There is finally an official press release from DOD on the forces deploying to aid those in the path of the tsunamis. Via the Sage I see that the USAF has its own story. One of InstaPundit's readers noted that the Air Force is going to be among the first on the ground with aid. I want to take a moment to recognize this fact and credit the airmen for what they do.
The first aid is often the most important in disasters like this: not only to provide drinking water, which is critical, but to prevent the outbreak of disease. A plague on top of a disaster is the natural course of human history, and can easily claim more lives than the initial blow. These deaths are largely preventable, and few are better at preventing them than the US military.
Aid
Rev&Disaster
The Associated Press carries a report of two hard-fought revolutions, interrupted by the recent quake:
Two of the world's longest-running civil wars are being fought on land devastated by Sunday's earthquake and tsunamis. In one conflict, the tragedy showed hopeful signs of bringing the two sides together; in the other, it appeared to be hardening the divisions.What follows is a good analysis. I have little to add to the discussion of the Tamil Tigers or the Aceh rebels, but I would like to point out that there is a third revolution struck full-on by this event. The insurgency in southern Thailand will prove to be heavily influenced by the tsunamis, which made their landfall in the three southernmost, Muslim majority provinces of Thailand.
Immediately after the quake struck, the warring sides in Indonesia's Aceh province agreed to put hostilities on hold, while government and rebel spokesmen in ethnically divided Sri Lanka accused each other of mishandling the response to the disaster.
The government of Thailand has rushed aid to the region, using military helicopters to ferry it by air. The King of Thailand's grandson was killed; the king has donated 30 million baht (about $750,000, as I estimate it) from his own funds to the reconstruction. The latest news in English can be found at The Bangkok Post and The Nation. The former is a newspaper really aimed at the expat community in Thailand; the latter, a paper of the Thai upper class.
Much of the reports of the dead have focused on the resorts, where many Westerners seem to have been killed. The Swedes in particular had 1,500 of their citizens reportedly missing as of this writing. It appears -- stunningly -- that twice as many foreigners as natives may have died in Thailand.
The process of rebuilding offers many opportunities to address underlying ills. Since the economy has been swept away anyway, you might as well put it back the way you'd like it to be. Both the Thai and the US government seem to recognize the opportunity.
It seems, in one way, petty to think of political opportunities in the wake of disaster. It is anything but that. The opportunity here is not some small partisan advantage, but a hope of peace found amid the wrack. To turn a disaster into a revolution -- not of blood, but of hope -- is the highest act of man. It offers a glimpse, fleeting but true, of the luminous spirit within.
Charity
There's more of the former than the latter, these days. In the event that you should wish to exercise some toward the survivors of the Great Christmas Quake, CareUSA has a setup. The Red Cross / Red Crescent has another. I imagine that those of you who attend religious services regularly probably have a way of your own to donate. Most likely you know others as well.
In addition, you are providing aid through the official government agencies. Australia's government is taking the lead in Indonesia, with USPACOM focusing on Sri Lanka and Thailand.
But this kind of aid is "stingy," according to U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland, who said that
[T]he United States and other Western nations were being "stingy" with relief funds, [and] there would be more available if taxes were raised.I strongly suspect that almost none of you needed me to post the links to charitable organizations. From the recent Spirit of America fundraiser, Doc Russia and I learned how extraordinarily generous the readers of our blogs can be. Probably every one of you has taken time to find out how to give, and has already given what you can. You did so in spite of having just given to Spirit of America, and at the Yuletide, when disposable income is already earmarked for gifts for others.
"It is beyond me why are we so stingy, really," the Norwegian-born U.N. official told reporters. "Christmastime should remind many Western countries at least, [of] how rich we have become."
"There are several donors who are less generous than before in a growing world economy," he said, adding that politicians in the United States and Europe "believe that they are really burdening the taxpayers too much, and the taxpayers want to give less. It's not true. They want to give more."
It's no surprise that the U.N. feels we are being "stingy" by not turning over more of our wealth for them to control. In the end, it is far more likely that a dollar donated to Spirit of America will do good, than any dollar spent by any U.N. bureaucracy. You have reason to feel good about what you have done.
Quake
I went to bed too early last night.
