Posted on 05/02/2023 6:55:37 AM PDT by fugazi
1863: During day two of the Battle of Chancellorsville, Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson is shot by a Confederate sentry while performing a leaders-reconnaissance mission. Following the amputation of Jackson’s shattered arm, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee will lament, “He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm.” The revered Jackson will die in eight days of pneumonia.
1945: Members of the 82d Airborne and the 8th Infantry Division liberate the Wöbbelin concentration camp in northern Germany. The Nazis allowed the 5,000 inmates to starve, and U.S. soldiers found some 1,000 dead upon arrival. Conditions were so extreme that some of the inmates had resorted to cannibalism, and hundreds more would die after the camp’s liberation.
That same day, Gen. Heinrich von Vietinghoff surrenders all Wehrmacht forces in Italy and the Red Army flies the Soviet flag over the Reichstag building. Berlin has fallen.
1946: When prisoners at Alcatraz riot – breaking into the prison armory and taking hostages – Marines from Treasure Island Naval Base assist in suppressing the riot. Prior to becoming a federal prison, Alcatraz was a military fort and detention facility, housing Confederate prisoners during the Civil War and conscientious objectors during World War I.
1964: Two months prior to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, a North Vietnamese frogman plants an explosive charge on USNS Card – a reactivated World War II escort carrier ferrying helicopters and American soldiers to South Vietnam – as the ship sits at a dock in Saigon. The blast kills five civilian crew members and Card sinks. The vessel is patched, raised, and will return to service in December.
1999: Lt. Col. David Goldfein, commander of the U.S. Air Force’s 555th Fighter Squadron, becomes the second U.S. pilot shot down during Operation ALLIED...
(Excerpt) Read more at untothebreach.net ...
Now if the Antifa crowd wanted to change a Confederate-named base to something fun like Camp Go F—k Yourself I think many of us veterans could get behind that.
My friend. It's an upside-down world we live in today!
Anyone who doubts the brilliance and focus of that man should read the book Rebel Yell (here)
Ever wonder how things might have turned out if that "sentry" had not fired that shot?
I’d argue you could have 10 Stonewall Jacksons and all it would do was make the war just a little longer. The Yankees had more men and better industry. The end was inevitable once Lincoln got good generals in place; it was just a matter of when it would be over.
My bottom line about base names is you can appreciate the valor of your opponent without supporting his government’s political ideology. There are very fierce jihadists out there, and by the grace of God if I had been born over there I’d be wanting to waste Americans too. Vo Nguyen Giap was undoubtedly a good leader. Bin Laden was an evil M.F. but put up a fight for a long time. I can find respect in someone willing to trade their life for mine to protect their family and what they believe in far more than the woke horde that just wants to tear apart my culture.
My bottom line about base names is you can appreciate the valor of your opponent without supporting his government’s political ideology.
Yes. I agree you could argue that.
You might also argue that the Vietcong or the rag-tag Taliban might not overcome the massive numbers of their adversaries (including us). But they did.
As for "supporting his government's ideology," in the case of Jackson, you might also argue that his (along with the country he was fighting for) ideology was not far off the mark.
Just saying :-)
God did not want Stonewall Jackson at Gettysburg, He knew the outcome would be much different.
I’d argue you can’t maintain a slave economy as a guerrilla operation, ergo they saw no point in fighting that way.
If we had decided that we would go all-out in Vietnam we would have won. With the full weight of the U.S. military and support from Washington, we could have brought North Vietnam to its knees (and nearly did so without it). Our enemies in Afghanistan won nothing; they just existed until we left. If the American people were like the Germans marching through the Soviet Union (or the Red Army marching through Germany) we could have fairly easily destroyed everything and everyone in that part of the globe if we really wanted to and taken it for ourselves. Probably would have been easier and cheaper than what we ended up doing.
The Civil War was different in that both sides threw all they had at the other.
The woke horde setting up the Marxists don’t realize and never would, that they would be the first ones lined up and shot by the “new” tyrants.
