Everyday physics on the planet mimics the actions of living things

Take for example using a blower to remove the leaves from a patio area. Assuming an ordinary patio and not a fanciful platform suspended in the sky, when you use the blower there is an intractable force that causes some of the leaves to come back toward the blower. If fact this is the principle problem when using a blower: how to keep the leaves in front of you and none returning along the edges or around your feet. Somehow the strange physics of the planet combines air resistance and gravity and a million other factors to thwart the perfect removal of leaves.

Imaginative strategies have to be implemented to get an otherwise simple device to move leaves from one place to another. If the blower is held too high, there are problems. Or if the angle is too steep, or if you stand in one spot too long – these things create problems that quickly defeat the objective at hand. Nope, the goal of removing leaves takes an on-going coordinated attack from many different directions, accompanied by retreats and continual movement over the same area. Despite using the full capability of the human brain, the job is rarely 100% successful, and it is not the fault of man or machine – it is purely a fact caused by the physics of our planet.

The same physics that stymies the leaf blower can be applied to military action. Perhaps this is a poorly chosen comparison but it comes to mind since I am wondering exactly what our military leaders are gleaning from the prolonged street warfare in Iraq.

The exact same problems encountered with leaves are encountered when using force to remove people. The blower, or in this case, the military firepower has to be employed in identical ways to the blower, and no matter how one advances while shooting the gun, the job is rarely 100% successful. Leaves, or in this case, humans in the line of fire, will follow the same pattern as leaves and scatter to the sides and roll back along the flanks. In some cases, just as you see with a leaf blower, some even come back straight back under your feet.

Obviously this has important implications for commanders on the ground who have to understand that advancing in one direction will create a natural vulnerability to counter-attack along the flanks. Advance too far and the natural physics indicates that you will become surrounded and require rescue.

It should be noted also that no matter how forceful the action with a blower, there is always a recalcitrant leaf wedged under a crack in the board. The same is true for people. Some people by twist of amazing fate even survived the atomic attacks in Japan. To completely eliminate any recalcitrant survivor requires a vigorous and focused attack, perhaps needing more effort than a quick first-pass. With a leaf, you could lean over and pick it out by hand, but in our military comparison, this fact would suggest that advancing troops will encounter groups of survivors impossibly wedged in a position as to require huge resources to remove. Advance far enough and several pockets of survivors will be in your midst leaving troops vulnerable to hit-and-run tactics across the entire area.

So it is safe to assume that a military attack cannot get 100% of the humans for exactly the same reasons that a blower cannot get 100% of the leaves. This bears out in another way. To move people requires the troops to alternately advance and retreat while continually moving side to side to make sure their advisories are kept out in front. This is exactly the same action needed to corral leaves using a blower.

This objectification of war is not intended to shock or offend the reader. It merely draws a commonality between military leaders and homeowners when it comes to blasting away at adversaries. The problems encountered by both will be unchanged until the physics of the planet changes, at which time other physics will create a host of new niches and problems that will have the final say in what happens here.



Gene Haynes