Posted on 07/26/2010 8:04:25 PM PDT by Pontiac
William Tecumseh Sherman is either a hated war criminal or a honored war hero in the United States in this article I do not debate this point but only draw upon his wisdom as it applies to war. In what follows I will apply this wisdom to our present long and destined to be longer war against the World Islamic Terrorist Organizations.
The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan have been the subject of a great deal of controversy in the last decade. The words “Bush’s war” and the questions of the Iraq war’s legality have been the subject of many a written word in our national press. This is however not the subject of this piece. Today I will expound upon the wisdom of these wars and wars yet to begin.
The war in Afghanistan is the result of an act of war perpetrated by Islamic extremist terrorist on our nation. This is an indisputable fact. The active participants in this act were from various Middle Eastern Muslim nations primarily Saudi Arabia but also Yemini and Egyptian. The stated grievances of these men were the United States support of Israel and the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia.
There are other unstated but strong motives that these men had. These motives have been expressed by like minded supporters of these terrorist actions. These motives are the spread of Western culture to the Muslim countries. In the minds of the fundamentalist Muslim the worst of the West influences is on women. That a woman can show bare skin let alone her face in public is to the Arab Muslim unacceptable and an affront to Allah. To the Taliban (the ruling power in Afghanistan at the time of the September 11, 2001 attack on this country) television, music, make up, dancing, soccer, kite flying and much more were forbidden as un-Islamic Western practices. To these people everything Western was evil. Another fundamental tenet of Islam is that all the world must be brought under the control of Islam, by sword if necessary.
For these reasons the Islamic terrorist brought war to our country. Our support of Israel may have been the precipitating act in their minds for the attack but their desire to humble the preeminent non-Islamic country in the world was large in their minds.
I will not discuss the legality of the Iraq war more than to state that congress voted on and passed a resolution authorizing the war and had available to them all of the intelligence documents concerning weapons of mass destruction that was available to the Bush administration.
The need for the war is however in my opinion undeniable. Saddam Hussein was a financial supporter of world wide Islamic terror. He had used chemical weapons on his own citizens he at the very least was gathering material to produce a nuclear weapon. Although we did not find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq there is evidence that he moved the weapons and the factories to Syria during the period before the war when the Bush administration was trying to negotiate Saddam’s peaceful surrender.
The point I wish to make about the Iraq war is that although direct ties between Al Qaida and Iraq are few Saddam had numerous ties with other terrorist organizations such as Hamas and the IRA. After the Iraq war a terrorist training camp was found there that had a Boeing 727 fuselage used for training terrorist hi-jackers.
Political correctness and multiculturalism has been much used in the arguments against these wars; either explicitly or in couched phrases; the failure of the government or the press to use the word terrorist or to openly name the people we are fighting as Muslim or Islamist is simply foolish political correctness. The first rule in war is to know your enemy. If you can not name your enemy, if you can not allow yourself to express anger and hatred at your enemy you will not defeat that enemy.
The press has spent a great deal of ink saying how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has harmed the reputation of the US and made us a pariah in international affairs. William Tecumseh Sherman arguably the most effective Union General of the Civil War had this to say about war and popularity:
“If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war and not popularity seeking.”
The United States is at war with people who choose to be at war with us and drew first blood. We do not have a choice of whether to go to war or not. This war is also not only a war of Islam against the United State. Islam is at war around the world. It is at war in Indonesia, the Philippines Islands, several African Countries, Europe, and even the Middle East itself. These Islamist are not simply trying to convert the world to Islam by the sword they also seek to purify Islam were it already exist. This is literally a world war. We are at war and we do not have the luxury of being kind and gentile with those who wish to kill us. I again turn to the wisdom of William Tecumseh Sherman:
“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over. I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy.”
The United States has made more effort than any nation at war ever has to limit the number of civilian casualties and yet the international press continues to excoriate the US for the incredibly few civilian dead in these wars. William Tecumseh Sherman had this to say:
“Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.”
