How to Win Wars

Posted on | December 29, 2014 | 258 Comments

Once, during Stonewall Jackson’s famous 1862 campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, some Union cavalry charged the rear guard of Jackson’s column and were nearly annihilated by a deadly volley of infantry fire. The officer who reported this action to Jackson was Col. John Mercer Patton (an ancestor of the famed WWII General George S. Patton). In conveying his report to Jackson, the colonel expressed “regret” at the enemy’s heavy losses. After he had finished hearing Patton’s report, Jackson asked him: “Colonel, why do you say you saw those Federal soldiers fall with regret?”

The colonel said he admired the courage and vigor the foe had shown, and felt a natural sympathy for such brave soldiers.

“No, shoot them all,” Jackson replied. “I do not wish them to be brave.”

That story, from R.L. Dabney’s famous biography of Jackson, came to mind today when I saw a story in the New York Times:

Maj. Gen. Michael K. Nagata, commander of American Special Operations forces in the Middle East, sought help this summer in solving an urgent problem for the American military: What makes the Islamic State so dangerous?
Trying to decipher this complex enemy — a hybrid terrorist organization and a conventional army — is such a conundrum that General Nagata assembled an unofficial brain trust outside the traditional realms of expertise within the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence agencies, in search of fresh ideas and inspiration. . . .
“We do not understand the movement, and until we do, we are not going to defeat it,” he said, according to the confidential minutes of a conference call he held with the experts. “We have not defeated the idea. We do not even understand the idea.” . . .
This month, Lisa Monaco, Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, said the increasing effort by the Islamic State to branch out to countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and Libya “is a huge area of concern.” About 1,000 foreign fighters flock to Iraq and Syria every month, American intelligence officials say, most to join arms with ISIS. . . .

Good! Let every jihadi son of a bitch on the planet join ISIS, so that we can give every one of them a one-way ticket to Hell.

It has never been the case that the United States lacked the weaponry or manpower necessary to destroy our enemies. The problem in regard to Islamic terrorism has been (a) locating the enemy, and (b) maintaining the political will to keep fighting the enemy until he is defeated. Whatever the number of bloodthirsty fanatics in the Islamic world, the number is not infinite. If we kill every one of them we find, eventually the enemy will run out of volunteers for martyrdom.

Do these generals not study our own history? The Union was in peril of losing the Civil War until Lincoln put U.S. Grant in charge, because Grant understood war in the same simple terms as Stonewall Jackson and every other great commander in history. There is no such thing as an enemy who cannot be defeated, if you have able leadership, adequate resources and a determination to keep fighting until the enemy is destroyed.

All of us remember that chart from our grade-school history book, where the resources of the Union and Confederacy were compared — population, industrial capacity, railroad mileage, etc. Yet none of the North’s advantages seemed to make much difference for the first couple of years of the war, as the South won a stunning series of victories in the Virginia theater that seemed to offset the Union’s victories in the West. Even after Grant took Vicksburg and the South suffered a bloody defeat at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee was still able to detach one of his army corps, sending Longstreet to reinforce Bragg in Georgia to defeat Rosencrans at Chickamauga in September 1863.

Despite the North’s advantages, after more than two years of war it was still by no means certain that the South could be defeated, until Lincoln made the decision to put Grant in overall command — and that made all the difference in the world. Grant appointed W.T. Sherman to take over in the West, where Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston’s army in North Georgia defended the key city of Atlanta, while Grant himself went East to supervise the campaign against Lee’s army in Virginia. Grant and Sherman met at a hotel in Cincinatti to coordinate their strategy in March 1864, and Sherman later summarized the result of that meeting simply: “We finally settled on a plan. He was to go for Lee, and I was to go for Joe Johnston. That was his plan.”

Very simple, and yet from the moment that meeting ended, only 13 months elapsed before Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

Here we are, 150 years later, and our generals believe that the key to defeating ISIS is to “understand the idea” behind ISIS?

Let me suggest instead that we make ISIS understand our idea: We’re going to start killing those sons of bitches, and we will keep killing them until there aren’t any more sons of bitches left to kill.

Problem solved.

Dear General Nagata: Is your job to understand our enemies, or is your job to KILL our enemies? http://t.co/W6t1ZUfFPs

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) December 29, 2014

.@smitty_one_each 1. Locate enemy. 2. Kill enemy. 3. Over beers afterward, perhaps attempt to understand enemy. 4. More beer.

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) December 29, 2014

Complex problems sometimes have simple solutions. Stop worrying about the problem and start finding the solution.

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) December 29, 2014

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Category: History, Military, Terrorism

Comments

258 Responses to “How to Win Wars”

Jack_Reacher
December 29th, 2014 @ 10:59 pm

In fact, God told King Saul to go and completely destroy the Amelekites (ancestors to today’s terrorists). God told him to kill every living thing. Man, women, and child. And every bit of their livestock.

Saul’s generals killed most. But kept alive the best livestock, and the elite of the people living there. So, Saul failed. God killed Saul for his disobedience.

