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Writing Hiatus
May 18, 2010 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 9:56am | 40 Comments
Now that I have completed my writing assignments for CNAS this spring, it's back to working on my dissertation. So expect blogging to be very light for a while. Thanks.
Thank God...
Thank God...
Ha. I can't figure out if
Ha. I can't figure out if that's "thank god you've shut the hell up for a while" or "thank god you're finally finishing this thing so we don't have to hear about it"I am so glad I never had to
I am so glad I never had to write a dissertation! I would stumble spectacularly - of this I am so very sure.
GOOD LUCK WITH THE WRITING - obviously I enjoy the blog, the topics covered (hey Londonstani!) and its still-just-the-right-amount-of-crazy comments section, but writing a dissertation sure seems like a good reason for a blog hiatus. Again, good luck.
AM, I don't see the
AM, I don't see the difference.
Is the COIN reading list
Is the COIN reading list your current bibliography? If not, could you post whatever you've got so far - similar to what Bleuer has done on afghanistan-analyst dot org?
No, COIN is not my
No, COIN is not my dissertation topic. Though I should post my bibliography...AM: You *do* know you can
AM:
You *do* know you can just buy them online now, right?
ADTS
@ ADTS Actually, he's going
@ ADTS
Actually, he's going to spend 2 months learning the identities of those who will judge his dissertation, but to do so he will have to use people of questionable motives, pay them untrackable money, and then junk their advice to go with his gut feeling. Once established, in order to pass he will pay them ungawdly sums of money for no end, then threaten them into submission, first overtly, then covertly, and that having failed will then ask them what they want. Of course they'll ask for the moon, and he'll quit in disgust, then return and barter for the next 8 years until he either gives up or they tire of his persistence and let him pass.
Then rinse and repeat for the next invader... er... student.
Make sure you post any Kurt
Make sure you post any Kurt (from "Glee") inspired youtube videos performed by the Army. We are waiting for more gay videos. Dying. Salivating. KY-ready...
There is a very interesting
There is a very interesting piece on surfing in Lebanon in The Surfer's Journal this month... is that your dissertation?
You really think that eh AM?
You really think that eh AM? Personally I think you, as well as many others in here are suffering from IAD. This is the third time you've said you were taking a blogging break in the last year and it only lasted at tops a week and 1/2 to two weeks!
Good luck with your dissertation. I remember doing my Competency (4) exams and independent study for my Masters Degree.... Can only imagine what hell you are going through.
You might want to read this link.
http://library.thinkquest.org/06aug/02049/types_4.htm
Get help if you need it! Tiger did it and so can you AM! LOL….
In the mean time, can you
In the mean time, can you change your blog name to "Gay/Military Complex: We have Gay Videos Up the Ass Galore!"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/woundedplatoon/
Can you tweet or blog about this one?
"In The Wounded Platoon, FRONTLINE investigates a single Fort Carson platoon of infantrymen -- the 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry -- and finds, after a long journey, a group of young men changed by war and battling a range of psychiatric disorders that many blame for their violent and self-destructive behavior."
Don't stay away too long, or
Don't stay away too long, or your ANON BOLD HYDE alter ego will take over Doctor.
I look forward to the flame war between Mr. Hyde and the Gay obsessed troll.
And I am wondering if that's really yet another personality manifesting itself.
[oh no I've gone and done it again. oh no Mother! Blood!]
@ Wounded. Having had an
@ Wounded.
Having had an unfortunate front row seat to those issues for the last 5 years, that was gut wrenching. A not unique perfect storm hit those guys; back to back deployments, extended 15 months on the second, the moral force of the platoon killed early in their second deployment compounded by the fact a few of those guys probably shouldn't have entered service. But anyone who thinks that platoon is unique is wrong.
Two recent stories that I'm surprised haven't been picked up.
