Road map to a profitable US victory in Afghanistan

Sun Tzu taught that the art of war is not concerned only with winning, but how you win.   This point relates to the fundamental challenge facing the American military in Afghanistan.

If a new product being developed by Raytheon, a patriotic defense contractor, gets the hundreds of millions of dollars in funding it so clearly deserves, US troops will soon be deployed wearing exoskeletons. According to a CNN report, these machines will endow American men and women in uniform with superhuman, "bionic" powers. Resembling Iron Man, the American soldier of the future will be able to lift ten times his weight.   There remain a few small issues the engineers need to resolve.  For example, any soldier equipped with the Iron Man device must carry around an enormous power generator.  An individual claiming to be a US soldier, commented at CNN:

I am a soldier. Please, for the love of God, stop giving us more junk to carry. We have too much stuff as it is.   If I posted my hand receipt on this sound off, you would be shocked. For example, I have 12 sets of eye protection! I only have two eyes!

Each time we get new stuff, the military rarely has us turn in the old stuff. It just keeps stacking up. I have 6 duffel bags full of issued gear.  It weighs more than I do, and takes up more room than I do. Do you realize how much money is being spent to transport all this?

Also, the gear is often designed with an original intent, which rarely gets honored by leadership. They favor good looks and uniformity over functionality...

We wear so much armor and gear in combat it is difficult to move. It slows us down. If forces us the take more breaks. It creates heat risks...

Finally, beware of the true motivation behind these new creations. Greedy companies try to act like they care about supporting troops, but in the end, they do it for profit, not patriotism...

Of course, US soldiers know better than to criticize patriotic American defense corporations. Therefore, it is doubtful that the individual who left the above comment actually serves in our military. An impostor working for CNN, some member of the liberal news media, is most likely responsible.

Nevertheless, DoF intelligence suggests that the gist of the comment is true. The US soldier may be reaching a breaking point beyond which he cannot carry any more cool stuff. If we cross that line, should our brave soldiers start collapsing from exhaustion on the battlefield, Congress is likely to call for an official inquiry. At that point, there’s a real risk that the entire military procurement process could be opened-up to public scrutiny.

Fortunately, DoF has a plan.  The authors of an astoundingly prescient DoF report spell it out.   Read the Executive Summary for yourself:

Author: Saturn Cell, United States Department of Fear
Title: "A twelve-year road map to a profitable US victory in Afghanistan"
Classification level: Unclassified*

... Our idea is to entice the Taliban into carrying an equally heavy load of flashy-looking stuff.  This will give the American soldier a fighting chance against his once-nimble enemy.  The Pentagon need only find ways to covertly supply the Taliban with the same quantity of gear that US troops have been forced to carry.

Slower-moving, will the Taliban remain an enemy capable of stoking fear in our hearts? That’s a good question. DoF experts remind us that a designated enemy’s capability is not correlated with its capacity to frighten the public.  DoF analysis maintain that sharper dressed and more heavily equipped, Taliban fighters will frighten Americans as never before, increasing public support for defense expenditures.

The cost of supplying both our own troops and the Taliban with lots of stuff to carry will be substantial, ensuring the profitability of the defense industry into the second fiscal quarter of 2014.

The downside to this plan is that should the accumulation of stuff by both sides continue beyond early 2015, the day will come when neither side is able to move, thereby ending the Afghanistan war in a peaceful stalemate.  That’s why at some point it will become necessary for the Pentagon to curtail deliveries of stuff to US troops while continuing to drop appealing brand-name kit behind enemy lines.  Our lighter, swifter, more agile forces could be assured victory by as early as 2022. 

Under this DoF plan, the prospect that expenditures on the war in Afghanistan will not significantly increase beyond 2014 presents all the more reason for the president to scout new theaters of operation from North Africa to the Arabian Peninsula.  

___
*DoF preemptively declassified sections of this report after discovering that WikiLeaks had obtained a copy.

How to dress a terror suspect

Drone assassinations.  Expansion of the presidential  "hit list" to include American citizens.   Reports out of Afghanistan that US troops are executing Afghan prisoners on the battlefield.  DoF is concerned that the Obama Administration needs to reign-in the recent and pervasive enthusiasm for exterminating terror suspects.

The reason DoF is troubled by some of this news is that a dead terror suspect is not a particularly scary terror suspect.

During the Vice President Cheney years, American government officials shared a basic understanding:  the Geneva Conventions might have to be overlooked, but the desirability of keeping terror suspects alive was widely understood (even if not followed in every case).   Although terror suspects are expensive to detain, the Vice President taught us that they can be put to very good use.   

In terms of making the most of captive terror suspects, it was understood a terror suspect must be appropriately dressed to fit the role.    "The clothes make the man," as they say.  At DoF we like to say that the right clothes make you fear the man.

One crisis facing the Obama Administration is that after eight or nine years of war, most of the military's finest designers have been relieved of duty.  The best ones came out of the closet long ago.  The so-called "Don't ask don't tell" policy has led to a situation in which there are simply no outstanding designers of terror suspect attire remaining in the US military.   

Here's a little-known fact for you:  the lack of a talented clothing designer has been the main hold-up in getting the scheduled trial of the notorious Khalid Sheikh Mohammed underway in Manhattan. Obviously, the government can't go parading the 9/11 mastermind around New York City until someone has figured out how KSM ought to be dressed.  The government does not want its  most famous captive terrorist to look like some kind of common criminal or thug (i.e. photo above).   If he is to scare anyone, he must look the part.  The situation is so desperate -- with respect to the lack of a suitable clothing designer  -- that there is now talk of holding the the trial in rural Virginia.

Of course, the answer is twofold.  The president needs to 1) scrap the "don't ask, don't tell" regulation that is preventing some of America's finest clothing designers from serving their country; 2) see that more terror suspects are captured and detained rather than killed.

DoF has included some archival photos of terror suspects "dressed to scare" from the Cheney years.