The Wisdom of William Tecumseh Sherman and the War on Terror

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.

“War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”

Sherman was a racist.

So were Lee and Davis and Jackson. Don't judge people from 150 years ago by today's standards.

This is also documented in Fellman's book. Sherman blamed the burning of Orangeburg, SC, "on some Jew" pp.231

Actually the quote is "Thus, of the burning of Orangeburg, he denied his men had done it..."I was told by some citizen it was burned by some Jew."" How do you know that was not the case?

There is no doubt that Sherman was an unpleasant individual in many ways, with a full load of the prejudices and bigotries common during the times. But don't pretend that he was alone in that, or that the majority of his peers on both sides of the war were any different. Sherman recognized war for what it was, and fought it in a manner which was designed to bring it to an end as quickly as possible. He wasn't there to nation-build. I wish our current leaders believed the same.

Yeah, you know, it is much easier to terrorize regular people than fight the opposing army.

Would you say the same about the air campaign against Germany and Japan in World War II?

I guess if you can buy off on the premise that fighting fellow Americans who simply want their independence from FedGov™ is the moral equivalent of fighting barbaric religious terrorists, then the screed has some merit. IMO I cannot buy off on that premise therefore this whole thing is rubbish to me.

War, as Sherman noted, was the remedy those 'fellow Americans' chose to further their aims. Given a choice between surrendering to their aggression or fighting their war out to the end, Lincoln chose to fight.

Would you say the same about the air campaign against Germany and Japan in World War II?

The bombing campaign over Europe during wwii was a failure. The German war production rose every year throughout the war. The only successful thing the allied bombing campaign did was make the Luftwaffe come up and fight, which made the aerial war a war of attrition.

My parents taught me when a healthy man chooses to attack an unarmed woman, child, or the elderly, he is a coward. Cowards do not have wisdom.

So....it's much wiser and braver to take those unarmed women, children, and elderly and drop a nuke on them?

So, I can put you down in the camp that thinks the South of 1861 is morally equivalent to the Talban? Gee, what a great guy you are, no wonder you have a Sherman blow up doll to go along with your Lincoln one.

Failure or no, was it a war crime?

In that they chose to begin a war, and therefore have no cause to complain when it doesn't work out their way, then yes.

In that they chose to begin a war, and therefore have no cause to complain when it doesn't work out their way, then yes.

So ladies and gentlemen there you have it, The South was morally equivalent to the Taliban in the great non-sequitur's worldly view. I think we have found King George III reincarnated spirit....

The South was morally equivalent to the Taliban in the great non-sequitur's worldly view.

Well neither believed in the rule of secular law. Both believed in keeping a large percentage of their population in bondage, literally and figuratively. Both started wars with the United States, either directly or through their proxies. I suppose there is a moral equivilence in some way.

Well I hoped that this article would not degenerate in to a debate on the Civil War, but I guess it was a foolish hope.

Perhaps if you had stated up front that this was your ambition. Nevertheless, I thought it was a good essay. One of the images that stuck with me from my earliest readings of the Civil War was of the citizenry coming out in their Sunday finest to watch the "pageantry". The foolish notions that some could initiate such a profound and destructive aspiration so casually. Like so many leftists today, they seldom catch a clue - even when it rises up and smacks them in the face.

“War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”

I love this quote from Sherman, but the quote in full is actually far more interesting, and goes like this:

"War is cruelty, and you can not qualify it, and those who brought war in our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour on. War is the remedy our enemy's have chosen. They dared us to war, and you remember how tauntingly they defied us to the contest. We have accepted the issue and it must be fought out. You might as well reason with a thunderstorm. I say let us give them all they want; not a word of argument, not a sign of let up, no cave in till we are whipped or they are."

My advice would be to rework those sections containing first person tense. Either remove yourself from the commentary or invite the reader to join you in your examination of Sherman’s wisdom.

Sherman’s goal in his own words (see memoirs) was to destroy the planter class of the south..

An admirable goal. I'm glad he succeeded as well as he did. As individuals, I'm sure many had admirable qualities, but as a political class, the plantation drones were pure evil, greedy for power, politically mendacious and full of contempt for their fellow Southerners of both races.

To hell with the lower class, in fact (Sherman) despised them.

If he did, so did a large segment of the Confederate big shots many of whom were happy to make $$$ by having their slaves grow cotton while the families of the mudsills doing their fighting starved.

His attempts to cover his deeds in South Carolina upon his entrance into a more accountable North Carolina, screamed his guilt to his more moral fellow commanders. This officers had been in vain attempting to rein in their men's criminal behavior. Sherman defense of his men's autocracies in Columbia, SC was that "No white women were raped". The records are filled with horrible abuses infected on former slaves, black and white children, defenseless women, and the elderly.

Do you have a reference for this data? Has anybody, to your knowledge, made any attempt to quantity the civilian deaths and abuses during his marches thru GA and SC?

CSA defenders tend to talk about huge numbers of such, while Union defenders claim they were minimal. Events of this type always occur in war. Without quantification, it is not possible to come to any conclusion about the relative responsibility of nations and commanders.

The enemy has no problem with killing the innocent, the helpless, women and children without hesitation.

Then do as Truman did, nuke em.

If you will look at the context of the statement, the nuke statement was toward those coming to harm our helpless women and children. Otherwise send a bomb aimed at that particular nest of terrorist.

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