what systems he had followed that enabled him to be eminently successful, plied him with question after question.” One specifically wanted to know what Forrest considered “the most important principle to be adopted in active operations against an enemy in the field.” In what the writer recalled was a “broad, uncouth dialect,” Forrest responded eagerly: “‘Wall, General, if I git youah idée, you want to know, sah, what I considah the main pint. Wall, now, I don’t know what you all think about it, but my idée is, to always git the most men thar fust, and then,’ he added, ‘ef you can’t whup ’em, outrun ’em.’” Aside from its practical application, the general’s observation reflected time-honored martial wisdom. The witness concluded simply, “It must be conceded that Forrest’s way of putting the Napoleonic maxim to ‘converge a superior force on the critical point at the critical time,’ was forcible and intelligent, if inelegant.”73

Our political institutions have absorbed the tactics of the tabloids like a giant sanitary product. The domination of spin, with political image managers intricately connected with media personnel, sees our political discussion operate as a subset of the corporate media, and our politicians strategising in much the same way as the media does: asking how do we push and prod and suck up the desires and frustrations of the electorate, transforming them into something that articulates the will of the powerful. It manufactures not just consent, but dissent and outrage and doubt, in a ceaseless production line of images. When the machinery jams, these interests become starkly visible. Jones’s

A leader’s checklist for planning should include the following: • Analyze the mission. —Understand higher headquarters’ mission, Commander’s Intent, and endstate (the goal). —Identify and state your own Commander’s Intent and endstate for the specific mission. • Identify personnel, assets, resources, and time available. • Decentralize the planning process. —Empower key leaders within the team to analyze possible courses of action. • Determine a specific course of action. —Lean toward selecting the simplest course of action. —Focus efforts on the best course of action. • Empower key leaders to develop the plan for the selected course of action. • Plan for likely contingencies through each phase of the operation. • Mitigate risks that can be controlled as much as possible. • Delegate portions of the plan and brief to key junior leaders. —Stand back and be the tactical genius. • Continually check and question the plan against emerging information to ensure it still fits the situation. • Brief the plan to all participants and supporting assets. —Emphasize Commander’s Intent. —Ask questions and engage in discussion and interaction with the team to ensure they understand. • Conduct post-operational debrief after execution. —Analyze lessons learned and implement them in future planning.

Why waste the space on a stack of half-read books and periodicals, when you could turn your nightstand into a tactical toolbox?

Humanity has always been controlled by two sides and never did its accomplishments been ignored but overseen and manipulated by those in power. The truth, however, is never accepted by those who keep on paying the price for the untruth they embrace. In doing so, they keep the most important truths hidden from themselves, for their level of consciousness cannot go beyond their ego — the belief that they have not been massively fooled. These high truths can only bypass the filter of the ego and mass media control when found in a book. And yet, you may never finish such book, or find it, if you cannot handle the truths found within it and reflecting within yourself. Among such truths, is the fact that what you believe to be a postmodern world, did not liberate anyone, but rather imprisoned mankind furthermore within the mind — the only physical center, for now, where control can be operated from an external source: The real purpose of the feminist movement was to force women to give away their children earlier to the state, as the earlier they are indoctrinated, the more easily controlled they'll be as adults; the real purpose of the LGBT movement and the women's liberation movement is to increase the levels of depression in society; and these, among other tactics, massively increase the profit of those in control, for they are the same behind the financing of Universities researching humanity at a psychological, biological, and chemical level.

Whereas the Soviets were content with the simplicity of sheer brute force strategy and tactics, and the Germans were depending on their technological superiority to make up for their deficiencies in production capacity, the Allies were building a systematic way of waging war, akin to a machine, one that would, if given sufficient time, integrate formations, units, and weapons types, land, air, and sea into an irresistible force. One that would still be subject to the mental and physical limitations of the flesh-and-blood creatures who had to operate and guide it, but that had been fundamentally designed from the beginning to fight battles in the way the Allies intended to fight them. As Rommel saw it, the Wehrmacht could not defeat that machine, therefore the Gemans must find a way to make it too expensive for the Allies to continue to operate it. That process, he believed, could begin in Tunisia.

