More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 27 - November 13, 2017
Who desires peace, should prepare for war … no one dare offend or insult a power of recognized superiority in action.
Everyone on the committee bought that. Agreement those days in the Pentagon was somewhat easier, since there was as yet no independent Air Force to protest the role of strategic bombing in the surrender.
A war is made when a government believes that only through war, and at no serious risk to itself, it may gain its ends.
7 Task Force Smith
Task Force Smith, designed to be an arrogant display of strength to bluff the enemy into halting his advance, had delayed the Inmun Gun exactly seven hours.
They had been raised to believe the world was without tigers, then sent to face those tigers with a stick. On their society must fall the blame.
But the abiding weakness of free peoples is that their governments can not or will not make them prepare or sacrifice before they are aroused.
The early months of the war were fought under weird circumstances by the American fighter and bomber pilots. Based in Japan, which never changed from peacetime ways, many of them had wives and family stationed at their fields. Many a pilot flew out in the predawn darkness to strafe and rocket enemy troops all day across the burning hills of Korea, then returned to play cards with his wife at night.
This was harder on both pilots and family than if the dependents had been an ocean away.
Without both air and sea power no nation can hope to guard the far frontier beyond its shores.
The enemy never seriously attempted to strike at American bases or lifelines beyond Korea, vulnerable as the bases continued to be. An air or sea strike—and both planes and submarines were available in quantity within the Communist bloc—might have wreaked havoc with American reinforcement of Korea, but it would also have exposed the enemy to even more serious retaliation. During the fighting, both air and sea forces continued to operate from their own “privileged sanctuaries” on both sides.
There had been many brave men in the ranks, but they were learning that bravery of itself has little to do with success in battle. On line, most normal men are afraid, have been afraid, or will be afraid. Only when disciplined to obey orders quickly and willingly, can such fear be controlled. Only when superbly trained and conditioned against the shattering experience of war, only knowing almost from rote what to do, can men carry out their tasks come what may. And knowing they are disciplined, trained, and conditioned brings pride to men—pride in their own toughness, their own ability; and
...more
Too late, he would find out what Lin Piao already knew—against a Communist army, in primitive terrain, air power could be important, but not decisive.
The Chinese, knowing they could not slug it out with American planes, tanks, and artillery, in which they themselves were weak, planned to tailor operations to fit what they considered were American weaknesses. They would plan attacks to get in the enemy rear, to cut escape and supply roads, and then to flail the enemy with pressure from both front and rear.
The best general in the world couldn’t succeed without good men in his small units, however high the loss of skilled manpower.
For as the commandos say, “It is all in the mind and in the heart,” and battles, more often, are won not on the drawing boards but in the hearts of men.
Despite this officer’s urging, none of these men would go up on the hill to give the riflemen a hand. Faced with being overrun, they seemed to feel that because their primary military occupational specialty did not include handling a rifle, no one had the right to make them use one.
He had a profound hatred of war, but any war upon which he embarked must henceforth be a crusade. In no other way could the suffering be justified.
The object of warfare is to dominate a portion of the earth, with its peoples, for causes either just or unjust. It is not to destroy the land and people, unless you have gone wholly mad.
Such orders cannot be given by men who are some of the boys. Men willingly take orders to die only from those they are trained to regard as superior beings.
This was discipline. Ideally, it should well up out of men, not be imposed upon them.
And the platoon was proud of itself; every man knew it was a good outfit, just a little better than the next.
Gradually, he came to realize that seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, mostly from the disadvantaged areas of society, had no feeling of responsibility to the Army or to the Republic for which it stood. They were not self-disciplined, and they tended to resent authority,
The other answer is to give up Korea-type wars, and to surrender great-power status, and a resultant hope of order—our own decent order—in the world. But America is rich and fat and very, very noticeable in this world. It is a forlorn hope that we should be left alone.
When Lieutenant General Ridgway left Tokyo to assume command of the Eighth Army on 26 December 1950, he asked MacArthur in parting, “General, if I get over there and find the situation warrants it, do I have your permission to attack?” MacArthur’s aged face cracked wide in a grin. “Do whatever you think best, Matt. The Eighth Army is yours.” These were, as Ridgway said later, the sort of orders to put heart in a soldier. And Ridgway’s own first task was to put heart in the Eighth Army.
No man likes to give up his life for an inconsequential reason, and there is no honor—only irony—to being the last man killed in a war.
It is this final, basic pride—what will my buddies think?—that keeps most soldiers carrying on, beyond the dictates of good sense, which screams at them to run, to continue living, and to hell with war.
Boatner loved the Army, and he loved the American soldier, though he had a firm belief that the American soldier was only as good as his officer made him.
A people that does not prepare to fight should then be morally prepared to surrender. To fail to prepare soldiers and citizens for limited, bloody ground action, and then to engage in it, is folly verging on the criminal.
