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Lunchtime Counterinsurgency Reading
July 15, 2009 | Posted by Ibn Muqawama - 11:24am | 24 Comments
Doing my daily reading on the interwebs and found a couple nifty things on Foreign Affairs. Strategic studies guru Eliot Cohen weighs in with his own counterinsurgency reading list and Haider Mullick analyzes Pakistan's shifting counterinsurgency strategy.
Someone needs to call the
Someone needs to call the "time of death" of this blog.
It really has jumped the shark.
Not so sure about jumps and
Not so sure about jumps and sharks, but I'm not so sure how much use any more insurgency books will be. I noticed a new one at Barnes and Nobles a week ago (name escapes me now) and so I started to flip through it. I stopped when I noticed something very profound, I noticed that there was absolutely no difference between this book and three others that I already own. What needs to be said about insurgencies may have already been said and we should start focusing on asymmetric matters (which aren't the same thing).
Jeez, tough crowd around
Jeez, tough crowd around here, lately. Comments sections are a kind of community. Commenters can make the community what it wants, especially when they are given freedom to post comments without much intereference. This is the sort of free speech I love: the messy nuttiness of internet, good, bad, and everything in-between.
"I noticed a new one at Barnes and Nobles a week ago (name escapes me now) and so I started to flip through it" - GRANT
Isn't that the natural progression of scholarly work as it makes its way into the mainstream? I see this in (I know I keep mentioning this, but it's the only reference point I have in terms of real life experience) popular medical literature. A New Yorker article is not peer reviewed literature, and I often scoff at the 'celebrity doctors', but aren't they performing some kind of service? Here I am, a complete newbie to the field with no education in *any* of it, trying to learn. I have lots of reasons and I've mentioned them, here, before. Perhaps books like those, Grant, are useful to introduce concepts to the general public. Concepts can then be refined. I sometimes get the feeling that many of you in the scholarly COIN community do not know how much you are being 'watched' by everyday people. Or, maybe you do.
Anyway, I guess I always go against the tide, because I don't want to pile on.
It's not a matter of there
It's not a matter of there being so many or that the field is entering the mainstream, in fact that's how I started studying this sort of thing. The problem is when the authors are just repeating something that's already been said five different ways. The art of insurgencies is by no means a finished topic, but the literature on them may be.
@RA "Someone needs to call
@RA
"Someone needs to call the "time of death" of this blog."
Dude, chill, it's on hiatus. And Fuck You. Ibn is cool. He could totally run his own blog. Whether it would be popular is a different story. I like Ibn. He lays some good stuff down. He knows the issues that attract this crowd. He has a future. he can guest blog on my blog anytime.
Plus, we all know this "hiatus" is all about Abu trying to convince Rachel Maddow's pussy that it likes men. When he declares "peace with honor" on that one, he'll be back and hitting his regular groupies. Jealous?
"I noticed that there was
"I noticed that there was absolutely no difference between this book and three others that I already own. What needs to be said about insurgencies may have already been said and we should start focusing on asymmetric matters"
Excellent point.
Everybody should read Rory Stewart's 5000 word piece in the LRB. It's free and you don't even need to burn gas to go to Barnes and Noble.
@Mahdu - Another excellent
@Mahdu -
Another excellent point.
Bloody Sunday ? If the two
Bloody Sunday ? If the two bookends of informative COIN-related movies are Battle of Algiers and this, then clearly there's a gap in the market. Gentlemen, start your screenplays.
There's not a lot that spring to mind, but surely The Quiet American edges this crap out,
"The Quiet American" Great
"The Quiet American"
Great book.
Blogs are places to discuss. If I wanted to get pissed at people and rant I would just drink and smoke crack all the time... oh, wait.
Speaking of great stuff, I'm
Speaking of great stuff, I'm way ahead of you on this one...
http://tinyurl.com/lc7al2
The Wind that Shakes the
The Wind that Shakes the Barley
I've been forgetting about
I've been forgetting about the Battle for Algiers, I have to admit that there aren't many movies that look at insurgencies. At least there aren't many that don't give you good guys and bad guys.
This blog was long gone
This blog was long gone before Ibn came on the scene. So chill.
The comments section here was amazing at one point.
Now it is somewhat of a joke (See anything by Johnny Rico).
Grant - fair points. I saw a
Grant - fair points. I saw a couple of those books at Borders today and thought immediately of this comment. I did not buy any of the books. Also, I don't know why I directed that mini-diatribe at you. Sorry.
RA - Yeah, I understand your point , I was lurking and reading long before I started commenting about a year ago. I just like tilting at windmills for some reason. We'll see what happens when the blog goes off of hiatus: that should be definitive for me, one way or another.
Why do I think son of the
Why do I think son of the resistance is actually N.F? it's 0300 AM. Who do you want posting?
We'll see in 12 mos or so - or so as in whenever AM either declares victory in AFPAK or gives up the ghost.
Personally - I don't think it can be triaged. But it deserves a shot.
"I was lurking and reading
"I was lurking and reading long before I started commenting about a year ago ... We'll see what happens when the blog goes off of hiatus"
Then you'll recall the last time we did this when the guest posters took over.
It's a one-man blog where the one-man's on holidays. Ain't a lot of deep spiritual insight required on that one.
In fact I believe Ibn's doing better than his predecessor. IIRC, the "it's all over" comments started with the previous guy's very first post.
Has SNLII been recruited to
Has SNLII been recruited to the leftist think tank AM as the pseudonym Ibn Muqawama?
No comments by him lately.
"We'll see in 12 mos or so -
"We'll see in 12 mos or so - or so as in whenever AM either declares victory in AFPAK or gives up the ghost"
@ Elf: well, the intellectual or political 'fight' is already taking place over how much time to give the new Afghan Surge-COIN strategy, or whatever, look at Ink Spots latest post: Dr. Bacevich's article vs. the Bergen article.
@ Kilo: actually, I think all the hiatus posters are doing just fine. I just don't care for the new blog platform, but I understand the need to move on from blogspot. Also, I need to take a little break from all of this because I have other stuff to do right now, so it's not a knock on anything or anyone.
Plus, we all know this
Plus, we all know this "hiatus" is all about Abu trying to convince Rachel Maddow's pussy that it likes men.
@Johnny Rico: How is it you are so familiar with abu Muqawama's sexual agenda?
If he is in Astan, I would imagine right about now AM is apologizing to his Qods force puppetmaster that his sphincter isn't as tight as it was the last time he was there.
"I just don't care for the
"I just don't care for the new blog platform"
Oh hell yeah, this is shit. In fact, I can't imagine what they thought the upside was to bringing this under the cnas domain. Any front page content they want to get highlighted can be linked from blogspot, without the need for something like this associated with your website. Seriously, I think we all know that this blog's death will involve press coverage of a news story on it's content/participants reflecting badly on the organisation that hosts it. Those "do not reflect the opinions of" disclaimers haven't helped anyone to date.
It doesn't help when even
It doesn't help when even the links are wrong.
Here is a correction for one such instance:
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65191/haider-ali-hussein-mullick/...
BTW..the author of this [above] piece has never talked to troops involved in trying to teach "natives" how to repair and maintain very complicated-high maintenance airframes. Success is few and very far between.
I would bet that if we trained the Paks for a year on "gunships" and then gave them brand new gunships and a continuous supply of parts and supplies, that in 6 months time not half of them would be airworthy and many would be at the bottom of smoking holes in the ground.
Just my [educated] two cents, cause I personally know several airframe guys that have been involved in training natives.
Papa Ray
West Texas
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