My wife Mil and I were reading tonight about King George the Third of
England. He was the English king who lost America. The colonists called him, dersively, "Farmer George", and considered him, for all practical purposes, an inbred idiot, a spoiled fool who'd never been in battle himself, or at minimum a childish fop who'd never in his life had to do anything to actually survive in the world, as most men do. And so, growing up, Farmer George lacked a basic sympathy for everybody else, which revelealed itself in his policies, and his concomitent place in history.
George the Third lost America because he refused to acknowledge what America basically was, or had become. Instead, in his overwhelming military power, George the Third insisted, along with his Privy Counselors, upon how he expected America to behave, or else.
That didn't work. The criminal colonist rebels, now known as America's Founding Fathers--George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, et. al.--so profoundly disagreed with Farmer George's assumptions and military suppression that they staked their personal honor, fortunes and lives upon their rebellion. It had become their country, not his. If we had lost the Revolution--and it was nip and tuck throughout the entire affair--our Founding Fathers would have been hanged as traitors and celebrated like offshore Guy Fawkes's . And they all knew it.
Just like Farmer George held on, however, listened to his counselors and generals and sent warships and British Regulars who, after their initial successes, were gradually worn down by the guerilla tactics of fighters defending their homeland, so too does the White House hold on to its insistence upon the power of our brilliant, pinpoint accurate war machine. They ask themselves, "What's the point of running a superpower if you can't impose your will? What is the Pentagon's purpose, if not a muscular foreign policy? We are America, after all."
And in this way, in my humble opinion, they miss the true potential flux of history, and instead stumble us into more troubles which will only redound to our loss of influence.
"Well, your Majesty, I suggest you simply crush them. They're rabble. Disorganised. They squabble amongst themselves. And might I remind you, you do command the greatest military on earth. Who can stand before the British Navy and our Regulars?"
"Yes. You're right. We'll crush them."
"Quite so. Their ill-begotten rebellion will end rather quickly once our forces arrive."
"It will, won't it? How utterly boring all this is, isn't it?"
"Oh, yes, your Majesty. Victory will be easy. Over with rather quickly, I should imagine."
"How dare they?"
"They're fools, Your Majesty. Dreamers. They cannot stand against the British Empire."
"Who could, after all?"
"No one, your Majesty. It's unthinkable."
"Then let us move forward."
"A brilliant strategy, your Majesty. I shall draw up the orders."
"Yes, quite so."
