worst generals in vietnam

The Germanic fighters demolished the three Roman legions. A former British officer, Gates rose to fame as Continental Army commander during the momentous American defeat of a British army at Saratoga in 1777. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author. Its quite exclusive: combat leaders who had the fate of their people in their hands and squandered it all. NEW FOR SUBSCRIBERS: This was heeded about as well as any piece of parental advice, anywhere ever. Sure, they ganged up on the Spartans at the Pass of Thermopylae. Hull, convinced that he was hopelessly outnumbered (he wasnt), surrendered Fort Detroit and its 2,000-man garrison without firing a shot. Considering some militants as instruments of regional influence while fighting others has had disastrous consequences. 3. Westmoreland was on a treadmill. After only 10 weeks into the Pacific War, Percival became responsible for the largest surrender of British-led forces in history. He was killed in combat on March 1, 1870. These battlefield bumblers serve to provide that contrast. James K. Polk upon the outbreak of war between Mexico and the U.S. and offered to become an agent for the U.S. (again). Westmoreland established a headquarters known as MACV Forward in the northern provinces of South Vietnam and put his deputy, General Creighton Abrams, in charge, placing him over the Marines and also the Army forces in that region. To that Hollings responded, "Westy, the American people don't care about the ten. The initial assault resulted in very high casualties for the Russians and an almost complete breakdown of morale in the Russian forces. The American Civil War was a factory for producing bad generals such as Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside. He denied senior civilian officials accurate data on enemy strength and composition, during development of a 1967 Special National Intelligence Estimate imposing a ceiling on the number of enemy forces his intelligence officers could report or agree to and personally removing from the order of battle entire categories that had long been included, thus falsely portraying progress in reducing enemy strength. 10. From Kaiser Wilhelm to Hitler and Saddam Hussein and Gadhafi, there is no end of national leaders who squandered their nations blood and treasure in futile conflicts. - 3 Best: 1987 Los Angeles Lakers. Westmorelands general mistake: severely underestimating the Communists. How does an admiral make a list of the worst generals? To say that he failed in both regards is to dramatically understate the case. Advancing to the North Korean border with China also was a red flag for Mao-Tse Tung, who feared that American troops on his border were a prelude to U.S. invasion. Explore the benefits included in your subscription. But his persistence and inspiration kept the Continental Army in the field through the worst of times, which is why his face is on the one-dollar bill. Heres the inaugural class: 6. 4. The latest news, analysis, and data from the country each week. The next major British offensive came at Passchendaele (July 31November 6, 1917), where Haig lost another 275,000 troops in a battle whose name became synonymous with pointless slaughter. The alternative was to split the United States asunder. Delivered Monday-Saturday. The Top Ten. Follow him on Twitter:@Mipeck1. Lebanon (1982-1984) 240. Not only is Sorley a third-generation graduate of West Point a Vietnam veteran and a historian, but he worked for Westmoreland as well. Gates thought otherwise, and fancied himself a better commander than George Washington. Sorley skillfully uses Westmoreland's own words to show time and again his duplicity at worst and his lack of touch with reality at best. Is Weiss correct? George McClellan is one of those generals who really looks great on paper. Some 15,000 talents of gold (the so-called Gold of Tolosa) had vanished under his watch, never to be recovered. A dull, unfeeling, unimaginative, smug "Colonel Blimp" of the worst sort. But the argument is unbalanced. Yet backstabbing your commander-in-chief in the middle of a war is taking ambition a little too far. Alas, call it the laws of probability or just cosmic karma, but every nation produces bad generals as well as good onesand America is no exception. Ulysses S. Grant, who replaced McClellan, understood this. George Brinton McClellan, a self-proclaimed Young Napoleon, ran dreadful campaigns, but he doesnt make the grade because he was canned before he could lose the entire war. Westmorelands devotion to advancing his own interests, even when necessary by misrepresentation, was fundamentally at odds with what Scouting is all about. If there was a saving grace for America, it was that he wasn't commanding an army. Along with Communist China and other Communist movements in the region, who were fighting to reunite the Vietnams under the red banner, there were other belligerent, free countries in the region who had an interest in keeping South Vietnam away from the Commies. 336 pages | 16 halftones | 6 1/4 x 9 1/4. (You May Also Like: The Five Best U.S. Argentina, Brazil, and the Brazilian puppet government in Uruguay formed an alliance, and on May 1, 1865, they declared war on Paraguay. Fort Bragg was named in 1918 during the Jim Crow era. Delivered Wednesday & Sunday. The pandemics outbreak brought rare reporting freedoms. Ultimately, he was denied his final showdown with the Allies by German political leaders who realized that the Americans could produce soldiers faster than Germany could produce bullets. The 20th century is the most violent century in history. Here are five of America's worst generals: Great generals have great talents, and usually egos and ambitions to match. America, the Middle East and the rest of the world are still reaping the consequences of those omissions. The result of his manic commitment to the war of attrition was that Westmoreland squandered four years of his troops bravery and support by the public, the Congress, and even much of the news media for American involvement in the war. He need not be concerned, soothed Wheeler, because the weight