What would Patton say about the war in Iraq?

AuthorHanson, Victor Davis
PositionWorldview - General George S. Patton

WHAT CAN WE IMAGINE Gen. George S. Patton might say about the present war? Based on what he himself said and wrote, his record in the field, and what scholars have written about him, I think we have some reasonable ideas. I will begin with Patton's strategic thinking, then follow with suppositions about tactical and operational doctrine.

Patton listened to the BBC almost nightly, spoke French fluently, and was an insatiable reader of history: German Field Marshal Erwin Pommel, French General (and then Emperor) Napoleon Bonaparte, and Roman Emperor Julius Caesar were among his favorite topics. He was a learned person despite purportedly being dyslexic. In any case, based on news reports, his extensive studies of European history, and meetings with those who had worked with the Soviets, he firmly believed that the Allies were making a horrible mistake by not driving on to Berlin to bring all of Germany behind Anglo-American lines. If we could paraphrase his thinking it might go something like this: We had fought World War II in part to ensure that Eastern Europe, i.e., Poland and Czechoslovakia, did not remain under the domination of Adolph Hitler's totalitarian regime; yet our policies at war's end were guaranteeing that those countries would fall under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's equally evil domination.

In a famous exchange, Allied Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower asked of Patton's request to move eastward immediately, "What in the world for?" Patton, without hesitation, replied, "You shouldn't have to ask that. History will answer for you, Ike." Eisenhower's righthand man, Gen. Omar Bradley, protested and offered up the standard American fear of sustaining 100,000 casualties. Of course, the Soviets did take over 100,000 casualties storming Berlin, a fact later used to argue for Eisenhower's prescience. Again, however, the Soviets suffered such losses because the Germans were fighting ferociously in order that everybody behind them might surrender to the West. Had the Germans known that the Allies were going to take Berlin, the city might have fallen after brief resistance in the same manner as other German strongpoints in the West.

Patton had the further notion that, after defeating the Nazis, we should not destroy Germany's armored forces and dismantle its strategic forces, but instead use them as a basis to rearm for the purpose of stopping the Soviets, who enjoyed an enormous superiority in respective land forces on the continent. This was blasphemy to most experts in the U.S., made worse by Patron's often puerile and offensive slurs about Russian primitivism and barbarity. As a result of his uncouth pronouncements, Patton's otherwise astute and vocal anti-communist rhetoric found little support, and indeed gave him very little margin of tolerance when his proconsulship of Bavaria later ran into trouble. Yet, this very idea of German rehabilitation would--within months after his dismissal--turn out to be the basis of NATO.

Patton always realized that armed forces serve political ends and create an immediate reality on the battlefield that politicians argue over for years--that there are times when audacious commanders can create favorable diplomatic situations impossible to achieve by politicians even after years of negotiations. Well before Pres. Franklin Roosevelt or Eisenhower, he understood that the new Germany was an ally, and the old Soviets were now the new enemy of freedom.

Applying Patton's thinking to today's situation, we first can recognize the so-called "war on terror" as a misnomer. There never really has been a war against a method other than something like Pompey's crusade against the pirates or the British effort to stifle the slave trade. In fact, we no more are in a war against terror than Patton was fighting against Tiger and Panzer...

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