How should the United States military think about counterinsurgency operations as it moves forward in Afghanistan and the wider GWOT [Global War on Terror]?
Professor Suri! I can’t wrap my head around the immensity of this subject! I want to devote weeks and months and years to digging into it. The answers (if there are any) are always shifting, always evolving. My bedroom is littered with scraps of paper where I’ve recorded miscellaneous thoughts. I have twenty-six journal articles open in Adobe Acrobat, which makes my poor overloaded laptop decidedly unhappy. I have forty books scattered around me, some in my bed and—let me tell you—it was not comfortable trying to sleep on that many books. One or two - no big deal. I rolled over on three or four books as I tried to sleep last night.
I could talk about this subject for hours. But I can’t write about it. Just the act of writing something down assumes a degree of certainty, and the more I read, the more I discuss this, the more I know I don’t know and the more I’m tempted to keep reading and learning more forever. My big problem with academic essays (especially this one) is that I never know when to stop researching, pull my nose out of my books, press ‘pause’ on great discussions, and say, “Okay, I don’t/can’t know everything, but I know enough to write this paper!”
I am all about learning and digging. I'm all about that part of the process. I'm not sure I can produce any kind of polished, finished document on this subject that I won't want to tear to pieces immediately for its ignorance and shallowness and necessary incompleteness!
Professor Suri! I can’t wrap my head around the immensity of this subject! I want to devote weeks and months and years to digging into it. The answers (if there are any) are always shifting, always evolving. My bedroom is littered with scraps of paper where I’ve recorded miscellaneous thoughts. I have twenty-six journal articles open in Adobe Acrobat, which makes my poor overloaded laptop decidedly unhappy. I have forty books scattered around me, some in my bed and—let me tell you—it was not comfortable trying to sleep on that many books. One or two - no big deal. I rolled over on three or four books as I tried to sleep last night.
I could talk about this subject for hours. But I can’t write about it. Just the act of writing something down assumes a degree of certainty, and the more I read, the more I discuss this, the more I know I don’t know and the more I’m tempted to keep reading and learning more forever. My big problem with academic essays (especially this one) is that I never know when to stop researching, pull my nose out of my books, press ‘pause’ on great discussions, and say, “Okay, I don’t/can’t know everything, but I know enough to write this paper!”
I am all about learning and digging. I'm all about that part of the process. I'm not sure I can produce any kind of polished, finished document on this subject that I won't want to tear to pieces immediately for its ignorance and shallowness and necessary incompleteness!
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