Saturday, December 18, 2010

Holidays? What Holidays?

A testament to the life of many graduate students is that they never really get a break from academic pursuits like they did in halcyon days of being an undergrad.  Although some lucky few manage to eke out a week or so without reading or writing, most of us continue to work year-round, whether summer teaching and research, trying to get ahead on reading for the next semester, preparing to teach, or studying for exams.

In my case, I have a little of all of it.  Not only do I get to spend time studying for comprehensive exams (I brought forty books on France just for that reason), but I need to finish my article on American Military Culture (it is past due), edit two journal articles to send out for publication (one of William Calley and another on George Armstrong Custer), and finish two short papers for a directed reading I've yet to finish (procrastination is the frenemy of the graduate student).  For my sins, I also have to continue working to organize the department's third annual graduate student conference (we need 3 more commentators), and edit more than sixty book reviews since I was also gullible enough to agree to be the book review editor for the Southern Historian.

For the next couple of days, I'll be working on those short papers and the encyclopedia article.  Here's the reading list:

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Veteran's Day

This Week's Reading

Now that my grading is getting caught up, I'm launching back into my comprehensive exam preparation.  That means reading books, articles, and book reviews.  I should have my European and Military & Naval reading lists nailed down in the next week, but U.S. is under control.  Since I don't have time to wait, and owe one of my dissertation co-chairs some work, I'm launching right into the Military & Naval, which has some overlap with the European list.

This week's light reading:

  1. Jan Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500-1660.
  2. Brian M. Dowling, The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe.
  3. William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000.
  4. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble.
  5. Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War.
  6. Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace.
  7. Ronald J. Glasser, 365 Days.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Election Day

If you are a citizen of the United States, and have not voted, get thee to the polls.  This is the most visible opportunity you have to do one of the things that makes you an American: choose our leaders.

Voting is a right, a privilege, a responsibility, and a sacred duty.  As citizens of the world's oldest republic, we are morally responsible for the decisions of our leaders and the actions of our government.  If you don't vote, which represents the absolute minimum level of active citizenship, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution to our nation's many problems. 

Regardless of who you vote for, it is your job as an American to exercise the franchise, and to do so responsibly.  Pick up a newspaper and spend a couple of hours learning the issues and the candidates, and vote what you believe.  Get your information from serious sources, not those entertainers on the radio or television - Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Olbermann, and Maddow get paid to get ratings by pandering to key segments of the political extremes.

Don't just vote for the candidate based on their party designation, but whether you agree or disagree with their stands on the issues.  This is hard work, what Michael Douglas calls in the American President "advanced citizenship."  Despite the difficulty inherent in being a responsible voter, it is your duty to be one.  Make careful and sober choices because there are serious consequences for them.  The lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans, not to mention citizens of other nations, depend on the decisions we make every time we vote. 

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Heroic Sacrifice, Halo: Reach, and American Pop Culture

I finally finished the campaign for Halo: Reach after 12 hours of game time.  That puts me behind the curve on skill and time, but I've played my First Person Shooters on the PC, not on a console.  Many years ago I started Halo: Combat Evolved, but didn't finish it, so I have no particular affinity for this franchise.  In essence, I started Halo: Reach as a completely new player without any knowledge of the background or skills many players bring to the game.  Of course, I'm not here to review Halo: Reach  Many people have done that with great skill already.

Back when Halo was first released, Trish pointed to a review that linked Halo: Reach to the epic tradition in Western Civilization, particularly that of the Iliad, particularly the self-sacrifice of Noble 6 in his effort to save humanity from destruction at the hands of an alien race (the Covenant).  Noble 6's sacrifice is notable due to his relative anonymity - his face is never seen, voice not heard.  He is the faceless, armored defender who sacrifices to complete his mission, and when it appears that he will escape with his life, goes back to certain death in order to allow humanity's last hope a chance to escape the alien onslaught.

Halo: Reach's narrative is full of heroic self-sacrifice.  Countless Marines desperately fight to the bitter end so that groups of civilians can escape, or so that others can complete critical missions.  The other members of Noble, the elite group of Marine special forces that Noble 6 is a member, similarly meet their fates.  Jorge pilots a corvette into a Covenant cruiser to allow human ships to escape.  He grabs Noble 6 and hurls him to safety, pleading with him to allow him to make this sacrifice, and to make it count.

Most of the rest of Noble Team also meet their fates with their eyes open.  Emile is dragged from an anti-ship battery and killed by Covenant forces while attempting to cover Noble 6's escape.  Jun is last seen escorting a civilian scientist with instructions not to let her fall into Covenant hands.  Carter, the commander of Noble, plows his crippled aircraft into Covenant armor in order to allow Emile and Noble 6 to deliver an AI containing information critical to humanity's survival to a waiting corvette.  The only exception is Cat, Noble's second in command, who is senselessly struck down by a sniper after guiding Noble 6 on a mission to suppress covenant forces allowing civilians to escape.  Her death is the only one that doesn't carry the message of self-sacrifice.

Halo: Reach is just the most recent example of this message of primacy of heroic self-sacrifice in American pop culture.  My initial reaction to Roger Travis' review was to blow it off because it seemed to argue that Halo was the only recent example of this message in recent American media, and to point to Saving Private Ryan (1998) to bolster that argument.  Travis goes a bit deeper than this, linking Halo to a deeper tradition in Western cultures, but I still think that they merely represent a new way of accessing these ancient traditions.  Just in the past thirty years we have numerous examples from a still important mass medium: movies.

Saving Private Ryan is merely an obvious example of the genre, in which a small group of soldiers are sent to find an American soldier whose family has already sacrificed three sons to the war effort so that he can be sent home.  The squad sets out across enemy-occupied territory to find Ryan in the aftermath of the D-Day invasion.  When they find him, he refuses to return to safety until his rag-tag unit defends a critical bridge.  While Ryan survives, the leader of squad, Capt. John Miller dies while defending the bridge, telling Ryan to live a good life in payment for the sacrifice.

There are a plethora of other examples.  One of my earliest movie memories is Star Wars, which I saw in 1977 with my Dad and our parish priest, Fr. George Kitchen.  The key moments of heroic sacrifice that stand out are Obiwan Kenobi's death at the hands of Darth Vader, and the combat deaths of a small group of outgunned rebel pilots who desperately through themselves into the teeth of the Death Star's defenses.  These guys could use their ships to flee, but they stay and fight to save their comrades, and by extension the free peoples of the Galactic Republic.  If we couldn't pick up this theme on our own, Director George Lucas slaps us in the face with it by using an argument between male leads Luke Skywalker and Han Solo over the rationale of the seemingly suicidal defense of the rebel base.  Solo is only redeemed when he returns at the last second, allowing Luke, the lone remaining rebel combatant, to destroy the Death Star in time to save the day.

1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn also features the theme of heroic self-sacrifice on more than one occasion.  The first example occurs off-screen when the civilian crew of scientists aboard a space station above Regula I sacrifice themselves to allow a small group group of scientists to escape with an experimental device that is both potential miracle terraforming device and terror weapon.  Later, Captain Terrell, commander of USS Reliant, kills himself rather than allowing Kahn to force him to kill Admiral James T. Kirk and seize the device.  During the movie's climax, Spock sacrifices himself to save the crew of USS Enterprise by entering a reactor chamber to perform critical repairs to the Enterprise's warp engines.  Radiation kills Spock, but the Enterprise makes it to safety at the very last second because, in his words, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."

