Posted on 08/11/2006 4:23:32 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
In a war, as Secretary Rumsfeld says, stuff happens. Things go wrong, sometimes a lot goes wrong, on occasion everything goes wrong. Then you have a fiasco (the title of the best book about Iraq, written by Thomas E. Ricks).
Military history is filled with fiasco stories -- the French army at Agincourt or the Union army at Fredericksburg. A more recent fiasco was Operation Market Garden in the autumn of 1944, a scheme cooked up by British Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery. The Germans, driven out of France, were falling back behind the Siegfried line. Montgomery desperately wanted to win the war by himself. The plan was for his British 2nd Army to run around the end of the line and go on to Berlin. Three airborne divisions (two American, one British) would secure bridges over the Rhine at Nijmegen, Enthoven and Arnheim. An armored corps of the 2d Army would drive up the road, cross the Rhine and strike into Germany.
It was an ingenious scheme, at least on paper. It turned into a fiasco (recorded in the book A Bridge Too Far and a film of the same name). The U.S. airborne divisions captured the first two bridges. The British failed to capture the bridge at Arnheim and their armored corps moved too slowly. The English paratroop division was destroyed and the war went on. Why the failure? Market Garden was developed in less than two weeks. The intelligence was inadequate. There were more Germans moving into Holland than Montgomery realized. There were not enough paratroop divisions. The armored corps was not strong enough and moved too slowly. The causes: arrogance and ignorance. The result: fiasco.
This paradigm matches the Iraq war: terrible intelligence, inadequate planning, not enough troops, underestimating the enemy. More arrogance and ignorance. Only the size of the fiasco is much larger, a terrible blow to the U.S. military and American prestige for the next decade. The pessimism among American leaders at the Senate Committee last week was palpable. There might be a civil war and, if there is, there is little America can do but get out of the way. Probably the worst fiasco in American history, worse than Pearl Harbor.
In the years to come people will ask why did they do it? They had been warned about what would happen and they went ahead anyway. The Congress and the media did not protest. Were they out of their minds?
The answer, I suspect, is yes, we all were out of our minds. Osama bin Laden in his wildest dreams could not have imagined that the United States would have responded to the World Trade Center attack with such madness. Ricks, the Washington Post's Pentagon reporter, points out that the columnists and editorial writers at his paper and the New York Times supported the war at the beginning.
Most of these writers, sentinels against government failures, have changed their minds as sanity begins to return, but they have yet to admit their mistakes and take responsibility. Thomas Friedman of the Times, its all-purpose pontifical expert on the Middle East, has finally announced, yes, it is time to call a peace conference among Iraq parties and get out. Where was he three years ago? Why doesn't he admit flat-out that he was wrong and apologize? Why doesn't he say that he was swept along by the 9/11 frenzy and the blatant lies of the administration, and that he ought to have known better? Why doesn't he credit those of us who warned all along that Iraq was worse even than Vietnam? Why doesn't he concede he, too, failed the American people by not standing up to the frenzy sweeping the country? Why doesn't he criticize the media, which propounded the false cliché that America would never be the same again and the misleading shibboleth "war on global terror''?
Arrogance and ignorance were not limited to the administration. Friedman, David Brooks, Robert Kagan and James Hoagland failed in their duty to cry "hold, enough!" We should not permit them to change their minds until they admit full responsibility for the fiasco, which has given bin Laden his biggest victory yet.
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Doesn't the headline sound like Greeley is talking about himself?
Can somebody please explain how a gadfly, queer pseudo-priest qualifies as a military expert? Just wondering...
He certainly is a jackass.
And he is wrong on a number of points on his history.
1) Monty was not out to 'win the war' by himself.
2) The Germans were certainly not 'falling back'.
3) There were enough britsh paratroopers.
4) The British paratroopers did secure the bridge at Arnheim if the assault had remained on schedule.
5) The entire assault did move too slowly due to a ferocious Germand defense - particularly since they were required to attack down a single road with boggy ground on both ends.
6) Recon had failed to notice (or decided to ignore) the arrival of a German panzer group that was put there for R&R.
7) The almost total loss of the paratroops was not great. However, the attack was not a fiasco in and of itself. A lot of ground was taken.
8) As the movie says - it was a 'Bridge to Far'. A less ambitious advance would have been a total victory - but would have given up the chance for a total breakout.
9) When you are up against a determined and vicious enemy - you are going to take casualties. Often the daring assault, the blitzkreig, achieves a great victory for far fewer losses than anyone could dare imagine. Witness the German blitzes at the start of the war.
Of course just like all liberals he criticizes but offers no alternate plan
Does Mr. Greely know that a rougue wave sunk a ship in the British Channel, killing 2,000 men aboard it in a training exercise for D-Day? Was Eisenhower "incompetent"?
I thought from the headline that the article was about the NYT until I saw (GREELY ALERT).
I fully agree with your rendition of the facts. Mr. Greeley should stick to writing fiction. In his world, leftist leaders are never driven by personal and base motives, but only by high principles and the greater good of mankind. That certainly describes Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, ...NOT!
Greeley knows enough about human nature to know men like him are aiding the enemy. Greeley doesn't know much about our fight for freedom.
In 1778, three years into our fight for freedom, one of Washington's top spies, Abraham Woodhull, (a member of the Culper Spy Ring on Long Island) had this to say.
"I cannot bear the thoughts of the war continuing another year, as could wish to see an end of this great distress.p95, Washington's Spies, by Alexander Rose...Were I to undertake to give and account of the sad destruction that the enemy makes within these lines I shoul fail. They have no regard to age, sex, Whig or Tory.
I lament to hear [of the] civil dissensions among you [the Congress] at Philadelphia.
I think them very alarming.
It sinks the spirits of our suffering friends here and pleases the enemy.
Cannot the disturbers see that they are working their own ruin.
Is there no remedy to apply.
Better they be cut off from the land of the living than to be suffered to go on."
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