By Major Van Harl USAF Ret
Wisconsin –-(Ammoland.com)- All I know about Pancho Villa the Mexican bandit general is what I read on line and from watching old black & white movies as a kid.
I also know I had a relative named Dr. Charles Harl(e) who road with Villa as his Army surgeon after Villa broke Dr. Harle out of prison. Harle was in a Mexican prison for murder. I don’t think having killers around him really bothered Villa or having a convicted murderer as his “gringo” personal doctor. Villa was a revolutionary general and was in constant conflict with his enemies and those who were supposed to be on his side of the “cause.”
There are over 36 movies that have been made about Villa. One of the movies was the Yul Brynner 1968 movie “Villa Rides.” Brynner’s Pancho Villa character in that movie was where I first understood what I call the Poncho Villa Management Style /PVMS.
Brynner’s Villa would go into a Mexican village and advise the villagers that the federal troops were on their way to attack. He would then suggest the villagers join him in his revolutionary actions. If they would side with him he would help protect them from the federals. If the villagers rejected Villa in the Brynner movie, Villa would pull back to the nearby hill and watch as the attacking federal soldiers would rape, pillage and plunder the innocent peasants. Then after the federal soldiers would ride off with all the valuables and a few women, Villa would trot down into the decimated village and re-ask the brutalized people if they wanted his help.
The poor villagers were considered the enemy of the federal troops. The old idea that my enemy’s enemy is my friend comes into play. The federal troops were Pancho Villa’s enemy and they were also now the villager’s enemy and when the village refused to side with Villa, by default they were Villa’s enemy. Now Villa and the victimized village both shared the same enemy.
In the process of the federals attacking the village, both federals and un-cooperating peasants were killing and dying in the fighting.
This of course meant there were less of both of these groups for Villa to have to fight in open combat later. Villa had to deal with multiple political parties and ideologies, multiple self-serving generals (much like himself) and the struggles of different factions of the average Mexican nationals. All these groups wanted it their way or at least a piece of the pie.
Now let us take this PVMS concept of management to the middle-east.
You have different nations who are players in this kind of struggle: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Israel. This list does not even include the surrounding Muslim countries. Then you have the Sunni Muslims, the Shiite Muslims, the Kurds, minority Christians and the Jews. There are the outside European influences of France, Germany, and Great Britain. You also have the Russians, China and of course the US.
Nobody really likes anyone or trusts any other entity, but they all need help and support from one or many of the above groups. Each individual faction has multiple enemies to pick from, in such a large cast of nation state actors.
I have a friend who is a Sunni. When he talks about Israel he can become rather excited and agitated. If, however, you want to see him become almost visceral then get him started on the subject of the Shiites. We in the Christian west do not really even understand the differences between Sunni and Shiites and their seemingly never-ending hostile and destructive struggles.
So you have all these factions, who take the lesser of their enemies as temporary allies, in the hope that the lesser evil will help them thin out the herd of the greater evil. In the process, if a current enemy, now new found short term friend, loses lots of its own combat troops fighting and killing your greater enemy, what more could you ask for.
Turkey, sitting on its border with the second largest land army in NATO, literally, feet away watching the ISIS hordes killing Kurds comes to mind. Turkey would love nothing better than to have a few thousand less Kurds in the world that might someday demand and take Turkish soil for a Kurd nation. How about the current Shiite Iraqi government refusing to help or give military hardware to its own citizens to fight ISIS, because those in need are Sunni or Kurd. If ISIS kills off lots of Sunni and those pesky Kurds, that will be just so many less combatants and civilians that Shiite Iran will not have to help Shiite Iraq eradicate.
Well planned and acted on PVMS leadership. Pancho Villa would be proud, but then remember they killed him at a roadside ambush the way Sunnis ambush Shiites or Shiites ambush Sunnis.
Nothing really changes, just the date, time, location and lethality of the enemies killing their enemy’s enemies.
[email protected]
About Major Van Harl USAF Ret.:Major Van E. Harl USAF Ret., a career Police Officer in the U.S. Air Force was born in Burlington, Iowa, USA, in 1955. He was the Deputy Chief of police at two Air Force Bases and the Commander of Law Enforcement Operations at another. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Infantry School. A retired Colorado Ranger and currently is an Auxiliary Police Officer with the Cudahy PD in Milwaukee County, WI. His efforts now are directed at church campus safely and security training. He believes “evil hates organization.” [email protected]