What are you currently reading in 2017?

[davidbfpo]

A well produced paperback (358 pgs) from UK-based Helion & Company:http://www.helion.co.uk/bandit-menta...-a-memoir.html

This is a refreshingly honest account by a New Zealander who volunteered to serve in Rhodesia’s British South African Police Support Unit, as the insurgency gained momentum 1976-1980. The Support Unit was the still largely civilian police’s para-military unit (1200 strong), with black African other ranks & NCOs and officered by regular, white police officers and those whites doing National Service.

What motivated him to serve? Simply ‘a selfish love of combat and life with a complete lack of routine…I was hooked on the adrenalin rush…adventure for the sake of adventure’ (Pg.267). Plus the opportunity between six week tours in the bush to drink, party and relax. By 1978 even with his experience no-one bothered to persuade him to stay, so the author left and ended up as an adviser to newly recruited UANC fighters, known as security force auxiliaries.

Little has been written about the ordinary black African role in Rhodesia’s insurgency; I exclude the Selous Scouts who were mainly turned ex-guerrillas. Loyalties were not fixed, the author recounts in the autumn of 1976 a captured guerrilla recruit claimed to be a serving policeman’s wife (Pg.79). Their motives were mixed, paid employment, revenge for some; they were loyal to the Support Unit and the BSAP – who ‘watched over them’ and like the French Foreign Legion ‘gave solid service in return’ (Pg.172).

The stance of the majority, rural African population in the Tribal Trust Lands facing violence from the guerrillas and the Rhodesian security forces was to steadily change. The Africans would claim ignorance of the guerrilla’s presence to actively supporting them. A good illustration at a Rhodesian firepower demonstration from an old African man asking ‘He said that if we are so powerful, why are there so many CTs in the bush? A good question’ (Pg.80).

Counterinsurgency warfare success is based on the security forces protecting the civilians from the insurgents; Rhodesia simply had extremely limited spending power, let alone forces able to live with the rural Africans and protect them (Pg.132). Personally I doubt the white Rhodesian government had the motivation to ever protect "their Africans", an attiude that hardened as the war developed.

This is a book which rightly concentrates on hunting insurgents, although criticisms of the Rhodesian approach abound, for example the lack of any briefing and debriefing (Pg.289). It helps to explain why Rhodesia failed to survive as the numbers of disaffected Africans grew, with so many leaving to join the nationalist guerrillas the security forces could not “hold the line”.

Worth reading, in part for the author's recollections and what can be learnt today. "Holding the line" is an appropriate phrase, yes a negotiated settlement was reached in 1979, but the "line" was simply full of holes and lacked after the Portuguese exit in 1974 strong foundations.

*Copied to Rhodesian COIN thread*.

[davidbfpo]

Cited in part (from Post 47):

A well produced paperback (358 pgs) from UK-based Helion & Company:http://www.helion.co.uk/bandit-menta...-a-memoir.html

This is a refreshingly honest account by a New Zealander who volunteered to serve in Rhodesia’s British South African Police Support Unit, as the insurgency gained momentum 1976-1980.

Thanks to a "lurker", ex-BSAP at the time for this comment:

I concur that the book was a good read, as I could reference places and situations the author mentions.

On the book, the author portrayed a very “Gung Ho” approach to events and I find it strange that he was allowed to get away with a number of things he actually did. I believe there was quite a bit of literary licence used. Initially, contacts and events were as one would expect, but as the book progressed so did the valour and attitudes. It may be me reading between the lines as the author was decorated for bravery.

In the book, he emphasized his position as being one of trust and honesty when dealing with matters, but then at the end he mentioned that he “sold up” his collection of stolen arms to pay for his trip back to New Zealand.

I did however, enjoy the book and would recommend it.

[Bill Moore]

The Force of Reason
by Oriana Fallaci

https://www.amazon.com/Force-Reason-...70_&dpSrc=srch

It has been awhile since I have read a book written with this much passion. She is a self-described Christian atheist, whose isn't left or right politically, but she viciously attacks the brain dead far left incapable of reason. More to the point she describes what she sees as an existential threat to Europe, the Eurarabia trend, where European culture is rapidly being displaced by Islamic culture, enabled by feeble far left politicians.

I write not for money, I write out of a sense of duty. A duty which is costing my life to dispel the silly and cynical lies dispensed to us like arsenic inside the soup.

Although she has a history of leaning left politically, she rejects the new left (my words), which is incapable of independent thinking and void of logic.

