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August 29, 2005
Flexibility and Adjustments
A football team always starts a game with a plan. In fact all good teams start games with a plan. They begin to execute it and hope that it works. If it doesn't they usually don't keep running the same plays. They adjust, at least the good ones do. If one thing doesn't work, perhaps something else will. They explore and prod the opponent looking to exploit any weaknesses. The coach fine tunes and develops a new strategy as the game evolves. If he doesn't the team usually loses. Sometimes they don't have the ability to adjust, perhaps the players are not good enough, or they don't have the immediate skills necessary to exploit what they found. It is a very simple concept.
I bring this up because of Iraq. Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz and company had a plan. They attacked Iraq, took Baghdad and begin to find that things were not happening as they anticipated. The people were not waiting in the streets with flowers. Many viewed U.S. troops as another in a long line of occupiers. Saddam's army dissolved into the landscape to reemerge as a vicious insurgency. The Sunnis wanted nothing to do with the U.S. constructed Iraqi government. To many experts it seemed the U.S. had far too few troops to do the job properly. The original plan was not working. So have we adapted? Have we implemented new strategies to contend with events we did not consider when we first entered the country? If we did, these strategies don't get much play in the mainstream media. If we are serious about winning instead of playing politics with our military strategy and the U.S. electorate, then we better adjust, or we will lose. big time.
Posted by Chip Spear at August 29, 2005 3:46 PM
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