Press on

History is replete with examples that teach us a resounding, perhaps decisive victory can be achieved if the winning side exploits its success on the battlefield and pursues the enemy when it is at its most disorganized.

All the talk lately of withdrawing from Iraq betrays an ignorance of the dangers of recoiling from hard fighting, even when continuing on seems the most difficult.

There are numerous examples where the victor routed its opponent, but held back because of fatigue, content with what it had achieved, and didn't move quickly to exploit its gains, and in so doing allowed the enemy to regroup and return, thereby costing more in the long run than would have been necessary had the opportunity been seized early on.

Here are a few examples of such battles.

* Gettysburg, 1863 - For three days the Union and Confederate armies clashed all along Cemetery Ridge. Pickett's Charge ended in disaster, and as Angus McLean said, with it the Confederate tide "swept to its crest, paused and receded". The Union army suffered over 23,000 casualties. The Confederates suffered perhaps as many as 28,000.

The Union army was bloodied and exhausted, but the Confederate army was broken and on the run. Yet, General Meade did not pursue General Lee with any kind of determination. Because of Meade's failure to crush the remnants of Lee's army, Lee was able to get back across the Potomac to Confederate territory.

Lincoln wrote to Meade and said this of Meade's lethargy:

Again, my dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee's escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not safely attack Lee last monday, how can you possibly do so South of the river, when you can take with you very few more than two thirds of the force you then had in hand? It would be unreasonable to expect, and I do not expect you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it.

Lincoln was right. The war went on for two more bloody years. The carnage of Chickamauga, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, the Wilderness and Cold Harbor was still in the future.

* Gallipoli, 1915 This battle will be remembered forever in Britain, France, and the ANZAC nations. This attempt to knock the Ottomans out of the war and open a route into Germany from the southeast to relieve the stalemate on the Western Front cost the Allies dearly. But it did not need to happen. In his terrific book A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin describes the lost opportunities.

The major problem was that Admiral Carden was losing his nerve. Churchill had cabled him on 13 March reporting that "we have information that the Turkish Forts are short of ammunition and that the German officers have made desponding reports".
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On the afternoon of 19 March...Churchill cried out in excitement that "they've come to the end of their ammunition," as indeed that had.
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The casualties and losses from mines on 18 March had left Admiral de Robeck despondent...De Robeck was unnerved because he did not know what had caused his losses. In fact his ships had run into a single line of mines running parallel to the shore rather than across the straits...It was a one-time fluke.

Meaning the way to Constantinople was clear. Fearing the threat was too great, the navy wanted to hold back until the army could join the action. Churchill knew the way to Constantinople was open because of the ammunition shortages. Admiral de Robeck retreated, though.

If Admiral de Robeck, who had led his fleet in battle for only one day, had plunged back into battle for a second day he would have seen the enemy forces withdraw and melt away...The fleet would have steamed into Constantinople without opposition.

What came next was a similar example of missed opportunities.

At dawn on 25 April 1915, the British, Dominion and Allied armies waded ashore onto six narrow, unconnected beaches on the Gallipoli peninsula. The Turks, who had known when but not where the Allies would attack, were taken by surprise and probably could have been overwhelmed that day.
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The Allies held an overwhelming numerical superiority that day--most of Liman's forces were held in reserve at a distance from the battlefield--and at beaches Y, X and S the invasion forces could have exploited their surprise attack by advancing the destroying the small Turkish garrison in the vicinity.

By 26 April the situation had changed. Turkish reinforcements started to pour in, and in a sense it was all over.
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On 25 April 1915 the Allies could have won an easy, bloodless victory by their surprise attack; but 259 days later, when they withdrew in defeat from their last positions on the blood-soaked beaches of the Dardanelles, it emerged that they had lost one of the costliest military engagements in history. Half a million soldiers had been engaged in battle on each side, and each had suffered a quarter of a million casualties.

* Pearl Harbor, 1941 The Japanese had crushed the American fleet, but turned around and went home. Hawaii was open to invasion, the west coast of American was open to invasion. How would history have changed if the Japanese had exploited their victory and continued on?

