Good news -- the insurgency is over! Now we need a new strategy for the Iraq War.

[slapout9]

FM, I don't know where you studied Philosophy but Epistemology is the science of "how" we know something and the problem was solved a long time ago by a man named Aristotle. It is the evidence of the senses.
Below is a link that gives a brief description of the Objectivist Philosophy to include Epistemology and what it means.


http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServ...ectivism_intro

[Fabius Maximus]

In your circles it might considered insane to evaluate the Iraq War relying largely on information from DoD, VOA, CSIS, and the major media. Not so in mine. That’s OK by me.

I have attempted to be a good sport, reciting basic material from sophomore college courses, referencing famous experts on the process of science, and giving fairly long explanations of my analytical process.

I see nothing comparable from most of you, in detail or length. Again, that's OK by me, since I am confident that you are all reasonable and knowledgeable people – and that your analytical processes are least as good as mine.

But there I believe there is no way to resolve this kind of debate about the nature of knowledge. At this rate soon we’ll be debating how can we know if we’re disembodied brains in jar, and exchanging lines of dialog from the Matrix movies.

All I asked was for comments or challenges to the facts or logic in my little article. The first question was about the uniforms of the Peshmerga (an unusual but interesting start), and have gone off into the blue sky from there (amidst some challenging and relevant exchanges along the way).

Topic drift is a fact of life on the internet. I’ve done this as much as anyone over the years. However, in my opinion, this is drifting a bit far a field.

I am catching a plane soon and will be off-line until next weekend. Best wishes to all of your for a good week!

[Culpeper]

In your circles it might considered insane to evaluate the Iraq War relying largely on information from DoD, VOA, CSIS, and the major media. Not so in mine. That’s OK by me.

I have attempted to be a good sport, reciting basic material from sophomore college courses, referencing famous experts on the process of science, and giving fairly long explanations of my analytical process.

I see nothing comparable from most of you, in detail or length. Again, that's OK by me, since I am confident that you are all reasonable and knowledgeable people – and that your analytical processes are least as good as mine.

But there I believe there is no way to resolve this kind of debate about the nature of knowledge. At this rate soon we’ll be debating how can we know if we’re disembodied brains in jar, and exchanging lines of dialog from the Matrix movies.

All I asked was for comments or challenges to the facts or logic in my little article. The first question was about the uniforms of the Peshmerga (an unusual but interesting start), and have gone off into the blue sky from there (amidst some challenging and relevant exchanges along the way).

Topic drift is a fact of life on the internet. I’ve done this as much as anyone over the years. However, in my opinion, this is drifting a bit far a field.

I am catching a plane soon and will be off-line until next weekend. Best wishes to all of your for a good week!

You elected to abandon the "facts or logic in [your] little aritcle", which directed the flow of this thread. You asked for "comments and challenges" and that is exactly what you received. You have forthwith relied on sleight of hand responses to keep you head above water. Take a little responsibility and quit belittling the group. You have made a grave error by underestimating the Small Wars Council and now you want to place blame on the group for "topic drift"? This is your thread and thus your responsibility. This is the hole you dug.

"I'm a faithfull follower of Brother John Birch
And I belong to the Antioch Baptist Church
And I ain't even got a garage, you can call home and ask my wife."

[marct]

Well, I just got back from my concert in Montreal, and I see that things have shifted over into one of my favorite topics: epistemology.

I have attempted to be a good sport, reciting basic material from sophomore college courses, referencing famous experts on the process of science, and giving fairly long explanations of my analytical process.

And, in all honestly, your paper reads like something I would receive in a sophomore course. FM, you are misusing terminology again. Referencing "famous experts", what Weber called an appeal to Traditional Authority, gets you absolutely nothing in an article when all you do is mention their names without invoking their arguments. And, in all honestly, I have yet to see an adequate, again at the sophomore level, description of your methodology. For a methodology to be "valid" it must either be "accepted" by a discipline as valid or it must be spelled out in detail. If it is "accepted", then the detail is available in published writings by others, and you point to it by saying "I am using X methodology (see REFERENCES).

I see nothing comparable from most of you, in detail or length. Again, that's OK by me, since I am confident that you are all reasonable and knowledgeable people – and that your analytical processes are least as good as mine.

