Some wise words from a wise man

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2005/08/22/JohnBrummett/326952.html

We made the war; we'll make the rules

<snip>I'm not a particularly big fan of Wes Clark, the retired four-star general, failed presidential candidate and cable news talker. But I always come back to two things he said two years ago.

One was that America doesn't start wars, it finishes them. The other was that when America forms alliances with Europe, it succeeds, and when it acts unilaterally without Europe, it doesn't.

We started the war in Iraq. We started our war in Vietnam. They went poorly.

We allied with Europe to resist the Nazis in raging battle. And we allied with Europe in a cold war with Soviet oppressors. We finished both those wars with glorious victories, not only for ourselves, but for mankind.

Thus the precedent seems clear. We don't do well when we invent or self-style reasons for sending our boys to distant countries that pose no direct threat to us. We do very well, though, when we join our friends to fight evil and ominous enemies who have threatened or attacked us directly.

[Jacobin]

1. I would have to quibble with that:

"We made the war; we'll make the rules."

Japan made the war in number two, but they lost so the victor made the rules.

The insurgency (the majority of Iraqis, IMHO) have won this war and they will make the rules.

[wli]

2. well, as far as WWII goes

We did do significant fighting, but the bulk of it was really the Russians. I'm getting the feeling more and more that the US was actually sympathetic to Nazi Germany, but when it looked like the Nazis were going to lose to the Russians, the US rushed in to grab territory so the occupation of post-WWII Europe wasn't exclusively "Communist" and so on.