Monday, August 10, 2009

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

For most militaries - especially for Great Satan and her allied sisters - combatty terminology is phonetically alphabetized. Alpha means "A", Bravo means "B" and "FUBAR" means Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition (note - fouled is most often subbed with an ancient Anglo Saxon term - yet still begins with a "Foxtrot")

Essentially - militaries have semi code used to express different ideas, designs and activities.

44's nearly 2 metre tall Teuffel Hunden as November Sierra Alpha - General Jim Jones Jr (Oh! He got game Bay Bee!)

At a briefing in AFPAKland's "Desert of Death" command cats like Marine Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, who commands 9,000 Marines, nearly half the new deployments 44 has sent to Afghanistan shared ideas about up stashing the number of troops available to kill enemies, corral fence sitting tribal folk and protect the Xformation into a wonderful Disneyland like society.

Announcing commander General McChrystal 60 day review would be hitting the scene soon - General Jones pointed out that

"At a table much like this, the president's principals met and agreed to recommend 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan." The principals -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Gates; Mullen; and the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair -- made this recommendation in February during the first full month of the Obama administration. The president approved the deployments, which included Nicholson's Marines.

"They then said, 'If you do all that, we think we can turn this around,' " Jones said, reminding the Marines here that the president had quickly approved and publicly announced the additional 4,000

"Now suppose you're the president, Jones told them, and the requests come into the White House for yet more force. How do you reckon 44 might look at this? Jones asked, casting his eyes around the colonels. How do you think he might feel?


As silence answered him, General Jones answered himself

"Well, Jones went on, after all those additional troops, 17,000 plus 4,000 more, if there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have "a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment." Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to WTF -- which in the military and elsewhere means "What the [expletive]?"


Such whiskey tango foxtrot moments can also be ascribed to a ton of incidents - historical and au currant.

Like the semi risible "It's official. Great Satan is no longer engaged in a "war on terrorism." Neither is she fighting "jihadists" in a "global war."

Yeah yeah we know - "War on Terror" is like saying "War on panzers" or "War on vertical envelopment" - making terminology war on a particular tactic, asset or resource maybe technically incorrect - so what?

This is significant. "Jihadi" is often interpreted in unfree and semi free mohammedist turf as a holy warrior.

Thus, announcing stuff like " IVY killed off several thousand jihadis' rotating in and out of Iraq" is a lot like saying "Great Satan annihilated Holy Warriors" and may be a magnet for recruits - frustrated in immediate, personal lives by strangling tribalism, time traveling contraints on fun and free choice with nearly no control over their own future.

Yet the Holy Warrior gig would grant an idea that jihadists have a say in their own lives and most likely their very short futures.

Replacing it with generic terms may lessen the appeal for fresh martyrs that ironically rebel against the control freaks in their lives while they strive and die to impose control on others.

Whiskey Tango Foxrot?

2nd, replacing such unphonetically alphabetized talk might medicate the home front - replacing rowdy Great Satan's penchant for getting somewhat crazy and unpredictable during wartime. Almost time traveling light - headed back to sunny sunny days when ideas like containment, police actions and - let's just cut to it shall we? - 'overseas operational contingencies" were so last millennium - the infamous "Pre 911 Mindset."

Indications that the diplo -polititary wing of Great Satan's intelligentsia wants to go back in time and bind Great Satan's home front attention and support for promoting fun and free choice in the new millennium def make the term "Whiskey Foxtrot Tango" very appropriate for a communications tactic that may be FUBAR.

Pic - "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"






1 comments:

Peter said...

I dunno. killing Jihadis by the boxcar load might make more bozos want to join the Jihadi line of worl. If it soes, though, why were the alQ in Iraq types down fo sending Downs Syndrome kids in as homicide bomb mules?

I'm not the smartest guy in the universe but I'm pretty sure we can make ammunition a lot faster than they can make Jihadis. Let's see, nine months just to begin the process, then at least ten or twelve years, all the way into late teens for the more sophisicated types.

I'm a hobby-handloader, I crank out rifle ammo one round at a time but I can load a whole buttload of rifle ammo in the time it takes to build one baby jihadi. So, how many rounds can the Lake City Arsenal load by the time Baby Jihadi learns to walk and is strong enough to carry a bomb big enough to do anything?