Sunday, November 02, 2008
Wise words from John Keegan
Rummaging through some old boxes, I found a wad of 25 year-old letters from my father. One, dated March 11, 1984, contained this pithy paragraph:
Friday I attended the Davis Center seminar, and since you are an old counter-insurgency type [ref.], I thought I'd report the latest words of wisdom from [military historian] John Keegan: "Criminals make excellent terrorists but bandits make terrible guerrillas."
Strangely enough, it occurs to me that both the United States military and al Qaeda in Iraq would have benefited from understanding that bit of wisdom in, say, the spring of 2003.
2 Comments:
By 
SR, at
Sun Nov 02, 10:59:00 PM:
I would agree that most of what Keegan says regarding military matters is wise, however I just don't get this one.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sun Nov 02, 11:55:00 PM:
Not familiar with the work, but perhaps: Bandits = unsubtle thieves who steal from and piss off the population they need to support them, and Criminals = already used to and good at sneaking around and carrying out illegal activities under the radar of law enforcement.
