Posted on 03/27/2002 7:05:44 PM PST by JohnHuang2
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the guy who saved our nation during the Civil War, probably wouldn't make major in today's Army. He was mule-skinner abrasive, enjoyed his sauce and wasn't exactly what you'd call a pretty face.
Today most generals and admirals are highly attractive smooth talkers with some sort of master's degree and a Ph.D. in how to work the corridors of power.
But while these uniformed central-casting smoothies know how to schmooze for funds for their latest silver-bullet project, they unfortunately don't know how to fight guerrilla wars.
The Somali debacle, and now the recent major foul-up in Afghanistan, prove in spades that our warrior class has lost out to a professional-management culture that's virtually destroyed our armed forces, less the Marine Corps – which is slowly veering in that direction as well.
Long before the first regular American soldier headed to Vietnam, the hardened vets who'd slugged it out on hundreds of killing fields knew the post-World War II ticket-punching personnel system was on its way toward destroying the leadership needed to win America's future wars.
Going, going, gone were the days when lieutenants like Frank Gunn stayed with a regiment from the first shot of the war until the last. Gunn led a platoon and company in Africa, was a major by '43 in Sicily, skippered a battalion in France the next year, and by the end of the war, at the ripe old age of 24, was commanding the storied 39th Regiment fighting across Germany. General Gunn, now retired, became skilled at his trade down in the mud with the soldiers he loved and would have died for – and they, in turn, followed him to hell and back. Gunn never got caught up in the type of career management that produced the current lot of Perfumed Princes. He learned to soldier by listening to his old sergeants and being with the troops.
In Vietnam, officer leaders were churned almost as quickly as customers at Starbucks. Ticket-punching was in, and leading from the front was out. The Washington personnel chiefs' agenda was to use the war as a training vehicle for officers so they'd have blooded leadership when the big fight with the Soviets exploded.
Post-Vietnam studies concluded ticket-punching was a major cause of our failure, and that the personnel system desperately needed surgery. But nothing was done, and over the years the cancerous system disabled our senior officer corps and is now infecting our proud NCOs. Their foremost concern always used to be for the welfare of their troops and how sharply their unit was trained, not what kind of rating they got on a report. My First Sergeant in Italy took great pride in showing us 'cruits the chain scars from his time in a Georgia prison. But with his fifth-grade education, the old Top could still run a lean-and-mean company of soldiers.
Afghanistan was going just fine while the old-pro Special Forces sergeants, chiefs and captains were running the fight. But when Perfumed Princes like Maj. Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck – with his M.S. degree in exercise physiology (but no combat experience) and Pentagon punches such as director for politico-military affairs for global and multilateral issues (I kid you not) under his shiny general's belt – took over the fighting with the conventional, non-mountain-trained 10th Division, our Army came away with that Vietnam Heartbreak Ridge look: high body count without many bodies and too many friendly casualties.
A fine sergeant in Kuwait says it all: "My generals worry about what kind of engraved Buck knives to buy to give as gifts to the foreign generals, do we have enough potpourri-scented Pledge to make sure our mahogany desks are dust-free, color ink for our laser printers, oh and let's not forget the staffers have to eat better than the rest of the Army, so we have to plan at least one big dinner function so the fat-cats can get fatter. I've seen these generals cancel a visit to troops training in the desert so they could drink coffee and have lunch with another general visiting from the War College. Where are their damn priorities?"
In my opinion, they should have kept them separate instead of making it easier for the men so that the women could participate.
So now that they have been spreading throughout the United States Government since the days of Bernard Baruch and FDR's "brain trust", how would you cure the contagion?
Personally, if it were up to me, I'd use eminent domain to seize the campus, distribute the library, exile the faculty with nicks in their ears, embargo their graduates from public life, and turn their campus into a public park.
But, that's me.
You mean other than the fact that he beat every Southern general sent against him? If Grant was that bad then what does it say about his opponents?
There are many differents kinds of military generalship. While Grant may not have been a "great field commander," he was rare among the military talents of the day in several ways: 1) he won battlefield victories, something most of his Federal colleagues couldn't or wouldn't do; 2) he had a good strategic sense, in his plan to invade the south by using the Tennessee River as a "logistical highway;" 3) he had a knack for picking good corps and division commanders and promting men of talent (e.g., Sherman, Sheridan) and getting rid of those without it (e.g., McClernand); 4) like Lord Montgomery of Alamein, Grant was not imaginative or dramatically innovative on the battlefield -- he was simply bulldog tenacious. After accidentally colliding with Lee's army in The Wilderness, in forty days he drove the Confederates into box perimeter around Richmond from which they could not break out. When they finally did in April 1865, the war was quickly forced to conclusion; 5) most importantly, Grant had the confidence of his Commander-in-Chief, President Lincoln and in our system, the military is always subordinate to civilian authority. All other Federal commanders were found wanting in some key respect -- Grant carried out the policy directives of his superiors and did it without incessant demands for more men and material (which he got, in any event).
Grant's reputation as a butcher is undeserved. No Civil War general was able to solve the tactical problem presented by the rifled musket, which made traditional Napoleonic battlefield tactics obsolete. Indeed, this problem was not really solved finally until after the bloodbaths of The Great War, with the advent of the tank, which returned mobility to battlefield action. Until then, defense, trench warfare, and high body counts dominated the tactical playing field. One cannot denigrate Grant as a butcher without also doing the same to Lee, whose aggressive and inexhaustable use of irreplacable southern manpower was often commented upon by many Confederate civilians. Only after the war, as part of the rise of the Myth of the Lost Cause, was Lee elevated to secular military sainthood.
Grant was a good general because he accomplished his military aims. You can criticize a much of his performance, but he understood the stakes and dimensions of the War and was unwilling to adopt a tentative, hesitant tactical approach. His doctrine of "pursue the enemy army, wherever he goes" was the key to finally defeating the Army of Northern Virginia.
Grant was at most competent - amoung other totally incompetent Generals.
Hackworth should have used Lee for his example - but I will forgive him.
We have 8 years of liberal control of the military, and he could help clean that up, and get the "perfumed princes" out of the system, "retire em all" let God sort em out LOL.
I don't care for General Franks and neither does Rumsfeld - especially after the incident - where the remote spy plane could have taken out Mullah Omar - you all remember - Rummy got so mad he threw the chair through a glass wall.
So then what you are saying is that Lee spent the first half of the war fighting and on several occasions being beaten by incompetent generals. And once he faced a merely competent general - your description not mine - he never once held the initiative and was forced to react rather than act for the duration of the war until he surrendered. That doesn't say much about Lee then, does it?
A very PRECIOUS national resource, and I wish a lot of these other guys who 'know the score' would make themselves heard ( before it's too d*mn late).
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