The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern

by Victor Davis Hanson

  Our tactical decisions have remained even more error-prone. Grant was still sending ranks of soldiers against entrenched Confederate positions for most of the horrific summer 1864, despite Sherman’s angry protests against the folly of such assaults in a rapidly changing war of massed firepower. Had our greatest general of the age continued with another Cold Harbor–type assault, and had Sherman not taken Atlanta, Lincoln would have lost the autumn election of 1864, and the country might have been permanently divided. In the First World War, despite our assurances that our well-trained riflemen could broach enemy positions, seasoned British and French commanders warned novice American planners against mass attacks into the German rapid-firing artillery, machine guns, tanks, and poison gas. Americans died in droves before we got it right by early 1918.

  For all its surprises and mistakes, D-Day was carefully planned and a brilliant success; its immediate aftermath was often a near disaster. Within a week of the landings, Allied army groups leaving Omaha Beach stalled in the hedgerows for over six weeks. We suffered tens of thousands of casualties while Americans were flummoxed by entrenched, camouflaged German positions amid the narrow lanes and thick hedges. Apparently no planner had thought much about the terrain or navigability of the bocage—although the area in Normandy beyond Omaha Beach was well-traveled and should have been familiar to American officers, many of them veterans of the fighting in France during the First World War. In the end, lower-echelon officers and enlisted men jerry-rigged spiked-battering rams on Sherman tanks to break through the underbrush. Finally exasperated generals called in B-17s to blast holes through enemy lines to break out of the confining landscape.

  Outgunned

  HOW ABOUT WEAPONS parity? America has a reputation for technological prowess and machine mastery. The phone and electric lightbulb were singular American innovations; the Wright brothers invented the airplane; Richard Gatling the first modern successful machine gun. As we have seen, no other culture is so adept at marrying man and machine in war. Nevertheless, in nearly every one of our major wars, American troops initially entered combat with arms inferior to their more experienced enemies. In this regard, Vietnam, the 1991 Gulf War, and the present Middle East conflicts are exceptional; these were our first major land engagements in which American weaponry at the outset was superior in almost every category. Yet sophisticated American infantry battalions often found their initial complex models of M16 rifles far less dependable than the less complex, less accurate, and less lethal AK-47s used by the Viet Cong and regular North Vietnamese regiments.

  We sent a million troops to Europe between 1917 and 1918 with weapons qualitatively inferior to both our German enemies and French and British allies. We had no tanks—and would never produce our own in any numbers until the war was well over. We relied for the most part on British- or French-designed machine guns and artillery. European airplanes were far better than American Dayton-Wright and Curtiss models. Only the American model M1903 Springfield rifle, and later the Browning automatic rifle (BAR), proved fit for the rapidly changing technological conditions of the western front.

  Our initial ill-preparedness was in some sense still worse in both the Second World War and Korea. The United States went to battle in 1941 equipped with far fewer aircraft carriers in the Pacific theater than the Japanese. Wildcat frontline fighters were inferior to the Japanese Zero; obsolete Brewster F2A Buffalos were rightly known as “flying coffins.” The Douglas TBD Devastator bomber was a death trap, its pilots essentially wiped out or rendered impotent at the Battle of Midway trying to drop often unreliable torpedoes into the wind at net speeds of not more than sixty miles per hour. American-designed Lee, Grant, and Stuart tanks—and even the much-heralded reliable Shermans (“Ronson Lighters”)—were intrinsically inferior to most contemporary German models, which had far better armor and armament, as well as a lower profile. With the exception of the superb M1 rifle and heavy bombers like the B-17 and B-24, it is hard to rank any American weapons system as comparable to those used by the Wehrmacht, at least until 1944–45. We never developed guns quite comparable to the fast-firing, lethal German .88 artillery platform. Our antitank weapons of all calibers remained substandard. Most of our machine guns and mortars were reliable—but of First World War vintage.

