Posted on 04/15/2017 9:43:08 PM PDT by Innovative
U.S. military commanders are stepping up their fight against Islamist extremism as President Donald Trump’s administration urges them to make more battlefield decisions on their own.
As the White House works on a broad strategy, America’s top military commanders are implementing the vision articulated by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis: Decimate Islamic State’s Middle East strongholds and ensure that the militants don’t establish new beachheads in places such as Afghanistan,
There’s nothing formal, but it is beginning to take shape,” a senior U.S. defense official said Friday. “There is a sense among these commanders that they are able to do a bit more—and so they are.”
While military commanders complained about White House micromanagement under former President Barack Obama, they are now being told they have more freedom to make decisions without consulting Mr. Trump. Military commanders around the world are being encouraged to stretch the limits of their existing authorities when needed, but to think seriously about the consequences of their decisions.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Bravo. Take the gloves off. MAGA!
The overall political picture needs to be considered by the Military commanders. The answer can’t be to Nuke’em or Boots on the Ground all the time.
We’re not a warrior state. Our goals are set by political and diplomatic objectives.
A cynic, I suppose, could look at this and see a potential problem. There's a bunch of CYA in there for Washington if those problems surface.
A good leader hires the best people at their respective jobs then turns them loose. This gets positive results.
A piss poor leader tries to tell everyone how to do their jobs while neglecting or botching their own. This gets negative results.
Community organizers are not leaders.
Only in Donnie Yen movies. In real life Yip Man was a good fighter in his prime, but not nearly as good as the movies portray, and he never fought anyone with Chuck’s skill level, or Chuck’s size. He wasn’t nearly as athletic as Bruce, who could fight as well as Yip’s best students (as demonstrated when he sparred with Wong Shun Leung during a visit to Hong Kong), and Chuck could hold his own against Bruce, though Bruce was better.
In the Pacific War, Nimitz ran the navy, while General MacArthur ran the army. MacArthur sought and won the glory, while Nimitz won the war. That's the way good leadership works.
in 100% agreement with your post
Athleticism, size and weight are of little consequence in a beimo or real fight - which, as far as I know, Chuckie never engaged.
Ip Man is said to have easily defeated the teacher credited with actually training BL who was only, as you say, marginally better than Chuckie.
Delegating is the mark of a leader!!
I believe the hit in Afghanistan is much bigger than we’ll ever know. Our guys must have done a little recon to come up with “the right site”.
I hope you are right
“I believe the hit in Afghanistan is much bigger than we’ll ever know. Our guys must have done a little recon to come up with “the right site”.”
That happens when you have good intel people and allow them to do their job and report the intel without PC BS!
Then allow your generals and admirals to act on that intel.
In the real world, Chuck Norris was a middleweight full contact karate champion, at around 185 lbs.
Bruce Lee was an actor, who never participated in full contact competitions, who weighed about 135 lbs.
In the real, real world, Ip Man survived both the Japanese invasion of China and the Communist Revolution. Chuckie survived an upset stomach or similar.
He fought many beimos (with no rules for size, weight, rest breaks ,or duration and survived) - they were contests of life, not of trophies.
Chuckie is a trophy guy who never had to fight for his life, just movie/tv scripts and trophies.
Just like the progress made bringing China to work for us regarding North Korea, the improved results in the fight against ISIS will make the American public wonder...
“What the hell was Obama doing for 8 years”?
“Our guys must have done a little recon to come up with “the right site”.”
No doubt. Afghanistan has long been characterized by the use of caves and tunnels in warfare. Because they receive very little rainfall for most of the year, they have long relied on cisterns to catch snowmelt off the mountains for irrigation.
Even back when the Mongols invaded, the locals were using their underground tunnels to shelter from and maneuver around the Mongols. Twice in Afghan history, extensive damage was done to the irrigation infrastructure, to prevent the Afghans from using it in war - the Mongols and the Russians (1980’s).
Bin Laden, poured a lot of money into improving the caves at Tora Bora (about fifty miles away from the caves we hit with the MOAB), into a fortress capable of holding a garrison of 1,000.
It is likely that those caves we just hit, so close to the main road/historic invasion route through the Khyber Pass have long been used, and are very well known in the history of the local people, including those now in the Afghan Government and Army. The ISIS guys in those caves were likely buying supplies and heading in and out of the local towns - everybody has cell phones, and they are very chatty.
Drones have probably been surveilling the site for a long time, and human intelligence was likely developed as well.
They would not drop a heavy bomb without confidence in the target, much less a MOAB.
It is a moot point, because they are from different eras.
Bruce Lee does seem like he is in a weight class or two above Yip Man in in your photo, though.
Surviving the Japanese invasion and communist revolution says nothing about one’s ability to fight hand to hand - many sweet old grandmothers survived as well. You could by the same token say that Chuck Norris “survived” the Korean and Vietnam Wars, as well as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Hong Kong was a rough city, and people did of course streetfight. I am reasonably sure that someone who ran a martial arts school would have likely had real brawls, with real local thugs.
No state in the USA would legally allow such a dramatic weight mismatch though, as existed between Yip Man (I’d guess 110-115), and a 185 lb trained fighter - for very good, objective reasons. If style made all the difference, than that style would dominate MMA - which is what MMA came about to demonstrate in the first place - which style was superior. In fact, you just don’t see any Wing Chun in such modern, open competitions.
If anything, MMA has shown that tighter weight classes are needed - 20 lbs is just too big of a difference among lean well-conditioned fighters.
One should point out that Chuckie only came to Korea after the war and never when to Nam, while Ip Man actually lived through real events unfolding around him. So the conflating does not work in that example.
In my book, it is real world experience that counts not studios, films, and tournaments.
Are you claiming that Yip Man somehow used his Kung Fu to fight the Japanese or Chinese Communists? Such struggles were typically conducted with guns.
The online biographies seem to indicate that he went to a rural village to live with one of his students during the Japanese occupation, and left to Hong Kong when the Communists took over.
So he gets constructive credit for “events unfolding around him” in your book - but not the grandma next door? Would she not be an equally hardened veteran, as qualified by her wartime experience/existence to triumph in the ring? There is no cause-effect relationship.
None of the on-line bios that I saw make mention of any wartime exploits by Yip Man, whatsoever. Mention is made that he was a regular opium smoker though. There is a cause-effect relationship with that, which detracts somewhat from predicted hand-to-hand performance.
On the other hand, once I looked into it, Chuck Norris was NOT a full contact champion (Claude van Damme was). Norris was competing in point competition karate contests, which in truth, is pretty far removed from full contact.
Goals, yes.
Implementation of military actions to accomplish those goals should be left to the military.
War is an admission that diplomacy has failed. Get the diplomats out of the way until a military conclusion is reached. Then let the diplomats draw up the terms of surrender, boundary changes, punishments for the enemy diplomats & politicians.
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