In a new paper, John Morrissey identifies a military-strategic studies complex that constitutes a key academic support for US geopolitical and geoeconomic imperialism.

In the power–knowledge symmetry of the academic–military world, strategic studies discourses do vital geopolitical work: they prioritize, disguise, legitimize and characterize entire conflicts; they reduce political and cultural geographical knowledges of distant places; and they erase the signature of, and accountability for, “our” violence. In a world of euphemisms and neologisms, well paid mercenary soldiers become “contractors” or “security employees”; ungovernable spaces of abject violence and misery become areas currently experiencing “a slight uptick in violence”; and waterboarding becomes “simulated drowning”, not actual drowning interrupted or torture.

The Taliban, self-labelled the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, issued a statement to the US Congress, via Agence-France Press this week. They suggested Congress send a team to Afghanistan to investigate the “ground realities” that they say are being concealed by elements of the US military.

The team should have freedom of movement and should be allowed to remain far from the clutches of your intelligence agencies,“ it said, adding that US military leaders were unlikely to allow the team to do so. The statement accused US defence secretary Robert Gates, commander of foreign troops in Afghanistan US General David Petraeus, and other "military brass” of exaggerating battlefield successes to appear victorious and for financial gain…

Is this conventional behaviour for a group like the Taliban? It seems unusual to address the legislature directly and underlines complications with jurisdiction and authority in both the global and local scale of the conflict.