“History will show that nation-building is a fool’s errand unless you annihilate the enemy and are not trying to build a nation at the same time. We assumed that we could put 800 years of Anglo-American culture on a CDRom and give it to Chalabi and Karzai and tell them, ‘Ok, boys, you’ve got 6 months.’” — Michael Scheuer

“Our enemies have learned to fight above our level of conventional confidence. We are fighting in an area which is Muslim, which is culturally different, which has different values and expectations, which does not see us as liberators … [to them] we are crusaders, we are occupiers, we are imperialists … above all we are not Muslims.” — Dr. Anthony Cordesman

The Defense Forum continues in Washington, DC today … Josh Manchester of The Adventures of Chester reporting.

“The nation’s most menacing future challenges are in the littorals. For most of the audience here today, your fight will be in the littorals.” — Brigadier General Michael R. Regner, USMC

The Defense Forum continues in Washington, DC today … Josh Manchester of The Adventures of Chester reporting.

Thomas Ricks, Senior Pentagon Correspondent, The Washington Post; author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, was the lunchtime speaker at today’s Defense Forum in Washington, DC.

“We can incinerate any other nation on the face of the globe … It is no surprise that our enemies have moved out of that quadrant into quadrants where they can survive: irregular, catastrophic, and disruptive.” — Dr. David J. Kilcullen

The Defense Forum continues in Washington, DC today … Josh Manchester of The Adventures of Chester reporting.

Josh Manchester @ The 5th Defense Forum, Washington, DC. September 5, 2006

Dispatch 1: Keynote

This is Josh Manchester of The Adventures of Chester. Today, I’m sending email dispatches to Pajamas Media from the 5th Annual Defense Forum in Washington, DC. The subject of this Forum is “Implications of the Long War on Naval Expeditionary Capabilities and Forces”