It seemed quiet when I laid down my head. This morning I wake to find that my email has swelled to bursting. There are two events driving the majority of it. Both of them are earthquakes.
One was a physical earthquake.
Thousands of people are dead across the coasts of Asia, killed by monster waves set off by an underwater earthquake off the coast of Indonesia.The other earthquake was in China:
The quake sent massive waves, up to 10 metres high, across the Indian Ocean: west to the Maldives, north-west to India and Sri Lanka, north into the Andaman Islands and Thailand and east to Malaysia, leaving more than 5000 feared dead in seaside towns and villages.
It measured 8.9 on the Richter scale, making it the fifth most powerful since 1900, striking at 8am local time yesterday (midday in Melbourne).
Up to 50,000 workers upset over mistreatment by local security guards clashed with police in a town in China's Guangdong province, throwing rocks and bricks and torching four police cars, a Hong Kong newspaper said on Sunday.Christmas was peaceful, but the Feast of Stephen (as the song says) is turning out to be anything but. The first matter in particular is of concern, as the US Navy and Marines will mobilize across the Pacific Command to provide relief to the stricken. This won't get the kinds of headlines Iraq does (when did you read about the aid we've been providing to the Philippines this month, in the wake of their catastrophic floods?).
The unrest was the latest in a string of riots and clashes in rural China, all sparked by seemingly minor issues, that have highlighted discontent over rampant corruption and abuse of power and a growing rich-poor gap.
In spite of the disinterest of the elite -- and in the face of real danger from the perils that affect all places recently struck by storm and flood -- our sailors and Marines will be out there, doing good. When you are thinking of the deployed this holiday weekend, think of the ones out in the Pacific, too. Not many do, but they're as far from home as anyone.
Kashmir
Big arrest in Kashmir today. You can read about it here. As the article points out, it is extremely rare to capture one of these senior people alive. If he talks, he will be most valuable in getting a picture of the operations of Muslim militants at the top of the world.
A light moment from the story. The fellow is identified by the author:
Mohammed Shafi Dar, alias Abdullah...Now, I can understand why a militant leader named Mohammed would want an alias. But Abdullah? That's just not making it any better.
holiday
In spite of the holidays, no rest. That's fair: there's a lot going on out there, and most of the world doesn't take off for Christmas. More's the pity.
I'll be doing some travel over the next week, too; in fact, I leave at 0200. This being our last evening in town, we had a little celebration at Molly's pub tonight with Sovay as our guest. She brought gifts, and we had a little something for her too.
They say you never get what you really want for Christmas, but sometimes that's just because you didn't know you wanted it:
A catapult! Who knew they still made catapults?
I set it beside my Winchester 94 so you can appreciate the size. It's a working scale model. I spent part of the evening practicing siege warfare, using walnuts as ammunition. In case you should be interested in real mayhem, however, the package came with little lead balls you could hurl.
With a little practice, I think I will be able to knock on my neighbor's door from across the street. Or, you know, their yippy dog. Whatever.
SoldierTech: Military Gear and Gadgets
Now this is body armor. These kinds of stories always invoke two reactions in me: 1) How great that our fighters will have this tech! 2) What are we going to do if we should ever have to fight against it?
Keeping a lariat on this genie is not a small matter.
Poetics
Military bloggers are surprisingly often poets, or take the time to host poets. Here are a few poems I've seen lately. Some of them are very good. Many of them speak to the sacrifices of the military life, which are felt most keenly during the holidays.
"On A Cold, Snow Night" treats a child, watching a sentry.
"A Military Christmas" shows the hardships of the military calling, even when all goes well.
"Freedom Isn't Free, It's Priceless" shows what it is like when things do not go well. It is by the mother of Lance Corporal Torrey Gray, killed this April in Iraq.
This isn't a poem, but it ought to be.
"A Soldier's Christmas" is written in the form of "The Night Before Christmas."
I'm sure there are others. If you've seen one you'd like added, email me or leave it in the comments.
UPDATE: Bill suggests "Merry Christmas, My Friend" or "A Soldier's Silent Night," available as a sound file, here.
