Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast

I am reusing a previous episode I used in the now moribund Stoicism podcast I started, The Dash, which I ran out of steam on.Applying Stoic values and discipline to the vocation and avocations we practice in life may be the hardest part outside of making a Stoic life a lived lifestyle. I find the management industry is a giant cargo cult that publishes books whose pages number in the hundreds but could simply be a page or two.References:James Clear Atomic HabitsMarcus Aurelius MeditationsWhitney J. Oakes (editor) The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers: The Complete Extant Writings of Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius and Marcus AureliusMy SubstackEmail me at cgpodcast@pm.me.

The concept of moral injuries for soldiers and non-soldiers alike, the gift of fear and being a dead man walking and how to handle regret and shame.“As beasts are beneath human restraints, gods are above them... It would be foolish and untruthful to deny the appeal of exalted, godlike intoxication....We have seen the paradox that these godlike exalted moments often correspond to times when the men who have survived them say that they have acted like beasts....Above all, a sense of merely human virtue, a sense of being valued and of valuing anything seems to have fled their lives....However, all of our virtues come from not being gods. Generosity is meaningless to a god, who never suffers shortage or want. Courage is meaningless to a god, who is immortal and can never suffer permanent injury. The godlike berserk state can destroy the capacity for virtue. Whether the berserker is beneath humanity as an animal, above it as a god, or both, he is cut off from all human community when he is in this state.”― Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of CharacterThose millions of men who have been in combat over the millennia have always brought home invisible scar tissue and regret that manifests in many ways but most of us take it to our graves.“…or the pilots doing nine-to-five jobs at computer consoles in Nevada killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan with drones and commuting to and from their homes like any other commuters. Imagine the psychic split that must ensue from bringing in death and destruction from the sky on a group of terrorists—young men who have mothers and a misplaced idealism that has led them into horrible criminal acts, but nevertheless young and brave men—and then driving home from the base to dinner with the spouse and kids. “Have a nice day at the office, hon?”― Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to WarReferences:Karl Marlantes What It Is Like to Go to WarBill Russel Edmonds God is Not Here: A Soldier's Struggle with Torture, Trauma, and the Moral Injuries of WarClark Savage King of All Things: A Guide to Man's Martial PurposeDick Couch A Tactical Ethic: Moral Conduct in the Insurgent BattlespaceAndrew Bacevich Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America's Misguided WarsShauna Springer WARRIOR: How to Support Those Who Protect UsJonathan Shay Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of CharacterJonathan Shay Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of HomecomingMy SubstackEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me.

My Storming America Series covers the gamut of what the spontaneous attack in the US will look like when terror cells launch a simultaneous attack on the US homeland.I cover it further in Episodes 41-43 and 49-50 of my Chasing Ghosts podcast.The hybrid and gray zone fight will come to America in the next war. Once the declining American colossus shuffles into the next near-peer and peer conflict, the 21st century will see the continental US come under a unified attack by external forces for the first time since the War of 1812 and the Mexican border issues in 1916. How the 9/11/2001 events have not been replicated is a cipher to me. We need to war-game all the possibilities once a war is initiated with a near-peer or peer adversary. The kinetic forces on the ground will be sleepers, NOCs or recently arrived illegals in addition to cadres recruited over time and left in place.The police have no duty to protect citizens.Supreme Court cases per police protection:Castle Rock v. GonzalezWarren v. District of ColumbiaDeShaney v. Winnebago CountyPer the attack on Israel out of Gaza on 7 October 2023, only 140,000 Israelis out of a population of 9 million, or under two percent, were allowed to own a firearm prior to October and that is restricted to a handgun only and ammunition was limited to 50 rounds.I talk about William Forstchen's "Day of Wrath" and Kurt Schlichter's "The Attack".References:William Forstchen Day of WrathKurt Schlichter The AttackMatt Bracken:Enemies Foreign and Domestic.Foreign Enemies And Traitors.Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista.The Red Cliffs of Zerhoun.Castigo Cay.Eric Frank Russell The WaspMichael Z. Williamson The Weapon (and the entire Freehold series)Ernest R. May Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of FranceRobert Heinlein The Moon is a Harsh MistressRobert Asprey War In The Shadows: The Guerrilla In HistoryMy SubstackEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me.