More recently, The Dark Knight (2008) and Star Trek (2009) reinforce this theme.  In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent, Gotham's District Attorney rages against Batman for saving him rather than his fiance Rachel, both of whom have been kidnapped by the Joker in his efforts to create chaos in the city.  The result pushes Dent over the edge into madness.  At the end of the film, Batman conspires with Lt. Gordon to paint himself as the villain to save Dent's reputation at Gotham's soul.  The city, the masked hero argues needs to have Dent as a symbol of hope, so he volunteers to become hunted as a criminal despite his efforts to save the city.

J.J. Abrams' reboot of the Star Trek franchise in 2009 opens with Lt. George Kirk assuming command of a damaged starship, desperately fighting a superior enemy in order to allow the crew and families of the vessel to escape while he uses the ship to ram another vessel, masking their escape.  His son lives to become the Capt. James T. Kirk, the original franchise revolved around.  Later in the film, Capt. Christopher Pike, commander of USS Enterprise, goes to his almost certain death at the hands of the mysterious enemy in order to give Kirk, Spock, and the crew of the Enterprise vital time to escape and warn Starfleet of an imminent threat to the the Earth itself.

The heroic tradition, thus, lives on in our mass media, of which video games are the most recent incarnation.  The question I'm interested is in what we do with this tradition.  One path is to glorify it as a warrior tradition, in which determined and brave people, usually men, perform heroic feats beyond the ability or expectation of average citizens.  This is the Homeric path that Roger Travis takes us down with his discussion of Halo and the Iliad as examples of the epic ring cycle.  If so, I believe this is a potentially dangerous cultural turn for Americans given the United States Army's current obsession with the "warrior ethos" as the basis for its core ideal.  The Air Force has also adopted the "warrior" mindset as the basis for much of its most basic training, even to the point that it extended Basic Military Training and is working to instill the "warrior ethos" in drone pilots.

The problem is that the mindset of the warrior is intrinsically different from that of the soldier.  Warriors focus on the issue of fulfilling the mission without worrying about the niceties of how they get the mission done.  The primary focus is on physical and mental toughness, veneration of those the attributes that lead to success in combat, and, historically, disparaging the civilians warriors protect and civilian leaders who do not measure up on a small cluster of values.  This trend, in which some members of the United States Military deem themselves somehow morally superior to civilians, particularly politicians, has been evident since the Clinton administration, but has actually been reported in the mass media over the past two or three years.

Contrast this with the mindset of the soldier, particularly the citizen-soldier of the American ideal.  The ideals of the soldier are outwardly similar to those of the "warrior ethos" - focus on mission, not leaving comrades behind, physical and mental toughness.  One difference is that the citizen-soldier is part of American society, not apart from it.  Another, and equally important difference is that soldiers do far more than fight and kill.  The focus on "warrior" detracts from other options - the soft parts of military power like building schools and clinics, restoring law and order, fighting corruption, agricultural reform, etc... When not in combat, these are important missions, particularly when fighting what used to be called "low-intensity conflicts," where they can reduce the combat that does occur.  This is the "hearts and minds" stuff that you have to do along with providing physical security and engaging in traditional combat actions.  Building roads and bridges have been part of the soldierly arts since at least 300 BCE, and they can't just be turned over to contractors.  This is how the British built and maintained their Empire.

I'll have more about the contrasts between "warriors" and "soldiers" another time.  My point here is that while Halo and other media may reach back to our mythic past, as embodied by the Iliad, there is another way of looking at the heritage it represents.  Rather than the Iliad, perhaps the model should be Livy's Cincinnatus, a figure that seemed to speak to 18th century American leaders.  Cincinnatus was a typical Roman citizen.  He had enough wealth in the form of his farm to be a citizen and to serve in the main three lines of the legion, rose to lead Rome as Dictator, and after defeating the Aequians, Sabinians, and the Volscians, resigned his post before his six month term was up to return to his farm.

Cincinnatus represents the tradition we see among most Greek hoplites.  With the exception of Sparta, the Roman and Greek model was that of the citizen soldier.  American tradition venerates the Minutemen and other militia of the American Revolution, the volunteers and conscripts of the Civil War and the Spanish American War, and the citizen soldiers of World War II.  The vast majority of Vietnam Veterans were not professionals, but conscripted citizens who were simply doing their duty as Americans (albeit frequently after being drafted).  This tradition required the United States to maintain small professional forces that could command greatly enlarged forces when wars occurred. 

The tradition of the citizen-soldier is what we see in Saving Private Ryan and Star Trek.  I would argue that we can even interpret Halo in this manner.  The Spartans that are the primary cast of the Halo series are genetically engineered versions of our own Special Forces, which date back to the American Revolution.  They, along with regular Marines, do their duty to defend civilians and help them escape, sacrificing themselves only when they must in order to ensure that others survive to fulfill that mission.  This is part of the grand tradition of the citizen-soldiers of the United States Military.  Yes, there are folks who fit the tradition of Achilles rather than that of Cincinnatus, but Achilles, the sulky, if gifted warrior, does not fit with our tradition of Republican Democracy.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

O Kindle, How I Covet Thee

To be honest, I really want an iPad, but that's a different conversation.

My initial objections to Amazon's toy was the original high price, the proprietary file format it required, the minimal support for other types of documents, and the limited availability of content.  Each iteration of the Kindle brought better support for other formats and and third parties have developed methods to add or convert files from most of the major document formats for use on the Kindle. 

I've also noticed expanded content available from Amazon.  The hardcover version of Christopher Coker's The Warrior Ethos: Military Culture and the War on Terror is $112 from Amazon, with the paperback coming in at a still hefty $41.  The Kindle version is available for $33.56.  This is a far cry from Amazon's requirement that e-books sell for $9.99, but still a significant savings over the cover price, and using the WiFi or 3G versions of the Kindle gives you instant access to the book, which you can also use on your PC, Mac, iPhone, Blackberry, or other devices.  While working on my last project, I came very close to purchasing the Kindle version for use on my Macbook or my iPod Touch.  That same project came close to pushing me to grabbing the Kindle version of James Woulfe's Into the Crucible.  In the past, not only were the works I needed not available as e-books, but I was reluctant to use them for serious work since they are harder to annotate and to refer back to.  Hell, I print out journal articles to read and scribble on.

I'm still averse to using e-books for serious work unless I'm driven there by desperation, but consider the utility of the Kindle for other types of reading based on newish developments.  The big key here is that Amazon's proprietary .azw format is based on the venerable Mobipocket format (.mobi or .prc) files.  Although Amazon doesn't proclaim it from the heights newer Kindles can read those non-DRMed files.  This leads us to a way to create something close to interoperability.  By using the free utility Calibre, you can convert most documents that don't have DRM to the Mobipocket or pdf formats that a Kindle can read.  Have a bunch of Microsoft Reader (.lit) or Epub books without DRM?  Convert those bad boys using Calibre and you're in business.  If you have DRMed e-books, you're going to have to find the software to strip it before converting.  It isn't hard, but you'll have to find it on your own...

The new Kindle also boasts a decent web browser based on the same webkit engine as Apple's Safari browser.  It reportedly does a good job of displaying the mobile versions of most websites, albeit in grey-scale.  The WiFi version does this with just about any WiFi hotspot, but the 3G Kindle lets you access the Internet anywhere AT&T's 3G network is available.  Using 3G doesn't cost you anything, which explains why Amazon doesn't really talk about this feature much.  Amazon foots the data bill for all Kindle web traffic.  Instapaper also works well on the Kindle 3, with some folks calling it the Kindle's "killer app".  Rumor has it a Kindle version is in the works. You can even get RSS feeds, Tweet, and read black and white comics (or even Manga) on the Kindle 3.