MARSOC Marine kills himself on the main road through Camp Lejeune last week after trying to check himself into treatment and then leading the MP's on a vehicle chase.
http://www.jdnews.com/articles/medal-78222-marine-corps.html
Retired former RDC for the USMC east coast, LtCol Scot Jack, USMC (Ret.) points out what has been obvious to a lot of us for awhile, the drug cocktails these guys are getting aren't helping and probably getting worse. The most I know of first hand is one Marine on 18 different medications. So the Frontline interview with the doctor on those drugs was something less than surprising.
http://www.jdnews.com/news/hospital-78400-lawyer-abuse.html
And it shouldn't be long before the "significant findings" of the DoD IG review of mental health treatment at Camp Lejeune is finished.
http://www.jdnews.com/articles/hospital-78350-naval-defense.html
Something for the new CNAS Wellness Initiative to chew on for a generation. Handing out OTH's to guys who have totally lost it only dumps their problem into our laps outside the frontgate. But until the culture for senior leaders changes on that, and they can get past their moral outrage at what these guys do when they spin out of control and look at this pragmatically as a problem for the whole country, not just their particular unit, they're still going to get dumped on society with little to no safety net.
I'm hearing more Army squads
I'm hearing more Army squads or platoons go downhill as a group, ie staying behind the wire and not giving their replacements a proper tour around their area of operation, killing each other once back in the States (ala "the Valley of Elah"), as a group shooting random civilians in theatre (ala "Full Metal Jacket"-- helicopter 'Get Some!' scene), etc.
While the Marines tend to do things individually.
Is there an explanation for this or am I just wrong?
AM, What Madhu said. Good
AM,
What Madhu said. Good luck and good luck staying away..
good stuff...
good stuff...
Hamdulilah! I hope it takes
Hamdulilah!
I hope it takes you years to finish.
Doesn't* I hope it
Doesn't*
I hope it *doesn't* take you years to finish. That was not a Freudian slip!
Censorship sucks!
Censorship sucks!
*There is, of course, a much
*There is, of course, a much larger body of "rationalist" explanations for military change and innovation, starting with this book and this book. I am pretty well read in the corpus, but the best guy to explain the various explanations dispassionately is my buddy Mike, who is wicked smaht and who I am meeting for beers in about half an hour. (Yes, I know what time it is in the afternoon, but give me a break: I have just returned from Saudi freaking Arabia, and happy hour will begin this week when I want it to.)
If you look at the
If you look at the decision-making process in 2009 on the war in Afghanistan, things more or less proceeded according to the normal theory. The president commissioned a review of policy and strategic goals in the winter of 2009, which resulted in this white paper. Gen. McChrystal then thought about how to operationalize the president's policy and strategic goals and submitted his own assessment along with a request for more resources. That assessment, combined with a corrupt Afghan presidential election, caused the administration to re-think its assumptions and prompted another strategic review. This was, on balance, a good thing that made me feel good about the president. The president then re-affirmed his policy aims, articulated new strategic goals, and committed more resources to the war in Afghanistan. (I write more about this process here.)
First, do what Dick Betts
First, do what Dick Betts does when writing about Huntington's so-called "normal theory" for civil-military relations and draw a big triangle on a sheet of paper. Now draw three horizontal lines on the triangle, dividing it into four levels -- political, strategic, operational and tactical. In the normal model, civilians have responsibility for the top section. They decide the policy aims. Then civilians and the military decide on strategic goals and resources. (Betts adds a fifth layer, actually, for ROE.) The military has responsibility for everything else under Huntington's model.
MARSOC Marine kills himself
MARSOC Marine kills himself on the main road through Camp Lejeune last week after trying to check himself into treatment and then leading the MP's on a vehicle chase.
http://www.jdnews.com/articles/medal-78222-marine-corps.html
Retired former RDC for the USMC east coast, LtCol Scot Jack, USMC (Ret.) points out what has been obvious to a lot of us for awhile, the drug cocktails these guys are getting aren't helping and probably getting worse. The most I know of first hand is one Marine on 18 different medications. So the Frontline interview with the doctor on those drugs was something less than surprising.
Retired former RDC for the
Retired former RDC for the USMC east coast, LtCol Scot Jack, USMC (Ret.) points out what has been obvious to a lot of us for awhile, the drug cocktails these guys are getting aren't helping and probably getting worse. The most I know of first hand is one Marine on 18 different medications. So the Frontline interview with the doctor on those drugs was something less than surprising.
Instruction runs throughout
Instruction runs throughout the evening. The instructors will sometimes assist students as they shoot, or take individuals or small groups aside and discuss specific points. Much instruction is simply by observation: watching others shoot, and especially watching the instructors shoot. A time-honored kyudo tradition is that students "borrow" instruction, paying close attention whenever an instructor assists another student.
