Thomas E. Ricks's Blog, page 167

Overheard in the TOC or at day care?

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his
favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns.
This originally ran on December 15, 2010.

Chief Red Bull surfaces with a great item about whether the following comment
was heard in a Tactical Operations Center (that is, a military headquarters in
the field) or in a day care center:

"Who told you do that?"
"Why didn't you do what I told you to do?"
"Was that a good decision or a poor decision?"
"Where did you last see it when you lost it?"
"Time to take a nap!"
"Where were you when you saw the bad stranger?"

Podknox/flickr

 

Mac Owens on the forgotten dimensions of American civil-military relations

By
Mackubin Thomas Owens

Best
Defense department of civil-military relations

It is
fair to say that most Americans do not pay much attention to civil-military
relations (CMR) and on the rare occasions when they do, they equate the term
almost exclusively with civilian control of the military.

There
are a couple of reasons for this:

First,
U.S. CMRs appear to be fairly healthy, especially in terms of civilian control.
The U.S. military as an institution seems to have internalized a commitment to
civilian control. Second, most of those
who have written about U.S. CMR, from Sam Huntington to Richard Kohn and Peter
Feaver, have focused on civilian control.

But this is
problematic: It may
cause citizens to miss other signs of unhealthy CMR.

For
soldiers, this focus, especially as articulated by Huntington in The Soldier and the State, which
provides an "ideal" formula for maintaining civilian control while also keeping
the military strong, means that they will tend to focus on operational factors -- how to fight wars -- at the expense of
strategy, the purpose for which a war
is fought. In other words, they may fail to connect operational art, at which
the U.S. military excels, to political goals.

My own
argument is that it is necessary to take a broader perspective on CMR. Civilian
control is important but it is not the only dimension of CMR. For citizens and
soldiers to ignore the other dimensions of CMR runs the risk of placing the
Republic in peril.

What do we mean by Civil-Military
Relations?

The term
"civil-military relations" refers broadly to the interaction between
the armed forces of a state as an institution, the government, and the other
sectors of the society in which the armed force is embedded. Civil-military
relations have to do with allocating responsibilities and prerogatives between
the civil government and the military establishment. It can be seen as "two hands on the sword." The civilian hand determines when the sword is drawn. The
military hand keeps it sharp and wields it in combat, always guided by the
purposes for which the war is being fought.

It appears to me that U.S. civil-military relations constitute a bargain, regarding the
aforementioned allocation of prerogatives and responsibilities between the
civilian leadership on the one hand and the military on the other.

There
are three parties to the bargain: the American people, the government, and the
military establishment. The bargain must be periodically re-negotiated to take
account of political, social, technological, or geopolitical changes. There have been several renegotiations of the
U.S. civil-military bargain over the past 70 years, including:

World
War II, when the military becomes a "central" as opposed to a peripheral institution
in America
The Cold
War, with the rise of nuclear weapons and the central role of deterrence
Post-Cold
War, when there was a shift to constabulary operations
Post
9/11, when CMR has to cope with a time of protracted conflict, giving rise to the possibility
of praetorianism

The
central question we face today is whether another renegotiation is in the
offing.[[BREAK]]

The Bargain and Five Questions

There
are five questions that cover the domains of CMR.

1)
How
do we ensure civilian control of the military establishment?

2)
What
constitutes an acceptable level of military influence on the other spheres of
society?

3)
What
is the primary purpose of the military, e.g. will it be used primarily to deter
and defeat foreign enemies or will it be used primarily to maintain domestic
order?

4)
What
pattern of civil-military relations best ensures military success?

5)
Who
serves?

The
emphasis on civilian control can be explained as a response to the central
dilemma of CMR: A military can threaten a government by being either too strong
or too weak. Coercive power makes the military at least a potential threat to
civilian government. But a weak military also threatens the government if it is
too weak to protect it. How do we create a military establishment that is
strong enough to protect the state but not threaten it?

Patterns of Control

Sam
Huntington identified two general patterns of civilian control. The first is
"subjective" control, which maximizes the power of the civilians -- authority, influence, and ideology -- at the expense of the military. It can be done by means
of government institutions: In Great Britain, there was a struggle for control
of the military between Crown and Parliament. In the United States, the
president and congress vie for control.

In many
countries, civilian control was achieved by means of social class, especially
the aristocracy. Civilian control may be by constitutional form. Many argue
that democracy is the best way to control a military but totalitarian regimes
have done well by pitting one part against another, e.g. Hitler's use of the
Waffen SS and the Soviet use of political officers in the Red Army.

The
danger with subjective control is that maximizing civilian power at the expense
of the military may weaken the latter to the extent that it fails on the
battlefield. For example, Hitler cowed his generals so completely that his
strategic mistakes trumped the operational excellence of the Wehrmacht.

In The Soldier and the State, Huntington
proposed an approach he called "objective" control, which maximize military
professionalism. As he wrote, "On the one hand, civilian authorities grant a
professional officer corps autonomy in the realm of military affairs." On the
other, "a highly professional officer corps stands ready to carry out the
wishes of any civilian group which secures legitimate authority within the
state."

Civilian
control is assured but military effectiveness is simultaneously maximized.

Eliot
Cohen calls this the "normal" theory of civil-military relations. In theory it is
superior to subjective control, but it is flawed in practice. The line between
military and civilian is not impermeable. Success in national security requires
that civilians have an ongoing say in military affairs and that the military
have a seat at the policy table.

Why is Objective Control
Problematic?

First,
it is by no means the norm in American history, even in recent times. As Eliot
Cohen has shown in Supreme Command,
successful democratic war leaders have always "interfered" in the military
realm. In addition, attempts to achieve the Holy Grail of objective control can
remove the military from debates over strategy and policy. Thus it can create a
"strategy deficit." For example, Richard
Kohn has written that "In effect, in the most important area of professional
expertise-the connecting of war to policy, of operations to achieving the
objectives of the nation-the American military has been found wanting. The
excellence of the American military in operations, logistics, tactics,
weaponry, and battle has been manifest for a generation or more. Not so with
strategy." He is echoed by Colin Gray
who observed that: "All too often, there is a black hole where American
strategy ought to reside."

The
problem here is that objective control focuses the military on the operational
level of war and not on strategy. As Hew Strachan has observed, "The
operational level of war appeals to armies: it functions in a politics-free
zone and it puts primacy on professional skills."

