Embrace the "Spectacular Failure" . . . and Move Forward
I love Disney movies.
Yes, they ocassionally wander off the Left side of reality--in particularly the "straight to video" ones.
But the ones they really try to market to the mass audience, they tend to be more careful about vetting their ideas. And, very often, those ideas are wonderful.
Just to list a few:
--The Incredibles, which skewers litigators while making jest of the Lefty belief that "everybody is special", by pointing out the when everybody is special, then nobody is special
--A Bug's Life, which posits that doing the unusual, and standing up to bullies, is often vastly preferable to being a cultural doormat (someone should send a copy of this one to the British Navy, about now)
--Monsters, Inc., which actually puts foreward the idea that the REAL solutions are often not improving what your doing now, but looking for the brand new idea
Well, this weekend I had the pleasure of seeing another Disney movie which puts foreward a wonderful idea.
The movie in question is Meet the Robinsons. The movie itself was, at best, above average: it dragged in many places and the humor was fairly predictable, and not terribly satisfying.
But it does put forward a wonderful idea: the Spectacular Failure.
The Spectacular Failure is a term the Robinsons use to refer to inventions that don't work. Rather than get down on the invention or the inventor, the Robinsons have a good laugh, take some notes, . . .
and then move forward.
Thomas Edison knew the wisdom of this. After 6,634 attempts at finding the right material to make a filiment for his light bulb did not achieve success, he did not see it as failure; rather, he merely noted that he had eliminated 6,634 possibilities, and moved on to possibility number 6,635.
You see, the Spectacular Failure only applies to the grand, the visionary, the . . well, spectacular. You cannot achieve Spectacular Failure if all you ever attempt is the mundane. Likewise, you cannot get beyond the Spectacular Failure if you do not learn . . .
and then Move Forward.
I was thinking about the Spectacular Failure in the context of the Iraq War. Without a doubt, attempting to sow the seeds of genuine democracy in the Arab world, while not forcing a martial society upon them, is the stuff of the spectacular. Many said it couldn't be done; many said it shouldn't be done.
And yet, we tried. And, BOY HOWDY has the post-invasion period been one Spectacular Failure!
Seriously, folks, we need to acknowledge the truth of this. Is it as bad as the media says? Certainly not. Have we been making progress? Almost certainly.
But it isn't what those of us who supported the War signed up for.
Parts of it have been spectacular. The invasion itself was masterful; finding Saddam, convicting him, and dispatching with him was important.
But not shutting the borders was ridiculous; not taking out al-Sadr when we had the chance was naive; and not learning from the example of Gen. Patraeus when he supressed Mosul, and instead pulling him out to teach counter-insurgency at Fort Leavenworth, while failing to follow his example around the rest of Iraq was just plain stupid.
So, FINALLY, it seems we've embraced the Spectacular Failure . . . and moved forward . . .
by bringing Gen. Patraeus back to use his techniques on Baghdad.
And, it would seem, that has finally started to pay off, as the Iraqis themselves are starting to export Gen. Patraeus' methods to other regions in Iraq.
It's not the first Spectacular Failure the American military has ever suffered. If you took the current media's line on things, the 57,000 dead at Normandy would constitute a Spectacular Failure. Certainly, what happened three months later at Market Garden, which was a strategic loss that cost 17,000 lives, was a Spectacular Failure. Antietam, in the Civil War, failed to achieve all that it was capable of, to the deaths of 23,000 Americans. And the entire year of 1776 was all one Spectacular Failure, up until the bold stroke of Trenton at the very end.
So, after 3,200 precious American lives lost, we have finally embraced our Spectacular Failure in Iraq, and moved oforward. This is important, and too slow in coming, . . .
but it IS important, and gives us the opportunity to achieve that which is Spectacular.
The Democrats, on the other hand, are attempting to RELIVE their Spectacular Failures. First, they try to broadcast our playbook to the enemy by putting a timeline on American withdrawal from Iraq. Then Nancy Pelosi wanders across the pond, with all the foreign policy expertise of Jane Fonda, and breaks bread with a man who has sent troops to kill Americans, has sent proxies to attack our ally in Israel, and is currently scrambling for all he's worth to avoid being hauled before the ICC for the murder of Lebanese statesmen. And, while all this is going on, Harry Reid puts forward the idea of cutting off the money the troops need to operate on the field of battle.
The distinction could not be more important. Not only does our side attempt the spectacular, though sometimes to our dismay, while the other side only attempts the mundane; not only does our side learn (albeit slowly) and press on to greater glory, while the other side tries to relive the "glories" of past American humiliation . . .
but our side is willing to act, to put men and treasure on the line to create the Spectacular next world, . .
while the other side is willing to put nothing on the line but WORDS.
If the Republicans do not start drawing this distinction in bold, bright lines, we will also be reliving our own Spectacular Failure, and allow the Demorats to bring back the grand humiliation and economic malaise that was the 1970s.
It's a simple choice: relive, over and over again to our unending humiliation, our past Spectacular Failures; or embrace our new Spectacular Failures . . .
AND MOVE FORWARD. | |
