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Former AHOD contributor 1LT Mark Larson has a new piece up over at the New York Times’ At War blog. Check it out. And if we have any Mongolian readers out there, drop us a line. LT Wompum and I have a particular fondness for your country.  Gotta Love Them Mongols While out at one of the smoking areas at Phoenix the other day, an Aussie Lieutenant asked to bum a cigarette off me. We starting chatting and eventually the conversation turned to how long he’d been in country. He replied that he’d been here three months: “Halfway done, Thank God.” Needless to say, to hear that was a little disheartening. I still have 3 more months just until leave, not even mentioning going home. The US Army remains the only service with minimum year long deployments. All of our coalition partners have 6 month tours unless they have some unusual circumstance. The same goes with the Marines whose 6 month tour is the standard. The odd Navy and Air Force personnel over here might have a yearlong tour, but once again that is not the norm. Curious to see what some of our partner’s policies on tours and R&R were, I took a look at what the British did. Within their normal 6 month tour they are allowed one 2 week leave around the middle of their tour. This alone was enough to make any American jealous, but then I continued on to read what happens if they have a year in country. British policy states that any soldier who spends over 11 months in country is entitled to THREE two week leaves! My jaw hit the floor after reading that. You mean the Brits get three leaves if they spend as much time in country as is normal for Americans? I suppose I should be grateful though, since U.S. tours used to be 15 months only a few years ago. If deployments were more like the tours of the French or British Armies back in the Imperial days where soldiers truly lived in the countries they were stationed, it might not be as bad. Back then soldiers could explore the cities, go to local markets, drink. Now unless you’re out on patrol, you’re likely stuck on a FOB or a Combat Outpost. Particularly if you’re a Fobbit like me, being stuck in a place that takes up only a few square blocks for a year is a long time to spend in such cramped conditions. Well, at least I’m halfway to the halfway mark. Christian Bleuer has a good post up over at his blog Ghosts of Alexander in which he airs his grievances against military writers:
Having read more than a few military theses/reports/analyses in my time, I have no choice but to agree 100%. Christian is also far too conciliatory when he dismisses that actual ‘bad writing’ part — namely grammar, spelling, sentence construction, etc. These are skills that should be learned in university, but unfortunately many officers prove wanting in this area. But to address his specific points, (1) and (2) and directly connected. As any undergraduate or, occasionally, postgraduate is oft to do, military officers generally reach for the easiest to find reference materials. Worldcat and JSTOR and Lexis are well-known but that doesn’t mean they’re widely used. Moreover, many of the officers writing these reports/theses/analyses are not, and generally have no desire to be, academics. As a consequence rarely do they have the formal research training that Christian and his brethren go through. The advocacy issue (3) is one we have direct experience with here at AHOD. What academics sometimes have difficulty understanding is that military officers writing academic articles are still officers in the military. Being overly critical of a particular strategy or tactic can quickly land one in hot water with the chain of command. Moreover, an evenhanded analysis can come across as indecisive or lacking in direction. Those are two qualities that most military officers abhore. The personal experience bit (4) is, again, more about process than anything. It is far quicker to extrapolate trends from personal experience than it is to delve into the literature or do additional on-the-ground research. Military officers have a full-time job outside of their writing pursuits and expediency often wins out over sound analytical technique. Weak editing (5) is a result of subpar writing skills in the first place and the fact that there are very few peers that have the requisite skills. The topics they are writing on often have very few subject matter experts as well; thus the ability to put in place a rigorous peer review process is very limited. The overconfidence aspect (6) can often be traced directly back to the advocacy issue. Many of these officers are overconfident because of the (military) culture they were raised in. The ‘can-do’ attitude that is valued so highly in military circles correspondingly results in officers that are willing to back their ideas fully, even when the evidence is less than stellar. All of these issues could be corrected but to do so would require significant training and mentoring on the part of civilian academics or writing professionals. The military has never taken an overly conciliatory view of its members writing for publication. Until this attitude changes, and a different writing culture is able to take root, military officer writing will continue to lag that of their civilian peers. This blog post is heavily indebted to two of the most engaging and relevant public intellectuals in contemporary America. Professor Reza Aslan whose book How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalisation and the End of the War on Terror is a must read for those interested in geo-politics and particularly the “War on Terror” and Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah whose academic work is flawless and whose popular work, especially Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, is essential reading for those seeking answers to ethical questions in a shrinking world.  