Posted on 12/08/2022 2:34:59 PM PST by Cathi
You know far more of the details about Gettysburg than I do, but I've thought for a long time that by Gettysburg Lee had become both impatient and arrogant about the ease with which he had defeated far larger Federal forces in Virginia. At Gettysburg all the home-court advantages and shorter lines of communication lay with the Federals, not the Confederates.
Putin faces a similar challenge in Ukraine: the Uke's obviously have shorter logistics and communication lines. They are also fighting for their homes and families, while fighting for Russia's glory doesn't really cut it in the cold and mud and heavy artillery. For all of Putin's talk of the Great Patriotic War, I doubt many Russian's buy into the notion that an independent Ukraine is a threat to Russia's existence.
“The Civil War analogy is a good one, and works in many ways.”
One way it works is that Putin’s attack on Kiyv was the high point of his war (Gettysburg), and he has been on defensive pretty much ever since.
One of the characters in the novel addressed in my Comment #58, was an Englishman named Arthur Fremantle, who actually did return to England and wrote a book about his experiences and the Confederacy. Published 3 months before the Civil War ended, he predicted the South would win. In the novel he explains that England will not enter on the South’s side because of the controversial “slavery” question. The novel describes the Southern NON USE of the word “slaves” and the preferred use of the word “servent.” Kind of like Putin’s unwillingness to use the word “war.”
Putin mistakenly thinks of the Ukranians as wayward Russians. He does not seem to acknowledge that a core of Ukraine was the Cossack people who were brutally taken over by the Bolshevicks after WW1. The Cossacks had a much more “democratic” form of leadership which worked much better than the the collectivist land usage so unsuccessfully promoted by the factory system oriented Bolshevicks and Marxist theory.
Actually, its more like McClellan's Peninsula Campaign.
The fact that Ukraine, with US help, has been striking targets in Russia hundreds of miles inland shows to Russians exactly what Putin has warned all along. NATO in Ukraine is a security threat. Now imagine those were nuclear cruise missiles?
Imagine if they were using “first string” munitions and aircraft? Ukraine is doing this with help…but we haven’t been sending the “good stuff” for fear of passing off Putin.
We are doing the exact things that Russian did for North Korea and North Vietnam. Payback is a bitch. Especially when our castoff stuff is better than Russia’s.
Set aside for a moment your one-sided appraisal of General Stuart's operation; there is no blinking away the fact that Gettysburg was a disaster for the CSA, and for the Constitution of the USA.
No known connection, but so far in 2022 over three thousand four hundred people have been shot down in the streets of Chicago.
And the year is not over.
And why is all this happening? The “poor” citizens are suffering because of an ego manic named pitin perhaps one might recall the Russian Finnish campaign. The comparison to Germans in ww2 are interesting. The Germans invaded, here the Russians invaded. The Germans were were not defending their lands and their supply lines were long. Well….
Aren't you really talking about Biden? The evil creep made a sh!t ton of $$$$$ off of Ukraine before the war and now he and his reptile cronies are making even bigger fat stacks of cash off of death and misery.
You are on the wrong side friend.
The corruption on all sides of this is stunning I don’t question that. My question is should Ukraine and the west just let Putin invade and conquer Ukraine. Fat stacks of cash? Look no further than planned parenthood, bailouts of union pensions, student loan “forgivenesses”, green new deal…. to see the stacks are quite high even without Ukraine.
So Russia is allowed to taken Ukraine then what?
The book I referenced in Comment #58 was printed in 1974. Here is one reference about Jeb stuart which explains in detail what may have motivated Stuart, his multiple actions, his failure to meet some of Lee’s instructions, and possible loss of at least one message about Union troops that never reached Lee. None of the listed sources with a date was written before the late 1980s. I feel it was a balanced evaluation of Stuarts actions and misactions. In the Novel, the bulk of the story covers action on the west side of Cemetary Ridge. This link covers Jeb Stuarts actions on the East side of Cemetary Ridge, the fatal third day of fighting.
I have no information about Mcclellan’s Peninsula campaign. The Novel by Michael Shaara was excellent and deeply moving, but I have not read deeply in Civil War literature.
“The facts [casualties] rose up like shattered fenceposts in the mist. The army would not recover from this day. He was a professional and he knew that as a good doctor knows it, bending down for perhaps the last time over a doomed beloved patient.” “That winter he requests relief from command, on the ground that he no longer believes the south can win the war. Lee prevails upon him to stay” which Longstreet does until the surrender at Appomattox.
Actually in hindsite saying the confederates could of gone to gorilla warfare and won is probably not correct, because back then you were actually allowed to “win” wars.
Sherman had already made his march to the sea and burnt everything along the way to break the confederacies spirit and get them to surrender, and it worked.
We are not allowed to do such things anymore, which is why wars cant be won anymore, and why gorilla warfare works so well now.
“Yet there are facts which defend Stuart's course of action as well. Robert E. Lee's orders to Stuart offered the young cavalier a tremendous amount of discretion; that he utilized that discretion rests at much on Lee's shoulders as on Stuart's. Materially, he brought need supplies back to the army, captured hundreds of prisoners, and disrupted the enemies supply line. Nor did his raid leave Lee entirely without cavalry. Although Stuart undoubtedly took some of the finer Confederate troopers with him, the brigades of Beverly Robertson, “Grumble” Jones, and Albert Jenkins were at Lee's disposal. Lee can hardly be said to be bereft of cavalry when Stuart left nearly five thousand horsemen behind. While Stuart attempted to notify Lee of Union movement north, those messages never got through. Yet the three brigades of cavalry left to Lee could have detected those movements as well.”
This is quite the contrast to your earlier one-sided appraisal of Stuart's actions: ““He was seriously betrayed by Jeb Stuart who ignored his orders to use his cavelry to travel widely, determine size and location of Union forces, and maintain reporting to Lee.”
General Lee's reputation - before, during, and after the war - was such that it had to be defended at all cost. Very understandable.
Stuart, and later Longstreet, would bear the brunt of the criticism for the disaster at Gettysburg.
General Lee defended his reputation best by taking full responsibility for the setback and offering to resign command. That is what leaders do.
Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice offered his view in closing his book: “Stuart should not have been sent off on a wild-goose chase at the beginning of the campaign of the Seven Days’; the attack on Malvern Hill should not have been made as it was made; the Antietam was, I believe an unnecessary battle; the orders to Stuart before the advance to Gettysburg were loosely framed with dire consequences; on two critical occasions Lee failed to control and direct Longstreet as a commander should control and direct a subordinate. Of how many generals who have commanded for three years in the field is it possible to sum up the mistakes committed in so few words?”
Analysis like this supporting outcomes favorable to Russia depends on distorted historical narratives. When addressing a position means challenging history falsehoods first, there is no point in discussing the position.
Try imagining Russia had never invaded Ukraine.
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