War’s Paradoxes II: From the Peloponnesian War to ‘Leading From Behind’
By July 1864 very few elites outside New England thought the North could win, or that Lincoln could even be reelected. Yet by November 1864, very few thought either the war or the election had ever been in doubt. Lincoln stayed resolute as former supporters slandered him, and modest as they later deified him. Grant and Sherman likewise went through cycles of success, near ruin, resurrection, controversy, and eventual apotheosis — while keeping historical perspective the entire time.
As a general rule in war, when the media and the politicians are in unison declaring victory or defeat, it is wise to reexamine the issue, given that the very opposite of considered wisdom is more likely true. “Hopeless” wars have a tendency to be saved — if the right people eventually rise to the top. In 2003 Chuck Hagel voted for the war and then supported our brilliant victory over Saddam; by 2007, he declared the surge would be analogous to a Vietnam-style debacle. The one constant? Agreement with what 70% of the general population felt at any given time.
3. What exactly was the “Leading from Ahead” Strategy of the Postwar Era?
I say “was,” in the sense that whatever we once did has largely been replaced by “leading from behind,” and outsourcing legitimacy to trans-national agencies like the Arab League and the United Nations.
What was the old policy? In easily caricatured terms, the U.S. and its Westernized allies once sought to craft a postwar world order, conducive to consensual government, free-market economics, and personal freedom. That did not mean that we would not support opportunistically at times both left-wing and right-wing tyrants, or find ourselves in wars of marginal interest, or resent bitterly the costs in blood and treasure.
Rather, the result was that from 1945 to 1990 the world did not follow the communist lead (the Soviet Union was to implode, and China was to claim an authoritarian capitalist state as a communist success story). Instead, it quite logically evolved along the present lines of globalized free markets and more or less generally recognized accords on trade, communications, and travel, as a vast American Navy patrolled the seas and American air force and army bases dotted the globe.
But to continue that paternalistic role, the U.S. had to assume that it was a better enforcer than the alternative for the rest of the world, and the leadership role sustainable in terms of costs at home. While Carter, Reagan, the two Bushes, and Clinton all at times ranged from lackadaisical to near missionary in following this policy, its general contours remained unchanged.
With the end of the old communist order, and the Pax Americana of the 1990s, the U.S. vision began to resemble a global version of mare nostrum. Just as the legions put down national liberationists, tribal insurrectionists, and regional renegades for over four hundred years — a Jugurtha, Mithridates, Vercingetorix, Ariovistus, Boudicca, etc. — so too the U.S. contained or ended the charismatic careers of a Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, the Taliban, etc. mostly on the premises that they threatened U.S. interests, humanitarian pieties, or the “new world order.”
I’m not sure just what you are arguing for here. Are you saying that instead of missile strikes we should be invading all these places?
I don’t think Obama is a very good president, but at the same time, it’s because he’s essentially doing everything Bush had been doing. There was a lot of money spent in wars during the Bush years, but lets not forget he also spent a lot of money expanding the government in almost every possible way, from the Medicare expansion to boosting education spending to increasing regulation in virtually everything.
If Obama were everything that he seems to be accused of, he wouldn’t be doing these missile strikes in the first place. I mean, who is it appealing to? Not his base. Not to Republicans. Certainly not to Libertarians. He seems to be doing it because he thinks its the best solution. But if he were really this ant-colonialist, blah blah blah, he wouldn’t be doing them at all.
Unless you are saying he’s deliberately trying to sabotage the US’s image in the world by an ineffective but extremely unpopular policy of drone strikes that cause excessive civilian damage.
Obama’s “drones for everybody” policy is motivated less by any geopolitical calculations than it is by personal hubris.
First of all, he sees the world as locked in a struggle for supremacy, but not the U.S. against everyone else. Rather, he sees it in “mystical” terms born of his childhood as a sort of “cultural tourist”, as his (leftist/New Agey/often incoherent) mother dragged him from one Third World pesthole to another, in search of “social justice” and “enlightenment”. As a result, he fell in love with a worldview in which all virtue could be found in a bazaar in Indonesia, where everybody was “equal”. Equally poor, we would say, but he would tell us they were living a “proper life close to nature”.
As a result of this, he followed the pattern of the rest of the hippies of his mother’s generation. That is, he is entranced by a vision of the “mystical, enlightened East” in a death struggle against the “evil, materialistic West”. He is determined that the East will win, thus bringing “enlightenment” and “mystical revelation” to all of us. We will all meditate, use drugs to “expand our consciousness”, and never, ever, hurt any little animal, or plant, ever, ever, again. And he is the Guru who will led us to Paradise.
One side-effect of this is that he is utterly incapable of distinguishing one belief-system in the “east” from another. It’s not that he doesn’t know what Islamism is, versus Buddhism or Hinduism; he simply refuses to admit that any of the above are not superior to “evil Western materialism”. He wants us to lose because he believes an Eastern “triumph” will create a new Golden Age. He probably thinks that the world is the poorer for the Greeks not being defeated by the Persians in 490-479 BC.
Plato, writing almost a century later, decried the Greek victories on the grounds that they were a defeat for rule by an “enlightened elite’”- like, well, Plato. Democracy is inherently inferior to the rule of philosopher-kings, in this worldview. “Philosopher-king”, BTW, is basically another way of saying “living god”; someone who is an absolute ruler because of their innate superiority. As to who decides that they are innately superior, why, they do, of course; after all, nobody else is qualified to judge them. (See “circular argument”.)
This mindset permeates Obama’s entire life. “I am superior. I know this because I tell myself so. Therefore, I must be obeyed. Anyone who does not agree is a stupid, ignorant, vicious thing who must be destroyed so my inherent goodness can triumph. Absolute power is my destiny, and my divine right. Q.E.D.”
This leads directly to his tendency to “drone” anyone he decides he wants erased. Simply put, he is simultaneously playing to his audience and indulging his hubris.
Smiting the “unholy” is a wet-dream of most progressives, who lust after the power to destroy anyone who dares to disagree with them. Obama using drones to do in terrorists is a cleft stick for them (because they often think the terrorists are the good guys on philosophical grounds- “We hate the West as much as you do”, etc.), but at the same time, he is doing it in a relatively “bloodless” way, by their standards, rather than sending troops or a manned airstrike, which they view as “American Imperialism” at its worst.
I suspect most of his supporters are gleefully contemplating “droning” NRA headquarters, the RNC, the Hoover Institution, and anyone like me who says things like this online. Their philosophy being “become enlightened like us… or else.”
The other reason The Self-Exalted One is so “drone-happy” I suspect goes back to his “philosopher-king” mindset. It’s another expression of his belief in his own superiority.
Remember, gods throw thunderbolts at anyone who displeases them. Or just at people at random when they are bored.
I leave you to draw your own conclusions about the mental state of a man who believes himself to be a “living god”, or anything like it. And about the potential consequences of someone with that mindset being probably the single most powerful individual on the planet.
clear ether
eon
Eon, excellent and well stated. But I add this for thought. I cannot see Obama as having ever taken the lead on anything in his entire life. In my view he has long since been seen by behind-the-scenes manipulators as the epitome of the proverbial “useful idiot”, just as are to a lesser degree Chuck Hagel and John Kerry currently. Obama is simply the perfect front-man for others with ambitions possibly even beyond the comprehension of Obama and his freeloader wife. He comes, not out of the blue, but out of a pot-smoking’/coke snortin’ haze from the beaches of Hawaii to being the “leader” of the free world. All this by virtue of his own personality and inner drive? I don’t think so. “Others” provided for this miracle. Do we not dwell too much on Obama’s personality at the expense ignoring how that personality is simply the perfect vehicle for the more dangerous ambitions of others? Who are the “others”.
I suspect that people who believe they are “puppet-masters” often find out the hard way that they’re the ones whose strings are being pulled. By the supposed “puppet”.
A smart con man gets people to give him what he wants by making them think they’re in the driver’s seat. And an egomaniac can bend others to his will by appearing to go along with them, for a time.
Obama’s meteoric rise is, I believe, less due to “manipulation” than to the hothouse nature of the academic world he rose in. Simply put, he had all the right beliefs, and was more fervent than anyone else in espousing them. In a milieu’ in which groupthink was, and is, the only thought which occurs. As such, he became a shining star precisely because he was exactly like everybody else, except more so. He has all the “credentials”- right philosophy, right career path, even the “right ethnicity”. Plus a self-conceived “message” that everybody around him swooned over.
It’s the difference between a “made man”, in Mafia terms, and a cult leader. Or for that matter, between a lip-synching boy-band and Elvis.
Some of his fellow true believers might have thought they had him on strings, at first. But by now, I think they understand that they never did because they never understood what he was really after. That being absolute power for himself, to be used to “remake the world” the way he dreams of it being.
I’d point out a very obvious 20th Century example, but Godwin’s Law prohibits it. So I’ll simply direct your attention to the fact that Italian industrialists thought they had Benito Mussolini in their pocket when he first became dictator of Italy.
It took him two decades to thoroughly wreck the country, at home and abroad. Obama seems determined to beat his record with the U.S. by about a decade and a half.
And like Il Duce’s “handlers”, his are going to be left holding the bag. Like the Italian people, we won’t even have a bag.
clear ether
eon
I can’t say that I disagree with your view. But I am left to wonder when I consider the observation made by a knowledgable individual a couple of years ago that you don’t simply waltz into the inner workings of the Chicago political machine and say “here I am!” and expect folks to take notice and devote, and especially risk, their efforts for simply your advancement. Somebody(s) must have said “hey, we’ve got raw talent here….let’s grab it, shape it so as to advance our enterprise, and ride the wave!”. You can too easily destroy yourself playing that game if you are wrong. It makes me wonder.
Right on eon. Clear ether about the sociopath-in-chief.
PJMedia, would you please fire Rick Moran immediately and hire this guy?
Please stop paying for foppish, inferior articles with an obvious leftist tilt and contempt for millions of patriotic Americans, and put excellence at the forefront.
Someone brokered the deal for him to shift Dem support from Hillary to Obama. That is what this meeting was likely about. Why else go to such lengths to throw the press off track?
