Friday, August 4th, 2006
UNPLUGGED
Going on a short trip and I’m disconnecting from the internet. Overdue respite. Be back on Sunday. Everyone have a great weekend !
Archive for 2006
Friday, August 4th, 2006
HEZBOLLAH AS A MILITARY FORCE
There’s some debate in the military community as how to best categorize Hezbollah as a fighting force. “Normal” guerillas ? 4GW ? A hybrid ? It is a testament to Hezbollah’s internal security and operational focus that today we have a far better understanding of al Qaida’s structure, capabilities and planning paradigms than we do the inner workings of the military wing of Lebanon’s radical Shiite “Party of God”.
Here is a survey of Hezbollah military prowess for would be military analysts to chew on, courtesy of The Jamestown Foundation. An excerpt:
“Hezbollah’s military leadership has rethought much of the strategic and tactical doctrine that led to the repeated defeat of Arab regular forces by the IDF. The top-down command structure that inhibited initiative in junior ranks has been reversed. Hezbollah operates with a decentralized command structure that allows for rapid response to any situation by encouraging initiative and avoiding the need to consult with leaders in Beirut. The military wing nevertheless answers directly to Hezbollah’s central council of clerics for direction.
The fighters are armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, typically assembling in small teams to avoid concentrations that would draw Israeli attention. The preparation of well-disguised explosive devices has become a specialty of Hezbollah. The uncertainty created by such weapons takes a heavy psychological toll on patrolling soldiers.
Hezbollah has improved its night-vision capabilities, although they do not compare with Israel’s state-of-the-art equipment, which includes UAVs, helicopters and jet-fighters equipped for night warfare. Hezbollah fighters are well-trained in the use of complex weapons systems. Air defense units use SA-7 missiles and ZU-23 anti-aircraft guns on flatbed trucks.
The guerrillas rigorously examine the success or failure of each operation after completion. Tactics change constantly and new uses are sought for existing weapons. The use of mortars (81mm and 120mm) has been honed to near perfection. Hezbollah fighters have developed efficient assault tactics for use against armor, with their main anti-tank weapons being AT-3 Saggers and AT-4 Spigot missiles. Four tanks were destroyed in two weeks in 1997 using U.S.-made TOW anti-tank missiles (these missiles traveled from Israel to Iran as part of the Iran-Contra affair before being supplied to Hezbollah).
Hezbollah leaders believe that their fighters have a perspective on conflict losses that gives them an inherent advantage; according to Naim Kassem, deputy leader of Hezbollah, “[The Israeli] perspective is preservation of life, while our point of departure is preservation of principle and sacrifice. What is the value of a life of humiliation?” (Haaretz, December 15, 1996). With no hope of overwhelming Israel’s well-supplied military, Hezbollah fighters concentrate on inflicting Israeli casualties, believing that an inability or unwillingness to absorb steady losses is Israel’s strategic weakness. “
Read the whole thing here. ( Hat Tip Small Wars Council)
LINKS:
Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett – “Demonizing Israel will come back to haunt us“
Dr. Chet Richards – Reason interview
Ralph Peters – ” CAN ISRAEL WIN? : NOT THE WAY IT’S FIGHTING“
John Robb – “THE SECRETS OF HEZBOLLAH’S SUCCESS“
William Lind – “Welcome to My Parlor“
Jane’s – “IDF setback at Bint Jbeil“
DEBKAfile – “Israel’s Surprise Raid of Baalbek Is No Panacea for Tactical Ills“
I include the last due to it’s widely presumed association and status as the unofficial mouthpiece for Israeli intelligence agencies.
Thursday, August 3rd, 2006
MORE ON THE MEDICI EFFECT
Dr. Von had an interesting post today on the growing trend toward taking a consilient approach in the sciences, one that takes advantage of the Medici Effect:
“In modern scientific research, we find more and more often groups put together in a very multidisciplinary way. What can happen from a mix of people who are trained in a variety of fields is often rapid progress and new findings, and has been referred to as the Medici effect. Recently, a panel was put together to discuss and make recommendations to Congress about the future of American high energy physics. The U.S., which has been at the forefront of particle physics for decades, will lose its lead when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is commissioned in 2007 at CERN. The LHC will replace Fermilab as the world’s most powerful accelerator, and numerous American physicists will center their research overseas (they have been doing so in larger and larger numbers for the past 8-10 years already).
