Aloha, Siun…! Did you see this excellent article from the BBC’s Adam Curtis; How To Kill A rational peasant – America’s Dangerous Love Affair With Counterinsurgency

Scroll down to the woeful tale of David Galula…! 8-(

War porn.

I always type a lot about the book I’m reading if it’s a good one.

On p 1168 of 1500 page Rise & Fall of Third Reich. Page turner. Explains so many things.

Relevant to this post, is how ruthless & inhumane war makers are.

Particularly the Chairborne Generals…! 8-(

To be fair, Hitler was a colonel in WWI and many of the other top Nazi warmakers were more prominent in WWI.

Totally agree wrt U.S. though.

U.S. won’t wage war against a country its own size, only some shitty little one it can throw against the wall.

Still U.S. hasn’t won a war (Grenada doesn’t count) since WWII, and the European part of that was won by the Soviets.

I’m offline the rest of tonight as we try to sort out an issue with the wifi at my new place but wanted to get this post up. Someone forwarded the Small Wars piece on a list I’m on and I was astonished such nonsense is still being put out there.

The Germans were always a militaristic society to begin with, what needs to happen globally, is a return to the Westphalian Sovereignty that is enshrined in the UN Charter…!

Best wishes in a speedy resolution, Siun…! I hope you enjoy your new digs…! ;-)

Thank you, Siun, for putting up a diary on this article.

My comment on the Diner earlier in the week that linked to it had the analysis: No matter how hard you try, Soldier, you’ll never be an Afghan.

No matter how hard you try, Soldier, you’ll never be an Afghan.

No Doubt, Tarheel…! ;-)

So were the Romans. So were the fill-in-the-blank.

The only countries that are not militaristic are those that are too small to entertain the delusion that they can win a war.

And many of them engage in insurgency.

Human condition.

I doubt the myth that they try. Maybe in their own minds…

Even 3 cups of tea was a lie.

I was actually fooled by the 3 Cups lie, when it first surfaced, but, then quickly saw through that propaganda when actual reporters visited some of the ‘schools’ in the book…!

The public doesn’t mind, either. From Glenn Greenwald, back in February:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-finds-broad-support-for-obamas-counterterrorism-policies/2012/02/07/gIQAFrSEyQ_story.html?hpid=z3

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that Obama, who campaigned on a pledge to close the brig in Cuba and to change national security policies he criticized as inconsistent with U.S. law and values, has little to fear politically for failing to live up to all of those promises.

Go liberals!

I read it when I needed a feel-good lift. Served its purpose admirably.

I knew it wasn’t scalable in the sense that if Mortensen did spend the time to get to know the locals that he claimed he did, no large org could do same.

Remember that BS with the jerk who wrote “We Meant Well?” I asked him how he was evaluated by his DoS bureaucratic masters on how well he did his job, and his answer was: By how much money we spent.

I didn’t catch onto the fraud in 3CoT until a lot later.

Saw a clip of Eleanor Clift on book-tv today. She is an over-the-hill D pundit. The 2 min I caught before nausea made me click off was her saying that the Rs might be better served not to campaign against O on foreign policy since he’s done such a great job.

BTW, what motivated Mortensen to write a bogus book. Did he make a lot of money? If so, how did he figure out it would be a best seller?

The folks who say that Obama has “forwarded the progressive cause,” then, must have an awfully dim view of what counted as the “progressive cause” before Obama “forwarded” it…

WWII war porn on c-span2.

IIRC he was funded by one of the NED/TED neolib NGOs that were sent into Afghanistan…!

Detached from the real world. But isn’t that the designated role of PTB pundits?

I’ve been touting a 1hr 22 min book-tv program last weekend that exposed in a very elegant & intellectual manor the way that “public intellectuals” Tom Friedman, David Ignatius and David-Henry Levy play in fooling the proggies. I’ll get the link if your interested. It’s worth the time if you’ve got it.

Aha. The bleeding heart NGOs that are shills for the other side.

A recent discovery for me, but not a surprise.

They, did and do have a sh*tty view of Progressives, think Rahmbo and his DLC’ers like Heath Shuler, Harold Ford, etc…!

The fundamental fallacy of US counterinsurgency doctrine. You really cannot do it in someone else’s country without committing war crimes. See Malayan Emergency.

Malaya is often cited as one of the few ‘successful’ coin.

However, it was led by ethnic Chinese, some 10% of pop, who were not supported by locals, so they had no safe havens.

Linky please. That sounds like an interesting take-down.

And there are recurring reports of brutality. I think the citation of a successful counter-insurgency masks the fact that human rights standards and expectation were not as salient in the 1940s and 1950s as they became after the civil rights and anti-war movements. Geneva Conventions notwithstanding.

eCAHN, you mistyped hitler’s rank in WWI. He was eventually promoted to corporal, not colonel. Apparently some new info has been discovered on hitler as not being a heroic runner on the front lines, but a safe runner well behind the front lines. You can see the story here.

colonel? Corporal I understood.

A Colonel in WW I would probably have had to be a Prussian Aristocrat.

There is no romance in going to bed eery night with loaded weapons by the side of your bed, not in tracking Terrs into the bundu and descending into the Zambezi Vally to be bitten by Tsetse files, mosquitoes and nearly everything else.

And you cannot wash in the river water because of the Risk of Bilharzia.

I think the romance is in imagining how counterinsurgency is going to create a stronger America and all that. Instead it creates a stronger al Qaeda.