Book Club Debacle

Neon lights, Nobel Prize
When a leader speaks, the reflection lies
You won't have to follow me
Only you can set me free
--Cult of Personality, Living Colour

How can you have any pudding
if you don't eat yer meat?
--Another Brick inThe Wall,
Pink Floyd
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Our Book Club went over like a lead zeppelin. How come no one showed up? We know we've got some erudite readers here, and we have got some flat out, hardcore military people (not that the twain shall never meet . . .), and you can't have figured out Counterinsurgency all on yer own, or you'd be dipping into the big bucks doing the government contractor - analyst gig. So that's not it . . .

We laid out the table cloth, set out the fancy Sea Salt & Vinegar chips AND the Cheezedoodles (for the work boot crowd). We gave you entre, intro and other book reports from which to crib. So what's the deal?

Help us out. Did you really wanna read Push, or The Help, or Three Cups of Tea? What was it that kept you away? 'Cause we'd really like to see if we can have a viable interaction over a third party's writing, to do that hard exploration from a hopefully disinterested vantage point.

See, the thing is, Ranger's pretty opinionated, and it becomes too easy in the blog world to gain a fanatical following of a cult of personality (ego's not a pretty thing, *sigh*.) An early posting to this blog elicited the comment, "Tell us what to think, Ranger"! But we cannot tell you what to think; we can only make an observation, and along with your input, hope to create some deeper understanding.

We would like to branch out and try new things. We are open to suggestions. Come as ANON, if you must, but tell us how we could hold a more successful Book Club.

Better eats? What?

The Accidental Guerrilla Book Club

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No posting today because we are hoping you will traipse over to MILPUB and participate in a discussion of David Kilcullen's Accidental Guerrilla.

We got the post up late (6 p.m.), and that may be partially responsible for the lag. As of now (late Tuesday night), most of the pub denizens are just looking at the chip bowl, and not sure how to actually DO book club. We don't know either, and this is just an experiment but we hope it becomes interactive, and we hope it is productive. We hope everyone is not just plumb saturated by Counterinsurgency (COIN) yet.

So, if you've ever had any questions about the man or the book that started The Surge, wanna know why we had to go get an Aussie for the job, or any esoterica at all, please pop by. Somebody should be on staff waiting to help out.

Virtual Book Club

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We would like to invite everyone to join our first virtual Military Reading Book Club, to be hosted by our brother site -- MilPub.

We have chosen the Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen for our first entry. Kilcullen was the chief advisor to Gen. David Petraeus during the 2007 Iraq war surge and this is the book widely seen as the summation of the U.S.'s approach to dealing with terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan. For an overview of the book, see Salon's "Meet the Accidental Guerrilla".

The book club will be dissecting and questioning the arguments and presumptions presented in the book. This will not be a wonkorama (though wonks are welcome, too.) The group will benefit by everyone's presence -- economists, historian, veterans, housewives, Mssrs. Nagl and Gentile and anyone else who wishes to enter the voyage of discovery.

Our goal: To understand Kilcullen's assertions and decide if and how they are correct.

The discussion will take place beginning 15 Nov 2011.

Come one, come all.