Talk:Edward Luttwak

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[edit] El Salvador

A recent letter of Edward Luttwak's published in the September 7, 2007 edition of the Times Literary Supplement (London) (online: TLS online; the current URL containing Luttwak's letter (second letter, under the title "Reagan revisited") is [1] ) stated that (my interjection in double parentheses):

... the El Salvador war ((during Ronald Reagan's time in office)) ... was certainly not a "dirty" war. It was a very clean war indeed in which I am proud to have played a small part, by helping villagers defend themselves against guerrillas who refused to take part in elections, and instead attempted to impose a Cuban-style Communist dictatorship by force of arms. When they were defeated by the US-trained Salvadorean army and by village militias, they did participate in general elections and were soundly beaten. ...

The rational mind boggles at the description of El Salvador as "a very clean war"; see, for starters former U.S. ambassador Robert White's writing on this subject and the El Mozote massacre. I've previously read Luttwak and thought him an honest man within the limitations of his worldview -- good writers on military strategy and history are almost inevitably rightwing -- and I was considerably taken aback to see him make such an extraordinary counterfactual claim. 137.82.188.68 02:31, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I have added a picture of Luttwak, that was used recently on a think tank website. It is a good likeness. [[Cangrande (talk) 12:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)]]

[edit] Dire predictions for First Gulf War

He famously and wrongly predicted that the Army would meet disaster if they confronted Iraq head on during the first Gulf War. Reported in "Charlie Wilson's War" among others. Would put it in here but there's a question of balance WP:WEIGHT and I'm not about to look for correct predictions. Student7 (talk) 23:31, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] POV Tag

I understand that biographies of living persons lean towards being positive, but this article borders on being hagiographic. It is filled with blanket statements about the importance of his work (that are not properly cited). It seriously needs some NPV cleanup. lk (talk) 19:55, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

We can all strive toward making this article more objective. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 22:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC) . P.S. I love that word, hagiographic.