Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast

May 13 2024 313
Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast artwork

An unauthorized podcast series peeking behind the curtain at the vast machinery and briar patch politics of fighting terrorism and insurgency and everything in between. I'm a "COINtra" and not a "COINdinista", the latter are the vast army of apparatchiks and apologists who fire the engines of Irregular Warfare (IW) planet-wide. We're the skeptics and doubters of all things IW and special operations. And we are a tiny sliver of the IW community. I have noticed a jarring gap in this part of the discussion and intend on filling the breach.Substack: Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare PodcastSmedley D. Butler Fellow for Military Affairs at the Libertarian Institute:I am an Amazon Affiliate.You can contact me at [email protected].

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Ep 042 "Storming America: War Comes Home"

May 13 2024 58 mins  
In this episode I discuss what the attack looks like in America.This is not if, this is when.The country is poised to experience this through a combination of neglect and the sheer hubris of meddling in the world without realize the unintended consequences.I wish I had better news but you have been warned, it's on the horizon.I talk about William Forstchen's "Day of Wrath" and Kurt

Ep 041 "Storming America: Intelligence Failure is Now and Forever"

Apr 29 2024 84 mins  
This is a continuation of my "Storming America Series" where I will tease out and describe why the inevitable internal attack on America by external forces will be made real.In this episode, I will examine what intelligence looks like from a professional perspective and why America and the West consistently engage in existential chaos avalanches that make the world a worse place.Th

Ep 040 "The Middle East: Shuffling to the Apocalypse (Part Two)""

Apr 15 2024 55 mins  
This episode will be an addendum to my initial coverage in October 2023 of the Gaza-Israel conflict in Episode 027 and riffing off the domestic implications in Episode 037 of a similar attack on CONUS. If you wish to listen to those before you do this one, you may but I have crafted this so that isn’t necessary.The clock is closer to midnight than it was in October 2023.Reference

Ep 039 "CG Excursion: Stoicism: Who Dares Leads"

Apr 01 2024 31 mins  
I am reusing a previous episode I used in the now moribund Stoicism podcast I started, The Dash, which I ran out of steam on.Applying Stoic values and discipline to the vocation and avocations we practice in life may be the hardest part outside of making a Stoic life a lived lifestyle. I find the management industry is a giant cargo cult that publishes books whose pages number in t

Ep 038 "Moral Injury: The Invisible Warrior Marks"

Mar 18 2024 26 mins  
The concept of moral injuries for soldiers and non-soldiers alike, the gift of fear and being a dead man walking and how to handle regret and shame.“As beasts are beneath human restraints, gods are above them... It would be foolish and untruthful to deny the appeal of exalted, godlike intoxication....We have seen the paradox that these godlike exalted moments often correspond to

Ep 037 "Storming America: Another War Will Come Home"

Mar 04 2024 73 mins  
The hybrid and gray zone fight will come to America in the next war. Once the declining American colossus shuffles into the next near-peer and peer conflict, the 21st century will see the continental US come under a unified attack by external forces for the first time since the War of 1812 and the Mexican border issues in 1916. How the 9/11/2001 events have not been replicated is a

Ep 036 "Drunk on Direct Action: The Destruction of Army Special Forces in the GWOT"

Feb 19 2024 44 mins  
The direct action concentration of US Army Special Forces (SF) in the conduct of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan at the expense of the specialized and storied legend of what SF could do in non-permissive environments raising partisan forces behind enemy lines. The Army SF concentrated on perfecting a craft that numerous other combat organizations like the USMC 0311, .Army 11Bs and

Ep 035 "Review and Discussion: Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War by Douglas Porch"

Feb 05 2024 46 mins  
Everyone and everything has an origin story, while I had a sneaking suspicion early on in my modest career in special operations and irregular warfare (IW) that something was fundamentally wrong with the western way of war in these endeavors, it was Douglas Porch who probably set my course straight. In this book, he makes a compelling historical and logical case for why the IW effo

Ep 034 "CG Excursions: Deep Six the Carrier Force: Naval Power in the 21st Century"

Jan 22 2024 49 mins  
Excursions is a new addition to the CG universe to cover adjacent conflict issues to the irregular warfare fight.***In the future near-peer and peer fight, salvo competition will be the preeminent means by which one country will kinetically overwhelm the other in a fight. I discuss the way the West is in an existential hazard of being woefully under-prepared to meet the threat if W

Ep 033 "CG Excursions: Salvo Competition and the Big Fight"

Jan 07 2024 63 mins  
Excursions will be a new addition to the CG universe to cover adjacent conflict issues to the irregular warfare fight.In the future near-peer and peer fight, salvo competition will be the preeminent means by which one country will kinetically overwhelm the other in a fight. I discuss the way the West is in an existential hazard of being woefully under-prepared to meet the threat if