Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Ep 018 "French COIN: Paras in Paris (Part Three)" Jun 12, 2023

Show notes

The April 1961 Generals’ Putsch of Algiers (Putsch des généraux), was a failed military action to press French President Charles de Gaulle to not abandon French Algeria, along with French people and pro-French Arabs living there. The putsch in French Algeria was conducted by four retired generals, led by Maurice Challe, the commander of the French Armed Forces in Algeria in 1958-60 and the author of the successful Challe Plan. The plan which in effect helped to defeat militant rebels across Algeria.

References:

Martin Windrow Our Friends Beneath the Sands: The Foreign Legion in France's Colonial Conquests 1870-1935

Douglas Porch The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force

Douglas Porch Counterinsurgency

Alistair Horne A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962

Martin Evans Algeria: France's Undeclared War (Making of the Modern World)

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Ep 017 Memorial Day Mailbag May 29, 2023

Show notes

In this episode, I go through some of the more interesting emails and comments I have gotten since the podcast began in September 2022.

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Ep 016 "TE Lawrence and the Guerrilla Mind (Part Three)" May 16, 2023

Show notes

his episodes examines the unconventional and eccentric mind sets of Lawrence and other famous and obscure military figures. We examine the way some armies embrace this while others discourage it.

References:

Scott Anderson Lawrence of Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

James J. Schneider Guerrilla Leader: TE Lawrence and the Arab Revolt

TE LawrenceSeven Pillars of Wisdom

Desmond Stewart TE Lawrence: A New Biography

Jeremy Wilson Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of TE Lawrence

Ranulph Fiennes Lawrence of Arabia: My Journey in Search of T. E. Lawrence

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Ep 015 "TE Lawrence and the Guerrilla Mind (Part Two)" May 01, 2023

Show notes

In this episode we will discuss how Lawrence's medievalism gave him a tremendous advantage serendipitously advising and leading the local Arab revolt during WWI against the Turks and more deeply, Allied efforts to map a post-war world. His predilections in study, preparation and application of his 27 points led to a success the British army and the larger Allied effort could not have achieved without him.

References:

Scott Anderson Lawrence of Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

James J. Schneider Guerrilla Leader: TE Lawrence and the Arab Revolt

TE LawrenceSeven Pillars of Wisdom

Desmond Stewart TE Lawrence: A New Biography

Jeremy Wilson Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of TE Lawrence

Ranulph Fiennes Lawrence of Arabia: My Journey in Search of T. E. Lawrence

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Ep 014 "TE Lawrence and the Guerrilla Mind (Part One)" Apr 17, 2023

Show notes

One of the peak guerrilla fountainheads in the early twentieth century, TE Lawrence has been in both the popular imagination and a large part of the engine in the Middle East that signed the death knell for foreign colonial powers to leave the region, Eccentric and brilliant, one of the few successful insurgency leaders during WWI.

References:

Scott Anderson Lawrence of Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

James J. Schneider Guerrilla Leader: TE Lawrence and the Arab Revolt

TE LawrenceSeven Pillars of Wisdom

Desmond Stewart TE Lawrence: A New Biography

Jeremy Wilson Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of TE Lawrence

Ranulph Fiennes Lawrence of Arabia: My Journey in Search of T. E. Lawrence

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Ep 013 "CG Goes to the Movies: Red Dawn (1984)" Apr 02, 2023

Show notes

The brilliant John Milius helmed this production in the thick of the cold war waning with the USSR. This will be the first episode where we examine the collision between irregular warfare and popular culture.

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Ep 012 "Sisyphus is God: Government Incompetence and Martial Failure" Mar 20, 2023

Show notes

Government, for a variety of reasons, is manifestly incompetent in everything it does and this lends parts of the explanatory framework in why systemic failure is the feature not a bug in Western martial efforts.

The critiques of the government supremacist mindset are legion and one can find many rational and elegant theses if you start at the Mises Institute and listen to the podcasts of Scott Horton at Antiwar.com. Scott and I recently did a deep dive together in Episode 5850 "Bill Buppert: A Deep Dive into Irregular Warfare" on 17 February 2023.

References:

Ludwig von Mises Bureaucracy

Colin Gray Modern Strategy

Thomas Sowell Knowledge and Decision

Daniel P. Bolger How We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Ep 011 "Three Strikes of the Match: American Divorce 1775" Mar 06, 2023

Show notes

As a former Appleseed instructor and Shoot Boss in AZ, I had the opportunity to teach a marksmanship/history project that had me master the origins and details of the first month of the First American Revolution. I cover the "Three Strikes of the Match" that we used as an organization to educate folks about the marriage between marksmanship and liberty that initiated the divorce from London in 1775.

References:

David Hackett Fischer Paul Revere's Ride

J. L. BellThe Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War

Robert A. Gross The Minutemen and Their World

John R. Galvin The Minute Men: The First Fight: Myths and Realities of the American Revolution

Kevin Phillips The Cousins War: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, And The Triumph Of Anglo-America

John F. Ross War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America's First Frontier

Stephen Brumwell White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery And Vengeance in Colonial America

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Ep 010 "Review and Discussion: Stalin's War by Sean McMeekin" Feb 21, 2023

Show notes

I review and discuss Sean McMeekin's brilliant tome on Stalin being the ascendant and most successful antagonist in WWII.

References:

Sean McMeekin Stalin's War: A New History of World War II

John Koster Operation Snow: How a Soviet Mole in FDR's White House Triggered Pearl Harbor

Herbert Romerstein, Eric BreindelThe Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors

M. Stanton Evans, Herbert Romerstein Stalin's Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt's Government

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Ep 009 "French COIN: Algeria: Losing Afrique (Part Two)" Feb 06, 2023

Show notes

I discuss the French experience in north Africa and the devastating consequences of the double blow of losing Indochina in the same time-frame in Algeria in north Africa.

References:

Martin Windrow Our Friends Beneath the Sands: The Foreign Legion in France's Colonial Conquests 1870-1935

Douglas Porch The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force

Douglas Porch Counterinsurgency

My Substack:

https://t.co/7a8jn2Mmnx

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.