I agree about Obama, who, I think, is the worst president since John Tydings – the traitor who joined the Confederacy. His returning the bust of Winston Churchill to Great Britain (given to President Bush after 9/11, I believe) and then visiting and bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia (Saudi Arabia being the home of the 9/11 terrorists), shows his foreign policy views.
However, he is not a “philosopher-king,” as Plato meant. The “philosopher-king,” is a philosopher – lover of wisdom- who, like Socrates, knows he is ignorant, which is why he pursues wisdom. In Plato’s terminology, he is, at best, a Sophist, who claims to be wise. Perhaps the Platonic character he is closest to is Thrasymachus, in Plato’s Republic (before he changes his mind under Socrates’ questioning), lover of power.
Having read the Republic, I think Plato was less enthused with actual philosophers, like Socrates, in charge than he was by the idea of rule by “really smart people”, with those people defining who qualified as “really smart”.
His writings re the Persian Wars make it clear that he disliked democracy, because he felt that ordinary people should “do as they’re told and shut up”, which was the Persian OPV, not that of the majority of his fellow Greeks.
Unfortunately, sixty-odd years later, his view was popular among the upper crust of Athens, which was rather the point of the Athenians trying to conquer the other city-states and impose their own rule via’ “governors” on same.
All I can say is that the entire idea of “rule by an elite’”, whatever they call themselves, has been shown to be a bad idea throughout history. Especially because such elites tend to be self-defining, and self-selecting.
cheers
eon
I don’t think it’s “really smart people” that Plato is enthused about as rulers, but really moral people, who will put the community first. Like many others, I think this is more a criticism of those who were at the time ruling in Greece–whether democratic or tyrant–than a genuine proposal.
Of course as an Athenian who had seen his city destroyed by both tyrants and democrats, he could not be much of an enthusiast for either. And as an Athenian who had seen the Spartan triumph over his city, it is unsurprising that he would incorporate superficial elements of Spartan ruling practices into his ideal rulers, especially as the Spartans themselves became weakened by their acquisition of wealth from their conquests.
It has become clear to me that the Sophists, these clever men whose inherent corruption so troubled Socrates/Plato, were the true models of much of modern Western society.
“Plato described the Athenian society in which he lived as the Sophist written large, explaining the peculiarities of Athenian order by referring them to the socially predominant sophistic type,” says Eric Voegelin, and it seems to be true again in our own day. The inter-connectedness of the Advocate, the Social Scientist, and the Community Organizer seem to me to be most meaningfully placed under the umbrella of the Sophists, all in more or less open, contemptuous rejection of the search for truth of the philosopher and the religious believer.
I recall an article a while back that said Obama rarely attended the daily intelligence briefings or other briefings he should have. However, he never missed the weekly drone targeting list meetings. Sources said that he seemed to enjoy going over the list and making the final decisions.
I don’t think that Obama has ‘a foreign policy’. All of his policy ideas in all of his speeches are all domestic issues that he can use against his political opponents.
I suspect that Obama does little more than sign off on ideas presented to him by the military bureaucracy.
Look at the list :
Street protests in Iran, Obama said nothing, did nothing.
Tunisia, Obama said nothing, did nothing.
Libya, Obama said nothing for weeks, European leaders begged him to do something; he equivocated, hedged, stalled, and finally did as little as possible then took all the credit until it turned bad and suddenly Obama is somewhere else.
Egypt, stung by criticism Obama almost immediately demands Murbark resign. Other than that what did Obama do? Send in his cadre of political activists?
Syria, Obama does nothing, says nothing. Unless the US Consul in Benghazi really was a CIA front moving arms to Syrian rebels. How well did that work out?
Mali, what are we doing there and why? Logistics support for a European ally, a socialist neo-colonial ally doing little more than putting down bandits. It has already been announced those French forces will be withdrawn within weeks. Mission Accomplished.
And what was that other much heralded incursion, a small force sent in to track down some charismatic Christian war lord somewhere. What was his name and how did that turn out anyway? Oh, ya, it was the ‘Lords Resistance Army’ led by Joseph Kony in Uganda.
How did that work out? Anyone?
China flexes it’s military muscle in the South China Sea, targets Japan, and Obama says nothing. Unless its the standard diplomatic boilerplate that means nothing, that everyone on the planet knows Obama doesn’t really mean it, that Obama really doesn’t care as long as it doesn’t distract from his domestic policy.
North Korea threatens the US with a nuclear strike, continues to test nuclear weapons, and Obama has his picture taken shooting a shotgun.
Good points. I could ask, “What is Obama’s foreign policy?” For that matter, “What is Obama’s Domestic Policy?”
All I ever hear from this supposed gifted man is the profundity of ‘Yes We Can’, the economic wisdom of “We will not returning to the same economic policies that got us into this mess that Mitt Romney would have us return to.”
Think about it. Platitudes and innuendo. Good times are just around the corner. Repetition and redundancy of failure.
This is not a complex hypothesis to be tested. Eon touched on – Obama is the very definition of hubris. Caesar Obama – a god among men. Add to the fact, this is a product of the Red Diaper Baby generation from the crib. America is not good but imperialistic. Free enterprise has proven inhumane, immoral and unfair – as long as those in authority hold majority voting shares and are immune to the consequences of their rhetoric. Class, race, categorization – necessary and noted to carry forth in message. The need to be held in high esteem, the constituents fawning with adulation. Those that disagree must not simply be defeated in election. They must be destroyed in reputation by a corrupted media.
Four plus years later, this is still the same basic, blank slate we saw standing in front of Styrofoam columns at football stadiums. “They are the generation we have been waiting for.” I don’t have any idea Obama’s core policies other than the fact the results clearly demonstrate they are weakening America. I only know for a fact that Obama’s policies are premised with one intent – Obama. And America was ripe for the picking.
Whether it be the puppet master pulling the strings as I have suggested or the puppet pulling the master’s strings as Eon suggests, and that may a battle yet to be fought now that the election over; either way, this ends ugly unless millions of the hoi polloi get an abrupt personal epiphany that America and its allies are walking dangerously close to a real precipice. Not the ditch Obama often speaks with his mundane and useful idiot analogies, but a financial collapse that does indeed radically transform America into Obama’s image. That’s tyranny by any other name.
The common thread to Obama’s foreign policy actions is that he chooses which ever course will most weaken America or Israel and he supports which ever Muslim faction is likely to be the most anti-American.
All previous presidents at least tried to give the appearance that they were looking out for the interests of America and its allies; Obama wants to show the world that he has contempt for his own country.
Obama’s foreign policy favors his romantic childhood memories and instinctive son idolization of his father’s beliefs of Islam and the indoctrinated African anti colonialism/ communist hatred for Capitalism, which his Communism drives his Socialist domestic policies, 0bama continues many of Bush’s policies because he realizes it does two things for him, one, it allows him political cover and two, 0bama realized it has kept any new “9/11” from happening on American soil. 0bama especially likes the drones because there are no messy “EI” that lead to the dreaded “Gitmo” problem.
Chasing Obama’s foreign policy without understanding the man and his far leftist politics, is like trying to attach a butterfly to a pin cushion by holding the cushion and throwing the pins at the butterfly.
You know what the result looks like, but your notion of the process is comical.
Obama is more akin to Stalin than Gandhi. Or perhaps Lenin than MLK. Or Marx than Kennedy. Or Gramsci than Machiavelli.
Obama has absolutely no use for Israel. But, he needs to soothe the “good Jews” with just the right words, the right tone that cover his repeated actions that belie them.
Obama similarly has no use for middle America and a strong enmity against conservative America. But, with the media, academia and Hollywood as propagandist fists in his pockets, he hammers home a string of lies and deceits about his intentions.
People who are easily fooled and even those who are even more easily duped and led…hear the words and dismiss the actions. The drone strikes are perfectly consistent with a small c communist worldview. No boots on the ground, in the old Soviet/national socialist jackboot way, this is a much stealthier brand of erosion of free market democracy.
Obama has always chided the revolutionaries who lack patience and advocate brutish ways to achieve the same means as his “slow cooking” method.
The Saudis have no great love for al Qaeda. Indeed, the Arab leadership generally despises what the Arab street admires in them. Droning to death al Qaeda top dogs does double duty, it keeps the dogs on the run without having to get their hands dirty and allows the Arab street to focus its enmity on the Western power.
Obama is more than happy to play the role.
He gets protection from his pocket press that a Bush would be pilloried and crushed for the very same actions. The feckless Republicans cannot tell the story because they have no vehicle for it. The brilliance of the far leftist battle plan was to FIRST seize all the channels of communication, THEN to propagandize all the “news” and “entertainment” and “education” for the masses.
As it stands now, NOTHING in opposition is “believable”. And ALL the “facts and evidence” are poisoned, toxic, treasonous and the “masses” are their own worst enemy. Kept ignorant and duped…they fight for the their own demise.
Brilliant. Evil. Corrupt. Sleazy. But brilliant.
Fighting the skirmishes that Obama and the far left keep throwing at the feckless Republicans misses the point, over and over and over again. Unless and until they wake up and understand the small c communist game plan, the battle plan, they are destined to lose.
But, they don’t just lose as a Party. They lose America for the rest of us.
And like the Chicago Cubs, the losing will last over 100 years. Nice to know that we are the generation that allowed America to be stolen from our children and grandchildren, because we didn’t have enough courage to save her.
“But, they don’t just lose as a Party. They lose America for the rest of us.
And like the Chicago Cubs, the losing will last over 100 years. Nice to know that we are the generation that allowed America to be stolen from our children and grandchildren, because we didn’t have enough courage to save her.”
Well said cf.
Some may even say: “Well, we might have stood by and done nothing as the greatest country in the world swirled down the drain but we can proudly say ‘at least we didn’t waterboard.’”
But a lot of those polled aren’t buying the propaganda:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/160385/obama-rated-highest-foreign-affairs-lowest-deficit.aspx
BTW the headline is plain wrong. His highest rating is not foreign affairs but national defense (stone-cold drone killer).
You have it down on paper,own the media & own the schools.Disarm the public and that’s check mate.
The Kenyan has become bold, he is kicking too many domino’s and sooner rather than later he will kick a domino to far. The laws of mathematics and the pragmatism of economics will not be trifled with, no matter the press, it will defeat him.
