Inspired by the extraordinary ignorance of all the Republican participants in the primaries, less Ron Paul, a FACT has emerged that is of such importance that I am moved to upgrade the Event Report I did on 27 September 2010, recording the wisdom and knowledge of MajGen Robert Scales, USA (Ret) PhD, speaking at the Brookings Institution. Notes taken and published with permission.
EVENT REPORT: MajGen Robert Scales, USA (Ret), PhD at the Brookings Institution, 27 September 2010
TOPIC: “The Next Generation of Small Unit Warfare [Posted with Permission of the Event Sponsor]
Robert H. Scales, Jr. is a retired U.S. Army Major General and former Commandant of the US Army War College. He now works as a military analyst, news commentator, and author.
Review: Firepower In Limited War addressed the disconnect between troops engaged in low intensity conflict, and the national and defense intelligence communities. He has also authoredFuture Warfare, Yellow Smoke: the Future of Land Warfare for America’s Military, and The Iraq War: A Military History.
Speaking to around 50 people under the auspices of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at Brookings, the presentation was summed up at the very end as General Scales offered his opinion on the essence of the four World Wars:
World War I: Chemistry World War II: Physics (especially radar)
World War III: Information (the Cold War) World War IV: Human Factors
His focus is on the reality that 4% of the “total force,” the engaged infantry, bear 80-81% of the total casualties, but receive less than 1% of the over-all acquisitions and training budget. He calls this, rather memorably, a “cosmic incongruity.”
Mark Thompson's 27 December posting, “General Newt,” alerted readers of Battleland to Karen Tumulty's pastiche of mini portraits of Newt Gingrich's martial prowess. Mark highlighted one the few passages that zeroed in on the insubstantial essence of the K Street Clausewitz.
Unable to contain my mirth, I immediately forwarded Mark's posting to to my close friend, the noted military reformer, Pierre Sprey, who replied immediately, with his usual rapier wit:
Chuck,
…What no reporter seems to have tumbled to is that Newt is dumb as an old boot. John Boyd and I had several years of “working” with him in the Congressional Military Reform Caucus, years during which Newt found it advantageous to pose as a reformer.
Within a month or so, John and I both realized that Newt had almost perfect recall of other people's intellectual-sounding ideas and phrases–and could barf them back convincingly without understanding a shred of the content. At the drop of a hat he could string together a two hour lecture on anything from concocting new war-winning technologies to optimizing grand America's strategy the 21st century. For the listening layman, the entire two hours would flow seamlessly and every idea would sound newly minted and carefully crafted. But for those of us who knew the sources of Newt's cribs, it was perfectly obvious that not one of those ideas was his, nor did he have the shallowest comprehension of any of them.
It has been clear for some time that the conduct of the banking and financial industry is one very important cause of the 2008 credit crunch. Moreover, for-profit banks by and large fail to deliver services to the poor, deepening poor people’s marginalization from the mainstream economy. The banks’ relentless pursuit of profit, an intrinsic feature of the industry (as of the broader economy), continues to expose all of us to the risk of another banking crisis that would repeat the enormous harm done last time, above all to the world’s poorest. Sadly, it’s unrealistic to expect Washington to do much to curb the industry, given the banks’ enormous lobbying sway and privileged access to senior officials, regardless which party is in power.
Mexican drug cartels, in a disturbing new trend, are luring young people from Southern California to smuggle drugs across the border and carry out other illicit work for the criminal enterprises, according to law enforcement officials and youth activists.
The result: More than 5,000 young people, most of them Latinos, have been held in San Diego County jails over the last two years, according to KPBS San Diego.
Phi Beta Iota: Crime in Southern California has been directly influenced by the US wars in Central America and Colombia, and by CIA and DEA sponsorship of strategic drug suppliers into the USA. The US Government consists of good people trapped in a very bad system, in which a two-party tyranny prevents the government from having intelligence and integrity–or a strategy–in the public interest. When citizens see that both the government and the major banks are corrupt, the benefits of participating in organized crime take on new alure. A rise in crime is a direct consequence of a drop in government legitimacy and efficacy.
