For Grim:

Storm that fort!

Looks like the Russians remember too.

Heraldry III

Heraldry III:

This one's for Eric.







I think that heraldry is a lot like poetry: the best of it comes from the most strict traditions. It is in testing yourself against the form that you push your limits.

Heraldry, Part II: Task Force Dragon

At various times, units of different sizes have held the distinction of being "task forces" here. "Task Force" can mean one of several things -- "Task Force Troy" is the counter-IED unit, for example -- but when assigned to a combat arms unit it denotes which level of command is considered the "ground owning" unit. When I was in Iraq the first time, it was with "Task Force Marne," a division-sized element commaned by the 3rd Infantry Division headquarters.

As you can see from the heraldry below, "Task Force Dragon" was a brigade-sized element (the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division). They have since left Iraq; the current "Task Force Dragon" is a battalion-sized element (1-63 Combined Arms Battalion, also part of 1st ID). That means the battalion owns the land, and the brigade and division commands support the battalion commander's efforts.



The motto, "Bellate Impavide," is "Fight Lustily!" or "Wage War Fearlessly!" Here is a milblogger from that unit, on their long-awaited final day in theater.

Here are two more from that period:





It is good to remember.

Heraldry, I

Heraldy, Part I:

One of the things I admire about the US Army is its devotion to the traditions of heraldry. The US Army's College of Heraldry has made a few "innovations," which is too bad -- I wonder if the 4th Infantry Division knows that the diamond-shaped shield is traditionally reserved for women? -- but on the whole it has preserved an ancient and noble custom.

The base where I am currently has had a lot of units pass through it. I took a longer than usual walk to the DFAC today in order to capture some of the better heraldry. I'll post a short series as I have time.



I like this example because it shows the classical heraldry as well as a more interpretive form. It also has the heraldry of the 1st Armor Division ("Old Ironsides"), to which TF Ram belongs.

North Korea Tests Second Nuclear Device, Fires Short-Range Missiles

Korea made its second test of a nuclear explosive on Monday and declared it was more destructive than the first, an advance that is likely to embolden Kim Jong Il's regime in rebuffing calls by the U.S. and others to halt its weapons program.

The country also launched three short-range missiles, including one from the same site from which it fired a long-range missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean seven weeks ago.

It never quite starts where you expect it to.

Right now, it seems Iran is the focus of the Obama administration's nuclear worries.

East wind, rain.

TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese ruling party panel is to propose that pre-emptive strikes against enemy bases be allowed despite the country's pacifist constitution, Kyodo news agency said on Monday, weeks after a North Korean missile launch.

In 1941, the Roosevelt administration expected, that if war broke out, the Japanese would attack the Philipines first.

People don't always do what you expect them to.

Oh, and happy Memorial Day to all.

Game Theory:

Let's play a game.

Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

“It will be a different business,” said Edward L. Yingling, the chief executive of the American Bankers Association, which has been lobbying Congress for more lenient legislation on behalf of the nation’s biggest banks. “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”…

The industry says that the proposals will force banks to issue fewer credit cards at greater cost to the current cardholders.

You’re already helping to pay off deadbeats’ homes. Why not help free them up to rack up some more credit-card debt too?

I gather the theory is that people who work hard will continue to work hard, even though they are now benefitting much less and paying the freight for people who don't. Yet we know from game theory that sometimes ultimatums get rejected:

The ultimatum game is a game often played in economic experiments in which two players interact to decide how to divide a sum of money that is given to them. The first player proposes how to divide the sum between the two players, and the second player can either accept or reject this proposal. If the second player rejects, neither player receives anything. If the second player accepts, the money is split according to the proposal. The game is played only once so that reciprocation is not an issue....

In many cultures, people offer "fair" (i.e., 50:50) splits, and offers of less than 20% are often rejected. Research on monozygotic and dizygotic twins has shown that individual variation in reactions to unfair offers is partly genetic.

To say that this arrangement is at least "partly genetic" is a way of returning to the concept of "natural law." Humans in many cultures will flatly reject an unfair split of free resources: A and B are both getting something for nothing, but B would rather get nothing at all than get only 19% while A takes 81%.

That's in a case where A is dividing spoils which are free to both parties -- neither one has any ownership of the spoils until they are divided. In the current case, A is proposing to take property that belongs to B and divide it between them. Because A controls the political branches, he is in charge of setting the terms of the division.