Herein
lies the problem for U.S. strategy making: Strict adherence to objective control
creates a disjunction between operational excellence in combat and policy,
which determines the reasons for which a particular war is to be fought. The
combination of the dominant position of the normal theory of civil-military
relations in the United States and the U.S. military's focus on the non-political
operational level of war means that all too often the conduct of a war is
disconnected from the goals of the war.

As two
writers recently observed, "rather than meeting its original purpose of
contributing to the attainment of campaign objectives laid down by strategy,
operational art-practiced as a ‘level of war'-assumed responsibility for
campaign planning. This reduced political leadership to the role of "strategic
sponsors," quite specifically widening the gap between politics and warfare.
The result has been a well-demonstrated ability to win battles that have not
always contributed to strategic success, producing ‘a way of battle' rather
than a way of war."

They
continue: "[T]he political leadership of a country cannot simply set objectives
for a war, provide the requisite materiel, then stand back and await victory.
Nor should the nation or its military be seduced by this prospect. Politicians
should be involved in the minute-to-minute conduct of war; as Clausewitz
reminds us, political considerations are ‘influential in the planning of war,
of the campaign, and often even of the battle.'"

The
reverse is true as well. The military has to be at the policy and strategy
table in order to ensure that its advice regarding options and risk are being
heard.

In this
regard, it is important to recognize that there is a difference between being
"political" and being "partisan." Military officers must be "political" in the
sense of understanding the political environment and being able to navigate its
currents. But they must be non-partisan and resist becoming an adjunct of a
political party.

U.S. CMR are complicated by the
reality of the separation of powers. Civilian control of the U.S. military
involves not only the Executive Branch but Congress as well.

The two
branches vie for dominance in the military realm (a species of subjective
control) but the decentralized nature of Congress gives the president and the executive
branch an advantage. The separation of powers also means that U.S. civil-military
disputes usually do not per se pit civilians against the military, but
involve one civilian-military faction against another.

For example:

--The
post-World War II debate over air power vs. the Navy: Truman, Secretary of
Defense Johnson, and members of Congress teed off against the Navy and its civilian
supporters regarding the B-36 strategic bomber and the "super-carrier" USS United States as the Air Force attempted to gain control of naval aviation.

--The
firing of MacArthur (Marshall and Eisenhower urged Truman to fire him,
while Republicans in Congress supported MacArthur)

--The
Marines and the Osprey.

As
budgets decline, this is likely to be the main arena of civil-military discord.

History Teaches other Lessons
about U.S. CMR

Civil-military
tensions are not new & the absence of a coup does not necessarily mean that
civil-military relations are healthy. Past examples include:

Washington
at Newburgh
Federalist
vs. Republicans re a Military Establishment

Andrew
Jackson and Spanish Florida
Mexican
War: Whig generals and a Democratic
president

Civil
War: Lincoln and McClellan
Reconstruction:
Johnson Urged to Use the Military to Suppress Congress
Preparedness
Movement

Election
of 1920: Leonard Wood runs for the Republican nomination for president while
still on active duty and indeed, in uniform.

Other CMR Lessons and
Implications: Advice and Dissent

U.S.
military history illustrates that the military is not always right, even regarding
strictly military affairs. The military has an obligation to forcefully present
its best advice but does not have the right to insist that its advice be
followed.

Dissent
is not disobedience: tTere must be a "calculus of dissent" that extends beyond
the stark choice of "salute and obey" and "exit." This is a function of
professionalism.

Dissent
raises the question: Is the uniformed military just one more obedient
bureaucracy in the Executive Branch or is it a profession granted significant
autonomy and a unique role in its relationship with civilian policy makers due
to its expert knowledge and expertise? What options does an officer have when
he/she disagrees with policies/orders, etc.?

During the "Revolt of the Generals," Lt. Gen.
Greg Newbold, USMC (ret) wrote: "I offer a challenge to those still in uniform: A leader's responsibility is to
give voice to those who can't -- or don't have the opportunity -- to speak...It is time
for some military leaders to discard caution in expressing their views and ensure
that the president hears them clearly." Many believed that his dissent would
have carried more weight had he offered it while he was still on active duty.

Nonetheless,
the issue of dissent has suggested to some that resignation or retirement is
the only option for those officers who disagree with policy. But as Kohn
argues, "Personal and professional honor do not require a request for
reassignment or retirement if civilians order one's service, command, or unit
to act in some manner an officer finds distasteful, disastrous, or even
immoral. The military's job is to advise and then execute lawful orders...If
officers at various levels measure policies, decisions, orders, and operations
against personal moral and ethical systems, and act thereon, the good order and
discipline of the military would collapse."

I have
argued that this belief on the part of officers is the result of a serious
misreading of Dereliction of Duty. "Many serving officers believe that H.R.
McMaster's Dereliction of Duty effectively makes the case that the Joint
Chiefs of Staff should have more openly voiced their opposition to the Johnson
administration's strategy of gradualism [during the Vietnam war], and then
resigned rather than carry out the policy.

"But the
book says no such thing. While McMaster convincingly argues that the chiefs
failed to present their views frankly and forcefully to their civilian
superiors, including members of Congress when asked for their views, he neither
says nor implies that the chiefs should have obstructed President Lyndon
Johnson's orders and policies by leaks, public statements, or by resignation.

Future U.S. Civil-Military
Relations

What
factors will influence U.S. CMR in the future? They include:

The
character of the wars we will fight in the future. For instance, protracted
wars often create the danger of praetorianism: France after Indochina and
Algeria; the "Team America" conceit on the part of Gen. McChrystal's staff in
the Rolling Stone article that led to the general's resignation.
Declining
defense budgets that may lead to the end of "jointness" and the emergence of
civilian-military faction fighting over resources and missions.
New
circumstances, e.g. cyber and oversight of special operations may create new
tensions.
The participation gap: The "other one percent"
Domestic politics, the truly "forgotten aspect" of U.S. Civil-Military Relations: How
society treats its soldiers and veterans and vice versa
Future
debate over the Iraq and Afghanistan "narratives." Copperheads and Vietnam.
Will
PTSD, a "disease model" prevail, or might it be supplanted by what Gen. James
Mattis has called "positive traumatic growth" as the best way to look
at the impact of close combat/intimate killing on soldiers? In other words, do
we see our soldiers and veterans as victims or as men and women who served
honorably under difficult circumstances? Here we need to look to the
problematic legacy of the Vietnam War. Karl Marlantes, with whom I served in
the same Marine infantry battalion in Vietnam has addressed these questions in
a recent book: What it is Like to Go to
War (he is also the author of the
remarkable Vietnam War novel, Matterhorn).
The psychological "split" in the soldier at war is captured in a passage from
Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzifal.
"Shame and honor clash where the courage of a steadfast man is motley like
the magpie. But such a man may yet make merry, for Heaven and Hell have equal
part in him."