The Kindle 3's new functionality combined with the inventiveness of users and business are working to make it a device that is useful far beyond Amazon's limited e-book vision.  The thing is not a tablet like an iPad or an Samsung Galaxy Tab, but it does seem to have carved out a viable niche for consuming text-based content.  I'm a text-based kind of guy, and while I would love to have an iPad to use as a light-weight laptop alternative (paired with an appropriate desktop computer), it's possible that the Kindle + Macbook  combo is also a worthwhile option.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Gates Don't Know Much about (Online) Education

Back in the beginning of August, Bill Gates argued that in a few years, people could learn more effectively using free resources on the Internet than by attending classes at an institution of higher learning, saying that, "Five years from now on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university.Five years from now on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university."

He's wrong.

Gates has no idea what he is talking about, and I'm not just saying this because I have a vested interest in students enrolling in classes (in person or online).  Indeed, more than half of my income currently comes from teaching online courses for community colleges and universities, so expansion of online education is good for my bottom line.  Though, in Gates' vision, I'd still be eventually out of work.

Despite the number of folks that use MIT's OpenCourseWare project that are self-studying (43%), some of whom famously used the electrical engineering content to design solar-powered lighting in Haiti, there are problems with Gates' vision of free online, unstructured, learning for the masses.  I'll stick to just a couple of them.

One critically important problem is who pays to develop and distribute this free educational content?  Half of OCW's, $3.7 million dollar budget comes directly from MIT.  In Gates' vision, people are better off using these free sources, but without a model for them to draw income, these resources will dry up, because schools will eventually not be able to support these endeavors.  Someone has to pay for it, whether through donations, subscriptions, or ads.  If MIT hasn't been able to move that model, I have little confidence that other organizations will be able to.

That ignores the question of efficacy.

Online instruction is finally old enough that we are getting some studies that try to assess whether  online education is as effective as live educational models.  The initial results indicate that for the groups most likely to enroll online courses, that live courses are at least slightly more effective.  These are likely the folks that need someone to create and enforce a schedule, to provide feedback, and to provide students the benefit of individual attention and feedback. That's not encouraging for folks who envision a decentralized system of free online learning.

Yes, the problem could be course design.  We're still learning the best ways to deliver both live and online courses, but we do know that lectures are not the most effective way to deliver information and that small courses that provide individual attention and engage multiple modes of learning are most effective.  The issue of course design effects both live and online courses, though, so that may not be the sole difference in learner outcomes.

There's also the issue of learner motivation.  The 43% of OCW users that are independent learners are highly motivated people who already have the skills they need to be successful in online courses, and as the Haiti example indicates, may have a specific reason to learn one skill or explore one small branch of knowledge.  Based on my experience as a student and an educator, this model does not fit the vast majority of people taking college courses.  Most of my community college or university students are not self-motivated learners (though the CC students do seem to have higher levels of motivation).  They need the structure and feedback formal courses provide, regardless of format.

Finally, Gates seems not to understand that like institutions of secondary education (high schools), institutions of higher learning don't serve only to transmit discrete bits of information.  Like high schools, colleges and universities developed on the Liberal Arts model exist to help students become well-rounded citizens.  The idea is to expose students to new ideas, people, and experiences in a coherent and safe setting, to teach critical thinking, to engage and challenge students.  Online learners will not get that from an a la carte, laissez faire learning environment that doesn't place demands on them.

Gates' utopian vision would be an absolute disaster for American students, colleges, and businesses.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Book 'em, Danno

Watching Hawaii Five-0 is a nostalgic experience.  Part of the nostalgia comes from memories of the show during its original (1968-1980) and syndicated runs.  The theme song and stylized opening sequence are indelible parts of American culture for many of us.  Like Magnum, P.I., the show was embedded in Oahu's seedy underbelly that meshed with the beautiful scenery and glimpses of an exotic culture that was American, but also something else.

Mostly, though, the show's nostalgia appeal comes from the experience of going to high school on Oahu.  When I watch the show, I see places I've been, hear the slang I remember, and get some of the feel of the place.  Last night's show included a brief hint at the differences in professional dress between Hawaii and the mainland when McGarrett harasses Dan about wearing a tie and looking like a haole (though he doesn't use that word).  Later, Dan is teased about not looking Kama'aina for maintaining his mainland cop style of wearing a tie and patent leather loafers.

Another feature of last night's episode, "Ohana", which struck a chord was the visit to Hickam AFB, where the family lived for out three years on Oahu.  The scene featured a short cut of the Hawaii Air National Guard's F-15 Eagle fighters taking off from the reef runway the base shares with Honolulu International Airport.  When we lived at Hickam, the HANG transitioned from F-4 Phantoms to the new F-15s, changing both the visual affect of living on base, but also the communal sounds we experienced, since there's a large qualitative sound difference between the two jets.  I also remember sitting in a 14-foot Holder sailing dinghy in Hickam Harbor, next to the taxiway leading out to the reef runway, watching both airliners and fighters taking off.

So, the show brings back a lot of memories.  The problem is that so far it treats Hawaii as just backdrop to a show that could be happening anywhere.  Cop shows are not so interesting that I'm going to watch them unless they have something special to give in terms of narrative, culture, or interesting questions.  So far, Hawaii Five-0 is failing this test in the same ways that The Glades and CSI: Miami do, but Magnum, P.I., CSI, and Criminal Minds don't.  The remake of Hawaii Five-0 is still in its early days, but so far it doesn't feel like the writers and producers actually know Hawaii very well.  I'm hoping that changes, because nostalgia will keep my attention for only so long.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Boer War Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography

Barthorp, Michael. The Boer Wars, 1814-1908. Durban: Bok Books International, 1987.

Barthop presents a strictly popular history of the Boer Wars, which he dates from Great Britain’s occupation of South Africa after the war with Napoleon.  The only endnotes are explanatory in nature, and the bibliography is limited.  This greatly reduces the work’s utility to scholars.  Barthop’s primary reference to the actions of the Naval Brigade is to the 250-man unit reinforcing the 9th Brigade under Methuen in 1899, but there are scattered references to sailors sent ashore from various ships taking part in assaults on, and defenses of various positions.

Lady Bellairs, ed. The Transvaal War, 1880. Cape Town: C. Struik (Pty) Ltd, 1972.

This book is a modern reprint of a work originally published in 1885 in the aftermath of the First Boer War.  Claiming to act as an “editor” Lady Blanche St. John Bellairs, resident of South Africa and second wife of Sir William Bellairs, compiled accounts based on printed British government documents and newspapers from South Africa without adding any new information or opinion.  In this way, she discusses the origins of the war and its conduct.  Despite her claims to the contrary, Lady Bellairs does have an agenda – to lionize the heroes of the small garrisons of the Transvaal that held out against the besieging Boer forces.  The work lacks the normal scholarly apparatus of footnotes and bibliography, and seems to occupy a grey area between primary and secondary work.  The appendices do, however provide extracts from some of the documents the work is based on.  These document excerpts and the discussion of the garrisons of the Transvaal make the work worthwhile for scholars who keep Lady Bellairs’ agenda firmly in mind.


Bridgland, Tony. Field Gun Jack versus the Boers: The Royal Navy in South Africa, 1899-1900. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Leo Cooper, 1998.

Tony Bridgland’s Field Gun Jack is a belated attempt to rescue the efforts of the Naval Brigades landed to support the Royal Army during the Second Boer War from the dustbin of history.  To do this he provides a detailed account of the landed sailors’ activities from the moment HMS Powerful was launched in June 1897.  Once hostilities commenced, the outgunned Royal Army desperately needed the additional firepower provided by naval guns mounted on makeshift carriages.  Field Gun Jack intersperses its operational history with a plethora of quotations from letters and other documents, but suffers from complete lack of notes and an extremely short bibliography that is split evenly between primary and secondary sources.  While the details Bridgland provides are useful to the historian, the lack of scholarly apparatus reduces the work’s utility.

