Mark Helprin: Unorthodox Thoughts In Regard to the Middle East Military Dimension
Educated at Harvard College, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Center for Middle Eastern Studies), Princeton, and Oxford, novelist Mark Helprin has served in the Israeli army and the Israeli Air Force. He has written about defense and foreign relations for fifty years. Advising half a dozen presidential candidates, and officials at the highest levels, from the White House on down, he was personally commended by the Director of Central Intelligence for making the best military estimates "in or out of government."
Helprin's novels include Refiner's Fire, Winter's Tale, A Soldier of the Great War, Memoir from Antproof Case, Freddy and Fredericka, and In Sunlight and In Shadow. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker for two decades. He writes essays and a column for the Claremont Review of Books. He serves as a Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. His writings, including political op-eds, have appeared in The Wall Street Journal (for which he was a contributing editor until 2006), The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Criterion, National Review, and other publications.
#Syria #Iraq #egypt
0:00:00 Introduction
0:02:37 Lecture
1:03:00 Q&A
Пікірлер: 3
What do you think of Mark Helprin's unorthodox thoughts on Middle Eastern militaries?
what a brilliant mind
It wasn't Mr. Helprin's intention, but I think he could have swiveled to Afghanistan and analyzed that long-fused disaster. We had no concrete goal. We allowed the State Dept. to pursue its cultural goals which contributed nothing to military and security goals. We did not acknowledge the culture and allowed the $800 million dollar embassy too much input, way too much discretion. Afghanistan is never going to accept "trans story hours" and so much more that the diplomats wanted to foist on an alien culture. Apparently no conclusions were made from the drip drip drip of green on blue killings. And as I suspect, Mr. Helprin would have observed that the Army and Marines were forced to stop a military security operation and dig in at forward operation bases and massive military facilities inevitably left in the hands of the enemy, yes, the enemy. Never mind the Wily Coyote/Sam the shepherd dog scenario of having military action organized as regularly scheduled combat seasons allowing the Taliban to regroup and rearm. Then again, as another military analyst noted; we accomplished our initial goal and should have left. Two trillion dollars spent, thousands of American coffins, ludicrous Foggy Bottom ambitions, no goal, no Patton rousing troops "on to Berlin." I would absolutely love to hear Mr. Helprin do a post-mortem on an epic fail that only the Pentagon and the Washington establishment could have pulled off as the world watched in shock and a perverse awe. As Mr. Helprin acknowledges. He isn't unorthodox; he is merely paying attention. It is a level of situational awareness lost on our rulers.