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Retired Col.
Jack J. McCuen , who has been there and done that, and is author of the
classic text The Art of Counter-Revolutionary War, critiques
Col. Gian Gentile's recent challenge
in Parameters to the COIN crowd.
I find this pretty powerful. For
example, Gentile disputes the ...
World
Afghanistan
Foreign Policy
Barack Obama
Vietnam
It has been a year since Dena Yllescas buried her husband, Capt. Rob Yllescas, after he died of wounds suffered in a bombing in Afghanistan.
"I have managed to put one foot in front of the other and try to make the best out of a horrible situation," she writes in her blog ...
World
Afghanistan
Last weekend my wife and I watched
Katyn , by the great Polish filmmaker Andrezj Wajda. It is about the 1940
massacre
of about 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviets, and also
about how the subsequent Communist cover-up corrupted postwar Polish society.
It isn't ...
Other
Richard Armitage is an unusual guy
in Washington -- both candid and well-spoken. He also has a talent for making the
right enemies. Now he of thick neck and broad shoulders has given an
interesting interview
to Prism , which is some sort of new publication at the National ...
World
Pakistan
Afghanistan
Egypt
The best line in yesterday's
hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee goes to Defense Secretary Robert
Gates, who said near the close of the session that, "Quite frankly, I detest
the phrase 'exit strategy.'" Loyal readers of this blog will know that I join
him in that ...
White House
Robert Gates
United States
Afghanistan
The best commentary on President
Obama's speech came, oddly enough, from a British newspaper. Clare
"Hold-and-Build" Lockhart writes :
President Obama
has got it right. After taking his time to wrestle with the enormous challenge
of defining the US national interest ...
World
Afghanistan
General David Petraeus
Here my CNAS colleague Michael
McCarthy reports on an unusual book party he attended at Fort McNair, here in
Washington, D.C.:
Last night I went down to Fort McNair, home of the Near East South Asia
Center for Strategic Studies (NESA). The occasion was a book launch event for ...
World
Afghanistan
My hawkish friends are picking on
Obama's speech. It didn't stir them.
News flash, fellas: It wasn't
meant to. He wasn't speaking to you all, or to me. In fact, he likely is mighty
tired of listening to Afghanistan hawks, having spent much of the last three
months with them. In ...
World
Barack Obama
Afghanistan
al-Qaeda
This one is fresh from the library
of the U.S. Army War College. The list
struck me as a bit haphazard --for example, why my article from Army
magazine, but not the book from which that article was excerpted? -- but overall
my attitude is, the more of these lists, the better.
...
World
U.S. Army
Afghanistan
Iraq
The other day I joined a reader in
wondering about the silence of Gen. Petraeus in recent months. Here is the general's response:
My comment for your
blog, Tom, in the wake of the speech:
I agree with General
McChrystal that the situation in Afghanistan is ...
World
Afghanistan
General David Petraeus
Barack Obama
al-Qaeda
9/11
Proven provider John McCreary
concludes that over the last year, the Taliban has dramatically increased its
military effectiveness. This is today's bad news, or at least the first
installment of it.
A year ago, he said, for every one
Allied soldier killed, wounded or captured, ...
World
Afghanistan
David Wood captures
the heartbreak of sending to war young men who only recently were boys:
I
sometimes forget how young they are. A few years ago, I was lazing in the dust
with a bunch of Marines during a break in training. Already combat veterans,
they were about to ...
World
Iraq
ricks.foreignpolicy.com - 4 days ago
—
ricks.foreignpolicy.com —
Now he says it: Sir Jeremy Greenstock believes
the American invasion of Iraq was of " questionable...
legitimacy ." As a British naval historian friend I know once noted, the time when the British government could have helped ...
(more)
Thanks for nothing, UK government
Comments
vote down
Lawyers, Guns and Money
found this 4 days agofound this
There were more than 27,000
divorces in the active-duty military last year.
"That's a divorce rate
of about 3.6 percent, compared with 3.4 percent a year earlier," reports
the intrepid Pauline Jelenik of the AP.
Other
ricks.foreignpolicy.com - 5 days ago
—
ricks.foreignpolicy.com —
It seems to be a given that President
Obama will send about 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan....
So to me the three big questions are: What are we going to do about the corruption and abuses of the Afghan government, arguably a more ...
(more)
Three Things We Need From Obama on Afghanistan
The Navy continues the tradition
of relief, ousting
the commander of its base in Bahrain just two weeks before he was scheduled
to leave. Ouch.
I think the Army could benefit
from looking at this Navy tradition. The Army used to oust a lot more
people -- George Marshall's first ...
World
Bahrain
U.S. Army
Foreign Policy
China
Here's my list
of ten of the most influential people in the counterinsurgency community. For
scathing responses from all the people who could have done better, you can read
this
discussion on Small Wars Journal . The comment I agree with is the one
that says lists of this sort are ...
World
Afghanistan
Iraq
ricks.foreignpolicy.com - 8 days ago
—
ricks.foreignpolicy.com —
I don't know why, but this year I
really have a strong sense of gratitude for all...
that I have been given in this life. Much of what I am grateful for, like my wife and family, has been there for a long time, so I think the difference is that this ...
(more)
Happy Thanksgiving, and some rules of the road