B, however, still has an option available, as the Randians keep reminding us. Doc Russia explores the question in depth.

It's still a good game. Many of us may have a lot more time to enjoy life, in the near future.

Cannibals!

One of the interesting sections from the paper we've been discussing is the Turkish view of the Franks as cannibals:

Other Muslim accounts note that the Franks not only killed civilians, but they tortured them to extort treasure and even ate them. According to Maalouf, Christian sources confirm that the Franks boiled and grilled adults as well as children so they could eat them. The local population quickly spread word of the atrocities that the Franks committed against the population of Ma’arrat. These stories reinforced the already prevalent image of the Franks as subhuman and further vilified them. What enemy could be worse, even in medieval times, than cannibals?

“They [Franks] aroused a mixture of fear and contempt, quite understandable on the part of an Arab nation which, while far superior in culture, had lost all combative spirit. The Turks would never forget the cannibalism of the Occidentals. Throughout their epic literature, the Franj are invariably described as anthropophagi.” Muslims equate the conduct of the Franks during this siege to their true nature and eventually used this example to igncooperation between rival princes and emirs. In the near term, the conduct of the Franks benefited their campaign. In the long term, their conduct would eventually contribute to the loss of the war.

That reminds me of Sir Walter Scott's introduction to his Crusader novel, The Talisman. It's too long to quote in full, but treats Richard the Lionheart's alleged cannibalism:

"The swarte vis [Black face] when the king seeth,
His black beard and white teeth,
How his lippes grinned wide,
'What devil is this?' the king cried,
And 'gan to laugh as he were wode.
'What! is Saracen's flesh thus good?
That never erst I nought wist!
By God's death and his uprist,
Shall we never die for default,
While we may in any assault,
Slee Saracens, the flesh may take,
And seethen and roasten and do hem bake,
[And] Gnawen her flesh to the bones!
Now I have it proved once,
For hunger ere I be wo,
I and my folk shall eat mo!"'

Sir Walter has an explanation for how he believes the rumor arose. It all reminds me of Roman Polanski's Pirates, in which the starving captain is trying to catch his last-remaining crewman to eat. The crewman scales the mast of their little boat, and as the captain is chopping down that mast, yells down:

"Cannibalism is a mortal sin! You will burn in hellfire!"

The captain pauses for a moment to consider that, and answers:

"What about Confession? What do you think Confession's for?"

Chop, chop.

Crusade

Crusaders:

I know the officer who wrote this. Good man.

Enjoy this, Grim!

That was a good king!



via American Digest, who brings up in his own way, my point about technology and entertainment, but muses why poetry isn't what it used to be. Interesting read, that.

Monkeysuits and Manners.

The guys over at Instapunk have an interesting post concerning the recent White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

Since class warfare has been initiated, I'm prepared to defend the unpopular position of, well, class. Since it's been entirely forgotten by all sides. Just not by me.It interests me that conservatives are struggling with why they were offended by the White House Correspondents Dinner last night. On the one hand, they know they were offended by Wanda Sykes's monologue and by the fact that Obama laughed at it. On the other, they think they're trying to be fair, trying to put it into perspective, not getting all bent out of shape by it because Ann Coulter is mean too, etc. Oh, and yeah, they're above it all somehow. Or just plain tone-deaf. Which?

It is an interesting read, and at the end, they note something about GWB that I knew all along.

Obama's War.

WASHINGTON, May 11, 2009 – Citing the need for new thinking and new ideas in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has recommended President Barack Obama nominate Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the new commander of NATO and U.S. forces there.

Gates announced at a Pentagon news conference today that he has requested the resignation of Army Gen. David McKiernan, currently the commander in Afghanistan. McChrystal currently serves as the director of the Joint Staff.“I believe that our mission [in Afghanistan] requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders,” Gates told reporters. “Today, we have a new policy set by our new president. We have a new strategy, a new mission and a new ambassador. I believe that new military leadership is needed.”

Gates also announced his recommendation for Army Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, Gates’ senior military advisor, for a new position under McChrystal as deputy commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan.

From some other people I've looked at around the blogosphere, this seems to be the triumph of the COIN officers over the "Conventional" officers. Or something like that. Or maybe not.

Time will tell.

McKiernan was fired though. You don't 'ask' people to resign. Even I know that.

