Plans v. reality

Thomas Sowell:

Who said, "If you hold your fire until you see the whites of his eyes, you will never know what hit you"? It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he said it on May 27, 1941. It applies even more today.
If you are going to go to war against terrorists in a nuclear age "only as a last resort" and also only when it meets international approval, you might as well not bother. You could see a mushroom cloud before you see the whites of their eyes.
Roosevelt said something else that has relevance today: "If we are to be completely honest with ourselves, we must admit that there is risk in any course we take." He said that on Dec. 29, 1940. But today there are those who think you can "plan" everything and that anything bad that happens is the fault of leaders who did not "plan" for it right. "Plan" seems to be a magic word politically.
No one asked FDR why he did not "plan" for the devastating surprise German counterattack that led to the Battle of the Bulge. We were adults and knew that wars do not run on a timetable or a road map, much less on an itemized budget.
Some today may take seriously Sen. John Kerry's demands to know what the war in Iraq will cost and when our troops will be out of Iraq, as well as the administration's plan for the rest of the war on terrorism. But Roosevelt said, "Nobody knows when total victory will come" and "The American people will never stop to reckon the cost of redeeming civilization."
That was said in 1943. The war would end two years later. But no one knew that at the time and no one expected the president to know. As for a "plan" — Mr. Kerry's magic word — we had plans to invade Japan in 1946. But the atomic bomb spared us (and the Japanese) a bloodbath that would have dwarfed the death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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