The Man in the Trenches
Sep 3 2023 (updated Sep 4 2023)
The Ukrainian counteroffensive has now been going on for about three months. Progress has been slower “than expected”, through the vast minefields and fortifications Russia has built over the last year or so.
Regarding “expectations” in a war, it would always be good to remember von Moltke’s maxim: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy”.
This means that you should not expect any plan to work on the ground as you planned it on paper, and that you should expect, and be able to, adapt the plan as the situation develops.
There has been criticism of the slow progress in the West, and some have talked about peace negotiations to end the war.
But criticising from afar, and fighting in the trenches are not the same thing. Before giving an “expert opinion”, it would be good to remember what Theodore Roosevelt said in a speech over a hundred years ago.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who lets refinement to develop in to fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a work day world.
*****
Sep 4 2023 The Washington Post
Ukraine may have a better chance to win in 2024, a retired U.S. general says
The U.S. general in question is the retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Arnold, who according to the article,
… has spent extensive time near the front lines advising the Ukrainian military (at his own expense).
Meaning he has been “in the arena”; i.e. on the ground, and has seen the reality, and…
He has come away impressed by the professionalism and élan of the Ukrainian army — while also cognizant of the limitations of the training and equipment they have been provided by the West.
