"It always strikes me as odd that Napoleon has a reputation as a great general. Genius, he may have been, but as a charismatic leader, not as a general. His defeats were embarrassing."

So was Robert E Lee's defeats and the same with the Romans being defeated against Hannibal. You should read up on the battles he won. Every battle he accomplished, opposing leaders and generals could not figure out how he did it. He made monkeys out of them.

"Attila the Hun- He conquered much of eastern Rome, from the city of Rome to the edge of middle Asia. He was called the “Scourage of God” for a reason. He absolutely demolished superior numbers of Roman soldiers with little more then nomatic horsemen and fantastic tactics. A list that doesn’t feature either of these two historic figures seems a bit thin to me."

Attila was a great general, but, he suffered the worst loss in history; the pope told him that if he kept on invading he would go to hell, and he believed it. I mean, at least British Kings thought they were above the Pope for crying out loud and as good if not equal to Jesus.

Kahn was the greatest, hands down. He never lost a war. Subudei, his number one General lost maybe one battle out of something around 80+ battles. Kahn took the simplest and oldest ideology of survival and applied it to warfare; hunting. Most of the time he wouldn't engage in hand to hand combat, but order his army to fire arrows until the opponent advanced, then retreat, and continue to fire arrows (read up on how he crushed the Europeans). He trained his army to fight on horse, use bows and arrows on horse while riding, and fight on the ground. His army was the fastest moving in the world traveling up to 120 km a day, which wouldn't have been seen up until world war 2 or at least the use of steam engines. Khan also knew how primitive his culture was; when he defeated an empire, he would use their resources which he knew his culture couldn't produce; one great example is the Chinese engineers to develop siege weapons to annihilate the middle east. The reason why the empire fell apart is because it was split into many nations, and like many siblings and relatives, decided to fight it out with each other.

Had Ogedei lived a few more years, Europe would've been annihilated as well. The Mongol warriors made fools of the Teutonic Knights, yet surprisingly the European nations didn't learn; for centuries after you would still see a class system of archers, footman, knights, etc.

In the end, there will be no number one general, it's all a mater of perception, taste, and also, who we think kicked the most ass, and whose ass the hardest.

"And I think this argument is applicable to a multitude of things we just don’t care about, like power plants (should we quit electricity?), airplanes, factories, you name it…"

We can make all those things not pollute. The technology is there. You'll never see a cigarette which doesn't cause harm to people's health. Get with the program already.