Comment: Cheese-eating surrender monkeys and fire-eating war

It seems too simplistic to think the "left" has their opinions formed by CNN, NYTIMES WASH POST and the "right" formed by FOX NEWS. But, maybe you are right.

I will offer, I think you THINK too much and have lost touch with some fundemental principles of right and wrong. I take offense to this "slime bags" representation of the American people. The same "flag wavers' today, were waving flags forever. They did not just start when GW took office. Yet, this author tires to paint a different story, and you intellectualize it with your prior statements.

You overthought this post, IMO.

Nice fancy name for a journalist...contemport historian!!!!!

Get over yourself.

I've posted that already, but since you obviously refuses to read what you don't want to know, here it is again:

Timothy Garton Ash:
In 1986-87 he was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. Since 1990, he has been a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, where he now directs the European Studies Centre and is Gerd Bucerius Senior Research Fellow in Contemporary History. He became a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, in 2000. A frequent lecturer, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts and a Corresponding Fellow of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences.

MA in modern history from Exeter College, University of Oxford
Graduate study at St. Antony's College, Oxford; the Free University in West Berlin; Humboldt University in East Berlin.


Awards and honors

- Somerset Maugham Award - Order of Merit from the Czech Republic - Order of Merit from Germany - Order of Merit from Poland - Honorary doctorate from St. Andrew's University, Scotland - British CMG - George Orwell Prize

But laugh on, my boy.

Of course what the Americans forget is that if it wasnt for the Brits defeating the French in N America (Quebec/Wolfe/Canada etc) the Americans would themselves be cheese eating surrender monkeys.

I find nothing about this slimebag funny. I am not impressed by his awards and honors; any a-hole can graduate college and receive awards... Just look at the last 2 American Presidents.

So, try again to explain why I should be impressed by this slimebags opinions?

I said nothing about why you should be impressed - otherwise quote me or YOU ARE A BIG LIAR!

I was only answering your:



You responded nothing to that.

Certainly, that does leap to mind--it occurred to me immediately.



In the Second World War, the most of our naval resources were committed to the Pacific Theater. The United States Marine Corps was dramatically expanded to more than 50 regiments in order to fight in the Pacific, and the United States Army and Army Air Forces fought there in significant numbers as well. MacArthur, in the Southwest Pacific Theater, was unable to rely upon significant naval resources from the United States, thanks to the petty attitudes of the Navy, so, instead, he relied upon the slim American resources he got, and the Royal Australian Navy, as well as small detachments of the Royal Navy. He relied upon United States Army and Army Air Forces most heavily, with the Australians close behind, and significant numbers of English troops, and the few Dutch troops available. MacArthur--unlike the Navy charging ahead and slamming head-on into Japanese strong points, and at a horrible cost, paid largely by the Marines--managed to conduct (admittedly in much different terraine situations) a mobile campaign which involved some heavy ground fighting, and a good deal of bypassing of Japanese strong points, leaving huge Japanese garrisons to rot on the vine. The Philippines involved, of course, huge naval and army resources, in the only broad ground campaiging of the Pacific War.

In Europe, the Americans did not even appear until late in 1942, and then came very close to being overrun in Tunisia. To our credit, Rommel in his papers states that he found the American commanders to be very resourceful. He remarks time and again how American commanders would fight until their positions were almost overrun, and then manage to conduct a fighting retreat to new positions, because of what he complained of as the lack of initiative in German commanders. He described Tunisia as the largest self-sustaining prisoner of war camp in history, after Hitler decided to pour troops into a futile defense.

When we landed on Sicily, we fought along side the British and the Canadians. To his credit, Patton used mobility and the considerable firepower of the United States Navy and the Royal Navy, to do an end-run around German defenses. By contrast, Montgomery, whom i personally consider to have been criminally incompetent, spent thousands of British and Canadian lives to hammer his way north on the east coast, and still failed to arrive before Patton did.

