AMF: I Told You So
Work makes Friday, and that's what today is. Since I took a day off this week, and since yesterday was Election Thursday, I have a lot of stories to catch up on. If your name is Mighty Mo, just skip past the last set of asterisks. Here we go!
Michael Yon has an excellent three part series entitled "Death in the Corn" about his recent experiences at FOB Gibraltar in Afghanistan. (1, 2, 3) I think I also linked to Michael Totten's The Truth About Russia in Georgia within the past two weeks; it's really worth reading. He also has a piece entitled The Scorching of Georgia that discusses further developments in the situation, and the exceptionally irresponsible Russian act of bombing to set forest fires in Georgia. Seriously, if you aren't already, you should be reading both of these guys' articles. They're both important and exceptionally interesting, with great pictures of exotic countries and exceptional analysis of what's going on in the world today.
* * *
You know how much whining we've all started doing about the cheap crap that's coming out of China? Only there's not really that much that we can do about it because the Chinese pretty much own the market on cheap crap, and even expensive cheap crap? Well, it's apparently becoming a big problem in the West Bank. How? Well, I've discussed shemaghs on the blog a few times. These are called keffiyeh by the "Palestinians". Now, those of you who pay any attention to these matters at all will probably know that the West Bank is the portion of the "Palestinian" Territories that Israel still controls and occupies; the other half is Gaza, which has turned into one of the must tragic failures in human history since the Israelis unilaterally withdrew a couple of years ago. At any rate, things aren't great in the West Bank, but one of the few industries that used to pull money into the "Palestinian" territories was the weaving and sale of shemaghs/keffiyehs. They're seen as both a traditional Arab garment, and a symbol of "Palestinian" resistance or some other such nonsense. The point is, this was actually a productive livelihood for the residents of the West Bank. So what happened? The Chinese got into the keffiyeh-makin' business, and they're now saturating the market.
The poor Arabs can't even block the importation of the Chinese knock-offs due to regulations that they have to comply with in order to receive aid from the outside world. As much as I hate to link to anything related to al Jazeera, there's a video here that explains a bit more. Now, I tend to side with the Israelis on just about everything, but let's face it: part of the problem in the "Palestinian" territories is that they have no opportunities. Now, that's largely their own fault, but this could have been an industry that provided an honest living for the Arabs that remain in the territories. Instead, China's undercutting them and making things worse. You'd think that the people who negotiate these kinds of things (and I've known of at least two: General James Jones, USMC, and the Right Honorable Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) could identify this as a problem and arrange with the Chinese, who are supposedly everyone's pal, to stop this crap. As little sympathy as I have for the so-called "Palestinians", I own four shemaghs/keffiyeh that I've used for work in the past, and I'd much rather have one that was woven in the last remaining factory in Hebron than the four I have that were made in China. This seems like sort of a no-brainer to me.
* * *
The Wired.com Danger Room blog has an interesting post titled 'Conservatives' vs. 'Crusaders' for Army's Future. The article basically discusses the two schools of thought that are debating within the Army right now: one that wants to focus on conventional warfare, and the other that wants to focuse on irregular warfare/unconventional warfare/counterinsurgency. To be honest, I think that this is a dangerous tightrope to walk.
The truth of the matter is that we need to focus on both of these, maybe even to the degree that we ought to cut the Army in half (or at least into two pieces) and have one focused primarily on conventional fighting, and the other on developing counterinsurgent warfare. The speed with which we were able to take down the Taliban in 2001 and the Iraqi military in 2003 wasn't luck or accident, it was the result of excellent training and emphasis in conventional warfare. At the same time, we've spent the last several years re-learning doctrines that we'd forgotten from our past conflicts, and it would be stupid and counter-productive to throw that expertise away like we have before. I think we learned from the development of various systems like the LAV/Stryker following the end of the Cold War, that our conflicts aren't all going to be like the relatively mild fighting that we saw in Bosnia and Kosovo. If there's one lesson we've learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, it's that there's no substitute for an M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank.
If we're going to do anything, we need to develop systems and doctrine that are versatile enough to cover a broad spectrum of warfare challenges. I believe that this is possible for several reasons. First, I've spent my entire post-college career working as a defense contractor, so I know from experience that the defense contracting world benefits from a wealth of exceptionally bright folks, many of whom have served in a wide range of conflicts and operations during the last twenty or thirty years. Second, the Marine Corps is already doing it. The kinds of things that are discussed in the "new" counterinsurgency literature are the same things that I was already learning when I was taking Marine Corps course work from the NROTC unit in college. The Army isn't as agile as the Marine Corps, but it can adjust - the Army of today is barely recognizable when compared to the Army that I could have joined when I finished high school. Not only can it be done, we owe it to future generations of service personnel not to let our military and political leaders repeat the mistake of allowing any warfare disciplines to disappear into the ether.
