General Sherman did not wreck the South

Spend any time with actual history, as opposed to the romanticized version of it that is practiced by Civil War revisionists, and you'll see enough of this to drive you nuts. Christopher Dickey writes this in Newsweek:

Last month I set out driving through Tennessee, Georgia and the Carolinas, roughly retracing the deepest scar in the country—the blazing track of total war left by Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in 1864 and 1865. After many years away I was exploring my own blood ties (which include an ancestor named after Sherman by his slave-owning-yet-Unionist parents), but also gauging the tenor of a region that has been critical to every U.S. presidential election since 1932, and may be again...

General Sherman did not "wreck" the South, nor did his march across the South have any lasting impact on the region. This is one of the most fundamental (and ludicrous) assertions that those who have a romanticized view of the Civil War maintain.

As historians have since pointed out, the destruction of Southern crops, livestock, factories, and railroads, and other infrastructure was anything but complete; much of the damage was repaired within a few years. The really serious economic losses can be traced to two things: the emancipation of slaves, which wiped out billions of dollars in Southern wealth, and the worthlessness of Confederate scrip, bonds, and promissory notes into which many Southerners had sunk most of their savings.

When Sherman's Army left Atlanta and severed the Confederacy, it did so as an untethered Army that traveled light, passing through Georgia and the Carolinas as it moved to link up with the Army of the Potomac. It did not burn or destroy everything in its path--in fact, one standing order was that the army would not leave poor Southerners, black or white, destitute.

General Sherman's orders were rigorously enforced, except in the case of South Carolina, which bore the brunt of the Army's wrath because it was considered to cradle of the Confederacy. I don't accept the revisionist history that says Sherman burned Columbia, South Carolina--there's plenty of evidence to suggest that drunkards were responsible. His Special Field Order 120 is especially handy for refuting the notion that his Army was on a mission of terror:

IV. The army will forage liberally on the country during the march. To this end, each brigade commander will organize a good and sufficient foraging party, under the command of one or more discreet officers, who will gather, near the route traveled, corn or forage of any kind, meat of any kind, vegetables, corn-meal, or whatever is needed by the command, aiming at all times to keep in the wagons at least ten day's provisions for the command and three days' forage. Soldiers must not enter the dwellings of the inhabitants, or commit any trespass, but during a halt or a camp they may be permitted to gather turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables, and to drive in stock of their camp. To regular foraging parties must be instructed the gathering of provisions and forage at any distance from the road traveled.

V. To army corps commanders alone is entrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, &c., and for them this general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.

VI. As for horses, mules, wagons, &c., belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and artillery may appropriate freely and without limit, discriminating, however, between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor or industrious, usually neutral or friendly. Foraging parties may also take mules or horses to replace the jaded animals of their trains, or to serve as pack-mules for the regiments or brigades. In all foraging, of whatever kind, the parties engaged will refrain from abusive or threatening language, and may, where the officer in command thinks proper, give written certificates of the facts, but no receipts, and they will endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion for their maintenance.

VII. Negroes who are able-bodied and can be of service to the several columns may be taken along, but each army commander will bear in mind that the question of supplies is a very important one and that his first duty is to see to them who bear arms. ...

– William T. Sherman, Military Division of the Mississippi Special Field Order 120, November 9, 1864.

The fact of the matter is, if you were a white Southerner of modest means, you had a much better time of it than any Native American. Here's a very detailed look at why this misconception lingers:

Let me give you an example of this private myth-making at work. It comes from the unpublished reminiscences of a woman, Grace Pierson Beard, who lived about eight miles from Winnsboro, South Carolina. Her postwar account, now preserved in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, consumes fifteen typescript, single-spaced pages. In it she describes how, returning to her home in February 1865, she encountered soldiers in her house, seated on benches taken from her piazza. They were roasting potatoes taken from her potato bank in a fire they had built in her fireplace. "I shall never forget that sight!" she writes dramatically--but then goes on to say that these men turned out to be members of Wheeler's Confederate cavalry, and nothing in her narrative suggests that she was in the least disturbed by their trespassing into her home.

Instead, the purpose of the men in her narrative is to convey a message about the danger she is in. Sherman's men were coming, they told her, and when she informed them of her plan to leave before their arrival, they responded that leaving would only guarantee the destruction of her house. "Sherman's orders are to burn all vacant houses and all provisions." Thus Grace decided to remain.

Next day, a group of Union soldiers arrived, killed a dog, and ate everything at her table, but left without assailing anyone. The day after a major force passed through--they ransacked her house for provisions and allegedly told her slaves not only that they were free, but also entitled to their mistress's possessions. (No one acted on this, however.) Her barn and outbuildings were burned. Some soldiers said threatening things, but another soldier deterred them with, "The first man who attempts to enter that house will have his brains blown out." Subsequently a second, self-appointed guard appeared, followed by a soldier who looked so much like her husband that her toddler son ran up to him, leaped into his arms, and called him Pa. The soldier "seemed to be much affected" by this. So was she: "I felt as if my baby was everlastingly polluted."

That was the extent of Mrs. Beard's experience with the coming of Lucifer's legions: vigorous foraging, the destruction of outbuildings, the liberation of slaves, and repeated efforts to extort possessions from her--which were never pursued to the point of assault and were, in any case, countered by soldiers who actively protected her family and herself. All this information is in her reminiscences, but the tone is one of fear and outrage, and the tone governs what an uncritical reader takes away from her reminiscences. In effect, Mrs. Beard--like thousands of other white Southerners--has constructed a mythical reading of her experience that emphasizes the harshness and injustice of that experience.

The influence of this myth can hardly be exaggerated. Even educated Southerners, far removed in time from the conflict, accepted it uncritically, indeed passionately. Eventually the murderous severity of the Union armies' attacks on civilian property became an article of faith. By the 1940s, one Southern historian could write, in a scholarly monograph, that "the invader did not limit himself to the property of people," but evidenced "considerable interest also in their persons, particularly the females, some of whom did not escape the fate worse than death"--without feeling the slightest need to document his lurid (and largely inaccurate) claim.

As for Sherman's status as a "war criminal, there's no shortage of stories like this:

Many myths surround the destruction of the plantations along the Ashley River Road. One is that Sherman burned them; however, General Sherman never brought his army to Charleston, rather he diverted towards Columbia from Savannah and never came through Charleston.

And:

The left wing of Sherman’s Army moved through Madison [Georgia] on November 17, 1864, burning the railroad depot and slave pens. The primary reason that many of the antebellum homes remain standing today is that, like few other towns in his path, Sherman was convinced to save the town by an old family friend Joshua Hill, a native son that became a U.S. Senator. Hill had befriended Sherman’s brother when they were cadets at West Point, and Sherman felt obligated to honor his request.

But why let the truth get in the way when it's easier to simply keep repeating a myth, right?

Violence on the upswing

At least fifty people were killed around noon Iraq time as the explosions from two separate car bombings in the recently restive Sunni areas of Ramadi and Baqouba ripped through crowded areas during lunch time.

Blame will surely be laid at the feet of the mysterious specter if al Qaeda, because the attacks were mounted via car bombs.

Forty people were killed and eighty more wounded in Baqouba when a bomb placed outside a government headquarters was detonated. Baqouba is the provincial capital of Diyala province.

Meanwhile, in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, a suicide bomber exploded his charge outside a popular restaurant. That blast killed 13 people and wounded 14 others, according to hospital and police sources.

The U.S. military pegged the death toll as slightly lower than the Iraqi police, and in the words of a military spokesperson I heard frustration and fear that the situation is rapidly getting out of control again. "These acts are intended to inflict fear into the local population and are just another example of the cruelty of the anti-Iraqi insurgency," said Major Peggy Kageleiry in a statement released to the press.

It all leads me to wonder - did the Sunni's just lay low while aWol moved in the Surge™ troops to buy him enough time to pass the baton off to the next president? Is the civil war resuming after a hiatus, where those fighting it rested up, cleaned their weapons and had some sons? Seems to me like there might be a case to be made for that hypothesis.

