Normal is a Cycle on a Washing Machine

 
The above is the motto of the U.S. Army's Asymmetric Warfare Group. The motto is actually in the Blackfoot Indian language.

The term asymmetric warfare refers to a warfare when one side is far more powerful but the other responds with new and deadly tactics of its own - Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are good examples. The motto " normal is a cycle on a washing machine " seems to have originated from the Vietnam-war era.

According to the Stars and Stripes:

The AWG is composed of senior enlisted, company-grade officers and contractors [and] the group is deployed, often in pairs, to advise combat units on various asymmetrical warfare threats and how to counter them. One major distinction, according to Greg Melcher, a contractor with the group, is "We don’t conduct operations."

Instead, they’re sort of expert consultants, "operational advisers," who, when deployed, go from unit to unit dispensing their expertise that’s ultimately supposed to save U.S. lives and win the war.

Selection for operational advisers happens only twice a year and includes, in addition to psychological and physical fitness tests, scenarios in which applicants are supposed to demonstrate problem-solving, communication and creativity skills.

The group also has a sort of research-and-development function. One of their claims to fame is a fogger devised to obscure snipers’ views.The Army already had a smoke grenade, but it took a while to actually put out smoke.Something quicker was needed, and they figured out how to do it, Lafferty said, after "blowing up some fire extinguishers."

Then they got it distributed quickly, another distinguishing group characteristic. "Our doctrine teaches us to ‘Do it this way,’ " Melcher said. "It doesn’t allow for that freedom of thought. We’re designed to augment the doctrine." The group also takes credit for the airdigger — which remotely shoots dirt off suspicious mounds to see if bombs are buried.

Language Log has also had a look at this article. Mark Liberman writes:

Versions of the saying "Normal is (just|only|nothing_but) the|a cycle|setting on the|a washing machine" has been around for a while, and it sounds like a Vietnam-era kind of sentiment. The phrase apparently is used in John McAfee's 1993 Vietnam novel Slow walk in a sad rain, and given the  description of the AWG in Stars and Stripes, and the description of the book in this review, it may well be the source of the motto:

The story begins in Special Forces A Camp, number 413, twenty miles from the Cambodian border. The camp's Green Berets, dividing their time between boredom and terror, are ostensibly led by a captain, the narrator of the story. But the officer actually takes his cue from an aggressive sergeant named Shotgun who is alternately crazy and wise, but always irresistibly, frighteningly dangerous. The altogether appropriate motto of A Camp is "Normal is a cycle on a washing machine." Commanding officers issue orders that have no meaning; weapons are used in ways that are the grotesque opposite of their original design. And in an experience that has a real-life counterpart, the Green Berets stumble on a shocking alliance between the CIA and North Vietnam, something they realize they must destroy — even at the cost of bringing both sides down on them.