[...] A recent CTV article tackled the stereotype of the Canadian soldier as “a macho high school dropout who enlisted because he couldn’t find work.” The article quotes a number of degree-wielding troops who look at the military not as an “out” but as a career. Over the past couple of decades the educational demography of both the Canadian and US militaries have changed. Canada’s Chief of the Land Staff holds several degrees. The US military is undergoing a sea change in brainpower lead by guys like LT Gen David Petraeus and LTC John Nagl. Influential books are being written by soldier-scholars from across the pond as well. But, this is a view from the outside. The view from within isn’t so rosy. As you can tell from my examples, high levels of education seem to be more prevalent in the officer corps. [...]

Saw that the other day Kevin, was wondering if it was someone’s in our little blog network. Good work.

I frankly believe that B.H. Liddell-Hart’s “Colonel Lawrence” would be of more use to war fighters in Iraq than Mao. Neither book provides a universal template, but the Liddell-Hart book does provide a model for analyzing operations by irregular forces. I would also recommend Jean Pouget’s “Battalion R.A.S.”, for his insights with dealing with an occupied Arab population, and Jean-Pierre Pissardy’s “Commandos Nord-Vietnam” for a look at how the French created anti-guerrilla units among former guerrillas, and the risks they ran for doing so. My own impression of U.S. Army opinions of Mao’s work is that they see it as “the” definitive work on guerrilla warfare. Not all irregular warfare is guerrilla war. The north Korean model is WWII Soviet Partisan doctrine, while the Iraqi model appears to owe much to general middle eastern irregular warfare experience that was around long before Mao.

There was a small outfit in Texas republishing “The Praetorians” this year, but I have lost the link. Perhaps when I retire…

There is a lot of good non-English material out there, but also one major difference between most other counterinsirgency experiences and our own. The French, British, Dutch, Portuguese, Rhodesians, etc., all fought counterinsurgencies within an environment which included control of the civil structure. This afforded them immediate access to, and influence over, the public security and intelligence apparati. Such has not been the case with the U.S. since Blackjack Pershing’s days as a captain. We inevitably deal with host nation governments, and their myriad corridors and stovepipes of civil, military, judicial and paramilitary power. Despite the Left’s characterization of most of these allies as “U.S. puppets”, advising counterinsurgency combat operations in host nation environments has inevitably been like pushing a wet string of spagetti up a cat’s derriere. If I could have had Noah Chomsky with me for three days back in Dien Khanh district in early 1968, he would probably be co-hosting the Rush Limbaugh show by now.

Sage, I’ve seen them in the bookstores, but never bothered to check them out. I’ll do so. Thanx