The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost—From Ancient Greece to Iraq

by Victor Davis Hanson

  A Korea Still Divided

  More than a million Korean civilians perished in the horrific three-yearlong war. Some estimates double that number. Over two million Communist Chinese and North Korean troops were killed or wounded, though the full extent of their losses has never been published. South Korean and United Nations forces suffered a million and a half casualties. The United States suffered 157,530 killed, wounded, or missing, among them 36,516 combat fatalities—and spent more than $500 billion in today’s dollars—to save only South Korea, and not, as once envisioned in autumn 1950, to reunite the entire peninsula. Altogether, more than 4 million Korean, Chinese, American, and allied troops and civilians perished in the war, at a minimum. Carpet bombing and massive shelling had decimated Chinese ranks but also resulted in frequent collateral damage to friendly populations. Sometimes American animosity toward North Korean and Chinese Communists became racial and made subsequent relations with South Korean allies problematic.

  This war—unnecessary to some—ended three years later right where it had begun, at the 38th Parallel. Why did so many hundreds of thousands have to die only to return to the status quo ante bellum—a Communist-backed dictatorship in the north, and an American-supported authoritarian government in the south? General Matthew Ridgway’s answer was that the costly effort had stopped Communist aggression. Americans had given the South Koreans a chance to find their own destiny. And for the first time in the nascent Cold War, a stand in Korea had reminded the Communist bloc that the United States could and would protect its allies.77

  Matthew Ridgway saved Korea from an unmitigated military disaster not of his own making. In the process, he realized his earlier ideas of how to contain Asian Communism without resorting to either nuclear weapons or a wider land war. Before Korea, Ridgway had made the argument for a strong conventional army in an age when too many dreamers and cost cutters alike wished to retreat to a fortress America protected by a nuclear Strategic Air Command. Very rarely has any American general (other than William Tecumseh Sherman and David Petraeus), in so short a time, radically changed tactics at the front while integrating such operational doctrine in a wider strategic framework of fighting.

  The truth was that just as Ridgway had been a rare operational optimist during his one hundred days as the head of the Eighth Army, as theater commander, he became pessimistic concerning the American ability to unify all of North Korea against overwhelming Chinese numerical superiority while maintaining public support for a major drawn-out Asian war that risked becoming nuclear. Ridgway the tactician felt that the reformed American army could go back to the Yalu, but as a strategist he feared that its success would mean a never-ending and ultimately unsustainable commitment.78

  Ridgway and the Verdict of History

  There are few parallels in modern American military history to Ridgway’s radical restoration of a lost war in so short a time. Even if one argues that the conditions of Ridgway’s appointment were, in hindsight, somewhat favorable—an arrival when Chinese forces were nearing exhaustion at their furthest point away from their supplies, followed by subsequent rapid promotion to theater command in Tokyo before the acrimony arose over whether to press far beyond the 38th Parallel—someone had to take shattered forces and use them to quell ascendant ones.

  The winter and spring 1951 American offensives are analogous to the Battle of Midway and Guadalcanal that were turning points in the Pacific war, coming less than a year after disaster at Pearl Harbor. In similar fashion, Ulysses S. Grant, at his victories at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg, restored the western front, and indeed the Northern cause itself, during the Civil War. General Creighton Abrams had stabilized Vietnam by 1973 and allowed the Paris peace talks to proceed on the basis of a two-state solution. Yet Ridgway’s victory in Korea was different from other restorations, in that he rescued an entire war with geopolitical significance—not just a campaign or theater.

  Should the Chinese-led offensive have continued unimpeded southward past Seoul, the United States, as planned, would have withdrawn from Pusan to either Japan or Taiwan. Such a defeat would have ensured thousands more American casualties, the loss of more equipment, and the extinction of the South Korean government. The Soviet Union would have had to become even more bellicose to match the rising stature of its client Mao Zedong’s victorious Red Chinese army and to maintain its mantle of exporting global Communism.

  There would have been no South Korean miracle—no Hyundai, Kia, or Samsung global brands, no evolution to democracy. Millions more Koreans would have had their lives reduced to the wretched misery that is the norm of contemporary North Korea—a country that, had it the combined population and resources of the entire Korean peninsula, would have posed a far greater threat than does the nuclear North today. An emboldened China would have turned its attention to Taiwan—convinced that a defeated America could not, or would not, send troops to protect its friends. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan could either have led to the annexation of Taiwan outright, or probably served as the catalyst for a nuclear response from the United States.

  Instead, the enormous losses China suffered in Korea between January and April 1950 from American artillery and air strikes left an indelible impression on its leadership about confronting U.S. forces—and might explain its later reluctance to intervene overtly in Vietnam in the fashion it had in Korea. According to historian Bin Yu, himself a veteran of the People’s Liberation Army, “The most important lesson that China learned from its engagement in the Korean War is to avoid or prevent such a war in the future, or both. Although it fought the war into a stalemate with the most powerful military in the world, Beijing paid a tremendous price economically, diplomatically, and strategically.”

  In retrospect, at least a few of Ridgway’s peers acknowledged, if belatedly, his stunning achievement. General of the Army Omar Bradley much later remarked, “His brilliant, driving, uncompromising leadership would turn the tide of battle like no other general’s in our military history.” After witnessing Ridgway in the field, one colonel summed up the opinion of more junior officers in Korea by remarking of his turnaround that it was “one of the marvels of military history.” Forty years later, at Ridgway’s May 1993 funeral, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Colin Powell could still declare, “Every American soldier owes a debt to this man.”79

  That both South Korea and Taiwan are today successful democracies, that MacArthur’s vision of an all-out war to roll back Asian Communism through the use of nuclear arms did not come to pass, and that the United States military still fought successful conventional wars abroad at the height of the Cold War nuclear standoff are largely due to the still underappreciated miracle brought about by General Matthew Ridgway—all in just those hundred days in Korea.

  Chapter Five

  Iraq Is “Lost”

  David Petraeus and the Surge in Iraq—January 2007–May 2008

  “The Willing Suspension of Disbelief” (September 10–11, 2007)

  The questioning grew sharper and the speechmaking windier. September 11, 2007, was turning into a long day on Capitol Hill for the bemedaled, rather diminutive general back from Baghdad to report to a skeptical Congress for a few hours.

  General David Petraeus, Commander of Multi-National Forces–Iraq, nevertheless thought that he had good news about the months-long surge of about thirty thousand additional American forces into Iraq to quell rising violence. The four-year-long effort in Iraq, deemed lost to internecine mayhem and foreign-inspired terrorism, had gradually since February begun to stabilize. Or at least that is what Petraeus and his staff believed. In his first year of supreme command in Iraq, David Petraeus already thought he could explain to his civilian overseers why and how the controversial surge had brought about this encouraging change of events—and why they should not give up on the strategy when it was showing concrete results.

  The additional troops—initially dispatched early in 2007 following President Bush’s January promise to send mor
e help to the theater—were in place by June. Petraeus was prepared with charts and statistics to reassure doubting congressional leaders that the beefed-up American presence—along with his command’s changes in tactics—had at last hit on the right formula to turn around the violent country.

  The surge was working, if ever so slowly. His combat teams had swept out of their compounds. They had decentralized their operations and concentrated on protecting Iraqis from sectarian violence and ensuring the delivery of basic services. Petraeus sought to explain to his overseers why his change in tactics and greater manpower would lead to fewer American deaths, fewer Iraqi deaths, and fewer terrorist incidents. Such progress would only accelerate, if the surge was still funded and supported at home, or so Petraeus argued to Congress. The unpopular Iraq War, in other words, was not yet lost.

  Along with the American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, Petraeus reviewed the metrics of the first eight months of the surge. The good news ranged from increased electrical production to fewer U.S. losses in the last two months. They were summarized by Petraeus’s confident assurance that “The military objectives of the surge are, in large measure, being met.” The general went on to explain how radical Islamic terrorists of all stripes were suffering grievous losses in Iraq. “Coalition and Iraqi forces,” Petraeus emphasized, “have dealt significant blows to Al Qaeda–Iraq.” At the same time, Petraeus added, “We have also disrupted Shia militia extremists.” American casualty figures, at least, were starting to bear out the general’s confidence. September 2007 would end in less than three weeks with 68 American deaths that month in Iraq. That was down from the war’s highest toll of 126 fatalities in May, and soon to drop to 23 in December.1

  One reason for the good news, according to Petraeus’s testimony, was that the Iraqis themselves were also fighting better than ever: “Iraqi Security Forces have also continued to grow and to shoulder more of the load.” But his optimism went beyond just the battlefield. Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy was improving the lives of everyday Iraqis who might see Americans at last as partners rather than occupiers. Because of additional positive signs of growing Iraqi political stability, good figures on economic improvement, and reduced civil violence, Petraeus finished his testimony with a glowing summation: “Our country’s men and women in uniform have done a magnificent job in the most complex and challenging environment imaginable. All Americans should be very proud of their sons and daughters serving in Iraq today.”

  Ambassador Crocker shared the cautiously optimistic appraisal of the surge’s effects, albeit with a disturbing warning to the wavering Congress: “I cannot guarantee success in Iraq. I do believe, as I have described, that it is attainable. I am certain that abandoning or drastically curtailing our efforts will bring failure, and the consequences of such a failure must be clearly understood.”2

  Had the general and the ambassador convinced skeptical senators and representatives that widely unpopular President George W. Bush’s January 2007 desperate gamble to send more troops into the Iraqi inferno had begun to pay off? Given the political dimensions to the issue, it was more complicated than a simple yes or no answer. Many Democratic would-be presidential luminaries on the other side of the Senate hearing table—Senators Joe Biden (D-DE), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Chris Dodd (D-CT)—had not only voted for the war in October 2002, but subsequently chastised the Bush administration for not sending enough troops to secure the peace.

