Military Leaders From The United States

"Kennedy was trying to keep us out of war. I was trying to help him keep us out of war. And General Curtis LeMay, whom I served under as a matter of fact in World War II, was saying "Let's go in, let's totally destroy Cuba.""

"In 1943, 40,000 died in the German city of Hamburg, many in the firestorm that swept the city as a result of Allied bombing, and in 1945 perhaps a further 35,000 in Dresden. (The figure for the latter, like the choice of the target itself, remains highly controversial.) The American bombing of Tokyo that same year with incendiary bombs (a weapon chosen deliberately because so many structures in the city were made of wood) destroyed sixteen square miles and left 80,000 to 100,000 dead and 1 million homeless. Major-General Curtis LeMay, whose responsibility the raid was, said the Japanese were ‘scorched and boiled and baked to death’. It was no oversight that mass bombings were not included in the Allied indictment of Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg trials."

"In the course of our talk, I asked LeMay how concerned he had been, as commander of SAC, about the possibility of a surprise attack by a Soviet submarine on Washington. He said calmly that he had “felt satisfied” with his authority as CINCSAC to carry out his plans in that event, which was clearly a reference to the Eisenhower delegation that I had reported on at the start of the year and which Kaysen had confirmed. But before I could pursue that—the first face-to-face reference to delegated authority from a military officer I had heard outside the Pacific Command—LeMay took the discussion into territory I had never explored before. Suppose that Washington had not been hit, he said, when warning of an enemy attack came in. Should the president be part of the decision process at all, he asked us, even if he were alive and in communication? Neither Kaysen nor I had ever heard that question raised before. We waited for him to continue, which he seemed to have expected. He rolled his cigar at the corner of his mouth in a way I’d seen imitated by some of his staff officers. (His ever-present half-smoked cigar gave him a tough look, befitting his reputation. I learned later that he used it to disguise a touch of Bell’s palsy.) Speaking gruffly, he asked rhetorically, “After all, who is more qualified to make that decision [of whether to go to nuclear war on the basis of warning]: some politician who may have been in office for only a couple of months … or a man who has been preparing all his adult life to make it?” Both his lips and his voice curled contemptuously around the words “some politician.” The “p” was an explosive puff. And the personal reference seemed pointed. This was the first year of the current politician’s presidential term, in which “Lieutenant Kennedy” had held back air support from his beleaguered invasion force at the Bay of Pigs. (And, as I learned later, the year he had refrained from knocking down the new Berlin Wall and then refused to send combat troops to Vietnam, having earlier rejected sending them to Laos.) The general making the comment, for years the commander of the Strategic Air Command, was the man who had planned and directed the immolation of a hundred thousand Japanese civilians in the firebombing of Tokyo on March 9–10, 1945, and five months after that had commanded the atomic-bomb strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

"Precisely to compensate for an impression of inexperience after the events of the last few months, Kennedy just then named as chief of staff of the Air Force General Curtis LeMay, the man with the toughest militarist image in the armed services. This despite the fact that a number of observers, including Robert Kennedy, would report incidents when certain military men—LeMay above all—would give Kennedy the impression that they were essentially insane, madly reckless, or out of touch with reality. (These included, the next year, LeMay’s strongly worded advice on the Sunday morning in 1962 when Khrushchev announced he was dismantling his missiles in Cuba that the president should go ahead and attack Cuba anyway.) Yet it was Kennedy who had named LeMay as chief of staff of the Air Force on June 30, 1961, and kept him there."

"An excellent pilot and officer equally capable in both combat and staff, LeMay was typical of the bomber-minded generals who emerged from World War II to dominate the Air Force during the Cold War."

"I used to receive a hundred calls a year from people who wanted me to get into the Green Room at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, because that's where the Air Force stored all the material gathered on UFOs. I once asked Curtis LeMay if I could get in that room, and he just gave me holy hell. He said, 'Not only can't you get into it but don't you ever mention it to me again.'"

"After the first International Days of Protest in October, 1965, Senator Mansfield criticized the "sense of utter irresponsibility" shown by the demonstrators. He had nothing to say then, nor has he since, about the "sense of utter irresponsibility" shown by Senator Mansfield and others who stand by quietly and vote appropriations as the cities and villages of North Vietnam are demolished, as millions of refugees in the South are driven from their homes by American bombardment. He has nothing to say about the moral standards or the respect for international law of those who have permitted this tragedy. I speak of Senator Mansfield precisely because he is not a breast-beating superpatriot who wants America to rule the world, but is rather an American intellectual in the best sense, a scholarly and reasonable man -- the kind of man who is the terror of our age. Perhaps this is merely a personal reaction, but when I look at what is happening to our country, what I find most terrifying is not Curtis LeMay, with his cheerful suggestion that we bomb everybody back into the stone age, but rather the calm disquisitions of the political scientists on just how much force will be necessary to achieve our ends, or just what form of government will be acceptable to us in Vietnam. What I find terrifying is the detachment and equanimity with which we view and discuss an unbearable tragedy. We all know that if Russia or China were guilty of what we have done in Vietnam, we would be exploding with moral indignation at these monstrous crimes."

"The practical effects of the policies are less interesting to policy makers in Washington than the spirit in which they’re intended. When you’re pulling the trigger, the spirit is always pure. Liberals believed that Curtis LeMay dropped bombs because he was a crazed warmonger who took pleasure in hurting people. Liberals believe they bomb countries for the same reason they once opposed bombing countries, because they want to make the world a better place."

"Lemay's style was to have his best crews set the highest standards, then provide more than adequate training and flying time for other crews to reach those standards of proficiency. He also insisted on scrupulously accurate records and very demanding evaluation procedures, knowing that he had inherited an air force that had reflexively gone from the rigors of war to the pleasures of a really well equipped flying club, one that paid you for belonging. It was a long process, for SAC was expanding rapidly. When the author joined the Strategic Air Command in January 1953, as a green second lieutenant freshly graduated from flying school, he was puzzled by the flying club atmosphere. Flying the big Boeing B-50s was done as a sport, radar bombing, navigation, and gunnery scores were fudged, and the principle occupation seemed to be playing hearts in the briefing room. Then one bright day Lemay's inspection team came in. Heads rolled, rigorous standards were introduced and enforced, and reporting became squeaky clean. Oddly enough, everyone still retaining his head was happier with the new system."

"When LeMay arrived to take over command, he was disappointed but not surprised at what he found- senior Air Force officers were aware that the Strategic Air Command in 1948 was woefully lacking in proficiency, discipline, and professionalism. He went to work immediately to correct things, using on-the-spot leadership to do so."

"If his politics offended some, there could be no censure of his military record. No one, friend or foe, doubted for a moment that he made SAC into an elite force, capable of strategic operations on a scale never before conceived and conducted at a level of proficiency that became the standard for the USAF. Inevitably the USAF became the benchmark to which the Army and the Navy, not to mention many foreign armed forces around the world, would aspire... LeMay was a genius at organization, and the Management Control System (MCS) he installed at SAC Headquarters (and which was replicated at lower levels of command) is but one example of his style. The MCS gave LeMay the capability to spot every breakdown or potential breakdown within the SAC system, and because lower-echelon commanders were aware of his system and used it themselves, potential breakdowns were usually detected and corrected before they occurred. LeMay also had the capacity for choosing good subordinates, delegating authority to them and letting them do their job. Not all of his choices were popular. His deputy and later successor at SAC, General Thomas S. Power, had a reputation for cold-hearted efficiency that many considered bordering on sadism. LeMay knew that Power was tough- but he also knew that he got his job done, and that was what counted."

"After his retirement in 1965, LeMay ran as a Vice Presidential candidate in George Wallace's 1968 third-party bid, a move that tarnished his reputation in the eyes of many. One time, later in his life, he was in the company of several other retired four-star generals, including his former aide David C. Jones, himself a former Chief of Staff of the Air Force and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The evening had been mellowed with some drinks, and the conversation took a daring turn- for retired or not, LeMay was still LeMay- to the question of why the general had supported Wallace. Jones recalls LeMay saying that he had not run because of political ambition- he had none, and knew that Wallace could only lose- but because he feared the direction the country would take if the Democratic candidate won. LeMay told the little group of intimates, friends for many long years, "Don't tell me about George Wallace. I know all about George Wallace. I knew he had no chance of winning. But I ran with him anyway because I thought he could take enough votes away from Humphrey. Humphrey would have been a disaster for this country as President." Always the strategist, LeMay wanted to add enough strength to Wallace's ticket to split the Democratic vote and thus defeat Humphrey. In essence, LeMay was making a last great sacrifice, his political reputation, to serve his country's cause as he saw it."

