Tag Archives: abraham lincoln

February 20, 2014 · 22:45

The First Modern War: The American Civil War, its Lessons and Challenges for Today’s Military Planners

Note: This article is one that I am preparing for my Gettysburg Staff Ride in early March. It is more academic and theoretical in its emphasis being directed at those who will be involved in the planning of joint operations at the operational level of war.

Pickett’s Charge Showcased the Futility of Napoleonic Tactics Against Modern Weaponry

The American Civil War was the first modern war. It was a watershed time which introduced changes in tactics, logistics, communications and the concept of total war to the world. Though it did not change the essential nature of war, which Clausewitz says is “is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfil our will.” What the war did was add new dimensions to war, increased its lethality and for the first time since the 30 Years’ War saw opponents take war to civilian populations as part of a military campaign.

The Civil War was a precursor to the wars that followed. However, like all wars many of its lessons were forgotten by military professionals in the United States as well as in Europe. Thus 50 years later during World War One, British, French, German, Austrian and Russian wasted vast amounts of manpower and destroyed the flower of a generation because they did not heed the lessons of the Civil War.

The lessons of the war are still relevant today. Despite vast advances in weaponry, technology and the distances with which force can be applied by opponents, war remains an act of violence to compel an enemy to fulfill our will. War according to Clausewitz is a “chameleon” which changes its nature to some degree in each particular case, but it is always characterized by the violence of its elements, the province of chance and its subordination to the political objective.

The study of the Civil War can be helpful to the joint planner and commander because it so wonderfully shows the interplay of Clausewitz’s Trinity during an era of great technological change. It is my intent to introduce the reader to the manner in which the military theory and doctrine that dominated American military thought before was applied and changed as a result of the experience gained during the war.

Dennis Hart Mahan’s Book: The First American Book on Military Theory

The professional American army officers on both sides were educated at West Point, VMI or the Citadel. In these institutions they were taught Henri Jomini’s interpretation of Napoleonic warfare and the theories of Dennis Hart Mahan and Henry Halleck.

The war exposed the serious weaknesses in all of these theories which were challenged by advances in weaponry and the vastness of the American continent. During the war both Union and Confederate armies learned to value field fortifications and the limitations of the artillery of the day during offensive operations.

Logistics influenced campaigning on the American continent much more than previous European wars. An example can be found in Lee’s Gettysburg Campaign where he had to travel far from his railheads and bases of supply, meaning that he had to live off the land in enemy territory. The concept of total war found its first application in the campaigns of General William Tecumseh Sherman and Robert E. Lee’s use of defensive maneuver and fortifications in positional warfare heralded a new era in warfare.

These factors influenced and affected the Union and Confederate armies as they campaigned. Likewise, the advances weaponry particularly the rifled musket, posed a conundrum for officers educated in the Napoleonic tactics that both armies began the war. Those tactics were developed at a time when the maximum effective range of muskets was barely 100 meters. Yet by 1860 the rifled muskets had an effective range of about 400 meters, and the advent of the repeating rifle increased the firepower available to individual soldiers. Yet despite the increase in range and accuracy that came with the rifled musket tactics were slow to change.

Ante-bellum US Army leadership was most influenced by the theories of Henri Jomini, Clausewitz had yet to make his appearance in America. Dennis Hart Mahan, a professor at West Point challenged Jominian orthodoxy and modified “the current orthodoxy by rejecting its central tenants-primarily offensive assault tactics.”[i] Thus there was a tension in American military thought between the followers of Jomini and Mahan. Conservative Jominian thinking predominated much of the Army, and within the army “Mahan’s decrees failed to win universal applause.”[ii]

However, Mahan did influence many future leaders of both the Union and Confederate armies who participated in his “Napoleon Club,” a military round table at West Point. [iii] Mahan’s greatest contributions were his development of the active defense and emphasis on victory through maneuver. Mahan’s thought contrasted with that of Jomini who thought maneuver was risky and believed that purpose of war was the “defeat of the enemy’s army.” As we look the Gettysburg campaign it is important to note how much Lee was affected by the thought of Jomini as he attempted to defeat the Army of the Potomac, while ignoring the advice of Longstreet to use maneuver and active defense too his advantage.

Mahan emphasized the use of “maneuver to occupy the enemy’s territory or strategic points.” [iv] Edward Hagerman wrestles with the disjointed developments in infantry, artillery and cavalry tactics of the ante-bellum Army in his book The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare. Hagerman surmised that “Military thinking, and even more strategic organization, remained essentially within the Napoleonic tradition filtered through an eighteenth-century world view….” He asserted that “A broader vision was necessary to pose an alternative to the mechanistic program.”[v]

The leaders who organized the vast armies that fought during the war were influenced more than military factors. Social, political, economic, scientific and even religious factors influenced their conduct of the war. Commanders educated at West Point who had previously commanded small units were faced with the task of organizing, training and employing large armies made up primarily of militia units and volunteers. Most had little experience commanding such units and their experience with militia and volunteer formations during the Mexican War did not increase their appreciation for them or their leaders.

The 2nd Michigan Regiment: Most Civil War Units on both sides were State Regiments

Both armies were changed by the war. Initially both sides sought to fight the war with volunteers. The South began a draft first followed by the Union in 1863. At the beginning of the war General George McClellan successful fought the break-up of the Regular Army. He helped keep it separate from the militia units organized by the States. This preserved a professional core in a time where the new volunteer units were learning their craft. The Confederacy did not have a Regular Army and all of its units were raised by the States and officered by a collection of professionals from the Ante-bellum Army, militia officers, political appointees or anyone with enough money to raise a unit. The draft laws created much consternation in both the Union and Confederate States and the efforts to enforce the draft were filled with controversy and sometimes violence as was evidenced during the New York Draft Riots of 1863 where Union Soldiers, recently victorious at Gettysburg were employed to end the rioting and violence.

The Integration of Sea and Land Logistics Systems in the Civil War Revolutionized the Way that Modern War is Supplied

The Ante-bellum Army developed its logistic doctrine from Napoleonic examples. That doctrine had to be modified in light of the American reality of a less developed continent with far greater distances involved in the movement of troops. During the war, both armies learned to adapt their logistical support services to the reality of war.

Railways Meant the Ability to Move Troops and Supplies Great Distances very Quickly

Where possible each side used railroads and maritime forces to move troops and supplies. The Confederacy, lacking in both was at a severe disadvantage. The Union however enjoyed a great advantage in modern rail networks, as well as ocean and river based maritime power. By late 1863 the Army of the Potomac, as well as forces in the West demonstrated “the close integration of operational planning and that of the general in chief and supply bureaus. In this one area, the development of a mature and modern staff was evident.”[vi]

In both armies commanders and their logisticians experimented with the number of wagons per regiment and how army commanders, modified that number at various points during the war based on their situation. Both armies experimented with the use of the “flying column” as a response to the dependency on wagons. The basic load of food and ammunition carried by each soldier in order to increase strategic maneuverability was adjusted to meet the operational need. Both armies often had to live off the land. The success and failure of forage operations and the requirements for people and animals in each theater of operations had a large impact on each army.

