Tag Archives: reconstruction

July 7, 2012 · 00:43

Protecting the Ideal: Reflections on Gettysburg, Freedom and Why It Matters

I have spent this week writing about the Battle of Gettysburg which happens to fall in the days before the celebration of our Declaration of Independence. This week on the 149th Anniversary of Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg washed up rocker and now political activist Ted Nugent wrote in the Washington Times “I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War.”  I find his remark appalling and disgraceful but I have come to expect such comments from him and and others who voice similar sentiments.

When I hear such sentiments and they are many now days I think of men like Joshua Chamberlain. Chamberlain was a college professor who served in the Union Army and won fame and the Medal of Honor for the defense of Little Round Top at Gettysburg. There is a quote from the film Gods and Generals which I think about when I hear anyone suggesting that it would have been better for the Confederacy to have won the war:

“Now, somewhere out there is the Confederate army. They claim they are fighting for their independence, for their freedom. Now, I can not question their integrity. I believe they are wrong but I can not question it. But I do question a system that defends its own freedom while it denies it to an entire race of men. I will admit it, Tom. War is a scourge, but so is slavery. It is the systematic coercion of one group of men over another. It has been around since the book of Genesis. It exists in every corner of the world, but that is no excuse for us to tolerate it here when we find it right in front of our very eyes in our own country. As God as my witness, there is no one I hold in my heart dearer than you. But if your life, or mine,is part of the price to end this curse and free the Negro, then let God’s work be done.”

There is a spot near the Copse of Trees along Cemetery Ridge which is referred to as the “High Water Mark of the Confederacy.” It is the spot close to where Confederate Brigadier General Lewis Armistead fell mortally wounded as the decimated remains of his command were overwhelmed by Union forces shortly after they breached the Union line. It is a place immortalized in history, literature and film. It is the place that marked the beginning of the end for the great evil of slavery in America.

My ancestors lived in Cabell County which in 1861 was part of Virginia. They were slave holders along the Mud River, a tributary of the Ohio River just to the north of what is now Huntington West Virginia. When war came to the country the family patriarch James Dundas and my great, great grandfather joined the 8th Virginia Cavalry Regiment in which he served the bulk of the war as a Lieutenant.  When it ended he refused to sign the loyalty oath to the Union and had his lands, which are now some of the most valuable in that part of West Virginia confiscated and sold by the Federal Government.  He was a believer in the “Lost Cause” that romantic and confused idea about the rightness of the South in its war against what they called “Northern aggression.”

Because he served I am eligible for membership in the Sons of the Confederacy. However it is something that I cannot do.  There are some that do this as a means to honor their relatives that served in the war and I do not make light of their devotion to their family, but there are some that take that devotion to places that I cannot go.  As much as I admire the valor and personal integrity of many military men who served the Confederacy I cannot for a moment think that their “cause” was just.

It has been said that the North won the war but that the South won the history.  I think this is true. Many people now days like to reduce the reasons for the war to the South protecting its rights.  Sometimes the argument is “states rights” or “economic freedom” and those that make these arguments romanticize the valor shown by Confederate soldiers on the battlefield but conveniently ignore or obscure the evil of the Southern economic system.

The “rights” and the “economic freedom” espoused by those that led the secession and that are lamented by those like Nugent were based upon the enslavement and exploitation of the Black man to maintain an archaic economy based on agriculture, particularly the export of King Cotton.  Arguments which try to place the blame on the North, especially arguments that attempt to turn the Northern States into economic predators’ intent on suppressing the economic rights of Southerners only serve to show the bankruptcy of the idea itself. The fact that the “economic and political freedom” of Southerners was founded on the enslavement of a whole race of people matters not because the “cause” is greater.

The fact is that the longer the South relied solely on its agriculture which was supported by the institution of slavery it deprived itself of the means of economic progress, the same progress that propelled the North to prosperity. The south lagged in all industrial areas as well as transportation infrastructure. The majority of non-slave owning whites lived at the poverty line and only enjoyed some elevated social status because the slaves ranked beneath them on the sociological and economic hierarchy.  The South depended on cheap imports from England, which then was still considered an enemy of the country. When tariffs to protect newly establish American industries were enacted in 1828 South Carolina attempted to nullify the Federal law even raising troops and threatened a revolt in 1832.

The Southern economic system was immoral and antiquated. It enslaved blacks and it impoverished most rural Southerners, with the exception of those that owned the land and the slaves. It was a hateful, backward and loathsome system which even the southern churches attempted to justify from Scripture.  Southern Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians would all break away from their parent denominations regarding slavery.

This does not mean that I think that the average Confederate soldier or officers were dishonorable men. Many officers who had served in the United States Army hated the breakup of the Union but served the South because it was the land that they were from. It was the home of their families and part of who they were.  To judge them as wanting 150 years later when we have almost no connection to family or home in a post industrial world is to impose the standards of a world that they did not know upon them. For those that gave up everything to serve one can feel a measure of sympathy.  So many died and so much of the South was destroyed in the defense of that “cause” one has to wonder just why the political and religious leaders of the South were willing to maintain such an inadequate and evil economic system one that hurt poor Southern whites nearly as much as it did blacks.

