Military Blunders Quotes

The British bombing of Caen beginning on D-Day in particular was stupid, counter-productive and above all very close to a war crime.

Battles are not won as frequently by geniuses as they are lost by idiots.

The Vietnam War was a tragedy waiting to happen, but one made much worse by countless errors along the way, in many of which I had a part.

Nothing is easy in war. Mistakes are always paid for in casualties and troops are quick to sense any blunder made by their commanders.

During the Second World War, the Germans took four years to build the Atlantic Wall. On four beaches it held up the Allies for about an hour; at Omaha it held up the U.S. for less than one day. The Atlantic Wall must therefore be regarded as one of the greatest blunders in military history.

Blunders are an inescapable feature of war, because choice in military affairs lies generally between the bad and the worse.

When we came to Iraq, we didn't understand the complexity - what it meant for a society to live under a brutal dictatorship with ethnic and sectarian divisions. When we first got here, we made a lot of mistakes. We were like a blind man, trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things.

Rule 1, on page 1 of the book of war, is: 'Do not march on Moscow'... Rule 2 is: Do not go fighting with your land armies in China.

War is such a dangerous business that the mistakes that come from kindness are the worst.

Most of these missions weren’t sent for intelligence. They were sent to supply nonexistent or fictitious resistance groups. They were suicide missions. They were suicidal and irresponsible.