Project White Horse Forum

Making war upon insurgents is messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife.  T.E. Lawrence In a new think piece, one of the best writer/thinkers on line, Mark Safranski at Zenpundit in “The Post-COIN Era is Here; Learning to eat Soup with a Spoon Again” -provides not only more detail on the COIN (“or […]

Haiti – Essence of Decision – Operation Unified Response In attempt to establish a framework for discussion of the many facets of the Haiti disaster, and as a precursor  to addressing the question – What kind of a community or organization –or indeed, group of organizations – can survive and thrive in unconventional, uncertain and […]

Miranda Rights, IEDs, Counter Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, “reasonable doubt,” Counter Insurgency, cyber war, Geneva Conventions, enemy combatants gang warfare and Drug wars,etc., etc, are all elements that must be considered in defining or even just establishing boundary conditions in a search for “what kind of war.”  While certainly this series has not answered […]

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness   Without strategy the science of war overtakes the art of war The human decision-making process, Boyd argues, deals with this conundrum through a constant dialectic of creation and destruction of mental patterns and perceptions in response to a changing and complex observed reality. We cannot […]

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness   ( From The Counter Terrorism Puzzle; A Guide for Decision Makers, used with permission of the author, Dr. Boaz Ganor, the Associate Dean of the Lauder School of Government, at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel, and the founder and Executive Director of the International Institute […]

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness There seems to be a trend toward treating events of terrorism as if they were specifically a law-enforcement problem , rather than  enemy operations in the context of war and warfare. Both require application of force  “but for force to be effective the desired outcome of […]

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness America has an impressive record of starting wars but a dismal one of ending them well. Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is a retired Army Colonel, graduate of  West Point, serving in Vietnam in 1970 and 71.  In […]

Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness  To say “warfare is changing” is banal, obvious and thus irrelevant. When did warfare ever not evolve? The acts of Sept. 11 changed nothing in the Thucydidean and Clausewitzian nature of war, or even its modern practice. America’s choice of response did change U.S. foreign policy […]

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness  … familiar arguments about what can and should be done to reduce America’s vulnerabilities are again filling the airwaves, editorial pages and blogosphere. Several of these arguments are based on assumptions that guided the U.S. response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — and unfortunately, they […]

 Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness A  ”lesson in aerodynamics” might be of interest as painting- hopefully- a useful “picture” of the period from  shortly before the September 11, 2001 8th hour, 46th minute, 40th second impact of American Airlines Flight 11, on through the remainder of the day as initial reaction and response […]