Originally posted by Mendax
I don't know. Think Thrawn might be getting a little too much hype.
He suffered a horrible defeat at Attolon which pissed the Emperor and Vader off immensely. Yeah some of it was due to a force user intervening but still. He also failed to stop the Rebels long before that battle even happened.
Why do you think he would all of the sudden be able to beat the Rebels in ROTJ? Firstly, Thrawn allowed the individual Rebel cells he engaged beforehand to survive -- he wanted to discern the location of their base and wipe out the entire Rebellion in one fell swoop. That being said, his 'failures' to stop the Rebels prior to the battle of Atollon were, in actuality, part of a much larger strategy.
As for the battle of Atollon itself: bear in mind that Thrawn could have destroyed the Rebels during his aerial bombardment of the base:
https://i.imgur.com/yQJDKi4.gif
However, he stopped his bombardment before killing them because a bit earlier in the episode, Tarkin(ironically enough) had explicitly ordered him to take the Rebels' leadership alive:
If Thrawn had his way, he would've just killed the Rebels then and there, and been done with it... But he was obligated to follow the orders of his superior officer(Tarkin.)
...And I really hope you aren't trying to pretend like Bendu is just some simple, run-of-the-mill "force user", right? Bendu is more akin to an elemental force god -- of course a being on his level is going to turn the tide in a battle, lol. Despite this, Thrawn was still able to figure out a way to 'beat' him on the fly, so there's that. /shrug
Anyway, put Thrawn as commanding officer in RotJ, and I have no doubt that he would have crushed the Rebels. As I said before: if Thrawn wouldn't have been removed from play, it's unlikely that there would have even been a Rebellion left to challenge the Empire by the time of RotJ. As a strategist/tactician, Thrawn was so far above everyone else in the Empire(including even its 'great minds', like Vader) that he would regard certain people as stellar tacticians if they were able to simply comprehend his plans... Even after they had been explained, lol.
tl;dr
Believe the hype.