Clausewitz and His Worksby Christopher Bassford. TABLE OF CONTENTSVersion 8 MAR 2. Since the close of the Vietnam War, the ideas expounded by the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1. American military writing (doctrinal, theoretical, and historical). His book On War (published posthumously in Prussia as Vom Kriege in 1. Naval War College in 1. Air War College in 1. Army War College in 1. It has always been central at the U. S. Army's School for Advanced Military Studies at Leavenworth (founded in 1. The U. S. Marine Corps's brilliant little philosophical field manual FMFM 1: Warfighting (1. On War (with a heavy maneuverist flavoring from Sun Tzu), and the more recent Marine Corps Doctrinal Publications (MCDPs, c. Clausewitz's basic concepts.*2. This is not the first time Clausewitz has been in fashion. Indeed, On War has been the bible of many thoughtful soldiers ever since Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke attributed to its guidance his stunning victories in the wars of German unification (1. Absolute Obedience With Crack HeadAbsolute Obedience With CrackerPosts about Bobby Singer written by isabel. If you look at Sam and Dean wearing your codependency goggles, it’s not difficult to see a motherly dynamic in some. The Defrosting Ice Queen trope as used in popular culture. She is the Ice Queen: cool, reserved, and giving nothing away. She may want love as ardently as. Nor is it the first time that individual American soldiers and military thinkers have been attracted by his ideas: George Patton, Albert Wedemeyer, and—especially—Dwight Eisenhower were intensely interested in what he had to say. It is, however, the first time that the American armed forces as institutions have turned to Clausewitz. While the philosopher had insisted that war was "simply the expression of politics by other means," the traditional attitude of American soldiers had been that "politics and strategy are radically and fundamentally things apart. Strategy begins where politics end. All that soldiers ask is that once the policy is settled, strategy and command shall be regarded as being in a sphere apart from politics."*3. The sudden acceptability of Clausewitz in the wake of Vietnam is not difficult to account for, for among the major military theorists only Clausewitz seriously struggled with the sort of dilemma that American military leaders faced in the aftermath of their defeat there. Clearly, in what had come to be scathingly called a "political war," the political and military components of the American war effort had come unstuck. It ran against the grain of America's military men to publicly criticize elected civilian leaders, but it was just as difficult to take the blame upon themselves. Clausewitz's analysis could not have been more relevant: The more powerful and inspiring the motives for war.. On the other hand, the less intense the motives, the less will the military element's natural tendency to violence coincide with political directives. As a result, war will be driven further from its natural course, the political object will be more and more at variance with the aim of ideal war, and the conflict will seem increasingly political in character.*4. When people talk, as they often do, about harmful political influence on the management of war, they are not really saying what they mean. Their quarrel should be with the policy itself, not with its influence. If the policy is right—that is, successful—any intentional effect it has on the conduct of the war can only be to the good. If it has the opposite effect the policy itself is wrong.*5. Many of America's soldiers found unacceptable any suggestion that they had failed on the battlefield, but they were willing to admit that policy had been badly made and that they had misunderstood their role in making it. They believed that, by clarifying the interplay among the armed forces, government, and people and by clearly describing the two sides of the civil- military relationship, Clausewitz offered a way out of this dilemma and into the future. This is why versions of Clausewitz's ideas underlie the most influential statements of the military "lessons learned" from the Vietnam debacle: Colonel Harry Summers's seminal On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War and the "Weinberger doctrine," first expressed by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger in 1. With the West victorious in the Cold War and the superb showing of the American military in the 1. Gulf War, some of the steam went out of the American military reform movement. There was a natural tendency for soldiers not only to suggest that these victories showed that the problems had been fixed but to imply that there really hadn't been much of a problem in the first place. Accordingly, the study of Clausewitz started to wane somewhat and all the usual arguments for his obsolescence resurfaced. However, the failure of much of the new, "non- Clausewitzian" military thinking in the wake of American offensives after the atrocity of 1. September 2. 00. 