The Politics of Victory. - 'Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime' - book review

National Review, July 15, 2002 by Richard Lowry

War always needs that firm hand, and lately it has been lacking in the U.S. Cohen argues that by the time of the Persian Gulf War, not only did the civilian leadership seek not to interfere with military operations, it allowed the military to make important political judgments. Colin Powell had an integral role in calling an end to the ground war at its 100th hour, and in keeping its goals from stretching beyond merely removing Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. The first President Bush had disastrously bowed to the illusion that war was a matter of mere battlefield management. But whether or not the Gulf War had truly been won was a more complicated -- a more subjective, and more political -- question than simply whether all Iraqi soldiers had left Kuwait.

Of course, in a meaningful sense, the war hadn't been won -- which is why the current President Bush is facing the same questions that confronted his father. His military is still a timid post-Vietnam force that doesn't like the political complications that would be involved in, say, occupying Iraq. So, it apparently has a "case of the slows," as Lincoln would put it, when it comes to finishing off Saddam. America's generals may not be, in Churchill's words, "psalm-singing, uniformed defeatists," but they do bring to mind one of Churchill's observations: "You may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman, or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together -- what do you get? The sum total of their fears!" Whether Bush can move the generals will go a long way to determining whether he joins the ranks of great wartime leaders.

Cohen writes that Churchill's success depended "less on professional expertise than on wide reading and massive common sense." If Bush's common sense isn't necessarily "massive," he certainly has plenty of it. And if his reading hasn't been all that wide, he could do worse than picking up this fine book, which almost reads like an instruction manual to handling the tasks ahead.