Quote Originally Posted by stu View Post
I would love to skype in for this, it sounds great. However, it seems I missed the beginning lectures. Such lectures wouldn't have been recorded and placed online, would they?

Best regards,

Stu
I'm afraid, that due to my limited expertise, it came down to either skyping or recording. We're starting Afghanistan on Tuesday, though. Back in time to 2001.

Quote Originally Posted by Boot View Post
maybe I missed it.
I don't see any speakers or Soldiers and Marines who served on Transition teams or any study of the role of advisors in COIN. Maybe even advisors from Vietnam or SF types who did a lot of thankless work in places like El Salvador and Africa. Obviously your in the execution phase of your class but that might be a view which IMO is very important to COIN, maybe even a cornerstone of any COIN strategy.


Boot
Actually, this is the result of not being able to edit these posts to reflect updates in the syllabus: we just had one Marine who did multiple tours as an advisor to Iraqi security forces do an entire guest lecture. For the class on "the civilians strike back", we'll have some PRT people. When I visit the UK in March, I'm going to attempt to persuade a British officer who just worked as an advisor to skype in; and I'm still pestering a CA reservist to tell us about his experiences. So don't worry, we've got a decent number.

My holy grail right now is finding someone who's done extensive advising in Afghanistan. Would love to hear from everyone who knows anyone.

As for vets of Vietnam or other 20th century wars, I will keep that in mind the next time I teach the historical survey course I taught last time. This course is definitely about OIF/OEF, though.

Now I have get back to figuring two things out: finding more TACs/DS for the exercise and deciding whether Battlestar Galactica has jumped the shark.