"War is cruelty; you cannot refine it."
Reading about Sherman's march links in my mind with interview recently watched of former KGB agent in '80s saying the Soviet plan was always to let America destroy itself by encouraging in their native pursuits an ever closer embrace of liberalism and lives of ease - he mentions with disdainful amusement several times in course of ten minute interview myopic American parents sitting dumbly in front of their TVs getting fat while college professors sympathetic to socialism indoctrinate a whole generation of the naive, pampered offspring of these torpid TV watchers with an enervating utopianism. Oddly and then not so oddly this got me to thinking of Afghanistan and the soft ambitions of COIN, a strategy which seems doomed, by dreaming of a war without war, to end up settling for a victory without victory, illusions to appease a discomfited polity. From that musing it was a rather short step into the memory of recent article in Washington Post suggesting that terrorist mastermind KSM indeed was broken by enhanced interrogation techniques and gave up much useful information, was happy to do so - Politico points out that this looks like the CIA striking back at the Obama administration's decision to prosecute the CIA over its war on terror practices, a decision that seems to have no purpose other than to mollify or maybe more accurately reward Obama's liberal base who, after a tough few weeks of health care waffling from Dear Leader, need reassuring that the enlightenment he promised them will not be sidetracked by inconvenient realities.
War is cruelty, you can't refine it. Sherman wanted to crush the South; former Union general McClellan, who looked poised to beat Lincoln in the coming election, wanted to make peace with the secessionists. Who was right? History has judged Sherman a hero and McClellan an indecisive fop - but if you could keep names and outcomes hidden and ask the America of today which policy seemed best my guess is most would choose McClellan's.
These hints of ideas, glimmers of impressions, all tumbled together this morning as if by design - and as I wondered about whether it was just a case of me needing another cup of tea I opened a further page and read in the London Times that evidence has surfaced which seems to prove that the release of the Lockerbie bomber, jihadist trailblazer who had served a mere eight years of a life term, was indeed all about securing an oil deal with Libya. Pondering the future of the West one is left nursing a disquieting sense of unease.
["You're not under the impression I hope that this is the first time the West, as you like to say, has abandoned principles and the common weal for the sake of making money?""No, no, of course not. But the context is troubling, and context sometimes is everything."]
