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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (324043)	2/1/2007 11:31:15 AM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 1576250

Slipping esteem "In traditional Southern households, four weeks after Christmas, comes the birthday of Robert E. Lee, icon of the South, 'one of the noblest Americans who ever lived, and of the greatest captains known to the annals of war' (according to Winston Churchill). "This year marks the 200th anniversary of Lee's birth, and yet so far it seems to have been marked largely by silence. How many of you noticed, or celebrated yourselves, Lee's birthday on Jan. 19 (or Stonewall Jackson's on Jan. 21)? Lee's birthday is still officially marked in some Southern states, but the great and good general seems to be slipping from America's consciousness, or at least from America's esteem. ... "Theodore Roosevelt, scion of a Yankee father and a Southern mother, thought Lee was 'without any exception the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth.' " -- H. W. Crocker III, writing on "Robert E. Lee: Icon of the South -- and American Hero," Tuesday in the American Spectator

To: tejek who wrote (324043)	2/1/2007 2:17:30 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1576250

Any loss can be considered a big deal. Certainly its a big deal for the people involved and for those close to them, but in terms of a burden on the country as a whole, in terms of comparisons against previous wars, and most esp. in terms of calling out losses part of a Phyrric victory, or a series of Phyrric victories, the losses are very small. If you start with the assumption that the war was a mistake from the get go, or that it was executed so poorly that the effort is now doomed to failure, then you would reasonably conclude that even these small losses are a horrible pointless waste, but even if one or both of those assumptions are assumed to be true it doesn't change the fact the losses are small, and certainly not enough to reasonably talk about Phyrric victories. In the context of Iraq a Phyrric victory would be something like succeeding in defeating the Iraqi army and kicking Saddam out of power, but taking a fifty thousand KIA in the process of doing so.