War Nerd: Praise Gen. Sherman for burning Atlanta!

For personal reasons I've been remiss not to post this sooner. Without further ado, here is Gary Brecher, aka the War Nerd, at his best. I admit it, I love his sentiments [emphasis mine]:

Sherman was trying, in everything he did, to wake these idiots from their delusion. That’s why they hate Sherman so much, 150 years after his campaign ended in total success: Because he interrupted their silly and sadistic dreams, humiliated them in the most vulnerable part of their weird anatomy, their sense of valorous superiority. Sherman didn’t wipe out the white South, though he could easily have done so; he was, in fact, very mild toward a treasonous population that regularly sniped at and ambushed his troops. But what he did was demonstrate the impotence of the South’s Planter males.

And here's what Sherman said of himself at the time in his "Letter to Atlanta," quoted by Gary:

“You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country…

“The only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride.

“You have heretofore read public sentiment in your newspapers, that live by falsehood and excitement; and the quicker you seek for truth in other quarters, the better. I repeat then that, by the original compact of government, the United States had certain rights in Georgia, which have never been relinquished and never will be; that the South began the war by seizing forts, arsenals, mints, custom-houses, etc., etc., long before Mr. Lincoln was installed, and before the South had one jot or tittle of provocation. I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds and thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding feet…But these comparisons are idle. I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.”

And then there's this golden nugget of truth from Gary, still apropos today, (I'm thinking of Ferguson, MO and many, many other places...):

Of course, this is all lost on the Phil Leighs of the world, who—for reasons that cut deep into the ideology of the American right wing—always take burnt houses too seriously, and dead people far too lightly. To them, burning a house is a crime, while shooting a Yankee soldier in the eye is just part of war’s rich tapestry. 

Unlike most other "Northerners" today who don't give the Civil War a thought, I am so, so glad that we beat the Confederacy and preserved the Union, aka the United States of America, and sent those pompous Foghorn Leghorns home in caskets or with their traitorous tails between their legs. I tip my hat to Sherman, Grant, et al and the 300,000 truest American patriots who ever lived and kept the USA the USA by facing down and defeating the greatest existential threat we ever faced: our meaner, more prideful selves.

The War Nerd: Why Sherman was right to burn Atlanta

By Gary Brecher

November 20, 2014 | Pando Daily

URL: http://pando.com/2014/11/20/the-war-nerd-why-sherman-was-right-to-burn-atlanta/

Vanden Heuvel's vile apologia of Putin

Not to get too personal, but Katrina vanden Heuvel's husband is Prof. Stephen F. Cohen of NYU, the most prominent Putin/Russia apologist in the U.S. Here's how the Kyiv Post described Cohen:

Cohen represents the part of the American left that used to admire some aspects of the Soviet Union and transferred their allegiance to Putin, who has increasingly appealed to the Soviet legacy. While Cohen criticized some Soviet policies, he was an ardent fan of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and a vehement critic of anti-communist President Boris Yeltsin.

In 2008, Cohen asserted that Putin “ended Russia’s collapse at home and re-asserted its independence abroad.” He has paid little attention to problems with free speech, freedom of assembly, rule of law and separation of powers in Russia, as well as to pervasive corruption that has only worsened since Putin came to power.

Cohen has also accused Ukrainian authorities of “war crimes” while ignoring numerous reports on kidnappings, torture, rape and murder by pro-Russian insurgents.

So now to vanden Heuvel's apologia in the Washington Post of Putin's 7-month war of aggression in Ukraine. In it she accuses "NATO leaders -- including President Obama" of having "escalated tensions, while dismissing opportunities to bring the conflict to a reasonable conclusion quickly."  Vanden Heuvel continued:

There would have been no civil war if the European Union’s leadership had not insisted on an exclusive association agreement that prejudiced Ukrainian industry in the east and trade with Russia, or if the United States and European nations had used their influence with the demonstrators to abide by the Feb. 21 agreement then-President Viktor Yanukovych signed, which would have handed more power to parliament and called for elections in December, or if the United States and Europe had been willing to work with Russia to restore the Feb. 21 agreement and calm worries in Crimea and the east about the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

Instead the U.S. and E.U. have encouraged the most radical elements in the Kiev government in their campaign to subjugate the east with military force — to seek a military solution to what is essentially a political problem in a deeply divided and economically fragile Ukraine.

In a few sentences vanden Heuvel throws out several mistruths -- coincidentally, this paragraph is the Russian propaganda line, verbatim.

