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		<title>Capturing Saddam</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2011/12/12/capturing-saddam/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2011/12/12/capturing-saddam/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:43:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark Thompson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Army]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Author Q&A]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Veterans]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://battleland.blogs.time.com/?p=61748</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Seems kind of funny that the same month we’re pulling out of Iraq, retired Army lieutenant colonel Steve Russell is releasing We Got Him! A memoir of the hunt and capture of Saddam Hussein. Russell, who served 21 years in the Army, was directly involved in Saddam’s capture in the infamous “spider hole” near Tikrit, eight years ago Tuesday. The new Iraqi government executed Saddam by hanging Dec. 30, 2006. Battleland chatted with Russell about his book in an email exchange: Why did you write We Got Him? I felt a moral obligation to the soldiers we served with and especially those we lost. What did you learn in writing the book? When we lived it, we were so engaged in it that it did not seem as impossible as it now looks today. I also learned a lot about the enemies that we fought. What role did you play in Saddam&#8217;s capture? I commanded an Infantry task force of a thousand soldiers in Tikrit and was involved heavily from June until his capture in December. Tell us about the key tip that led to Saddam’s capture. After closing the ring for five months, we had three series of raids that led us to Saddam&#8217;s key man named Mohammed al-Musslit. We felt if he were ever captured, he would have to know where Saddam was. He did. What don’t people understand about the hunt for Saddam? It was not an instant or chance thing. It was a six-month manhunt involving many players, with both special operations and regular forces working hand in hand with one another. What did the hunt for Saddam teach you? And the country? Don&#8217;t quit. If it is worth doing it is worth finishing. We understood this at the lowest level and that is why Saddam was captured. Iraq and its people taught me that there are good human beings all over the world that are often subject to tyranny with little hope of escape.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=61748&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Author Q&amp;A</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/author-qa/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/we-got-him-cover.png?w=168</featured_image>
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		<title>Author Chat: War in Pre-Revolutionary America</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2011/11/16/author-chat-war-in-pre-revolutionary-america/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2011/11/16/author-chat-war-in-pre-revolutionary-america/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:04:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark Thompson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Author Q&A]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://battleland.blogs.time.com/?p=60402</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Eliot Cohen is one of those Washington, D.C., polymaths who, when he’s not professing at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is putting together the Gulf War Air Power Survey or the already-classic Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime. In his spare time, he writes books that are – dare we say it? – fun to read (not to say that the GWAPS wasn’t a hoot, in its own way). His latest is Conquered into Liberty – the lengthy struggle among the British, French, Americans, Canadians, and Indians – that helped forge American geopolitics and the nation&#8217;s military culture. They fought over that long-ago keystone of North America – that corridor running from Albany to Montreal, dominated by the Champlain valley &#8212; and known to Native Americans as the Great Warpath. Battleland chatted via email with Cohen about his pre-revolutionary book: Why did you write Conquered into Liberty? The book deals with battles along the “Great Warpath” from Albany to Montreal over two hundred years.  It is an area that had fascinated me as a boy: in recent years, though, I began to conclude that that period of chronic warfare was deeply important for understanding the American way of war. What does the title mean? The Continental Congress ordered the invasion of Canada in 1775, before the United States had even declared its independence from Great Britain.  In advance of a two pronged invasion – one north along the Great Warpath, one through the woods of Maine – the Congress had a subversive letter addressed to the French residents of Canada spread about by American agents.  It begins, “You have been conquered into liberty.”  Right there you have one of the enduring themes of American strategy: the notion that one can, in fact, conquer an enemy into liberty. Its what we did to Germany and Japan during World War II, after all – and, some would say that we are still at it. Was Canada really an enemy of the U.S.? It might be more correct<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=60402&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>National Security</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/national-security/</primary_category_link>
