Columnist – John Sammon
Who says you can’t learn anything from history. Certainly our leaders must think that, because they never seem to learn. They don’t study history. I want to point out the mistake Bush and Cheney made in the Middle East before their disastrous administration fades in the collective memory.

Nobody thinks of these kinds of things except me.

Bush made almost the exact, identical strategic mistake that George Custer made at Little Bighorn, and Hitler on the Eastern Front during the invasion of Russia.

Custer, a supreme egotist, fatally divided his men into three prongs (a fourth was bringing up supplies). The three prongs of the attack against the Sioux village at the Big Horn were far enough apart physically, that no prong could support the other prongs if the other prongs ran into trouble. In other words, the Indians could defeat each of the three prongs of the attack separately.

The rest is history. Custer and one-third of his men were cut off and annihilated while the other two-thirds (the other two prongs) took refuge on a hilltop until the Indians broke off the battle.

Hitler did the same thing. Hitler invaded Russia in three prongs. The Northern prong was to capture Leningrad. The middle prong was to capture Moscow, and the southern prong was to capture the Ukraine and the Caucasus with its oil. Each of the three prongs was just weak enough, not to be able to accomplish the mission it had been given.

Like Custer, Hitler fatally divided his force into three. Also like Custer, each prong was far enough away from the others that it couldn’t provide support to the others if the others got in trouble.

All three could be defeated individually.

Hitler wouldn’t listen to his generals’ advice and meddled in the plan. First, he changed his mind on capturing Moscow, and sent that force north to help take Leningrad. Then, he changed his mind again, and decided to bring that force back, and to send it against Moscow as originally planned. Months were lost in the shuffle.

The Russian winter came. The rest is history. Hitler, like Custer, fatally divided his forces, and bit off more than he could chew. He lost.

Here comes Bush and Cheney. They decided they could launch two wars at once, Iraq and Afghanistan, in this case, two prongs. Bush wouldn’t listen to generals who told him he didn’t have enough force on the ground, and fired them.

Hitler also fired his generals who told him things he didn’t want to hear.

Like Hitler, Bush, was a strategic blunderer. Rather than listen to experts, he listened to Cheney, who told him our troops would be greeted in Iraq as liberators and flowers thrown at their feet. It would be a cakewalk.

Bush put most of his push, men, equipment into Iraq, and reduced Afghanistan to a relative sideshow. Iraq turned out to be tougher than expected. This gave the Taliban in Afghanistan time to recoup and recover and re-take the initiative. Now, Afghanistan is a shambles, and Obama is trying to un-do Bush’s stupid mistakes, by withdrawing troops from Iraq, and sending them instead to Afghanistan, where they should have been sent in the first place.

Because of this bungling, a clear victory has been achieved in neither theatre.

What do Custer, Hitler, Bush and Cheney have in common beyond stupidity and arrogance?

Old Russian proverb. If you try to catch three rabbits at the same time (or even two), you wind up catching none.

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