ZenPundit
Monday, November 12, 2007
THE SMALL WARS JOURNAL HITS THE MSM BIG TIME
The publisher and the editor-in-chief of the highly regarded Small Wars Journal, respectively Bill Nagl and Dave Dilegge, are doing a public Q&A at noon on Tuesday with the powerhouse The Washington Post. I imagine that Bill Arkin will be involved somewhere as well - but we can hope otherwise. ;o)
Read about the details at the SWJ BLog.
Submit YOUR questions here.
The publisher and the editor-in-chief of the highly regarded Small Wars Journal, respectively Bill Nagl and Dave Dilegge, are doing a public Q&A at noon on Tuesday with the powerhouse The Washington Post. I imagine that Bill Arkin will be involved somewhere as well - but we can hope otherwise. ;o)
Read about the details at the SWJ BLog.
Submit YOUR questions here.
Labels: brave new war, COIN, insurgency, iraq, media, small wars journal, swj blog
¶ 8:37 PM 0 comments
Saturday, August 25, 2007
LEARNING TO EAT SOUP WITH JOHN STEWART
Lt. Colonel John Nagl, author of Learning to Eat Soup With A Knife and and the new Counterinsurgency Field Manual, had a very effective performance on a segment of The Daily Show. Colonel Nagl carried the whole effort off quite deftly.
John Stewart's show reaches an enormous segment of the American population that only tangentially consumes news media information, More than likely, the viewers were hearing things from Nagl about warfare and Iraq for the first time that have been discussed on blogs and at The SWC for years but have been below the media radar. Certainly, host John Stewart seemed engaged in the topic and impressed.
Hat tip to Dave Dilegge of the The Small Wars Journal.
Lt. Colonel John Nagl, author of Learning to Eat Soup With A Knife and and the new Counterinsurgency Field Manual, had a very effective performance on a segment of The Daily Show. Colonel Nagl carried the whole effort off quite deftly.
John Stewart's show reaches an enormous segment of the American population that only tangentially consumes news media information, More than likely, the viewers were hearing things from Nagl about warfare and Iraq for the first time that have been discussed on blogs and at The SWC for years but have been below the media radar. Certainly, host John Stewart seemed engaged in the topic and impressed.
Hat tip to Dave Dilegge of the The Small Wars Journal.
Labels: COIN, iraq, john nagl, media, small wars council, web 2.0
¶ 6:32 AM 2 comments
Sunday, May 27, 2007
THIS TELEVISED BEHEADING OF THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOU BY PRESIDENT BILL RICHARDSON
Former UN Ambassador Bill Richardson just suggested to Tim Russert that all American troops should be withdrawn from Iraq in 2007 and that security for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad be placed in Iraqi hands. Right. The embassy would be overrun in about five minutes if that happened. Does the Democratic Party really ache to relive the hostage crisis of their youth ?
I realize that the worst of the delusional screamers now dominate the Democratic primary process but an experienced international diplomat like Richardson should really try to preserve his intellectual credibility. Richardson isn't going to win the nomination but he just might be a Secretary of State or Defense, and, as such, he shouldn't be saying really dumb things like this on television.
Former UN Ambassador Bill Richardson just suggested to Tim Russert that all American troops should be withdrawn from Iraq in 2007 and that security for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad be placed in Iraqi hands. Right. The embassy would be overrun in about five minutes if that happened. Does the Democratic Party really ache to relive the hostage crisis of their youth ?
I realize that the worst of the delusional screamers now dominate the Democratic primary process but an experienced international diplomat like Richardson should really try to preserve his intellectual credibility. Richardson isn't going to win the nomination but he just might be a Secretary of State or Defense, and, as such, he shouldn't be saying really dumb things like this on television.
Labels: 2008, bill richardson, democratic party, foreign policy, iraq, media, tim russert
¶ 8:14 AM 9 comments
Thursday, May 17, 2007
MIL THEORY GOES MAINSTREAM
It's rather nice to see the esoteric theory topics I kick around here in conjunction with sites like The Small Wars Council, DNI, Tom Barnett and John Robb's blogs and the circle of related bloggers, are penetrating the mainstream press. Some recent examples:
William Lind in UPI
Max Boot citing the Small Wars Journal
"War without limits" by Christopher Shea in the Boston Globe (hat tip to Dr.Ralph Luker)
Thomas Barnett's frequent appearances in columns by David Ignatius going back several years
This is a good thing. While there is a healthy tendency in our online alternative defense thinking community to disagree, at times caustically, there is a shared consensus that the current structure, strategy and appropriations process for America's armed forces are ill-suited to the challenges facing the United States.
Change is required and change will only come when the ideas that we have been batting around on blogs, discussion boards and ( in a few instances ) books, penetrates the mass media and gets into the minds of the political class and the voting public. Maximizing attention on the ideas, rather than being distracted by infighting or loose cannon comments, is the route we need to go.
