It is an interesting question, what the brash and often at odds with his superiors Patton would do with today's situation in Iraq. His name was often invoked during the large-scale military operation that drove towards Iraq at the beginning of operations in Iraq and rightly so. Unfortunately, his name was never invoked afterwards, after the tanks had stopped and the "occupation" of Iraq began, when his influence might be having a greater impact for the better on the situation in Iraq more than anything else presently being put into action might. Long have I thought that our actions in Iraq, as much as they have angered the world, have not been strong enough, especially with an enemy that will use any slight sign of weakness as proof that we are indeed everything they believe us to be, soft and fat, unwilling to fight when it gets tough for longer than a few days.
Why does this all arise? Well Victor Davis Hanson (again a mind that I highly admire and his knowledge of history is almost like a crystal ball for today's times) has posted an adapted transcript from a speech he previously made that explores exactly what would Patton think about today's situation in Iraq and it resonates with my own thoughts on the situation in Iraq.
This passage I find highly relevant:
Patton had two phrases that he used almost ad nauseam. The first, from Danton, was: “Audacity, always audacity, still more audacity.” The second was “the unforgiving minute,” a line from Kipling, which referred to certain times in war when the collective will of a people or an army can without warning collapse—at least for critical moments that must be capitalized on. Unlike Eisenhower and Bradley, who thought the August collapse of the German army was likely and thus the war would now end before Christmas, Patton knew that if the Panzers were saved from near death, they could be ready to kill again and under far more favorite circumstances. That is exactly what happened at the Falaise Gap. Later at the Seine River, near the Siegfried Line, and when attacking the Bulge, Patton saw that a sweeping hook, rather than a head-on assault might bring on a total collapse, but only if risks were taken and old plans ignored in light of new realities. Again, the conservative, doctrinaire approach of cautious attack proved the far more costly tactic.
These lessons too apply in recent times. In the first Gulf War, Saddam put almost 250,000 Iraqi troops in bunkers in the sand, and even after weeks of U.S. bombing they were still operational. In response, General Schwarzkopf marched hundreds of miles around the flank, leaving many of the entrenched Iraqi positions behind and headed toward Basra, his long flanks covered by air support. But although we copied Patton’s tactics, we forgot their purpose—stopping at the so-called Highway of Death because of the television images of “thousands” of enemy dead. Pentagon staffers worried at the time that 20,000 enemy soldiers had been killed, thus causing a global uproar. We know now the real number was in the hundreds—and that when we stopped before Basra, fleeing Iraqis did not and so killed thousands of mostly defenseless Shiites and Kurds over the next few weeks. And over the next twelve years, Anglo-American pilots flew thousands of missions in the Iraq no-fly zones, all as a precursor to the recent war. In short, we forgot Patton’s most important lesson: the purpose of outflanking the enemy is to demoralize and annihilate the enemy, thus removing the reasons to go to war in the first place.
I have always found it amazing how much history is essentially a crystal ball. There is a passage in Proverbs that says "there is nothing new under the sun" and though that isn't exactly true, in the course of human events it certainly applies far more often than not as it does in Iraq today. Knowing history is, in a way, knowing the future because no matter how far we come with technology and innovation, human nature remains much the same and thus the actions and reactions of nations and civilizations are much the same as they have been in the past. Unfortunately today we fail to learn history's impact, fail to find its usefulness in today's times when it is quite obvious that it definitely has one. As they say, those who fail to learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them. I believe both sides, Left and Right, have failed to acknowledge those lessons in regards to the war on terror in today's world. To me, the Left is caught up far too much in the here and now and only mention the past when it suits their needs (for example a Vietnam "quagmire," we created Saddam Hussein and such) and the Right, while recognizing history (invoking Patton), have failed to learn all it's lessons and have stood with one foot in the door and one foot out the door which might be far more dangerous in the long run for our nation. If we must move militarily, we must move with overwhelming strength and confounding speed. To rest is to allow our enemies to breathe, to stir their nearly unlimited (in terms of young minds) base, and make this fight last longer than it ever should. Men like Patton, even with his numerous faults, understood this and thus there is no shame to contemplate what men as he would have done no matter the era they resided. This is the lesson of history for us now, but not nearly enough are asking the question, let alone seeking the answer that would bring this knowledge and wisdom to us.
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