Beautiful, Tyb
Focus on who is telling the truth.
1/5
@RealGenFlynn, [20.08.21 18:37]
Local Action truly has a National Impact:
“Tactical-level information is laden with strategic significance.”
UncoverDC journalist WendI Strauch Mahoney captures the essence of local action!
https://t.me/RealGenFlynn/574
@RealGenFlynn, [20.08.21 18:37]
https://t.me/RealGenFlynn/575
A Jan. 2010 report called “Fixing Intel:A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan” written by Gen. Michael Flynn, Captain Matt Pottinger, and Paul Batchelor may well be a useful blueprint to combat the tightening stranglehold being felt by many communities across America. It is also, in its own right, a remarkable analysis of some of the reasons we failed in Afghanistan.
Explicitly, the paper takes a look at the conflict in Afghanistan, the very real threat the Taliban exert on local, tribal communities, and how the collection of intel must and can be shifted to more effectively help forces operate to then “protect and persuade” the people of this Central Asian country. Metaphorically, this analysis has many useful parallels and lessons for Americans here and at this time.
Voices From the Field/Fixing Intel/Flynn/2010
The paper emphasizes a core belief that in fighting a counterinsurgency, “The most salient problems are attitudinal, cultural, and human.” It also points out that the intelligence community, at times misguidedly, places a high priority on secrecy and is, as a result, less likely to achieve “mission effectiveness.” The intelligence community, the authors believe, too easily “[falls] into the trap of waging anti-insurgency campaigns” which are “far from sufficient for military success in Afghanistan.”
The basic premise of the analysis is that, in order to be effective in Afghanistan, a shift in focus must happen—when it becomes clear the enemy is repeatedly winning. In this case, it was (and is) the Taliban in Afghanistan who has won. Simply stated, the authors contend that the focus must shift from a more enemy-centric, reactive mode to a more proactive focus on the lives of the people who are living under the thumb of fear and enemy threat.
Discussed is the reality people in the local Afghani communities face daily. They have learned patterns of behavior that help them function and operate daily in an environment of fear and imminent danger. Therefore, the analysis seems to advocate that an intelligence community that pursues a focus on the practicalities of the daily life of the local people; “the political, economic, and cultural environment” in which they live—is an intelligence community who will be more likely to guide a counterinsurgency that would reap the kind of lasting change local people need.
Such intel would go further to alter their willingness to distance themselves from a fear-based way of approaching daily life for themselves and their families than to merely react to attacks by the enemy.
“Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy. Having focused the overwhelming majority of its collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, the vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which U.S. and allied forces operate and the people they seek to persuade. Ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the power brokers are and how they might be influenced, incurious about the correlations between various development projects and the levels of cooperation among villagers, and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers—whether aid workers or Afghan soldiers.”
“Enemy-centric and counter-IED reports published by higher commands are of little use to warfighters in the field, most of whom already grasp who it is they are fighting and, in many cases, are the sources of the information in the reports in the first place..Officers in the field believe that the emphasis on force protection missions by spy planes and other non-HUMINT platforms should be balanced with collection and analysis of population-centric information. Is that desert road we’re thinking of paving really the most heavily trafficked route? Which mosques and bazaars attract the most people from week to week? Is that local contractor actually implementing the irrigation project we paid him to put into service?”
Also highlighted in the paper is the experience of the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, “when despite killing hundreds of thousands of Afghans, they faced a larger insurgency near the end of the war than they did at the beginning.” Again, the authors assert “the inescapable truth” that, counterintuitively, “merely killing insurgents usually serves to multiply enemies rather than subtract them.”
2/5
In summary, the authors explain:
1) brigade and regional command analytic products, in their present form, tell ground units little they do not already know; and 2) lethal targeting alone will not help U.S. and allied forces win in Afghanistan.
So what are the fresh elements of understanding and intel collection being advocated in the paper and how do they serve as a metaphor or a blueprint for our current climate of oppression here in the U.S.?
