Category Archives: Political Commentary

June 21, 2016 · 21:17

More Musings of a Realist in Wonderland


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have just a short thought for the day and plan on writing more again tomorrow and in the coming days. In the days before I travelled to Gettysburg and today I have continued to immerse myself in reading, study, reflection, and writing. Of course this is in addition to normal life and work, so it is a premeditated pursuit of knowledge, as well as truth, which never leaves me disappointed. 

I have been continuing to work on the first couple of chapters of my Gettysburg and Civil War text and I am now convinced that these two chapters, comprising close to 350 pages of text will have to become one or two books as I begin to edited them, and find a publisher. That will leave over 700 pages dealing with the Gettysburg campaign and the battle itself, and that section will also continue to grow. 

But as I do this I am reminded that indeed I am a “Realist in Wonderland.”  I am reminded how, despite how successful the campaigns of the American military have when fighting opponents that behave the way we expect them to at the operational level; my study and observations are like so many others that since the Second World War show me that we win battles but don’t win many wars. 

Actually there is no mystery to this. The simple fact is that the United States does not have a coherent national strategy, what Clausewitz called policy, and as such, our military force used almost exclusively used as a hammer to fulfill policy objectives when when we have so many other non-military tools in our strategic arsenal. 

I was reminded of this as I was revising the first chapter my Gettysburg text which is nearly 200 pages be a book in its own right. As I continue to research the connection between strategy in the American Civil War I read the works of other military historians and theorists I see just how much that disconnected from any rational political policy that war cannot be justified. This is what Clausewitz said nearly 200 years ago, and which, Abraham Lincoln, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Ulyesses S. Grant demonstrated in the Civil War. 

Those men connected national strategy to military strategy and the operational art, while the Confederates never were able to develop a national strategy that matched their military, economic, and diplomatic capabilities. As such, even the Confederacy’s  best general, Robert E. Lee, who was one of the most prolific commanders at the operational level of war, who like so many other great military leaders, and our own military leaders of the past 30 years, 70 if you go back to Korea, never was able to translate operational success to actually winning a war.

 Clausewitz understood this all too well, the act of war is not an autonomous event, and unless it is connected to rational policy it is madness. 

Pretty soon I will post something from that text revision, but I am not ready to just yet, what I am working on is difficult, because my first instinct is always to pursue conciliation with are enemies and try to limit the destructiveness of war.  But the fact is that the more that I study history, the more I am convinced, as repulsive as it may sound, that the nature of war never changes and that if we continue to attempt to abide by rules of behavior that our enemies do not follow, all of the death, carnage, and devastation of the wars that we have been fighting for over a decade and a half will have been for nothing. To paraphrase British historian Hew Strachan, if the facts to not support theory, you do not suppress facts, but change the theory in light of the facts. Sadly, every American political administration, Republican and Democrat, since the end of the Cold War, as well as the Congress has ignored this basic truth when committing this nation to war. In light of history, that is inexcusable. The fact is that we need leaders like Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman and not like Jeffeeson Davis and Robert E. Lee if we are to ever emerge from this war without end without destroying our nation in the process, and handing its destiny over to the likes of Donald Trump or supposedly Christian religious zealots. 

As unpolitcally correct as this may sound, especially coming from a man who is a liberal and progressive, I have to admit that as Sherman said, “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”  If there was a way way to undo this timeline and go back before 9-11 which brought a measure of fear and vulnerability to the people of the United States as we have ever experienced, and the misbegotten Bush Adminstration invasion of Iraq, the terrible effects of which are still with us and not going away, I would do so. But real life is not science fiction, and we cannot alter the timeline. We can only deal with it the best that we can. 

At this point I do not know how I will post these things. I might post sections of the text or I might write something that flows out of them. Whatever I do, you will see it here first. 

We have to do better. 

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+ 

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June 19, 2016 · 23:18

To be Dedicated to the Task Remaining: Gettysburg and the 33rd Anniversary of My Commissioned Service

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I spent the 33rd anniversary of being a commissioned officer in the United States Military leading the last portion of a Staff Ride at Gettysburg with the officers, Command Sergeant Major and First Sergeants of the Army Recruiting Battalion based in Cleveland Ohio. In fact today was the portion dealing with Pickett’s Charge and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It was a fitting thing to be doing today.

Thirty-three years ago I was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army at UCLA. I spent 17 1/2 years in the service, including some National Guard enlisted service before I was released by the Army Reserve to enter the active duty Navy.

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Commissioning Ceremony at UCLA

I am not going to talk about the long strange trip that my life has been since I was commissioned as I have done that before a number of times. Today I think was fitting because I talked about the defeat of the Confederate invasion that was meant to permanently rip the country that I serve now apart. And frankly, as a commissioned officer I have no doubt that the defeat of the Confederacy and all that it stood for was absolutely necessary for the proposition in the Declaration of Independence that “we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal….” 

These were words which Abraham Lincoln began to universalize beginning with the Emancipation Proclamation which were echoed in his Gettysburg Address. I always finish the Staff Ride at the Soldier’s Cemetery and conclude by reading Lincoln’s “brief remarks.” For me they are the proposition, the spirit that guides the United States, and Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg, that 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.”

Those words for the basis of so much that has happened since Gettysburg; the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment which overturned the travesty of the Dred Scott Decision and and the Fugitive Slave Act by ensuring that anyone born in this county is a citizen with full citizenship rights, and the 15th Amendment which gave Blacks the Right to vote. Those were the beginning, and the 14th Amendment was the most important, for it was the first Constitutional Amendment which extended rights to peoples formerly enslaved, and formed the basis for, and legal precedent for further extensions of civil rights. They were followed by the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote, the American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, and the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1943, continued them. Laws meant purely to discriminate against the rights of African Americans and other minorities were overthrown by Supreme Court decisions such and Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which overturned the “separate but equal” Jim Crow laws which had been upheld by the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1894. These were joined by the Voting Rights Act of 1964, and the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the revocation of laws which banned homosexuals from serving in the military, and most recently the Obergfell v. Hodges decision that allowed LGBTQ people to marry and receive the same rights as heterosexual couples anywhere in the country.

Of course there is still so much to be done. People whose political ideology is rooted in the same limits on freedom as were the foundation of the Confederacy still fight basic civil rights for people that they despise at every opportunity.

The oath that I swore when I was commissioned thirty-three years ago, and which I have repeated with every promotion, and when I transferred to the Navy in 1999 states that “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.”

