Military Affairs

A Lucky Country

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I can walk to work from a few different directions and I took a detour and headed south on LaSalle street. Just north of the Chicago River there is a refurbished office building with a large photo essay on the Eastland disaster. The S.S. Eastland was a passenger ship that capsized in 1915 and killed 845 passengers along the Chicago River (near where this building stands today). The exhibit is called “A Day Unlike Any Other”.

What does this essay say about America, and why are we “A Lucky Country”? As a history buff, when I see any date from the time period 1914-1918 only one thing leaps to mind – World War One. While the United States did participate in World War One, we declared war in 1917 and only had sizable forces on the ground for the 1918 German spring offensive and the subsequent Allied counterattack.

Thus while 1915 is “A Day Unlike Any Other” (and even the wikipedia page on this date, July 24, points to the Eastland disaster) in America, let’s put this in perspective.

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NEW BOOK: The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy and War

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Re-posted from Zenpundit.com at the request of my co-author Lexington Green:

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The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy, and War

This post has been a long time coming.

A while back, we had a a symposium at Chicago Boyz to discuss and debate the superb book Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd by Colonel Frans Osinga. It was a great discussion from which I learned far more about the ideas of the iconoclastic military theorist John Boyd than I had ever previously considered. Not everyone involved was an admirer of John Boyd, a few were initially skeptical and we had one certified critic ( though I had tried to recruit several more). Overall, it was the kind of exchange that makes the blogosphere special as a medium when it is at it’s intellectual best.

Shortly thereafter, via Dan of tdaxp I was approached by the publisher of Nimble Books, W.F. Zimmerman, who happened to be a military history buff and who was interested in working our loose online discussion of Dr. Osinga’s prodigious tome into a book. Initially, I was somewhat dubious but I warmed to the project at the urging of tdaxp and Lexington Green, and agreed to serve as the Editor and “herder of cats” in a project that would involve a large number of contributors with very different backgrounds and some fairly dense and esoteric material on strategic theory to digest and make comprehensible to a general reader.

A wonderful experience.

We had an excellent roster of contributors for The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy, and War – Dr. Chet Richards, Daniel Abbott, Shane Deichman, Frank Hoffman, Adam Elkus, Lexington Green, Thomas Wade and Dr. Frans Osinga, who contributed several essays. Dr. Thomas Barnett sets the intellectual tone in the foreword after which the authors brought a wide range of professional perspectives to bear – cognitive psychology, military history, physics, strategy, journalism and, of course, blogging – in a series of articles that tried to explain the essence and dimensions of John Boyd’s contribution to strategic thought. Hopefully, we succeeded in creating an interesting and useful primer but the readers will be the ultimate judges, free to dispute our conclusions and offer contending arguments of their own.

I’d like to think that Colonel Boyd would have wanted it that way.

Get a Jump on Christmas! – Put Michael Yon in a Soldier’s Stocking

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Just a note that combat blogger Michael Yon has made arrangements with his publisher to offer his book Moment of Truth: How a New ‘Greatest Generation’ of American Soldiers is Turning Defeat and Disaster into Victory and Hope free of charge to soldiers through the Soldier’s Angels organization.

You can purchase Michael Yon’s book online, directly from the publisher, and the copies will be given to soldiers as a gift. It’s hard to imagine a book that would be better received and more thought-provoking for soldiers in the field. Michael Yon is one of the few voices committed to putting in the time to learn what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, supported only by citizen-contributors.

To quote Michael:

This project is dependent entirely upon private donations. Without your help, it won’t happen. For folks who wish to put one book in the hands of a soldier, it’s just $10. For five books, it’s just $40. Ten copies are $75. A donation of $150 will put a copy of Moment of Truth in Iraq in the hands of 30 American soldiers; that’s just $5 a book.

As a Canadian who’s donated to Michael’s efforts directly in the past, I’m particularly appreciative of the fact that he’s starting to report on the efforts of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. Those guys are getting far too little credit for their courage and skill over the last seven years (Canadian special forces and snipers were engaged since the beginning). In any event, I’m hoping that Michael gets a chance to interact with the Canadian troops as he did with the Brits in Basra. Their story needs telling.

And in the wider context, putting an exciting insightful book on Iraq into the hands of a soldier for Christmas, seems like a really good idea. I’ve chipped in $150 from the Great Non-White (just yet) North.

For the direct publisher link, please go here.

UPDATE (for commenter Seerov): Great White North is a term of endearment used by Canadians for their country, first appearing in a skit on the comedy program SCTV. It refers to snow. Being as it’s early September in Alberta, we have snow on the tops of the Rockies, but not “just yet” in the foothills … not yet, but soon.

Chicagoboyz Poll on Iraq

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Which best describes your view of the Iraq War?
Knowing what we knew at the time, it was a mistake to invade Iraq.
Knowing what we knew at the time, it was right to invade Iraq.
Knowing what we know now, it was a mistake to invade Iraq.
Knowing what we know now, it was right to invade Iraq.
  
pollcode.com free polls

Shooting Down Missile Defense

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In late June, the U.S. Missile Defense agency conducted a successful test of THAAD, the Terminal High Area Defense system. THAAD is intended to provide the upper level of a multilayer defensive shield, with a lower-level defense provided by Patriot or a similar system. It is particularly intended as a defense against short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, although it also offers some capability against intercontinental missiles.

I don’t think Barack Obama would be much of a THAAD supporter. In this speech, he says he would cut investments in “unproven missile defense systems” and indeed seems pretty hostile to defense technology programs in general.

I guess THAAD counts as an “unproven technology,” given that it has not yet been combat-tested or even deployed. The radar-and-communications network that protected Britain from air attack during WWII was also an “unproven technology” when it was deployed: it is very fortunate that Neville Chamberlain, rather than Barack Obama, was Prime Minister of Britain at the time.

THAAD is a hit-to-kill system: it destroys its targets via force of impact, rather than with an explosive charge. This is basically “hitting a bullet with a bullet,” an idea that opponents of missile defense have long mocked.

An aerodynamicist once supposedly “proved” that it was impossible for bumblebees to fly; however, the bumblebee continues flying happily, unaware of the impossibility of its behavior. Similarly, THAAD “hits a bullet with a bullet,” not deterred by the supposed impossibility of this action.

Very clearly, “progressives”–and even many mainstream liberals–have long been hostile to the very idea of missile defense. They were hostile to it when the principal threat was from the Soviet Union, and they are hostile to it when the principal threat is from rogue states, terrorists, and a brutish theocracy. They were hostile to it when the latest thing in computer technology was the IBM System/370, and they are hostile to it several generations of technology later. It seems to really bother them that any system should be so presumptuous as to interpose itself between Americans–and citizens of allied nations–and those who would launch missiles at them.

Why?