"Embarking upon the wrong war, I would suggest, is a bit like getting into a long-term relationship with the wrong person. One can endlessly speculate about how things might have turned out differently, where they went wrong, and whether the other person might change, but in many cases, nothing can make up for that initial fundamental mistake. So it was, in my opinion, in this case. The collapse of the Iraqi Army in the northern part of the country, the fall of Mosul, and the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has led to a flood of recriminations directed against the Obama Administration. If only the President had not cut and run too early, Republicans claim, none of this would have happened. Others ask in amazement how the Iraqi Army upon which we spent so much money and which we supposedly "trained" for so many years could have collapsed so quickly. No one--not even Dexter Filkins, who understands the weaknesses of the Malilki government as well as anyone--seems to be able to face the simple truth: that Americans have no means of making Iraqis become whom they want them to be, tolerant and mutually understanding citizens of an independent nation...." DK (my underlining)
He makes some great points here.
I want to extend the analogy just a bit.
Getting into the wrong kind of war, or marriage, can also, I think, be like getting into a bad divorce.
Not that I do not think there are good divorces severing bad marriages.
There can also be bad divorces, however, severing good or at least acceptable and proper marriages.
Good or bad, with regard to marriages, are also relative terms, I fear.
One such good proper or acceptable marriage, I would call it a good marriage as marriages of that type, back then, went, loose and arguably somewhat faithless as it was, a marriage of convenience even, or of obligation, but a good marriage of convenience or obligation, as arranged marriages of convenience or obligation went,
was that of Britain with its American colonies.
The divorce of 1776 I would therefore call a bad divorce of an otherwise good marriage.
Certainly, the divorcing colonists claimed, wrongly I would assert, that the grounds on which they sought divorce were violations of those sublime principles which only both lovers (along with other British Anglo colonies' marital ties to Britain), as only true lovers could, had shared.
"...I strongly suspect that if a Democrat wins in 2016 we may be threatened with the break-up of the nation....." DK
Sadly, if such a thing were to occur, I would look back and suggest that it is, in part, a consequence, and a vindication to some small extent, of the point I have made above regarding bad divorces, coming home to roost, 250 years later.
Who cares, moreover, that other Anglo British colonies eventually broke away, as well?
That too, may turn out, in the fullness of time, to have been a series of ill considered divorce developments.
A whole host of profound counter factual implications follow, had this bad divorce not back then occurred.
Terms search: Before 1776
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