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Archive for December 8th, 2005

Thursday, December 8th, 2005

COUNTERINSURGENCY AND BERNARD FALL

Continuing its evolution as a superb resource and site for discussion on military history and policy issues The Small Wars Journal has put up a transcript of an address by Bernard Fall entitled ” Counterinsurgency: The French Experience” (PDF). An excerpt:

“…There is a hard fact of military life which is very often forgotten, and that is you usually learn much more from defeat than from a victory. Victories are particularly dangerous in terms of lessons. For example, the French came out of World War I absolutely persuaded that the key to victory is a strong, deep, defensive system. The Germans, who lost World War I. precisely against the deep defensive system, came out perfectly persuaded that the way to win the war is with deep, air-supported, armored penetrations. It took us five years of bitter fighting to beat them at their own game. “

Hat tip to Jedburgh.

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Thursday, December 8th, 2005

RECOMMENDED READING

Some good things here:

Dr. Thomas Barnett has blasted the attempt by the Pentagon to gut what military manpower remains in order to preserve all the ” big-ticket” items. (He was beaten to the punch here by Brad Plumer)

Dr. Chet Richards at DNI unveiled the intro to his new book

NYKR in DC has an interesting post on “ open source cyberjihad “

The First Iraq discusses ” Fingerprinting the Human Voice” – which reminded me of Solzhenitsyn’s characters in The First Circle

Friend of Zenpundit Myke Cole is back from Taiwan and has an article coming out in The Journal of Counterterrorism and Homeland Security International – which is not readily available online but some of you have university library access.

Bruce Kesler slashes at “Democrat Infamy” – he’s correct that the Democratic Party is basically in a state of moral collapse over the war. A collapse that Howard Dean’s recent comments, in my view, badly aggravated without even satisfying the party’s antiwar wingnuts.

Dr. Nexon at The Duck of Minerva opines on the State and Westphalia ( while beating the Belmont Club about the face and head). I would however have liked to hear Dan’s take on the underlying post by Josh Manchester, particularly the network aspect.

That’s it !

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