In both, grassroots-level engagement are key. The war is won or lost down at the local level. In fact, that is very much one of the foundational elements espoused by our founding fathers. The 10th Amendment set out to “confirm the understanding of the people at the time the Constitution was adopted, that powers not granted to the United States were reserved to the States or to the people.”
The authors of the paper describe the effect of a soldier’s actions on the battlefield. It doesn’t get any more grassroots than the boots on the ground. They discuss “the strategic corporal” or “how the actions of one soldier can have broader implications” on the nation as a whole. “Tactical-level information,” the authors emphasize, “is laden with strategic significance. All counterinsurgency is local. (“‘Tip'” O’Neil).”
“In a counterinsurgency, the flow is (or should be) reversed. The soldier or development worker on the ground is usually the person best informed about the environment and the enemy. Moving up through levels of hierarchy is normally a journey into greater degrees of cluelessness.”
A critical passage in the analysis can be found below. It is a recounting of an incident in NAWA in late 2009. It cannot be stated more emphatically that a shift away from reaction to and a focus on the enemy to a proper focus on understanding the ecosystem, the realities, and the perceptions of the local community were key aspects of the turnaround.
“A small number of U.S. Marines and British soldiers were the only foreign forces in Nawa, a district of 70,000 farmers in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The American and British troops could not venture a kilometer from their cramped base without confronting machine gun and rocket fire from insurgents. Local farmers, wary of reprisals by the Taliban, refused to make eye contact with foreign soldiers, much less speak with them or offer valuable battlefield and demographic information.”
“The tide began to turn in Nawa on July 2, when 800 Marines descended in helicopters and began sweeping across the district on foot, establishing nearly two dozen patrol bases in villages and cornfields along the way. Five months later and with few shots fired by Marines after their initial operation, the situation in Nawa is radically different. Insurgents find it substantially more difficult to operate without being ostracized or reported by farmers; government officials meet regularly with citizens to address their grievances, removing this powerful instrument of local control from the Taliban’s arsenal; the district center has transformed from a ghost town into a bustling bazaar; and IED incidents are down 90 percent. Nawa’s turnaround, although still fragile, could not have occurred without population-centric counterinsurgency techniques. This evolution illustrates the pivotal role intelligence plays when a battalion commits itself to understanding the environment at least as well as it understands the enemy.“
“The men of 1st Battalion, 5th Marines who fanned out across the district that hot July morning had to operate with no more supplies than they could carry on their backs. For weeks, they had no hardened bases, little electricity, and only radios for communication. The battalion S-2 and deputy intelligence officers, finding their unit widely dispersed across an alien environment without classified or unclassified data networks, responded with two particularly farsighted decisions. First, they distributed their intelligence analysts down to the company level, and second, they decided that understanding the people in their zone of influence was a top priority.”
The authors go on to say that how one deals with “local residents and their perceptions” can affect the way the war goes:
“What do locals think about the insurgents? Do they feel safer or less safe with us around? What disputes exist between villages or tribes? As the picture sharpened, the focus honed in on identifying what the battalion called ‘anchor points’—local personalities and local grievances that, if skillfully exploited, could drive a wedge between insurgents and the greater population. In other words, anchor points represented the enemy’s critical vulnerabilities.”
3/5
The battalion, in this case, found vulnerabilities to exploit using thoughtfully collected intel from the local people and elders. In the end, the integrated intelligence gave the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines the kind of information they needed to engage and strengthen the power structure of the local elders while at the same time subverting the Taliban power structure.
“The battalion commander partnered with the district governor, traveling with him constantly and participating in impromptu meetings with citizens to build their confidence in Afghan and U.S. security. To demonstrate the benefits of working with the Afghan government, the battalion facilitated development projects that addressed grievances identified through coordinated surveys of the populace by Marines and civilian officials. These efforts paid off. The district governor persuaded elders to reconstitute a traditional council featuring locally selected representatives from each sub-district. The council now serves as the primary advisory board to the Afghan government in Nawa.”
The paper also states that you must turn your focus to serving and supporting the battalions in the field. “Maps, imagery, surveillance, and SIGNT support” are some of the things battalions need. It is a “proactive approach” where officers:
“Use telephones or show up in person to walk the battalion’s S-2 through the support they can provide, like tailors fitting a customer for a new suit. they personally know the soldiers going out on patrol each day and this makes a difference.”
With this kind of intel collection and support, patterns of behavior are identified. Identifying those patterns in many cases prevent well-intended decisions from having unintended negative consequences.
The well/The Epoch Times/2009
The example of the building of water wells in Afghanistan is instructive:
“A foreign-funded well constructed in the center of a village in southern Afghanistan was destroyed—not by the Taliban —but by the village’s women. Before, the women had to walk a long distance to draw water from a river, but this was exactly what they wanted. The establishment of a village well deprived them of their only opportunity to gather socially with other women.”
“Swedish troops operating in northern Afghanistan also found that new wells could create animosities between neighboring tribes by depleting the aquifer in one area in favor of another. This is a problem well known to water engineers the world over, but not necessarily to every executive agency or military commander operating in Afghanistan. The Swedes now repair wells rather than dig new ones. Without the ability to capture this simple history, prosaic as it may be, others are doomed to repeat it. Equally important is the cumulative effect of thousands of other small but important histories and cultural vignettes of this type.”
One of the wisest statements found in the analysis can be found in the quote from General McChrystal:
“The conflict will be won by persuading the population, not by destroying the enemy.”
General McChrystal and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Command Sergeant Major Michael T. Hall recently wrote:
“History is replete with examples of powerful military forces that lost wars to much weaker opponents because they were inattentive to nuances in their environment…A single-minded obsession with IEDs, while understandable, is inexcusable if it causes commanders to fail to outsmart the insurgency and wrest away the initiative…”
“A military force, culturally programmed to respond conventionally (and predictably) to insurgent attacks, is akin to the bull that repeatedly charges a matador’s cape— only to tire and eventually be defeated by a much weaker opponent,”
“This is predictable—the bull does what comes naturally. While a conventional approach is instinctive, that behavior is self-defeating.”
4/5
Where We Are Today
For over a year now, groups of parents have shown up at school board meetings, at rallies, in front of legislatures in hopes of wresting back freedoms that are rapidly slipping away. We have been told to mask up, vaccinate, stay home, stop talking, close businesses, leave loved ones to die alone, not to travel, not to get certain treatments, you-name-it. All these edicts and mandates are either coming from people we perceive to be in power or people we say have it. Are we, however, employing a winning strategy by focusing our time and attention on what the “enemy” is doing?
How can we use the lessons outlined in the blueprint from Afghanistan to change our paradigm? Who is the enemy and should our focus shift somewhere else? Who are the people we seek to help, protect, and persuade and how are we collecting the kind of intel on them that will engage their support and subvert the enemy? Why do we keep losing at the mercy of school boards, legislatures, and bureaucrats in our government? Are we falling into the “trap of anti-insurgency,” chasing our tails, reacting to the enemy and losing our story and our strength? Is our mission ineffective because of secrecy and an unwillingness to share the practices that have the power to shift the power to us?
Do we adequately understand the fears of our silent allies—those individuals we seek to enjoin our fight? Why is it that some continue to bring their 5-year-olds to school in a mask even when they may already know the masks help very little, and in fact, may even be harmful? What lessons can we learn from the battalions in NAWA? What can we do to understand other “people in their zone of influence” and help them explore and offer their talents for the benefit of the community? How can we help people repair and continue to drink from their own wells?
It seems that there is a message in this blueprint that is poignantly relevant to what is now happening in our country. Would these authors suggest that Americans are so focused on “the enemy” that they are failing? Should our focus now shift to one of operating proactively by our rules? Perhaps the time for thinking we can persuade the enemy they are wrong is now over.
We aren’t winning. They aren’t listening. Maybe it is because we are playing by their rules. Maybe it is time to make our own ecosystem, informed by intelligence, which gives our silent allies the tools they need to resist tyranny and regain their freedoms.
