Where the grades come in lower to me stem from treatment of the conflict as a PR move with muscle instead of reaching War objectives. Every war I've read about in detail always has strong political suasion mucking up the process from the start, and in most cases lasts long enough for the military to be allowed to do what it is charged with doing (Viet Nam the exception, it was always politically hamstrung from the start). In this case it didn't last long enough to ever move out of any such phase.

I'm confused by toolkien's comment.

Wars happen for political reasons and if they have objects at all they are political objects. What the military is "tasked with", has to be expressed as a military task. But complaining about "political suasion" as if military activities ought to be independent of (or even, drive) politically determined strategic objectives is Strangelove territory.

Where the US and allies lose most marks overall in the last couple of years is in letting the Pentagon and intelligence services do their thing out of control. While broad strategy's been plausible, there hasn't been sufficient attention paid to whether detailed tactics and methods support or undermine grand-strategy.

You know, I really hate it when some nitwit group decides to issue 'grades' on government or Organization X's performance.

It's the biggest chunk of arrogance I see on a daily basis, and has the absurd presumption that the graders:
A: Know what the fuck they're talking about to begin with.
B: Know more than whom they're critisizing.

Really fuckin obnoxious. Argue policies all you want, but this grading shit is dumb.

Besides that, I don't really have anything to say on the topic at hand.

I've scrolled six or seven items down and can't find any thread about the European "constitution" meeting today, so I'm going to elbow my way in here. I've just watched the news here (France), and the two countries mentioned by all the commentators as standing up for the rights of their citizens are Poland and Spain.

Britain, no. Blair continues to charm, if that is not too strong a word, his way through the EU corridors of power, shaking hands, kissing both cheeks, as long as Jacques and Gerhardt have their trousers down.

Victor Davis Hanson says we are winning, militarily and politically.

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200312120835.asp

DFenestrate, do you think that people who adopt the grading trope really believe it is somehow objective? The point is surely to say, "This is how well I think this organization is doing" on a broad scale, yet to emphasise the subjectivity and tentativeness of the conclusions. School grades are generally understood to be art rather than science, and by adopting the form, the grader is saying that his conclusions are necessarily tentative, but also--importantly--that he is entitled to an opinion.

So A. graders do assert they know what they are talking about, but B. (and this goes to toolkien's point too) it isn't necessary to be better than the gradee in the chosen field in order to assess, approve or criticise his performance or set out criteria for doing so. Otherwise there would be no teachers, coaches, critics, sport, science or performance.