Mistruth 1: Negotiations between the EU and Ukraine (headed then by pro-Russian President Yanukovych) caused the civil war. Let's recall that those negotiations were ongoing since February 2008, after Ukraine's admission to the WTO, after which Yanukovych's government made public and private announcements to EU leaders that it certainly intended to sign such an Association Agreement (AA) and enter into a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) with the EU. So, if the EU had "insisted" on the AA, then it did so very patiently with a very willing partner, while painstakingly negotiating the 1,200-page draft document.

Of course President Yanukovych and his team led by Arbuzov understood that the AA would have been a net economic benefit to Ukraine. Yanukovych's government only changed its position on the AA on the eve of signing because of Russian threats of retaliation -- higher gas prices, WTO-violating trade sanctions against Ukraine, etc. 

For more info, read some of the myths surrounding the Association Agreement here; much more recent explanation of the EU's position, offers of macro- and technical assistance to Ukraine, post Feb. 21, here; and the EU's Guide to the AA here.  

Mistruth 2: The U.S. and EU used their influence to nix the agreement on Feb. 21, 2014 between then-President Yanukovych and political leaders representing the Maidan protesters. In fact, Russia, which was involved in those negotiations, refused to sign the Feb. 21 agreement, yet today Russia calls for all sides to abide by it!  And in fact, on Feb. 22, President Yanukovych, without a word of explanation, fled Ukraine and surfaced a few days later in Russia. Meanwhile, Ukraine's new Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced that $37 billion had gone missing from Ukraine's state coffers -- certainly the reason Yanukovych fled in the first place, to avoid prosecution. Despite Yanukovych's theft and absconding from Ukraine, Ukraine's opposition continues to abide by the Feb. 21 agreement. To quote the EU:

Violence in the capital ceased and protesters withdrew from public buildings; a Law reinstating the 2004 constitution has been adopted; a comprehensive constitutional reform envisaged along with new electoral laws and a balanced Central Electoral Commission; democratic and inclusive Presidential elections have now taken place. Investigations into acts of violence have been ordered by the new Prosecutor General, with expert advice of the Council of Europe's International Advisory Panel, inaugurated on 9 April.

More recently new Parliamentary elections have been called for October 26, giving all Ukrainians yet another opportunity to have their voices heard. 

Mistruth 3: The U.S. and EU did nothing to calm worries in Crimea and the east of Ukraine about the rights of Russian speakers. Vanden Heuvel is partly right: the U.S. and the EU did do almost nothing to counter the Kremlin's vile propaganda that Russian speakers would be forced to speak Ukrainian, or worse, be killed by roving bands of Right Sector "fascists." I witnessed this propaganda firsthand in Crimea, where many sincerely believed that battalions of Right Sector vigilantes were coming to kill them and rape their daughters for speaking Russian. With Russia's help, so called "self-defense militias" were formed to repel this non-existent threat; in the end these militias ended up rousting pro-Ukrainian citizens and kidnapping and killing Crimean Tatars and other "anti-Russian" citizens. Not a single attack or even appearance of Right Sector in Crimea ever occurred.  

Ditto in eastern Ukraine: Human Rights Watch, the OSCE and other observers have not documented the kind of anti-Russian pogroms that Putin's media fabricated on Russian TV channels and social media.  

Indeed, the sad irony of all these phony accusations is that the city of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, is mostly Russian-speaking. The charges by Russia of fascism and discrimination were all a lie designed to lubricate the penetration of "little green men" -- Russian soldiers, spies, mercenaries and irregulars -- into eastern Ukraine.

Mistruth 4: The U.S. and EU have encouraged the most radical elements in the Kyiv government. Ask any pro-Russian who those radical elements are and they will tell you Oleh Tyahnybok's right-wing Svoboda party, and Dmitry Yarosh's Right Sector militia and political party. Vanden Heuvel doesn't offer any evidence of her accusation, and it's hard to imagine how she could, since these two parties do not represent Ukraine's President, Prime Minister; and only Svoboda has about 35 seats out of 450 in the Supreme Council (Parliament). One can only wonder what the vanden Heuvel thinks the devilish West must be doing in Ukraine behind the scenes?....

Mistruth 5: The U.S. and EU have encouraged a "military solution" in eastern Ukraine "to what is essentially a political problem."  Fact: Starting in March 2014, pro-Russian militias, headed by Russian agents and special forces, seized government buildings throughout eastern Ukraine. This looked like a repetition of Russia's Crimea scenario, where Putin at first denied (in March 2014) and then admitted (in April 2014) that most of the "local self-defense militias" were in fact Russian troops. A few days later, "little green men" were fixed in eastern Ukraine. 