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I take that seriously, and every time I go to Gettysburg I have the importance of that reaffirmed as I walk the battlefield and stand in the Soldier’s Cemetery, and ponder what those men who stood in the path of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia fought for, and which I have both fought for and swear to maintain, against all enemies, foreign and domestic. My task is also to continue to labor for and be dedicated to the task remaining; that from the honored dead who lay at Gettysburg and so many other places, that I take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that I 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.”

For me those words are personal, and that my friends is why I continue to serve, and why what was done and said at Gettysburg means so much to me.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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June 16, 2016 · 06:00

Who Will Speak? The Aftermath of Orlando


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Over the past few days I have written about the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando which killed 49 people and wounded more than 50 more, mostly male homosexuals. The massacre was committed by an American born man whose father came to the United States from Afghanistan in the 1980s. While the killer swore his allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State in a call to 911 during the attack, it also appears that he was also Gay and a patron  night club. He grew up in a family where his father believed and still believes that God will judge homosexuals, and his father talked of the extreme anger that the killer supposedly exhibited a few weeks before the massacre when he saw men kissing in public. The psychological dynamics, the probability that the killing was as much motivated by self-hatred directed at the people most like him, as it was by religious ideology is rich. 

If this is the case it is an instance where a man killed because his religion condemned him. That is not surprising, it happens all the time, not necessarily the killing, but the outward manifestations of physical and verbal hatred toward homosexuals by people who cannot accept that they too are homosexual. We see it in examples some of the most vehement anti-gay preachers and politicians whose secret lives are revealed.

If this case was not so tragic in scale it would have been easy to ignore, but it cannot be ignored. It cries out to be heard, and the hatred that caused it, motivated by religious self-hate, terrorist ideology, and a culture in which Christian and some Muslim and Jewish preachers routinely call for the persecution, death, and eternal damnation of Gays, while politicians at the local, state and Federal level promote thousands of laws specifically designed to persecute and limit the civil, legal, economic, and social rights of LGBTQ people promotes a perfect climate for such crimes to be committed. One cannot promote discrimination, persecution, and demonize a group of people without expecting violence to result. 

The question is when do good people finally speak up against this toxic climate of hate which produces such avoidable tragedies? Thankfully, some are now doing so, including Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox of Utah, a conservative Reupblican who delivered some of the most poingent remarks that I have heard in the wake of the massacre. His remarks can be found here:  Cox Speech I found them to be incredibly heartfelt and moving. I do hope that others will make the same kind of stand, not just in word, but in deed. 

We all have to make a stand as Americans to honor, respect, and care for each other; to defend the weak against the hated of those who will stop at nothing to harm them in any way possible, legal and illegal alike. If we do not we too may one day be faced with the words of the German pastor, Martin Niemoller, a war hero and conservative who initially supported Hitler because Hitler promised to “protect Christian values.” However, Niemoller, a man who despised Socialists, atheists, and had little love for the Jews, discovered that Hitler’s rule was tyranny. Niemoller ended up being sent to the concentration camps and imprisoned. After the war Niemoller wrote this penetrating verse:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist. 

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. 

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me. 

When we hate people for their lifestyle, sexual orientation, gender, religion, race, ethnicity, or political beliefs. When we allow demagogues to preach those hatreds and and even give them our vote and political power, we cannot expect that one day, once they are done with their first enemies that they will not someday come after us. Thus it is imperative that we stand against hate in all its forms. 

Over the next few days I will be meeting a group of Army officers at Gettysburg, so I do not know how much I will post the rest of the week. I do plan on doing another follow up article on my post A Pause to Think  dealing with the hard choices of the war that we will have to fight against the Islamic State and other terrorist groups who revel in the terror and carnage that occurred in Orlando, it is not a fight that we can spurn because there are more Orlandos waiting to happen. 

Have a great day, and I do wish you all the best.

Peace

Padre Steve+ 

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June 14, 2016 · 06:00

The Appalling Silence of Good People

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have been asked by some people why I as a chaplain, priest, and military officer, not to mention the fact that I am heterosexual, so strongly support my Gay and Lesbian friends, as well as the LGBTQ community. My answer has to echo the words of Albert Einstein who said “If I were to remain silent, I’d be guilty of complicity.”

Many times the question is crouched in theological terms, and those that ask presume that I am supporting sin, and aiding as some say the “enemies of God.” The problem is, that if being Gay is a sin, then why are not all those concerned about them doing something other than condemning them unto their last breath? Likewise why are the sin hunters who hate LGBTQ people with unmatched passion; who use local, state and when possible attempt to use the Federate government to legislate against equality for LGBTQ people, and who remain dreadfully silent when Gays are attacked and killed, never condemn those that practice what are called the Seven Deadly Sins? If you don’t know them here they are; pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth. They infect our society root and branch, and dare I say our hallowed religious institutions, from which so much of the anti-Gay venom spews forth.

I wish I knew the answer to that, but for some reason it seems that religions in general tend to condemn, persecute, and even sanction the killing of Gays, especially Gay men, more than any other institutions. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, there are elements in all these religions who are not content with simply preaching against homosexuality, but wherever they have control of government to persecute and kill LGBTQ people.

Early Sunday morning a man whose personal hatred toward Gay men, and radical Islamic religious based terrorist ideology formed a nexus of evil that allowed him to kill about fifty men and women, while wounding over fifty more. This was certainly a terrorist act, in the words of the man who committed the massacre an act done in the name of his understanding of Islam, and in accordance with the overall goals of the Islamic State.

We will find out if there is a deeper connection between the killer and the Islamic State, but that is not the biggest question here. Why did he strike a Gay nightclub versus any other soft target? There are hundreds if not thousands of soft targets in South Florida, including some which would have just as easy, and symbolic as symbols of America or even Christianity. Why not a sporting event, a non-gay nightclub, a park, a school, or even a church? Well, because here is what many Americans don’t want to admit, he hated Gays, and specifically targeted them on Pride weekend. Those two factors my friends are the key. He could have attacked anything, but he chose to kill mass numbers of Gays and others gathered at the Pulse nightclub.

Sadly he is not alone and has found significant support from anti-Gay Christian leaders like Pastor Steven Anderson and Walid Shoebat who both would prefer Gays to be killed, in fact Anderson’s only issue was the fact that it should have been the government that killed them, not the terrorist. Shoebat said that the only people mourning over the victims of the massacre are “liberals, idiots, and Gay lovers.”  I will not repeat rest of their hate filled venom here because it boggles the mind. How such people can even call themselves Christians is beyond me.

Mercifully others who are often at the front in condemning Gays have been relatively silent and mentioned that they will be “praying for the victims and their families.” But such prayers are cheap, unless you actually care about the people you are praying for, and unless you can empathize with them. Sadly, many of these religious leaders and their political allies have no intent of backing down on their work to curtail, limit, or roll back the rights of LGBTQ people, even to the point of criminalizing homosexuality.

