Embassy Closings: Leader Turns Coward.

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In your command, if you personally demonstrate cowardice, it will spread like a flu pandemic throughout the troops in your charge. After that, your troops won't think twice about disobeying your orders as your alpha underlings each try to grab command and control of your troops. After a while you will have chaos and anarchy. The United States, instead of using the intelligence it has to make some pre-emptive enemy camp strikes (the drones need more testing), and simultaneously shoring up its embassies with wider protective perimeters, extra military guards and better security checks in a show of "WE ARE NOT AFRAID."

Having committed the unforgivable sin of backing off, we are feeding the beast that is terrorism by letting it terrorize us, and letting it control our activities worldwide.

How can a president expect to maintain national order with this type of policy -- folding up our tents and umbrellas because it looks like its getting stormy, instead of digging in and bringing the horror to them - to their madrassas - to their training camps - to their embassies. I know that some of you who are not use to my style at The Taking Command Blog, will find my analogies and metaphors disconcerting, but we are having pebbles thrown at us by sand-dwelling lunatics, while we stand helpless atop the highest hill -- why don't we start and avalanche of stones?

You cannot, in your walk as a commander or leader, ever yield to a threat -- because once you have, you will have lost everything that you once had that was worth defending. When someone puts the tip of a lit cigarette on your tender forearm, you do the best you can to escape -- but you come back with a flamethrower and destroy everything that he holds dear. There are really no rules in war, either physical or psychological. The objective is to win, with as little loss of life and property on your side as possible.

Is our nation's leadership simply cowardly, or just helplessly ill-equipped? Either one makes for great rejoicing among the terrorists who have changed the US way of life since 9/11. They are winning. They have us on the defensive, up against the ropes. Our thinking, our tactics, our strategy and our will, our commitment to remain free (as free as we can be ) have to change. Immediately.

After the Benghazi affair, which needlessly and callously cost several decent Americans their lives, and which was a clear demonstration of poor utilization of well-gathered field intelligence, a lack of any responsiveness, and a show of just how unimportant lives are when politicians are busily advancing their own agendas. It was a study in poor judgment and poorer values.

In the wake of that tragedy, with intelligence informing us of very credible, imminent threats to the safety of our embassies in many parts of the Islamic and non-Islamic world, and with terrorists emboldened by our failure at Benghazi, and by our obvious domestic and overseas security checkpoint security protocol foul-ups (Homeland Security, The Airports, The Boston Bombers, the Fort Hood slaughter), the U.S. embassy closures and travel warning has spurred an influx of media coverage, adding to the hype and counterintuitively, creating even more terror for the masses.

If we had the courage of command, we would shore up security using the military at each of those embassies, tighten perimeters, conduct intensive security checks, and leave them each proudly open, but obviously secured. We are looking increasing increasingly cautious and defensive instead of outraged and offensive -- and this is just what the enemy wants. Terrorists thrive on cowardice and fear. And sadly, since we apparently will not mobilize the resources to shore up those ambassadorial posts, we are, as the enemy sees it, running away -- afraid to fight.

War is just as psychological as it is physical.

The embassy closures are shameful and set a terrible precedent. But it is hard to disagree with the State Department's edict when we know that our own political leadership is not dedicated to the task of showing strength - no, we are the loudest country with our empty threats about sanctions and so forth, but the first to run away from a burning building and leave our comrades behind.

It gets increasingly difficult to be proud of being a US citizen. That much is for certain. I believe as do my closest colleagues and confidantes that the best way to fight the war against terror is by combining our intelligence units with those of our few genuine allies (Mossad would be a fabulous addition), locating all of the terrorist training camps, and testing out drone strikes. Let them be terrified to train in the open. Let them close up shop and hide in spider holes underground. Bullies only victimize those they believe won't fight back. And the U.S. is encouraging terrorists to bully us. It's disgraceful.   

Douglas E. Castle for The Get Global Edge Blog and for The TAKING COMMAND Blog.

A new edition of THE UNDERCURRENT is out and it would be advisable for you to read. It is as interesting as it is informative -- and of course, it's free [as we'd all like to be]. Just click on the title and you'll get a chance to read it, or even subscribe if you'd like.

