Tactical Jenga vs. The Strategic Stopwatch
Just got back from spending five days watching Dr. David Kilcullen in action at Joint Urban Warrior (JUW) 08, a US Marine Corps and US Joint Forces Command cosponsored program.
Here is a slide from one of Dr. Kilcullen's briefs I thought might stimulate some commentary here on the Council. It depicts a framework for understanding (or more precisely “how to think about”) the transition of responsibility and authority of security, essential services, humanitarian assistance, economic development, and political governance from a coalition to host nation.
The illustration may be bad...
but the concept makes sense to me. What he's doing is attempting to show how outside considerations can interact with the realities of what's happening in the theater. The spikes show areas where local considerations might bump up against the external timeline and create domestic issues (like "is the surge working") and thus spark in-theater damage control (or adjustments to the external timeline).
I think it's more of an internalized illustration, based more on how domestic considerations drive tactical decisions (or can at least influence them). Haven't had enough coffee yet to really break it down, but I can see what he's doing. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but I can see where he's going.
The Analogy Comes Tumbling Down
I really want to like (and borrow) this graphic, but the application of Jenga as an analogy ultimately ... falls apart for me.
Others here have rather cleverly noted how the game involves multiple actors, looking for fault lines, etc. Still, for me, evoking the game works cross-purposes with the intended message behind the slide.
Assuming that the Jenga tower represents stability/order/a working government, consider: The way in which one wins a game of Jenga is to be the last person to make a move, immediately proceeding the point at which someone else makes the whole thing tumble to the ground.
Not to put too coarse a point on it, but you could also say that the objective is to make the destruction of the structure look like someone else's fault.
I hope to come up with a constructive suggestion of a more constructive analogy, preferably in the form of a game or activity. In the meantime, anyone else have any suggestions? Or interpretations?
What? Wait until you have enough information to
comment intelligently? That's un-American. Or something... ;)
(so it's okay for Wilf... :D)
i didnt get it either, and still dont too
Quote:
Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
Looked at this slide for 10 minutes. I read the words, and I understand them, but I just don't get it. It means nothing to me.
maybe that is why i rarely use pp slides in the classroom to teach history and perhaps even why I have never cared much for Boyd and his so-called brilliant thinking reduced down into charts and slides.
I am a big fan of the written word, so can somebody who understands the slide write out in a couple of paragraphs what it means. Kilkullen is an excellent writer which is why I have often been baffled by his reliance on these meta-pp slides presentations. If he wanted to use a slide why didnt he just write a couple of the salient points into sentences, put that on the slide and lecture from it?
My guess is that he is saying that because there is more flexibility in Iraq (I assume we are talking about Iraq here) with "tactical conditions" (I am not sure what that term means, is he talking about US forces or Iraqi, or Iraqi conditions, or combinations of all of these?) than "strategic" because that timeline is somehow fixed (not sure what that means either) then this is gentile's interpretation of what the main point of the slide to be:
continue American efforts in Iraq along the lines he (along with Biddle) has recommended before that orients our efforts on reconciling and rebuilding Iraq from the grass roots, or bottom up approach.
Am I on to something here or just "stupido" like my friend wilf and others too who are confused with the slide.
SWJED; perhaps it is the time for you to be didactic and not coy with the meaning here since you spent a number of days listening to Dr Kilkullen.