The WBR is a tactical operational meeting to analyze performance trends of the prior week. At Amazon, it was not the time to discuss new strategies, project updates, or upcoming product releases.

if there really is no way you can win, you never say it out loud. You assess why, change strategy, adjust tactics, and keep fighting and pushing till either you’ve gotten a better outcome or you’ve died. Either way, you never quit when your country needs you to succeed. As Team 5 was shutting down the workup and loading up its gear, our task unit’s leadership flew to Ramadi to do what we call a predeployment site survey. Lieutenant Commander Thomas went, and so did both of our platoon officers in charge. It was quite an adventure. They were shot at every day. They were hit by IEDs. When they came home, Lieutenant Commander Thomas got us together in the briefing room and laid out the details. The general reaction from the team was, “Get ready, kids. This is gonna be one hell of a ride.” I remember sitting around the team room talking about it. Morgan had a big smile on his face. Elliott Miller, too, all 240 pounds of him, looked happy. Even Mr. Fantastic seemed at peace and relaxed, in that sober, senior chief way. We turned over in our minds the hard realities of the city. Only a couple weeks from now we would be calling Ramadi home. For six or seven months we’d be living in a hornet’s nest, picking up where Team 3 had left off. It was time for us to roll. In late September, Al Qaeda’s barbaric way of dealing with the local population was stirring some of Iraq’s Sunni tribal leaders to come over to our side. (Stuff like punishing cigarette smokers by cutting off their fingers—can you blame locals for wanting those crazies gone?) Standing up for their own people posed a serious risk, but it was easier to justify when you had five thousand American military personnel backing you up. That’ll boost your courage, for sure. We were putting that vise grip on that city, infiltrating it, and setting up shop, block by block, house by house, inch by inch. On September 29, a Team 3 platoon set out on foot from a combat outpost named Eagle’s Nest on the final operation of their six-month deployment. Located in the dangerous Ma’laab district, it wasn’t much more than a perimeter of concrete walls and concertina wire bundling up a block of residential homes. COP Eagle’s

As CGFMFPac, Krulak was concerned about the strategic side of the war being directed from Washington. He favored stopping the flow of supplies from North Vietnam to South Vietnam because this would aid in implementing his ideas about counterinsurgency. Thus he was in favor of both mining the harbor at Haiphong and bombing the north. Such actions were external to his theater of operations but would have a direct impact on his ideas. The next-lowest level of war is the operational level, where Krulak’s ideas about counterinsurgency were most important. The third level is tactical. This is about individual battles.

He was particularly aggrieved by his narrow loss to Jack Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, which turned on a few thousand votes in Texas and Illinois. Nixon was in “no doubt” that substantial voter fraud had been committed. He blamed his defeat on the dirty tricks of “the most ruthless group of political operators ever mobilized for a presidential campaign” and the “slanted reporting” of brazenly pro-Kennedy journalists. He did not contest the results of the election for fear of being labeled a sore loser. Nevertheless, from that moment on, he wrote later, “I had the wisdom and wariness of someone who had been burned by the power of the Kennedys and their money and by the license they were given by the media. I vowed that I would never again enter an election at a disadvantage by being vulnerable to them—or anyone—on the level of political tactics.

God's tactics are counterintuitive to our male-centered world, but therein lies the surprise for the Enemy, for the world, and for us. For when men and women are allied together, richer discussions result in better decisions, the elimination of blind spots, and a greater kingdom force in the world. If you don't believe me, just compare Esther, Mordecai, Mary, and Joseph each operating solo with what they accomplished by working together.

Brute spent almost as much time with frontline units as he did at Shepherd’s command post. For his role in the invasion, he would receive the Legion of Merit, the citation for which praises him for bringing the division to “a state of complete readiness” and for providing Shepherd with advice “of immeasurable value, being always sound, and based upon comprehensive and excellent tactical judgment and a consistently complete grasp of the situation.” It also notes that to better acquaint himself with fluid battlefield conditions, Krulak frequently was on the front lines, where he exposed himself to enemy artillery and small-arms fire, and that his coordination of subordinate units “contributed materially to the success of this difficult operation.

