“It is hard not to sympathize with the views expressed by your letter-writer who was stationed outside Fallujah. He does a good job of expressing the view from the trenches.
The trouble is that his ‘old military maxim’ is a brilliant position when it comes to tactics, and a hopeless one when it comes to strategy. Grunts in the field should execute decisively without second-guessing; but that mind-set is no virtue in generals, much less in national leaders.
Bush with his self-imposed blinders might well be a good man to have with you on patrol–though he studiously avoided the opportunity to find out–but a gung-ho patrol-leader may make an abysmal war-manager. Imagination, reflection, and the ability to learn from errors are needed by people at the top of the chain of command. In the field it may be more important to act in a split second, even wrongly, than to canvas for informed opinions, but in planning for a war, and in conducting a campaign over the course of years, those high-adrenalin errors will add up into strategic disasters like the one we are faced with now.” More feedback on the Letters Page.
RESISTING REUTERS: Canada’s Globe and Mail insists on using the term “terrorist” for people who target innocent civilians for political or religious ends. How shocking. CORRECTION: That should be the National Post, not the Globe and Mail. My bad.
THE GOODS ON KETCHUP: An oasis of calm in a troubled food world.
O’REILLY FOR PORN: His obsession has a long pedigree. Of course the correct answer is: so what? After the Clinton mess, I came reluctantly to the conclusion that I couldn’t support sexual harassment laws any more. Not that sexual harassment isn’t a problem and isn’t disgusting. It’s just that the violation of privacy that any legal investigation inevitably entails is just too intrusive. Die-hard feminists and theocons will disagree. But I pity O’Reilly for what is about to be done to him.
The Dish 