The Audacity of Hyperbole

We want to get the hell over there. . . .
Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit
--General George S. Patton, Jr.

Don't worry chaps you'll
only have to do this once.
I'll have to come back and do
a dozen takes with Errol Flynn!
--David Niven, rallying his platoon
________________

Obama's speech at Omaha Beach was disturbing, as it was gross misunderestimation [sic] of American military involvement in WW II (Obama Hails 'Sheer Improbability' of D-Day Victory).

The allies' D-Day victory was not a "sheer improbability". As General Eisenhower wrote before the invasion, "the tide has turned":

• The Germans had weak and combat-depleted divisions in the zone of action

• Reinforcing the defense was problematic since the allies controlled the skies

• Even a simple airborne assault supplanted by naval gunfire could have established a beach or airhead

• The U.S. Army had a Theatre Army in Southern France pushing generally north and east, and were firmly controlling the pace of combat operations.

• U.S. leadership of the day did not and would not endanger an entire Theatre Army on a "sheer improbability"

• The success of the war in Europe did not hinge on a successful Normandy Invasion

• The German Army had lost the ability to fight offensively and strategically

• The German Army was defensive throughout the entire Normandy campaign. All offensive actions were local in nature

Also, D-Day was not an "unimaginable hell" as stated by Obama. D-Day was just another day at the office for the U.S. military. While there were "unimaginable hells" in that war, Normandy was not one of them. The Bataan Death March, the London Blitz, Warsaw, Stalingrad, Hamburg, Dresden -- these were Hell on earth.

Further, Obama said, "At an hour of maximum danger, amid the bleakest of circumstances, men who thought themselves ordinary found it within themselves to do the extraordinary."

Au contraire, D-Day was not amid the "bleakest circumstances". By June 1944 the war was won by the allies in both theatres. After Midway and Guadalcanal in the Pacific and Kursk and Stalingrad on the Russian front, the German Army was no longer the dominant force on the continent.

Bleak actually describes the status of the Axis powers at that historical moment. Are the President and his speechwriters that oblivious to their nation's history? Did the Department of Defense vet this palaver?

Granted, we live in a time where everything is outstanding, and everyone heroic. Pomposity like "The Audacity of Hope" works well from the pulpit or the self-help section of your local bookstore, but it is unnecessary when confronting history. The facts speak for themselves.

And Obama missed the boat with his hyperbolic, but uninformed, rhetoric.