Soldier Dreams
Recently deployed to participate in counterinsurgency operations outside of Kabul, 19-year-old Pvt. Robert Welsh told reporters Monday that for as long as he can remember, he has wanted to serve his country by fighting in Afghanistan. "My most vivid childhood memories are of seeing the war on TV and imagining one day I'd be able to grow up and come over here to fight for my country," said Welsh, who has followed the U.S. struggle against the Taliban for more than half his life and once spent recesses at school make-believing he and his fellow third-graders were fighting the war on terror. "I honestly never thought I'd get the chance to participate all these years later, but here I am." Welsh went on to say that while he doesn't want to get his hopes up, he remains cautiously optimistic that his own children will one day follow in his footsteps by fighting in Afghanistan.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/newly-deployed-soldier-has-dreamed-of-fighting-in,26433/
"Issues With Various Countries"
TO: Doug Feith
FROM: Donald Rumsfeld
SUBJECT: Issues w/Various CountriesWe need more coercive diplomacy with respect to Syria and Libya, and we need it fast. If they mess up Iraq, it will delay bringing our troops home.We also need to solve the Pakistan problem. And Korea doesn't seem to be going well.Are you coming up with proposals for me to send around?Thanks.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/02/what-its-like-to-work-for-donald-rumsfeld/71521/
Imitation of Imperial Life
Everyone aimed at security: no one accepted responsibility. What was plainly lacking, long before the barbarian invasions had done their work, long before economic dislocations became serious, was an inner go. Rome’s life was now an imitation of life: a mere holding on. Security was the watchword — as if life knew any other stability than through constant change, or any form of security except through a constant willingness to take risks.
http://3weirdsisters.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/someone-stop-this-man-before-he-writes-again/
The Fragile Empire
Great powers are complex systems, made up of a very large number of interacting components that are asymmetrically organized. They operate somewhere between order and disorder. Such systems can appear to operate quite stably for some time; they seem to be in equilibrium but are, in fact, constantly adapting. But there comes a moment when complex systems "go critical." A very small trigger can set off a "phase transition" from a benign equilibrium to a crisis. Historians often misunderstand complexity; they are trained to explain calamity in terms of long-term causes. In reality, most of the "fat-tail" phenomena that historians study are not the climaxes of prolonged and deterministic story lines; instead, they represent perturbations, and sometimes the complete breakdowns, of complex systems. A small input to such a system can produce huge, often unanticipated changes -- what scientists call "the amplifier effect." When things go wrong in a complex system, the scale of disruption is nearly impossible to anticipate. One day, a seemingly random piece of bad news will make the headlines. Suddenly, it will be not just a few policy wonks who worry but the public at large. This shift is crucial: A complex system is in big trouble when its component parts lose faith in its viability. Empires function in apparent equilibrium for some unknowable period. And then, quite abruptly, they collapse.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ferguson28-2010feb28,0,7706980.story
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