An Emersonian View Of War Critics

Wretchard over at the Belmont Club critiques the media critics of the war effort:

The men who judge what works in their area of operations are the Commanders. Sometimes they will be wrong and sometimes get it right. The only demand one can make of command going up the line is to learn from their subordinates' experience and reflect it downward in changed guidance. The failure to adapt is the ultimate command failure. Stupidity was not sending men into the face of machine gun fire in August 1914 when that weapon was encountered in large numbers for the first time. What was stupid was to keep doing it even in the Somme in 1916. [This is] the most disturbing aspect of the debate over the War. The press has made consistency in the prosecution of war a virtue; just as it has made the "failure" to live up to the initial plan the ultimate sin. In consequence so much of the debate consists of archaeology. What George Bush said to Tony Blair in Downing Street. What Joe Wilson heard in Darfur. Yet consistency in war is often not virtue but vice. The hobgoblin of small minds.

Small minds, indeed! Contemporary journalists simply follow a professional template, a single methodology, mindlessly applied. They seek inconsistency and exploit it ruthlessly. To them inconsistency is prima facie evidence of bad faith and dishonesty. The template saves them from having to think.

Read him here.