Serious matters and unserious ones

In response to Haditha.

This is what American soldiers do as a joke.

Atomic situps

Imagine what real trouble is like, how real trouble is prosecuted if even a whiff of sexual discrimination scares the pants off NCOs.

Human behavior is controlled by rewards, discipline, and punishments. The discipline of the United States military is uniform to a degree Sun Tzu would have shat a brick to have in his army. Its' quality is greater than all armies on this planet put together, because no other army on this planet has combat tested experience even near the United State's.

As I advised here before. Expect the worse, prepare yourself psychologically for a critical strike. Only through this, can the psychological impact of whatever propaganda victory the enemy scores, be lessened. Starting from the individual outwards. The propaganda damage is already being done and already has been done, it can't be recovered. It only remains as to see whether the propagandists have picked a falcon that'll hunt or just fly away.

In the end, in any guerrila war or propaganda war or psychological war, it is perceptions that matter. Not the truth. Truth matters on the battlefield when precision guided munitions are dropped via the support of Predator B UAVs armed with hellfire missiles, because no amount of deception can piece together your body after being blown up by such weapons of war ex post facto. But perception can make terroist execution of Shiite and Kurdish students traveling on a bus to take final exams into "successful sectarian violence unhindred by US efforts". While Haditha is created as "war crimes indicative of regular and formative US policy and action". The target is the US, death by a thousand cuts. The Japanese culture and philosophy has a lot of education and worthwhile things that apply to the situation the US and Iraq finds itself in. But I doubt I will ever hear the fake multiculturalists use Japanese philosophy to justify their policies.

The President has the powers and abilities to degrade the use of enemy propaganda. But just seeing how he reacted firstly to the Haditha question by reporters, is quite unimpressive. He should have reminded the American people not to lose faith in the military just because the media is jealous of America's faith in the military, a faith the media does not have. He should have reminded people that the ACLU will defend the most hardened of criminals, and cheer when his death sentence is cut, but will cry for blood and cruel torture when their arch enemies the military does a 1/4th serious crime.

Proportionality, perspective, context, and psychological cushioning should be the benefits of a powerful and united central leader. In the 21st century, no ruler can afford to be incompetent at PR. It is only by the grace of God such people as Washington survived to lead the Revolution, and such people as Bush wins elections. There is no other way I can explain it, if you look at the history of Washington's reckless military actions and Bush's unorthodox political strategies. Holding the Final Fallujah offensive until AFTER the 2004 elections, cause he "didn't want the media attention to distract the troops" is a wise decision. But not even wise decisions can affect deception and perception in a propaganda war.