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		<title>Is America a &#8220;Wounded Giant&#8221;?</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2011/11/15/is-america-the-wounded-giant/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2011/11/15/is-america-the-wounded-giant/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Nov 2011 11:29:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark Thompson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Author Q&A]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pentagon]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://battleland.blogs.time.com/?p=60298</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Michael O’Hanlon is one of those perpetually peripatetic Pentagon punditeers. When he’s not busy commenting from his perch at the Brookings Institution, the former Congressional Budget Office military expert is at Time appearing on Command Post (as he is Tuesday), penning an op-ed for the New York Times (as he did Monday), or traveling the world (he’s just back from Afghanistan). Battleland conducted the following emailed Q&#38;A with O’Hanlon before he headed for the war zone. The bottom line in his new e-book, The Wounded Giant: America’s Armed Forces in an Age of Austerity, is a lot like Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s: precision-guided budget cuts – limited to no more than $500 billion over the coming decade – can be safely made through tougher management, changes in military compensation, and a smart reduction in the number of ground, air, and naval forces. Deeper cuts, he warns, are potentially catastrophic: Is it fair to call America a “wounded giant”? YES!! If so, why? We are still the giant &#8212; far and away number one in military power, far and away number one in the size and capability and economic power of the alliance system we lead, still tied for top in the world in manufacturing believe it or not, still the best in research and education, still the highest-ranking large country according to the Davos World Economic Forum competitiveness index &#8212; and yet we have an eroding manufacturing base, 9% unemployment, trillion dollar deficits, low national savings, a dispirited public, and broken politics. What’s the most important thing you learned/realized by doing this book? How hard it is to do a balanced analysis like the above. Too often, we stay blissfully ignorant as a nation about an issue until we decide it is such an extreme crisis that we might as well just throw in the towel. I dramatize a bit, but all the talk of American decline is a bit much, coming just a few years after we were at the &#8220;unipolar moment.&#8221; Reality is more complex. Are we getting our<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=60298&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Pentagon</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/pentagon-2/</primary_category_link>
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		<title>A Navajo Code Talker…Speaks So We Can Understand, at Last</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2011/10/28/a-navajo-code-talker%e2%80%a6speaks-so-we-can-understand-at-last/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2011/10/28/a-navajo-code-talker%e2%80%a6speaks-so-we-can-understand-at-last/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:01:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark Thompson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Author Q&A]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Japan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military Training]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pentagon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Troops]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Veterans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[navajo code talker]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://battleland.blogs.time.com/?p=59337</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For those of us to young to remember, the exploits of the Navajo code talkers during World War II have become legend. They were the guys who transmitted messages in their native language (with some English mixed in) between the Marine units closing in on Japan – a code the Japanese could not crack. Chester Nez, now 90, tells his story with help from Judith Schiess Avila in their new book Code Talker – The first and only memoir by one of the original Navajo code talkers of WWII. Battleland recently chatted, via email, with Chester: Why did you write Code Talker? I wrote Code Talker: the first and only memoir by one of the original Navajo code talkers of WWII, so people would learn about how my Navajo people helped our country. It’s important that we understand how the diversity of cultures in this country contributes to our strength. In a nutshell, tell us where you were deployed, for how long, and what you did there? Guadalcanal – November 4, 1942 Bougainville – November 3, 1943 Guam – July 21, 1944 Peleliu – September 14, 1944 Angaur – September, 1944 – just a few days On each island our mission was to secure the land for the United States, and we did that. As a code talker, I was responsible for sending messages about battle tactics, things that were needed by the troops (like ammunition and food), and the coordinates of Japanese troop and munitions locations so that our artillery and fighter planes could successfully target the enemy. I stayed on each of the Pacific Islands until they were secured. The group of code talkers I was assigned to work with never got R&#38;R.  When the 1st Marine Division left Guadalcanal, I was assigned to help the 2d Division and then the 3d.  I remained with the 3d except for during the conflicts on Peleliu and Angaur, where I was needed to help out the 1st Marine Division and the Eighty-First Army respectively. What don&#8217;t people &#8220;get&#8221; about what<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=59337&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Veterans</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/veterans-2/</primary_category_link>
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		<title>The General Who Lost Vietnam</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2011/09/30/the-general-who-lost-vietnam/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2011/09/30/the-general-who-lost-vietnam/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:12:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark Thompson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Army]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Author Q&A]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pentagon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Troops]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Veterans]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://battleland.blogs.time.com/?p=58094</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Even now, the easiest way to get into an argument at a V.F.W. bar is to mention Vietnam. Seared into all who fought