The Mess

[jbird4049]

As I understand it some of these pics are by "peeping toms." So that kind of invasion on a military installation is a huge deal now standard sexting, I know we are not supposed to say this but these are young people being stupid young people.

Pictures of sleeping/passed out naked chicks. Not really what I consider peeping toms, but still illegal AFAIK.

I heard showerers and changing rooms but passed out sleeping is still pretty bad.

Yeah. That does make some difference. I was just thinking people sending pics of themselves.

[Okeefenokee]

Pictures of sleeping/passed out naked chicks. Not really what I consider peeping toms, but still illegal AFAIK.

I heard showerers and changing rooms but passed out sleeping is still pretty bad.

Yeah. That does make some difference. I was just thinking people sending pics of themselves.

99% of it is sexting. Don't let the headlines fool you.

[pineapplemike]

I'm glad this guy is on my team

[Smitty-48]

SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS: Our strategy right now is to accelerate the campaign against ISIS. It is a threat to all civilized nations. And the bottom line is we are going to move in an accelerated and reinforced manner, throw them on their back foot. We have already shifted from attrition tactics where we shove them from one position to another in Iraq and Syria, to annihilation tactics where we surround them. Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa. We're not going to allow them to do so. We're going to stop them there and take apart the caliphate.

Excuse me, General, but "accelerate and anihilate" is not a strategy, more of a boilerplate aspiration, perhaps a slogan "Accelerate to Anihilate!"

SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS: Well, attrition is where you keep pushing them out of the areas that they're in, John. And what we intend to do by surrounding them is to not allow them to fall back, thus, reinforcing themselves as they get smaller and smaller, making the fight tougher and tougher.

You see that right now, for example, in western Mosul that is surrounded and the Iraqi-- security forces are moving against them. Tal Afar is now surrounded. We have got efforts underway right now to surround their self-declared caliphate capital of Raqqa. That surrounding operation is going on. And once surrounded, then we'll go in and clean them out.

Yes, General, you said that, but still not a strategy; "advance, surround, kill"; that's tactics not strategy, "tougher and tougher"; another aspirational slogan.

SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS: When you're in operations, the best thing you can do at the top level is get the strategy right. You have to get the big ideas right, you have to determine what is the policy, what is the level of effort you're willing to commit to it? And then you delegate to those who have to execute that strategy to the appropriate level. What's the appropriate level? It's the level where people are trained and equipped to take decisions so we move swiftly against the enemy.

Yes, that's true enough, but you still haven't said what your strategy is, getting the strategy right is the best thing, but again; "Accelerate to Anihilate!"; is not a strategy.

There is no corporation in the world that would, in a competitive environment, try and concentrate all decisions at the corporate level.

True, but they'd still want to hear what your strategy was.

But I would point out here that we have not changed the rules of engagement. There is no relaxation of our attention to protect the innocent. We do everything we can to protect the civilians, and actually lowering-- delegating the authority to the lower level allows us to do this better.

Again, aspirational, but exactly why and how delegating authority reduces collateral damage is not clear.

SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS: Once ISIS is defeated-- there's a larger effort underway to make certain that we don't just sprout a new enemy. We know ISIS is going to go down. We've had success on the battlefield. We've freed millions of people from being under their control, and not one inch of that ground that ISIS has lost has ISIS regained.

How do you know ISIS will "go down" if you can't articulate a strategy, I mean, "kill them all" isn't really a strategy, how can you guaruntee it will work?

It shows the effectiveness of what we're doing. However, there are larger currents, there are larger confrontations in this part of the world, and we cannot be blind to those. That is why they met in Washington under Secretary Tillerson's effort to carry out President Trump's strategy to make certain we don't just clean out this enemy and end up with a new enemy in the same area.

But, wait, clean this enemy out is what you said your "strategy" was, how does that translate to not ending up with a new enemy in the same area?

SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS: I think as we look at this problem of ISIS, it's more than just an army. It's also a fight about ideas. And we have got to dry up their recruiting. We have got to dry up their fundraising. The way we intend to do it is to humiliate them, to divorce them from any nation giving them protection, and humiliating their message of hatred, of violence. Anyone who kills women and children is not devout. They have-- they cannot dress themselves up in false religious garb and say that somehow this message has dignity.

Isn't that just another boilerplate aspiration?

SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS: This is going to be a long fight. The problems that we confront are going to lead to an era of frequent skirmishing. We will do it by, with, and through other nations. We will do it through developing their capabilities, to do a lot of the fighting, we'll help them with intelligence. Certainly, we can help train them for what they face. And you see our forces engaged in that from Africa to Asia. But at the same time, this is going to be a long fight and I don't put timelines on fights.

So, basically, this war is going to go on indefinitely because you haven't got a strategy other than "Accelerate to Anilihate"?

SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS: Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation. We do everything humanly possible consistent with military necessity, taking many chances to avoid civilian casualties at all costs.

So you're gonna kill a lot of civilians? Why would you "avoid" civilian casuaties "at all costs" when you just said they are a "fact of life", isn't that contradictory?

SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS: Probably the most important thing we're doing now is we're accelerating this fight. We're accelerating the tempo of it. We are going to squash the enemy's ability to give some indication that they're-- that they have invulnerability, that they can exist, that they can send people off to Istanbul, to Belgium, to Great Britain and kill people with impunity.

We're going to shatter their sense of invincibility there in the physical caliphate. That's only one phase of this. Then we have the virtual caliphate that they use the Internet. Obviously, we're going to have to watch for other organizations growing up. We cannot go into some kind of complacency. I'm from the American West. We have forest fires out there. And some of the worst forest fires in our history, the most damage were caused when we pulled the fire crews off the line too early. And so we're going to have to continue to keep the pressure on the enemy. There's no room for complacency on this.

Yes, yes, "Accelerate to Anihlate", you said that already, aren't you just repeating yourself without actually saying anything?

SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS: The American people and the American military will never get used to civilian casualties. And we will-- we will fight against that every way we can possibly bring our intelligence and our tactics to bear. People who have had tried to leave that city were not allowed to by ISIS. We are the good guys. We're not the perfect guys, but we are the good guys. And so we're doing what we can.

Yes, General, you're good guys, but you're still not really saying anything cogent here, sort of "blah-blah-blah, we're the good guys".

SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS: Beats me. Right now, Russia's future should be wedded to Europe. Why they see NATO as a threat is beyond me. Clearly, NATO is not a threat.

But right now, Russia is choosing to be a strategic competitor for any number of reasons. But the bottom line is NATO is not a threat and they know it. They have no doubt about it.

Whoa, wait, you have no idea what motivates the Russians in your initial response, but then you know exactly what they're thinking a split second after? Which is it? "Beats me" or "they have no doubts"?

SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS: Nothing. I keep other people awake at night.

Perhaps they're simply worried that you don't actually have a strategy and are really just talking out of your ass most the time?

[TheReal_ND]

FISKED AF

why doesn't Okee post anymore?

[Smitty-48]

FISKED AF

why doesn't Okee post anymore?

I didn't notice he was gone until you just mentioned it. Maybe he ran out of Tucker Carlson videos.

[Speaker to Animals]

Fisking an article or some public statement is not the same as fisking in a forum. Nobody expects Mattis to come here and respond to Smitty. But in the context of responding to a forum post (a dialog), fisking is the internet equivalent of shouting somebody down. There really exists no coherent way to respond to it other than red inking everything. It's just a way to stop the debate.

When you fisk in a forum (usually), it means you knew you lost the debate and you want to make a post that is so difficult to respond to that the person walks away, as if that gives you a "win" (it doesn't).

Fisking an article (like the original fisking blog post) is okay.

[Smitty-48]

Mattis; meh. He's turning into a disappointment, has no idea what he's doing as SECDEF, he's just operating like he's still in the Marine Corps. /shrugs

[SuburbanFarmer]

Fisking an article or some public statement is not the same as fisking in a forum. Nobody expects Mattis to come here and respond to Smitty. But in the context of responding to a forum post (a dialog), fisking is the internet equivalent of shouting somebody down. There really exists no coherent way to respond to it other than red inking everything. It's just a way to stop the debate.

When you fisk in a forum (usually), it means you knew you lost the debate and you want to make a post that is so difficult to respond to that the person walks away, as if that gives you a "win" (it doesn't).

Fisking an article (like the original fisking blog post) is okay.

No, it's a means to address each point made by your opponent, such as when they're flailing about and hurling a mass of nonsense, hoping to overwhelm the discussion.

But them don't make good simple words, so it's better to just ignore getting your arguments rammed up your ass and call him a jerk.

As we all know, nothing in life is true unless it feels true.

[Smitty-48]

These General's just employ a lot of bafflegab, and the media just gives them a pass, for instance, how many media types can actually discern between tactics, operations, and strategy?

They ask "what's your strategy, General?", the General presents a laundry list of tactics, operations, boilerplates, aspirations, and slogans, without ever actually articulating a strategic poisition at all, media types; "thank you, General!" *applause*

It's not actually even the role of General Officers to devise strategy, that's not what a General Officer does, so they're not even actually strategic experts at all.The role of the General Officer is to conduct operations and foster the morale, thus, when you ask them to articulate a strategy, they don't know, so they just tell you what they do know; operations and "rah-rah-rah". Once you view them as they actually are, which is mostly bullshitting, starts to seem a little silly.

They'd impress me more if they simply spoke the truth; "as a Marine Corps General Officer by trade, and now Secretary of Defense, it is neither my role to devise strategy, nor articulate strategy, I do operations and administration, strategy, is above my paygrade."

What's our strategy for this exponentially complex war, General?

"We're gonna dig more and we're gonna dig faster!"

What kind of strategy is that?

"We call it Accelerate to Anihilate!"

Un-hunh. So, in essence, that sounds like we're basically playing checkers instead of chess?

"Accelerate to Anihilate!"