Supreme Command

Mr. Eliot Cohen talked about his book Supreme Command, published by Simon and Schuster. The book examines four war statesmen, Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion. He argues that, in times of war, politicians should make the major decisions, not the generals. According to Cohen, the generals may think they know how to win, but the statesmen are the ones who see the big picture. Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill, and Ben-Gurion led four very different kinds of democracy, under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. They came from four very different backgrounds, yet they faced similar challenges, not the least of which was the possibility that their conduct of war could bring about their fall from power. Each exhibited mastery of detail and fascination with technology. All four were great learners who studied war as if it were their own profession, and in many ways mastered it as well as did their generals. All found themselves locked in conf close