The other night I had the opportunity to watch several different cable news networks with their various former military experts opining on the situation between Israel and Lebanon. What I found especially interesting was that almost all of the retired Generals, the former Joint Chiefs members and assorted other bureaucrats from the military went on and on about the strategic difficulties that Israel would encounter with any incursion in Lebanon and why the cease fire was crucial.

What struck me most was the opinion of many that sending in ground troops to root out the terrorists was sheer folly. They agreed that air power and missiles alone would not solve the problem, but by sending in ground troops, Israel would leave itself open to flanking action and set up fierce door-to-door fighting that could not possibly be successful.

Although I do not even pretend to be any military expert myself, I did become concerned as I listened to their descriptions of how futile it was to engage an enemy in a city or a couple of them implied that it was even folly to engage them in the open countryside. I realized they were describing pretty much every war that’s ever been fought when it came to taking someone’s capital or important cities. If you listen to some of these experts, every military expedition since Troy should fail.

I contrasted this with some of the other experts that were spoken to below the General rank. The Majors, the Colonels, in some instances Captains, who had a lot of ideas on how this might be accomplished as opposed to how impossible it might be. I suppose that some of the Generals being talked to may never have commanded any men on the field of battle. They might be well versed in logistics, support duties or other of the many areas of the military vitally important to the mission but not directly involved in the actual conflict, at the point of the spear, many like to say.

It made me think of how many Generals Lincoln had to go through before he found Grant, who while he liked to drink, he also would fight, unlike several others that Lincoln tried to convince to take to the field against Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. And I thought back to the Roman Republic when Hannibal was raging throughout Italy, how many Generals the Roman Senate went through to find one that would actually engage the enemy in battle. I realized how elusive and difficult the concept of leadership truly is; not to be confused with foolhardy abandon of which many have in full measure. We expect when we entrust our young soldiers, sailors and Marines to someone’s command they will be as parsimonious as possible in their use. However, history has shown many times; as is the motto of the British Special Air Service, "Fortune Favors the Brave."

What I took away from this was not that I knew better than the military experts, because I don’t. But what I did discover was that like almost every other walk of life, the majority of people will tell you why things can’t be done. There is always someone who has a laundry list of reasons why a project can’t be accomplished. Sometimes it’s true, but it always seemed to me that the first list ought to be ways to try and get something done and see if those will work, not the other way around. War, politics and almost everything else is full of critics, armchair quarterbacks and sunshine soldiers.

As conservatives we should remember two of our most positive and successful leaders, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, men who saw opportunity where others had failed, be it digging a big ditch called the Panama Canal, where others had crashed in defeat or knocking down an Iron Curtain that people felt would be there forever.