1 then led to the customary re- revisions. Clausewitz is very much back in style—with new attention to his thoughts on "people's war," the inherent power of the defense, etc. But this new fashionability applies mostly to civilian and military scholars, not to America's military institutions. Bobby Singer | Cobweb Queen. Please understand that this isn’t about saying which character had a ‘worse’ time in Hell. I just intend to take a closer look at Sam, Dean, Cas and Bobby’s experiences of Hell, and what they could say about that character. So let’s start with Dean. The facts are these: Dean went to Hell for four months, i. The most we see of Dean’s Hell involves him stretched out over an abyss, a hook piercing his shoulder. The sexual connotations are there, though never explicitly spoken. With Dean, everything is sexualised- like, practically every monster they meet comes onto him. For instance: Sex seems to be a kind of safe retreat for Dean, usually. Perhaps this is because only then does he get to be both open and safe- look at his post- coital heart- to- heart with Cassie in Route 6. Lisa in The Third Man (in hilarious contrast to the following scene, with Soulless Sam working out and casually paying a prostitute). Monsters pick up on this chink in Dean’s armour, and they always use it against him. All in all, I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that Dean was raped in Hell. It’s a systematic destruction of all his safe places, basically. And when he gets back, his time in Hell has twisted his perception. He seems to automatically place less trust in Sam when he returns- even before he finds out about the whole demon blood thing- and he seems to have left a part of himself behind, as Alastair says. Most importantly, though, when Dean’s in Hell he’s screaming for Sam- who told him that he would not go to Hell, that Sam would find a way to save him- and nobody is answering. He has no way of knowing that Sam is tearing himself up trying to get Dean back. And this goes on for forty years. In short, Hell breaks Dean by making him think his brother has abandoned him, and by using sex- which has always been Dean’s comfort zone- against him. We do see the beginning of a healing process concerning the sex thing, when Dean and Anna have sex in the Impala in Heaven And Hell- it’s a very gentle, peaceful scene, and the way she puts her hand over Castiel’s handprint on Dean’s shoulder is like she’s trying to erase his pain. Then of course there’s the fact that he turned to torture. It’s interesting that endverse! Dean, who had gone back to torturing for information, only began doing that after he and Sam were separated. Endverse! Dean was frighteningly similar to Dean in Season Four’s On The Head Of A Pin, in fact. Sam and Dean’s relationship is dangerous, yes. But they need each other anyway. Because otherwise this sort of thing happens. Sam’s Hell problems were a different animal altogether. Sam jumped into Lucifer’s Cage to save the world, and spent a year and a half down there- about one hundred and eighty years in Hell time. He was basically a source of entertainment of Lucifer, and possibly Michael. There would probably be a revenge element involved too, as it was thanks to Sam that they were in the cage. When Sam got out and his Hell memories were unleashed, it resulted in a psychotic break. The question here isn’t so much what happened to Sam in the pit as what didn’t happen to Sam in the pit. Over one hundred and eighty years basically everything would have happened. As Hallucifer says, ‘the rapier wit, the wittier rape’…Yet the image that is chosen, over and over, to represent Sam’s time in the Cage is this one. It’s used repeatedly in Season Six. Then, in Season Seven, there’s this: One day, I will sit down and write an essay entirely about that image. I mean, come on, SYMBOLISM. But not just yet. The fact remains, they could have chosen anything out of the varied repertoire of things Sam went through, and every single time, they went with fire. Given what he says in Defending Your Life about feeling like being in Hell had erased a lot of his guilt, it seems that Sam’s Hell time was like a kind of trial by fire for him, a purification. One that drives him insane. And look! He ends up in a mental hospital. Wearing all white. Apart from the Samifer scene in Season Five’s The End, it’s the only time we see a Winchester completely dressed in white. Colour symbolism, yay. Also, I suspect that the Jesus Stubble is no accident. It’s a genuinely heartbreaking episode, by the way. Basically the culmination and resolution of Sam’s Hell trauma plotline. Sadly, the purification thing doesn’t last long for Sam, as anyone who’s seen the last few episodes of Season Eight- and that awful, devastating I’m not clean speech- will know. Sam may have felt purified, but Dean certainly hadn’t. Possibly the difference was to do with the reasons that landed them in Hell- whereas Dean was there as a result of what was essentially his own selfishness in resurrecting Sam (though I don’t think any of us blamed him), Sam went in order to save the world. Sam knows he’s made the ultimate sacrifice and that no- one can ask any more of him- until they do, in Season Eight, when he must go through the whole trial- by- fire thing again. Literally, this time. Libertarianism and the Workplace — Crooked Timber[This post was co- written by Chris Bertram, Corey Robin and Alex Gourevitch ]“In the general course of human nature, a power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.” —Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 7. Libertarianism is a philosophy of individual freedom. Or so its adherents claim. But with their single- minded defense of the rights of