The Confederate defeat, with Grant cowering under the bluff on the Tennessee river, at Shiloh and the loss of Albert S. Johnston was the true beginning of the end. Buell’s late arrival saved Grants chestnuts and allowed Bragg/ Beauregard/Johnson to retreat east leaving Vicksburg out to dry.
Really? Downhill since Shiloh? I disagree that the elimination of slavery and the success this country has had since 1865 is “going downhill”. Do we have problems? Yes. Can our country deal with them? I pray that we can.
Yes Grant make mistakes at Shiloh. But he commanded his army better than Johnston or the rest of Confederate staff did. Johnston ran the battle like a division commander, which is why he got shot leading an attack near the front lines. Johnston took his eyes off the big picture, missed reinforcing the successful Confederate attack against Sherman, and threw troops away in piecemeal attacks on the Hornet’s Nest.
I think the Western theater was strategically more important than the Eastern theater in the Civil War. Whoever controlled the Mississippi and its feeder rivers controlled the interior of the country. I don’t think the Confederate command structure ever understood this. Lee certainly didn’t- he was myopic about his beloved Virginia and was defeated because of it. He should have learned a lesson from George Washington- keep your army intact and fight on terms favorable to you.
I know this response is off topic, but I’m a Grant admirer. We don’t defeat Obama and his ideas by wishing we could turn the clock back 151 years.
I believe the reference to downhill was to the invasion of the southern states. You also may be surprised i have some admiration of Grant, not so much Sherman. Of course with benefit of hindsight slavery was abysmal and by all rights needed to be eliminated. I try to look at the southern position with a mindset of what they understood in 1860 not what we who have the knowledge of history understand. I see the current position we are in today with a somewhat southern perspective that someone is in the process of taking away our symbolic lifestyle.
Tactics are important as you expertly point out, but leadership is critical, we are without someone who can eloquently and tactically lead us. VDH attempts at every occasion of his writings to explain the historical perspective of this country’s deviation of course and the practical consequences. This we can hope, someone will step forward
By the way Beauregard failed to press the attack and the steamboats coming to extract Grant unfortunately also carried Buells troops.
Shiloh was the first of the truly big battles and I don’t think there was anybody there who’d ever commanded even a regiment in combat. There was nobody there who’d made use of modern transportation in a war. Almost none of the men had been in service more than a few months and most of the officers knew what little they did know from studying their copy of Hardee’s or Gilliam’s Tactics and had never done any of the things they’s studied except on the drill field.
Only in the last months of the War did Lee have any responsiblity for overall strategy and by then it was too late for him to really effect things. His job was to command the Army of Northern Virginia and protect the Capital. You can quarrel with how jealously Lee protected his command and his willingness and ability to have his Army get the best of things without much regard for the wellbeing of the other PACS armies. There’s still a very good quarrel to be had over whether the ANV should have gone on the defensive and sent Longstreet West in ’62 and likewise in the spring of ’63. Hindsight is 20-20; these guys were peering through the smoke of battle at the fog of war. Lee’s objective in both the ’62 and ’63 campaigns into the North was to get the Yankees out of Virginia so that The Confederacy could harvest the fall crops. While he never got the potentially decisive victory in the field he sought both campaigns successfully defended the Confederate Capital and consumed enorumous Union resources.
Grant and Sherman’s great innovation was that they saw the scale of the war and understood that the Appalachian’s were a fortress wall with redoubts at either end; Richmond/Petersburg and Chattanooga/Atlanta. By ’64, the Union had the resources to put large armies in play at both ends so that each PACS army was isolated and the CSA’s interior lines could not be used for mutual support. Essentially, Sherman/Thomas’ taking of Chattanooga and Atlanta turned Lee’s left flank and put Sherman almost unopposed in Lee’s rear. Grant and Sherman could think in the distances involved and saw the whole war as a single 600 or so mile line to be turned. As brilliant as Lee could be tactically, I don’t know that he ever really got the strategic aspect but It wasn’t his responsibility to get it beyond any advice he might have given to Davis, Benjamin, et al. He certainly knew he was on the defensive in ’64 and said to someone, A.P.Hill, I think, that if the ANV were pushed into the Richmond/Petersburg works it become a seige and thus “only a matter of time.”
It is with great pleasure I read yours TJ and Bob Ross comments on Civil War history tactics and would only hope our schools would delve into understanding the single most cataclysmic event of our country. VDH can and does the greater comparisons to world history and ancient wars. But alas the students of today are fed volumes of global warming and MLK.
WD and Art. Well, we seem to agree on some things. Bottom line was the South didn’t take a strategic approach the war- maybe they couldn’t or didn’t have the luxury. Lee’s best hope would have been a prolonged war with his army intact…and Stonewall Jackson in command out west. Or Longstreet. Or Clebourne (sp?).
I agree with the comments re: what the schools teach as “history”. I’m a divorced father of two. My kids are in high school, and I make sure to talk with them about what they’re studying in U.S./world history, politics, current events. This has given us something to talk about and share. They come to me with questions and we have some great discussions. They know I’m conservative, but I tell them both sides of the issues and let them come to their own conclusions. They’ve told me this has helped them become “thinkers” on their own, and not willing to be spoon-fed some PC mush. My daughter in particular…the pressure on girls to conform is huge. Took my son to Gettysburg last summer. We had a blast and he really got something out of it.
I’m rambling here. I guess my point is that we (meaning BCers) can make a difference around us. Let’s start with those closest to us.
@Whistling and tjk -
Every one of my military aged ancestors served in Mr. Lee’s Army. My maternal g/grandfather served in Co. F (Kent’s), my paternal gg/grandfather in Co. H, Col. Gibson’s 48th Regiment of Georgia Volunteers, Bg. Gn. Wright/Sorrel/Tayloe’s Brigade, Mg. Gen. Anderson/Mahone’s Division, Lt. Gen. Longstreet’s Corps/Lt. Gen. Hill’s Division, General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. If you can’t rattle that stuff off, you’re not really a Southerner.
Taking them out a step from the lineal ancestors, I had gg/s in Semme’s 51st GVIR and in somebody whose name I can’t recall’s 49th GVIR. My blood is Gray.
That said, on my mother’s side, ten members of her clan showed up for militia muster on 4 Mar 62 to be “invited” to volunteer for service in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States; three were still alive on 26 April 65, and one of the three went down as a deserter because after serving the whole War from the Seven Days, after Sailor’s Creek, he threw his rifle down, decided to get a meal, and studied war no more. After a hundred odd years as landowning farmers by the ’70s they were all sharecroppers and tenant farmers. My gg/grandfather on the paternal side was a reluctant soldier. He was a fairly well off, educated, and, yes, slave owning man. He used every political ploy he had to stay out of the War but he, too, “volunteered” on 4 Mar ’62. He got wounded in the Seven Days and that brought him into contact with the administrators of the various Confederate Hospitals. He was in and out of combat after the Seven Days; I know he was at Chancellorsville because I have his letters recounting the battle. Wright’s Brigade was the hinge upon which Jackson’s Flank Attack was swung and they saw heavy fighting. After Chancellorsville he got a detail to a hospital in Tallahassee, Florida. When the Confederacy was truly robbing the cradle and the grave to put men in the ranks in ’64 he lost his detail and returned to the ranks for the Overland Campaign of ’64. He made it through The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and the race to the James. He was KIA in Mahone’s counterattack at The Crater. I grew up with ghosts in the closet.
Albert Sydney Johnston chapter, SCV.
Gen. John Bell Hood Camp
That’s actually a Los Angeles based Camp but when I joined many years ago, there wasn’t one in Alaska. Since, they’ve formed the CSS Shenandoah Camp in Anchorage, but I know the LA guys, really like some of them, so I’ve never transferred to the Shenandoah Camp. I should because I’m certainly no great fan of the Gallant Hood of Texas who Played Hell in Tennessee. In his defense, by the time he played Hell first before Atlanta and then at Franklin, he should long have been relieved of duty; missing an arm and a leg, had to be tied in the saddle, and addicted to laudenum ought to get you out of the service.
This Administration’s foreign policy seems to me to be driven by its belief in Systems Theory and its desire to push the idea that everyone is interdependent. That there is no legitimacy in being an autonomous part like the traditional Western emphasis on the individual. And that the majority can bind all. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/develop-learners-who-think-and-behave-and-view-themselves-as-systems-citizens/
It doesn’t just permeate the education reforms to K-12 and higher ed that few are aware of but also all the Climate Change policies being pursued by the EPA and the National Science Foundation. Science has become social science and its psychology and sociology theories. There is also a very dangerous belief that by pushing social and emotional learning on all students we can create mindsets that will make future peace possible. Just use the classroom to make students believe that everyone in the world deserves their empathy and that Universal Love is the ultimate stage of human development.
Human nature doesn’t really change but we are cultivating ignorance and beliefs in things that are not so and likely will never be. As I read these global calls for equality enforced by the state or UN, the history major in me recognizes this will require a permanent caste of enforcing bureaucrats and thus be unequal. But the people in charge of promulgating this vision via education and foreign policy decisions and development funding either do not know any history or believe this time utopia is possible.
The latter belief is actively cultivated on too many campuses now. Especially the elite ones where the Credentialled can then go forth and take action. Hopefully for an NGO or foundation or if necessary the community outreach efforts of a multinational.
It’s a hard time to know your history isn’t it professor? Especially if you are also paying attention.
Doc, you fall into the trap set by the Lefties in calling the GWOT (and WWII) a series of “wars”, instead of campaigns.
To go from Poland to Norway to France and the Low Countries without the continuity of an over-arching conflict would mean there would be no Grand Alliance by the time of Pearl Harbor.
Likewise, viewing Iraq and A-stan (not to mention the Horn of Africa and the Philippines) as separate conflicts means there was no linkage between the campaigns. This is similar to viewing the WWII in Europe and the Far East as completely unrelated.
Prior to the Second World War the United States was focused on Asia and had largely abandoned Europe as the center of our geo-political universe. WWII and the Cold War were largely a diversion. In the post Cold War new order, with a dying Europe and a rising Asia, the United States has returned to the pre WWII status quo ante.