But then there are others who are genuinely good people, who have friendships with Gays and even have Gay family members but still refuse to take the necessary step to support the basic human and legal rights of their friends and family members, and who for whatever reason, fear of being ostracized by their church or any number of a myriad of other reasons remain silent when horrible, inhuman crimes take place. But then Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted, “Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people.”

All I know is that I will continue to speak out for LGBTQ people, and I will not be silent. I am sure that will lose me some friends, but I cannot stand by and remain silent, it would make me complicit with the man that killed and wounded all of those innocent people, and with the religious leaders that harbor the same views.

That is all for now. Have a good day, and please, even if you do not agree with me on anything else, and please take the time to try to feel a measure of empathy for those killed, those wounded, and those who grieve for them, and if you can take the next step to speak up for them. I promise that you will not regret that decision.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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June 12, 2016 · 06:00

They too Needed Emancipation

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

For the past number of years I have been amazed at people who like me in the 1980s, 90s, and until 2008 vested their hope in all alleged “conservatives” to protect their rights, and to enhance their prosperity. I bought into their message for many years; “trickle down” was good, immigrants were bad, racism (so long as it wasn’t called racism) was okay, and programs to support the poor and the elderly,  including Social Security were “evil entitlement programs.” For years I bought that tripe, the same tripe I hear today from people very much like me who have for the last four decades have bought the lies of those who despise them and only want their votes to maintain control. I find that interesting because today, some of the same people who have demonized the poor, ethnic minorities, and government social assistance programs have now turned their knives on active duty military members, their families, and veterans. It seems that the programs and benefits that were used to encourage men and women to serve in unpopular wars that only benefited the rich are now considered “expensive  entitlement programs” by Donald Trump supporter Senator Jeff Sessions, as well as many other Republican Senators and Represenatives, programs that need to be slashed, even as they dream up more wars. 

The problem with being a historian is to actually know something about history. I was doing some work on my Gettysburg and Civil War text this week and read quite a few original source documents of Southerners, including Confederate soldiers who realized during the war that the wealthy slave owners did not give a damn about them; before the war they only wanted their votes, promising that it would keep them above the slaves, during the war it meant that poor Southern whites who had nothing to gain from the slave owners who exempted themselves from serving in the war, fought and died for a Confederacy that only wanted to use them. Eventually I will post some of that material as I update the text, but until then I wanted to let Ulyesses Grant speak for me. Grant wrote after the American Civil War:

“The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre–what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation. Under the old regime they were looked down upon by those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave-owners, as poor white trash who were allowed the ballot so long as they cast it according to direction.”

I think that Grant’s words are something for all of us to ponder when we go to cast our ballots in November. 

Have a great Sunday,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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June 11, 2016 · 20:55

Can We All do Better? We Will be Remembered in Spite of Ourselves

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am a bit late posting today. I was out late last night and attended a funeral this afternoon. But anyway, over the past few days, amid all the political mayhem going on I have been thinking a lot about the responsibility that all of us have as citizens, not to our political parties or ideology, but to the country and the whole idea of liberty. That may sound like an old fashioned and quaint proposition to people whose life is devoted to ideology, no matter if that is a conservative, liberal, progressive, or even religious one, but it is still something that I think is important.

As usual that thought took me back to Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War. I as reminded of some remarks that Lincoln made less than two weeks before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. At the time it was still a controversial proposition, even for many people in the North, as is almost any proposition to expand the boundaries of liberty. I was reminded of that today when an old friend, a man who was my mentor as I was preparing to be ordained as a priest went on a rant and told all of his friends that he was leaving Facebook. His reasons, the supposed moral decay of the country, especially in regard to allowing Gays to marry. His tone was so despondent, so bitter, and so negative that I chose not to engage it. Instead I simply wished him well because he is not a bad person, in fact he is incredibly wonderful, and he has suffered much. At the same time I wonder about all the propaganda that he had to ingest to get to this point, but I digress…

Lincoln spoke these words, words which are as pertinent today as when he spoke them. He said,

“I do not forget the gravity which should characterize a paper addressed to the Congress of the nation by the Chief Magistrate of the nation. Nor do I forget that some of you are my seniors, nor that many of you have more experience than I, in the conduct of public affairs. Yet I trust that in view of the great responsibility resting upon me, you will perceive no want of respect yourselves, in any undue earnestness I may seem to display.

Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if adopted, would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure of money and of blood? Is it doubted that it would restore the national authority and national prosperity, and perpetuate both indefinitely? Is it doubted that we here–Congress and Executive–can secure its adoption? Will not the good people respond to a united, and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by any other means, so certainly, or so speedily, assure these vital objects? We can succeed only by concert. It is not “can any of us imagine better?” but, “can we all do better?” The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We — even we here — hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just — a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.”

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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June 9, 2016 · 06:20

A Realist in Wonderland 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It looks like that the primary season is finally about over with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the presumptive nominees of the Republican and the Democratic parties. It is what it is, but in listening to some of Trump’s and Bernie Sanders supporters I feel as if I am in some sort of logic free zone. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenauer called it Wolkenenkuckkuckscheim or “cloud cuckoo land.” It was a term to describe people who think that things completely impossible might happen, rather than understanding how things really are. 


In early 1861, William Tecumseh Sherman was serving as the first superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning  and Military Academy, the present LSU. As Southern States began to secede from the Union, Sherman, who was well liked in Louisiana never hesitated to state his belief in the Union. He tried to warn his Southern friends of the folly of secession and war. Though he loved his position and the people he worked with in Louisiana, Sherman resigned and went North. There he found that the politicians and people were completely unprepared for war, and just as unrealistic of what the war would cost as their now estranged Southern brothers. 

Sherman was a realist. He was one of the few people in his day to actually understand the link between military strategy, political policy, economic necessity, and geographic reality. But his counsel was completely ignored in the South as well as in the North. It was only in late 1862 that Sherman and his superior, Ulysses S. Grant began to be listened to by Union leaders. His biographer, the British military theorist, B.H. Liddell-Hart referred to Sherman in 1861 as “a realist in Wonderland.” 

I always seek to be a realist. Yes I have strong views, and I subscribe to a more liberal or progressive ideology, but at the same time that is tempered by my experience as a military officer and education as a historian. I am not an ideologue or revolutionary. Nor am I someone who ignores history, especially history of countries going through great times of national stress, such as the United States in the late 1850s and Weimar Germany. 

