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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (92529)	4/11/2003 9:51:21 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Good column from Hanson. Excerpts. >>>> Great marches often entail enormous risks because, as columns slam deeply into enemy country, supply lines thin and the enormous convoys that bring up food, water, and fuel from an increasingly distant rear sometimes in transit nearly devour the very supplies they carry. Napoleon, the Panzers of 1941, and even George S. Patton all were plagued by the very rapidity and extent of their own advances. They all eventually ran out of supplies, even as their armies gradually shrunk in order to garrison captured ground to the rear. Sherman escaped the paradox ? but only by feeding his army from the countryside, convinced that for a landed society like the Confederacy it would be almost sacrilegious for plantation owners to scorch their own earth before the path of Union armies. Alexander the Great cached his supplies in advance, but even he often found himself nearly destitute, and eventually ruined his army not far away in the Gedrosian desert. Thus it is nearly impossible to recall a similar advance that has traveled so far, so fast, with so few losses, without major shortages of fuel, ammunition, and food ? and without being parasitic on the surrounding countryside. What happened the last three weeks is unprecedented in military history. >>>>> I think Messrs. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, when this is all over, will have done a great favor to millions of Iraqis and provided Americans increased security, but I don?t expect that they will win any popularity contests for all their efforts. Don?t expect that Walter Cronkite, Arthur Schlesinger, David Halberstam, Susan Sontag, and a host of others who predicted a nightmarish ?hornet?s nest? and American diplomatic catastrophe in Iraq to admit their error. More likely, such critics will commit a trifecta of hubris and misjudgment by predicting further endless terror to complement their past gloomy prognostications about the Taliban and Saddamites.<<<< >>>>>> much has transpired since 1991. Then the Soviet Union was not entirely gone, and our allies still worried about breaking ranks from our nuclear shield. Now, with the fear of an invasion of Europe a distant memory, this present war has offered the perfect occasion for many of our NATO allies to showcase longstanding resentments and jealousies. In response, we shrugged and reached Baghdad in half the time, so far with half the American total casualties it took to get to Kuwait. We have no idea of the nature of eventual peace settlements, but already the roll into Baghdad as an act of liberation and a military masterpiece will rank along with Epaminondas?s trek to free the helots, Sherman?s March, and Patton?s long race to the German border. Meanwhile, everyone seems either to have criticized or belatedly praised ?the plan?; but so far no one seems to quite know how 250,000 brave American, British, and Australian young men and women in the field are actually pulling it off.<<<< REST AT:http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson041103.asp