My long expected warning came to me when I noticed that, one after another, those stocks which had been the leaders of the market reacted several points from the top and—for the first time in many months—did not come back. Their race evidently was run, and that clearly necessitated a change in my trading tactics.

Some of the more doctrine-laden ground people also talk about the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war, so they can think in bins or boxes: “strategic” means whatever the President thinks about and does, “operational” is what the CINC thinks about and does, “tactical” is component-level-and-below thinking and doing. To an airman this is meaningless. My tactical fighter (tactical), flying to Baghdad (operational), kills Saddam Hussein (strategic). So finally, in talking about air plans or air operations, I keep as far from these words as I can. Airpower is essentially very simple: Aircraft can range very quickly over very wide areas and accurately hit targets very close to home or very far away. Nothing more. Nothing less.

For many victims of motor vehicle collisions, the decision whether to pursue an insurance claim or handle their own case can be a difficult one. However, there are numerous reasons why victims of accidents should be represented by a lawyer if they have received a substantial injury such as whiplash. A Car Accident Lawyer Will Explain The Process to You When they hire a car accident lawyer, victims of accidents will immediately receive the assistance and attention they need and deserve. Because most of the details of how car accidents occur are unique and not common knowledge, knowing how to proceed will be the major difference in the outcome of the case. A lawyer who is familiar with how insurance companies operate will know how to negotiate a better settlement with them. During an accident, most insurance companies will want to pay the least amount possible and move on, not even addressing the extent of the damage to the other car or some of the details of the accident. When victims have a lawyer involved, they will not be vulnerable to these tactics.

After contracting Lyme disease and operating at ~10% capacity for 9 months in 2014, I made health #1. Prior to Lyme, I’d worked out and eaten well, but when push came to shove, “health #1” was negotiable. Now, it’s literally #1. What does this mean? If I sleep poorly and have an early morning meeting, I’ll cancel the meeting last-minute if needed and catch up on sleep. If I’ve missed a workout and have a conference call coming up in 30 minutes? Same. Late-night birthday party with a close friend? Not unless I can sleep in the next morning. In practice, strictly making health #1 has real social and business ramifications. That’s a price I’ve realized I MUST be fine with paying, or I will lose weeks or months to sickness and fatigue. Making health #1 50% of the time doesn’t work. It’s absolutely all-or-nothing. If it’s #1 50% of the time, you’ll compromise precisely when it’s most important not to. The artificial urgency common to startups makes mental and physical health a rarity. I’m tired of unwarranted last-minute “hurry up and sign” emergencies and related fire drills. It’s a culture of cortisol.

The Chinese advisors introduced some of their successful tactics from the Chinese Civil War of 1946–1949. Among the developed tactics were those designed to outnumber the enemy whenever possible in order to wipe out entire enemy units instead of simply repelling them, engage the enemy in mobile operations, and achieve surprise whenever possible.

Eisenhower found the difficulties he faced “nerve-wracking. Ordinarily,” he later observed, “a commander is given, along with a general objective, a definite allocation of forces upon which to construct his strategical plan, supported by detailed tactical, organizational, and logistical programs. In this case the situation was vague, the amount of resources unknown, the final object indeterminate, and the only firm factor in the whole business our instructions to attack.

It’s also worth noting that getting more resources will be perceived as recognition or a reward. Leadership should publicly celebrate managers who are actively improving their operational efficiency, for example by coming in under budget at the end of the fiscal year or “giving back” headcount allocation.

2 Glock 9mms with extra clips KA-Bar knife Leatherman MUT Tactical $300,000 in remaining cash Compass GPS with miniature solar panel Flashlight Binoculars Burner phone Crank-operated radio Various passports

But that didn’t happen. Instead, a unit of about thirty1 Ukrainian soldiers wearing night vision goggles rode quad bikes through the forests around the capital that evening. They dismounted near the column’s head and launched jerry-rigged drones equipped with small explosives. These took out a handful of lead vehicles. Those disabled vehicles then clogged up the central road. Surrounding fields were muddy and impassable. The column, facing freezing weather and faltering supply lines, ground to a halt. Then the same small unit of drone operators managed to blow up a critical supply base using the same tactics, depriving the Russian army of fuel and food.

Now the equipment, organization, and tactics of an army were not achieved overnight: one must allow for a period of transition before a large mass of men could be trained to operate under unified command. Until towns arose and population was sufficiently concentrated, the prelude to war was an organized but one-sided display of power and bellicosity in raiding expeditions for wood, malachite, gold, slaves.

the sheer tactical complexity of special operations almost guarantees that at least one critical variable will come loose between planning and execution.

In the case of the entry styles examined here, there are clear cognitive processes in operation. Officers will naturally orient on threats. They will also tend to experience acute stress response (ASR). ASR frequently produces a variety of perceptual distortions including tunnel vision and audio exclusion. The styles of entry can be considered to be the environmental structures. While it may be possible to conduct enough training to overcome the cognitive limitations of the officers (this is the point of much tactical training; Friedland & Keinan, 1992), it is easier to alter the entry style (i.e., structure of the environment) to one that is better adapted to the situation. This approach has also been suggested in other policing situations, such as how investigators can better detect deception (Blair, Levine, Reimer, & McCluskey, 2012). We now turn to discussing the specific entry techniques that dictate exactly where the officers go when they enter the room.

The three classic levels of war – strategic, operational, and tactical – still exist in Fourth Generation war. But all three are affected, and to some extent changed, by the Fourth Generation. One important change is that, while in the first three generations strategy was the province of generals, the Fourth Generation has given us the “strategic corporal.” These days, the actions of a single enlisted man can have strategic consequences, especially if they happen to take place when cameras are rolling. The Second Persian Gulf War provides numerous examples. In one case, U.S. Marines had occupied a Shi’ite town in southern Iraq. A Marine corporal was leading a patrol through the town when it encountered a funeral procession coming the other way. The corporal ordered his men to stand aside and take their helmets off as a sign of respect. Word of that action quickly spread around town, and it helped the Marines’ effort to be welcomed as liberators. That in turn had a strategic impact, because the American strategy depended upon keeping Shi’ite southern Iraq quiet in order for American supply lines to pass through the territory.

These changes point to another of the dilemmas that typify Fourth Generation war: what succeeds on the tactical level can easily be counter-productive at the operational and strategic levels. For example, by using their overwhelming firepower at the tactical level, state forces may in some cases intimidate the local population into fearing them and leaving them alone. But fear and hate are closely related, and if the local population ends up hating the state forces, that works toward their strategic defeat.

Fourth Generation war poses an especially difficult problem to operational art: put simply, it is difficult to operationalize. Often, Fourth Generation opponents have strategic centers of gravity that are intangible. These may involve proving their manhood to their comrades and local women, obeying the commandments of their religion, or demonstrating their tribe’s bravery to other tribes. Because operational art is the art of focusing tactical actions on enemy strategic centers of gravity, operational art becomes difficult or even impossible.

The game of connection and isolation will therefore be central to tactics and operational art as well as to strategy and grand strategy. It is important to ensure that what you are doing at the tactical level does not alienate independent power centers with which you need to connect at the operational or strategic levels. Similarly, you need to be careful not to isolate yourself today from independent power centers to which you will need to connect tomorrow.

Fortunately, there is a simple tool that can help meet this complex challenge: the grid. The Grid Physical Mental Moral Tactical Operational Strategic By using the grid to evaluate every proposed mission before it is undertaken, it is often possible to avoid the sorts of contradictions and unwanted second-order effects that bedevil actions by state militaries in Fourth Generation wars. How can you do that? By asking what the effects of the mission are likely to be in each of the nine boxes. Let’s consider three examples, looking just at the basics.

What I am talking about here is that positive leadership offers s true decentralized control throughout the organization. This decentralized (BOTTOMS/ UP) approach allows freedom to decide at the strategic, operational and tactical levels of a law enforcement mission. The intuitive decisions are made at the tactical and operational levels while the slower strategic decisions are made at the top. Decision makers working cohesively at all levels enhance successful operations.

TDGs are common to a wide array of specialties, nationally and internationally. Teachers should introduce students to TDGs with problems they are not familiar with, such as combat troops doing non-combat TDGs, and just the opposite for support personnel. Particular courses or units may develop different operating procedures, but it is inadvisable to argue about specific procedural points. There will be plenty of time for that during the student debrief.182 TDGs do not have to be tactical. Other types of games exist: for example, the Los Angeles, California Fire Department has developed tactical decision games. Even the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps has developed its own games to deal with different scenarios that chaplains may experience.183 Instructors of other Army leader programs have also developed very good games as tools to teach adaptability.