Burne, C.R.N. With the Naval Brigade in Natal, 1899-1900. London: Edward Arnold, 1902.

Burne was a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, who after serving as a Gunnery Lieutenant on HMS Thetis commanded a battery of 12-pound naval guns during the Natal campaign of General Sir Redvers Buller.  With the Naval Brigade is the published version of his journal of service during ten months in South Africa.  As such, it describes technical aspects of using naval guns on land, and the transportation of British troops to South Africa.  Burne also portrays the reality of camp life, and the conduct of British operations leading to the relief of Ladysmith.  While the discussion of troop movements are available in many secondary sources, Burne’s candid discussion of camp life and the technical aspects of naval gunnery are useful for scholars interested in the social aspects of military service.


Carver, Field Marshall Lord. The National Army Museum Book of the Boer War.  London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1999.

The sources of this unusual work are the letters, journals, and personal papers of the officers and men that served Great Britain during the Second Boer War.  All of the items used were drawn from the collection of items donated to the National Army Museum, with the goal of providing the reader the a view of the war in the voices of those who served.  As such, it does not deal with the political or diplomatic moves of the war, but with the daily life of the combatants.  It is neither properly an operational history, nor a social history, but an amalgam of the two.  The Naval Brigades do not receive much space, but their activities and experiences are well represented by the accounts of those who witnessed their efforts, and through the voice of Midshipman James Menzies’ letters home.  There are no notes for the historian or student to consult, but there is a short bibliography and a list of those who contributed their documents to the museum.  At the very least, this work provides scholars of the Naval Brigades a valuable starting point for research.

Churchill, Winston. The Boer War: London to Ladysmith via Pretoria and Ian Hamilton’s March.  London: Pimlico, 2002.

This volume contains two written by Sir Winston Churchill during his service as a war correspondent and as a lieutenant with the South African Light Horse in the Second Boer War, and originally published in 1900.  Churchill’s work is perhaps unique in that he presents the plight of prisoners of war in Boer hands, and the challenges of escaping from captivity. The combined texts provide a glimpse at the daily life of a junior officer during the course of the war, but provide little of use to readers desiring the details of any type.  The Naval Brigades are scarcely mentioned despite Churchill’s presence at the scenes of their greatest efforts.  The overall result is that this work is interesting for scholars interested in Churchill, or in the activities of young gentlemen of the Victorian era, but not to those who need solid information about the wars in South Africa.

Crowe, George. The Commission of H.M.S. Terrible. London: George Newnes, Limited, 1903.

Crowe, Master and Arms on HMS Terrible, follows the new ships’ entire first commission.  While the activities of her sailors ashore play a prominent role throughout the text, the first 190 pages cover the Naval Brigades’ activities in South Africa through 1899 and 1900.  The remaining portion of the text focuses on Terrible’s voyage to the China and participation in combat there.  Although not related to the topic of either the Boer War or the Naval Brigade, Crowe’s discussion of his ships’ commissioning and sea trials are interesting and useful for those not already familiar with the tasks involved.  It is critical that readers understand that this work is not a history of either of the conflicts it discusses, rather, it is the history of the ship and its crew.  Due to his focus, Crowe pays significantly more attention to the preparation and activities of the Naval Brigade and ships that many other accounts, one interesting example is his description of the Navy’s efforts to prepare sailors for participation in ground combat at the port of Durban.  Like Lady Bellairs’ work, Crowe straddles the line between primary and secondary source, but is nonetheless required reading for any historian who needs to understand the Royal Navy’s involvement in the Second Boer War.


Farwell, Brian. The Great Boer War.  London: Penguin Books, 1976.

The Great Boer War sets out to present the entirety of the Second Boer War, framing it as an event of the same dramatic consequence as the two World Wars of the twentieth century.  While Farwell may not quite succeed in swaying readers to his view of the war, he does present a comprehensive exploration of the political and military aspects of the conflict.  In doing so, he devotes more time and space than the average history of either Boer War to the activities of the Naval Brigade.  In addition to discussing its use for artillery support, Farwell presents a compelling view of the Marines and sailors of the Naval Brigade gallantly (or foolishly) leading a charge into the teeth of the Boer infantry on the march to Kimberly under Methuen.  Farwell provides all of the normal scholarly apparatus needed for serious study of the wars in South Africa, including a detailed bibliography of primary and secondary sources.


Griffith, Kenneth. Thanks God We Kept the Flag Flying: The Siege and Relief of Ladysmith, 1899-1900.  New York: Viking Press, 1975.


Griffith focuses on the Siege of Ladysmith, but also provides sufficient space to the causes of the Second Boer War and the early stages of the war.  In this preparatory material, Griffith pays special attention to the lack of readiness displayed by the British before the outbreak of conflict, and lays the blame for the fighting on the maneuvering of British capitalists in the Transvaal and the machinations of British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain.  The majority of the text describes the Siege of Ladysmith in detail, providing significant space to the activities of the Naval Brigade’s efforts in counter Boer artillery.  The text provides no footnotes or endnotes, but makes frequent and thorough use of primary sources in the form of direct quotations throughout.  The extensive bibliography provides a large variety of primary and secondary sources useful to scholars desiring information that is more detailed.


Holt, Edgar. The Boer War.  London: Putnam, 1958.

Holt provides little in the way of scholarly apparatus.  He provides no footnotes or endnotes, but does include biographical sketches of major participants in an appendix and a lengthy bibliography that consists primarily of outdated secondary sources.  Despite the outward appearance, that The Boer War is merely a popular work; Holt does include the argument that the discovery of gold and diamond deposits in the 1870s provides a significant motivation for Great Britain to re-annex the Transvaal region. While naval guns are mentioned as taking part in the appropriate actions, Holt gives them, and their crews, short shrift.  As a result, this work is of limited value for scholars or students studying the Boer Wars, whether they hold a particular interest in Naval Brigades, or not.


T.T Jeans, ed. Naval Brigades in the South African War, 1899-1900. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Company, 1901.

Edited by Jeans, a surgeon serving in the Royal Navy, Naval Brigades in the South African War combines the efforts of the officers of various Naval Brigades participating in the Second Boer War.  The text is divided into separate parts, ensuring coverage of all aspects of the Naval Brigades’ activities. Coverage extends beyond the Siege of Ladysmith and Methuen’s march to Kimberly to include Bloemfontein and Grant’s thousand-mile pursuit of De Wet.  Jeans and his fellow officers intended this account to illustrate the esprit de corps of the Royal Navy under arduous conditions, and to ensure that the Naval Brigades’ actions beyond Ladysmith were remembered.  Keeping this in mind, this is a valuable resource for historians of the Royal navy.

Judd, Denis, and Keith Surridge. The Boer War.  London: John Murray, 2002.

Due to constraints by the publisher, the endnotes are limited.  However, the bibliography is extensive and varied, containing large numbers of both primary and secondary sources of all kinds.  Judd and Surridge provide a nuanced narrative of the Second Boer War, complete with diplomatic and political efforts to avoid war.  Despite this, the activities of the Naval Brigade are discussed only in light of the Siege of Ladysmith, in which the Royal Navy’s guns provided much needed counter-battery fire against the Boer’s heavy artillery.  While this might not prove useful to the study of the Navy’s efforts in South Africa, Judd and Surridge provide a useful interpretation of the start of the war and the guerilla campaigns after its official end.

Knox, E. Blake. Buller’s Campaign: With the Natal Field Force of 1900. London: Jonathan Cape, 1902.

