What is LIC?
Low-Intensity Conflict (LIC) is the official name for when individuals or governments hire intermediaries to conduct violent operations from a secure position. LIC is a misnomer; those who have become victims of the barbaric cruelty of those practicing LIC find nothing “Low” about the experience. The conflict is intense, the actions brutal, and the practitioners remain cunning adversaries using and employing willing dupes to hide the true depths of moral decay inherent in the societal destructions and depravations the practitioners are enacting. Many confuse LIC in describing the actions of unbridled violence committed by ideologues under the banner of terrorism. The US Military Joint Chiefs of Staff define LIC as:
“A limited political-military struggle to achieve political, social, economic, or psychological objectives. It is often protracted and ranges from diplomatic, economic, and psychological pressures through terrorism and insurgency. Low-intensity conflict is generally confined to a geographic area and is often characterized by constraints on the weaponry, tactics, and levels of violence (Tinder 1990) [emphasis mine].”
Green (1997) adds a key ingredient to the description of LIC from Tinder (1990).
“… Non-international conflict is a refined term for what [was] formerly known as revolutions or civil wars, particularly when these have developed into major operations with the likelihood or reality of atrocities being committed against non-combatants. Whether civilians or those [rendered] hors de combat, a fact that is often more common in non-international … conflicts, especially when ideological, ethnic, or religious differences are in issue. It is for this reason that it must be borne in mind that the term low-intensity [conflict] has no relation to the severity or violence of the conflict” [emphasis mine].
Lt. Colonel Alan J. Tinder wrote a paper for the Air War College in 1990 titled: “Low-Intensity Conflict.” I have learned much from the Colonel and benchmarked this principle to more thoroughly understand LIC, recognize LIC, and detail LIC for others. The other compelling source is L. C. Green’s paper on “Low-Intensity Conflict and the Law.” I aim to synthesize this information into a manageable topic and aid understanding. Let me state emphatically that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) leadership’s actions are nothing short of LIC where employees and veterans/customers are concerned.
Regularly, the Department of Veterans Affairs – Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG) reports on a comprehensive healthcare inspection of a VHA facility, reports on employee morale in the VBA, or sum analysis of an employee or customer surveys, and include in the report a fairly descriptive, yet starkly utilitarian phrase, “reduce staff feelings of moral distress at work.” Generally, the efforts to reduce “moral distress” is left to an underling, an assistant, or a person for whom this is a secondary or collateral duty and is not considered important or relevant.
Do the actions of a leader represent complicity in creating moral distress fit the general definition of LIC? Absolutely. Consider that the leader sets the culture through actions, words, and behaviors, which originate in the thoughts and feelings of the leader. Correcting moral distress is pawned off on a junior staff member as a collateral duty, another method for displaying disrespect and communicating principles of abuse to employees. But there is no physical violence; how does this apply to LIC? Aren’t dead veterans’ examples enough of violent tendencies to justify the definition of LIC? The VA leader operates from a place of security, exemplifies the culture they deem acceptable, and then works through minions to achieve a “to achieve the political, social, economic, or psychological objective.”
Never forget these two critical points in the description of LIC:
“Often protracted and ranges from diplomatic, economic, and psychological pressures.”
“LIC has no relation to the severity or violence of the conflict.”
At the VA, the leadership calls their example politics; keeping your position or advancing is economical, and the psychological pressure to conform is palpable. All fundamental keys to conducting LIC against veterans, taxpayers, dependents, and non-conforming employees. Multiple times Congress has held hearings and listened to how the VA Leadership exacted revenge and retaliation upon those who reported problems to the VA-OIG, their elected congressional leaders, and other investigative parties. Feel free to peruse some of these hearings; you will hear victims relating physical, economic, and mental abuse, and the VA leadership never takes action. Elected officials never scrutinize and hold accountable those executing LIC, and the victims are victimized a second time.
Want another indicator that LIC is being practiced, the VA-OIG, after learning there are problems with moral distress at work, makes the following to slide the issues under the proverbial rub:
“The OIG’s review of the medical center … did not identify any substantial organizational risk factors.”
Signifying that even though the VA-OIG found moral distress is affecting and influencing employee behavior, the VA considers employee moral distress not an “organizational risk factor.” What does an employee who feels morally distressed do in performing their duties? Delay patients’ appointments, make mistakes on medication shipped, slow walk any responsibility to make things more complicated and take longer than they should. Does any of these actions sound familiar; they should, for this is the standard operating procedure for VA employees.
As reported previously, while I worked at the VA, I had intimate observations of what morally distressed employees do. When I wrote to the VA-OIG, I was informed that since I had my employment terminated, I could not be a whistleblower and get my job back. Plus, what I reported could not be actioned because it did not apply. How’s that for protecting the guilty? The VA Leadership is writing procedures and policies to target anyone and everyone who would report problems and seek help. An employee physically assaulted me; the camera mysteriously broke when I reported it, so no evidence was available. Who was at fault? Me; the assistant director promoted the attacker, and I got ostracized. The attacking employee took moral distress to new heights after this incident, and anyone who reported their behavior felt the wrath of the attacker and the VA leadership at the Albuquerque VAMC.
What is horrendous, this is not an isolated incident. What happened to me frequently repeats daily across every VA office. LIC is the overarching term, LIC is the behaviors named, and LIC is what the taxpayers are forced to pay for, all at the expense of veterans, dependents, and employees who see, know, and can do nothing. Repetitions of moral distress in employees, reported by the VA-OIG, are more than 20 just in 2022. The problem is cultural, and the elected officials desperately need to begin doing their second job, scrutinizing the executive branch and holding people accountable, including canceling the retirement packages of those practicing LIC.
Before someone tries to make this a Republican vs. Democrat issue, it is NOT political. LIC is never political, just as LIC is never religious, never racist, not sexist, or any other distinction. These distinctions are excuses, and the reasons do not justify the means for being violent. The leadership at the VA, and many other government agencies, have found that abusing the taxpayer pays well, provides protection, and allows them to exercise dominion to their heart’s content, all with the power of government to justify their deeds.
Do you realize that the VA-OIG has a metric for measuring moral distress, and the only time the VA-OIG reports moral distress among employees is when the results are higher than national averages? How scary is that to ponder? The problem is so prevalent that it only warrants reporting when it exceeds the norm. Thus, moral distress is declared less frequently when the average worsens. Official protection for LIC is provided by LIC, increasing, and the taxpayer is footing the bill.
I have read reports where the moral distress has worsened from year to year. The same leaders exacerbating the problem of employee moral distress are promoted and moved instead of reprimanded, punished, or fired. One of the VA-OIG reports is particularly heinous in hiding moral distress in employees.
“Selected employee survey responses demonstrated satisfaction with leadership and maintenance of an environment where staff felt respected and discrimination was not tolerated. Patient experience survey data implied general satisfaction with the outpatient care provided; however, leaders had opportunities to improve inpatient care satisfaction [emphasis mine].”
Mark Twain is oft quoted as stating, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” How much more valid are these words when results are “selected,” “cherry-picked,” or allowed to “imply generalities?” Those who engage in LIC are criminals, they are comparable to terrorists, and they have infiltrated the bureaucratic halls of government. Employing government power, they form unholy unions with social media outlets and media companies to further silence and abuse, all while increasing protection.
Where does it end? How do we put paid to the tyranny?
It ends when ordinary people decide they have had enough. Ending the LIC-powered tyranny requires nothing more than elected officials scrutinizing the government and doing the jobs they swore to commit. No violence, problematic or arduous tasks, merely following established law and doing the jobs we elected them to accomplish. LIC is always destroyed when the citizens being oppressed stand up for their rights and demand the bullies, tyrants, and fiends cease and desist!
Thomas Paine, writing in “Common Sense,” discussed simplicity, stating:
“I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple anything is, the less liable it is to be disordered; and the easier repaired when disordered.”
The American government was established on simplicity, and the US Constitution is a simple document. Using Thomas Paine’s pattern, the disorder in the government is simple to correct; all we need are people insisting that the infection is terminated. Using the systems established in the US Constitution, the US government can be brought to heel, the rot removed, and justice can be delivered to those tyrants employing LIC for personal gain and political profit. LIC is happening in every government agency, and it is time for change to begin. Where are the politicians willing to do the job we elected them to perform?
Mark Twain provides the final word, “The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.” From artistic villainy to LIC is not an arduous shift, merely the extension of abuse of power to a larger audience. Learn, choose, and then make your voice known through elections and peaceful assembly for redress per the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
© Copyright 2022 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.
Last week, feel free to look it up on YouTube, Officer Tatum was discussing a Drag Queen show where children are present, and the Drag Queen is exposing their underwear regularly to the horror of the children attending. Now, take a minute and put your critical thinking hat on. If a man or woman exposes their drawers to a child anywhere, that person is arrested for exposure and investigated for child endangerment and other potential crimes. Yet, if the person claims to be a cross-dressing member of the LGBTQ+ community, the law somehow doesn’t apply. Tell me why!
Generally, I am against banning books, but I am all in for age appropriateness in materials offered for reading. Tell me, should kindergarten-aged children be learning about masturbation? Their young minds and bodies are not developed sufficiently, yet what do we find in kindergarten required reading, how to masturbate? It was inappropriate to have harlequin romances in a junior high school library. What I needed was to learn about love, not sex. Not knowing there was a difference cost me a lot of time and relationships. What is the exposure to gay sexual details doing to the children’s minds right now? Why are these materials not only allowed but promoted to children?
Where are the rights of parents? On YouTube, a discussion was held that a mother and father had no legal say in what their child was taught in his second-grade classroom. Really, where did the rights of parents go? In 6th -12th grade, I freely admit I forged parental signatures on permission forms. Yet, my parents were still afforded their right to say no and tell the school board. More, when my mother became vociferous sufficiently to make a nuisance, she was jailed for contempt regarding teacher overreach in what was being taught to my younger brothers.
You have no claims upon my personal liberty, and I want my rights back!
Employers throughout the world, including Disney, American Express, Wells Fargo, and thousands more, have begun to battle their employees. Unionized shops, the battle has been waged for 50 years and shows no sign of relenting. Only recently have other employers joined the fray, not to help employees but to rid themselves of employees. These businesses are fighting employees against their employees for the company’s culture and soul. Couched in many a buzzword, political stance, and archaic practices, the employers want to rid their workforces of those they despise, and the battle is legal!
One truth that should give hope to the employees affected is that when the minority becomes the majority in a body and does not have any substance, they destroy themselves. C-Leaders, are you sure you want to take the company you have been placed in control over down this dangerous path? On my first day at American Express, new hires were introduced to the rich, proud, and stable company history and core values. How sad it is to witness how fast this company has fallen! Who will replace these companies? Will their replacements learn from the failures of the past?
Consider with me the actions of Fauci and the liquid definitions of “Gain of Function” research. Before Fauci started getting hammered by Senator Rand Paul for funding “Gain of Function” research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) changed the definition to protect Fauci from the crime of “lying to Congress.” Consider the other lies, language tricks, and tyrannical actions of Fauci throughout COVID from Feb 2020 to the present (Feb 2022). Fauci regularly claims he is “consistent” in his approach, even when claiming he lies with noble purposes.
Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is employing these exact tactics right now in Ottawa, where the #FreedomConvoy is concerned. Listen carefully to the words and tone used. Someone in the media should have asked about the prime minister’s intent when calling peaceful protestors racists, fascists, and other derogatory terms. Merely uttering those words should have been a warning to every Canadian citizen and media representative that the prime minister has left the reservation and needs to be questioned more thoroughly about his intentions, reasons, and legal footing for taking action and uttering the words he has used.
Since the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), democracy has experienced the same fate as the term sexuality, as discussed by Uwe Poerksen (1995, p. 12). Democracy has “made its appearance as a fixed element, which the reader cannot comprehend.” Political Science degree holders, media representatives, and tyrannical influencers have twisted the term democracy, plasticizing the term and then stretching it until confusion reigns, chaos flourishes, and the result is theft of thought. Unfortunately, democracy is but one of a list of thousands of terms regularly plasticized for political gain and the expansion of tyranny.
Consider the following from Uwe Poerksen (1995, p 88-89), where the author speaks of experts acting as functionaries who shape reality through their words. Compare this to Biden, Trudeau, or any number of other politicians, media talking heads, and so-called “influencers,” and a cold shiver should creep up your spine.
Two significant trials started in the last couple of days, both of which the media has been trying very hard to keep quiet while at the same time trying to, in the case of Epstein’s pimp, also make money on. The sheer audacity of the media, as well as their complicity in the crimes, remains astounding to me. The whole time Epstein was powerful and wealthy, the media fawned and twisted themselves into contortions fit to shame a pretzel. Then when his crimes could no longer be covered up, they still tried to protect him while simultaneously trying to report on a story that should have been written decades earlier.
Yet, what is the automatic response of government; more lockdowns, more masking mandates, more authoritarian government overreach, and less common sense! The lack of common sense in the COVID “pandemic” remains a crucial point of contention. The flip-flopping dead fish government cannot make up their collective minds, except to claim they want to inconvenience their citizens more. Every citizen should be sardonic and hold their elected officials in contempt for their COVID-SILLINESS. More to the point, the citizens of representative government need to send the only message to the government that can awake and arouse, “You’re FIRED!” Yet, I guarantee some politicians and bureaucrats consider themselves safe from the repercussions and citizen anger; I fully support correcting this misconception, pink slip the lot of them!
After discussing 
Several books of scripture, in multiple religions, record the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob and Esau are twins male children of Isaac and Rebekah. The boys were competitors for their entire lives. Esau acts outside his parent’s wishes in marriage, sells his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of pottage (stew or beans; something cooked in a pot), and late in life is reconciled to Jacob even though his people continue to have animosity towards Jacob’s people to this day. While the story of these twin brothers remains useful to those in religion and teaches several morals of importance, Jacob and Esau represent a classic tale of why government should be limited in size and scope.
