June 2009
137 posts
“No, we are not jeopardizing any “victory” by withdrawing...”
– Tom Ricks
“Spraying the [poppy] crops just penalizes the... →
With a nationwide election only weeks away, the... →
The American military doctors watched in horror as... →
[via Bouhammer]
Unfortunately, I doubt the election here will... →
The taliban claim to have killed 103 and wounded... →
“The problem is that the Surge succeeded tactically and improved security, but...”
– Tom Ricks, on Charlie Rose
[via SWJ]
Proceeding with the presidential and provincial... →
Is the critical factor not the volume of violence,... →
Why not fix Mexico, which has much more strategic... →
I post a lot of links I mean to be thought-provoking, and not necessarily representative of my opinions (which tend to be rather fluid). This time, however, I’ll follow Bacevich out of the shadows and finally declare that I think COIN sucks.
“Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.”
– Mohandas Ghandi
On the other hand, their efforts present the same... →
Fixed!
After a tussle with my registrar, I got my domain name back. If your RSS reader hasn’t heard from me in a while, you may want to get caught up on http://rootcausecorrectiveaction.com.
The more convinced you are when you come that this... →
Prof. Fleming writes a pretty effective teardown of the Annapolis mystique. As an alum, I had a hard time staying dispassionate while reading—my pride was alternately stung and swelled.
The big thing that Fleming is missing is perspective. Two decades of observing midshipmen must provide tremendous insight into the leadership of midshipmen. His experience with Naval Officers and the...
It was up to Harrison, a 27-year-old company commander who oversees U.S. military operations in a sprawling, isolated and violent swath of Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, to figure out how to take advantage of the opening the Taliban had given him. The question consumed and frustrated the Virginia native for most of June. It also laid bare the challenges facing the Obama administration...
If you think about it, the greatest leaders who... →
monologamist:
The U.S. military is posting updates about the war in Afghanistan on Twitter and Facebook. Just today I found out that the war in Afghanistan is no longer in a relationship.
Whether you realize it or not, whether you can... →
Clear, hold, and build. This is a strategy that... →
Yeah, there should be a short list of stupid... →
From a commenter on Ghosts of Alexander. Weren’t we just talking about the alien and manifold cultures? This is the most basic of the most basic, but our seniormost diplomat in Afghanistan doesn’t know better. What does that say about our soldiers’ chances of getting it right?
On the other hand, it was just a gaffe.
rootcausecorrectiveaction.com is dead (while I sort some things out with the domain registrar)! Long live rcca.tumblr.com!
There was a saying that we didn't fight in Vietnam... →
How many times will we fight here for one year?
There are many changes Gen. McChrystal must make in order to have a chance at success, and this is one of them. Even we that are tired and on our last few weeks in country, ready to go home, acknowledge that the tours are too short for us to reach our potential. In Vietnam, soldiers were expected to adapt to guerilla fighting tactics in a foreign,...
“That’s probably the single hardest part about Afghanistan, is that this is...”
– Matthew A. Ritchie
New numbers from military researchers disprove a... →
We know, relatively speaking, pretty much nothing... →
Ah, something to which I might speak somewhat intelligently.
Due to Taliban strong-arming, remoteness, and gender inequality, broad swaths of Afghanistan’s population will not have access to polls. Many will not vote out of fear or apathy or disillusionment. Those from Karzai’s tribe will certainly have the strongest sense of enfranchisement. And let’s not forget the...
There is a fundamental disconnect between what we... →
The Army’s leadership appears to have succumbed to... →
Did we withdraw from Vietnam because we ran out of political will? Is it conceivable that, at some stage of the war the American public would have tolerated more significant martial action, along the lines of Dresden or (god forbid) Hiroshima? How does today’s American perspective on armed conflict differ from that of 1969? Are we wiser? Are our attention spans or capacities for...
“The perfect war is started for obscure reasons, is hopelessly murderous, and...”
– Errol Morris
