Via Sgt. Missick, A Line In The Sand, I came to this short, fascinating, and hawkish piece by a military writer about the continuing fighting in Iraq. The author, Richard Hart Sinnreich, endorses the outlook ascribed to Ulysses S. Grant by one of his biographers:
“He had no liking at all for the cruel weight which modern warfare puts on the civilian, but he could order the weight applied without the slightest hesitation when it seemed to him to be necessary.”
It touches on, but is also at an angle to, some themes that have been debated at great length at PooterGeek here and here and here.
[My calling Sinnreich’s article “fascinating” is not the same as my agreeing with it.]
Killer fact: after his second term as President of the United States, U. S. Grant travelled to Sunderland, where he opened the first free municipal library in England.
Thank you, PG, a very interesting and incisive article. One of the many irritants in this present imbroglio, is the smug complacency of those Brit commentators who point at the British Army’s ‘softly-softly’ approach as though, having been developed over the last 40-odd years, it was inherently superior. I would remind them that the last 40-odd years has been one continuous retreat and surrender, including, and especially, the last pathetic campaign in Ulster.
By the way, I have just finished the last Jack Reacher book which rather disappointed. Nicely complicated plot but the main theme of murderous intrigue amongst the high command of the US army was ludicrous. Reacher is at his best, I suggest, when dealing with good, old-fashioned baddies.
The WaPo is suggesting that we should be more ruthless? It seems rather hypocritical from what I remember of their previous coverage…..