nerdgirl

BIGUN. Miss your wisdom & wit. And the last few years have been an *awesome* ride that many times I would have liked to have 'heard' your perspective. Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

One of the biggest concerns I have currently is the uncertain mission of the Army into the future as the US military deployments in Iraq & Afghanistan are ending. The role of strategic landpower as part of the Army's narrative, as well as the overall DoD narrative, is less than clear and needs to be articulated (& POM'd against) sooner rather than later. I'm still undecided wrt the wisdom of the regionally aligned brigade concept. The shift toward regional alignment provide purpose with regards to geography and not capability. I'm concerned that we will see -- heck, we already are seeing -- a repeat of the post-Vietnam repudiation of counterinsurgency operations and tactics in the GPF. At the same time, too much of the thinking toward insurgency (FM 3-24) has been based on Maoist, Confucian insurgencies rather than recognizing the tribal nature of current situations and likely future ones. I'm concerned about how the ground forces sustain and foster the high-performing officer and NCO talent of the last 11 years and *effectively* address the 'toxic leader' phenomenon over the next few years. Concur wrt low intensity conflicts and asymmetric threats -- as well hybrid style (a la Hezbollah 2006) -- being the most likely. The ground forces provide a critical role a conventional deterrent. As awesomely cool as the JSF and LCS are, they do not replace soldiers and Marines as conventional deterrents. Need 'ground pounders'/'door kickers' + FAOs and CAs. More so in "an uncertain future." Army GPF numbers are going to go down; that needs to be done in way that does not erode the conventional deterrent. Oh yeah ... and then there's sustaining S&T dominance. VR/Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

A couple weeks ago I was a false positive for some profile at Ben Gurion on my way out of Israel. Any confidence I had in the implementation and execution (as opposed to notional or perfect use) of profiling has been pretty much shot. All it takes is n=1 to disprove a hypothesis. While one never knows for certain, the best speculation was that my interrogation was due to two attributes: (1) single woman traveling alone, who (2) travels a lot. The security officer who identified me for additional questioning was very interested in my passport, particularly the visa from Turkey (May 2010) and visa & stamps from Cambodia (Oct/Sept 2009). After getting my boarding pass (and after the first screening), most folks go through a screening like a US airports … but I got directed off to the right. There were two Delta flights (to ATL and JFK) and an Uzbeki airlines (?) flight to Tashkent departing from the same terminal. The line for additional questioning was basically Uzbeki, Uzbeki, Uzbeki, white girl, Uzbeki, Uzbeki, white girl, Uzbeki, Uzbeki, Uzbeki, white girl, etc. All three of the white girls were traveling along and appeared to me in mid-20s to mid-40s. During my interrogation, I was asked multiple times what my mother’s name was and what my father’s name was. (Got it right every time without hesitation.) I was asked multiple times in multiple ways if I had accepted any gifts from men. (No, not even from any of the very nice ones.) I was asked where I had been, who I had seen, and what I had done in Israel. (They got a pretty detailed itinerary, altho’ when I asked if they wanted to see the business cards of any of the folks with whom I met, they declined politely.) After about 45 minutes of this, apparently they decided I wasn’t a threat. They never actually searched my suitcase. If the concern was I had accepted a package (bomb or whatever) from someone … because all single female travelers from the US are so nice & naïve that we’ll accept gifts from strange men … search my luggage. It did go through 2 different scanners. One appeared to be standard X-ray and another was not. If the concern was my international travel, ask me what I do. They never did. Or call up one of the very nice guys from the IDF or MFA or MOST or MOITL with whom I met. I will say that everyone was very polite. Another American woman who I met in Tel Aviv and who departed about a week before me recounted a similar false positive profiling. In 1971, four women from Europe were duped into carrying bombs packaged as gifts onto a plane by Palestinian “boyfriends;” that’s the origin of that profile … except neither of us were European. And neither of us had bombs, i.e., neither of us were actual threats. A former colleague, whose previous job includes Assistant Director for Chemical and Biological Countermeasures at the White House Office (i.e., cleared up the wazoo) and who left the day before me, encountered an interrogation he described as searching everything but his colon. Mine wasn’t that bad. He’s white in 40’s, and his last name is Jewish-sounding. But it’s n=3 for false positives on the profiling. I had no problem on the way into Israel – was met by a representative of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which made everything so easy. So that's my experience with the ineffectiveness of Ben Gurion's profiling. It's a different variety of security theater, imo. There’s also a numbers (logistics) game: Ben Gurion handles ~11.5M passengers a year. ATL alone handles about 88M passengers a year. In the US overall, there are over 600M passengers a year. My estimate (& that’s all it is) was that there were on the order of 3-5 times more security agents (& those were just the ones in uniform) at Ben Gurion than one encounters at a US airport. To implement Ben Gurion-style profiling, the US would need to hire a whole lot more TSA agents, and that would cost more. If one’s argument against screening/TSA is about giving up freedoms, that one was the most intrusive into my freedoms … except when I got felt-up flying domestically inside Nepal. Also got to observe parts of the “Turning Point 5” drills. At least in Jerusalem, the response was similar to what I expect it would be in much of the US: everyone basically ignored the sirens (like a car alarm). /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Google searches say no. Mr. Hauge wasn’t foreign secretary during the most recent Hanukkah or Diwali; the previous foreign minister, David Milbrand, did for both. Couldn't find anything for the Buddhists tho'. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