it &#8212; and many who merely lived through it &#8212; that conflict remains a bitter stew of second-guessing and recriminations. Historian Lewis Sorley &#8212; author of 1999&#8242;s well-regarded A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of American&#8217;s Last Years in Vietnam  &#8212; now zeroes in on General William Westmoreland. Not only is Sorley &#8212; a third-generation graduate of West Point &#8212; a Vietnam veteran and a historian, but he worked for Westmoreland as well. Alas, as a historian, he passed on the opportunity to answer Battleland&#8216;s questions about what Vietnam should teach us about Afghanistan, and who, if anyone, is today&#8217;s Westmoreland, during our email chat earlier this week: What&#8217;s the most important thing you learned writing Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam? The most important, and also the saddest, is that in Vietnam and thereafter Westmoreland was willing to shade or misremember or deny or invent the record when his perceived interests were at stake. This was true in matters both great and small. A very significant instance was his determination to arbitrarily hold down the estimate of enemy strength during a 1967 order of battle controversy. Although Westmoreland denied it, he imposed a ceiling on the reported number of enemy by instructing his intelligence officers to adhere to a “command position” of not more than 300,000, even though newly acquired and more accurate data developed in his own headquarters then indicated a much higher figure. And, to further demonstrate “progress” in reducing enemy strength, Westmoreland arbitrarily and entirely on his own removed from the order of battle several categories of enemy forces that had long been carried there, including during the three years Westmoreland had already been in command of U.S. forces in Vietnam. A more minor case, but one revealing of Westmoreland’s character, stemmed from his unwillingness to level with his senior Marine subordinate at the time of the 1968 Tet Offensive.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=58094&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Veterans</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/veterans-2/</primary_category_link>
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		<title>Wars, Yesterday and Today</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2011/09/22/wars-yesterday-and-today/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2011/09/22/wars-yesterday-and-today/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 22 Sep 2011 10:56:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark Thompson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Army]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Author Q&A]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pentagon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Troops]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Veterans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[green berets]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[h. lee barnes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vietnam]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://battleland.blogs.time.com/?p=57365</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s a profound sense of deja vu among those of us who came of age &#8212; in uniform, at school, in politics &#8212; during the Vietnam war. So much of what is happening today resonates with that conflict in ways both good and ill. Lee Barnes has just written When We Walked Above the Clouds about his experiences early in the southeast Asian campaign as a Green Beret. He spoke with Battleland about that time nearly a half-century ago in an email exchange, and what relevance it has to today. What is the most important thing you learned in writing When We Walked Above the Clouds? I can’t think of just one thing to answer with. There’s no one learning experience in putting together a war memoir. One important result of my having written When We Walked Above the Clouds was the way it served to reconnect with and build friendships among my former teammates as we rehashed the events that shaped us. We discovered in picking away at details that decades later the people we met over the years can’t and don’t understand us the way we understand one another. Another thing that eventuated from writing it was that I realized why over the years my developing, much less nurturing, relationships had been difficult and why I had deep mistrust of authority. The reason revealed itself soon after I completed the first draft of the memoir. I was driving along in traffic, everything normal, when I suffered a panic attack, an event that spurred me to seek help at the VA where I was quickly diagnosed as having delayed-onset PTSD. For four years now I’ve been working with the VA to develop coping skills. What are the key lessons you learned in Vietnam as a Green Beret? All these years later, after earning a graduate degree, publishing books, earning a black belt, and winning tennis tournaments, the one trophy I most prize remains my green beret. As my teammate Rich Norwood said, “We had the adventure of our lives.”<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=57365&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Veterans</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/veterans-2/</primary_category_link>
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		<title>The Lessons of Ending &#8220;Don&#8217;t Ask, Don&#8217;t Tell&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2011/09/16/the-lessons-of-ending-dont-ask-dont-tell/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2011/09/16/the-lessons-of-ending-dont-ask-dont-tell/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:06:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark Thompson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Author Q&A]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Don't Ask Don't Tell]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military Training]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Troops]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Veterans]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://battleland.blogs.time.com/?p=56915</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There is going to be a fair amount