Since 2004, a panel (EPP2010) was put together by the National Research Council, following a request by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, to set the course for U.S. high energy physics. Their report came out this past April. What is interesting about the panel, though, beyond their final report and recommendations, is the make-up of the panel. In the past, advisory panels consisted of high energy physicists and some administrators of national labs. This time around, knowing that our loss of the lead in this type of research was a certainty for many years to come, the NRC took a new approach and formed a multidisciplinary panel. The chair was Harold Shapiro, an economist and president emeritus of Princeton, and the other members included 3 Nobel winners (2 in physics, 1 in medicine), an astronomer, a former CEO of a technology firm, a former director of Brookaven National Lab, a former White House OMB official (expert in budgets), a former Presidential science advisor, a condensed amtter physicist, and then several high energy experts. “
Read Von’s post in full.
Thursday, August 3rd, 2006
ON METAPHORS AND CONNECTIVITY
One of the tools I find to be highly useful in making intellectual connections with other people is the employment of metaphors, particularly at the start of a debate or a brainstorming process. Metaphors are a cognitive accelerant. They catch the attention of the reader or audience, raise the emotive level and instigate conceptual linking . People will react strongly against metaphors that appear to challenge their values or epistemological worldview, even if the offense merely involves a clever turn of phrase.
In other words, metaphors are useful because they are generative. They are a potential path to new insights.
There are many theories about metaphors – actually a tediously large number – but whatever the truth about how metaphors work, they are deeply involved in the breakthrough process in the sciences, capturing the phenomena as a mental model long before it can be experimentally proven true or the math worked out. That is to say, metaphors are most appropriate when coming to grips with a thing that is new and not yet well understood. They lend themselves well to simplifying complex systems down to a comprehensible essence.
Not least, in terms of memetic appeal, metaphors have the strength of a titan. They stick in our memory. Many of us are familiar with Isaiah Berlin’s ” Fox ” and “Hedgehog” but such metaphors are used all of the time by bloggers. Steve DeAngelis at ERMB recently wrote about a David Brooks column on relationships which ” Ecologists and Engineers” was the metaphor. Here is how that deceptively simple sounding phrase triggered a complex analysis from Steve:
“Other examples of engineers who have connected with ecologists are Bill Gates and Dean Kamen. The results of ecologist/engineer connections is almost universally beneficial. To be fair to Brooks, his column is about politicians (natural ecologists in that they appreciate the power of relationships) who turn into engineers once in office (believing that all problems can be solved by throwing enough resources at them). The result, Brooks writes, is often “policy failure.” To make his point, Brooks focuses on America’s failure to increase its percentage of college graduates despite having thrown billions of dollars at the challenge. He writes:
When politicians address this problem, they inevitably ignore the core issues — lack of preparedness, personal crises, disengagement, cognitive dissonance. They flee to the issue of tuition costs. They think like engineers.
In other words, even in domestic situations “disconnected defines danger.” In an earlier blog, I discussed Frans Johansson’s book The Medici Effect and noted what an intoxicating experience the Medici Effect can be. The Medici Effect is all about getting ecologists and engineers and artisans and scientists and so forth to connect. When that happens, great things result. I really think that is what Brooks is trying to say. He certainly can’t believe that ecologists promote better policies than engineers. Any myopic attempt to solve problems will result in bad policy. Resilient organizations understand that.”
I called the metaphor ” deceptively simple” because ” Ecologists and Engineers” is also a set of analogies ( another very important cognitive tool for stimulating insight) that have been presented using alliteration. The mind of the reader is being grabbed from several directions at once which may explain why Steve, busy CEO that he is, spent his limited time reading that column in the NYT. There were multiple ” hooks” in play with that metaphor that the brain finds naturally interesting, making ” Ecologists and Engineers” a dynamic concept for connectivity in itself. Good metaphors bridge domains, supercharge intellectual creativity and inspire new relationships.
Next time you have a meeting to attend or a blog post to write, try to open with a strong and artfully constructed metaphor. Then sit back and watch how people react. The results may surprise you.
Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006
RECOMMENDED READING -HEZBOLLAH EDITION
Posts, great and small, relating in some way to those zany guys in the Bekaa:
The Glittering Eye – “Is it legitimate for the Pentagon to have a daycare center?“
Aqoul (Collounsbury) – “ Baalbek“
Bruce Kesler – “Who is responsible for deaths of innocents?“
Aqoul (Tom Scudder) -“Lebanon: Bloodletting at Qana“
Global Guerillas – “JOURNAL: Legitimacy, Long Tail markets, and Violence/Security“
Middle East Perspective – “Israel-Hizballah: What’s Next? “
Whiskey Bar – ” The Meat Grinder“
Younghusband – ” Spelling the Party of God“
Right Wing Nuthouse -” IAF ADMITS IT WAS WRONG ABOUT QANA“
Sic Semper Tyrannis – “Hizballah or Hizbullah“
Dan of tdaxp– “Hezbollah v. the Lebanese Nation, Hezbollah v. the United Nations“
Small Wars Council – “ Hezbollah TTP“
That’s actually not it, but it’s enough for now.