"Though the daughter of secularism, (besides a secularism begotten by liberalism and consequently not consonant with dogmatism), the Left is not laic. Whether it dresses in red or black or pink or green or white or in all the colours of the rainbow, the Left is confessional. Ecclesiastic. Because it derives from an ideology of religious character. That is it appeals to ideology which claims to possess the Truth. . . Like Islam it considers itself sanctified by a God who is the custodian of the Truth. Like Islam it never acknowledges it faults and its errors, it considers itself infallible and never apologizes. Like Islam it demands a world at its own image, a society built on the verses of the Prophet. . . Like Islam it does not accept different opinions and if you think differently it despises you. It denigrates you, it punishes you. Like Islam, in short, it is illiberal."

In sum this book is about resistance to Islamic fascism. She argues Troy is burning in Europe, but she has great faith in America to oppose this evil.

"The war that Islam has declared on the West is not really a military war. It's a cultural war. A war, Tocqueville would say, that instead of our body wants to strike our soul. Our way of life, our philosophy of Life. Our way of thinking, of acting, of loving. Our freedom.
Don't be fooled by their explosives. They are just a strategy. Those death lovers don't us just for the pleasure of killing: they kill us to break our spirit.

The decline of intelligence is the decline of Reason. And everything which now happens in Europe, in Eurabia, is also a decline of Reason. A decline which before being morally wrong is intellectually wrong. Refusing to admit that all Islam is a pond inside which we are drowning, in fact, is against reason. Not defending our territory, our homes, our children, our dignity, our essence, is against Reason.

I enjoyed the passion, the prose, and agree with her message.

The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period. Oriana Fallaci

To learn about this fascinating author who sadly passed away in 2007, the following links to one short story and one of medium length provides some insights to her life.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/b...e-stefano.html

Oriana Fallaci, Right or Wrong
By NINA BURLEIGHNOV. 3, 2017

Her interviews remain studies in speaking truth to power. Interviewing Ayatollah Khomeini, she famously called the chador a “stupid, medieval rag” and took it off, provoking the Ayatollah to leave the room. (It is a testament to her journalistic power that he came back the next day.) She badgered Ariel Sharon about the meaning of the word “terrorist” and accused him of having been one himself. She got Henry Kissinger to compare himself to a cowboy, alone “with his horse and nothing else.” Nixon, De Stefano writes, “was not at all pleased by the cowboy metaphor.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...hought/305377/

She Said What She Thought
Mark Steyn December 2006 Issue

One would have been only mildly surprised had her interview with Ayatollah Khomeini followed the same trajectory. After traveling to Qom and cooling her heels for ten days waiting for him to agree to see her, she was ushered—barefoot and wearing a chador—into his presence—and found what she subsequently described as the most handsome old man she’d ever met. In his own way, Khomeini must have dug the crazy Italian chick. The meeting was terminated when she tore off “this stupid medieval rag” and hurled her chador to the floor, but he agreed to finish the interview a day or two later.

[Bill Moore]

I had a strong interest in peak performance physically and mentally as it relates to being a warrior, but the interest now is more in peak performance for life in general. Over the years the Special Operations community has explored these topics, but disappointedly never really embraced as part of our culture. However, there is interest now in using mediation to address PTSD.

The two most recent books I read are:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/03...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/14...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

The first book provided some interesting insights on the how scientific research is evolving, how the tests are conducted, the associated bias that is difficult to eliminate, etc. However, it provided less than a chapter in total on how mediation is proven to change your mind, brain, and body. Frankly, there isn't sufficient scientific evidence yet, but according to the authors that is changing based on the large volume of ongoing research.

The second book I enjoyed much more. The author draws parallels in the latest views from the world of psychology and how they align with what Buddhists have discover centuries ago.

The author does a good job of explaining some the key tenants of Buddhism in plain English, such as mindfulness, emptiness, and nirvana. While in plain English, the concepts are not simple and the author doesn't simplify them. If you're interested in the topic, I would recommend this book.

[Backwards Observer]

Military Misfortunes by Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch


Endless Empire by Alfred W. McCoy, Josep M. Fradera, and Stephen Jacobsen (editors)

[omarali50]

Posted at Brownpundits.

Text:
The history of the Second World War continues to offer up new and fascinating details as archives are opened and dying old men occasionally decide to tell the truth before they die (the latter opportunity is now almost gone, the first is still a work in progress). Lynne Olson does a good job here of bringing to light an aspect of that titanic struggle that deserves its own book length treatment: the European exiles who found shelter in Great Britain (the “Last Hope Island” of the title) and the role they played in the war.

