carrying a message—the flesh carrying the word, as it were. That meshing is harder than it looks. The contemporary American military, by contrast, often tends to be good tactically while lacking an overarching strategy. That’s a major problem, because tactical excellence without a strategic understanding resembles a Ferrari without a steering wheel—the vehicle may be powerful and look good, but it won’t get you where you need to go.
I realize that, as a military historian, I am an outsider to the subject of American civil rights. But I think that my decades of experience in witnessing, analyzing, and writing about American military operations enable me to write about the Movement in
Waging a Good War
Thomas E. Ricks