I had a "PM" exchange with a poster today who feels that he has trouble communicating with posters who are have no doubts about their opinions. I replied that as you get older, your opinions, like your back, tend to get rigid. :>)
The "Fog of Politics" exists even more than the "Fog of War," IMO. The only wars we have no doubts about, because we were forced into them, were WWII and Korea. All of the others could have been avoided. The country felt at the end of each one of these other wars that we were "Right" to have entered them because we won them, and "Wrong" to have entered the one we lost, Vietnam. So "right or wrong" is really a condition of "won or lost" at the end of the war, isn't it?
So how will we ever know if we are "Right" to enter a war? And how if will we know if we are fighting it the "Right" way. We won't. In fact, when we look back in History at the wars we fought, we realize that we did fight them the "Wrong" way. They all would have been fought much differently in hindsight. And we can argue forever on whither we should have some of them at all. But the Majority either feels we were right, or doesn't give a shit.
But that did not affect whither we won or lost. What affected that was our resolution. We won the wars we resolved to win, and lost the war we did not resolve to win.
So I am saying that we are in the middle of the "Fog of Politics" now, and cannot know if we are right or wrong. If we do what we all know is planned, we will win, because the resolve is there to win. And we will feel at the end of the war that we were right to fight it. There will still be a division to some degree, but the easier we win, the more "Right" we will feel. "Everybody loves a Winner!" A long time from now, look back Historically , the generations to come may agree or disagree. We will never know. |
