Best military commander post WW2?

I would agree that the US were rarely if ever defeated in a tactical sense. Yet in spite of 'losing' ever major engagement on the battlefield the NV ultimately won a strategic victory. I concur that the VC were no longer combat effective after TET but with regards to the NVA I think you are overlooking key components of Giaps strategy. First, because Giap could dictate the rate at which the NVA would infiltrate the south he could effectively prevent the US from ever destroying enough NV combat power to win the war of attrition. So long as the NV could replace combat power faster than he lost it the war would drag continue to drag on unless the US expanded the conflict. Second, it would have been foolish of Giap to mount large scale offensives outside of the monsoon season as this would play into the hands of US firepower and Logistic capabilities. Additionally, because of the relative confinement if US forces to SV Giap could pick where and when he wanted to engage US forces or otherwise withdraw them when the advantage swung to the US. Giap new he didn't necessarily need a dien bien phu to defeat the US as a war weary US republic dependant on conscription would could not suffer the pain of conflict as long as the vietnamese. Giap strategy is concrete proof that one necessarily has to win the battles to win the war.

My post WWII generals would be:

(Maybe to old)
Chesty Puller
Oliver P Smith

Brigadier General Yeshayahu Gavish, formulated and executed IDF plan to destroy egyptian forces in teh Sinai in 67

 

The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today [Hardcover]
Thomas E. Ricks (Author)

History has been kind to the American generals of World War II—Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley—and less kind to the generals of the wars that followed. In The Generals, Thomas E. Ricks sets out to explain why that is. In part it is the story of a widening gulf between performance and accountability. During the Second World War, scores of American generals were relieved of command simply for not being good enough. Today, as one American colonel said bitterly during the Iraq War, “As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.” In The Generals we meet great leaders and suspect ones, generals who rose to the occasion and those who failed themselves and their soldiers. Marshall and Eisenhower cast long shadows over this story, as does the less familiar Marine General O. P. Smith, whose fighting retreat from the Chinese onslaught into Korea in the winter of 1950 snatched a kind of victory from the jaws of annihilation.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Generals-American-Military-Command/dp/1594204047