The war devastated the South and the radicals that ran “Reconstruction” ensured that Southerners suffered terrible degradation and that Southern blacks would have even more obstacles raised against them by the now very angry and revengeful whites.  It would take another 80-100 years to end segregation and secure voting rights for blacks. Thus I have no desire to become part of an organization that even gives the appearance of supporting the “cause” even if doing so would allow me to “honor” an ancestor who raised his hand against the country that I serve.

I was raised on the West Coast but have lived in the South much of my adult life due to military assignments. I have served in National Guard units that trace their lineage to Confederate regiments in Texas and Virginia. Despite my Confederate connections both familial and by service I can find little of the romance and idealism that some find in the Confederacy and the “Lost Cause.” I see the Civil War for what it was, a tragedy of the highest order brought about by the need of some to enslave others to maintain their economic system.

Today there are many that use the flags of the Confederacy outside of their historic context. They are often used as a symbol of either racial hatred or of defiance to the Federal Government by white Supremacist or anti-government organizations.  Many that use them openly advocate for the overthrow of the Federal Government.  The calls for such “revolt” can be found all over the country even in the halls of Congress much as they were in the 1830s, 40s and 50s. Some of this is based in libertarian economic philosophy which labels the government as the enemy of business, some based social policies which are against their religious beliefs and some sadly to say based in an almost xenophobic racial hatred.  The scary thing as that the divisions in the country are probably as great as or greater than they were in the 1850s as the country lurched inexorably to Civil War with neither side willing to do anything that might lessen their political or economic power even if it means the ruin of the country.

As seems to be the case around this time of year I have seen the symbols of the Confederacy, particularly the Battle Flag displayed in manners that can only be seen as symbols of defiance.  Wednesday was July 4th and it seems to me that the flag that should be most prominently displayed is the Stars and Stripes not the Confederate Battle flag or even the Gadsen Flag which has become the symbol of the modern Tea Party movement.  Somehow I find the flag flown in rebellion to the country that I serve displayed in such an arrogant manner.

For people like the Federal Government which is the enemy. Now I know that our system of government has its flaws. Likewise I cannot agree more about the corruption of many in political office, regardless of their political allegiance.  While it is true that the Federal Government has taken upon itself many powers some never envisioned by those that crafted the Constitution, it has done so because leaders of both political parties have consented to it and even worked to strengthen the Federal Government with the consent of the American people that elect them again and again.

Despite this much of this has been accomplished by the Federal Government has been for the good for the country and people no matter what the critics say. Many of the things that we enjoy today are the result of the work of the Federal Government and not business as much as those that deify big corporations want to believe. There are the National Parks, laws against child labor and for safe workplaces brought about by Teddy Roosevelt, the infrastructure built in the 1930s and 1940s by the Franklin Roosevelt administration. The Roosevelt administration also brought about Social Security and banking regulations to protect Americans from corporations and banks that violated the public trust. The Eisenhower administration began the Interstate Highway system which is the backbone of our transportation system.  Likewise the Space Program and yes even the military have led the way in technological, scientific and medical innovation including that thing that we all take for granted today the Internet.

Today quite a few people are calling for revolt or secession if they do not get what they want be it socially, politically or economically. For years politicians on both sides have fought to minimize such talk and enact compromises with the usual discontent that comes with compromise.  Unfortunately many of those compromises have had the effect of widening the political divide much as the various compromises on the road to the Civil War.  Jefferson said of the Missouri Compromise of 1824: “but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.”

We have allowed the issues of our time to become a fire of unbridled angry passion where those with almost no historical understanding and whose history is often based on myth stake claims and promote ideas that will destroy this Union if they continue. Unfortunately we have not yet reached the high water mark of this movement yet and I fear like Jefferson that the hatred and division will only grow worse as both radical on the right and left prepare for conflict.

This week we celebrated the 236th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence.  It is a remarkable occasion. It is the anniversary that free people as well as those oppressed around the world look to as a beacon of liberty. It has been paid for time and time again, especially during that cruel Civil War which killed more American soldiers than any other war that we have fought.

A few months after Gettysburg Abraham Lincoln a man much reviled by those that have romanticized the Cause and who is demonized by many “conservative” politicians and pundits today as a “tyrant” made these brief remarks at the site of the battle:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Today with so many radicals on both the political right and political left doing all that they can to plunge us into yet another civil war we should remember Lincoln’s word and rededicate ourselves to this Union, this remarkable Union.  Tony Blair the former Prime Minster of Great Britain remarked last year:

“It may be strange for a former British Prime Minister to offer thoughts on America when the country will be celebrating its independence from Britain. But the circumstances of independence are part of what makes America the great and proud nation it is today. And what gives nobility to the American character.

That nobility isn’t about being nicer, better or more successful than anyone else. It is a feeling about the country. It is a devotion to the American ideal that at a certain point transcends class, race, religion or upbringing. That ideal is about values, freedom, the rule of law, democracy. It is also about the way you achieve: on merit, by your own efforts and hard work.

But it is most of all that in striving for and protecting that ideal, you as an individual take second place to the interests of the nation as a whole. This is what makes the country determined to overcome its challenges. It is what makes its soldiers give their lives in sacrifice. It is what brings every variety of American, from the lowest to the highest, to their feet when “The Star-Spangled Banner” is played.

Of course the ideal is not always met – that is obvious. But it is always striven for.

The next years will test the American character. The world is changing. New powers are emerging. But America should have confidence. This changing world does not diminish the need for that American ideal. It only reaffirms it.”

I think that the Prime Minister got it right and Ted Nugent is an ignorant fool but he has the right to be one.

Peace

Padre Steve+

About these ads

Leave a Comment

Filed under civil war, History, Political Commentary

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 23, 2012 · 17:50

The First Memorial Day

The acrid smell of smoke of the last battles of the American Civil War was still lingering over many towns and cities in the South on May 1st 1865.  Charleston South Carolina, a hotbed of secession was particularly hard hit during the war. In 1861 Cadets of the Citadel and South Carolina militia forces began the war with the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Union Forces laid siege to the city in late 1863 which ended with the city’s surrender on 18 February 1865. By this time much of the city had been destroyed by Union siege artillery and naval forces.

Charleston had also been the home of three of the Prisoner of War Camps erected by the Confederacy, one in the Charleston City Jail and the other at Castle Pinckney. Another camp was erected on the site of the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club in 1864. This was an open air camp and Yale Historian David Blight wrote that “Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand.” (See http://www.davidwblight.com/memorial.htm)

By the end of the war most of the white population of the city had left and most of those remaining were recently freed slaves. After their liberation and the city’s occupation by Federal forces including the famous 54th Massachusetts as well as the 20th, 35th and 104th US Colored Troops Regiments. A number, about 28 Black men went to work and properly reinterred these 257 Union dead on the raceway building a high fence around it. They inscribed “Martyrs of the Race Course” on an arch above the cemetery entrance.

On May 1st over 10,000 Black Charlestonians gathered at the site to honor the fallen. Psalms, Scriptures and prayers were said, hymns were sung and many brought flowers. A parade of 2800 children covered the burial ground with flowers.  They were followed by members of the Patriotic Association of Colored Men and the Mutual Aid Society whose members provided relief supplies to Freedmen and provided aid to bury those Blacks who were too poor to afford burial. More citizens followed many laying flower bouquets on the graves. Children then led the singing of The Star Spangled Banner, America and Rally Around the Flag. The Brigade composed of the 54th Massachusetts and the 35th and 104th Colored Regiments marched in honor of their fallen comrades. Following the formalities many remained behind for a picnic.  A contemporary account can be found here: http://media.charleston.net/2009/pdf/firstmemorial_day_052409.pdf

Other communities would establish their own Memorial Day observances in the years following the war, with the Charleston event preceding the next earliest event by a full year. The first “Official” commemoration was on 30 May 1868 when Union General John Logan and head of the veteran’s organization called The Grand Army of the Republic appealed to communities to honor the dead by holding ceremonies and decorating the graves of the fallen. In the South three different days served a similar purpose.  In Virginia people commemorated the day on June 3rd, the birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, the Carolinas marked the day on 10 May, the birthday of General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, while in the Deep South the event was conducted on the anniversary of the surrender of General Joseph Johnson’s Army to General William Tecumseh Sherman.  For many in the South the day would become about “The Lost Cause” or “the defense of Liberty” or “States Rights” and was often caused the “War of Northern Aggression.”

The “Martyrs of the Racecourse” cemetery is no longer there. The site is now a park honoring Confederate General and the White Supremacist “Redeemer Governor” of South Carolina Wade Hampton. An oval track remains in the park and is used by the local population and cadets from the Citadel to run on. The Union dead who had been so beautifully honored by the Black population were moved to the National Cemetery at Beaufort South Carolina in the 1880s and the event conveniently erased from memory. Had not historian David Blight found the documentation we probably still would not know of this touching act which so honored those that fought the battles that won their freedom.

The African American population of Charleston who understood the bonds of slavery and oppression, the tyranny of prejudice in which they only counted as 3/5ths of a person and saw the suffering of those that were taken prisoner while attempting to liberate them stand as an example for us today.  Within little more than a decade they would be subject to Jim Crow and again treated by many whites as something less than human.  The struggle of them and their descendants against the tyranny of racial prejudice, discrimination and violence over the next 100 years would finally bear fruit in the Civil Rights movement whose leaders, like the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. would also become martyrs.

Frederick Douglass spoke to Union Veterans on Memorial Day 1878.  His words, particularly in light of the war and the struggles of African Americans since and the understanding of what those who were enslaved understood liberation to be are most significant to our time. It was not merely a war based on sectionalism or even “States rights,” it was a war of ideas. He said:

“But the sectional character of this war was merely accidental and its least significant feature.  It was a war of ideas, a battle of principles and ideas which united one section and divided the other; a war between the old and new, slavery and freedom, barbarism and civilization; between a government based upon the broadest and grandest declaration of human rights the world ever heard or read, and another pretended government, based upon an open, bold and shocking denial of all rights, except the right of the strongest.” 

I do hope in the days ahead as we prepare to celebrate Memorial Day, as we prepare to honor those Americans who died that others might be free to look back at what freedom actually means and not forget the sacrifices of those that give their lives that others might live.

Peace

Padre Steve+

Leave a Comment

Filed under History, Military

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 4, 2011 · 01:19

Reflecting on the High Water Mark of the Confederacy and the Importance of Our Union

Yesterday was the 148th Anniversary of Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. There is a spot near the Copse of Trees along Cemetery Ridge which is referred to as the “High Water Mark of the Confederacy.” It is the spot close to where Confederate Brigadier General Lo Armistead fell mortally wounded as the decimated remains of his command were overwhelmed by Union forces shortly after they breached the Union line. It is a place immortalized in history, literature and film. It is the place that marked the beginning of the end for the great evil of slavery in America.

My ancestors lived in Cabell County which in 1861 was part of Virginia. They were slave holders along the Mud River, a tributary of the Ohio River just to the north of what is now Huntington West Virginia. When war came to the country the family patriarch James Dundas and my great, great grandfather joined the 8th Virginia Cavalry Regiment in which he served the bulk of the war as a Lieutenant.  When it ended he refused to sign the loyalty oath to the Union and had his lands, which are now some of the most valuable in that part of West Virginia confiscated and sold by the Federal Government.  He was a believer in the “Lost Cause” that romantic and confused idea about the rightness of the South in its war against what they called “Northern aggression.”

Because he served I am eligible for membership in the Sons of the Confederacy. However it is something that I cannot do.  There are some that do this as a means to honor their relatives that served in the war and I do not make light of their devotion to their family, but there are some that take that devotion to places that I cannot go.  As much as I admire the valor and personal integrity of many military men who served the Confederacy I cannot for a moment think that their “cause” was just.

It has been said that the North won the war but that the South won the history.  I think this is true. Many people now days like to reduce the reasons for the war to the South protecting its rights.  Sometimes the argument is “states rights” or “economic freedom” and those that make these arguments romanticize the valor shown by Confederate soldiers on the battlefield but conveniently ignore or obscure the evil of the Southern economic system. The “rights” and the “economic freedom” were based upon the enslavement and exploitation of the Black man to maintain an archaic economy based on agriculture, particularly the export of King Cotton.  Arguments which try to place the blame on the North, especially arguments that attempt to turn the Northern States into economic predators’ intent on suppressing the economic rights of Southerners only serve to show the bankruptcy of the idea itself. The fact that the “economic and political freedom” of Southerners was founded on the enslavement of a whole race of people matters not because the “cause” is greater.

The fact is that the longer the South relied solely on its agriculture which was supported by the institution of slavery it deprived itself of the means of economic progress, the same progress that propelled the North to prosperity. The south lagged in all industrial areas as well as transportation infrastructure. The majority of non-slave owning whites lived at the poverty line and only enjoyed some elevated social status because the slaves ranked beneath them on the sociological and economic hierarchy.  The South depended on cheap imports from England, which then was still considered an enemy of the country. When tariffs to protect newly establish American industries were enacted in 1828 South Carolina attempted to nullify the Federal law even raising troops and threatened a revolt in 1832.

The Southern economic system was immoral and antiquated. It enslaved blacks and it impoverished most rural Southerners, with the exception of those that owned the land and the slaves. It was a hateful, backward and loathsome system which even the southern churches attempted to justify from Scripture.  Southern Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians would all break away from their parent denominations regarding slavery.

This does not mean that I think that the average Confederate soldier or officers were dishonorable men. Many officers who had served in the United States Army hated the breakup of the Union but served the South because it was the land that they were from. It was the home of their families and part of who they were.  To judge them as wanting 150 years later when we have almost no connection to family or home in a post industrial world is to impose the standards of a world that they did not know upon them. For those that gave up everything to serve one can feel a measure of sympathy.  So many died and so much of the South was destroyed in the defense of that “cause” one has to wonder just why the political and religious leaders of the South were willing to maintain such an inadequate and evil economic system one that hurt poor Southern whites nearly as much as it did blacks.

The war devastated the South and the radicals that ran “Reconstruction” ensured that Southerners suffered terrible degradation and that Southern blacks would have even more obstacles raised against them by the now very angry and revengeful whites.  It would take another 80-100 years to end segregation and secure voting rights for blacks. Thus I have no desire to become part of an organization that even gives the appearance of supporting the “cause” even if doing so would allow me to “honor” an ancestor who raised his hand against the country that I serve.

