What America’s top military leaders have learned from a 54-year-old history of the Korean War.
Last Monday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general with a legendary appetite for military history, ticked off a list of book recommendations to a crowd of U.S. Army leaders and supporters—titles that might help them understand command, strategy and the ways war is evolving. But he kept coming back to one book in particular: T. R. Fehrenbach’s This Kind of War, a 54-year-old history of the Korean War that’s much better known in military than civilian quarters.
Fehrenbach, Mattis explained during his address to the Association of the United States Army’s Exposition on Building Readiness, reminds us of two essential truths about war: its “primitive, atavistic, and unrelenting nature” and the “absolutely fundamental” importance of boots on the ground, even in an age of drone attacks and cyberwarfare. “You may fly over a nation forever, you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life. But if you desire to defend it, if you desire to protect it, if you desire to keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground the way the Roman legions did: by putting your young men in the mud,” Mattis said, quoting Fehrenbach. “I would only modify it today by saying, ‘by putting your young men and women in the mud.’”
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WNU Editor: I am sure that this is one book among many that he is reading right now.
5 comments:
WNU,
Fehrenbach"s book is good, but it is beside the point. The US for quite sometime has had a mistaken grasp of the "what and why" of the concept of warfare in the general sense. Why this is and how long it has existed is very open to debate. Some (myself included), contend it goes back to the American Civil War and it's cultural consequences, but that is only one school of thought.
As long as this situation prevails it doesn't matter where you fight, you will always have the same problems.
" ‘by putting your young men and women in the mud.’” as in burying them?
In all retrospect the Korean war was a disaster. Referencing any and all outdated historical information is redundant, just like the military commanders of the US military. When has America ever won a war on its own! You don't win a war, the people win a war. France is testament to this as well as every town that cheered and celebrated Nazi fall.
You want to win a war in North Korea, you need to show them that supporting you and undermining your enemy is beneficial to you. Rome was ROMA, it was the grand spectacle of it age with technological advances like no other.
To win a war in Korea, you need to be a god, BE THE GOD OF THE PEOPLE! Bullets and bombs breed hatred, you need to inspire them that you offer something no one else can. Fact is you can't, fact is Kim is their god their provider and they see those in the South for what they really are. Puppets influenced by propaganda of their Western overloads.
Korea is a trap!
He should probably read the Missiles of October...
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