Inept leadership by American generals was responsible for the failure of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A culture of mediocrity has taken hold within the Army’s leadership rank—if it is not uprooted, the country’s next war is unlikely to unfold any better than the last two.
Thomas E. Hicks, The Atlantic
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Darren Braun
November, 2012 | On June 13, 1944, a few days after the 90th Infantry Division went into action against the Germans in Normandy under the command of Brigadier General Jay MacKelvie, MacKelvie’s superior officer, Major General J. Lawton Collins, went on foot to check on his men. “We could locate no regimental or battalion headquarters,” he recalled with dismay. “No shelling was going on, nor any fighting that we could observe.” This was an ominous sign, as the Battle of Normandy was far from decided, and the Wehrmacht was still trying to push the Americans, British, and Canadians, who had landed a week earlier, back into the sea.
Just a day earlier, the 90th’s assistant division commander, Brigadier General “Hanging Sam” Williams, had also been looking for the leader of his green division. He’d found MacKelvie sheltering from enemy fire, huddled in a drainage ditch along the base of a hedgerow. “Goddamn it, General, you can’t lead this division hiding in that goddamn hole,” Williams shouted. “Go back to the [command post]. Get the hell out of that hole and go to your vehicle. Walk to it, or you’ll have this goddamn division wading in the English Channel.” The message did not take. The division remained bogged down, veering close to passivity.
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March 27, 2013 | The plight of the Republican Party and its damaged brand are much in discussion recently. Republicans are in a state of despair over their loss in the 2012 presidential election and, as is always the case, debate among themselves about the reasons for their defeat. Despite the absence of polling or other data which might indicate a Mitt Romney victory, they had high hopes of defeating Barack Obama. They used every opportunity to undo and weaken his initiatives but they made the error of listening only to those within their bubble, and created needless enmity among enough white Americans to help Obama win convincingly.
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April 25, 2013 | "The stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost." -- Reverend Jeremiah Wright 
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Apr 25, 2013 | With the opening of the George W. Bush presidential library in Dallas, Texas today, there has been some creative re-telling of history and the Bush legacy — a legacy full of terrible consequences, intended and otherwise, that we’re still having to deal with to this very day.
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Brecht Vandenbroucke 
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