ARMED FORCES JOURNAL - COIN lies we love - April 2009 - The Diigo Meta page

• 30 Apr 09
  

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  Armed Forces Journal, 29 April 2009

  coin military theory

  • When it comes to fighting terrorists and counterinsurgency warfare, we have less intellectual integrity than Bernie Madoff had financial integrity. Priding ourselves on our educational credentials and career successes, we engage in comforting lies and bureaucratic superstitions so absurd that a shaman or witch doctor would only shake his head.

    We believe what we choose to believe, not what the evidence tells us. We have no time for evidence, since facts confound us damnably.

    • A grood critique of the "new conventional wisdom" of the U.S. community with regards to counterinsurgency. But the more damning critique is of patterns of thought in the defense community as an epistemic culture--i.e. a knowledge-producing culture. Sloppy thinking and lack of empirical rigor is not just a problem for COIN, but is a problem I've observed again and again, especially where qualitative and/or historical work is concerned. In many ways, Peters' own recommendation for how history should be used is also an example of the kind of sloppiness that leads to the very notions he critiques.
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  • Instead of dissembling by citing a few preferred case studies that we distort to our own ends, we should search for confirmatory evidence from 3,000 years of history of revolutions, insurgencies and terrorism.

    • No! This is NOT how to use history. 1) It's unrealistic to think you can meaningfully search 3,000 years of history. 2) To try at all requires treating secondary sources as promary sources, which a common problem for military theorists. 3) The methodological presentism of reading past conflicts through the lens of modern notions of counterinsurgency is problematic at best. 4) Searching for "confirmatory" evidence is NOT valid research design. Falsification should be the goal, not confirmation. Ultimately, while Peters is correct that the defense community is often plagued by sloppy thinking, he offers us no way out of that pattern. Instead, he offers more of the same kind of sloppy thinking that leads to the kinds of ridiculous ideas that he is criticizing here!
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• 
  TransTracker on 2009-04-30
  A grood critique of the "new conventional wisdom" of the U.S. community with regards to counterinsurgency. But the more damning critique is of patterns of thought in the defense community as an epistemic culture--i.e. a knowledge-producing culture. Sloppy thinking and lack of empirical rigor is not just a problem for COIN, but is a problem I've observed again and again, especially where qualitative and/or historical work is concerned. In many ways, Peters' own recommendation for how history should be used is also an example of the kind of sloppiness that leads to the very notions he critiques.
• 
  TransTracker on 2009-04-30
  No! This is NOT how to use history. 1) It's unrealistic to think you can meaningfully search 3,000 years of history. 2) To try at all requires treating secondary sources as promary sources, which a common problem for military theorists. 3) The methodological presentism of reading past conflicts through the lens of modern notions of counterinsurgency is problematic at best. 4) Searching for "confirmatory" evidence is NOT valid research design. Falsification should be the goal, not confirmation. Ultimately, while Peters is correct that the defense community is often plagued by sloppy thinking, he offers us no way out of that pattern. Instead, he offers more of the same kind of sloppy thinking that leads to the kinds of ridiculous ideas that he is criticizing here!

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