The current USEUCOM Commander and NATO SACEUR issued one too ... altho' via a slightly less official channel. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

20? Altho' I'd bet that would be on the low end of what the average American would estimate. (US, USSR/Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, DPRK, and Israel) From other nuclear states. It’s been a much less effective deterrent to domestic/homegrown or international terrorists or insurgents, here or in other states. Again, in picking up on [champu’s] post – we learned a lot from mutually assured destruction of the Cold War with a bipolar balance of power and another superpower as adversary. What lessons did we learn from that and which ones are meaningful in thinking about deterrence for the 21st Century? /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Still happens: this summer I’ve been reading about Task Force Tarawa at the start of OIF. This morning CNN had a story, on its “Top Stories” bar, about ongoing efforts at an earlier Tarawa. Somewhat in the vein of [champu’s] post – a lot was learned from the first Tarawa. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Favorite recent image. Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Happened in Turkey too, except the Republicans here are the ardently secular party. Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

That reminds me of a conversation the other night I had with some Muslims here in Ankara regarding their domestic anti-secular, conservative movement. The latter is, in some ways, more democratic than the Ataturk-style alternative. Like so much of the real world, it doesn't simplify well to "us" versus "them." So we should expand government handouts to all people worldwide to make them like us? Naw. If, however, their standard of living is increased they can buy more of our stuff and services. We've actually done a pretty good job overall of raising the standard of living of large parts of the world's population. And the motivations were never, imo, purely driven by humanitarian concerns but rather recognition of the need for new markets and security. In his inaugural speech and the speech in which the foundation of NATO was announced, President Harry S Truman spoke about "hand outs", i.e., non-military foreign aid, especially increasing S&T capacity, in very idealistic rhetoric: “Fourth, we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas. “The United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques. The material resources which we can afford to use for the assistance of other peoples are limited. But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing and are inexhaustible. “With the cooperation of business, private capital, agriculture, and labor in this country, this program can greatly increase the industrial activity in other nations and can raise substantially their standards of living.” Sounds idealistic, eh? Underlying the idealistic motivations of which President Truman spoke was also a reality of recognition of foreign aid as a means to create new markets. New markets of populations where people could buy things. Things that they like. New markets where people would buy American goods (predominantly in January 1949) and services. Over sixty years ago President Truman recognized the connections between foreign aid, international economic development, and American economic growth. The double-edged sword not recognized then was the globalization would eventually elevate other nation-states to the point of being (potential) competitors. Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Pretty confident it wasn’t intended as such … but that comment immediately reminded me of Paula Loyd (SSG, USAR). Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

For me, I make a change when I’m unhappy more than 50% of the time (about whatever). It’s a subjective system but works for me. I left the company I co-founded in April 2003 (got bought out) not knowing exactly what I was going to do next. For my next job I moved 2250 miles across country knowing noone in the new town and initially took a 70% pay cut. I've pursued my passion to places, experiences, and successes that I would never have imagined if someone had posed the notional scenario to me 10 years ago.

Very cool! And perhaps more beneficial than an octopus. Go Wings. Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

The US system of law owes more to the Magna Carta and English common law, as well as Enlightenment principles, which were largely originated and promulgated by the French. The Iroquois Confederacy’s “Great Law of Peace”, a participatory democracy that guaranteed freedom of religion, expression and other rights later incorporated in the U.S. Constitution, was another influence on the Founding Fathers. One notable difference was that the Iroquois ‘Constitution,’ dating back to at least 1400 AD (& perhaps as early as 1100 AD), extended rights to women. Was President Jefferson influenced by his Christian deist beliefs (which more closely resemble the Unitarians) and practice as an Anglican in writing the Constitution? Of course. Was that the only influence? Of course not. President Jefferson wrote "I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.” Did his observation/interpretation of problems lead to the “no religious test” clause of the Constitution, i.e, “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” (Article VI, Section 3)? One can speculate. What inspired President George Washington’s letter to the Jews of Rhode Island, in which he wrote about the importance of the US example of separation of church and state: “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.” I speculate that a significantly under-recognized reason why the US Constitution -- an amazing document im-ever-ho -- has been so successful for so long (relative to other governance documents) is its foundation in civil (not religious) law and the wisdom of the drafters to suspend their own egos, if only momentarily in a few cases, and adapt/adopt/borrow from multiple sources! /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Today's xkcd is on 9-11 conspiracy 'theories.' Coincidence? /Marg ... grumble-grumble ... they should be called notional speculations not theories anyway ... Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying