According to anonymous sources, who insisted on not being identified out of fear of being ridiculed, the Observer has learned that the Army plans to remove headlights from tanks, cars, trucks and other vehicles.
The new measure will solve the Army’s speed problem. Political leaders have long complained bitterly that the Army’s vehicles traveled at far below their maximum speed at night. The Army’s somewhat lame explanation was that the drivers were under instructions “to not outrun their headlights”, in order to avoid accidents when they didn’t have sufficient time for braking.
The politicians exclaimed, in exhalted tones: “We don’t care about your technical problems. If you have a problem, just solve it, OK?”
The Army came up with the perfect solution: Remove the headlights. If they did that, the problem of outrunning the headlights would be solved.
They ran it by their political superiors, who were delighted at the easy solution to the problem, with the unexpected savings on the headlights that would no longer be required.
Later, at a “lessons learned” workshop among the top national security officials, the success of the Army’s approach was touted by top political officials, who decided they could use the same principle on a much larger scale.
Since diplomats often tied up decision making by conjuring up myriad problems further down the road, slowing up the deployment of troops and other military operations, this major problem in the execution of military actions could be solved in a simple but powerfully direct manner:
Remove the diplomats from the front of the military juggernaut, and the problem of unnecessary speed constraints would be resolved. As in the case of the Army headlights, removing the diplomats would result in a significant cost savings.
President Trump and his top officials all agreed. The State Department would adopt a new approach to its role in international affairs, with a proposed 37% cut in its budget.
See Colum Lynch, “White House Seeks to Cut Billions in Funding for United Nations; U.S. retreat from U.N. could mark a ‘breakdown of the international humanitarian system as we know it.’”, FP.com, March 13, 2017.
A top international security analyst and official in the Trump administration, speaking off the record, expressed enthusiastic approval of the new approach, declaring “Once again, President Trump has proved that the world is not as complicated as it appeared to be, and that heretofore seemingly insurmountable problems can be quickly resolved by inspired and forceful action.”
The Trenchant Observer