  The American military learned immediately in Korea that our first-generation jet fighters—F-80 Shooting Stars—could not match Russian MiG-15s. For much of the summer of 1950, North Korea enjoyed air superiority, as Communist pilots often flew jets against our own propeller-driven fighters. Even improved Sherman tanks and newer M24 Chaffee light tanks through much of 1950 were outclassed by the Second World War–vintage Russian T-34s and T-85s. Indeed, it was nearly inconceivable that the abjectly poor North Koreans would have had access to tanks in 1950 superior to those of the Americans, despite our reputation as the recent winners over sophisticated Japanese and Germans. The United States, despite the harsh lessons of the Second World War, would not produce the world’s preeminent tank until the appearance of the Abrams in the early 1980s.

  Poor Leadership

  HAVE THERE EVER been lapses in military leadership like the ones that purportedly marred the Iraq effort? The “revolt of the generals” against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—in which a number of retired generals publicly lambasted the Pentagon chief for not listening to their prewar warnings—was nothing compared to the “revolt of the admirals” which led to Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson’s forced resignation in the midst of the bitter first year of the Korean War.

  Johnson himself, remember, had come to office following the removal (or resignation), and then probable suicide, of Secretary James Forrestal, whose last note included a lengthy quotation from Sophocles’ Ajax. Johnson’s successor, the venerable General George Marshall, lasted less than a year—hounded out by Joseph McCarthy, and an object of furor in the wartime 1952 election that brought in Eisenhower (who did not defend his former superior from McCarthy’s slanders). The result was that four different secretaries of defense—Forrestal, Johnson, Marshall, and Robert Lovett—served between 1949 and 1951, all with radically different agendas and ideas about how to reshape the military to confront an array of new global challenges. At one point Secretary Johnson advocated ending the Marine Corps altogether, with some initial encouragement from President Harry Truman.

  Critics of the Iraq War wonder how the workmanlike Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, on whose watch Abu Ghraib occurred and the insurgency grew, rose to command all coalition ground forces in the first place, or later why General George Casey persisted in tactics that were aimed more at downsizing our forces than going after the enemy and fighting a vigorous war of counterinsurgency. But surely these armchair critics can acknowledge that such controversies over personnel pale in comparison to past storms. Lincoln serially fired, ignored, or bypassed mediocrities like Generals Burnside, Halleck, Hooker, McClellan, McDowell, Meade, Pope, and Rosecrans before finding Grant, George Thomas, Sherman, and Philip Sheridan—all of whom at one time or another were under severe criticism and nearly dismissed. Before the Battle of Shiloh, Sherman was felt to have been crazy and unreliable; after the victory, it was Grant’s turn to be accused of everything from drunkenness to gross incompetence.

  The Second World War was little better. By all accounts the sacrosanct General John C. H. Lee set up an enormous logistical fiefdom that indulged in perks and privilege while American armies at the front were short on manpower, materials, and fuel. To this day military historians cannot quite fathom how and why Major General Lloyd Fredendall was ever given an entire corps in the North Africa campaign, or why John Lucas was given command of the Anzio landings. The former’s uninspired generalship led to the disaster at the Kasserine Pass and his own subsequent removal; the latter lost an opportunity to either take Rome or surround several German divisions in Italy. Thousands of dead and wounded paid the price for the lapses of each.

  Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, a competent officer,
was bewildered by the unexpected Japanese resistance on Okinawa, and unimaginatively plowed head-on through fortified enemy positions—until killed in action on the island, the most senior-ranking officer to die by enemy fire in the Second World War. The plodding generalship of charismatic Mark Clark in Italy often proved disastrous—perhaps analogous to the slothful command of General Henry Halleck, who, after the victory at Shiloh, took de facto command from Grant of Union forces in the west, only to let the retreating defeated Confederate army escape annihilation.

