'Fortress Israel' and 'The Generals'

[BSB]

I'm reading "The Generals" now.  So far an excellent read.

BSB

'Fortress Israel' and 'The Generals'
Authors Patrick Tyler and Thomas E. Ricks examine Israeli and U.S. militarism through the country's commanders.

By Steve Weinberg / October 22, 2012

When Patrick Tyler started writing about the Middle East for The Washington Post and then The New York Times, he heard and saw the stereotypes about the Arab-Israeli conflicts. Hoping to understand the hostilities beyond the stereotypes, Tyler (author of “A World of Trouble”) dug deep into Israeli society, until he understood something alarming: Israel has become a society so militarized, so under the sway of its generals, that nonviolent diplomacy has become a casualty.
 
How and why such a thoroughly military outlook became the norm is the subject of Tyler’s new book, Fortress Israel, a telling phrase that sheds any ambiguity when combined with Tyler’s subtitle, “The Inside Story of the Military Elite Who Run the Country – and Why They Can’t Make Peace.” The word “peace” is the final word of the subtitle, suggesting its relative priority in the nation itself – the lowest priority.

As of mid-2012, the primary concern of the Israeli militarists seems to be Iran, according to Tyler. The generals believe that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb and the Israeli military has successfully assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists within Iranian borders. Tyler talks with knowledgeable individuals within the Israeli military establishment who would prefer a less aggressive approach. But those individuals are not ascendant and never have been. Tyler presents  a chronological account of the dozen prime ministers since Israel’s “founding father” David Ben-Gurion who have established the country’s warrior culture.

Current-day Israel, with its constant state of high alert, may seem depressing, especially when compared with the idealism permeating the Jewish nation- state when it was first created. Tyler poses the vital question of whether the departure from the original vision of the Zionists is justified given the perception of never-ending outside threats. What if that original vision of a peaceful homeland had come true through the medium of contemporary diplomacy? What if Israel had become, as Tyler suggests, “a progressive and humanistic state deeply engaged with its Arab and Islamic neighbors and dedicated to lifting all boats in the Middle East”?

Just as Tyler examines Israeli militarism through a mostly chronological rendering of its commanders, Thomas E. Ricks organizes The Generals, his account of the US military, historically, starting with World War II commanders. As a longtime military correspondent at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal (and author of the bestselling “Fiasco”), Ricks has learned to appreciate the difficult balancing act performed by generals. He is no apologist, however, and is quick to criticize generals when appropriate for their tactics and their personalities.

An obvious difference between the United States and Israel, and thus between the two books, is the fact that Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbors, while the US does not suffer from such a precarious situation – Sept. 11, 2001, notwithstanding. That means the US generals should presumably view the world as less threatening than Israeli commanders do.

But it does not always work out that way, as Ricks’s book demonstrates. Generals and civilian military commanders want to make their marks on history, and many of them believe warmongering is the means to that end.

Ricks’s chief concern about the US military, however, is what he perceives as an increasing lack of accountability and a subsequent decline in the quality of leadership in the US military. He worries about an institution that today – unlike the military leadership of the World War II era – seems to him unwilling to learn from its own errors.

Ricks does not argue that the past constituted a golden age for the top US military brass. On the contrary. He is every bit as hard on World War II-era Gen. Douglas MacArthur (“a troublesome blowhard”) as he is on Afghanistan and Iraq top commander Tommy Franks (a “two-time loser”). But what does worry Ricks is his perception that in the era of MacArthur, unlike today, failing generals were relieved of their commands. Ever since the Korean War, he argues, US military leadership has been allowed to decline into mediocrity with little or no blame assigned to those at the top.

Both books are written by talented journalists and both make for sobering reading. And in both cases they deal with fighting machines so powerful that no nation on earth can afford to ignore them – or their failings.

Steve Weinberg is the author of eight nonfiction books.


http://www.skweezer.com/s.aspx?q=http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2012/1022/Fortress-Israel-and-The-Generals

[Xavier_Onassis]

It is probably true that US generals are less competent than they should be. On the other hand, the Soviets, the Russians and certainly the Iraqis and the North Koreans are also hardly as competent as they could be. I imagine that the same is true in the Chinese Army as well.