* * *
Okay, I know that those of you who actually read all of that are getting bored, so here are a couple of lighter subjects. First, regular readers will remember that I'm quite enthusiastic about shipping container housing. Well, a company in Texas has found an excellent use for it: affordable housing for the very poor, particularly in foreign countries. Second, I noted the upcoming film Fireproof, which opens in theaters this week. Well, apparently, actor Kirk Cameron continues to honor a longstanding pledge to only kiss his wife, both on-screen and off. That, friends, is classy.
Alright, a couple of things. First off, a rant: Virginians are horrible drivers. They have no concept whatsoever of driving in the rain, they're rude, and it's only my own excellent driving skills that have prevented me from being turned into a statistic since I moved here last July. Seriously, I've seen soldiers drive, I've seen Californians drive, I've even seen Europeans drive, and these Virginians are by far the worst drivers I have ever seen. It's not helped by the fact that it's been exceptionally rainy and windy here over the last couple of days. It throws them into a complete panic.
Ladies and gentlemen, several weeks ago I posted an honest, heartfelt, and candid post in which I admitted wrongdoing and sought to close an open wound for both myself and a dear friend. This, ladies and gentlemen, involves the same person as that post; but it's nowhere near as diplomatic or as apologetic. In fact, this is an "I told you so" post. Folks, when I was spending a great deal of time with April, one of the things that we clashed about on a regular basis was Clay Aiken. April and her mother were huge fans, and April actually spent her hard earned money to fly around the country in order to attend Clay Aiken concerts. I didn't make that much of a fuss about it, but I could never understand why she got so excited about an American Idol runner-up who didn't even write his own songs. One of the things that I tried my best to just ignore, though, was Clay Aiken's sexual orientation. April insisted:
As such, I found it extremely interesting to hear that Clay Aiken had pirouetted out of the closet in a recent interview. Now, I'm not so much concerned with the fact that Clay Aiken is gay - what happens in Aiken's lace-adorned four-post bed is none of my concern, and to be honest, I don't want to know about it, at all. No, the point isn't that Clay Aiken's trousers fit poorly when he stumbles into a Chippendales club. The point is that the Fly was right, and April was wrong. As gracious as I generally try to be under circumstances such as these, I'm positively relishing this particular development.
Alright, folks, that's it for Friday from the Fly. Have an outstanding weekend, and we'll see if the Fly can't get some writing done. Also, check back soon for Stuff Fly Wants, which I'll try to post this weekend.
Michael Yon has an excellent three part series entitled "Death in the Corn" about his recent experiences at FOB Gibraltar in Afghanistan. (1, 2, 3) I think I also linked to Michael Totten's The Truth About Russia in Georgia within the past two weeks; it's really worth reading. He also has a piece entitled The Scorching of Georgia that discusses further developments in the situation, and the exceptionally irresponsible Russian act of bombing to set forest fires in Georgia. Seriously, if you aren't already, you should be reading both of these guys' articles. They're both important and exceptionally interesting, with great pictures of exotic countries and exceptional analysis of what's going on in the world today.
You know how much whining we've all started doing about the cheap crap that's coming out of China? Only there's not really that much that we can do about it because the Chinese pretty much own the market on cheap crap, and even expensive cheap crap? Well, it's apparently becoming a big problem in the West Bank. How? Well, I've discussed shemaghs on the blog a few times. These are called keffiyeh by the "Palestinians". Now, those of you who pay any attention to these matters at all will probably know that the West Bank is the portion of the "Palestinian" Territories that Israel still controls and occupies; the other half is Gaza, which has turned into one of the must tragic failures in human history since the Israelis unilaterally withdrew a couple of years ago. At any rate, things aren't great in the West Bank, but one of the few industries that used to pull money into the "Palestinian" territories was the weaving and sale of shemaghs/keffiyehs. They're seen as both a traditional Arab garment, and a symbol of "Palestinian" resistance or some other such nonsense. The point is, this was actually a productive livelihood for the residents of the West Bank. So what happened? The Chinese got into the keffiyeh-makin' business, and they're now saturating the market.
The poor Arabs can't even block the importation of the Chinese knock-offs due to regulations that they have to comply with in order to receive aid from the outside world. As much as I hate to link to anything related to al Jazeera, there's a video here that explains a bit more. Now, I tend to side with the Israelis on just about everything, but let's face it: part of the problem in the "Palestinian" territories is that they have no opportunities. Now, that's largely their own fault, but this could have been an industry that provided an honest living for the Arabs that remain in the territories. Instead, China's undercutting them and making things worse. You'd think that the people who negotiate these kinds of things (and I've known of at least two: General James Jones, USMC, and the Right Honorable Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) could identify this as a problem and arrange with the Chinese, who are supposedly everyone's pal, to stop this crap. As little sympathy as I have for the so-called "Palestinians", I own four shemaghs/keffiyeh that I've used for work in the past, and I'd much rather have one that was woven in the last remaining factory in Hebron than the four I have that were made in China. This seems like sort of a no-brainer to me.