What Constitutes "Healthy" CMR?

Comity
and a low number of disagreements between civilian and military decision makers
Success
in war and peace and the absence of policy-strategy "mismatches"

But in the end, the
key to healthy CMR can be summed up in four words: TRUST. TRUST. TRUST. TRUST.

Mackubin Thomas Owens is professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College and editor of Orbis. He is the recipient of the 2012 Andrew Goodpaster Prize awarded by the American Veterans Center for excellence in military-related research for his 2011 book, U.S. Civil-Military Relations Since 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain. These remarks are from his Goodpaster Lecture of June 12.

You can go strangle yourself with that yellow ribbon, or, here is what I want you to do instead of shaking my hand

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his
favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns.
This originally ran on December 8, 2010.

Tom R.: Today I am offering a guest column by a young vet I know who
was one of the most observant Marines I witnessed in Iraq, where he served four
tours. He is still sorting through his experiences there, and his thoughts about
coming back home.

There is a lot here. It works best if you read the whole thing before posting
comments.

By "A. Scout-Sniper"

Best Defense national service columnist

The military is ultimately a reflection of our culture or what we would like
to believe about our culture. We would like to believe that our military is an
all-volunteer force filled with young and old people who represent the diversity
(class, sex, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, non-religion, talent, skills or
politics) of our country. We would like to believe compulsory national service
has failed to win wars in the past, that a draft is the penultimate form of a
dictatorship and that today's military is better than any in our history. But is
it really voluntary? Is compulsory national service as threatening as some
libertarians would view it? Is the all-volunteer military the "best" our country
has ever produced?

As an OIF vet and Jarhead, and above all someone trying to find a healthy
balance as a civilian once more, I've watched the military from within and
without and the truest observation I can make is that we fight with a
conscripted force in all but name.

For those who cannot listen to an argument without attacking someone's
personality or politics, here is my background up front. I am a white male. I'm
a middle class kid who grew up working on my grandfather's potato farm in
Southern Idaho and lived in suburbia while attending badly run and academically
useless public schools K-12. I'm a Generation Y, ivy-league educated, FDR
liberal, environmentalist, atheist vegan. I graduated with a BA in English and
History in 2002 from a private college I busted my ass to get into on an
academic scholarship. I enlisted as a private in United States Marine
Corps after 9/11 but I wanted to be a jarhead before that for these reasons:
1) I could not afford graduate school without the GI Bill; 2) I
wanted to repay the government and country that gave my grandfather free
farmland and an education after his war in Korea; and 3) I wanted to be
there for my friends. I was a grunt and a scout sniper. I served four
voluntary tours in Iraq. On the last two tours, I burned into my
inactive reserve time and took someone else's place so they wouldn't have to go.
I'm currently using the New Deal-GI Bill to pursue my graduate studies and I am
a small business owner. But guess what? I'm average. This was just a job and a
means to an end just like most the guys I served with. Despite the physical
injuries I sustained and the PTSD I will live with forever, the lies I was told
by military and civilians alike, I do not regret being there for my Marines and
my Iraqis.

I do regret, until now, not responding to the snap judgments made about
compulsory national service and the assumptions about an all-volunteer military.
Most of the comments or observations made about free choice and diversity of an
all-volunteer military are inconsistent with what I experienced. Please suspend
your judgment and see things in my world for a few minutes.

1. Elitism and Snobbery

I am distressed by the elitist feelings
military personnel have about themselves and the elitism showered by us,
civilians, on them. This is a starting point that fits into the observations
that follow. In some sense, we have transformed the military from just a regular
part of government service into a special interest group that believes in its
own entitlement. My view is pretty much my grandfather's view: the four year
Marine Sergeant or the 24 year Army General are both citizen soldiers working
for the country and are no better than their local USPS Delivery man, the Fish
and Wildlife Ranger at Yosemite, a librarian, a Senator, the EPA clerk or the
President.

This has to be one of the very unhealthy and unintended effects of the 1974
policy that made our current military. Typically we use the high-society term
"professional" to describe our military. Its overuse, by those inside and
outside, sounds suspicious as if Americans in other periods were unskilled
simpletons with mediocre public schooling and industrial skills who made average
soldiers at best. This sets up a dangerous perception that the military is
"better" than the government and, in turn, the society it serves. Part of this
I-Am-Special mentality comes from the idea that we are all volunteers and thus
better humans because we willingly and knowingly gave up our lives in both blood
and time and joined a very small club. We don't honor our local EMTs, AmeriCorps
students, Policemen, City Water Sewage personnel, teachers, and VA doctors, for
instance, who give up just as much and sometimes more.

While I would like to believe that everyone volunteers 100% for only one pure
reason, this is another extremist view of life. Not everyone who serves has the
financial and intellectual luxuries of a Pat Tillman. That is a semi-mythical
belief all of us as civilians and military tell ourselves to avoid thinking
about those we consciously and unconsciously target as recruits and then send
half way around the globe while we shirk or exonerate ourselves of any
responsibility. USMC, we often say to sleep easy at night: U Signed the
Mother-Fucking Contract.

2. Impoverished Young People

Many Marines I served with, I'm
talking Sergeants and down, enlisted to escape poverty and get a college
education. Most young people do not know how relatively low military pay is,
especially enlisted versus officer, but it's there, every hour for four or
twenty years. It also comes with signing bonuses, the GI Bill, health care, or
promises of a VA house or business loan after enlistment. Prior to signing up,
most of my friends asked themselves how they could pay for college growing up in
the poorest class. What if you are not a great student or a superb athlete? You
probably won't get that education through McDonald's and you definitely won't
get it from the school or your minimum wages of your dual working parents. As we
all know, it is almost impossible to get a job now without a good-looking
diploma from a decently named school. And how do you get healthcare without a
decent paying job? This is just part of our society and our idea of success.
Occasionally, a degreeless Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, with their own hidden set
of leg's up, shows up but these outliers are exceptions to the rule.

