Keeping it short

[unixronin]

Two good articles in Iraq, by Tony Blankley and by Thomas Friedman.

Best quote (from Blankley):

"Fighting and winning always impress.  Even merely fighting and persisting impress.  Shortly after the fall of Soviet Communism, I had dinner with a then-recently former senior Red army general.  He told me that the Soviets were astounded and impressed by the fact that we were prepared to fight and lose 50,000 men in Vietnam, when the Soviets never thought we even had a strategic interest there.  They thus calculated that they'd better be careful with the United States.  What might we do, they thought, if our interests really were threatened?"

Comments

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

Well, of course. I've appreciated the value of sheer pugnacity ever since I saw a hummingbird chase two swallows, either of which was easily three times its size, up a creek. But it doesn't always work, and it comes at a price. The USSR's pugnacity in Afghanistan only hastened the fall of the Soviet Union.

If we waste our resources on ill-advised demonstrations of pugnacity where we have no perceptible strategic interest, what will we be able to do when our strategic interests really are threatened?

p.s.

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

And of course pugnacity can be exploited. An age-old strategy is to continually irritate a regime with operations that are, each by itself, inconsequential, but like a swarm of mosquitoes eventually bring it to a crisis, simply because it refuses to (or cannot) stop swatting.