SWII
There has been some talk lately about how there are relatively few "conservatives" in academia. Some have suggested that academic culture is biased against conservatives; others, that conservatives by nature are anti-intellectual, or more interested in money than in "the life of the mind."
For purposes of this analogy, we combine several definitions to say that digital is a description of data that is stored or transmitted as a sequence of discrete symbols from a finite set. And, a discrete set is countable or countably infinite. We define analog as relating to, or being a device in which, data are represented by continuously variable, measurable, physical quantities. For example, the digital watch indicates the exact time and the analog watch, while indicating the time, requires you to add or subtract in order to state the exact time. And, while the digital watch's time is exact, the analog watch's face indicates time in general relation to the upcoming hour or half hour, and so on. We are a digital culture. We expect our questions to be answered yes or no. We want our problems fixed now. We want our world neatly and discretely categorized into good and bad boxes. We do not always want to know how answers on one issue generally relate to another issue. The U.S. military has not been exempt from this quest for precision answers with quantifiable facts that can be added or subtracted to give an exact, perfectly repeatable answer. This is clear from its increasingly heavy emphasis on operations research, modeling, and simulation. While these disciplines are of undeniable value, it is important that we not conveniently accept the neatly quantified "digital" (more rigorous) analysis over the less tangible, less quantifiable, common sense judgment call when dealing with systems and processes that are highly complex and often non-linear. Especially in a world of small wars, the palette is shades of gray and not the more categorical black or white—one or zero. On the other hand, Beirut, Somalia, and Kosovo were analog wars. We were to "create conditions," "stop the suffering," and "prevent ethnic cleansing." Diplomacy continued to operate and military activities were shaped predominantly by political and diplomatic imperatives. The roles and missions of the military constantly varied given the dynamic interplay of political, diplomatic, and economic forces. Unlike World War II and the Gulf War, it was not easy to tell who the bad guy was. Indeed, the good guy one day could easily become the bad guy the next day because of changes, real or perceived, "on the street." Thus, the reduced size of the area or smaller number of belligerents does not necessarily simplify the warfighting tasks. It is our digital culture that makes ours an impatient culture. We want clear results, and we want them now. Fast food and breaking news are our sustenance. Patience is not our cultural virtue, and working in an uncertain environment with fog and deception leads to our critical vulnerability in small wars: resolve. The greatest and most significant danger we have in entering a small war is the potential for an asymmetry of wills. We must decide before embarking upon any small war whether we can withstand the pressures of our own impatience.
The real answer lies elsewhere. Read this passage from the new Small Wars Manual:It is ironic that as our Western civilization becomes increasingly a digitized world, the surrounding geopolitical landscape is becoming progressively less "digital" and more "analog."
Just two days ago we talked about the JASON panel, named after Jason and the Argonauts of Ancient Greek legend, and its piece on information war. This month we also saw the passage of the Defense Science Board's Strategic Communications paper into the clear. At the end of November, there was this article on the "Cambrian Project," whereby DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) intends to use evolutionary theory and state of the art computer systems to project threats and responses.
By their fundamental nature, small wars require an approach more art than science, more analog than digital.
World War II and the Gulf War in 1991 were both digital wars. We declared war; diplomacy took a back seat, and the military had the clear-cut objective of defeating the enemy armed forces—neat and discrete.
These three groups are part of a parallel structure for the "life of the mind," one directed pointedly at the preservation of America and the furthering of our national aspiration of a world based on human liberty. JASON overlaps with academia, but DARPA and the DSB are largely independent of it. Add to those the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), far larger and more successfully secretive than the better-known CIA; the military services' intelligence agencies (AIA, MCIA, etc.); the NSA (National Security Agency); the military academies, the War College, and a host of lesser-known players.
The life of the mind is alive and well on the right. It is simply differently directed.
Reader Tom sends a link to a draft version of the new USMC Small Wars Manual. Unlike many USMC manuals, it states that it does not intend to supersede the previous verison -- in this case, a version last compiled in the 1940s.
This is wise. The 1940 Small Wars Manual was the product of a very different Marine Corps. The 1940 manual was a voice for the accumulated knowledge of two generations of Marines who had never seen a year without an expedition to fight a small war somewhere. Every Marine should read it.