It’s a wise man who takes enough but not too much.Stealing a lot of gold but not being able to run too fast,mass adrenaline short circuits moderate achievements on the way to too much.I find myself agreeing with the know nothing obama concerning his downsizing our global ambitions.His magic carpet finally took a correct turn(read this knowing i have 5 of age sons). Our Russian wall in Europe,our fleet fencing in China,and the Ownership of the entire Pacific Ocean is a little bit much! The teleprompter has it right,cash in the chips while you still have stacks,sell the house when the market goes up,don’t borrow to build an extension.Consolidate, don’t over extend.Allow someone else to get up early and tend to things,i hear they still hate us in Chile!Our Don Quihote finally got something right!
Perhaps the answer to our problems lies in two things, one never quite seen before, and the other a common problem in history.
The first is that America has taken the ideas behind the Bill of Rights and equality to the point where every tiny little injustice in America is magnified and assigned an institution and bureaucracy, but only if you belong to an historically oppressed group. By contrast, conspicuous racism and discrimination against traditionally successful groups is ignored. We have even extended this goofy view of injustice to the point where the entirety of the Third World are de facto and practically de jure American citizens and the remainder of the West has adopted this same viewpoint. American popular political thought resembles a combination of the Salvation Army, a socialist collective, and a scientific program to uplift chimpanzees to sentience. We have dedicated huge swaths of our national treasure and resources to this.
We have taken that idea further and come to the conclusion that the worst injustice comes from the groups that have created the most institutions to fight injustice. That is a form of madness, since it means success is failure and inversely, failure is success. If one believes all failure is because of oppression and an uneven playing field, then you probably believe you can lick a black hole.
The second is overrefinement. When we hem and haw over wearing dresses in a court room that may offend men who conspired to kill American citizens in their thousands, one’s survival instincts are basically defunct. When you argue hardship in the face of a failed Latin America demographically subverting a successful nation and turning it into a slightly upscale version of Rio de Janeiro, that is a problem; one of confidence and the resolve back it up having completely disappeared.
We fought a war and won. And then our children commenced to war against themselves and us. They are winning, dismantling success faster than it can fill the gaps. Given our current attitudes to legal and illegal immigration and the political climate, I doubt there is any turning back.
We are destroying ourselves by having faith in a thing that hasn’t been seen in 5 thousand years of human history. That thing is that history’s failures have been unlucky, unlucky for the entirety of 5 thousand years. An amazing coincidence that liberal thought nevertheless hugs to its breast as fact.
In liberal thought, the East India Company operated on privilege, though completely on the outside looking in. So did Cortes, Pedro Alvorado and Bernal Diaz. Apparently every success story in history is smoke and mirrors, from the level of great nations to individuals. Similarly, every failure in history is a circumvention of great talent, the genius rats in the walls, the Fremen in their caves. By this logic Africa is a continent of unlucky rocket scientist who will build space stations if we only give them a chance by getting out of the way. What a surprise the rats have huddled around our Paul Muadib analogue, the head of the political correctness/race brigade, President Obama. Obama is the ultimate expression of failure as success, racism as justice, self-pity and incompetence as injustice, and the logical extension and endpoint of a depraved, faddist and decadent society fighting to commit suicide.
Sad but true.
A representative example: The frequently assigned middle-school novel “I, Juan de Pareja,” supposedly based on the life of the eponymous slave of the great painter Diego de Velazquez. In the book, Juan de Pareja, an African, is so tremendously gifted that merely by watching his master he learns enough of painting to become his equal. That’s all you need to know…
“Nine men in ten are would be suicides.” — Benjamin Franklin
Great article and a good read.
I think a streong case can be made for President Obama being the ultimate expression of the “Peter Principle.” An excellent speaker that talked himself into a job he is really not qualified for and really can’t do well.
Good political operatives seldom make good leaders.
Just a suggestion: Honor the office by consistently referring to “President Obama”. I know that the lefties never did so when George Bush was in office, but….
And I seem to recall that Athens virtually bankrupted itself with the ill-fated expedition to Sicily in t he midst of its war with Sparta. Any parallel to the present?
Nope, he’s always going to be Mr. Zero to me.
The USN would have to lose eight carrier groups and three amphibious groups to match the Athenian debacle.
So, there’s no comparison at all.
No, it’s Comrade Obama for me. It can be “Dear Leader” for you.
The North did beat the South largely because of manpower. Not only could they field larger armies but they could field larger armies. By that I mean they had the manpower to run the vast logistical system, the rail roads and steamships running, the factories churning out guns and powder, and keep the farms functioning to supply the food to an army of millions (and the bureaucrats who oversaw the system). The South did not have the manpower to do this and couldn’t supply the guns it needed nor especially the food either for the army or through much of the South the civilian population, something exacerbated by a less well developed rail network which couldn’t shift food where it was needed as the North could.
The early Afghanistan campaign was Keystone Cops affair, thanks to Washington. The troops wanted to fight, especially at Tora Bora, but Washington, fearful of casualties, said no, let the locals fight and say they are earning their freedom from the Taliban. Problem with that was Tora Bora was where Bin Laden operated during the Russian War. He was well known and liked for that. Then there’s the fact that he built roads, hospitals and such in the area and spread money around all of which further endeared him to the locals. At the same time, he fortified the mountains and knew it well.
Now, if Bush and crew had not pulled that Ranger battalion and its resources out of the country but sent it to Tora Bora to isolate the mountains and then press the attack, Bin Laden might have died there. But Bush was already shifting his focus to Iraq. Even then, Bush was in such a hurry that he listened to his advisers like the clown Rove that they could fight the war quickly and on the cheap, that it would be so easy they wouldn’t need to wait the month or so to bring those divisions around from Turkey (which had denied their use against northern Iraq). So they went in, beat up some of the Iraqi army then spent the next 10 years fighting the elements that melted away to wage guerrilla warfare. I never though we had a chance of coming out ahead in Iraq and it was a stupid war.
Now we’re a spent force and the world knows it. I suspect that there will indeed be more wars cropping up especially once the troublesome ones see the military gutted by sequestration and the economy tanked by Obamacare and Obama’s planned skyrocketing energy costs. Those factors combined with the social unrest that will follow and Obama’s efforts to cling to power will certainly leave us in no shape to intervene in any of them. The world is about the become a very interesting place again, one more interesting to watch from the sidelines than be stuck in the middle of it all as we unfortunately are.
We, in Israel, are engaged in a vast political debate about whether to depend on, appease and go along with the USA and rely on President Obama or to go it alone. You would have thought that after the debacle of the war years (WWII), we, Jews, would have learned something about power. Some of us have. At any rate, quite aside from the mistake of giving over our power to another entity (Israel to the USA), as Thane has made quite clear, the USA is, and will remain, a very undependable ally. So for me and most of the people I am in contact with (after all, I reside in one of those tough Jewish communities east of the Green Line), the choice is quite clear: We are commanded to depend on ourselves!
In the War of the Rebellion,the pretended Confederacy had an unbalanced economy. Cotton could not provide wealth unless tied to industry and markets. Tennessee provided pork to the entire south.
Grant’s first campaign cut the supply lines from Tennessee to the rest of the south. Southern soldiers were starving. Jeff Davis’ counter, to have poultry raised inefficiently by former cotton plantations, merely provided ready to eat meals for the US Army. Grant noted that soldiers turned down a dinner with a congressman in Mississippi: He was going to serve poultry, and they had eaten nothing but for weeks. He needed to reestablish his supply lines after cutting off Vicksburg to furnish his men with hard tack biscuits.
The US survived the 7 days battles, Fredricksburg, Chancellorsville, and Grant’s Overland Campaign, we will survive Obama. We always do the right thing, but sometimes get there after exhausting all alternative wrong things. The foolishness of Obama’s debt will be paid off, perhaps after we realize that robots are cheaper than illegal aliens or legal aliens working offshore.
Artificial Intelligence may be the only chance that some of us have to have true intelligence working at our disposal.
Obama and the Democrats are the greatest threat the country has ever faced far moreso than even the War of Northern Aggression. They are the traitors within that military sages have warned about since the time of Sun Tzu. The Democrats have held power, particularly in the public schools and colleges, to change the way people think. Most people have no idea what the Constitution means and have been taught that America is a terrible and evil place, the more evil place ever. At the same time they have increased government dependence to nearly 50%.
Once they get the illegals legalized, on welfare and voting for them, it will pretty much be over. Obama’s debt will never be paid off because it will never end. As the dollar collapses in the near future and government obligations keep rising, they will just keep printing and the Fed will keep buying government debt, etc., anything to keep the freebies flowing and the Democrats in power.
As for AIs, no. That’s not going to work out at all well for us. Better to simply set up psychological screening for politicians, their staff and mid-level and up bureaucrats to keep out psychopaths. If we manage that we won’t need AIs because the most predators will be kept away from power.
Don M.: If you aren’t aware of it, Victor David Hanson wrote a book on military history entitled “Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny”. One of the three generals he writes about was William Tecumseh Sherman and, naturally, as a military historian, wrote about Sherman’s “March Through Georgia”, his strategy, tactics and opposition including opposition from General Grant. At any rate, Hanson’s writing is fascinating and would probably dovetail with your own knowledge of Sherman’s conduct in the south. If you are already familiar with this (Davis’) work, the least I could do is bring new interest in it to other intelligent readers of this article.
The part that isn’t talked about much is that The South didn’t grow much surplus food or fodder and didn’t have the large truck farms that had come to surround Northern cities. As best I recall, only Richmond and New Orleans had over 25,000 people. The vast majority of the Southern citizenry were non-slaveholding subsistence farmers who grew enough food and fodder to feed their family and their livestock and that it. The rest of their cultivated land was devoted to cotton and tobacco; cash crops. The larger farms and plantations with slaves grew enough food to feed the occupants but many had become accustomed to importing much of their fodder from the North and West rather than devote cultivated land to corn and other fodder crops rather than the cash crops, cotton and tobacco. When the men of The South went away to war, the farm production plummeted and while old men, young boys, the women, and the slaves could produce enough food to subsist it was difficult to produce enough fodder to feed either livestock for domestic and military food or for drayage, huge amounts of which were required by armies of a hundred thousand men. One of the great losses to the whole Confederacy with the loss of control of the Mississippi was the loss of access to horses, cattle, and fodder from Texas and the West as well as access to materiel run past the blockade into Mexico.