Knox, a Lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps, published his memoir of the British campaign in Natal in 1902.  His account focuses on the defense of Ladysmith and the port of Durban against the oncoming Boer forces.  Naval brigades play a small role in Knox’s work, but he places them in the context of the overall campaign, which makes Buller’s Campaign valuable for those desiring to understand their employment under field conditions.  The appendices provide addition information regarding the function of the Medical Corps during the Natal Campaign.

Laband, John. The Transvaal Rebellion: The First Boer War, 1880-1881.  London: Pearson Longman, 2005.

In The Transvaal Rebellion, John Laband combines the political and military aspects of the First Boer War to provide a comprehensive view of its conduct.  Particular attention is devoted to the peace process, even before Majuba, and to the continuing potential for conflicts between British South Africa and the Transvaal Republic and Orange Free State.  While not focusing on the Naval Brigades, Laband discusses each contingent fighting on land, including sixty men and boys from Boadicea and fifty-eight from Dido.  Laband also discusses the roles of a large number of warships and transports of the Royal Navy during the short conflict.  The expected scholarly apparatus abound, with a reference list and notes for each chapter, and a lengthy bibliography of both primary and secondary sources for the entire work.


Lehman, Joseph. The First Boer War. London: Robert Hale, 1972.

Lehman provides a thoroughly scholarly account of the First Boer War in its entirety, from the original settlement of South Africa by the Dutch East India Company, through the tenuous peace established in 1881.  Rather than focusing merely on the final climactic battle at Majuba, Lehman devotes a significant amount of space to the “beleaguered” and “forgotten” British garrisons of the interior. The actions of the Naval Brigade is mentioned only in passing in reference to larger concerns, though special mention is made of the sixty sailors with the Indian contingent, from HMS Dido HMS Boadicea, who brought their cutlasses, rocket tubes, and Gatling guns with them.  The First Boer War relies almost solely on primary sources, including unpublished archival sources from South Africa, the Duke of Cambridge’s papers in the Royal Archives, and the private letters of Wolseley.


James, Lawrence. The Savage Wars: British Campaigns in Africa, 1870-1920. London: Robert Hale, 1985.

James examines Great Britain’s colonial and imperial wars in Africa beyond the confines of the Boer Wars.  While James devotes space to subjects such as the growth of British imperialism, technological advances, and the use of native or colonial troops, he all but ignores the use of Naval Brigades to bolster British artillery.  The Savage Wars provides all of the expected scholarly apparatus, organizing the moderate number of endnotes by chapter.  For sources, James relies on the official records of the Admiralty, Colonial Office, and the Cabinet, in addition to both published and unpublished letters and diaries.  The usual list of secondary sources, including Clowes’ The Royal Navy.

Knight, Ian. Colenso 1899: The Boer War in Natal. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995.

This illustrated popular history of the Second Boer War is almost completely unusable for scholars or students in post-secondary education.  It provides no bibliography, and shallow treatment of all issues.  While the text incorporates photographs of naval artillery in temporary field mounts, the Naval Brigades are mentioned only as the heaviest artillery available to the Royal Army units to which they are attached. 


Nicholls, Bob. Bluejackets and Boxers: Australia’s Naval Expedition to the Boxer Uprising. Sydney: Allen & Unwin Australia Pty Limited, 1986.

This small text focuses on the Australian response to the Boxer Uprising in China in 1900.  Despite focusing on China, rather than on South Africa, Nicholls provides useful information about the Australian recruiting process for naval brigades that may increase understanding of their employment elsewhere in the British Empire.  Readers interested in issues related to Naval Brigades must navigate the work to location the desired information since it is embedded in Nicholls’ narrative.  Nicholls includes photographs, appendices of naval armaments, and personnel statistics, but skimps on the scholarly apparatus.  The small bibliography includes a mixture of secondary and primary sources, but provides no footnotes or endnotes.  Nicholls’s approach is deliberately popular in construction.


Norbury, Henry F. The Naval Brigade in South Africa during the Years 1877-1878-1879. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1880.

Norbury served as the surgeon on HMS Active and as the chief medical officer for the forces the Royal Navy operated on shore from 1877-1879.  His activities predate the outbreak of the First Boer War in 1880, but his journals are useful for the information they contain related to conditions in South Africa and how Great Britain employed sailors ashore at the end of the nineteenth century.  The first sixty-eight pages of texts described the social lives and customs of South African tribes and the climate of the region.  The remainder discusses the role of Naval Brigades in the Anglo-Zulu War that preceded the Transvaal War. Norbury indicates that during this conflict, in which two hundred sailors from HMS Active, along with six twelve-pound guns, rocket tubes, and a Gatling gun, bolstered the soldiers of the 88th Regiment, the Navy used Naval Brigades for both artillery and infantry work.


Pakenham, Thomas. The Boer War. New York: Avon Books, 1979.

Pakenham provides a sweeping narrative of the Second Boer War, beginning with political and financial maneuvering in 1895.  His primary goal is to correct the flaws of two earlier works: the official British History of the War in South Africa and the Times History of the War in South Africa.  The major flaws of those works were a lack of South African sources, lack of attribution of source material, lack of political analysis on the part of the History of the War, and overt partisanship in the Times History.  Pakenham makes four arguments as part of his correction: that capitalists chasing profits from gold and diamonds played a key role in the causing the war, that Sir Redvers Bullers’ command must be understood in the context of a greater political struggle, that Africans, not whites, suffered the most during the war, and that Kitchener’s use of concentration camps for Boer civilians actually gave his opponents both motivation and freedom of movement.  The story of the Naval Brigades effort is embedded among the operation history of the war, and Pakenham’s work provides important material for understanding their critical role.  The Boer War provides the full array of scholarly apparatus, including a comprehensive bibliography.  Since it is also based almost exclusively on primary sources, Pakenham’s text is critical for historians who want to gain a detailed understanding of the later of the two Boer Wars.


Pearse, H.H.S. Four Months Besieged: The Story of Ladysmith. London: Macmillan & Company, 1900.

Four Months Besieged is the combined publication of the Daily News’s correspondent H.H.S. Pearce, who arrived in Africa before the outset of the Second Boer War and observed both the start of the war and the Siege of Ladysmith.  While covering the siege in intimate detail, Pearce fully describes the activities of the Naval Brigade to counter the Boer advantage in artillery and to defend the encampment from attack.  This work is a partisan one, evidenced from Pearce’s praise of the ingenuity of the bluejackets, and his frequent references to “us” and “our”.  Despite this, Pearce provides a handy resource for historians needing multiple perspectives on the conduct of the siege.

Ransford, Oliver. The Battle of Majuba Hill: The First Boer War.  New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968.

 The core of Ransford’s text is a detailed operational history of the British defeat at Majuba in 1881, ending the First Boer War.  This is preceded by an overview of the settlement of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, British annexation of South Africa, and the outbreak of war between the Boer farmers and the British Empire.  The small Naval Brigade of 120 sailors, who served six small artillery pieces and a battery of rocket tubes, appears only sporadically, appears sporadically through the text.  In addition to the expected artillery support, Ransford singles out the small group for the defeat at Majuba because they were unable to wrestle even one Gatling gun to the top.  Although Ransford provides some endnotes and short bibliography, the text is primarily aimed at a popular audience.


Nicholas Riall, ed. Boer War: The Letters, Diaries, and Photographs of Malcolm Riall from the War in South Africa, 1899-1902. London: Brassey’s, 2002.

Nicholas Riall compiled this work using the letters, diaries, and photographs of his grandfather, Malcolm Riall, OBE.  The result is a biographical and pictorial tour of the Second Boer War.  Riall’s letters and diaries mention the Naval Brigade’s guns at Ladysmith and elsewhere, but the overall effort is not particularly useful for most historians, despite the interesting anecdotes and photographs.