As in Crimea, admissions in eastern Ukraine follow denials. Now rebel leaders in eastern Ukraine and in the Kremlin say Russian troops "on vacation" are fighting against Ukraine. But we need not rely on their admissions/denials: NATO has estimated that over 3,000  Russian troops are active in Ukraine. And in Russia, associations of soldiers' mothers, brave journalists and human rights activists have cataloged hundreds of secret burials of Russian regular troops KIA in Ukraine -- and met with harassment from the Russian government for revealing the truth.

Just imagine if NATO soldiers "on vacation" turned up fighting in the ranks of Ukraine's military -- what apoplectic fits of outrage vanden Heuvel and her husband would have!  But of course they are not, and the U.S. and NATO have so far refused to offer any lethal military assistance to Ukraine.   

Next, vanden Heuvel throws out a red herring, NATO: 

Our responsibility goes beyond the immediate crisis, too. There would not have been such a concerted Russian nationalist response to the crisis had the West not sowed the seeds of suspicion and mistrust over the past 18 years by growing NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe.

Yet by her own admission this whole "civil war" in Ukraine started over the EU Association Agreement that had nothing to do with NATO! So there's no real point in discussing it.

Later, vanden Heuvel writes [emphasis mine]:

[T]he hawkish outcry for a more confrontational stance toward Putin has yet to give way to common sense. Across the political spectrum, prominent figures are demanding harsher sanctions targeting Russia, as well as military assistance and NATO membership for Ukraine. These demands seem to increase regardless of what Moscow does and regardless of the fact that Russian cooperation is essential for the stabilization and rebuilding of the shattered Ukrainian economy. Never mind that Putin has just helped broker a long-sought cease-fire; sanctions, we are told, must be broadened and deepened. Punishing Russia is far more important than a political settlement in Ukraine.

Even most Russians would have to smile at, "Never mind that Putin has just helped broker a long-sought cease-fire..." since Putin is the one providing weapons and troops to fight Ukraine's military. So of course Putin can "broker" peace -- he only has to broker with himself!

Vanden Heuvel's denial of Russia's deep and sustained military action in Ukraine deprives her arguments of any credibility.

Indeed, vanden Heuvel also ignored the despicable Russian missile attack on MH flight 117 that killed 298 people, mostly Europeans, and how this attack hardened Europe's resolve to impose harsher sanctions against Russia for its aggression against Ukraine!

Now a final word about the ceasefire and "political reform" in Ukraine. As I've said before, President Poroshenko and just about every political party in Ukraine, including Svoboda (!), has come out in favor of decentralization of Ukraine's government, i.e. more local government control. But the kind of "federalized" Ukraine that Russia wants would be unacceptable; it would technically be a confederacy and make Ukraine ungovernable and disunited ... which is exactly what Putin wants.  

Again, vanden Heuvel ignores this, ignores the fact that such a confederate political structure exists exactly nowhere on Earth, and for good reason: both times it was tried in the United States it failed miserably, most tragically during the U.S. Civil War that took 750,000 lives.   

UPDATE (09.15.2014): My post drew a heated response from a few Russian academics that I know. (So far every Russian studies professor that I've come across is extremely defensive of Putin's policies in Crimea and Donbas. Funny how that works....).

First, I was criticized for daring to question Prof. Stephen Cohen's objectivity and "putting labels on people." 

To which I replied:

Well, Cohen said that "the U.S. would go down in history as having blood on its hands" in Ukraine. That was an amazingly unobjective  statement considering that Russian troops and weapons are killing people in Ukraine, and not a single U.S. soldier or weapon is there!  Cohen can't even bring himself to say directly that Putin is fighting a war in Ukraine (check out 19:20):

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-07/top-russia-expert-ukraine-joining-nato-would-provoke-nuclear-war

Cohen is certainly knowledgeable but also clearly a russophile to a fault.

Also debatable -- in fact, unknowable -- is Сohen's assertion that Ukraine would still be in a civil war even without Russian interference. We can never know that for certain because Russia has been there from the start.  But I would say look at places like Kharkiv that seemed to be tipping toward Russia but then came back strongly in favor of Ukraine.  I have no doubt that now many people in Luhansk and Donetsk hate Ukraine after all the fighting and Russian propaganda, but I would wager that most of them want a return to нормальная жизнь, regardless of who can give it to them. 

Perhaps worst of all, he's from Kentucky and yet said that "we" fought for the South in the U.S. Civil War, which is false!  

http://www.ket.org/civilwar/kyrole.html

Second, I was challenged on the merits of what I wrote above. I won't write down what my interlocutor said, in the interest of space. You can glean it from my replies:

1) The EU certainly seemed to take [President Yanukovych] and Arbuzov at their word that they were serious about it. What they thought in private -- I don't know. The EU didn't realize what an unreliable counterpart Yanu was. More important, many Ukrainians took Yanu at his word that he intended to sign the AA. Even the folks who hated him and PR [Party of Regions] thought that at least Yanu was doing one thing right -- moving Ukraine toward the EU. And when Yanu broke that promise too, it was the last straw. I was there and you had to see the despair then anger of many Ukrainians who just couldn't tolerate Yanu's deceit toward the Ukrainian people.

This is of course what started Maidan, not Western NGOs, agents or any baloney like that. I hope you're not one of those people who believe such simple fairy tales. Again, I have friends who were joining up on Maidan via Facebook and VK when there were only a few dozen, and they thought that nobody would come. But eventually more people did come, and it was all driven by Ukrainians, not the West, mostly through social networks. I saw this movement evolve before my eyes on FB. So yes, "the whole thing started because of DCFTA," but for the reasons I just explained, because of the stifled will of the Ukrainian people.
What "consequences" did the EU threaten Ukraine with?  Besides that, it's elementary that Ukraine couldn't be part of the tomozhenniy soyuz and enjoy special trade status with the EU. 

2) There is no evidence that [President Yanukovych] was under threat; and anyway, he could have gone to another city to stay, for instance Donetsk or Simferopol, but instead he went to Russia. As policemen say, "If you're not guilty, why are you running away?" Yanu stole from Ukraine for years and he knew the new government would uncover it soon. He didn't want to go to jail so he ran away. No innocent and responsible president flees his own country; this is what African dictators do, not European leaders. 

3) The law on language was reversed and never implemented. Yes, the new gov't went too far there but cooler heads prevailed. Re: pogroms, numerous statements of Ukrainian Jews and rabbis have confirmed that there was no more anti-Semitism on Maidan than at any other time; in fact many Jews (I know them personally) were there; and even some Israeli Jews returned from Ukraine to participate.  So please let's not support this Kremlin myth with any more wasted words, since Russia has more anti-Semites and neo-Nazis than Ukraine by many times. 

By the way, I see you ignored that pogroms against Crimean Tatars started right away -- in fact Aksyonov was known in years past for clearing out Tatar samozakhvat. Tatars got the message when Putin named him acting PM of Crimea. The Tatars' "Nelson Mandela" [Mustafa Djemilev] is once again exiled from his homeland. Kidnappings and murders of Tatars, pro-Maidan activists and Ukrainian Orthodox priests in Crimea remain unsolved, and Putin's "brownshirt" militias still rove Crimea's streets. Anti-fascists indeed! 

4) Yarosh can say whatever he wants, it's up to reasonable people to assess the situation rationally. Vizitka Yarosha was the joke of the year. Putin needs a bogeyman and Yarosh is the closest thing.

5) Are you seriously denying that regular Russian troops have not been sent to fight in Ukraine -- that is, sent a second time, after Crimea? If you can't be honest about that then we probably cannot find common ground about anything else.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/14/russian-military-vehicles-enter-ukraine-aid-convoy-stops-short-border

6) The plane [MH flight 117] was hit by an object moving at high speed. Of course it was a missile and the Ukrainians had no reason to shoot down an airplane over their own skies, since Russia has not yet sent aircraft to Ukraine. The terrorists were shooting down Ukrainian aircraft. And at first the rebels admitted on social networks that they shot down the plane, that they had the missile systems from Russia.  You must know about this but you choose to ignore it.  They are the culprits. Or do you believe it was a conspiracy to garner sympathy for Ukraine? Or do you believe what the Russian media says -- the first missing plane from Asia was diverted to the U.S., everybody onboard was killed by the CIA, then at the right moment the plane was sent over Ukraine to be exploded with a payload of corpses?  It's disgusting that such filth could be discussed on television, but that's Russia for you. 

7) I'm sure you understand what I was saying, but I'll explain. Putin may call it "federalization" but what he talked about -- autonomous economic and foreign policies for Donetsk and Luhansk -- is not a federation, it's a confederation. All federal systems have a strong central government that makes economic and foreign policy, period. So Putin can call a duck a zebra but we still know it's a duck.

