The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost—From Ancient Greece to Iraq (48 page)

42.
Appleman,
Disaster in Korea,
384.

43.
The record of F-86 pilots against MiGs and their often Russian pilots was quite remarkable, given the near parity in performance per se of the two jets. For the jet war in Korea, cf. Millett,
War for Korea,
310–11.

44.
Appleman,
Ridgway Duels for Korea,
155.

45.
On the American success in destroying Communist forces following Inchon, see Whelan,
Drawing the Line,
194–95.

46.
On the schizophrenic reporting from the front that finally prompted the Joint Chiefs to send General Collins to determine whether MacArthur or Ridgway was deluded, given the vast discrepancy in their memos back to Washington, see Whelan,
Drawing the Line,
284–85.

47.
Ridgway,
Korean War,
241.

48.
On the politics surrounding Ridgway’s restoration, see D. Halberstam,
The Coldest Winter,
594–96. See Cummings,
Origins of the Korean War,
712–14.

49.
Ridgway,
Korean War,
160; on the turnaround in Pentagon thinking after Ridgway’s successes, see Blair,
Forgotten War,
682–84.

50.
Ridgway,
Korean War,
151.

51.
Ridgway,
Korean War,
86. Korea was the first American war in which soldiers at the front heard media accounts that their efforts might be in vain and the war abandoned without victory.

52.
Ridgway,
Korean War,
97. The fact that Americans were now fighting Communist Koreans and Chinese rather than Japanese, Germans, and Italians made little difference to Ridgway; the challenge was not the enemy per se but the attitude and skill of American forces.

53.
Appleman,
Ridgway Duels for Korea,
9–10.

54.
Ridgway,
Korean War,
87–88.

55.
Ridgway,
Korean War,
100.

56.
On Ridgway’s removal of division commanders, see Weintraub,
MacArthur’s War,
306–7.

57.
Appleman,
Ridgway Duels for Korea,
145–46.

58.
Ridgway,
Korean War,
90. To validate the MacArthur narrative, American forces would have to do poorly without the sort of leeway that he insisted
was the requisite for recovery; accordingly, Ridgway’s victories sometimes served as an embarrassment.

59.
Cf. Sandler,
Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished,
132–33.

60.
For the quotes about Western civilization, see Mitchell,
Ridgway,
56. And see Soffer,
General Matthew Ridgway,
122–24, on Ridgway’s appeal to the soldier’s notion of a liberal American lifestyle imperiled by its enemies in Korea. For Ridgway’s role in desegregation, cf. Sandler,
Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished,
252–53; and in general, M. J. MacGregor,
Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940–1965
(Washington, D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History Publication, 1981).

61.
Halberstam,
Coldest Winter,
488–89.

62.
Ridgway,
Korean War,
89.

63.
Halberstam,
Coldest Winter,
491. Halberstam assumes that the mostly conscript army was far more representative of American society than contemporary professional soldiers of the post-Vietnam age.

64.
On Ridgway’s appearance and character, cf. Millett,
War for Korea,
373–74.

65.
For Ridgway’s ego, see Millett,
War for Korea,
373. Cf. Soffer,
General Matthew Ridgway,
122–24: “he was photogenic, deeply religious, all-American, and was married to a young, beautiful woman. He was one hundred percent Army, individualistic enough to be a family man, yet tough enough to stage Operation RIPPER. The many pictures of Ridgway in popular magazines show a tall man with a craggy, handsome, face and piercing eyes, a ready-made Hollywood war hero.” Cf. Appleman,
Ridgway Duels for Korea,
14–15.

66.
“Ancient Stoic”: Whelan,
Drawing the Line,
281.

67.
Appleman,
Ridgway Duels for Korea,
21–23.

68.
Ridgway,
Soldiers,
161–62: “If I had taken the doctors’ advice, I’d have retired ten years ago and would have missed all that was to come—the Korean War, Supreme Command in the Far East and Europe, and the two-year period as Chief of Staff, which were among the most interesting, as well as the most arduous, periods of service in my career.”

69.
Ridgway,
Korean War,
159: “In the course of this interview, the record of which had been impounded until after General MacArthur’s death, the latter, Mr. Lucas reported, rated me at the bottom of his list of field commanders. In the light of all that General MacArthur had said to me in Korea, and of his subsequent statement to Senator Harry P. Cain in Washington, which follows, this presents a puzzle for which I have no satisfactory answer.” On criticism of Ridgway by MacArthur, cf. too, Halberstam,
Coldest Winter,
598–99.

70.
Eisenhower and Ridgway: Soffer,
General Matthew Ridgway,
183.

71.
Cf., e.g., Ridgway,
Korean War,
113: “In General Eisenhower’s book, he reports that Seoul was recaptured after General James A. Van Fleet had taken over the Eighth Army. This is untrue.” Cf. Appleman,
Ridgway Duels for Korea,
348: “Could a military man of Eisenhower’s long experience, and presumably intense interest in the Korean War at a time when he was running for the president in 1952, display such ignorance of the events?” Cf. Blair,
Forgotten War,
802–3, on the Ridgway–Van Fleet tension.

72.
On integration, see, again, Sandler,
Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished,
252–53.

73.
Blair,
Forgotten War,
815–16.

74.
Ridgway,
Korean War,
233. On the bleak developments between 1945 and the outbreak of the Korean War (e.g., Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech, the Berlin Airlift, the Czech coup, the Soviet detonation of an atomic bomb in 1949, etc.), see Whelan,
Drawing the Line,
27, 49–74.

