Winning the peace

Rev. Donald Sensing takes a look at the Kerry speech to the American Legion. In particular this statement by the candidate:

And, if there’s one thing I learned from my service, I would never have gone to war without a plan to win the peace.

Rev. Sensing gets to the heart of the matter:

Again, another indicator that a Kerry presidency would be paralyzed - "paralysis by analysis," we used to call it. I can't think of any war this country has fought where there was a plan to win the peace before the war was entered, not even the Revolutionary War, where the postwar politics were made up as the war went along.

And concludes:

There was never a plan to "win the peace" before American wars, so Kerry is really off the mark here.

As i noted here last November, George Marshal didn't task George Kennan with developing a plan for European reconstruction until April of 1947. (That was the genesis of the Marshall Plan). So it was two years after the war that we came up with the plan that "won the peace" with Germany.