“TEACH THEM A LESSON” IS A PROFESSIONAL MILITARY UNDERTAKING
March 20th, 2010
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My friend Corporal Otto.
My comments sequietially appended to your posting
On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 1:12 PM, Patrick Otto wrote:
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Posts Tagged ‘them’
“TEACH THEM A LESSON” IS A PROFESSIONAL MILITARY UNDERTAKING
March 20th, 2010
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Mr Kyijomanyi,
1/7 You observe that the UPDF went to Kasubi to teach the youth a lesson. That is debatable. However, what we should not debate is the question whether a military force that “goes out to teach a lesson” is a professional force.
2/7 Military operations doctrine world over abounds with what are called “Show of Force Operations” which are one of the 10 principle military engagements that form back bone of stability operations. Stability operations also include peace operations, peacekeeping, peace building, operations in support of diplomatic efforts, foreign internal defense, security assistance, humanitarian and civic assistance, support to insurgencies, support to counterdrug operations, combating terrorism, noncombatant evacuation operations, arms control.
3/7 Your UPDF (and for that matter UPF also) is involved in such operations locally and abroad. According to my limited assessment as a retired Lance Corporal, the Buduuda case is an instance of humanitarian and civic assistance; the Somalia deployment is a case of peace operations, peacekeeping, peace building, operations in support of diplomatic efforts, combating terrorism etc; the support to SPLA was a case of support to insurgencies and so on.
4/7 Yes: there is a thing called “Teach them a lesson” operations, TTALO! Thaey are professionally called “Show of force operations” (SOFO), operations “intended to warn or intimidate an opponent and to showcase one’s own capability or will to act if provoked” (wikipedia). Yes: to intimidate and show that they can act if provoked. It is as professionally defined and bluntly put as that. Uganda’s historiography is full of cases of “punitive expeditions”…in Ibanda, Bukedi, Bunyoro, Lango etc. These are days of political correctness, hence: Stability Operations”. This contradicts your view that, and I quote, “They went there to teach the youth a lesson” and therefore they were unprofessional. When you make that assertion, you are distancing yourself from the truth, because show of force operations are doctrinally intended “to teach…a lesson”.
5/7 And by the way, far from the childish talk that we are involved in here on the forum, I bet you that the top mind of the edifice of coercion in Uganda may have had serious questions to ask about the nature of the fire at Kasubi. Was it a steady blaze or was it punctuated by blasts and pops, like fireworks? In other words, was there some ordnance? Tell you what soldiers (especially those that have branched into statecraft) do not trust even their own shadows. When they stand for long, they have to keep checking whether an enemy is not creeping up on them using the cover of their very own shadows. Call it paranoia if you want to be mistaken, but it is “ujanja ya polini”: jungle craft. Your Uganda is a jungle!
6/7 It is not accidental that I posted here the nature of the fire at Kabaka Mwanga’s palace on 16th March 1886 (note the 16th March), a few days after Bwana Stokisi (Charles Stokes who has many descendants in Uganda) had delivered a stock of ordnance (Read the 1898 book, “Mackay of Uganda”, pp. 275-6).
7/7 If you want to debate this issue at all, it may not help much to pursue it from the purely military angle: all your arguments will end up being clouded by emotions. You are probably better off pursuing the political question of “Stability Operations”: stability for whom? That may be safer ground.
Lance Corporal (Rtd) Patrick Otto “THE SAME HEAT THAT MELTS THE BUTTER HARDENS THE EGG”
How do Ugandans punish an army ready to shoot at them helplessly?