We now have the technology to minimize civilian casualties but they can not be eliminated and we can not allow fear of civilian casualties to prevent us from pursuing the enemy where ever he may hide. Our enemy knows of our reluctance to harm civilians and uses this against us. He has used civilian villages a refuge and taken up human shields as a tactic of defense. This is a war crime and we must not permit it to deter us. To do so will encourage its continued use and lead to further civilian deaths or our ultimate defeat because we become unwilling to kill the enemy. We must adopt William Tecumseh Sherman’s stated goal:
“My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
We can not fight a war with half measures. It will only prolong the war and multiply the casualties. This should be the lesson of the Viet Nam war. A limited war is an endless war and can not be won.
I will end by again quoting the wisdom of William Tecumseh Sherman:
“War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”
So he was a racist, and your point is? You could make the case that every person alive was a racist yet you save your condemnation for one man. Your selective outrage is duly noted.
Why should Sherman, or any Union general, trust Hood?
Ulysses S. Grant, Chapter 16: Discussing Secession, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant
Just out of curiosity, had the rebel agents Jefferson Davis dispatched been successful in their November 1864 plot to burn New York City then how would you retain your outrage over Sherman burning towns in South Carolina?
Forgot to include this part: "We could not and ought not to be rigidly bound by the rules laid down under circumstances so different for emergencies so utterly unanticipated. The fathers themselves would have been the first to declare that their prerogatives were not irrevocable. They would surely have resisted secession could they have lived to see the shape it assumed."
In the matter of "Who burned Columbia?", there was ample evidence presented that looting and arson was committed by retreating confederates (specifically Texas Volunteers under the command Col. Wheeler) acting on the orders of General Wade Hampton before the Union army ever entered the city.
[rb in post 147 after citing places burned along Sherman's path through SC]: Surely all of that wasn't burned by this supposed Jew that Sherman mentions. I wonder who burned all those towns along his march?
[ns in post 155] Did Sherman blame one for starting the fires?
Apparently Sherman did just that in the case of Orangeburg that you mentioned above. My question about who burned all those towns was sarcasm. I had posted links to you about the Orangeburg fire and the fires in other places before. [Link]
It is true that some stores were looted by Wheeler's retreating troops. Attempts were made by those troops under orders to remove government supplies so that the Federal troops would not have them, but they also looted.
Sherman, Logan, Howard vs. Hampton, Wheeler link
You posted a link. Here's another: Hampton, Beauregard, and eyewitnesses to the Columbia fire. This link says fires were out but were then started by Sherman's men.
Your link said Howard's testimony was consistent with Sherman's. Here is some anecdotal information about Hampton and Howard after the war [Link]:
Generals Hampton and Howard.
On one of Gen. O. O. Howard's visits to Columbia, during Reconstruction days, he met Gen. Hampton accidentally, in the presence of Major James G. Gibbes. The Major introduced the two Generals. Howard promptly put forward his one hand towards the Carolina General, who withheld his for a few seconds, saving, "I cannot take your hand, sir, until you retract your statement as to my connection with the burning of this city." "General Hampton," was the prompt reply, "I freely admit that I was mistaken in that matter ; and hope that now you will forgive and forget it." Hampton nodded and a hearty hand-shake resulted.
You posted a NYT link to the first column of Sherman's 1873 testimony. I took photographs of his testimony from that edition of the newspaper. As I remember, it took up over nine full columns of the paper. It took me 25 photographs to copy the whole article. Here is another part of the article you linked to [and here's a NYT link to the whole article, not just the first column]:
Q. -- You testified, a little while ago, that it was very likely they [Sherman's own men] might burn Columbia, and you permitted them, or your officers did -- permitted them to go about the town?
I could have had them stay in the ranks, but I would not have done it, under the circumstances, to save Columbia.
Q. -- Although you knew they were likely to burn Columbia, you would not restrain them to their ranks, even to save it?
A. -- No, Sir. I would not have done such harshness to my soldiers to save the whole town. They were men, and I was not going to treat them like slaves. ...
Oops. “I could have had them stay in the ranks ...” was Sherman’s answer to the question.
This was after Dahgren's failed raid in March 1864 to burn Richmond and kill the Confederate leaders, right?
