Book Review: Invisible Armies

How Do You Defeat an Invisible Army? -- Justin Green, Daily Beast

Guerrilla warfare, according to author and historian Max Boot, "is the universal war of the weak." Practiced by insurgents from Assyrian-era rebels to Jewish revolutionaries in the 1st century of the common era to contemporary groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, irregular warfare provides ragtag forces the capacity to humble the mightiest of conventional armies.

Consider, for instance, how Afghan militias were able to reduce the Soviet Union's vaunted Red Army to this in the 1980s:

[Soldiers] took refuge in alcohol and drugs to escape the "sweet-and-sour smell of blood," which, one soldier said, "turned my stomach inside out with nausea." Troops got drunk on vodka, moonshine, aftershave lotion. Or they got high on marijuana, heroin, hashish, sometimes provided free by Afghan suppliers who were happy to corrupt their enemies. Said one soldier, "It's best to go into an operation stoned - you turn into an animal.

(Invisible Armies, p. 495)

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My Comment: Finally got my copy. Will be reading it during the Easter break, and will give my review then.

'The Military Was Designed By Geniuses To Be Run By Idiots': A Book Review

Photo: Jake Guevara/The New York Times

The Military Machine as a Management Wreck -- New York Times

IT was once a wry joke that the military was designed by geniuses to be run by idiots. Not anymore, Tim Kane writes. As an all-volunteer force, the young men and women who serve these days are top drawer; it is the institution that is idiotic, he argues. And he has a drastic remedy in mind: a dose of classic economics.

In “Bleeding Talent” (Palgrave Macmillan, $30), Mr. Kane gives us a veteran’s proud, though acutely critical, perspective on the American military. He offers an illuminating view of the other “1 percent” — not the privileged upper crust, but the sliver of Americans who have accepted the burden of waging two of the longest wars in our history.

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My Comment: With massive defense budget cuts projected far into the future .... the Pentagon better find a better way to handle it's resources and personnel .... and fast.

'The Life That Follows': A Book Review

'The Life That Follows' Disarming IEDs In Iraq -- NPR

Brian Castner arguably had one of the most nerve-wracking jobs in the U.S. military. He commanded two Explosive Ordnance Disposal units in Iraq, where his team disabled roadside IEDs, investigated the aftermath of roadside car bombings and searched door to door to uncover bomb-makers at their homes.

"We would disassemble the IEDs when somebody else found them; we would go on route-clearance patrols with the engineers to trip the ambushes before they would hit our convoys; and we would do the post-blast investigations," Castner tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "Hopefully we would find weapons caches and dispose of a lot of this bulk ordnance before it would be used as an IED. ... But there was no getting rid of all of the bombs."

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My Comment: There are many good points in this book review .... it looks like a must read.

Book Review: ‘Little America'

Book Review: ‘Little America : The War Within The War For Afghanistan’ By Rajiv Chandrasekaran -- Neil Sheehan, Washington Post

In the prologue to Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book on the war in Afghanistan, a young Marine corporal approaches a State Department political adviser who is visiting his outpost. “Sir, I just hope this all adds up,” the corporal says, “All of my friends are getting hurt over here.” The corporal receives no answer, but by the conclusion of “Little America,” the reader does. The corporal’s friends will have been killed or wounded in vain.

Americans are a historyless people. We are constantly being told by wishfully thinking leaders that history does not apply to us, that we are its “exception.” Unfortunately, we are not, which is why it bears repeating that what the Obama administration is attempting to do in Afghanistan bears a striking resemblance to what the United States attempted in Vietnam.

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My Comment: The following paragraph sums up what the reviewer of this book quickly realized ....

.... The reader also gets a keen sense of the chaos that reigns among the Americans and their allies. There is no central guidance from the top on how to wage the conflict. The Army fights one war, the Marines another, and the British a small and ineffective third. Civilian projects initiated by the U.S. Agency for International Development to win Afghan “hearts and minds” wither for lack of follow-through.

Indeed.

Wanted Dead Or Alive: Manhunts From Geronimo To Bin Laden (Book Review)

Author Writes Of US Military's Strategic Manhunts -- Lancaster Online

"Wanted Dead or Alive: Manhunts From Geronimo to bin Laden" (Palgrave Macmillan), by Benjamin Runkle: When U.S. Navy SEALs last spring ended a seemingly endless manhunt by killing Osama bin Laden in his hide-out in an affluent suburb north of Pakistan's capital, the world learned that the code name given to the al-Qaida leader during that operation was Geronimo.

Although the designation upset some Native Americans, it had some compelling logic. The strategic manhunt launched by U.S. forces 125 years ago was targeted at Geronimo, the tribal warrior whose savage attacks on American settlers in the Southwest made him the target of Army troops who pursued him on both sides of the border with Mexico.

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My Comment: Being a military history buff .... stories like this stirs my blood.