The American heritage is one of a strong work ethic and a deep sense of personal responsibility. These individual traits, together with civic engagement, are the cultural foundations of American prosperity. Originally, these traits sprang forth naturally from America’s Judeo-Christian roots. Max Weber and De Tocqueville both warned what would happen if these individual traits […]
Looking at a Surge in Afghanistan
July 23, 2008 By
It is nice to see the insurgency in Pakistan getting more news coverage. Today I want to pull out some points made in a recent AP story, Suspicion, terrain are foes for US in Afghan surge). The general point of the story is that “surging” troop strength in Afghanistan might be counterproductive. Before I go […]
In Praise of Civility – and a warning about love
July 23, 2008 By
Today’s gospel lesson from the Orthodox lectionary is on the parable of the leaven, and how a little bit really improves everything. In general, the leaven is love: you can change the world around you if you genuinely love. This is a fundamental truth, but the world has so damaged the concept of love, that […]
Signing Peace Accords with Insurgents
July 22, 2008 By
Pakistani COIN has a definite rhythm to it: increase military pressure in an area then, when things are near a breaking point, sign a peace agreement with insurgent leaders (or their proxies), according to which the insurgents promise to stop attacking Paksitan military and government forces/facilities, stop cross border operations into Afghanistan, stop creating parallel […]
Music and Science – missing the obvious point
July 22, 2008 By
My apologies if you were hoping to read more exciting thoughts on bureaucracy, elections, and tyranny, but I am going to take a few minutes to share some random thoughts on something more fundamental : music. There is much that could be said, but I want to focus for a moment on the questions of […]
More Reasons to Support Pakistan in the FATA
July 21, 2008 By
The conventional wisdom seems to be that Pakistan is the cause of instability in Afghanistan, and that if the government of Pakistan cannot solve the problem we should go in and solve it for them. Earlier I argued that there is not such entity as “Pakistan”, that Pakistan’s bureaucracies are corrupt and inefficient, and that […]
Who is Pakistan and where can I meet him?
July 17, 2008 By
Our brains just don’t work well in certain situations. Unfortunately, the world is full of “those situations”. There is a wonderful literature out there on how our brains let us down when we do certain kinds of analysis (The Psychology of Intelligence by Richard Heuer remains the best, although ). Nassim Taleb (The Black Swan) […]
Should We Use Force in the FATA?
July 16, 2008 By
On Tuesday, Senators Obama and McCain talked about Pakistan and the war in Afghanistan. I am not really all that interested in campaign politics, but I am interested in counter-insurgency (COIN), especially COIN in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And some of the things the candidates say about this theater worry me. Sen. Obama has been criticized […]
