billd91 said:
Just trying to avoid the political firestorm currently raging in the US since specifically political discussion is not appropriate for these boards. But, in general, these would also be reasonably appropriate examples. Vietnam a bit less so since it wasn't really a leap before looking. We had plenty of warning from the French example and still went in. Hubris? Yes. But not necessarily the same unknowing leap into conflict that I think we're trying to get a grasp of here.
One might well point out that very few of these were real leaps into the dark.
In both gulf wars, the US and its allies had fairly good information about the convential military assets of Hussein's Iraq. That's true of most of the wars in the last century. Japan had a pretty realistic assessment of America's naval strength in World War II. I'm pretty sure that Argentina knew enough about the British military in the 80's to know that they were outclassed. Even in WWI, most sides knew how many soldiers their foes were mobilizing.
What the facts of history demonstrate is not that people leaped before looking, but rather that the fortunes of war are fickle and that a host of considerations other than simple military strength enter into the equation.
In World War I, it turned out that new technologies (machine guns, poison gas, etc) turned made the war much more deadly than anyone had expected. It also turned out that the system of secret alliances which had been expected to bring security made what was initially a regional conflict expand to encompass the entire continent. That wasn't as much a case of leaping without looking as it was a case of having miscalculated in the looking. Similarly, it would have been difficult to anticipate the effects of the Russian Revolution or the development of new technologies like practical military airplanes, tanks, and flamethrowers.
WWII was also not a case of leaping before looking. The Japanese had been planning an attack on the US for decades. The French had built massive defenses along the German border in anticipation of just such a war. But the Japanese had purged those who predicted they would lose the war with the US and the French had not anticipated the German Blitzkrieg. It wasn't so much that they leaped without looking as that they misjudged what they saw when they looked.
Korea, Vietnam, the Falkland Islands, and both Gulf Wars highlight another factor: the (mis)calculation of political will. General McArthur thought the Chinese were bluffing and pushed too far. When the Chinese entered the war officially, everything changed. Vietnam is perhaps most famous as a war where defeat came from a failure of political will rather than a military defeat. (The Tet offensive was not decisive because it was a VietCong victory--it was actually a crushing defeat for them--but rather because the American public had been told that victory was at hand and the all-out offensive demolished that public perception. Nobody knows what would have happened had Americans stayed the course, but as I understand it, the American military was in a stronger position vis a vis their foes after the offensive than before it). My understanding of the Falkland Islands War is that Argentina thought that Britain didn't have the stomach for war--that gamble didn't pay off but it was a miscalculation of political will rather than military strength. Similarly, in both Iraq wars, it seems to me that Saddam Hussein believed that the US and its allies either would not attack or would leave him in power afterwards. His strategies both before and after appear to have been aimed at the political will of his opponents (with calculated apparent concessions WRT inspections at the last minute or afterward designed to make compromise appear possible, PR tours for gullible flacks, under the table payments to the French and Russians and even the lack of effective military resistance--he wasn't trying to prevail militarily).
That so many calculations seem to be wrong (in both directions) doesn't indicate that people don't count the cost before entering into conflict but rather the inherent difficulty of such calculations and the manner in which hubris, wishful thinking, incomplete information, internal turf wars, and domestic political agendas interfere with those calculations.
But it's not as if the leap into conflict is necessarily unknowing in D&D either. While a Kobold who happens to be a kobold Ftr 20 can be difficult to anticipate, there are plenty of threats which are estimatable. A huge red dragon is, prima facia a serious threat for mid level characters who know their abilities, an overwhelming threat for low level characters, and a moderate or even negligible threat for very high level characters. A troll is a serious threat for low level characters and a moderate to neglible threat to high level characters. A troll wearing shiney mithral fullplate and wielding a large spiked chain is clearly much more of a threat than a troll with a dirty loincloth. Characters can estimate the threat level of a monk by looking at the number and type of dice the DM rolls for damage on his first attack. A foe wearing scale mail, carrying a rusty battle axe, and a wooden shield is, prima facia, a weak threat on the scale of an orc warrior or human militia member. A foe wearing spiked fullplate and carrying a flaming sword is worthy of more consideration. A foe with an animated shield or who casts a quickened third level spell is obviously a very serious threat.
All of these things can be misunderstood or misleading but they provide a reasonable amount of information for threat analysis. It doesn't account for the possiblity of a raging, power attacking scythe crit or the cleric failing his concentration check to cast a key spell defensively in round 2 and then missing three consecutive attacks when doing his Righteous Might+Divine Favor+Strength Domain+Haste power attack smackdown and both foes saving against the wizard's glitterdust. It's hard to accurately predict chance. But that doesn't mean you can't predict stuff in general. You just have to understand that such predictions are not significantly more accurate than those made by political leaders throughout the centuries. They don't account for unexpected chance or sudden failures (or unexpected successes) of will and planning. A fight that could be easy will be difficult if half the party decides to run, half the party decides to fight and by the time the half that decided to fight starts to run, the enemy succeeds at killing a horse or two so they then have to stand and fight and the ones who ran are coming back to help those who fought but are still a couple rounds away.
Easy Company, Sergeant Alvin York of World War I, etc. are those 1% for whom real-life legends are written. But on any other day out of those 365 in that year, with any other company of combatants, those 35 men storming 200 men with superior firepower will be a statistic instead of a story.
