Wednesday, June 08, 2005
RECOMMENDED MILITARY READING
Hooooo-HAH ! A meaty selection to sink your mind into:
" The Journalism of Warfare" by Keith Windshuttle in The New Criterion. Windshuttle opens with an absolutely devastating attack on Robert Fisk's laudatory descriptions of Osama bin Laden:
"In Fisk’s description, bin Laden was attended by “bearded, taciturn figures” who never strayed more than a few yards from him. In Lawrence’s account, Feisal was accompanied by a retinue of slaves who guarded his person and lit his path with lamps. Students of British imperial adventure novels will recognize the genre. The world the writers conjure up is pre-modern, where natural aristocrats, tall and slender, lord over male servants and slaves who are handsome, silent, and strong. The aristocrats are famous for their warrior skills. Their long robes are trimmed with gold and scarlet. They carry daggers in their belts. It is a world without women and it reeks of homoeroticism. ...
...This same hankering after the trappings of aristocracy, or anything that smacks of aristocracy, is behind much of the anti-American and anti-Jewish sentiment that now emanates from the European news media, especially in the writings of European leftists such as Fisk. "
" Crack in the Foundation: Defense Transformation and the Underlying Assumption of Dominant Knowledge in Future War" by Colonel H.R. McMaster.
This one was brought to my attention by reader Jacob H. , for which I am most grateful. It is the longest by far, a 102 page PDF document in which McMaster takes a critical look at the assumptions of Network-Centric Warfare and Joint Operations Concept based transformation at the DoD. McMaster, who has a PhD in history and is currently commanding the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq is a rising star who nonetheless jumped right into a hotly contested Pentagon policy debate. It must not have hurt him because McMaster was eventually picked to be an adviser to Lt. General John Abizaid and then tapped for a coveted field command.
" Feel that Draft ?" by Charles Moskos in The Chicago Tribune. One of America's foremost experts on the U.S. military, Northwestern University sociologist Charles Moskos has come out with an op-ed piece arguing for a return to conscription ( an eventuality I foresaw more than a year ago and Moskos makes some of the same points ):
"In brief, draftees could readily fill the multitude of jobs that require only a short formal training period or even just on-the-job training. It is well documented that higher-quality recruits have the skills and motivation to learn quickly a wide variety of military jobs. Draftees would be ideally suited for duties on peacekeeping missions such as in Bosnia, Kosovo and the Sinai. Better educated and more mature draftees would also be ideal for guard duty in military prisons."
That's it. ¶ 6:13 PM
Hooooo-HAH ! A meaty selection to sink your mind into:
" The Journalism of Warfare" by Keith Windshuttle in The New Criterion. Windshuttle opens with an absolutely devastating attack on Robert Fisk's laudatory descriptions of Osama bin Laden:
"In Fisk’s description, bin Laden was attended by “bearded, taciturn figures” who never strayed more than a few yards from him. In Lawrence’s account, Feisal was accompanied by a retinue of slaves who guarded his person and lit his path with lamps. Students of British imperial adventure novels will recognize the genre. The world the writers conjure up is pre-modern, where natural aristocrats, tall and slender, lord over male servants and slaves who are handsome, silent, and strong. The aristocrats are famous for their warrior skills. Their long robes are trimmed with gold and scarlet. They carry daggers in their belts. It is a world without women and it reeks of homoeroticism. ...
...This same hankering after the trappings of aristocracy, or anything that smacks of aristocracy, is behind much of the anti-American and anti-Jewish sentiment that now emanates from the European news media, especially in the writings of European leftists such as Fisk. "
" Crack in the Foundation: Defense Transformation and the Underlying Assumption of Dominant Knowledge in Future War" by Colonel H.R. McMaster.
This one was brought to my attention by reader Jacob H. , for which I am most grateful. It is the longest by far, a 102 page PDF document in which McMaster takes a critical look at the assumptions of Network-Centric Warfare and Joint Operations Concept based transformation at the DoD. McMaster, who has a PhD in history and is currently commanding the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq is a rising star who nonetheless jumped right into a hotly contested Pentagon policy debate. It must not have hurt him because McMaster was eventually picked to be an adviser to Lt. General John Abizaid and then tapped for a coveted field command.
" Feel that Draft ?" by Charles Moskos in The Chicago Tribune. One of America's foremost experts on the U.S. military, Northwestern University sociologist Charles Moskos has come out with an op-ed piece arguing for a return to conscription ( an eventuality I foresaw more than a year ago and Moskos makes some of the same points ):
"In brief, draftees could readily fill the multitude of jobs that require only a short formal training period or even just on-the-job training. It is well documented that higher-quality recruits have the skills and motivation to learn quickly a wide variety of military jobs. Draftees would be ideally suited for duties on peacekeeping missions such as in Bosnia, Kosovo and the Sinai. Better educated and more mature draftees would also be ideal for guard duty in military prisons."
That's it. ¶ 6:13 PM
Comments:
<< Home
The world the writers conjure up is pre-modern, where natural aristocrats, tall and slender, lord over male servants and slaves who are handsome, silent, and strong.
The survival of pre-modern networks, and the continued attempt at people to "discover" them even where they do not exist, is astonishing. When all the rest of modernity fades and dies away, either into a happy or sad ending, pre-modern networks will still exist.
-Dan tdaxp
The survival of pre-modern networks, and the continued attempt at people to "discover" them even where they do not exist, is astonishing. When all the rest of modernity fades and dies away, either into a happy or sad ending, pre-modern networks will still exist.
-Dan tdaxp
There is almost zero chance of a draft. Support for it would be quite low and any congressperson who voted for it would be defeated.
Barnabus
Post a Comment
Barnabus
# posted by 
: Friday, 10 June, 2005
: Friday, 10 June, 2005<< Home
