The Solution to Mistakes in War

Below, I spoke on Churchill and the vagaries of war. To that, I would add this excerpt from Victor D. Hanson's reply to an "Angry Reader" about the place of humility in wartime when facing the "unforeseen" and, it is safe to say, mistakes:

You suggest I am arrogant, but repeatedly I have called for some humility in understanding that in war, whether in the summer of 1864, in Okinawa in 1945, or at the Yalu in 1950, the unforeseen happens and is corrected only with resolve not self-incrimination. If you review American history, I think you will see the context in which a Grant, even after Cold Harbor, proved wiser than the loud McClellan or a calm Ridgeway even during the chaos of retreat was more sober than a hypercritical and publicly furious MacArthur.

And, to all the shrill alarmists, this advice:

There is currently a great illness in this country, but it is mostly on the hysterical left that cannot stand any support for the effort in Iraq that it equates not with idealism or support for democracy, but with either ignorance or arrogance. Yet, grant that if we are successful, in five years people like yourself will look back and think the democratization of Iraq following the removal of a mass-murderer was a good thing, with all its attendant ripples from Lebanon to Libya. So get a grip, tone down the slurs, and learn to reason rather than vent.