This clip was edited out of the final movie We Were Soldiers for some reason, but I have to agree with Tom Ricks’ Article, they should have left it in. “You Won’t Run the little Bastards back home sir, They Are Home….” As I Said, that sums up COIN.
Category: Guerilla Warfare
Colombian Mercs in Yemen?
The Arabian Dream: Colombians Taking Part in Yemen War Some 800 former Colombian military troops will enter the city port of Aden in Yemen, switching the jungle terrain of their home country for the deserts of Arabia. The former Colombian army troops will join a coalition of allied international troops fighting Shiite rebels. They will operate under…
Knowing Your Enemy: Mujahideen, The Strategic Tradition of Sunni Jihadism
By Brett A. Friedman The world is in the grips of the group known as ISIS. Unable to look away but equally unable to fathom the group’s extreme violence, the civilized world marvels at a terrorist threat that is seemingly al Qaeda cranked up to eleven. Its media blitzkrieg has recently been described by Jessica…
Psychological Warfare Files: Ghost Tape #10 and Operation Wandering Soul
“Vietnamese legends held that on the anniversary of a person’s death, a spiritual channel between our world and the afterlife can open making communication possible. Was this just such a phenomenon?” JUST AFTER dusk on the night of Feb. 10, 1970, the jungles near the U.S. Army’s Fire Support Base Chamberlain in Hau Niga Province, South Vietnam…
Cartel Corner #1
I have decided to start an ongoing series called Cartel Corner that will seek to educate the everyday citizen on the complex problem that is the drug war as a whole and also study the actual TACTICS and STRATEGIES that both the Drug Cartels, Law Enforcement and Armed Civilians are using in the ongoing Fight….
“Homebrew Guns” & the Cartel Guerilla Gunsmiths that Make Them
It was usually evening when the three men arrived at the shop. They would roll up in a Volkswagen Beetle, and come to a halt at a nondescript, garage-sized warehouse in a strip of shops in a residential neighborhood in Guadalajara, in Southwestern Mexico’s Jalisco state. They would park the Bug, and proceed to drink…
Corbett vs. The Caliphate: What a Long Dead Naval Strategist Tells us about Combatting the Islamic State
Julian Corbett (1854-1922) has long been hidden in the shadow of Clausewitz and by the baneful glare of modern think tanks. Renowned as a naval thinker, Corbett was far more—and ever adept at pointing out how absolute theories collapse when faced with reality. Of particular pertinence to the current befuddlement of U.S. policy toward…
A Grunt’s Thoughts on the Loss of Kunduz
By Ryan Blum Best Defense guest columnist As I’m scrolling through my Facebook feed during my Monday morning commute I almost overlook a post from my old Company Commander: “Taliban Fighters Overrun Kunduz City as Afghan Forces Retreat” My mouth drops. Back in March of 2010 my unit took responsibility for Kunduz Province in northern…
Propaganda of the Deed: How Insurgents are Seizing the Initiative
On a clear afternoon in March 2011, the relatively still air in Uruzgan’s Tarin Kot bowl was punctured by a blast wave and flame ball that rose more than 100 meters into the sky. Insurgents had concealed an improvised explosive device within a motorcycle, and infiltrated it into the logistics soak yard outside the Multi-National…
Use Espionage to Destroy ISIS
By William A. Levinson Sun Tzu’s Art of War admonished more than 2500 years ago, “Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day. This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy’s condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces…