"...bespoke idiocy - well, be charitable and say ignorance - at the highest levels of government."
-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT VIII, p. 134.
Its orders are:
"'...issued by politicians safe at home, who've always held the theory and practice of war is too wicked a subject for civilized men to study.'" (VIII, p. 125)
204 pages and several centuries later but in a story published twenty five years earlier:
"It was a stupid policy, typical of the blundering leadership that had helped lose us our wars."
-"The Star Plunderer," p. 329.
Future historians work hard to keep their series consistent.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Political and military blundering by our civil and military is all too plausible an idea! The classic example of that being how the French and British botched the handling of the deadlocked Western Front in WW I. They kept repeating the same old mistakes, with huge and needless casualties.
The German made their full share of blunders in WW I, of course, ones which eventually cost the Central Allies the war.
Sean
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