Patton: The Glory of War and its Limitations

Toogood Reports ^ | 28 September 2003 | Nicholas Stix

[mrustow]

Nah, I just have an aversion for nonsense. Which is why this guy draws so much criticism.

But he doesn't. Don't lie, to try and get other people to jump on your pathetic little bandwagon. You can't compensate for your own lack of an argument, by inventing other people who supposedly do.

[dirtboy]

If I were you, I wouldn't bother with Dirtboy's comments.

He doesn't, because they go right over his head. This army didn't have to up to beating Hitler, because we weren't fighting Hitler - so the statement was both true and absurd, with absurdity being the more important qualifier here. And Hitler was a different enemy in a different time and in a different situation. For all the whining that we didn't have a great field commander, we managed to take all of Iraq with fewer casualties than we suffered trying to maintain a few peacekeepers in Beruit.

[dirtboy]

But he doesn't.

Once again, I wasn't disputing the veracity of his comment, just that it was an absurd point of argument to make. We didn't have to have a continental army to fight this battle.

Don't lie, to try and get other people to jump on your pathetic little bandwagon. You can't compensate for your own lack of an argument, by inventing other people who supposedly do.

Why don't you try growing a thicker skin and quit responding to critiques with personal attacks and vulgarity? Why don't you support YOUR position instead of attacking those who question it? Why don't YOU state why you think this is a valid argument to make and why it is relevant - why is it relevant that we didn't have an army to beat Hitler when we were fighting what was left of Saddam's regime?

[dirtboy]

But he doesn't.

He drew plenty on threads I have seen. He got resoundingly spanked on the thread you called into question by dragging your dispute with me from that thread into this one - hardly any comments were favorable. Yet you call me the liar.

[mrustow]

If I were you, I wouldn't bother with Dirtboy's comments.

You're right, especially when he gets help from a higher power, removing my responses to his flames. You can't call it a flame war, when one side is disarmed.

I admire your whole posting...and responses.

Thanks.

I was taken by Patton's theory to avoid foxhole digging...but rather continue moving foward. (I believe this came from someone else but your post engendered it.)

Me, too. I'll have to study up on that, since he's the only general I've heard of espousing that idea. Maybe it depends on the battlefield leader -- with the right guy, the troops go psycho and run over the opposition, but with the wrong guy, they get shot to pieces. On the other hand, you have the Civil War, where it practically became a matter of who had more bodies to throw at the enemy.

[archy]

Another retired general is on the record as saying he would not vote for Clark because of character issues.

That was General H. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11. Check the FR keywords for stories listed under the category WEASELY for details.

-archy-/-

[dirtboy]

You're right, especially when he gets help from a higher power, removing my responses to his flames.

Gee, you only spewed an insult, used vulgarity and dragged a dispute from one old thread into this one. That's THREE violations of the posting guidelines. Yet I'm the heavy.

I've got a hint - if you keep your posts on the up-and-up, they won't get pulled! Is that such a difficult concept to grasp?

[mrustow]

A good article about a great man, but there are surely some false notes in it.

For one thing, Patton didn't say we fought on the wrong side. He said there were TWO enemies, Hitler and Stalin, and he was right about that.

Yeah, I seem to recall a line where someone asked him if he had said that if he had the Reds on one side of him, and the Browns on the other, that he would attack in both directions. And he said, IIRC, no, but I sure as hell wish I had.

I was especially bothered by this: "Some people thought him mad, for wanting to fight the Russians (and for believing we should have been fighting them, rather than the Germans), but millions thought he was right. The notion that we were fighting the wrong guys echoes today among those who suggest our enemies are the Jews of Israel, rather than radical Islam."

Horse manure. The people who loved Uncle Joe Stalin and the people who pretended that Tet was a great defeat are all slobbering over Arafat and the Palestinian terrorists. The people who thought we were naive to give Eastern Europe to Stalin with a bow on it or to give China to Mao are not the antisemites of today.

You're right that some aren't, but some are, or at least are the successors to some of those guys.

