tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post6888531847852844050..comments2024-03-27T13:13:25.164-04:00Comments on johnshaplin: War, what is it good for? by Nick Tursejohnshaplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-58467343976764194952010-10-18T12:22:01.443-04:002010-10-18T12:22:01.443-04:00Just recently, the Pentagon put a book focused on ...Just recently, the Pentagon put a book focused on the Afghan war, Operation Dark Heart by Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, on the bestseller list. The "Commander's Counter-Insurgency Reading List" from the US Army's Combined Arms Center contains seven key texts, most of them classic works, including The Evolution of a Revolt by T E Lawrence (of Arabia), but its "additional readings" contain newer faves like retired army colonel and COIN uber-cheerleader John Nagl's 2002 text, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counter-Insurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. Similarly, a pre-deployment reading list for Army personnel shipping out to Afghanistan breaks down selections by rank, assigning privates a series of texts, including Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid, while their colonels are told to read Nagl's book, among other works.<br /><br />"Today's military thinker must appreciate the many dimensions - political, environmental, economic, informational, and others - that comprise international security," said Air Force chief of staff General Norton Schwartz in July, marking the latest of his office's quarterly recommendations of books to read. Among the selections was former Australian infantry officer and counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen's 2009 offering, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, which also appeared on this year's US Army War College's suggested military reading list. <br /><br />But don't think this is strictly a military phenomenon. Nagl's and Kilcullen's works and others like them, focused on enhancing war-fighting capabilities, not stirring debate on the wisdom or morality of the war in question or war-making in general, are increasingly being sold to civilian audiences, too. In recent years, newspapers and magazines have done their part in publicizing selections from such military reading lists and from military or former military figures. The process, involving articles, positive book reviews, op-ed opportunities, as well as raves from pundits and commentators, can now transform even a once little-noticed Pentagon-approved tract into a must-read for the book-buying public.johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-81747174459368611912010-10-18T12:18:33.802-04:002010-10-18T12:18:33.802-04:00The groundswell of protest against the Vietnam War...The groundswell of protest against the Vietnam War was strongly influenced by books that exposed the human costs of the conflict, and questioned whether it should be fought. The current literature of the Afghan war is more concerned with muscle-minded analyses of how to fight a better counter-insurgency. While the American war in Vietnam raged, publishers churned out books whose titles still resonate. In 1967 alone, classics like Mary McCarthy's Vietnam, Howard Zinn's Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal, Thich Nhat Hanh's Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire, not to mention Norman Mailer's Why Are We in Vietnam: A Novel all hit the shelves. <br /><br />In fact, between 1962 and 1970, as American involvement in the conflict accelerated and peaked, some 9,430 books were written about the Vietnam War. <br /><br />Four decades ago, a stream of books was being produced for popular audiences that exposed the nature of war making and focused readers' attention on the misery caused by US military actions abroad. Today, a startling percentage of the authors who bother to focus on the current conflict are producing works dedicated to waging the seemingly endless American war in Afghanistan better.johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.com