“The US military is on the slow path to the realization that nation-building — from reconstruction to other forms of traditional COIN dogma that serve to return legitimacy to the government — doesn’t work. Politics and populations in our new…
Category: Politics
Baby boomers….
They were born from the greatest generation. Their parents lived through depression, fought in an enormous war, and built the American economy and industry. The parents of the baby boomers created the American dream and then spoiled it into delirium…
Cyber-warfare threat or hype?
Center of gravity constructs look at the strategic, operational, and tactical elements of an adversary to identify weak points in the over all capability of resistance. Cyber-warfare attacks the computing and communication infrastructure of the adversary through a variety of…
Economic collapse
Is it possible that economic warfare could be waged on the United States or that we could be in the middle of a form of economic warfare? Some would say business is warfare and there is an expansive library of…
We are in a time of crisis, but what does that mean?
When people defend the Patriot Act, the warrant-less wiretaps, and the other infringements on American civil liberties, they often point out that we are in a time of crisis and these sorts of things are necessary during a crisis. What…
Dear Britney!
I think I may be the only person who really feels sorry for Britney Spears. I do not find any kind of entertainment in watching the interviews or the VMAs where she performs very badly. When I look at Britney,…
Counter Insurgency (COIN) as different levels of war
It seems like a lot of people have defined counter-insurgency doctrine at different levels of war. I’ve been trying to construct a VENN diagram showing elements of low intensity conflict for a project and came up with some things that…
The F-Word
As a former Marine I take umbrage at to much political correctness…. The f-word is a capital letter, comma, period, exclamation mark, and hyphen. It fills the role of punctuation in the speech of a Marine. It should be used…
Block Cheese and Wires: Are you afraid?
In the news today is a story about a TSA alert brought on by block cheese and wires (CNN.com). After seeing the story it seemed an interesting coincidence that the alert comes just a week after The Secretary of Homeland…
I’m terrified of the terrorism(ist)
I’ve been thinking about the concepts of terrorist, terrorism, insurgent, and what these terms mean to our resulting interest in international relations. The discussion keeps popping up to delineate the terms and codify the meanings. Coming to a common consensus…
Manifest destiny another take on the subject
Much of our thought about how the frontier began and our American version of our own history is written from the perspective of Fredrick Jackson Turner. Writing in the 1880’s and 1890’s his thesis on the frontier described the effect…
Generational assumptions of warfare
I’ve been looking at generational warfare from a slightly different perspective. As we have agricultural revolutions, industrial revolutions, and the information revolution it appears there is a corresponding relationship to the generations of warfare. We did not give up agriculture…
Military Bloggers
The following post is in response to the Wired news story that members of the Army are specifically banned from posting on Blogs. This is of specific interest as Blogs have served as a “lessons learned” and educational tools form…
Privacy and terrorism
In the restriction of personal freedom for perceived security rarely do you gain that security you crave. You loose freedom in a iterative and piecemeal way leaving a hungry feeling for the freedoms lost. Reactionary political fascism has never resulted…
Let’s be positive
Americans are sick and tired of hearing how much your opponent sucks. Petty name calling of your opponents proves an utter arrogance of the political process that reeks with the fetid and rancid rancor of illegitimate discussion. Providing a forum…