On 8/29/06, Mark Lause <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Fads are just fads in any academic area. They aren't designed to get people
thinking in any ways different enough to threaten the existing paradigm.
In fact, I'd argue that fads (queery theory included) exist primarily to
translate areas of potentially dangerous thought in the wider society and
put them safely in the academic zoo with the right label on the cage.
The people caught up in these fads may or may not recognize it as such, but
there is also a very heavy predisposition to survey new parts of the
reservation to create new hiring fields.
While not directly on top of academic military matters, I know enough people
who are to suspect that the same holds true for them.
The Rumsfeld Doctrine is an ultimate fad, a fad that translated the
corporate management philosophy of "lean and mean" corporations
powered by high technology and dependent on outsourcing into a
military doctrine. Unlike an academic fad, in this case, this fad has
dangerously sought to apply what works for corporations, whose
externalities are paid for by the state, to the military, an arm of
the state whose externalities have to be paid for by itself. Modern
wars can be fought well only on the basis of state socialism or
capitalism, and only guerrillas and terrorists, not states, can
actually fight post-modern warfare.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