On the other hand, a supplement is needed. The Marine Corps of 1940 had very little concept of "air support," for example, as the Second World War had not yet begun for America. Integrated air-land force is now fundamental to USMC operations. The information revolution is likewise producing major changes in how we fight, changes that are ongoing as we speak.
You may wish to read both, if you haven't seen them before.
BLACKFIVE: Want to Send a Marine A Letter?
BlackFive has a piece today entitled "Want to Send a Marine a Letter?" HQMC has apparently instituted a new system to get supportive letters from home out to the troops, in time for the holiday season. These are physical letters, so the Marine has something to hold and carry with him into battle if need be.
If you know a specific Marine, you can send to him; if you do not, there is a system for sending messages to express your support for the Marines generally.
Thanks, B-5, for helping to publicize this. I had not heard of it myself, and am glad to see it.
Spirit of America
The Spirit of America "Friends of Iraq Blogger Challenge" has ended. You can see the results at that link.
The result that really matters is the final total: $90,116 raised by bloggers to help the people of Iraq, to uplift the poor, and to aid the cause of friendship between our peoples. That kind of cash will go a long way out there.
Thanks again to everyone who helped out the Leatherneck Bloggers, and our eventual teammates with the Pajamahdeen. But thanks especially for helping out the greater cause. The competition was all in fun, but the real cause is a very serious matter. All of you who gave have reason to be proud.
AnAmericanSoldier
Drill Sgt. Rob at AnAmericanSoldier has composed a Christmas list for the deploying soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine. I don't have anything to add except to second his recommendation of the Applegate-Fairbairn folder. I also carry one everywhere, these last couple of years, and it's an excellent choice.
Yahoo! News - Ala. Judge Wears Ten Commandments on Robe
Now this is something you don't see every day:
A judge refused to delay a trial Tuesday when an attorney objected to his wearing a judicial robe with the Ten Commandments embroidered on the front in gold.Yeah, I bet. While the ten commandments don't actually say anything specific about DUI, which was the offense in question, there are certain parts of Deuteronomy that would make me nervous if I were the defendent in this case. "What does it mean, 'And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die'?"Circuit Judge Ashley McKathan showed up Monday at his Covington County courtroom in southern Alabama wearing the robe. Attorneys who try cases at the courthouse said they had not seen him wearing it before. The commandments were described as being big enough to read by anyone near the judge.
Attorney Riley Powell, defending a client charged with DUI, filed a motion objecting to the robe and asking that the case be continued. He said McKathan denied both motions.
"I feel this creates a distraction that affects my client," Powell said.
ddd
We've all read about the extraordinary impact of information flow on the new, American model of war. In spite of all that has been accomplished, there is much left to be done to optimize our success.
One of the chief problems is the system of information classification. This has been the subject of a new report called HORIZONTAL INTEGRATION: Broader Access Models for Realizing Information Dominance. The authors identify a key problem:
Information flow to the warfighter is perceived by many to be -- and we concur in this judgment -- excessively constricted.This is because the old system, of secrets and top secrets, doesn't reflect the reality of today's information needs.
These soldiers have high expectations for warfighting technologies in general, and information technologies in particular. The consumer of intelligence is no longer an O4 "behind the green door." She is an E4 behind the (camo-) green door of a humvee -- and it is moving.One of the interesting results of this impasse is that soldiers are refusing to classify documents at all. Data from Predator overflights, for example, is unclassified -- the soldiers protect it with an ad hoc system they've developed. A tremendous amount of intelligence both in the military and otherwise is now "sensitive, but unclassified," a designation that has no particular meaning. No one knows exactly what kind of material belongs in this category.
A new system is needed, one that reflects our current reality. The authors of this report lay out three principles, which are revolutionary:
1) Sort out what the risk of intelligence getting out would be.
When risk factors can’t be measured directly, they can often be plausibly estimated2) Decide how many lost secrets we can afford.
("guessed"); and subsequent experience can then be used to derive increasingly
better estimates.
As a nation we can afford to lose X secret and Y top secret documents per year. We can afford a Z probability that a particular technical capability or HUMINT source is compromised. If we set X,Y,Z, . . . all to exactly zero, then all operations stop, because all operations entail some nonzero risk. What, then, are acceptable ranges of values for X, Y,Z and a long list of similar parameters?3) Design a system that can be expected to result in exactly that much lost secrecy, but no more.
