New Rules of War

[Fuchs]

I think the point wasn't about reporting, it was about propaganda and the Americans have their own Dolchstoßlegende that asserts that their own media & Jane Fonda became propagandists for the enemy.

Propaganda, of course, can influence will quite apart from real events.

[Gnaeus]

Apparently, when writing his article and proposing his theory of the "New Rules of War," Arquilla overlooked the Marine Corps' base unit for conducting war...the MAGTF. Rule 1 leads readers to the conclusion that the military has a rigid and inflexible structure that is only suited to fight using large maneuver elements such as divisions. The flaw in Rule 1 becomes especially apparent when examining it next to the MAGTF structure. Arquilla states the the military has a "scaling problem," even though the MAGTF is built around the principals of task-organizing forces based on its mission and scope of operations. The ground combat element of the MAGTF could be a division, if it was required, but the GCE could even be scaled down to company-size if the situation dictated. What I find even more misleading in this article is that Arquilla states "the Marines now routinely subdivide their forces into "expeditionary forces" of several hundred troops each." This further implies that the expeditionary construct of Marine forces was a knee jerk reaction to the current counterinsurgency environment, even though the MAGTF concept has been around and applied since the 1960s. I would think that a Naval Postgraduate School professor would have a better understanding of the composition and doctrine of the Marine Corps.