March 19th, 2010
2 comments
The arrogance with which some security personnel handle cases of cold blood murder by their colleagues of un armed people points at something bigger than soem Ugandans may be thinking. First of all, all security personnel leaders must realise that they have allowed a trend that we shall regrate in the near future. We have allowed our security personnel to believe that they can shoot to kill any time they have been provoked. If every single Ugandan who were provoked by any body was to resort to such fatal action then the whole country will be at war with itself. Self restraint and other tactical manourvours are expected to be exploited first before resorting to shooting to kill during such situations. To me, a security outfit that resorts to killing unarmed people is professionally bunkurapt, technically unfit to do what they are doing. We cannot talk of having a professional army when we are encouraging such unwanton killing, in cold blood of a people who are expressing their anger and loss, more so without any weapons to intimidate the security personnel. Secondly, to me, the president’s handlers need alesson or two about handling such sitautions. We all know that the relationship between the President and a big portion of Baganda, especially the youth, is very bad. This has been on for some time due to a number of happendings and, particulalry, the presidents decisions over CBS, Kayunga and other issues. Now, given the abvoe, there was no way the president should have gone to Kasubi immediately the Tombs were set on fire. We all know that many a Baganda would want to link a number of people and groups to the above action and many may want to believe that given the recent happenings, some elements within government may have had a hand in the burning of the Kasubi tombs. So, under such circumstances, the president should have sent some Minsiter or any othe delegate to assess teh sitauion, convey his message to Buganda and then when the storm, the anger and the erest has subsided, the President would go there. The bottom line is, we do not have to keep murderring our owsn people for us to show that we have a strong security detail. We do not have to drive the presedent through a wall of angry people and shoot to kill to allow the president driver over dead bodies to prove that, yes, he is well protected. The fact will always remain that once a leader starts to get the heaviest protective ensamble possible to drive through his people, when a leader can no longer be protected by those he leads, then it is time to know that he is no longer their leader. I invite you to look at the two pictures shown in The Observer of Thursday March 18th – 21st 2010, Page 4. You may take interest in many more pictures elsewhere and tell me what you see. Bottom line is. We do not have to kill innocent, unarmed Ugandas to prove our mighty as protectors of the President. This trend, I must stress, is pregnant with trouble in future. Frank
Pojim: FDC party buys two radio stations, Mutabazi to close them down
March 15th, 2010
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Pojim:
Dr Besigye announced that FDC had bought tow FM radio stations and now Mutabazi promises to close those radio stations. Was it necessary for Dr Besigye to reveal plan B?
WBK
WBK
Rating
By Gerald Bareebe (email the author)
Posted Monday, March 15 2010 at 00:00
Mityana
The Forum for Democratic Change has announced that it has bought two existing radio stations following a government decision to deny the party a licence to set up its own. The decision to buy the radio stations was taken by FDC National Executive Committee, the highest decision-making organ of the party.
The announcement was made by FDC president, Dr
Opposition want law to allow them receive donor funds
March 11th, 2010
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Folks;
I consider Hon. Ekanya as one of the most lucid legislators in Uganda today. Here, he’s making an impressive and timely case for legislations to level the funding field for all political parties.
My chief concern here is that neither Mr. Ekanya nor any other Opposition leader has come out to spell out how much each party has received, how they spend it, and what projects they hope to embark on with additional fundings.
Nevertheless, his fight to amend the laws governing political funding is commendable.
Pojim
Opposition want law to allow them receive donor funds Thursday, 11th March, 2010 E-mail article Print article
Opposition MPs have asked Parliament to amend the Political Parties Organization Act to enable political parties receive more funds from donors.
According to the current law, Political Party cannot receive cash donations exceeding 400 million shillings.
Appearing before the legal and Parliamentary affairs committee of Parliament, Tororo County Legislator Geoffrey Ekanya said their activities are curtailed by inadequate funds.
He also wants the Presidential Elections Act to have a clause that will ban RDCs from engaging in active politics because they are civil servants.
WELLCOME TO IRAQ AFTER WE HAVE MURDERD ABOUT A MILLION OF THEM
March 8th, 2010
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Allan barigye
Look very closely at this photograph.
http://www.thehindu.com/fline/fl2204/images/20050225001105001.jpg
Please tell me what holds power, is it the gun or the ink on the finger?
EM Toronto
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group “With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy” Groupe de communication Mulindwas “avec Yoweri Museveni, l’Ouganda est dans l’anarchie”
[mailto:ugandans-at-heart@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of barigye.rugo@gmail.com Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2010 6:43 PM OF THEM
Isn’t that Africa? the judge will as usual remain Mr. AK47
On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 3:37 PM, e j wrote:
Democracy has arrived, gun on one hand and vote with the other hand. hehe
WELLCOME TO IRAQ AFTER WE HAVE MURDERD ABOUT A MILLION OF THEM
March 8th, 2010
2 comments
Isn’t that Africa? the judge will as usual remain Mr. AK47
On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 3:37 PM, e j wrote:
ANOTHER DRARU? SPE KAZIBWE TOUGHT THEM!
March 6th, 2010
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Woman kills husband Friday, 5th March, 2010 E-mail article Print article By John Semakula and Herbert Ssempogo
A WOMAN in Mukono district on Wednesday night reportedly stabbed and killed her husband, whom she suspected of infidelity.
Jadida Kahaliya is said to have killed Henry Keemo, 27, at Namilyango, Goma sub-county.
The Seeta Police chief, Apollo Kyangungu, said Keemo, a boda boda rider at Namugongo in Wakiso district, was with an unidentified woman when Kahaliya attacked him.
“She stabbed Keemo twice in the neck, making him bleed profusely. He died on the way to hospital,” Kyangungu added.
Kahaliya is said to have fled but was found hiding in a house. She had allegedly swallowed chemicals in an attempt to commit suicide.
The Police rushed her to Mulago Hospital in Kampala for treatment, after restraining the angry boda boda riders who wanted to lynch her.