When I listen to some of Sanders’s most devoted and self-identified “revolutionary” followers, I am reminded of the leaders of the Communist Party of Germany between 1928 and January 1933, men who worked with the young Nazi Party to tear down the Majority Socialists to destroy the Weimar Republic. The Communists called the Majority Socialists traitors, and Facists equating them with the German Right wing hoping that they would collapse the Socialists and the Republic. 

When I listen to some of Trump’s supporters in the leadership of the Republican Party, I am reminded of the mainline old German conservatives who latched on to Hitler to destroy the Republic thinking that they could control him or that he would moderate in time. Both the German Communists and German conservatives badly misplayed their hand. Both the Communists and the German conservatives hated the Republic, albeit for different reasons, but they underestimated the forces seething in Germany, as well as the psychological and political brilliance of Adolf Hitler during that critical time frame. They remind me of the Sanders supporters 

I am also reminded of the Southern fire breathers of 1860 and 1861 who brought about secession and civil war, who continued the war holding onto slavery until the bitter end in 1865.  Likewise there were Northerners who thought more conciliation and compromise would bring the seceding states back into the Union early in the war, while many of them came to their senses, one group, the Union Copperheads were in favor of a negotiated settlement as late as 1864 and 1865 that would have dissolved the Union, and allowed for the continuance of slavery. All of these groups and their leaders lived in their own make believe wonderland where reality need not bother to knock. 

The fact is that no matter how you spin the results that Sanders lost the a democratic primaries by over 3.7 million votes, close to 400 pledged delegates and over 900 total delegates.  Yet there are still some people, including to some reports, even Sanders himself, who refuse to believe that the campaign is over. Somehow, they believe that trying to get some 400 plus Super delegates to switch from Clinton to him; thereby undercutting the results of the vote is a good idea. Of course if they continue down this path the result will be as it is, Clinton will still win. Worse for them, the if Sanders and his supporters continue down this path, they will end up marginalizing themselves and preventing the Democratic Party from embracing a more progressive platform.  If they don’t recognize this reality and deal with it they will not be in a position to help bring the Democratic Party to more progressive positions on issues that they so deeply care about. That would be a tragedy. Personally I think that had Sanders and his supporters backed off of their fratricidal war on the Democratic Party a few weeks ago, even if Sanders remained active in the race, that they would be better off today. They would not have forfeited the good will of their real political allies. I think that fighting things out to the bitter end in order to eke out a few more delegates was counterproductive to them and their movement. 

Likewise, after months of underestimating Donald Trump and having their asses handed to them, some Republicans are finally beginning to realize that Trump is indeed really is th narcissistic, racist, unstable bully that he is, and now they are stuck with him. Too late some are suggesting that the GOP party leadership try to find a way to dump Trump before the GOP convention, or even try to change the convention rules to keep Trump from becoming the nominee. Of course neither Trump nor his passionate supporters will allow that to happen without blowing up the GOP in the process. As far as the GOP leadership goes, I am sorry to say that they created the environment that allowed the Trump Frankenstein to emerge, and now,they have to deal with it. If they keep him they will lose and maybe destroy the party in the process,  if they try to keep him from getting the nomination they will certainly destroy the GOP. 

I hate to say this because I have dear friends, friends who will remain my friends no matter what, who are passionate supporters of Trump or Sanders. But there are times when I feel very much like William Tecumseh Sherman in 1861, who was scorned in the North and South because he indeed was a realist in wonderland. It was only in 1864 and 1865 that people in the a north and the South understood just how correct that Sherman was. I can only hope that my friends on all sides of this debate will try to be realists and not live in the cloud cuckoo land that will harm all of us. 

But, nobody likes a realist. Oh well, such is life.

Peace

Padre Steve+ 

Update: it appears after his meeting with President Obama that Bernie is going to unite with Hillary to defeat Trump. I know that will upset some of his supporters who seem to hate her as much as the GOP, but this is where change starts. Good on him for stating this now. 

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May 23, 2016 · 07:00

Zealots and Ideologues

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“In this world, there are no sides. Only players.”

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I think my favorite character on television is Raymond “Red” Reddington, played by James Spader on the shoe The Blacklist. He is a very complex and troubling character, and the thing is I can understand him. His is a world of gray where he does the right thing for wrong reasons and the wrong thing for right reasons. His loyalties are personal and not ideological, he is a man of contradictions, as am I. Raymond Reddington one said, “Cultural peculiarities notwithstanding, I find cock fighting to be abominable. However, truth be told, I do love fried chicken.” I totally agree with that, sorry Vegan friends.

My regular readers know that I am a complex person as well. I am a Christian, a priest at that, who often doubts; a career military officer who hates war, but also realizes that as much of an evil as war is, that there are worse evils than war itself.  Likewise I am very liberal and progressive in my political and social beliefs, but I serve in a profoundly conservative institution that is not always welcoming to my beliefs. But that being said, even though I am a liberal and progressive at heart, my education as a historian and my life experience mitigates against me becoming an ideologue or zealot, and I am not a revolutionary.

I tend to be able to see and appreciate arguments of multiple points of view on almost every issue, and I wrestle with them, doing the best I can to do the right thing. Whether it is for the right reason or not, I don’t pretend to know. Maybe that is one reason I have friends on all sides of the political, religious, and ideological debates that rage about this country and in the world. But as always I digress…

In the last episode of season three of The Blacklist, Reddington tells an assistant FBI director who he has been helping solve crimes, “I know so many zealots, men and women, who choose a side, an ideology by which to interpret the world. But, to get up every single day and do the hard work of deciding what to believe. What’s right, today? When to stand up or stand down. That’s courage.” From my experience I believe that to be the truth, and truthfully, I would rather deal with people that wrestle with this difficult world than rather than those whose beliefs are shaped by their ideology first, regardless of facts, divergence of opinions, history, science, reality, and experience.

But what bothers me in what I see going on in this country and around the world is that mass movements of ideologues and zealots of every persuasion, political and religious, those that have seized or are trying to seize power in many nations, and foment revolution. Captivated by ideological purity, they are unwilling to compromise and frequently label anyone that disagrees with them or the leader of their movement, even in the slightest manner as traitors or evil. Many times the zealots take no time to evaluate the quality of the merits of their movement or those that oppose them, their cause is right, their opponents are evil and need to be destroyed. I think the most distressing case is where the Nazis and German Communists worked together to destroy the Weimar Republic in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Eric Hoffer wrote,  “The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.” Likewise, Hoffer noted something that I observe almost every day, that the zeolots and ideologues of mass movements use anger and hatred to unify their followers. Hoffer noted, “Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.” Believe, me, ask any ideologue of any type, and he or she will tell you who their devil is. But sadly history demonstrates that a mass movements of any type, political, ideological, or religious has achieved powe, all opponents, especially those closest to them ideologically or religiously are the enemy, or to use Hoffer’s words “a devil.” The opponents closest to the ideologues ideology have to be destroyed or discredited first, before they can move on to battle their real opposites. Just look at history.

