Posted on 05/27/2004 12:27:27 PM PDT by philosofy123
To the Editor/ The New York Times:
Your "Political Points" article in the 23 May Sunday New York Times, reports that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is reading Grant, the biography of the Civil War general, Ulysses S. Grant, as a morale booster.
But if Rumsfeld is going to adopt Grant as a role model or source of inspiration, he (and you) should be aware that Grant’s policies and actions included the following: •
Ordering the expulsion on 24 hours notice of all Jews "as a class" from the territory under his control (General Order # 11, 17 December, 1862), and forbidding Jews to travel on trains (November, 1862); •
Ordering the destruction of an entire agricultural area to deny the enemy support (the Shenandoah Valley, 5 August, 1864). •
Leading the mass murder, a virtual genocide, of Native People, mainly helpless old men, women, and children in their villages, to make land available for the western railroads (the eradication of the Plains Indians, 1865–66).
Overseeing the complete destruction of defenseless Southern cities, and conducting such warfare against unarmed women and children (e.g., the razing of Meridien, and other cities in Mississippi, spring, 1863).
Contrast these well documented atrocities (and many others too numerous to list) with the gentlemanly policies and behavior of the Confederate forces. My ancestor Major Raphael Moses, General James Longstreet’s chief commissary officer, was forbidden by General Robert E. Lee from even entering private homes in their raids into the North, such as the famous incursion into Pennsylvania. Moses was forced to obtain his supplies from businesses and farms, and he always paid for what he requisitioned, albeit in Confederate tender.
Moses always endured in good humor the harsh verbal abuse he received from the local women, who, he noted, always insisted on receiving in the end the exact amount owed.
Moses and his Confederate colleagues never engaged in the type of warfare waged by the Union forces, who routinely burned, looted, and destroyed libraries, courthouses, churches, homes, and cities full of defenseless civilians, including my hometown of Atlanta. My ancestors may have lost the war, but they never lost their honor.
Perhaps Rumsfeld should be reading the memoirs of General Lee or Major Moses, instead of the bio of a war criminal like General Grant.
Sincerely yours,
Lewis Regenstein
Atlanta, Georgia
But Grant didn't take pictures of naked prisoners. Now THAT would've been a real war crime.
A divided nation would have retained slavery north of the border, too. They just didn't call them slaves -- they called them Irish immigrants, and they weren't treated any better than black slaves in the South.
Figured this was RATmedia dung only to find it is homegrown lunancy. US Grant knew how to deal with traitors trying to destroy the United States. He would have loved Rummy too.
Major Moses? Would that be Mosby?
John Kerry?
I guess he never heard from his ancestors about Nathan Bedford Forrest and Ft Pillow.
As bad as things were for the Irish in, say, the coal mines of Pennsylvania, it beat the hell out of their lot in British Ireland, which WAS about as bad as the lot of the black slaves in the Deep South.
Nonsense; people don't emigrate in waves from their homeland to become slaves.
Perhaps when he's done reading the book about the winning general...with all due respect to General Lee.
And all those blacks who were bought in Africa and shipped to the U.S. were taken from homes in paradise, right?
When they're starving to death in their home country they do.
Well, it could hardly have been worse than a field hand in the old Southwest, at least in the years when the frontier was being settled. Virginia slaves used to cut their own achilles tendons to keep from being sold down South.
I guess you heard the wrong version. Forrest was cleared of wrong-doing by Capt Woodruff and Dr. Fitch, both Yankees.
"War means fightin' and fightin' means killin'".-
Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest
Thank you Vab. Philosofy, This is what I was referring to in posts 21 and 33, but I was too PC to say it, but maybe you already knew it.
Actually, Machiavelli was a dyed in the wool republican who hated the Medici and was incredibly disappointed when Florence threw away it's republic and welcomed the Medici back into power
Some authors have postulated that the dark and cynical tone of "The Prince" reflects this disappointment and a resultant general cynacism with human nature.
It's not that complicated, though. Although Niccolo felt that a republic (of the old Roman form) was the best form of government by far (this is clear in his real political masterwork "The Discourses on the first ten books of Titus Livius"), Machiavelli loved the idea of govenment and the workings of government more than any particular form of government.
In that sense, he was a lot like some guys you see in Washington today (David Gergen comes to mind, though probably not the best example), who land advisory positions in administration after administration, without regard to the party in power.
So, when the Medici came back into power and he was unemployed (he had had a number of roles in the Florentine Republic), he did what anybody does when trying to get a job - he wrote a resume tailored to the target employer. Since he was trying to get hired by a prince, and was trying to demonstrate everything he could do for him, he wrote - "The Prince".
He also developed a well deserved reputation in his later years of working closely with a number of Freedman's Bureaus toward the goals of racial harmony and reconciliation.
All together a remarkable man who is very difficult to pigeon hole...
He should admire the great Charles Martel of France. Because of him we have that thing called the Western civilization. Without martel we all would have to face Mecca every time we need to take a leak.
The USSR did!
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