Further fall-out from miscellaneous internet research.
Boning up for Becca’s game (Anamnesis, it’s called, and there’ll be more to say later, in a variety of fora; in the meanwhile, go read what John and Chas, who’ll also be playing, have to say to each other [and Emily, and Vince] about gaming in general, and I’ve got something rattling around in the back of my head about the four stances and how any truly postmodern art needs to take them into account—is that sufficiently hubristic? But for the moment, I’m distracted—ooh, shiny!), in which I’ll be playing a rather (for me) odd character; then, it’ll be an odd situation in a number of respects: it’s been four years? five? since I’ve played in a role-playing game, and much longer since I’ve played in one I didn’t also have a vested interest in as a GM. (But since the terms probably don’t mean that much to most of you reading this, I’ll skip for now the whole discussion of how the way we went about it ended up making the distinction between GM—the “gamemaster,” running the scenario and presenting the world—and players—the ones playing individual agents reacting to that world—problematic at best.)
But! That isn’t why I fired up TexEdit to type up a new post. No, it’s this article I stumbled over from the rations Journal on urban lessons learned from the Russian experience in Chechnya. There’s 57 lessons, starting from the very general and strategic (Lesson 4: Overall Russian command lacked continuity and was plagued by too much senior leadership at the operational level) to the very specific and tactical (Lesson 52: Helicopters need stand-off weapons), but it’s the first one that makes you stop and go, huh:
Lesson 1: Military operations could not solve deep-seated political problems.
You don’t say.
Oh: and if you think I’m thinking there’s several more of these strategic and operational lessons that Yankee chickenhawks will have an opportunity to learn for themselves in Iraq, well, you’re every bit as smart as I thought you were.
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