Posted by
Andrews on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 11:04:40 AM
Apparently no Democrat ever heard of von Moltke. Nor do they possess the sort of knowledge your average first grader does.
Why do I say that? Because they appear to have no understanding of von Moltke's aphorism that "no plan survives contact with enemy". More than that, they seem to lack even the basic understanding of little children that both the future is unknowable and that you can't always trust what you learn second-hand.
Why do I say this?
Because the basic Democrat complaint about the war in Iraq is that we did not get the results we expected, that it has gone on longer than anticipated, and that we did not find the WMDs we anticipated. They also say we were not welcomed as liberators, but as that is an outright lie I will ignore it. Or I will ignore it after saying that, for the record, we were welcomed as liberators, though later terrorists from out of the country combined with Baathist holdouts and formed this "insurgency". However, it is not really the majority of Iraqis who oppose us, it is a small fraction of Iraqis supported by external powers such as Iran, Syria and al Qaida.
But moving on to their more substantial charges, that we did not find WMDs and that the war went differently than anticipated.
The WMD charge is amusing, as whenever we find something the left changes the rules. Chemical shells don't count as they are "too old". Cannisters of chemicals don't count as they "aren't finished weapons" or they are just "argicultural chemicals" kept in military bunkers. And on and on.
I wrote about this before, so I will not say much here. All I want to note is that we found quite a few WMDs, but even if we hadn't, the burden was on Saddam to PROVE he had eliminated them. As he did not meet his burden we were justified in going in, regardless of whether there were WMDs or not.
So, what about the charge that the war did not go according to plan?
My response is, of course not. No war does. And so what? Wars are not ballets or movies, they do not follow a script. Sometimes the unexpected happens. It is easy in retrospect to point out what should have been done, but I note none of those doing so pointed out what should have been done at the time, only after the fact.
We have a presidential candidate who is constantly surprised when his associates prove to be "someone else", yet he is criticizing our military for imperfect knowledge of the future? We have Democrats who are surprised that increasing unemployment benefit duration increases the number of unemployed and the time it takes for them to find jobs, yet they expect generals to be able to trace the cause and effect of every act on millions of Iraqis and predict outcomes five or ten years into the future?
It is just absurd. The future is unknowable. In warfare even more so. Even with the best foreknowledge, it is impossible to predict the reactions of 25 million people. And even were our military to correctly predict the initial actions of the enemy, the enemy, acting on knowledge of our perfect predictions, could then change course, making a shambles of our predictions./ At best, military planning allows the flexibility to adjust to the unexpected, even the best planner does not believe he has perfect foresight. Only the Democrats expect that of generals.
So, in short, the Democrats claim the war was a failure because after being greeted as liberators foreign powers managed to stage a mock insurgency, because we could not meet the shifting standards of proof required to show thee were WMDs, because our military planners did not accurately anticipate every event in advance, and because Democrat politicians after the event can come up with better plans than the generals did when planning before events.
Somehow it seems like a less than damning criticism