If the fear is loss of school structure, maybe we form home school communities. Many are already cropping up. If the worry is lack of childcare, maybe a community pulls together and helps its mothers. Can a website be developed that creates an ecosystem of doctors, media, businesses, school options, churches, and platforms that support a community that seeks freedom from tyranny? What ideas do you have that embolden the ones who are too afraid to speak up? What can you do to learn more about what the barriers for participation are?
We are in uncharted waters. The way is not clear. However, it is becoming abundantly clear that we are continuing to focus on and react to an enemy that has little interest in our livelihoods, our health, our wellbeing, and our communities.
The time has come to shift the focus from the enemy to the people we seek to protect and persuade—our children, our grandchildren, and all the allies who have been sitting on the sidelines, hoping the tyranny will magically disappear. It won’t.
Help your allies make better decisions by giving them the support they need to overcome whatever their perceived or real barriers are. Be there to catch them when they fall. Help them find the tools they need. Make them, not the “enemy,” the object of your time and treasure.
The message is being sent loud and clear. We are fighting and losing because we are fighting by the terms of the enemy while thinking that is the way we win. Sometimes the way you shift your perspective makes all the difference in the outcomes you seek. “Tactical-level information is laden with strategic significance.”
In the words of Sun Tzu, “One mark of a great soldier is that he fight on his own terms or fights not at all.”
https://uncoverdc.com/2021/08/20/a-blueprint-for-america-lessons-from-afghanistan/
happy days
GEORGENEWS, [20.08.21 21:57]
SAVE AMERICA
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
AUGUST 20, 2021
BEDMINSTER, NJ
Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America
This Afghanistan Disaster wouldn't have happened with Trump. The Taliban knew I would rain down fire and fury if any American personnel or interests were harmed, the likes of which have never been seen. This is a catastrophe of historic proportions.
###
https://t.me/georgenews/1936
I ran Team Trump’s Afghan withdrawal — Biden’s attempt to blame us is just sad
By Kash Patel
August 19, 2021 6:35pm Updated
Former President Donald Trump
"We handed our entire plan to the incoming Biden administration during the lengthy transition. The new team simply wasn't interested," writes Kash Patel, a Pentagon official under former President Trump.
President Joe Biden has sought to place blame for the shocking dénouement in Afghanistan on the situation he “inherited” from the Trump administration. What a sad-sack attempt at blame-shifting. Team Trump’s withdrawal plan was sound. What proved catastrophic were Biden’s changes to that plan.
I’m intimately familiar with former President Donald Trump’s Afghanistan strategy. In November 2020, I was named chief of staff at the Pentagon, where one of my primary responsibilities was to wind down the forever war in Afghanistan.
Trump instructed me to arrange a conditions-based, methodical exit plan that would preserve the national interest. The plan ended up being fairly simple: The Afghan government and the Taliban were both told they would face the full force of the US military if they caused any harm to Americans or American interests in Afghanistan.
Next, both parties would negotiate to create an interim-joint government, and both sides had to repudiate al Qaeda. Lastly, a small special-operations force would be stationed in the country to take direct action against any terrorist threats that arose. When all those conditions were met — along with other cascading conditions — then a withdrawal could, and did, begin.
We successfully executed this plan until Jan. 20, 2021. During this interval — when there were no US casualties in Afghanistan — President Ashraf Ghani and the Taliban conducted multiple rounds of negotiations, and al Qaeda was sidelined. The result was a successful drawdown of US forces in Afghanistan to 2,500, the lowest count since the dawn of the War on Terror.
We handed our entire plan to the incoming Biden administration during the lengthy transition. The new team simply wasn’t interested.
Everything changed when the new commander in chief declared that US forces would leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021, pushing back the Trump administration’s timetable by four months. Crucially, he didn’t condition the withdrawal on continued adherence to the agreed-upon stipulations. It would be an unconditional pullout with an arbitrary date based on pure symbolism — and set in stone.