All hell breaking loose

Heavy fighting has erupted in Sadr City, starting Sunday when Iraqi and coalition forces retaliated against the Mahdi Army after rocket attacks rained down on the Green Zone from the Shi'ite slum.

The retaliatory attacks failed to quell the attacks on the Green Zone, however, and rockets continued to fall. Two American soldiers were killed in the Green Zone and seventeen others were wounded. The deaths were the first of American service personnel in the fortified area since last July. The violence spikes as Petraeus and Crocker are in Washington to testify before congress about the stunning success of the Surge™ that has thus far failed to achieve political reconciliation among the fractious groups vying for power in post-Saddam Iraq.

The events of the last few days are certain to provide plenty of ammunition for the congressional pie-fights that are on the horizon. Republican warmongers will say it proves we can't ever leave, Democrats will say that time is up, we can't sustain it, and should start leaving.

The timing of the violence is also worth noting for another reason. In the wake of the stand-off in Basra that strengthened Sadr's hand, Maliki is under pressure to regain some of the stature he lost in that fiasco. Basra solidified Sadr's bloc as the provincial elections loom, and Maliki faces not just a military draw (which amounts to a win for the side lacking air power) but a political defeat at the hands of the young former video-game junkie. Faced with that reality, Maliki now says militias must disarm. In a statement, the council declared that all political parties must immediately dissolve their militias and surrender their weapons if they wish to take part in elections.

The fighting draws to a close a relatively restive few days in Baghdad. On Sunday morning, an Iraqi military unit rolled into Sadr City supported by an American Stryker squadron, and were met by militia fighters with RPGs.

After the Iraqi soldiers came under attack, American forces in Abrams tanks, Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles rumbled to the scene. An American helicopter fired at least two Hellfire missiles at militia fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades, and blasted one of their vehicles. Later at least one militia-fired rocket hit the Jamilla market, a heavily frequented part of Sadr City, where clashes left at least 20 people dead, Iraqi officials said.

A large whoosh from a rocket disrupted a briefing in Sadr City for a small group of reporters, prompting correspondents and soldiers to duck. The news conference at the lone American Army and Iraqi combat outpost in Sadr City was given by Gen. Abud Qanbar Hashim, the Iraqi commander for Baghdad, and Maj. Gen. Jeffrey W. Hammond, who leads the American division charged with securing the capital, and began as bursts of gunfire rattled nearby streets.

Hammond seemed to dismiss the rocket as an errant discharge that was intended for the Green Zone.

In recent days, Maliki has issued a series of inconsistent statements in regards to militias and his willingness to take them on. The Iraqi General who was put in charge of the Sadr City operation attempted to assure Sadr's followers that the move was not aimed at any specific group, but at all militias. “The main thing is that arms should be in the hands of the state,” he said. “And we will never allow any armed group to carry arms as an alternative to the state to provide security to the citizens."

Americans have a different tactical objective...they want the rockets and mortars to stop falling on the Green Zone, and are pursuing them to their source. This has them occupying abandoned dwellings and buildings and living in pretty damned primitive conditions as they fend off counterattacks by a well-organized opponent with a command and control structure that is surprising in it's efficacy.

Sgt. Maj. Michael Boom of the First Squadron, Second Stryker Cavalry Regiment, said more than 1,000 American and Iraqi troops were operating in his sector. He said the recent fighting began March 25 when the Americans heard that Iraqi checkpoints were being overrun.

“My soldiers pushed out to help the Iraqi security forces re-establish the checkpoints. In some cases, we actually took over the checkpoints until they could get forces back there,” he said. “My companies have been taking direct fire every day.”

On March 28, the Americans moved to take control of the militia rocket sites to try to blunt the attacks on the Green Zone. The militias responded with a heavy counterattack the next day.

“They obviously wanted to retain that ground and maintain their ability to shoot rockets with impunity,” said Lt. Col. Dan Barnett, the squadron’s commander. “They have a command and control structure. They have a plan in place.”

The fighting spiked as Iraqi forces, backed up by American support, attempted to clear a neighborhood east of the outpost.

