George Marshall was one of the greatest of all Americans -- the organizer of victory in WWII, the rebuilder of Europe after the war, the only professional soldier who has ever won the Nobel Peace Prize.
He was also the most boring of great Americans, a man who never sought glory, who concentrated on practical matters, who made the glory of others possible. But he was a deep thinker about war. "Military power wins battles," he said, "but spiritual power wins wars." He was the anti-Rumsfeld. Two weeks after America entered WWII Marshall set up a commission to plan for the occupation of Germany and Japan, realizing how easy it would be to win the war but lose the peace, as we have done in Iraq. In 1945 he urged his generals to end the war as quickly as possible, afraid that extending our government on a war footing, with its attendant centralized wartime powers, would erode America's habits of democracy.
We need to remember him now -- remember what our country has forgotten in its "war on terror". Our only hope in this war is spiritual power.