I spent 30 days, after my first tour, as an assistant recruiter in Salt Lake
City, UT and this only reinforced what I heard from my friends in boot camp,
SOI, and in OIF 1. My recruiting NCOs and I only canvassed the poorest areas and
crappiest high schools in our AO. We never visited universities or colleges, let
alone middle or upper class neighborhoods. When I was ordered to cold-call
various high school kids, the names on the list fit a profile: lower class,
conservative families and 60% Latino immigrant or first generation Americans.
All the stations in SLC are nowhere near middle or upper class areas and I
suspect that this is the same in every major city. We told kids what they wanted
to hear: buy your own car, never pay rent, live in base housing, no utility
bills, and combat pay. It's the kind of golden ticket almost no one we recruited
could refuse.

3. Other Kinds of Escapism

I can't speak for every Marine, but I
can speak about the platoons and companies I lived in. More than three quarters
of the men I served with didn't have any choices if they stuck around their
hometowns. I am trying to make you remember what life was like at 17 or 18 and
you didn't think there was a way out of the situation you were born into. Here
is what I saw and was told: Some young men fled gang life in poor areas like
Chicago, Redlands, Compton, San Bernardino, Watts or Portland (crimes they
committed or crimes to be committed on them); some wanted US citizenship after
having arrived from Latin America, Europe, or Africa; some fled religious and
sexual persecution (yes there are gay marines and some are from Texas); some got
off the isolated encampments known as Reservations; I had Marines escaping child
abuse; some guys hated the farm life; and the mediocre athletes knew they didn't
have the NFL talent now required to play at even the lowest junior university.
So this word "choice," that people who never served or never served at the
bottom use, smells like bullshit.

My point isn't to argue that these are bad reasons for joining up and it
would also be a gross generalization to say these hardships only occur in poor
areas. I am telling you the decision making process is already distorted long
before the recruit walks into a station. The Marines I know didn't have the
luxury of thinking hard about other choices like Pat Tillman. In retrospect,
most said they had no other choices.

4. Meeting Quotas/Volunteers Can Be Shit-Birds Too

Even during the
shittiest period of Iraq, shittiest to the American viewpoint, the Corps and the
Army still met its voluntary quotas even after several months of slipping. How
did they do this? Clearly, the recruiters worked hard but we also know that
certain branches just dropped the standards and hustled with better and bigger
deals. The Army bonus went from 8k to 10k, scholarships from 50k to 70k, no GED
= no problem, and commercials aimed at parents showed up. The Marines, having no
cash to toss at first termers, changed some standards but also raised
re-enlistment bonuses in a way my senior NCOs never saw in their lifetime. To
preserve an all-volunteer military, the spending went up and the standards went
down, not drastically but just enough, to keep quotas up.

Once again, based on my experience, we started to receive the fruits of
lowered standards during my third workup in summer 2005. At the time, the 2 tour
Iraq vets and the really old Master Sergeants were singing the same tune. I
heard similar concerns from other jarheads at 5th Marines, 7th
Marines, and my friends serving as instructors at SOI and MCRD-San Diego. We had
kids totally unqualified to be in the Corps, let alone a line battalion, but the
pressure came from above.

By then I was the platoon sergeant at E-5 and this is what I saw in the
Service Record Books of the hundred or so new-joins to my unit: lower ASVAB
scores or ASVAB waivers on a test that is already too easy and measures no real
sense of competence; physically weaker recruits on waivers with injuries MEPS
should have disqualified them for; drug records that included documented mental
disorders and criminal charges for drug dealing and small scale possession; a
higher percentage of English as a 2nd language speakers which didn't bother me
until trying to communicate via radio or with Iraqi translators; waivers for
psychological problems such as severe ADHD/Bipolarism/Child Abuse/Sexual Abuse.
One of my relatives, for instance, enlisted in the December 2005, got in trouble
and pulled 45 days in San Bernardino County jail for a weapon's possession
charge, C Class Misdemeanor. The recruiter tore up the contract but then
resigned him six months later on a simple waiver.

Beggars couldn't be choosers and we grabbed who we could and suffered the
results on deployment in 2006. Marines get in fights, make trouble and get STDs
but in 2006 I saw a higher level of indiscipline amongst the new-joins than I
had in the previous two tours. A few were fantastic gunfighters but at least
half seemed un-ready for the Fleet. Withholding judgment, I asked other grunts
in my unit if they had the same problems in their platoons and there was an
overwhelming consensus that the gatekeepers at the recruiting stations had
dropped ball.

Using my authority and tact, I brought the hammer down on these Marines as
well as their NCOs. While I might have wanted to take a few Marines out back,
lance-corporals and boot lieutenants included, in 2005 the Marine Corps came
down blisteringly hard on what it called "Hazing." Everyone in the Corps has a
kind of understanding about where the line has to be drawn with physical
intimidation and it already existed prior to this mandate. It was a large part
of making me a tougher jarhead as a new join. At the time and in retrospect,
this policy change was wedded to the shortage of bodies for Iraq. Overnight, the
Corps became a place where you had to be careful what you said and how you acted
even if you didn't plan on making a career out of it. It made my job, as a
platoon sergeant and chief scout to 34 Marines, insanely difficult. My job
description was simple: train those Marines to the highest standard of combat
sniping I had experienced and make the training as close to the real thing as
possible. Pain (physical, psychological and academic) was an important tool to
my training program. Our train the way you fight mentality turned into train the
way that will not get you in trouble or lose Marines for the roster.

Let me give you a few examples of changes made that risked our combat
effectiveness. My Battalion Commander forbade me to run marines in gas masks or
to simulate stress under fire by dumping flour or water on them while playing
Egyptian pop music while doing immediate action drills with smoke bombs and fire
crackers. Typically, I made every Marine run everywhere with a battle buddy
around my camp. I demanded the same sub-lot of ammunition for our sniper rifles
so we could have consistent data on those guns. This is a .25-cent request. At
every training shoot, I was given a different sub-lot of ammo and often machine
gun ammo. To you these are simple things. To me this is life or death and is
intimately connected with the concept of an all-volunteer military. I was
ordered to mellow out the training because we could not get replacements for
Marines I washed out.