The idea is radical: to accept and justify a system of classification that reliably fails to protect secrets. The trade off, which the authors think is more than worth the loss in secrecy, is better availability of information to the warfighter.
Ensure that information is distributed all the way up to the acceptable risk level. This is a very fundamental point. We have been living with systems that try to minimize risk. That is the wrong metric! We actually want to maximize information flow, subject to the overall constraint of not exceeding the acceptable risk levels set according to principle number 2, above. This means that instead of minimizing risk, we actually want to ensure that it is increased to its tolerable maximum (but no higher).Emphasis in original.
They have a specific proposal as well as these general principles, but it is the principles themselves that are the most interesting. This is a model for information-based warfighting that is as bold as the fighters themselves. It is worthy of them.
UPDATE: A commenter points out that Secrecy News ran an article on this same thing yesterday. You can compare their take to mine; by and large, they were impressed by the same parts of the report.
Viral Freedom
The Spirit of America contests is in its last hours! The Leatherneck Bloggers have merged with Team Pajamahdeen in an effort to overtake those goldbricks at the Fighting Fusileers for Freedom(!).
If you can't kick in to help out freedom and democracy, at least you can help us put the hurt on our fellow Milbloggers. The gap is closing!
SoAGrim's Hall
Thanks to everyone who has donated to the Leatherneck Bloggers today. I don't know if it's just one of you, or a whole bunch of you, but our "score" has pretty much doubled in the last three hours.
Whoever you are, your generosity will make a difference. LtCol Couvillon is right: the Spirit of America project is a "silver bullet." It builds goodwill, as well as providing the foundations for prosperity and success in the new Iraqi republic. The projects they are on run the gamut from the simple to the majestic: from sewing machines for Ramadi women who need an income, to supporting Seabee and Marine efforts to train and equip tradesmen, to the "Viral Freedom" project we've talked about.
Whatever else happens in Iraq, these are families that will remember what we did for them. If you support our mission in Iraq, this is one of the best ways to ensure that the things our Marines, sailors, soliders and airmen are fighting for come into reality. If you don't support the mission, you can still surely wish a long-suffering people a better life. Either way, Spirit of America is a direct road to making it happen.
Thanks to everyone who has given. I wish I knew your names, so I could thank you directly. I'm proud that our humble team has done so well. We are one of the smallest teams, but we're in the top four for overall donations. Like the Marine Corps itself, we're doing more with less. That's owed to all of you, and I appreciate it.
Belmont Club
Wretchard's got one for you today. Here's something to ponder:
"The genius of the founding fathers," European Commission President Romano Prodi commented in a speech at the Institute d'Etudes Politiques in Paris (May 29, 2001), 'lay in translating extremely high political ambitions . . . into a series of more specific, almost technical decisions. This indirect approach made further action possible. Rapprochement took place gradually. From confrontation we moved to willingness to cooperate in the economic sphere and then on to integration."Yeah? It all makes sense, if you remember that your founding fathers were George S. Patton and Winston Churchill.
If you've got some reason to pretend that isn't so, it all falls apart.
The New Yorker: Fact
The New Yorker recently ran an article which provides more insight into the problems of intelligence. In this case, it's a kind of intelligence that seems quite solid -- pictures, which you can see with your own eyes.
You can build a high-tech camera, capable of taking pictures in the middle of the night, in other words, but the system works only if the camera is pointed in the right place, and even then the pictures are not self-explanatory. They need to be interpreted, and the human task of interpretation is often a bigger obstacle than the technical task of picture-taking. This was the lesson of the Scud hunt: pictures promise to clarify but often confuse.In exploring just how that can be true, the author casts a wide net: USAF hunting in the "Scud Box" during the Gulf war, the trouble with mammograms, the tremendous sacrifice and utter failure of WWII bombing runs on German ball-bearing factories, and the reasons why Colin Powell's UN presentation on Iraqi WMD went wrong.
Take a few minutes to read it. You'll find it fascinating, and be better informed as to some of the problems of intelligence too.