  The story of the U.S. Army at war is one of frequent sacking, sidetracking, or ostracizing of its highest and best-known commanders in the field—Grant after Shiloh, Douglas MacArthur in Korea, Patton in Sicily, and William Westmoreland in Vietnam—for both good and awful reasons, and not until thousands of Americans had first tragically died. Iraq and Afghanistan are peculiar in that there have been so few personnel changes, much less a general consensus about perceived military incompetence. In comparison to past conflicts, the wonder is not that a gifted officer like General David Petraeus came into real prominence relatively late in the present war, but that his unique talents were recognized quickly enough to allow him the supreme command and latitude to alter the entire tactical approach to the war in Iraq.

  Live and Learn, Learn and Live

  WHAT CAN WE learn from the wartime blunders and controversies that together cost hundreds of thousands of American lives but usually did not endanger eventual victories? Surely, we should not shrug, concede that “stuff happens,” keep quiet, and simply support our troops, no matter what.

  Instead, first, remember that such failings usually were aired in a long tradition of investigative, hard-hitting exposés and columns. Long before Seymour Hersh and Peter Arnett, Thomas Knox, Edward Crapsey, Ernie Pyle, Drew Pearson, and Walter Winchell wrote scathing critiques of American military performance. In reaction, the most vehement attack on the wartime press came not from Richard Nixon but from William Tecumseh Sherman. “If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world,” he sighed, “but I am sure we would be getting reports from hell before breakfast.” Yet until the defeat in Vietnam, there was a sort of tragic acceptance of military error of some sort as inherent in war. Senator Harry Truman won national attention only through his Truman Committee, which uncovered billions of dollars of military waste and fraud during the war years. True, he relieved General Douglas MacArthur in April 1951, but for interfering in politics, not the general’s incompetence and laxity in being surprised by a Chinese invasion.

  Ours was once a largely rural population, a harvest away from hunger and inured to hard physical labor, accustomed to natural disaster and resigned to human shortcoming, without instant communications or the contemporary unspoken faith that we may all die in our sleep. Though presidents Lincoln and Truman were both at times reviled, Americans still felt that ultimately the American system of transparency and self-criticism would correct wartime mistakes. Fault-finding and partisan grandstanding there were aplenty, but the common desire for victory usually overcame perpetual finger-pointing and despair. Pearl Harbor and its attendant conspiracy theories may have set the Greatest Generation back, but such losses, humiliation, and suspicion were hardly considered tantamount to American defeat.

  So we plowed on, accepting that, in war, choices are only between the bad and worse. Yes, it was foolhardy not to escort convoys early in the Second World War, but Admiral King—always suspicious of British motives—erred because he believed that such a commitment would divert precious assets from the Pacific War, where the United States, largely alone, had to face the Japanese fleet, which was far larger and more formidable than Hitler’s. Unescorted daylight bombing raids in 1942–43 were suicidal, but slowly the planners in the American Eighth Air Force learned from their errors, and by late 1944 improved B-17s, drop tanks, and long-range fighter escorts, refined tactics and ordnance, and far more skilled and experienced personnel led to the destruction of most of the key German urban and rail centers. The Sherman tank trapped and incinerated thousands of Americans when easily torched by Panthers and Tigers, but Patton himself saw that its dependability, speed, easy maintenance, and sheer numbers offered countervailing advantages in racing toward the Rhine.

  By the same token, for every recognized blunder in Iraq, there was at least an understandable reason why such a lapse occurred in the context of human imperfection, emotion, and ignorance. Such considerations do not mitigate the enormity of military mistakes, but they should foster an understanding of how and why they occur. Such recognition might lend humility to criticism, and wisdom to the perpetrators—and prepare us to accept and deal with similar human fallibility in the future.

