Posted on 02/19/2015 8:50:35 AM PST by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
ISIS is using a lot of strategies that they must have learned from Nathan Bedford Forrest. Upon reading history, the main tactics employed by Forrest were raw determination, speed, and deceit. ISIS does not have nearly the manpower the media here (which obviously delights in the killing) portrays. They don't have anything they claim to have. It's all a lie. Were we to have proper leadership (A general Sherman, for example) who could be turned loose on ISIS, it would all be over in a matter of weeks.
As someone famously said, "You to have to kill enough of the enemy so that they don't have the will to fight you anymore."
“You to have to kill enough of the enemy so that they don’t have the will to fight you anymore.”
No, we need midnight basketball and jobs programs for them. Thing is most of them want to be butchers.
Sometimes the best way to demonstrate how bad a concept is, is to let it go down.
Your attention, maybe?
Nathan Bedford Forrest was carefully studied by the German High Command and especially influenced Rommel. The US army doctrine of combined arms highly mobile offensive strategies have their origins in Forrest’s tactics and campaigns. It is unfortunate and somewhat blasphemous that ISIS is benefitting from his legacy. His greatest strategic failure however is that by late 1864, he was unable to deploy a significant force out of northern Alabama to disrupt Sherman’s rear and supply lines.
Lots of the souths’ greatest warriors came from the patrician planter class, their prowess at horsemanship and swordsmanship learned from leisure activities. Nathan Bedford Forrest was not one of them.
His father was a blacksmith. His fortune he earned on his own. What he brought to battle was brazen ferocity and cunning. He was largely a self-educated man who worked his way though the ranks by virtue of his competence.
I’m not favorable to the cause he fought for, but I recognize talent when I see it and we could use some like him in the existential war against islam that cowards like Øbozo refuse to admit we are in.
“Get there firstest with the mostest” - Nathan Bedford Forrest
“War means frighten and frighten means killing” Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The Army of U.S. Grant could win this fight in a couple of months, with the weapons they possessed at the time! Had you a Commander who was ably supported with a man like Sherman it would have been fun to watch as he marched across the Arabian peninsula and killed everything that threatened his force and destroyed anything that supported his adversary.
Patton would have laughed had Eisenhower ordered him to clean up Iraq and Afghanistan before proceeding into the heart of Europe. He would have simply ordered up Lemay’s bombers and ended the fight.
You see, the issue is not that we can’t, nor that we lack the ability! No, we lack the political will and leadership. We hamstring our combat forces with “Rules of Engagement” and favor the views of lawyers setting in the beltway.
History will be amused that a Great Power fumbled while this Islamic menace rampaged throughout the Middle East.
Please consider that in 1864 when a large well-equipped force drove south from Memphis, Forrest lured them further and further south with a small portion of his command. He then raided the Federal Headquarters in Memphis itself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Memphis
Been introducing my nine-year-old to Forrest over the past month - It's been fun to re-visit the most interesting character that war produced.
FYI
I would say the onus for the strategic failure in 1864 lies with John Bell Hood. Forrest was not the theatre commander, Hood was. Forrest knew he was subordinate to an idiot, a man way over his head.
Very Interesting
And who will be the next American president to have worn a uniform do you think?
I would not call General Hood an idiot. He had served Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia very well. At Antietam & Gettysburg, his brigade was in the thick of the fighting.
But division command was probably his highest level of capability. When appointed to Command the Army of Tennessee, Lee, it is reported, commented to an aide that he thought General Hood was to much the wolf and not enough of the fox. His actions out side of Atlanta and Nashville would verify General Lee’s estimation of Hood’s capability.
The man served the Confederate cause with grim dedication.
A missing leg, a useless arm yet still up to the fight. How many of the perfumed princes of todays Pentagon make that level of sacrifice. As far as Forest is concerned, the man was a skilled and able officer, every inch a fighter. The largest formation he commanded was a large brigade. Whether he could handle division, corp. or an army command is pure speculation.
Pigs must be flying!
Anyway, well said.
What has surprised me is ISIS’ ability to hold the ground that they have taken. It’s one thing for them to win battles, it’s a wholly different matter for them to be able to hold territory and rule it.
The fact that they seem to be able to govern means that they are far more dangerous than I thought they would be.
What, because I said something complimentary about Forrest? Well, OK thank you! You should rise above such binary thinking though ;’) I’ve made complimentary comments about Lee, Stonewall, and Early too. I can be appreciative of their skills and accomplishments without endorsing their mission.
As a for-instance I believe that the same audacity that made Forrest a force to be reckoned with also manifested itself in recklessness. I think that there was substance to the allegations at the Massacre at Fort Pillow and believe that he dodged a bullet.
But enough about that. Can you imagine what our current-day troops could accomplish if they were stripped of their ridiculous ROE and let off the chain for a while like Nathan’s boys?
As for ISIS’s ability to govern, the notion reminded me of that insipid movie Waterworld and the “Deacon” character (played by Dennis Hopper). I suppose one could call that governing but to me it looks like (barely) controlled chaos.
“But enough about that. Can you imagine what our current-day troops could accomplish if they were stripped of their ridiculous ROE and let off the chain for a while like Nathan’s boys?”
Well they’d likely cure the world of the ISIS problem for one thing.
From what I can see the American military has been hamstrung since Korea with ROEs that lead to a loss, a tie, or an ambiguous victory. In Lyndon Johnson’s time it came from politicians who thought they knew more than the uniformed military. I assume it’s still the same, although in Barky’s case he may be cheering for the other team.
I didn’t see Waterworld but if Dennis Hopper was playing the character I can imagine what Deacon must be like.
I was thinking that ISIS’s rule must be something along the lines of good government as envisioned by Lavrentiy Beria and Hermann Göring assuming they were converts to sharia law.
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