"No other U.S. military force commander so imprinted his personality and ideals upon his organization as did LeMay. SAC became LeMay personified- but only after tremendous effort on his part. There were no criticisms of his intellect or industry, nor any suggestion of patronage, but the hard, and often seemingly cold, manner in which he drove SAC gave rise to many stories about him, most of them apocryphal. In 1951, at the age of forty-six, he was confirmed as a full four-star general, the youngest since Ulysses S. Grant. LeMay was "the Iron Eagle" to his admirers, and simply "Iron Ass" to detractors who feared him. Some of his seemingly tough demeanor probably stemmed from a deadened nerve that left his face immobile and unsmiling. In practice, LeMay took better care of his troops than anyone else in the Air Force, and his tenure at SAC was filled with achievements such as improved housing, pay, recreation, promotion, medical care, and other vital personnel requirements. The most important assessment of LeMay was defined by the loyalty and the high morale of the people he commanded."

"You know the difference between a politician and a statesman? Here is the LeMay definition: a politician is a high-profile hooker looking for money to fund a campaign so that he can be in position to be owned by a political party, doing their bidding like a slave. Johnson fit that category. A statesman is a politician whose allegiance is only to their nation, and who, despite the feelings of others, does what he believes in his gut is in the best interest of his country, politics be damned. That even means doing something that may cost him his career, but he takes the moral high ground as he sees it, to do what must be done. That was Churchill. That's the difference. Ronald Reagan is a statesman, and make a note of it- we may not have any more in the future. They are a damned dying breed. That also applies to military commanders. You can have a charismatic, friendly, and amiable type of leader, but that is a difficult position to hold when you have to maintain discipline. It can be done, but it is hard. Then there is the hard-ass, no-holds-barred, get-it-fucking-done leader who pushes his men and expects ever-better results afterward. The easygoing leader may be liked more by his men, but the hard-ass will sure as shit have their attention, and if she shares the dangers with them, he will have their respect. Respect is everything."

"Any Ivy League academy asshole can issue orders and take the credit. What matters is when you place your own ass on the line, and your men know that you are not some armchair commander asking them to risk death while you enjoy the good life. Morale is everything, and you do not build it by typing goddamned reports and having cocktail parties. Strange, LBJ, and that ilk were like that. Those motherfuckers were whores paid to screw the public. And you know what? They never lost one night's sleep over it. They never had their ass in danger, and they never waited for the knock on the door telling them that their son was killed, all because some asshole with an Ivy League degree and a champagne glass in his hand decided that their boy did not need the money or weapons or even the fucking political support to stay alive."

"I hope that the United States of America has not yet passed the peak of honor and beauty, and that our people can still sustain certain simple philosophies at which some miserable souls feel it incumbent to sneer. I refer to some of the Psalms, and to the Gettysburg Address, and the Scout Oath. I refer to the Lord's Prayer, and to that other oath which a man must take when he stands with hand uplifted, and swears that he will defend his Country. None of those words described, or the beliefs behind them, can be sung to modern dance music. But they are there, like rocks and oaks, structurally sound and proven. They are more than rocks and oaks; they are the wing and the prayer of the future. Whether we venture into realms of Space in our latest vehicles, or whether we are concerned principally with overhauling our engines and loading our ordinance here on the ground, we will still be part of a vast proud mechanism which must function cleanly if it is to function at all. Crank her up. Let's go."

"Apply whatever force it is necessary to employ, to stop things quickly. The main thing is stop it. The quicker you stop it, the more lives you save."

"We’re at war with Japan. We were attacked by Japan. Do you want to kill Japanese, or would you rather have Americans killed?"

"China has The Bomb. [...] Sometime in the future--25, 50, 75 years hence--what will the situation be like then? By that time the Chinese will have the capability of delivery too. That's the reason some schools of thinking don't rule out a destruction of the Chinese military potential before the situation grows worse than it is today. It's bad enough now."

"...Native annalists may look sadly back from the future on that period when we had the atomic bomb and the Russians didn't. Or when the Russians had acquired (through connivance and treachery of Westerns with warped minds) the atomic bomb - and yet still didn't have any stockpile of the weapons. That was the era when we might have destroyed Russia completely and not even skinned our elbows doing it."

"I'd like to see a more aggressive attitude on the part of the United States. That doesn't mean launching an immediate preventive war..."

"Today we hear much discussion about "overkill." The people who are talking "overkill" knowingly or unknowingly support the adoption of a minimum-deterrence strategy. In advocating that strategy, they are addressing the wrong problem. Instead of belaboring our ability to destroy the population of an aggressor nation, they should consider what we require to save American lives and property by preventing war, or by gaining a decision as quickly as possible if war occurs. That is the proper and traditional task of the United States armed forces. The counterforce strategy which we are pursuing and analyzing today provides our best prospect for success in that task."

