A smylere with a knyf

The Temple of Mars Ultor, Rome, completed in 2 B.C.E., commemorating the Battle of Philippi. Ancient History Encyclopedia.

Lt. Col. Dr. John Nagl, Headmaster of the Haverford School, former president of the Center for a New American Security, worshiper at the Temple of Mars Armipotent, and all-round person who likes to find unusual ways of using the word "knife" in book titles—Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, 2002; Knife Fights, 2014—is on the book tour circuit mongering the latter, a Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice (you can catch him with his co-"author" on the army's revised counterinsurgency manual, Gen. Dr. David Petraeus, being interviewed by Max Boot, M.A., no military rank for some reason, at the 92nd Street Y for $45 if you don't mind one of the cheap seats, the night before Halloween).

So he's showing up on NPR and the other usual venues creating buzz by letting everybody know that while the US Armed Forces are helping out the Kurdish People's Protection Units in Syria, what they really ought to be doing is conquering Anbar province in Iraq, something they're really good at, having done it twice already. Indeed, he thinks they ought to keep conquering it at regular intervals for "a generation or more", to honor the sacrifice of those who conquered it the first couple of times, although he acknowledges that doing it then was a "mistake".

He noted in passing that the second US conquest of Anbar was possible only after the Sunni sheikhs of the province decided they were "tired" of having to deal with al-Qa'eda and made common cause with the Americans to get rid of them. He failed to note the that the same sheikhs do not appear to be all that tired of the Da'esh forces that have taken over Fallujah and Mosul and so on, mainly because they are so tired of the US-backed government in Baghdad that they haven't got time to be tired of anything else.

Also, you know, we're not occupying Anbar, and the other guys are; they're not insurgents any more. (Nagl continues to believe with John McCain and other certified fools that there would have been 15,000 "advisors" in boots on the Iraqi ground at this time if not for Obama's fecklessness, and that that would have been a good thing, but they're not there in any case.) In other words, even from the standpoint of enthusiastic fans of counterinsurgency, the people of Anbar are just not available at the moment. When they are, I'm sure they'll give you a call.

Meanwhile in Kobane, the Kurdish situation continues to improve, with local forces leading, inflicting deep damage on the Da'esh fighters, while the American planes back them up, the way it's supposed to work. I'm forced to believe that President Obama understands the military options better than Nagl, Petraeus, and even the Boot his august self.

Also on my radio this morning was the Krista Tippett interview with somebody who really understands a lot of things, in my view, the anthropologist Scott Atran, on a subject relevant to Obama and his dilemma in dealing with people like Nagl as he seeks to make a world with less war:

(starting around 37:00, but start a couple of minutes earlier for a complaint about "legalism" replacing public thinking about social reality, in a way that seems very close to my own views; my transcription)

I had an interesting dinner with someone very close to
the president and the administration
and I went through my sort of shtik about
never before have so few people caused such hysteria in so many
and he posed an interesting question to me
he said OK maybe the president agrees with you
maybe the president does agree that the threat of terrorism
and the reaction of the United States to it has been outsized
that we have overreacted
but now what do you do
what would you advise the president to do
to help convince the American people
that the political landscape has changed
and we should deal with the rest of the world
in a different way

it's a little bit like turning a—
the way policy works is like turning a giant aircraft carrier in a small port
you cannot give as most people do on their blogs or in op-eds
these grand sudden changes and expect them to be meaningful at all
it's got to be by small steps....

I posed this to you know foreign policy people and I said
so what would you suggest and it's fascinating
they all came with data-driven evidence-based arguments
for what's wrong and what we should do
and I sort of said look guys that's not going to work
first of all outside of the academy people are not interested in evidence and data
or even truth
people are interested in persuading and victory
and confirming what they believe in or love
second you haven't addressed any of the emotional aspects of this
which really drive people
revenge, revenge and fear...

If Obama is really working to shift that ship, to make the war a little less hysterical and a little less warlike, the least we can do is not to fall like the Anbar sheikhs on the side of our most dangerous enemies, the people who gave us the Iraq and Afghanistan we have today, viz., the Republican Party and the CIA, and not to distract him with our cries of "Ur doing it rong!"

Venus, Mars, and an Augustan noble, probably after the lost statuary inside the temple of Mars Ultor. Interesting that the god is distinctly shorter than his girlfriend. Via University of Arkansas.