During a war, a general gains favor by winning battles and having fewer casualties than his adversaries. During peacetime, a general wins favor by APPEARING to be more capable, and of course, by sucking up to the political leaders. I don't think that this varies much from country to country.

[BSB]

What's your point? Everybody sucks so so should we?

BushliedandpeoplediedDickCheney refused to fire people. He wore it as a badge of honor. You can't do that in wartime. If a general, or sec. of defense, is screwing up you have to fire them and bring in new blood. Bushliedandpeopledied waited 3 long and deadly years before shaking things up in Iraq.  That cost us thousands of dead and wounded, not to mention the cost to Iraq.


BSB

[sirs]

Well, at least we can identify a more accurate persona who has adopted the Bush lied us into war nonsense.  I hope that makes he who will not be named feel better

[BSB]

You have to shake things up. Not doing that for 3 long and bloody years was Bushliedandpeopledied's (member of the KKK, and known pervert) big mistake.

From "The Generals":

"DePuy's own World War II experience illustrates how the swift relief of some officers cleared the way for others with more competence. He began the war as a "green lieutenant" from the ROTC program at South Dakota State College. He finished it having commanded a battalion at age twenty-five and then been operations officer for a division. During the war he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and three Silver Stars.

The 90th Division also improved radically, going from a problem division that 1st Army staff wanted to break up and use to send replacements to other units to being considered, as Bradley wrote later, "one of the most outstanding in the European Theater." Retired Army Col. Henry Gole, in his analysis of the 90th Division and DePuy's command style, directly credits the policy of fast relief:

Because incompetent commanders were fired and replaced by quality men at division and regiment, and because the junior officers of 1944 good at war, including DePuy, rose to command battalions in a Darwinian process, the division became an effective fighting force. DePuy was 25 years old. His regimental commander was 27. The other two battalion commanders were 28 and 26.

DePuy would be haunted for decades by the bloody, grinding fighting of the summer of 1944 and by the incompetent leadership he witnessed in Normandy. "The brutality and stupidity of those days have affected me all the rest of my professional life," he said. It shaped DePuy's approach to fighting in Vietnam, where he would command the 1st Infantry Division twenty-two years later. He then would go on to play a central role in shaping the post-Vietnam Army that fought in Kuwait in 1991. "DePuy is one of the very small handful of very great soldiers that this country had produced in this [20th] century," said another general, Donn Starry. "The Army owes him a great debt, an enormous debt. He set it on the path for the 21st century."

Three aspects of the experience of the 90th Division stand out, even seven decades later. First, that generalship in combat is extraordinarily difficult, and many seasoned officers fail at it. Second, that personalities matter — the 90th floundered under its first two commanders in the summer of 1944 but thrived under McLain's leadership. Third, and most significant for understanding American history, that American generals were managed very differently in World War II than they were in subsequent wars. During World War II, senior American commanders generally were given a few months in which to succeed, be killed or wounded, or be replaced. Sixteen Army division commanders were relieved for cause, out of a total of 155 officers who commanded Army divisions in combat during the war. At least five corps commanders also were removed for cause. Corps and division command, wrote Secretary of War Henry Stimson, "was the critical level of professional competence" during the war.

I first learned about the standards to which American generals were held during World War II when, taking a break from covering the Iraq war, I joined a "staff ride" — that is, a study of a military campaign in which one walks battlefields and recounts the decisions of commanders and the information available to them at the time. The staff ride group, selected mainly from students in the strategy course of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, was studying the Allied invasion of Sicily during World War II. We were gathered on the highest point in central Sicily, looking north across the razored ridges of that extraordinary mid-Mediterranean island, when one student recounted how Maj. Gen. Terry de la Mesa Allen, one of the most successful American generals of 1943, had been relieved after winning the last major battle of the Sicily campaign.

I was stunned. How could this be? I still had the dust of Iraq on my walking shoes, and my mind was still focused on that war, where even abject failure did not get a general fired. Relief in the U.S. military had become so rare that, as Lt. Col. Paul Yingling noted during some of the darkest days of the Iraq war, a private who lost his rifle was now punished more than a general who lost his part of a war."

http://www.skweezer.com/s.aspx?q=http://www.npr.org/books/titles/163154502/the-generals-american-military-command-from-world-war-ii-to-today

[sirs]

lol

[Plane]

I have heard about "The Generals ", if you are reccomending it I will definately read it.