No direct links have been
No direct links have been drawn between either Lariam or increased use of psychotropic drugs and a growing military-suicide rate. But their parallel course is, at best, inconvenient. According to the U.S. Army Medical Department's 2008 mental health report, at least 13 percent of U.S. troops in Iraq and 17 percent in Afghanistan are taking antidepressants, anxiety medication or sleep aids.
This falls in line with the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center's May 2008 report, which found that within a year of deploying, 11 percent of surveyed active-duty personnel had at least one prescription for psychotropic medication including common SSRIs (Paxil, Zoloft and Prozac), anti-anxiety medications (Valium, Ativan and Xanax), attention-deficit medication (Ritalin, Adderall), and antipsychotics (Seroquel), but not sleep medications, such as Ambien and Lunesta, or antidepressants used to stop smoking, such as Wellbutrin.
Also of note: The New England Journal of Medicine found in 2004 that 11 percent of military recruits had psychiatric histories before entering the military. No more recent information on that is available. But we do know that since 2004, the military has seen an increase in "waivers" OKs given to recruits who committed acts that under previous conditions would have precluded military service, including marijuana possession and DUI, misdemeanors and felonies. Waivers jumped from nearly five percent in 2004 to 11 percent leading up to the surge, and the number of Army recruits who graduated high school fell from 91 percent in 2001 to 79 percent this past year.
1904 St. Louis World's Fair
1904 St. Louis World's Fair
Muslim Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism in the Southern Philippines
By Thomas M. McKenna
Chapter 5, America's Moros
In his 1983 work on early American colonial rule in the Muslim Philippines, Peter Gowing cites a passage from a 1909 report to General Tasker Bliss, the second governor of the "Moro Province": "I find that the Moros who attended the St. Louis Exposition bought and brought in, apparently without question, no less than fifty rifles and revolvers of the very latest models... [M]any of them have changed hands, thus making it a very profitable business for the Moros who were lucky enough to have visited the United States" (Lt. Jesse Gaston to Bliss, January 8, 1909, cited in Gowing 1983, 177).
While not remarked upon by Gowing, this short passage says much about the responses of Philippine Muslims to the early American occupation of the southern Philippines. It refers to the one hundred "Moros" (certainly many datus among them) who, with representatives of other subject groups of the American-held Philippines (one thousand individuals in all), were brought to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and placed on exhibit.
The report complains of the behavior of the Moros, who apparently did not content themselves with their assigned roles in a "living ethnological display" but also spent their time shopping for the most sophisticated firearms that American industry had to offer (Rydell 1984, 162). It is tempting to imagine them making their way from their "ethnological village" in the "Philippine Reservation" to the Palace of Manufactures, there to regard those gleaming, high-calibered benefits of Western technological progress (1984, 167).
This depiction of subjugated Philippine Muslims as both objects of colonial intentions (quite literally so in this instance) and strategizing subjects is characteristic of political relations in Cotabato throughout the American period, especially those between Muslim notables and colonial agents.
Yeah combat stress will hand
Yeah combat stress will hand the happy pez out like candy. As far as it being handed out without supervision back in CONUS that may be representative of the medical profession at large. As is drinking and self medication among people with issues common among our population at large.
For adrenaline fixes - well try motorcycle racing or something better than sitting around drinking and playing cards maybe? There's a club in NJ of former vets and current personnel who's mission statement is just that - race to deal with stress issues.
As far as proper care - you need the resources to do that - and certainly the VA and probably the Military Health system doesn't have the resources in terms of medical staff. Meaning too many patients/not enough doctors. One of the consequences of opening the system up to more and more people (spouses, vets with non combat or service related maladies) without providing more staff.
It's also hard to find good doctors. May I recommend canvassing the local medical community, and if you find the right one than be prepared to pay cash.
Finally, if you literally tell the VA that you're having a bad day because your dog of many years -think Old Yeller - died, be prepared for some of them to react like you've just confessed to having ticking WMD. And someone needs to tell the VA staff that yes, their patients quite likely have seen and done terrible things. Try not to recoil in horror. We don't get that luxury, neither should you. Dr Phil won't cut it.
When do you expected to have
When do you expected to have the thesis finished, Ex?
My pee-pee is yearning for
My pee-pee is yearning for some more gay videos!
Post more Gay videos, Please?
Post more Gay videos, Please?
love the vids
love the vids
I'll just say, the comment
I'll just say, the comment moderation on this site has certainly improved the quality of the comments. Well, except not, but other than that...
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