A failure of imagination

Just exactly why Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his men all died on a hill above a river named the Little Big Horn may never be known. His flamboyant personality has long ago given rise to the theory that, in taking the 7th Calvary where he did, when he did, he was, at worst, looking for headlines, or at best simply making a disastrous military mistake. Whatever causes there were, what resulted was a famous last stand at a place where all his men, all of them, were killed by Native warriors from several different tribes, who shared the intense anger created by an endless stream of white men and women and children who just wouldn't stop coming into their worlds. 

Among the theories is one advanced by the behavior of his officers, Capts. Marcus Reno and Frederick Benteen, both distinguished Civil War vets, who somehow failed to come to Custer's rescue. Neither were afraid of a fight. At the moment "Custer's Last Stand" took place, Reno and his men were battle weary, having run into fierce opposition as they attempted to attack the United Nations of Native people just up the river. They'd been overwhelmed, in fact, suffered casualties, forty or more, that would have seemed catastrophic if it hadn't been for the 210 men who went to their deaths with Custer. 

Whatever the case, Reno chose not to chase after Custer, even though once the guns were silenced in his own venue of the battle, several survivors claimed that the ruckus a couple of miles north of Reno's ill-fated battlefield was not only audible but visible. Clearly, some claimed, something was happening where Gen. Custer attacked the hostiles. Some fighting was going on. 

But Reno didn't go. Why not? Good question. His uniform was blood spattered from the death of a Crow scout who took a bullet to the head right beside him. Maybe he'd simply had enough.

What some argue, however, is that Reno didn't go to his superior's aid because he simply couldn't believe that his famous boss could lose to a madcap gang of unruly savages. It was beyond his imagination. Some theorize that Reno didn't go because it never dawned  on him that the First Nations would batter Custer and his men, kill them all.

I couldn't help but think of that story when another broke in the NY Times just last week, the alarming story that the Israeli defense forces were told some months back that HAMAS was planning an attack by strategies unlike any attempted before, that they'd use glider planes and motorcycles and whatever they could to carry out a surprise raid over neighboring regions of Israeli-occupied land, that they would do exactly what they did.

Which few believed because it was, well, unfathomable, just as unfathomable as the idea that George Armstrong Custer would go down at the hands of savages.

Yet another approximation in the weeds here needs to be called out. Part of the inability to imagine outcomes is built on jaundiced perceptions of the enemy's strengths, created almost certainly by bigotry. If you think the enemy are savages, you can be savaged by your own bigotry. 

The IDF didn't believe HAMAS could do what they did. Capt. Reno didn't believe a bunch of scraggly warriors could do what they did. Why not? Because the people who defeated them were idiots and savages.

I couldn't help thinking that similar weaknesses played a role in similar outcomes.