Eleven months later actually. But if you're saying that burning New York would be justified revenge for buring Columbia, for example, then couldn't the Union say burning Columbia was revenge for burning Lawrence or Chambersburg? I suppose when your looking to justify your own actions by blaming it on your opponents then any old excuse will work.
Oh, give me a break. The confederate army never stopped Sherman from doing exactly what he wanted to do, which was to destroy the south's ability and will to continue the war.
If Lee had not gotten those conditions, he would not have surrendered.
You southerners have a tendency to conflate leniency with vindication. Here's how Lee himself reported the situation: "The enemy was more than five times our numbers. If we could have forced our way one day longer it would have been at a great sacrifice of life, and at its end I did not see how a surrender could have been avoided. We had no subsistence for man or horse, and it could not be gathered in the country. The supplies ordered to Pamplin's Station from Lynchburg could not reach us, and the men, deprived of food and sleep for many days, were worn out and exhausted. "
If you could not defeat the Confederate Army in the field, destroy their base, which were the farms.
What confederate army? After getting chased out of Atlanta, Hood took his men to Tennessee. Sherman sent part of his army after him and all but destroyed them as a fighting force at Franklin and Nashville. Joe Johnston took over, but never had enough strength to do much more than try to harass and slow Sherman, neither of which he was able to do. His army, too, was starving, and he never stopped being grateful to Sherman when, after his surrender, Sherman ordered ten days worth of food be delivered to Johnston's army.
In reality Sherman fought war in a way that minimized loss of life, combined small scale violence that made the point that violence would be had with large scale yet bloodless campaigns that attacked the cultural heart of a people.
Oh boy. Watch out. Dealing in reality when it comes to Cump is a good way for the Neoconfed fantasy malcontents to set a fatwa against ya!
Great book!
You are having date problems again. Columbia was burned in February 1865. The failed burning of New York was in November 1864.
... then couldn't the Union say burning Columbia was revenge for burning Lawrence or Chambersburg? I suppose when your looking to justify your own actions by blaming it on your opponents then any old excuse will work.
There were a lot of retaliatory acts going on. As you know, Chambersburg was in response to Union General Hunter's destroying 1,000 homes in the Shenandoah Valley. The burning of Chambersburg was an attempt to show the North that the burning of Southern homes and towns that had been going on for years by Union troops could happen in the North as well. As I've posted to you before, it almost succeeded. Here is Lincoln's response to the Chambersburg burning in the Official Records:
WASHINGTON, D. C., August 14, 1864 - 1.50 p. m.
Lieutenant-General GRANT,
City Point, Va.:
The Secretary of War and I concur that you had better confer with General Lee and stipulate for a mutual discontinuance of house burning and other destruction of private property. The time and manner of conference and particulars of stipulation we leave, on our part, to your convenience and judgment.
A. LINCOLN.
Apparently Grant prevailed, for the burning of Southern towns and homes continued.
Here's how the Richmond Dispatch responded to the burning of Chambersburg:
There have been about twenty towns burnt in the Confederacy, and it takes nineteen more to get us even with the Yankees.
And that was before Sherman's troops torched towns in Georgia and South Carolina. It wasn't just Sherman's troops who were making war on civilians. Here, for example, was General Banks in Louisiana: [The burning of Alexandria, Louisiana].
IIRC, the burning of Lawrence was retaliation by the relatives of women and children taken as prisoners by Union forces and kept in a 7-year old building that collapsed and killed and injured some of prisoners.
“To paraphrase Master Yoda: Go to war or don’t. Do or do not do there is no try not to kill people or break things when you go to war”
This is the sort of silly, false either/or choices that makes relativists look like geniuses. War is hell, and blah, blah, blah. But the point of strategy (or good strategy, rather) is to win as efficiently as possible. I don’t see the “no half measures” mindset being particularly conducive to this concern.
“It is at least as damaging as one-way free trade.”
I’ll never understand people’s problem with the other side being unfree. That’s THEIR problem, not ours. I’ll weep for them all the way to the bank.
“Amigo, a direct one-on-one fight is the way of the loser.”
That seems illogical. I mean, both sides can’t be losers, can they? If they don’t tie, that is.
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