enthalpy

Sunday, November 12, 2006


In the wake of the "regime change" from last week's elections, the moronic dunderpates at The Weekly Standard are now using The War of Northern Aggression as their model in Iraq.
The proper response to that calculation is to make emphatically clear that the fight will not end until one side or the other wins, decisively. That kind of battle can only have one ending, as Abraham Lincoln understood. In a speech delivered a month after his reelection, Lincoln carefully surveyed the North's resources and manpower and concluded that the nation's wealth was "unexhausted and, as we believe, inexhaustible." Southern soldiers began to desert in droves. Through the long, bloody summer and fall of 1864, the South had hung on only because of the belief that the North might tire of the conflict. But Lincoln did not tire. Instead, he doubled the bet--and won the war.
Holy cow, that's the stupidest thing I've ever read. Lincoln finally got the General he deserved with Grant, in that "he fights" as Lincoln said. But the battles of 1864 were pretty horrific, in human scales. Petersburg, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor cost the Union 40,000 men. As Lincoln knew, it wasn't easy to find a general that would lose that many soldiers in a month and keep marching forward. Sure the Union had three times the population of the South and thousands of troops that had never heard a shot fired in anger. Where the hell was I going with this??

Oh yeah, America has neither the troop-strength nor the intestinal fortitude to endure such a war of attrition in the 21st century. Declare victory and get the hell out.



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