In Italy, there was truly a United Nations army. In addition to the Americans, British and Canadians, who represented about two thirds of the force (just about equally divided), there was a huge contingent from India, a South African armored division, a huge New Zealand mechanized "super division," three Australian divisions, three Polish divisions and a Polish armored brigade, a Brazilian division, several French divisions and more than half a dozen French colonial regiments (one from west Africa and the rest from Algeria and Morroco), and a Palestinian Jewish brigade.

The landing at Normandy in June, 1944, less than a year before the conclusion of hostilities in Europe was the first occasion upon which the Americans were to take a leading role. The 4th division went ashore at Utah beach against spotty resistance. The 29th and 1st divisions went ashore at Omaha beach against murderous resistance. The night before, both the 89th and 101st Airborne Divisions had gone in with three PIR (Parachute Infantry Regiments) each, and one glider regiment each, along with artillery brought in by glider. The English landed at two beaches themselves, and met spotty resistance, but which was murderous where the Germans did put up a fight--the French went in with them with special forces. The Canadians landed at their own beach, and met little resistance, until they drove inland. Then their casualties were horrible, and they became involved in a six week nightmare fighting the Hitler Youth SS Panzergrenadier division and an SS Panzer division.

Gradually, the Americans reinforced to the entire First Army. After La Falaise, and the escape of the Germans through the "gap," Third Army was landed, and joined First Army in Omar Bradley's Army Group. Patch landed in the south of France with Seventh Army, many of whom were veterans of hard fighting in Italy--which while it substantially increased the American forces in France, greatly reduced their presence in the United Nations army in Italy. Montgomery's Army group was built around Horrock's XXXth Corps, largely armor and mechanized troops, with the Canadians and the American Ninth Army. The Americans did not reach a superiority of force among the allied in the west until there was far less than a year left to go--at no time did the combined forces of the Empire and the United States reach the proportions of the Soviet ground forces committed in their "Great Patriotic War." The large numbers of Australians who had fought with the English in Africa had been greatly reduced, as a Labour government insisted on their return to defend Australia--when they joined MacArthur.

None of that is intended to minimize the importance of the American war effort--but it is to point out that the Pacific was the focus of our efforts, and despite Roosevelt's desire to "get Hitler first," a dubious proposition advanced against him by revisionists, the most of our resources were used to combat the Empire of Japan.

In the Great War, the arrival of the Americans was certainly crucial--nevertheless, the fewer than a quarter of million casualties does not even remotely stack up against the more than a million lost by England, nor the losses of the French, who lost a million casualties at Verdun alone. The Canadians, with only a population of 7,000,000 in 1914, became, along with the Australians, the "shock troops of Empire" as the English military dimwits liked to call it. Somewhat more than 600,000 Canadians participated in the European war in 1914-18, and more than 60,000 of them were killed outright or died of wounds. The Australians suffered a similar proportion of loss compared to their population. For the Americans to have matched the Canadian commitment, we would have had to have dispatched more than 8,000,000 troops, and to have suffered more people killed or died of wounds than the entire butcher bill of the American civil war. But our casualties were not even a quarter of that figure, and we only had a million troops there for the late 1918 offensive against the Germans--we raised that to 3,000,000 by 1919. There is no doubt that we arrived in the nick of time in many respects. There is also no doubt that we did not suffer anything like the human holocaust which the Europeans visited upon themselves. In the Second World War, all Allied casualties other than Soviet combined did not make a siginficant fraction of the Russian losses.

Some reasonable perspective shows that although our contributions in both wars were crucially important, we did not come anywhere close to having "bailed them" out in Europe on either occasion. It has been alleged that without the Americans, the German 1918 offensive would have succeeded. I doubt that based on the evidence. They (the Germans) might have done better than they did, but they simply did not have the logistical or human resources to "break through to the sea," or to successfully drive on Paris. Our landings with the English in 1944 largely simply assured that the Soviets would not drive on to the Bay of Biscay.

Well, I for one don't regard Mr. Ash as a "slimebag". His credentials are exceptional, and his views worth consideration. I'm not even so sure that his remarks quoted above are all that critical of the United States, or our current policies. He's made an observation and tried to interpret it as well as he could. That doesn't make the interpretation correct, nor the observation representative of a larger reality.

We are engaged in a war, but this is a war very different from any fought for hundreds, perhaps a thousand years. We've become used to war being a state of armed conflict between two or more nations fought by uniformed formations and conforming to agreed upon behavior. In this war we are witnessing a throw-back to an armed conflict conducted by an enemy who regards themselves as unconstrained by prior agreements. Their "soldiers" are not part of a formal organization with uniforms and the sanction of any particular national government. Rather, they're driven by religious zealotry to destroy all who do not agree with their own interpretations of Islam. This enemy doesn't have fighter aircraft, or a navy of formidable warships. They can't put armored tank divisions into the field, or conduct any of the military operations one has come to expect during war.

This enemy is dedicated not to any national goals or objectives, but to a religious ideal that would subjugate all people to a harsh dictatorship of a few religious leaders who bemoan the passing of the 8th century. They recruit their "soldiers" from among the "faithful" in every country where Muslims live. There potential terrorists in every European country and in the United States, all willing to die while killing as many infidels as possible. These young people, and most of the cannon fodder are young, are largely idealists who have been taught to hate the non-Muslim world. Their allegiance isn't to their country, but to a dystopian ideal.

The war against against international Islamic terrorism just won't fit our conventional models of what war is. A whole lot of the Infidel World, thats us folks, are in denial that a serious effort to destroy us has been underway since the mid-1990's. To many it appears a hopeless fight, and one that the United States and other Western Industrialized peoples are destined to lose. If you expect to lose, its a whole lot harder to be victorious.

This enemy has some strengths and capabilities, but they are not insurmountable. They work hard to instill terror and doubt in their opponents. They use our institutions and concepts about fair play against us. They have a "natural constituency" in the poverty-ridden masses of Southwest Asia, and a commonly accepted enemy in Israel. They have the reach to pinch off oil resources needed by Europe and the industrialized nations of Asia.

On the other hand, the number of highly skilled leaders is limited and their ability to conduct complex large scale operations is limited by their weak C-cubed organization. U.S. surveillance of communications channels is a major hurdle to be overcome. The reach and lethality of U.S. combat forces can not be matched. Their operational losses aren't easy to replace, while the losses they inflict work almost as much against their cause as for it. At the moment, they must concentrate their limited resources in trying to frustrate any attempt to reconstruct Iraq as a stable government where religious tolerance is accepted. If there is to be civil war in Iraq, it is because Al Queda-like organizations are desperate and fear losing an important country in the heart of Southwest Asia. Iran, Syria, Yemen and the conservative (!) religious schools of Arabia, are their secret support, but the battle on the ground is in Iraq, and to a lesser extent in Afghanistan. They are losing, and in the end will be defeated unless we in the West decide to award them the victory.

Thanks, Asherman.

Thats exactly why it is printed as a comment.

(His credentials are so exceptional, that he is listed as one of 100 most influencal people worldwide - which is really extraordinary for an historian ... or with woiyo's words "a journalist" :wink: )

He's a slimebag and that is my opinion.

If you want to gush over his credentials and insist every opinion he makes is accurate, that is your decision.

I think differently.

The article Walter cited was an interesting one. I believe its essential point was that the experience of World War I forever changed European thinking on such matters. He infers that prior to that the contempory attitudes of many Americans were common (indeed dominant) in Europe as well. The history of WWII does not entirely support this thesis, but certainly the cumulative effect of these two wars appears to have made a lasting difference.

This naturally leads one to consider just which is the "natural" state of public attitudesd on the matter. It is entirely possible that it is Europe, not America that is the odd man out in this comparison. The many wars that have repeatedly ravaged Europe throughout the Modern Age (since 1500) do set it apart from most of the rest of the world, and the subsequent reaction of a people exhausted by it all may do the same today.

I'm not making any value judgements here - just attempting to put the question in an historical context. Perhaps the relevant question today is, which of us is better adapted to the competitive challenges of the 21st century? I don't suggest the answer here is obvious, but do note that there is a case to be made for America's competitive advantage.

Exactly, Walter and Asherman.

To summarize my opinion of American participation in the Great War and in the Second World War with regard to the proposition that we "bailed them out":

The German 1918 offensive came in three phases. The first phase, launched on the first day of Spring, 1918, burst into a lightly defended sector of the English line opposite St. Quentin. There is no reason not to give Ludendorf the credit he deserves, for as loony as he later became. Max von Hoffman and others had devised the devastating operational method in the East which Ludendorf applied in the West, and which apparently didn't sink in with the Allies, because the Germans used it again in 1940. That was to bypass strong points, and rely upon lightly encumbered troops (i.e., carrying as little gear, ammo and food as possible--later, in 1940, that was translated into the use of mechanized divisions, the "Panzer" divisions of 1940 did not in the least resemble what we later faced in France in 1944), who would use speed to get past the defenses, and cut off the defenders, who could be forced to surrender from lack of resupply and constant shelling--and it usually worked. Gough's Fifth Army was literally shredded. They were only saved because the Fifth Corps of the Armée du Nord was rushed in and slammed into the flank of the German attack, and because the Canadians were rushed in to counterattack as furiously as the Germans were attacking. The Canadians conducted the last successful cavalry attack in the history of warfare (Polish and Russian cavalry attacks in 1940 and 1941 were uniformly unsuccessful)--losing 300 men killed and 800 horses killed in a single brigade. It has been said that if the Americans had not replaced the French in the trenches, the Armée du Nord could not have reacted as they did--but that is not a certainty. Americans were rushed to trenches when they arrived in 1917, because of the French mutiny, but the Germans did not learn of the mutiny until it was all over, and the Americans were never obliged to defend those trench lines.

In the March 1918 offensive, the arrival of the French simply forced the Germans farther to the northeast, they did not stop the advance. What stopped the advance, apart from Canadians and Australians being willing to die in large numbers, was simple logistical failure. Immediately west of St. Quentin, and entire German corps simply stopped in their tracks when they ran into the Fifth Army supply depot. They found bakers there with ovens hot and baking white bread, something they had literally not eaten in years--they sent the bakers back to their ovens at gunpoint and sat down to wait for the bread. They found tins of beef, of ham and sausages, and fresh fruits and vegetables, a far cry from their black bread and "sausage," both made with liberal amounts of sawdust. In no small measure, the Canadians were enabled to respond because the German offensive bogged down. They did not have the logistical resources to bring ammo and food to front as had been planned, and the common foot soldier stopped to eat and rest whenever he stumbled upon what must have seemed fabulous riches to him.

This is not different from the failure of the Schlieffen plan in 1914. The plan was good, but it was not properly implemented, and even if it had been, the plan failed to take into account a simple human factor--fatigue. In the Battle of the Marne, the French and English often had to wake the Germans up to make prisoners of them, and sometimes couldn't even do that--they heaved sleeping prisoners into trucks and moved on. All three of Ludendorf's offensive thrusts failed upon two bases--logistical failure and simple fatigue. Too much was being expected of the soldiers, and the logistical resources were simply not realistically available.

Absent the arrival of the Americans, the likeliest consequence would have been a negotiated settelment rather than a dictated settlement by the Allies. For all that the Germans were rolling over the English and the French in 1918, the Canadians and the Australians were doing the same thing to them. When the Allies counterattacked late in 1918, the Americans performed far in excess of everyone's expectations, including their allies, and Ludendorf sued for an Armistice to prevent the Allies from carrying the war into Germany, which, although impoverished, had remained largely untouched. Without the Americans, the Germans would have had a bargaining position--with the Americans, that bargaining position was negated.

