Read this article slowly and consider the ancient and modern historical background information. If you understand the fundamentals of Counter-Insurgency Warfare, this is basically a re-cap on the basics… it is too bad the U.S. Govt. has yet to grasp this simple fact. -SF The Latin phrase hic sunt dracones translates roughly to “here be dragons,”…
Category: Military History
Churchill’s Take on Islam as Relevant in 2015 as when it was written in 1899
I have been with great urgency for the last few weeks and especially since the attacks in Paris doing as much historical research as I possibly can for a series of articles I am planning to do on the “problem of islam in the world today”… Notice I did not say Terrorism, yeah we will…
21st Century Crusaders: Americans who Volunteer to Fight ISIS with the Peshmerga
“One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.” -Winston Churchill, 1940 When I first started reading about these brave men…
Military History: The Hürtgen Forest: America’s Longest, Most Costly Battle During World War II
At the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest, over 4,500 American troops were killed and wounded — and for the cost, very little ground was gained. Many have never heard of the Hürtgen Forest, much less the bloody battle that took place there 71 years ago. Located in western Germany between the Ruhr River and the…
Military History: The Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917
A Cautionary Tale for Revolutionaries Human society is continuously shaped by social, political, and technological developments. Some societies reject these developments and others embrace them. Normally, the rejection or acceptance is silent and smooth. At times, however, the process is violent and leads to conflict or revolution. According to Samuel Huntington, “a revolution is a…
Can the Counter-Insurgency Doctrine Be Saved?
After failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s time for a new understanding of counterinsurgency. With the apparent lack of progress and success in Afghanistan and Iraq, counterinsurgency (COIN) has fallen out of favor within the political and military establishments in the U.S. and elsewhere. Regardless of whether these failures were due to erroneous implementation or…
Understanding Counter-Insurgency Warfare in under 3 minutes
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.
Military History: A Lot of What We Think We Know about World War II is Wrong
New Book Challenges Conventional Wisdom By James Holland The Second World War remains an enduringly fascinating subject, but despite the large number of films, documentaries, books and even comics on the subject, our understanding of this catastrophic conflict, even seven decades on, remains heavily dependent on conventional wisdom, propaganda and an interpretation skewed by the…
Cold War Files: The Third World War that Almost Was in 1950
With the comfort and hindsight of a half-century, President Harry Truman’s decision to commit American power to save South Korea from Communist aggression in late June 1950 stands as perhaps America’s finest moment of the Cold War. By making a difficult commitment, by sacrificing 50,000 American lives in the end, Truman upheld Western values…
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…