I didn't call anybody subhuman, but all the Russian spies and soldiers fighting in Ukraine should leave or face death. Unfortunately Russia is the stronger country militarily and without Western help Poroshenko cannot defeat them, hence the ceasefire and negotiations.  This is a war by Russia against Ukraine. (Incidentally, many Russians say it's a war by the U.S. against Russia, but the logic is the same: Russia vs. _____.)

Time to end the bloody Ukraine conflict

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

September 9, 2014 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1qC5orr

U.S. missiles won't end Syrian war

Eliot Cohen has a deplorable record as a neoconservative academic who advised Condooleeza Rice and Dick Cheney before and after the disastrous invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Eliot is coyly mum here on whether he thinks Obama should send U.S. troops into Syria.  

Nevertheless, the man who favors "preemptive war" is giving a wise preemptive warning (that's redundant) to U.S. policymakers: we can't lob a few missiles into Syria and hope to change anything there.  

We ought to stay out of it entirely.  

UPDATE (28.08.2013):  Looks like the US and UK, at least, are going to war with Assad in Syria.  They want to do a limited Kosovo-style air war with "punitive military strikes."  That's the key phrase. They're not pretending that these strikes will affect the direction of the civil war or even prevent more civilian casualties; the West just wants to slap Assad on the wrist for his alleged use of chemical weapons in violation of international law.

This seems like a desperate attempt to remain relevant on the international stage without actually doing anything.

Syria will require more than cruise missiles

By Eliot A. Cohen

August 26, 2013 | Washington Post 

URL: http://wapo.st/17fduK8

Civil War redux over Southern voting rights

Yeah, well, this pretty much says it:

[W]hite southern Republicans enact voter ID laws because they do not want Democratic constituencies to vote, particularly people of color. Rather than embrace the changing demographics in the US and adopt platforms to address the needs and concerns of voters of color, Republicans have chosen to eschew these voters and wage an assault on civil rights, immigration and policies of diversity and inclusion. This is the endgame for the Republican Southern Strategy of race card politics. The GOP was able to win elections on the margins by appealing to the racial insecurities of disaffected working class whites. In the process, southern whites fled the Democratic party, and the GOP became the party of the white South. Now, this marginalized base of angry white voters is all that is left of the Republican strategy and of the GOP as well, so Republicans must remove the segments of the electorate that will not vote for them.

What the GOP is doing to itself, employing short-term, racist fixes like gerrymandering, voter ID and anti-immigration, reminds me of one of those over-injured, desperate, ageing athletes who keeps on taking cortisone and steroid shots in the hopes of eking out one more winning season, but in the process is destroying his bones, rupturing his tendons, and basically killing himself.

This voter ID thing may work for the GOP in 2014, but blacks and Latinos will remember it; and birthrate wins. They won't trust the GOP for another generation, at least. The Republican Party is killing itself to save itself for one more go-round.

The US civil war is playing out again – this time over voter rights

By David A. Love

August 2, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3hytm

NRA and the next Civil War

[Sigh].  I debated with myself whether to comment on the first speech of new NRA President and Alabama good old boy Jim Porter.

I mean, he's obviously following the new NRA playbook which is to sound as inflammatory as possible, scare as many gun owners as possible, in order to sell as many expensive, militarized firearms as possible to a shrinking pool of gun-owning households.

But Big Jim went over the top.  He flirted with Birtherism.  He sided with Iran, N. Korea and Syria in opposing the UN small arms treaty that concerns arms dealers, not citizens.  But worst of all, he brought up the Civil War.  That tore it.

Sure, give a crusty old Alabaman a mic and a national audience and he's going to mention either Bear Bryant or the Civil War. I get it.

But he told a bald lie: that "down South," they call the Civil War the "War of Northern Aggression."  I'm from the South, I lived 4 years in Alabama, and I never heard anybody call it that, not even a so-called Professor of Southern Studies.  

But even worse was his obvious implication: that another Civil War is coming. Between North and South, or Blue and Red states, or urban and rural counties, or a disappearing white majority and everybody else.  It's being fought on all those fronts and more.

This is indeed where we're headed, folks.  And remember, 29 percent of Americans think armed insurrection against our government may be necessary.

