Product Description

From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror, the American military has consistently beaten the odds. It's not luck.

America's armed services are under attack. From college campuses to the floor of the Senate, the Iraq war is portrayed as a quagmire, the Army is described as "broken," and our men and women in uniform are maligned as torturers. Hollywood keeps producing anti-war films, and the media celebrates liberal anti-military activists such as Cindy Sheehan.

These critics fail to understand the real nature of the American military. By seeing everything through the distorted lens of Vietnam — a war shrouded in harmful myths —they have lost sight of our country's real military record, and the factors that have enabled us to win with remarkable consistency, in situations even more dire than Iraq.

In America's Victories, Professor Larry Schweikart restores the truth about our amazing military heritage. Just as he did in his acclaimed previous book, A Patriot's History of the United States, Professor Schweikart cuts through the distortions passed along by academia and the media.

Why do Americans win wars, and why is it all but certain we will win the War on Terror? The biggest answer is that, far from being a cruel, bloodthirsty nation, eager to acquire other people's resources, we value the sanctity of life more than any military culture in history. This fundamental trait has led, over the last two centuries, to more humane treatment of prisoners, more daring POW rescues, and more effective operations than any comparable power.

The American military has also benefited from a combination of other virtues: the ability to learn from losses and mistakes; the unique autonomy entrusted to our troops; and, ironically, the constant improvements forced by anti-war protestors. When coupled with an unmatched free-market economy, America's fighting forces are fearsome.

America's Victories explains how this culture of victory has endured through the darkest moments of World War II, Korean, and Vietnam, and how it has helped our troops prove their critics wrong over and over, from the Battle of New Orleans under Andrew Jackson to the war in Afghanistan under Tommy Franks. Among the book's many revelations, you'll learn:

* How the military since the time of the Revolution has constituted an incredible "melting pot" of ethnicities and social classes, creating a culture blind to origins, but open to talent and desire.

* How the Higgins Boat (key to the success of D-Day) and the Jeep (the backbone vehicle of World War II) were created by American entrepreneurs, not central planners, and how our economic capacity buried the Axis powers.

* Why Abu Ghraib does NOT contradict our respect for individual human life, including our exceedingly humane treatment of prisoners of war, and how a better example of Americans' view of prisoners is the POW rescue at Canabantuan.

* How anti-war protestors, by emphasizing "body bags," have led our military inexorably toward more efficient operations that minimize casualties.

* How Americans (not the French) put into practice Napoleon's maxim that "every soldier carries a Marshal's baton in his knapsack," and made our front line troops the most autonomous fighters in history.

Professor Schweikart acknowledges America's blemishes and weak moments, but also exposes the deep-seated anti-American bias of the Left. Based on the lessons of history, he concludes that we will win the War on Terror, through a weapon more powerful than any bomb or rocket: our unique military culture.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #623571 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Review
Schweikart dares to tell the truth about America’s military heritage, showing why it can deservedly be called nothing short of glorious. -- National Review Online

About the Author
Larry Schweikart is the co-author of A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror, and is a professor of history at the University of Dayton. He has written more than 20 books on national defense, business, and financial history.

Customer Reviews

How our military has done its good work throughout our history
This book is really a series of eight essays on various aspects of the culture and character of the United States Military and how those qualities have led to the strength of our fighting forces in battle and in peace. The author, Professor Larry Schweikart, teaches at the University of Dayton and has written on military matters in the past and is the co-author of "A Patriot's History of the United States".

The first chapter describes how Americans have treated prisoners throughout our history versus the standard treatment of prisoners by other nations and then uses that context to give a clearer picture of Abu Graib and Gitmo. While the outrages our soldiers have suffered in no way excuses any abuses we commit, he also notes our punishment of those committing those abuses.

The second chapter goes into how our armed forces have learned from failure and loss throughout our history. The real danger of loss is the paralyzing effects it has on the ability to make decisions and continue to take the fight to the enemy. Our ability to recoup, gather new approaches, and become stronger is duly noted.

In the third chapter Schweikart takes us through the role of the Citizen soldier throughout our history. Especially comparing the militia versus the professional soldier. It has given our military a special character. Particularly interesting is his debunking of the constitution of our current volunteer army and the vested interest some have in perpetuating the false picture of our military as kids who can't succeed in life at anything else. Nothing could be further from the truth!

I really enjoyed the discussion in the fourth chapter about how our empowering our front line soldiers and their immediate leaders to take the initiative, to adapt, and to succeed even when orders have to be changed to gain the larger objective. The author compares that to the strongly centralized decision making of enemies we have defeated throughout our history.

In chapters five and six he discusses the role of technology and industrial might in our success at war and the way our ability to integrate our armed forces into a single fighting force has increased our ability to defeat our enemies.

In the last chapter he discusses how protest has strengthened our military by causing us to rethink the mission, the means, and the way in which we use our armed forces. He does deal with the concept and problem for a large democracy in fighting a small conflict because it is tough to accept the kind of brutality and loss it takes to win wars for what are perceived as small stakes (but are they really small?).

The conclusion draws everything together in a single essay.

