The Tactical Life

Saturday Morning Coffee Break:

nude

lake-in-the-fall-1

Coffee Break:

water

machine%20gun

Coffee Break:

spaCE%20GIRL

cyber%20punk

Coffee Break: This sums up the USG this week

facepalm

I hear you brother. “Here I am. Send me…”

A similar attitude seems to be prevailing in the diplomatic services of all Western countries, for what it’s worth. I think that background is key: if you were involved in something akin to “knuckledragging” before joining the diplomatic service, then you’ll definitely see things differently. You will be an outlier, though.
(as an aside, I was told that the Czech diplomats are run through a short SERE-type course by their DoD before entering their DoS - that sounded interesting to me)

Motivational Monday:

The day you realize you are not special is hard, but a strong person will overcome that truth and train to make themselves into something special. Why don’t you start today?

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I hope it never happens to you, but, there may come a day when your weapons will do you no good, there is no backup, and your communications are shit. The only thing to help you survive is the physical strength you have built in training. It happened to me once, hopefully never again.

strong

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Truth.

Tuesday Tactics: 3 Real reasons why law enforcement and military should train Jiu Jitsu

I have to admit my attitude on ground fighting has shifted over the last several years. I once thought that if you had to go to the ground, it was almost a death sentence. Now, after several years of sporadic training in Judo and Jiu Jitsu, I believe an LEO should focus more on grappling than striking. This is based on my own past experience. In my current line of work, the odds of “going to the ground” are nil, but, if I was pushing a squad car again, the odds are good to happen every day.

Here are some thoughts from John Valentine:

From the stand point of the military from almost 1000 post action interviews( he is taking about MP’s here) the data proved that every fight was a grappling match and for cops unless some new technology appears where people arrest themselves you’re going to have to go hands on. Whether you’re doing Jiu-Jitsu or learning from the local high school wrestling coach let’s get down to 3 REAL reasons why LE or MIL should train:

#3 You’re in the business of killing/restraining evil (People who want to kill you)

Your fight comes down to two basic scenarios. Either help is on the way or help is not on the way. Just because it isn’t on the way for you doesn’t mean help is not on the way for the bad guy(s).

#2 Do you want to be in the news?

People throw around pseudo legal terms all the time. None make me cringe like “excessive force.” People use those words without understanding any of the legal factors or standards that come with use of force for LE/MIL.

It’s not just bad enough that you have mobs of people who don’t exactly understand the legal system but you also have a judicial system that could 6 months to judge something to took 6 seconds. We all see how they get; the longer the mob waits the more their blood lust grows. The media we know are all shameless scumbags. They will not only release your information but put up pictures of your family, hell if they could drop a google map pin on your home while reporting live they will. What does this do to your personal safety and to the safety of the ones that count on you because your only plan was glock-fu?

If a 15-year-old grabs at your gun there is no Rule of Engagement in the world that says you can’t shoot him but think of the headlines, that D.A. with political ambitions, the mobs, etc. These days it’s socially acceptable to threaten and assault uniformed service members while being totally unacceptable to shoot people despite what your ROE says. When it comes to scapegoating the group is ALWAYS right even when they’re wrong. You have to learn how to use other tools especially your hands.

That’s just what happens if things go well for you in the fight. Things go south and the media is publishing your obituary. Training is going to give you options for escalation as well as de-escalation. No one ever rises to the occasion. You need to train on your anticipated tactical situations to the point where it’s no longer conscious thought.

#1 It’s cheaper to bury you

Think back to your days at the academy or at basic training. What happened every time you completed a portion of your training? That’s right. The block was checked. Your training was designed so that not only you could get through it but the kid in your class that ate glue, remember him? Yeah that guy made it to graduation day too.

T_he institutional setting has that exactly backwards and because they no longer have the liability since the block was checked the interest to provide (expensive) training is All training within the institutional setting is terminating training. It’s made to be an event that has to be overcome so once the training is completed (on very perishable skills) it hardly ever or never revisited again. All the warrior cultures of the old times that we try to measure up to for whatever reason (Samurai, Spartans, etc.) all shared one thing in common. They lived a lifestyle or had a culture of training.

Training is not an event it’s a constant learning.

Keep that in mind when 6 months or 6 years down the line when it comes time for you to call on those skills it will be as if you never had the training in the first place. However, in all the days that led up to that day, the day that chooses you. All the decisions you made up to that point dictate if you are going to live or if you’re going to die.

The command cares enough to ensure that whole time you were paying into your life insurance at least because your unit or department doesn’t have the funding to provide regular training to actually make you competent in varied skill sets.