of judgment was that the enemy cant match us on a buildup. That turned out to be one of the classic misjudgments of the war, comparable in magnitude and consequence to General MacArthurs assurances to President Truman that Chinese forces would not enter the Korean War. In fact, he did a lot to ensure that Germany would find itself in another war that it couldnt win, but, since he died in 1937, he gets extra credit for being a bad World War II general from beyond the grave. In 1941, Graziani resigned his commission after the British counterattacked and the Tenth Army was completely defeated during Operation Compass. Operational Culture General Training LREC SME Support Training Course Catalog Cognitive Dimension Training Additional Resources . - 4 Worst: 1990 Cleveland Cavaliers. But all that remains of his would-be empire today is a flaky French pastry. His invasion of Canada came to an abrupt halt when he failed to capture Fort Malden, a British position that was a laughably short distance from Hulls headquarters at Fort Detroit. The Battle of Khe Sanh (21 January - 9 July 1968) was conducted in the Khe Sanh area of northwestern Qung Tr Province, Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), during the Vietnam War. On September 9, 1965, Navy Cmdr. Eschewing a direct overland march to the Confederate capital of Richmond, McClellan orchestrated an impressive amphibious landing of more than 100,000 troops at Fort Monroe, at the southeast end of the peninsula between the James and York rivers. History: Military History. When all is said and done, it doesnt matter how nice, brave, courageous, gutsy, loyal, or brilliant commanders theyve been. Advancing in dispersed columns across the northern half of the peninsula was an invitation to be destroyed piecemeal. What is a bad general? The inept Luigi Cadorna of Italy fought a dozen battles on the Isonzo before his army completely collapsed at Caporetto. There are issues around killing and counting unarmed civilians (non-combatants) as enemy combatants, as well as inflating the number of actual enemy who were killed in action (KIA).For search and destroy operations, as the objective was not to . Villeneuve lost 20 ships, while Nelson lost none. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? By the end of the conflict, America had unleashed the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on Vietnam. Historian Lewis Sorley author of 1999s well-regarded A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of Americans Last Years in Vietnam now zeroes in on General William Westmoreland. Among the most detrimental and problematic policies are the incarceration of drug users in compulsory treatment centers, and the stigmatization and abuse of consumers by the police. McClellan was removed from command immediately after. But there was something that not even the factories of New York and Chicago could produce, and that was time. The 5 Worst Generals in U.S. History. Among them are, of course, Lyndon Johnson himself, Robert McNamara, and General Earle Wheeler. Stay updated on the topics you care about with email alerts. Frederick C. Weyand was a U.S. Army General who was the last commander of American military operations in the Vietnam War from 1972 to 1973. Johnston was wounded on the first day of the Battle of Seven Pines, six miles east of Richmond, and he was replaced by Robert E. Lee. McClellan was a superb organizer, a West Point-trained engineer who did much to build the Union army almost from scratch. While there were a host of bad generals serving on both sides during the American Civil Warmostly on the Union side unfortunatelythe one that usually gets the most credit for dragging out the war as long as he did is Union General George McClellan. He deprived the South Vietnamese of modern weaponry, giving U.S. and other allied forces priority for issue of the new M-16 rifle and other advanced military wherewithal. That dubious distinction falls to William Hull, the only general officer in American history to be ordered before a firing squad for cowardice and dereliction of duty. While British cannons shelled the fort from the Canadian side of the river, Tecumseh marched his warriors through a forest clearing in an endless parade. Although he eventually disavowed Hitler, by that point Ludendorff had become so deeply involved with mysticism that few took him seriously. But in a contemporaneous cable to General Earle Wheeler, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Westmoreland complained that the military professionalism of the Marines falls far short of the standards that should be demanded by our armed forces. According to a Time magazine reporter who wrote about the Dak Son massacre, Viet Cong guerrillas shouted "Sons of Americans!" as they launched their assault on the village. Sun Wu Sun Zi, or Sun Tzu, was a prominent military general during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) who is always regarded as one of the greatest military strategists in China and even the World. The South Vietnamese thus went for years equipped with castoff WWII-vintage U.S. equipment while outgunned by the communists, who were armed with the AK-47 assault rifle and other top of the line equipment. He continued on to suffer defeats at Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz, almost letting the war slip away from the British. He lacked the schooling and relevant experience to understand the war and devise a viable approach to prosecuting it. But its not just the United States. 