Category Contemporary Security & Statecraft
The Best quote about the failure of COIN I have read so far comes from Ralph Peters in a piece today in the New York Post. But the simple fact the wise men missed was that killing terrorists works, while… Continue Reading →
I have been pondering why modern Westernized man has such a problem successfully waging war for a few days and had a breakthrough recently. Before we can really get to that, a few brief thoughts are in order. First, what… Continue Reading →
The Return of Pallywood in the current fighting in Gaza You know, this has inspired me to start thinking and I will probably put together a piece addressing 20th-21st Century Unconventional Warfare and the nexus played by the media in… Continue Reading →
I read The Reagan Diaries when they first came out and had occasion to reread them not long ago when I had nothing better to do.  I mainly read the book, not because I am a rabid Reagan conservative, although I… Continue Reading →
Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, is one of the best economic histories I have read.  It seeks to be a global history of money and does a good job of it.  It is somewhat… Continue Reading →
This question came up for several reasons mainly because of the news out of Afghanistan and Iran plus the book I am currently reading about the Second World War . Victory is an elusive thing because in war defining victory… Continue Reading →
HOLY WARS: 3000 Years of Battles in the Holy Land is one of the better primers about conflict in the Holy Land to appear within the last few years. It consists of 17 chapters covering the initial Israelite conquest… Continue Reading →
Saw this update on SFC Taylor’s case yesterday and decided to add it to my page as well. From the LA Times: Court-martial decision postponed for soldier in Afghan shooting. His Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of… Continue Reading →
[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the publisher for purposes of reviewing it. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Michael Stephenson’s work The Last Full Measure: How… Continue Reading →
In today’s edition of Stars and Stripes and the LA Times is an article about a combat engineer facing charges for actions he took in combat in Afghanistan last year. The gist of the story is that the soldier involved shot an unarmed female… Continue Reading →
Today I was reading a selection of articles from Foreign Affairs magazine dealing with modern Counterinsurgency and its perceived success or failure. One of the things that struck me about the articles and that Bing West brings out in… Continue Reading →
Lately I have been somewhat preoccupied thinking about the geostrategic position the US and even the wider Western world find themselves in. Â While I do not believe that the world is on the cusp of some massive catastrophe, it does… Continue Reading →
There is an old adage that “you can catch more flies with honey than with salt.” The truth of that adage is being put to the test daily in Afghanistan and being to shown to be false under certain circumstances… Continue Reading →
[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Kirov by John Schettler is the Philadelphia Experiment in reverse.  It is the tale of… Continue Reading →
Book Review: Countdown: H Hour by Tom Kratman
Countdown: H Hour is the third installment in the Countdown series, hopefully there are plenty more still to come as this just built onto the already strong premise of the first two books. This book happens at the same… Continue Reading →