'The Warrior Ethos' talk

 My last post reminded me of something I wanted to say about Hegseth's speech. I know I already shared someone else's commentary on it and iirc it covered this, but I wanted to add emphasis to it.

When I was reading up on counterterrorism, I wound up reading a book about the Algerian fight for independence. What I recall, and what I have seen repeatedly when dealing with terrorism in general, is that governments lose when they overreact.

See, when the government decides that the terrorists are so bad that anything is justified - then the abuses they tolerate start to radicalize previously neutral people. If the government arrests everyone near an incident, some of those people are innocent. And as they sit in jail wondering why they're there, they tend to get radicalized...

As does the friends and family around them. (Sort of like we're seeing in Chicago with ICE, from what I hear).

Basically a government fighting a terrorist organization will often stalemate - the terrorists can make citizens feel unsafe, insecure, and unhappy with the government but they can't really force the government to do much of anything. 

It's only when the government overreacts that terrorists really win. Because the government pushes citizens into their arms.

So that whole speech he gave about Rules of Engagement?

It's bullshit. Childish bullshit. I think it came from a common misperception from the Vietnam War, tbh.

There was a genuine feeling in the military that they 'won every battle and lost the war', that our fighters were better, and that if they just didn't have to deal with all the rules of engagement they could have kicked the Viet Cong's asses.

Now, I don't know enough about the reasoning for some of the decisions back then. For why the Air Force was refused permission to bomb certain targets or not...

But blaming the loss on those rules of engagement sounds to me like how baseball fans always blame the refs when their team loses.

It's just something to make you feel better about a loss. 

Some of it may be legitimate, in which case the rules of engagement should be modified. But not having them at all is a very, very, very bad idea.

I want to emphasize that again - it's a very bad idea.

Because here's another little thing you learn about leadership - you set the tone. When you take over a new command and you give your little speech, you tell your people what you care about and what you don't. You tell them where the lines are drawn. You set expectations.

And the thing of it is, although I loved my soldiers and they were all amazing men and women - many of them are also dumbasses. Many joined straight out of high school, have a steady income for the first time ever and a nice little sign-on bonus, and they will do the stupidest things.

Plus, there's always that small fraction of the population that is outright sociopathic and/or sadistic. 

Like - you set expectations and establish boundaries because if you don't, there's always going to be someone who goes too far.

There's a reason so many militaries are known for raping and looting, and it's only good leadership that prevents it.

So when you have a president who pardons someone who went too far, when you have a SecDef who tells his senior leaders that we "don't fight with stupid rules of engagement" - without ever clarifying which of those rules are 'stupid' - what they are doing is giving a green light to any dumbass or sadistic soldier who will totally use that to justify going too far.

The alternative, the brute use of power to stomp out opposition, basically puts you in the position where you have to put the boot on their neck and never let up.

It's the road to tyranny, if you don't provoke a counterreaction that puts you out of power entirely.

Now, perhaps the SecDef only was referring to some of the rules of engagement, but without clarification he just sounds like a childish cartoon villain who doesn't know what he's talking about.

But he sure is giving fan service to the wannabe war criminals.