In the Second World War, we were going to fight in the Pacific come what would. But we were enabled to fight in Europe because the idiot Hitler declared war on us. Absent that declaration, we might have eventually found a pretext, but, basically, without the Americans, the most significant change would have been that the Soviets would have "liberated" Paris, rather than the French and the Spanish.

I always enjoy Setanta's historical essays, but do find his description of the essential features of our war in the Pacific against Japan to be fundamentally flawed.

Japan's advance into the Southern Ocean and towards Australia was stopped by the Navy & Marine forces under Admiral Nimitz at Guadalcanal and later in the Coral Sea. Japan's ability to wage aggressive war was destroyed at Midway and later in the Battle of the Marianas. Japan was ultimately defeated by the utter destruction of her shipping, preventing the import of food and materials, and an air campaign which destroyed her cities. MacArthur's operations in Australia and around Port Moresby had nothing to do with any of this. The islands he eventually took and "hopped" were isolated from supply and reinforcement and incapable of anything but self-defense, because the Japanese Navy had been either destroyed (particularly their carrier forces) or stuck in port due to the lack of fuel. This was achieved by the Naval, Marine, and Army forces under Nimitz - a much wiser strategist and military leader than MacArthur, though far less a poseur and prima donna.

The carnage came at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. These were essential campaigns to get based from which to attack Japan, and our success was essential to the subsequent victory. The Philippines campaign was done only to assuage MacArthur's inflated sense of self-importance.

Your naval prejudices are showing. Eichelberger, MacArthur's ground commander, was put in charge of all American and Australian troops before the operation began against Guadalcanal. The Americans and Australians pushed over the mountains from Port Moresby at the same time that Turner was moving on Guadalcanal. The Battle of the Coral Sea cost the United States just as much as it cost the Imperial Navy, and was, effectively, a draw. It was months of brutal fighting for the Navy to finally cut off Guadalcanal, to which Ironbottom Sound can testify--some of the most vicious surface battles in the war took place at night in "the Slot." I have never cast aspersions upon the heroism of the Marines, but their dramatic effort to hold on at Henderson Field is far from the only story on that island. The Japanese had just moved to take over the island when Turner showed up, dumped off the Marines, and got the hell out of Dodge. Turner doesn't impress me very damn much, and Halsey and Nimitz were nowhere in sight when the Marines began their nightmare on Guadalcanal. By the time the campaign to rid the islands of Japanese began, the United States Army far outnumbered the Marines on Guadalcanal. The Marines had a hell of a job to do and they did it well--and they got the glory for it. The GIs only got to come in and do the nasty fighting and dieing necessary to round up all of the Japanese defenders.

While the Marines were fighting the Japanese on Guadalcanal, Eichelberger, relying mostly upon the Australians, did the nightmare fighting around Buna and Gona which eventually allowed MacArthur to being the process of "island hopping," a term which he invented, not your boys on board the invasion fleets which eventually fought their way to Truk. After he bypassed the Japanese with an airborne landing at Hollandia followed by an amphibious landing which the RAN did more to cover than did the USN, he "hopped" to Manus, and set up a base for cutting off Rabaul. Neither the Marines nor the GIs on Guadalcanal could have mopped up until Rabaul was cut off. You put the cart before the horse in describing his island hopping campaign--those important bases were cut off and isolated because he did that, not before he did that. Richmond Turner was a great apple-polisher, but he was no kind of naval commander.