And the people left to live? ISIS. Al Queda. Taliban. Etc.
Adobe_Walls
December 29th, 2014 @ 11:00 pm

There was nothing dishonorable about the destruction we inflicted on our enemies or those we were trying to liberate in WWII. We did what we had to, we screwed it up alot but prevailed in the end.
WJJ Hoge
December 29th, 2014 @ 11:08 pm

This whole war would work better if the Army were led by General Patton, the Air Force led by General LeMay, and the Marines by Lt. Gen. Puller. And if their Commander-in-Chief were former Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson.
Adobe_Walls
December 29th, 2014 @ 11:17 pm

You are aware that we’re still allied to South Korea and we never had North Korea or North Vietnam right?
Lemuel Vargas
December 29th, 2014 @ 11:29 pm

Or, as Sarah Palin aptly said. “Let Allah sort it out.” That is why the US military strategy that was adopted might be called the Palin Doctrine.
Let the Shiites, Kurds and the Sunnis do the attacking and defending their territories. We should provide all the help that we can, but the locals must do the fighting on the ground.
Dave Mears
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:17 am

If the London Police managed to locate Jack the Ripper in the midst of his second attack, and shot him dead just before he delivered the lethal blow, would they have surrendered their moral advantage? You’re putting civilization and anti-civilization on the same level. Don’t.
JeffS
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:42 am

Or it’s a troll. And a stupid one at that.
ZZZZZZZZ
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:42 am

zzzzzzzzz…………………
JeffS
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:45 am

Why this obsession with Mosul? Did you serve there?
JeffS
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:46 am

And your point is ….. ?

Seeing as “Yank” isn’t an insult, I mean. Are you posting just to be saying something?
jamesbbkk
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:48 am

Flypaper strategy.
richard mcenroe
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:49 am

The classic fallacy that our enemies are only ever responding to our original malice. The innocent little urchins can never have imperatives or interests of their own, like the furtherance of communism or the spread of a medieval fundamentalist religion that stunted the growth of over a third of mankind fince 750 AD.
richard mcenroe
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:51 am

So we kill the first six and we’re golden?
richard mcenroe
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:51 am

He’s still dreaming of Arclight missions. Right on top of things.
DEFEATING ISLAMIC TERRORISTS: Lessons From Lincoln…. | CRAGIN MEDIA
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:52 am

[…] DEFEATING ISLAMIC TERRORISTS: Lessons From Lincoln. […]
richard mcenroe
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:54 am

Not to serve this President, and not for the people who vote for him.

Obama cancelled the wedding of two Army captains in Hawaii to play golf on their reserved facility for the ceremony.
SausageAway
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:54 am

Your saying its a falacy does not make it so. US creates its own enemies. You honestly think any one hates the US because it has Hooters and McDonalds? Please!
SausageAway
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:54 am

back to sleep sonny.
SausageAway
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:55 am

What the heck are you talking about?
JeffS
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:55 am

Given that the U.S. Army is handing out ARCOMs for this sort of meaningless PC bulls**t, it comes as no surprise that a flag officer wants to study a well known enemy (Islamic terrorists) who went from a regional low intensity conflict to a fledgling nation engaged in open warfare with adjacent nations.

My professional credentials are a bit tarnished with age, but if a cranky retired reservist can define the problem (which suggests several strategies) without a lucrative contract, the U.S. Army is indeed lost to the political clowns.

I further conclude that the Army is dead as an effective fighting force for a generation. I hope the Marines keep up their rear action against being neutered by Obama — we’re gonna need those magnificent bastards sooner or later.
JeffS
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:56 am

Islam has been at war with the world since its inception. You’d know that if you studied any history before 1968.
SausageAway
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:57 am

US lost in NK and Vietnam- what part of that are you denying?
ZZZZZZZZ
December 30th, 2014 @ 12:57 am

zzzzzzz…….

Huh, wuzzat? Oh, just another ignorant troll. Well, I mustn’t feed them, or so I’m told.

Besides, it’s boring. So,

zzzzzzzz……..
Lifeofthemind
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:00 am

As Saint Ronaldus explained his strategy for winning the Cold War, “We win. They lose.” Churchillian.
JeffS
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:00 am

We surrendered in Vietnam. Rather, Congress did.

As for North Korea … it’s a loss for the US when the Norks fell back to their own border, and stay there, backsliding into the Stone Age?

Yeah, that’s the way to argue. Ignore facts and history.
Steve White
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:01 am

Perhaps General Nagata recalls this quote from Sun Tzu:

“For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”

Or, if you prefer, Sunzi: “Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

Stacy is correct: we can indeed kill our enemies; their resources not only are not finite but also not nearly as great as ours. But we will consume resources to defeat them: good people, equipment, resources, all of which could be doing other things for us. Most of all, our good people, our sons and daughters, people we’d prefer not to see die or maimed.

The “acme of skill”, the “supreme excellence”, is to defeat ISIS without having to kill them all. To do that we need to understand them AND FIND THEIR WEAKEST POINTS. They most certainly have those weak points, we just need to exploit them. Knowing our enemy and knowing ourselves, as Sun Tsu points out, are prerequisites to total victory.

