Vinegar Joe

As we anticipate for General Petraeus' report, I've been thinking about General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell.

For those of you who don't recognize the name, Stilwell was an "old China hand" who was sent back to the Far East by FDR in early 1942, in a desperate attempt to stem the Japanese tide that was running over Southeast Asia. By the time Stilwell arrived in southern China, in March 1942, the Japanese had been handed the keys to Indochina by the Vichy government of France, overrun Malaya and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), acquired Thailand as an ally, and were moving swiftly through Burma against disorganized and ineffective resistance.

Given "command" of two Chinese field armies (which generally disregarded his orders), Stilwell moved into Burma in a last-ditch attempt to stanch the Japanese tide. The effort soon turned into a debacle, and Stilwell, with a rag-tag band of soldiers and civilians (including Dr. Norman Seagrave, "the Burma surgeon," and his Burmese nurses, a Quaker ambulance unit and a reporter), decided to walk to India--more than 100 miles through jungle and over mountains--ahead of the onrushing Japanese. Somehow, they made it.

And what did Stilwell tell reporters after he arrived safely in India? Just this: "We sure took a hell of a beating." No excuses. No self-serving rhetoric. Just the straight truth.

Need I say that we need another Vinegar Joe in Iraq?

Can we expect that from General Petraeus? No. If he were Stillwell's kind of soldier, he would never have got the job.

There will be no surprises in the Petraeus Report. The general will tell us that while progress has been uneven, that there is reason to keep American troops fighting the battle against...well, whoever we're fighting this month. Just one more sign of how far--mostly downhill--we've come from the can-do attitude of WWII.

One of my favorite scenes in The West Wing was where President Bartlet told his aide, Charlie, how FDR predicted that America would produce 50,000 airplanes in four years, and people said he was crazy. And he was: we turned out 50,000 planes in one year (1944). Do we still have that spirit? For all the posturing we've seen in the last six years, there's been seen precious little evidence of it.