The ideologue cannot lose because he already knows his answer, the classic fundamentalist Christian quote, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it”  is very much descriptive of other ideologically driven mass movements be they conservative or liberal. The ideologue’s attitudes are derived from their ideology and are often not subject to facts. I see it every day, especially on social media where partisans of evil persuasion fire broadside after broadside at all opponents, regardless of the facts, or even the fact that there may be more than one equally valid viewpoint on a subject. But then I tend to see everything in various shades of gray and not in black and white absolutes, and ideologues of all types frighten me, even those whose unbending beliefs are sugarcoated with millennial or utopian sentiments of the perfect world that will follow their victory. I know from history that such is not the case, in far too many instances first thing that radical, or self-proclaimed revolutionaries do after achieving absolute power is to kill.

Maybe that is why I like Raymond Reddington. I really do think that real courage is to wrestle with reality every day and do the hard work of deciding what to believe; and today that may be different then tomorrow, but it will be based on reality and tempered by my often contradictory beliefs. Of course a true political ideologue or religious fundamentalist will condemn me to their version of hell of being that honest, but it is true. That is my uncomfortable reality, it may not be right, and my vision may be skewed and distorted, but it is what it is, and as Reddington said, “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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May 22, 2016 · 07:00

So who did the dirty work for us? Armed Forces Day 2016

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Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Today I am reposting something I wrote last year regarding Armed Forces Day. I was pretty emotionally raw when I wrote it but at the same time after re-reading it I cannot disagree with anything that I wrote. So today in honor of the fewer than 1% who serve in the uniform of the United States at any given time I am glad to share this. The faux patriotism displayed by so many, the bumper stickers that say “I support the troops” while supporting politicians and corporations that exist solely to make war on the backs of such a small segment of society, while cavalierly tossing veterans aside is no patriotism at all.

This may piss some people off, but as a man who has served 35 years in uniform and who has been to war and seen its horror, I cannot be less than honest.  

So please, take some time today to thank a currently serving Soldier, Sailor, Marine, Airman, or Coastguardsman for their service, and don’t do it flippantly. Recognize that they make sacrifices that go beyond what most people make, and all too many suffer for their service.

Peace

Padre Steve+

Marine Major General and two time Medal of Honor winner Smedley Butler wrote, “What is the cost of war? what is the bill?…“This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all of its attendant miseries. Back -breaking taxation for generations and generations. For a great many years as a soldier I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not only until I retired to civilian life did I fully realize it….”

Today is Armed Forces Day and unfortunately most of the country will not notice unless they are attending a Baseball game where it is being observed or some special event on a base, national cemetery, monument or VFW hall. Armed Forces Day was established in 1948 by President Harry Truman after the founding of the Department of Defense.  It was established to honor and remember those currently serving, not the discharged or the retired veteran, they are remembered on Veterans Day, the former Armistice Day, nor the fallen who are commemorated on Memorial Day which we will do next weekend.

Unlike Veterans Day or Memorial Day there is no national holiday for Armed Forces Day. I find this ironic for a nation which claims to support the troops that the men and women who we honor are honored on a day that unless they are deployed in harm’s way or have duty, is regular day off like any Saturday. Personally I think the day should be celebrated by giving the active duty force a real day off and if they are deployed given some kind of down time as operational needs allow, and maybe even given them a ration of beer. We did this for the Marine Corps birthday in Iraq, so why not on Armed Forces Day? But I digress…

Back when Armed Forces Day was established there was still a draft which meant that in theory everyone had skin in the game and that our leaders were far more hesitant to commit the nation to war.

Back in 1952 the New York Times editors wrote:

“It is our most earnest hope that those who are in positions of peril, that those who have made exceptional sacrifices, yes, and those who are afflicted with plain drudgery and boredom, may somehow know that we hold them in exceptional esteem. Perhaps if we are a little more conscious of our debt of honored affection they may be a little more aware of how much we think of them.”

But sadly today in all honesty were think very little of them. Today of course there will be a fair number of local celebrations to honor members of the Armed Forces across the country, but for the most part they will be small and not well publicized. Most of the people in attendance will not even be there for the troops. They will be there for the event and their hearts will be warmed by the tributes paid to the troops. As a career officer and son of a Vietnam veteran Navy Chief I appreciate those events and at least some of the good hearted the people that put them together. Being a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, especially those that have taken the time to honor Iraq and Afghanistan veterans like me who have returned from war totally fucked up. But again I digress, badda bing, badda boom, badda bomb…

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Bu here is what really s upsetting to me, good number of these patriot, flag waving, war porn satiating, yet somehow inspiring ceremonies to honor the troops are not even coming for the heart of the people putting them on. Until it was exposed last year many of these ceremonies, particularly those done by the NFL were coming out of the Pentegon budget and being paid for by the taxpayers. These events are nothing more than faux patriotism and little more than propaganda that exploits the troops. They are being done as a recruiting tool with the Department of Defense which is paying hundreds of millions of dollars to the tax exempt National Football League and its teams to put on shows that give all the appearances of honoring the troops but are really nothing more than propaganda and recruiting commercials. Likewise for all which for all the money we the taxpayers spend on them actually net few recruits if any as a huge number of our current troops are the sons and daughters of men and women who have also served this country. They, like me, serve for something greater than partisan politics  greater than money, greater than anything that can easily be repaid. For most it is the ideal of the love of this country and the principles found in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal. However, that is fodder for another article.

But honestly I am so offended by this faux  patriotism shown by the NFL and God knows who else that it causes me a great deal of anger. I say this because throughout our nation’s history our political leaders, business leaders and the populace as a whole have despised the military, and those who in the absence of a draft chose to serve. That despicable attitude was well recounted in Herman Wouk’s monumental novel, which became a classic film The Caine Mutiny. In the film a defense attorney for those accused of mutiny, Barney Greenwald played to perfection by Jose Ferrer told the acquitted mutineers of the Caine’s wardroom:

“You know something…when I was studying law, and Mr Keefer here was writing his stories, and you, Willie, were tearing up the playing fields of dear old Princeton,method was standing guard over this fat dumb happy country of ours, eh? Not us. Oh no, we knew you couldn’t make any money in the service. So who did the dirty work for us? Queeg did! And a lot of other guys. Tough, sharp guys who didn’t crack up like Queeg.” 

