Subject: Re: Hegseth....terrible choice
Isn't that pretty much how all wars are won and lost?
To win a war, you must have more men or more resources. Preferably both.

Not necessarily. You could have “luck”, for instance. It’s well known that the invincible Spanish Armada was laid low by weather: storms in the English Channel forced them to go north where they encountered even worse storms, resulting in much of the fleet being shipwrecked on the rocks of Scotland. And thus ended much of the Spanish domination of the continent and paved the way for the English to settle America.

Weather has often played a large part. The Normandy Invasion was helped immeasurably by storms coming in which convinced German Generals to chillax, with Rommel opting to leave his coastal position for his wife’s birthday party in Paris (I think), which many analysts believe led to many hours of directionless German defense and allowed the Allies to gain important beachheads.

And then there’s just stupidity from your opponent: Germany soldiers were told to hold up on their invasion of Russia halfway to Moscow, resulting in them being unprepared for the Soviet Winter which arguably did as much damage to them as any Russian military endeavor. Or the French Generals in WWI having no plan to defeat the Germans except (as Churchill exclaimed) “using our young soldiers’ chests to stop machine gun bullets.”

It was luck that the US aircraft carriers were out of port on December 7, 1941, and stupidity that the Japanese didn’t launch a third planned wave of attacks on Pearl Harbor, which would have decimated the repair facilities and fuel store depots on another part of the island - but Yamamoto decided the first two waves had inflicted enough damage and he didn’t want to push his luck. As it turns out it would have been a cakewalk with nearly all US defenses obliterated, and having the repair facilities and fuel depots intact allowed the US to rebound far more quickly and changed the trajectory of the Pacific theater.

Whoops, got carried away there. But yes, men and resources are important, but not necessarily determinative. What’s that they say? “No war plan survives the first contact with the enemy.” Shit happens.