Maliki has spent the last week attempting to do damage control after failing to crush the militias in Basra as he had boasted his forces would. The stalemate left him weaker and Sadr stronger. So Maliki spent some of his remaining political capitol and got a decree from the Security COuncil - on which he has a seat - to push a demand that militias disband. The Security Council issued a fifteen point proclamation, one of the points being that all Iraqi's and especially sect leaders, “appreciate the role of the army in imposing security and order in Basra and the rest of the provinces.”

Mahmood Uthman, an independent member of Parliament who is part of the Kurdish Alliance, said he doubted that the Sadr group would go along. Mr. Sadr and his followers, he said, are likely to insist that any call for disarmament be applied to other political parties with militias, including the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, whose armed wing is the Badr militia.

Luway Smessem, the head of the Sadr party’s political committee, said that though the group agreed with much of the statement, party officials had “reservations” about some points, including the demands that militias disband and that Mr. Maliki’s Basra campaign be supported.

“The Mahdi Army is not a militia,” he said. “We don’t have masked fighters and everyone knows who we are and who our commanders are.”

The immediate future is tenuous and there is much at stake. And I am extremely nervous because I don't trust any one of the feckless, self-serving jackals that occupy positions of power.

Can it be January now? With enough congressional Democrats taking seats that no matter who wants to retain troops in Iraq, they won't have the funding? Please?

Unspooled

In the last five days, the security situation in Iraq has collapsed like the house of cards it ever 'twas. You might even say the insurgency was resurrected on Easter, and it came back like something out of Pet Cemetary.

As mortars and rockets rain down on the green zone (twelve in four hours just yesterday) the State Department has warned personnel not to leave "reinforced structures."

In a memo sent Thursday to embassy staff and obtained by The Associated Press, the department says employees are required to wear helmets, body armor and other protective gear if they must venture outside and strongly advises them to sleep in blast-resistant locations instead of the less secure trailers that most occupy.

"Due to the continuing threat of indirect fire in the International Zone, all personnel are advised to remain under hard cover at all times," it says. "Personnel should only move outside of hard cover for essential reasons."

"Essential outdoor movements should be sharply limited in duration," the memo says, adding that personal protective equipment "is mandatory for all outside movements."

"We strongly recommend personnel do not sleep in their trailers," it goes on to say, offering space inside the Saddam Hussein-era palace that is the embassy's temporary home as well as room at an as-yet uncompleted new embassy compound and a limited supply of cots.

In a separate public notice to American citizens in Iraq, the embassy said the restrictions would remain in place "until further notice."

And what does the (worst) Secretary of State (ever) have to day about it? "Iraq was harder than I thought." Seriously. She said that. Then she went on to blame the Iraqis for the turmoil and chaos in their country, but to her minimal credit, she stopped short of calling them a bunch of ungrateful wogs who don't know their place.

Civil War in Gaza

Oh where to even start. I have been trying all day to write something about the pressure-cooker in Palestine that has blown apart in the last few days.

Five years ago this month, the President of the United States made a Rose Garden speech, wherein he laid out a bold, vivid two-state vision for the Middle East. Israel and Palestine, coexisting side by side, their peoples living in peace and prospering together. "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror." he declared back then.

That vision was a mirage.

I certainly do not have the answers to this dilemma but I do know one thing beyond all doubt – a lot of it can be directly traced to the horrid policies of the Bush (mal)administration and the State Department that wasn’t.

United States policy overtly encouraged Israel to withdraw from the Gaza strip – not in and of itself a bad thing. But they also pressed for elections in both the Palestenian territory and Israel. Abbas won the election to replace Arafat as the President of the Palestinian Authority after Arafat’s passing in late 2004. He arrogantly allowed Hamas to run candidates to stand for legitimate election to parliament, thinking that he could defeat them at the polls.

He thought wrong.

So the Bush administration – on the heels of moving the goalposts in Iraq from WMD’s to fostering Democracy – decided that they didn’t much care for Democracy the way the Palestinians exercised it, because gosh-darnit, they picked the wrong leaders. Money and aid was cut off – a situation choreographed by Washington D.C. – in an attempt to strangle Hamas out of the political process.