Is the distinction clear? A right cannot be stripped from you by anyone, ever unless you choose to deny your inalienable rights to that particular right. For example, the 
In most societies, you can purchase and legally become the owner of an item due to the purchase. Thus, liberty allows you to become free to use that purchase however you desire. Until the use of that purchase interferes with someone else’s inalienable rights. For example purchase of a baseball bat is legal, mostly around the world. Use that baseball bat for its intended purposes, i.e., to play baseball or softball, and the government does not infringe upon your liberties. Use that baseball bat outside its intended purposes, to break windows, cause injuries or property damage, and you can lose your liberty and your property.
Thus the confusion and complication in defining and detailing liberties. Liberties can be taken and refused; liberties can be eliminated by government force and social changes. Liberties are not inalienable rights or even a right. You do not have a right to liberty. You may pursue happiness, but achieving happiness is not a right, freedom, or liberty.
Civil liberties are freedoms you pay the government to enjoy. For example, driving a car requires a license. By issuing licenses, the government can control the population, even though driving is considered a privilege, a right, and is often confused with “freedom of the open road,” which is two lies for the price one. Another example is 
Freedoms are often defined as political independence, which is fine insofar as civil liberties are concerned. Freedoms entail several other qualities that the government cannot give, take, invent, or delete. True freedoms do not need legal support from case law to be enjoyed. True freedoms include living without restraints, acting without control or interference, and not being bound by conventions, rules, and authorities. It cannot be stressed enough, even though liberties and freedoms share some components, they are merely similar, not identical. In trying to push liberty and freedom as equivalent, the tyranny of language is discovered to sunshine disinfectant. A right, especially those inalienable rights, are not freedoms or liberties to be granted and removed at the power of authority, and the distinction should be clear.
It has been said that my freedom of speech ends where your nose begins. Thus, I cannot exercise my freedom of speech through physical violence, or I lose my right to speak and, more likely, some freedom and property as well. Thus, the role of responsibility begins with knowing the extent of and limitations formed around rights, freedoms, liberties, and privileges, for ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Our responsibility of living in society is to know the rules that form the laws and the social constraints of that society.
Poerksen (2010) provided sage counsel regarding how language plasticity leads to tyranny. Unfortunately, when discussing criticism, the tyranny of “constructive criticism” is displayed, and it is time for this lie to end, permanently! Let me state, for the record and unequivocally, criticism never constructs positive behaviors! Criticism doesn’t change simply because an adjective attempts to make criticism less harmful.
The remaining definitions in the term criticism expand nicely upon the point that criticism and being critical can never be “constructive.” “The analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of work.” “A person who expresses an unfavorable opinion of something.” The etymology of critic, which is the root of criticism, comes to us from Latin criticus, from Greek Kritikos, from kritēs ‘a judge’, from krinein ‘judge, decide.’ Never forget criticism, or the act of being critical originates from personal perception, a choice to be judgmental and critical. The intent is to pass judgment upon something, someone, or someplace with the intent to cause personal harm or sway the opinions of others.
From the DEI email, we find something very interesting in the Constructive vs. Destructive questions; the lack of the term “criticism” in the constructive criticism questions. Instead, criticism has been subtly changed to “feedback” in every place the term criticism should reside. So, for example, the first item under constructive is stated, “Feedback and advice from others are essential for growth and success. Look at criticism as a learning opportunity.” Better still, the third item in the constructive list states, “Detach yourself from criticism.”
The following is a recap of several stories that should have been big news, but since the corporate media is practicing “Biden Behind Covering” (BBC), I doubt this news was heard anywhere. However, this information is critical, and I have included the links if you want more than my paltry summation of the story. I encourage you to always hit the links included in the articles I publish, so you know where I get my source materials.:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/inflation_color2-216537dd3aeb4365b991b67790765e4f.png)
From the 
Risk managers across the financial system are looking at the government on the Federal, State, and Local levels and are not liking what they see as inflation continues to grow beyond the Federally approved 2% annual allowed rate. As taxes adjust for increased inflation, it will require more money to pay taxes to maintain current levels, as inflation depletes the value of dollars saved. Thus, every government is looking at their “Rainy Day” funds, and are watching it depreciate as inflation increases, and this is happening before a penny is even spent.
If you have not read, or listened to, George Orwell’s book 1984, you might not recognize “the Ministry of Truth,” which is the propaganda arm of the government who rewrites history to what the government says it is, and not what actually happened. Would someone please explain to me who appointed the Homeland Security Secretary the harbinger and decider of truth and lies? When the media cannot even get the truth right, how will a government, senate appointed, person who serves at the pleasure of the current sitting US President know, recognize, or even understand truth? When the media allow truth to be “subjective to circumstances, environments, and cultures,” how will bureaucrats be able to discern truth?
Want to hear the truth about the problem on the southern border, let’s talk about “got-aways.”
Can you hear the Statue of Liberty weep at how are laws are being manipulated by the drug cartels, for the glorification of single-party rule and fiscal return on investment?
DNC-Consulting 