“You can lie all you please when you tell other folks about the Rangers,” advised Major Robert Rogers in 1759, “but don’t never lie to a Ranger or officer.”
That guidance is recalled in a newly updated Ranger Handbook published by the U.S. Army last week.
The Handbook is a compilation of doctrine, tactics, history and lore associated with the Army’s elite Ranger special operations force.
One learns, for example, that “Proficiency with knots and rope is vitally important for Rangers, especially in mountaineering situations. Familiarity with the terminology associated with knots and rope is critical.” Various knots are helpfully explained and illustrated, though the descriptions alone will hardly make the reader proficient.
The Army Ranger Regiment “is a lethal, agile and flexible force, capable of conducting many complex, joint special operations missions. . . . Their capabilities include conducting airborne and air assault operations, seizing key terrain such as airfields, destroying strategic facilities, and capturing or killing enemies of the nation.”
Two Army Rangers were killed in action in Afghanistan on April 27, the Department of Defense announced today.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.