Brilliant on the problems, missing the reality of the two-party tyranny,December 30, 2011
I received this book as a gift, along with Capitalism 101. Of the two I prefer this one.
On the positive side, both books represent a growing body of citizens who understand that big government is very much alike to central government, and both are forms of fascism / socialism that are bad for the majority.
On the negative side, neither book seems to appreciate the fact that the Republican Party is every bit as corrupt as the Democratic Party.
Being already predisposed to agree with the author on the fundamentals, I found the book interesting but disconnected from a great deal of what I have been working on, including transparency, truth, and trust. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are corrupt; both have been busy borrowing a trillion dollars a year in our name while seeking to regulate our lives into misery.
There is a place for limited government, and a vital role: keeping business honest. Trust lowers the cost of doing business. The two-party tyranny has corrupted America, turned America into The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead.
The books well researched with many interesting notes, and it has an index [the same is not true of Capitalism 101, which is more like a bunch of personal stories bundled together.]
Where I have a problem with books like this (agreeing with the author on the basics) is in the denial of the raw fact that the Republicans have done as much if not more than the Democrats to loot the Republic, they just work in a different way. It was a Republican, Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who as banking chairman put in 200 pages of lobbyist written deregulation five minutes before the bill was to be voted on, and it was the other 99 Senators, from BOTH parties, who lacked the integrity to cry foul. It is the Republicans that started the practice of borrowing a trillion dollars a year so they could earmark their way to personal wealth at our expense, charging 5% for each allocation of the public's money to projects we do not need and cannot afford.
We live in a two-party tyranny, and the first thing my fellow lovers of liberty have to get a grip on is that BOTH the Republican AND the Democratic parties are corrupt, have sold us out, and cannot be trusted with the White House in 2012. One reason I am running for the presidential nomination within the Reform Party is because I have concluded that there is nothing wrong with America the Beautiful that cannot be fixed by flushing BOTH parties down the toilet, uniting the Independents, moderates from both parties, the Greens, Libertarians, Constitution, and others in a massive rebirth of a Republic that is Of, By, and For We the People.
So this book, and the Tea Party, are welcome voices, but both need to get a grip on reality: BOTH parties are corrupt, BOTH parties have enabled Wall Street corruption AND Welfare / Socialism corruption. I share the author's view that three fifths or more of the federal government should be shut down, and I advocate a balanced budget and true cost economics as a means of getting all of us back in harmony with reality and one another.
On the positive side, both books represent a growing body of citizens who understand that big government is very much alike to central government, and both are forms of fascism / socialism that are bad for the majority.
On the negative side, neither book seems to appreciate the fact that the Republican Party is every bit as corrupt as the Democratic Party.
Being already predisposed to agree with the author on the fundamentals, I found the book interesting but disconnected from a great deal of what I have been working on, including transparency, truth, and trust. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are corrupt; both have been busy borrowing a trillion dollars a year in our name while seeking to regulate our lives into misery.
The book is clearly a labor of love and a gift to us all. It does not have an index or references. I salute the author for taking the time to write and publish this book–Thomas Jefferson said “A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry,” and one can clearly find educated citizens reading this book and thinking about these challenges.
The author's “big idea” is called “Radical Transparency,” what the rest of us have been calling “Open Books” for decades. I like it, and in the context of his elegant story-telling, I buy in. This book also goes to a five because it is an Information Operations (IO) books, ably focused on data, information, and information-sharing as well as collective sense-making. He author anticipates most of us becoming “active agents” for change, armed with information as Thomas Jefferson understood so well.
CORE NUGGET: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is not done for most things, but when done right, it is mainly data and it tracks impacts on human health, ecosystems, climate change, and resource draw-down, for every single component and every single process including transport, packaging, etcetera. Toward the end of the book when the author talks about how an LCA commons is emerging, and quotes Andy Ruben of normally ultra-evil Wal-Mart as saying that LCA innovation “is the largest strategic opportunity companies will see for the next fifty years,” I am seriously impressed.
Brilliant on the problems, missing the reality of the two-party tyranny,December 30, 2011
Relevance, Content, Price–Solid Five,December 29, 2011