Worst of all, because of our back-to-back-to-back deployments drumming any
Marine out became impossible. Most of the platoons in my Battalion were filled
with voluntary shitbirds that none of the combat vets would take to combat. Even
some of my best combat vets from the Cemetery in An Najaf, began having severe
PTSD symptoms and behavioral problems during the workup. This included alcohol
abuse, spouse abuse, depression, wrist banging, mental fogginess, and a
condition that couldn't be cured through any motivation. I tried, through the
Medical Officer, the Chaplin, and my chain-of-command to get them out of the
unit and back to Regiment and therapy but these attempts were denied every time.
We needed the bodies. Eventually, I conceded that it would be better for some of
these Marines to never go in country at all because of the risk they posed to
the unit. At that point, yes, I would have loved a draft. It would have let me
pick stronger candidates for our mission and bench those Marines not fit for
combat.

5. Fears of a Draft

A-Draftees Make Bad Fighting Men

Many
libertarians and military personnel have argued that draftees are weaker
compared to volunteers. Our ancestor's military repeatedly wrecks that concept.
There are plenty of draftees who had their heart in the game. I have ten
relatives who were all drafted in WW2 and they learned to be damn solid
"professionals" while defeating two toxic empires. "They came as liberators, not
conquers. Only a tiny percentage of them wanted to be there, but only a small
percentage of these men failed to do their duty" (Citizen Soldiers,
Ambrose 14). What about draftees in later wars? I have my grandfather in Korea
working as P-51 mechanic that kept birds flying and in turned saved many a young
grunt's life. Want some stellar examples from Vietnam? Check out PFC Ronald
Leroy Coker, MOH, who was drafted in 1968. What about another draftee, Spec 5
Dwight H. Johnson, MOH 1968? Oddly enough, the military still had standards for
draftees and could remove recruits who were not fit for duty.

Another component of this fallacy is that draftees don't have enough time to
become "professional" modern day fighters? Really? Under time constraints of a
six month work up and as Chief Scout, I made shake n' bake scouts out of fifteen
new joins who could shoot long range, clear houses, call for fire, direct CAS,
observe and gather info, practice first aid, and brief a one star general on a
sniping mission. Many NCOs have done this in the last ten years. And what about
all the welfare baggage a long-term professional soldier brings over the single,
two-year draftee? How can you avoid the costs of emotional and financial baggage
such as a spouse, kids, base housing, base roads, base facilities, and family
dental and health care?

B-Draftees Bring Liberal Politics into a Non-Political
Military

First off, wake up: we already have a politicized military and
it is one-sided. In data collected by Adrian R. Lewis, "Republicans outnumbered
Democrats by 8 to 1" in uniform and Tom has done a bit of fact finding in this
department in Making the Corps. I can confirm this mainly through my own
experience. I can only think of one or two men and women, way above my pay
grade, who had any liberal leanings and they joined up before the 1980. I hid my
politics out of a fear of retribution and because I thought the military was not
supposed to be political. It is not conservativism that bothered me but the
contempt for anything that would interrupt how the military should work and be
used within that belief system. During boot camp, I was taught to hold civilians
as nasty, sub-human liberals, which only distanced Marines from their own
society. I had several First Sergeants and Officers question my motives about
being in the Corps year after year once the origin of my degree was located.
When my Marines asked me who I was voting for in 2004 I told them I wasn't
voting because I didn't think it was okay to be engaged in politics whatsoever
while in uniform. I said there was no pressure to vote or not vote and to make
their own decision. A platoon commander overheard this, and instantly struck
down my position and told them to re-elect the president or face the
consequences of a lost war. It seemed unprofessional to me then and now.

This is a pretty new development in our history and one that should trouble
anyone who is trying to fight a war. Typically we want an apolitical military
with lots of talented people because they can use those talents in the fight and
because we don't want military coups. The first component is what keeps the
balance. Talented people come from all walks of political life and whether we
like it or not, a lot of the talent we need in this kind of war (historians,
linguists, cultural anthropologists, union leaders, Islamic scholars, grass
roots organizers, student teachers and agriculture specialists to name a few)
are generally not all conservatives but that shouldn't matter. Why not
have feminists, soccer moms, gay dads, retired generals, Islamic privates,
psychologists, businessmen, and so forth talking about issues in the military in
forums like this unlike the current situation: a small group of "professionals"
or ex-military who are typically right of center and generally white men.

The loss of political variety within our military has helped create the holy
cow of defense spending. We seem to write blank checks for corporations that
making things for the military and blank checks for the military itself while we
hack apart the entitlement programs from WW2 such as the VA, DOT, Social
Security, Education, and Medicare. No one wants to be seen not "supporting the
troops," that elitist problem surfacing again, by voting against something
wasteful or voting against something they don't have the military education to
comprehend.

C-Drafts Create Protests

This is an uncomfortable fact that we must
admit: a government that wants an indefinite, badly managed war placed on a
credit card without the complete consent of its citizens could only do it with
an all-volunteer military. The biggest closet fear some might have and one I
have heard several times, is that a draft would end the current war on terror.
This fear probably carries over from the lost war in Vietnam. As we know,
President Nixon promised to end the war but the draft was not entirely abolished
until the war was nearly at its end in 1973. This fear of an anti-war movement
has now solidified into an untouchable program but it brilliantly decreased the
number of people who would protest, let alone be interested in, the actions of
their own military. Aside from Cindy Sheehan, there aren't many anti-war
volunteers out there marching or enduring hunger strikes and that's because they
have no skin in the game either. Regardless of our political leanings or beliefs
about the war, this should trouble us. It means that people who oppose the war
know their efforts are useless, that only their kids are the ones fighting and
dying or for the indifferent populace, they think people in the military "did it
to themselves" and this is disingenuous.

My response to this fear this a call out: If we are fighting a just war with
clearly stated objectives and fighting this with a firm moral compass, then we
have nothing to fear with re-instating a draft because nearly everyone will
support the effort and those who cannot fight or will not fight can sit in jail
with Thoreau, go into exile, or help build our country here.