The USN did not move north to the Marianas until 1944, and the major Japanese base at Truk was not successfully attacked and neutralized until early 1944. The horrible battles at Kwaljelein, Makin and Tarawa were all fought in 1944, and the United States Army fought for those scraps of coral along with the Marines. Your remarks about the battle of Midway are well-taken, but that destroyed the offensive naval air power of the Imperial Navy--it did not destroy the entire Imperial Navy. You speak of them being stuck in port for lack of fuel. That is certainly true--and it had more to do with MacArthur's southwest theater than it did the USN. Pearl Harbor was attacked to defend the flank of the Souther Operation from the US Pacific Fleet. Nagumo's First Air Fleet had Japan's six largest carriers, and he was under strict orders to return as soon as possible--the Eleventh Air fleet, which was all that remained to support the Southern Operation, did not have the launch capacity of Shokaku or Zuikaku alone. Probably one of the greatest advantages which the Southern Operation enjoyed was the destruction of the United States Army Air Force on the ground in the Philippines--for which MacArthur was certainly to blame in that he was the responsible party on the scene.

But the Japanese put so much stock in the Southern Operation because of the mineral and petroleum resources of the Dutch East Indies and Borneo, both the Dutch and the English portions. MacArthur's operations were the effective means of keeping the Imperial Fleet in port for lack of fuel, because his campaign cut Japan off from the indispensable resources of Macronesia, while the Navy was fighting in Micronesia. Your snotty comments about MacArthur ignore the importance of his contribution, and his great personal, physical courage. For all of his foibles, he was a courageous, intelligent and resourceful soldier. Nimitz could not have done it without MacArthur, and MacArthur could not have done it without Nimitz.

The largest naval campaign in history was fought in and around Leyte Gulf late in 1944. MacArthur got all the support he needed for his Philippine campaign, for whatever contempt sailors like to express toward him, because even swabbies could understand how important to the overall campaign it was to cut Japan off from the East Indies and its resources. Securing Borneo and Luzon effectively ended any possibility of Japanese use of the resources of the East Indies, and effectively left literally millions of Japanese troops kicking their heels in China and southeast Asia.

Nimitz could not have done it alone, any more than MacArthur could have done it alone.

By the way, George, the Battle of the Coral Sea took place in May, 1942--just before the landing on Guadalcanal. I was incorrect in stating the the fighting at Buna and Gona took place at the same time--the fighting to defend Port Moresby was taking place at that time. But then, i check my facts.

Apparently, you don't.

you never cease to amaze me Set with your grasp of both historical import and detail

Thanks, Boss . . . keep in mind, though, that i do go out to check my facts, even if i do the narrative from memory.

The Battle of the Coral Sea begins on May 1, 1942; the landing on Guadalcanal took place on August 7, 1942. Both dates courtesy of Wikipedia.

I tend to agree on this point more with George than Setanta. It shouldn't be surprising that the war in the Pacific was primarily a Naval War. Midway and the Marianas broke the back of the Japanese Navy, and thereafter it was just a matter of time before significant and continual air attacks on the Japanese homeland became common. Capture of essential ground at frightful price was primarily accomplished by the Corps, and the Army came in later.

Okinawa was essential as a concentration and jumping off point for the invasion of the southern portions of Japan. This involved more Army, but it was still primarily Nimitz's show. Few informed folks have any doubt that the ground invasion would have been the most bloody campaign in the history of war, even though the Japanese were "on the ropes". Nimitz remained a powerful force within the Navy, and MacArthur set himself up as the shadow emperor of Japan.

MacArthur was an ego maniac and glory hound without comparison. Nimitz was a hard man to work for, but his management of resources was much better. Mac never delegated a victory, nor personally took responsibility for his many errors. Nimitz had less need to be a public hero.

Personality is no basis for judging someone's accomplishments. George himself has acknowledged that the Imperial Navy was marooned in port from a lack of fuel. That lack of fuel resulted directly from Japan being cut off from its sources in Macronesia.

While you're at it, you might want to check your dates, as well. The Battle of Midway took place in June, 1942. We did not land on Saipan in the Marianas until June, 1944, two years later. The definitive destruction of the Imperial Navy took place during the Philippine campaign, in Leyte Gulf, in October 1944. You jumped over an enormous amount of history there, Asherman.

"Location: Reality, Earth,"

I dooooon't thiiiiink sooooo.