The direct action concentration of US Army Special Forces (SF) in the conduct of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan at the expense of the specialized and storied legend of what SF could do in non-permissive environments raising partisan forces behind enemy lines. The Army SF concentrated on perfecting a craft that numerous other combat organizations like the USMC 0311, .Army 11Bs and the exquisitely talented Ranger Regiment could do handily not to mention the legendary prowess of the Tier One units.SF could capitalize on the rich heritage of a regional expertise harnessed to a deep cultural IQ and understanding of allied and coalition fighting organizations. In concert with the deep intelligence and actionable intelligence infrastructure in a naturally expeditionary mindset practice strategic compression: the employment of tactical means to achieve and satisfy strategic end-states.SF needs to carve out their talent-stacks and showcase what makes them unique.References:David Maxwell Counter-Unconventional Warfare (2014)Douglas Porch Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of WarAnn Scott Tyson American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim GrantH. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to WarfareMark Bowden Blackhawk Down: A Story of Modern WarBob Scales Scales on War: The Future of America’s Military at RiskAaron B. O’Connell Our Latest Longest War: Losing Hearts and MindsHy S. Rothstein Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional WarfareRobert Asprey War In The Shadows: The Guerrilla In HistorySpecial Forces Detachment Mission Planning Guide HQDA January 2020My Substack:https://t.co/7a8jn2MmnxEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Everyone and everything has an origin story, while I had a sneaking suspicion early on in my modest career in special operations and irregular warfare (IW) that something was fundamentally wrong with the western way of war in these endeavors, it was Douglas Porch who probably set my course straight. In this book, he makes a compelling historical and logical case for why the IW efforts planet-wide have not only been a failure but ones that repeat themselves again and again.References:Douglas Porch Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of WarNathaniel Moir Number One Realist: Bernard Fall and Vietnamese Revolutionary WarfareMartin Windrow The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in VietnamTed Morgan Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam WarMy Substack:https://t.co/7a8jn2MmnxEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Excursions is a new addition to the CG universe to cover adjacent conflict issues to the irregular warfare fight.***In the future near-peer and peer fight, salvo competition will be the preeminent means by which one country will kinetically overwhelm the other in a fight. I discuss the way the West is in an existential hazard of being woefully under-prepared to meet the threat if Western forces go toe toe with regional hegemons in the East or West.Let’s anticipate the disasters now that are the Spanish in the English Channel in 1588, the British Royal Navy at Jutland in 1916, and the discovery in WWII all these battleships were not really capital ships, or had adequate armaments, yet their political dimensions compel not only their continuous construction but are the most devastating when lost.The aircraft carrier has been a signature component of US naval power and prestige for more than a century. The utility has continued to diminish since the end of WWII. The tremendous disadvantage of putting so much manpower and treasure into these single use leviathan systems in the modern world of distributed missile and PGM systems, emerging near-peer & peer adversaries and concentration of power in vulnerable systems is a recipe for future disaster.References:Gerry Doyle Carrier Killer: China's Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles and Theater of Operations in the early 21st CenturyDavid Lee Russell Early U.S. Navy Carrier Raids, February-April 1942: Five Operations That Tested a New Dimension of American Air PowerJeff Vandenengel Questioning the Carrier: Opportunities in Fleet Design for the U.S. NavyJeff Vandenengel interview on Midrats with CDR SalamanderIvan Gogin Fighting ships of the PEOPLE LIBERATION ARMY NAVY 1949 - 2023Jerry Hendrix Retreat From Range: The Rise and Fall of Carrier AviationMy Substack:https://t.co/7a8jn2MmnxEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Excursions will be a new addition to the CG universe to cover adjacent conflict issues to the irregular warfare fight.In the future near-peer and peer fight, salvo competition will be the preeminent means by which one country will kinetically overwhelm the other in a fight. I discuss the way the West is in an existential hazard of being woefully under-prepared to meet the threat if Western forces go toe toe with regional hegemons in the East or West.The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of AgeReferences:Nassim Taleb Antifragile: Things That Gain from DisorderMark Gunzinger & Bryan Clark Winning the Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air and Missile DefenseChristian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech WarfareMy Substack:https://t.co/7a8jn2MmnxEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me.

The emerging anti-fragile forces of indigenous irregular warfare forces in concert or independent of near-peer and peer competitors challenging US and western global hegemony are on the march and will in the end succeed.References:David Maxwell Counter-Unconventional Warfare (2014)Douglas Porch Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of WarAnn Scott Tyson American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim GrantH. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to WarfareMark Bowden Blackhawk Down: A Story of Modern WarBob Scales Scales on War: The Future of America’s Military at RiskAaron B. O’Connell Our Latest Longest War: Losing Hearts and MindsHy S. Rothstein Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional WarfareRobert Asprey War In The Shadows: The Guerrilla In HistorySpecial Forces Detachment Mission Planning Guide HQDA January 2020My Substack:https://t.co/7a8jn2MmnxEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me.

In this episode, I will be a heretic to the current military establishment in America and the west. They can't do unconventional warfare and I must be very specific in the conditional problem I propose: the western military has no capability to conduct long term partisan warfare in concert with indigenous forces fighting an insurgency in a non-permissive environment. It doesn't have the language skills, cultural IQ, sophisticated intelligence/communications infrastructure to support stay-behind missions, isolated stand-in force capability (nor does the USMC for FD2030 fantasies) comprehensive bushcraft and primitive skills for long loiter missions nor a fighting force that is capable of living in third world conditions for years (rotational longevity) at a time.This is Part One of a two part series in which we will discuss the converse capabilities conundrum in counter UW for the west in Part Two published o/a 26 December 2023.References:David Maxwell Counter-Unconventional Warfare (2014)Douglas Porch Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of WarAnn Scott Tyson American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim GrantH. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to WarfareMark Bowden Blackhawk Down: A Story of Modern WarBob Scales Scales on War: The Future of America’s Military at RiskAaron B. O’Connell Our Latest Longest War: Losing Hearts and MindsHy S. Rothstein Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional WarfareRobert Asprey War In The Shadows: The Guerrilla In HistorySpecial Forces Detachment Mission Planning Guide HQDA January 2020My Substack:https://t.co/7a8jn2MmnxEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Here we do a deep dive in US Army Special Forces (SF) and why a complete overhaul is needed to resurrect the original charter to save SF from itself. Over two decades of fighting neo-colonial conflicts throughout the Middle East and Africa has decimated the original construct and mission of what made SF so special.References:Douglas Porch Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of WarAnn Scott Tyson American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim GrantH. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to WarfareMark Bowden Blackhawk Down: A Story of Modern WarBob Scales Scales on War: The Future of America’s Military at RiskAaron B. O’Connell Our Latest Longest War: Losing Hearts and MindsHy S. Rothstein Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional WarfareRobert Asprey War In The Shadows: The Guerrilla In HistorySpecial Forces Detachment Mission Planning Guide HQDA January 2020My Substack:https://t.co/7a8jn2MmnxEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me.