As a newbie to this site, I am astonished at the high quality of this discussion.

Jones_RE, I wish I had talked to you before writing the militia article! All great points!

I have a few brief comments, on which I'd appreciate seeing your replies. I'll post those in a separate reply.

But first, a mechanical note. On the web the number of readers decreases sharply with length of an article. I've found aprox 7 pages (2500 words) as the upper limit. That does not allow the kind if detailed analysis these subjects require!

Note that SWJ has similar limits. Feature stories are 1,000 - 2,000 words, the length of my light, topical articles. Short articles are 750 to 1,000, the length of my letters to Mom.

My "Militia" article, in which you would have liked more detail, was 4400! In hindsight, much too long. Yet I left a lot of material on the cutting room floor to keep it that short.

Something to keep in mind when reading articles!

So I have taken to writing articles in a series. That's what I did in my review of the Iraq War (2 parts), and the current series on developing a Grand Strategy for America (3 parts).

In fact, you can see my 4GW articles as chapters in a book. It's collectively written, as readers hammer on each article as it gets posted -- which improves the next article.