Thursday, March 01, 2012

Back Again

Google is in full digest mode, trying to unify its databases and clean-up its design, its interface.  The battle seems over privacy, but fighting it is on a par with using the current war to refight the previous one.  The chief reason that is not more discussed now lies, I think, in the different ecologies of Afghanistan and Vietnam, which allow people to claim they are not similar.  Wrong.  The physical terrain amounts to nothing compared with the psychological territory, in which the generals are as lost now as 50 years ago.  Here is a glaring example, a story heard on NPR this morning.  Army has built a fake Afghan village in which it is training the military advisers to train fighters who tactical skill already surpasses that of their advisers.  The training is in English.  The alarms should be melting down.  Learn the language and culture.  Well, do that, and we won't be there at all.