Word: blunderer
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More disturbing than their arrogant naivete is the small intellectual distance they have travelled since 1965-Vietnam is still "unique," a "test of very little" and a "20-year blunder." It is shameful that non-experts like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn were the first to point out the actual situation in Asia. But the "experts" are still lost in the clouds, and we must question their vaunted expertise...
...certainly now know what many have suspected before, that Professors Thomson, Schwartz, Cohen, Hofheinz, Vogel, Woodside, and Fairbank subscribe to the "blunder theory" of American imperialism [letter of October 24, 1969]. What else does their letter contain? Nothing but unpleasant patronizing bluster and academic one-upmanship. For example...
Their outfielders grew sorely confused when baseballs flew their way; time after time, the balls landed safely between them. In the tenth inning of the fourth game, their pitcher hit a Met base runner on the wrist while trying to throw the ball to first. That blunder allowed the winning run to reach the plate and put the Orioles behind, three games to one. In the final game the Oriole pitcher and first baseman conspired to commit two errors on a single play (shades of Marvelous!) to permit the last, poetic Met run to score. The Oriole manager, a stocky...
Loyalty Test. Despite his blunder, Mitchell again proved his clout with Nixon. The President, Mitchell and Presidential Counsel John Ehrlichman went to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's house on Washington's Linnean Avenue for dinner at midweek. Mitchell bore down heavily on the point that the Haynsworth affair was being turned into a political attack on the President. Agreed on that premise, Nixon and his Attorney General decided to cast the issue as a test of presidential prerogative and party loyalty. The Senate Republicans who opposed Haynsworth and those who had strong misgivings about him were selected...
...relic, really, of a classic blunder. Perdomita Britannia et statim omissa, noted Tacitus scornfully-"Britain was conquered and then thrown away." He blamed the Emperor Domitian, who in A.D. 84 suddenly ordered his brilliant field commander Agricola to return to Rome just when a wholly Roman Britain seemed within grasp of the legions. Thereafter, year by year, the troops that had pressed nearly to the top of Scotland fell back under guerrilla attacks from the Britons. At last, in A.D. 119, Rome decided to stem the retreat and make the best of things by building a wall...