My analogy with the extirminator is, I believe, a correct one. An extirminatorlooks at a house infested with bugs…he then chooses his plan of attack (so to speak), and takes all precautions himself. He chooses his weapons (gas, spary, solid bait) with an eye to achieveing maximum effectiveness with minimal costs.
If more generals thought this way, war would be less costly, i believe.
Did’nt Gen. George Patton say something like:"…nobdy ever won a war by dying for his country. You win by getting the OTHER poorguy to DIE for HIS country".
That expresses my philosophy nicely. Occupying gound is nice, but its a collorary to killing/extirminating the enemy force.
Care to mention any current generals who don’t seek “maximum effectiveness with minimal costs”? Actually, now that I think about it, Patton is a good example of someone who was not overwhelmingly concerned with minimizing costs.
Again, based on what you’re writing, your understanding of the theory of warfare sounds pretty superficial.
No, Ralph, it’s really not. An exterminator is exterminating, not waging war. Bugs don’t fight back. Bugs won’t wait until you’re having lunch and then mount a counteroffensive. Bugs won’t flank you and blow up your exterminator van. If you don’t think they’re different, you won’t even make a good corporal, much less a general.
Generals aren’t exterminating bugs and they’re not playing “Civilization 3” on the PC. A general is leading an enormous, hideously complex organization of at least four to five thousand men (if you’re a brigadier) and maybe more than a hundred thousand (if you’re a four-star general.) You don’t select the weapons, you manage the men who do. You don’t choose the tactics, you manage the men who do. Are you a natural leader of men? If not, you may as well forget being a general.
Your analogy is incorrect and only suitable to perhaps a war of attrition which is the costliest kind of war. Understanding that the objective in war is to kill the enemy while incuring minimal categories is the very basics of military strategy. How does your strategy translate to a war where the enemy is not necessarily identifyable?
Your boy Clausewitz said “war is the continuation of politics by other means”. Political objectives are rarely extermination. Do you think you have the ability to direct military forces to achieve political objectives?
General Westmoreland thought this way.
He also said “Success demands a high level of logistical and organizational competence.” Patton also understood a great deal about leading and inspiring men.
I think you are misreading Patton, Lincoln, and Grant.
I think you need to read and study more… :smack:
I think Nietsche said something about not trusting those who are quick to punish… and that certainly seems your case.
Generalship is naturally more than “war doctrine”. I doubt the US military would allow you to flatten Iraqis cities because of your “private” doctrine. Being a general is about victory and how to achieve it. **Sun Tzu ** is certainly something you should read… and in some cases “total anihilation” might be militarily useful… and in others very counter productive. (Clausewitz doesn’t hold a candle to Sun Tzu)
I know there is a nasty example from the US civil war... I think Jackson (?) that basically destroyed everything before him... and that worked out in the end.Sherman. But even in Sherman’s case, that wasn’t all he did, and he did it in conjunction with a broader Union strategy.
Grant’s instruction to Meade was that the objective was Lee’s army, not the capture of Confederate territory. By “destruction” of the army he didn’t mean the killing of everyone in it but rather its elimination as an organized military force.
The elimination of the enemy’s army is the prime objective. Once that is accomplished, the taking of territory follows easily.
Sherman’s method on the campaign from Atlanta to Charleston was one of the first examples of “total war.” He and others realized that the real strength behind an army is the morale and logistic support of the country. The sight of an army of 60000 going virtually unimpeded through the heart of the Confederacy was quite disaterous for Confederate morale. The destruction of the economy of the area was a big blow to the amount of materiel the Confederate armies could count on. After all if Sherman could do it so could others.
The OP is a variety of a syndrome that I’ve defined in my dealings with editors and columnists through my years in the media.
To wit:
“Because I am knowledgeable on a subject and am considered so by myself and others I am not only entitled to an opinion but also could do the job on which I am commenting as well or better than the people I am commenting upon.”
I see it all the damn time. Editors of newspapers who believe they could be better at leading the government than the President. Writers at trade shows who believe they would be better at running a Fortune 500 firm better than the CEO.
A tip:
Knowledge does not equal ability. There are good reasons why, before one gets a chance to lead such a large organizations (a country, an army, a corporation) there is an apprenticeship to teach one the practices and methods that lead to success. And reading, while helpful, is only the beginning of the process.
My degree is in history. This does NOT make me a historian. It makes me someone knowledgeable about certain aspects of human history.
My experience is in publishing. This DOES make me competent to lead a publishing firm or effort.
As others have said:
- you misquote Clausewitz
- thinking of the enemy as vermin to be exterminated is not helpful
- you have little experience
- you underestimate the importance of logistics and delegation
But it was brave of you to ask!