Perception vs. Reality

I envy the black and white world of
libertarianism but it's not reality. When you start digging behind the
free-market or all-volunteer argument you find conscription-like
inconsistencies. This is not a self-made government conspiracy but a natural
growth of political policies, cultural narcissism and a culture of
anti-government and anti-service since our departure from Vietnam. We have many
inconsistencies to draw on. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter ordered every
18-year-old male to register with the Selective Service in response to the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Despite the end of the Cold War, this system
still exists and we require young people to register by law. This ignored fact
collides with libertarian view that recruiting stations, monthly quota numbers,
TV commercials, sales pitches, contract deals and standards are randomly placed
and haphazardly created. Libertarians argue that recruits are free radicals with
strong critical thinking skills, no emotional or financial duress, and an
endless supply of time and opportunities. In this view, the fact that 37,000
non-Americans of Latino descent served in Iraq is just a random coincidence. In
this view, public education teaches American kids to think critically so they
make an informed decision before signing a contract with the government.

We have gone from one extreme to the next. The burden of fighting and sharing
a war has shrunk to the point where 1% of our citizens and their families endure
the permanent life-changing consequences of warfare. A similar kind of extremism
and elitism exists in the rest of our government with various parties lining up
on the sides. In both cases, regardless of your political persuasion, it just
looks like years of short-term self-interest have produced two broken systems.
If our military is supposed to be a reflection of our culture, then what I've
described should not be surprising but it should be disturbing. How can we
continue to fight a war and not be asked or forced to sacrifice anything save a
couple hundred dollars here and there in taxes, adding a bumper sticker we let
fade to our rear window and two holidays? How can we burden such a small
percentage of our people and have them return to a health care system we neglect
and now want to privatize?

We have not heard enough about why compulsory service is one of the best ways
to open up these divides:

We need to find a balance that allows people to pick up a
government-sponsored set of skills that can be used after service for a better
society and economy. "They had learned to work together in the armed
services...They built the Interstate Highway system, the St. Lawrence Seaway,
the suburbs...they had learned the army virtues of a solid organization and
teamwork, and the value of initiative, inventiveness, and responsibility"
(Citizen Soldiers, Ambrose 472).


Bring balance into all sections of our government, both civil and military,
and our lives. For the war effort, bring in other kinds of talent (welding,
languages, soil specialists, sociologists, biologists, historians, businessmen,
Islamic scholars).


It's easier to storm a with machine gun nest or pilot a drone than it is to
make Awakening deals with tribal sheikhs, run and collect biometric data,
conduct census patrols, train police, monitor elections, build armies and
protect and run water purification plants. Our recruiting standards should
reflect that need.


One of the great side effects of national service would be easing the trauma
of homecoming and PTSD for vets. It would help veterans lay down their arms and
learn to trust if they didn't come home to neighborhoods and schools filled with
people who cannot identify with them and have no clue what they fought for. This
would save us save money at the VA and put less stress on an already overloaded
system. Perhaps, as has happened with my own physical injuries, civilian doctors
and health practitioners through government incentives would give vets free
treatment.

Without a different structure, the future offers much of the same.
The soft interventionist attempts -- ROTC programs, sending military personnel
to non-military colleges, speeches, bonuses, bad movies, bad books and yellow
ribbons -- haven't changed the imbalances found within or outside the military.
The same applies to our government. Here is a sneak preview of things to come:



As the inability of anyone in our government to explain succinctly what our
purpose at war is, then expect more Americans to turn eyes away from the
conflict and be less inclined to encourage their children to enlist unless their
economic situation is dire. Other kinds of talent will not serve. In consequence
of these reactions, the military would cut standards and raise bonuses, which
would contribute to higher amounts of spending and weaker recruits flushed into
the system. Remember to add their dependents and the welfare net that has to be
built to support them.


Expect more aimless, inarticulate plans from our governmental leaders about
the way forward. This inability to present a cogent plan and stick with it will
make us put the burden on certain intellectual-generals when we need tough
minded civilian leadership with a robust civilian effort.


Use volunteers, active/reserve/inactive reserve, over and over and over
again until they are physically broken or mentally destroyed. Eat the decades
long cost of caring for them at the VA or, much worse, if they become homeless
or criminals. A service person with too much PTSD will more than likely have a
break down in the field with any number of all negative consequences happening:
civilian shootings and maltreatment, drug addiction-from prescription PTSD meds
or recreational drugs, loss of situational awareness and general disciplinary
problems.


Supplement the lack of military with mercenaries/contractors/bloated support
services like KBR and eat that cost too. At some point, they will ask for care
from the VA and we have to calculate that cost. Then consider the alienation
most indigenous people rightly feel about freewheeling hired guns or imported
workers from Malaysia, India, or Mongolia working at the DFAC. Consider the
alienation of military personnel who earn just above minimum wage standing at a
Snatch VCP while the mercenary drives by at $500.00 a day. Perception is
reality: this distrust can only spill over into a general distrust of all
Americans as it has for Iraqis, Afghanis and our world allies.

Conclusion

The uneducated decisions made and various untruths told
after 9/11 by leaders we picked, have brought us to this impasse. Like it or
not, regardless of who you voted for or what party you belong to, we cannot go
back. We have a moral obligation to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. We have
irrevocably changed their lives by haphazardly invading their sovereign lands,
toppling their governments, and upending their socio-economic lives. We have to
show them our values are not imperialism, coercion, exploitation, torture, and
abandonment. We will accept the consequences of our actions, correct our
mistakes, commit more of our blood and treasure, and help them build the kind of
countries they want over the next 90 years. If not, we face repeat
consequences of terrorist attacks from the countries we abandon, justified
suspicion of our motives by the rest of the world, and more half-cocked
interventionist measures. At the same time, our consumption of imported fossil
fuels literally kills us and this is wedded to our own undeniable self-made
economic disparity and environmental disasters. As my senior drill instructor
said the morning of graduation, "Ladies and Gents, it's time to sac up and eat
the shit sandwich."

We are going to have to make hard decisions that will not look anything like
the irresponsible, childish partisan bickering of proceeding three decades. We
are going to have to do what Americans do best in crises: SACRIFICE AND
COMPROMISE. A natural solution, the invisible hand, a technological solution or
a repeat of the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike or the Boston Tea Party are not
things we can wait for.

