They liked and looked good in their shiny uniforms, but their performance has been, how shall we put this, lackluster.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Time to Fire Some McClellans...
They liked and looked good in their shiny uniforms, but their performance has been, how shall we put this, lackluster.
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8 comments:
Right -- we need fewer McClellans and more Shermans. While at it, a Buck Turgidson would be good, too. Have they broken the mold?
This guy (bottom photo "Weightman" I think his name is) has been dicking-over returned war vets who, for some time, have been less-than-satisfied with the treatment (or lack thereof) they've received at Walter Reed Medical. To be fair, Weightman hasn't gone out of his way to mess with shot up vets. Rather, he's done nothing to improve the lackluster treatment they've been getting. Total bullshit.
As a rule of thumb, most good high ranking officers, whether of combat or service units, are those who have earned their way through experience of war or having passed through the lowest of echelons [enlisted] on their way up. These seem to serve as a filter to cull out bureaucratic twits and shameless Mclellanesque careerists.......Fortunately the Union army, in the Civil War, had people such as Grant, Sherman, Sheridan [even Burnside] as alternative to the Mclellan's and Hacketts. But, today, it seems its 95% Mclellans.
Good analysis, AA. Like I was saying: Total Bullshit.
AA: Yes -- but the phenomenon you describe did not just happen during the War between the States -- also, in WWII, etc. Why not now?
That's a good question, AI. There is a history behind that worthy of a serious scholar. But, in the absence of one [MFT probably currently preoccupied with things pertinent to his degree] let me put out this guess:
Up through WWII most high ranking officers HAD seen combat experience, often direct and brutal experience, in the many "small" conflicts the US had engaged in since the late 1890s .
Think of the Spanish-American War, of course, but also some brutal guerilla conflicts, lasting decades, in the Phillippines, some hostile "policing actions" along the Panama canal and elsewhere in Central America, the protection of foreign legations in China [both against Chinese and Japanese], the fighting in Siberia in the late 'teens to aid the Whites in the Russian civil war, and of course WWI itself. The filter had been active.
In addition, with the exception of those who had gone to West Point or the Naval Academy, many officers had risen up through enlisted or warrant ranks. Again, the filter was active.
So, yes, the bureaucratically minded [the Hacketts] or the parade ground Boffo's [the Mclellans] might still carve out their niche....but they did not dominate the higher ranks.
Today, it is different. And I would note that after WWII there was a vast bureaucratization of the armed forces, so that there was ample room for the H&M's to garner ranks and ribbons without ever having to directly confront the realities of warfare. There was also, with this, a sharper sense of hierarchy, of officers and enlisted, for example, not being allowed to fraternize, of college degrees as being required for officers, of making it very difficult to start as enlisted and then move up to officer, etc.... In other words, it has become impossible to imagine an American General wandering freely around a battlefield, now engaging with fellow generals, now engaging with privates and corporals, all while seeing himself as a soldier amongst them [think of Grant at Shiloh, of Bradley at the Bulge or Stillwell in Burma during WWII]......
They are almost all Westmorelands and Clarks and Weightmans and Caseys now [I'm hoping for better from Petraeus]. The only significant exception I can think of, which only proves the rule, was General Schwarzkopf in the first Gulf War. Surrounded by Mclellan naysayers on all sides, especially from the logistics and Pentagon types [who are, unsurprisingly, the most bureaucratized] he cut through the crap and simply forged ahead with those who were willing to fight the damn thing. He was lucky, in this respect, that Bush senior was shitting in his Tejas Pantalones that the Saudis would go belly up and had agreed to let Schwarzkopf craft and command the war without outside interference, a pledge he honored just long enough to let General Blackhead win in Kuwait but be stymied from overthrowing Saddam [but that is another sordid story]. Nevertheless, the Gulf War was noteworthy for an imaginative and determined campaign that bypassed the institutional blocks that had developed after WWII......And it is noteworthy in that it was led by the one post WWII leading general to have personally seen extensive combat experience [Schwarzkopf was highly decorated for such when a junior officer in Vietnam, and the men who served under him invariably report on both his personal courage and his ability to bypass "the book" and improvise on the moment as needed].
And where are the Schwarezkopfs of today????....All we can hope is that some of the best now being educated firsthand in war, in Iraq and Afghanistan, stay in the armed forces and rise to high rank in the future.
It would be a bloody shame to let Mandarins replace Generals.
Good analysis, AA. I meant to say more before, but was cut short by one of those perrenial taxi duties. Another General I had in mind was John J. Pershing, who cut his teeth chasing Pancho Villa through the mountains of Mexico. Those boys did not exactly cover themselves with glory during that expedition (though it did give plenty of grist for generations of Hollywood moviemakers), but hey, that was good training for facing the much tougher Krauts when the time came to duke it out (and, by the way, save the Frenchie's sorry asses, but that's another story, let's not get distracted.)
By the way, do you know who was Pershing's aide while JJP was chasing the mustachioed Mexican up and down the Maestras? George "Blood and Guts" Patton himself! Yes, that's how it used to be done, in those days of yore when men were men.
As for the bureaucratization of the Army after WWII: it's hard to pin the tail on the donkey on this one, but if I were to pick a single name, I'd say: Robert McNamara. 'Nough said?
AA, don't forget these (minor footnotes to your list): Or a Matthew Ridgway in Korea, or a General Washington along the Potomac...
Gentlemen: we're up against something bigger than fu*king Hetians, something bigger than a suicidal Kim II Sung/Mao Zedong army (well, maybe the equivalent, or more analogous).
Not that I need to validate what has already been set down, but what AA speaks of (college vs. non-college degrees) is true as far as the post-WWII military goes. This is really tragic, and even symbolized in today's Iraqi military "analysis," where not one soldier below a Lt. Col. was seriously considered as having a valid contribution to make toward the report. In my great Uncle's WWII day (a farm boy and recently-turned G.I. from rural Dakota being able to assimilate with nearly anyone from any other part of the U.S.), it was a different story.
Yes, of course Patton was a brilliant commander, and soldier, and everything else. Keep in mind, though, that there is a threshold to proving how "man" one is (see former McClellan aide-de-camp and brevet general, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer circa late-June/early-July 1876, and a stream entitled, The Little Bighorn, in Montana Territory as a grand example — those privates perished in large part because of his megalomania/idiocy; also don't forget: the Sioux were great Plains warriors, and understandably really, really, really, really pissed off).
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