Understand, I'm not terribly worried about real armed rebellion, although enough violent kooks will take matters into their own hands.  No, such polls are a testament to the violence being committed against our political culture, our sense of national unity.  Our nation is being torn apart, politically, and increasingly, culturally.  It was already divided economically and ethnically.    

What's going to hold us all together?  What do we all agree on anymore?  How are we going to solve our real problems, like persistent unemployment (especially youth unemployment), ballooning student debt, caring for our elderly, addressing the rising cost of health care and education, wrapping up two disastrous wars, and having a long-term plan for our budget and national debt?  And when will we ever have a chance to talk about all this without killing each other?

Partly, I think it's the media's fault; they've been divided for a long time, because sensation and shouting is better for their ratings.  The media, especially cable news and talk radio, spend hours a day trying to get us all riled up about stupid shit like birth certificates so that there's no time left to talk about substance.  It's a distraction technique, it creates an addiction to anger and a belief in quick, easy answers, and it works terribly well.  That's why I was hesitant to even comment on Jim Porter's buffoonish remarks that were meant to divide us.

But it's also our fault.  Or mostly our fault.  Yes, ordinary Americans.  When there is no occasion or need for liberals, conservatives and independent to talk to each other anymore, then rigid stereotypes and political caricatures replace "the other guy," the cable-radio echo chamber replaces citizens' dialog and debate, and civility breaks down.  

When I'm at home in the South, which isn't often these days, and politics comes up at a gathering of polite semi-strangers, (for me, that's usually in a bar), at the first opportunity I tell the other guys, usually Republicans, "I have to admit, I'm a big lefty liberal and I voted for Obama twice."  After they get over the shock of my admitting that so openly on "enemy" territory, with a smile on my face, the conversation usually goes pretty well.  Nobody has yet spit on the ground and walked away.  

We usually end up agreeing we share most of the same values, like the importance of family, hard work, liberty, tolerance and neighborliness... as well as taking care of our weak and unfortunate brothers and sisters.  

What we certainly disagree about is how our common values should be expressed in terms of government policy.  But it makes for an entirely different and more productive conversation when we seek to define common ground, and don't start the discussion with "liberals hate America," or "conservatives are Nazis."  

The point is that it's OK to be partisan, it's OK to have strong opinions, as long as we're honest, forthright, fair and we listen.  That's the essence of civility.  We used to have that in America.  I hope we haven't lost it, myself included.

Meet Your New NRA President-A Man Still Fighting The Civil War From The Losing Side

By Rick Ungar

May 3, 2013 | Forbes

URL: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/05/03/meet-your-new-nra-president-a-man-still-fighting-the-civil-war-from-the-losing-side/

U.S. still paying for Civil War, WWI...what about Afghanistan & Iraq?

This is fascinating. The USG is still paying survivors of WWI and children of Civil War vets:

If history is any judge, the U.S. government will be paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the next century as service members and their families grapple with the sacrifices of combat. 

This ought to make us think twice -- then twice more -- about sending our troops into battle.

Costs Of War Linger 100 Years After Combat Ends

By Mike Baker

March 19, 2013 | AP

URL: http://huff.to/ZqPkcL

Today's racial parallels to Reconstruction era

This is worth reading, especially if you are a white Republican.  The 1865 parallel to Obamacare is especially interesting.  It's absurd and sad at the same time that freed blacks were accused of relying on handouts only a year after their emancipation: the 19th century version of Reagan's "welfare queen" myth.  

The more things change....

Parallels to country's racist past haunt age of Obama

By John Blake

November 1, 2012 | CNN

URL: http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/01/parallels-to-countrys-racist-past-haunt-age-of-obama/?hpt=hp_bn13

Is Obama too soft on Syria?

Do you think Syria will even come up in tomorrow night's Presidential campaign debate?  If Romney criticizes Obama, it can only be for being "too soft" on Syria and President Assad.  Knowing Romney, he'll probably just leave it at that: an accusation without any supporting facts.

It doesn't seem to me that Americans -- Republicans included -- are clamoring for a third war right now... and the cleanup, occupation, institution-building and development aid in Syria that would come with it (Colin Powell's Pottery Barn rule).  

I don't even hear people besides John McCain and the neocons saying we should arm Syria's rebel militias.  Again, the memory of arming the Taliban in Afghanistan is pretty fresh.  And it would give Putin a green light to arm Assad.  Then we'd be fighting a proxy war with Russia, who has more skin in this game than we do.

Chickenhawks like Jackson Diehl, cooped up at their desks in DC, will have to wait a decade or so until Americans forget how hard it is to pick winners in a civil war, then occupy the country to make sure the winner does the "correct" things.

