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.”
More rubble, less trouble.
Bump for reference.
You done good.
Sherman won two great wars, acting per his own initiative. His words are far bloodier than his actions. AWESOME FEAR was his objective by the one’s you quoted.
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.
Easy to write well when your co-author is Sherman ;-)
Being a southerner I am not Sherman’s biggest fan but I sure do wish we fought wars now like he did then.
General Joseph E. Johnston who fought directly opposite Sherman in the final days of the war was able to let it go...
"...General Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate officer who had commanded the resistance to Sherman's troops in Georgia and the Carolinas, served as a pallbearer in New York City. It was a bitterly cold day and a friend of Johnston, fearing that the general might become ill, asked him to put on his hat. Johnston famously replied: "If I were in [Sherman's] place, and he were standing in mine, he would not put on his hat." Johnston did catch a serious cold and died one month later of pneumonia."
We just didn't find all of the stuff declared after the first war, components and actual weapons.
Now either saddam told us the truth, that he destroyed it all in the desert and didn't remember where or he lied and transferred it all to syria, lebanon and iran.
If he told us the truth he will be forgotten by islam within a decade, if he lied he will be revered as a hero to islam for a millenium.
What do you think he did?
Not bad. Pretty good, really: Based on historical fact, well reasoned, and logical.
Of course, to the leftscum, that means it’s hegemonic and racist. Hopefully the writer is prepared for being ridiculed ceaselessly on that basis.
Being a Texan (transplant), I agree. That said, I can understand that he probably did shorten the war by his brutality - and more importantly his brutal reputation - thereby actually saving Southern lives in the long run. (Regardless of the political issues, the South’s only chance of victory was a quick win. The North’s industrial advantage made the outcome inevitable after the first year.)
Early in the war Confederate soldiers freely entered and left Grant’s headquarters, which almost led to his capture.
I sent out an email missive on 9/12/2001 that included this quote from WTS:
“We cannot change the hearts of those people, but we can make war so terrible...[and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.”
We did not act in this manner in this war. We may yet, before it is over.
I think a big reason they got along so well was that Sherman had no designs whatsoever on Grant’s job, most likely because of Sherman’s previous nervous breakdowns. And of course, Grant had complete trust in Sherman.
Considering there are more than a billion Muslims in the world I think that would be and unrealistic goal.
However if we could truly totally destroy fundamentalist terrorist Islam we may be able to trigger a reform of Islam to a more peaceful form.
Honor was the motivating force of every war until Vietnam. We will never win a war without an absolute and terrible commitment to honor.
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