Big Effin' Mess
 

I honestly don't know whether I chopped down a cherry tree or not. So if I say I didn't, I'm not lying.

If I were better at this crap, I could have set this up way better. But I'm kind of not comfortable with being dishonest, so unfortunately I've made it clear that I realize (because I'm not a total dumbass) that if I'm going to go chopping down trees, it's kind of incumbent on me to figure out what kind of tree it is that I'm chopping down, especially if people are reasonably going to want to know. I mean, it's one thing to go pulling up random weeds, but whole entire fully-grown trees, that you have to hack at for some time with something that you could use to kill a person? Kinda ought to know what you are dealing with there.

Big Effin' Mess
 

2. Everyone Hillary had killed was premeditated and intentional.


Penske-style post!TM

Most Foolish War since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C Sent His Legions into Germany
 

I can't believe the reading list does include Thucydidies, Sun Tzu and Siegbert Tarrasch.

Most Foolish War since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C Sent His Legions into Germany
 

A bare read of those by the uninitiated would be less useful than a guided tour, which is why two of your three are covered in the basic and elective classes at all of the "war colleges". Your chess choice is puzzling, though.

(Documentation:

EL 523 MASTERS OF WAR: THUCYDIDES

PROF K. Walling

Course Description: This elective is based on a book I am writing on Thucydides. It will require careful reading on your part and some war gaming. It should be especially valuable both for students currently taking or waiting the Strategy and Policy course, for which Thucydides offers a superb introduction, and for those who have finished that course and desire an opportunity to study Thucydides slowly and carefully, at the pace of about 100 pages per week. Thucydides wrote his account of the great war between Athens and Sparta as a "possession for all time." It is meant to reveal the essence not merely of the Peloponnesian War, but of war as such. In that respect, his account of the Peloponnesian War is meant to be the greatest (most insightful, most moving, and most comprehensive) account of war ever written.

We will test Thucydides' claim to have written the perennially useful account of war against the text by examining such classic issues as the causes of war, land v. sea power, limited and unlimited war, coalitions, intervention, peripheral operations, political, economic, and revolutionary warfare, escalation, war termination, civil-military relations, the match between strategy and policy, and the struggle for power among political parties in time of war. We shall pay special attention to Thucydides’ understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of Athenian democracy at war in order to see whether they have any bearing on the problems of democracy at war in our own time. Thoughtful students of Thucydides have recognized that his book is about much more than strategy, however. It is the beginning of Western political science, some even say, of Western political philosophy, so we will ascend to these perennial issues too as they come up in our conversations.

Time permitting, we will also play a war game I have purchased in which we will seek alternative strategies for waging and winning this war.

Standards: Grading for this course is high pass, pass, or fail. The method is Socratic. Students will be expected to read ca.100 pages per week carefully and to participate in discussions consistently. Your opinion is the most valuable part of the course, so don't be a wallflower!

Written work will consist of a take-home final exam issued on the last day of class. A short paper answering one of several final exam questions will be due ca. one week after you receive the exam

Trimester offered: Spring 2005; Wednesdays.)

---------------------

EL 531 SUN TZU’S THE ART OF WAR

PROF Wilson

The Art of War is significant for many reasons. It is an elegant strategic theory and one of the cornerstones of Chinese strategic culture. It is also relevant to many of the strategic choices that have been made by statesmen throughout history, and to the grand strategy of the contemporary United States. At the same time the book (and its many translations) are highly problematic and prone to questionable interpretation. Such a paradox makes for a textual dilemma that deserves critical analysis. This is not an “I love Sun Tzu” course! Instead critical engagement and skepticism is required from anyone seeking to understand this book and to explore the philosophical assumptions that underlie Sun Tzu’s theories. A close and systematic reading is the only way to accomplish this objective.