At that point, the Taliban sat back and waited for the date to draw near, then launched a countrywide offensive, knowing they had no reason to fear any reprisals from this administration. The ongoing chaos — not least the stranding of US personnel and allies — was the natural result of the Biden administration’s decision to eschew a conditions-based plan.
With an unmovable withdrawal date in place, Team Biden showed no appreciation for ground-level intelligence reporting, which was largely rendered irrelevant. Just this week, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, claimed the security situation in Afghanistan “unfolded at unexpected speed.”
That is a shocking statement to hear from one of our nation’s most senior national-security officials. No one should have been the slightest bit surprised that when relieved of any conditions or obligations, the Taliban could and would overrun the whole country in the absence of US military power.
Tragically, because of the Biden administration’s single-minded focus on the pullout date, hard-nosed intelligence was replaced with wishful thinking and false promises. In April, Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed, “We will withdraw our troops responsibly, deliberately, safely. . . . We’ll pursue a durable and just political settlement between the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban.”
None of that happened. Last month Blinken assured us that Biden’s withdrawal plan wouldn’t endanger the US embassy in Kabul, which is now evacuated. And Biden himself declared last month that it was “highly unlikely” the Taliban would overrun Afghanistan, which they have now done with blinding speed.
Amid this cheap political rhetoric, ignorance of the ground-level security situation and the lack of a conditions-based plan, Afghanistan has fallen. America and the world deserve much better from those privileged to serve in high office. We are witnessing the utter collapse of a government — and not just in Afghanistan.
Kash Patel served as chief of staff for the Department of Defense and as deputy assistant to the president for counterterrorism in the Trump administration.
https://nypost.com/2021/08/19/i-ran-trumps-afghan-withdrawal-bidens-attempt-to-blame-us-is-sad/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=ph.telegra.Telegraph.Share
It seems being “woke” is being replaced with being “awake.”
#TheGreatAwakening
https://t.me/AmericanAFMindyRobinson/175
Jim Watkins, [19.08.21 20:55]
[Forwarded from SomeBitchIKnow]
[ Video ]
Important for California recall.
https://t.me/jim_watkins/729
Great dig
it was a comment on positive vs negative
when kids are running down the road, if you yell at them to stay off the road, their focus is the road, they will veer towards it
if kids are running down the road and you yell at them look at the path, we walk on the path, their attention is on the path and not on the danger of the road
semantics which shape an attitude and direction of attention
GEORGENEWS, [20.08.21 22:28]
SAVE AMERICA
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
AUGUST 20, 2021
BEDMINSTER, NJ
Endorsement of Adam Laxalt
Adam Laxalt is running for Senate in Nevada to defeat Harry Reid’s, Chuck Schumer's, and Nancy Pelosi's handpicked successor, and win an America First majority in the U.S. Senate. Adam is a Navy Veteran who served our Nation bravely in Iraq. As a former Attorney General he has always supported our Law Enforcement and keeping our communities safe. He fought valiantly against the Election Fraud, which took place in Nevada. He is strong on Secure Borders and defending America against the Radical Left. Adam has my Complete and Total Endorsement!
###
https://t.me/georgenews/1937
Sidney Powell
TO ALL HUMANITY
• Zinc / Zinc Ionophore approach inhibits RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RDRP)
• RDRP is essential for some RNA viruses such as:
• all the Corona virus strains
• all the influenza strains
• RSV
Zinc Ionophores include:
• Hydroxychloroquine
• Ivermectin
• Quercetin
• EGCG
We can potentially cure all Corona, Influenza, and RSV infections with a safe, cheap, and oral treatment approach.
This is why the Globalists, Pharmaceutical industry, tyrants, despots, and devolved pagans are opposing this is approach.
It undermines their agenda, profits, and the use of fear as a weapon.
We must resist and sacrifice at all costs and win the war for God consciousness and freedom from tyranny.
Vladimir Zev Zelenko MD
https://gettr.com/post/p8bu2oa250
filtering you for being sly