Most anyone who has tried to predict election cycles, or who will be in the World Series or the World Cup, what the next set of offensive plays will be in an NFL game, or what the next month at work will be like understand the difference between attempting to predict and prepare for something and those who come running behind after the fact touting their visionary brilliance in predicting what had happened would happen (though they are almost always hard put to prove themselves). It is especially the case when ‘rear window experts’ were not on board with a plan.

Jed Babbin at RCP provides some true predictive insight when he notes a coming storm of Rear Window Experts will be emerging from the leftward leaning ranks of the US military. The military does reflect this nation and that includes all the naysayers and late blooming experts. So the fact there are doubters in the ranks is not news, no matter how much the news media will pretend it is. My experience with these Johnny-Come-Latelies is to think about a few vision tests for these backward looking folks to pass:

Did their prediction include a solution of provable improvement? Those who say the insurgency was avoidable are whistling past a lot of intelligence which clearly points to the insurgency as Saddam’s number one plan for success. But if they had a different idea, they need to show it would have made a measurable improvement – not something that might have been or might have not been. A clear and obvious difference. Whether we disbanded the Iraq Army or not is actually not a clearly better path because of the mischief Saddam sympathizers could have caused in the name of the new Iraq government. Murders and kidnappings from inside sources, and security details riddled with insurgents, would not have bode well for Iraq over the last few years

Will the Rear Window Expert stake his/her reputation on their contention their path would have created a better result than what we have? Any hesitation and you have someone posing as an authority. If they will not take a risk and make a public stand now it is very likely they did not make a big stand back when it counted, which is maybe why their views were not accepted. They lacked a certain confidence from the source – themselves.

Can the Rear Window Expert point to any instance where their proposals were accepted and successful? Actions speak louder than words, but results rule the day. I will give infinite credibility to someone with a track record of success.

Will the Rear Window Expert offer to shun any benefit that might arise from being proven correct? If this is truly in the national interest, then personal gain should easily be shunned for the greater good.

Does the Rear Window Solution include illegal or immoral actions. The common leftwing media spin is to make the military sound like it is a democracy. It isn’t. It is run by people who give direct orders to be followed no matter what. It exposes the military to human errors in judgement, but it makes it incredibly nimble in the decision process which enacts all actions and events. That is the trade. The faster the decisions are made the faster you can move. To make fast decisions requires the decision process be in a single individual. There is no getting around this. Those who complain about “following orders or else” in the military are missing the essence of a chain of command. So naive commentary like “A willful blindness gripped political and military leaders, and dissent was not tolerated” is really misinformation, and possibly a diversionary stunt to manipulate the reader. That statement could easily be summed up as “orders where given and followed, and what happened is a result of those orders”. Sort of makes sense and it is not very sensational if you think about it.

Looking back is easy. Looking back in the midst of a tough situation and saying it could have gone better is trivial. The final acid test is to propose something today to get us on a better path. Kerry never understood the power of results verses words (mainly because the guy has no results beyond his personal gain to point to). When he claimed he could get Europe and the UN on board with Iraq he should have just done it and showed up Bush. Even as a die hard Bush supporter, if someone was able to make things measurably better by taking a different path (and that does not include efforts to claim victory from Bush’s success as with all these years of calling for troop withdrawls) I would be hard pressed not to support this person. Actions and Results. Rear Window Experts have to demonstrate the same minimum abilities. Otherwise they are just reverse engineering tea leaves.