These exiles did not always come to England because England had stood by them; The Czechs had been sold out; the Poles, while unlikely to survive in any case, received little or no real help against the Nazis; the Norwegian campaign and Britain’s blunders and betrayals in that saga are already relatively well known (Churchill, responsible for some of the biggest blunders, was lucky to survive them and become PM; that he did survive them also proved fortunate for those who opposed Nazism, since blunders and all, he was still crucial to the survival of Britain and even the eventual liberation of Western Europe). Benelux and the French fell mostly to their own weaknesses, but Britain’s interventions were not without their share of blunders, minor betrayals and other embarrassments. This book reveals all these details, and shows how much of what did survive owed to individual initiatives, chance, and the vicissitudes of fate, and not to the brilliant performance of the British establishment. Though to be fair, the lesson here is not that Britain had a bumbling establishment, but rather how much stupidity and muddle-headedness attends any great war, especially before the kinks are worked out.
The role of the Poles in particular is worth highlighting (and tragic, now that we know what happened to that much-abused nation in the years that followed); it is already relatively well known that Polish pilots played an outsize role in the crucial Battle of Britain, but I did not realize how much resistance they faced before being allowed to play that role; what is less well appreciated, even today, is how critical their role was in the decoding of Enigma, far and away the greatest intelligence coup of the war. The role of the French in Enigma is also highlighted, as is the absolutely critical role they played in jump-starting the Western nuclear program.

(side note: i did not know that Marian Rejewski, the great Polish mathematician who first broke Enigma, died in near-obscurity in Soviet controlled Poland, living for 20 years in anonymity to avoid the fate of countless other returning Polish exiles, who were exiled to Siberia or killed outright by the Soviets).


The fact that MI6 was a bumbling, incompetent old boys club led by second-raters is made clear, as is the reason for their extremely exalted reputation (including among their enemies; Hitler was a huge fan); they benefited from (and shamelessly took credit for) the flood of intelligence they were able to get from the intelligence networks of many defeated nations (now headquartered under their supervision in London), first and foremost, the heroic Poles.
Interesting tidbit: Roosevelt talked about handing over the Norwegian port of Narvik to the Soviets after the war. That he was generally shameless (and ill-informed and foolish) about the fate of smaller nations is pretty well known already, and is highlighted in this book; incidentally, the “free world” may have dodged a bullet by having him die in time for the relatively more principled and less megalomaniacal Truman to take over, errors and omissions excepted.
The book follows the general progress of the war to its end, including the liberation of France, the probably avoidable Dutch hunger winter that followed Montgomery’s over-cautious and then over-ambitious blundering, and the much more clouded and frequently cruel liberation that attended the Soviet victory in the East. It ends with an account of the setting up of supranational institutions (starting with the Benelux treaty, then the larger and much more consequential coal and steel pacts, the EEC and finally the EU).


Personally, I would have liked some more facts and figures and a few pages offering the author’s own summary of the lessons learned from each section, but that is just me.
All in all, a very readable, very interesting, fact-packed book about an important but somewhat neglected aspect of the war. It is possible that the weight of Soviet numbers, Russian asabiya and American industry would have led to the same final outcome and all other players (including even Great Britain) were relatively small fry, but it is also possible, even probable, almost certain, that the survival of that Island was critical, and that relatively small contingencies played a big part in that survival. One of those was the arrival on that island of some very determined, courageous and talented refugees from Nazi occupied Europe. This is their story.

By the way, brought to my attention by @cybertosser : some of the Poles ended up in Pakistan. One, Air Commodore Turowicz, played an important role in setting up not just the technical facilities of the Pakistan Air Force, but also our infant space program..

And Seapower:

This is not really a history of sea power in any strong sense. Stavridis mostly gives a somewhat superficial and cliched review of all the world's oceans (the books is organized ocean by ocean) and ends with some cliched remarks about the importance of sea power and that is about it. If you are interested in a history of sea power, this is not really the book for you.
Still, you will learn some new things (and several good book recommendations; he recommends books about every topic he covers) and it does have some nice anecdotes about his time in the US Navy and its activities around the world in the last 40 years.
Not much meat.

[Backwards Observer]

Ideal Illusions by James Peck


Everything Is Going According To Plan by Dmitry Orlov