Brandon9000 wrote:I find it to be self-evident that if the party out of power creates a huge and constant noise that the president is an evil moron, that the war should never have been undertaken and was done so only dishonestly, and heralds every military setback or goal not yet achieved as a sign of impending doom, then that does weaken the war effort, for example, undermines the will to fight. Frankly, I don't think I should be asked to prove something so self-evident.
You may find it self-evident, but you do not provide any evidence that anyone else should.
During the War of 1812, public resentment was high. Madison's first Secretary of War, William Eustis, was so incompetent as to have merited the term criminally incompetent, were he not so "self-evidently" stupid. His replacement, John Armstrong, was better, but not by much. Eustis lost his job after Hull surrendered Detroit to Isaac Brock--whose force was not one third as large as Hull's--and after the fiasco at Queenstown, when the American invasion of Canada was entrusted to Stephen Van Rensselaer, whose major qualification was that he had married the daughter of a Revolutionary War hero. He had been appointed largely for the good and sufficient military reason that the Governor of New York wanted him out of the way, instead of campaigning for the Governor's mansion. Fortunately for the United States, officers such as Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Jackson and Oliver Hazard Perry were available. Madison had relied upon the idiotic policy of Thomas Jefferson which held that the nation could be defended with the militia (whose favorite passtime was foot races to see who could run home from the battle the fastest) and a gun boat navy (much of which can still be seen by those with scuba equipment.). Replacing bad apples and dead wood is the job of an administration, and if they fail, a lot more is at stake than simply the next election.
During the American civil war, Lincoln constantly told those around him that he wanted to find someone who understood the numbers. Winfield Scott had now spent more than fifty years of his life in the Army, and when his native Virginia seceded, it took the heart out of him. Henry Halleck proved a competent successor as an administrator, but was still not what Lincoln was looking for. One commander after another succeeded in command of the main army in the east--Irwin McDowll, George McClellan, John Pope, Ambrose Burnside, Joseph Hooker--until George Meade finally took up the command until the war's end. When Lincoln finally settled on Grant, he had the man he needed, someone who understood the numbers. The Republican's special committee on the conduct of the war acted as a virtual Star Chamber, and heaven help the officer called to appear before them. But in the end, Mr. Lincoln's armies got it right.
By contrast, Jefferson Davis liked almost no one, and no one liked him. The pantheon of incompetent Confederate officers continued in command is breathtaking--Braxton Bragg, W. W. Loring, John B. Floyd, Pierre Toutant--known as Beauregard--John Bell Hood, Theophilus Holmes. It didn't matter how good you were, if Davis didn't like you, you were out. It didn't matter how bad you were, if the Confederate Congress liked you, you were untouchable. But no one at the South spoke out against these men, because that would have been unpatriotic, that would have underminded the effort. Ironically, the only major Confederate commander who ever had a wide, bad public reputation was Robert Lee, who was known as "Granny Lee" before the Seven Days changed everyone's minds.
One of the greatest, classic American essays was Thoreau's
Civil Disobediance, written in protest against the Mexican War. Our armies have performed well despite incompetence at the highest levels, and have only benefited from having that incompetence pointed out. What kind of free republic is it if the warhawks have the right to make all critics sit down and shut up? Every citizen has the right, the responsibility even, to speak out against such incompetence. And the troops are still citizens, as well, and they deserve the best we can offer them, not some doddering fool like Rummy; they deserve to be sent where they can do the most good, not into some trumped up war designed to fulfill the PNAC agenda, and line the pockets of Halliburton.
All of which seems self-evident to me.
