Here’s a nice coincidence. Up at The Weekly Standard Website there is a piece by Frederick and Kimberly Kagan about the strategies being used by Coalition forces in the war against terrorists in Iraq. It’s interesting. Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber sneers—on the reasonable grounds that Frederick Kagan is obviously not a disinterested commentator, and on the stupid grounds that:
- Kagan is a “tabletop war nerd” who admits that helicopter rides are “cool”,
- the US military gives macho names to its operations—“Phantom Thunder”? ha!—and,
- the latest macho name is just like one they used in Vietnam [you know: the famous US military disaster that was just like Iraq].
The post and its comments demonstrate that when Crooked Timber contributors try to be funny they are as successful as when they try to be clever.
Meanwhile, I note, via Norm, Jeff Weintraub’s post about a French military operation which, instead of being devoted to killing, capturing, or driving out mass murderers, seemed to have been about protecting, arming, and training them. The French called theirs “Operation Turquoise”.
They’re much more our sort of people.
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