Like the planners of the German General Staff in 1914 and 1939, U.S. planners of the 2003 war in Iraq and Russian planners of the 2008 war in Georgia were able to count on blitzkrieg, an extraordinarily fast-moving war that wrapped up their enemies in a matter of weeks or even days rather than even months. That is easy to do if you are a militarily well-equipped superpower up against a small and far weaker nation.From Space Wars:
World wars start differently. World War II was a looming storm that was anything but unexpected. But World War I was a diabolical bolt from the blue. Until Austria-Hungary, with the enthusiastic backing of German Kaiser Wilhelm II, sent its notorious ultimatum to Serbia in July 1914, no one in Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary or Czarist Russia dreamed of the immense conflagration that was about to destroy their worlds.
The war in Iraq that the United States has been engaged in for more than six years was looming since the al-Qaida terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City and mauled the Pentagon in Washington.
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