David Corking's personal annotations on this page
Dcorking bookmarked
on 2007-12-18
Oh dear - sounds like the mistakes of Vietnam were made all over again.
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In western Afghanistan, for instance, a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division was being targeted by rockets, over and over, from the vicinity of a nearby village. But no one from the unit had bothered to ask the townspeople why. When the Human Terrain Team finally paid a visit, villagers complained that the Taliban was around only because the Americans didn't provide security. And oh, by the way, they really wanted a volleyball net, too. So a net was acquired. Patrols were started. There hasn't been an attack in two months...."Stability operations is like soccer. Major combat operations is like football. So it's almost impossible [for one team] to win both the World Cup and the Super Bowl in the same year," he tells me. "Not when you're playing two different games."
This link has been bookmarked by 11 people . It was first bookmarked on 30 Nov 2007, by fureteur fureteur.
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Tom Woodwardworth thinking about in terms of how schools screw things up
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Tom Woodwardworth thinking about in terms of how schools screw things up
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David Corking
Oh dear - sounds like the mistakes of Vietnam were made all over again.
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In western Afghanistan, for instance, a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division was being targeted by rockets, over and over, from the vicinity of a nearby village. But no one from the unit had bothered to ask the townspeople why. When the Human Terrain Team finally paid a visit, villagers complained that the Taliban was around only because the Americans didn't provide security. And oh, by the way, they really wanted a volleyball net, too. So a net was acquired. Patrols were started. There hasn't been an attack in two months...."Stability operations is like soccer. Major combat operations is like football. So it's almost impossible [for one team] to win both the World Cup and the Super Bowl in the same year," he tells me. "Not when you're playing two different games."
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Brian Hsinice read on social networks applied. talks also of that new counter-insurgency manual that talks about community building as a strategy
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