The size of the armies and the distances involved on the battlefield made command and control difficult. As such communications became more important and each army experimented with new signals organizations that used both old and new communication technologies. At the beginning of the war both sides made extensive use of visual signals and couriers, but rapidly began to rely on the telegraph for rapid communications.

Signal Corps Soldiers and Wire Communications

The organizational tension was particularly evident in the rivalry between the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Military Telegraph Service. The Signal Corps focused on wireless communications. It preferred the Beardslee wireless telegraphs which had the limitations of such early wireless technology. The Army command favored the traditional wire bound networks operated by the Military Telegraph due to better reliability and security. Though the Army rejected the Beardslee equipment some commanders requested it for their operations. [vii] As each Army became more dependent on the telegraph, each feared that their signals could be compromised through wiretapping and made efforts to encode their transmissions.

The Beardslee Wireless Telegraph

The evolution of how Union and Confederate armies used field fortifications is an interesting topic. McClellan made extensive use of them on the Peninsula in 1861 and Lee made sporadic use of them [viii] until 1864. Lee made much more use of field fortifications during the Wilderness campaign, the battles around Richmond culminating in the defense of Petersburg. The developments in field works and firepower gave the advantage to the defense. This was especially the case when opposing armies made the frontal attacks which were at the heart of Jominian offensive tactics. Early in the war commanders including Grant at Shiloh and Lee at Antietam failed to dig in, but over time both the Union and Confederate armies learned to dig hasty field works as a matter of course.[ix]

Massive Siege Mortar outside Petersburg

Both sides also learned to use maneuver in combination with positional warfare to force the enemy to battle. Hagerman examines the campaigns in the West of Grant, Sherman and Rosencrans, particularly Stone’s River, the Vicksburg Campaign, and the campaign in middle Tennessee.[x] The last two chapters of Hagerman’s book detail these issues in the context of the 1864-65 campaign around Richmond and Sherman’s campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas. Of particular note is how Sherman’s forces routinely entrenched on the offensive [xi] and how Confederate forces under Joseph Johnston employed entrenchments on the defensive.

Petersburg Fortifications a Harbinger of World War One

Surprisingly, it was Confederate Cavalry commander Joe Wheeler toward the end of the war made use of entrenchments, something not seen before by an arm traditionally known fro maneuver. Hagerman noted that Confederate Cavalry “perhaps best displayed the growing intensity of trench warfare” [xii] by the latter part of the war.

The Corps of Engineers in both armies adapted to the war. Prior to the war the Corps of Engineers was primarily responsible for building coastal fortifications and outposts in the west. Both sides had to develop Engineer or Pioneer units from scratch in 1861.By the middle of the war organized units of Pioneers and Engineers were enhancing both offensive and defensive operations.

Engineering Units were Built from Scratch and Accomplished Many Feats

The Corps of Engineers initially had a difficult time adapting to war. The dispersion of the Corps among the line and its civil duties were impediments to responding to the needs of war. There was a hesitancy and resistance to creating engineering units by Congress, despite the pleas of McClellan and Lincoln for specialized engineering units.[xiii] When they were established it was ironic how the newly organized engineer units had few very few West Point trained Corps of Engineers officers. Most Union Engineer Units were primarily staffed and commanded by officers detailed from the line or who had come from civilian life. The effect was a “decline in the antebellum definition of professionalism embodied in the Corps of Engineers” [xiv] which prior to the war were considered the elite branch of the Army.

Strategy and operational level adapted to the new reality of war. Attrition and exhaustion became as important in relation to both positional and maneuver warfare. In 1864 in the East the “ascendancy of positional warfare” allowed Lee to hold out and force Grant into winter quarters at Petersburg.[xv] This demonstrated that “an army fighting on interior lines, even under nearly overwhelming conditions of deprivation and against vastly superior numbers, could sustain a prolonged existence by use of field fortification and defensive maneuver.”[xvi]

Sherman’s March to the Sea

Despite the increasing power of positional warfare in relation to fortifications in the East and around Atlanta, maneuver was not ignored. Sherman’s campaign in Georgia and the Carolinas demonstrated how an army could exploit “diversion, dispersion, and surprise to successfully pursue a modern total-war strategy of exhaustion against the enemy’s resources, communications and will.”[xvii] Sherman used maneuver to force his opponents out of their prepared positions and did not hesitate to target the key infrastructure and infrastructure needed by the Confederate armies. The same was true in Virginia where in 1864 General Phillip Sheridan laid waste to the Shenandoah Valley, the breadbasket of the Army of Northern Virginia.

The developments in tactics, maneuver, defense and logistics and how those were developed over the course of the war brought about a form of warfare that remained dominant of decades. In studying the campaigns, developments and tensions between the theories of Jomini and Mahan in the Civil War a student can begin to recognize them in future wars fought by the US Army including World War Two.

Russell Weigley picks up this theme in his book The American Way of War. Weigley discusses Grant’s strategy of annihilation and its costs as well as Sherman’s campaign against Johnston and his attack upon Southern resources.[xviii] Weigley’s discussion of tactics used by both sides in the Civil War reflects the thought of British theoretician of J.F.C. Fuller. Fuller noted that “the tactics of this war were not discovered through reflection, but through trial and error.”[xix]

It is important for planners and commanders at the operational level to see the importance the developments of the Civil War on how we campaign today. While the technology is now antiquated, the ideas are not. The campaigns of Grant and Sherman in particular influence modern strategy. This is reflected the Marine Corps which discusses the maneuver and attrition warfare continuum in MCDP 1 Warfighting.[xx] It is important for students of operational art to be able recognize the these developments and principles in what we do today, to see the logical development of each of these elements in modern war and to find new ways to apply them within the scope of the technologies we now use that those that will be available in the coming years.

The Destruction of Hood’s Ordnance Train Outside Atlanta

The important things that we learn from studying the various campaigns of the Civil War are timeless. If we only focus on the military aspects of the great battles we miss the really important lessons. The battles and leadership lessons that we learn from them are important. However it is the often arcane but important subjects such as transportation, logistics, communications and fortifications, as well as the diplomatic, economic and informational aspects of the war that are more important.

In his book Hagerman makes an astute observation on how change comes to military organizations. At the end of his discussion of the Corps of Engineers and the Army following the war, he notes “that change in war requires time for digestion before lessons are converted-if they are converted-into theory and doctrine.” [xxi] Such is true in every war.

