War, Morality & Error

When I was growing up during World War II, my slightly older friends returning from the military kept saying, “If we win this damned thing the only reason will be that the other side makes more mistakes than we do.” Reading Liddell Hart’s History of the Second World War in an accidental but bizarre counterpoint to the Pentagon Papers, I am forced to conclude that that judgment could be made not only about World War II but about most human history. Plowing through Liddell Hart and the Bantam Books edition of the unabridged New York Times excerpts from the Pentagon Papers simultaneously is not an experience calculated to give one much confidence in the human race.

In Hart’s view, World War I...