The notion that we were fighting on the wrong side relates not to our support of Israel but to our war against Yugoslavia on behalf of drug-running Muslim Albanian thugs.

Whoa! Did part of your post jump over from a Wesley Clark thread? I know so little about that issue, that I'm sure as heck NOT going to open that can of Balkan worms.

[mrustow]

Thanks for the great post. I was about to pick some out as the most important, but realized that others were just as essential.

[mrustow]

Thanks for the background. The politics were unbelievable. In 1982, I heard a lecture by a German historian who still couldn't that FDR would let his ole' buddy Joe have Eastern Europe. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it a matter of "finders, keepers"? That what the Russians "liberated," they took, and what we "liberated," we took? Whic is why hundreds of thousands of Germans fled across the iced-over bay in the North Sea, to get "liberated" by the Americans.)

Now, I can understand coddling the Brits -- to a point. But the French?!

DeGaulle has to have been the greatest con man in 20th century history. Didn't he essentially name himself the head of the French military in exile? And getting treated as an "ally" and "victor," after the war ...! And he stabbed us in the back, just as Chirac has been doing for the past two years.

[mrustow]

When I grew up, it was taken for granted that every president would have served his country under combat arms.

I am assuming that you are a boomer.

Correct.

Your parent's generation (my grandparents) sent a lot of young men into the war, and every President from Ike to GHWB served in that war, if I remember correctly. However, the rapist and W are boomers too. Their war did not involve as much of the population as did WWII, so it is not surprising that we see fewer candidates with a military background.

Beginning with Korea, the Pentagon increasingly issued draft deferments to college boys and grad students that did not exist in WWII.

...all I see is a bunch of draft-dodgers. (dems and GOP'ers).

I don't think that one's military service (or lack thereof) is a qualifier for serving as President.

Not anymore, I guess. The qualified guys would all be dying off. But I support bringing back the draft -- with no deferments. Even if it involved only one year of mandatory military service.

Consider Gen. Clark ...

I'd rather not.

- who on FR would vote for him because of his service record? Another retired general is on the record as saying he would not vote for Clark because of character issues.

Yeah, Clark is definitely not an argument for a military man as civil leader. Heck, if anything, he's an argument against a military man as military leader. I don't want to speculate as to how many men might have needlessly died, had he been in charge of the war in Iraq. The guy doesn't have decision-making capabilities to close a home sale, let alone a war. That he made it all the way to NATO Supreme Commander is scary as hell (regarding both NATO and whoever was in charge of giving Clark the command), and a judgment on the deterioration of NATO's post-Berlin Wall significance.

[mrustow]

My pleasure.

[mrustow]

Just to pick a nit, the opening music isn't Reveille, it's "To the Colors."

Thanks for the correction.

[Pagey]

A "What a great post, What a great thread" BUMP

[archy]

On the other hand, you have the Civil War, where it practically became a matter of who had more bodies to throw at the enemy.

See the exploits of Confederate General *Wild* Patrick Cleburne, both in the attack and defending. asside from the final attack ordered by Hood at Franklin in which Cleburne and most of his men were killed in a suicidal charge against dug-in troops, his operations were a textbook example of the way to do it.

...with the right guy, the troops go psycho and run over the opposition, but with the wrong guy, they get shot to pieces.

Ah yes. And from the same conflict, that would be Confederate general and cavalryman Nathan Bedford Forrest, fond of putting the scare into! those opposing him, and said by Lee to be his best commander, though the two men never met. Cleburne and Forrest were a bit more than passing acquaintences, though, and their conversations must have been something to have been a part of.

Two very different men, two differing ways of doing things. Same excellent results.

[Light Speed]

Yes..you are spot on as they say about Duh! Gaul

He did name himslf..and tried to do a coup of sorts under the U.S. Eurpoean command.

Roosevelt saw thru this..blocked him by spltting the Free French forces with De Gaul and another miltary commander.[Who De Gaul despised].

Hence the tantraum back in England..Roosevelts impatience.

There is a myriad of garbage that History denotes ..but is seldom discussed openly.

Like the Families from Sicily and Italy which worked mob and dock realities...the U.S. actually went into Sicily to put the formers back in place.
I guess the same occured as per Italy.

No foolin here...the mob made their desires known..the U.S. Navy needed the docks to be proficient.

Some Navy types in high places were connected to the mob..or did their bidding via extortion.

If one tracks the recent history of Internet hacking and fiscal extortion..one would find the Russian mob in the U.S. ,,throw in Japanese and Chinese tongs or gangs.

America has got to cozy with the nations they have met...now..they undermine America..exploit the numerous advantages they never had back home.

Churchill saw Russias Gambit....Macarthur saw China.

America has zenithed them all in stratagem..but the cost has been beyond imagination.

Now the Third world is clawing at America...and the Corporate crowd is drooling to new bell ringing.

[mrustow]

We won in Iraq through an overwhelming advantage in men and materiel,..

Geeze I thought the Wes Clark said we had insufficient troops.

What day was that? And was that his morning, afternoon or evening position? Was it before or after he took his meds? I think you'd betteer check with his press secretary on that. Or make that, HE'D better check with his press secretary on that.

Sorry we don't do wars of attrition, that's the old Europe philosophy. We do firstest with the mostest. How? With superior ability to communicate the operational picture up and down the chain of command. We knew where the Iraqi Divisions were. They could only guess at our dispositions. In addition, it appears that hardcore elements adopted the run away to fight another day strategy. There's a lot of buried munitions and weapons that are being policed up.

That's all true. But the ultimate criterion for judging a fighting force is the greatness of the enemy over whom it triumphed. When two great forces meet on the field of battle, attrition is inevitable. I'm happy for our boys in Iraq that they didn't have to make a world-historical statement, but I'm not going to dishonor our boys from WWII, by saying that both American forces were equals.

[mrustow]

Bumpbackatcha!

[archy]

DeGaulle has to have been the greatest con man in 20th century history. Didn't he essentially name himself the head of the French military in exile?

There was some contention for his heading the Free French military effort from General LeClerc, successfully continuing the resistance to the French surrender from his posting in Cameroon at a time when Degaulle was vice secretary of State of War in the last reshuffle of the Reynaud cabinet. But LeClerc and later Massu, then a captain supported DeGaulle, and that was pretty much that, though I recall a French Admiral-Darlan?- who had to be removed from the scene after General Mark Clark had promised him recognition of his claims to be regarded as head of the French government aronnd Christmas '42/ New Years '43 when the *Torch* landings in North Africa were taking place.

-archy-/-

[mrustow]

Our victory in Iraq was planned out by some leaders who studied their tactics. "There is nothing to be gained by a long protracted war" - Sun Tzu. And G.S.P. knew and studied tactics.

I don't think Patton would have criticized our strategy, were he alive. He loved speed. Jimmy Johnson may have learned coaching from him.

But make no mistake, our Military force is the best in the world. Why? Because it is staffed by people who love their freedom enough to fight for it. They are highly disciplined, and highly effective as long as we do not allow the moral fabric of the service to be undermined by the likes of DACOWITS (Defense Assessment Committee On Women In The Service) and the Gay Rights fuqairs.

I do think that our military is the best in the world today -- by default. But I think it could be much better, if not for the negative influences of those very groups you cited. And some of our people have died, and many more will die in the future, if those influences are not rolled back.

Fred Reed has written on sexually integrated units in Marine Corps boot camp, where the women stand around and watch the men during much of the exercises, because the womenfolk aren't permitted to do them due to their inferior upper body strength, agility, stamina, etc., or because the women injured themselves doing the few modest exercises they ARE permitted to do. And William McGowan has written, in Coloring the News, about the incompetent, and in some cases, insubordinate women pushed along through pilot school, in order to fill illegal quotas for feminist flyers. Some of those females got themselves killed, destroyed $100 million jets, and/or had to get bounced out of the service for service unbecoming an officer and a ...?