This is on my list, though in all honesty I have been re-reading the collected combat histories written by SLA Marshall compiled during '64 thru '69 in VietNam. The parallels between the startegic thinking of NVA and Minh government and the strategies of Islamofacist terror groups are clear. A passage,
"We have two Vietcong holidays coming up within the week," Norton(General Jack Norton)said,"and so we figure that is why we might catch them coming on."
"But is that the way their minds work?"I (Marshall)asked. "Do they give a damn about their holidays? I suggest their target is not the body of your soldiers but the emotions of the American masses. They will do everything they can to spoil the Christmas season for our people and toward deepening their resentment of the war. If that reasoning is correct, then the hour just before the Christmas Truce begins is the time of main danger."
Norton pondered, then said,"It could be so."
This from December, 1966. History clearly shows Marshall's line of reasoning was absolutely dead on. And the ongoing actions of Al Queda and other terror organisations clearly shows they have learned those lessons, while the West has not.
Sorry to rant! I been awake several hours this AM reading and it tends to anger me. Wifey has read Freakonomics, I skimmed through it. As you say, I have already gone over Marxist dialectic many years ago. A "new" writting of it holds no interest for me.
This is on my list, though in all honesty I have been re-reading the collected combat histories written by SLA Marshall compiled during '64 thru '69 in VietNam. The parallels between the startegic thinking of NVA and Minh government and the strategies of Islamofacist terror groups are clear. A passage,
"We have two Vietcong holidays coming up within the week," Norton(General Jack Norton)said,"and so we figure that is why we might catch them coming on."
"But is that the way their minds work?"I (Marshall)asked. "Do they give a damn about their holidays? I suggest their target is not the body of your soldiers but the emotions of the American masses. They will do everything they can to spoil the Christmas season for our people and toward deepening their resentment of the war. If that reasoning is correct, then the hour just before the Christmas Truce begins is the time of main danger."
Norton pondered, then said,"It could be so."
This from December, 1966. History clearly shows Marshall's line of reasoning was absolutely dead on. And the ongoing actions of Al Queda and other terror organisations clearly shows they have learned those lessons, while the West has not.
Sorry to rant! I been awake several hours this AM reading and it tends to anger me. Wifey has read Freakonomics, I skimmed through it. As you say, I have already gone over Marxist dialectic many years ago. A "new" writting of it holds no interest for me.