In his 1999 book, The Soul of Battle, Victor Davis Hanson examined three great generals - Epaminondas, William Sherman, and George Patton-within the context of his broader arguments of the "western way of war." [1] Hanson argued that these three generals led democratic armies of liberation that transformed entire cultures. Although he gave high marks to the military phase of the Gulf War, he lamented that it was shortened, in essence, before we could finish the job. "Had Epaminondas led the Allies in Desert Storm," Hanson hypothesizes, "he would have set up new defensible societies for the Kurds and the Shiites, and held off the Iraqi army until both cultures were safe from retribution. Sherman would have ...cut a swath through Iraq, leveling every one of Saddam''s palaces, "torching his munitions factories and the entire industrial infrastructure of his warmaking, and destroying for good measure the homes of the Ba'ath party elite. ... Patton, of course, would have headed straight for the Iraqi capital and not left until the Republican Guard was annihilated and Saddam Hussein dead or in chains." [2] With the war in Iraq (or, as President Bush termed it, "the battle of Iraq") now substantially over, we can answer Hanson's question, "Is the age of Epaminondas, Sherman, and Patton long past?" [3] Hanson appeared to think so then, arguing, "The great danger of the present age is that democracy may never again marshal the will to march against and ultimately destroy evil." Although to my knowledge Hanson has never specifically revised these statements, he has, in numerous columns for National Review Online, later collected in a book called The Autumn of War, concluded that in fact the American military in Afghanistan conducted such an operation, but one that still fell short of a war of liberation. Iraq provides evidence that now allows us to unequivocally answer Hanson's question in the negative: the age of great generals has not past, and the United States, Britain, and other democracies can still "marshal the will to march against and ultimately destroy evil." However, the war did provide a sharp modification to the model of a single great general controlling the action, leaving us with a much different structure in which a general in the field (Gen. Tommy Franks) was supported and empowered by a civilian at home, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. These "twin towers," together, fit Hanson's description of individual generals, such as Sherman and Patton. Whether they confirm his warning that no new Shermans can arise, or whether they represent a metamorphosis that reflects a new realty of war in a 21st century democracy with its omnipresent media is another matter. When the "Battle of Iraq" began in March 2003, critics and doomsayers came out of the woodwork. Conservative media outlets have made hay out of the ridiculously wrong predictions by the "hand ringers," as Rumsfeld called them. [4] Each war has its objectives, though--a point that some conservative critics also missed-and in Iraq the goal was to separate the population from the regime, not to punish the Iraqis for sustaining Saddam's government (which it is reasonably argued, the Iraqis did not). Thus, from the outset there were clear lines drawn as to targets, and restrictions on destroying civilian areas. Clearly this would not have sat well with Sherman-if in fact the population had been supporting Saddam's henchmen the way the civilians in the South supported the Confederate armies. Was the strategy right? No one would know until sufficient assurance existed that Saddam was gone, and only then would it be possible to evaluate the support Saddam had with the people (or lack thereof). As the live pictures showed, we did not have to wait long for confirmation that Saddam was no one's hero. With that in mind, it is much more likely that a Patton would have viewed liberating Iraq the same as liberating Belgium. Had Sherman encountered any large pro-Unionist pockets, say, of city size on his way to Savannah, he may well have left them relatively untouched. That he did not confirmed in his mind the nature of the society, and the task he faced in ripping up the class system by its roots. Rumsfeld appreciated the distinction between "the Iraqi people" and Saddam, and thus relieved Franks of having to make those close calls from his field headquarters. Such a view was consistent with Bush administration claims that the people would welcome us as liberators, which did happen, if on a somewhat delayed basis. In short, just like Sherman and Patton, Franks was constrained by rules of engagement that sprang from political considerations at higher levels. Franks and the Pentagon staff devised the campaign to fit the Administration's guidelines, much the way neither Patton nor any other American general could have any assurance that the atomic bombs would be used to eliminate enemy resistance even after their reality was announced with the Trinity