Leon Hadar: Founding Father Hamilton Could've Predicted Current Mess In Iraq
Since I've been spending so much time in recent months reading and writing about US President George W Bush, his neoconservative advisers and the mess in Iraq, I decided to take some time off these current topics and read a very well-written and very well-researched life history of one of America's Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton.
But I had to read only a few pages of the massive biography by Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton, Penguin Books, 2004) before I was transported from the late 18th century to the start of the 21st century, to Bush, the neocons and Iraq.
Here is how Hamilton, in an impressive and shrewd insight into the psychology of power, described the futile efforts by the then British prime minister, Lord North, to suppress the insurgency by the American colonists against the occupying imperial power: 'The premier has advanced too far to recede with safety; he is deeply interested to execute his purpose, if possible - in common life, to retract an error even in the beginning is not an easy task. Perseverance confirms us in it and rivets the difficulty - to this we may add that disappointment and opposition inflame the minds of men and attach them still more to their mistakes.'
As Hamilton saw it, the punitive measures taken by the British could not defeat the scrappy and opportunistic strategy pursued by the insurgents. 'The circum stances of our country put in our power to evade a pitched battle,' Hamilton advised his American compatriots. 'It will be better policy to harass and exhaust the soldiery by frequent skirmishes and incursions than to take the open field with them, by which means they would have the full benefit of their superior regularity and skills.'
We know how the American Revolution ended. The British continued to dig themselves into a deep hole from which they were able to extract themselves only after a long and costly war. It's not surprising that historian Barbara Tuchman in her classic work The March of Folly illustrated the tendency of governments to act stubbornly and perversely against their own interests by using the loss of the American colonies by the British as a case study.
What was amazing about the entire situation was that the British Parliament had many opportunities to defuse the situation before independence became a rallying cry of the Americans. Out of ignorance and arrogance, and despite the warnings and advice of any number of competent men on both sides of the Atlantic, the British leaders refused to do so, and thus the colonies were lost.
Indeed, as the Bush administration's effort to 'stay the course' in Iraq is demonstrating once again, to 'retract an error even in the beginning is not an easy task' and the disappointments that the administration has been experiencing in Iraq almost on a daily basis as well as the growing opposition to the war at home only seems to 'inflame the minds' of Bush and his aides and 'attach them still more to their mistakes'.
But I had to read only a few pages of the massive biography by Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton, Penguin Books, 2004) before I was transported from the late 18th century to the start of the 21st century, to Bush, the neocons and Iraq.
Here is how Hamilton, in an impressive and shrewd insight into the psychology of power, described the futile efforts by the then British prime minister, Lord North, to suppress the insurgency by the American colonists against the occupying imperial power: 'The premier has advanced too far to recede with safety; he is deeply interested to execute his purpose, if possible - in common life, to retract an error even in the beginning is not an easy task. Perseverance confirms us in it and rivets the difficulty - to this we may add that disappointment and opposition inflame the minds of men and attach them still more to their mistakes.'
As Hamilton saw it, the punitive measures taken by the British could not defeat the scrappy and opportunistic strategy pursued by the insurgents. 'The circum stances of our country put in our power to evade a pitched battle,' Hamilton advised his American compatriots. 'It will be better policy to harass and exhaust the soldiery by frequent skirmishes and incursions than to take the open field with them, by which means they would have the full benefit of their superior regularity and skills.'
We know how the American Revolution ended. The British continued to dig themselves into a deep hole from which they were able to extract themselves only after a long and costly war. It's not surprising that historian Barbara Tuchman in her classic work The March of Folly illustrated the tendency of governments to act stubbornly and perversely against their own interests by using the loss of the American colonies by the British as a case study.
What was amazing about the entire situation was that the British Parliament had many opportunities to defuse the situation before independence became a rallying cry of the Americans. Out of ignorance and arrogance, and despite the warnings and advice of any number of competent men on both sides of the Atlantic, the British leaders refused to do so, and thus the colonies were lost.
Indeed, as the Bush administration's effort to 'stay the course' in Iraq is demonstrating once again, to 'retract an error even in the beginning is not an easy task' and the disappointments that the administration has been experiencing in Iraq almost on a daily basis as well as the growing opposition to the war at home only seems to 'inflame the minds' of Bush and his aides and 'attach them still more to their mistakes'.