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A more minor case, but one revealing of Westmorelands character, stemmed from his unwillingness to level with his senior Marine subordinate at the time of the 1968 Tet Offensive. The premise was that, if he could kill enough of the enemy, they would lose heart and cease their aggression against the South Vietnamese. He underestimated the enemys staying power, maintaining that if he could inflict enough casualties the communists would lose heart and cease their aggression against South Vietnam. Delivered Monday-Friday. To accomplish this goal, Vietnam employs repressive policies that often contravene international human rights law. General Wheeler was often just flat wrong in what he told the President. By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to occasionally receive special offers from Foreign Policy. Saul David reviews a surprising study of military failure and names his own five most infamous generals Saul David Thursday February 17 2022, 12.00am , The Times Feel free to mention any others you may know of in the comments. Most younger officers who worked around General Westmoreland, excepting only a very few among his many aides-de-camp or executive officers and the like, had no personal relationship with this difficult and distant man. In 334 BC, Alexander the Great invaded the Persian Empire. What defines Santa Anna is his utter failure to subdue the Texican rebels and block American expansion. 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 . 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. This proved possible only with enemy cooperation, since they could break contact and limit casualties as they wished by withdrawing into sanctuaries across the border. There's an entire myriad of generals from the American Civil War that fought for the Union that were incredibly inept. Yet Fredendall's solution was to order an Army engineer company to build a giant bunker a hundred miles from the front lines. The Vietnam War Crimes You Never Heard Of | History News Network On a visit to Vietnam Senator Hollings from Westmorelands home state of South Carolina was told by Westmoreland: Were killing these people, the enemy, at a ratio of 10 to 1. Said Hollings, Westy, the American people dont care about the ten. After the war, the phrase lions led by donkeys came to be associated with the British army for what should be obvious reasons. But Franks, who commanded the invasion, made a bad situation worse. Still, it is his world-changing defeat at Yorktown that merits memorializing. 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. At the height of the Cold War, he dealt decisively with neither. The Top-10 Most Evil Leaders of the 20th Century - LinkedIn During the darkest days of the rebellion, when Washington's army had been kicked out of New York and King George's star seemed ascendant, the "Conway cabal" of disgruntled officers and politicians unsuccessfully schemed to out Washington and appoint Gates. 9 Worst Generals in History | Britannica What a Lovely War and then in the 1989 television comedy series Blackadder Goes Forth. James K. Polk. After early success in the Mexican War for Independence, the rest of his career didnt pan out the way he would have liked. Lincoln relieved McClellan but reinstated him after the devastating Union defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Contrarily, I would not so stigmatize another important player often criticized by others, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. General Earle Wheeler was essentially a staff officer with virtually no troop leading experience, much less combat acumen. These Are the Five Worst Generals of All Time LBJ's tragic "addiction" to Vietnam: The mistake that still - Salon Who was the worst US general during the Vietnam War? - Quora He was killed in combat on March 1, 1870. However, not even they managed to get themselves court-martialed and sentenced to death for ineptitude on the battlefield. All rights reserved. Think about how history would have been different if Hannibal had a military plan to outlast Roman might. 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. Lebanon (1982-1984) 240. Santa Anna was found wearing a privates uniform, hiding in a marsh. Caepio may have been a terrible general, but he was apparently an exceptional thief. Download the FP mobile app to read anytime, anywhere. Again fighting outnumbered Texans, this time Santa Anna would lose the battle stunningly. Ulysses S. Grant made his Civil War debut at the Battle of Belmont against Confederate Gen. Gideon Pillow. Allied with Brock was the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who was head of the most formidable pan-Indian military force the continent had ever seen. The 5 Worst Generals in U.S. History | RealClearHistory (You May Also Like: The Five Best Generals in U.S. History). By one estimate from Harvard University, more than 130,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or severely wounded, in addition to the deaths of more than 7,000 Ukrainian civilians. 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. Vietnam War. Cue the protests from other parts of the globe: A chorus of nations are accusing Washington of fostering unfair competition. Watchthe conversation onFP Live, the magazines forum for live journalism, orreada condensed transcript. Instead of holding a natural defense line around Pyongyang, which would have given the United Nations control of most of the peninsula, the UN troops retreated all the way back into South Korea in a humiliating reverse for U.S. power after the crushing victory of World War II. A dull, unfeeling, unimaginative, smug "Colonel Blimp" of the worst sort. Yes, eminently. Who was the worst US general during the Vietnam War? Is Weiss correct? He was uninterested in other viewpoints on how the war might be prosecuted, dismissing the PROVN Study sponsored by Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson (which concluded that Westmorelands way of war was not working and could not work) and basic disagreements with Westmorelands organization and approach voiced by his brilliant classmate General Bruce Palmer Jr. 7. Having several decades of duplicity to draw on at this point, everyone had a pretty good idea of how any such deal would turn out, and the aging general was rebuffed by both parties. What is a bad general? Westmoreland held a press conference in which he categorically denied any such loss of confidence. 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. NEW FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Instead of sweeping around the French defenses in a massive flanking movement, the Germans were checked at the First Battle of the Marne. These battlefield bumblers serve to provide that contrast. Its quite exclusive: combat leaders who had the fate of their people in their hands and squandered it all. Is the Biden administrations China policy too hawkish? 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. General Harold K. Johnson was an authentic battlefield hero, and as noted above was fundamentally at odds with Westmorelands approach, but he was not in the chain of command. Here are five of America's worst generals: Great generals have great talents, and usually egos and ambitions to match. Ludendorff is one of historys greatest examples of a general who can win battles but still loses the war. A very significant instance was his determination to arbitrarily hold down the estimate of enemy strength during a 1967 order of battle controversy. In the summer of 1967, the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) initiated a series of attacks in western Kontum Province. Top 10 Utterly Useless Military Commanders - Listverse Explore the benefits included in your subscription. The world over, countries are embarking on ambitious projects of industrial policy. Relations between the United States and China seem to be getting frostier by the day. Santa Anna liked to call himself the Napoleon of the West. And, like Napoleon, he squandered it all in one grand campaign. With a few relatively minor changes, thats just about where they stayed for the next four years. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author. The British blockaded the port at Cdiz with a numerically inferior force, and Villeneuve, upon learning that he was to be relieved of command, rashly struck out at Nelsons fleet. Necessarily, more is lost to time than is remembered. Delivered Wednesday & Sunday. Yet backstabbing your commander-in-chief in the middle of a war is taking ambition a little too far. On the other side of the trenches in World War I was Erich Ludendorff, commanding the armies of Germany. Yet, Hannibal nevertheless ranks as one of the worlds epic fails. So unused to being challenged, the United States has become so filled with anxiety over China that sober responses are becoming nearly impossible. The enemy simply kept sending more and more replacements to make up his losses. Its prewar population was reduced by more than half, and perhaps 90 percent of Paraguays fighting-age men perished. So what is the standard of shame for induction? Some captured Romans were placed in wicker cages and burned alive, others were enslaved or ransomed. James Jay Carafano is a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail. After eight years at Foreign Policy, here are the ten most popular Best Defense posts. In the famous Battle of the Alamo, Santa Anna struggled to defeat about 250 Texans with 2,400 Mexicans and subsequently lost nearly 600 men. The Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files contains records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War. Varus placed his legions in a position where their fighting strengths would be minimized and that of the Germanic Cherusci tribesman maximized. They dramatically upped their game, pressing the U.S. worldwide. Military. To that Hollings responded, "Westy, the American people don't care about the ten. As Lincoln well knew, the only way the Union could lose the war was if the North eventually grew tired and agreed to allow the South to secede. Vietnam War body count controversy - Wikipedia The 20th century is the most violent century in history. By the end of May 1862, Confederate commanding Gen. Joseph E. Johnston had withdrawn his forces to Richmond, and McClellan was close enough to the Confederate capital to hear its church bells ringing. The resulting Peninsular Campaign (AprilJuly 1862) was a marvel of planning but something of a farce in execution. Vietnam War U.S. Military Fatal Casualty Statistics Thus it was under Darius rule that the Persian Empire fell and was conquered. Watch the conversation or read the condensed transcript. Years later, when Marine Corps historians were at work on their history of the war, Westmoreland met with them. Some staff officers who briefed him one-on-one at deskside were dismayed when Westmoreland occupied himself by signing photographs of himself, one after another, during their presentations. To say that he failed in both regards is to dramatically understate the case. Lee demonstrated an immediate grasp of McClellans demeanor, and, during the Seven Days Battles (June 25July 1, 1862), Lee drove back the Union armies from Richmonds doorstep. Casey was an Army insidera four-star general and the son of the highest-ranking American casualty of the Vietnam War, a division commander who was killed in a July 1970 helicopter crash. Two years later, he lost a leg fighting the French. If there was a saving grace for America, it was that he wasn't commanding an army. A more positive example is George Washington. As the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles crippled Germany, Ludendorff effectively sabotaged the Weimar Republic by propagating the belief that he and his armies had been undefeated on the battlefield. This would be known as the Tet Offensive and would become a major turning point in the war. He was called the inevitable general. A West Point graduate, he served in World War II and Korea. At this point, things somehow got worse for Hull. When the Germans shattered his troops and his reputation at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in early 1943, Fredendall was only a major general and a corps commander. Westmoreland was on a treadmill. If