test. Like Epaminondas, Sherman, and Patton, Franks received wide latitude to conduct a campaign within certain general restrictions: don't involve Iran or Syria; neutralize the Scud areas as soon as possible; save the oil fields; and above all, eliminate Saddam or, at the very least, destroy his ability to control troops in the field. Hanson's liberators fought with similar restrictions. Sherman did not have the opportunity to pillage in border states, nor would he have attempted to do so, because he understood the strategic plan. Patton, to a greater extent, did not. Given the late arrival of Patton in France, it is difficult to ascertain how negatively he might have shaped the war, but if he alienated the British enough, he could have jeopardized Allied landings of materials through Holland and if he antagonized the Russians sufficiently, he might have unwittingly provoked further incursions westward that the Anglo/American armies were not capable of resisting. Hanson rightly points to a free Czechoslovakia as a potential gain from unleashing Patton, but the drawbacks could just as well have included a permanent occupation of Austria by the Soviets. Whereas Patton was responsible through a chain of command to Bradley, Eisenhower, Marshall, then ultimately FDR, Franks essentially reported only to Rumsfeld, who in turn was handed working control of the war-a far different role than George Marshall held as Chief of Staff in the World War II, and even from the relationship between Sherman and Grant, who himself allowed his subordinates, for better or worse, to display extensive individual initiative. Indeed, Franks compares better to Grant than Sherman when it came to style of command, equipping his field generals with the overall strategy then turning them loose. Like Sherman, however,' Franks was permitted wide latitude in the timing and nature of the overall Iraq war. As he and Rumsfeld made clear in numerous press conferences (which the media seemed unable to report with any understanding or insight), the plan involved three phases that could be put into operation simultaneously, or in any order individually. The first of these "compartments" involved special operations (which included assassination of Saddam and his hench- men; targeting of specific buildings or units from the ground; and coordination with local Iraqi resistors and/or defectors, as well as with the Kurds). Air power constituted the second, which included both strategic bombing (of the most precise type ever witnessed, in which individual buildings were targeted) and, later, tactical air support. Third, the ground phase brought the same traditional tanks, armored personnel carriers, and infantry that have always comprised ground operations. Rumsfeld empowered Franks, though, to move in any order he determined best to accomplish the major objectives, save making the call on assassinating Saddam, which President George Bush did with little hesitation. Consequently, after the initial strike on March 20, an intensive air strike took out Saddam's headquarters and, according to most accounts, either injured him or rendered him virtually incommunicado for the remainder of the war. Franks immediately moved with the ground campaign to seize the oil wells and prevent their destruction, then advanced northward along two large pincer-type prongs while the British took Basra and Um-qadr. Franks' surprise (and rapid) insertion of a main ground force completely shocked the Iraqis, who had been prepared for the "shock and awe" air campaign. (Indeed, "shock and awe" remains one of the mysteries of the war, as it never seemed to unfold in anywhere near the levels of destruction that had been leaked to the press before hostilities.) [5] At that point, Franks revealed his Pattonesque side-or, more accurately, his MacArthuresque side-swinging around points of strong resistance and cutting them off, surging ahead to al-Nasariyah, then Baghdad itself in less than two weeks. Meanwhile, the genuine air campaign commenced, demonstrating uncanny precision and target identification capabilities. The air campaign clearly benefited not only from superior technology with satellites and aircraft systems, but from the third component in the allied arsenal, the special operations forces, many of whom were on the ground inside Baghdad with regularity. While little is known about the activities of the special operations forces, it is clear in retrospect that they successfully conducted at least four major missions: 1) they secured the support of the Kurds in the north and destroyed terrorist bases there; 2) they helped regular Army and Marine units secure the air fields in western Iraq and assisted in shutting down the "Scud boxes" there; 3) they provided on-ground targeting for air strikes; and 4) they supplied regular, and apparently fairly reliable, information about the ground situation inside the major cities. Information on a fifth critical service they provided is tightly held, but it appears that they also negotiated with Iraqi commanders for them to either not resist or, in some cases, defect. While Franks skillfully juggled the three components of his forces, Rumsfeld proved to be the "anti-Eisenhower." Far from reigning in his generals, Rumsfeld conducted regular briefings and made routine public appearances in which he was supportive and laudatory of Franks and his staff. Moreover, Rumsfeld essentially deflected criticism of Franks about the numbers of troops on the ground and the decision to by-pass strong points, fielding the questions in his own briefings. (Franks did so, from time to time, but for the most part the Secretary of Defense allowed the general to run the war). Questions of insufficient troop strength arose at the first sign of any solid Iraqi resistance. Rumsfeld responded that the plan he and Franks had agreed to involved a "rolling deployment" in which troops would be inserted steadily, as the need arose, but at any time further troop arrivals could be canceled (and were). Most of the criticism of insufficient force came from former military people, including a few, such as Ralph Peters, who supported the action in Iraq. Whether additional ground forces would have made a difference in any single battle is highly dubious; and whether now, some 45 days later, additional troops would make the cities more secure may be somewhat more debatable, but is still not obvious. According to one sergeant in the field, "If there had been any more men, we would have been tripping over each other." [6] Imagine weighing Sherman down with an additional 40,000 men! He already had too large a force to move rapidly, and had to break up his army into two large columns so as to not slow it down. Likewise, it is questionable whether additional forces would have made Patton more formidable. By April 9, American troops had entered Baghdad after only two weeks of fighting, and the bronze statue of Saddam came down, ripped out by gleeful Iraqis and American winches. The British had stabilized Basra, and while much remained to be done, virtually all key objectives had been taken. Fewer than 150 military personnel were killed, and of those, many died in "friendly fire" incidents and a lunatic grenade attack by an airborne soldier on his comrades. More Americans and British died from wounds received by American and British guns or missiles-and accidents-than from Iraqi resistance. At last count, the total number of U.S. soldiers or airmen killed by Iraqis was under 30. For the third time in 15 years, including Operation Enduring Freedom, the "western way of war" had proven overwhelming. Pattonesque tactics of circling behind entrenched positions and, in the Gulf War, a rapid flank swing that enveloped the enemy, when combined with superior western technology, and, above all, a commitment to total victory, demonstrated that not only can democratic armies of liberation still march, but, in the hands of capable commanders, they can achieve unprecedented battlefield success. Victor Hanson may be right that a single general can no longer operate outside the command structure as did Sherman and Patton, but he did not take into account what happens when a general's superiors share his strategic assessments. In the case of Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld was the civilian face of the war that permitted Tommy Franks to conduct his military operations largely free of political (though not press) criticism. Perhaps this is a new paradigm for democratic armies; or perhaps it is an anomaly. What is obvious is that had either man failed in his task, the other would have paid the price as well, along with many fighting men and women. To answer Hanson's question then, if the age of Sherman and Patton is past, the twin towers of Rumsfeld and Franks delivered a forceful "No." New realities have demanded new relationships, but a William T. Sherman or George Patton is still welcome in the armed forces of the United States. Perhaps more important, the war in Iraq also responded to Hanson's concern that "democracy may never again marshal the will to march against and ultimately destroy evil." It can, and it did so-resoundingly. NOTES [1] Victor Davis Hanson, The Soul of Battle (New York: Free Press, 1999). [2] Ibid., 411. [3] Ibid., 409. [4] See, for example, "Hall of Shame," National Review Online, April 10, 2003, for the comments of R. W. Appel, Chris Matthews, Barry McCaffrey, and Maureen Dowd, at http://www.nationalreview.com/ nr comment/nr comment41003.asp. [5] I remain convinced that "shock and awe" was a disinformation campaign to disorient Saddam's ability to determine when, and where, we would strike. Given the clear objectives of protecting the Iraqi "infrastructure," "shock and awe" simply was not compatible with the broader strategy in any way. [6] This comment was made in an interview with Rick Leventhal on Fox News. 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