Studying War Among The Graves

Ironic that I'd log onto the Internet after some couple days of following the path of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia up through Maryland and on to Gettysburg to find this piece by Victor Davis Hanson: Why Study War? Were you ever taught that, putting an outright military victory aside, a significant motivation behind Lee's second invasion of the North was to stir up the Northern peace movement in hopes of winning the war in perhaps the only way ever actually open to him - politically?

Lee hoped an invasion would fuel the northern peace movement and, at least, disrupt the Union war effort.

Fifty-one thousand killed or wounded in a few days, ten thousand or more in a single wheat field in half an afternoon, still Lee did not realize his Tet, if you will. And that in a war that yielded up photos like the one of a fourteen year old boy killed in battle at Petersburg and cited a 12 year-old boy as perhaps its youngest veteran amputee. Yet, the sides fought on. Here's a comprehensive wiki. A solid page with photos on the larger war here.

If you read just a bit of history around Gettysburg you'll note that the great General Lee all but stumbled into a battle he neither planned, nor wanted, and against the best advice of some of his commanders, in fact. His originally stated intention was to fight a defensive battle he could win, not the offensive sort he eventually lost. And Meade, the victorious Northern General was soon relieved in disappointment by Lincoln for his failure to pursue and crush Lee's army. Some fascinating reads on Gettysburg and also the politics around that battle here.

As I was making my way North I thought of men walking, many of them so very, very young. From Alabama, New York, Kentucky, Minnesota, Georgia, wherever, children walking, in many cases, to their death. You see, they were from the North and the South, as the Federal Army was making its way North, as well - probing, attempting to stay in touch with Lee's forces. Were their lives wasted? Were they simply poor, impoverished dupes of some military industrial complex? The victims of materialistic politicians bent only on acquiring power for themselves?

If you are to conclude that, then you must conclude that our Republic itself has no worth, no value at all in the grand scheme. And while Iraq is obviously not America, to conclude our men and women now fighting and dying there are nothing but the saddest of the above is to conclude that country and its twenty-some million people are of no value, either. And that's something I'm simply not prepared to do.

Why study war? I don't know. Because it is real and perhaps always proves itself inevitable? Because it refines truth with the hottest of fires and makes us face things and ideas we might prefer to ignore? I didn't log on to answer the question: Why study war? as VDH does. I simply logged on to say that, when you do, everything else pales in comparison. And you will learn lessons you might not like but nevertheless need if you are to truly understand the world in which we live today, assuming you have the insight and wisdom to admit it, of course.

Comments

[rwilymz]

Here's a little historical perspective for the [current] resident self-loather.

...as an aside, I don't have time to be here very often, and it seems that every time I come back the old resident backbiter has gone, and a new one has taken its place. There's always only one, and they pretty much have the same arguments as the previous clown even down to -- in many cases -- using the same terminology to make them. My guesses as to why include:
1] sockpuppetry, or
2] they all learned the lessons by rote in self-loathers school, and simply recite, word for word, the lecture.

I find it curious... anyway:

The Soviet Empire fell because it went broke. Period. End of discussion. Money is the grease of politics, and they had none. The engine of their government seized up. The East Bloc peoples' yearning for freedoms and rights had nothing to do with the government disintegrating... and I can say this with little fear of contradiction because there were no revolutions. Their peoples' yearning for freedoms simply made their acquiescence to The West palatable.

The Soviet Empire went broke, on the other hand, for myriad reasons. The one commonly cited by Reagan boosters is the Star Wars "keeping up with the Americans" spending. And that certainly played a part. Possibly a lions share. But also included was the disastrously expensive ten-year A'stan invasion/occupation. Additionally, selling off their gold reserves for Western currency with which to buy Western food to feed their people after it was discovered -- yet again -- that socialism and farm policy do not work well together, no matter how many Five Year Plans are in the books saying otherwise.

And the point that I will bring up again is that in the mid/late 70s, Carter had the arguable opportunity to screw the lid down on the end of State Socialism, but instead he decided to sell the Russians surplus US wheat at below market price thus both propping up the Soviets for another go-round as well as hurting the US financially during the OPEC Oil Embargo. Carter would rather be "nice" than effective.

