War Is Too Important To Be Left To The Strategists

A reminder that this administration honestly went into this thinking a complete refusal to look pessimistic facts in the face would see them through.

This story reminds us about the war games the military, all 4 branches, ran last year to test out strategies to be used on Iraq. One general quit when he realized that the "Iraq" half of the game was being barred many methods of warfare that Iraq was, even then, just the same assumed to have. In other words, the game was rigged to provide a result that the US would win without any adjustments in their plans, tested or not. The general in question referred to it as "scripted."

And not only is that entirely typical of the Bush administration's demonstrated psychology--if reality disagrees with you, ignore it or shout at it or hammer it till it goes away--that's disgustingly unfair to the troops getting killed because they did not use the war games for their purpose, which is to test strategy before you risk men's and women's lives with it, to see the gaps and mistakes and fix them. To, in short, do everything you can to ensure winning. Otherwise why go to war unless you're an idiot or psychopath? Why waste the soldiers' lives? Were they thinking, like the 19th-century-thinking Russian generals of WW1 who sent their troops against machine guns with sabers, that bravery and pluck would win the day, proper planning or not? Or more succinctly, just what the fuck were they thinking?

I could think perhaps in some weird way Bush doesn't want to win but touch off some kind of general instability by all this to, as some say, precipitate what he thinks to be armageddon. But this most extreme of all theories as to the sometimes downright weirdly clumsy, blundering and brutish behavior of this baffling administration gives him too much credit. I'm willing to believe he really is simply stupid.

Labels: politics

  ¶ March 28, 2003