"My solution to the problem would be to tell [the North Vietnamese Communists] frankly that they've got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression or we're going to bomb them into the Stone Age. And we would shove them back into the Stone Age with Air power or Naval power—not with ground forces."

"Point is, the person in public life is bound to receive a lot of half-witted criticism. He's a natural-born target for it. It is unnecessary to go to any extraordinary lengths to maintain a picture of lily-white purity and innocence. If you let things like that worry you, very soon you run out of worrying time. There are too many real problems up there on the board. Whatever you do, somebody's going to criticize you. Forget criticism."

"The German people themselves were historically responsible for the Nazi hierarchy and the Nazi war machine. No little band of hand-picked zealots alone could have wrought such a fantastic massacre. It had to be done with people. It was done with and by the German people. We can look back and salute a comparative handful of clear-minded and courageous Teutonic humans who were tortured out of existence by the Schutzstaffel or who decayed in concentration camps. But they were a distinct minority. The bulk of the German population was behind Hitler, or pretended to be. The bulk of the population applauded him, sustained him, or (in the less evil instances) stood idly by, or turned their backs on the whole thing."

"Actually, I think it's more immoral to use less force than necessary, than it is to use more. if you use less force, you kill off more of humanity in the long run, because you are merely protracting the struggle."

"Again they thought of those pictures of the embers of Japan, the black stuff hanging around on bulletin boards. I guess intermingled with that was the thought, "How soon can we go home?" Volunteers always think that in a war, and mainly ours was a volunteer or a drafted force, as we all know. You can't blame them for thinking that. You can thank them for working like demons, which is what they did."

"General Curtis LeMay, commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command many years ago, used to insist that all his subordinates think positively. One day a colonel ran into General LeMay's office and shouted, "General, we have an insurmountable problem!""

"I'll tell you what war is about, you've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting."

"As far as casualties were concerned I think there were more casualties in the first attack on Tokyo with incendiaries than there were with the first use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The fact that it's done instantaneously, maybe that's more humane than incendiary attacks, if you can call any war act humane. I don't, particularly, so to me there wasn't much difference. A weapon is a weapon and it really doesn't make much difference how you kill a man. If you have to kill him, well, that's the evil to start with and how you do it becomes pretty secondary. I think your choice should be which weapon is the most efficient and most likely to get the whole mess over with as early as possible."

"She America] escaped the ruin visited upon other nations because she was given time to prepare and because of distance. [In the next war] distance will be academic [and no preparation time, too]."

"If I see that the Russians are amassing their planes for an attack, I'm going to knock the shit out of them before they take off the ground."

"We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another, and some in South Korea too.… Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure?"

"Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier."

"There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders."

"Dear Rosy, In June Strategic Air Command had fourteen accidents. Eleven of the fourteen were in the Fifteenth Air Force. Do something. Sincerely, Curtis E. LeMay, Lieutenant General, USAF, Commanding."

"When two of his companies were engaged by a large hostile force, Colonel Haig landed amid a hail of fire, personally took charge of the units, called for artillery and air fire support and succeeded in soundly defeating the insurgent force ... the next day a barrage of 400 rounds was fired by the Viet Cong, but it was ineffective because of the warning and preparations by Colonel Haig. As the barrage subsided, a force three times larger than his began a series of human wave assaults on the camp. Heedless of the danger himself, Colonel Haig repeatedly braved intense hostile fire to survey the battlefield. His personal courage and determination, and his skillful employment of every defense and support tactic possible, inspired his men to fight with previously unimagined power. Although his force was outnumbered three to one, Colonel Haig succeeded in inflicting 592 casualties on the Viet Cong ... HQ US Army, Vietnam, General Orders No. 2318 (May 22, 1967)"

"From the liberal atmosphere of the Notre Dame campus to the dominated life of a West Point Plebe proved to be a step tinged with reluctance to Alex. As ever, unchanged, he has glided through the years with a gay sincerity that has won him an abundance of loyal friends. His pleasures lean toward the athletic and social. Consequently, he has developed a skill in both. Strong convictions and even stronger ambitions mingled with a deep understanding of his fellow soldier should form a "Warrior's Chariot" to carry Alex to the top."

"Let them march all they want as long as they continue to pay their taxes."

"That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude."

"Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security. The Ettinger Report, 2005-05-11."

"Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president and the secretary of state, in that order, and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. As for now, I'm in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course."

