Dear Bob Shrum,

First of all may I offer belated condolences on your candidates failure to achieve there goals in the last two elections, I'm sure this is no slight on your abilities as an adviser, after all, who would have foreseen hanging chads or swift boats? At any rate, I'm not writing to you about politics, but instead about your an analogy you're quoted as having used in last week's Sunday Times.

While I am all for the use of analogies that reference British History, I did find it somewhat odd that you should be using them too, after all, your particular former colony has a whopping two centuries of history now, perhaps you could have found some analogies of your own. This is, however, by the by, my problem is with your analogy itself, in that it's incorrect.

The Charge of the Light Brigade
- Not actually all that bad!

You suggest that the charge of the light brigade at the battle of Balaclava was not successful, from your phrasing of the analogy, I'd even go so far as to say you suggest it was a failure. On the contrary, my dear boy, the charge of the Light Brigade was spectacular not only in the fearless courage shown by the combatants, but also in the fact that the objectives of the charge were in fact achieved against all odds. The guns at the far end of the valley were taken and the twenty battalions holding said guns repulsed. Now, due to the unfortunate fact that more than half of the horses and almost a quarter of the men lay dead on the field, the only possible option from this point was to retreat back along the valley, such a position as they had attained being indefencible due to their high casualty figures, however the fact remains that they objective was achieved in the first place.

Permit me if I may, to suggest a better analogy, I'm sure we could find one, if we tried. I was at first going to suggest one of the major defeats inflicted upon the British in that era, however at Islandwhana and Khartoum we were attacked, as opposed to attacking, thus rendering them entirely useless for the purpose of your analogy. I considered the Hicks-Pasha column, however, while Hicks himself was British, the column was Egyptian and Soudanese and they were ambushed before any attack was made upon the Mahdi's forces.

To make your analogy work we need an all out attack by the forces, on this count Badajoz would come into contention, however again this resulted in success, albeit after many assaults of the most bloody and nightmarish nature. This leaves us with somewhat of a problem in that, as a general rule, when the thin red line attacked, it did so successfully. If I may venture to offer a Naval analogy, perhaps you could consider the battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife? Not only were the attackers defeated, but their commander lost his arm. Of course, the defeat was in fact a negotiated surrender with full military honours, again it seems to fail you.

For an example of an unsuccessful attack, may I suggest you look elsewhere, perhaps at a nation with a less distinguished historical track record. I can think of a few, Napoleon's 1812 jaunt into Russia was rather less than successful, and Hitler didn't fair overly well when he attempted a similar manoeuvre 169 years later. Of course, we must assess also the ability of your audience to be familiar with the business end of your analogy, so perhaps we should look elsewhere, perhaps one may find some examples of failed military aggression a little closer to home, I don't know for certain, but perhaps Vietnam, Korea, Iraq may give some scope for thought.

Yours

amillionpieces