Tiassa
03-29-03, 09:25 PM
The not-so-quiet American (Economist) (http://economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1667191)No one can doubt Mr Rumsfeld's success in amassing power. But how successfully has he wielded it? The accusations against him have been launched in two waves. The longstanding barrage?mainly dispatched from doveish quarters?is that he has wilfully antagonised allies and sabotaged diplomacy. The fresher assault, which comes from generals as much as politicians, is that he has underestimated the difficulty of removing Saddam Hussein. Mr Rumsfeld, they whisper, is a classic victim of ?sun-king syndrome??a near universal malady among bosses of all sorts that leads them to overestimate their own abilities and underestimate everybody else's. It's a good read, and it has one of the funniest cartoons of Rumsfeld I've seen in a while; they make him look real Reaganesque.
But unfortunately it's going to be kind of a boring article for some; since it tries to be fair, there's less to get upset about unless one seeks a problem.
As an editorial comment, however, I would say that my impression of Rumsfeld is that he's not so stupid as to accidentally underestimate his enemy. It may be some bigoted hitch; Americans tend to view the world in terms that imagine people thinking like us, and it's one of the reasons the world doesn't seem to make sense to the average American. But I would actually consider the possibility of a deliberate miscalculation.
Rumsfeld is an advocate of the technological war, a reduction of less soldiers and more equipment. If he could have the "Trade Federation" robot army, he would much prefer that. If you need a source on that, I'll dig it up later; it's one of the first things I heard about him when he came to his office. But in light of the first Bush administration making a number of critical screwups that led us to this current war, and considering that the only real reason we didn't go to Baghdad the first time was obliterated by the "Bush Doctrine", one can almost see how the situation could have been orchestrated to force us to finish the job in the future. Now, this is not entirely rational, as it relies heavily on psychological interpretations that cannot be substantiated, but I see in Rumsfeld a similar problem at work. He didn't undercommit to the point that our troops are being slaughtered, but he apparently argued with the generals for what is turning out to be a "merely" adequate invasion. He can't possibly wish a slaughter of Americans to prove his point, but an inefficient war is just what he needs to further reinforce his vision of a high-tech military. But if we look to information alleged to come from the Russian GRU (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2454.htm), there exists an assessment of the general failure of the high-tech war: The only significant advantage of the precision-guided weapons is the capability to avoid massive casualties among the civilians in densely populated areas.
And that's no small benefit. It's huge, and vital. But the going assertion is that the high-tech war hasn't given any significant strategic advantage insofar as our final goals are concerned. But there does exist the possibility that Rumsfeld is playing for fool's gold, and that's kind of disturbing.
:m:,
Tiassa :cool:
But unfortunately it's going to be kind of a boring article for some; since it tries to be fair, there's less to get upset about unless one seeks a problem.
As an editorial comment, however, I would say that my impression of Rumsfeld is that he's not so stupid as to accidentally underestimate his enemy. It may be some bigoted hitch; Americans tend to view the world in terms that imagine people thinking like us, and it's one of the reasons the world doesn't seem to make sense to the average American. But I would actually consider the possibility of a deliberate miscalculation.
Rumsfeld is an advocate of the technological war, a reduction of less soldiers and more equipment. If he could have the "Trade Federation" robot army, he would much prefer that. If you need a source on that, I'll dig it up later; it's one of the first things I heard about him when he came to his office. But in light of the first Bush administration making a number of critical screwups that led us to this current war, and considering that the only real reason we didn't go to Baghdad the first time was obliterated by the "Bush Doctrine", one can almost see how the situation could have been orchestrated to force us to finish the job in the future. Now, this is not entirely rational, as it relies heavily on psychological interpretations that cannot be substantiated, but I see in Rumsfeld a similar problem at work. He didn't undercommit to the point that our troops are being slaughtered, but he apparently argued with the generals for what is turning out to be a "merely" adequate invasion. He can't possibly wish a slaughter of Americans to prove his point, but an inefficient war is just what he needs to further reinforce his vision of a high-tech military. But if we look to information alleged to come from the Russian GRU (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2454.htm), there exists an assessment of the general failure of the high-tech war: The only significant advantage of the precision-guided weapons is the capability to avoid massive casualties among the civilians in densely populated areas.
And that's no small benefit. It's huge, and vital. But the going assertion is that the high-tech war hasn't given any significant strategic advantage insofar as our final goals are concerned. But there does exist the possibility that Rumsfeld is playing for fool's gold, and that's kind of disturbing.
:m:,
Tiassa :cool: