Sublime

David Martin and John Walcott’s Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of America’s War Against Terrorism (Martin and Walcott 1988).

The more that warfare is “formalized” the less damaging it proves. Past efforts in this direction have had more success than is commonly appreciated.

Cette guerre, explique-t-il, oppose des pays libres à un pays qui ne l’est pas. « Dans un pays libre, l’État n’est pas une idole ; il est une organisation nécessaire qui doit justifier constamment sa nécessité et ne demander à chacun des citoyens que ce que lui demande explicitement le bien de tous. » Il paraît bien loin l’éloge imprudent de

The historian Andrew Roberts reminds us that, although the most common understanding of ‘leadership’ connotes inherent goodness, leadership ‘is in fact completely morally neutral, as capable of leading mankind to the abyss as to the sunlit uplands. It is a protean force of terrifying power’ that we must strive to orient toward moral ends.[14]

Prime Minister Winston Churchill also recognized the power of using irregular forces to combat the Wehrmacht in conjunction with regular military operations. In July 1940, he charged a new organization, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), with the mission to “set Europe ablaze.”9 For the next several years, British agents assisted local

Crowe began where Mackinder left off. Great Britain was an island off the coast of a continent, but with “vast overseas colonies and dependencies.”21 Its survival required the “preponderant sea power” it had long maintained. This had made it “the neighbour of every [other] country accessible by sea,” a status that could have provoked “jealousy and

he cautioned me ‘never to confuse energy with strength’.

The third element, the “psychological,” was of particular importance to Lawrence considering the Arabs’ relative inferiority. “We were so weak physically that we could not let the metaphysical weapon rust unused.”173 He explains, “We had to arrange [our Arab soldiers’] minds in order of battle, just as carefully and as formally as other officers