This blew up in their faces most spectacularly. The attempt to make Hamas unpopular enough that the Palestinians would blame them and their support would erode, instead engendered hatred and pure, unadulterated resolve toward the west, and by extension, to the man they perceived as a marionette of western masters, Abbas. This week, the seething cauldron boiled over. Hamas and Fatah turned their guns on one another, and as it stands now, Hamas is in control in Gaza.

"The two-state vision is dead. It really is," said Edward G. Abington Jr., a former State Department official who was once an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas, whose bouts of vacillation have irritated U.S. officials, yesterday dissolved the Palestinian government in response to Hamas's takeover of Gaza. U.S. officials signaled that they will move quickly to persuade an international peace monitoring group -- known as the Quartet -- to lift aid restrictions on the Palestinian government, allowing direct aid to flow to the West Bank-based emergency government that Abbas will lead.

"There is no more Hamas-led government. It is gone," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the administration must still consult with other members of the Quartet. He said that humanitarian aid will continue to Gaza, but that the dissolution of the Palestinian government is a singular moment that will allow the United States and its allies to create a "new model of engagement."

The evolving U.S. strategy would let the Hamas-run Gaza Strip fend for itself while attempting to bolster Abbas as a moderate leader who can actually govern and deliver peace with Israel. The senior administration official noted that Gaza has no territorial issues with Israel, since there are no Israelis in Gaza, so the Hamas entity there would have no stake in potential peace talks concerning the border on the West Bank.

Referring to Abbas, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters yesterday that "we fully support him in his decision to try and end this crisis for the Palestinian people and to give them an opportunity to return to peace and a better future."

But analysts said yesterday that this strategy of dividing the moderates from the extremists -- which was the core of Bush's 2002 speech -- proved ineffective and may have led to the dilemma facing the administration.

So now, the government has been dissolved, and the Gaza Strip is under Hamas control. Fatah has retreated to the West Bank, and the Bush administration is still supporting Abbas. And a radical Islamic state, committed to the destruction of the jewish state, exists literally on Israel’s doorstep.

No one has asked me, but if they did, I would say that it looks to my eyes like we should probably bow out. Every damned thing we have done has turned around and bit us on the ass. Beyond encouraging the “Quartet” to get aid and assistance flowing, and maybe send a check.

Although I am perhaps the least religious person you will ever encounter, I leave you with a prayer for peace. Oseh Shalom, Gaza.

Not such a Good Friday after all…

Just wading through the article linked that describes just some of the violence in Iraq in one 24 hour period covering Thursday and Friday has wrecked my entire day and left me feeling physically ill.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosives-and-Chlorine laden vehicle, killing at least 25. As he sped toward a checkpoint outside Ramadi, coalition forces opened fire and the driver veered toward a residential development, killing women and children.

It was the sixth Chlorine-bomb attack in recent weeks, and it was unclear whether the explosion or the poison killed more people. Final casualty numbers are not known as yet, but are expected to climb as victims are pulled from the rubble.

All around Baghdad, mortars rained down, killing indiscriminately. Snipers picked off civilians, including children, as they went about attempting to live their lives, only to have them stupidly snuffed out.

Buried in the article, it is revealed that missiles fired from American helicopters killed 15 civilians, that a Toyota sedan was fired on, and all three occupants were killed. There is no mention that the people in that car posed any threat at all, apparently they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the same section of the piece, we learn that American forces mistakenly fired on a college residence hall, killing two students.

Stuck in the middle of a sectarian civil war, where the only common thread among the warring factions is a hatred of the occupying forces and a deep desire for all of the occupiers to leave, American forces are targets for all of the hatred and anger felt by the people of Iraq.

That focused anger and hatred has resulted in the deaths of 18 Americans so far in April, and the four-month period from December-March has been the deadliest for Americans this year than in the same time period since the war started in 2003. (Hat tip to Larry Johnson at No Quarter for the chart.)

What has happened to that country, as a result of the delusional agenda of a mentally ill American president is unconscionable.