Ultimately everyone (the good guys) wants the same things. Bad guys put away or put in the ground with the good guys coming home at the end of shift. None of this is new information to you guys that are actually putting in the work and most of the reason I wrote this was to inform the public as oppose to the MIL/LE guys.

To be fair there is nothing wrong with civilians questioning the training they pay for. There probably isn’t enough of that going around. I recently came across an LEO who told me his department sent him to a two week school to learn how to put in car seats… yeah… car seats…

I could go on and on further building a case on why you should train but what you do on your off time is your business. I will end this with one simple truth.

If you don’t train on your own time and on your own dime the bad guys will kill you or someone who counts on you.

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Thought for the day:

Mindset

When I worked the street, I must have heard this a thousand times from victims, everything from a car accident to a rape. “Why did this happen to me? Why? Well, it happens because of a lot of factors: people cannot drive, predators seek victims, and a majority of people are just plain stupid in situational awareness. You live in the suburbs and you make trips to the inner city to buy your drugs from a street dealer? And you wail and cry about being robbed or worse? Are you some special snowflake? Do you live such a charmed life that you believe that nothing will ever happen to you?

There is an old expression in police work: There are smart cops and stupid cops, but, there are no naive cops. Start today and accept the fact the world is dangerous: prepare, train, and most of all own what happens in your life.

Some food for thought from Tim Burke:

One thing I have found to be true about combat, whether fighting in war or defending yourself on the street, is that you don’t get to opt out. When a criminal (in this case) appears in front of you demanding your money at gunpoint, you don’t get to say, “I’m just not into it today!” You ARE into it, whether you like it or not. Accepting the situation for what it is, is the first step toward a solid and acceptable solution, responding appropriately is the second key to success in a tense situation like this.

Many times, in business or in life, people make very stupid decisions because they have failed to apply rule number one; realize that you don’t get to opt out, they either don’t realize the situation for what it is, or they think they can get out of it without getting their hair messed up. The truth is, sometimes things are going to be confrontational, uncomfortable, or just plain bad. The first thing you must do is see the situation for what it is and accept that you are in it.
Accept it. See the situation for what it is. This allows you to more accurately assess your options, and thereby make a smarter and appropriate decision.

There is a myriad of methods people use to get out of things, such as; talking themselves out of reality, negotiating with themselves that “this can’t really be happening”, denying that it is happening, not believing someone would do this to me, and on and on.

A threat to your physical security may be an extreme case to demonstrate this rule, but it is certainly a good one. Many situations will be far more obscure in character. Nevertheless, it is critical you see it for what it is.

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Some articles concerning oblivious US FSOs on OAFNation:
http://oafnation.com/2015814new-american-royalty/
http://oafnation.com/2015817new-american-royalty-part-2/
http://oafnation.com/2015817new-american-royalty-part-3/

The shits & giggles alone make for a good read. @idaho, what do you think can and should be done to at least narrow the chasm between the “security guys” and FSOs?

I don’t know who “Thusla” is, but he or she knows what they are talking about. Some comments:

After all the information had been briefed to Karl, he deemed “the risks were not associated with me”,

Karl hated any US military/PMC presence , or their accompanying weaponry, and would always make the comment “this sets our mission back by the Afghans seeing your guns, this sets the mission back.

As I have stated before, I did 18 months of diplomatic protection in Iraq. One of the worst jobs I have ever done. I encountered this mindset from every diplomat I ever encountered. Every diplomat I was ever around hated the military / PSD teams with a passion, even going so far as to say, “I don’t want see any guns at my meeting” Really, you fucking idiot? You are risking 12 men’s lives to kiss an Iraqi ass, and, you don’t want any guns? Do you actually think this war is over? This is a Muslim country you idiot, where killing is the national sport. One time, I asked a particularly stupid Cornell graduate, ( I know because he told me three times) "do you think you are in Norway?, “don’t you think its a little hot for Finland?”. I was removed from his detail that afternoon.

“I fucking told him! I fucking told him! Fine, Sergeant get up here with comms!” yelled General Hood, standing outside with us, furious and cursing”

You brief them time and time again and they simply think you are just an uneducated gorilla. Then the shit hits the fan and they are never the ones to die. They always blame you for the attack, even one going so far as to say, the reason for the attack was we had too many guns. Their arrogance and stupidity knows no bounds.

This oblivious blundering in combat zones by DoS officials was typical, and was certainly not exhibited only by the Ambassador. It was almost a rule. Routine. Expected. Yet there was always this misplaced sense of accomplishment after the mission with them, but nothing of lasting quality was accomplished, nor will anything substantial be accomplished over there. It’s not that they were wrong for wanting to help, it’s that they wanted to do “something” only so that they could say “Oh look what I did. Look how charitable I am” with no concern about actions being ineffective or worse yet, harmful. It’s a very brief hazardous duty posting to list on their resume that will provide them with memories of fun times at NGO bars and mingling with foreign indigenous peoples, occasionally doing something that had the air of diplomacy. Democracy in that complex tribal system is a joke and a farce, just ask the average Afghan what he thinks about the voting process.

