Return-Path: <sentto-279987-5350-1033653730-fc=all.net@returns.groups.yahoo.com> Delivered-To: fc@all.net Received: from 204.181.12.215 [204.181.12.215] by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.7.4) for fc@localhost (single-drop); Thu, 03 Oct 2002 07:05:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 8605 invoked by uid 511); 3 Oct 2002 14:01:21 -0000 Received: from n38.grp.scd.yahoo.com (66.218.66.106) by all.net with SMTP; 3 Oct 2002 14:01:21 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-279987-5350-1033653730-fc=all.net@returns.groups.yahoo.com Received: from [66.218.67.201] by n38.grp.scd.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 03 Oct 2002 14:02:12 -0000 X-Sender: fc@red.all.net X-Apparently-To: iwar@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_1_1_4); 3 Oct 2002 14:02:10 -0000 Received: (qmail 70763 invoked from network); 3 Oct 2002 14:02:09 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.217) by m9.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 3 Oct 2002 14:02:09 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO red.all.net) (12.240.147.208) by mta2.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 3 Oct 2002 14:02:10 -0000 Received: (from fc@localhost) by red.all.net (8.11.2/8.11.2) id g93E2CF11979 for iwar@onelist.com; Thu, 3 Oct 2002 07:02:12 -0700 Message-Id: <200210031402.g93E2CF11979@red.all.net> To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List) Organization: I'm not allowed to say X-Mailer: don't even ask X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3] From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net> X-Yahoo-Profile: fcallnet Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list iwar@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:iwar-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com> Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 07:02:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [iwar] The Fog and Friction of War (fwd) Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit [FC - a really interesting article -0 at least to me.] 2 October The Fog and Friction of War By: GySgt Bob Howard, USMC Classified leaks; senators visiting Iraq and criticizing the president in public; retired flag grade officers providing insight on how they might see forces employed for combat; what is our country doing? I'm all for freedom of expression, but for members of the government to do any of the above unmentionables should be considered criminal. It is criminal down at the military service level. Members cannot leak info without going to prison. Members cannot bad mouth the president without repercussions as well. The fight at the highest levels of the government needs to be behind closed doors. Let the public citizens demonstrate and let the media guess, but don't give away our country's actions or intentions, and bad mouth the government service members are going to have to fight for in some capacity or another. For the general public it's called freedom of speech; for members fighting the enemy in uniform or under some kind of cover, this kind of confusing behavior is a recipe for disaster. Balkan and Mid-East Cultures have no respect for vacillation. There are three levels to employing forces; the Strategic, the Operational and Tactical levels. In layman terms this means the Political level; CINC, to roughly Regiment Level; and grunt level-the people carrying the guns. Waging war from my way of understanding requires a focused effort at all levels; a solid round vice a shot gun blast. The solid round can kill an elephant, the latter a duck- if you are lucky. Without going into detail, reading General Vo Nguyen Giap's book "How We Won The War" illustrates this point. My point is simply this. Conflict occurs at three levels; the spiritual/moral, mental and the physical levels. Fog and Friction, AKA confusion & uncertainty, is what we try to levy upon the enemy to break his will to fight-bottom line. Conflict is not about destroying the enemy's weapons, cities, people or soldiers. It's about making an enemy realize that fighting will do him no good, so he should give up. The fact that material damage and loss of life occurs is simply a by product of attaining the objective of bending him to see our will through. This is an example of how fog and friction can work for us. On the other hand, if the enemy's Fog (the unknown) is reduced via the leaking of classified information and blabbing by former senior military experts; or a schizophrenic political leadership, we give him a reason to believe that he can win the fight. WE GIVE HIM THE WILL TO FIGHT. This is especially true if the enemy is backed into a corner. Why tell him our probable courses of action and give him the opportunity to put up the best and hardest defense for the sake of martyrdom and enlarging the conflict? Why break Sun Tzu's dictum on maintaining the State of Formlessness by telling the enemy what we are going to do and how? Certain members of this country have convinced me that members of the armed services need to buy their spouses a hell of a lot of life insurance to carry them over if they, or their friends, die because of someone running their soup-cooler. Where was Sun Tzu's press corps? My best guest was in the grave. I'm sure he considered them to be enemy spies. Today's press reporting via leaks is stupid. We can go on and on with the Info Ops theory, but that would never need to exist if people kept their mouths shut. Whether or not anyone realizes this, war has already started. War begins in the mind and heart. Whether the U.S. agrees with the president or not needs to be handled in a better manner. A service member goes with the decision made by this government regardless of feeling. They just want to come to a home at the end of a day too. Service members do not want to freeload or get special benefits. They will die for something to believe in, that is the Constitution and to "Defend this Country From All Enemies Foreign and Domestic." Semper Fidelis, A Marine who plans to retire in 3 years. Bob Howard GySgt USMC --This communication is confidential to the parties it is intended to serve-- Fred Cohen Fred Cohen & Associates.........tel/fax:925-454-0171 fc@all.net The University of New Haven.....http://www.unhca.com/ http://all.net/ Sandia National Laboratories....tel:925-294-2087 ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> 4 DVDs Free +s&p Join Now http://us.click.yahoo.com/pt6YBB/NXiEAA/MVfIAA/kgFolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ------------------ http://all.net/ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2002-12-31 12:01:54 PST