Victor Davis Hanson: What Would Patton Say About the Present War?

VICTORHANSON.COM ^ | October 23, 2004 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Tolik]

The following text is adapted from a transcript of a lecture delivered on July 23, 2004, on board the MS Heidelberg during a Hillsdale College cruise on the Rhine and Moselle rivers. A shorter version of this informal speech was published recently in Imprimis. [and posted here and here]

....Patton, who was both learned and yet not smug about the power of the primordial emotions, understood perfectly the irrational nature of warfare, and the effect that utter defeat or glorious victory have upon an otherwise rational people. No wonder he hated war defined as a purely bureaucratic enterprise or a purely material and industrial challenge, inasmuch as neither can change the hearts of men that need to be changed, usually increase the body count, and rarely lead to lasting peace. We should remember wild-eyed George Patton in our Fallujahs to come.

[Tolik]

victorhanson.com is a MUST EXCERPT website unfortunately. Please, follow the link for the complete text of this article.

[Tolik]

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

       Let me know if you want in or out

[OXENinFLA]

VDH Ping......

[lainde]

bttt

[Dissident Aggressor]

Great article!

[Khurkris]

Very good article. Thanks for posting.

[Jackknife]

bump for later

[Cincinatus]

Hanson!!! Hanson.... you magnificent bastard, ... I READ YOUR BOOK!!!!

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

There are some truths you are not allowed to state.

• Journalists, and everyone else who goes into the publishing or broadcasting business, want to influence public opinion. Journalism is politics.

• The FDR Administration was sympathetic to Communism, and helpful to Stalin.

• The FDR Administration systematically avoided seperating the German people from the Third Reich. The was policy to crush both.

• Senator Joseph McCarthy was right, and Edward R. Murrow was as typical of CBS News as Dan Rather is, and as Walter Cronkite was.

[wayoverontheright]

But Patton, like William Tecumseh Sherman, would insist that it is only by military defeat and subsequent humiliation first that the supporters of terrorism against the West will understand the wages of their support for Islamic fascism. Once people in the Middle East, like the Germans, see that the Islamic fascists are defeated—and that everybody who supports and condones that ideology are synonymous with it and thus must pay for their complicity through some measure of sacrifice and suffering—radical bellicose Islamicism really will end.

There simply could be no humiliation factor for the Middle East which included leaving Saddam in power. The sacking of Iraq WAS the region's consequence, the required comeuppance and consequence which may already have won the crucial psychological battle in this war, IMHO.

[prognostigaator]

repeat and underline post 10--

[Robert Drobot]

Thanks for the ping. It was a great article, about a great leader of men, denied his rightful place in history by men incapable of standing in his shadow.

America desperately need another General Patton, but we will be denied that opportunity by the socialist one world government mind-set now dominating the legislative and executive branches of our central government.