of noise in coming days over the expected September 20 end &#8212; that&#8217;s next Tuesday &#8212; of the Pentagon&#8217;s 17-year old policy banning openly gay men and women from serving in uniform. Expect to see some gay service personnel emerge from the closet (most will stay there, some forever), and opponents insist it&#8217;s a big mistake that will lead to all sorts of bad things. But it looks like it is going to happen. So what lessons, if any, can we glean from the effort to change a Pentagon policy and federal law? Glad you asked, because Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, is publishing an e-book next week &#8212; How We Won: Progressive Lessons from the Repeal of &#8220;Don&#8217;t Ask, Don&#8217;t Tell&#8221; &#8212; detailing precisely that. The Palm Center is a California-based research group that has been a leader into research on the issues associated with gays serving in the military. We chatted with him via email for an after-action report on the impending demise of &#8220;Don&#8217;t Ask, Don&#8217;t Tell&#8221;: What&#8217;s the most important lesson of the successful push to repeal &#8220;Don&#8217;t Ask, Don&#8217;t Tell&#8221;? Ideas play a critical role in American politics, even though you can’t touch or even measure them.  DADT was locked in place by a single idea, the notion that allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly would undermine the military.  Scholars already knew in 1993 that that claim was untrue.  But there’s a big difference between a scholarly consensus and what the public believes. In order to make it safe for politicians to repeal DADT, we had to change the public’s mind about this one idea. It took a decade of pounding away at the same message, again and again, for our point to sink in. But by the time we were done, even the Pentagon brass agreed that repeal would not harm the military. We knew we would win at some point because our position was based on evidence and research. But, even<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=56915&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Veterans</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/veterans-2/</primary_category_link>
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		<title>Afghanistan 2.0</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2011/09/13/afghanistan-2-0/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2011/09/13/afghanistan-2-0/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:07:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark Thompson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[9/11]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Author Q&A]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Counter-Insurgency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Intelligence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pentagon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[State Department]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Troops]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://battleland.blogs.time.com/?p=56659</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Some old-timers speak of deja vu all over again: just as Afghanistan became the Soviet Union&#8217;s Vietnam, it could also become America&#8217;s. Tuesday&#8217;s complex attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul &#8212; reputed to be a safer place &#8212; raises anew questions about the scope of the decade-old U.S. war in Afghanistan, and its chances for success. Rodric Braithwaite,  who served as Britain&#8217;s ambassador to Moscow from 1988 to 1992, has just written Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-1989, which details the U.S.S.R.&#8217;s ham-fisted efforts to subdue its southern neighbor. In an email chat with Battleland, he also talks of what lessons America might take from its former superpower rival&#8217;s debacle there: Why has Afghanistan proven so tough for so many great powers over the centuries? “The Grave of Empire” is a tired and misleading cliché. Afghanistan has been successfully invaded many times &#8211; by Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and a host of others. People mostly cite the alleged British failure in the two British-Afghan wars in the nineteenth century. The British wanted to ensure that they, not the Russians, controlled Afghan foreign policy. They could do it directly, by occupying Kabul; or indirectly through bribery (which they called “subsidies”), political manipulation, and extensive military assistance.  Occupying Kabul turned out to be a mistake: the British lost a whole army in 1842 and were defeated in Maiwand in 1880. They reasserted themselves by burning down Kabul and hanging the notables. They then sensibly withdrew, and adopted the indirect method. This enabled them to control Afghan foreign policy until 1919 when, after repelling an Afghan invasion of India, they decided it was no longer worth the expense. The Afghans date their independence from that year &#8211; a measure of British success., not failure. The real lesson is different, as the Russians and Americans have subsequently discovered. It was drawn by a Russian general in 1921: “The country is extremely well adapted to a passive resistance. Its mountainous nature and the proud and freedom-loving character of its people, combined with the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=56659&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Troops</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/troops/</primary_category_link>
