December 17, 2004
HOW MANY MINUTES INTO IT WOULD TODAY'S DEMOCRATS HAVE DEMANDED WE GIVE UP? (via Rick Turley):
Sixty years ago at dawn (Paul Greenberg, December 16, 2004, Townhall)
According to the German battle plan, Bastogne was to be overrun on the second day of the operation; it never was. General Anthony McAuliffe's one-word response to the German commander's surrender terms would become a classic summation of American defiance: "Nuts!"Forced to split up and go around isolated pockets of American resistance, the German advance slowed. Unlike 1940, there was no breakout. Methodically, the Allied command drew up new defensive lines, then held. And to the South, Patton was turning the whole Third Army on a dime and hurtling to the rescue . . . .
Before it was over, the Battle of the Bulge would involve three German armies, the equivalent of 29 divisions; three American armies, or 31 divisions; and three British divisions augmented by Belgian, Canadian and French troops.
More than a million men would be drawn into the battle. The Germans would lose an estimated 100,000 irreplaceable troops, counting their killed, wounded and captured; the Americans would suffer some 80,000 casualties, including 19,000 killed - that's a rate of 500 a day - and 23,554 captured.
But the Allied forces held. And the war went on, moving across the Rhine and then into the heartland of the enemy. Against all bitter expectations, the conflict in the European theater would be over in four months.
There's a different kind of war on now, but war itself remains the same brutal experience. And it invokes the same admixture of fear and desperation, bloody miscalculation and incredible heroism, over-confidence and unchanging defeatism.
Which puts us in mind of something we wrote some time ago. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 17, 2004 1:14 PM
The retired generals and liberal press would have a 24/7 gig for sure. US troops can't fight in the snow, the brutal Belgium winter, the threat of mustard gas, bogged down in a quagmire, and on it goes hoping for the worse.
They just can't accept the infallible Yankee knowhow and can do!
Posted by: Tom Wall at December 17, 2004 1:50 PMAt that party I was at that I mentioned the other day, people were talking about how soldiers are having body armor shipped to them from home and how that demonstrated the pure evilness of Bushitler and the unjustness of this war. I thought about how, during the Battle of the Bulge, good winter boots were in such short supply that soldiers were ordering them from LL Bean. Using that logic WWII was an unjust, incompetently waged war too, but you don't see too many people trying to make that case.
Posted by: Governor Breck at December 17, 2004 1:56 PMOther than me.
Posted by: oj at December 17, 2004 2:01 PMAnd Pat Buchannan, but you're two lone voices howling in the wilderness.
Posted by: Governor Breck at December 17, 2004 2:46 PMHowlin' Mad Smith told the Navy, when planning for the Tarawa operation, to remember that his Marines 'would have nothing between them and the Japs but a khaki shirt.'
Some things change.
Although not the need for infantry
Posted by: Harry Eagar at December 17, 2004 3:31 PMOJ, today's Democrats wouldn't have given up in 1944 -- they would have fought it to the very last solider and then some, because to back off would have meant screwing Uncle Joe over on the Eastern Front. Even in their minds, some things are worth dying for; you just have to have the right people you want to save.
Posted by: John at December 17, 2004 6:23 PMWe didn't need any infantry to beat Japan.
Posted by: oj at December 17, 2004 10:07 PMHow would we have done it without infantry?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at December 18, 2004 12:57 AMThere were no infantry on the bombers.
Posted by: oj at December 18, 2004 8:18 AMMr. Judd;
It was really the submariners who beat Japan, not the bombers (except for the last two). As in Iraq, the only need for infantry would have been to reduce Japanese civilian deaths.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at December 18, 2004 10:58 AMOJ:
Ummm--since B-29s don't come equipped with water skis, the only place from which they can operate is airfields.
On islands.
That infantry won for us.
(Including the last two.)
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at December 18, 2004 8:50 PMYes, Jeff.
The subs brought Japan to the point of economic collapse but that's not the same as military defeat.
Not in the context of Japan.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at December 19, 2004 5:05 PM