Strong Stuff

Patrick Cockburn in today's Independent has some strong concluding words for the US administration:

"Almost exactly a century ago the Russian empire fought a war with Japan in the belief that a swift victory would strengthen the powers-that-be in St Petersburg. Instead the Tsar's armies met defeat. Russian generals, who said that their tactic of charging Japanese machine guns with sabre-wielding cavalry had failed only because their men had attacked with insufficient brio, held their jobs. In Iraq, American generals and their political masters of demonstrable incompetence are not fired. The US is turning out to be much less of a military and political superpower than the rest of the world had supposed".

The question is a real one. Could an exercise which was in part intended to serve as a show of US strength, turn out to be a show of weakness? The whole article is worth a read.