When the United States entered ground combat operations in the First World War, General John Pershing’s strategy revisited some of the worst mistakes of the Civil War, as well as the bloody lessons learned by the Europeans during the first three years of that war. In light of this one wonders if the lessons were ever fully digested by the Army.

Irregular Formations Such as Mosby’s Raiders Would Create Problems Behind Union Lines, much Like Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan

Such an observation can be made about our present wars. We need to ask if the lessons of previous insurgencies have been digested, even going back to the lessons of the Union Army operating in the hostile lands of the conquered Confederacy.[xxii] Likewise it is fair game for us to examine how our military adjusts to developments in weaponry, technology and tactics today in relation to past examples. Such studies must include regular and irregular warfare. Thus when we look at the Civil War, it is important to use those lessons to better understand the timeless aspects of military history, theory, doctrinal development, logistics, communications and experiential learning in war.

If we do not believe that we can learn from history we will in the words of historian George Santayana “be doomed to repeat it.”

Peace

Padre Steve+

Notes:

[i] Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare. Midland Book Editions, Indiana University Press. Bloomington IN. 1992. p.9

[ii] Ibid. p.13.

[iii] Hagerman also notes the contributions of Henry Halleck and his Elements of Military Art and Science published in 1846 (p.14) and his influence on many American Officers. Weigley in his essay in Peter Paret’s Makers of Modern Strategy would disagree with Hagerman who notes that in Halleck’s own words that his work was a “compendium of contemporary ideas, with no attempt at originality.” (p.14) Weigley taking exception gives credit to Halleck for “his efforts to deal in his own book with particularly American military issues.” Paret, Peter editor. Makers of Modern Strategy: For Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1986 p.416.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid. p.27.

[vi] Ibid. p.79.

[vii] Ibid. p.87.

[viii] The most notable use of them between the Peninsula campaign and the Wilderness was at Fredericksburg by Longstreet’s Corps. Many wonder why Lee failed to entrench at Antietam.

[ix] Fuller, J.F.C. Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship, Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN 1957. Fuller comments “Thus over a year of bitter fighting was necessary to open the eyes of both sides to the fact that the trench was a by product of the rifle bullet, and like so many by-products, as valuable as the product itself.” (p.269) He calls it “astonishing that Lee, an engineering officer, made no use of entrenchments at the battle of Antietam.” (pp.269-270)

[x] Ibid. pp. 198-219.

[xi] Ibid. p.295. Hagerman comments how Sherman’s troops outside Atlanta began to entrench both the front and rear of their positions.

[xii] Ibid. p.297-298.

[xiii] Ibid. p.238.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Ibid. p.272

[xvi] Ibid. p.274.

[xvii] Ibid. p.293. B.H. Liddell-Hart in comparing the campaigns of Grant and Sherman makes an important note that Sherman’s strategy is more “suited to the psychology of a democracy…” and “ he who pays the piper calls the tune, and that strategists might be better paid in kind if they attuned their strategy, so far as rightly possible, to the popular ear.” Liddell-Hart, B.H. Strategy Faber and Faber Ltd, London 1954 and 1967, Signet Edition, The New American Library, New York 1974 p.132

[xviii] Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military History and Policy University of Indiana Press, Bloomington IN, 1973. pp.145-146.

[xix] Ibid. Fuller. P.269 A similar comment might be made of most wars including the current Iraq war.

[xx] ___________. MCDP-1 Warfighting. United States Marine Corps, Washington D.C. 1997. pp. 36-39

[xxi] Ibid. Hagerman. P.239

[xxii] Ibid. Fuller. Fuller’s comments on the situation of the Northern Soldier are eerily similar to our current conflict in Iraq : “Consequently, minor tactics were definitely against the Northern soldier, because his major tactics demanded the offensive; for without the offensive the South could not be brought to heel. It was the problem which had faced the French in LaVendee and in the Peninsula of Spain, which faced Napoleon in Russia, and the British in South Africa during the Boer War of 1899-1902. Not only was the Northern soldier, through force of circumstances, compelled to fight in the enemy’s country, but he was compelled to devastate it as well as conquer it, in order to protect himself against the bands of irregular troops which were here, there and everywhere.” pp.247-248

Bibliography

Fuller, J.F.C. Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship, Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN 1957

Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare. Midland Book Editions, Indiana University Press. Bloomington IN. 1992

Liddell-Hart, B.H. Strategy Faber and Faber Ltd, London 1954 and 1967, Signet Edition, The New American Library, New York 1974

Paret, Peter editor. Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1986

Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military History and Policy University of Indiana Press, Bloomington IN, 1973

___________. MCDP-1 Warfighting. United States Marine Corps, Washington D.C. 1997

New Year 2014: Resolutions, Coffee and Donuts, The Mendoza Line and the Unknown Possibilities of Existence

“New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” Mark Twain

New Year’s Day is typically one of the laziest days that I observe during the year and this year was no different. The reason for this is because I figure that there are another 364 days left in the year and I need to pace myself.

Last night we were up a couple of hours after the ball fell in Times Square and thankfully our dogs Molly and Minnie let me sleep until eight-thirty. After I let them go out, take their morning constitutional and feed them breakfast I went back to bed and stayed there until after noon when Minnie told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to be up and that she needed another constitutional.

After that it was time for a shower followed by a cup of coffee, and this morning in a fit of wild abandon I discovered that Krispy Kreme Chocolate Mini Donuts are great when dipped in coffee. It is amazing the chances I will take in a New Year, as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it.” But I digress.

Like I said yesterday I don’t do New Year resolutions. I find that I don’t do well with them and my reality is more in line with Mark Twain who so rightly observed:

“Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.”

That doesn’t mean that I will not seek to improve myself or do better. As I have mentioned on numerous occasions I am not a “Hall of Famer” in the game of life, I am a “Mendoza Line” guy when it comes to doing life. For those unfamiliar with the Mendoza Line it is named after Mario Mendoza a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates and other teams who was competent at defense but a marginal hitter, his batting average being just enough not to be sent to the minor leagues. The Mendoza Line is considered to be a batting average of .200 though Mendoza’s actual lifetime average was .215. Thus for me life is something that I manage to muddle through and if I do well I might muddle through a bit better than I have before.

That being said I do have some goals this year. I want to become a great teacher of Ethics and Military History and get started on a Ph.D. so that whenever I retire from the Navy I can be competitive in teaching at the college and university level. I want to get started on a book this year and maybe even find a publisher and I hope that a major media or commentary site will start publishing some of my blog articles. So if you know someone that can help in that last category please give me a shout out.

Other things I want to do apart from work and education. I want to make a trip to England, Ireland and Scotland with Judy this year. I want to go to a lot of Norfolk Tides baseball games at Harbor Park, see a Orioles game at Camden Yards, and maybe if possible see a game at Fenway Park or Wrigley Field.