The book is written in a rather informal style and jumps from topic to topic much like the old and popular TV show "Connections" by James Burke. Sometimes the re-use of stories and examples can seem a bit repetitive and at other times the author brings something up or makes a simple assertion that might have benefited from some more focused and structured discussion. Also, there are a few small slips, such as on page 167 where he has the 1965 battle at Ia Drang and the 1993 battle in Mogadishu, Somalia as separated by "Just under twenty years" where he meant thirty, obviously. He has a few nice maps, but doesn't really integrate them into the discussion and that seems a shame, as well.

This book can help readers, young people especially, understand what is strong and good about our military history and can help cure the wholly negative picture they receive from the mainstream media sources, the large majority of our entertainment industry, and from too many of our schools (at all levels).

Just don't expect a series of histories of various military battles or a scholarly debate about American military history and you should be fine. Really, it is a book of appreciation and apologia for our country's use of military force over our more than two centuries of existence.

Good, but not cohesive enough to convince any skeptics
America's Victories is a popular, not scholarly or analytical, explanation of several more or less unique factors about how America has fought throughout its history. The general thesis of the author is that the combination of these factors, which reflect a uniquley American (beyond merely Western) culture -born from the Revolution- makes the American military singularly effective at wining wars.

Each chapter goes into a factor, which include: Our relatively humane treatment of prisoners, our ability to learn from losses because we don't have too much pride to investigate our mistakes, our citizen solider ethos, our encouragement of individual initiative in our armed forces, our free-market derived mass production power, the ability of our branches to operate in a joint manner as a single unified force, and how anti-war protests have focused our military to avoid losses and thus become a more effective killing force.

The book reads very easy and is enjoyable, but each chapter comes off like a loose assortment of facts. There is a lot of good information and interesting revelations in the book which certainly makes it worthwhile, but the presentation of the argument is not really comprehensive or focused enough to sway those who have an anti-military bent, or to serve to inform professional warfighters how to plan and lead combat. In all fairness however the above two goals would have been excruciatingly difficult to achieve, especially in a book the length of this one, and the author probably didn't have either of them in mind when writing this text. Just an FYI for anyone possibly expecting the book to deliver this, as the subtitle could suggest. There is also no grand strategy presented about how to win the war on terror, it's assumed as a corollary that the American way of fighting is essentially invincible and terrorism will thus fare no better than facism or communism.

The bottom line is that this book has a good deal of interesting information, loosely arranged around a pretty decent thesis, but is not solid enough to be anything more than general interest. Recommended, but should be tempered with the expectation that it is a relatively simple conceptual overview of what could be an extremely in-depth and important topic: how specifically America can continue to fight and win wars against terrorism and global instability in the current age.

How an un-warlike nation wins military victories...
"America's Victories" is essentially a discussion of American exceptionalism in the context of her military and conduct of wars. America is often viewed by adversaries as an essentially unwarlike people--the Japanese, for example, thought that one hard blow would so discourage Americans that the country would turn its back upon the Western Pacific. Nor has the military traditionally been the path to wealth or status within American society as it has been in the societies of many of America's opponents. So how is it that Americans, nevertheless, generally win wars?

This book addresses these questions. As one might expect from the co-author of "A Patriot's History of the United States," the basic thesis of this work is that the American military is a reflection of what works in other American institutions. The author notes that the military draws from America's incredibly diverse citizenry (and sometimes non-citizenry) and has traditionally been a place where soldiers could overcome disadvantages of birth or class. The traditional American high value of individual life and aversion to casualties has remorselessly forced the military to devise ways of fighting wars that minimize both American and enemy casualties. (An interesting corrollary to this: no other country has repeatedly sought to liberate its POWs during conflicts as America has in WW2 and Vietnam, for instance.) American free enterprise creates better and more innovative weapons and tactics than those of centrally-planned totalitarian states, just as her consumer economy produces innovative civilian products to which Soviet-style command economies cannot compare. American soldiers, while disciplined, are thinking citizen-soldiers, not cannon fodder in the disciplined Prussian mold. (Anyone who has ever served in the military has to be impressed with the essentially egalitarian culture within the military, where the undoubted superior position of officers is nontheless balanced by the fact that enlisted men enjoy rights unmatched in probably any other country's military.)

Perhaps among the most important observations that Schweikert makes is that America's military derives from an intensely competitive, capitalistic society. Just as market capitalism forces those in the marketplace to learn from mistakes or perish, the American military has developed a culture that examines and learns from mistakes (oh, yes, there are mistakes!) and becomes stronger. In a field where mistakes usually involve the loss of human life, this ability to learn from mistakes is an essential component of America's military success.

This is all true. But Schweikart also addresses the problems of America as a military power. Few world powers have ever had such a powerful, anti-military faction comparable to the American Left. Anti-military Leftists have grown stronger in America in recent decades, as the author tellingly points out, and the Left wields great power in many American institutions including the press, entertainment, and American universities. For example, many, many of the Hollywood stars of the 1940s had distinguished war records, and served their country humbly and well as front-line soldiers, sailors, or airmen. Very few in the entertainment business today have served or would consider serving a tour in the military.

This is a piece that has the potential to challenge the thinking of those on the Left, and it is an excellent companion piece to "A Patriot's History of the United States." In our presently very divided body politic, it is unlikely that many of those on the Left will be convinced by this work of the essential humanity and competence of America's military. On the other hand, there are sufficient books out there that gratuitously condemn America's military that a work like this is needed.

Recommended.