China’s Increasingly Good Mock Air Battles Prep Pilots for Real War BY DAVID AXE 02.07.13
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/china-mock-air-war/
Great stuff!
Then there’s the micro reality, in America. Most individuals are fat and sick, and getting more so, daily, with every bite of “food” they swallow. Read Dr. Richard Schulze, and visit his blog, herbdocblog.com—
“Health Care is truly what Natural Healing is, which is caring for your health. Call it Creating Powerful Health, not just CARING FOR IT.
What most Americans call “health care” would more accurately be described as “disease care”. After all, people go to medical doctors for a check up, to check for and discover DISEASES. Then, when one is found, a course of medical DISEASE TREATMENT is suggested, such as chemical drugs or surgery. So DISEASE TREATMENT is a better name.
DISEASE TREATMENT implies that the disease is cured, which most often it is not. In reality, most chemical drugs are used to suppress or mask the symptoms of a disease, or even attempt to halt the progression, but not cure it! Often surgery is used to simply remove the diseased part, but still, NO CURE! That is why after most surgeries, within time, your body gets sick again. Even the AMA admits that modern medicine has absolutely no cure for the vast majority of all diseases. They only have treatments to minimize the symptoms and make you more comfortable while you literally rot away. So in fact, the most accurate name for this medical cover-up called Health Care would actually be Disease Suppression, Disease Retardation, Disease Maintenance, or at best Disease Management.
So the bottom line is that the diseases are SUPPRESSED, DELAYED, RETARDED, MAINTAINED, and even MANAGED, but kept alive, and just maintained at low enough levels in your body, so the symptoms of your disease are tolerable. And when the symptoms are not tolerable, then a higher dose of numbing or suppressing medication is prescribed, or stronger medication, or even surgical intervention.
On the contrary, the basic principle of Natural Healing is that we will never be smart enough to outsmart God, or to know exactly how the human body works. So instead of getting in the way of what the body is already trying to do, or worse yet, thinking the body’s actions are a disease (fevers, headaches) and suppressing it, Natural Healing is instead a healing system based on belief in God, a belief in Nature, and a big dose of Common Sense.
STOP doing what makes you sick and START doing what will Create Powerful Health. And disease will leave your body.
I once had a medical doctor tell me, “A patient cured is money lost!” Considering the $2,000,000,000,000.00 (two trillion dollars) Americans spend every year on Disease Management, maybe this answers why disease is MANAGED in America, and not cured.”
Can we get this spam cleared?
You probably EAT spam.
I happened to have read the Peloponesian War by Thucydes, the Athenian general. It reads like a modern book, full of logical insight.
The thing that kept drawing my attention was how blood thirsty the Athenians were. They would just not allow any city, village to be neutral, uninvolved in a war that had nothing to do with them. Typically they would ask “What have you done for Athens”. An unsatisfactory answer would get a sword run through their gut. Countless villages on the islands were obliterated: bodies filled the wells.
As it were the Spartan coalition would always behave, defeat the Athenians on the rare confrontations they fought each other, get to the Athenian walls every year (they had no technology to defeat those) and Athens with its fleet would wreak havoc on the peripheral.
In the end Sparta (not documented in that book)would take advantage of the Athenian hunting for food in the Dardanelles while their galleys were beached to sail across the straight and invade the Athenian camp.
Athens survived because of its trade, but not Sparta which was based on agriculture. Greece always had a poor and dry soil, not able to support a large population.
Jean
Don’t forget that Sparta’s power was based on a permanent reign of terror, waged against the Messenian Helots and any surrounding Perioikoi who got too uppity. They declared ritual war against them every year, and the young killers of the Krypteia could legally slaughter any Helot they came across. It would be biased to call Athens bloodthirsty without applying that label to Sparta as well. And having “freed” the Aegean cities from Athens imperial grasp, the Spartans quickly gained a reputation as ruthless oppressors as well.
Once you reach the top of a power pyramid, it is risky to give it up, because rightly or wrongly you earn the ire of many of those beneath you by virtue of being at the top. It is still an eat or be eaten world. The Athenian experience has to be viewed in that context. The best way to ensure peace and long term prosperity is to demonstrate both the will and capacity to fight and defeat any aggressor. But it is still a dangerous path to be on. Pericles said it best (paraphrasing), “You can argue whether it was right or wrong to build an empire, but now that we have it, letting it go could be fatal…”
So far we have struck a good balance: maintaining a relatively peaceful and prosperous world, mainly through trade and diplomacy, all backed by overwhelming strength. I agree with Eon that Obama is partly motivated by a ridiculously naive and unrealistic view of geopolitics, but I also think he’s driven to delierately weaken America, while at the same time enabling the most vicious and violent regimes out there.
The great leaders, at least recently, have been humble men (the Founders, Washington, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan), or had been humbled (FDR-polio, Churchill, Grant).
Humility seems to be a good guide when it comes to making decisions that affect the lives of millions of people.
What we have is a talentless clown who has achieved nothing but who thinks he is god.
So, You’ll Kill Me for the Constitution? Post Collapse America in Perspective
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63zZ6I0QiO8
Good question. I wonder, was that asked of the slaves and slave owners prior to the civil war? I also wonder if the answer would be different depending on which one you asked. I don’t really have to wonder – do I?
I’m gratified to read that Hanson understands Hagel’s paleo-right ideology, and the accompanying reference to Buchanan is apt, except Hagel lacks the intelligence and intellectual discipline of Buchanan.
Almost no one gets this about Hagel. Paleoconservative foreign policy views often mesh with those of the New Left. Paleoconservatism is also the last bastion of right-wing anti-semitism, with that odious bigotry having largely moved over to the Left. The choice of Hagel speaks volumes about Obama. It says that our president is dangerously cavalier about American security because he wants an imcompetent ideologue to run the Pentagon. It also shows that he is cleverly diguising his choice of a fellow-traveler as a “bipartisan” move. These two factors illustrate Obama’s contempt for the nation and people he leads.
We are not safe with this man in office.
BhO is a marxist-muslim-mole: Marxist on his mother’s side with good tactician skills from Saul Alinsky- Muslim on his father’s side with the inner dissimulation ability ( takkiya )- third world champion, with a clear will to diminish the weight and prestige and leadership of the USA. So BHO must serve several masters at the same time, depending on the circumstances.But the one and only result is a crippled country, a crippled army , a cripled diplomacy . The two bama’s terms are a bliss for the radicals either stalinist ( China North Korea ) muslim extremists ( Iran Syria Pakistan ). The elimination of a few Al Quaeda lunatics serves as a cover to look like someone seriously fighting terrorism ( on a small regional scale ) while at the same time giving a free ride to much more dangerous powers like Iran, North Korea, China.On the whole Obama is a grand master at a subtle deceiving and treason game.
So you are positing that Obama, to prove he is not a communist or muslim sympathizer in your eyes, should bomb, attack or otherwise destroy Iran, North Korea, or China? And did you miss the fact George Bush turned the USA into a major debtor to the largest and most successful communist nation in world history? Did this mean Bush was a communist? Or can that not be true only because he is white?
You think it was Pres. Bush that turned us into a nation of debtors? You have a strange view of history.
I would challenge several statements in this article, which is not badly written. One glaring one is the suggestion the North and Grant intended to occupy Richmond and that is what led to the failings of 1963. Not true.
Lee rightly assumed Grant was focused on destroying Lee’s army as his primary goal. There were several times when Richmond was well within reach. Grant had no designs on Richmond. He and Lincoln agreed the destruction of Lee’s army was the necessary strategy to end the war, not the occupation of Richmond. It was true the two separate Union armies were spread out, but this was mainly due to the strategy of taking and holding the Mississippi River and its major tributaries and to find and fight the Western armies of the South. I do not believe there ever was a plan to occupy the South or the large land mass it contained. If there was, it is not something mentioned in any of the seminal works I have read.
Also, I think the interpretation of Sherman’s goal is questionable. The primary goal was to drive north behind the Southern lines to eliminate and destroy any chance the South had of resupplying Lee’s army. Sherman took it upon himself to inflict a rein of destruction on the general populace, but undermining the local plantation-based economy was the best way to destroy Southern supplies.
Finally, the statement the war was not won because the Union had more men and resources is simply false. That is how the Union won the war. It was not necessarily true the Union developed better military minds. Instead, they developed allegiance to Grant and his insistence that no matter what happened in any individual battle, the Union would continue to bring the war to Lee. Thomas’ stand at Chickamaugua, a battle the Union technically lost, is an example. Grant did not care how many Union soldiers died and how many battles he lost. He knew it was only a matter of time.
Before Grant took over, Lee continued to bring the war to the Union. After Grant took command, Lee was always on the defensive, even though he failed to appreciate it. Gettysburg is one of the greatest military failures of history. It unfolds because Lee stubbornly clings to the outdated and proven false notion he could bring the war to Grant. Big mistake.
You mean that Lee thought he could bring the war to LINCOLN. Grant was still at Vicksburg when Lee fought Meade.
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Left out of high school histories: The CSA had no gold or silver mines to speak of. The entire war was triggered by CALIFORNIA
You mean that Lee thought he could bring the war to LINCOLN. Grant was still at Vicksburg when Lee fought Meade.
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Left out of high school histories: The CSA had no gold or silver mines to speak of. The entire war was triggered by CALIFORNIA — and its gold rush.
Young Hickory’s involvement (Polk) is ironic, no?
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The CSA never had any backing for its quasi-national currency. It printed large, like it was the USA, from the start, though.
Hyper-inflation gutted the South utterly. It was this beat down that triggered the vast bulk of Southern suffering during the next generation. No one had any liquid assets. No one had any economically competitive investments – without slavery.
While Sherman’s March is well known — even it touched only a trivial minority of Southern investment capital: factories, farms, mines and whatnot.
Hyper-inflation ‘touched’ everybody, Southern.
That debacle gets folded into the war, proper, of course.
