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

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Well, it's a good thing this isn't that, I suppose.

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I mean, it was. Rupertus was arrogant to the point of fatalism but Puller himself fought on Peleliu with a deep-seated hatred for the Japanese borne out by the death of his brother in an earlier battle in the Pacific. Which is probably why Puller never bothered to question Rupertus's insane orders to keep up the attack despite his regiment suffering hundreds of casualties every day they were on the front line.

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Inspirational though he was, Puller’s leadership at Peleliu left something to be desired. His brother had been killed in another Pacific battle, and he burned with hatred for the Japanese, an enmity that perhaps took away some of his focus. He believed that the best way to win was through the pressure created by constant, unrelenting attacks. “He believed in momentum,” General Oliver Smith, Rupertus’s second in command at Peleliu, commented. “He believed in coming ashore and hitting and just keep on hitting and trying to keep up the momentum until he’d overrun the whole thing [island]. No finesse.”

Some members of the 1st Marines never forgave him for the losses the regiment suffered at the Umurbrogol. “Chesty Puller should never have passed the rank of second lieutenant,” Pfc. Paul Lewis later said of his colonel. Sergeant Richard Fisher thought of him as a tragic caricature of his own aggressive image. “All battles are ‘training exercises’ for men like Puller, and it was just another rung up his ladder. Puller was a man who could not live long without war.” Captain Everett Pope, one of his company commanders, was anything but a fan of Puller, whom he thought of as a mindless butcher. “I had no use for Puller,” said Pope, who would win the Medal of Honor at Peleliu. “He didn’t know what was going on. The adulation paid to him these days sickens me.” General Robert Cushman, who served as commandant of the Marine Corps, believed that Puller was a great combat leader who nonetheless could not understand anything except constant attacks, regardless of the circumstances. “He was beyond his element in commanding anything larger than a company—maybe a battalion—where he could keep his hands on everything and be right in the middle of it.”

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Still, with all that taken into consideration, Puller seemed to have little grasp of the impossibility of what he was telling his men to do. Day after day, he cajoled, threatened and coaxed his commanders into launching more and ever costlier attacks. When Puller ordered his 2nd Battalion commander, Lt. Col. Russell Honsowetz, to take a hill one day at all costs, Honsowetz complained that he no longer had enough men. “Well, you’re there, ain’t you, Honsowetz? You get all those men together and take that hill.” Puller clearly wanted quick results regardless of the consequences. Amid the bloodbath, he simply would not admit to himself or anyone else that his regiment could not achieve the impossible. Nor did he have much appreciation for the challenging terrain. He even turned down an opportunity to fly over it for a better look, saying he had plenty of maps.

Sometimes positive characteristics can actually become a weakness. In this case, Puller represented aggressiveness, valor, and inspirational leadership, all ingredients that make the Marine Corps great. But he also demonstrated the tendency of Marine officers to overrely on these strengths to the exclusion of all else. His repeated, mindless frontal attacks were the American version of banzai—almost as costly, and every bit as fruitless.

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No. It really wasn't.

I can copy-paste, too...

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While it might have been in Puller's nature to drive straight ahead in all situations (and that is open to debate), Marine Corps doctrine and Navy command decisions would have pushed him to that style of warfare at Peleliu in any case. General O. P. Smith (the assistant division commander) later gave an estimation of Chesty's tactical views that would have described most of the senior Marine commanders in World War II: "He believed in momentum; he believed in coming ashore and hitting and just keep on hitting and trying to keep up the momentum until he'd overrun the whole thing." General Lemuel C. Shepherd, one of the most respected Marine division commanders of the war, pressed the offensive on Okinawa with a similar outlook: "We will attack and attack vigorously, and we will continue to attack until the enemy is annihilated." Army General George Patton, a premier practitioner of the amphibious art in the European theater, expressed the same philosophy: "We must attack ... a commander, once ashore, must conquer or die." One need only look at Buna-Gona, Tarawa, Biak, Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa to realize both the Marine Corps and the Army often employed straight-ahead, attrition-style tactics against strong Japanese bastions.

