Blog Them Out of the Stone Age
This blog, run by military historian Dr. Mark Grimsley, is one I should have added to the blogroll a long time ago. From perusing Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, there are points of agreement and disagreement that I’d have with Grimsley, but his overall aim to put military history in a broader context or understanding is an effor worthy of enthususiastic support. Historical knowledge is useless unless it is widely disseminated.
Check out a few sample posts below:
The Culture of War
….This is Martin Van Creveld’s eighteenth book, and like most of its predecessors it combines the insightful with the provocative with the merely exasperating. Van Creveld is both a gifted military historian and a world class gadfly, and he often gives the impression that he cherishes the latter reputation more than the former. This impression is more unavoidable than ever in The Culture of War, which, the author informs us, he has written with the desire to put “any 
number of assorted ‘-ists’ – such as relativists, deconstructionists, deconstructivists, post-modernists, the more maudlin kind of pacifists, and feminists firmly in their place.” (xv) These “bleeding hearts,” he imagines, scorn the notion of a culture of war. He also wishes to confront the “neo-realists” who collapse warfare into a supposedly rational instrument of policy – and this is in fact the most interesting aspect of the book – but his swipes at the academic left are so frequent and tiresome that they threaten the integrity of the book.
A Plain Violation of Civilian Control? – Part Trois
….To a particularly tendentious question that was in effect an invitation to criticize the Obama administration, McChrystal replied, “I won’t even touch that.”
At no point in the Q&A did anyone mention Vice President Biden or allude directly to the Biden option. Many of the questions dealt with such things as the possible role/response of Iran, the legitimacy of the Afghan election, the element of the Taliban that was most dangerous (the questioner told McChrystal what he regarded as the most dangerous element, then asked if McChrystal agreed), how one might best cut off the flow of Taliban recruits (“jobs,” McChrystal replied), etc.
Having watched the whole Q&A, I was impressed by the general’s poise, his articulateness, his praise for the efforts of the coalition forces, and his repeated endorsement of the Obama administration’s strategy review process.
A Douglas MacArthur type McChrystal decidedly is not.
General McChrystal Versus Vicki Carr
….Modern communications have tempted some presidents to micromanage. During the disastrous Desert One rescue mission in 1980, Jimmy Carter famously (and problematically) dealt directly with COL Charles Beckwith, the commander on the scene. But the ultimate micro-manager was also the first to have easy access to ground commanders: President Abraham Lincoln, thanks to the telegraph. Lincoln constantly bypassed his secretary of war and general in chief to deal directly with army commanders. Although some historians seem to believe that everything Lincoln did was correct by definition, Lincoln’s interventions were often to ill effect.
In any event, Obama already knows what McChrystal thinks. At this point McChrystal, in effect, needs to know what Obama thinks. That is to say, the president needs to give McChrystal a clearly defined national security objective that is the prerequisite for any coherent military strategy.
Amen to that last part.
