Never Reinforce Failure

There’s a cardinal military rule taught at places like Sandhurst and West Point and Saint Cyr but is in fact as old as Homer, if not older.

The rule is this:

Never reinforce failure.

In other words, don’t throw good money after bad. Don’t waste more lives on an operation that has already failed. It’s almost impossible to make a bad plan succeed by throwing more resources at it, and the result is almost always to make a failure larger.

President Bush has just disregarded this golden rule. It puts in him notorious company such as Field Marshal Douglas Haig, Marshal Robert Nivelle, and even scum like Adolf Hitler.

To ignore this rule is the cardinal military sin, because it means you’re asking your people to suffer and die in vain

So I’m going to stick my neck out here and predict that another five brigades of American troops in Iraq will make no long-term difference. Another five divisions wouldn’t.

That the war, if one recalls it’s various justifications and objectives back in 2002-3 is lost, and that the only result of this reinforcement will be more dead and mutilated people on all sides.

After so many years, I shouldn’t really be surprised at Bush’s stupidity and pathological inability to face reality, but… I am. This is a last desperate throw of the dice - only he’s gambling lives rather than dollars.

The shock and awe at what he’s done today makes me angry and sad and bitter.

America and indeed the whole world deserve better than this pathetic, superstitious, stupid man.