re: Who is the GOAT of all U.S generals?

The dude was required reading in my company.

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You need to do more research on D-Day. There was far from a certain prospect of victory.

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Actually, I was not referring to success on D-Day, but rather in the overall war effort. D-Day was important, but just as Dieppe had been a failure of a landing effort and the war continued, if Overlord had stumbled, so the allies would have continued in the fight. The USA in WW2 had amazing resources and was pouring them over the pond and would have made whatever sacrifices were needed to win.
Contrast that situation with Washington's army... The situations could not be more stark. He led a starving and dispirited group of men on the verge of evaporating to an energizing victory. He led from desperate situations many times and kept the effort alive. It was literally the difference between success and failure.
I stay with Washington - even after studying D-Day.

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What most people did not realize is that total war is much more merciful than what we did for over twenty years in Afghanistan. If you are going to fight go all out and end it.

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This is stupid. You don't fight an insurgency with "total war".

Edit - I'm not say we are worth a shite at fighting insurgencies either. We're not.

Well, they weren't an insurgency when we got there.

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This is the correct answer. The first president of LSU invented modern warfare almost 100 years before WWII.

WWI, the Spanish American War, and several other interveneing conflicts around the world represented a step backwards from his tactical genius.

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One general was suppressing a rebellion, the other was a traitor fighting against the United States of America, so, yeah, the standard is by necessity different. One of them also continued to run a terrorist insurgency against US citizens long after his side surrendered.

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I feel bad for people who lack the intellectual capacity to judge history from an objective standpoint and instead allow political considerations cloud their judgment.

It’s hilarious seeing the Lost Cause losers get angry over the mention of Sherman. They’re still salty all these years later that their loser ancestors got their asses smoked by him.

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One knock against him, fair or not, was he tended to win via attrition.

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This is not true at all. His campaign against Lee was the exception to the rule. And even though he defeated Lee via attrition, his undetected move around Lee’s right at Cold Harbor and across the James River was a triumph of logistics and maneuver.

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Allow me to rephrase, he was willing to accept casualties on a scale previous Union commanders shied away from.

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Once again, this is a myth. Ulysses S. Grant, throughout the entirety of the American Civil War, would see 154,000 Union soldiers fall as casualties of war in his armies. However, his armies inflicted 191,000 total casualties on the Confederacy in a winning effort. Compare that to the 209,000 casualties that Lee sustained in just one Theater of operation, in a losing effort mind you, and ask yourself the question of who was really fighting a war of attrition.

Grant's reputation as a hard-fighting butcher with no regard for losses was created by Southern historians of the war in the latter half of the 19th century. This couldn't be further from the truth. The way he was trying to fight the Overland Campaign - attempting to flank around behind Lee and forcing him to fight an offensive battle on the Union's terms - should be clear that he wasn't some heartless man with no regard for human life.