Whittle Gets It

I lost patience with Bill Whittle's blog about a year ago. Posting too sporadic, pieces too long...

But he's back on my must read list with this piece, which I'm going to clip gratuitously.

A wallet full of money quotes in this piece:

Morale, my friends. Morale. Humor and confidence are our best friends now. And so, as we begin our journey through Mordor toward the heart of Mt Doom, this mission to defeat this pernicious attack on our strength, remember this:

Americans eat disasters and crap hand grenades. And I got your quagmire right here.

He's right, to a point.

We will eat and crap as he says - as long as we know we're getting the return for our investment in disasters, grenade-y crap, and blood.

Whittle continues:

The average Iraqi knows full well we can bomb and pummel the hell out of anything we damn well want. But this was different. This took patience, and a willingness to get inside the enemy strategy. This took commitment, and persistence. It was cunning. These people know how strong our military might is; no need to re-teach that lesson. But strong and cunning? Strong and cunning and patient? That puts the Arab imagination into overdrive.

The threat of the vast Shiite uprising that loomed in early April has largely evaporated. Things are still very tense. They may again get worse; they may become horrible. But we will win this because we are not going home until we do. This is slowly beginning to dawn on some of the hardest heads in Iraq. When Iraqi leaders start saying things like we’d better help the Americans stabilize the country, because they will not go away until we do – well, that is precisely, exactly the kind of victory we need. We need that attitude. There is a shred of can-do self-reliance in those words. Al-Sadr will either end up like Uday and Qusay or Saddam. Those are his remaining choices.

Fallujah still stings proud people like me. I want them to admit the obvious: that we kicked their ass and can do so again at the drop of a hat. But confidence, the confidence borne of real strength, tells me I might perhaps be wrong. Victory may be more important than my personal pride; indeed more important than the pride of the US Marine Corps. The Marines are all about pride, but their mission is Victory, and nothing gets between a Marine and victory.

So the next time you hear this Graveyard of Americans bullshit, do what I do: close your eyes, picture Colonel Klink, and remember that no one has ever escaped from Stalag 13.

Read it all.

Posted by Mitch at May 25, 2004 06:00 AM