On the logistics true, esp. as regards the impossibility of England supporting the CSA. England had already shifted or begun shifting the Manchester cotton products mills... to India (another kind of slavery by caste) Raj. But- if the battles continued to no real end result (tactics changing, etc.) at some point there would have been a split. Something the foreign bankers wanted to happen by the way. It is no accident that J.P. Morgan moved in to take over all the different gauge railroads in the South— to create the Southern Railroad. This was his purpose in supporting the Union- as well as control of the western rail expansion.
Final comment: we, the USA created Bin Laden from the first day we trained the jihadis in Stingers vs. Hind helos. Right from then we created the monster and the subculture of Muslim Brotherhood (who were and are in direct opposition to the House of Saud, the Emirates and others in the Sunni aristocracy). Obamaumao his-self cut the deal to get cash to the Iranian shiite monsters, under the guise of some Hague Court decision on money owed to.... the former Shah! Bammy got his cut of an all cash transshipment to Teheran. A real piece of work who started all the current shite.
True, a Soviet defector said that the useful idiots die first because once they realize they’ve been duped by the side that they pushed so hard for, they become a real threat.
But I think it’s narcissistic to think that we created Bin Laden. The ideology he followed predates the United States by over 1,000 years; we just armed him and the mujahideen to fight the Soviets. Useful one day, a problem the next; that is foreign policy. Elements of our society have helped them along the way because the Leftists and jihadists hate many of the same things, but they were around long before we were.
No, it is how and why George Tenet of the see eye ehhhhh immediately said Bin Laden.. day after 9-11. They all knew, and playing in the psycho fields of the non-religion to end all religions cult of death islam/mohamedism, they had no experience of understanding of how to stop this crap. Nor did they want to. Cause the Soviets left Afghanistan and Jimmah Cahtah and Chase Manhatten were happy, bold “soldiers” they were not.
Bagram Airfield was built by the Soviets and the idiots of JoeBama land gave it to the Taliban— because it helps the Belt and Road linkage of Chi-Coms and because it helps Chi-Coms aggravate the Country of India on it’s Pamir Mountains border with..Chi-Coms (they’ve had major battles there).
Whatever happened to Posse Comitatus ?
One key issue in the South's loss was the southern code of chivalry. If Davis had ordered the use of unrestricted warfare against the north's infrastructure (as was Grant's directive to Sherman, leading to his march to the sea) at the start of the war, it might have broken the north's will in short order. But the plan then (which, in hindsight, was a mistake) was to fight primarily a defensive war when, truth be told, the South was in an indefensible position.
The only way Jackson might have made a difference at Gettysburg would have been if he could have convinced Lee to begin his all-out assault on the 2nd ... or not at all.
I've once read (and can't now find the source) that Uncle Bob was quite ill before Gettysburg. Don't know if that was behind it but he screwed that call ... bigly.
If the Confederates had pursued the retreating Yankees after First Bull Run and in the doing threatened Washington, the war might have been over that day.
And if "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas.
It would be fascinating to see how that would play out on a simulator that emulated a population’s will to fight. A Confederate scorched-earth campaign through Union states could have steeled the resolve even further and ended up just the same, except fewer Americans and lots more destruction.
Little known fact about Gen Jackson: Before the war, he taught classes of slaves to read - in violation of the law - so they could read the Bible.
bkmk
Trump passed over Goldfein to appoint Milley.
I wonder if he would have been better.
Says who?? Other than the massive kingdoms of Granada and Panama, our best days were WWII. We never won again afterward.
Our enemies in Afghanistan won nothing; they just existed until we left.
In other words, we lost -- they won.
The Civil War was different in that both sides threw all they had at the other.
As you noted the South was vastly outnumbered. If Britain or France had joined the South things surely would have been different.
None of that matters now. They didn't and the outcome is what it is. Just like in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the outcome is what it is. We lost -- whatever the reason.
I’d love to be proven wrong but I think for the last decade or two the Armed Forces has weeded out the warfighters. Not one flag officer has resigned his commission in protest since last century. There was that Marine battalion commander that resigned a year or so ago, but I haven’t heard about anyone else. Biden’s Afghan pullout was the biggest foreign policy disaster in American military history and not a peep out of the Pentagon. Too many people are too juiced in to the system. They want promotions and access to the swamp after they retire.
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