I'm currently reading a counterinsurgency classic, David Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. Published in 1964, its a how-to manual for fighting a counterinsurgency war against a revolutionary insurgent based on the author's direct observations and experiences in Algeria, China, and Vietnam. I picked up the book after reading a Washington Post on-line chat with Thomas Ricks, who recommended it. Its lessons from then are...

Just when you thought the Corner couldn't become any more of refuse pile than it already is, J-Pod brings forth a defense of his "kill them all and let g-d sort them out" approach to counter-insurgency. Turns out, he's a courageous intellectual posing the tough questions.Interesting. Seems to me that in 1982, in Hama, Hafez al-Assad wiped out an uprising against his regime by slaughtering 25,000 over a weekend. And in 1991, Saddam Hussein took...

Via Arms and Influence:Everyone remaining in southern Lebanon will be regarded as a terrorist, Israel's justice minister said yesterday as the military prepared to employ "huge firepower" from the air in its campaign to crush Hizbollah.Besides the fact that this is empirically false it's just plain stupid from a political standpoint. Not helpful.Filed as: Israel, Lebanon

Last week, my email inbox received a post from a listserv with this subject line: "Opportunity: Social Sciences/ Iraq." I don't know that the list is confidential, but I suppose one has to be a member of a particular scholarly organization to receive postings. In any event, I don't have to violate list norms because another blogger already posted the entire ad. Read it here. Actually, Lincoln Group has the jobs linked on its own website. The...

From this issue of Politics and Society, I offer two keywords we will probably never see next to one another again:The Strength of Weekly Ties: Relations of Material and Symbolic Exchange in the Conservative MovementThomas MedvetzUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe current Republican ascendancy in American government has generated considerable scholarly interest in the conservative movement. Through an ethno-graphic study of the widely...

Sad news in the Israeli-Hizbollah conflict. As most of you already know, or will know soon, an Israeli air strike killed at least 34 children.The raid on the southern village of Qana -- the bloodiest single attack in Israel's 19-day-old war on Hizbollah -- aborted U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's mediation efforts. Lebanon told her she was unwelcome in Beirut for talks.Israel announced a temporary suspension of air strikes, presumably...

Here's my State Capacity post of the week (just to continue the trend.)From Today's Washington Post:Some in Congo Long for the Order Of Late DictatorYes, folks, we're talking Mobuto Sese Seko. Who ever thought you would long for the man who invented the kleptocratic state and his leopard-skinned chapeau?He brought State Capacity, of course!On the eve of the first multiparty balloting here since 1960, nostalgia was running high for a man who,...

Steven Cook (who holds a PhD from my department I might add) argues in the Washington Post this morning that the current problems in the Middle East are not to be blames on President Bush's democratization strategy. It isn't that there has been too much democratization to-date, but rather too little. Unfortunately, his analysis suffers from a number of problems: a rather weighty faith in the power of democratization and ignoring the more...

I've been skimming the Washington State Supreme Court decision (PDF) on gay marriage (via Andrew Sullivan), and I'm pretty appalled. My jaw started to drop when I read this line:Finally, DOMA does not violate the state constitution’s equal rights amendment because that provision prohibits laws that render benefits to or restrict or deny rights of one sex. DOMA treats both sexes the same; neither a man nor a woman may marry a person of the same...

I really, really hope that today's developments prove my skepticism about the efficacy of Israel's coercive pressure on Lebanon wrong.BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah politicians, while expressing reservations, have joined their critics in the government in agreeing to a peace package that includes strengthening an international force in south Lebanon and disarming the guerrillas, the government said.The agreement — reached after a heated six-hour...

This month's Foreign Policy has a forum on the Israel Lobby, building on Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's very much discussed article in the LRB on the power of the "Israel Lobby" in producing a narrow-interest based but sub-strategically optimal US Foreign Policy in the Middle East.As I walked from the office with my mailbox back to my office, pondering the nice glossy cover on my copy of FP, I pondered the issues in the debate in the...

Photo courtesy whitehouse.govThis is just a quick followup to my post last week about the risks of escalation in the current Middle Eastern conflict.Israel is apparently ending its incursion into Gaza , but there is very little good news emerging from the region.US Secretary of State Condi Rice is on the case, but she is employing an odd diplomatic style to say the least. News agencies pessimistically report "no sign of a cease-fire."So, is the...