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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Ian Rose 10:07, 15 June 2013 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.

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Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): —Ed!(talk) 01:37, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article. —Ed!(talk) 01:37, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I have the following comments:

  • As I noted in the A class review, this article really should include references to Thomas Ricks' recent book The Generals, which provides fairly detailed analysis of Schwarzkopf's generalship during the 1990-91 period. Ricks strongly disagrees with the notion of the 1991 war being "decisive", and argues that Schwarzkopf's flawed war plan contributed to a fairly poor outcome given the extent of the Allied military force's superiority. This may not be a consensus view, but Ricks is a high-profile author and his book has attracted a fair bit of attention.
  • The material on Schwarzkopf's relationship to the Media during the Gulf War wrongly argues that he encouraged free-ranging media coverage of the war. In fact, the media operated under significant restrictions which were loosened in subsequent wars.
    • Added a little more clarity on this. —Ed!(talk) 04:17, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • This is now contradictory - it starts by saying that Schwarzkopf gave the media considerable access, but then states that the media was tightly controlled. I think that there are academic-type studies of the role of the media in the Gulf War which would be worth looking for. I'm also not sure what's meant by "In spite of this, several high-profile reports publicized the CENTCOM strategy" - does this mean that his war plans were leaked to the media? Nick-D (talk) 10:35, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "with the 6th Infantry Division in Allied-occupied Germany" - the Allied occupation of Germany ended well before 1959
  • " In July 1960, Schwarzkopf was assigned as aide-de-camp to Brigadier General Charles Johnson, who commanded the Berlin Brigade.[36] Schwarzkopf was stationed in West Berlin." - this could be compressed into a single sentence (the Berlin Brigade was stationed only in West Berlin)
  • Why did Schwarzkopf volunteer to leave a teaching position at West Point to serve in South Vietnam?
  • "the 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam were demoralized and in poor condition, racked with rampant drug use and disciplinary problems as well as a lack of support from home" - all elements of this sentence are disputed by modern historians, and it's clearly inappropriate to use this as a blanket statement concerning the state of the military in 1969 (the general view these days is that the Army was largely in good shape at this time, but things got much worse later on).
  • "He immediately established an extremely rigorous training regimen" - why? Was the division poorly trained when he assumed command?
  • "and became well known for his hard driving leadership of the division." - 'well known' among whom? Phrases like "hard driving leadership" are also somewhat problematic - they're essentially military cliches (no-one is opposed to 'hard driving leadership'!), but are unclear - can you say what his command style and approach involved?
  • "Among his duties, he sat in on arms reduction talks" - 'sitting in' on a meeting isn't an active role, so was this really part of his duties?
  • "The operation was a learning experience for Schwarzkopf, who saw the need to develop greater cooperation between the services for future joint operations" - what did he do to implement this during his time as a senior commander? (there's nothing on the topic at present)
  • "Schwarzkopf devised an operational plan, dubbed "Operation Desert Storm," to be based on speed and mobility, using the desert warfare strategies based on British commander Bernard Montgomery's defeat of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel at the Second Battle of El Alamein in World War II" - this doesn't seem accurate. Monty's overall strategy at El Alamein was to use infantry and artillery to slowly work through the Axis defences, and then unleash his armoured forces. It didn't work as the defences were tougher than had been expected, and the armoured forces ended up being used to support the infantry. The slow pursuit of the defeated Axis forces after the battle is generally considered to have been a major failure.
  • The material on the Gulf War hardly mentions the fact that Schwarzkopf was leading an amazingly diverse international coalition. How did he manage cross-national relations? (which would have been one of his main tasks)
    • I've added a paragraph on this in the 'Desert Shield' section. —Ed!(talk) 15:44, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • "Most of the allied forces, however, were not combat veterans, and the allied commanders wanted to fight cautiously to minimize casualties." - almost none of the US troops were combat veterans either, and Schwarzkopf was also highly risk-adverse (hence the lengthy air campaign before the ground forces went into action and the cancellation of plans to conduct an opposed amphibious landing in Kuwait). Nick-D (talk) 10:35, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "He oversaw the strikes from his war room in Riyadh amid a flurry of press coverage" - the media was in the war room?
  • "Within 90 hours, his force had destroyed 42 of 50 Iraqi Army divisions at a cost of about 125 killed and 200 wounded among American troops" - what about the non-American casualties? Nick-D (talk) 00:01, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • As an extra point, "His accomplishments were praised in a manner much differently from commanders who returned from the Vietnam War and the Korean War" reads awkwardly (and what was this difference?). Nick-D (talk) 10:35, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've found a few books to cover these points. I'll be adding them over the next few days. Going to have the same problem with Ricks that I mentioned in the ACR, my only access to the book is through Google Books which has no page numbers, so the pages will be a total guess for those refs. —Ed!(talk) 06:35, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK. I've responded to all of your points and made a bunch of fixes. Let me know what you think. —Ed!(talk) 15:44, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've just struck my oppose, and have no objections to this article's promotion and would be pleased to see it on the main page. However, I don't think that I'm going to support promotion either I'm afraid Ed. Unlike many of your other efforts, this article never really gets under the skin of its subject (who is a much-written about person) and I think that there's probably scope for further improvements, particularly on the material covering his senior leadership which never really digs deeply into what he did and why. But as I said, I have no objections to promotion. Nick-D (talk) 11:46, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I think Ed! has done a good job in addressing the myriad issues with this article. Chris Troutman (talk) 18:51, 1 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

Delegate comment -- I'm afraid that after remaining open six weeks without approaching consensus to promote, this seems to have stalled so I'll be archiving shortly. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 10:14, 14 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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