I was raised on the West Coast but have lived in the South much of my adult life due to military assignments. I have served in National Guard units that trace their lineage to Confederate regiments in Texas and Virginia. Despite my Confederate connections both familial and by service I can find little of the romance and idealism that some find in the Confederacy and the “Lost Cause.” I see the Civil War for what it was, a tragedy of the highest order brought about by the need of some to enslave others to maintain their economic system.

Today there are many that use the flags of the Confederacy outside of their historic context. They are often used as a symbol of either racial hatred or of defiance to the Federal Government by white Supremacist or anti-government organizations.  Many that use them openly advocate for the overthrow of the Federal Government.  The calls for such “revolt” can be found all over the country even in the halls of Congress much as they were in the 1830s, 40s and 50s. Some of this is based in libertarian economic philosophy which labels the government as the enemy of business, some based social policies which are against their religious beliefs and some sadly to say based in an almost xenophobic racial hatred.  The scary thing as that the divisions in the country are probably as great as or greater than they were in the 1850s as the country lurched inexorably to Civil War with neither side willing to do anything that might lessen their political or economic power even if it means the ruin of the country.

In recent weeks I have seen the symbols of the Confederacy, particularly the Battle Flag displayed in manners that can only be seen as symbols of defiance.  Tomorrow is July 4th and it seems to me that the flag that should be most prominently displayed is not a Confederate banner, nor even the Gadsen flag, a flag from the Revolutionary War which is used as a rallying symbol for many in the Tea Party movement but the Stars and Stripes.  Somehow I find the flag flown in rebellion to the country that I serve displayed in such an arrogant manner

For many of these people it is the Federal Government which is the enemy. Now I know that our system of government has its flaws. Likewise I cannot agree more about the corruption of many in political office, regardless of their political allegiance.  While it is true that the Federal Government has taken upon itself many powers some never envisioned by those that crafted the Constitution, it has done so because leaders of both political parties have consented to it and even worked to strengthen the Federal Government with the consent of the American people that elect them again and again.

Despite this much of this has been accomplished by the Federal Government has been for the good for the country and people no matter what the critics say. Many of the things that we enjoy today are the result of the work of the Federal Government and not business as much as those that deify big corporations want to believe. There are the National Parks, laws against child labor and for safe workplaces brought about by Teddy Roosevelt, the infrastructure built in the 1930s and 1940s by the Franklin Roosevelt administration. The Roosevelt administration also brought about Social Security and banking regulations to protect Americans from corporations and banks that violated the public trust. The Eisenhower administration began the Interstate Highway system which is the backbone of our transportation system.  Likewise the Space Program and yes even the military have led the way in technological, scientific and medical innovation including that thing that we all take for granted today the Internet.

Today quite a few people are calling for revolt or secession if they do not get what they want be it socially, politically or economically. For years politicians on both sides have fought to minimize such talk and enact compromises with the usual discontent that comes with compromise.  Unfortunately many of those compromises have had the effect of widening the political divide much as the various compromises on the road to the Civil War.  Jefferson said of the Missouri Compromise of 1824: “but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.”

We have allowed the issues of our time to become a fire of unbridled angry passion where those with almost no historical understanding and whose history is often based on myth stake claims and promote ideas that will destroy this Union if they continue. Unfortunately we have not yet reached the high water mark of this movement yet and I fear like Jefferson that the hatred and division will only grow worse as both radical on the right and left prepare for conflict.

Tomorrow we celebrate the 235th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence.  It is a remarkable occasion. It is the anniversary that free people as well as those oppressed around the world look to as a beacon of liberty. It has been paid for time and time again, especially during that cruel Civil War which killed more American soldiers than any other war that we have fought.

A few months after Gettysburg Abraham Lincoln a man much reviled by those that have romanticized the Cause and who is demonized by many “conservative” politicians and pundits today as a “tyrant” made these brief remarks at the site of the battle:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Today with so many radicals on both the political right and political left doing all that they can to plunge us into yet another civil war we should remember Lincoln’s word and rededicate ourselves to this Union, this remarkable Union.  Tony Blair the former Prime Minster of Great Britain remarked today:

“It may be strange for a former British Prime Minister to offer thoughts on America when the country will be celebrating its independence from Britain. But the circumstances of independence are part of what makes America the great and proud nation it is today. And what gives nobility to the American character.

That nobility isn’t about being nicer, better or more successful than anyone else. It is a feeling about the country. It is a devotion to the American ideal that at a certain point transcends class, race, religion or upbringing. That ideal is about values, freedom, the rule of law, democracy. It is also about the way you achieve: on merit, by your own efforts and hard work.

But it is most of all that in striving for and protecting that ideal, you as an individual take second place to the interests of the nation as a whole. This is what makes the country determined to overcome its challenges. It is what makes its soldiers give their lives in sacrifice. It is what brings every variety of American, from the lowest to the highest, to their feet when “The Star-Spangled Banner” is played.