  So shoot the Baghdad looters of April and May 2003—and CNN likely would have libeled the occupation forces as recycled Saddamites. Level Fallujah in April 2004—and Iraqis would have compared us to the Soviets in Grozny. Had we kept together the Republican Guard in 2003—if that were even possible—charges of perpetuating the agents of Saddam’s genocidal regime would have followed, with unfavorable contrasts to our successful de-Nazification program after the Second World War. Granted, there were not enough American troops to close borders, monitor ammunition depots, and maintain order. But as a result, there were enough deployed elsewhere to discourage trouble in the Korean peninsula, reassure Europe and Japan of our material commitment to their security, fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, help keep order in the Balkans, and man dozens of bases worldwide.

  When MiG-15s surprisingly proved superior to American F-80s, our Korean War planners took a pass on blaming one another and instead deployed with blinding speed the superb F-86 Sabre jet, which soon often surpassed its Russian counterparts. Once a General Hooker or Fredendall was found incompetent, Americans expected that someone like Grant or Patton would eventually step forward from a large officer pool of the formerly peacetime army. A general like Sherman or Petraeus doesn’t emerge on the first day of war. Only the lethal experience during early high-level B-29 bombing missions from the Marianas led to appointment of General Curtis LeMay, who, in unorthodox fashion, turned a sophisticated, million-dollar precision bomber into a relatively low-level, low-tech night raider spewing napalm over Tokyo.

  We are relieved that the recent emphasis on counterinsurgency under General Petraeus has brought radical improvement in Iraq in a way that previous counterterrorism tactics did not—but much of our current wisdom nevertheless accrued from the hard years of fighting between 2003 and 2006, when Americans severely weakened both al-Qaeda and the Sunni insurgents, and gained invaluable knowledge in the process about the tribal fissures and affinities within traditional Iraqi society. The notion that America was “surging,” and not leaving, likewise had enormous psychological benefits to the struggling Iraqi security forces that grew and improved all through 2008 and 2009. Again, what loses wars is not necessarily the inevitable mistakes but the failure to correct them in time—and the degree to which defeatism and depression (because errors occurred at all) are allowed to erode morale.

  The quagmire in the Normandy hedgerows in 1944 led to thousands of American deaths, but also to innovations and new tactics, whether specially equipped “Rhino” Sherman tanks or using B-17s to blow holes in the German lines (and by mischance kill hundreds of Americans in “friendly fire” blunders). Likewise, the United States may have started in Iraq with the naive belief that thin-skinned Humvees were simply updated Jeeps good enough to transport personnel behind the lines. But troops quickly learned that, in a war with no lines, the Humvees became underarmored coffins—prompting a challenge and response cycle between the enemy’s improvised explosive devices and our armor.

  Frenzied development efforts produced up-armored kits, factory-designed models with superior protection, and entirely new vehicles like the Strykers, MRAPs (mine resistant, ambush protected), and Rhinos. Technological improvements, along with experience gained in identifying the profiles of bomb-laying terrorists, meant that by late
2008 almost no Americans were dying from IED road mines, while those who planted them were often killed or captured.

  Back at Home

  AMERICANS ON THE home front once accepted that our adversaries faced the same obstacles and challenges of war. Moreover Americans assumed that the enemy, usually being less introspective and self-critical, was even more prone to military error than we were—and less likely to innovate and correct. The lack of free-thinking Nazi generals and general staff debate eventually would doom the megalomaniac Hitler to commit strategic blunders; ossified standard Soviet tank and infantry doctrine would ensure that North Korean and Red Chinese invaders would finally fight in predictable fashion, and not adapt to changing conditions on the ground as quickly as their American counterparts. A mere three months after they triumphantly crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea in January 1951, the Chinese in dejection were pushed back across it, suffering tens of thousands dead.

  That wartime confidence of past generations, embedded within a more general realistic view of human limitations, often ensured that the public saw mistakes not just in absolute but also in relative terms. Yet currently is there any serious discussion at home about the terrible effects of Predator drone attacks on bin Laden’s terrorists in Waziristan, the wear and tear on his minions living under constant aerial attack, or the lopsided ratios of human losses that typically follow Taliban-NATO firefights?