Yep it was… and something no one or I should criticize. Next !
On the other hand, Ralph might have been perfectly suited for a major command on the Western front during World War I.
Yeah, the whole “exterminator” analogy is completely wrong-headed.
A general’s job isn’t to exterminate the enemy, his job is to win wars. Generalship isn’t a technocratic job, it is mostly a political job…getting your subordinates to work together, putting the right person in the right position, protecting your organization from wrong-headed decisions from above, getting your superiors to listen to your ideas.
As has been pointed out, we could “win” the war in Iraq simply by killing most of the Sunnis. Exceot that would win the war in Iraq but start new wars all over the Middle East. How is that an improvement?
And of course, this “exterminator” talk reveals a certain blind spot in your thinking. That is, you will calmly and carefully prepare a strategy to kill the enemy and execute the strategy, and the war will be over. Except real human beings don’t passively wait for your strategy to be complete, like insects. They react to your strategy…and THEY have a strategy that YOU have to react to. If you simply stick with your plan and assume that because something worked yesterday it will work today, you will get a lot of people killed.
Yep, sounds a lot like General Westmoreland. He had a strategy to exterminate the enemy too. Except it never seemed to work, they always seemed to recover. No matter how many VC or NVA we killed, for some reason they never quit like they were supposed to. Never mind, the plan is perfect, we just have to keep fighting and pretty soon they will act in accordance to our plan. After all, they are just gooks, we have the most powerful military machine in the world, we set the strategy and they just react like insects.
I opened up my copy of “On War” to look for a quote that I had in mind about the OP. Much to my surprise, I found it on the very first page:
“War therefore is an act of violence intended to compel our opponents to fulfil our will… Self-imposed restriction, almost imperceptible and hardly worth mentioned, termed usages of International Law, accompany it without essentially impairing its power. Violence, that is to say, physical force… is therefore the means; the compulsory submission of the enemy to our will is the ultimate object. In order to attain this object fully, the enemy must be disarmed, and disarmament becomes therefore the immediate object of hostilities in theory.”
Then, several pages later: "“Thus, therefore, the political object, as the original motive of the War, will be the standard for determining both the aim of the military force and also the amount of effort to be made… If the aim of the military action is an equivalent for the political object, that action will in general diminish as the political object diminishes… Thus is is explained how, without any contradiction in itself, there may be war of all degrees of importance and energy, from a War of extermination down to the mere use of an army of observation.”
So, I say again, if the OP thinks that Clausewitz argued that all wars were wars of extermination, he’d not only be a poor general, but also not a very good student.
Well, at the risk of being tedious, I think it fair to point out that as a general (see my new stars!) my first concern is for the lives of my men…therefore, I NEVER would have risked men in the kind of “BLACKHAWK DOWN” debacle we had in Somalia. I would have put out the word, that everybody (in the area of Mogodishu that I had decided to attack) was going to be dead. My troops would sit back in armored vehicles, and waste those guerillas attempting to flee the artillery.
After that, if Adid wanted to continue, I would follow up again…until he (Adid) decided to seek reason.
Gen. Colin Powell expressed it well…use overwhelming force, and you will win.
Those people who criticize the Allied Bombing campaign (over Germany) forget that it wasn’t carried out ruthlessly enough…had Air Marshall Harris had his way, Berlin wouldhave been reduced to a cinder. The Germans would have had a lot of trouble making tanks, guns, etc., if all of their factory workers were dead.
Again, I don’t believe that war can ever be made “fair”,or “just”. Yopu enter war for one and only one purpose…to win.
And, as I said, if war became sufficiently brutal, maybe people would think twice about entering into it.
Do you think it’s kinda fun to shoot people? Yeah? Here’s your frist star, soldier.
But how would you have known to do that if you hadn’t seen the movie already?
No, your first concern ought to be completing your assigned mission.
.
Including the civilans? Accomplishing exactly what, given that your entire purpose there is to facilitate humanitarian relief efforts? Destroying the city in order to save it, eh?
Again, the glee in killing is not a good sign.
Ah. he, of course. Not like he’s ever change tactics.
Ever hit a mosquito with a sledgehammer?
And you fail to grasp that winning is not defined as “kill them all.”
But as far as you being a great general, I’d have to say that you’re not a strategist, nor schooled in the operational art, nor a tactician, nor a soldier. Other than that, you are a great military man.
ralph124c, I have an honest question:
Are you actually reading any of the posts written by anyone else in this thread? Without going back and re-reading, do you think you could summarize ANYTHING that anyone has written?
You’ve missed the point by such a wide margin, it’s as if you’re aiming in the opposite direction. You really haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.