As a young person who served in a war you made, I don't want your handshake,
your pity, your daughter's phone number, or your faded bumper sticker. I did my
frigging job so now do yours. Baby Boomers and Generation X: I want your
leadership. Rather than cower behind a set of fragmented ideals you don't even
live up to, I am asking you to exercise your adulthood and feel some pain. As we
say in the grunts: lead from the front. An open and vigorous discussion of
compulsory national service, for all classes, and what sacrifices you
will make need to be part of the way forward.

Ed Schipul/eschipul/Flickr

Stuxnet: It's the real thing, baby

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his
favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns.
This originally ran on December 7, 2010.

Tom R.: For a long time I thought "infowar" or "cyberwar" was
nonsense, mainly a gambit to make money in the defense consulting complex. But expert comments like this one
on Stuxnet have me reconsidering. 

By Jay Holcomb

Best Defense infowar columnist 

I believe this event should be looked at from a much wider view … the Stuxnet
worm (threat vector) certainly should be considered a "game changer" … the folks
who are conducting the forensics analysis have been somewhat successful in
gaining high level public/government attention to this issue.

While most folks seem to unofficially agree this worm likely targeted Iranian
facilities -- if we look wider -- this "attack" … or perhaps a better
classification "sabotage" … contains so many complex cyber elements combined
into one package that it is absolutely fascinating. I do not believe it is
hyperbole to say the Stuxnet worm is "revolutionary" in terms of what we should
be expecting to see in future high quality cyber threat vectors.

For example, a few of the well publicized items used by the Stuxnet worm
include:

At least four zero-day vulnerabilities were used. Remember, these were
classified as "zero-days" once we found out about them back in June/July --
which means the folks that discovered the vulnerabilities could have been using
them/testing them for 12-24 months(?) before we even knew they existed.
Discovering a single previously unknown vulnerability and using it successfully
against a target is impressive!
Used "legitimate certificates stolen from two certificate authorities" to
digitally sign Stuxnet code to be installed on target machines -- this was
needed to prevent Microsoft Windows from alerting the computer user that a
suspicious file is trying to install on the computer. This is huge! Imagine if
someone was able to steal a genuine SSL/TLS certificate for YOUR online bank
from VeriSign or Entrust and set-up a web site that was an exact clone of YOUR
online bank. If you accessed the cloned web site -- your web browser would NOT
alert you to any problems with the fake web site because the site uses a valid
certificate -- the entire Internet online commerce model is based on this
"trust" of Certificate Authorities.

Sound unrealistic … how about this …
anyone else remember 10 years ago when VeriSign issued two Microsoft
certificates to someone posing as a Microsoft employee? Imagine what they could
have done with those certificates … perhaps create their own "special" Microsoft
Windows patch … how many folks would download and install? We often trust major
companies and our systems will trust the process if the source file is using a
"trusted" Certificate Authority (VeriSign for example) security certificate to
sign the files! To further highlight this issue … to this day the only two
"Untrusted Publishers" certificates installed in our Internet Explorer browsers
are for Microsoft from VeriSign!
Numerous propagation methods -- USB drives, network shares, other
peer-to-peer methods, etc. Interesting to see the Conficker vulnerability
(MS08-067) was one of the Stuxnet propagation options. Depending on what
type/version/patch level of Windows the worm is residing determines which
propagation method it will use. (Amazing)
Command and Control options -- via Internet or peer-to-peer if Internet
access is no longer available.
Very specific configuration of the target environment is needed to activate
the Stuxnet payload (manufacturer, specific product type, and unique product
configuration are examples) … the intelligence and reconnaissance needed of the
target must have been incredible.
The goal does not seem to have been destruction -- rather
interruption/delay. The payload modified the speed of very specific high speed
motors and at seemingly random intervals. How many people knew weapons-grade
uranium enrichment requires long periods of constant high speed motor action?

These examples do not include the many other specific SCADA asset features
the worm is targeting to validate prior to payload release/action -- amazing!

With the complexity of this cyber "event" it should change how we view future
potential threat vectors -- from both the government (at varying levels and
organizations) and civilian perspective. The possibility of this type of
complex/specifically targeted cyber threat has now been proven in the wild. It
is only a matter of time before we identify a similar event has occurred or is
occurring right now.

The potential targets are only limited by our imaginations. I would expect
both Nation States and common Cyber Criminals have been analyzing the same
materials we are and developing new ingenious complex threat vectors into
critical infrastructure, defense assets (government and civilian), financial
environments, technology resources, and numerous other industries depending on
the target niche market. 

The goal would not have to be "global domination" or "nation destruction" --
in fact, I would propose the most dangerous outcome of this event will be the
smaller -- highly sophisticated/complex -- threats that are successful but stay
under the radar. They launch, are successful, and either destroy themselves or
are jettisoned as expendable.  (From both Nation States and common Cyber
Criminals)

One interesting "pie in the sky" future item -- will Cyber Criminals be able
to pull together a team of experts similar to the Stuxnet team (Cyber
Mercenaries … a field that we can assume is growing quickly!) to create the
civilian Stuxnet equivalent -- perhaps for historic financial gain or nearly any
other historic event. Sounds like a Hollywood movie doesn't it … I assume
everyone has seen "Live Free of Die Hard"…

Finally, here are some additional background resources and great reading if
interested:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/11/stuxnet-clues/

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/stuxnet/

http://www.symantec.com/business/theme.jsp?themeid=stuxnet

http://www.tofinosecurity.com/blog/stuxnet-mitigation-matrix

Jay Holcomb is an assistant professor in the cyber/information assurance
depart of the National Defense University. 

Rebecca's War Dog of the Week: Summer Postcard Series: Puppies on parade

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Somewhere in the Marshall Islands, cute aren't they?

We mean the puppies of course! These four Marines have taken over the job of being foster mother to the pups, after their real mother left behind by the Japanese, gave birth to a litter of 13 and couldn't take care of all of them. The Marines are (from left to right): 2nd Lt. G.H. Hoffman Jr., Corporal Louis R. Bonini, Corporal Edward J. Frankenbech, and Master Sergeant Harold "Porky" May. Their recipe for raising good, healthy puppies --plenty of C rations. All four Marines and puppies were attached to an aviation group with 4th Marine Air Wing."

This photo is taken from the Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections, ca. 1941-1945.