SMaC recipe is a set of durable operating practices that create a replicable and consistent success formula. The word “SMaC” stands for Specific, Methodical, and Consistent. You can use the term “SMaC” as a descriptor in any number of ways: as an adjective (“Let’s build a SMaC system”), as a noun (“SMaC lowers risk”), and as a verb (“Let’s SMaC this project”). A solid SMaC recipe is the operating code for turning strategic concepts into reality, a set of practices more enduring than mere tactics. Tactics change from situation to situation, whereas SMaC practices can last for decades and apply across a wide range of circumstances.

Progressives needed a new idea, and Alinsky came up with one: force banks and financial institutions to loan money to unqualified applicants so that they can buy homes. Alinsky’s own idea was to terrorize the banks by having thousands of activists walk into banks and open up accounts of one dollar each, in effect paralyzing the bank’s normal operations. This became the model for a number of leftist groups that took up the cause of bank intimidation, notably an Alinskyite organization called ACORN. The ideological justification for this tactic was “social justice.” Starting in the 1970s, ACORN and other leftist groups protested that banks were “discriminating” against poor and minority home loan applicants. Even though such applicants had less wealth, less income, and less reliable credit histories, these groups insisted that banks should lower their lending standards to accommodate them. According to these activists, home ownership was a “right” and getting a mortgage to buy a home was a matter of “fairness.” In 1977, a liberal Democratic Congress obligingly passed, and President Jimmy Carter signed into law, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). This law, aggressively promoted by liberal icons like Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator William Proxmire, imposed on banks an “affirmative obligation” to make loans in their own neighborhoods, even if those neighborhoods were poor credit risks.

While it would be nice to use these nine principles as a checklist or formula, they are by no means sacred. Over the years, strategists have suggested a number of others, at least one of which is worthy of discussion here because it so strongly applies to law enforcement tactical operations. The principle of legitimacy is sometimes called the “10th Principle of War.” It identifies the absolute necessity of maintaining the confidence of the community of the lawfulness and morality of actions. The U.S. military learned the significance of this principle the hard way when they lost the support of the American people for the Vietnam War and ultimately withdrew. The lesson should not be lost on domestic law enforcement who are constantly scrutinized as a matter of course.

Since no country has had any experience with the tactical use of nuclear weapons, the possibility of miscalculation is considerable. The temptation to use the same target system as for conventional war and thereby produce vast casualties will be overwhelming. The pace of operations may out strip the possibilities of negotiation. Both sides would be operating in the dark with no precedents to guide them.119

Hilary wrote her college thesis on Saul Alinsky, the leftist extremist who dedicated his book Rules for Radicals to Lucifer, and adored his subversive tactics to further the Big Government agenda.

Tactical Science The systematized body of knowledge covering the principles and doctrines associated with tactical operations and emergency responses. It reconciles scientific knowledge with practical ends. Tactics The methods and concepts used to accomplish particular missions. (See also Strategy and Techniques) Technique A procedure or process for performing a specific task or function. Techniques almost always involve the employment or utilization of a weapon or piece of equipment. (See also Strategy and Tactics)

The odds were stacked against them, but Derek knew that every last one of his teammates relished this mission. They’d trained together, fought together, lived, breathed, and bled together for six long months of deployment. On this tour alone, they’d racked up more successful tactical operations than anyone cared to count. But it wasn’t every day they got the chance to rescue a civilian from the country they’d sworn their lives to protect and defend. At

Although the NYPD frequently attempts to justify stop-and-frisk operations in poor communities of color on the grounds that such tactics are necessary to get guns off the streets, less than 1 percent of stops (0.15 percent) resulted in guns being found, and guns and other contraband were seized less often in stops of African Americans and Latinos than of whites.112 As Darius Charney, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, observed, these studies “confirm what we have been saying for the last 10 or 11 years, which is that with stop-and-frisk patterns—it is really race, not crime, that is driving this.”113

