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