I am still playing catchup with all the good stories that came out last week. I especially want to highlight Exum’s “The State of COIN 2010” and if you are in academia, Drew Conway’s “Ten Reasons Why Grad Students Should Blog“.
The State of COIN 2010
For counterinsurgency to remain relevant as an art, its practitioners and theorists must be its harshest critics. In effect, we need to join the Gian Gentiles of the world. (Or at least the Eli Bermans.) I have no doubt, for example, that a lot of what is in the literature on counterinsurgency is simply wrong. What assumptions, when tested by Iraq and Afghanistan, have proven in need of amendment? How do we need to examine wars against insurgents differently? Have we gone too “soft” in Afghanistan? Have we spent too much time fretting over tactics and operations and not enough time thinking hard about the politics? (My answers would be “no” and “yes”, respectively, to those last two questions.) What are we missing? And what are we too timid to challenge for fear of giving the more unreasonable critics (the baby + bathwater folks) ammunition? These are just some of the questions this blog and the rest of the community needs to think about.
Military Can’t Keep Tabs on Pill-Popping Troops, Senate Says
For years, Pentagon-backed studies have cautioned that more and more troops are being medicated with antidepressants, sleeping pills and psychotropic medications. But despite the warnings, it turns out that the data needed to reach any solid conclusions about military pharmaceutical use isn’t available. The military doesn’t actually keep tabs on the drugs its troops take.
Adding Discredit To The Anti-al-Qaeda ‘Disrupt, Dismantle, Defeat’ Mantra
Naturally, it’s hardly a sufficient condition, as we have to recognize that the demand for al-Qaedism or toleration of the demand for al-Qaedism is impacted by U.S. strategy. Public diplomacy is not a substitute for policy. But it ought to be a component of national strategy, and Malcolm has some worthwhile ideas in this regard. I can’t wait to read his book.
Ten Reasons Why Grad Students Should Blog
As I thought longer about the vacant state of grad student blogging I wondered if it could be explained as a “they don’t know what they don’t know” situation. Perhaps by standing from the outside looking in, my fellow grad students simply do not know all of the benefits that can come from participating in an online discourse. To remedy this informational problem, and in an attempt to encourage more grad students to begin blogging, I present (in no particular order) my ten reasons why grad students should blog
Christopher R. Albon is a political science Ph.D. specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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