As I am often vilified for claiming that America is the homeland of “creative destruction,” these two quotations (lifted from some comments on The Long War Journal make me palpitate:

“The reason Americans do so well in war, is war is chaos, and Americans practice chaos on a daily basis.” Rommel 1942

“The difficulty in planning against American doctrine is that Americans neither see fit to follow their doctrine nor even read their manuals.” KGB Document

To which one should add Churchill’s observation that Americans always do the right thing after having exhausted all the other possibilities.

And it follows, I think, that the impulse to screw up is ever present, and so while things may look pretty good today, tomorrow is always another day. We still have no Iran policy, do we?