How Obama bungled the Syrian revolution

By Jackson Diehl

October 15, 2012 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/OBPZWe

Texas judge preparing for post-Obama uprising

Stop teasing us and just do it. Please!

It really is the 90s all over again.  I mean, there is not even a whiff of Obama making some move toward the UN, yet the same crazy conspiracy theories are rising up again.  

These people are ridiculous hicks and paranoid freaks.  The problem is that there are too many of them.  So Romney is joining in, encouraging the hysteria.  Once again, he's saying anything to win.  

Tom Head, Texas Judge: Obama Reelection Could Lead To 'Civil War,' I'm Ready To 'Take Up Arms'

By Nick Wing

August 22, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/QqRP7l

Politico: White Americans have been duped before

The more things change the more they stay the same? You'd think folks would wise up.

Still fighting against own cause

By Robert McElvaine

January 13, 2011 | Politico

Mississippi seceded from the Union 150 years ago this week (Jan. 9). But the intermittent, sometimes bitter, argument over whether the Civil War was "about slavery" again is the focus of public debate.

Actually, both sides are right. And deciphering this paradox can go a long way toward explaining a perplexing aspect of our current political struggles.

Many have been puzzling over why so many middle-class Americans were persuaded to demonstrate and vote against their own interests — supporting low taxes for the very rich.

Here in Mississippi, we have a lot of experience with that sort of thing.

On one side of the debate over whether the South seceded and fought because of slavery is irrefutable evidence. "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery," the Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union begins, "the greatest material interest of the world."

The sentiment in the Union, the declaration complains, "denies the right of property in slaves."

On the other side are those Mississippians who point out that their great-to-x-power granddaddy, who fought valiantly for the Rebel cause, owned no slaves — so clearly, he was not fighting for slavery.

Obviously, Mississippi and the other Southern states seceded and fought the Civil War to protect their "peculiar institution" — as they plainly stated in their documents of secession. When South Carolina seceded, three weeks before Mississippi, its declaration focused on the North's attacks on slavery and the "election of a man to the high office of president of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery."

The Confederate Constitution contained a provision that no law denying "the right of property in negro [sic] slaves" could ever be passed.

Yet it should be almost equally obvious that the vast majority of those who fought on the Confederate side but owned no slaves were not fighting to defend slavery. Rather, they were duped by the planter aristocracy into fighting to protect the slave "property" of the rich.

Slaveholders riled the region's less affluent whites by talk of a struggle to maintain their freedom from the federal government that, the planters told them, wanted to take away their liberty.

The slaveholders were able to persuade other white Southerners to fight, kill and die for a cause that was, in fact, against their own interests. Slavery worked against whites who owned no slaves. They had to compete with those who had this cheap source of labor. Protecting slavery also made the South hostile to other reforms, including industrialization, that could have benefited less affluent whites.

This story line should sound familiar to us now.

What is happening in the nation's political economy today is all too similar to what transpired a century and a half ago. The benefits now accruing to middle-class Americans from concentrating more and more wealth and power at the very top — like the benefits 150 years ago of slavery to non-slaveholding whites — can be measured in negative numbers. Unemployment remains high in large part because a consumption-based economy is dependent on a less inequitable distribution of income.

Once again, talk about putative threats to "freedom" and "liberty" is being used to scare ordinary citizens into acting in the interests of the wealthy, who are focused on their own concerns, not on behalf of the people they are stirring to anger.

As was true 150 years ago, one way less affluent people are being misled into acting against their own interest is through the argument that the threat to their well-being comes from people with darker skins — now Latino immigrants — rather than from those with much greater wealth.

To my knowledge, slaveholders never thought of the brilliant marketing ploy of using something like the tea party as their symbol. But they found it expedient to identify their cause with that of the American War for Independence. They sold their undertaking as the War for Southern Independence — in which the Confederates were fighting for freedom against the federal government in the same way that Americans had fought for freedom against the British.

"For far less cause than this," the Mississippi declaration asserts, "our fathers separated from the Crown of England. ... We follow their footsteps."

The Civil War, however, was far from a "war for Southern independence." It was a "war to maintain Southern dependence." Its objective, for the members of the white Southern elite who had engineered secession, was to preserve their dependence on slaves to work their land.

Unlike the Spirit of '76, the Spirit of '61 saw no contradiction between liberty and slavery. Rather, it defined liberty in terms of the right to deny liberty to others. It was not about states' rights but about states' wrongs.

