Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 152

Weekend Mashup

It's been one month since the June 8th launch of "It's the Tribes, Stupid." One month since I stepped into the blogosphere, sent my first "tweet" and was introduced to more sites, blogs, and social media participants than I knew existed. It has been a real education.
 As I move forward, ...

Horse Sense, or What We Can Learn from a British Cavalry Officer of the 1830s

One of my favorite writers, Patrick Devenny, wrote an article recently for Foreign Policy that's not only fascinating and fun, but also has much to teach us about, in Mr. Devenny's words, "one of the most complicated problems in Afghanistan today: the training and oversight of local defense forces."
 
The article, ...

A Tale of Two Captains, Part Two

 


[caption id="attachment_365" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Tribal elders tell US Special Forces about their "muj days," fighting the Russians":][/caption:]

A week ago I ran a post about two young Army captains—Jim Gant and Michael Harrison—who served in the same valley in Konar province, Afghanistan.  Their service was six years apart, yet the two ...

What I've Learned About Blogging So Far

In the coming weeks, I'll start posting on regular days, probably Mondays and Thursdays (I'm working on it), probably a long piece and a short one. On other random days I'll post "I take it back" pieces, highlighting how comments or correspondence have changed or expanded my thinking. I want ...

Sisyphus, Sean Naylor and C-SPAN

First, many thanks to all correspondents and contributors for the tremendous and very thoughtful response  to the previous post, "A Tale of Two Captains." More to come in a couple of days about Capt. Harrison's work, including an update dispatch from him in Konar.
But first, here's a strikingly apt flashback ...

Gifts of Honor: A Tale of Two Captains

 

[caption id="attachment_323" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Mangwel and the Konar River Valley":][/caption:]

June 22nd, the Washington Post ran an excellent article by Greg Jaffe, titled “A Personal Touch in Taliban Fight.” The piece is about a young Army captain, Michael Harrison, and his up-close-and-personal work as a company commander in the remote ...

Part Two: The Tribesman in All of Us

One of the acts that tribes frequently practice is ritual scarification. Tattoos, circumcision, mutilation of the flesh. The purpose is to draw a line between who's a member of the tribe and who isn't. This is Us ... this is Not Us.

Non-hereditary tribes--criminal organizations, elite military units, certain religious or ...

The Tribesman In All Of Us

I was in Frankfurt a couple of summers ago and there was a young man at the hotel named Kaitet Olla Kishau. He was a Masai from Kenya. Kaitet is a big, tall, good-looking guy; he speaks English and German; he's married to a European lady; he's a writer and ...

Lawrence of Arabia on Tribes

[caption id="attachment_267" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Maj. Jim Gant, ODA 316, with Malik Noor, Mangwel, Konar Province":][/caption:]

I like very much Gen. McChrystal's idea for a new Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell (cited in Max Boot's article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal). This entity would be an ongoing "corps of roughly 400 officers ...

Summing Up: Our First Week and What We’ve Been Talking About

 

[caption id="attachment_248" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Courtesy Prof. Andrew Lubin":][/caption:]

This blog has been up now for a little more than a week. Many thanks to all who have contributed comments--and to all who will do so in the coming weeks. Now seems as good a time as any to pause for breath ...