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Nov. 27, 2004 Once upon a time a young Scotsman was making plans for a date with a young Scottish maiden and had the evening planned perfectly, after which he hoped to end up in feverish amorous embrace. Simultaneously, a wee Scottish mouse who lived in his apartment was also making plans for a date with a winsome mouse-maiden, and he had also the same carnal designs for the end of the evening. Unfortunately, on the way to her date in the young Scotsman's bachelor pad, the young maiden tripped as she got into her carriage and broke her ankle and ended up in the hospital getting a cast. The young mouse-maiden was even more unfortunate, being pounced upon and eaten by a cat as she scurried to her date. The Scotsman and the wee mouse were both disconsolate, which proves the old adage, "The best-planned lays of mice and men gang aft aglay." But speaking of plans, how many times did we hear that "Bush had no plan to win the peace," "Rumsfeld had no plan for the Iraq war," and of course Kerry's frequent "I HAVE A PLAN! (But I can't tell you what the plan is until I'm elected....)" I know there was a plan for the war in Iraq, because a young Navy officer of my acquaintance had seen the plan and, though it was highly classified, he was able to assure me it was a good one. And indeed, the initial war went so well that it took everyone by surprise, probably even Rumsfeld and General Franks and President Bush. Which may be why the rest of the war has dragged on. Too many of the bad guys cut and ran and lived to become terrorists another day. That was probably their strategy from the beginning, and one has to give them some credit for recognizing that they would have been annihilated if they stood their ground. But one cannot conclude that there was no plan just because situations change. To quote an old military man: "No plan of operation extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force. Only the layman thinks that he can see in the course of the campaign the consequent execution of the original idea with all the details thought out in advance and adhered to until the very end." --Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the Prussian general staff during the wars of German unification. "(The commander must keep his objective in mind) undisturbed by the vicissitudes of events....But the path on which he hopes to reach it can never be firmly established in advance. Throughout the campaign he must make a series of decisions on the basis of situations that cannot be foreseen. The successive acts of war are thus not premeditated designs, but on the contrary are spontaneous acts guided by military measures. Everything depends on penetrating the uncertainty of veiled situations to evaluate the facts, to clarify the unknown, to make decisions rapidly, and then to carry them out with strength and constancy." --Helmuth von Moltke Or, as someone else said, "A plan does not survive the first bullet that flies." Only one completely ignorant of military matters expects a plan to unfold in a neatly sequential manner just as it was drawn up. I always taught my troops to have a Plan B ready--and a Plan C! And also a Plan X, which was the "if everything goes to hell, this is what you do" plan. In other words, be ready to modify your strategy and tactics depending on the unfolding of events. I submit that this is exactly what our military has done, from the troops on the front lines to the generals in the Pentagon. And it is what our Bush administration people, from President Bush on down, have done. This is not a sign of bad planning. It is a sign of reality. As Clint Eastwood said to his trainees in "Heartbreak Ridge," "Improvise, adapt, and overcome." And that's what Bush and Rumsfeld and the troops are doing. And as for the eternal, nauseating, boring gripe about "No plan to win the peace," I can say only this. ONE DOES NOT WIN A PEACE! One wins the war and then peace follows for a time, until the next bad guy rears his head. "You can have peace, or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at the same time." --Robert A. Heinlein ------------ About the author Brooks A. Mick: 63-yr-old physician, still practicing medicine but retired from the US Army. Write just for the fun of it, but working on novel in the vein of Tom Clancy's politico-military genre. Email: brooks15@cox.net ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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