On a personal level I want to see more improvement in my PTSD recovery, to sleep better without nightmares and night terrors, to not be as anxious in crowded places or in bad traffic and to develop some better spiritual disciplines. Those are all things I have struggled with since coming back from Iraq and though I am have been doing better over the past year I want to see some more marked improvements in each area this year.

Likewise I want to be better at caring for those in my life, family, friends and those that I work with and those that I will teach and those who read this website.

Of course none of us know what the future brings, but thankful to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln “the future only comes one day at a time” so we should be good.

So a New Year is a hand, 364 more days in it and lots of possibilities. The past is now past, and though the past may still be with us and influence the present it does not have to bind us in its icy grip.

The new year presents me, and maybe all of us the chance to look at possibilities that we never imagined, to accept the past and all that is part of it without being trapped by it. It is as the entity Q told Captain Jean Luc Picard in the Star Trek the Next Generation episode Tapestry:

Captain Picard: I sincerely hope that this is the last time that I find myself here.

Q: You just don’t get it, do you, Jean-Luc? The trial never ends. We wanted to see if you had the ability to expand your mind and your horizons. And for one brief moment, you did.

Captain Picard: When I realized the paradox.

Q: Exactly. For that one fraction of a second, you were open to options you had never considered. That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.

Our trials will not end in the coming year. However, if we open ourselves to new possibilities and to options that we never before considered we just might find that at the end of 2014 things might go better. Even more important we might be different, better or changed. As T.S. Elliott wrote: “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.”

Peace

Padre Steve+

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December 31, 2013 · 12:43

The Future Comes One Day at a Time: Padre Steve’s New Year Eve 2013

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.” Abraham Lincoln

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Uo0JAUWijM

Abba Happy New Year

Well finally we come to the end of the year 2013. That being said we can say that it was definitely a year. It was a year filled with days which were filled with hours which were filled with minutes, seconds and nanoseconds. It was a year of triumph and tragedy that filled the hearts of many with fear and unease. At the same time it is now in the past. It cannot be relieved or changed but we can take the time to learn from it and hopefully build a better future.

2013 like all of the past will be remembered and written about by historians, theologians journalists and philosophers and most will place their own interpretation on it and then go on to surmise the future. I do not presume to be that smart until someone starts paying me to make such learned prognostications. However the future is unknown and even Jesus warned us “that we do not know what tomorrow brings.”

I am a historian. For me history is not just something dead in the past but a living reality that influences us in everything we do. As such I thing we need to learn lessons from history and apply that knowledge to what we do now. We do not live in a vacuum, if we did we would be very dusty and always spinning around, but I digress.

Uncertain Times

I think that we have to learn from the past in order to be ready for the future. But the future is unknown and often uncharted. Thus we should as George Patton said “Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.” That really is the reason I study history, not so we have a laundry list of facts events and dates that I can use to prove my point but rather to see how people and nations dealt with things that they either could not or did not foresee. Human nature doesn’t change and while circumstances and technology may change the way people deal with unforeseeable events can help us navigate future difficulties. It is not a guarantee but it is a help.

Dallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban wrote today that “None of us are born into the world we live in.” That is so true because we are all born at a moment in time and the world is always changing and changing is ways that will always surprise us. Maybe not some of the events themselves, but the players that make things happen, the places that they happen and the speed of which they happen. Time stands still for no person.

Though the future is yet to be written though people of faith place the future in the hands of God we cannot erase the past and go back to some point in time where our interpretation of history says that things were better. Such thinking is pure fantasy and is quite delusional.

Golda Meir said “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” Unfortunately most politicians and pundits do not understand this as George Orwell so poignantly noted “All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”

I think that is a large part of why we are in the political mess we have been in for so long in this country and probably why my spiritual search will never really end.

Rat from Pearls Before Swine and I have a lot in Common

For me 2013 was a year of growth and learning. After 5 years of doing hospital work I am back in academia teaching ethics, military history and a class on working with IGOs, NGOs and the private sector in humanitarian operations or in combat zones. The new assignment will be quite rewarding and I expect to start work on a Ph.D. this year so that when I retire from the military I will be better positioned to teach and do other things in these academic areas.

In 2013 I made plenty of mistakes and really haven’t deviated too much off of the Mendoza Line. But hopefully have learned from those mistakes. I thought about making specific resolutions for 2014 but decided against it, I don’t want to have to give myself “resolution absolution.” I figure that there is no way that I could make it through New Year’s Day if without totally screwing them up so why bother.

However that being said I do resolve this year is to go out every day, do my best and try not to screw things up too badly. It is the same attitude that I have playing baseball or softball, so why not apply it to the rest of my life?

English poet Thomas Hood penned this:

And ye, who have met with Adversity’s blast,
And been bow’d to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass’d
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury –
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen. Thomas Hood

All this being said I think that the wisest thing ever said about the future was by Yogi Berra who wisely remarked “The future ain’t what it used to be.” But then was it ever what it used to be?

Tonight I will usher in the New Eve with Judy and our Papillon Dachshund mix Molly and Papillon Minnie after going out to dinner and for a few beers with friends at Gordon Biersch.

And surely you’ll buy your pint cup !
and surely I’ll buy mine !
And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Blessings my friends, Happy end of the Old Year and all the best for the New Year!

Peace

Padre Steve+

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December 24, 2013 · 21:08

Christmas at the Front 2013: A Look at Christmas Now and in Military History

German Bundeswehr Soldiers decorating for Christmas in Afghanistan

Today as on so many Christmas Days in days gone by military personnel serve on the front lines in wars far away from home. Today American and NATO troops engage a resourceful and determined enemy in Afghanistan. American Marines are working to safeguard the lives of Americans in South Sudan while French troops are intervening in Mali and the Central African Republic to attempt to prevent genocide. In many corners of the globe others stand watch on land, at sea and in the air. Unfortunately on this Christmas wars continue and most likely will until the end of time as we know it.

It is easy to understand the verse penned by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his song I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day after the death of his wife and wounding of his son in the US Civil War:

And in despair I bowed my head

“There is no peace on earth,” I said,

“For hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I have done my time in Iraq at Christmas on the Syrian-Iraqi Border in 2007 with our Marine advisors and their Iraqis. That was the most memorable Christmas and the most important Christmas Masses that I ever celebrated. Since returning home have thought often of those that remain in harm’s way as well as those soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, American and from other nations that have spent Christmas on the front lines. Some of these events are absolutely serious while others display some of the “light” moments that occur even in the most terrible of manmade tragedies.

Christmas 1776 at Trenton

In American history we can look back to 1776, of course we could go back further but 1776 just sounds better. On Christmas of 1776 George Washington took his Continental Army across the Delaware to attack the British garrison at Trenton. Actually it was a bunch of hung over Hessians who after Christmas dinner on the 24th failed to post a guard which enabled them to be surprised, but it was an American victory.

