The transnational liberal project and the dream of radical Islam

Wretchard at The Belmont Club does another excellent analysis of the situation in the Middle East and compares it to other historical elements of warfare: bq. A Tale of Long Ago When Napoleon reconnoitered the Duke of Wellington's position at Waterloo on June 18, 1815 he remarked to his Marshals that beating the English would be no more serious an affair than "eating breakfast". It was the Emperor's habit to disparage the enemy in front of his men, but inwardly his heart misgave him. Napoleon knew that if Wellington's ally Field Marshal Blucher could concentrate his additional forces on Wellington's left before the close of day that "France was lost". There remained but one chance: to rout Wellington before Blucher arrived. He ordered D'Erlon's corps forward at the pas de charge in one last desperate throw of the dice. bq. In 2004, French audiences flocking to Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 to laugh at the stupidity and weakness of their enemy are subconciously participating in a gambit of equal desperation: the notion that if George Bush's reelection can be prevented by a John Kerry victory; that the liberal project which had been thrown off the rails by the September 11 attacks can somehow be set in motion again and the world restored to its proper course. Absent is the Napoleonic self-awareness of the man concious of impending tragedy yet daring it nonetheless. bq. Waterloo had been lost before Napoleon set foot on the battlefield. The principal Napoleonic innovation of the Army Corps, which enabled combined arms manuever at a subordinate level and proved decisive against the inflexible and unitary command structures of his enemies had been copied and bettered by the Prussians. With characteristic efficiency, the Prussians took Napoleon's inspired improvisations and created a general staff system and restructured their armies so that their brigades were combined arms units, French Corps in miniature. And as for Wellington, he had of old time beaten all of France's Marshals in Spain. Napoleon entered the field at the peak of his powers backed by an army of veterans yet he was not to win. It was not that Napoleon had grown smaller; it was that his enemies had grown larger. bq. The transnational liberal project and the dream of radical Islam are alike pursuits after a lost glories. In its eighth century heyday, Islam wielded a two-edged sword. Not only were their mobile tactics superior to those of the petty kingdoms around them, they brandished a creed and social structure which was in many ways superior to the barbarian modes which they encountered. Similarly, while Napoleon wielded the levees en masse; he rode on the greater wave of revolutionary France before whose ideas the dynastic houses of Europe trembled. But at the dawn of the 21st century, these two mighty blades had dwindled into single-edged fillets of rusted iron. Islam no longer the representative of a prosperous and tolerant society and the idea of France shrunken to a kind of petty socialism peopled with legions of pensioners. Ouch and Ouch again... Pitty to be them in this century. I cherry-picked Wretchard's essay, check out the whole thing here Good stuff!!!