This is the fucking truth. No matter what happened or many men he got killed protecting his fat ass, they were always right, ass kissing mother fuckers.

It’s as if the power generators there run on bribes. The US has made the same mistake it made in Vietnam and Iraq and in Afghanistan. Corrupting every official from top to bottom with its munificence; foolishly assuming that money will just solve all the world’s problems and they will simply roll over and adopt American democracy. . . and that they will love us for it. However you cannot buy an Afghans loyalty, only rent it, and they know that all they have to do is wait us out until another US election and there will be a new money faucet

America is the worlds whore. All we do is open our financial legs and everyone fucks us. Everyone hates American on the international level, but, fuck that wasted tax money is so sweet. God Bless, that stupid American farmer, auto worker, civil servant or whatever, as long as those stupid Americans keep working, we can steal anything we want, especially the filthy, corrupt Afghans. The most corrupt society I have ever seen.

As if that money was really going to be put into building a school for orphans, not funding the supposed Minister of Education and his immediate family an all-expense paid trip to Dubai. Even Butterfingers Karzai had an inability to keep track of triple digit million dollar brief cases; funding his local, rolling clown-show private army, making backdoor deals with radical militants and local drug warlords.

There is nothing but corruption here, nothing is more important to an Afghan official than fucking over the USG, well, since this is a Islamic country, killing other Muslims ranks high on their list.

Every diplomat I ever met comes from the Bernie Sanders school of thought. “The world needs love and money” the problem is someone has to work, someone has to die to protect these idiots. About 90% of every diplomat I ever met came from some ultra liberal college, soaked in the juices of socialism, bathed in rightness, full of love for their fellow man. Just give your enemies money you have never earned, they will love you and that’s the most important thing for these idiots, they want to loved, to be seen as some type of Messiah.

_**NO ONE SHOULD EVER, EVER, BE A DIPOLMAT UNTIL THEY HAVE ACTUALLY DONE SOME TYPE OF “REAL WORK”. GOING TO THE JFK INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS IS NOT A JOB. MY RECOMMENDATION: GET RID OF ALL OF THEM, REPLACE THEM WITH “REAL PEOPLE” WHO ARE RETIRED TEACHERS, MILITARY.BANKING, WHATEVER.

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Thought for the day(1) Two more dead, rest easy my brothers.

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Thought for the day (2): Try a little experiment: find a quiet place and for about 10 minutes think hard about these 5 questions. Where do they stand in your life? If you answered any with , "I don’t know? " what does that say about your life?

Roman

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Is letting the “diplomats” go out alone an option?

Also, though I support some measures, and have suggested a few on another thread, I’m generally leary of gun control for many reasons. One of which is that everyone I know who is “anti-gun” is also “anti-police” to the point where they almost immediately believe the worst accusations against the police. I can’t see the logic there, if there is any. Do you Idaho, or anyone else reading think these people are anything more than “useful idiots?”

I work in public schools. I would bet most of the teachers are for stricter gun control. I have never seen any anti-cop attitudes. Police are talked about positively with students and treated with not only respect but friendliness from teachers. The teachers are actually glad and even relieved to see them.

After Sandy Hook, I’m in CT, there was a cop at my kid’s school and I felt better about leaving her there as did the rest of the parents when it came to their kids. And CT is not the most gun friendly state. Anti-cop people who aren’t criminals are just people who want to feel like part of some victim group.

I don’t even think they are useful. And from my personal experience, I find “anti-gun” to be basically the same as “anti-police”. But, have one of those snowflakes fall victim to a crime and the “police” will be the first they cry to.

Thought for the day:

Lady%20cop

“I choose to believe. Believe in the power of calling. I believe in honor and sacrifice, in courage through the danger, and strength through the struggle. I believe in hope. I believe in the power of will, in justice, in a new day, and in making a difference. I will never stop believing no matter what comes my way. Some may hate, while others turn a blind eye. There will be burdens and risks. Loss of brothers and sisters and the challenge to keep going. No matter what confronts me, no matter the danger, I will keep my faith, my hope, and my courage”

In recent the events of our fallen brothers and sisters I will continue to smile and carry out my duties. But remember the second you try to rid me of my smile and rid me the opportunity to go back to my loved ones at the end of shift… I will fight, WE will fight. We don’t cower in fear.

Well said, My Lady, well said.

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Flashback Friday:

Friday

Frost

Saturday Morning Coffee Break:

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