On Peleliu, Puller faced a situation that gave him no opportunity to adopt elaborate schemes of maneuver. Within the Umurbrogol, the nature of the interlocking defenses meant that any assault deteriorated quickly into a frontal attack. There were attempts to get at the coral redoubt from the flanks, but in each case the Marines ran into supporting Japanese positions. There simply were no weak areas to exploit. As the commanding officer of 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, put it years later: "We did not discover the defenses until we were in the middle of them being fired at from three sides." The only real option for maneuver was that employed after the 1st Marines was relieved, a move along the lightly defended west coast. There is no indication that Chesty seriously considered that idea, but it was beyond his capability to execute it in any case. The vital beaches and rear areas had to be protected, and that required the 1st Marines to maintain an unbroken line throughout its zone. By the time the nature of the Umurbrogol defenses became apparent, the regiment already had exhausted its own reserve and that of the division, as well as a good portion of its front-line combat power. The forces available to Puller were too weak to exploit the coastal flank and guard all the uncovered portion of the ridges. It became possible only after the 5th and 7th Marines had completed their missions and the 321st Infantry had reinforced the division. Thus it was a decision for Rupertus, not Chesty, to make.

The only practical alternative Puller had was one advanced by Julian Smith, who felt that the division should have cleaned up the rest of the island and then attacked the Umurbrogol with all its resources, instead of letting a weakened regiment go it alone. Of course, that choice also was not Puller's to make, as Smith pointed out: "I wouldn't have assaulted as soon as the 1st Division did with Puller's regiment. . . . I would have put him on the defensive, and he would have been in fine shape." That undoubtedly was the best solution, but Rupertus was in a hurry to take Peleliu, and all his subordinates knew it. Years later Puller complained privately that the general gave him no options: "Orders were to attack dead ahead, and that was the only thing we could do, to take ground regardless of losses.... It was more or less of a massacre. There was no way to cut down losses and follow orders."

Other senior officers at Peleliu felt the same way. Colonel Harold D. "Bucky" Harris of the 5th Marines reported later that there was "plenty [of] pressure from above to speed up the attack." He felt "roughly used" when Rupertus pushed him too hard and believed that only Geiger's intervention had prevented his relief by the division commander. The operations officer of the 5th Marines agreed his outfit was "under the greatest of pressure from headquarters" and that Harris launched some attacks with "great reluctance." He remarked sarcastically: "You can imagine the fine impression we had at that time of division." The Army's senior observer was equally astonished by Rupertus's orchestration of the operation:

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There was not much effort on the part of the Division Commander to coordinate the action of the regiments or assist them by means at his disposal. . . . There were instances when it is believed that coordinated artillery fire and assistance from the 5th Marines would have aided the 1st Marines. . . . It was not until D+4 that the Division Commander visited any of the regimental command posts.... The regimental commanders appeared to know their jobs and had superior records as leaders in previous combat.

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Lieutenant Colonel Arthur M. Parker, Jr., the executive officer of the 3d Armored Amphibian Battalion, placed the blame entirely on the general: "The cold fact is that Rupertus ordered Puller to assault impossible enemy positions at 0800 daily till the 1st [Marines] was decimated." Major Day agreed: "To blame Puller for the day-to-day attacks on the ridge line is really unfair. He was carrying out Rupertus' orders."

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I am both astonished and completely bemused that any sane person would suggest that any USMC General Officer might be "the GOAT of all U.S generals".

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Lieutenant Colonel Arthur M. Parker, Jr., the executive officer of the 3d Armored Amphibian Battalion, placed the blame entirely on the general: "The cold fact is that Rupertus ordered Puller to assault impossible enemy positions at 0800 daily till the 1st [Marines] was decimated." Major Day agreed: "To blame Puller for the day-to-day attacks on the ridge line is really unfair. He was carrying out Rupertus' orders."

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Rupertus was correct in ordering Puller to assault the ground. What the hell else was he supposed to do? They were there to capture an island and secure an airfield. Puller's failure was in HOW he attacked. He did not adequately reconnoiter the terrain and continually threw his men at near-impregnable positions without regard for human life. The 3rd and 5th Marines both succeeded in securing their initial objectives within a matter of days while the 1st Marines failed to take theirs.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I personally side with the majority of scholars and my own research in concluding that Peleliu was not Puller's finest hour. He was an excellent soldier who saw better days before and after Peleliu. However, I strongly feel his emotions got the better of him in the Palaus due to what happened to his brother and many of his men died needlessly as a direct result of those emotions.

All I know is that I have provided sufficient evidence, both my own observations and those of scholars, to support Vader's assertions that Puller's behavior on Peleliu bordered on criminal.

No one said Washington? The dude literally led us to a new country

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Puller's behavior on Peleliu bordered on criminal.

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This is hyperbole and not supported by the evidence.