If people really want me to, I could transcribe my 9 hours of lectures on epistemology and meta-epistemologies and post them here, along with their ties into neural structures and evolved psychological mechanisms. Do you really want to start a debate about quantum consciousness and its relationship to objective "Truth"?

FM, I don't know where you studied Philosophy but Epistemology is the science of "how" we know something and the problem was solved a long time ago by a man named Aristotle. It is the evidence of the senses.

Hey, Slapout! I'll admit, I never really liked Aristotle - I always preferred Xenophon's Plato. Still and all, you're bang on with that comment! And, when we are dealing with something like the situation in Iraq or, for that matter, any situation where certain classes of facts are easily established via the senses, Aristotle is the place to start.

I would argue that it starts getting fuzzier as soon as we start imputing anything subjective to a "fact" (i.e. X attacks against troops during this period). In that case, we can certainly establish as a fact that X events took place that were interpreted as attacks by the reporters of the events, but not that they were interpreted as such by the "attackers". As an example of his, go back to 2003 with the "rifle attacks" with such "bad aim" - they were not viewed as "attacks by the Iraquis conducting many of them but, rather, as a way of regaining their honour (Ricks talks about this in Fiasco).

3. You say that few here like a reductionist view of the Iraq war. What is your point? It is the primary (not the only) method of analysis today in the physical and social sciences. For example, Kilcullen's professional papers (i.e., the long ones) are highly reductionist -- and are in my opinion deservedly highly praised.

Reductionism is one, and not the primary, method of analysis in the social sciences. Reductionism is the analytic method of choice for social scientists who can't handle reality and tends to appear in most in the "theologically dominated" social sciences, e.g. sociology, political science and Anthropology - usually in its Marxist or Post-Modernist forms.

If you've read Godel Escher Bach, then you should be familiar with the concept of emergent properties of systems (it's a corollary of Godel's second theorum; the one that sunk Russell's analytic empiricism). And, if you have ever taken a course in physics, you should be familiar with he concept of "phase changes" - both of which are being used right now as ways of unifying natural and social sciences in a "complex", emergentist model. This is the type of model DK is producing, as you should know from his references in his major paper on modeling the Iraqi insurgency.

"Godel Escher Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter has an excellent discussion of this. The physicist/mathematician Roger Penrose's has written extensively to attack scientists reliance on reductionism.

And Roger has also written on the development of quantum consciousness (The Emperor's New Mind) as part of his debate with Dennet. So what? Pointing to someone and saying "I know one of their books" is not a "reference".

Earlier, you said

But I was speaking about giving evidence in a debate. I say I saw "A". You say you saw "B." Will you believe me, and change your view of Iraq? Also, since we only see bits of the whole, we both could be right.

Certainly, except that you did not "see" the event, you saw a representation of the event. RTK's earlier comment about you embedding yourself in a unit, or just going over for a "look-see" is very germain: he has "seen" A, you have only "heard" of A and interpreted it as B (or, possibly, the representation of A that you saw was interpreted as B during its presentation). Your "evidence" is not equal in the logical sense and no appear to a traditional authority (in the Weberian sense) will make it so.

FM, let me make an observation, here. As you may or may not know, I am not now nor have I ever been in the military. As an academic and as a Canadian, I have quite different filters that I "see" events with from those of most of the people on the board. If I was going to write an "analysis" of what was happening in Iraq, this would be the first place I would turn. Because, despite having a PhD, being a theoretician, teaching epistemology, Anthropology and computer mediated communications (plus a few other areas, as well as being an expert on new religious movements, symbol systems and organizational culture) I haven't been there and many of the people on the SWC either have or are now over there.

I would have to be a freaking idiot not to take advantage of the wealth of experience these people have in the lived reality of Iraq (if you don't recognize that term, read Schutz and Luckmann, Structures of the Life World, 2 vols., Northwestern University Press). I teach my students that the mark of a true scientist is to test their ideas and the only way I would have to test those ideas would be to toss them out, like you are doing, and them modify them based on the data (input and commentary) I receive from people who actually have the knowledge.

Most of the folks here seem to be pretty okay with that model. Are you?

Marc

[goesh]

I'm a faithfull follower of Brother John Birch
And I belong to the Antioch Baptist Church
And I ain't even got a garage, you can call home and ask my wife.

LOL! It's been too many years to count since I heard that song.

[Steve Blair]

I think the poll question itself reveals the simplistic basis of the discussion. Iraq, IMO, has elements of an insurgency in some locations, but there is much else going on over there. I do not base this assertion on personal experience in the AO, but on examination of the posts here and elsewhere combined with my experience with history and the analysis of events based on historical methodology and background. Trying to lump something as complex as Iraq into a simple "is" or "is not" model is going to doom most constructive discussion to the sort of circular discussions we've seen here.

Proper historical analysis of events calls for an understanding of the environment (both physical and cultural) that those events take place in and around. Marc's mention of Ricks and his discussion of "badly aimed rifle fire" is spot on here. Events do not exist in a vacuum, nor do they always conform with convenient theories (such as 4GW, which I remain skeptical of). What may be considered the norm or progress in one area of Iraq (be it a physical province or thought process on the part of inhabitants) may be a setback or not carry over to another area.

That's at least part of the reason that I consider the basic poll question flawed, and by extension some of the reasoning offered in its defense.

[Fabius Maximus]

Looks like some interesting posts here. Will look at them when I have time.

slapout9 -- Thanks for the link! Probably not too many SWC discussions range to include Epistemology, Aristotle, and Ayn Rand.

Also -- a flashback to an earlier discussion in this thread about difficulty of getting factual data about Iraq (also relevant to the primary vs. secondary sources debate):

Analysis: Iraq War's Statistics Prove Fleeting
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post
March 19, 2007

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...031801587.html

Esp. significant, I think, is the last part about the numbers of our Iraq allies.

[slapout9]

FM, your welcome. FYI we discuss things (Epistemology,Philosophy)of this nature all the time. There are some very intelligent people here, with a lot of MO JO! Enjoy your trip.

[Fabius Maximus]

Probably not too many SWC discussions range to include Epistemology, Aristotle, and Ayn Rand.

One fun thing about this thread... if I said the "sun will rise tomorrow" someone would immediately deny it! In the spirit of the many micro-challenges to my little op-ed, I await with interest a list of SWC threads including "Epistemology, Aristotle, and Ayn Rand."

As for "There are some very intelligent people here", thank you for agreeing with what I just said. That is, perhaps, a first for this thread!

[Fabius Maximus]

No time to deal with all of this now. Too much good material to look at here, and some requires a bit of thought. But this is too good to let pass ...

Weber called an appeal to Traditional Authority, gets you absolutely nothing in an article when all you do is mention their names without invoking their arguments.

You say "appeal to authority" like it's a bad thing. OK, what's the length of the Nile River? No appeals to authority, please.

That's an extreme example, of course. But not that different from what I did when challenged on my statement that modern science is generally reductionist. I quote some authorities. The alt is to whip out a quick 200 page PhD thesis.

Nor was my comment exactly an appeal to authority. I said that this was the consensus opinion, but I specifically cited a major figure taking the opposite side of the debate.

Also, this does not seem to me a significant point to debate. Reductionish/holistic was introducted just to distinguish the approach of my "brief, hopefully provocative introduction” from Krepinevich’s overview.

[MountainRunner]

Going back to basics quickly, FM you wrote to offline queries at the beginning of this thread:

Insurgency is a rebellion against a gov't. No gov't, no insurgency.

From Chet's article directly

In between lies an ungoverned or disputed zone, a diverse ethnic and religious mixture. Since there is no longer a national government for Iraq (the Coalition destroyed it) and no government in the disputed zone, there can be no insurgency.

This is the foundation of Chet and your argument apparently, and the semantic issue many, such as myself, have found wanting. I'm not sure whose definition your using, and I'm interested to know, but a previous (CIA) definition was "a protracted political-military activity directed toward completely or partially controlling the resources of a country through the use of irregular military forces and illegal political organizations."

Requiring some kind of legitimacy really makes the determination of whether it is an insurgency messy and based on a specific POV, either yours or theirs. This is problematic when "they" are numerous groups.

Going back to basics, the foundation of Chet's, and by extension your, possibly makes your assertion true, however it creates so many problems that it is unworkable and unusable.

