What's a nice transplanted Austrian Fascist Dictator of the Germans to do?
Ya promote the guy to Feldmarschall, because no german Field Marshall has ever surrendered before - and the defeatist bassid promptly goes and does what?
Surrenders! The Entire Sixth Army, upon which you have staked your martial reputation as a military genius!
And then there's that damn Afrika thing, too. Montgomery sitting in Tripoli! Well, at least that's mud in the eye of your fascist mentor, Benito.
Some days it just doesn't pay to get up.
*Based on some email - this is relevant because today is the date in 1943 that Paulus surrendered, pretty much sealing the fate of the Germans in WWII.
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Meanwhile, here's an interesting view from someone else, who, unlike Hitler, *is* challenging his assumptions, in the form of a liberal mugged by reality. You may not agree with all his conclusions (he certainly doesn't with mine!) - but he's on an interesting voyage himself.
Update: Looky - a Main Streamer does some navel-gazing. I suspect he'll find enough bad to redeem himself before all is said and done. What I find interesting, however is this paragraph:
Deciding democracy's worthOn the other side of that barrier is a concept some of us have had a hard time swallowing:
Maybe the United States really can establish a peaceable democratic government in Iraq, and if so, that would be worth something.
Would it be worth all the money we've spent? Certainly.
Would it be worth all the lives that have been lost? That's the more difficult question, and while I reserve judgment on that score until such a day arrives, it seems probable that history would answer yes to that as well.
I don't want to get carried away in the moment.
Now, I admit that when I was in the nuclear weapons business, you had to confront the question - are 'democracy and freedom' as we define them, worth the potential annihilation of the human race? Would that not be the ultimate Phyrric victory? And, I concluded that 'democracy and freedom' as I understood has risen twice (the Greek city-states, post-Enlightenment West) and therefore would probably rise again from the ashes, as long as there was something to rise. Glad I wasn't in the Boomers, or SAC - those guys had to really face those choices, we Army guys didn't.
But as I read the paragraph above - I think that guy's threshold of 'it's better Red than Dead' is one hell of a lot lower than mine. And he's more about the here and now, the "I", than he is about the future.
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The Red Ensign Standard #14 is up!
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