In contrast: California gold and Nevada silver made Lincoln’s Greenbacks ultimately good as gold. They also made European powers unwilling to come out in alliance with the CSA.
The North could, and did, out finance the South. The US Treasury Bond market dates from that war.
“Before Grant took over, Lee continued to bring the war to the Union. After Grant took command, Lee was always on the defensive, even though he failed to appreciate it. Gettysburg is one of the greatest military failures of history. It unfolds because Lee stubbornly clings to the outdated and proven false notion he could bring the war to Grant.”
The “seminal” works you read must have been written by Howard Zinn. You’re an effin’ idiot.
Lee’s only purpose in the ’62 and ’63 Campaigns into the North was to relieve the Yankee pressure on Virginia. Lee’s only responsibility until the last few months of The War was to protect Virginia and the Capital. A secondary strategic objective in ’62 was to, perhaps, relieve the Union pressure on Maryland so that its Legislature, essentially captives of the Union, could convene and secede. But the real purpose was to get the Yankees out of Virginia so that the Confederacy rather than the Yankees could harvest the crops. If you’re hungry, not much else matters. Lee well understood that if Grant’s Overland Campaign of ’64 forced him into the Richmond/Petersburg works the war in the East would become a seige and then “it would only be a matter of time” as he expressed to Gen. A. P. Hill.
Gettysburg was not the defeat in the open field that Lee desired to inflict on the Union;it accomplished his goal of removing the Yankees from Virginia and keeping them as “quiet as suckling doves” for a year. The Yankees declared a victory because for the first time since Sharpsburg, they didn’t get driven from the field. At most the Battle of Gettysburg was a tactical draw which left the Yankees unable to resume offensive operations until the next campaign season. There is no doubt that Lee would simply have loved to get the Yankees in a battle on the open field somewhere on the communications lines to Washington, where he was confident he could defeat them. Whether that confidence was misplaced or not, we’ll never know but his track record against the Yankees suggests that it wasn’t a fantasy. That said, his objective was to get them out of Virginia and to loot Pennsylvania the way the Yankees had been looting Virginia; this he accomplished. Lee’s trains southward were a hundred miles long and they were full of “good stuff” the Confederacy wouldn’t have to buy.
If you could get over the lefty bullshit your perfessers pounded into your head, you might have a chance at joining the ranks of civilized, educated people.
And for the Civil War history purists, we can have a really good discussion of how well Lee and, especially, his subordinate commanders handled Lee’s complex plans at Gettysburg. My answer is not well, but that is for another thread and isn’t really relevant to the discussion in this post.
Any thoughts on what would have happened had Lee followed Longstreet’s alleged advice to bypass the fight at Gettysburg and head toward Washington, instead? With a Jackson still around, I can imagine Lee figuring out a way to move east and strike a weak spot, using some improbable Jackson march/dash to win a battle, but with the war then in the North, Meade would not have been able to retreat the way all the previous generals had after losses. Woulda, shoulda, coulda…
But the War is so easy to talk about, compared to the peace. The integration or the lack thereof of all the freed, illiterate, and somewhat rootless blacks into a bleak and bitter South, with Yankee schoolmarms down there (like a woman who grew up one mile from me) trying to teach reading, writing, temperance and Congregationalism to a group of people of, er, diverse ability and interest in education, surrounded by whites who despised them, an emerging Klan, hard drinking and violence from both races all leading to Grover Cleveland and another grand bargain. THAT history, of which I have barely scratched the surface (while your ancestors lived it) speaks to the nasty complexity of all human endeavor and, dare we say, progress.
Whatever is happening in our era, seems less difficult than what happened then, but according to many sages here, life under the evil and grandiose philosopher King Obama is much worse. Hell, now we have the leisure time to get on our magical machines and pontificate of the state of things, whereas in really bad times, we would be out busting our humps to survive, until we could go to live with a child, generous enough to take us in.
Being a younger man, Longstreet was not burdened by the Mexican War — and its legacy of American victorious assaults against superior Mexican positions — many d i r e c t l y the result of Captain Robert E. Lee’s leadership.
Captain Robert E. Lee was General Scott’s right-hand man and go-to staff officer. Scott dispatched Lee time, and time, again, to critical spots — as his personal representative. All subordinate commands were under standing orders (verbal) to follow Lee’s ‘advice’ as if it were coming from Scott, himself. That’s how much confidence General Scott had in Robert E. Lee.
You can’t get into Lee’s psyche at Gettysburg without following Lee’s track record in Mexico.
It was in Mexico that Lee came to learn that well led Americans (a lot of Southern boys in the mix) could ‘do the impossible.’
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In contrast, Longstreet’s first war was the Civil War. He saw that the Minié ball had transformed aggressive, shock, assaults into militarized suicide in a way that Lee, standing abstractly in the rear, just didn’t grasp — until it was too late.
Longstreet realized that it was essential to stand, tactically, on the defensive. One could move offensively only strategically, or operationally. That is, before army formations closed upon a battlefield.
Longstreet could never get Lee to see that Virginia’s strategic role was to block the Army of the Potomac — and nothing more. The constrained terrain of the east made it perilous to even attempt flanking schemes against the North — with its double-sized army.
Grant, Longstreet, Sherman, et. al. realized that it was only everywhere else, the open spaces, that permitted traditional grand maneuver tactics.
Marching north while Grant besieged Vicksburg was fatal. The southern cause HAD to keep the route to Mexico open. Without it, a gunpowder crisis would ensue. (It did.)
In a repeat of King Phillips War, the CSA lost due to persistent black powder ‘poverty.’ Omitted by most historians, the southern generals were so constrained by low powder that their every stance was affected it.
A variation on this theme was seen in WWII when the Axis Powers literally ran out of gas. That poverty drove all of their decisions, too.
Seminal cites on the gunpowder shortage assertion, please?
I’m aware that the CS had a severe niter (KNO3 or potassium nitrate) shortage and went to extraordinary lengths to obtain niter, but to my knowledge powder limitations were more a function of field army transport than actual shortage. One of Lee’s limitations at Gettysburg was his limited shot, shell, and powder supply, but that was a transport limitation, and one that affected both armies. Meade couldn’t agressively pursue Lee because his men had no food, shoes, or other provender because almost all Union transport had been required to bring ammunition forward. The only real difference between Hannibal at Cannae, Jackson at Chancellorsville, and Frank/Swartzkoft in Iraq was the amount of horsepower and thus speed and weight available to each commander.
Confederate powder, produced largely at the giant Augusta, Georgia mill was of uncertain quality and that combined with fuse quality issues had a deleterious effect on the efficacy of CS artillery and infantry fire. You know you’re having a bad day when you’re trying to pee in the barrel of your musket while under fire because your canteen is empty and you really, really, really need to clean that fouled barrel. I know of quite a few examples of a unit running low on powder simply because it couldn’t be carried forward to them, but I’ve never heard of that shortage being the result of the powder being unavailable to the army for lack of supply.
As for King Phillip’s War, I don’t know that the Indians lacked powder, as much as they lacked a safe home base, where they could grow their corn and squash. When Turner nailed them in their previously thought-to-be safe refuge, they were screwed, especially since the Mohawks would not align with them. They got Turner on his way back from the raid, but still, they were pretty much without hope after that raid/massacre and either headed for Canada, from which, they and their St Francis pals would wreak havoc with raids down into NE for the next 140+ years, or else got killed, captured, or sold into West Indian slavery.
Dwight…
Every (surviving) account of the King Phillips War tells of robust native successes — absolute romps — followed by some pretty incompetent colonial counter-strokes.
It was O N L Y after the natives ran out of powder (and ball) that their tactics suffered.
More black powder was brought in — at terrific (panic) expense — none of which was made available to the natives. (unlike prewar custom)
All too quickly, the natives were compelled to fall back upon bow and arrow. In every such engagement (arrows vs bullets) — it was a slaughter.
The only factor that could’ve stopped the natives from sweeping the field, early on, was their lack of powder and shot. They made fantastical efforts to secure more. The colonists went to even greater lengths to make sure they didn’t get any.
Man for man, the natives out fought the colonists, typically 3:1. (It took three colonists to face off one native.)
Ever afterward, the colonists were extremely circumspect about handing out black powder. Typically, they didn’t. Typically the natives had to get black powder from the French — the long way round. The French used this as their method of control — right through to the Seven Years War/ French and Indian War.
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Art Chance
When any army pays astounding prices for guano and salt peter it’s a ‘tell’ that black powder is critically short.
Lee even delayed his ‘northern project’ so as to have full caissons.
The powder shortage didn’t really hit until Vicksburg was lost and Grant kept pushing the issue into the last months of 1863.
This not only shut off the Mexican route — but made getting bat cave guano problematic. Almost all of Tennessee was lost by that point. It had been a significant source.
An army’s supply status is always held secret — admissions of shortages are absolutely taboo in any army in any war. So, it’s not surprising that there’s only oblique, indirect, references to low powder stocks in the written record.
The absolute give-away is the absolute priority the CSA put to getting powder or salt peter past Lincoln’s blockade. Davis was frantic. Circulars were even printed begging all loyal citizens to curry comb the countryside for bat caves. Before the end, even two pounds of guano was enough to gain a draft exemption for an able bodied man for one year.
In the land of Lincoln, it took $ 300 in hard money to gain a draft exemption. (for the duration)
Doing the math, the CSA valued guano at approximately $ 75 per pound. (You’d need four pounds to stay out two years.)
In plain English: the CSA was absolutely desperate for black powder. It went from bad to worse to zero.
Hence, when Sherman’s crews were gutting Georgia — no one was shooting back. Most civilians, being so deep in the rear, had long given up what powder they had for the cause. Here and there, the wives would keep some pistol shots — but the long guns were at the front.
Even outstanding defensive positions collapsed into mere skirmishes. The defenders were down to one or two shots. Sherman could, and did, run through all resistance after Atlanta — for lack of powder.
The US Army N E V E R forgot the logistical lessons of the Civil War.
Lesson number one: never run out of ammo.