How enjoyable it would be to watch ISIS implode with only a modest (discernible) push from us, knowing that behind the scenes we did the necessary things to cause them to be defeated without fighting. How useful it would be then to make sure our other enemies in the region knew that we did it and that we’d be happy to do it again — to them.”

Perhaps that is what General Nagata is considering.
SausageAway
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:01 am

How has Islam been an enemy to the US?
JeffS
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:01 am

We should ask the same of you. I’ve heard more sense from hippies burned out from acid.
SausageAway
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:01 am

nonesense, how can you pretend the US “won” in those theaters?
JeffS
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:03 am

Sun Tzu also said, in part and paraphrasing, know yourself as well as you know the enemy. Methinks that the good General needs to look in the mirror, long and hard.

Or, to be fair, the cretin who gave him his marching orders should look in the mirror.
Adobe_Walls
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:04 am

Are you really this dense. We couldn’t loose North Vietnam we never had it, we lost South Vietnam to North Vietnam. We never had North Korea, but we did save South Korea from North Korea and China to boot.
JeffS
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:05 am

Go read the history behind the line in the Marine Corps hymn, “…to the shores of Tripoli…”

And then open your eyes.
JeffS
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:06 am

That comes from watching too many bad ‘Nam movies.
Rob Crawford
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:06 am

Islam has been an enemy of the US since its founding.

(Antecedent left ambiguous on purpose.)
DeadMessenger
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:07 am

Islam is an enemy to all it considers infidels, which includes anyone not them. Destroying infidels (us) is their stated, documented purpose. Therefore, they gotta go, for our own good, and the good of all the other infidels in the world.
Fail Burton
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:10 am

They would be out of their element.
Ed Minchau
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:13 am

Mecca. Medina. Start with those two. Repeat until no longer necessary.
Rob Crawford
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:13 am

“You honestly think any one hates the US because it has Hooters and McDonalds? ”

We are the “Great Satan” because we are successful without being slaves to Allah. They hated us from our founding — declaring it their holy duty to enslave as many of us as possible. What REALLY ticked them off was the licentiousness and sexual abandon of a 50’s sock hop. No, really — that’s the truth.

Some of Mohammed Atta’s acquaintances in Germany remember that a particular movie scene enraged him, leaving him fuming in anger. It was the “Silly Song” from Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”.

These are people from a culture that values acquiescence. That values murder. That treats a raped woman as the criminal, considers wrapping every woman in a head-to-toe tarp as “liberating”, and considers grinding your forehead into the ground in “prayer” to the point of developing a distinct callous as a sign of holy devotion.

They win, or we win. They won’t settle for “live and let live” because our way of life is just too enticing. We tell the rape victim she’s NOT the criminal. We tell the man who does not believe in Allah that he WILL NOT be killed for renouncing his parents’ faith.
Rob Crawford
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:14 am

ISIS definitely has logistics. They have to. Find those channels, choke them off, and ISIS will either have to come to a decisive battle or they will starve.
Dungeonmaster Jim
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:15 am

If I want to understand them, I’ll conduct an autopsy.

Kidding aside as Sun Tzu said,

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need
not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not
the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If
you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every
battle.”
Rob Crawford
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:16 am

Really? Then why has the Democrat party adopted it as their primary platform?
Rob Crawford
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:18 am

No, they wouldn’t. Conflict was their element.

They would need only a light tutorial in the capabilities modern technology has brought, and none of them would really be shocked by it.
Rob Crawford
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:20 am

You know what their weakness is? The impression they’re unstoppable. Their primary recruiting strength is their record of “victories” — that’s drawing the jihadis in like ants to honey.

Give them a defeat — a clear, unmistakable defeat — and that recruiting will fade. They will likely also lose much of their funding as well.
Rob Crawford
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:22 am

Ah, Sausagefest drags out old Marxist agitpoop — the “industrialists behind the war”.

That crap was out of date in WWI.
Elizabeth Bartley
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:27 am

This.
Fail Burton
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:30 am

The British Army was annihilated in their 1839-42 invasion of Afghanistan.
gastorgrab
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:31 am

We should extend the standard ‘Courtesies of War’ only when our enemy respects our right to exit. ISIS doesn’t want to conquer the United States in order to rule it’s people. They want to kill every last American.

When two boxers step into a ring together, each of them respects the other enough to abide by Queesnberry Rules. But Queensberry rule have no place in a fight for survival.

The danger to us is not the physical threat posed by a bunch of 15th century primitives with guns. The threat we face is our own reluctance to see that our enemy could have no respect for our very existence. We couldn’t get mercy from this enemy even if we surrendered.

There is no possibility of peaceful coexistence with them. There is not bargain we can make. We HAVE TO kill them.
Fail Burton
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:32 am

My point was quite clear.
DeadMessenger
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:32 am

There’s tons of other cool, impressive-looking technology that could be used in lieu of nuking, so no worries. I think the key here is a complete lack of subtlety.
Fail Burton
December 30th, 2014 @ 1:33 am

My grandfather was the Mayor of Mosul