The First Rule Of Fight Club Is...

The first rule of Civil Affairs is dont make any promises. No one has the authority or the power to garantee a promise of any kind. Even if you lose control of your tank and flatten a house, you dont promise to rebuild it. The most that you can ethically and honestly promise anyone is to look into it. There are just too many people who can say no. Those who control the purse strings and the lawyers are the most obvious, but sometimes even the Iraqis dont want what you may have promised. It is their country after all.

Managing expectations is the number one concern if you want to help someone else. Raising expectations beyond what you can reliably support is asking for trouble. It is far better to promise nothing and deliver a little, than to promise even a little and deliver nothing. The time to show someone what a great person you are is when the contract is signed and the money obligated, because the work cant be stopped after that. Anything less around here, and you are risking blowback in the form of violence and not just against yourself. Angry people are not selective in who they take their anger out on.

There are way too many people, ostensibly on our side, who are in the habit of making promises without thinking about who has to keep them. Sometimes they dont even have the courtesy to tell you that they made a promise that you now have to find a way to keep. To put it mildly, I am really annoyed right now. I have to figure out how to accelerate a someone's pet project that isn't a priority to anyone but him, and the people to whom he made the promise. Fortunately, he doesn't read this blog, but I suppose that I will have to delete this post eventually.

While I am ranting, I was supposed to go out on another mission yesterday. It would have been my first overnight stay out in the city. Would have been, because I couldn't get any transportation. The Brits mean well, but they have drawn down their presence here over the past year and don't have the capacity to support us like we need. They have playing defense for a long time, and that is also annoying me right now.