An Historian's Perspective
You might want to check out Brian Glyn Williams' post at the Complex Terrain Lab. He's been directly involved with the HTT program. As an historian AND one who's subject matter expertise is actually relevant to the work, he offers some interesting observations.
Agreed that it's a nice piece
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mike Innes
You might want to check out
Brian Glyn Williams' post at the Complex Terrain Lab. He's been directly involved with the HTT program. As an historian AND one who's subject matter expertise is actually relevant to the work, he offers some interesting observations.
would like to know if he has written in more detail some of his experiences and the way he approaches the relationship between the HTT and their military teammates?
All true - and since prolonging a war by
using half measures in an attempt to reduce the suffering caused almost invariably ends up in prolonging that war (usually immeasurably) and thus inducing even more suffering it seems a short sighted, illogical and even inhumane approach to me.
But I'm just a uneddicated grunt... :D
And Mugabe is just misunderstood
Quote:
Originally Posted by
SteveMetz
I must add that anthropologists may today's masters of 1960s intellectual leftist silliness, but they don't have a monopoly. I was at an AFRICOM conference at the Pentagon Doubletree yesterday listening to a historian basically make the argument that training African militaries is a bad idea since it simply made them more effective at repressing "the people."
Yeah, I've heard that argument as well :rolleyes:. Recently, I've been thinking that if Africom wanted to start off on the right foot, they should do some live fire training in Zimbabwe ;).
I'm always a bit leery...
of anything that starts with "KY" :eek:
Now that I got the KYFHO site to load...
I agree. That is also a basic tenent of traditional martial arts.
If possible is alwqays the rider...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ken White
People are funny about that. Then, too the Medical, military and political fields (among many others) are far from error free in the determination of potential problems.Which is why I'm a strong believer in psychological testing and personnel selection in most things. Shouldn't be a problem if you get the right sociopaths... :wry:
Too bad we don't have psychological testing for politicians :D.... getting the sociopaths isn't a problem :( (on the right or the left).
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ken White
As an aside, Phoenix was in operation under another name long before the onset of that name and CORDS; it dated back to the earliest days (62 IIRC) and was modeled on a British program from the Malayan Emergency. Some Australian involvement in the set up and training was beneficial. The onset of CORDS saw it ramped up considerably in effort.
Yeah, I'd read that in John Nagl's book and, also, heard about it from my great uncle (an even earlier version in Sicily in WW II). The basic idea appears workable, but my concern with any program like that is the "false positives". After WW II during the de-Nazification process in Austria, ex-party members lost all social benefits. The problem was that, in order to get them under the Nazi's, you had to be a party member...
That's an operational issue, but there is a deeper philosophical issue which relates to free speech. Any organization that has a monopoly on power has a tendency to use that power to its own benefit (think institutional de Tocqueville). I agree that it is certainly ethical to blow the snot out of someone who is trying to blow the snot out of you, but what if they are just advocating that things should be different without engaging in armed conflict? I can easily see a Phoenix type program being used by repressive regimes to stifle free discussion and freedom of thought and action (BTW, it's one of the reasons why I was opposed to turning over the HTS databases to the host governments).