Of course the ideal is not always met – that is obvious. But it is always striven for.

The next years will test the American character. The world is changing. New powers are emerging. But America should have confidence. This changing world does not diminish the need for that American ideal. It only reaffirms it.”

I think that the Prime Minister got it right.

Peace

Padre Steve+

3 Comments

Filed under History, philosophy, Political Commentary, Religion

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 28, 2010 · 00:21

Fighting a World Wide Insurgency: The Problem Fighting Revolutionary Terrorists and Insurgents- Part One

Taliban Insurgents

“Warfare is now an interlocking system of actions political, economic, psychological; military that aims at the overthrow of the established authority in a country and its replacement by another regime.  To achieve this end, the aggressor tries to exploit the internal tensions of the country attacked ideological, social, religious, economic, any conflict liable to have a profound influence on the population to be conquered.” Roger Trinquier Modern Warfare

The United State and our allies have been at war with Islamic terrorists as well as nationally based insurgencies for over nine years.  The war that we are fighting is not like the Second World War where we fought a conventional war against enemies that were defined by national, political and geographic boundaries.  That war as well as the First World War and most recently the 1991 Gulf War but rather is a global insurgency in which we are pitted against a number of sometimes disparate groups One of the things that seems to be misunderstood by much of the media as well as the public

Muslim terrorist groups they use some tenants of Islam, mostly from the Wahabi school that emerged on the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1700s to justify what they do. Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard use the Islam taught by the school of the Ayatollah to do the same.

However that being said there are a sizable number of Muslims worldwide that oppose the terrorists and their brands of Islam but still can be offended and driven to the other side by Americans doing just what pastor Jones got started. The radicals take this and use it as propaganda against us.

The fact is that it is all about using propaganda effectively and not giving the terrorists the grist they need to use against us. The terrorist or the insurgent has no need to tell the truth and usually will not and will twist any “truth” to his own end. This is true in every revolutionary war, which is what all of these groups are waging. They are fighting to turn all of Islam and anyone else they can against us. This is the case since the beginning of time and not limited to Muslims.

We as Americans have been pretty lousy at this except when we were the revolutionaries. It is a fact, not just with the Muslims but all revolutionaries that since they are on the weak side of the military equation that they use propaganda, especially what any of our people do to radicalize people on the fence against us. Jones and others played into their hands and by doing so jeopardize the mission and endanger our troops. The fact is that we neither have the resources or people to allow this to become a war against all of Islam. Thus we have to exploit natural divisions and cultural divides in the Moslem world to isolate and neutralize the radicals of Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Taliban, Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

It may seem on the surface to be politically correct appeasement but a true strategic purpose is served. The counter-insurgent cannot do what the insurgent can as they will lose the propaganda war and with it the broader war. We are fighting a world-wide revolutionary war against Moslem fundamentalist extremists that want us to make it a war against all of Islam. If that were to be the case we would have to go to a total war footing, ignore our own economy renew the draft and prepare for a war that in the long run we cannot win and will leave us as broken as Germany after WWII.

The problem with Islam as that for the most part much of Islam especially in the Middle East still lives in the 14th century with fancy technology. They did not have the Renaissance, Reformation or the enlightenment thus the appeal of the fundamentalist sects and radical Islam. That makes our job hard and that of Bin Laden easy as their world-view  promotes a black and white understanding of the world which makes recruitment of youthful idealists easy especially when the conflict is framed as against “Crusaders” or “Imperialists” opposed to Islam.

The war that we are engaged in is not conventional and we do not have a good record in recent times of fighting this kind of war. We lost in Vietnam because we ignored this. We won all the battles and lost the war. Despite what some pundits believe this is not like WWII and no new incarnation of George Patton will win it.

As I said we are engaged in a revolutionary war which is different than other types of war. In revolutionary wars the revolutionary no matter what his cause is able to use propaganda to influence opinion, usually of people that they are trying to bring to their side. Our founders were very good in portraying the British as violent and brutal occupiers. We used British excess especially in Boston and in the South against them very well. The Jihadists are promoting a revolutionary cause, that cause being the overthrow of established governments in the Middle East and bringing about a radical and fundamental brand of Islamic rule. This happened in Iran and after 30 years the young people are beginning to revolt against the Ayatollahs. It is also revolutionary because they are actively promoting the overthrow of established states and have a goal of establishing their brand of Islam over the entire world. The use revolutionary techniques and strategies used successfully by other revolutionaries attempting to control the populations where they operate through both terror and by discrediting unpopular or corrupt governments.

One of the problems that we in the United States have in understanding Al Qaida and other Islamic groups that rely on terrorism as their primary means of conducting warfare is the nature of the terrorist himself.  Roger Trinquier who observed and fought against such groups in the 1940s and 1950s wrote one of the fundamental books on this type of warfare.  Trinquier said something that will undoubtedly be taken wrong by some readers of this essay but if one understands the nature of Revolutionary war has been true going back for centuries and is not confined to militant Islamic Fundamentalism.   Trinquier observed that “the terrorist should not be considered an ordinary criminal.  Actually he fights within the framework of his organization, without personal interest, for a cause he considers noble and for a respectable ideal, the same as soldiers in the armies confronting him.”