Rebecca Frankel, on leave from her FP desk, is currently writing a book about military working dogs, to be published by Free Press.

Dueling historians: Lt. Col. Bob Bateman's takedown of Victor Davis Hanson

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his
favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns.
This originally ran on November 4, 2010.

I
could never quite figure out what irked me so much about Victor Davis "Carnage 'n' Culture'' Hanson's work until I read John
A. Lynn. I liked what I read by Hanson about ancient
Greece, but as Lynn shows, the further Hanson wandered
from ancient Greece, the less he seemed like a historian and the more he came
off like a polemicist
with an agenda.
Lt. Col. Bob Bateman,
who is both an active-duty officer and an academic with terrific credentials in
military history, delivered the coup de grace in a series of articles I hadn't seen
until recently.

Reader comment of the day: Gourley on the meaning of a death in combat

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his
favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns.
This originally ran on October 25, 2010.

Jim Gourley, in a response
to the post on the Adrian Lewis book, parses the loss of a soldier:

Someone
dies in combat. At Brigade level, he's a social security number and a status
that gets tracked to Landstuhl. At Division, he's a storyboard. At Corps, he's
a statistic. At Platoon and Company, he's a gaping wound in the soul of a
hundred men. To his family, it's the end of the world."

Someday
I hope to see a printout of those words posted on a cubicle wall, or over a
urinal, in a division or corps headquarters.

General Shelton: Rumsfeld was the devil in the form of a defense secretary

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his
favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns.
This originally ran on October 11, 2010.

That's basically the impression I took away from reading Without Hesitation, the memoirs of retired Gen. Hugh
Shelton, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001. Boy is
he steamed.

There are plenty of other people Shelton pings in the book, most notably John
McCain. But the unquestionable No. 1 villain of the book is the former secretary
of defense who, in Shelton's telling, elevated his old Princeton wrestling
techniques into a management philosophy. "The McNamara-Rumsfeld model," as
Shelton calls it, was "based on deception, deceit, working political agendas,
and trying to get the Joint Chiefs to support an action that might not be the
right thing to do for the country but would work well for the President from a
political standpoint." (401) (As an experiment, I'm including page numbers --
should I continue doing this in future book discussions?) He adds, "It was the
worst style of leadership I witnessed in 38 years of service." (413)

After his first meeting with Rumsfeld, Shelton recalls thinking, "We're going
to need some heavy-duty cleaning supplies if all we're going to do is waste time
having pissing contests like this." (407) When Rumsfeld was proven wrong in a
meeting, Shelton says, he wouldn't admit it, but rather would press on and do
"his best to stay afloat amid the bullshit he was shoveling out." (413)

At one point, Rumsfeld utterly rejected a plan for how to deal with Iraqi
attacks on U.S. warplanes in the old "no-fly zones." Shelton liked the plan how
it was, so when ordered to revamp it, he let it sit on his desk for a couple of
weeks, and then sent it back to the defense secretary with a new label on it:
"Rumsfeld Auto-Response Matrix." "He loved every word of it," Shelton reports
with unconcealed contempt. (424)

This book is different from other senior generals' memoirs I've read, such as
those by Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf, and Tommy R. Franks. Hugh Shelton's
telling stories and naming names. The first half of the book is a rather dull
account of his earlier career, but that changes in his relation of his last year
as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in 2001.

Overall, Shelton comes off like a good soldier and a decent and honorable
man, but inexperienced in the ways of Washington, and so a bit of a babe in the
woods when it comes to politics. I blame this situation on civilian officials,
Democratic and Republican alike, who were so scared of the political clout that
Colin Powell accumulated that they have picked a series of political
non-starters as chairmen: Shalikashvili (his pop fought for the Nazis), Shelton
(naïve about Washington), Myers and Pace (the two most pliable senior officers
of recent memory). Admiral Mullen is proving to be an exception -- he stands up
for himself, yet isn't trying to move into the political realm. I am not sure
President Obama and his aides appreciate this.

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Rebecca's War Dog of the Week: risky business in Afghanistan

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his
favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns.
This originally ran on October 1, 2010.

By Rebecca Frankel

Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

The suave looking war dog in this photo is wearing doggles -- not goggles, doggles -- and yes, these
are real. Military dogs wear doggles specifically designed to protect the eyes
of working dogs from dust and debris. Soldiers rely on the heightened senses of
these dogs which far surpass those of a human, and so the dogs' handlers take
the precautionary measures necessary to protect them, keeping a careful watch on
their vitals and the care they receive in the field. 

This German Shepherd is wearing his doggles while Chinook helicopters take
off during an air assault operation by U.S. soldiers in Parwan province,
Afghanistan on May 11.      

U.S. Army/Sgt. Jason Brace/flickr

Some more thoughts on the soldier's load and how to reduce it

By Ryan Woods

Best Defense
office of packing light

Speaking of personally acquiring civilian gear to use (I
have zero idea how common it is or what kinds of limiting/precluding rules
there are, it sounds like it happens a fair bit) I have some tips for saving money:

Everyone in the military can get a promotive.com account with a DoD email
account (it is a manufacturer's proform clearinghouse...generally 40 percent off MSRP, a
great deal for some brands and more expensive than common retail on others,
caveat emptor). Even if you don't want it for any kind of tactical gear,
there's some sweet rec gear open to that team as well. (I am not affiliated
with them in any way but do have an account.)

Along similar lines, a quick call to other brands
(tactical or rec) might well yield access to their actual proform, often at
much deeper discounts than 40 percent off. Usually marketing or customer service
controls access.

Failing that, it is often possible
to get wholesale/proform prices by going directly to a manufacturer with a
group buy (generally need 10+ purchasers), eg: if everyone in a unit wants a
pack (or one of several packs) from a manufacturer.

BTW, I appreciate all the responses they have been very
interesting for me. One thing that still sticks in my craw a bit is the
insistence that the weight of stuff is a given and/or necessary. The
weight of a thing is not generally a feature, it is rather a byproduct of other
engineering requirements or lack of thought. So far, I've got bullets and
probably some minimum weight on a hand grenade where the actual mass of a thing
has a beneficial component, not that both can't be optimized to be lighter
necessarily. Sorry to hammer on this, but I cannot count the number of
things where I didn't think about the weight of a thing until I got something
lighter and realized how much better it was both in use and in the carrying.