Are we in another Vietnam?

I don't think Bruce Catton would agree Lee was stupid.

 

Let's play multiple guess test. Stupid? Arrogant? Just didn't have the right strategic vision? Whichever you pick, Lee continuously chose the offensive when he should have remained on the defensive and allowed a series of Yankee generals to waste men trying to chase him all over the Southeast until the bluebellies decided it's time to go home (and he could have learned that just simply by looking to his step-great-grandfather-in-law GW). His strategic vision was far too narrowly focused on Virginia and all but ignored the other parts of the Confederacy (except as something that could be bled dry for Virginia's sake). And he continued to waste men long after it was obvious that he had lost.

Thing is, comparing the situations of US v. UK (1775), CSA v. USA (1861), and VC v. US (1964), the CSA in 1861 was facing the least bad odds of the three underdogs and they were the only ones that blew it.

 

One way to look at General Lee is to think of him as a brilliant tactician and strategist.

But there's an old saying...amateurs talk strategy and tactics but professionals talk logistics.

Lee never really grew from being a brilliant company commander (though on an enormous scale) into being a modern general. His old-school gentlemanliness may well have gotten in the way; Sherman and U.S. Grant DID understand logistics from the very beginning and quickly developed reputations for cruelty against local populations and wanton destruction. Neither could approach Lee as a battlefield commander but the war wasn't won on the battlefield. Modern warfare required material support, something Lee didn't really understand and, worse, failed to bring home to the Confederate Congress and President Davis.

 

I'm not up on modern military history, but I did read a fascinating book recently called Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. It does an excellent job of explaining a military underdog story. The Mongols were a tiny group of people riding pony-sized horses who managed to create (at least for a few generations) the largest empire ever known (except perhaps for the British empire). They could quickly defeat higher-technology Western, Arabic and Chinese armies. The core strategy that the author outlines involved taking minimum casualties at all costs. Every technique the Mongols used -- high mobility, attacks from a distance, terroristic attacks on civilians, a very un-nomadic skill in siege warfare -- stemmed from that core. They were unencumbered by any chivalric values and simply ran off if they didn't like their odds in any prospective battle, then came back right back the second the odds were better.

The book also has a great discussion on the cultural role of the Mongol empire... the spread of trade and exchange of religious and technological ideas being positives, although the vast destruction they caused isn't ignored either.

 

Lee hardly rises to the level of a brilliant strategist and tactician. Grant and Sherman were brilliant strategistsand tacticians quitebecause they realized what must be done and did it, and they did so with an attitude of damn the fact that their contemporaries and posterity might call them the butcher and the arsonist. Near the end of the war, some of Lee's subordinates recommended taking to the hills and fighting a guerilla war ... precisely the strategy that would have been most likely to win the war. But Lee's Sounthern aristocratic arrogance (NOT gentlemanliness) would have none of it. Had Lee been a true strategic genius, he would have personally seen to the raising of the siege of Vicksburg in May-July 1863 rather than horsing around with an ill-advised and costly offensive in Pennsylvania.

 

You are very correct about mediaeval Mongolian military strategy: scare the living "upside down 7734" out of them before the battle's even begun.

 

And the North finally won the Civil War when they took their bluebelly bayonets home in 1877?

 

Is the war in Iraq synonymous with the war on terrorism?

I think that Iraq probably will be an open-ended low-intensity conflict somewhere in-between police and military. That's easy enough for a few thousand insurgents to achieve. Just make scattered attacks on patrols from out of hiding so that the opposition suffers several battle deaths every day. Then if the opponents are a democracy with a political opposition and a free press lke the Americans have, just sit back and watch them fall apart.

The militants think that countries like America have great battlefield equipment, but if you can just harass and frustrate them, they will quickly demonstrate that on the human level they are cowards and they will eventually run away from the confrontation.

I don't think that we can make Iraq safe from sporadic shooting and roadside bombs anytime soon. So we probably need to do what we can to reduce our own exposure to casulties by turning over policing and counter-insurgency duties to the locals. We don't need the US Army patrolling every fly-infested town in humvees where they make themselves into great targets.

But we can't just walk away, washing our hands of the new Iraqi government. We need to back it up until it's strong enough to stand on its own. So we need to keep significant American forces in the region to ensure that the Iraqi government can't be overthrown like the South Vietnamese were.

Of course, what finally overran the South Vietnamese wasn't sporadic village terrorism, but North Vietnamese regulars who launched a more conventional campaign after the Americans got tired of fighting and left.

My guess is that victory in Iraq might follow this scenario:

We might succeed in creating a reasonably popular democratic government there. Iraqis will like their new freedoms and opportunities. They will lose patience with those who make their lives unsafe and who keep them from having the good things that they want. So the insurgents will become more and more isolated, intelligence on them will come flowing in from the civilian population, and their campaign will gradually fade away, becoming more and more sporadic. This is obviously what Washington and London hope will happen.

And there are lots of less attractive scenarios too, ranging from a radical mullah-led Islamic theocracy, to an authoritarian state that restores a Saddam-style grip, to failed-state anarchy, to division of the country into separate Kurd, Sunni and Shiite states, to armed interventions by neighboring states after the US leaves.

 

The big questions become: Did the Iraqis ask us to liberate them from Saddam? Which ones? Are we perceived more as liberators or conquerors? By whom? Who has more rifles, the Iraqis that think we're liberators or the Iraqis that think we're conquerors? It appears that the president forgot to think about possible perception problems.

 

This may piss a few off, but I never subscribed nor ever embraced the political correctness theroy, so here goes:

Perhaps Jimmy Carter should shoulder most of the blame for terrorism, yes Jimmy Carter, why you ask? Perhaps no other president emboldened religious fundementalists to get away threating the world and coupled with this, ever since the end of WWII America has tried assuming some holier-than-thou moral backdrop that over time our enemies used as a tool against us.
So in essence instead of having a total war in which you make an enemy howl for peace because of their agression brought on an incenderary raid like at Dresdend or Toyko in which a death toll dwarfed Hiroshioma or Nagasaki, we now send soldiers in caravan columns down narrow steets that are heavily crowded with buildings in which religious fundementalists with RPG's and roadside bombs do damage because of America's inability of being able to unyoke herself of trying to win their warped "hearts and minds". Instead we ask our soldiers to be diplomats..here's diplomacy...when a soldier dies in a roadside bomb, B-52' and 155's push each side of the roads back 1000 yards and everything and everyone with it.
Likewise, back to Carter, he should have quitely made an overture to the Iranians for the hostages being released, in which both countries could publicly walk away with a face saving gesture. If that failed and the extremist spew began again, publicly announce that we want our hostages released in 72 hours and that the clock is ticking; if not released, America is coming for them, and for what ever reasons should Americans die in retaining their release, for everyone that dies so will one of their cities in a blinding flash!
Soviets would have cared less, sure publicly they would have denouced us, but quitely cheered us on.
Thus no present day Saddam problem, nor emblodend fundementalists, as a matter of fact Saddam's ass would have been so drawn up that you couldn't have shoved a pin up it! Heck, however doubtful; even if there was a first Gulf War and Iraq survived from being transformed into glass Saddam would have closed all schools within 30 miles of a no-fly zone in fear of a kids paper airplane violation.

Even in 79 the Soviets would have cared less if America caught Iran between the hammer and anvil of her Nuclear might.

America needs to simply unshackle herself of what is considered "Rules of War", for thousands of years there were no rules, it was all about mauling your enemy into submission. Didnt Sherman on the outskirts of Atlanta say something along the lines of " You cant stop them from hating us but you sure can make them hate war". No matter how you feel about warfare, it is a dirty business, and armies are trained and built to do one primary thing and that is to kill, they are simply a killing machine.
Once everything else fails and an army is unleased, don't incumber them. I know it all sounds terrible, but ask youself this fundemental question- If religous extremists could get nuclear devices on our soil, would any consideration or mercy be given?

 

You are very correct. Carter was a nice Christian man who tried to bring decency to politics and failed. Not only is it extremely difficult to bring decency to regular old parliamentary politics (the sit-down-and-talk variety), it is impossible to bring any modicum of decency to "politics by other means" (to be read: "war"). If you're going to do it, just go in and do it and get it done.

 

Me thinks muskets and lead balls from the Civil war are now obsolete although "brilliant" military quarterbacking still persists. So ten years and 50K dead wasn't just quite enough effort to "win" the Vietnam war? If weren't for Kent State, Jane Fonda, and all those unpatriotic "commie" draft card card burners, by gollie, we woulda "won" that darned war? I'm working on a 120 billion over ten year (and who knows how much ultimately) military program and you know the money is great for me. Thank you dear taxpayer! However the fact is you drive a Bradley or anything else over a very cheaply made man mine and you know what? Dead troops. If the blast doesn't penetrate the armor the G forces can do them in. Will the 120 bil lead to "improvements"? Perhaps. But as I said before if you think you can solve POLITICAL problems via the military then perhaps you need yet another degree or something to have realism set in. What would it take for you guys to admit that Iraq is another Vietnam? Eight more years and 48K more dead? Be patient, the stats never lie. If you want to "stomp" out anything with an overpowering crushing force I would FIRST look at poverty and ignorance here at home.