...and Brezhnev thanked him by invading A'stan. Oh what a tangled web.

Additionally -- and this is a point I bring up from time to time -- the Soviets went broke by attempting to perform one of the basic government functions: keeping its people materialistically satisfied. The Russian people wanted, desperately and clawingly, Western "stuff" [normally typified by blue jeans and rock-n-roll music]. One of the jobs of government, ANY government, is keeping people happy, even if they are relatively oppressed.

The Soviet government couldn't actually buy Levis and Jordache because that would be too expensive [and signal the worlds' socialists that socialism was actually inferior, however superficially, to Western pigdog decadence], so they created their own knockoffs. Which were lousy, and as inferior to the "real thing" as a Trabant was to even a Ford. So they spent rubles to create knockoffs that nobody bought, they spent more to fight the black market in Levis and Beatles albums, and they simply wasted money.

Now, wasting money is not uncommon for government, and we certainly do enough of it ourselves. But it's not often fatal as it was here. The reason it was fatal to the Soviets is because the Soviet government was built upon a profit-neutral economy that was spending money like a drunken sailor on leave. The US can spend money hand over fist; it will pinch and it will have a wide range of negative financial impacts, but it won't be fatal. The US government is built on top of a profit-making economy... there's always more money to be found.

And this is the critical point that needs to be understood as regards current US policies: we're spending $$billions$$ fighting group[s] of self-appointed would-be world-beaters who are armed with, comparatively, pointy sticks. Many people, usually those who have the circumspection of a gnat, will whine and moan and wail "Oh, we're going broke! Oh, think of what else we could spend this on! Oh, woe is me!" and what they don't realize is that the folks we are fighting have their own fiscal problems as well. Even though they are fighting against smart bombs and body armor with pointy sticks, they still have to **buy** those pointy sticks -- or someone does -- and they are almost exclusively the products, themselves, of a profit-neutral, even profit-hostile, economic mindset.

In short: they will go broke before we will. Just like the Soviets did.

This is not even to mention that the more we remove entire state regimes from the funding apparatus for these groups of would-bes, the smaller the pool of money they have to buy their pointy sticks with. In just the last 5 years we've removed Iraq, Libya and Yemen from actual state-sponsorship of these roving bands of hotheads. Iraq by force; Libya and Yemen by object lesson. Without state sponsorship of paramilitary forces, those paramilitaries will be forced to rely on bake sales and cash donations to fund their private wars, ...which means they won't be having private wars. There's a finite [and very limited] number of state sponsors.

Do the math.

[Ken McCracken]

First of all, markie, go look up the word 'nascent' since it is clear you have no idea what it means. It does not mean 'fully formed and functional', for your information.

Here is a history lesson for you: our own nascent democracy took a couple decades to get its act together. You are demanding that the Iraqis do it in mere months by comparison.

Oh yeah markie, the Iraqis have suffered more casualties than Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Hamburg and the Tokyo firebombings all put together?

You really believe that crap?

The Lancet study methodology, whatever it is, on its face is just ludicrously wrong, and a factor of 10 higher than the next highest estimate, based on actual death counts.

Your sarcasm detector obviously doesn't work any better than your bullshit detector, my 'oceans' argument was obviously facetious (as in, oceans didn't protect us on 911, and they won't protect Fortress America from the inevitable terrorist attacks that will come once the jihadis have their sanctuary established in Iraq). At least I am far more honest than you are. I have the honesty to admit that there are huge problems in Iraq. You, on the other hand, cannot bring yourself to even admit that large strides have also been made there, and that it is not hopeless.

Maybe getting over your denial will be your first step towards recovery.

[rwilymz]

People who talk about the Military Industrial Complex are simply invoking the same institutional boogeyman that was previously served by the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons or, by some, the UN.

"I guess it explains why Hanson is the warlover he is."

For all the *personal* anecdotia to tear-jerk us away from war, the bottom line to it will always be: It Works.