75.
Jensen,
Reagan at Bergen-Belsen and Bitburg,
104–6.

76.
See Halberstam,
Coldest Winter,
490–92, for some examples of Ridgway’s critical insight in both earlier and later American crises. On Korean War casualties, see Blair,
Forgotten War,
975.

77.
Whelan,
Drawing the Line,
373–74.

78.
On the controversy, and the statements of Van Fleet, again see Whelan,
Drawing the Line,
319–20.

79.
For Yu’s analysis of the terrible prices paid by the Chinese, see Li,
Mao’s Generals,
25–27. See the examples of Ridgway encomia collected by Soffer,
General Matthew Ridgway,
117; cf. 211; cf. also Appleman,
Ridgway Duels for Korea,
147.

1.
Cf.
http://icasualties.org/Iraq/ByMonth.aspx
.
Petraeus had argued that to quiet Iraq, American troops would have to venture out of their compounds, and assure security to Iraqi supporters. That would lessen casualties in the long run, but surely spike them in the short term. By August and September 2010, two and three Americans had perished, respectively—the lowest fatalities of any months of the seven-year war up to that time.

2.
For the hearings and Petraeus’s discomfort, cf. Ricks,
Gamble,
246–47, and especially West,
Strongest Tribe,
317–23. The full text of General Petraeus’s testimony of September 10–11, 2007, can be found at the Department of Defense’s online archives
(
http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/Petraeus-Testimony20070910.pdf
).
The remarks of Ambassador Crocker can be retrieved at
http://2001-2009.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rm/2007/91941.htm
.

3.
For the vote and some of the speeches in favor of the war, cf.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/11/iraq.us
;
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2002-237
;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wyCBF5CsCA
;
http://www.c-span.org/vote2004/kerryspeech.asp
.
Senator John Kerry had offered an impassioned warning about Saddam Hussein’s likely use of WMD: “I have said publicly for years that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein pose a real and grave threat to our security and that of our allies in the Persian Gulf region. Saddam Hussein’s record bears this out.”

4.
The disapproval figure is based on a CNN / Research Opinion poll taken between September 7–9, 2007, just hours before the September 10–11 hearings began. For a good review of the monthly approval ratings of the Iraq War between 2006 and 2007, see the data assembled at
Pollingreport.com
(
http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
).
More specifically worded polls revealed that at least half the country did not believe the surge was working—and even fewer that the additional cost in blood and treasure was worth it.

5.
For Senator Clinton’s earlier desire to leave Iraq, see her 2007 interview with Iraq war veterans (e.g.,
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/263224/when-vets-freedom-met-hillary-clinton-vincent-g-heintz
).

6.
For Obama’s appraisals of the surge, see an ABC News synopsis at
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/07/from-the-fact-c.html
, and cf. his remarks in New Hampshire
(
http://www.nhpr.org/node/13507
).
For a video of Obama’s seven-minute statement at the Petraeus hearings, see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIUej6VJzII
.
The
Washington Post
reported on his call for combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 31, 2008:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/30/AR2007013001586.html
.

7.
For Senator Biden’s various appraisals of Iraq, see contemporary accounts at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20676775
/;
http://www.historiae.org/biden.asp
;
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/05/petraeus-201005
.
However, on February 10, 2010, then Vice President Biden asserted that an Iraq secured by the surge, and the prior policies of General Petraeus, could soon become one of the Obama administration’s “greatest achievements.”
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcOv-AbHlCk
)

8.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18227928
;
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3575785&page=1
;
“happy talk”
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/09/presidential-ca.html
.

9.
For a review of the upsurge in violence, see Ricks,
Gamble,
45–46.

10.
The
New York Times
ombudsman found his paper’s “General Betray Us” ad troubling—both the matter of the discounted rate, and its personal invective that went against the stated
Times
policy of prohibiting paid attack ads against individuals:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/opinion/23pubed.html
.
On the ad, cf. Ricks,
Gamble,
245–46. Cf. Michael Moore:
http://michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/heads-up-from-michael-moore
;
Nicholson Baker,
Checkpoint
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004); on Gabriel Range’s 2006 docudrama,
The Death of a President,
see
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/01/AR2006090100858.html
;
Charles Brooker,
The Guardian,
October 24, 2004.

11.
On the American losses in Afghanistan, see
http://icasualties.org/OEF/index.aspx
.
On the prebattle confidence of a “cakewalk” in Iraq, see one example from K. Adelman “Cakewalk in Iraq” (
Washington Post,
February 13, 2002): “I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.”

12.
What allied governments wished in 2003 and in 2006 were very different things. For a discussion of the role of American allies and the war, see Shaw-cross,
Allies,
221–26.

13.
The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:HR04655:@@@X
(where readers can be directed to the text and vote on the resolution).

14.
George Bush admitted later that the flight onto the
Abraham Lincoln
and the carrier’s banner were a public relations “mistake” that gave the wrong impression about the status in Iraq, despite qualifiers made evident in his speech. For the president’s later remorse, cf. H. Roswenkrantz, “Bush Says He Regrets Use of Iraq ‘Mission Accomplished’ Banner,” ’
Bloomberg News,
Nov. 12, 2008. In fact, the banner may have referred to the completion of the
Abraham Lincoln’s
tour, rather than victory in Iraq.