Category Archives: War

General David Petraeus touting General U.S. Grant as an intro to a rant against “Confederate History Month”

Americana, Current Affairs, General U.S. Grant, Politics, War

Recently, Tom Ricks, who has an excellent blog called The Best Defense on the Foreign Policy website, in an interview of David Petraeus, asked this question:

BD:
We do a lot of reading lists on my blog. What is one book
you’ve read lately that you think should be better known?

General Petraeus: Bruce Catton’s Grant Takes Command (and
Jean Edward
Smith’s Grant). Both support historian Sean Wilentz’ recent
assertion that Grant was a truly great commander and president, vastly
better than historians assessed some years back. 

Grant 2

I am a big fan of General Ulysses S Grant and think that he is a greatly underappreciated  American hero  – in case, somehow, you didn’t know . I love that people are starting to relook at Grant and, in doing so, are seeing his humanity and greatness. But Grant being underappreciated is part of a bigger picture that includes Confederate History Month.

From – oh, say – the turn of the last century to  the 1950s, the southern revisionists rewrote both slavery and the Civil War. The novel, Gone With the Wind, with its defense of the Ku Klux Klan and depiction of happy slaves was an example of this. The crux of the revision was that the war was not about slavery and that the North, lead by the inept butcher, Grant, only won because they out numbered and out resourced the noble South and because Grant was willing to lose more men than the superior man and general, Robert E Lee.

That is hooey. The war was clearly about slavery, the abomination that had been tearing at the fabric of the United States since the 3/5’s clause was put in the Constitution. South Carolina was the first state to secede and, following its secession, South Carolina requested the other southern states to join them in forming a southern Confederacy. It said We . . . [are] dissolving a union with non-slaveholding confederates and seeking a confederation with slaveholding states.
Mississippi became the second state to secede, and it said Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world. . . . [A] blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
The other states that followed had similar statements. Fifty years later, these statements transmogrified into the so-called virtuous goals of states rights, independence, and the protection of traditional values. But those traditional values and states rights were slavery.

The North won the Civil War for lots of reasons including that it outnumbered and out resourced the South but the South had the advantage of being on the defensive. It knew the ground it was defending and always had shorter lines of communication and supply. It is much easier to defend a position than take it it.

But the North had better generals in Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas, among others. Especially Grant. The generals on the North were younger, they were more adaptive and more inventive, and they had a more compelling vision.    As always happens – given enough time – the future won over the past.

So now I come to Confederate History Month – which I don’t understand any more than I understand displaying the confederate battle flag. As an aside. Often people who display the confederate battle flag have the common decency to also display the swastika so, at least, we know that they are just pissed at everybody. End aside.

But why Confederate History Month? What is it about a feudal society that supported itself by slavery that they find so compelling?  The Virginia proclamation, which seems to have received the most PR, starts out WHEREAS, April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse;
As Reagan once said There you go again…. Here we have the war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox. Concluded? As when Lee surrendered? So, I guess, it makes sense if the celebration is for a war of independence that was not lost, but just, you know, concluded. I think we should celebrate a North Kicked the South’s Ass Month to celebrate that the war concluded for Virginia when Bobbie Lee surrendered his sorry, whooped, ass to General Ulysses S Grant.

 

 

The Taliban’s problem

Current Affairs, Film, Music, War

When we read about the war in Afghanistan, we almost always read about it from the US point of view – duh! – or a Marines point of view, or a NGO peace workers point of view.

A couple of days ago, I read a blog in the NY Times (it is amazing how much good stuff is in the Times, I wonder, and not in a good way, where it will go after the Times folds – if it doesn't just disappear) that talked about why the Taliban are such poor shots. And it sort of talked about it , inadvertently, I think, from the Afghans point of view. Among a long list of problems like having and using equipment in poorly maintained condition, relying on automatic fire rather than aiming, using mismatched and bad ammunition, was

a matter of public health. Many Afghans suffer from
uncorrected vision problems, which have roots in factors ranging from
poor childhood nutrition to the scarcity of medical care.

Sunday afternoon, while the rain feel all afternoon, I watched Afghan Star


The two of them, together, left me with an almost overwhelming feeling of how poor Afghanistan really is. Not We have no doctors, poor. but We have no good sanitation poor. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on Earth. So poor, most of the adult population can't see very well.

And there is a huge minority of the Afghan population that is afraid to move away from that poverty,. Afraid that they will lose more than they will gain. Maybe they are right – they will lose community, they will lose their convictions and answers – I don't think they are right to be afraid, but, then, I've eaten from the apple a long time ago. I am biased.

Watching the Olympics and thinking about New Stories

Evolution, Games, War

Afghan women

The other night, some friends came over for dinner and part of the conversation revolved around how our myths or stories no longer fit a new reality. Mankind – well, the USA and Russia for sure, and probably Britain, France, and China – have the ability to detonate enough nuclear weaponry to destroy mankind and yet we continue to act as if that were not the case..

I remember reading an article about two traditional Afghan villages getting in a Hatfield-McCoy fight sometime after the Afghans drove the, then, Soviets out of Afghanistan. The feud had been going on for many years in a cold war sort of way. To patch things up, the daughter of one family – let's say Delbar (meaning sweetheart) Durani – was married to the son of the other family – let's say Fariad (meaning outspoken) Mamadzai. 

A couple of months later, Delbar did something that pissed Fariad off and he beat her. Now Delbar, who had perhaps been too coddled as a child, did not like being beat up. The second time Fariad beat her, she snuck away and returned to her village. This put the Duranis in a bind, they either had to take Delbar in or return her. If they returned her, she would probably continue to be beat up; if they took her in, then the Mamadzais would be dissed.

They took her in and the feud was renewed. But this time, both families had AK47s and rocket grenade launchers. This time, the fight was short and lethal. The majority of the men of both villages were simply wiped out. The rules hadn't changed, the stories they built their lives around hadn't changed but the equipment had. The old ways no longer fit the new reality.

AFGHN-10083NF8

So, I sit here watching the Olympics and thinking about how every contest is a zero sum game. This high ideal – this lofty gathering is for somebody to win – for some nation to win. And that means somebody – some other nation – has to lose. And I thought how much that reflected almost everything in our modern world. 

Everything is about winning. I read recently that most people would prefer to make $100,000/year if everybody else was making $80,000/year compared to making $150,000/year with everybody else making $200,000/year. Think about it: we would prefer to make less – be able to buy less – if it was more than the next guy. 

And that led me to thinking about how much different it would be if the Olympics were about cooperation rather than conflict. What if cooperation were the ideal. What if everybody doing better were the ideal.

How about a bobsled contest in which a gold medal would only be awarded if the average time of all the competitors were were no more than 2% higher than the fastest competitor. In other words, to win a gold medal, the fastest guys would have to make sure the slowest guys went faster. How would that change our story of what a winner is?  

 

Watching the Olympics and thinking about the Fall of Rome

Television, War

During some some history of the West class, probably sometime in highschool, we studied Rome. One thing I remember is how Rome’s constant wars bankrupt the state and left the populous too poor to buy bread. To keep the people from rioting, the government gave out free food and held games to keep them distracted.

I remember wondering Why do they have all those foreign wars? and how does it bankrupt the state? At the time, I understood that looting was making some people rich – like Caesar and his fellow Centurions. And it was also making them powerful. Later – much later, like last week – I began to realize that there were other people making money by making roads that went to Gaul or Hispania, armaments, and war support equipment.

Money that could have been spent to make Rome stronger, making Rome a better place to live, was actually spent to make Rome only look stronger. Money that could have been spent on schools or aqueducts, was being spent on the greatest army the world had ever seen and a wall in England.

So I sit here, watching the Olympics, thinking about all the money we spent on Iraq and Afghanistan. All the money we will spend on Iraq and Afghanistan this year and next year and into the foreseeable future. I have heard the arguments for being in Iraq and Afghanistan and they are alway presented in an vacuum. Nobody ever says Should we spend the money on drones for Afghanistan or schools for Los Angeles? Should we build more F22s or start rebuilding our infrastructure?

 

President Obama has signed legislation lifting the cap on
government borrowing to $14.3 trillion except for Medicaid, Social Security and food stamps; and I am beginning to wonder how this is different from the Roman Senate handing out bread and putting on games in the Coliseum?

General U. S. Grant, Mathew Brady, and the new American Hero

Americana, General U.S. Grant, Politics, War, What's a man?

 

Lee

 

In case you weren’t paying attention during your Civil War history class, the picture above in not Grant, it is Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It was take in 1863 and was pretty typical of a portrait of a Civil War general. He stands tall in his battle uniform, with resolute eyes, beautiful shinny boots (you can be sure he didn’t shine them), and a sword. Every inch the patrician. He was the son of Major General Henry Lee III “light Horse Harry” who later became the governor of Virgina.       

Grant, like Lincoln, was a mid-westerner. A common man. At West Point, Lee was Captain of Cadets  while Grant muddled along near the bottom of his class. Grant was quiet, shy, self-effacing. When Grant met Lee during the Mexican-American War, he was thrilled; Lee later said he didn’t remember the meeting. The next time they met was at Appomattox – after Grant’s army had pounded the shit out of Lee. Lee was still resplendent in his beautiful uniform, Grant was wearing a muddy privates uniform with his three stars pined on the shoulders.

Grant had come to do a job and he did it. The picture below shows just that.

Ulysses-grant

 

It is a new kind of portrait. It was probably taken during the Overland Campaign just after the battle of Cold Harbor. Grant is not the patrician hero: he looks tired, his eyes are sad, his boots are muddy. Unlike Lee, war is not a great adventure for Grant. It is a dirty job to be done.

Grant was the new American hero. The quiet man just doing his job. John Wayne. Gary Cooper in High Noon.  No braggadocio flourishes, just quietly getting the job done.

 

This is probably Mathew Bradley’s most famous photo. Not only because of it’s informality, but because it is so penetrating. I have read that a good portrait is a artifact of a relationship. This is a portrait of a man, the picture of Lee, in contrast, is generic. The pictures, together, are emblematic of the Civil War. Up until then, portraits were formal affairs but this portrait was informal.  Lee is shown as the patrician, and by extension, the south as feudal. They are formal portraits reflecting a formal society: ridged, stratified, looking back. This portrait of Grant, the dynamic new kind of American from the West, and by extension, the new and dynamic North: the new America.

An America that is open to the common man. Open to change, at ease with its new frenzy and energy and looking forward. In about a hundred years, from 1800 to 1900, we went from being the equivalent of a third world country to being the world’s industrial powerhouse. And the cleavage point was the Civil War: before it, we were mostly an agrarian society; after it we (the North, at least) were an industrial, urban society.