Abraham Lincoln Quotes
It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones, and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other.
Lincoln, Abraham. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Edited by Roy P. Basler, vol. 5, Rutgers University Press, 1953, p. 50.
Written when he was forced to share command with General Francois Kellerman.
He lost the vote on this issue, and the Congress created the first committee to investigate and oversee military affairs.
He was objecting to the current crop of senior military officer who have little experience in fighting and much in academic, strategic and technical training. Many however see him as a dinosaur who does not realized the complex nature of the modern military missions. In general, we have won almost all of our fighting battles but often failed in our maintaining civil society, occupation, nation building, military procurement, preventing sexual assault of our own troops by our own soldiers, assuring mental health of our soldiers. Hackworth, detractors argue, wants to change what already works and ignore what does not.
George Washington had been appointed by the Continental Congress as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army but was politic about keeping Congress informed and not appear to be usurping authority. He asked Adams for an opinion of whether his authority reached beyond Boston to include the defense of New York City. Adams had been a member of the Congress that appointed Washington. Adams reply has been used as precedent for the broad authority of the President as Commander in Chief by those claiming broad Presidential power since.
The President told McNamara that if the administration does not send the troops the Generals want, they will be blamed for any military failures that occur. If they do send all the troops that the Joint Chiefs wanted, they would be going far beyond the limits that the Defense Secretary recommended and the President would have preferred. JBJ felt he really had no political choice. He authorized the wanted troops further escalating the war. See his special assistant’s question about that decision in {617151}.
He fought in Algeria and other counterinsurgencies and then studied them. He wrote the classic book on counterinsurgency warfare. After all the mistakes the U. S. made after the successful invasion of Iraq, his book and doctrine were very influential in the change in strategy and tactics that turned the Iraq War in our favor.
Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy.