[marct]

Hi FM,

No time to deal with all of this now. Too much good material to look at here, and some requires a bit of thought. But this is too good to let pass ...

I'll look forward to it.

You say "appeal to authority" like it's a bad thing. OK, what's the length of the Nile River? No appeals to authority, please.

Length: 6,695 km according to Wikipedia, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile dl/20/3/2007

An appeal to authority is not, in and of itself, an invalid argument (forget "good" and "bad"). My point was that you had used an appeal top authority incorrectly. In order to use such an argument, you must reference not only the author, but the argument or fact and it must be in a manner that can be checked by others. An appeal to authority argument relies on an assumption of trust in the good faith of the authority figure and, at the same time, assumes that you have read their arguments and are incorporating them. What you did with the Penrose reference was toss the name out with no pointers to specifics as if it was, in and of itself, both self evident and unassailable.

That's an extreme example, of course. But not that different from what I did when challenged on my statement that modern science is generally reductionist. I quote some authorities. The alt is to whip out a quick 200 page PhD thesis.

But you didn't quote them, you referred to them, and not their work, which is a different thing. Simply referring to someone who is an expert does not make an argument.

Nor was my comment exactly an appeal to authority. I said that this was the consensus opinion, but I specifically cited a major figure taking the opposite side of the debate.

How can it be a "consensus opinion" if there are major dissenting figures and a "debate"? Besides that, "reductionism" is philosophically different between the natural and social sciences, a point you didn't note but one that is very important.

Also, this does not seem to me a significant point to debate. Reductionish/holistic was introducted just to distinguish the approach of my "brief, hopefully provocative introduction” from Krepinevich’s overview.

Why not? The communication of ideas / perceptions / emotions is at the heart of all writing, so it follows that when someone asks for input on a work, that there use of words etc. will be a major point of commentary.

Marc

[Fabius Maximus]

Using technical definitions is problematic when posting on DNI. Due to the magic of the web they are read by people in a wide range of occupations and from many regions.

I use the general meaning of insurgency, as in most dictionaries (quoted earlier in this thread). I should have included this in the text (there basic errors are so obvious in hindsight, yet I overlook them so often).

As for the functional definition of legitimacy, that is explained in the article. Modern pol science has drifted from this (as you point out) vague concept to "attributes of government." While specific lists vary, there is a consensus on the key ones -- which I list. I think you'll agree that at this time the Iraq national or central gov't has few or none of these. The big question is, of course, how much time should we give it before considering "plan B."

As for "unworkable and unusable" you might be right. I'd be a fool would contradict Lawrence and be dogmatic on such swampy ground! I would, however, appreciate more detail as to why and how.

[RTK]

Using technical definitions is problematic when posting on DNI. Due to the magic of the web they are read by people in a wide range of occupations and from many regions.

I use the general meaning of insurgency, as in most dictionaries (quoted earlier in this thread). I should have included this in the text (there basic errors are so obvious in hindsight, yet I overlook them so often).

As for the functional definition of legitimacy, that is explained in the article. Modern pol science has drifted from this (as you point out) vague concept to "attributes of government." While specific lists vary, there is a consensus on the key ones -- which I list. I think you'll agree that at this time the Iraq national or central gov't has few or none of these. The big question is, of course, how much time should we give it before considering "plan B."

As for "unworkable and unusable" you might be right. I'd be a fool would contradict Lawrence and be dogmatic on such swampy ground! I would, however, appreciate more detail as to why and how.

FM's definition from Webster's is the same as JP 1-02.

[Fabius Maximus]

Marct, thank you for introducing this concept to the discussion. It might have many applications to the military arts (that is for another thread, perhaps).

Its relevance here is to the discussion of reductionism. The use of reductionist methods to understand high-level properties of systems is perhaps one of the triumphs of modern science. To use the metaphor in GEB, it has proved most fruitful to study the behavior of ants to understand the intelligence of the anthill.

Consider evolution, “solved’ by the development of mendelian genetics and later biochemistry (DNA, etc).

Economics, where the grand insights of previous generations are being replaced by mathematical modeling of social systems using specific human behaviors. The schools unable to do this, such as the Austrians, have steadily lost influence in this discipline to those viewpoints that work well with reductionism (e.g., neo-Keynesians).

