6-19-25

A friend of mine served in Kandahar Afghanistan at the beginning of the war

there…..we were on different teams…..but at some point we were back in the

same spot together and he told me a story of one of the Special Forces guys that

he was with getting attacked in close quarters in the streets of Kandahar and

suffering a shot to the face……but the Green Beret immediately assessed his own

wounds……slapped something on it to stem the blood flow, acquired his target

and took out the enemy shooter…… My friend told me that the word on the

street thereafter was “these Americans…..you can shoot them in the face and

they will just fix themselves and then kill you!”…….makes me laugh….. there is no

denying the quality of personnel we put in the field……and a lot of that boils down

to the training and equipping of that force…….

There’s a lot of talk in the news right now about what is going on in Iran….are we

going to bomb Iran…..are we going to follow through on what President Trump

has been saying for over ten years – that Iran cannot be allowed to become a

nuclear weapon state?......there are those that wring their hands and claim that

any action at all is not what they voted for, but they will also tell you in a

heartbeat that they want peace….there are those who desire war, in some kind of

sick fantastical view that war is the steady state that makes things better, and I’m

here to tell you that’s not it…..but like I said the other day, I don’t believe that we

are “going to war” in the normal sense…..but I also don’t believe that we are

going to just sit idly by and pretend that bad people who have done bad things for

decades will suddenly not pose a threat if we just turn our backs…..not for a

second…..having said that, let me break down the Iran crisis in two categories:

first let’s talk about our fighting posture (not the fight itself) but the fighting

posture…..and then let’s add some historical context because knowing our enemy

is important…..

Okay…..fighting posture……If you’ve ever had any experience at all with firearms

then you know that like anything else shooting is an acquired skill…….In the

military….anyone who has ever served in uniform has gone through basic

marksmanship training……in the Marines they have a saying that every Marine is a

rifleman first……for many who enlist the use of firearms in the military is their first

exposure to shooting of any type….and at least their first formal

instruction…..basic shooting comes down to the basics…..things like proper use

and care of your weapon, body position, sight alignment, breathing control,

trigger squeeze……but shooting at a fixed target at a known distance in the prone

position under highly regulated conditions is just the introduction……the real fun

comes when you get to the point that you’re able to conduct things like reflexive

fire training……being allowed to shoot, move and communicate under more

stressful conditions and with the brain more fully engaged……like tracking your

rounds, reloading while still maintaining a fighting posture, learning to stage your

magazines so that you can reload with your eyes closed or in the dark……and one

of the most unnatural aspects of that is squaring off to your target……

Here’s the thing…..if you’re in an armed confrontation and cover and

concealment is not an option then how you present yourself to the opposing

target matters…..the natural inclination is to slim your profile….provide less of a

target yourself by turning to the side…..but when you are in combat and wearing

body armor the side panels of your ballistic vest provide very little high impact

protection……the true ability of body armor to shield the wearer comes from the

protective inserts…..the SAPI Plates…..that cover the vital organs in the front and

rear……so the training for those who wear armor is to adopt a stance that squares

your shoulders to the enemy …….it’s also a stance that shows the enemy that you

mean business…..its also unnatural and requires some training….and truthfully it

requires a measure of faith…….right now, anyone who believes that Trump should

turn the nations back, or narrow the nations profile, is leaving us exposed…..it

doesn’t mean that we have to put boots on the ground, but it does mean that we

do not leave ourselves exposed…that we present a hard target…..putting carrier

strike groups in the Gulf, making serious demands, pre-positioning air assets and

upgrading logistical hubs, those are the national version of squaring ourselves to

the target…..presenting a ready and capable and defendable position to those

that have said that they intend to do us harm…..

How you are when the moment of conflict or confrontation or challenge arrives is

going to be largely dependent upon the level of preparation you have put into

such an occurrence well before it happens…..and how much you are willing to

trust that the armor you have prepared to use on that day will actually provide a

measure of protection……President Trump is right to ready the US military, to

position our posture so that we are squared off…..anything less would be seen as

weakness and would literally make us more vulnerable…..

Squaring off to the target is both unnatural and needed……it takes practice, but it

also takes believing that the armor will work……

But then there is the history…..who is the enemy….what do we know about

them…..who are they….what do they stand for…..

Sun Tzu once said,

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a

hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained

you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will

succumb in every battle.”…..You always look at the enemy….try to get in his

head….recognize his motivations, his styles, his prior actions….it’s no different

than a Coach watching game films of the team he is up against the next

week…..learn their styles, their capabilities….except in this case it’s not a game, its

about life and death…..for thousands of years the nation that we know today as

Iran has been a thorn in the side of the western world, and the middle east…..the

Persian empire under King Xerxes attempted to conquer Greece….he failed, but

the battle that we now know as Thermopylae, with the 300 Spartans, was thew

galvanizing moment that led to the formation of the western world…..fast

forward to modern times…..the Imperial State of Iran was an ally of the west….but

the undercurrent in their society was a fundamental Islamic radicalism that

wanted a theocratic control…..the Ayatollah Khomeni was the leader of the

movement who was living in exile…..but the revolution, sparked by fighting in the

streets, and the murder of hundreds of innocent citizens, led to the nation falling

into chaos and the Ayatollah being flown into the country to take control as the

Iranian royal family fled the country…..that was 1979…..and just a short time later

the new Islamic Republic of Iran began setting the stage for war with the

west…..In November of that same year, 1979, fundamentalist radicals, with the

blessing of the Ayatollah, seized the US embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans

hostage…..the hostages were paraded on TV, blindfolded, threatened,

mistreated……President Jimmy Carter….the second worst president in American

history didn’t understand the idea of squaring off to the enemy…..he crawfished,

and wrung his hands, and tried to appease and negotiate…..finally, realizing that

there was nothing else that could be done Carter authorized a special operations

mission called Operation Eagle Claw….a daring raid into Iran….I’ve met men who

participated in that mission….everything that could go wrong did go wrong…..but

the problems were not the mission members….the problems were that we had

never properly squared off as a nation to an enemy that was fine with holding 52

of our people hostage…..Ronald Reagan changed that….he guaranteed a new

posture and days after he was elected President Iran released the hostages…..but

since that time Iran has continued to kill Americans…..just in the war in Iraq we

know of over 660 American soldiers killed because of Iran…..we know of Iran’s

direct involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 that killed 17

US sailors and wounded 40 others….We know of Iran’s direct involvement with

Hezbollah bombing the US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 that killed 241

Marines…..we could talk all day about Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi’s…..don’t think

for a minute that this conflict your watching is just Israel and Iran…..Iran has been

killing Americans for decades and if they go nuclear they will not stop…..history

dictates that they don’t value life, especially American lives…..

So yes, its all about squaring off to the enemy…..which Trump is doing…..and its

about knowing the bigger picture, the history, which Trump knows quite well…..

This big picture moment….it is not finite and small….

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way