In a recent film version of, believe it or not, the Battle of Trenton, Washington at the head of half his army approaches a Hessian guard post that must be silenced, and dispatches two men to overcome an enemy of indeterminate strength. Clattering up to the farmhouse, they nonetheless manage to surprise three times their number inside, and kill them after a desperate fight, though without suppressing the warning shot they were sent to prevent. Given that the Battle of Trenton was brilliant in all respects, with not one American casualty, why in this version did Washington send only two men to do a ragged job while more than a thousand stood by? The answer is that the director and the screenwriters who commanded Washington and his troops didn’t really know what they were doing.
In this war, the White House and the civilian Pentagon often didn’t really know what they were doing either, and still don’t. The war went as well as it did despite them, and much of what they themselves did or would have done was like passing on a blind curve: Though it can work, it offers little guidance for the future. Nor do they react well to criticism, as is a human right, although their charge that criticism endangered the troops may seem a bit rich when one recalls that never have war plans been discussed so openly by so many than in the glacial prologue that preceded the invasion of Iraq.
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