Weekend Mashup—August 21 to 23

By Steven Pressfield | Published: August 21, 2009

This past week, the New York Times ran the op-ed “The Land of 10,000 Wars” by Ganesh Sitaraman. Hard to resist the urge to post the entire op-ed here. Check it out if you haven’t read it already.

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Posted in Mashup
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Tribes, the Taliban and the Death of Baitullah Mahsud

By Steven Pressfield | Published: August 17, 2009

I was very interested last week to see what would happen, in terms of leadership succession among the Pakistani Taliban, after the reputed death of Baitullah Mahsud. According to scores of press reports as well as Pakistani and Taliban spokesmen, the immediate aftermath was a shootout involving two rival successors, Hakimullah Mahsud and Wali ur-Rehman, that resulted in the death of Hakimullah Mahsud. Within two days however, Hakimullah was phoning in, according to the Economic Times, declaring not only that he was still alive but that so was Baitullah–and that the world would be hearing from both very shortly.

This is pretty Wild West stuff. What struck me on a deeper level, however, was that both incidents–Baitullah’s death and the subsequent succession gunfight–illustrate timeless truths about tribes and the tribal mind-set. (more…)

Posted in Afghanistan, Editorial, On Tribalism
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From a Vietnam Vet: A Guest Blog

By Steven Pressfield | Published: July 20, 2009

My dear friend Printer Bowler is a former army captain who served with psychological operations units in Viet Nam (1966-67). He was attached to the Third Marine Amphibious force, I Corps near the DMZ. He’s a perennial history student, now teaching, writing and pumping out radical troop-support propaganda from his home in Montana. It’s a pleasure to post this missive from God’s country:

Da Nang, 1967: Capt. Bowler offers a Camel to a buffalo

Posted in Afghanistan, Agora, On Tribalism
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