Word: shockely
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Unshocked, Unawed The new strategy, with its limits on actions that risk civilian casualties, represents a sea change in U.S. military doctrine. It was only six years ago that Air Force General Richard Myers, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, predicted that a shock-and-awe strategy would bomb Saddam Hussein's Iraq into submission. That - and the tech-heavy force that then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent into Iraq to stumble and falter for four years - hewed to the American way of war, one that was equal parts laser beams and hubris. But the military has rethought...
...your "fresh eyes." What have they shown you? The first thing I was struck by when I got here was that the security situation is very serious. I am not saying catastrophic, but it is very serious, and it warrants a very serious effort. So that didn't shock me, but it reinforced things that I had been seeing. The other observation is that there has been a tremendous number of people here doing a lot of good work - and that means the ANSF, parts of the Afghanistan government, UNAMA [United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan], NGOs, doing...
...Shock and awe - technological war. It's now different. What does this say? I think what we do learn ... the most important thing in war is the human being. In this war, the human being is the most important thing in every point. The most important is the human being in the Afghan population that is making their decision on who they are going to back. It is more important than the enemy. Because at the end of the day, the Taliban, each of them are making a decision to participate in an insurgency, and we are trying to convince...
...there is a time to kill, but that time is very carefully thought through, and it is as precise as you can be, and it is when there are no other options. So I think the human-being part of it ... if we went back to the concept of shock and awe, those are designed to shock command and control systems. And nations. You can shock and awe human beings, but it doesn't last. I've seen operations where kinetic strikes would go in on a target, and the enemy would come out shooting. They weren't awed...
...wrote seven notes of consolation on your first day. I've been in war a long time, so it wasn't the sudden shock of losing people. But if you read the circumstances of every servicemember's death, it makes you think about what you are doing here. It stops being a number and becomes a person. If you write their next of kin, it makes you realize the impact on them as well...