Slaveholders lost on the battlefields in the 1860s. But the cause of the top 2 percent of the nation won at the polls in 2010, when politicians opposed to any increase in top tax rates and any meaningful regulation of financial institutions were victorious. For less affluent people, who voted against their interests last year, the cause remains what it was for the less affluent people deceived into fighting against their own interests 150 years ago: a Lost Cause.

Robert McElvaine is Elizabeth Chisholm professor of arts and letters at Millsaps College. He is the author of "The Great Depression: America 1929-1941" and is finishing a book, "'Oh, Freedom!' — The Young '60s."

Disengagement in Iraq, not withdrawal

To help Baghdad, let it fend for itself

Edward N. Luttwak

February 6, 2007 | International Herald Tribune

The sooner President George W. Bush can get his extra troops for a "surge" in Iraq, the sooner he will be able to announce that all U.S. troops are coming home because of the inevitable failure of the Iraqi government to "live up to its side of the bargain."

In fact, in the run-up to the surge proposal, it is unlikely that there was any real bargaining before Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was induced to issue promises — particularly in terms of government troops taking on Shiite militias — that he cannot possibly fulfill. Maliki, it seems, simply agreed to whatever was asked of him, to humor the White House and to retain American support for a little while longer.

For the Iraqi Army and police to disarm the Shiite militias, the prime minister would have to be a veritable Stalin or at least a Saddam Hussein, able to terrorize Iraqi soldiers into obedience. Maliki, of course, has no such authority over Iraqi soldiers — indeed he has little authority over his own cabinet, the members of which mostly represent sectarian parties with militias of their own.

Actually the situation is even worse than that, because only the Kurdish militias unfailingly obey their political leaders — one is the president of Iraq no less, Jalal Talabani — while, for the rest, it may be more true to say that Iraqi militias have political leaders to represent their wishes. The largest and most murderous of the Shiite militias, the Mahdi Army, which is invariably described as belonging to the truculent cleric Moktada al-Sadr, actually is divided under local commanders, some of whom obey Sadr some of the time. In sum, the most that Maliki can do is to not interfere when U.S. troops fight militias.

Nor can the Iraqi leader fulfill his other major promise: to lead a new effort to reconcile the warring sects of Iraq. He is not another Gandhi, but rather a leader of the fiercely sectarian Dawa Party. It is very much as a militant Shiite that he speaks out. It would be remarkable if Maliki could even reconcile with his Shiite rivals, let alone the Sunni insurgents.

Fortunately there is a promising, long- term policy waiting for Bush whenever he decides to call off his surge: disengagement. I don't mean a phased withdrawal, let alone total abandonment.

Rather it would start with a tactical change: American soldiers would no longer patrol towns and villages, conduct cordon-and-search operations or man checkpoints. An end to these tasks would allow the greatest part of the troops to head home. The remaining U.S. forces would hole up within safe bases in Iraq to support the elected government, deter foreign invasion, dissuade visible foreign intrusions, and strike at any large concentration of jihadis that should emerge. This would mean that U.S. personnel could not remain embedded in large numbers within the Iraqi Army. At most, the Americans would operate training programs within safe bases.

What would be the result of disengagement along these lines? First, it would not be likely to increase the violence afflicting Iraqi civilians. The total number of U.S. troops in Iraq is so small, and their linguistic skills so limited, that they have little effect on day-to-day security. Nor have they really protected Iraqis from one another.

Disengagement should actually reduce the violence. U.S. power has been interposed between Arab Sunnis and Arab Shiites. That has relieved the Shiite majority of responsibility to such an extent that many, notably the leaders of the Mahdi Army, feel free to attack the U.S. and British troops who are busy protecting their co-religionist civilians from Sunni insurgents. For many Arab Sunnis, on the other hand, the United States must be the enemy simply because it upholds the majority of the heretical Shiites.

Were the United States to disengage, both Arab Sunnis and Arab Shiites would have to take responsibility for their own security, as the Kurds have been doing all along. Where these three groups are not naturally separated by geography, they would be forced to find ways to stabilize relations. That would most likely involve violence as well as talks, and some forcing of civilians from their homes. But this is happening already, and there is no saying which group would be most favored by a reduction of the U.S. footprint.

One reason for optimism on that score is that the violence itself has been separating previously mixed populations, reducing motives and opportunities for further attacks. That is how civil wars can burn themselves out. In any case, it is time for the Iraqis to make their own history.