 

I believe that I have elsewhere expressed my frustration over President Carter's hand wringing approach to the Iran hostage crisis. It cost him the election in 1980, and it SHOULD have done so.

Regarding Lee; I don't think you are being quite fair, TH. I agree that "gentlemanliness" might well produce the same results as "arrogance" but no one, not even Lee's worst enemies, ever called him "arrogant" to my knowledge,

This is not to say that he didn't suffer from a good deal of over confidence in his own abilities. He certainly did; witness Pickett's Charge. (Pickett, of all people, never forgave Lee for what he'd done but I can't recall him ever using the term "arrogant". For that matter, the whole Pennsylvania invasion was ill advised, as you rightly point out. But the plan was duly approved by a TRULY arrogant official, President Davis.

But abounding confidence is absolutely necessary in a successful battlefield commander. Look at General Hooker for a wonderful example of what happens when a commander lacks confidence in himself.

As to "brilliance"; no, I think you are wrong there. Lee really WAS good at reading his enemy's mind. Like it or not, the Confederacy did not err in entrusting the Army of Northern Virginia to him. But Lee couldn't extend his thinking past his own battlefield; making him General in Chief WAS a mistake for which Davis quickly paid...

Oh, well, who really knows?

 

Professor Ed Hagerty (American Military University) referred to him as "arrogant Bobby Lee" in a marginal note on my final exam for CW 516: Lee & His Lieutenants. Prof. Hagerty's reasons were that Lee had an extremely high casualty rate (much higher than Grant's) and he continued the war for two years after he should have realized it was lost.

By the standards of Lee's time (given the military technology of the time), the attackers needed a three to one numerical superiority in order to prevail. At the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee had 75,000 men. He should not have attacked any force larger than 25,000 and could have held off an attacker with up to 225,000 men. Meade had 95,000 men at Gettysburg. While Lee might not have had an exact head count of the number of soldiers in the Army of the Potomac, certainly he should have known from the Battle of Chancellorsville (two months earlier) that the Army of the Potomac was rather a bit bigger than 25,000.

 

Actually, I never recommended using muskets and minnie balls in a present-day war. As to the equation between war and politics by other means, that comes from the nineteenth century German military theorist Clausewitz. As to whether we might have won in Vietnam had we just continued pouring in more and more troops, the answer is: from a strictly military perspective, it could have been done; politically, however, such a decision would have been dangerous.

 

Are we in another Vietnam?

I must admit that the similarities are becoming more alarming every week.

 

TH

With due respect to your AMU professor (and a very good school AMU is) again I don't think you are being quite fair.

Lee, with Davis' concurrence, considered that an entirely defensive war would lead inevitably to defeat. That's what Petersburg was all about; Lee knew that once he was forced into his battlements, it was just a matter of time. The idea wasn't to "hold on as long as possible" but to inflict sufficient defeat upon the North as to undermine the will of the North to continue the war.

Secondly, as to prolonging the war, that really wasn't Lee's decision, was it? Lee was, after all, an American military officer whose training and experience always stressed the subordination of the military to the civilian authority. When and whether to surrender when the means of defense were at hand is a POLITICAL and not a MILITARY decision.

I will agree to the extent that Lee could have, and perhaps should have, taken greater pains to speak the truth to Davis. But that falls under the rubric of my earlier criticism of Lee; that he never really "grew" into a modern general. He couldn't see beyond his own battlefield.

Besides, I doubt that your professor is quite THAT old!

 

But still, Lee's step-great-grandfather-in-law, George Washington, won the Revolutionary War by making the Brits chase him all over the Eastern United States, inflicting some damage along the way in the form of guerilla warfare. And Lee could have won his war by making the North chase him all over the Southeastern United States. The problem, however, as Jeff Hummel states in his _Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men_ (a most excfellent libertarian interpretation of the Civil War) consists in this: Will the people (in a representative democracy) put up with being invaded? Militarily, the defensive made sense but politically, it probably did not. This is why the powers that be adopted what, from the purely military perspective, appears to be the wrong strategy.

 

TH:

Fair enough.

The only further point I'd like to make is that American history of the Revolution tends to minimize the naval contributions of Spain and France.

Washington had considerable help in keeping supplies and reinforcements from reaching the British at critical times.

Logistics, again!

 

Another Vietnam

Republican senator says we are in another Vietnam.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050821/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq