"Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!"

Victor Davis Hanson considers what Patton would say about the present war:

Patton was sometimes asked where he was going. Berlin was always his answer, along with quips about Hitler soon to be in chains. This was no mere braggadocio, but revealed strategic insight that there could be nothing less than unconditional surrender, the occupation of the enemy heartland, and the humiliation accruing from taking the German Fuhrer—only that way might Nazism be discredited. We bristle at such Patton Manichaeism in the present postmodern war, forgetting that we shall not be through with Islamic fascism until the governments of Iran and Syria cease their support, al Qaedists are killed or in cuffs, and the greater Middle East autocracies terrified of offering succor terrorist offshoots. Anything less as our goal and we will be in a perpetual quagmire of reactive warfare.

Finally, like Thucydides, Patton appreciated that the emotions that sophisticated people sometimes think are so unimportant—such as fear, pride, and honor—in fact are what drive us humans, and therefore must be addressed in any total war. We chuckle at his attention to dress, protocol, medals, speeches, and theatrics; but this obsession was not vanity as much as acceptance that soldiers are proud and sensitive beings, and must be rewarded and punished in visible ways, war being the essence of human emotion. By the same token, military operations are more than just ground taken and held, but powerfully symbolic, conveying to third-parties either hope or dejection when they see armies routed from the battlefield.

Today, millions in the Islamic world are watching the West struggle against Islamic fascism. Perhaps deep down inside they prefer, logically and with some idealism, to live under Western-style freedom and democratic auspices. And yet nationalism, pride, religion, and ethnic solidarity war with reason, combining to produce far greater resentment against a powerful, Western America, even when it brings the very freedom that the Arabs for decades have said they wished. A modern Patton would not be bothered by such inconsistency, but rather have made sure that he had not only defeated the terrorists and their supporters, but had done so in such damaging fashion that none in the Middle East might find such a repugnant cause at all romantic, bringing as it did utter ruin as the wage of the wrath of the United States.

Patton, who was both learned and yet not smug about the power of the primordial emotions, understood perfectly the irrational nature of warfare, and the effect that utter defeat or glorious victory have upon an otherwise rational people. No wonder he hated war defined as a purely bureaucratic enterprise or a purely material and industrial challenge, inasmuch as neither can change the hearts of men that need to be changed, usually increase the body count, and rarely lead to lasting peace. We should remember wild-eyed George Patton in our Fallujahs to come.

Read the whole thing.