AL Daily

Well, Now:

Here's an interesting -- if unproven -- theory:

[T]he painter Vincent van Gogh did not slice off his left ear in a fit of madness and drunkenness in Arles in December 1888. His ear was severed by a sword wielded by his friend, the painter, Paul Gauguin, in a drunken row over a woman called Rachel and the true nature of art.

It's remarkable how big a difference that one detail would make in our understanding of the man.

Madness

Madness:

The Independent writes:

[W]hat, if anything, could possibly link minds that gave the world the theory of relativity, great surreal art, iconic comedy, and songs about surfing?

According to new research, psychosis could be the answer.... "There is now a feeling that these traits have survived because they have some adaptive value. To be mildly manic depressive or mildly schizophrenic brings a flexibility of thought, an openness, and risk-taking behaviour, which does have some adaptive value in creativity. The price paid for having those traits is that some will have mental illness."

Research is providing support for the idea that creative people are more likely to have traits associated with mental illness. One study found that the incidence of mood disorders, suicide and institutionalisation to be 20 times higher among major British and Irish poets in the 200 years up to 1800. Other studies have shown that psychiatric patients perform better in tests of abstract thinking.

Wise research, I suppose, to have discovered a fact that any slight student of archaeology or anthropology could have told them. Madness is not only adaptive but widely sought by those societies living at lower levels of technology, whose lives are more keenly balanced between survival and destruction. It is the rare society that did not have some form of mystical vision-seeking, based on suffering or drugs designed to take the mind out of its normal function.

In the West, this took the form of the cults that used ergot beverages, which have been discovered sealed in jars of the greatest antiquity.

A mild madness is merely a way of seeing reality differently. Give a man an alphanumeric string to remember: 24E7Y21P93Q. Then give him a word of the same length: BACCHANALIA. The mind can hold the one only with care and repeated effort: the other it seizes at once.

For a mild autistic, however, the two things may be equally easy to remember. That means that, if we could control that particular form of madness, we could access that function when we needed it. There is really no reason the one set of data should be easier to remember than the other; it is just the way the brain normally works. The brain could work otherwise. What is wanted is the ability to control it, and apply the talent we need.

Likewise, other forms of madness may drop walls to perception. Sometimes these walls are very useful: it can be helpful not to realize how dangerous it is, for example, to drive a car. Dropping that particular wall, as happens sometimes to those who suffer severe car wrecks, can be disabling in normal life. It is best that we can't normally understand just how perilous it is to push a heavy piece of metal to a speed of sixty miles an hour. Yet there may be times when such perceptions are useful, if they can be had for a while. If you could show your teenage son a vision of the thing for just a moment, it might save many a fine young life.

Creativity and madness are surely linked. That means there is a price: if we have bred to have a certain number of Einsteins, we have also bred to have a certain number of gibbering madmen who suffer and can not help themselves. More control is needed, which perhaps will come with greater understanding of the physical mechanisms of the brain.

Models based on an assumption that "normality" is a goal to be striven for, however, are not helpful. What is wanted is not a "normal" mind. What is wanted is the right mind, at the right moment.

Twa Recruiting Sergeants

Tuesday Lyrics (because, why not?) -

Here's a YouTube video of a song I've always liked, "Twa Recruiting Sergeants," pointing up some of the differences past and present in why troops enlist. Pre-Worker's Comp...

Oh, laddie, ye dinna ken the danger that you're in
If your horses was to flag, and your owsen was to rin
The greedy old farmer, he wouldna pay your fee
Sae list my bonnie laddie, and come alang wi' me.

("fleg" = "take fright," "Owsen was to rin" = "ox was to run" - obviously, ways of getting hurt.) A bit of wry humor there, but it fits what Wellington said of his troops, recruited from among "the scum of the earth." - "Some of our men enlist from having got bastard children — some for minor offences — many more for drink; but you can hardly conceive such a set brought together, and it really is wonderful that we should have made them the fine fellows they are." (See this as well.) Or packed neatly into a few lines of song -

With your tattie porin's and your meal and kale,
Your soor sowan' soorin's and your ill-brewed ale,
Your buttermilk, your whey, and your breid fired raw.
Sae list my bonnie laddie and come awa.

