Wednesday - February 28, 2007
The Enemy Gets a Vote
One of those not really too old sayings that
floats around from time to time is about Murphy's Laws for combat. They're
usually a cynical collection of pithy comments on the difficulties of fighting a
war.
• Remember your weapon
was built by the cheapest bidder
• No
plan survives contact with the
enemy
You
get the idea. One of the more important ones is that when judging how well your
battle plan works, the enemy gets to vote
too.
I thought I understood what that
meant. But I see now that there is a greater dimension to that
adage.
Nowadays when we say the enemy gets a vote, we
aren't only talking about the battlefield where bullets are flying. We mean in
the media, where Al Jazeera and CBS put out propaganda to influence public
opinion. This is very important.
But
even that isn't my revelation today. Information operations are still done very
poorly, but the phenomenon is well understood by
us.
What is even more profound is that
when we say "the enemy gets a vote" it is no longer a figurative statement. The
enemy's interests are well represented by Murtha and Pelosi, who have every
intention of letting the enemy
win.
Pelosi, the intellectual
featherweight, and Murtha, the thug, want us to quit the war while the enemy is
being beaten down but still is not beaten. They want to give up, not because
they are pacifists, but because they are on the other
side.
When we say the enemy gets a vote
we mean on the battlefield. We didn't mean in Congress.
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