By Michael Vlahos
I contemplate this booklet some of the most vital books of our time, for it takes on "the Borg" at an highbrow point in a cultural context, and in so doing, speaks fact to strength: our Emperors ("the Borg") are bare and ignorant.
Early on he issues out that ours isn't the first globalization, and that prior globalizations have verified that new identities upward thrust inside globalization and *cannot be placed down* (his emphasis). New rules, counter-establishment rules, can't be suppressed, and finally triumph in new attention at a number of degrees. States fight vainly, equating every little thing "new" with being a "threat," and eventually cave in lower than the burden in their personal lack of know-how and lack of ability to evolve.
The first few chapters recommend that our response to 11th of September opened a Pandora's field, that AF-IQ are our Waterloo, and that "non-state actors" is a general time period for all that's open air the kingdom.
He specifies six "identity" migration paths: networks of conversion and subversion (e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood and the Pentecostals); independent city subcultures (e.g. gangs); rising countries; fighter fraternities; militarized Bucellani (vandal elites, e.g. the Taliban, a kingdom inside a state); and our personal move to undergo, intercessor protection sub-cultures (e.g. our military-industrial complicated to which i'd upload, a Congress missing in integrity).
TWO significant issues:
1. the USA army is not any longer Of, by means of, and For We the folk, now not a collective citizenry that's armed--in short, the militarization of nationwide coverage has made us conceited, ignorant, and repugnant.
2. through resisting switch we're selling swap. i can't support myself, i feel of the anti-Borg from outer area that grows after we nuke it, shrinks after we express love.
The writer issues out that each US army intervention right into a Muslim society has failed; that our mess ups result in new formulation (reformations) instead of new instructions (transformations); and that during being drawn in and preserving the chaos area, we're feeding the metamorphosis of non-state cocoons into butterflies very difficult to hit with an artillery shell or perhaps an aimed bullet.
The heart of the ebook expands at the subject of struggle as "creative destruction" (a mantra within the advertisement intelligence world), whereas mentioning that during ignoring morality, the Napoleonic and Clauswitzian crucial ("the ethical is to the actual as 3 is to one"--today i'd make it 10:1) the united states is giving up the very strength that concerns, and failing to appreciate that id is better than materiel. He issues out that the "others" have dedication, sacrifice, collective effectiveness, breeding in conflict, are struggling with on their domestic floor, and attain transcendence in resisting the USA. in the meantime, within the US, 1% do the struggling with and the opposite ninety nine% are requested to move buying.
P26: "America's challenge comes with the invention that it really is purely the midwife instead of the godfather. We struggle so that it will get not anything from these we legitimize."
I have a word tradition is identification is being is sacred and jointly shape recognition.
The writer is important of Al Qaeda and its many blunders, yet credit them with drawing the U.S. out into growing the chaos house during which different indigenous forces are emerging.
His part on approach discusses the application of historical past and anthropology, either overseas "denied parts" to the USG IMHO.
The writer issues out the most obvious that's not so visible to these sacrificing America's blood, treasure, and spirit in our identify, i.e. thirds of humanity is "the different" dwelling the Hobbsian existence that's "poor, nasty, brutish, and short.," For those humans, struggle is an access element to negotiations, and the recent gamers collect legitimacy via out-lasting (not inevitably out-fighting) US forces.
As we circulation towards the belief the writer speculates that we might be headed for a brand new heart a while with an international pandemic, weather swap, and an power crunch (to which i'd upload water crunch).
AF-IQ went flawed in 5 methods:
1. Liberation fizzled (I upload, simply because neither Rumsfeld nor Gates are thinking about waging peace)
2. Al Qaeda confirmed up in Iraq (the writer neglects Iran's glee and strategic leverage)
3. No magnificent reconstruction (according to Paul Wolfowitz , "at their expense")
4. No democratic transformation (to have anticipated one was once idiocy or lying)
5. international didn't, won't, settle for the "Long battle"
Chapter eight on "fit" credit Martin van Creveld with the time period, and assuredly discusses how our leaders went to struggle, ordered others to conflict, with out the slightest figuring out of "the other." The "American approach of conflict" that Tony Echeverria has mentioned isn't really a manner of conflict in any respect, has been, within the author's phrases, "the helpmate to enemy realization."
On web page 176 the writer itemizes our "transformation" ideas set and concludes it's flat out fallacious.
1. Situational know-how (based on distant applied sciences)
2. Precision killing (ineffective for people)
3. swift dominance (not so speedy)
4. Kill sufficient of the enemy and their leaders, and resistance will fold (simply now not so).
PP191-192 are a stake within the middle of COIN--it isn't incorrect, it's easily ignorant and oblivious of the strategic complete of presidency and full Earth ramifications of spending all of our funds on a lemon. COIN is (my phrases) "Borg triumphant." COIN is "bento-box cognizance" and RAND--normally a supplicant cheer-leader-- has defined its dying intimately.
P202: "The occasions of Sep 11 drove us again to nice warfare, yet this time with out *the people.* This nice conflict was once *and continues to be* a struggle of the management and its tribal confederacy. it's a state-military firm, yet way more considerably, *it is additionally now a state-military liturgy.* (Emphasis in original.]
The writer notes that the "other" has a swifter studying curve than we do, and on web page 182: "Today's non-state actors be aware of us higher than we want to recognize them." this can be an indictment of the USG.
See the pictures loaded less than the booklet disguise, and lower than books in keeping with author's intent:
The classes of History
The panorama of heritage: How Historians Map the Past
The well-being of countries: Society and legislation past the State
The Unconquerable international: strength, Nonviolence and the desire of the People
A strength Governments can't Suppress
Breaking the genuine Axis of Evil: how you can Oust the World's final Dictators by means of 2025
Uncomfortable Wars Revisited (International and safeguard Affairs Series)
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: the tale of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars
The Tunnels of Cu Chi: A Harrowing Account of America's "Tunnel Rats" within the Underground Battlefields of Vietnam
Radical guy
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Extra info for Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change
Sample text
The god Augustus was thus no more than a civic hitchhiker off the established body of the local = everywhere sacred. The new faith called Christianity—already a new and subversively insurgent imperial identity—refused this tolerant offer, and when the Christians took power after Constantine, they also refused the tolerant path for identity’s relationship with authority. The old live-and-let-live imperial system was succeeded by an uncompromising vision of identity. Christianity demanded not simply a bit of incense—it wanted submission.
People going in different directions become enemies. But the greatest weakness in our story of globalization is that we cannot see the full significance of the back story. Hence our ineffectiveness in a changing humanity is not just about the limits we place on ourselves. Our ineffectiveness is hardwired into our very belief system. Our cultural printed circuits switch us off from how our enemies speak for the identity demand of a larger, desperate humanity. We deny the dynamic trajectory of the world’s other humanity.
We are threatened by alternative initiatives. People going in different directions become enemies. But the greatest weakness in our story of globalization is that we cannot see the full significance of the back story. Hence our ineffectiveness in a changing humanity is not just about the limits we place on ourselves. Our ineffectiveness is hardwired into our very belief system. Our cultural printed circuits switch us off from how our enemies speak for the identity demand of a larger, desperate humanity.