Richmond, October 11
      Let me make this as plain as I can about this term "Rules of Engagement". These are rules created by men lacking in physical courage as a way to signify how they would react if they were in a brave man's shoes. Bill Clinton proved this axiom when he bombed Serbia from 50,000 feet..."with victories he was swimmin', he killed children, dogs and women" (John Cash).
      Also, being able to design and issue these ROE's is also a way to demonstrate control, i.e., who's in charge, as a way to say it's always the pressed suit back behind the front lines that stands tallest in the pecking order
      In practice, throughout history, this ranking scheme has never worked well...actually, not at all...unless that fellow back at the front office had spent an adequate amount of time in the front lines, getting a taste of what it's really like (reading Red Badge of Courage won't do) having to perform while staring harm's way in the face. It was a rite of passage, as the military academies all required their grads to serve in a combat branch before moving on to their chosen career path. In the private sector, it was common for manufacturing companies to require entry level managers to spent at least a year on the factory floor before moving into that cubicle or office at the front of the building. This began to fade away in the 1980s.
     The Japanese were absolutely religious about this idea of having managers with grease under their finger nails, starting all their managers out in quality control. But again, that all changed in the 1980s when we (American business) elevated their lawyers (bengoshi)  to something above that of coffee-runners. Since our managers brought lawyers to every meeting, they had to bring theirs. Engineers were moved to the back benches.

     Now that we have, in every public and private sector, a management class that has never smelled the acrid bite of gunpowder, or tasted a blood trickle from the corner of the mouth, even figuratively, a new image of the rule-makers has emerged.
     When in total control, and a posse in tow, they become bullies. When government is bully is when government is hated most. But when confronting a force that may strike back, they blink...every time...and try to talk, dance and squirm. (Or they go nuclear.) Anything to keep from getting their pants, or reputations, wrinkled.
      As a military term, "rules of engagement" that go way back, but as a control mechanism of physical cowards, this practice only goes back 20 years or so, beginning with attorneys at City Hall telling cops how to behave in street confrontations. What lawyer is willing to 'rassle a perp to the ground? Really. It's better, we find, to sneak up on him with disguised politeness. "Sir, would you please lie down on the ground and put your hands behind your back?" Then, when the perp (or citizen) asks "Why?", we pounce, with a sudden and immediate whack across the shins. Now he hits the ground involuntarily, and gets shackled a little more roughly than originally planned...and he also gets a resisting arrest charge tacked onto the original complaint.
      Yes, I know in the old days, the cop would've talked him into the cruiser, often never even requiring a cuff. Or he might simply have grabbed the perp by the ear lobe and marched him home to Mom. But for the attorney back at city hall, major markers would have been by-passed. First and foremost, "Why?" is a sign of disrespect for his station. Second, with plenty of back-up, the least little bit of verbal resistance is an excuse to turn bully, which the lawyer secretly wants to do every chance he can get. The whack over the knees is the perfect sucker punch, an immediate sign of control, but borne as much out of fear as control, for it insures the citizen won't sneak in that first punch himself. The experienced, mature cop would've handled that situation much differently. Moreover, he would have been on speaking terms with the neighborhood the next day.
      But what if the perp pulled a gun? Well, we know the cops, all six of them, would retreat behind bullet-proof card doors, a SWAT team would be called in, maybe even a hostage negotiator, ten city blocks would be cordoned off, Channels 3, 8 and 12 news would show up, and for three to twenty three hours, the whole city would thrill at the spectacle of a stand-off.
      Just like the poor fellow still doing eternity for eating a bologna sandwich on Friday back in 1955, when they finally frog-march the poor guy out, now under a list of charges that run to twelve pages, he's muttering under his breath, "It was only a joint. A lousy joint."
      How the experienced cop would have handled it would have been to shoot him dead before he could even clear leather, or, simply crack him over the head with the butt of his service revolver. I don't think they can do that any more. I don't think they're even trained to that anymore.
  
      See where I'm going?
      In the military, this is how attorneys (called JAG's) back at HQ now get to crawl into the foxhole with the unit commander on the ground, without even getting their uniforms dirty. Bill Mauldin called them "garritroopers".
      And, in State, Justice and even CIA, it is how desk bound careerists, as often as not attorneys (do you sense a pattern here?), get to tell men in the field, in harm's way, how they would deal with a situation if in their shoes. If foreign policy were football, it would be a game of punting.

      We've written about this before, for most attorneys are physical cowards, i.e., beta males (at best) on the physical side of any confrontation. But when in control they are natural bullies. They do may have alpha minds, which puts them in a superior position over the Alpha males out there facing down the enemy, but sadly, especially in City Hall and Washington, the tie-breaker is that they almost always have beta-to-omega character traits, and reflexes that are defensive in nature, at best. (Why this equation is so dominant among attorneys...but not doctors...is a mystery to me, but if someone out ca figure it out, and can write a really juicy book explaining it, there's a permanent seat on one the Fox panels, for sure.)

      Just keep this in mind as you watch things develop in Afghanistan. The daintier desk bound hands in Washington (and ain't Joe Biden just the cat's meow at fightin' wars?) are running out of options that will let them keep those hands clean. I see 1) a bug-out and a lot of cynical deaths (murder) of innocent Afghan citizens, a la Southeast Asia in 1975, or 2) a lot of cynical deaths (murder) of our under-numbered soldiers just hanging around for no particular purpose other than conveying to the folks back home we haven't bugged out, or 3) a quick denuding of the Afghan hill country (what they call inside the Beltway "going nuclear"). Just as the US Senate has yet to stand in the well of history for the genocide in SE Asia they walked away from, if Obama and this Congress think they can walk away scot free, they will.
      When I think of lawyers in government and the corporate world, I can't help but stop and think about Bill Clinton, and what just one tour of duty on the front lines of anything could've done for his character. Just one broken nose when he was a kid and Bill Clinton could've been the best goddamned president in America history. Sometimes that's all it takes...one broken nose (in my case two) to separate honorable men from liars, and to separate all men from lawyers.
      The saddest thing, too, is that Moses believed Afghanistan was the easier of the two (alongside Iraq) to plant the basic ideals of democracy and liberty at the grass roots.  (More on that later this week.)
VB