Adam Hochschild Quotes
As the First World War made painfully clear, when politicians and generals lead nations into war, they almost invariably assume swift victory, and have a remarkably enduring tendency not to foresee problems that, in hindsight, seem obvious.
Hochschild, Adam. To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, p. xv.
Although the two men differed on a very important issue, each admired the other and acquitted themselves politely throughout. Congress explicitly gave the President the powers that he had exercised and won the dispute. But Dixon had also won, and upheld the law as it existed until it was changed.
Ikle wrote this over a decade before both the military and civilian leaders fell into this trap in the 1994 Iraq War.
He lost the vote on this issue, and the Congress created the first committee to investigate and oversee military affairs.
See a similar sentiment by Tallyrand
The General refused. He had already achieved a strategic victory and it was only a matter of time when the Dutch would withdraw on their own as their supply lines were cut off and the populations wanted them out.
Ruling group of France during the French Revolution. The purchase and transportation of an army in the field was a very expensive element of war and was very difficult as well. The Directory urged its generals to live off the land and get their food from the enemy country they were invading. Rarely did they pay for it but typically just took it from the civilians. Napoleon who served under the directory took this principle one step further. He also stole the invaded country’s art—paintings and statues mostly. These he sent back to Paris where they were sold to rich people. This way he could pay the salaries of the troops and buy more weapons and ammunition. Napoleon could conquer so much territory because France did not have to pay for the military effort as other countries did. This is one of the major reasons for example that the Louvre Museum in Paris has so many great Italian and Spanish paintings.
The “surge” was the short term injection of a large number of American combat troops into Iraq when the Iraq War was going badly. President George W. Bush, who at the urging of Vice President Cheney and the neoconservatives had invaded Iraq and while the invasion went well the administration botched the so-called peace and America was in the midst of a Iraqi civil war. Bush went ahead with the surge despite the advice of the Joint Chiefs. What makes the quotation particularly interesting, beyond the fact that the senior military advice was ignored, was that the President had always campaigned on the principle that the President should listen to the senior American Military officials on military tactics and strategy. He like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and other presidents found that the military leadership perspective was often very narrow and not even militarily infallible. The Iraq War turned in our favor after the surge albeit that there have been arguments since then as to whether or not the surge was the reason or was it due to other factors which occurred at the same time. Probably, all were factors.
The War Plan that the Germans had developed--{642092}—had gone awry at the battle of the Marne in late 1914.
Adam Hochschild is an American author, journalist, historian and lecturer. His best-known works include King Leopold's Ghost (1998), To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918 (2011), Bury the Chains (2005), The Mirror at Midnight (1990), The Unquiet Ghost (1994), and Spain in Our Hearts (2016).