  In October 2002, pro-war speeches by Senators Joe Biden, John Kerry (D-MA), and Harry Reid (D-NV) were among the most passionate in calling for Saddam Hussein’s removal for violating past accords and seeking weapons of mass destruction. In fact, these former supporters of the war had once couched their support for his removal as a continuation of the Clinton administration’s official call for regime change. For them, a public grilling was to be a marquee occasion to prove to a country, turned off by the unexpectedly violent and costly Iraq War, that they were as antiwar as they had been pro-war just four years earlier.

  Iraq in the public mind had descended from a brilliantly conceived three-week victory by April 2003, to a terrible mishap plagued by too few troops in early 2004—to what, exactly, now in September 2007? Few were certain. Whereas there once had been millions of parents of the war, it was now a veritable orphan.3

  In the questioning to follow—perhaps the most acrimonious congressional hearings about an ongoing war since deposed General Douglas MacArthur’s appearance to review the Korean War nearly sixty years earlier in May and June 1951—Petraeus’s testimony was met by near-universal skepticism. Although the military in Iraq did not calibrate the success or failure of the surge by the number of U.S. casualties, nonetheless, 2007 was on track to record the most U.S. fatalities in the entire history of the war—despite a clear tapering off of American losses in August and September 2007. Nevertheless, 904 Americans would die by year’s end. Even more might perish in 2008, as thousands of Petraeus’s troops left fortified compounds and began to intermingle far more with the civilian population. Was not the previous strategy of General Casey and General Abizaid—one that emphasized a lower military profile—the right one in a politicized climate that worried more about American battle casualties than about quelling ethnic and sectarian violence?

  At times, some senators displayed open scorn for Petraeus and his surge—perhaps because the September 2007 hearings had roughly coincided with the kickoff of the 2008 presidential campaign. Moreover, Petraeus was not just supreme commander in Iraq, but had become a symbol of a wider strategic and political effort to justify the Iraq War. Lame-duck president George W. Bush was at his most unpopular since assuming office, with the Republicans in disarray after their shattering losses in the 2006 congressional midterm elections that had proven a referendum on an unpopular war. A sharp antiwar stance seemed a requisite for any serious Democratic presidential contender. Most senators at the hearings intended to make the most of their free televised time in showing the nation how Petraeus—and indeed the Bush administration—was wasting more blood and treasure in the hopeless quagmire in Iraq.

  Petraeus’s televised inquisitors knew well enough that the most recent polls showed that 64 percent of the American people did not approve of the Iraq War. Few interrogators were about to buy any of Petraeus’s rosy scenarios when most Americans did not. Almost immediately upon the conclusion of the testimonies, senators would do ad hoc interviews outside the hearing room that began with flamboyant dismissals of Petraeus’s optimism.4

  In late 2007, Senator Hillary Clinton in most polls led all her Democratic rivals for the 2008 party nomination. After Petraeus finished his testimony, she grilled the general and essentially called him untrustworthy: “I think that the reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief. Any of the metrics that have been referenced in your many hours of testimony, any fair reading of the advantages and disadvantages accruing post-surge, in my view, end up on the down side.”

  It was hard to tell whether Clinton was accusing Petraeus of deliberately distorting data, or simply offering a disingenuous and false analysis of the otherwise reliable information that he had supplied to Congress. She seemed to be worried that her chief Democratic rival, Barack Obama—who was not a senator in October 2002 when Congress (including Senator Clinton) had authorized the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein—had emphasized his far earlier antiwar pedigree. In any case, she had been on record by early 2007 as wanting a unilateral American withdrawal from Iraq: “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, and know when to fold ’em. It is my judgment that it is time for us to disengage from Iraq.”5

  Most presidential hopefuls did not bother much with questioning Petraeus or Crocker at all. Senator Obama, for example, lectured both witnesses for seven minutes without pausing for a reaction from either—or posing a question. He concluded, “We have now set the bar so low that modest improvement in what was a completely chaotic situation, to the point where now we just have the l
evels of intolerable violence that existed in June of 2006 is considered success, and it’s not. This continues to be a disastrous foreign policy mistake.”

  In fact, candidate Obama’s present assessment was rather mild compared to his earlier negative assertions. But it fairly represented a growing American weariness with the five-year-old war. He had greeted the announcement of the Petraeus surge in January 2007 with an especially pessimistic forecast: “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” If there was any doubt of Senator Obama’s contention that the surge was not only not working, but making things worse, he had made his views even clearer four days later following the hearings: “I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.” In January 2007 he had already called for all American combat forces to be completely withdrawn from Iraq by March 31, 2008—with the departure of troops to start before the surge had even begun. Even as the surge had proceeded, Obama persisted in declaring the troop increase a failure—to the approbation of both a growing antiwar base and a majority of Americans. While campaigning in New Hampshire on July 20, 2007, for example, Obama had stated as fact the surge’s failure: “Here’s what we know. The surge has not worked.”6

  By the time of the hearings it was clearly advantageous for candidate Obama’s budding foreign policy reputation to remind the country that he had long predicted the present failure. Now on national television, he, like other senators, was not prepared to let General Petraeus get away with what he felt was a false impression that the surge was working or that his own earlier prognostications were flawed.