The Wired.com Danger Room blog has an interesting post titled 'Conservatives' vs. 'Crusaders' for Army's Future. The article basically discusses the two schools of thought that are debating within the Army right now: one that wants to focus on conventional warfare, and the other that wants to focuse on irregular warfare/unconventional warfare/counterinsurgency. To be honest, I think that this is a dangerous tightrope to walk.
The truth of the matter is that we need to focus on both of these, maybe even to the degree that we ought to cut the Army in half (or at least into two pieces) and have one focused primarily on conventional fighting, and the other on developing counterinsurgent warfare. The speed with which we were able to take down the Taliban in 2001 and the Iraqi military in 2003 wasn't luck or accident, it was the result of excellent training and emphasis in conventional warfare. At the same time, we've spent the last several years re-learning doctrines that we'd forgotten from our past conflicts, and it would be stupid and counter-productive to throw that expertise away like we have before. I think we learned from the development of various systems like the LAV/Stryker following the end of the Cold War, that our conflicts aren't all going to be like the relatively mild fighting that we saw in Bosnia and Kosovo. If there's one lesson we've learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, it's that there's no substitute for an M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank.
If we're going to do anything, we need to develop systems and doctrine that are versatile enough to cover a broad spectrum of warfare challenges. I believe that this is possible for several reasons. First, I've spent my entire post-college career working as a defense contractor, so I know from experience that the defense contracting world benefits from a wealth of exceptionally bright folks, many of whom have served in a wide range of conflicts and operations during the last twenty or thirty years. Second, the Marine Corps is already doing it. The kinds of things that are discussed in the "new" counterinsurgency literature are the same things that I was already learning when I was taking Marine Corps course work from the NROTC unit in college. The Army isn't as agile as the Marine Corps, but it can adjust - the Army of today is barely recognizable when compared to the Army that I could have joined when I finished high school. Not only can it be done, we owe it to future generations of service personnel not to let our military and political leaders repeat the mistake of allowing any warfare disciplines to disappear into the ether.
Okay, I know that those of you who actually read all of that are getting bored, so here are a couple of lighter subjects. First, regular readers will remember that I'm quite enthusiastic about shipping container housing. Well, a company in Texas has found an excellent use for it: affordable housing for the very poor, particularly in foreign countries. Second, I noted the upcoming film Fireproof, which opens in theaters this week. Well, apparently, actor Kirk Cameron continues to honor a longstanding pledge to only kiss his wife, both on-screen and off. That, friends, is classy.
Alright, a couple of things. First off, a rant: Virginians are horrible drivers. They have no concept whatsoever of driving in the rain, they're rude, and it's only my own excellent driving skills that have prevented me from being turned into a statistic since I moved here last July. Seriously, I've seen soldiers drive, I've seen Californians drive, I've even seen Europeans drive, and these Virginians are by far the worst drivers I have ever seen. It's not helped by the fact that it's been exceptionally rainy and windy here over the last couple of days. It throws them into a complete panic.
Ladies and gentlemen, several weeks ago I posted an honest, heartfelt, and candid post in which I admitted wrongdoing and sought to close an open wound for both myself and a dear friend. This, ladies and gentlemen, involves the same person as that post; but it's nowhere near as diplomatic or as apologetic. In fact, this is an "I told you so" post. Folks, when I was spending a great deal of time with April, one of the things that we clashed about on a regular basis was Clay Aiken. April and her mother were huge fans, and April actually spent her hard earned money to fly around the country in order to attend Clay Aiken concerts. I didn't make that much of a fuss about it, but I could never understand why she got so excited about an American Idol runner-up who didn't even write his own songs. One of the things that I tried my best to just ignore, though, was Clay Aiken's sexual orientation. April insisted:
"If you could only see it when he takes a girl out of the audience and sings to her, you'd know. When he does that, you can totally tell that he's not gay."
- April, being wrong, circa 2005
As such, I found it extremely interesting to hear that Clay Aiken had pirouetted out of the closet in a recent interview. Now, I'm not so much concerned with the fact that Clay Aiken is gay - what happens in Aiken's lace-adorned four-post bed is none of my concern, and to be honest, I don't want to know about it, at all. No, the point isn't that Clay Aiken's trousers fit poorly when he stumbles into a Chippendales club. The point is that the Fly was right, and April was wrong. As gracious as I generally try to be under circumstances such as these, I'm positively relishing this particular development.
Alright, folks, that's it for Friday from the Fly. Have an outstanding weekend, and we'll see if the Fly can't get some writing done. Also, check back soon for Stuff Fly Wants, which I'll try to post this weekend.
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