It was the winter from hell. Temperatures below zero, snow up to the men’s knees and blinding snow storm blizzards. It was, by all accounts, the worst winter in Europe in centuries. To make matters worse, January 1945, had been one of the worst months of fighting that the European Theater had seen. The Allied Army, after being caught by surprise and losing ground to Hitler’s forces in the Battle of the Bulge had fought back to regain all the ground that had been lost. Slowly, yard by freezing yard, they had taken back land that had already been won, two months ago, and then lost. Finally at the end of January they stood on the edge of Germany, right up against the Siegfried line.

It had been horrifyingly hard work--sleepless 20 below zero nights with inadequate protection from the cold, exhausting assaults through knee-deep crusted snow against massive light arms and armored resistance, hand to hand combat in many cases, and then the impossible task of digging into the frozen ground to hunker down for another sleepless night before doing it all again the next day.

It was an offensive strategy that Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton all believed in so strongly that against all human reasonableness, they pressured the men beyond belief to perform acts of extreme heroism, courage, commitment, that lesser men would have given up on long ago. Why Eisenhower did this is a lesson to us today that we must understand.

There is no doubt that Eisenhower could have stopped his offensive assaults when he hit the Siegfried Line. A massive protective barrier, it gave the Germans the cover they needed to regroup. No reasonable military person would have thought it wrong to stop the offense, rebuild the lines, replace the tired, hungry and freezing veterans with new blood, and strengthen the weak spots in preparation for a spring final assault upon Germany. But Eisenhower had played football and everyone that has ever played the game knows the one hard and fast rule…The best defense is a good offense!!  And so, with exhausted men, in icy cold conditions, he ordered the offensive assault on the Siegfried Line.

It was Patton that said it best—“In war, the only sure defense is offense, and the efficiency of offense depends on the warlike souls of those conducting it.”  And so the American army slogged forward, bone tired, famished, battle weary and frozen, and eventually pushed the Germans all the way back to Berlin.

Today, in the war on terror, it would be good to know that our commander-in-chief and our military leaders all know and understand this principle. It would be even better for our safety and security if the American public knew this and believed in it. If they don’t, we are in for failure after failure in our attempts to defeat the terrorists until such time as someone comes along who does believe in it and crushes the terrorists in an overwhelming offense. 

So instead of chanting “Defense, Defense” as the fans do at football and basketball games, we need to start chanting—“Offense, Offense!!!  If we don't, prepare to lose ground to the terrorists....

All right, since you asked, my opinion on what persons in the past should have been elected president.  Ed Muskie and Bill Bradley.  And why?  They were smart, skilled, and did not obsess over being president.  The presidency should not be given to anyone whose every move has been designed with the presidency in mind.  Tell me Corzine is not aiming for the presidency.

Overlooking the more experienced candidate for the more likeable one, the American public chose Bill Clinton in the election of 1992. This inability to see past the charm and the manipulation of public sentiment will happen again in 2008. The American public thinks this is American Idol and will choose the more likeable candidate once again. The problem is, likeability does not translate into competence.

We don’t need a snake charmer in the white house. We need a competent, experienced, and skilled leader. But the American public is too full of whimsy to elect one.   They are still stuck on Harry Potter, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings where the wise wizard always knows what to do and leads the warriors down the correct path to victory. If Americans think charm and grace go hand in hand with wisdom and judgment, they are sadly mistaken, and we will all be led down the path to defeat.

Charming enough to charm the snake from the basket, Barak Obama will win the presidency and proceed to set the precedence that public likeability is more important than competence and experience.