"If they turn on their radars we're going to blow up their goddamn SAMs [surface-to- air missiles]. They know we own their country. We own their airspace…We dictate the way they live and talk. And that’s what’s great about America right now. It’s a good thing, especially when there’s a lot of oil out there we need."

"Peering through his field glasses, George Custer saw all that he needed to see. He turned to his brother, the privileged lieutenant, and to his senior staff men. "What do you say? Shall we give those poor devils a good thrashing?""

"As Hancock issued the order to Mott to move his division up onto White Oak Road, a cavalcade appeared behind his trail brigade. "Better hold off," Hancock told the division commander. "See what the hell they want. Just get de Trobriand placed. Then come back." His leg scourged him doubly. He almost felt like pounding his thigh with his fists, to beat out the pus and hammer the pain to death. Preceded by outriders, Grant and Meade came cantering side by side, trailed by more flags than a Fourth of July celebration in Philadelphia. Behind the banners, enough well-mounted cavalrymen followed to be put to good use, had they not been retained to serve as palace guards. Their uniforms were mud-clotted now, to the delight of troopers less fortunate."

"Rud Hayes watched his division dissolve. What little he could see of it, anyway. He had just assured Kitching, an insolent young colonel newly attached, that his men would hold against any Reb assault, when thousands of screaming Johnnies had burst from the fog behind his left flank. Stunned, the one brigade he had managed to get into line buckled, then broke and disintegrated. Now he rode among swirls of air made visible, alternately ordering and begging his men to rally. Of all the brave soldiers he had led through three years of battles, few heeded him now."

"We know how to deal with apocalyptic blood-thirsty fanatics. We have two thousand years of historical examples in various religions of these death cults exploding out of the mainstream religion. And in two thousand years there is not a single example of these wildfire death cults being put down without extreme violence. Not a single example. But the Obama Administration doesn't know history, they don't want to know history, they don't want to deal with reality. And the reality is: That the way you deal with Islamic State - these blood-thirsty, blood-drunken terrorists - is to kill them, keep on killing them until you kill the last one, then you kill his pet goat! That's how you deal with them."

"A mighty burst of rain assaulted the canvas, conjuring Gettysburg: his hour of glory, of triumph. The smoke, confusion, and carnage had calmed to reveal his army victorious. Lee had been defeated. Lee! His elation on that July afternoon had soared beyond all words, beyond his deathly exhaustion, and he had thought, mistakenly, that all might be well thereafter. Only to spend the night wrapped in an oilcloth, sitting on a rock amid the mud, under a tree that channeled the rain into torrents. Every roof had been required for the wounded his victory cost. The wounded, in their legions. Damn Washington, and damn the New York papers. None of the men in frock coats and cravats understood the human side of an army. How they had howled- and were howling still- because he had not chased Lee like an ill-trained dog. They refused to hear that three hard days of battle had left tens of thousands of wounded men in his care and thousands more as prisoners in his hands. They did not want to hear that his army, too, had been mauled and thrown into confusion, that officers had been slaughtered by the hundredfold, that ammunition pouches and caissons had been emptied, that entire divisions had nothing to eat and no water untainted by blood, that the corpses of the brave baked in the sun, or simply that he had done the best he could. The Army of the Potomac had worked a miracle, sending Lee home in shame, but it had not been wonder enough for the stay-at-homes."

"He had to do the honorable thing, he understood that. Today of all days, it was vital to remain a gentleman, to speak faithfully and betray no emotions to his career's executioner. His family seemed ever destined for disappointment: his father, now him. Yet, he had done much, giving them all the victory they needed, that victory and more... Only to have a low cabal poison Lincoln against him. Liars. Devils. Whoremongers. Intimating, in the wake of Mine Run, that he sympathized with the Confederacy, that he was unfit to command, even that he was cowardly. All because he would not squander thousands of men to no purpose. Oh, yes. Had he overruled all military judgment, common sense, and decency and ordered Warren to attack, had he sacrificed five thousand soldiers in an act of folly, he might have been forgiven. But powerful men never spotted near a battlefield had seized upon his refusal to charge Lee's entrenchments, coiling like snakes to strike his reputation. Their ardor for slaughter repelled him. Perhaps he was better off being relieved. He could put this filth behind him, this infinite human vice of cold ambition. He could not understand how men could tell a public lie and then stand by it. He was not made for the politics of command, not for politics of any kind. He knew that his notions of honor seemed quaint, even laughable, to the likes of Sickles, Hooker, and Butterfield. But he could not imagine a life lived another way."

"To the flesh-and-blood men who struggled, before we turned them into bronze and marble."