* Antwerp and the Scheldt approaches, 1944 In early September 1944, British forces captured the port of Antwerp. A deep-water port was vital for bringing in supplies closer to the front in order to keep the drive in Western Europe pushing forward. However, the banks of the Scheldt River needed to be cleared as well, or the port would be useless. Germans along the river could attack any shipping passing between Antwerp and the Channel.

In his book Armageddon, Max Hastings describes the Allies' failure to secure the port and the approaches quickly.

At that moment, had they chosen to do so, the British could have driven onwards up the forty-mile coast of the Scheldt which linked Antwerp to the sea with nothing to stop them. The battered German Fifteenth Army, comprising 100,000 men who had lost most of their transport, would have been isolated if the British had advanced just a few miles further.
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Yet now the British made one of the gravest and most culpable errors of the campaign. They failed to perceive, as the Germans at once perceived, that Antwerp was useless as long as the Allies did not command its approaches.
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Belgian Resistance leaders warned of the vital importance of the Scheldt. Exhausted British officers, sated by the dash across Belgium they had just accomplished, brushed the civilians aside.
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While the British celebrated, refueled and rearmed, the Germans acted.
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In sixteen days, they moved 65,000 men, 225 guns, 750 trucks and 1,000 horses across the waterway north-west of Antwerp.
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Only on 13 September, nine leisurely days after Antwerp was seized, was belated action begun to clear the Scheldt approaches.
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The guns did not finally fall silent on Walcheren [an island fortress] until 8 November. The opening of the Scheldt had cost 18,000 casualties. The Royal Navy was obliged to clear 267 sea-mines before the estuary was navigable. The first Allied ship unloaded at Antwerp only on 28 November, eighty-five days after the 11th Armored Division first seized the docks. Until that date, almost every ton of Allied supplies had to be trucked or carried across the devastated French rail net from the Normandy beaches or the Channel ports.

* Iraq, 1991 After routing Saddam Hussein's armies in Kuwait and Iraq, the United States forces had a clear path to Baghdad. Hussein could have been toppled then. Instead, he was left in power. How would the last 14 years have been different if the United States had exploited its victory and finished off its enemy then?

Victor Davis Hanson was written of the need to press home the fight, even when the going seems the toughest, even when our strength fades and we weary of the fight. In this column, Hanson wrote:

In war, it is hard to know when victory is near, since the last campaigns are often the bloodiest. Yet we are seeing the foundations of a new Middle East, with terrorists scattered, jailed and dead. And, yes, victory itself is on the horizon -- but only if on this memorable day we persevere, and allow George W. Bush to finish the job.

And in this column, he wrote:

While Ted Kennedy and John Kerry pontificate about losing the war on terror, al Qaeda is nearly finished. What we have been seeing lately are its tentacles flapping about in search of prey, after the head has been smashed — still for a time lethal, but without lasting strength. We should remember that perhaps the bloodiest month for Americans in the European theater of World War II was not during 1943 and 1944 amid the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, Italy, or Normandy, but rather in January 1945, a mere five months before the close of the war, when GIs fought back the last bitter German offensive.

Likewise a mere four months before the surrender of Japan the United States began the most bloody campaign of the entire war at Okinawa, where almost 50,000 Americans were killed, wounded, or missing. The fighting, which killed the commanding generals of both sides, did not end until a mere two months before the surrender. What later is seen rightly to be last gasps at the time often appear as irrefutable proof of inexhaustible strength and endless war to come.

We do grow weary of the casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. We cry out for peace, that there would be no more families broken apart, no more lives lost. Yet we must recognize the undeniable success our military has forged in these troubled lands. The enemy has been weakened, he lashes out now at civilian targets because he no longer has the ability to strike hardened military targets, except through random roadside bomb attacks which will not affect the outcome.

To speak of withdrawing from Iraq before the victory is complete is to ignore the lessons of history. It is hardest to steel our will when we are weary, but reason tells us that we must. We cannot give away a victory that is almost in our hands. We must press on.