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For those who are now getting pissed off at me, let us look at facts. At any given time less than 1% of Americans are serving in all components of the military. For nearly 15 years we have been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as other locations that we don’t like to talk about too much. However this has not been the effort of a nation at war, it is the war of a tiny percentage of the population, a segment that everyone is far too willing to exploit.

As a nation we are disconnected from the military and the wars that the military fights. The fact is that most Americans do not have a personal or vested interest in these wars, they have been insulated by political leaders of both parties from them. There is no draft, and no taxes were raised to fund the wars and the military is now worn out.

We have been at war for nearly 15 years and truthfully there is no end in sight. In that time every single Soldier, Sailor, Marine and Airman volunteered for duty or reenlisted during this time period. Motives may have varied from individual to individual, but unlike the World Wars, Korea and Vietnam every single one volunteered to serve in time of war. I think that this makes the current generation of veterans quite unique in our modern history, but not so different than the professionals who served before and after the Civil War,and  those who served before and after the First World War. The situation after the Second Wolrd War and the Cold War required a large standing military and large reserve force. This required the draft, which though hated by many  leavened the professional force with civilians who got a taste of military and when they left did not forget they meaning of their service and the sacrifices made by the professionals. We do not have that anymore. We are no longer are no longer a military composed of citizen soldiers. We who serve,  even in our reserve components are  a Warrior caste, set apart from the society that we serve.

There is a tragic disconnection between the military and civilian society in the United States. This is the result of deliberate public policy since the end of the Vietnam War supported by both political parties. For almost 40 years we have relied on an all volunteer force. It is that relatively small and socially isolated military which is sent to fight wars while the bulk of the population is uninvolved and corporations, lobbyists and think tanks get rich.

Andrew Bacevich wrote in his new book Breach of Trust: How Americans failed their Soldiers and their Country:

“Rather than offering an antidote to problems, the military system centered on the all-volunteer force bred and exacerbated them. It underwrote recklessness in the formulation of policy and thereby resulted in needless, costly, and ill-managed wars. At home, the perpetuation of this system violated simple standards of fairness and undermined authentic democratic practice. The way a nation wages war—the role allotted to the people in defending the country and the purposes for which it fights—testifies to the actual character of its political system. Designed to serve as an instrument of global interventionism (or imperial policing), America’s professional army has proven to be astonishingly durable, if also astonishingly expensive. Yet when dispatched to Iraq and Afghanistan, it has proven incapable of winning. With victory beyond reach, the ostensible imperatives of U.S. security have consigned the nation’s warrior elite to something akin to perpetual war.”

Bacevich, a retired Army Colonel and Vietnam veteran who lost a son in Iraq is dead on, as is Rachel Maddow who wrote in her outstanding book Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power:

“The reason the founders chafed at the idea of an American standing army and vested the power of war making in the cumbersome legislature was not to disadvantage us against future enemies, but to disincline us toward war as a general matter… With citizen-soldiers, with the certainty of a vigorous political debate over the use of a military subject to politicians’ control, the idea was for us to feel it- uncomfortably- every second we were at war. But after a generation or two of shedding the deliberate political encumbrances to war that they left us… war making has become almost an autonomous function of the American state. It never stops.” 

The lobbyists, pundits, politicians, preachers and war profiteers that promote war don’t care about the troops. This especially applies to the likely GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump, a man who brazenly and shamelessly equates his time at a military high school as being equal to actually serving while using multiple deferments and medical excuses to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War. Trump called military personnel who were captured by the enemy “cowards,” a man who cares not a whit about real men and women who serve this country. When Trump and other most other politicians say they do care about the troops they are lying out their asses. This is because no matter who is in office or who controls congress these people and corporations will promote policies that keep them employed and their businesses enriched, and yes, Bernie Sanders is on that list, despite his denunciations of war and vote against the Iraq war he has consistently supported weapons programs like the F-35 fighter plane fiasco which is such an example of waste, fraud and abuse,  not to mention overpriced, overdue, and underperforming weapons systems ever, in order to bring jobs to Vermont.

Marine Major General and Medal of Honor winner Smedley Butler was quite right when he said:

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”

I think that the reason that our current wars have gone on so long is the that misguided policies have brought about a chronic disconnection in our society between those that serve in the military. But how can there not be when in the weeks after 9-11 people like President Bush and others either directly or in a manner of speaking told people to “go shopping” * as we went to war in Afghanistan? When I returned from Iraq I returned to a nation that was not at war whose leaders used the war to buttress their respective political bases.

The results are terrible. Suicide rates are continuing to rise among veterans who have returned to find that neither the VA nor the civilian mental health care sector is prepared to care for them. Even worse the members of the GOP controlled Congress are working their asses off to screw the troops. Ohio GOP Congressman, Tea Party favorite,  supposedly deeply committed Christian and even worse a Colonel in the Ohio Army National Guard has attempted and is attempting again to attach an Ammendment to the 2016 Nation Defense Authorization Act which would keep the Defense Department from enformice rules which would protect young troops from the predatory payday lenders who line the avenues leading to every major military base in the country. My opinion, this man is a traitor to the country even though he wears the uniform and has deployed and led soldiers in in Iraq and other locations during this war. He is selling out the the young troops to protect the payday lending industry with which has had a nearly incestuous relationship since he day that was elected to Congress.

But Congressman Stivers is not alone, Congressmen and women of both parties sell out the troops to prop up banks, insurance companies and Wall Street. Those military health benefits not directly provided in military medical centers are run through an organization called Tricare. Tricare, which is managed by the insurance companies who bid on competitive contracts is a for profit industry. These insurance companies routinely deny services to the families of military members, pay so little or are so mind numbingly  incompetent that many medical providers refuse to deal with them, leaving the troops their families stuck in the middle. That my friends is fact. Now the GOP led by the Koch brothers is attempting to privatize Veterans Admisistration Heath care. Now in all honesty, the chronically underfunded and bureaucratically bound VA. That being said my friends privatization will only make things worse for veterans who will now have to deal with private for profit insurance companies and Heath care systems that see them and their wounds and infirmaries as a way to make a buck off of taxpayer and to screw the veteran.

But let’s not stop there. Politicians of both parties and their backers from the financial sectors have been working overtime since the Adminstration of George W. Bush to roll back retirement benefits which they call  “entitlements” which are supposedly destroying the financial health and well being of the nation. Never mind the fact that these same  politicians have spent trillions of dollars bailing out the corporations which have almost single handed lay destroyed this nation’s economy time after time since the 1970s, and who support corporations who are based in this country but have sold the nation out and work against the interests of Americans.

But never mind, I digress, for as we all know it is the troops who are the leches who are bankrupting the country.

But this isn’t new my friends it began during the Reagan Administration which changed the retirement system from the flat 50% of one’s final active duty pay that one would retire with at 20 years of service or high multiples up to 75% at 30 years to an average of the last three, or the highest three years of pay that one earned while on active duty.  In effect the Reagan Adminstration robbed military retest of hundreds of thousand of dollars of hard earned benefits. But again the beloved Saint Ronald loved the troops, after all he said so.

Likewise, did you know that some GOP legislators want to cut the disability payments to military members who have been wounded or injured during their service?  You probably didn’t and you won’t find that fact out on Fox News or CNN. This is not to be confused with the retirement benefits that they are looking to cut.  This, my friends is the debt of honor that this nation owes to the men and women who have given everything and now are broken in body, mind and spirit. But, those who promote such policies, even those who have worn the uniform, like Congressman Stivers have no honor. Like those that sold out the Union veterans after the Civil War and the Doughboys after World War One they are much more indebted to their political benefactors than they are to te troops no matter what they say.

Now I do believe that Armed Forces Day should be better celebrated and I am grateful to the people that do things every day to thank and support military personnel. These wonderful people that do this come from across the political spectrum. Some are veterans and others non-veterans, but they care for and appreciate the men and women that serve in and fight the wars that no-one else can be bothered to fight.

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Of course the politicians, pundits, preachers and the defense contractors, banks and lobbyists will find a way to profit. They will do so no matter how many more troops are killed, wounded or injured and how badly it affects military personnel or their families and will push to abandon those who fought as they do after every war. After all, to quote Smedley Butler, “war is a racket.”  So that is what I believe; and if God is just, and if there is a Hell, I hope that the people who promote war and profit from it, and then abandon those who fight their wars end up there, especially the preachers who this very morning will invite the troops to their churches to supposedly honor them even as they support the politicians whose policies damn the very troops that they pretend to honor today. 

That may sound harsh, but is it any more harsh than condemning people to Hell who have different beliefs or lifestyles who have harmed no one by their actions? I think not. 

As so to these preachers, I say, to use the words of one of my football coaches, “your actions speak so loud I can’t hear a word that you are saying.” 

Peace

Padre Steve+

President Bush’s actually words were “Now, the American people have got to go about their business. We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don’t — where we don’t conduct business, where people don’t shop…” http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011011-7.html

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May 16, 2016 · 07:00

Women in the Civil War: Spies, Nurses and Transgender Soldiers

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

This is the follow-up to yesterday’s article on the early women’s rights movement. It deals with how women served in the Civil War. While women were not allowed to be soldiers, many disguised themselves and lived as men in order to do so, in effect living as transgender men. Others served as spies or nurses. All were pioneers, and though women are now beginning to reach the highest ranks of the U.S. Military, and being allowed to serve in military specialties previously limited to men, there is still much political and cultural opposition to them doing so. 

As before this is a section from my Civil War and Gettysburg text. I do hope that you find it interesting. 

Peace

Padre Steve+

Of course when the Civil War broke out the logical end of this train of though was that should women be allowed to serve in the military. Legally and socially it was not possible for women to serve in the military in 1861, but this did not stop women in the Union or the Confederacy from doing so. Quite a few women on both sides of the conflict chaffed about not being allowed to fight for their countries, their families and their causes, and despite official prohibitions that kept women from serving in any capacity but nursing, a good number of women found their way to go to war. While men in the North and South “were expected to enlist, any woman actively participating in the Civil War was an oddity if not a renegade.” [1] In some cases this involved hundreds of women taking male identities in order to fulfill their desires to serve their countries.

The motives of these women varied. In some cases women wanted gain the economic privileges of full citizenship, and for others the glory reserved to only to men. In our modern parlance those that took male identities would be considered transvestites or possibly transgender, but for them “transvestitism was a private rebellion against public conventions. By taking a male social identity, they secured for themselves male power and independence, as well as full status as citizens of their nation. In essence the Civil War was an opportunity for hundreds of women to escape the confines of their sex.” [2]

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During the war hundreds of women went to war, taking on the identity of men. They enlisted under male names and pretended to be men. Unless they were discovered to be women, or unless they confessed to their wartime service either during or after the war, most women managed to serve without being caught. Sadly, most of their service records were lost. In 1861 Private Franklin Thompson “enlisted in Company F of the 2nd Michigan Infantry…unknown to comrades, Thompson actually was Sarah Emma Edmonds.” [3] Edmonds served in the illustrious Iron Brigade until the disaster at Fredericksburg. Well known for her courage as Franklin Thompson, Edmonds participated in some of the bloodiest combats of the war. At Antietam she was caring for the wounded when she came upon a soldier who had been wounded in the neck. That soldier informed Edmonds that she was dying and after a surgeon came by and confirmed what the soldier said the dying soldier told Edmonds:

“I am not what I seem, but I am female. I enlisted from the purest motives, and I have remained undiscovered and unsuspected. I have neither father, mother nor sister. My only brother was killed today. I closed his eyes about an hour before I was wounded….I am Christian, and have maintained the Christian character ever since I entered the army. I have performed the duties of a soldier faithfully, and am willing to die for the cause of truth and freedom….I wish you to bury me with your own hands, that none may know after my death that I am other than my appearance indicates.” [4]

That unknown woman was not alone, at least nine women, eight Union and one Confederate, fought at Antietam and of those five were casualties. Five women, two Federal and three Confederate took part at Gettysburg. All three Confederate women at Gettysburg were either killed or wounded, or captured, including two women who took part in Pickett’s Charge. [5]

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Sarah Edmonds aka Franklin Thompson

Sarah Edmonds published a book Nurse and Spy in the Union Army while recovering from malaria in 1863. The book, which was published the following year, sold 175,000 copies, the proceeds that she donated to care for sick and wounded Union veterans. After the war, Edmonds attended Oberlin College, married, had three of her own children and adopted two more. She “became a member of the Grand Army of the Potomac, the organization for Union veterans of the Civil War. She applied for, and received, a military pension, and upon her death in 1898 was buried with full military honors.” [6] She was the only women admitted to the Grand Army of the Republic.

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Frances Clayton

Another of the women to serve was Frances Louisa Clayton. Fighting for the Union as a member of the Minnesota State Militia Cavalry and 2nd Minnesota Battery, serving under the command of Ulysses S. Grant she was wounded at Fort Donelson. Like many other women soldiers, Clayton mastered the art of behaving as a man. She “became “a capital swordsman,” but also commanded attention with her “masculine stride in walking” and “her erect and soldierly carriage.” [7] After the war she promoted her service in a book.