In 1777 Washington and his Army had a rather miserable Christmas at Valley Forge where they spent the winter freezing their asses off and getting drilled into a proper military force by Baron Von Steuben.

The Eggnog Riot

While not a battle in the true sense of the word the Cadets at West Point wrote their own Christmas legend in the Eggnog Riot of 1826 when the Cadets in a bit of holiday revelry had a bit too much Eggnog and a fair amount of Whiskey and behaved in a manner frowned upon by the Academy administration. Needless to say that many of the Cadets spent the Christmas chapel services in a hung over state with a fair number eventually being tossed from the Academy for their trouble.

The Battle of Lake Okeechobee

In 1837 the U.S. Army was defeated at the Battle of Lake Okeechobee by the Seminole Nation, not a Merry Christmas at all. In 1862 the Army of the Potomac and Army of Northern Virginia faced each other across the Rappahannock River after the Battle of Fredericksburg while to the south in Hilton Head South Carolina 40,000 people watched Union troops play baseball some uttering the cry of many later baseball fans “Damn Yankees.”

Blue and Grey Christmas Baseball

In 1864 the Army of the Potomac and Army of Northern Virginia faced each other again in the miserable trenches of Petersburg while General William Tecumseh Sherman enjoyed Christmas in Savannah Georgia after cutting a swath of destruction from Atlanta to the sea. He presented the city to Lincoln who simply said “nice, but I really wanted Richmond.”

Napoleon had something to celebrate on December 25th 1801 after surviving an assassination attempt on Christmas Eve and 1809 he was celebrating his divorce from Empress Josephine which had occurred on the 21st of December.

The Christmas Truce

In 1914 “Christmas Truce” began between British and German troops and threatened to undo all the hard work of those that made the First World War possible. Thereafter the High Commands of both sides ensured that such frivolity never happened again. The movie Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas) does a wonderful job in bringing home the miraculous truce.

General and Montgomery and his Staff, winter 1942

World War II brought much suffering. In 1941 after Pearl Harbor the Japanese forced the surrender of Hong Kong and its British garrison while two days later the Soviets launched their counterattack at Moscow against Hitler’s Wehrmacht. In Libya the British were retaking Benghazi from the Afrika Corps after a brutal series of tank battles in Operation Crusader. A year later the Americans were clearing Guadalcanal of the Japanese. General Montgomery’s 8th Army was pursuing Rommel’s Afrika Korps into Tunisia as American and British forces under General Dwight D. Eisenhower were slogging their way into Tunisia against tough German resistant. In Russia the Red Army was engaged in a climactic battle against the encircled German 6th Army at Stalingrad. At Stalingrad a German Physician named Kurt Reuber painted the famed Madonna of Stalingrad.

Kurt Reuber’s Madona of Stalingrad

The drawing which was taken out of Stalingrad by one of the last German officers to be evacuated now hangs in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. Reuber drew another in 1943 while in a Soviet POW campbefore his death from Typhus in early 1944. Reuber wrote to his wife of painting in Stalingrad:

“I wondered for a long while what I should paint, and in the end I decided on a Madonna, or mother and child. I have turned my hole in the frozen mud into a studio. The space is too small for me to be able to see the picture properly, so I climb on to a stool and look down at it from above, to get the perspective right. Everything is repeatedly knocked over, and my pencils vanish into the mud. There is nothing to lean my big picture of the Madonna against, except a sloping, home-made table past which I can just manage to squeeze. There are no proper materials and I have used a Russian map for paper. But I wish I could tell you how absorbed I have been painting my Madonna, and how much it means to me.”

“The picture looks like this: the mother’s head and the child’s lean toward each other, and a large cloak enfolds them both. It is intended to symbolize ‘security’ and ‘mother love.’ I remembered the words of St.John: light, life, and love. What more can I add? I wanted to suggest these three things in the homely and common vision of a mother with her child and the security that they represent.”

Christmas Concert at Guadalcanal

In 1943 the Marines were battling the Japanese at New Britain while the Red Army was involved in another major winter offensive against the Wehrmacht. In 1944 Christmas found the Russians advancing in Hungary.

Bastogne Christmas

In December 1944 the Americans were engaged in a desperate battle with the Germans in the Ardennes now known as The Battle of the Bulge. On Christmas day the leading German unit, the 2nd Panzer Division ran out of gas 4 miles from the Meuse River and was destroyed by the American 2nd Armored Division.

As that was occurring the embattled 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne was relieved by General George Patton’s 3rd Army. Patton had his Chaplain pen this Christmas prayer:

“Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.”

In the Philippines Douglas MacArthur’s forces were fighting hard to liberate Leyte, Samar and Luzon from the Japanese. At sea US and Allied naval forces fought off determined attacks by Kamikazes.

USO Christmas Show in WWII

During the war the USO sponsored many entertainers who went to combat zones to perform Christmas shows, among them was Bob Hope.

Bob Hope Christmas Show on USS Ticonderoga CVA-14 off Vietnam

In the years following the Second World War Christmas was celebrated while armies continued to engage in combat to the death. Christmas of 1950 was celebrated in Korea as the last American forces were withdrawn from the North following the Chinese intervention which the 1st Marine Division chewed up numerous Red Chinese divisions while fighting its way out of the Chosin Reservoir.

Bob Hope with 1st Infantry Division in Vietnam

In 1953 the French garrison of Dien Bien Phu celebrated Christmas in primitive fashion unaware that Vietnamese General Giap was already marshaling his forces to cut them off and then destroy them shortly after Easter of 1954. In 1964 the U.S. committed itself to the war in Vietnam and for the next 9 years American Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen battled the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong with Marines fighting the North at Khe Sanh during Christmas of 1967. A hallmark of that war would be Bob Hope whose televised Christmas specials from that country helped bring the emotion of Christmas at the front back to those at home.

In the years after Vietnam American troops would spend Christmas in the Desert of Saudi Arabia preparing for Operation Desert Storm in 1990, in Somalia the following year and in the Balkans. After September 11th 2001 U.S. Forces spent their first of at least 12 Christmas’s in Afghanistan. From 2003 thru 2011 US and coalition partner troops spent 8 years in Iraq, that was my war.

Christmas with Bedouin on Christmas Eve (above) and Christmas games at COP North Al Anbar Province Iraq 2007 (Below)

Christmas Services at COP South Al Anbar Province, Iraq 2007

Today Americans and our Allies serve around the world far away from home fighting the war against Al Qaeda and its confederates and some may die on this most Holy of Days while for others it will be their last Christmas.

Please keep them and all who serve now as well as those that served in the past, those that remain and those that have died in your prayers.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under civil war, faith, History, iraq,afghanistan, Loose thoughts and musings, Military, Religion, world war two in europe, world war two in the pacific

Tagged as 101st airborne division, abraham lincoln, Baseball, battle of trenton, bob hope, chosin reservior, christmas at the front, christmas truce, civil war baseball, dien bien phu, eggnog riot, George Patton, henry wadsworth longfellow, i heard the bells on christmas day, iso christmas shows, joyeux noel film, kurt reuber, madonna of stalingrad, mali, napoleon bonaparte, Patton's christmas prayer, sherman at savannah, south sudan, the battle of the bulge, valley forge, vietnam war, west point

November 18, 2013 · 23:21

A New Birth of Freedom: The Gettysburg Address at 150

I am always humbled when I travel to Gettysburg as I did just two weeks ago. It is hard to believe in that now peaceful pastoral setting that over 157,000 Americans, almost 82,000 Union and 75,000 Confederate met in a three day battle. In those three days over 28,000 Confederates and 23,000 Union soldiers were killed, wounded, missing or captured. It was the greatest number of casualties inflicted in one battle on American soil in history.

The places that the battle was fought have become legendary, for they are “hallowed ground” as President Abraham Lincoln so eloquently put it. The places, McPherson’s and Herr’s Ridge, Seminary Ridge, the Railroad Cut, Barlow’s Knoll, Cemetery Hill, Culp’s Hill, The Wheat Field, Devil’s Den, the Peach Orchard, Little Round Top, Cemetery Ridge, the Apse of Trees, the Angle and the High Water Mark are in a sense holy, or hallowed, consecrated by those who struggled there, those who lived and those who gave the last full measure of devotion to their country.

I think about those men of both sides, fully convinced of the rightness of their cause who fought valiantly in the struggle. That being said when I go there though my family predominantly fought for the Confederacy my heart is drawn to those men who remained loyal to the Union and those who answered the call of Abraham Lincoln to serve in a cause greater than their own interests, the great and the small alike.

Lincoln was a masterful orator who managed to rally the Union and bring hundreds of thousands of men volunteer before Gettysburg. They came for an ideal an ideal which Lincoln’s oratory was probably the most effective at articulating in a way that men would volunteer to suffer hardship, fight and die to bring about. It was well put in the movie Gettysburg where Colonel Joshua Chamberlain said:

“This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you’ll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we’re here for something new. This has not happened much, in the history of the world: We are an army out to set other men free. America should be free ground, all of it, from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow, no man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here you can be something. Here is the place to build a home. But it’s not the land. There’s always more land. It’s the idea that we all have value, you and me. What we’re fighting for, in the end… we’re fighting for each other…”

On November 19th 1863 Lincoln delivered a “few words” at Gettysburg which were in all practical aspects a benediction at the dedication of the battlefield cemetery. Lincoln was the second speaker at the ceremony following former Pennsylvania Congressman Edward Everett who spoke for more than two hours, a typical speech from the period. The 270 words of Lincoln’s address are perhaps the most important of any speech or document in American history save the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

The speech was so powerful that Everett wrote Lincoln the next day:

“Permit me also to express my great admiration of the thoughts expressed by you, with such eloquent simplicity & appropriateness, at the consecration of the Cemetery. I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

The speech is short, but it’s eloquence is unmatched. Lincoln wrapped ideas, concepts and ideals that men have written volumes about into a speech so powerful that many have memorized it.

But few realize the context that it must be placed. Though the Union had defeated Lee’s Army at Gettysburg and Grant had taken Vicksburg to cut the Confederacy in half the North was groining war weary. There were those in the North, the Copperheads who were willing even after Gettysburg and Vicksburg to end the war on terms favorable to the Confederacy, even granting Confederate independence and the continuation of slavery. Likewise Lincoln was sick when he delivered the address having what was mostly likely a mild form of Smallpox when he gave the address. Thus the tenor, simplicity and depth are even more remarkable. It is a speech given in the manner of Winston Churchill’s “Blood sweat toil and tears” address to Parliament upon being appoint Prime Minister in 1940.

In a time where many are wearied by the foibles and follies of our politicians, even wondering about our form of government can survive Lincoln’s words matter. Dr Allen Guelzo, Professor of Civil War Studies at Gettysburg College wrote in the New York Times today:

“The genius of the address thus lay not in its language or in its brevity (virtues though these were), but in the new birth it gave to those who had become discouraged and wearied by democracy’s follies, and in the reminder that democracy’s survival rested ultimately in the hands of citizens who saw something in democracy worth dying for. We could use that reminder again today.”

Dr Guelzo is quite correct. Many people in this country and around the world are having grave doubts about our democracy. I wonder myself, but I am an optimist. I do believe that we will recover because for the life of me I see no nation anywhere else with our resiliency and ability to overcome the stupidity of politicians, pundits and preachers.

The amazing thing was that in spite of everything the Union survived. Lincoln was a big part of that but it was the men who left lives of comfort and security like Joshua Chamberlain and so many others who brought about that victory. Throughout the war, even to the end Southern political leaders failed to understand that Union men would fight and die for an ideal, something greater than themselves, the preservation of the Union and the freedom of an enslaved race. For those that volunteered it was not about personal gain, loot or land,it was about something greater. It was about freedom.

Now I for one do not think that we are currently living up to the ideals enunciated by Lincoln that day at Gettysburg. I can understand the cynicism disillusionment of Americans as well as those who have for over 200 years looked to us and our system as a “city set on a hill.” That being said, when I read these words and walk that hallowed ground I am again a believer that we can realize the ideal.

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 battle-field 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 can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not 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.

In the hope that we again realize those ideals and help bring about “a new birth of freedom,” I wish you a good night.

Peace

Padre Steve+

Confederate Army Strong? I Think Not

Attack on Ft Sumpter

“THE CAUSE of the great War of the Rebellion against the United Status will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that “A state half slave and half free cannot exist.” All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true.” ― Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, Vol. 2

I have served my country, not just Red or Blue States or members of either major political party, or minor political party for 32 years. I have served and as a Chaplain have guarded the religious and free speech rights of Christians, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, Atheists and Agnostics as a Chaplain for 21 of those years.

My family on my mother’s side came to the British Colonies in North America in the 1680s or 1690s from England and France. My father’s family came in the 1740s from Scotland. During the War for Independence much of my family fought for the colonies or was neutral and some were Tories. One of my direct relatives lived in Philadelphia and worked as a supply officer for the Colonial Army throughout the war. He is buried not far from Benjamin Franklin and other heroes of the Revolution in the Christ Church Cemetery in Philadelphia, something that get’s me free admittance to the historic site anytime that I am in the city.

Those that were Tories ended up in what is not Canada after the war. I even had distant relatives who were British Redcoats, one a Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Dundas, later Major General Sir Thomas Dundas commanded one of Lord Cornwallis’ brigades at Yorktown and was one of two British Officers who arranged the surrender at Yorktown.

Thus said my family has a long pedigree in this country and when the war of the Souther Slaveholder Rebellion broke out in 1861 I had family on both sides of the conflict. Most served in the Confederacy, though the part of Virginia they lived in seceded from the Commonwealth because Virginia seceded from the Union.

All this being said I can claim my heritage as a Son of the American Revolution or a Son of the Confederacy.

Today I saw something that made my blood boil. As I said I have served this country for 32 years in both the Army and the Navy. Part of my service has included time in both the Virginia and Texas Army National Guard. In my time in Virginia or Texas the units that I served traced their linage to either the 1st or 5 Texas Regiments of Hood’s Brigade or the 2nd or 17th Virginia Regiments which fought under Jackson or Pickett during that war.

As I was saying I saw something today that made my blood boil. I saw a bumper sticker on a pickup truck at the local Home Depot that looked a bit like the US Army “Army Strong” complete with the star featured on the Army bumper sticker. However this one was different. It said “Confederate Army Strong.” To be fair I have seen this sticker on a number of vehicles in Virginia over the past few years but this one got me. The man also has numerous other Confederate or neo-Confederate stickers as well as partisan political comments and conspiracy theory comments about 9-11 being an “inside job” as well as a sticker for the conspiracy theory nutcase Alex Jones’ “Info Wars” website.

What I find offensive about the “Confederate Army Strong” sticker is that it is a slap in the face to all who died to preserve the Union. Likewise it is the symbol of a political movement designed to promote, defend and expand an economic system built on slavery using the language of “States Rights.” That being said those states and their political leaders who claimed “States Rights” only cared about their own rights and in the decade leading up to the War of the Slaveholders Rebellion, now known as the Civil War used Federal statutes against non-slave States whenever they needed to and fought for tougher Federal laws to keep their “freedom” to maintain slavery.

Freed Union Prisoner at Andersonville

The fact is that the Confederate Army was responsible for the more deaths and other casualties than all other enemies of the United States before or after the War of the Slaveholders Rebellion. The real fact is that those “noble Confederates” like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and others that by the way included men from my family who owned slaves were rebels who when they did not like the result of an elected seceded from the Union and declared war on their fellow citizens in order to maintain their racist economic and political power. They were not about due process or the will of the people, but their will.

These were the same men who condoned the atrocities committed at places like Andersonville and Belle Isle and when they invaded non-slave states had no qualms about taking any black men, women and children from their homes and sending them to the South, even if the were Free Men and not escaped slaves.

However it is now impolitic to say this. But that is the case and whenever I see such displays of hatred against the country, constitution and citizens who I have sworn an oath to support and defend “against all enemies foreign and domestic” for 32 years I get angry.

I saw the man get into his vehicle and almost confronted him, but in the current climate had I done so I would have been the person condemned in the hate filled right wing media and blogosphere which wants nothing more than to have anyone connected to the Federal Government look like they are being intolerant. Such is the victim culture of many on the political right.

So I held back, took a picture of his stickers and went on my way. I have been far too busy trying to catch up on things left unattended by the past 7 years of service to this nation which has cost me much of my mind, my health and finances being away from home, deployed to Iraq or serving as a geographic bachelor, the latter alone which has cost me over $50,000 that I will never get back. Likewise I figured out that the last 17 years of my military career I have been away from home for 10 years. Since I returned from Iraq I have had to deal with the “Mad Cow” of PTSD.

Thus when I see some old fat codger running around spouting hate who probably has not served a day in uniform, or if he did served an enlistment and then got out I get pissed off. To tell the truth I think that I have good reason. There are times that I think that maybe William Tecumseh Sherman was too gentle on the South and that maybe the Radical Reconstructionists like Thaddeus Stevens were right about the South and what needed to be done to eradicate slavery and restore the Union.

Now that is not me, I am more of a Lincoln “with malice toward none and with charity toward all” kind of person. As a soldier I can be gracious toward a defeated enemy. But when I see that thrown back in my face by the neo-Confederates of my day I wonder if maybe I and men like Sherman, Grant, Hancock and Chamberlain were wrong. Maybe the rebels should have been tried, executed, exiled or imprisoned for their crimes against the Constitution and their fellow citizens.

That being said Grant noticed how the landed elites of the South not only enslaved the blacks but used poor whites who had nothing to gain from their economics or slavery. The sad thing is the descendants of those who enslaved blacks and used poor whites as their political and later military fodder are at it again. Grant noted:

“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.”

It really is a sad state of affairs and I grieve for the United States. To think I swear on my life an honor to ensure that all citizens have their right to freedom of speech including the man with his message of hate. However I don’t think that he or others like him would do the same for me.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under civil war, History, national security, Political Commentary

Tagged as 1st texas regiment, 2nd virginia regiment, abraham lincoln, Alex jones, american civil war, american revolution, andersonville, belle island, emancipation, ft pillow massacre, tea party, US Grant

June 30, 2013 · 13:15

Gettysburg at 150 and the Lingering Curse of the “Lost Cause” on the United States

This week I will be writing a lot about the Battle of Gettysburg which happens to fall in the days before the celebration of our Declaration of Independence. Some of these will be articles that I published before and some will be new work. I think that the American Civil War and its consequences today is something that we need to look at as a society, and not from the romanticized “Lost Cause” revisionism that is so popular among many even today.

Last year 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. But Nugent is not alone, an organization called The League of the South states its goals in very clear language: “The League of the South is a Southern Nationalist organization whose ultimate goal is a free and independent Southern republic.”

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 and others on both sides of my family served in Confederate ranks 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.

One interesting point that many turn a blind eye to is that in each of its campaigns above the Mason Dixon Line Lee’s Army rounded up blacks, mostly freemen and sent them back to the South in chains to be used as slaves. I have to wonder what Southern success at Gettysburg would have meant to African Americans today. Lee believed that his campaign in Pennsylvania would bring about a result that would change the political situation in the North and bring about a situation where the North would recognize Southern independence. He wrote in April of 1863 “next fall there will be a great change in public opinion at the North. The Republicans will be destroyed & I think the friends of peace will become so strong that the next administration will go in on that basis…”

Of course Lee was wrong and his campaign was flawed in large part because he did not adequately define his intent to his commanders. That much is obvious in the writings of the surviving participants after the war.

The overall situation for the Confederacy in June of 1863 was grim. There had been food riots in Richmond, Vicksburg was on the bring of falling and with it the Confederacy would be split in two along the Mississippi River, the Union blockade of Southern ports was working, the South had not been recognized by any foreign powers and the textile industries of Europe had found other suppliers for “King Cotton.” Despite this Lee held on to the hope that a military victory in the East could change the political calculus.