property and contract, libertarians cannot come to grips with the systemic denial of freedom in private regimes of power, particularly the workplace. When they do try to address that unfreedom, as a group of academic libertarians calling themselves “Bleeding Heart Libertarians” have done in recent months, they wind up traveling down one of two paths: Either they give up their exclusive focus on the state and become something like garden- variety liberals or they reveal that they are not the defenders of freedom they claim to be. That is what we are about to argue, but it is based on months of discussion with the Bleeding Hearts. The conversation was kicked off by the critique one of us—Corey Robin—offered of libertarian Julian Sanchez’s presignation letter to Cato, in which Sanchez inadvertently revealed the reality of workplace coercion. Jessica Flanigan, a Bleeding Heart, respondedtwice to Robin. Then one of us—Chris Bertram—responded to Flanigan. Since then, the Bleeding Heartshave offered a series of responses to Chris and Corey. Life at Work. To understand the limitations of these Bleeding Hearts, we have to understand how little freedom workers enjoy at work. Unfreedom in the workplace can be broken down into three categories. Abridgments of freedom inside the workplace. On pain of being fired, workers in most parts of the United States can be commanded to pee or forbidden to pee. They can be watched on camera by their boss while they pee. They can be forbidden to wear what they want, say what they want (and at what decibel), and associate with whom they want. They can be punished for doing or not doing any of these things—punished legally or illegally (as many as 1 in 1. But what’s remarkable is just how many of these punishments are legal, and even when they’re illegal, how toothless the law can be. Outside the usual protections (against race and gender discrimination, for example), employees can be fired for good reasons, bad reasons, or no reason at all. They can be fired for donating a kidney to their boss (fired by the same boss, that is), refusing to have their person and effects searched, calling the boss a “cheapskate” in a personal letter, and more. They have few rights on the job—certainly none of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendment liberties that constitute the bare minimum of a free society; thus, no free speech or assembly, no due process, no right to a fair hearing before a panel of their peers—and what rights they do have employers will fight tooth and nail to make sure aren’t made known to them or will simply require them to waive as a condition of employment. Outside the prison or the military—which actually provide, at least on paper, some guarantee of due process—it’s difficult to conceive of a less free institution for adults than the average workplace. Abridgements of freedom outside the workplace. In addition to abridging freedoms on the job, employers abridge their employees’ freedoms off the job. Employers invade employees’ privacy, demanding that they hand over passwords to their Facebook accounts, and fire them for resisting such invasions. Employers secretly film their employees at home. Workers are fired for supporting the wrong political candidates (“work for John Kerry or work for me”), failing to donate to employer- approved candidates, challenging government officials, writing critiques of religion on their personal blogs (IBM instructs employees to “show proper consideration…for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory—such as politics and religion”), carrying on extramarital affairs, participating in group sex at home, cross- dressing, and more. Workers are punished for smoking or drinking in the privacy of their own homes. How many nanny states have tried that?) They can be fired for merely thinking about having an abortion, for reporting information that might have averted the Challenger disaster, for being raped by an estranged husband. Again, this is all legal in many states, and in the states where it is illegal, the laws are often weak. Use of sanctions inside the workplace as a supplement to—or substitute for—political repression by the state. While employers often abridge workers’ liberty off the job, at certain moments, those abridgments assume a larger function for the state. Particularly in a liberal state constrained by constitutional protections such as the First Amendment, the instruments of coercion can be outsourced to—or shared with—the private sector. During the Mc. Carthy period, for example, fewer than 2. Free Sex, Free Porn, Free Direct Download. Cast: Danielle Kelson, Simone Claire, Amber Roxx, Beverly Cox, Sarah Daykin. Description: Director Bud Lee is riding fast along the rails of the A Train. The first 'Train' proved so popular, Sin City had to release number two. This all- anal gonzo hump- fest is a treat for fans of beautiful women who like to get boned up the backdoor. Highlights include Beverly Cocks, a real British blonde who takes the high, hard one like a champ, moaning and groaning in that cute accent while totally loving her ravishment. Other stand- out scenes include Simone Claire, a stunning creature who's not above spreading her cheeks for a big lap monster. It's all shot in that Bud Lee style; so real, you almost feel like you're there! Read the rest of this entry ..
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