Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
That is why I put it(article) up as a target and see who shoots at it I thought you were mad because it was written by an Army Guy and not a Marine
Well Slap, target or trap, you now know what bear bait looks like.
I really do not care if this guy is Army or Marine, in my opinion he is selling PC horse puckky based on bad analysis and shallow thinking. I will still stand by this warning: Watch out for those service publications, they tend to reinforce the current institutional propaganda (and the Marine Corps Gazette, as a rule, is not an exception).

Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
Big wars or Small wars don't matter that much to me....it is LONG wars that we seem to have the most trouble with. What do think Boyd would say about that? I don't think he would like them myself butt?????
Remember, the “Patterns of Conflict” Discourse was born out of a study Boyd started as a LIC Study (Low Intensity Conflict, that’s what we called it back in the 70s). Boyd’s method: to take things apart, find the pieces that worked, and put it back together again is noticeably absent in the article (Wow! Look what I built! What do we call it? Maybe a…Snowmobile!). LTC Wilcox had the right references but still got it wrong (18 Taken from Franklin C. Spinney presentation on Boyd, “Evolutionary Epistemology”) and (9 Montgomery C. Meigs, “Unorthodox Thoughts about Asymmetric Warfare”, Parameters (Summer 2003) pp. 4-5.) (You need to read those, BTW). Because the author didn’t use the method, another thing that bugged me…most of his examples were negative…he offered no positive “pieces”, yet he found the moral “Holy Grail”.

What Boyd would say about the LONG war is in Patterns…go back and review Patterns again. Moral Essence is extremely important, and it is so important you/we cannot afford to get it wrong. It is much bigger than just the sound bit of “the moral high ground”…it is systemic and it is “Cheng and Chi”; whatever works for us must also work against the enemy. Whenever Boyd gives a definition, it has two parts, for example, again (as Bear stomps his foot):
“Pump-up friction via negative factors to breed fear, anxiety, and alienation in order to generate many non-cooperative centers of gravity, as well as subvert those that adversary depends upon, thereby sever moral bonds that permit adversary to exist as an organic whole.
Simultaneously,
build-up and play counterweights against negative factors to diminish internal friction, as well as surface courage, confidence, and esprit, thereby make possible the human interactions needed to create moral bonds that permit us, as an organic whole, to shape and adapt to change.”
IMO, if we followed the thinking of the article, you and I would be discussing how a platoon of pilgrims, totting bibles, got to Baghdad as part of the 2007 surge, after all, what is more moral than a pilgrim.