The most ridiculous items of the week

Two posts with a unifying theme.


Do football coaches maximize returns?


Rumsfeld and the Generals


The theme is "the professionals are stupid and craven and we know their business better than they do."

What makes them ridiculous are the the laughable errors the clever guys commit in their arrogant attempts to show how smart they are.

Steve Sailer deals with the football paper here.


The second post "argues" that the military is angry because Rummy's "small, light and fast" ideas interfere with their promotion opportunities. This selection give a taste of his expertise:

Not so creditably, the generals devised a way to cover their butts, mainly by keeping the politicians off them. It found its most famous expression in the "Powell Doctrine," with its insistence on overwhelming force and an "exit strategy." (How to get the Army out with its getting hurt or embarrassed, never mind that quaint concept, "winning.") And the generals eagerly took refuge in the doctrine of "two major wars and a brushfire" capability for the armed forces as a whole. It assured lots of spending, made the military largely inert, and got the generals (and admirals) lots of big, expensive weapons systems around which to scuffle for stars.

So what about that quaint concept of "winning". The Rummy way was tried in Iraq, we did take Baghdad in a lightning campaign. Did we win? Did we defeat the enemy? The bodybags tell the answer.

What is the Bush plan to "win"? More of the same? How do those wonderful high-tech bombs work against an insurgency?

Somehow the two and one-half wars idea does not seem so stupid now that we are confronting North Korea, Iran, and the insurgents in Iraq. Is it possible that the military brass actually knew something?

Naw, that can't be possible. A couple of generals criticized Bush so the whole bunch of them are worthless.

This is what the rightwing has come to? Will we really swallow any argument if it attacks those who attack Bush or Rumsfeld?