Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Military fairy tales

Best Defense is in summer reruns. Here is an item that originally ran on April 26, 2016.

By , a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy.
gustavedore_she_was_astonished_to_see_how_her_grandmother_looked
gustavedore_she_was_astonished_to_see_how_her_grandmother_looked

 

 

Best Defense is in summer reruns. Here is an item that originally ran on April 26, 2016.

I like them. Example:

So, this little girl was getting ready for a trip to her grandma’s house. Red Riding Hood started by doing a map recon and checking with the intel bubbas to see what was going on along her route. After she heard about the increase in wolf-related activity in the area, she requested additional assets like a drone for overwatch and more ammunition for the mass-casualty producing weapons systems.

Etc.

Another passage I liked:

Three little pigs were preparing for an imminent invasion by a big, bad wolf when one proposed that each pig should fall back to their own home, the senior pig got pissed. “What are you, some kind of dumb boot!?” he asked. “We should concentrate our forces in the most defensible territory we have.”

Meantime, here are some updated military sayings, such as, “Cry, ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of limited, low intensity counterinsurgency.”  Or, “It is well that PowerPoint is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.”

Image credit: Gustave Doré/Wikimedia Commons

Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1

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