"Probably a million dead [Iraqis] by now"

4% of their population? Wow.

"Tell it to Major Tammy Duckworth and the tens of thousands of other GIs ..."

This may be news to you, but their job, as soldiers, is to offer their bodies, or parts thereof, to the furtherance of US foreign policy. They volunteered.

Tell it to Dale Earnhardt and his grieving widow and children that NASCAR is fine and not too dangerous a "sport" for safety-at-all-costs wimpy Americans indulge in. Oh, yeah, Dale Jr drives and the grieving widow owns the race team...

First of all what nascent democracy? The Sunnis have withdrawn from the government.

The same kind that plagues Italy, it sounds like. Or Texas when the Democratic minority doesn't like Republican redistricting plans. Or Illionois, when the Democratic majority doesn't like the inane Democratic Governor...

Britain from time to time...

"You can't force an ideology... Has history taught you nothing?"

You're right about that, but in just the short space of what I've read of you here and now, you're about the farthest from lecturing on learning from history as I've seen in a while.

"Our disastrous occupation of Iraq inspires disaffected Islamic and Arab dumbasses from all over to hate us even more than they already do and the distraction and waste of resources on said occupation prevents us from devoting the attention required to Afghanistan and Pakistan"

See what I mean? You've got your prose littered -- as with rhetorical landmines, ironic as it is -- with inane, emotive adjectives that add nothing to an academic discourse, as one would expect to get from a bone-dry recitation of historical analysis. Instead, you are preaching. And you are not reaaly different from a Chattaqua Revivalist in the form and construct of your, ahem, "argument".

Since you're obviously ignorant of the lessons of history that you would otherwise speak so glowingly of, let me just throw this out at you:

How did the US beat the Soviets in the Cold War?

And why?

"Did the Atlantic protect us from Howe and the Hessians?"

Yes. But you obviously knew that.

Unless you didn't, in which case my advice to you would be to disengage right now.

"...studies that Bush, Rummy, and Cheney are all to happy to cite when it serves their purposes"

Gosh. Politicians playing politics. Whoda thunk?

"The Domino Theory was a lie."

Many things are. To the degree they aren't the Truth. And also to the degree they aren't irrelevant red herrings.

And in politics, you are guaranteed to see the free mixture of all -- Truth, Falsehoods, and Irrelevancies -- and you are guaranteed to NOT see only one of them.

Those who claim to see only one of them are either deliberately dishonest, or they are ignoramical boobs.

Just to be nice to you thus far, I'm going to consider you a boob.

[markg8]

Bob define "win" please.

"were the interests of the US advanced by those we left the country to?" There's a Hilton I think it is at China Beach. Last I heard Thieu was living in London (probably off some of the $10 billion in US aid
money to his corrupt government he skimmed) and Key owned a Holiday Inn in San Diego.

You're gonna have to get over Vietnam. After centuries of occupation by the Chinese, French, Japanese and the French again the Vietnamese like a lot of countries after WW11 wanted to run their own country. Ho Chi Minh in 1946 begged Truman not to let the French back in and even offered to translate the US Bill of Rights and put it into his constitution. Even our
military adviser to the region told the State Dept we should support Vietnamese nationalism instead of a return to French colonialism. Truman had enough problems on his hands without pissing off the French and wasn't
interested in the pleas of the trained communist Ho.

So fast forward to 1972. After almost a decade propping up a puppet government in Saigon Nixon started redeploying out of Vietnam. Vietnamization was working he said. Vietnamese were standing up so we could stand down. In early 1973 Kissinger signed a peace agreement that was essentially the same as the one LBJ agreed to in 1968. Kissinger and Nixon scuttled that deal in late 1968 in Paris when Henry whispered into South Vietnamese ears, "Don't sign this, wait til after the election and we'll get you a better deal." So after another 30,000 or so US dead and untold millions of Vietnamese we left. All Henry wanted was "a decent interval" before the inevitable happened.

From Wikipedia: In December 1974, congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which cut off all military funding to the South Vietnamese government. President Ford signed the bill into law. The North Vietnamese, however, were growing impatient with the Thieu regime, which remained intransigent in its opposition to national elections. On 10 March, 1975, General Dung launched Campaign 275, a limited offensive into the Central Highlands. President Gerald Ford gave a televised speech on April 23, declaring an end to the Vietnam War and all U.S. aid. On April 30, 1975, VPA troops overcame all resistance, quickly capturing key buildings and installations. A tank crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace and at 11:30 a.m. local time the NLF flag was raised above it. Thieu's successor, President Duong Van Minh attempted to surrender, but VPA Colonel Bui Quang Than informed him that he had nothing left to surrender. Minh then issued his last command, ordering all South Vietnamese troops to lay down their arms.

When push came to shove in 1975 even though we left the South Vietnamese the third largest air force in the world and billions of dollars in munitions and equipment they lost in a rout that lasted six and a half weeks. They were never going to stand on their own because they didn't have the support of their own people.

As for Cambodia talk to Kissinger. He never should have destablized the country. And here's something you'll never get reading your revisionist history books. The Vietnamese appalled at Pol Pot's brutality were the ones who invaded Cambodia and overthrew his regime. And then probably just to piss you off they left. The Domino Theory was a lie.

We "camped out" in Germany for 60 years to protect half the country from the Soviets, same with Japan. It's amazing how the threat of really crappy government on the other side of the wall can focus a people isn't it? The West Germans got so good at democratic capitalism their example helped inspire Eastern Europe to throw off their communist puppet governments. When East Germans and Poles saw their cousins in the West could afford washing machines, cars and even protest the installation of American missiles in Europe without winding up in a gulag they decided the Soviet way had to go. The glaring differences in prosperity and civil liberties between East and West did more to bring down the Soviet Union than any arms build up ever did. Ask Lech Walesca.

Insults are the last resort of small minds Bob. Just like Vietnam you're going to have to get over Iraq. The adults are going be back in charge soon. The "they stabbed us in the back, we coulda won if only the liberals woulda let us" meme you fellas trot out incessantly has been exposed for the fraud it is. It's a sick perversion of history. The American people are sick of incompetent chickenhawks sqaundering our power, reputation and resources. We're going to leave Iraq and finish the job Bush won't, going after the people who actually attacked us on 9/11. And then we're going back to the business of making a more perfect union. You will be free to marginalize yourself telling people how treasonous that is. Enjoy wallowing in your misery and self pity Bob. It's all you have left.

[Fred Beloit]

"Guns don't kill people ken, people with guns kill people." This from sock puppet markg8. But in this case it is people like markg8 who want to kill all those Iraqis who will surely die if the opinions of people like markg8 gain ascendancy. Guns don't kill people, markg8, people like you who want us to run from Iraq as we did in Vietnam kill people by proxy. Cars kill people, not drivers, everybody knows that.

[markg8]

Ken I don't know how you manage to get so many things wrong in such a short post but you do.

First of all what nascent democracy? The Sunnis have withdrawn from the government. Maliki's done nothing to elect regional councils, his government doesn't provide services and his army doesn't provide protection. It's non functional. He was handpicked by the US to be the Alliance candidate which started him off as suspect in Iraqi eyes. He bolsters his public credibility by ignoring Bush and merrily signing agreements with Iran. He may have been elected in the purple finger election but calling his government democratic gives democracy a bad name.

But let's see how democratic they really are. Carl Levin just came back from Iraq calling for the Iraqi parliament to fire Maliki. Although Levin said he would not presume to dictate to the Iraqis how to run their own government, he did take the extraordinary step of saying what he hopes the Iraqis will do about the problem. The quote, "So I hope that the Iraqi Assembly, when it reconvenes in a few weeks, will vote the Maliki government out of office, and will have the wisdom to replace it with a less sectarian and a more unifying prime minister and government."

There were about 1500 Al Qaeda wannabes in Iraq a couple of months ago, about half of them Saudi. That was before the US military started chasing them around the boonies. Probably about half that now. Even the Sunni Iraqis hate 'em. They're not setting up anything in Iraq. Once we leave they will be exterminated by Iraqis of all creeds and colors.

As for all those sunk costs, why waste more lives and treasure? You can't force an ideology, whether it's communism, democracy or Saddam's baathist thuggery down the throats of a people at the point of a gun unless you're willing to be like Saddam, his hero Stalin or Mao. Has history taught you nothing?

Emboldening terrorists? While you've been cheerleading this fiasco in Iraq
the terrorists haven't wasted time waiting to be emboldened. They've reestablished themselves in Pakistan and Afghanistan. According to the latest NIE Al Qaeda has rebuilt their capabilities to 9/10 levels. How they'd do that you ask? Our disastrous occupation of Iraq inspires disaffected Islamic and Arab dumbasses from all over to hate us even more than they already do and the distraction and waste of resources on said occupation prevents us from devoting the attention required to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Oceans? God you really need to come up with a more sensible strawman argument than that cuz just repeating Bushisms is silly. When have oceans ever protected us? The goddam British sailed a whole fleet into New York harbor in 1776 to try to stamp out our revolution. Did the Atlantic protect us from Howe and the Hessians? The vast reaches of the Pacific didn't "protect" us on 12/07/41. The Russians have started flying their nuclear bomber forces again.

The Lancet study has been discredited by whom? The same people who told you the WMD are in Syria now? That study used the same methodology of other studies that Bush, Rummy, and Cheney are all to happy to cite when it serves their purposes. The latest poll from Iraq shows 53% of the Iraqi people say they have a close friend or family member who has been killed or wounded by the violence. Over half say someone close to them has been killed or wounded. The death toll may very well be higher than a million. It's difficult to get hard numbers because the US and Iraqi government refuse to allow a real census.

It's nice to see you're so concerned about the possibility of killing fields Ken. There may be an all out bloodbath when we leave. There may not be. Nobody knows. But you're showing very little faith in the Iraqi people to let their nascent democracy get on with governing. Al Qaeda isn't going to take over. Saddam's baathists are never going to run the country again.

The French didn't hang around here for years after helping us win our revolution telling us how to form a government or chasing Tories around the countryside. Let freedom ring. Like Rummy said, democracy is messy. In the meantime if you are so concerned about a possible bloodbath maybe you should write General Petraeus and tell him to stop arming all sides in the conflict. Guns don't kill people ken, people with guns kill people.

[Cindi]

did you expect more from one self described as "markie.?

[bloodrage bob]

ahh, markie, what a funny funny man you are. "i thought i spelled it out for you", but - as i sense some denseness on your part here - let me reiterate. "we must withdraw entirely from iraq", you say? "we cannot win", you moan?

why? because *you* say so? let's go back to the latest historical parallel: good ol' veetnam. what happened when we "withdrew entirely" from veetnam? did good things happen? were the interests of the US advanced by those we left the country to? did our undignified retreat - brought about entirely by democrats, BTW - did that make us appear to be 'honorable', and 'willing to pay the price to honor our commitments'? or did it just make us seem to be a pack of craven shallow morons?

how about the good folks of vietnam we abandoned? did things go well for them after we left? did their standards of living rise rapidly, along with their personal freedom? or is vietnam just another useless "ex"-commie 3rd world hellhole even today, 30 years later? how did our craven flight - the same kind of cowardly retreat you're calling for - how'd that work out for the cambodians? i doubt teacher bothered to tell you about this, as it makes statist/communists look bad, but google "killing fields" sometime.

we camped out in germany for 60 years after ww2, mark. spent a lot of money, true, but it seems to have turned out ok. been awhile since they invaded poland again. same with japan. why not now?

lastly, you end your halfwit rant by (as near as i can tell) believing what mookie al-sadr says he'll do after (nitwits like you) allow him to take over. "mookie says he'll welcome us back with open arms!" uh-huh. because islamic theocrat totalitarian dictator wannabes have such a sterling record of speaking the truth.

what a *putz* you are, markie. i shall waste no more time on you.

[Ken McCracken]

Shorter markg8: just cut and run.

Forget helping the nascent democracy in Iraq, screw it, its not our problem!

Just abandon Iraq so it becomes a terrorist haven and a jihadi nation, capital of the new Caliphate.

Forget all that blood and treasure already spent - those are just 'sunk costs' now anyway, so who cares?

Don't mind that another humiliating defeat for America will embolden the terrorists. After all there is an ocean between them and us to protect us, er, right?

Just don't pay attention when the killing fields bloodbath starts in Iraq and a real civil war breaks out. There haven't been a million Iraqi casualties mark, you are foolishly relying on the discredited Lancet study for that figure. A more accurate count based on real death tolls puts it at more like 50,000. But if you want to see one million Iraqis dead . . . go ahead, cut and run. It could very likely happen.

Stop worrying about Baghdad's traffic patterns, and start thinking through what you are proposing.

The end of the Vietnam war taught you nothing, it seems.

[markg8]

Bob try to get the blood flowing back to your brain. Tell that "fewest casualties of any major war *ever*" stuff to the Iraqi people. Probably a million dead by now, 2 million displaced within the country, 2 million refugees outside it. Tell it to Major Tammy Duckworth and the tens of thousands of other GIs who will never be whole again.

The US has never signed a "no landmine treaty" so I suppose the Bush administration in theory could mine the borders. That wouldn't likely win many hearts and minds seeing as most of the Iraqi industrial and food processing plants are either destroyed or unusable due to water and power outages. If you'd like to starve Iraqis to death that'd be a good way to start. They count on food imports from their allies in Iran, Syria and Jordan to survive.

Remember Sgt. Aquina? The sad little vet who showed up at Yearly Kos and tried to lecture General Clark and the VoteVets about politics while in uniform? I'm sure you do if you read wingnut blogs, he was quite the cause celebre there for a day or two. I met him at Kos and part of his shtick was telling anybody who'd listen his heartwarming story about Iraqi
soldiers. His mean old Lt. wouldn't let him abandon his post and go back to base to get breakfast and cruelly lectured him when he asked if the Lt. himself would be kind enough to go get him some donuts or something. Very traumatic. He recounted this incident like he was reliving D-Day at Omaha. Even though the Iraqis didn't speak any English they evidently felt his pain. They pulled their meager resources and gave him some food. He then pulled out a carefully folded wrapper he keeps in his wallet. It's the real show stopper in his mind I guess. I looked at it, it was a candy bar wrapper, nice graphics, well printed, good grade plastic, from an Iranian made Moonpie. That's what the Iraqi army is eating Bob. Not MREs, not Hershey bars. Iranian candy.

I thought I made my point pretty clearly but let me spell it out for you. We must exit Iraq. Everything, lock stock and barrel. No residual US troops except maybe in Kurdistan but only if they agree to rein in the PKK terrorists that are killing our ally and their biggest oil customer Turkey's border guards. Not too much to ask to guarantee their security. Sadr has said he would welcome UN troops if the US left, if they actually helped to rebuild the country and didn't act as occupiers. The Sunnis most assuredly would too. We ought to take them up on it before Maliki tries to turn the place into a wholey owned subsidiary of Iran and/or Saudi Arabia
expells every single one of their disaffected Al Qaeda wannabe kids into the country for suicide duty.

Turn those permanent bases over to the Iraqis for housing. Same with the Green Zone. We have no business building a Vatican size embassy in the heart of Baghdad. Among other problems it totally screws up traffic patterns. That's prime real estate and it's the least we can do.

Tell them when they figure it all out and the war ends if they'll have us back we'll send an ambassador, staff and 50 marines to guard the gate and buy a little compound in one of the tonier districts just like we do everywhere else. Congratulate them on their freedom, lie a little to make 'em feel a little better about our trashing their country, compliment them on their manly fighting ability, tell 'em they were our toughest adversary since the Whermacht or some such garbage, apologize for the mess and leave a phone number where we can be reached if they want help getting their oil out of the ground and into tankers. BTW that's another thing Sadr said he'd want to do eventually: bring back American oil field service companies as hired help instead of majority partners forced down their throats to upgrade their facilities. The sooner we get out the sooner things will get back to normal. Sure they they may fight a nastier war for awhile, they may not. One thing's for certain it's gotten worse every year we've been there. We're not stopping them now anyway.

[bloodrage bob]

"meatgrinder", mark? this war features by far the fewest casualties of any major war *ever*, even including the IED deaths. (most of which are directly caused by the liberal insistence on "no land mines". thus keeping us from sealing borders with, say, iran. not near as much smuggling over mined borders, now is there?)

and still it's a "meatgrinder"?? hmm. *I* suspect you're exaggerating things to make a predetermined political point. ("we can't win". isn't that what you said?) this makes everything else you said suspect, too.

also couldn't help but notice that nowhere among your rant which included that stirring "we can't win" call and attacks an VD hanson as a chickenhawk ... nowhere in there was *your* proposed solution to the situation. how very liberal of you. when the next topic is "the revolutionary war", will you do another "we can't win" diatribe for us?

[markg8]

Lee had no choice but to try and win the war politically from the start. The Confederate states couldn't match New York state's industrial capacity let alone the rest of the Union's. They never had a chance militarily even with the lion's share of our best generals. They needed to win as many battles as it would take until the war was no longer worth it to the North. Lee blew that strategy at Gettysburg.

If you really feel the need to study war then go to West Point or Annapolis. It makes me wonder why Hanson, a man who claims he was surrounded by relatives who rehashed their personal war stories all the time didn't enlist himself. I too have relatives who served, a West Point graduate grandfather, an uncle who almost died in both the Battle of the Bulge and Tet, and my father who spent three years flying around the South Pacific as a flight engineer on a B-24 when he would have preferred to be at the University of Illinois on that football scholarship he earned. None of them regaled us with war stories as far as I remember. None of them "talked constantly about battle". I had a hard time prying any of that personal history out of them. Recalling the time a friend's bomber blew up on takeoff or the days when my uncle almost lost his toes to gangrene in the Ardennes weren't pleasant for them. Watch almost any interviews with W11 soldiers, no one who has been in combat glories in war. They tell sad tales of long dead friends who never got the chance to grow up or the last look on the faces of the enemy soldiers they killed. Faces they'll never forget. It makes me wonder what kind of family Hanson was born into. Maybe
descendants of Viking berserkers or something. I guess it explains why Hanson is the warlover he is.

As for Iraq our military can no more defeat a multiheaded insurgency fighting us and each other or fight it's way to a free and democratic Iraq allied with the US anymore than Lee could force a military surrender of the Union Army. 130,000 or 160,000 US troops and a like number of "contractors" never were sufficient forces and even if we had a couple million more to throw in the meatgrinder - which we don't - after four years of this fiasco our brand is ruined in Iraq. The Sunni sheiks know it, Sadr knows it, the Kurds know it, Sistani knows it, Maliki knows it and most importantly the Iraqi people know it. It's their war to fight, it's their war to end, because it's their country. They are waiting for us to face facts, wise up and leave. Inexplicably we're now trying to pacify the country by arming all sides except the few AL Qaeda wannabes. And I wouldn't doubt our munitions are falling into their hands too. That's not a recipe for success no matter what the latest rationalization Bush has for staying. It will make it an even bigger catastrophe for the next president to deal with though if we don't end the occupation by 2009. That seems to be the plan. Occupying Iraq isn't the solution to the problem, it IS the problem. They don't want us to save them, they know we can't and don't think that's our objective anyway. US soldiers are never going to be able to convince them otherwise.

[Ken McCracken]

There was no 'mortal wound' to the Confederacy.

It was doomed from the start, and William Tecumseh Sherman presciently warned the South about this:

"You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing!

You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it ...

Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth—right at your doors.

You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail."

[seekeronos]

"--- The 'mortal wound' to the Confederacy might not have even been military in nature. When Britain and France refused to recognize the South, it was likely doomed to lose the war against the then hyper-industrialized North. ---"

One might have fed the other - it served as a heck of an interesting "point of departure" for extending the CSA's lifespan some 80-odd years in the "Timeline-191" or _Southern_Victory_ series by Harry Turtledove.

(The "191" in Timeline-191 refers to General Lee's Special Order # 191 which in our time line, was captured and found its way into Gen. McClellan's [Army of the Potomac] hands. In the Turtledove series, the premise is that the Battle of Antietam was not fought, and sand horrific losses, the Brits and the French were more inclined to intervene against Lincoln on behalf of the CSA).

Touching on China, I don't think we would win a long conventional war against the ChiComs mainly because they have all the industrial potential and thrice as much to spare, as we have outsourced or allowed to rust over the past 50 years. If China gets a blue-water navy on par with what the IJN had in WW2, or what we have now, we wouldn't have much chance of holding a 8,000mi supply line across the Pacific to threaten their eastern coast.

[Dan Riehl]

"the mortal wound to the Confederacy"

The "mortal wound" to the Confederacy might not have even been military in nature. When Britain and France refused to recognize the South, it was likely doomed to lose the war against the then hyper-industrialized North.

Since the Civil War and including the Cold War, barring political factors, the economics of the combatant States are a pretty good predictor of outcomes. It's also why we could have "won" in Vietnam - we all but did, actually. Same for Korea. And we can win in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only a political defeat for victory can prevent it.

The above is also what makes China such a threat should they ever opt for war.

[templar knight]

Have to disagree with you there, DANE, the mortal wound to the Confederacy took place at Chancellorsville, and it was self-inflicted. The hopes of a Confederate victory died with Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson.

[DANEgerus]

Lincoln had his Copperhead (D)emocrats, advocating for defeat...
Bush has his Copperhead (D)emocrats, advocating for defeat...

The Civil war's real turning point was Fredricksburg. If the Army of the Potomac could endure that, to face Lee at Gettysburg, game over man...

[seekeronos]

"--- So, the system has to go bust and then be re-scaled, fixed and re-designed to run efficiently and prudently, just like any other big machine that runs poorly or becomes obsolete or dangerous.

This situation will right itself through trauma. I see a government ENRON on the horizon, with an associated house cleaning. ---"

Mr. Larson,

If things are as truly bad as you state, and that the MIC has metastasized into an all-controlling cabal of cronies only out for themselves, who are in effect, a shadow government in their own right... then the "housecleaning to come" (this in itself assumes that the American people wake up to it enough to become of a mind to take action) will be far more drastic and have a far greater impact than a mere change of administration (be it from one party to its opposition, or within the same party).

Somehow, I do not think that the folks pulling on the puppet strings will let things go down hill that far, that fast. They do have their investments to protect, after all.

Such a "housecleaning" could very well entail circumstances and results that would hold potential to destabilize us on a national level, and might even provoke those whose faith is less well grounded in the high ethics and principles our nation was founded upon to lead us deep into the pits of tyranny.

[Ken Larson]

I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 years of working in the Defense Industrial Complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak. I believed another Vietnam could be avoided with defined missions and the best armaments in the world.

It made no difference.

We have bought into the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). If you would like to read how this happens please see:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703

Through a combination of public apathy and threats by the MIC we have let the SYSTEM get too large. It is now a SYSTEMIC problem and the SYSTEM is out of control. Government and industry are merging and that is very dangerous.

There is no conspiracy. The SYSTEM has gotten so big that those who make it up and run it day to day in industry and government simply are perpetuating their existance.

The politicians rely on them for details and recommendations because they cannot possibly grasp the nuances of the environment and the BIG SYSTEM.

So, the system has to go bust and then be re-scaled, fixed and re-designed to run efficiently and prudently, just like any other big machine that runs poorly or becomes obsolete or dangerous.

This situation will right itself through trauma. I see a government ENRON on the horizon, with an associated house cleaning.

The next president will come and go along with his appointees and politicos. The event to watch is the collapse of the MIC.

For more details see:

http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com