Dan, you said:
Michael, I believe that we learn as much from military failures, especially the catastrophic ones, as we learn from the victories. In fact I believe that many military failures have contributed significantly to later military victories.
Military history books are full of the stories of both victories and defeats, and to discard the memory of the catastrophic failures as unworthy of remembrance would harm the development of future strategic initiatives.
I agree completely with the notion that studying poor performance enhances future performance. I take exception with your characterization of my response as a recommendation that we "discard" memories as I don't believe we did that. Perhaps I phrased things poorly.
The original comment was that Marc "hoped the media" paid attention to the 69th Anniversary of Operation JUBILEE. My question is simply why would it be any more significant than the 67th Anniversary of Operation TOTALIZE, which to my mind was a far more signficant event in Canadian military history? TOTALIZE employed more troops, represented the first time a Canadian Army took to the field under its own headquarters, witnessed for all intents and purposed the invention of the fully tracked armoured personnel carrier and the modern concept of mechanized infantry as we see it practiced today. It was also more successful, lest costly, and did more damage to the Germans.
My wish is that "the media" would trot out one or two Canadian success stories on occasion rather than continue to wring hands about age-old defeats.