RE: [iwar] The Fog and Friction of War (fwd)

From: John Sforza (jsforza@isrisk.net)
Date: 2002-10-04 09:45:38
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From: "John Sforza" <jsforza@isrisk.net>
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Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 12:45:38 -0400
Subject: RE: [iwar] The Fog and Friction of War (fwd)
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Yup.. But....

This marine forgets what he has been provided with by the U.S.
government - TRAINING. He has been taught a method to mask his
intensions from adversaries, to value that information - even casual
commentary can be used to offer an advantage to the enemy. In the .gov
and federal contractor space this is OPSEC training. That training is
available to the civil population in VERY LIMITED channels if at all. I
give OPSEC briefings to the general population and I can tell you that
the light bulb's ALWAYS come on. This is a missing component of the
civil security culture. Often associated with 'social engineering' and
wet-ware common sense, it is much more. It is also amazing how many
individuals who have had this training seem to forget it as lifestyles
change. Ohhh well.... A voice in the wilderness. 

John Sforza
COO, IA Operations Director 
ISRisk
jsforza@isrisk.net
585-230-3516 voice
720-294-6533 fax
www.isrisk.net
 
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-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Cohen [mailto:fc@all.net] 
Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2002 10:02
To: Information Warfare Mailing List
Subject: [iwar] The Fog and Friction of War (fwd)


[FC - a really interesting article -0 at least to me.]

2 October

The Fog and Friction of War

By: GySgt Bob Howard, USMC

Classified leaks; senators visiting Iraq and criticizing the president
in public; retired flag grade officers providing insight on how they
might see forces employed for combat; what is our country doing?

I'm all for freedom
of expression, but for members of the government to do any of the above
unmentionables should be considered criminal.  It is criminal down at
the military service level.  Members cannot leak info without going to
prison.  Members cannot bad mouth the president without repercussions as
well.  The fight at the highest levels of the government needs to be
behind closed doors.  Let the public citizens demonstrate and let the
media guess, but don't give away our country's actions or intentions,
and bad mouth the government service members are going to have to fight
for in some capacity or another.

For the general public it's called
freedom of speech; for members fighting the enemy in uniform or under
some kind of cover, this kind of confusing behavior is a recipe for
disaster. Balkan and Mid-East Cultures have no respect for vacillation.

There are three levels to employing forces; the Strategic, the
Operational and Tactical levels.  In layman terms this means the
Political level; CINC, to roughly Regiment Level; and grunt level-the
people carrying the guns.

Waging war from my way of understanding requires a focused effort at all
levels; a solid round vice a shot gun blast.  The solid round can kill
an elephant, the latter a duck- if you are lucky.  Without going into
detail, reading General Vo Nguyen Giap's book "How We Won The War"
illustrates this point.

My point is simply this.  Conflict occurs at three levels; the
spiritual/moral, mental and the physical levels.  Fog and Friction, AKA
confusion & uncertainty, is what we try to levy upon the enemy to break
his will to fight-bottom line.

Conflict is not about destroying the enemy's weapons, cities, people or
soldiers.  It's about making an enemy realize that fighting will do him
no good, so he should give up.  The fact that material damage and loss
of life occurs is simply a by product of attaining the objective of
bending him to see our will through. This is an example of how fog and
friction can work for us.

On the other hand, if the enemy's Fog (the unknown) is reduced via the
leaking of classified information and blabbing by former senior military
experts; or a schizophrenic political leadership, we give him a reason
to believe that he can win the fight. WE GIVE HIM THE WILL TO FIGHT.
This is especially true if the enemy is backed into a corner.  Why tell
him our probable courses of action and give him the opportunity to put
up the best and hardest defense for the sake of martyrdom and enlarging
the conflict?  Why break Sun Tzu's dictum on maintaining the State of
Formlessness by telling the enemy what we are going to do and how?
Certain members of this country have convinced me that members of the
armed services need to buy their spouses a hell of a lot of life
insurance to carry them over if they, or their friends, die because of
someone running their soup-cooler.

Where was Sun Tzu's press corps?  My best guest was in the grave.  I'm
sure he considered them to be enemy spies. Today's press reporting via
leaks is stupid.  We can go on and on with the Info Ops theory, but that
would never need to exist if people kept their mouths shut.

Whether or not anyone realizes this, war has already started.  War
begins in the mind and heart.  Whether the U.S. agrees with the
president or not needs to be handled in a better manner.  A service
member goes with the decision made by this government regardless of
feeling.  They just want to come to a home at the end of a day too.

Service members do not want to freeload or get special benefits.  They
will die for something to believe in, that is the Constitution and to
"Defend this Country From All Enemies Foreign and Domestic."

Semper Fidelis, A Marine who plans to retire in 3 years.

Bob Howard
GySgt USMC




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