Depth & Breadth & Perspective

That's what you get in the writings of Victor Davis Hanson, as in this column today at NRO:

.... Indeed, it is hard not to acknowledge that war seems endemic to the human species. Such old-style collisions of thousands of soldiers were supposed to be part of an ancient age, not to be revisited in a post-Enlightenment, post-heroic age of learned men and women. But until the nature of man changes, war tragically will always be with us, and it is valuable to note the ironies of the present conflict, which are as old as the very idea of yet another 19th-century-style advance of invasion, liberation, and occupation.

Great marches often entail enormous risks because, as columns slam deeply into enemy country, supply lines thin and the enormous convoys that bring up food, water, and fuel from an increasingly distant rear sometimes in transit nearly devour the very supplies they carry. Napoleon, the Panzers of 1941, and even George S. Patton all were plagued by the very rapidity and extent of their own advances. They all eventually ran out of supplies, even as their armies gradually shrunk in order to garrison captured ground to the rear. Sherman escaped the paradox — but only by feeding his army from the countryside, convinced that for a landed society like the Confederacy it would be almost sacrilegious for plantation owners to scorch their own earth before the path of Union armies. Alexander the Great cached his supplies in advance, but even he often found himself nearly destitute, and eventually ruined his army not far away in the Gedrosian desert.

Thus it is nearly impossible to recall a similar advance that has traveled so far, so fast, with so few losses, without major shortages of fuel, ammunition, and food — and without being parasitic on the surrounding countryside. What happened the last three weeks is unprecedented in military history....

(Thanks, G. Thomas.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 04/11/03 02:58:34 PM
Categorized as War.