Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Looked at this slide for 10 minutes. I read the words, and I understand them, but I just don't get it. It means nothing to me.
maybe that is why i rarely use pp slides in the classroom to teach history and perhaps even why I have never cared much for Boyd and his so-called brilliant thinking reduced down into charts and slides.

I am a big fan of the written word, so can somebody who understands the slide write out in a couple of paragraphs what it means. Kilkullen is an excellent writer which is why I have often been baffled by his reliance on these meta-pp slides presentations. If he wanted to use a slide why didnt he just write a couple of the salient points into sentences, put that on the slide and lecture from it?

My guess is that he is saying that because there is more flexibility in Iraq (I assume we are talking about Iraq here) with "tactical conditions" (I am not sure what that term means, is he talking about US forces or Iraqi, or Iraqi conditions, or combinations of all of these?) than "strategic" because that timeline is somehow fixed (not sure what that means either) then this is gentile's interpretation of what the main point of the slide to be:

continue American efforts in Iraq along the lines he (along with Biddle) has recommended before that orients our efforts on reconciling and rebuilding Iraq from the grass roots, or bottom up approach.

Am I on to something here or just "stupido" like my friend wilf and others too who are confused with the slide.

SWJED; perhaps it is the time for you to be didactic and not coy with the meaning here since you spent a number of days listening to Dr Kilkullen.