President Trump now considers himself a wartime president. Appropriate, I think. The inestimable Victor Davis Hanson thinks that war is a valid metaphor for combatting the COVID-19 virus.

Okay, let’s do that. Later, after we’ve secured ourselves, we can go on the offensive (in this case, that means get proactive) and ensure that we annihilate China’s ability to control worldwide supply chains and production (in this case, the production of medical supplies). First, though, defense. If this is a type of war, why don’t we secure Fortress America the same way we secure our Army posts, our air bases, our Naval stations, and our OCONUS Forward Operating Bases?

All of these installations require varying degrees of security, but we don’t lock down the whole installation all the time. That would be, as the kids today say, unsustainable. So, too, is locking down all of the US.

Too many security impediments to personnel getting to their place of work decrements duty performance efficacy and efficiency. Plus, military dependents (see, I’m no sexist; I didn’t say “wives”) can’t make the school carpools, the soccer practices, the commissary runs. No bueno. So an ID card check at the front gate works to get people with a legit purpose on post the ability to move on and off with a minimum of friction. Visitors without an ID card have the privilege of pulling over for a vehicle search and a paperwork check (if you forgot to renew your registration this year, sorry, you’re not getting on).

But, security appropriate for the front gate is not optimal for those areas that may be targeted by the threat. So, security forces create hardpoints with which to protect vulnerable parts of the installation. It’s easier to get onto base than onto the (military) fuel point. It’s easier to get onto the fuel point than it is to get into the Ammunition Holding Area. You may have access to the AHA, but not the flight line. And you’ll definitely never get into a SCIF without proper ID/credentials etc.

Some hardpoints within installations have dedicated armed security with whole different Rules of Engagement than the bubbas at the front gate.

Establishing social and economic hardpoints crafted to give us maximum protection of our vulnerabilities while permitting those less prone to the vagaries of the virus to go about doing America’s business should be priority one. Our greatest asset in setting up viable, effective hardpoints is the American people themselves. Sure, there’s always some knucklehead that thinks “this rule doesn’t apply to me.” But in this case, I think there would be a cast of action agents willing to say, “Hey, knucklehead, you stupid?  This rule applies to you.”

Right now, our biggest liability to setting up viable, effective hardpoints is our media. The American people would probably go a long way to making this situation safer for everybody if they could get timely, accurate, relevant information from the news (okay, not that chick in Port St. Lucie who called 911 because McD’s had run out of McNuggets, and her ilk). But we can’t, because our media sucks.

First step in any operation — offensive or defensive — is to perform an intelligence assessment. That is difficult to do with garbage media. Sure, most Ricochetti are switched on and have found their go-to sites for reliable intel. Vast swathes of our population, though, have the now-unreasonable idea that they can switch on the news and get what they need to plan their lives accordingly.

The unwieldy military term for gathering the best information possible to develop the most viable plan to reach the optimal achievable end state (sheesh, talk about unwieldy) is Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment (or JIPOE). This has four steps:

Define the Operational Environment.

Describe the impact of the Operational Environment.

Evaluate the Adversary.

Determine the Adversary Course of Action (given that particular Operating Environment).

It’s pretty simple, even though there are 19 sub-steps total inside those original four steps.

I’m not an epidemiologist, or a virologist or any other kind of scientific or medical guy, but using any kind of paradigmatic template to observe, evaluate and assess the threat and appropriate countermeasures should be well do-able to get the country back to work.

‘Course, it would have been do-able a lot sooner if the lyin’, dog-eating, bat-soup-slurping CHICOM government had come a lot cleaner a lot sooner. But first, security. Then, we get proactive and ensure those commie bastards can never put us over a barrel again.