I watched part of an interview on C-SPAN conducted by a guy who was identified as a (the?) “CBS News national security correspondent.” The interview was with a leftist author who has written a conspiracy-mongering book about the Blackwater company. At one point the author used the term, “fourth generation warfare.” The CBS guy subsequently said that he had never heard that term before and was unfamiliar with it. Is this possible? It seems like a very odd admission for a “national security correspondent” to make. Perhaps I misheard, or the correspondent really was familiar with the term and was trying to elicit an explanation for an audience he assumed was not. Either way, very strange.
5 thoughts on “MSM Military Expertise”
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It is perfectly possible, unless perhaps you are dealing with a select TV talking head who is an actual expert on security affairs like Bernard Trainor, Anthony Cordesman, Pat Lang, Thomas X. Hammes, and so on.
Aside from most journalists lacking any formal education in history, political science, economics, the sciences or military affairs, the military ( outside of SOCOM and to an extent, the Marine Corps) have not just ignored 4GW, but COIN doctrine itself. Until very recently, COIN specialists were the unloved stepchild of the JCS which have wanted to focus only on training to fight wars with ” peer competitors”, like China. And even in the COIN/SOCOM community, 4GW is controversial or, at best, only partially accepted.
Jonathan,
Do you know if a rush transcript is available of the interview?
A.E., I don’t think so. However, based on the shows currently available in C-SPAN’s 2007 archive, it looks like it should be possible to watch the show online within the next few days.
This was last week’s After Words segment (repeated 3 times) and those usually appear again the next week but it doesn’t appear to be on the schedule yet. Here’s the description: After Words: Jeremy Scahill, author of “Blackwater: The Rise Of The World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” interviewed by David Martin.
Martin writes for CBS and Scahill for the Nation and works for Democracy Now!