So, to recap, - no Ralph - you wouldnt.
We do have an opening in our Cannon Fodder dept though…
Sin
Or, more precisely, the aim of war is to impose one’s will upon the enemy. The destruction of the enemy’s military capability obviously helps toward this end, but is not the end in itself.
I came to my conclusion based on what’s happened in American military history. Of course the peacetime military will deny it. The current “war” is not serious enough to require across-the-board replacement of generals on the scale of the Civil War or WWII; but I’ll bet that if we got into it with an enemy on the scale of the former Soviet Union or China you’d see some spectacular American disasters in the beginning, as usual.
I seriously doubt it, at least not on a massive scale. You can’t begin to imagine the difference between the US military today and the US military of the pre-Civil War or pre-WWII era. Its like night and day. The entire emphasis is different. In the past the military was like the red headed step child that no one wanted in the US…we didn’t want to spend much money on it, it was distrusted and looked down upon…until we needed it of course. And the officer corps reflected the over all attitude about the military. Every time the US went to war in the past we went through a period where we had to re-learn practically from scratch how to fight again. Our troops had no training, our officers had no practical experience or training (except perhaps through books…i.e. they didn’t PRACTICE with the troops), our equipment sucked. The US had to constantly relearn the lessons needed to wage war…at the expense, especially initially, of our young men. By the time the conflict in question was usually over or winding down we were once again proficient…and then we threw it all away, cut back the military again and put it back in its place. Until the next conflice came up.
Now though we train constantly. Officers train with their troops on a continual basis…and as they come up through the ranks such training goes with them. To be a command officer in the combat arms such tickets are REQUIRED to be punched…or you never get that kind of command. At the higher levels our officers constantly game or even coordinate electronically simulated battles WITH the men. That kind of training and experience is the next best thing to real warfare…and its a good part of what makes the US military the predominant military in the world today. It would be the Soviets or China who would be learning those hard lessons THIS time around (not that I expect such a conflict to ever happen).
-XT
I don’t recall any mass replacement of generals in WWII. Could you give me some examples?