Pretty easy to criticize someone 75 years after the fact. They made the best decision they could at the time with the invformation they had.
Was Pickett's charge at Gettysburg a big mistake by Robert E. Lee? Hell yes.
Was Cornwallis's decision to hole up in Yorktown, which got him surrounded by the French Navy and Washington's troops, a mistake? Hell yes.
What about the whole Vietnam War? The purpose was to prevent the North from taking over the South because that would lead to the "domino theory," whereby "monolithic communism" would take over all the other Southeast Asian countries one at a time. That whole theory was totally flawed. At least at Iwo Jima we didn't end up with 58,000 dead Americans, didn't lose the battle, and didn't end up a few years later with big American corporations falling all over themselves to build plants in the enemy's territory.
Gettysburg would have been different if Jackson had been there instead of Ewell