Better food and whiskey - now you deploy to pretty decent meals, but everyone eats better at home, and there's GO #1, and DOD policy against "glorification of alcohol," and a substance abuse program to be thrown into - and a population that can afford quite as much as it cares to drink - who would enlist for it? (Wellington saw his troops on the floor of an occupied building between battles, drinking 'til "the wine ran out of their mouths" - imagine it now!)

O, laddie, if you hae a sweetheart or a bairn,
Ye'll be weel rid o' that ill-spun yarn.
Twa rattles tae the drum, and that'll end it a',
Sae list my bonnie laddie and come awa.

In my practice, advising commanders before and troops and spouses facing divorce now, how often I must explain Army Regulation 608-99 - service and deployment are no escape from those obligations; in fact, if there's a court order, the command has to enforce it, and if there isn't, enforce a "stop-gap" payment based on rank. Now, Soldiers who get "chapter fever" will howl to the skies that their recruiters lied to them, but I never yet heard one say he thought he could escape fatherhood by joining up. (And when I explain why we have the reg, I use this two-hundred-year-old cliche as the start point. We don't want that, but we don't want the commanders adjudicating the merits of the marriage, either, so we let the courts sort out the details, and enforce what they say.) In fact, single parenthood is the surest way out of the service, for whoever lacks a family care plan.

So, if the idea gains currency (and it will) that not everyone's right for college, will recruiting end? Of course not - some things don't change, until the human race changes much more - the verses aim for the base, but the chorus calls out something far more thrilling:

It's over the mountain, and over the main.
Through Gibraltar to France and Spain,
Wi' a feather in your bonnet, and a kilt aboon your knee,
List as a soldier, and come awa' wi' me.

Iran strike

Iranian Airstrikes:

We've let the Turks get away with this kind of thing before, so now Iran wants to play:

It is a serious development because the Iraqi airspace is under the control of the US Air Force and under US protection. So the raids are either approved by the United States, as was the case when a US nod was previously given to the Turkish Army, or such operation was a surprise by the Iranians. According to eyewitnesses, the planes were flying at very low altitudes, which may indicate that they were trying to escape detection by radars. So these planes were able to attack many locations. Eyewitnesses and official Kurdish sources said that the raids were carried out by fighter jets and not helicopters.

Exit question:

Which is worse -- the idea that Iran is carrying out airstrikes in defiance of President Obama, or the idea that President Obama is endorsing Iranian airstrikes? Discuss.

Not Exactly Fenris

Are Giant Ravens Next? -

All right, you fantasists, here's a bit of Alaskan prehistory from Not Exactly Rocket Science.

But he forgot to say, "It's not exactly Fenris."

Heh.

Someone told me
It's all happening at the zoo.
I do believe it,
I do believe it's true.

Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Whoooa. Mmmmm.

Oh yeah, I'm sure that's going to work.

Update and bumped:

Uh-oh. The General is stepping up his rhetoric.

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, has told U.S. officials the next two weeks are critical to determining whether the Pakistani government will survive, FOX News has learned.

So. We have a sort of count-down here, it appears. I think it was Orwell, writing during WWII, who said that "You might not be interested in the war; but the war is interested in you." The President may be about to really understand that sentence. I don't think I've heard Petreaus couch things in such a short time span before. And I don't think the man is given to exaggerating when he says things. This can't be good.

COIN Academy

Taji:

I'm in Taji this week, guest-instructing a couple of classes in my area of specialization at the COIN Academy. When not teaching, I'm spending the week going through the Counterinsurgency Center for Excellence Leaders Course alongside the unit that I will be working with as my old unit RIPs out.

It's good stuff, to be sure. I wish we could have a trusted journalist, one known to be fair and careful with America's genuine secrets, sit through it and tell the story. It's amazing how much attention and care is paid to these issues of reconstructing Iraq, shepherding its institutions, and helping its people enjoy expanding security and essential services. Talk about friction points is frank and in depth. It would be good if people understood that. Most of America has no idea.

I did have a moment just a while ago to read through Eric Blair's dissection of the Kaplan piece. While more entertaining and written in a blustery form -- as befits a blog rather than an academy -- it is intellectually on par. While here in Iraq, I rarely have time to do more than point out interesting things that are worth reading and considering. I had wanted to do a long piece on it myself, but simply have not had the time.

Fortunately, here at the Grim's Hall Strategic Center for Excellence, we have a staff of writers who can do it for you even when I'm away.

Didn't Dante write that the lowest level in hell is reserved for traitors?

See you in hell, Arlen!