The couple reportedly got married in 2003 and had two children; Brenda Nabalayo, 4 and Erick Okabaka, 6. JN FDC FOR FEDERAL!!
Foreigners they didn’t steal our jobs: they created them
February 25th, 2010
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Foreigners they didn’t steal our jobs: they created them
Are immigrants from Eastern Europe putting Britons out of work? A simple experiment provided a surprising answer
February 24, 2010
Evan Davis
‘There is a lot of skilled work out there but there’s nothing for people who haven’t got skills.”
Philip Doughty scrolls through online job ads and grumbles about the lack of suitable employment in his town. It’s easy to understand his frustration at the job choices apparently on offer.
“Hypnotherapy, I’m not skilled for. Media sales I’m not skilled for. Project manager contractors, again not skilled for. What jobs are there for people like me?”
His question is one that surprisingly quickly gets right to the heart of the national debate over immigration.
Philip comes from Wisbech, a once-prosperous market town in Cambridgeshire. Despite his complaints, one thing is painfully clear in his area there are plenty of unskilled jobs around.
The proof is in the approximately 9,000 Central and Eastern Europeans who have come and found them since the EU was expanded in 2004.
So why doesn’t Philip have a job?
One theory is the familiar one, that foreigners have stolen them all. You hear it expressed a lot in the town and it is hard to blame the local unemployed if they assume that the sparkling new avenues of employment that lead from Wroclaw to Wisbech have bulldozed their way through the opportunities of the people that were already there.
But there is a second interpretation: that the unskilled jobs exist; it’s just the British can’t or don’t want to do them at rates at which it is viable to employ them. On this theory, if you were to take the immigrants away, you would have the same British unemployment as you had before.
The economics profession has veered towards the second of these views rather than the first. But sometimes anecdotal evidence can do more than a thousand studies to help us frame an opinion, which is why BBC One commissioned Leopard Films to conduct an experiment.
It simply involved taking a dozen or so unemployed people in Wisbech for a couple of days and putting them into jobs filled by migrants packing potatoes, serving in an Indian restaurant, renovating property. It’s unscientific but illuminating.
The outcomes are mixed, but overall it’s easy to see why employers default to foreign labour for many of the most routine jobs available.
Philip takes part in the experiment himself: he gets two days picking asparagus. Unlike some other British participants in the project, he does turn up and does his best. But even he has to concede that the foreigners are good workers. “If I had a farm, I’d employ them any day,” he admits.
The most important conclusion must be that immigrants have not all stolen their jobs from the British. They’ve made more economic activity on these shores viable than would be the case in their absence. As the employers in the programme explain, if the immigrants were to leave Wisbech, their jobs would not go to the local unemployed, many of them would simply go altogther.
But you might go farther and argue that not only have migrants not stolen unskilled jobs, they have created jobs for white-collar workers.
Take the Greenvale potato-packing plant near Wisbech, for example. Like many large employers these days, it substantially fills the shopfloor with non-Brits who do the back-breaking routine work. Twelve- hour shifts, with two fifteen-minute breaks and a half-hour lunch.
The company wouldn’t be as big or profitable without a ready stock of hard-working, motivated employees to take this work. Hence one consequence of the migrants is that there are more jobs upstairs in management, human resources, secretarial and other functions. In short, at Greenvale, migrants have created British jobs for British middle-class workers.
And that is probably one of most significant effects of immigration.
To make the point, the Office for National Statistics published some interesting statistics last year: of those born in this country, 16 per cent are employed in roles labelled managers or senior officials. That’s almost as many as are employed at the traditional unskilled end of the labour market. You find only 18 per cent of us employed in the “bottom” two rungs, so-called elementary occupations and process, plant and machine operatives.
The thing about a country of managers is that it needs people to manage. And immigration from Central and Eastern Europe has ended up topping up the numbers of the British working class. Among the imported workers from Central and Eastern Europe, most are in those bottom two rungs. And hardly any are in the management or professional categories.
No wonder Philip sees plenty of hypnotherapy and project management type jobs being advertised out there.
Which brings us to an important question left open by the Wisbech experiment. Even if migrants are not the root cause of his problems, how do we help Philip? And how do we nudge into activity, the “shirkers” those who are now almost entirely devoid of any motivation to lift themselves off benefits.
The incentive to think about those workers whether they need carrots, sticks or subsidies to get them doing something has been undermined by the ease with which they can be replaced by new arrivals. Migration has made it possible for employers no longer to bother trying to help indigenous workers with the fewest skills and least ability to compete; it also made it easy for policymakers (before the recession) to boast of growing employment and a successful labour market.
In short, migration has made it easier to be middle class or an employer.
Maybe that is a good thing. But don’t be surprised if it doesn’t feel so to someone unskilled.
The Day the Immigrants Left is on BBC One tonight at 9pm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7038352.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=2270657