The Armchair General: Can You Defeat the Nazis?

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While he isn't necessarily on the front lines, he is personally present at nearly every battle he commands. Star Carrier: Grand Admiral Giraurd, a Pan-European battle group commander who is sent to Alphekka to reel in Admiral Koenig in Center of Gravity and pursues him to a refueling stop in Singularity. It's frequently pointed out in later seasons of SG-1 and Atlantis that the IOA, when faced with a difficult decision, will deliberate until after the deadline so that someone else can make the decision and they can criticize it. The Hussars under the command of Alexis Cromwell ignore the manual and kill him by throwing an asteroid jury-rigged with sensor spoofing packages into his flagship at a measurable fraction of the speed of light.

So the war was outsourced to the rest of the galaxy with the populations of Landfall and Wreath not experiencing or caring about the war. Rebuild of Evangelion: Shinji criticizes Misato (and the rest of NERV's command staff) of this near the end of the first movie, asking how it's fair that he's the only one risking his life.The novels and movies tell slightly different stories on how his career ended, but agree that his career ended right at the start when he survived a helicopter crash that left him partially disabled. This person may be a civilian whose only exposure to the military or military history is through academic or self-study, or a former member of the military, who was of low rank and/or has no experience with planning or strategic decision-making. The method he proposes for Blackadder to be relieved is the same one he tried at the start of the episode. The armchair military appears in Discworld a few times, where there's much general critique of this style of warfare.

Noncombatants (with or without a military background) commenting on actual military operations (as professional pundits or otherwise) or wargaming past military operations with other enthusiasts. Attacking the allied Manticoran and Havenite forces, who by the end of their war have cleaned out almost all their bad commanders by the simple expedient of getting themselves killed or captured, and who have spent 20-odd years in a Lensman Arms Race that the Solarians have been blissfully oblivious to suddenly makes it terrifyingly clear to them that the proper designation for their huge fleet is "targets".Another way is to needle T’Sousa about how useless all those asari strategies were, seeing as how they capitulated really fast to the Reapers even with a whole lot of advanced warning. The British secretary of state Lord Chesterfield also criticized those in the Letters to His Son: ".

The book does reserve some scorn for Samuel Hoare, who clearly learnt nothing from the run-up to war. In The Universiad, the failure of the First Incursion was in part due to these sorts "commanding" MILNET. The men responsible for organizing the Battle of Yonkers in World War Z were armchair military types. The term is also used to describe "a military commander who is not actively involved in warfare, or who directs troops from a position of comfort or safety.

While there is some truth to this, legitimate criticism of military leadership tends to get drowned out by the "lions led by donkeys" caricature above. But a solid lodgement in France would make it a great deal easier for the US to reinforce the troops, then take the offensive in 1944.

About Face, an autobiography by Colonel David Hackworth, proposes that the war in Korea and Vietnam was undermined by academic 'experts' and military commanders with no understanding of what was happening in the field. Muruta Azrael also counts he sits back and watches the carnage his forces unleash, but should things go wrong he starts throwing hissy fits to the one in charge, and he demands his forces to keep on attacking no matter what. Assume the role of real historic decision-makers: general, leaders, soldiers and intelligence officers of the Allied Forces during World War I.

In practice, he makes General Failure Lord Djibril (who at least has a certain ruthless ness to commend him) look brilliant. When a race of battle-hardened alien refugees with gritty war machines turn up along with the Goo — now out-of-control Starfish Aliens), humanity has no choice but to dust off their old machines and go back to war. The rise of the Internet has led to a veritable explosion in the second type by lowering the cost of entry and allowing every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a keyboard and Internet connection to voice their opinion. The Modern Major General in The Pirates of Penzance is so educated that he knows everything about almost everything and can perform several outright impossible feats like humming a fugue. Shinseki's ideas were based on established military doctrine on how to control a country such as Iraq, while Rumsfeld's thoughts were pulled out of his ass.