I have read many accounts of King Phillip’s War and don’t recall any references to the gunpowder issue, even though I will grant you that logic would tell us that it had to be an issue. The Indians had their own forges and gunsmiths, although certainly nowhere on the scale that the English did. The Indians must have captured guns, ammunition, and powderhorns in the early part of the war. What were the specific battles in which the Indians reverted to bows and arrows? I don’t know of any. I do know that the colonists outnumbered the Indians at least five to one and finally got serious when they established their thousand man militia and enlisted here-to-fore distrusted “praying Indians” like our local Ahauton (who had originally passed on the story, told him by another Indian, who supposedly had seen Phillip’s men drown John Sassamon) to be scouts.
It’s late in the thread so maybe I won’t start a flame war with this: I don’t know that Lee should have fought the Battle of Gettysburg or that he could have won it, but I do know that he stumbled into it and he and his subordinate commanders handled their troops very, very badly.
First, Lee had no idea where the Army of the Potomac was until they crashed into the Army of Northern Virginia on July 1, 1863. This fact itself discredits all the Pipe Creek theories. If on the first day, the ANV had withdrawn and moved east, it would have just had an accidental meeting battle somewhere else.
The ANV had been having a grand romp through verdant Pennsylvania feasting as they’d not feasted since the war began and looting promiscuously though they did fastidiously present the Yankees with IOUs and treated the Yankee women well. The legend is that Mg. Gen. Henry Heth sent two brigades into the town of Gettysburg seeking shoes thought to be there. That either isn’t true or Heth is even dumber than his last place rank in his West Point class would indicate. There’s some family history that militates for the dumb as a stump theory since Heth and Pickett were first cousins.
Two Confederate brigades had a nominal strength of 2000 men and a hundred-odd marching miles into a campaign probably had an actual strength of around 1500, a lot for a simple looting, excuse me, foraging mission with the only opposition expected to be perhaps a US cavalry vidette or some Pennsylvania militia that would fire one volley for their manhood and run like Hell. So something isn’t right with the story from the get-go. In any event, two brigades of experienced infantry would normally make short work of cavalry videttes but Buford was an experienced and effective commander and his cavalrymen had Spenser repeating rifles and essentially fought as mounted infantry. Buford also knew, unlike Lee et al., that the Army of the Potomac had come from its camps on the Rapidan at a run and was only a few miles away. Buford’s cavalrymen bogged Heth’s two brigades down and either Heth on his own or A.P. Hill threw the rest of Heth’s division into Gettysburg just in time to face the leading elements of the AOTP with the “Black Hats” of the Iron Brigade in the van. A general melee ensued that was not going well for the Confederates until Early arrived, late as usual, and threw his troops in. Here the command failures begin in earnest.
This was the ANV’s first battle without Jackson and its first in the new three corps organization in which only Longstreet had any experience with corps command. Heretofore, the ANV had operated as two corps or “wings” commanded by Longstreet and Jackson. The most common disposition was to have Longstreet’s wing function to hold a position, the anvil, and Jackson’s wing function as the maneuver unit, the hammer. Lee, Jackson, and Longstreet had worked this way since The Seven Days battles in June of ’62. Command was in the form of agreeing on objectives and general dispositions and leaving the actual battle to the discretion of his two trusted corps commanders. Neither Virginian, Hill nor Early, had any experience above division command and both were accustomed to the VERY controlling and directive Jackson, with whom Hill particularly had gotten along very poorly. Hill’s new II Corps was formed mostly of units from Longstreets wing and a few from Jackson’s and Hill knew few of his new subordinates well. Lee placed a great deal of faith in Mg. Gen. Richard Heron Anderson to be a guiding and steadying influence on the new Corps commander, a faith that was misplaced as Anderson had a serious alcohol problem.
A suggestion that an objective be taken “if practicable” given by Lee to the very agressive Jackson meant do everything you can to take the objective. To Jubal Early it meant take the objective if you can do so with little risk. Longstreet’s Corps didn’t arrive in Gettysburg until the night of the 1st, some quite late in the night. Hill’s Corps was still coming up as Heth engaged Buford. Early’s arrival tipped the battle to the Confederates on the first day but some of Hill’s units had significant losses, a fact not adequately considered when they were assigned to Pickett’s left on the fateful third day. In any event, Early did not move expeditiously to secure the high ground behind Gettysburg known as Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Ridge and as the Yankees moved into the high ground, Early held the Confederate left with his units below the Ridge, a disasterous turn of events.
I think most of the CW about the Second Day is wrong. I don’t have my notes handy but I researched the Second Day extensively when working on a regimental history of the 48th Georgia, a regiment in Wright’s Brigade, Anderson’s Division, Hill’s Corps. People have relied on Fremantle’s memoir to assume that decisions and dispositions were made in the very early morning of 2 July, before daylight which as best I recall was a bit after 5 AM. It must be remembered that there was no standard time in 1863 and watches were set to “sun time,” the time on the courthouse clock, or in the military, some time agreed to by the commanders, so there is no consistency as to time between various reports. The image of Fremantle in his Coldstream Guards uniform in a tree looking down on the Confederate command working by lamplight to decide the fate of a Nation is compelling. Fremantle was very, very unlikely to have been wearing his uniform at any time in his “Three Months in the Southern States,” and the map work was almost certainly done after sunrise. It is highly unlikely that orders were issued before nine or ten AM and then Longstreet’s Corps had to march some miles from their encampments behind Herr’s Woods to their start positions below and to the right of the Round Tops. The Virginians blame the late start on the Second Day on Longstreet’s recalcitrance, a deliberate slowness. I think that is a libel of the Georgian, who by the time of the memoir wars of the 1880s was the sole survivor of the Confederate Pantheon and had gone on with his life renewing his friendships with old Army comrades from before the war and committing the unpardonable sin of becoming a Republican. In any event, even if the orders had been set around sunrise, several hours would be required to get Longstreet’s men up, fed, assembled, and marched several miles by a circuitious route to avoid observation to begin the attacks on the second day. Getting the ball rolling somewhat after noon is not dilatory even if the orders were given around sunrise and is quite expeditious if they were set at the more likely mid-morning.
The complex, overly complex given the state of his organization, en eschelon attack was intended to draw ever more Union troops away from the union right so that Early could push from the Confederate left and roll up the Union right flank as so many union forces would have been drawn into the center that Meade could not effectively oppose Early’s thrust on his right. Lee’s plan fell apart at the juncture between Longstreet and Hill’s Corps. The small Florida brigades were on Hill’s right against Longstreet’s leftmost unit, I can’t remember whose division. They stepped off as planned after Longstreet’s leftmost unit advanced but were drawn into heavy fighting below Cemetery Ridge. Wright’s Brigade followed the Floridians over the Emmittsburg Pike and up the Ridge pushing the Yankees back effectively, capturing several guns, and ultimately taking the Ridge and holding it for awhile. Some of Posey’s Mississippians moved with Wright’s Georgians but Posey’s units were generally confused and over half of them never attacked effectively. Mahone was next and his Virginia brigade was the largest and freshest brigade in Hill’s Corp. Mahone refused to move and thus nothing to his left moved. Anderson sent his aide to order Mahone to move but Mahone refused to take an order from anyone but Anderson or Hill, neither of whom took any action. Even Hill’s very friendly biographer titles the chapter on Gettysburg “Bystander to Defeat.” Anderson’s biographer hardly mentions Gettysburg. Hill is known to have been ill at Gettysburg. If too ill to command, he should have asked for relief from the beginning. Anderson is thought by many to have been drunk. Early met stiff resistance and was unable to reach the Ridge. The Yankees counterattacked and drove Wright of the Ridge with heavy losses as night fell. Wright was incensed over the lack of support on his flanks and it almost came to an affair of honor with the Floridians who had in fact moved but were stymied by Yankee resistance. Wright’s official report is here: http://www.civilwarhome.com/wrightgettysburgor.htm
Wright is known to have met with Lee on the night of the 2nd Day and may have been the last commander to see Lee before he went to bed. Wright says he told Lee he’d been on the Ridge and that it wasn’t too hard to get there because there were some protecting swales where units could reform without taking fire from the Ridge. Wright said Lee’s decision was that if you could take it with a Brigade, you could take it and hold it with a division thus breaking Meade’s front.
It’s called Pickett’s Charge because the Virginians wrote the histories but the Third Day assault on the center of the Union line was composed of brigades commanded by Pickett, Pettigrew, and Trimble with flack support on the right by two of Anderson’s brigades. Lee either didn’t know or failed to adequately consider how badly weakened from the first two days of fighting many of the units were, particularly those on the left under Pettigrew and Trimble. Three Confederate divisions would have a nominal strength near 15,000 men. Between losses and shirking, and, yes, there was shirking; the men of the ANV knew what they faced, it is likely that the assault stepped off with little more than 10,000 men, many of whom were lost to whithering artillery fire in the 3/4 mile march up the ridge. At most a few hundred actually reached the stone wall and they were quickly killed or driven back. Approximately half the attacking force was killed or wounded. Thus ended the battle of Gettysburg and those three days destroyed the Army of Northern Virgina as an offensive force; it never attacked again. (The ’64 raid on Washington was merely a feint to try to draw pressure off Richmond/Petersburg.)
Early failed to secure the heights on the first day and failed to effectively assault them on the second and third days. Hill failed to handle his troops effectively on the second day and was ill on the third and inactive. Anderson failed to effectively manage his troops on the second day and either Hill or Anderson should have laid the flat of their sword to Mahone to get him to move in support of Wright or relieved and court martialed him. And on the third day, the criticisms of Longstreet are justified; he failed to manage the troops under his command almost entirely, refusing even to give the order to commence the assault. Early’s troops failed again to adequately pressure the Union right and relieve the center. Alexander’s artillery was largely ineffective in suppressing fire from the Ridge on the third day. And Lee failed by letting it happen. To his credit, Lee took the blame and never again expected his corps commanders to act independently. From Gettysburg on, Lee was almost foolhardy in his insistance on handling troops directly and, in fact, troops under Hood at the Wilderness refused to move in an attack until Lee absented himself to the rear.
This was written from memory and I may have a few dispositions, unit, and commanders wrong and some lefts and rights reversed but it is in the main correct. You can, of course, take the opinions for what you think they’re worth.
