Cowboys, Indians & Obsolescence

Robert Kaplan on the New Middle East
Summary by Trudy Kuehner
Original Article

In essence, he said, the U.S. military is back to the days of fighting the Indians. In the second half of the 19th century, the U.S. Army had to fight large numbers of Indian groups — from different tribes and with different languages and cultures — of which there were almost as many as there were ethnic groups around the world. It had the job of hunting them down and fighting them in small numbers and unconventional conditions. Success was wrought by people who knew the language and understood the culture: the pathfinders and mountainmen.