Having been co-opted by individuals as diverse as Pat Riley, Oliver Stone, Matt Groening (The Simpsons), Dusty Baker, and Xena Warrior Princess, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War has earned a near-mythic place in contemporary American pop-culture. As a result, the true achievements and limitations of Master Sun’s theories have been obscured by New Age babble and pop strategizing. This course involves a close reading of several translations of the classic text of Chinese strategic culture. The first weeks of the course will focus on a slow and careful reading the original text. We will then examine Sun Tzu’s place in Chinese strategic culture, and his contemporary relevance to a host of strategic and theoretical issues. In the final weeks we will use Sun Tzu’ian logic to examine several historical and contemporary cases. The purpose is to get past the “fortune cookie” philosophy so often attributed to Master Sun so as to enhance our appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of his approach to strategy and operations. The course is conducted through informal lectures, in-class reading exercises, video, student presentations, and seminar discussions. Small teams will lead discussions on specific chapters of The Art of War, and each student will individually submit a 6-8 page paper or offer an in-class presentation (20 minutes) that critically applies Sun Tzu’ian logic to an historical or contemporary case study. No prior knowledge of China or Chinese is required.

Trimester offered: Winter 2004-2005; Wednesdays.

Most Foolish War since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C Sent His Legions into Germany
 

I have no military training, so this might seem presumptous, but I would suggest they be required to read Ty's posts from 1 month pre-war and through at least the fall of Baghdad. Very insightful stuff re. light V. heavy armor.

Who is telling the truth about the war?
 

I don't know if the war in Iraq is ultimately unwinnable, but what I do know makes me skeptical of those who say so.

I do know that since Vietnam, liberals have viewed every exercise of American military power (with the exception of those undertaken by Bill Clinton) as preludes to disaster. The very first question Ronald Reagan was asked at his first presidential press conference concerned El Salvador. The question: Did he think it was going to turn into another Vietnam? Democrats invoked Vietnam with every other sentence during the long and nasty controversy about aiding the resistance in Nicaragua. More recently, just days into the Afghanistan war, The New York Times ran a front-page lament calling that conflict a new "quagmire."

Liberals seem always to believe that America will lose its wars, and when it doesn't, that it should.

It is obviously deeply painful to contemplate the more than 2,000 American dead, and many others gravely injured in Iraq. And charities like Fisher House (www.fisherhouse.org) welcome concrete demonstrations of Americans' concern for military families. But one does not sense that members of the military share the belief so widespread in the press and Congress that the Iraq war is going very badly and that the original decision to fight was a mistake.


One Marine, Sgt. Todd Bowers, who did two tours in Iraq, described the attitude of many press types. "They didn't want to talk to us." Why? I asked. "Because we were gung-ho for the mission." Bowers, who was saved from grievous injury when a bullet lodged in the sight of his rifle (a sight his father had purchased for him), is chary about the press.

In his first tour, he noticed that members of the press were reluctant to photograph Iraqis laughing, giving the thumbs up sign, or cheering. Yet Bowers saw plenty that would have made fine snapshots. In Baghdad, Al Kut and Al-Nasiriyah, Bowers reported no signs of anti-American feeling at all among Iraqis.

Fallujah, of course, was different, as the city was a hotbed of terrorism, and the battle of Fallujah was one of the fiercest engagements of the war. During the battle, Bowers found himself sharing a ride with an embedded reporter for the AP. He was asked what he thought of the destruction. Bowers responded that it was "Incredible, overwhelming. But it definitely had to be done." He also stressed that because the enemy had fought so dirty, tough calls had to be made. Later, he saw himself quoted in newspapers around the country to the effect that the destruction was "overwhelming" as if he could not cope. He had also made some anodyne remarks about rebuilding the damaged areas of the city, and responded "Where to begin?" when asked about the plans. He was speaking of the water treatment plants, medical facilities, and schools American forces were about to help build, but his comments were offered as evidence of the futility of the situation -- the very opposite of this eager Marine's intent.

There was plenty of progress to report, if the press had been interested. When the battle of Fallujah was over, the Marines set up a humanitarian relief station in an abandoned amusement park. Together with Iraqis locally hired and trained for the purpose and with an assist from the Iraqi ministry of the interior, they distributed rice, flour, medical supplies, baby formula, and other necessities to thousands of Iraqis. For six weeks, Bowers reports, the distribution went beautifully, "like a well-oiled machine." Not worth a story, apparently. Only when something went wrong did the press see something worth reporting. A small group of Iraqis were turned away from the food distribution point, though they had been waiting in line for hours. They were given vouchers and told they could come to the front of the line the next morning when supplies would be replenished. These few unhappy souls were then besieged by press types eager to tell their story.

At the same site, the Marines had repaired an old Ferris wheel. The motor was dead, but when two Marines pushed and pulled by hand they could get the thing turning to give rides to the children of the Iraqi employees. They did so for hours on end. A photographer from a large American media company watched impassively. "Why don't you take a picture of this?" demanded one Marine. The photographer snorted, "That's not my job."

Mona Charen is a syndicated columnist and political analyst living in the Washington, D.C., area.

Who is telling the truth about the war?
 

Every war can be unwinnable if you perceive that public pressure will allow you to send only the absolute minimal number of troops that might almost barely be enough to come close to being able to call a tie a win. That was VN - the numbers were, for the most part, kept too small, through the public pressure of the very vocal antiwar side, to allow us the advantage that our sheer size should have brought us. Similarly, we could "lose" in Iraq simply by allowing the antiwar pressure to force whoever is in charge to send only enough troops to hang on, but not win. That's really the only way a small country or small group can beat a behemoth - by using the home front of the enemy to make it beat itself in dissent. All of the new talk now about "how many troops can we start bringing home, and by what date" is really the first step. Murtha's ill-advised tantrum was Zarqawi's first real win.

Who is telling the truth about the war?
 

This doesn't address your main point, but haven't we come darn close to that from the beginning? (I don't mean the conventional war, of course.)

This happened because of the draw-down throughout the 1990s, and (in my view) erroneous assumptions as well as a desire by the senior civilian planners to use the minimum necessary number force with the asumption that there would _not_ be a lengthy occupation.

As it is, the force that we _did_ send into Iraq significantly impeded our capability to respond to other crises (none of which have emerged, fortunately).

S_A_M

eft

Clemency
 

So, one lead story today is that Mark Warner granted clemency to a convicted murderer on the ground that DNA evidence that might have cleared him was destroyed. Fair enough. But the effect was to commute the death sentence into a sentence of life without parole. Why does that make sense? If the DNA evidence could clear him, why should he still be stuck in prison for life because the prosecutor chucked possibly exculpatory evidence?

Spanky, this is your type of question, so I want an answer.

Who is telling the truth about the war?
 

This is part of why I would analogize not to Vietnam but to the Soviet Union, where break-up was inevitable regardless of the level of military force because of the depth of ethnic feeling (even with the Soviets relocating Russians in force throughout the country, forbidding the speaking of local languages like Lithuanian, and using military force very heavily against their own people).

I remember sitting in political science in the early eighties listening to a fairly staid, conservative professor explain that the Soviet Union would split up before the end of the century, and thinking he'd been smoking something. But the centrifugal forces in Iraq strike me as stronger, if anything, than the centrifugal forces in the Soviet Union were. No matter what forces we apply, no matter what tactical advantages we gain, the Kurds, Sunnis and Shi'ites will still have an unbridgable chasm between them.

Most Foolish War since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C Sent His Legions into Germany
 

That was my favorite part...b/c I knew it was great flame bait for a partisan hack like you. Sucker. I knew it would piss off the sheep - that's why I posted it. For my entertainment. Thanks for complying.

Big Effin' Mess
 

You take this way too seriously. This is a chat board, not the floor of the Senate. For someone who has on more than one occasion tried to stir the pot a little, why are you unable to recognize it when someone else does it to you? Beg, borrow or steal a sense of humor. Sheesh.


Is there no room for reckless indifference? ;)

Ummm...yes, I agree.

Who is telling the truth about the war?
 

At the risk of STPing, I believe I posted here (pre-invasion) that it was the position of me and many liberals I knew that we should not invade Iraq, b/c the evidence linking SH to 9/11 was dubious at best. However, if we were to invade, we should invade all out, and not pussyfoot around with this light/quick/mobile air-supported shit that Rumsfeld was hawking.

To repeat - had we sufficient forces in place from the beginning, we'd be a lot better off now. It was Rumsfeld, who wanted to test his "transformed military" theories, who sent only enough troops to hang on.

Who is telling the truth about the war?
 

2, except that I'm not a liberal.

Clemency
 

Did the chucking of the evidence go through the process at the time of trial? Crim procedure is a distant memory for me. What does the law say about this? Was the destruction of evidence intentional? "Might have cleared him" seems to be very speculative, but this is a bit disturbing.