He was an artilleryman who missed out on the Armys great schools system, never attending the Command & General Staff College or the Army War College. standing, Ukrainians are determined to keep fighting, and the West has so far stayed resolute in its support of Ukraine. Not until 1995 did Vietnam release its official estimate of war dead: as many as 2 million civilians on both sides and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. Only FP subscribers can submit questions for FP Live interviews. Vice President, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute. Alas, call it the laws of probability or just cosmic karma, but every nation produces bad generals as well as good onesand America is no exception. As the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, he faced a two-front war, an insurgency in the South and an invading army from the North. This piece originally appeared in The National Interest https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/6-worst-military-leaders-ever-167526. 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. When the War of 1812 began, Hull was commissioned a brigadier general and tasked with defending Michigan and invading Upper Canada. Assuming you believe the subtitle to be accurate, who were GEN Westmorelands biggest accomplices in the loss? But for whatever reason, some American commanders have lost the battle for history. Want to read more on this topic or region? A very influential visitor, Senator "Fritz" Hollings from Westmoreland's home state of South Carolina, had warned him about reliance on such ratios. But its not just the United States. Delivered Friday. Listing MacArthur as one of America's worst generals will be controversial. The pandemics outbreak brought rare reporting freedoms. Even now, the easiest way to get into an argument at a V.F.W. Unfortunately the fates of the former Republic Vietnam (Sout. Its quite exclusive: combat leaders who had the fate of their people in their hands and squandered it all. Nelsons victory at the Battle of Trafalgar was so complete that it established British supremacy on the high seas for more than a century. Delivered Monday-Saturday. Officially labelled a defector by the Pentagon, many suspected Nolan, an African American, changed sides after suffering a lifetime of racial discrimination. While Maximus was conducting negotiations with the Cimbri, a Germanic tribe that had invaded the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, Caepio rashly attacked the Cimbri army on October 6, 105 BCE. This was true in matters both great and small. Over time Westmoreland asked for and received large numbers of U.S. troops, eventually totaling well over half a million. He was soon released, however, and, as more capable French admirals either died or somehow incurred Napoleons disfavor, a path to the top echelons of command was opened for Villeneuve. He called for bombing China, as if liberating Korea was worth risking 550 million Chinese and possibly war with Russia as well. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? Hannibal. On March 24, 1976, Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1 st Viscount of Alamein, hero of World War II, died at home in England. He was an artilleryman who missed out on the Army's great schools system, never attending the Command & General Staff College or the Army War College. Darius family would be captured and even lost the Battle of Gaugamela, where so many factors were in his favor. In considering who should receive such a dubious honor, Ive consciously excluded bad leaders. General Wheeler was often just flat wrong in what he told the President. These are the incompetents, the idiots, the bumblers who have represented armies or nations at war only to lead them to defeat or shame. The elder Lpez had bequeathed to his son a relatively powerful military by regional standards but had cautioned Francisco against using it to settle diplomatic issues. Grachev publicly promised to swiftly crush the Chechen separatist forces in a couple of hours with a single airborne regiment. He led the disastrous storming of Grozny while drunk after celebrating his birthday on January 1st. He continued on to suffer defeats at Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz, almost letting the war slip away from the British. [1] Only recently have those in the defense and military complex begun to look at how we rate generals. The American Civil War was a factory for producing bad generals such as Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside. Todays list: The top ten reasons Gen. Westmoreland lost the war in Vietnam, Want to read more on this topic or region? Feel free to mention any others you may know of in the comments. This might have ended okay for Germany, provided they didnt do something like provoke a previously neutral country with Allied sympathies and an effectively bottomless war chest. Defining that is like defining a bad meal. Their orientation, indeed the core of Scoutings values, is selflessness and service to others. 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. If Putin had hoped to weaken NATO, the very opposite has happened, with Finland and Sweden on the cusp of joining the transatlantic military alliance. 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. Ukraines economy and infrastructure have been dealt blows that will take decades to recover from. Routed by U.S. forces under Winfield Scott, Santa Anna was again driven into exile. The heavily forested, swampy terrain made the Legions maneuvers impossible. War is an extension of politics, and if commanders dont help secure the desired political ends, they get a failing grade. 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. Varus placed his legions in a position where their fighting strengths would be minimized and that of the Germanic Cherusci tribesman maximized. A former British officer, Gates rose to fame as Continental Army commander during the momentous American defeat of a British army at Saratoga in 1777. Delivered Wednesday. The South Vietnamese thus went for years equipped with castoff WWII-vintage U.S. equipment while outgunned by the communists, who were armed with the AK-47 assault rifle and other top of the line equipment. 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. The American Civil War was a factory for producing bad generals such as Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside. Delivered Wednesday. He ran as a Democrat against Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election. George Brinton McClellan, a self-proclaimed Young Napoleon, ran dreadful campaigns, but he doesnt make the grade because he was canned before he could lose the entire war. The American Civil War was a factory for producing bad generals such as Braxton Bragg and Ambrose Burnside. Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security. Disobeying orders, he sailed for Cdiz instead of the Channel, allowing Nelsons fleet time to return and effectively scuttling Napoleons plans for a cross-Channel invasion. Download the new FP mobile app to read anytime, anywhere. He is the dumb ass who gave the order to exfoliate the jungles with agent orange. Haste risked casualties and defeats at the hands of a formidable opponent like Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. For its part, Washington has made a series of policy choices over the last few years that can be summed Show moreup as tough on Beijing, even seeking to contain the rise of the worlds second-biggest economy. While there are plenty of books that analyze the keys to success, The Worst Military Leaders in History offers lessons of failure to avoid. He need not be concerned, soothed Wheeler, because the weight of judgment was that the enemy cant match us on a buildup. That turned out to be one of the classic misjudgments of the war, comparable in magnitude and consequence to General MacArthurs assurances to President Truman that Chinese forces would not enter the Korean War. The rise of American-made chatbots has kicked off a flurry of Chinese activity. Darius did not take the field against Alexander until a year and a half after Granicus, at the Battle of Issus. There are a number of contenders for the top places on such a roster. Pillow escaped during the night, leaving Simon B. Buckner to surrender the fort and 15,000 Confederate troops. Fortunately, along came Reaganif not for that, Westmorelands military reversals could well have signaled the beginning of our end. His prestige restored by his conduct during the Pastry War with France, Santa Anna once again claimed dictatorial powers. Delivered Monday-Friday. 10 Redvers Buller I flew into Vietnam in June 1968 as a young . 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. (You May Also Like: The Five Best Generals in U.S. History). Cue the protests from other parts of the globe: A chorus of nations are accusing Washington of fostering unfair competition. 13,091. He couldnt. What was the worst battle of Vietnam? It is probably not a coincidence that corruption in the military appears to have escalated since 2006, when the number of military generals started to jump sharply. 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. Hull responded by ordering the evacuation of Fort Dearborn, and the garrison was promptly massacred by a Potawatomi war band upon leaving the fort. Thus, almost by default, Westmoreland was left to go his own way, year after bloody year. Although Nelson was killed in combat at Trafalgar, Villeneuve outlived him only by six months. Westmorelands first resort in claiming progress in the war was always body count, but in fact this was meaningless. As a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he theoretically had some influence there, at least to the extent he could shape the collective viewpoint, but even then LBJ and McNamara were famously impervious to advice from the Joint Chiefs. Nearly as many men died in captivity during the Civil War as were killed in the whole of the Vietnam War. Despite Lincoln's pleas for aggressive action, his Army of the Potomac moved hesitantly, its commander McClellan convinced himself that the Southern armies vastly outnumbered him when logic should have told him that it was the North that enjoyed an abundance of resources. McClellan truly disappointed president Lincoln at the Battle of Antietam where the North and South would fight the bloodiest battle of the war. 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. In reality, it is a collection of ideas, images, and information that enough people have chosen to preserve and disseminate. The British gained control of the fort, dozens of cannons, the brig USS Adams (recommissioned the HMS Detroit), and virtually the entire Michigan Territory. Some historians are a little more sympathetic towards Percivals legacy nowadays arguing that Percival had been dealt an unusually bad hand. The man who appealed for Varus help was Arminius, a Romanized Germanic prince. He denied senior civilian officials accurate data on enemy strength and composition, during development of a 1967 Special National Intelligence Estimate imposing a ceiling on the number of enemy forces his intelligence officers could report or agree to and personally removing from the order of battle entire categories that had long been included, thus falsely portraying progress in reducing enemy strength. T he Civil War was America's bloodiest conflict. Hull, convinced that he was hopelessly outnumbered (he wasnt), surrendered Fort Detroit and its 2,000-man garrison without firing a shot. His war of attrition, search and destroy tactics, and emphasis on body count did nothing to affect the war in the hamlets and villages of South Vietnam, where the enemys covert infrastructure was left free to continue using coercion and terror to dominate the rural populace. Gamelin made the mistake of viewing the Ardennes as impenetrable and chose to defend it with ten of his weakest, least well equipped and least well trained divisions. 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.
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