One can see how this is demonstrated in history in such disparate groups as the Israeli Irgun fighters who used terrorist tactics from 1931 until the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 against the British occupiers, the Irish Republican Army.  This is even part of the American experience in the post Civil War South of the Reconstruction era.  Then many Southern whites organized into guerrilla terrorist units such as the Klan in Tennessee, the Red Shirts in South Carolina, the Knights of the White Camellia in Louisiana, the Young Men’s Democratic Club in Florida in order to attack anyone associated with Reconstruction. Their targets included newly free blacks, carpetbaggers, Scalawags, teachers from the North, Freedmen Bureau officials, northern troops, and Republicans.  If you read their writings or even query their current day descendants you will find that none believed that they were criminals and their actions, while unacceptable to many were justified.  One does not have to agree that the terrorists cause is right to acknowledge that terrorists believe this to be true.  Thus in fighting the terrorist organizations one has to employ a wide variety of tactics to protect the populations targeted by terrorists to include police, limited military involvement, the use of propaganda, and “soft” methods to provide aid to these populations and isolate the terrorists from them.

The current batch of Jihadists are actually fairly disparate and not necessarily allies as we found out in Iraq where Al Qaeda and the foreign fighters turned the population of Al Anbar Province against them and brought that Sunni population to our side. They also have sometimes conflicting goals or limit their cause to local areas. The Sunni and the Shi’a have a hard time working together so while this is a global revolution it is not monolithic. Thus if we are smart we can exploit natural divisions in these groups. To do so we have to play smart in how we fight them recognizing that the “soft” approach often is better as the French found out too late in Vietnam but did well with in Algeria. See books by David Galula “Counterinsurgency in Algeria 1956-1954″ “Counterinsurgency Warfare”, Roger Trinquier’s “Modern Warfare” as well as the book by Alister Horne “A Savage War of Peace” all are excellent reads. Bernard Fall’s book “Street Without Joy” is a good study of how this happened in French Indochina. The US Counterinsurgency Manual is available online or in bookstores as is “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife” by John Nagl, a major writer of US Counterinsurgency doctrine.

US Advisors with Afghan Army Officers

In a world-wide insurgency even actions which seem logical to Americans at home can be detrimental to US Forces and political goals in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq and throughout the Muslim world. I’m not a fan of the Mosque near the World Trade Center even though it is the equivalent of 6 normal city blocks away and not visible from the site. Many Americans if not an outright majority oppose this building project yet the builders don’t seem to understand the raw wounds that the project has opened for many Americans. I’m sure for them that much of it is a business, they are developers in New York City and the land was available. Yet the project can quite rightly be seen as insensitive because of what it means to the victims.

At the same time politicians and protesters by naming it the “Ground Zero Mosque” has raised its propaganda value exponentially, that is why Hamas and Hezbollah have also raised the ante in their talk about it. Thus what was an annoyance and hurtful to the victims has become a propaganda victory for the terrorists. In a sense we have let our collective outrage play into the terrorist’s hands. When he pastor of a small church in Florida threatened to burn a large number of copies of the Koran he helped ignite a firestorm of protest in many parts of the Islamic world especially in the epicenter of our current struggle in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

We are at war with the warlike highly militant strains of Islam and trying to keep the more Western leaning peaceful variants on the sidelines or enlist them to our side. This is a hard path for our leaders to walk as President Bush found out and President Obama is finding out is that most Americans don’t see it that way.  To many Americans all of Islam is the enemy and nothing can change that and the heated passion of our population often plays into the hands of our enemies.  Thus both Presidents’ comments about Islam have usually fallen on deaf ears and both have been excoriated for straddling this fence.

Anyway as you gather I have spent a considerable amount of time studying this type of warfare. I admit that this is pretty unusual for a chaplain, but I also have a Masters degree in Military History as well as the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. When I was in Iraq I knew more than many Marine and Army officers about fighting this type of war. Kind of weird I know but what can I say?

One of the most famous and successful practitioners of Counterinsurgency Warfare was French Colonel David Galula.  Galula in a sense is the “voice crying in the wilderness” of counterinsurgency doctrine and his methods have been used with some measure of success during the “Surge” in Iraq and the “Anbar Awakening” which turned the tide of the Iraqi insurgency.  Galula commented about terrorist tactics, tactics that have not changed in either Iraq or Afghanistan:

“The rebels realized that they could achieve the greatest psychological effect on the French and on world opinion at the cheapest price by stepping up terrorism in the main cities, notably in Algiers, which served as headquarters to most French and foreign correspondents and thus acted as a natural amplifier. A grenade or a bomb in a café there would produce far more noise than an obscure ambush against French soldiers in the Ouarsenis Mountains.” Galula “Counterinsurgency in Algeria”

One of the most frustrating aspects for military and police personnel fighting insurgencies that employ terrorist tactics is that quite often superior forces cannot finish off the insurgents. Galula provides an answer to this question.

