Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
About Me
- Mark Jacobsen
- C-17 Pilot, Middle East Regional Affairs Specialist, Olmsted Scholar in Jordan (2009-2011), Software Developer, Writer. Visit my blog at www.buildingpeace.net. You can follow me at @reach364.
What I'm Reading
- Islam Without Extremes by Mustafa Akyol
- Crescent & Star by Stephen Kinzer
- The Dervish House by Ian MacDonald
- Makers of Ancient Strategy, ed. Victor Davis Hanson
- A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani
Twitter Updates
Good Sites Online
- Abu Muqawama
- Congressional Research Service
- Constructively Discontented
- Earlybird
- Foreign Affairs
- Global Guerillas
- International Crisis Group
- Jihadica
- KurzweilAI.net
- Mountainrunner
- Natural Security
- Open the Future
- Pick Your Battles
- Small Wars Journal
- Steve Walt
- The Best Defense
- The Cable
- The Economist
- The Middle East Channel
- The Official Google Blog
- The Olmsted Foundation
- Wings Over Iraq
- Wired: Danger Room
- Wired: Threat Level
- Zenpundit
1 comments:
I have to say I was disappointed in this article. The author actually did make some valid and good points, but it was lost in the simplistic and almost niave rhetoric about not only the politics of the situation, but the viewpoints of Nagl, Gentile, Bacevich, and Killcullen. Many of the hyperlink assertations didn’t match what was actually said in the articles they linked to. The most egregious being the quote about Democrats being inclined “to embark upon a host of half-baked, interventionist ‘crusades’ in Third World quagmires.” What? Not only do I think this is something that both parties can share their part of the blame (making it more of an American problem than a political one), but the link on the word “crusades” (a very inflammatory word which doesn’t help convince people that we’re not fighting a religious war) goes to a Bacevich article which talks about “crusaders versus conservatives” where Nagl is described as one of the crusaders (used in a completely different context). I don’t get his point. I don’t see anyone excited about jumping into another mess where we can use COIN, on the contrary, I see people clinging to it because it seems the only way to get out. There’s a lot of blame to go around, and pointing fingers at one side or the other is not a useful activity if you want to engage in serious scholarship.
It’s really easy to break things down into black and white and let people pick which side they’re on; it’s just not useful. This is something Reza Aslan talks about very well in his book How to Win a Cosmic War; you’re either with us or against us. Unfortunately, it may make people feel good and make their life simpler, but life is not lived in black and white. Black and white are the extremes and most of the world is lived in shades of gray. I also like Nagl’s viewpoint on “hawks” and “doves;” he prefers “owls.” Blaming anti-war sentiment on “leftwing extremists” delegitimizes many of the independents and conservatives (mostly smart military officers) who felt the same way not through ideology but through serious study of the subject and fighting in the wars. We need more owls. I think the current trend towards independent voters is not so much a “revolt of the moderates” as it is a dissatisfaction with having your thoughts already be dismissed or defined for you based on a political party label. Saying Democrats are for this or against this and Republicans are for this and against this, is a fundamental misunderstanding of how diverse each group is. We need to be specific with our criticism and praise. Some of the rhetoric about not being a “real American” or a “real conservative” is very disturbing when you put it up against some of the rhetoric about not being “real Muslims.”
The truth is that Nagl and Gentile aren’t actually all that far apart. They’re both right in their own way. Most of Nagl’s book is not so much about the rules of counterinsurgency as it is about building an Army that can learn to adapt to whatever type of war it is facing. Gentile is actually arguing the same point. He’s warning us not to become so rigidly married to counterinsurgency that we can’t adapt to a different type of war. Bacevich has an even more nuanced approach talking about America’s love affair with the military and war (hardly a liberal idea when you consider Eisenhower warned of the same thing and if you know anything of Bacevich’s history). The danger with looking at things as black and white, point and counterpoint, Democrat and Republican, is that it leaves no room for them to all be right. They’re just not all answering the same questions.
Great leaders and great thinkers are the ones who can hold many seemingly contradictory ideas in their head and be okay with it. We’re never going to get anywhere in the debate by making people pick sides. Just like there are no “front lines” in war anymore, I don’t think there are “sides” in this debate either.
Post a Comment