it couldn't or wouldn't govern the country, who would? Lpez was the son of Carlos Antonio Lpez, a dictator who had done much to modernize Paraguay in the mid-19th century. In the end, the Romans leveled Carthage and salted the earth. There was no warmth, no apparent interest in his associates as people. Answer (1 of 4): The former Cham general/leader Che Bong Nga was killed in the battle against the enemy Dai Viet (old Vietnam) but Che Bong Nga was LUCKY to be mentioned by the enemy Dai Viet historians to allow people to remember him. Then, in an ill-advised comeback, he met his Waterloo. Like it or not, the U.S. military would become the governing authority. Scott claimed that Pillow was ''the only person I have ever known who was wholly indifferent in the choice between truth and falsehood. When talk of secession reached Pillows home state of Tennessee, he helped organize the state militia and was appointed a brigadier general in the Confederate army. What will another year of war look like? Diem's family was one of the earliest to convert to Catholicism, a religion he took . (The leg did get a state funeral). But he was overly cautious by nature. In 1847, U.S. troops once again surprised Santa Anna and captured his prosthetic leg. General Failure - The Atlantic 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. Still, he choked in the big game. Exactly. 1968 takes the cake for me. The Worst American Civil War Generals and Commanders Thus, almost by default, Westmoreland was left to go his own way, year after bloody year. Their orientation, indeed the core of Scoutings values, is selflessness and service to others. The world over, countries are embarking on ambitious projects of industrial policy. Santa Anna, a lifetime gambler, was known for his risk taking in battle, but also his brutality. Without question, many lives would be saved if their tactical professionalism were enhanced.. Woefully inexperienced U.S. soldiers found themselves against Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps veterans. Perhaps Mao would have intervened anyway. Elmo Zumwalt was a U.S. admiral and commander of American naval forces in Vietnam. Grachev played a key role in initiating and leading the First Chechen War. A monthly digest of the top articles read by FP subscribers. Haig had largely dismissed the effect of the machine gun on the battlefield, believing that previous Allied failures owed to something other than an impenetrable wall of lead traveling at ballistic velocity. It would be nice if all American generals were great. Delivered Wednesday. More ways to stay updated on global news: By submitting your email, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to receive email correspondence from us. These records were transferred into the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration in 2008. 1 Erwin Rommel Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel, popularly known as the Desert Fox, was a German field marshal of World War II. Percival surrendered Malaya to Japanese forces in early 1942, defying Winston Churchills own instructions for prolonged resistance. 2. Bombs away! Here are the 13 worst military movies in Hollywood history Xi Jinpings signature foreign policy is a shadow of its former self.. 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. Worst US General of all time? | O-T Lounge - TigerDroppings Publication of the PROVN Study, whose precepts were later implemented with great success by Westmorelands successor, illustrated a matter of fundamental importance. Of course, that is what they did when Ludendorff pushed for the use of unrestricted submarine warfare against Allied shipping. Cornwallis later did redeem himself militarily. Opportunistic firms in Asia and Europe have already begun to relocate investments to the United States. Weekly update on whats driving U.S. national security policy. With the Little Corporal running everything, Europe might have become a very different place. 8. All the enemys losses were quickly made up. The rise of American-made chatbots has kicked off a flurry of Chinese activity. McClellan and Burnside in particular. Hull responded by ordering the evacuation of Fort Dearborn, and the garrison was promptly massacred by a Potawatomi war band upon leaving the fort. All related (37) Sort Recommended Doug Szabo Author has 972 answers and 137.7K answer views Nov 27 My vote goes to adm Otto Zumwalt. Under Westmorelands command, the Vietnam war began smoothly as the U.S. won every battle. But in 1968, when Westmoreland became Army Chief of Staff, Communist forces baited Westmoreland into committing nearly 40% of his strength to the military outpost at Khe Sanh, then attacked cities and towns throughout South Vietnam. 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. Westmoreland was on a treadmill. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Essential analysis of the stories shaping geopolitics on the continent. The Vietnam War, as Seen by the Victors - The Atlantic Todays list: The top ten reasons Gen. Westmoreland lost the war in Vietnam, Want to read more on this topic or region? Quintus Servilius Caepio takes the cake amongst the worst Roman generals ever to take command of a legion though. He ran as a Democrat against Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election. The 1970s were scary times. This was true in matters both great and small. Seldom included in. These Vietnam War photos taken by U.S. Army photographers reveal a side of the conflict that few people have ever seen. In the opening month of World War I, Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg scored a crushing victory over the Russians at Tannenberg. Some historians are a little more sympathetic towards Percivals legacy nowadays arguing that Percival had been dealt an unusually bad hand. He was responsible for coming up with the idea of using force to restore constitutional order in Chechnya. The Worst Civil War Generals on the Confederacy Confederate Maj. Gen. Gideon Pillow. 2. Haig was cruelly mocked, first in the satirical musical Oh! Hull was taken prisoner by the British and was court-martialed upon his return to the United States.