From this basis, Boyd sets out to develop a normative view on a design for command and control. As in Patterns of Conflict, he starts with some ‘samples from historical environment’, offering nine citations from nine practitioners, including from himself (see Box 6.1):6 Sun Tzu (around 400 BC) Probe enemy strength to unmask his strengths, weaknesses, patterns of movement and intentions. Shape enemy’s perception of world to manipulate/undermine his plans and actions. Employ Cheng/Ch’I maneuvers to quickly and unexpectedly hurl strength against weaknesses. Bourcet (1764–71) A plan ought to have several branches . . . One should . . . mislead the enemy and make him imagine that the main effort is coming at some other part. And . . . one must be ready to profit by a second or third branch of the plan without giving one’s enemy time to consider it. Napoleon (early 1800s) Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less chary of the latter than the former. Space we can recover, time never. I may lose a battle, but I shall never lose a minute. The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack. Clausewitz (1832) Friction (which includes the interaction of many factors, such as uncertainty, psychological/moral forces and effects, etc.) impedes activity. Friction is the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper. In this sense, friction represents the climate or atmosphere of war. Jomini (1836) By free and rapid movements carry bulk of the forces (successively) against fractions of the enemy. N.B. Forrest (1860s) Git thar the fustest with the mostest. Blumentritt (1947) The entire operational and tactical leadership method hinged upon . . . rapid concise assessment of situations, . . . and quick decision and quick execution, on the principle: each minute ahead of the enemy is an advantage. Balck (1980) Emphasis upon creation of implicit connections or bonds based upon trust, not mistrust, that permit wide freedom for subordinates to exercise imagination and initiative – yet harmonize within intent of superior commanders. Benefit: internal simplicity that permits rapid adaptability. Yours truly Operate inside adversary’s observation-orientation-decision-action loops to enmesh adversary in a world of uncertainty, doubt, mistrust, confusion, disorder, fear, panic, chaos . . . and/or fold adversary back inside himself so that he cannot cope with events/efforts as they unfold.

The F-110 designation was applied to the initial F-4 Phantom II variant operated by the USAF covering 29 F4H-1 (F-4B) carrier borne fighters loaned to the USAF by the USN for evaluation. In the early 1960’s the USAF was looking for a new tactical fighter, which came down to a fly-off competition between the Convair F-106 Delta Dart (then in USAF ADC service as an interceptor) and the USN McDonnell F4H-1 Phantom II. While the USAF traditionally opposed adopting naval fighter aircraft the Phantom II had obvious advantages over the F-106, being designed with true multi-role capability, whereas, the F-106 had been optimised for the interception role.

Tactical engagement principle number one is if you don’t have a clear and decisive objective the operation becomes disconnected and unfocused.

We didn’t need everybody to follow every single operation in real time (something just as impossible as building lifelong friendships with seven thousand people). We needed to enable a team operating in an interdependent environment to understand the butterfly-effect ramifications of their work and make them aware of the other teams with whom they would have to cooperate in order to achieve strategic—not just tactical—success.

When the fight starts you do not have time to stop and think about the fundamentals.” ~Chet Richards, Certain to Win 1   Chet Richards wrote an interesting piece “Developing the Touch”, in which he asks the question, if Fingerspitzengefühl (fingertip feel) can be taught, why do so few people have it? He goes on to make two key points: First, Fingerspitzengefühl is a skill, so although most people can get better at it, some are going to get a lot better. Second, it’s a strange kind of skill, not for performing complicated or even dangerous tasks mystically well, but for sensing what is going on among groups of people in conflict and then influencing what happens.2 Chet’s points got me to thinking about, why is it we in law enforcement often times have difficulty applying what we know to a given situation? How do we get better at it? The answer lies in creating and nurturing our abilities in “Operational Art” taking what you know and being able to apply it to a given set of circumstances to affect your strategy and to bring an end to a potentially violent occurrence using appropriate tactics. To do this takes awareness, discipline, adaptability, skill development and strength of character to focus our efforts on the task at hand to meet our overall intent. You cannot learn this by sitting in some training class listening to an instructor give you a checklist formula on how to solve a particular set of problems. As Chet states: The first problem in learning Fingerspitzengefühl is that you can’t learn it by yourself. You have to have at least two groups of people to practice with — your team and some opponents.2 Our training must involve interaction with an adversary, red teaming comes to mind. Red Teaming is an approach to understanding our adversary and the methods they use. To develop a fingertip feel and maneuver we must possess numerous skills and be able to apply those skills individually and collectively if we are to be as effective as we need to be, to win

Eisenhower’s tragedy was that he permitted himself to be pushed into what turned out to be a trap. He had succumbed to General George C. Marshall’s suggestion that he take over the ground command in Europe and involve himself in the tactical conduct of the war, for which he was not actually suited. He took upon himself this enormous operational responsibility in addition to his strategic job, which alone was beginning to overtax his resources. Consequently, both strategy and tactics suffered, leading inevitably to a drifting beyond the Seine and eventually to the prolongation of the conflict.

Second, focusing on the strategic potential of governance ignores its tactical side. Governance is also concerned with establishing and maintaining efficient and effective operations for the business as usual activities of the organization.

After the war, Manor returned to New York University and finished his degree in 1947. Later that year he became an instructor at the air tactical school at Tyndal Field, Florida. Following that assignment he went to Maxwell Air Force Base at Montgomery, Alabama, and helped organize the squadron officers’ school, staying on to teach the first class. He departed Maxwell for the Tactical Air Command air-ground operations school at Southern Pines, North Carolina.

According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, the National Security Agency often identifies targets for drone strikes based on controversial metadata analysis and cell phone tracking technologies—an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.

Learning the art of operations and develop the fingertip feel for applying tactics during interplay between adversaries, you can see is crucial to our success. This interplay teaches us that interaction leads to maneuver and maneuver opens up opportunities to exploit weaknesses. Then through superior situational awareness and insights you develop innovative ideas as you accord with an adversary. This leads to well thought out and/or intuitive decisions and actions to meet our strategic goals, whatever those goals may be.

A strategic victory does not validate all the victor's operational and tactical methods or make them universally applicable.

The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.

The claimed “hard work” or “nose-to-the-grindstone” method of white wealth creation is Euro-mythology in its purest form—another psychological trick designed to suggest that Black poverty is merely a sign of Black laziness and Black inferiority. There is a very logical reason why whites did the “hard work” of constructing thousands of ships to sail thousands of miles to kidnap millions of Africans to work as slave laborers for hundreds of years—and it is not because those people are lazy. Indeed, they are the most productive, creative, and industrious people who ever lived. The racist, exploitative behaviors committed by whites are not the random acts of rogue Caucasians, but the highly efficient tactical operation of a dedicated people acting in unity on the perfected European principle of racial domination. Whites feign ignorance of these extraordinary injustices when they prescribe “HARD WORK” for the children of their former slaves. Dr.

However, for ordinary citizens in a homedefense scenario or for police officers responding to an emergency call, the chances of having to operate alone are quite likely. In these types of situations, backup is frequently unavailable or will not arrive in time. The citizens and officers who are forced to operate on their own face potentially the greatest risk, yet there are almost no tactical references (books, videos or classes) that provide useful information on the subject of single-person tactics. This manual and the associated training courses were developed by a team of experts with extensive special operations and lawenforcement experience to help fill the dangerous capability and knowledge gap in the area of single-person tactics. This manual can provide citizens and officers with critical, life-saving tactical knowledge that will give them a marked advantage in an emergency situation.

Emergency tactics are the opposite of deliberate tactics. In an emergency situation, you may need to take shortcuts and not clear every room or danger area completely. This increases the level of risk. However, in an emergency situation where time is critical or there is imminent danger to innocent people, a tactical team might choose to assume a greater level of risk. Because of the increased danger typical of single-person operations, deliberate tactics are generally the best option. Most of the tactics in this book are deliberate rather than emergency. While deliberate tactics are preferable for single-person operations. You might end up facing an emergency situation alone and you will have no choice but to move at maximum speed and assume greater risk. This type of scenario is extremely dangerous and as an individual, there is little you can do to reduce the risk. Your best option is generally to move as quickly as possible and use speed as security, hoping that adversaries will not react fast enough to see you or shoot at you.