NEWSWEEK: You’ve said most people are interested in history, but they’re bored with the way it’s presented to them. How are doing it differently in this magazine?
I’m trying to make a history magazine that is credible and serious and in-depth, but at the same time engaging and entertaining, by focusing on the people instead of just the dates and the places. History is really about people. And people are interested in people. If you present history as examples of real people called on to do extraordinary things, that really resonates with readers.
Why put General George S. Patton on the first cover?
One thing is that people like celebrities and, when it comes to military history, Patton is probably the all-time, best-known celebrity. He’s one of these characters that people react to–they either love him or hate him. We write one article on a general in each issue, about what made him tick, what made him the right general at that time. With Patton, we ask the question: was he the best? We don’t tell them what to think. But we ask the question.
Do you think Patton was the greatest general of all time?
It’s an impossible question to answer. He is certainly in the top 10 or 15. He was certainly the right general for the time and place where he was, and certainly one of the great leaders of his time. He was also very provocative. He is an absolutely fascinating character, whether you are interested in history or not.
What about Gen. Tommy Franks, the Army general who led the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan as head of Central Command?
Gen. Tommy Franks is actually on the cover of our upcoming, third magazine. I would rank him in the top ten. He led two of the most successful military campaigns in history. Put aside the aftermath and the current turmoil in Iraq, the campaign itself was one of history’s most successful. The only thing going against him is the fact that he was quiet and worked behind the scenes like Dwight Eisenhower. His ego was more wrapped up in the accomplishment of the task. I would say he was universally loved by his men. He led brilliant campaigns. Iraq had a massive army and with a force a fraction of the size he took down the country in days. We coin a term ‘hyper war’ for him–it was the only word we could think of to describe what he pulled off there.
So the Armchair General’s perspective of the military operation in Iraq is pretty positive?
The military campaign itself was nothing less than astounding. In terms of distances covered, the size of the Army being opposed, casualties to our forces, and the mitigating of civilian casualties in Iraq–there’s no war in history that can compare to it. Think about the past wars that involved attacks on large civilian populations, they have almost always generated tens or hundreds of thousands of refugees clogging the roads. My personal belief is that, regardless of how they felt about Americans, the Iraqi people knew that we had no intention to go out of our way to go after civilians and they had confidence in our military precision to minimize civilian casualties. In World War II, we would flat out bomb entire German cities, killing tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
What do you think about the operations in Iraq now?
The only thing I would say about the aftermath of the war–the year since the campaign–is that the making of history is a very difficult thing to judge in the short-term, especially when it is subjected to micro-analysis. The Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II, which are all great causes, all had dark, depressing moments when victory was certainly not perceived as being the likely outcome. …It’s easy to become discouraged. I would suggest that people decide whether the overall objectives in Iraq are worth it or not. If they think they are, they need the patience to see it through. If they don’t, that is a different story. I’m not putting forth one or the other. But if people believe it is a worthy cause, then you have to deal with these moments like the other day when the four contractors were brutally killed–that was enough to discourage anyone. When you look back 25 or 30 years from now, that’s when we’ll know whether this was worth it or not.
What can we learn by looking back at past military leaders?
My belief is that these leaders today who have the fortitude to stick it out in tough times are drawing on history themselves. A perfect example is Rudy Giuliani during the World Trade Center attacks; he drew his inspiration and strength from Winston Churchill. Leaders draw on history for that sense of patience, fortitude and inner strength. Without that sense of history, you have no context with which to judge what is happening.
Our armies and weapons are so much more advanced now than during World War II, how do you think Patton would fare today?
Patton used to say that the weapons of war change, but the people who fight the wars don’t. He, and any of the leaders today, would say that at the end of the day it comes down to the people. That’s the part of warfare that has never changed. The better-trained, the better-motivated and the better-led armies will almost always win. But the weapons have changed dramatically. The weapons of sophisticated countries like ours are almost so powerful today that many people envision a future not so far off where large-scale wars like the Iraq war will no longer happen. Large-scale battlefields will probably not be practical in the future. Because these weapons are so lethal and so accurate today, it is hard to have an army out on a battlefield and not just get decimated by these weapons. That’s why Donald Rumsfeld–and he’s created a lot of controversy over this–is much more focused on having light, highly maneuverable, highly sophisticated military units that can go in and handle small scale operations.
So you don’t see a large-scale invasion of another ‘Axis of Evil’ member like Iran?
It’s hard to envision many more large-scale wars, unless there’s some kind of war with Iran or North Korea. But let’s look back at the start of the Iraq war. They launched missile strikes to take out Saddam Hussein, and though they didn’t, they probably got pretty close. Those strikes take a lot of intelligence and a lot of luck, but you have to think that leaders in countries like Iran and North Korea have that in the back of their mind. We don’t have to launch a full-scale war anymore to affect regime change. You have to believe they’re thinking, I might get a missile in my office one day. Small scale raids and operations are also a real threat to these leaders. We even have unmanned Predator vehicles that carry missiles in them.
Why didn’t we use that technology earlier against terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden?
There’s been a change in the ways we are willing to use those weapons, in fact, we have an article in the third issue called the evolving art of hunting bad guys. The old paradigm used to be find the target, then get permission to hit the target… The new paradigm is now make a target list, which you are pre-approved to hit. So if one of the unmanned aerial vehicles was to catch a pre-approved target, the process of releasing its weapons would be a lot faster.
As an armchair general, what are your thoughts on how the war on terrorism is going?
There was a commentator at the end of the Cold War, I don’t remember who it was, but he said something about how we would regret the end of the Cold War. Because at least in the Cold War, we knew who the enemy was, and even though they weren’t exactly the same as us, they had more-or-less the same values. At least we were able to anticipate and reasonably think-through how the Russians would respond to things. But in this war, the enemy is not as clearly defined, and they don’t necessarily think like we do. Other than a few Japanese kamikaze pilots in World War II, it’s never been seen before where people will voluntarily go to their deaths in order to cause that kind of carnage… I think we are in for an ongoing conflict that will have hotter moments and quieter moments but it will be ongoing for years. It’s going to be a long-term war.
