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by _3ddw
1706 days ago
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I wrote a different comment, then re-read your comment above, and deleted my original reply. All I can say is that I thought about Desert Storm when I wrote my original comment. I may have been 7 or whatever, but I did grow up in the period after Desert Storm and I remember clearly how infallible American military might was thought to be in popular opinion. > That's probably what Colin Powell was counting on. God knows. Why would you distance Powell from the other "generals would never tell the truth"? I'm not sure I would. |
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That's a fair question. My first reason was that Powell was in the State Department under W, and the State Department has a more skeptical attitude towards our military capabilities than the military itself does. My second reason, which may be wrong-headed, was that I assumed that the military tendency to misrepresent situations in an optimistic way comes from their desire to do the job. I.e., they say fighting will succeed because it's their job and they want to do it, and then when it isn't going well, they say it's going great because they want to prove that they can do it. Just like a developer downplays the complexity of a challenging project because they're excited about tackling it, and when they get in over their head, they won't admit it because they don't want the project cancelled before they can complete it, no matter how long it takes. (Like that, except with killing.) Since Colin Powell wouldn't be responsible for directing the invasions as a general, I didn't think he would be influenced by that aspect.
EDIT: I think in retrospect what I didn't understand about the Gulf War was that some people viscerally loathed the lessons of Vietnam, hated the idea that the U.S. military could be "defeated," and chose to interpret the Gulf War not as a vindication of applying the lessons of Vietnam, but as proof that the lessons of Vietnam no longer applied. Your comment about the infallibility of American military might reminded me of that.