Psychology, where the extreme reductionists of sociobiology and neuroscience increasingly dominate the discussion – and some even deny the existence of high-level phenomena such as intelligence.

The pursuit of artificial intelligence also shows this trend. Until the last few decades the major thrust was directly modeling high-level activities. Now the focus is on tiny behavior. Sight, hearing, movement, speech, decision-making in small domains using a small set of data and rules (expert systems). The evolution of programs to play chess illustrates this trend. As we all know, there are always exceptions to any trend, such as neural networking in AI.

A historical note to illustrate the role of reductionism in this area. One milestone in the modern study of emergent properties was the John Horton Conway’s “game of life.” (Scientific American, October 1970). Only four rules, but capable of displaying highly complex and sophisticated behavior. Got many people thinking how reductionist methods might apply to their fields

[Fabius Maximus]

Marct, thank you for introducing this concept to the discussion. It might have many applications to the military arts (that is for another thread, perhaps).

What Marct might have had in mind when introducing this concept to the thread (just guessing) was that combat is a powerful instance of emergent behavior.

To over-simplify (am in a hurry), let’s contrast top-down and bottom-up perspectives.

Many factors encourage a top-down analysis in the military arts. The hierarchical command structure of most armies. The top-down perspective of space given by maps. The top-down view of time given by military history.

But combat outcomes result from bottoms-up activity. Such as the specifics of logistics and terrain. But most importantly, the behavior of soldiers as individuals.

The military professionals might learn from study of emergent behavior in theory and reality in other fields.

That is not a new insight, of course. Perhaps would be an interesting thread on SWC, if there is not already one. I for one would be interested in reading it (not competent to say much more about it, except after many brews).

[RTK]

What Marct might have had in mind when introducing this concept to the thread (just guessing) was that combat is a powerful instance of emergent behavior.

To over-simplify (am in a hurry), let’s contrast top-down and bottom-up perspectives.

Many factors encourage a top-down analysis in the military arts. The hierarchical command structure of most armies. The top-down perspective of space given by maps. The top-down view of time given by military history.

But combat outcomes result from bottoms-up activity. Such as the specifics of logistics and terrain. But most importantly, the behavior of soldiers as individuals.

The military professionals might learn from study of emergent behavior in theory and reality in other fields.

That is not a new insight, of course. Perhaps would be an interesting thread on SWC, if there is not already one. I for one would be interested in reading it (not competent to say much more about it, except after many brews).

Specifically as we discuss COIN as a Troop/Company and below fight, mixed with the concept of the "strategic corporal" I think this is already happening. Interesting that many of the professionals who speak the most on this have a "soft science" background, such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology.

[Fabius Maximus]

the concept of "phase changes" - both of which are being used right now as ways of unifying natural and social sciences in a "complex", emergentist model. This is the type of model DK is producing, as you should know from his references in his major paper on modeling the Iraqi insurgency.

A powerful point, and touches on what seems to be a theme in this thread: like guns, these abstractions are tools -- not magic wands. No one tool gets the job done.

Phase changes are an example of things than cannot be (a bit of overstatement) analyzed using reductionism. Another, perhaps more accessible example, is dropping grains of sand to form a pile. The pile will eventually collapse, and the dynamics of this cannot be determined by looking at the grains, but only at the pile.

Devising a strategy for the Iraq War might require a holistic perspective. We can bury ourselves in detail, and never see a way out.

For more on this see Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

[jcustis]

Devising a strategy for the Iraq War might require a holistic perspective. We can bury ourselves in detail, and never see a way out.

Yes, and no, no, no. We have the holistic approach, and it's secure the people.

Details are absolutely critical. Lack of that crushed us during the Phase IV transition in May of 2003.

[RTK]

Devising a strategy for the Iraq War might require a holistic perspective. We can bury ourselves in detail, and never see a way out.

Huge differences between strategic, operational, and tactical details and bureaucracy, which is what I really think you're talking about. We've become mired in the later. We didn't have enough of the former to begin with.

Suffice it to say, if we'd done four years ago what we're beginning to do now or what was done in Tal Afar in 2005, perhaps things would have turned out differently. There are more than a few on this board who got to the outskirts of Baghdad and thought "what next" in mid-to-late April 2003.

Details aren't our problem. Lack of them were.