Damnit, we're the contemporary Flower Warriors. I knew it.

If you've got a little bit of time on your hands and you feel like punishing yourself, take a look at Zhivan Alach's Strategic Studies Institute monograph "The New Aztecs: Ritual and Restraint in Contemporary Western Military Operations." It's a muddled mess of stereotype, unproven assertion, tertiary-source quotations, conservative social theory, tortured syntax, and staggeringly bad analysis, and it's the leading contender in the always-crowded field for Worst Thing I've Read This Year From a Serious Publisher.

To give you a taste of just exactly how awful this thing is, I present Prosecution Exhibit 1: the paper is just over 38 full pages of text, and it cites Ralph Peters 14 separate times and Victor Davis Hanson eight. There are no references to primary-source historical documents, and Alach's limning of the history of warfare -- sort of important context for a study of "primitive" restraint in warfighting versus the allegedly modern trend towards total war -- is cribbed almost entirely from Hanson and John Keegan.

Now for Prosecution Exhibit 2, which pretty much just speaks for itself:

It pays to consider the Aztecs. At the time of the Flower Wars, the Aztecs were hegemonic in Central America. They could fight in a ritualized way because they had no true rival. When a rival did appear -- a rival named Cortes, who fought in an amoral, instrumental, rational, unrestrained, and nonritualized manner -- the Aztecs were defeated. Cortes fought to kill. He fought to win. 

Is there a Cortes awaiting the West today? Will we, the contemporary Flower Warriors, face a foe who, to be defeated, requires our willingness to kill, be killed, and fight to the bitter end? Is the current style of Western warfare but a mere historical blip, a momentary anomaly that will disappear when the world changes again? History cannot answer that question, but we had better be prepared to answer it ourselves.

To answer it with lead and steel and metal and brawn, because brown people haven't mastered those things yet! If only those flower-fucking Aztecs had taken the gloves off and fought unrestricted, total warfare, they surely could've defeated Cortes' vastly superior tactics and materiel! It was those pathetic, primitive, and obviously homosexual Aztec ROEs that doomed them to defeat!

These freakin' people, man.

Now seriously for a second: how does the U.S. Army War College publish something like this?

As good as being there: Army War College Strategy Conference YouTube channel

Remember that conference where I was pal-ing around with Martin van Creveld? No? Well, me neither, or at least probably not as well as I should. Lucky for me, the Army War College has its own YouTube channel, complete with extensive video from the conference.

Some highlights:

• Carafano craps on conference concept
• Vlahos* acts like a total nut
• Standard Hammes (which is always worth your time)
• Nathan Freier, who I thought gave pretty much the best presentation of the conference

There's a lot of good stuff there, so take a look. I'm hoping to delve back into a few of these subjects in greater depth now that I've got this resource.

*Readers will no doubt be disappointed to note that this is Mike Vlahos (who is nuts), not Kelley Vlahos (who is not nuts, just contrarian, and also a little bit hot).

So Martin van Creveld, T.X. Hammes, Andrew Bacevich, and Gulliver walk into a bar...

I'm hitting the road in a couple of hours for scenic Carlisle, PA, where I'll be attending this awesome-looking conference at the Army War College.

The DC conference circuit can get a bit stale, if not on account of the speakers then simply for the repetitiveness of the subjects. (As much as I enjoyed hearing him speak, I saw Dave Barno three times in two weeks last month. What's more, on two of those panels he was joined by some of the same folks.) I've never heard van Creveld speak, so I'm particularly looking forward to that part. And an old undergrad history professor of mine who has since hit the mainstream big-time is also speaking, so that should be a trip.

The broad subjects being covered this week -- "The Meaning of War"; "The Historical Context"; "How Do We Know When We're at War?"; "How Do We Know When a War is Over?"; "Who Participates in War?"; "What Rules Govern War?"; and "Why Does it [War, presumably, and the answers to these questions] Matter?" -- could each support entire blogs, so I'd imagine I'll have plenty to write about.

Anybody else going to this? Anybody else have suggestions about which is the most awesome Arby's in Carlisle/Harrisburg, or the optimal driving route from downtown DC?