Well there were all sorts of things going on inside the fishhook, but I appreciate all the detail on the Rebs. Also from memory: Your commentary fits in with what I think I know. One bottom line; you couldn’t replace Jackson Another was that for once, the big Union army was relatively condensed and much less likely to retreat (OK, maybe on the 1st day) while defending northern soil. Barlow, who had gone to the Brook Farm school, a mile from where I put in my thirty seven years, got flanked by Early on the first day and was part of the usual Howard debacle and retreat. On the second day, it certainly was fortuitous that Gouvernor Morris saw Longstreet’s men moving behind the trees (or else he just realized that the left flank was vulnerable) and got Vincent, Chamberlain et al. up onto Little Round Top. With vicious fighting on all three days, it is hard to blame any of the actors, for not going the extra mile to take the high ground on the first day, march behind the whole Reb line to get into position early on the second day, fight up Culp’s Hill or Little Round Top on any day, or on our side, beat Bobby Lee to his crossing at Hagerstown back over the Potomac. The latter seems the most do-able, if you don’t get distracted by the fact that you have just taken terrible casualties for two days and fought a hell of a battle on day three. Maybe if the Vermont Cavalry had not been waxed on the fourth day, Meade would have been more aggressive in using cavalry to harass Lee as he retreated.
But as I said before, the War is still a lot more discrete and open to coherent analysis than the years which followed.
One thing little noted about Gettysburg is that in that battle, the Yankees were the ones who were ragged and hungry. Lee had stolen a march on the as he slipped out of his camps in Virginia and went north and the Yankees had to come North at a run. By the time they got to Gettysburg, many had tattered uniforms and worn out shoes. They had left much of their train behind and it took virtually all of their drayage just to keep the men in ammunition so there was very little food. Meade had a very worn and hungry army so those who lay so much blame on him don’t understand what kind of shape the Union Army was in after Lee withdrew.
Art Chance…
Meade’s number one — and correct — reason for not attacking Lee was the Union’s horrific loses in ‘Class A’ generals.
The North had endless numbers of political generals. They ran into the hundreds. (!)
As for effective generals — half were dead or shot up by July 4th, 1863.
Lincoln had to transplant talent in from the west.
His masterstroke was leaving Meade in command of the Army of the Potomac — and then putting Grant above him — as a Lt. General.
(That rank was rare: only Scott, victor of the Mexican War, was made Lt. General by Congress, until Grant.)
Without his critical subordinates, Meade would’ve been leading a rabble against Lee. Lincoln would’ve been toast.
@Blert -
Lee’s losses in officers were horrendous as well and many units never recovered. Brigadiers, Colonels, Captains, and Lieutenants paid a very heavy price on all three days of the battle. It is made to seem that Gettysburg all but ended the War, but it really was barely halfway through the War, which went on for over a year and a half more and with very heavy losses in the Overland Campaign in ’64. The Army of Northern Virginia that met the Yankees at The Wilderness and fought much of that battle over and among the bodies from the Battle of Chancellorsville on the same ground the year before, didn’t resemble the Army of Northern Viginia that fought at Chancellorsville or even the one that marched to Gettysburg. By robbing both cradle and grave and pulling as many men as possible off details and into the ranks, my gg/grandfather among them, the PACS got the Army more or less up to strength but the seasoned officers lost at Gettysburg simply could not be replaced.
SOUTH CHINA SEA
The US may have a direct interest. The US can act as if they have a direct interest and it will work as authoritarian systems are liable to be hustled successfully.
The Philippines got independence without a plebiscite. Such a vote is required to change status in the Commonwealth. A Senate trade bill adjusting the trading agreements with the Philippines in the 1920s included a little mention that it was not necessary to have a plebiscite, just a vote of the legislators will be sufficient. It passed into law.
Citing the lack of a plebiscite can support US direct interest.
VOICE OF US MILITARY
Since the independence of the Air Force, the US military speaks with the voice of the White House. Spoken disagreement will be from retirement (or the speaker will be retired in 24 hours). Opinion expressed below field-grade officers receives less White House interest. Military disagreement with the White House can be found by picking over the writings in the professional military publications. That article by a Sergeant First Class or by a 2nd Lieutenant, who else has that outlook?
Stagflation: Back to the 1970′s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoRY-pEhdq4&feature=player_embedded
“Then and now, victories lead to hubris that leads to overreaching that leads to folly, and eventually ruin.”
So goes the life and ending story of imperial nation building around the world though, not many real victories of record!
You, sir, are an exemplar of muddled thinking.
“Imperial nation building” is oxymoronic in the extreme.
Imperial powers, by their nature, destroy other nations so that they may absorb them.
(Rome, China, Aztecs, Hitlerite Germany, Soviet Russia, … plenty to choose from.)
In Science Fiction, the Borg is Imperialism, writ galactic.
Nation building, is the inverse function of imperialism.
It’s more commonly known as ‘national liberation.’
(Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Eastern Germany, Korea, China… and so on.)
America has a sustained track record of terminating empires and reversing conquests.
In contrast, America is pretty quick out the door, unless requested to stay.
(Philippines, Iraq, France, Libya, Saudi Arabia,… even Pakistan (!))
As for hubris — check out Barry, the Wan. He’s an international poster-boy for hubris.
The blow-back is just beginning.
While Grant was a good general, his strategy was fairly simple. He had superior numbers, he knew it, and he wasn’t afraid to use them. He also generally was smart enough to avoid mass suicide attacks against prepared positions and instead was content with flanking maneuvers and keeping Lee bogged down in a long war of attrition.
When Grant first took control of the Army of the Potomac, Lee out-maneuvered him several times. But Grant had more troops, so he could always come back to fight another day. While Grant was a good general and a big improvement over his predecessors, if the roles had been reversed with Lee commanding the North and Grant the South Lee would have made short work of Grant.
It’s a hundred and twenty five miles from the Rapidan to the James and Grant killed or wounded 1000 men a mile; he turned over the entire nominal strength of the Army of the Potomac to invest Lee in Richmond/Petersburg. If losing 7000 men in twenty minutes at Cold Harbor ain’t a mass suicide attack it sure seemed to be one to his men who mutinied when ordered to charge the Confederate works again. Grant didn’t get the nickname “Butcher Grant” from killing Confederates.
That said, he was hired to withstand the bloody arithmetic.
The captain from NH, who said, “if Jesus Christ ordered me to charge again, I would refuse.” Grant acknowledged that he always regretted the last charge at Cold Harbor. He had tried to beat Lee to that spot, did not, and his men paid a terrible price. It was the last such attack on an entrenched position of the war.
As for the bloody arithmetic, I recently hear a story of Lincoln speaking with Stanton or someone after Fredericksburg of all battles, and saying, “You know, with ten more battles like this, we win the war.” That arithmetic I can’t wrap my mind around.
I have trouble believing that and I’m not a real big Lincoln fan. Northern political authority and the newspaper editors were appalled by the losses first at Sharpsburg and then at Fredricksburg less than three months later and this to those “ragged, wolf-like men” as the Northern press had first described the first Confederates they’d actually since First Manassas when the ANV entered Maryland.
The Northern “political elite” to use our present term had really bought McClellan’s line about what a wonderful army he had and it shook them to the core when Lee and his ragtag rebels chased McClellan and his “perfumed princes” all the way from the gates of Richmond back into Maryland, the District, and Pennsylvania in 3 months, leaving a lot of Yankees in shallow graves.
Poor Burnside, can you believe I said that of a Yankee, never wanted army command but didn’t want to be commanded by Hooker, as it turned out an astute desire. Damnable assignment that it was, Burnside had to perform; he had to be agressive before the now approaching mythical Lee. Nobody was going to be able to say that Burnside lacked agression on Lee’s front and he simply battered his army to pieces before the stone wall on Marye’s Hill. I’ve stood up there and even my cold heart can feel sorry for those poor damned Yankees at the base of that hill. Interestingly, Lee, driven by the same political compulsion to perform, battered his army to pieces before another stone wall at Gettysburg. It isn’t coincidence that the Yankees on Cemetery Ridge on 3 July 63 were chanting “Fredricksburg, Fredricksburg, Fredricksburg” as the Confederates attempted to gain the stone wall.
If Lincoln had had many more battles like Fredricksburg, he’d have been facing revolt from the Northern governors who at that time had control over whether he could get troops; the US conscription didn’t begin until mid-’63. The Civil War song “The Empty Chair” was starting to have real meaning in lots of Yankee homes and they did have elections in The North. Lincoln was a pretty astute politician. He didn’t go to that “bloody arithmetic” stuff until he found in Grant a General he could trust and had proven that his armies could win a battle or at least hold the field at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. Even then, as Lee predicted, the Yankees were “quiet as suckling doves” from Gettysburg until The Wilderness almost a year later.
You may be correct, but each fought the way that they thought that they HAD to fight. Lee had to fight a go-for-broke war; Grant, a wear-em-down war, given the cards they drew.
Agree that Lee would have been phenomenal had he had access to resources like the North. That was his problem- he didn’t. The South didn’t have the resources to fight knock-down drag-out battles, but Lee didn’t grasp this until after his two failed invasion attempts. His best chance for victory was to keep his army intact and stretch out the war. The Democrats in the North would have loved a negotiated peace with their Southern brethren- they almost got it as is.
Grant was the most amazing story of the war. From the equivalent of living in a refrigerator box in 1861 to the most powerful man in the country in 1865. He could fight a war of maneuver (Vicksburg campaign) or do the ground and pound (Eastern theater 1864-1865). I’m a big Grant fan- no bones about it.
If you are our enemy, how do you beat the United States? Keep your army intact and prolong the war as long as possible. After 4 or 5 years with no decisive outcome the Democrat party will be happy to cut a deal with you while using the war to their political advantage.
For all of the Lost Cause posters- OK, have you really thought how our country would be different with a dominant Democrat party with little opposition? Because that would have been the result of an outright Southern victory or negotiated peace. Think things are lousy now? Think of the past 150 years with one-party government. We’d be California times 150 by now…or worse.
There is no doubt that the nouveau US foreign policy, howver you want to characterize it, is making the world a more unpredictable place, and hence a more dangerous one.