151. Click + to receive email alerts when new stories are published on. His war of attrition, search and destroy tactics, and emphasis on body count did nothing to affect the war in the hamlets and villages of South Vietnam, where the enemys covert infrastructure was left free to continue using coercion and terror to dominate the rural populace. There appeared to be little serious planning for what would happen the day after Saddam was gone. Napoleon. By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to occasionally receive special offers from Foreign Policy. A key plank in the Democratic platform that year was, appropriately, not fighting, and McClellan lost in a rout. Thus the progress Westmoreland claimed in racking up huge body counts did nothing to win the war. Grachev once said that only an incompetent commander would order tanks into the streets of central Grozny, where they would be vulnerable. Yet near the end of the war he did exactly that. Hundreds of thousands died of disease. George Custer at the Little Big Horn and Lord Chelmsford at the Battle of Isandlwana leap to mind. After making a laughingstock of himself by ordering his men to entrench on the wrong side of fortifications at Camargo, Pillow bungled his role at the Battle of Cerro Gordo, making himself the low point of a resounding American victory. Yet, Hannibal nevertheless ranks as one of the worlds epic fails. James K. Polk. Darius did not take the field against Alexander until a year and a half after Granicus, at the Battle of Issus. Fighter Aircraft of All Time). He ran as a Democrat against Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election. This would be known as the Tet Offensive and would become a major turning point in the war. With a few relatively minor changes, thats just about where they stayed for the next four years. In 1940, after increasing pressure from dictator Benito Mussolini and facing demotion, Graziani followed orders and invaded Egypt with his Tenth Army. Delivered Thursday. But he was overly cautious by nature. He was also supremely gifted at overestimating the size of his opponents armies to a degree that beggared belief. Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Baines Johnson announced his fateful decision to double the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam. Men and material the Union could provide its armies. While Muammer Al-Gaddafi isn't into the funny business in his politician reign, he most certainly is one of a highly egotistical leader and a member who represents more of the "self" rather than all else. The premise was that, if he could kill enough of the enemy, they would lose heart and cease their aggression against the South Vietnamese. Gamelin was commander of the French forces in World War II and is largely responsible for the fall of France into German control during the Battle of France. As military professionals, we should think about more . But then MacArthur thrived on controversy like bread thrives on yeast. Not that Fredendall didn't have real issues that would have tried any commander. Lyndon Johnson had no understanding of military affairs whatever, nor did Robert McNamara. Even if Moscow holds onto territory, the war has wrecked its future. The loss of Fort Donelson opened the door to Kentucky and Tennessee to Union forces and marked the beginning of the end of Confederate resistance in the west. The Worst Civil War Generals on the Confederacy Confederate Maj. Gen. Gideon Pillow. Not later than the autumn of 1966 the leaders of both services involved in fighting the ground war in VietnamArmy Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson and Marine Commandant General. Essential analysis of the stories shaping geopolitics on the continent. Muammar Al-Gaddafi. Military historian Russell Weigley rendered a succinct judgment on LBJ: No capable war President would have allowed an officer of such limited capacities as General William C. Westmoreland to head Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, for so long.. In the end, Chiang sacrificed more than a million Chinese soldiers and well over ten million Chinese civilians in his bid to stay in power. Is the Biden administrations China policy too hawkish? 9 Noteworthy Bog Bodies (And What They Tell Us), 12 Novels Considered the Greatest Book Ever Written, Inventors and Inventions of the Industrial Revolution, https://www.britannica.com/list/9-worst-generals-in-history. The 1970s were scary times. In 1847, U.S. troops once again surprised Santa Anna and captured his prosthetic leg. In his single-minded pursuit of that objective, Westmoreland (despite his repeated claims to the contrary) essentially ignored two other crucial aspects of the war, improvement of South Vietnams armed forces and pacification. Ukraines economy and infrastructure have been dealt blows that will take decades to recover from. Assuming you believe the subtitle to be accurate, who were GEN Westmorelands biggest accomplices in the loss? In the opening month of World War I, Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg scored a crushing victory over the Russians at Tannenberg. As the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, he faced a two-front war, an insurgency in the South and an invading army from the North. General William Westmoreland. The man who appealed for Varus help was Arminius, a Romanized Germanic prince. Thus it was under Darius rule that the Persian Empire fell and was conquered. The Romans lost an estimated 80,000 infantry and perhaps 40,000 auxiliaries and cavalry, numbers that dwarf the staggering totals at Cannae. After occupying Jerusalem and crucifying 2,000 Jewish rebels in Judaea, Varus went off to govern Germania and tame barbarian tribes. But he also displayed remarkably bad judgment, as when he was commander in the Philippines in 1941. Lpez was the son of Carlos Antonio Lpez, a dictator who had done much to modernize Paraguay in the mid-19th century. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. Outstanding commanders such as George H. Thomas, Phil Sheridan, and William Tecumseh Sherman routinely bested their Confederate opponents. General William Westmoreland. The War of the Triple Alliance devastated Paraguay. If Putin had hoped to weaken NATO, the very opposite has happened, with Finland and Sweden on the cusp of joining the transatlantic military alliance. In fifteen thought-provoking essays, each written by a professional military historian, readers are introduced . Not good, Hannibal. While Maximus was conducting negotiations with the Cimbri, a Germanic tribe that had invaded the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, Caepio rashly attacked the Cimbri army on October 6, 105 BCE.

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