HOW COULD THE OVERDOG...:

Goliath and David in Afghanistan: The arrival of General Petraeus to take charge of the war against the Taliban highlights enduring tensions in the US over the role of the military in political life. (Godfrey Hodgson, 7 July 2010, MercatorNet)

For most of its history, the United States has been able to deploy far more powerful military force than its adversaries. In the 19th century, both before and after the civil war, American officers gained military experience in Indian wars where their troops’ superiority in firepower and mobility was usually assured. In its 20th-century wars, American generals - John J Pershing in 1918, Eisenhower in 1944-45, William C Westmoreland in Vietnam, and Norman Schwarzkopf in Kuwait/Iraq in 1990-91 - commanded forces that possessed crushing military advantage (even if deploying this effectively was another matter entirely). The United States joined the first world war in 1917 after Germany had been exhausted; in the second, it overwhelmed Germany and Japan (along with its allies) through its far greater industrial-military capacity.

Yet the United States began life as a small country that expended blood and treasure in throwing off colonial rule - and the legacy of that experience is the enduring presence, deep in the American psyche, of an “underdog” mentality. This contradiction - equivalent to Philistine-warrior Goliath identifying with shepherd-boy David in the biblical story - explains much of the dilemma that confronts President Obama and his shifting cast of commanders in Afghanistan.

...not identify with David?

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 8, 2010 5:19 AM