Marc | January 15, 2010
A very interesting discussion is starting to heat up over at the Small Wars Council over a paper written by Matt Lauder called Religion and Resistance: Examining the Role of Religion in Irregular Warfare (March 2009, DRDC Toronto TN 2009-049; NB: originally posted by milNews.ca over at army.ca forums). I expect the discussion to expand [...]
Marc | January 10, 2010
NPR just carried a nice story about Dr. Paula Holmes-Eber on teaching culture at the Marine Corps University (hat tip to Kerry Fosher who sent out the link over MilAnthNet). I’ve had several chances to talk with Paula about her teaching there, and I have been quite impressed with both what they are teaching and [...]
Marc | November 27, 2009
Max Forte has just produced another posting on the historical relation of Anthropology and Science entitled The Social Production of Science and Anthropology as Knowledge for Domination. Don’t let the title put you off, it is well worth reading and, having studied the period under question myself, I can also say that it is, in [...]
Marc | November 26, 2009
CBC just ran a report that noted that Gen. Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the German Inspector General (roughly Chief of Staff) has asked to be “relieved of duties” after the Bild published still photographs of the September 4th airstrike against two tanker trucks captured by the Taliban (see also AFP, Earth Times, Die Zeit). Not only has [...]
Marc | October 15, 2009
The 2009 Army Capstone Concept will be released on Dec. 21, but until then, Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center’s Concepts Development and Experimentation Directorate, invites the public to preview and provide feedback for the draft copy on the Small Wars Journal blog. Source: Draft Army Capstone Concept hits Web [...]
Marc | October 13, 2009
There is a “rule” known as the rule of the excluded third that derives from a particular form of knowledge construction: X either is or is not Y. This rule is often used in the construction of rhetorical positions that seek to present options in an either / or format. While this may work in [...]
Marc | October 7, 2009
A couple of articles on the HASC assessment of the HTS have appeared. First, Max Forte has collected some of the key background documents relating to John Stantons’ original article. Second, John has a new article out at Counterpunch that is worth a look. Finally, last week I posted a longer look at the review [...]
Marc | September 29, 2009
In the US House Report 111-166 – NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2010, there is a very interesting set of requirements regarding a direction to implement an independent assessment of the Human Terrain System (major hat tip to John Stanton for letting me know – his own article on it is available here).
Marc | September 21, 2009
With the release of an unclassified version of GEN McChrystal’s assessment (pdf; w/ hat tip to SWJ and the Washington Post) we can finally start to get a handle on the rationale behind the new (?) strategy for Afghanistan. I have only skimmed the Assessment as yet, but several points jump out at me. In [...]
Marc | September 16, 2009
I’ve been having an email discussion with my friend Drew about narratives for the past little while. One of the things that bothers me about the general topic, and by this I mean the military use and analysis of narratives, is that it is all to often focused at the wrong “levels”; in milspeak, it [...]
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