Sibbald, Raymond. The War Correspondents: The Boer War.  Dover: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1993.

Based on the reports of correspondents for The Times, this text concentrates on examining the big events of the Second Boer War rather than developing a narrative.  This allows it to cover both critical items and controversial ones in a relatively small space.  Although most of the coverage of the Naval Brigade relates to its use artillery, but unlike most works this is not merely in the context of the Siege of Ladysmith, but also the engagement at Colenso.  Sibbald also shows the Naval Brigade engaged in other activities, including the misguided charge under Methuen and reconnaissance work using naval telescopes at Ladysmith in conjunction with the use of balloons for observation.  The primary negative aspect associated with the origins and intent of this popular work is the lack of citation and bibliography.  Large portions of the reports from South Africa are reproduced, but these do not make up for the scholars’ need for bibliographic details necessary to check facts and arguments.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Books on American Military Culture

I'm on a project discussing American Military Culture that requires me to rely on secondary sources.  I desperately need some articles or books regarding the U.S. Army's move to develop a distinct "Warrior Culture" since 2001, but also discussions of the unique cultures of the four branches of the American armed forces.

Here's what I've got so far, but as anyone who reads the list will see, it has gaps.  I'm more than open to suggestions to fill in or replace items.

Beyond the Wild Blue: A History of the United States Air Force, 1947-1997 / by Walter J. Boyne.

The Transformation of American Air Power / Benjamin S. Lambeth.

Decisive Force : The New American Way of War / F.G. Hoffman.

Decisive Force : Strategic Bombing and the Gulf War / Richard G. Davis.

This People’s Navy : The Making of American Sea Power / Kenneth J. Hagan.

On point : The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom / Gregory Fontenot, E.J. Degen, David Tohn

Technology and the American Way of War / Thomas G. Mahnken.

The American Military Ethic : A Meditation / James H. Toner

The American Culture of War: The History of U.S. Military Force from World War II to Operation Iraqi Freedom / Adrian R. Lewis.

American Military Culture in the Twenty-first Century: A Report of the CSIS International Security Program

Waging War Without Warriors?: The Changing Culture of Military Conflict / Christopher Coker.

American Military History and the Evolution of Warfare in the Western World / Robert A. Doughty

Male Armor: The Soldier-hero in Contemporary American culture / Jon Robert Adams.

The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis / Carl H. Builder

The Warrior Ethos: Military Culture and the War on Terror / Christopher Coker

Military Life: The Psychology of Serving in Peace and Combat, Vol. 4: Military Culture / Thomas W. Britt

The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel. / Dima Adamsky

The New American Way of War: Military Culture and the Political Utility of Force / Ben Buley

Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq / John W. Dower

“The Warrior Ethos and Soldier Combat Skills,” U.S. Army Field Manual FM 3-21.75, January 2008

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The Guizhou University Kurt Vonnegut Book Club

Originally posted 12 May 2008...

In light of all of the ultra-nationalist rhetoric from both the CCP and angry young Chinese men regarding the Tibet riots and the Olympic torch relay, this give me hope for our relations with China, and for China's future.  Students at Guizhou University not only smuggle in copies of Kurt Vonnegut books to read and discuss in a very serious manner.  They seem to want a better understanding of the United States.
“We don’t understand all of what Vonnegut wrote,” the club’s president, Isabel Yuan, told me, “But we think reading him helps us understand America.” Isabel and I spoke over a steaming pot of bitter pu’ er tea in a restaurant not far from the Gui Da campus. She sat upright, her black eyes focused on the porcelain cup in her hand. “Vonnegut,” she continued, “is our window into the American mind.”
The students give each other writing assignments before meetings in a way that students at elite American schools are reputed to, but that I have a hard time imagining of my community college or university undergrads.
KC members had posed these questions at last month’s meeting, and each member had prepared a written answer, which they took turns reading, occasionally correcting each other’s pronunciation of uncommon English words (“paradigm,” “subversion,” “granfalloon”).
The most insightful essay came from the only male in the club, a 23-year-old with thick, wire-framed glasses. He went by the name Little Dragon (in honor of martial arts actor Bruce Lee), and read in slow, halting English: “Intellectuals in America and intellectuals in China serve different roles. In China, the role is to serve the state. In America, the role is to serve the truth.” Little Dragon paused, looked nervously at me while pushing his glasses up his nose, and continued. “But it is said that individual Americans feel lost. They have material excess but no equality, and democracy but no power. So Vonnegut sees there is no truth worth serving, and simply behaves ridiculous.”
Among the most interesting items are that few students have an awareness of the Great Firewall of China, which censors Internet traffic in and out of the PRC, unless you are savvy enough to use a proxy server or VPN to get around it.  That, and that the leader of the Kurt Club believes that Chinese students need to learn to mock their leaders in the way that Americans mock theirs.  I would suggest the British model myself, as it seems more tolerant of dissent than our own ultra-nationalistic and partisan mode.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Recruiting "Hackers"

We'll leave aside the whole issue of nomenclature - the hackers/crackers dichotomy - and just get to the meat of the problem.  The DoD, the entire U.S. government really, is in desperate need from experts in information security - the folks commonly known as hackers.  That need led to the creation of CYBERCOM to act as the nation's defensive bulwark against computerized intrusion and to develop some sort of offensive capability.  To attract young people with the right skills, the DoD sponsors competitions to find and develop potential recruits.

All that is fine.  The problem is that the military doesn't really get how to recruit and retain the people it needs.  Adam Weinstein points this problem out, but at the same time manages to minimize the problem by bringing Private Bradley Manning into his argument.  Manning is a good example of poor screening for security clearances, but not exactly a paragon of computing virtuosity.  Unless I've missed something critical, my 86 year-old grandmother has all the skills (but none of the desire) Manning needed.  He isn't so much an example of a "cyber-savvy intel weenie", but the traditionally dangerous disaffected insider.

Both Weinstein and West Point researcher Lt. Col. Gregory Conti miss the point when they address the problem of recruiting and retaining infosec capable geeks.  Weinstein argues that you have to show potential recruits that CYBERCOM is doing good things for the world as opposed to promoting death and destruction, while Conti argues that the DoD just needs to be ubercool to attract and keep "hackers".  Both arguments show that neither Weinstein or Conti (or the DoD) get the culture of the people they need (or think they need, which is a whole different story).

18 year-old Michael Coppola illustrates the problem to a small degree.  He rejected the idea of enlisted because he associates the military lifestyle with regimentation and lack of creativity.  While Conti argues that the culture of CYBERCOM is still malleable, I don't buy it.  The US Army just ordered Special Forces troops in Afghanistan without ongoing interactions with Afghans to shave their beards despite knowing that facial hair is an important cultural tool in that environment - a fact we've known since the Templars grew beards and cut their hair to gain the respect of their Muslim neighbors. 

That was a thousand years ago.

So we're supposed to expect that the DoD will allow a creative and libertarian culture at CYBERCOM, when the Special Forces guys in combat have to shave?  That's a joke, right?  Do these people even know what kind of tools CYBERCOM needs?  Look at the difficulty Weinstein reports at getting terminals that could access Facebook, and then tell me that CYBERCOM will provide its recruits with the unfettered access to the Internet they need to find new exploits in the wild, develop their own, and test them out.  Is that a realistic expectation when it seems like the approach is to make it seem like a cool job for young men?

In my old career as a Systems Administrator, I knew a few guys with the types of skills and a desire to serve in the military (they couldn't due to health issues) and appreciation of the military culture.  Most of the folks that the DoD would want to recruit, though, are interested in hierarchical organizations, want the freedom to dress as they want, wear their hair however they feel, work flexible hours, and expect to not only modify their machines at will, but to have free run of networks and the Internet.  That's a large part of the reason they want to work for companies like Google.  Maybe one percent of the potential "hackers" the DoD tries to recruit are likely to fit the bill.