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		<title>Writing the Book on Military Mental Health</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2011/09/08/writing-the-book-on-military-mental-health/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2011/09/08/writing-the-book-on-military-mental-health/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:33:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark Thompson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Army]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Author Q&A]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military Families]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military Mental Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military Women]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pentagon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PTSD]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Suicide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Traumatic Brain Injury]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Troops]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Veterans]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://battleland.blogs.time.com/?p=56429</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The literature of war can be literature &#8212; think Stephen Crane&#8217;s The Red Badge of Courage (Civil War), Erich Maria Remarque&#8217;s All Quiet on the Western Front (World War I), or Neil Sheehan&#8217;s A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. And sometimes it&#8217;s less lit and more textbook. That&#8217;s surely the case with the publication of Combat and Operational Behavioral Health. Catchy title it&#8217;s not. It&#8217;s edited (and contributed to) by Battleland&#8217;s own Dr. Elspeth &#8220;Cam&#8221; Ritchie, and because she&#8217;s too modest to toot her own horn, we&#8217;ve decided to blow it for her. The Army&#8217;s former top psychiatrist, she and 152 of her colleagues, largely from the field of military mental health, have just released the latest medical science on the mental challenges associated with combat. They spent six years writing (and rewriting) chapters dealing with everything from post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide, drug dependency, and all of the pathologies we&#8217;ve come to associate with a decade of non-stop war. But they also write about good things: the important role played by chaplains in keeping military minds healthy, for example, and the need to develop ways of improving troops&#8217; mental resilience. We&#8217;re asking Dr. Ritchie about the book, published by the Army&#8217;s Borden Institute (its contents can be downloaded &#8212; for free  &#8212; here): Why is this book important? Let me first give you some background. The Army Medical Department has been publishing Textbooks of Military Medicine for many years. The last two on mental health, War Psychiatry and Preparing in Peace for War, were published in 1994 and 1995. However the lessons learned in these volumes essentially didn&#8217;t include much that happened after World War II. We have now been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for 10 years.  When I proposed the book to the publishers, it was in 2005, and I felt that we needed a volume which would cover the psychological effects of asymmetrical warfare, then called the “Global War on Terror.&#8221; Obviously that includes combat and improvised explosive devices, head trauma<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=56429&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Veterans</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/veterans-2/</primary_category_link>
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		<title>Counterstrike: A Post-9/11 Report Card</title>
		<link>http://nation.time.com/2011/09/06/counterstrike-a-post-911-report-card/</link>
		<comments>http://nation.time.com/2011/09/06/counterstrike-a-post-911-report-card/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:48:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark Thompson</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Author Q&A]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Battleland]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CIA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Counter-Insurgency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cyber]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Homeland Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Intelligence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pentagon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://battleland.blogs.time.com/?p=56181</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There is a flood of 9/11 books now coming onto the market, but Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America&#8217;s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda by Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker of the New York Times should be atop the list of anyone curious about how the U.S. government has grappled with the challenges posed by al Qaeda. Both authors – who have spent careers reporting and writing important stories about U.S. national security – have dissected what the U.S. has gotten right –- and where it has whiffed – over the past decade. The two of them chatted via email with Battleland last week about Counterstrike: What was the most important thing you learned in reporting Counterstrike? Schmitt: As national security correspondents, we always were aware that most of our daily reporting was describing the iceberg above the water and then as much below the surface as we could survey, identify and define. In taking three years to focus on American counter-terrorism strategy, based on almost a decade of reporting, we learned how much had changed, and was changing in the counter-terror fight across the U.S. Government. So we were able to dig out a number of new and exclusive case studies in countering violent extremism on the Web, in financial networks and in the “marketplace of ideas,” as well as on the battlefield. We also struck by how far behind the U.S. government has been, and continues to be, in combating al Qaeda&#8217;s ideology. If you were a schoolteacher grading A-F, what grade would you give the U.S. government for its post-9/11 counter-terror strategy? Shanker: The “kinetic” part of the fight gets an A-. Cyber and financial counterattacks get a B+ (with an E for effort). Efforts to counter the messages of violent extremism are a D, or even failing. Was the Iraq war necessary? Schmitt: A fair question, and we hope you think this is a fair response: As beat reporters for the Times, this answer goes far beyond news judgment to opinion, and we are not columnists<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nation.time.com&#038;blog=20157722&#038;post=56181&#038;subd=timemilitary&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Terrorism</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://nation.time.com/category/terrorism-2/</primary_category_link>
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