Doubts about Sauron's war record

[coolismo]

I am really beginning to doubt whether the Dark Lord is really such a great villain. Serious doubts arise as to Sauron’s record in battles past and misgivings as to the Dark Lord’s strategy and tactics persist.

Lets look at the record:
Before first age.
Sauron proves a better smithees mate than commander. Cannot save Melkor from Valar though does some competent middle ranking defending. Shows liking for fortress warfare.

First age,
The Beren fiasco. Sauron ends up living of nuts and berries as a shapeshifting wolf in the godforsaken pine forests. Shows cannot fight on the run and doubts arise as to his ability to sustain capture of fortifications when elves are on the opposing team.

Second age,
The ring of power is discovered when the elves figure their own rings will only pick up one channel. After taking a few centuries off Sauron manages a revenge attack but ends up almost as a humilliated client of Numenor before pulling out and settling to be a mullah in the East.


After this Sauron tries dubious coalition building with the likes of the Pakistans and Irans of middle Earth. Sauron shows an inability to fight on any more than one front. Is weak in the rear and susceptible to low intensity conflict. Simple raiding sorties ultimately succeed even when he has interdicted his own agent into the final low level sortie by two relatively untrained if highly motivated halflings.

Sauron takes many generations to develop sufficient forces to attack. This has the effect of letting so many generations go by that the dumb Orcs or scruffy men forget previous defeats. This, however, gives the Dark Lord access to only low grade forces which are held in fragile coalition.

Given his personal and tactical limitations Sauron has fallen prey to the old classic military bugbear...mission creep or setting wooly objectives. The plan now seems to be nothing less than the domination of the whole of ME a goal that is so flexible as to appear amorphous to both the command structure and the rag tag army that is built around it. Result; demotivation and ground forces quickly break down into infighting.

Sauron is a rubbish baddy. The elves are in decline, the men of Gondor are in a succession crisis and Sauron loses to a couple of halflings who have been knackered by long travel, treachery and a bloody great spider.



In short Sauron is probably a worser villain than FuManChu.

Anyone ?……………

c lism

[sepulchrave]

now that's funny...Osama bin Sauron!! lol

[bropous]

Gorthaur bin Laden? I dunno...

As for his war record, I doubt Sauron was as big a REMF as you amusingly describe! Sauron was the will behind the armies, the mind behind the muscle, and though he apparently took to the field of battle just the once when Isildur pulled a shiv on him after kicking him in the Dark Jewels, he still managed to have the Elves quaking in their slippers and the Men of Gondor driving up the birthrate in a frenzy of "last night before ship-out" antics at the mere thought of him coming off his front porch. Yeah, the Dark Lord was ready to stomp a hole in Minas Tirith and finally deal with his noisy neighbors, but the Gondorians hocked their wedding rings to the Corsairs and stole his boats to attack from the rear.

And he was gonna kick the snot out of that upstart Palantir hacker who broke in to the last three minutes of the season cliffhanger of As the Orc Turns and kick him off his welcome mat when the sneaky little furfoots [furfeet!!] threw his secret decoder Ring into the barbecue pit when his back was turned. And he hadn't even made all the payments yet.

[Foul_Dwimmerlaik]

Sauron's biggest strategic error, in my opinion, was going after Galadriel's, Thranduil's and Brand/Dain's kingdoms at the same time he was trying to defeat Gondor. Instead of having an army far superior to any one defender, he had four armies that each were just slightly not good enough.

Sauron must not have been very good at Risk.

[coolismo]

BTW how did you put that picture under your name....too stoopid to work it out ....thanx

[Foul_Dwimmerlaik]

push the user cp button located above the messages. you'll be able to figure it out from there

[allsirgarnet]

Strategy mmmmmmmmm?

Maybe Sauron during the War wasnt as bad as he was painted.

Firstly remember it was the desire to regain the One Ring which was uppermost in his mind.

Secondly as Denethor saw in the Palantir, the War itself was only just beginning after the initial four attacks.Sauron still had vast forces to call on.

I'd suggest that his strategy was more to do with drawing out the Ring bearer,especially as he probably assumed it was someone like Aragorn.

As Aragorn himself said,Sauron was looking/waiting for someone holding the Ring to assume lordship of the good peoples by force if needed and then challenge him for supremacy.The final advance to the Morrannon was exactly for this purpose,to fool Sauron into believing this .Militarily the final battle would probably have gone Saurons way,but for the destruction of the ring.

To summarise i think personally the 4 simultanious attacks were a faint to draw out the Ring bearer if he was some great lord,and then once identified to destroy him completely,regain the Ring win totally.

[FrodoFriend]

Ack! You're all wrong!

Sauron was holding back his forces because he didn't want to hurt anyone! He was acting for the good of Middle Earth all along, trying to protect the free peoples from the ravages of the Evil Elves! He forged the One Ring as a defense against the (evil) Three Elven Rings! Unfortunately, the vicious Elves spread hideous lies about him, turning those he wanted to save against him! Thus, he was forced to use mild amounts of armies and war procedures to attempt to bring peace, light, and knowledge to Middle Earth. He had to slaugher his own beloved Rohirrim and Gondor Men in attempting to drag their stubborn butts to paradise!

LOL. Have you ever read the wolf's version of the Three Little Pigs?

[Renille]

(Heehee...oh, Frodo-Friend... I predict that you're going to be either a comedian or author when you grow up! )

Seriously, though, I think that though Sauron was evil, but, the ring was the real "bad guy." But the fact remaines that Sauron made the ring and was kept alive by the desire of it. Okay, I admit, he was still bad.