I'm not even convinced by the numbers they say they need.  Does DoD really need 10-30,000 of them?  Or do they need a few hundred exceptional folks and a whole bunch of homegrown guys like me - who aren't coders, but are smart, interested, and determined to both secure and penetrate networks given the opportunity, time, and the tools.  Think of it this way - how many guys like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird does a basketball team need?  You need both stars and role players to win the championship.  To me, you need some brilliant guys, along with some guys who are good to get the infosec job done.  Just like in team sports. 

The Dream Team is not what DoD needs, just guys who can get the job done.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Books - New Acquisitions on Gender & History

As part of preparing for PhD comprehensive exams, I'm sitting in on Dr. Holly Grout's pro-seminar on Gender in European History.  My dissertation research about French and American soldiers in Vietnam has a large gender (masculinity) component, so this helps on multiple levels.

  1. Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England
     
  2. Judith Surkis, Sexing the Citizen: Morality and Masculinity in France, 1870-1920
     
  3. Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London
     
  4. Ann Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule
     
  5. Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man
     
  6. Mary Louise Roberts, Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in fin-de-siècle France
     
  7. Whitney Chadwick and Tirza Latimer eds., The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris Between the Wars

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Vietnam War Reading

Every time Dr. Jones teaches his Vietnam War class, I get several requests from other grad students about what their options are for his book review assignments (they should really ask his PhD candidate Becky).  Each year I give them a basic list based on their preferences, but this time around, I'm going for a  master list that covers a little bit of everything.

Here's what I have so far, and it is by no means exhaustive, just what I have here in Tuscaloosa:

  1. Bing West, The Village
  2. Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once... And Young
  3. Bernard Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place
  4. Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy
  5. Frances Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake
  6. Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History
  7. John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife
  8. Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War
  9. Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie
  10. William Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A life
  11. Rick Newman and Don Shepperd, Bury Us Upside Down
  12. Tom Mangold and John Penycate, The Tunnels of Cu Chi
  13. H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty
  14. James Olson and Randy Roberts, Where the Domino Fell
  15. Truong Nhu Tang, A Viet Cong Memoir
  16. William Duiker, Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam
  17. Mark Moyar, A Triumph Forsaken
  18. David Anderson, Facing My Lai: Moving Beyond the Massacre
  19. Kendrick Oliver, The My Lai Massacre in American History and Memory
  20. James R. Ebert, A Life in a Year: The American Infantryman in Vietnam, 1965-1972
  21. Deborah Nelson, The War Behind Me
  22. Frederik Longevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam
  23. Michael Lind, Vietnam: The Necessary War
This list is light on the air war and naval warfare, so that needs to be fixed.  Any comments or suggestions for what might be missing?

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Misusing History, Max Boot Style

Last Wednesday Jason Sigger at Armchair Generalist took Max Boot to task for his argument that decreasing American armed forces was directly correlated to foreign aggression, so we have to maintain or grow the military to maintain peace and stability despite the increasing cost and outsized effect on the Federal budget.  As Jason points out, Boot ignores all of the social, economic, and cultural factors related to war.  Of course, that's as far as he goes.

Boot's argument is actually worse that Jason makes out. Taking every major conflict the United States fought in turn, Boot argues that merely maintaining a large standing military would have prevented or reduced all those wars, and provides numbers to prove his point.  The problem is that he does so by completely ignoring the context in which those conflicts occurred, and goes off the rails almost immediately.

In his theory, Boot contends that if only the young American republic had kept the standing army at 35,000 men instead of reducing it to a paltry 10,000, the Whiskey Rebellion, War of 1812, Quasi War, and conflict with the Barbary pirates would have all been avoided.  Of course, this requires us to ignore the Founding Fathers' fundamental ideology against standing armies and the ideology of the Revolution arguing that it was both the right and duty of citizens to resort to arms to defend against oppression.  It also assumes that keeping soldiers would have been effective against Great Britain, or would have somehow translated into strength at sea (against Great Britain, France, and Barbary).

The Civil War gets similar, if even less nuanced treatment.  Arguing that 50,000 troops were too few to effectively enforce Reconstruction in the defeated Confederacy, Boot ignores that fact that many in the North simply did not have the political will or interest to radically redraw the political and social order of the South over the long term.  Northerners also had no interest in paying the taxes needed to support large bodies of troops - one of the debates featured in the 1876 Presidential election was over the Federal budget and cost of maintaining a large standing Army.  If Boot thinks that large bodies of Union troops could have forced permanent social, economic, and political change in just 11 years after the end of the Civil War, he is sadly mistaken.  Fighting the pro-Confederate insurgency would have required a permanent Federal presence lasting generations.

Despite all of this, Boot's argument runs into its biggest problems when he addresses the 20th century.  Boot has completely taken leave of his senses if he truly believes that Woodrow Wilson, who could barely drag his nation to war by relying on the Zimmerman Telegram, sinking of the Lusitania, and the Creel Commission, and could not get a Republican Senate to join the League of Nations at the end of the war, could have persuaded them to maintain a force much larger than the 250,000 man force that still existed in 1928.  When arguing that American forces in France or Poland would have somehow deterred Hitler in 1939, Boot conveniently ignores American isolationism in the interwar period and the hoops FDR had to jump through to provide aid to England with the Lend-Lease Acts of the 1930s, which were a response to the cost of America's involvement in World War I.

The fact of the matter is that the size of our Armed Forces is not the only factor leading to these conflicts or how quickly or easily they were ended.  We do need to have a national conversation about the size military we need, and what we need to use it for, what the threats we face are, and how to pay for it all.  But, in having this conversation, we should not be distracted by false assertions and emotional arguments about the past.  Hard as it is to do, we need to examine this complex and serious issue as rational and responsible citizens.  That means accepting that the world is a complicated place, and that mere numbers of troops won't solely determine whether we are secure, or not.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Containing China

There's more going on in East Asia re: containing China's influence in the region. 

While the Clinton State Department works to increase ties to Vietnam, Defense Secretary Gates is working to increase military cooperation with Indonesia, in moves designed to show U.S. commitment in the South China Sea and to bolster efforts to defend freedom of the seas in the face of Chinese territorial claims.

At the same time, the United States agreed to sell Taiwan two Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates for anti-air and anti-sub work, bolstering the island's defense against the PRC, which continues to claim that Taiwan is historically part of China.  Other regional powers are also working to build defenses against a potential sea threat from the PRC.  Japan is building supersonic anti-ship missiles that it can launch from fighter aircraft to counter Chinese carriers, destroyers, and cruisers, and increasing the size of its submarine fleet to counter the larger number of submarines deployed by the People's Liberation Army Navy.

What I find interesting is that the label "containment" doesn't appear in these discussions.  Instead Clinton and Gates are working to maintain the "balance of power" in East and Southeast Asia by building partnerships with regimes that are liberalizing and modernizing while still trying to push them on human rights issues.  On the surface this is different from Cold War containment, in which any opponent to the Soviet Union was our friend, no matter how nasty that "ally" might be, but containment it is, and our partners are still folks who fear an aggressive larger neighbor. 

The change in labels from "containment" to "balance of power" makes some PR sense.  Given America's Cold War efforts at containment, China might see it as an aggressive move against them, and the Obama administration's efforts are not so much a move to isolate China completely, as to keep the PRC in check.  To my mind, though, the phrase "balance of power" recalls the 19th and early 20th century European diplomacy leading up to World War I, and we all know how that worked out.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Desert Stuck...

That's how my Dad described it when he got back from Bahrain Mother's Day of 1991. 

