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To: moderatewolverine

We have them....but the wars they fight in are too different to compare. If you send a general on a Sherman march In Iraq, every soldier under him would be brought up on war crime charges and found guilty. Much like in the movie The Patriot, when wars are fought with hand tying rules, it’s the ones with their hands tied that suffer the most.


24 posted on 05/22/2008 7:19:00 AM PDT by Wavrnr10
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To: Wavrnr10
We have them....but the wars they fight in are too different to compare. If you send a general on a Sherman march In Iraq, every soldier under him would be brought up on war crime charges and found guilty.

Sherman proved in his writings both before the Civil War and after, that he understood warfare in a very unique way that few others do, and that has proven to be timeless - Hap Arnold and others in the US Army Air Forces were using Sherman's tactics against the Japanese.

He would have known how to deal with Ho Chi Minh. He would have felt at home in the first Gulf War in '91, or going after the Taliban in 2001.

If anything, he would have had an understanding of how to fight the Taliban and other radical groups that few of people do today - In his memoirs, he said:

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 of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." .

Just swap the word "rebel" with the word "Taliban".

Sherman not only understood the little picture and how to get into the head of the individual enemy soldiers they faced, but he understood the bigger picture as well - look at what he said in December of 1860 (before the war started):

You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it… Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth—right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail
34 posted on 05/22/2008 1:34:39 PM PDT by af_vet_rr
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