It's rather nice to see the esoteric theory topics I kick around here in conjunction with sites like The Small Wars Council, DNI, Tom Barnett and John Robb's blogs and the circle of related bloggers, are penetrating the mainstream press. Some recent examples:
William Lind in UPI
Max Boot citing the Small Wars Journal
"War without limits" by Christopher Shea in the Boston Globe (hat tip to Dr.Ralph Luker)
Thomas Barnett's frequent appearances in columns by David Ignatius going back several years
This is a good thing. While there is a healthy tendency in our online alternative defense thinking community to disagree, at times caustically, there is a shared consensus that the current structure, strategy and appropriations process for America's armed forces are ill-suited to the challenges facing the United States.
Change is required and change will only come when the ideas that we have been batting around on blogs, discussion boards and ( in a few instances ) books, penetrates the mass media and gets into the minds of the political class and the voting public. Maximizing attention on the ideas, rather than being distracted by infighting or loose cannon comments, is the route we need to go.
Labels: barnett, dni, john robb, max boot, media, military, military reform, small wars council, small wars journal, strategy, war, william lind
¶ 9:10 AM 2 comments
Sunday, February 25, 2007
ON PUTIN AND HIS IMAGE ABROAD: THE RUSSIAN GEORGE W. BUSH ?
President Vladimir Putin of Russia is under increasingly critical western scrutiny these days. Drum roll please....:
"Post-Putin" By Steven Lee Myers -NYT Magazine
"The Putin Era in Historical Perspective" (PDF) -National Intelligence Council report
"Kremlin Inc. Why are Vladimir Putin's opponents dying?" - Michael Specter, The New Yorker
"Who's killing Putin's enemies? -Part I" and "Part II" - Michael Specter, The Guardian Observer Magazine
"Seven Questions: Russia’s Cloaks and Daggers " -Foreign Policy
"Europe wary after Putin tirade" - The Daily Telegraph
"Russia’s Managed Democracy" by Perry Anderson - London Review of Books
The Russians have expressed some concern on how Putin's recent speech in Munich has been portrayed:
"One Cold War Was Enough" - Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov -Washington Post
They should be concerned.
Russia's siloviki political system is a carrot and stick machine for quiet, minimalist, authoritarianism that seeks to keep the masses of the Russian public complacently supportive while neutralizing intelligentsia critics (unpopular with the masses anyway), neutering the free press and preventing the emergence of any serious (or semi-serious) power blocs or public figures who might challenge the interests of the regime.
Normally, Russian hamfisted behavior at home and abroad raises more hackles than this but at the moment, much of the world's intellectuals and political literati are obssessed with George W. Bush. The Bush administration soaks up a great deal of negative rhetoric and political energy both here at home and overseas. But as Bush's term wears on and certainly by the time he leaves office, this enormous global resentment and capacity for selective outrage will begin casting about for new "villains". This is not to say Putin's regime is a good one or that Russia can be regarded as a democracy; it can't. These are real issues to be addressed and not swept under the rug. But if you become highly exercised over Vladimir Putin, while being conspicuously silent over Robert Mugabe or Dar Fur, your moral calculus is in disarray
Putin will clearly be in that bulls-eye at that time and there will be a media stampede to push the already poor state of U.S.-Russian and EU-Russian relations over a cliff.
Hat tips to Dr. Diane Labrosse of H-Diplo and Stan Reber of the SWC
President Vladimir Putin of Russia is under increasingly critical western scrutiny these days. Drum roll please....:
"Post-Putin" By Steven Lee Myers -NYT Magazine
"The Putin Era in Historical Perspective" (PDF) -National Intelligence Council report
"Kremlin Inc. Why are Vladimir Putin's opponents dying?" - Michael Specter, The New Yorker
"Who's killing Putin's enemies? -Part I" and "Part II" - Michael Specter, The Guardian Observer Magazine
"Seven Questions: Russia’s Cloaks and Daggers " -Foreign Policy
"Europe wary after Putin tirade" - The Daily Telegraph
"Russia’s Managed Democracy" by Perry Anderson - London Review of Books
The Russians have expressed some concern on how Putin's recent speech in Munich has been portrayed:
"One Cold War Was Enough" - Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov -Washington Post
They should be concerned.
Russia's siloviki political system is a carrot and stick machine for quiet, minimalist, authoritarianism that seeks to keep the masses of the Russian public complacently supportive while neutralizing intelligentsia critics (unpopular with the masses anyway), neutering the free press and preventing the emergence of any serious (or semi-serious) power blocs or public figures who might challenge the interests of the regime.
Normally, Russian hamfisted behavior at home and abroad raises more hackles than this but at the moment, much of the world's intellectuals and political literati are obssessed with George W. Bush. The Bush administration soaks up a great deal of negative rhetoric and political energy both here at home and overseas. But as Bush's term wears on and certainly by the time he leaves office, this enormous global resentment and capacity for selective outrage will begin casting about for new "villains". This is not to say Putin's regime is a good one or that Russia can be regarded as a democracy; it can't. These are real issues to be addressed and not swept under the rug. But if you become highly exercised over Vladimir Putin, while being conspicuously silent over Robert Mugabe or Dar Fur, your moral calculus is in disarray
Putin will clearly be in that bulls-eye at that time and there will be a media stampede to push the already poor state of U.S.-Russian and EU-Russian relations over a cliff.
Hat tips to Dr. Diane Labrosse of H-Diplo and Stan Reber of the SWC
Labels: bush, diplomacy, foreign policy, media, putin, russia, siloviki
¶ 9:04 AM 4 comments
