Recruiting for SWC members because....

[TheCurmudgeon]

I've been lurking far too much and not posting enough. I can't help but say 'mea culpa' at that. This is a bit of a long and rambling post. My apologies. I've written 3 RFPS in 4 weeks and I am approaching 'deranged'.

But that is what is great about this place, anyone, from anywhere, can come in here and post ideas. SWJ has its regulars and after reading about ten of their posts you understand their slant. But in addition to them there are other people who are doctors, philosophers, or sociologists or just interested people who post. They see this world from a different perspective. Many won't agree. Some may be rude about it, but your ideas matter (unless they conflict with mine, then they are just CRAAAZZZYYY!)

With that said, I do have ideas on how to get more folks from the humanities over here.
- Make the journal peer reviewed. Yes, this will require time but it can be put on the c.v. Academic service and all that jazz, but you're not going to be truly taken seriously without peer review.
- Perhaps soliciting entries from scholars on a theme, and then having op-ed pieces?
- Do we reach out to other organizations? MESA, AAR, and APSA come to mind off the top of my head.
- Do we attend conferences and panels?

I can say from experience that SWJ does not take every paper they get, there is an editor who weeds out the less desirable (like me). I have also seen that peer reviewed journals tend to take on an editorial line - things they like and things they reject. They also tend to not take risks on ideas out of the mainstream. They don't like to risk their own credibility. SWJ takes anything relevant to the topic from tactical considerations to issues with doctrine to attacks on the way the Army works. It is that diversity that makes it useful, again, to those that spend their time in a relatively closed society.

I don't know if anyone here cares what I think. I care what I think. I care what YOU think (except when you disagree with me). So please, jump in.

[Steve Blair]

One thing I can say with some confidence is that you will get robust discussion here. As a mod, I can say we as a group are pretty tolerant of discussion so long as people stick to the issues and avoid personal attacks (attack the issue, not the individual). Pet rocks can abound, as they do in any group of people with some similar interests, but on the whole it's a pretty good "give and take" environment.

[graphei]

For the first time in about 6 weeks I don't have an RFP to write. I have a grande caramel macchiato circulating in my system and I had some chocolate. To paraphrase OneRepublic, "I can think again…"

First, I follow completely on the peer review and the reasons. It was definitely good to hear the reasoning behind it. Can I just say that it is outstanding anyone can publish if they have a point and can present it in a coherent manner? It is. I don't think people outside of academia really get how nasty peer-review and publishing can be. When people say you need thick skin in the 'Publish or Perish' world of academic press, what they really mean is you need is adamantine plated rhino skin. In short, bravo zulu to all of you.
Anyway, I wanted to clarify on the theme. A few of my favorite journals will put out a special edition once a year or so on a topic selected by the members from examining a particular event or concept to 'advancing' the field. Now that the focus is being moved to other parts of the region :cough: Egypt :cough:, maybe these types of topics or discussions will be more relevant? Granted, you masochists publish at break-neck speed, so it would require a fair bit of logistics, but it's just some food for thought.

If a copyeditor and/or another reviewer is needed, sign me up. Which reminds me, I need to renew my MESA membership...

I brought up the conference thing in part because back when I was a good little snowflake of a graduate student, I went to my first American Academy of Religion conference in 2007 out in San Diego. It was the 'big' one and not one of the smaller, regional meetings. The Council of Foreign Relations sponsored a roundtable on religious violence. It was one of the headline events and had a 3 hour block. I think the table had the floor for about an hour and then it was opened up to the audience for the next two. It was enlightening, but I couldn't help think no matter what was discussed, it wouldn't matter; these weren't the people that needed to be a part of it. Given the wide range of experiences we have here, this is closer to the audience I *wished* could hear it.

As far as the podcast/roundtable thing, I definitely know it's possible to get a quality cast done remotely with current open source technology. I've been doing a fair amount of research, and once I get this Intel DCO app out of my hair I can return to giving this my full attention. The main issue I've been running in is where to store and host the casts. Paying to have it hosted could cost me quite a bit. Rolling my own servers and maintaining them is just not in the cards right now. I know I'm not thinking of all the possible solutions, so I'm going to scoot out to my alma mater in September and discuss logistic with a professor of Media Studies. She has run her own radio show for years, and is well versed in digital production.

The book club thing is definitely possible and I participated in one as an undergrad. In fact, my prof and two others at different colleges team taught a course that way. It was not without challenges on their end, but it did work quite well! I remember the discussion board quite vividly. Every two weeks, a team of students- one from each college- would devise discussion points with the professor's blessings. From there, they'd moderate and contribute. At the end of the semester, we had to prepare and anthology of sorts. I suppose you could say I was at guinea pig at the bleeding edge of digital pedagogy back in 2004. Right now, I know one professor who runs a book discussion on Twitter of all places. While I'm not sold on having 140 characters, it really forces you to think about what your point is. Granted, it's not the same as sitting in the same room, but it opens up many different possibilities for interaction.

If either or both of these are interest to people, I will spearhead these and get them rolling.

I will say this: I'm always up for having a great discussion about the ways religion and violence intersect- especially with Islam. It makes me giddy that I found a place on the net where I can have these types of discussions. However, I'm feeling a bit hesitant to share right now. I just realized the other day that September will mark a decade of me studying Islam and religious violence. I started as an 18 year old girl, and while there are many people who are envious of my large head start, it isn't without drawbacks- many of which I'm attempting to navigate now.

What I'm trying to say- and failing so miserably at- is I feel you all deserve better than my musings of the past decade. Right now, I'm attempting to find ways to connect with resources, but I spend most of my energies looking for them instead of writing. I'm surrounded by colleges and universities, but none of them have the proper resources for me. Its a definite case of "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink…" I remember being so excited when the COIN Field Manual was revised, then feeling underwhelmed by how religious insurgency was handled. I've wanted to write something about that for at least 3 years, but without resources it's not any good. I can't cite my experience.

And for those would say "Doctoral program- tally ho!", I would chuckle. Funding is non-existent and I have enough student loans as it is. If I knew I could get picked up at a think tank or research center when I was done, it would be another story, but for now it's not in the cards (sadly).

[jmm99]

Most of the time, my posts on SWC deal with the "rules" and "reasons" for killing or capturing people. Their "literary genre" is more or less "book reviews", since I often link one or more books, articles or videos. Then I comment - briefly or verbosely.

There's an ulterior motive for doing what I do. It forces me to read the materials I cite; and therefore I learn. Whether others learn is their choice. Whether others elect a different presentation mode is also their choice. One thing I can say with complete assurance: SWC has no "party line" for "literary genres".

In basic mentality, I've been a practitioner and not an academic-scholar; though I was a law review editor for two years. So, I have a bit of experience there, having stayed at the Holiday Inn Express some 40+ years ago. Reduced to fundamentals, legal writing by practitioners and by academics-scholars is not that different: briefs vs articles. All are advocacy (albeit sometimes disguised, thickly or thinly); and should be well-sourced (personal opinions, generally, aren't worth much in the practitioners' world; probably, they are worth more in academia - "peer review", etc.). The formats are, however, quite different.

Here are two examples, as I would post them.

Michael C. Behenna v United States, Petition for a Writ of Certiorari (SCOTUS, 2 Jan 2013):

Introduction

Petitioner, Army First Lieutenant Michael Behenna, was serving as a platoon leader in Iraq in 2008 when an insurgent attack with an improvised explosive device ripped through his patrol, killing two soldiers and three Iraqi civilians. Lieutenant Behenna interrogated a suspected insurgent linked to the deadly attack by intelligence reports identifying him as a member of the local “Al-Qa’ida in Iraq IED Cell.” Because Lieutenant Behenna conducted the interrogation “without authority” and trained his handgun on the suspected terrorist during the encounter, a bare majority of the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF) ruled that Lieutenant Behenna “lost the right to act in self-defense as a matter of law.”
...
The AAF’s ruling is likely to be determinative of servicemembers’ right to self‐defense in combat zones unless this Court intervenes. ... The decision below should be reviewed, and reversed, now.

and Kevin Jon Heller, 'One Hell of a Killing Machine': Signature Strikes and International Law (to be published):

Abstract:

The vast majority of drone attacks conducted by the U.S. have been signature strikes – strikes that target “groups of men who bear certain signatures, or defining characteristics associated with terrorist activity, but whose identities aren’t known.” In 2010, for example, Reuters reported that of the 500 “militants” killed by drones between 2008 and 2010, only 8% were the kind “top-tier militant targets” or “mid-to-high-level organizers” whose identities could have been known prior to being killed. Similarly, in 2011, a U.S. official revealed that the U.S. had killed “twice as many ‘wanted terrorists’ in signature strikes than in personality strikes.”

Despite the U.S.’s intense reliance on signature strikes, scholars have paid almost no attention to their legality under international law. This article attempts to fill that lacuna. Section I explains why a signature strike must be justified under either international humanitarian law (IHL) or international human rights law (IHRL) even if the strike was a legitimate act of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter. Section II explores the legality of signature strikes under IHL. It concludes that although some signature strikes clearly comply with the principle of distinction, others either violate that principle as a matter of law or require evidence concerning the target that the U.S. is unlikely to have prior to the attack. Section III then provides a similar analysis for IHRL, concluding that most of the signature strikes permitted by IHL – though certainly not all – would violate IHRL’s insistence that individuals cannot be arbitrarily deprived of their right to life.

We at SWC have been paying attention to signature strikes and other droney things for quite a while - and to the rules for killing or capturing HVTs. Not being a scholar, though, I can't pass judgment on Kevin's bolded comment as it applies to scholars.

Thus, as I said before, different strokes for different folks.

Now, who wants to write up a nice little article arguing that Kevin's message is all wet.

Regards

Mike

[selil]

Now, who wants to write up a nice little article arguing that Kevin's message is all wet.



Mike

Me... I'd use the process laid out in the HVT Process document they declassified along with the process found in there.

99.9% of the military has zero idea how targeting is really done and the rest are wrong