The Iron Duke
First Sergeant
- Joined
- May 22, 2009
- Location
- Georgia
I believe Bragg would be considered the face of indecisiveness.
An excellent example of indecisiveness. It also may not. And that's the difference.
Indecisiveness has definitely lost many battles in history.
I think I'll stay out of any organization that values decisive stupidity. If I'm going to be sacrificed for my country, I'd at least like to die knowing my general knew what he was doing.
But, as has been said, this is also dependent on being able to go to Plan B if Plan A is shown not to be working.
Some people appear to prefer decisiveness for being decisive whether or not its stupid, however.
There's no point being able to make a decision without hesitation unless you have the ability to make good decisions.
Aggressive fools can get lucky (say, Hood at Franklin as a scenario where that might have come up) - but to point to the actual battle, aggressive fools are more likely to lose heavily without gaining anything in exchange for their losses.
Obviously I want those decisions to be sound, but at least give me a direction to go and make the decision quickly enough that I'm not playing catch-up the whole way through, and I'll take it from there and make it work. A leader who is indecisive is no leader at all.
A general without judgement will not be able to take advantage of the initiative.