Albert-Cashier

However, most women were more discreet during and after the war regarding their true sexuality. Private Albert Cashier hid his sexuality identity for his entire term of service. He enlisted in August 1862 as a member of the 95th Illinois. Cashier was born in Ireland as a woman, Jennie Hodgers. He fought in forty battles and was discharged with the regiment in August 1865. At Vicksburg he was briefly captured by the Confederates while conducting a reconnaissance “but managed to escape by seizing a gun from one of her guards, knocking him down, and outrunning others. Comrades recalled Private Cashier climbing to the top of their fieldworks to taut the enemy into showing themselves.” [8]

After the war “Albert” returned home and lived as a “farmer and handyman and served as a caretaker in his church. He never married.” In 1890 he applied for and received a military pension and in 1911 the now elderly “man” was struck by a car and suffered a broken leg. The doctor threating him discovered that Albert was not a man, but a woman. But the doctor kept his confidentiality and without revealing “Albert’s” secret had the Union veteran admitted to the local Soldier’s and Sailors’ Home at Quincy, Illinois.” [9] A few years later the elderly “man” began to exhibit erratic behavior and was “committed to a public mental hospital and the word was out.” [10] With her story now sensational front page news and “old comrades in arms came to her defense.” [11] Her comrades had never known that “Albert” was a man during or after the war, while the news was a surprise to them they came to her defense. To combat some of the sensationalism in the media Albert’s fellow soldiers testified “to Albert’s bravery in combat and public good works in later life. Albert/Jennie died at Watertown State Hospital in 1915 at age seventy-one. The local post of the Grand Army of the Republic arranged for her burial. Her headstone reads: “Albert D.J. Cashier, Company G, 95th Illinois Infantry.” [12]

Wartime records are sketchy but as a minimum it is believed that “between 250 and 400 women disguised as men found their way into either the Federal or Confederate armies.” [13] Women known to have served had a “combined casualty rate of 44 percent” including the fact that “eleven percent of women soldiers died in the military.” [14] Some of those women are now well known but many others are lost to history. Most women tried to keep their sexual identities secret, even to the point of their death on the battlefield. Most of the women who served in the armies returned home to resume relatively normal lives after the war.

Other women would serve as spies for both sides, often rendering valuable assistance to their countries. The women who served as spies often took their lives into their hands; however, they often provided vital information to the Union or Confederate officers that they served. Pauline Cushman “parlayed her acting talents into a series of elaborate ruses that allowed her to pry information out of admiring and complaisant Confederate officers; Belle Boyd used an equal measure of talent in as a northern Virginia coquette to elide the same kind of information out of Federal officers.” [15]

Even those women who were successful often suffered for their service during and after the war as they learned “that few people completely trusted or respected a spy, not even a “friend.” [16] Many, especially Southern women who spied for the Union were ostracized and persecuted in their communities after the war, and found little support from Northern politicians. Rebecca Wright, a young Quaker schoolteacher in Winchester, Virginia provided information that “enabled him to defeat General Early’s forces” in the Valley of 1864. She lost her job, and her former friends and neighbors boycotted her family’s businesses. Rejected for a pension, Sheridan helped Wright obtain “an appointment in a government office, remaining there for the rest of her days.” [17] Elizabeth Van Lew was a lifelong resident of Richmond and daughter of a wealthy businessman. She helped Union prisoners escape from Richmond’s notorious Libby prison and when Grant besieged Petersburg, Miss Van Lew “supplied him with a steady stream of information” [18]

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Harriet Tubman

“African American women were generally dismissed as militarily harmless, a miscalculation that Harriet Tubman…used to immense advantage. Tubman, who had escaped from slavery in Maryland twenty years before the war and who had amassed considerable experience venturing into the south to guide runaways to the North undertook spying expeditions for the Federal troops on the South Carolina Sea Islands.” [19] The incredibly brave woman served throughout the war accompanying Union forces and securing vital information even as she worked to set other slaves free. Tubman’s “spying activities included convincing slaves to trust the Union invaders,” [20] many of whom would join the ranks of the newly raised regiments of U.S. Colored Troops.

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Dorothea Dix

Other women served in various roles caring for the wounded. In the North, “Dorothea Dix organized the Union’s army nurses for four years without pay; Mary Livermore headed the Union’s Sanitary Commission, inspecting army camps and hospitals….Scores of others like Clara Barton, volunteered to be nurses.” [21] All of these women did remarkable service, mostly as volunteers, and many witnessed the carnage of battle close up as the cared for the wounded and the dying which often created ethic concerns for the women nurses:

“Clara Barton described her crisis of conscience when a young man on the verge of death mistook her for his sister May. Unable to bring herself actually to address him as “brother,” she nonetheless kissed his forehead so that, as she explained, “the act had done the falsehood the lips refused to speak.” [22]

Clarabartonwcbbrady

Clara Barton

Of the women that served in the ranks, some were discovered, and many remained protected by their fellow soldiers. Quite a few received promotions and even served as NCOs or junior officers. With women now serving in combat or combat support roles in the U.S. Military since Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the stigma and scandal that these cross-dressing women soldiers of the Civil War has faded and as scholars and the public both “continue probing cultural notions of gender and identity, the reemerging evidence that women historically and successfully engaged in combat has met with less intellectual resistance and has taken on new cultural significance.” [23] As the United States military services examine the issues surrounding further moves to integrate the combat arms we also should attempt to more closely examine the service of the brave and often forgotten women who served on both sides of the Civil War.

Notes

[1] Silvey, Anita I’ll Pass for Your Comrade Clarion Books, New York 2008 p.9

[2] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons p.5

[3] Ibid. Lowry The Stories the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell p.119

[4] Ibid. Silvey I’ll Pass for Your Comrade p.68

[5] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons pp. 15-16

[6] Ibid. Silvey I’ll Pass for Your Comrade p.90

[7] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons p.58

[8] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons pp. 16-17

[9] Ibid. Lowry The Stories the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell p.121

[10] Ibid. Lowry The Stories the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell p.121

[11] Ibid. Silvey I’ll Pass for Your Comrade p.90

[12] Ibid. Lowry The Stories the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell p.121

[13] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.394

[14] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons pp.206-207

[15] ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.395

[16] Ibid. Massey Women in the Civil War p.87

[17] Ibid. Massey Women in the Civil War pp. 103-104

[18] Ibid. Massey Women in the Civil War p.102

[19] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.394

[20] Sizer, Lyde Cullen Acting Her Part: Narratives of Union Women Spies in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford 1992 p.130

[21] Ibid. Silvey I’ll Pass for Your Comrade p.10

[22] Faust, Drew Gilpin, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War Vintage Books, a division of Random House, New York 2008 p.12

[23] Ibid. Blanton and Cook They Fought Like Demons p.204

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