Reza Aslan Reza Aslan has argued, I would say very convincingly, that one of the great problems with the term “War on Terror” is that it irradiated the differences between the various types of Islamic terrorism and that in irradiating those differences has seriously undermined efforts to address what is, doubtlessly, a serious security threat. I accept, for the most part, the framework put forward by Aslan in distinguishing difference types of religiously justified terrorism: there is religious terrorism of the nationalist variety and religious terrorism of the universalist variety. Below I will juxtapose these two positions and offer a few suggestions as to how each variety might be addressed (and I think there are very different ways to address them). Islamic Nationalism- Think Hamas, think Hezbollah. Islamic nationalism is first and foremost nationalism. Like other forms of nationalism, its principal concern is securing a nation-state with distinct borders which does or will have a specific national character based on a whole set of cultural markers. These markers of cultural identity, include language, dance, music, legal codes, and (of course) religion. It has served the purpose of certain nationalists groups to forefront one aspect of national identity, religion, in their struggles for sovereignty and/or for political control within what are often multi-national states. There aren’t just Muslim nationalists. Nationalism is a global feature of the modern world. There are Jewish nationalists in Israel. There are Christian nationalists, particularly in Northern Ireland and the United States. If there weren’t, the IRA would never have existed and country music would still be about cheating wives and three-legged dogs.  Hamas The good thing about religious terrorism when it is essentially nationalist is that the perpetrators and their sympathisers actually want something that can happen and so there is room to talk. They want a nation-state fashioned according to their values. Talk to most Christian nationalists in the U.S. Basically, all they want is a bizarro world Sweden. The good news is that you can fashion the laws and mores of a specific society not only through violence but also through a peaceful, democratic political process. For this reason, there have been successful attempts to bring formerly violent, nationalist groups into a democratic political process with very good results. The IRA becomes Sinn Fein and Hamas is less of a threat when the leadership has to worry about keeping the lights on. Moreover the democratic process tends to moderate ideology and ultimately eliminates the treat. This requires level-heads and lots of time, but in the long run it is about as good as it gets. Islamism- The reason that the political incorporation of Islamic national groups can and does work is that these groups have theoretically achievable goals. You are free to disagree as to whether the achievement of these goals would be a good thing, but you can’t deny they are things that could happen. Islamism, or universalist Islamic terrorism is different. These groups, to which Al-Qaeda belongs, are not seeking the creation or transformation of a nation-state; what they want is nothing short of the complete transformation of the global order. They see themselves as fighting a cosmic war between good and evil: A war that cannot be lost, because it will ultimately involve divine intervention.
20JUN10: Charlie Foxtrot (aka. clusterfuck)… Maybe that is a little harsh, and I am whining a little bit. Not my first rodeo with hurry up and wait, but when we landed there were only enough buses for half of us. Waited 1.5 hrs, then got to where we had to wait for our next bus. While there I was approached by MAJ Tango (S-3 — Supply) and informed I would be having some extra time at Kandahar Airfield until all the planes had arrived. He said, “You just became the new temporary assistant S-1 (Admin).” He told me to fix all. Figure out the squadron’s number by location, where they are going and when, how to get more buses next time — essentially become an S-1 for a few days. MAJ Tango’s ‘UNFUCK this mess” pretty much summed it up. He wanted to know this information by tomorrow at 0700. It was currently about 0100. Ouch. 0700 hrs: 2300 hrs: Kandahar is not bad though. It’s amazing actually. This is my first deployment place of duty and it’s definitely not what I expected. The boardwalk has a TJI Fridays, two 24-hour coffee shops, a pizza parlor, cell phone store (where I immediately bought a phone), and several other shops with locals and other foreigners working in them. Never thought that I would have a phone in Afghanistan, but why not? I’m not a huge technology junkie either, but if there are comforts available, why not take advantage? Hearing my wife’s sweet voice on the other end of the phone line today was such an awesome taste of home. And did I mention that we got rocket attacked today? 22JUN10: Editor’s Note: LT McBain checks in with his first post. Since LT’s McBain and Hossenfeffur are both heavily engaged with the local populace — Taliban included – in Kandahar, time to write is, as one might suspect, at a premium. LT McBain will be providing us with excerpts from his war journal, like that below, in addition to more structured posts when time permits. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.  C-17 19JUN10: I’m only minutes from crossing into the combat zone of Afghanistan. We are all on the C17 headed for Kandahar Airfield. It was a painful merry-go-round of putting your stuff on, taking your stuff off… We kept getting delayed when we were waiting for this flight. When we were taxiing to the plane on the Tarmac, the bus’ side door was open and LT Jerome’s helmet went rolling out. He was like “Shit! Shit! Shit!” but it turned out not being that bad since the bus behind us stopped and picked it up without anyone noticing. Oh I remember though; guaranteed I won’t forget. We fill up pretty much the whole bird. I was lucky enough to get a seat on the side between LT Jerome and CPT Ku, not crammed in the middle four-wide seats like sardines. We get to take our gear off until we enter the “hostile area”. At that time, the dimmed interior of this bird will have green lights switch to red, and it will be official. I’m really not too worked upright now honestly. Not to mention, Kandahar Airfield is pretty secure from what I understand. In 2003 it was shockingly easy for George W. Bush and Tony Blair to convince people that Afghanistan and Iraq were connected, that Saddam Hussein had something to do with Al-Qaida and the Taliban. The reason that this was so painfully easy is that for most Westerns “The Muslim World” exists as monolithic entity, a dangerous misconception. That is why over the next few weeks, I will offer this AHOD series entitled They Don’t All Look Alike, Folks. This series will be intended to highlight great diversity that exists amongst the world’s nearly 1.5 billion Muslims, a diversity that we must come to understand. Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism are the largest examples of universal religions; that is to say, religions which emerge with a prophet at a discernible, known point in history and make claims on the whole of humanity. Unlike the spiritual traditions practiced through most of human history, these traditions have not confined themselves to a single cultural group. They intentionally have sought out and absorbed converts from many cultures. What this has meant in practice is that the universal religions have, for the most part, provided a spiritual overlay, existing alongside the earlier, local traditions that they claim to have replaced. For example, my Greek grandmother was a Christian who, like most Greek Orthodox Christians have for centuries, practiced her religion in a way so very marked by the pre-Christian religious practices of the ancient Mediterranean. The plethora of local deities and demons which haunted the world of Socrates need have only undergone an obligatory name change to find their ways onto my grandmother’s rake of saints. The tension between local cultural practice and universal claims has been felt strongly throughout the history of all these faith traditions, but has taken on more pressing importance since the 18th century as dissatisfaction with modernity has nursed fundamentalism. The idea of a ‘global’ Christianity or Islam, divorced from local practice, is actually a quite radical concept, not a return to the principles of the founder as fundamentalists claim. This principal confusion of fundamentalism lies at the heart of the rise of the Taliban. The rank and file of the Taliban is drawn primarily from the madrassas of Pakistan, run by Saudi Wahhabis for the children of Afghan refugees. Wahhabism is a fundamentalist Islamic sect founded by Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab in what is today Saudi Arabia. Like other fundamentalists, Wahhab wished to purify Islam of what he saw as innovations and contaminations of the faith. He believed in a global Islam, an Islam that would be practiced the same way throughout the world, and two hundred years later this concept was taught to the predominately Pashtun students studying in the Pakistani madrassas. These Pashtun students had learned the tribal beliefs and practices of their tribe along with the tenants of Islam (just like my grandmother learned the tenants of Christianity alongside the local beliefs and practices of Cretans). The result was an ideology of ‘global’, purified Islam which was in actual fact heavily indebted to the Pastunwali, the tribal law of the Pashtuns. For example, Arab women do not wear the blue burqa that has become such a recognizable symbol of Afghanistan. That is a Pashtun tribal practice, but it didn’t stop the Taliban from making it law. This is why the rule of the Taliban was so unacceptable even to the most religiously conservative non-Pashtun Afghani. The big moral of the story, I guess, is what George Bernard Shaw wrote in Caesar and Cleopatra, “Pardon him….he is a barbarian and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the law of nature.” It is too tempting in a religion that makes universal claims and has absorbed local custom to claim that your local customs are in fact tenants of a universal faith. But the example of the Taliban also highlights the complexity of the ideas we all carry. Our ideologies have histories, complicated histories, which are all too often hidden by all too human desire for a world that is ahistorical. As we shall see throughout this series, nothing, even faith, is truly ahistorical. So stay tuned and next week we shall discuss the difference between what Professor Reza Aslan has called Islamists and Islamic nationals. You won’t want to miss it. |
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