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TMLutas' blog posts can now be found at Flit(tm)
November 14, 2003More Clueless US LiberalsPosted by TMLutas
Michael Kinsley enters the clueless race when it comes to the intellectual backing for Bush's strategy. Hellooo Michael. The Naval War College's newrulesets.project started as a little intellectual experiment prior to 9/11 and radically ramped up in importance thereafter. There's a natural human tendency to want your ideological or partisan side to win but it's dangerous to the stability of the nation if the opposition is too incompetent. I can see Michael Kinsley disdaining the new rule sets approach. I can see him dismissing it. But pretending it doesn't even exist is just too departed from reality to take any joy from. In fact it's downright worrisome. Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for the story. The Nature of WarPosted by TMLutas
A tour de force from Steven Den Beste on the nature of the present conflict. Read the whole thing. One minor addition to add, if civilian factory workers were combatants (though at a radically different level than uniformed, front line soldiers) in industrial age total war, information era war seems to imply that the war blogger is something on the line of the WW II fire warden or war bond seller, the butt end of the tail of combatants. Which brings me to Ted Tomorrow's comic Chicken Hawk Down. Ted Tomorrow's effort is of a piece with those who mocked the air raid/blackout wardens, the war bond sellers and other 'tail' figures (the rearest of the REMFs). The military bloggers seem to have caught Mr. Tomorrow by surprise. He obviously didn't understand that this war can have the point of the spear participating in tail operations to this extent but it doesn't really help turn aside his main attack. What Mr. Tomorrow is striking at is the idea of our side fighting on the field of ideas. He wanted to demoralize those of us who believe that ideological combat, working out in public ideas for convincing Islamists to give up and go home, is not a fit subject for people out of uniform. On the contrary, it is the sole subject where a uniform (at least in the US) is a handicap to warfare. Ideology and psychological operations is what we the rest of us do in a society where the government maintains a proper monopoly on the organized use of force to solve social problems. |
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