"What Today’s Generals Could Learn from George..." Topic

… Washington's Evolution

"The nature of Washington's strategy has been a messy subject for students of the Revolutionary War. This may have occurred because most of them come to the war as political or social historians, rather than from a military perspective. For example, one otherwise knowledgeable writer, assessing Washington's powerful political position after the war, derogates his military record thusly: "Washington had not achieved this kind of adulation as a result of battlefield brilliance, having lost more fights than he won, sometimes quite badly, most notably in his incompetent failure to hold New York, where he squandered thousands of troops needlessly." He adds that, "during the war, he simply acted as if every defeat really was a victory." Such conclusions miss the point that wars are more than just a string of battles, and that battles sometimes are not the decisive factor in conflict.

One persistent point of confusion in studies of the War for Independence dates back to the nineteenth century. This is the conflation of two distinctly different approaches: a war of posts and a Fabian strategy. In the former, one fights defensive battles from fortresses; in the latter, one avoids battle altogether and seeks to defeat an enemy by wearing him out. Washington's contemporaries understood the difference. "The idea, about this time, seems to have been taken up of making our resistance a war of posts," one American officer who was there in New York at the time wrote in a memoir. "This sort of war, however, . . . in a country without regular fortresses, appears to be scarcely practicable."…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Interestingly I believe they do study Washington, Jackson, Grant, Lee, etc. in the staff colleges, etc. And even in the lower ranking officer's training/schools/courses. And many study this on our own. It was part of our craft to understand military history, etc.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand