Obamacare and the Nivelle Offensive

Over at The Liberator Today, good friend B-Daddy has a very nice post discussing cost estimates for Obamacare. He is way overthinking the problem. This isn't about health care any more, it's about saving the remainder of Barack Obama's presidency. This is the Nivelle Offensive for the Democrats.

In 1917, Robert Nivelle was the Commander-in-Chief of the French Army. He developed a plan for a massive offensive that he thought would end the war. It involved using a large number of the new French tanks and a creeping artillery barrage that would move forward at a man's walking pace. His plans met with considerable opposition in the French government. After all, the disastrous Somme Offensive a year earlier had slaughtered 60,000 British troops in a single day.

Nivelle staked everything on his plan. In the end, he threatened to resign if he was not allowed to proceed with the attack. Afraid of the consequences of their C-in-C resigning and publicly lashing out at them, the French politicians caved.

Prior to the offensive, a German raid on the French trenches resulted in the Germans capturing a complete set of the battle plans. They reacted immediately, withdrawing from all exposed lines and moving their forces back onto a series of hills overlooking the battlefield. They dug in deeply, using everything they had learned about defensive warfare in the last few years. Nivelle knew that his plan had been compromised. He knew that the Germans had withdrawn and that the plan now attacked German positions that no longer existed. He knew the Germans had dug in.

He attacked anyway. By this time, Nivelle had too much personally at stake to withdraw. It was more important that he roll the dice and try to win than it was to save the lives of his men.

The French were slaughtered. It was the Somme all over again. The tanks were blown apart by German artillery. The weather was awful and the infantry couldn't keep up the required pace. German artillery, expertly registered on the battlefield, blasted whatever French forces weren't hung up on the barbed wire and machine gunned by the German infantry. The French medical corps, incompetent under the best of conditions, were totally overwhelmed. Prepared for 10,000 casualties, they received more than 100,000. Communications were so bad that the French artillery became convinced that the French troops had not yet left the trenches and proceeded to "walk" over the battlefield one more time, while the French troops were there. They blew their own countrymen apart.

It was a total disaster, done at the behest of a man who valued his own honor more than the lives of his troops. Does that sound familiar?

"Trust me, guys. This is going to work."