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MORE:

http://www.th.ceguardianom/commentisfree/2013/aug/05/embassy-closures-us-nsa

http://thedailybanter.com/2013/08/the-conspiracy-theory-nexus-of-glenn-beck-glenn-greenwald-and-alex-jones/

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-08-04/terror-threat-that-closed-embassies-called-credible-by-lawmakers

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Scoop.it

Command In Crisis: Abandoned Cruiseship!

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A captain in command who chooses to abandon his ship and all of the souls whom he is sworn, by ethics and Maritime Law (the "Law Of The High Seas") to protect, without regard to his own safety until the last of his charges is safe is a coward. He made a decision to be derelict in his sworn duties. He is not a leader. There is no gray area here -- the implications are carved starkly in black and white: He probably should be blindfolded, hands tied behind his back, and made to walk the plank.

Having said this, this article is not about the captain, but about the Officer-In-Charge at the Port Authority, who spent an hour of critical time engaging in a futile conversational exchange with the derelict deserter in an attempt to "convince" a proven self-serving coward to cooperate, instead of immediately using the threat of lethal force to accelerate the cowardly captain's compliance. The OIC was an enabler, if not an accessory, to this circus of childishness surrounding a heinous crime.

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Synopsis, excerpted from a situational case study by the American Management Association: Please read through this rather indecisive, uninstructive situational analysis by a bright group of people with an analytical but "non-action" orientation, and then read my more pointed TAKING COMMAND comments, which follow:

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"When a tragedy claims lives in a shipwreck or an aircraft crash, like the Italian vessel that capsized this week, working out responsibility is urgent and important. The causes and the chain of command get investigated and blame gets apportioned. It’s not always that way in life.

The wreck of the Italian liner Costa Concordia is desperately sad, and shocking for anyone involved. Inevitably, there will be an investigation, prosecutions, and law suits. This is a tragedy—people have died, and the environmental impact could also be devastating.

In an incident such as this, the questions of responsibility—whose fault is this? What happened? Will be critical—and they will be answered.

In business life, we often look at questions of responsibility when things go wrong: who gave the orders? Who responded? What happens when people make mistakes?

The answers are usually shades of gray rather than black and white. And the chains of consequences are hard to work out. Things go wrong because of many factors, and it’s often hard to say whose “fault” something is. We usually end up by saying, in a vague way, that “mistakes were made.” ####
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TAKING COMMAND Commentary...

The captain should now, simply put, walk the proverbial plank. But he was not the OIC - Officer In Charge. He was not the commander. Sometimes the situational dynamics dictate who is justly and most effectively in command.

In certain situations, an individual must determine whether or not a person-in-charge is competent to be there, and must take action accordingly. The communications officer at the Port Authority had become, after very simple situational assessment, the OIC. From the second he made that determination of the captains lack of willingness or ability, it was his obligation to take complete command.

Instead of a childish back-and-forth duck-and-dodge game of asking questions and trading sarcastic insults which wasted a precious hour and caused further damage and loss of life, the OIC should have made it clear (perhaps with some audacious bluffery involved):

"Captain. You have abandoned your ship, and have been derelict in your duty. You are hereby commanded, in accordance with law, and under penalty of death, to return to your ship and board immediately, without delay. Once there, you will contact me immediately to give me a full situation report. You have 30 minutes to do this -- if you have not confirmed that you are back on board the vessel within exactly 30 minutes, I am prepared to issue the order to fire on your life vessel. Am I perfectly clear? [pause and wait for acknowledgement].
Do not contact me until you are on board the vessel. Over."

The object, on the part of the OIC was to get the cowardly captain back on board his vessel immediately. The easiest way to accomplish this would be giving the captain a simple, definitive choice -- re-board the vessel, or face execution.

Extreme approach? Possibly. Effective? It certainly would have generated better results than the travesty that we will all be reading about in the mainstream media for months.

Douglas E Castle [http://aboutDouglasCastle.blogspot.com] for
Taking Command! [http://TakingCommand.blogspot.com]

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