It's hard to believe that 20 years ago, President George Herbert Walker Bush deployed the 82nd Airborne Division and the First Air Wing to Saudi Arabia to deter Saddam Hussein from invading Saudi Arabia.  At the time I was a sophomore at USF, starting my first semester of Army ROTC, and arguing with my soon to be ex-girlfriend about the deployment.  She had joined the National Guard to get money to pay for school and was upset about the prospect of having to deploy to the desert (that didn't happen since she spent the next 8 weeks in Basic Training at Ft. Dix, followed by a year at Ft. Sam Houston).  My unfeeling response to her was to ask her exactly what she had expected when joining the Army...

Desert Shield and Desert Storm were an interesting experience in Tampa.  An anti-war group on campus tried to prevent us from wearing our uniforms, when there were rallies at the campus flea market the cadre warned us to not start anything (we promptly went over wearing our gold and black t-shirts), the campus police stopped to investigate our early morning ruck-run, and when our color guard participated in parades, SGM McLaughlin reminded us to defend the colors from protesters.  The flag-bearers were specifically reminded that they were carrying a spear.

The one thing that really gave us pause was the deployment directive posted in the cadet lounge.  It specified that in the event of a full-scale call-up of all forces, cadets who had finished Advanced Camp would be commissioned, that cadets in their third year would finish training before commissioning, and scholarship cadets would be enlisted in the ranks.  The rest of us would stay in school, assuming we didn't volunteer on our own.

These days I teach college students, mostly freshmen and sophomores, who are 18 or 19 years old, but nothing has made me feel quite so old as this anniversary.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Feds Paying for Outsourcing?

When this story first arrived, I tweeted my amazement and left it at that.  How could the Federal government be paying for folks in developing countries to learn IT skills and improve their English language skills to make it easier for American companies to outsource decent paying jobs?  This goes far beyond abusing H1-B visas for IT workers or having a tax code that stupidly encourages American companies to outsource IT work and call centers, but actively encourages outsourcing by having the American taxpayer pay to teach people in other countries the skills they need to take jobs out of an economy with 9.5% employment.

I was going to let it rest, but Matther Yglesias wrote at both The Progressive Realist and Think Progress that this program is little different from building schools or clinics because those bit of foreign aid might also encourage outsourcing by teaching skills (math and languages) and keeping people alive.  He also argues that it is natural for foreign workers with IT and English language skills to seek work with vendors providing outsourcing solutions.  His point is that looking at this particular program as a threat to American jobs is overly simplistic and that government efforts that lower trade barriers and improve conditions in the rest of the world are inherently good.

I think, though, that he misses the point.  Even if you accept the free trade ideology that free trade improves the lives of people everywhere, that jobs that move overseas will be replaced by value-added jobs here, and that free trade also spreads democracy and capitalist ideals, spending taxpayer money while running gigantic budget, trade, and current accounts deficits with 35 million Americans out of work is fundamentally stupid unless it somehow promises to quickly help fix any of those problems.  This program promises to do quite the opposite.

Beyond that, the whole idea that an advanced job skills program to teach is far different from programs that provide basic services such as elementary education or vaccinations.  They are an order of magnitude difference, and shouldn't be in the same conversation.  The only way the three types of foreign aid might reach some sort of equivalence is in prevention of terrorism, and that's a big stretch since many analyses of the sources of terrorists from the Middle East is that a significant fraction are highly trained engineers that are frustrated by lack of opportunity at home.  If that's the case, then this could have the opposite effect by producing a surplus of trained workers with no jobs (although this program does place them with outsourcing vendors).

Airpower and COIN Update

Last weekend Air Force Times carried an article about converting A-10 Warthogs to drones for use in combat.  The idea is that a JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller) would designate targets and coordinate weapons release with an A-10 pilot in order to increase accuracy on the battlefield.  Since current COIN doctrine is worker hard to limit civilian casualties, the idea is that this would reduce accidents, and be more useful than the current fleet of MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones due to speed and ordnance flexibility.  DARPA program manger Stephen Waller contends that the A-10 in question could have a pilot in it, or not, but that his vision is that a soldier could use his JTAC computer to attack targets just like he uses his M-16.

Depending on the implementation, this may be a good idea, or even a good temporary solution until USAF gets some dedicated COIN aircraft in the inventory.  I'm not in favor of a drone-only A-10 solution, even paired with a JTAC controller on the ground, having an A-10 pilot in a trailer many miles away reproduces some of the same problems with drones - a highly destructive weapons system, flying at high speed, that may crash on take-off or landing, or due to enemy fire because a desk chair pilot doesn't have the same situational awareness as a pilot in the aircraft.  Instead of losing at least a third of the drones we fly, we'll be losing the more expensive, more capable A-10s at a high rate.  we just may not be hitting as many of the wrong targets while doing it.

Don't get me wrong, this solution, if it works when demonstrated in 2014, looks a damn site better than the Reaper or planned follow-on aircraft, and infinitely better than dropping a JDAM from 30,000 feet from a B-1.  However, I can't help but think that this is just a stop-gap until funding for a real turboprop aircraft for COIN comes through.  New CentCom head Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis and ISAF Commander Gen. David Petraeus both want a replacement for the old A-1 Skyraider and OV-10 Bronco, but since the leading candidate comes from Brazil's Embraeur, funding is proving hard to come by.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Lebanon, too...

The Blackberry ban is official in Saudi Arabia, and now Lebanon is examining the device's potential threat to security.  Combine that with the lackluster launch of the Blackberry Torch with data that says that 58% of Blackberry users (like me) are planning on moving to an iPhone or Android based device like the DROID X, and things look grim for Research in Motion.

Update: RIM and Saudi Arabia have come to an accord over monitoring.

Containment Redux?

Maybe it's just me, but looking back at the past few weeks of U.S. activity in East Asia, I can't help but wonder if we have a quiet sort of containment policy against China going in the region. There just seems a pattern, not just of the United States being more assertive in Asia, but of making moves to counter Chinese influence.

The first item to get my attention was the Obama administration completely ignoring China's objections to the joint U.S. - South Korea Invincible Spirit exercises that followed the Cheonan incident with North Korea. While the obvious purpose of the war games was deterring North Korean aggression (a tepid response to their sinking of a South Korean vessel, if there ever was one), it also serves to remind China that their are other powers with not only interests in the region, but with the ability to project enough power to protect their interests.

A second tidbit was the United States' offer to mediate territorial disputes in the South China Sea.  The PRC claims sovereignty over all of the waters and small islands in this highly populated area, and like with Tibet and Taiwan tries to fall back on a dubious historical basis to bolster its claims.  The Chinese government magnanimously says it will allow interested parties access to the sea lanes, but, of course, it is going to decide who has legitimate interests.  As much as an effort to reduce tension in the South China Sea, this is also a way for the United States to gain influence by supporting the smaller regional powers against China's territorial ambition.

The third puzzle piece showed up today.  The United States is negotiating a deal to help Vietnam develop nuclear power, including its own fuel enriching facilities.  For its part, Vietnam says it does not want to develop weapons-grade nuclear material because that would make China nervous, inviting it to become militarily involved in Vietnam.  While the Vietnamese won their border war with China in 1979, the outcome these days is far from certain, and you don't ask for a war you just can't win.  Still, the American negotiators indicate that China is not part of the nuclear power discussions since the deal is between Vietnam and the United States.  I find the negotiators' bluntness in saying that it wasn't any of China's business really interesting, almost provocative.

Combine this with renewed engagement in Thailand and our traditional defensive partnership with Australia, and you might see an outline of a Chinese containment regime.  The question is whether this combination is just happenstance, or if the President's advisers see the PRC as a competitor that needs closer watching?