“Our forces were vastly superior to the rebels. Then why couldn’t we finish with them quickly? Because they managed to mobilize the population through terror and persuasion . . . It was therefore imperative that we isolate the rebels from the population and that we gain the support of the population.  This implied that under no circumstances could we afford to antagonize the population even if we had to take risks for ourselves in sparing it.”

This is a lesson that we have not always learned as incidents such as the Abu Ghraib torture and most recently a series of targeted killings of Afghan civilians by a squad of Army Soldiers in Afghanistan in which they allegedly planned the killings in advance and kept body parts of their victims.  Unfortunately atrocities like this as was demonstrated at Mei Lai in Vietnam do little to the enemy and everything to turn the populations that we are trying to protect and world opinion against us. It also provides grist for the terrorist propaganda purposes and aids him in recruiting more insurgents to his cause.

Galula recognized the quandary that commanders of police and military units involved in counterinsurgency operations face when dealing with populations where terrorists operate. Galula was a realist about this and noted “If we distinguish between people and rebels, then we have a chance. One cannot catch a fly with vinegar. My rules are this: outwardly treat every civilian as a friend; inwardly you must consider him as a rebel ally until you have positive proof to the contrary.” This may seem contradictory but the concept was used by Ronald Reagan during the Cold War using the term “trust but verify” in relationship to the Soviet Union and arms control.

David Kilcullen an Australian Army Lieutenant Colonel and counterinsurgency expert and advisor to General David Petreus noted

Colonel Dennis Drew writing in 1988 understood the linkage of all parts of insurgency and how well an insurgency represents the essence of the thought of Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz: “Although theorists consider insurgent warfare to be anti-Clausewitzian, such warfare is the very embodiment of the Prussian master’s most famous dictum. Insurgency represents the total integration of political and military factors, but with political factors always in complete domination.” (INSURGENCY AND COUNTERINSURGENCY American Military Dilemmas and Doctrinal Proposals- Air University Press Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 1988)

Thus attempting to fight an insurgency and terrorist groups thinking that one can defeat them in the style of world War Two, as is so often espoused by pundits and amateur military theorists that crowd the airwaves and cyber space is foolish and only leads to the defeat of the counter-insurgent and the loss of the population targeted by the insurgent. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not conventional wars and the political outweighs the military in every respect.  As Drew noted:

“Although the military aspect of the struggle may ebb and flow, the source of insurgent strength–a covert political infrastructure–remains constant. This infrastructure, the bitter fruit resulting from the perceived political and economic inequities sown much earlier, is the most important ingredient in the insurgent recipe for success. The political infrastructure performs at least six major functions vital to the survival, growth, and eventual success of the insurgency: (1) intelligence gathering and transmission; (2) provision of supplies and financial resources; (13) recruitment; (4) political expansion and penetration; (5) sabotage, terrorism, and intimidation; and (6) establishment of a shadow government.”

This is exactly what has happened in Afghanistan and why we have such difficulty in fighting the insurgency.

One of the most common tactics that the United States has attempted in attacking the insurgents is the strategy of decapitation. In this the U.S. has attempted to kill the leaders at the top echelons of the insurgency with limited success. Even when we kill off a senior Al Qaida or Taliban leader others rapidly take their place with little affect in their operations against us. Galula recognized the fallacy of this approach in Algeria when the French government succeeded in capturing five top leaders of the Algerian rebellion. “Then, five top leaders of the rebellion, including Ben Bella, had been neatly caught during a flight from Rabat to Tunis. Their capture, I admit, had little effect on the direction of the rebellion, because the movement was too loosely organized to crumble under such a blow.” The lesson here is that should we ever succeed in capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden or Mullah Omar that this will not lead to victory unless we are able to protect the population of Afghanistan.

Protecting the population Iraqi Police and Civilians in Ramadi

To do this the population must come to our side because they know that we will stay the course and that we can be counted on to help them.  This cannot just be the military aspect of protecting them against the terrorists as well as economic and political reforms that is consistent with their traditional way of life which is not necessarily consistent with Western political and social traditions or practices. In fact the difficulty for the United States and NATO in Afghanistan is the political struggle on the home front where as Drew states:

“American military dilemma concerns time, public support, and image. Time is the ally of the insurgent; the longer an insurgent survives, the stronger its chances of growing. Meanwhile, as time drags on, the American military position is weakened by declining support, impatience, and war weariness at home, particularly if there is no perceived progress in the struggle. Maintaining public support is clearly a responsibility of the political side of the equation and involves factors far beyond the battlefield–although military progress is a key ingredient. The connection between the duration of the struggle and public support is the image of the insurgency presented to the American body politic.”

To be continued….

Peace

Padre Steve+

1 Comment

Filed under counterinsurency in afghanistan, History, iraq,afghanistan, Military, national security, Political Commentary

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,