Ep 064 "War and Remembrance: Drawing the Wrong Lessons"
Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare PodcastShow Notes
This CG episode got the complete audio upgrade and revision to achieve the cleanest sound ever for the podcast series effective 22 June 2025 using the new technology at Chris Williams' Podsworth. Memorial Day is a day to reflect on the existential moral outrage and trail of tears American military might has draped over the planet since the end of the nineteenth century. Wars of choice are by their very nature a path to corruption, excess and unintended consequences. 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 Character Those 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. References: The Roots Tribunal in Congress Nick Turse Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam Bill Russel Edmonds God is Not Here: A Soldier's Struggle with Torture, Trauma, and the Moral Injuries of War Clark Savage King of All Things: A Guide to Man's Martial Purpose Dick Couch A Tactical Ethic: Moral Conduct in the Insurgent Battlespace Andrew Bacevich Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America's Misguided Wars Shauna Springer WARRIOR: How to Support Those Who Protect Us Jonathan Shay Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character Jonathan Shay Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming My Substack Email at [email protected].
More from Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast
It's been quite some time since I have responded to "mail" so I have curated these questions to address:. Why the future of warfare is not clone wars? The Fall of Europe is inevitable, here is what it will look like. The rifle is no longer the future in any form of warfare. How systems engineering is ultimately the way of war now and forever Events and Ephemera: The Arcata Summit in Bozeman 13-14 November 2026 Hearts of Space Subscription Service References: Why the M7 is Wrong with Ian McCollum Unauthorized History of the Pacific War Podcast RAND wish-casting on drones in 2015. Slaughterbots (2017) Slaughterbots: if human: kill() (2021) How are Drones Changing Modern Warfare? Sun Tzu The Art of War Carl von Clausewitz On War Miyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America My Substack Email at [email protected]
Hybrid warfare is a can of worms, a fascinating conjoining of kinetic and non-kinetic means of achieving victory or stale between warring nations. We continue our conversation. References: The Arcata Summit 13-14 November 2026 War Without a Center: Iran’s Mosaic Defense Richard J. Samuels Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community John Llewelyn The Imperial Japanese Army’s Tokumu Kikan – Special Service Organisations: Connections Between Wartime and Peacetime Intelligence Activities Simon Hall BLINDED BY THE RISING SUN JAPANESE MILITARY INTELLIGENCE FROM THE FIRST SINO-JAPANESE WAR TO THE END OF WORLD WAR I Interrogation of IJF CDR Miyazaki Report to Congress on Russian Hybrid Warfare in Europe 11 August 2026 The Future of Hybrid Warfare Hybrid Warfare: How to Escape the Conceptual Gray-Zone The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare: Implications for Strategy and the Military Profession Richard Feynman Cargo Cult speech at CalTech 1974 RAND wish-casting on drones in 2015. Slaughterbots (2017) Slaughterbots: if human: kill() (2021) How are Drones Changing Modern Warfare? H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America Email at [email protected]
Hybrid warfare Is a can of worms, a fascinating conjoining of kinetic and non-kinetic means of achieving victory or stale between warring nations. This second episode examines an historical example of what I think is the closest modern hybrid warfare modality in the Japanese Empire in the 1930s leading to WWII; the.Imperial Japanese Army’s Tokumu Kikan – Special Service Organizations that laid the groundwork for this phenomenon in the modern west. References: Richard J. Samuels Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community John Llewelyn The Imperial Japanese Army’s Tokumu Kikan – Special Service Organisations: Connections Between Wartime and Peacetime Intelligence Activities Report to Congress on Russian Hybrid Warfare in Europe 11 August 2026 The Future of Hybrid Warfare Hybrid Warfare: How to Escape the Conceptual Gray-Zone The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare: Implications for Strategy and the Military Profession Richard Feynman Cargo Cult speech at CalTech 1974 RAND wish-casting on drones in 2015. Slaughterbots (2017) Slaughterbots: if human: kill() (2021) How are Drones Changing Modern Warfare? Sun Tzu The Art of War Carl von Clausewitz On War Miyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America My Substack Email at [email protected]
Hybrid warfare Is a can of worms, a fascinating conjoining of kinetic and non-kinetic means of achieving victory or stale between warring nations. This first episode tries to lay the ground work of what it is and in the next two episodes we will examine an historical and a contemporary example of hybrid warfare in meat-space. References: Report to Congress on Russian Hybrid Warfare in Europe 11 August 2026 The Future of Hybrid Warfare Hybrid Warfare: How to Escape the Conceptual Gray-Zone The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare: Implications for Strategy and the Military Profession Richard Feynman Cargo Cult speech at CalTech 1974 RAND wish-casting on drones in 2015. Slaughterbots (2017) Slaughterbots: if human: kill() (2021) How are Drones Changing Modern Warfare? Sun Tzu The Art of War Carl von Clausewitz On War Miyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America My Substack Email at [email protected]
I discuss the possibilities of America relinquishing its global ambition to reduce its footprint to a regional hegemon in the Western hemisphere. The new technologies of AI, UAVs and hypersonics rather easily challenge the spending paradigms and mission architecture of the American armed forces. There are no near-peer competitors, every nation on Earth is now a peer to modern western war machines. America boasts a magnificent 20th century war machine is not fit for purpose for 21st century peer warfare. The crossroads is chock-full of landmines. References: Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America Martin van Creveld The Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939-1945 Colin Gray Strategy and History: Essays on Theory and Practice Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy William Lind Maneuver Warfare Handbook John Boyd Patterns of Conflict Michael Weiner Legacy of Ashes: History of the CIA John Prado The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA's Heart of DarknessSun Tzu The Art of War Carl von Clausewitz On War Miyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare My Substack Email at [email protected]