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 their support for the institution of 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. July 4th will be celebrated this week 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, especially those on the political right, but some on the left such as the “Anonymous” group doing all that they can to plunge us into yet another civil war we should remember Lincoln’s words and rededicate ourselves to this Union, this remarkable Union. Tony Blair the former Prime Minster of Great Britain remarked in 2011:

“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+

6 Comments

Filed under civil rights, civil war, History, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as 20th maine regiment, 8th virginia cavalry, abraham lincoln, battle of gettysburg, declaration of independence, gods and generals, high water mark of the confederacy, joshua chamberlain, league of the south, lewis armistead, little round top, missouri compromise of 1824, patriotism, reconstruction, robert e lee, slavery, southern churches and slavery, southern economic system, states rights, ted nugent, the gettysburg address, the lost cause, thomas jefferson, tony blair, white supremacists

May 11, 2013 · 00:43

Sometimes It Is Better to Say Nothing: Learning Better Social Media Manners and Boundaries as a Christian

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” Abraham Lincoln

I like social media. I frequent both Facebook and Twitter but after a number of years of emotional frustration I have been working the past few months to turn over a new leaf in how I conduct myself on it. I am learning though that sometimes strongly held opinions need to be muzzled in places dominated by people that like to slam their opposition with what amounts to sound bites, usually accompanied by some vitriolic picture and phrase to paint whoever and whatever they oppose in the worst possible manner. This is especially bad on Facebook and though I like the medium as a way to stay in contact with friends I am growing tired of its use as a vehicle to promote political, religious and other issues in a manner that cheapens debate and actually destroys any chance of reasonable discourse.

I used to join the political, ideological and religious wars on Facebook until they wore me out. I would try to enter into actual dialogue, get blasted, often by third parties that didn’t know me and then find that I got spun up and drawn into the muck. When I did that I felt cheapened and that something died in me. It wasn’t real debate, it was shouting and sometimes people that I thought were long time friends turned out only to be friends so long as I completely agreed with them.

Twitter seems to be a better fit for political discourse because at least there no-one is claiming to be a friend. They are followers or supporters maybe even haters and trolls but it is easy to not be as personally consumed by debate so long as one knows that going in, where I don’t know if Facebook has that distinction or if people understand that friends can disagree and still be friends.

Some of my twitter comments do end up on my Facebook page, but I do try to keep things separate. I would rather use Facebook now to keep up with friends and attempt to stay out of the political, social and religious wars that often envelope those pages. To do that I have worked over the past few weeks not to enter into those firefights on other people’s Facebook pages, even if I think that they are full of crap. I don’t have the energy for it. I would actually rather write well reasoned articles here and then deal with the replies.

As far as those that decide to comment on things I have on my Facebook page I try to be civil and reasoned now and sometimes just leave negative comments alone, not because I am afraid of conflict, but because I would rather try to maintain relationships rather than prove myself right. I figure that time will always tell.

I have around 1150 Facebook Friends. I would have a good number more had I not gotten into some of the firefights that I have over the years. Some was my own fault, but others, well intolerance is more common, especially among the more “conservative” Christians who I spent much of the last 20-30 years hanging around with. I was actually surprised to see how many of them were quick to savage me when I didn’t agree with their (and my former) religious-political-social views. Things got so bad that earlier in the year I went through my friends list and weeded out the dozen or so worst offenders, those whose posts that were the worst, most vicious, intolerant and mostly inaccurate that showed up on my page. I didn’t need the vitriol, hatred and viciousness. Out of 1100 or so friends I only got rid of about a dozen, and the sad thing that most were ministers, many from my former denomination which kind of creeped me out.

No wonder so many non-Christians want to have nothing to do with us when the face that they see is one of hatred, bigotry and intolerance. Today I saw a friend, who is a minister, on another friend’s page blast someone that he did not agree with. The tone my minister friend framed his comment was arrogant, condescending and demeaning to the other person, a young person who was obviously struggling with faith. I decided not to jump in knowing that no good could come out of another debate on someone else’s page.

So I am learning to shut up a bit and try more to let the grace of God permeate what I do on social media. If some people think that is foolish I guess that it will have to be that way. There are some things that do spin me up but I am going to try to treat people, even if they disagree with me or I them the way I would want to be treated. I will probably screw this attempt up later tonight or tomorrow but I am going to do my best to be a better citizen on the often un-social social media. Hopefully in doing so maybe set some kind of example that will maybe help people with radically different views find reconciliation and not just toleration.

Peace

Padre Steve+

1 Comment

Filed under christian life, faith, philosophy

Tagged as abraham lincoln, christians on social media, facebook, facebook friends, social media, social media manners, twitter

February 27, 2013 · 23:15

Remembering the Deal with the Devil that Has Brought us the Sequester

“But we have no one to blame but ourselves. We voted them all into office and we have encouraged their repugnant behavior with our votes which more often than not were purchased by the fear mongering engaged by each side and our desire to have our special interests and or ideology come out on top.” Padre Steve August 2nd 2011

Back in late July 2011 it appeared that the Federal Government would o what it had never done, default on the payments for the National Debt. I was in Washington that week and could not believe what had become of the country.

For me it was a week that I remember well because on a nighttime picture taking expedition on the National Mall I fell off a darkened ledge at the Washington Monument while turning to line up another picture while walking in the dark.

That week I wrote a number of articles on my observations of what was happening. Since it appears there is a strong chance of the dreaded “Sequester” occurring in a bit over 48 hours I am posting those articles in their entirety here along with the links to the articles on this website.

As a historian and serving Naval Officer I really have a hard time believing what is happening in our government. I can only imagine it is the same kind of feeling that officers in service in 1860 and 1861 felt as their families, friends and the elected officials home states were pushing the country into the abyss. Unfortunately now, as it was then there is enough blame to spread copious amounts between politicians, preachers, and pundits the Unholy Trinity of both parties and across the political spectrum. Men, women and institutions that care more for their special interests than the country that gives them the opportunity to achieve great things.

These are my writings from that unfortunate week in our history. Unfortunately nothing leads me to believe that anything has changed since then and that the leaders of both of our political parties and their supporters in their respective media, corporate and lobbying interests and partisan pundits and preachers on both sides will not do all they can to ensure the ruin of this country.

While I have my own opinions about the root causes of this situation and my own political leanings. That being said I cannot fail to note that among our political classes and their supporters that to some degree they and we are all to blame. No one wants to hear that but it is the truth. Most of us and certainly our political leaders, lobbyists, business leaders and pundits have by refusing to listen to those we disagree with have brought us to this point. Just like 1860. This is something that need not have ever had to happen. I agree with the hero of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Union General John Buford: “I am disgusted and worn out with the system that seems to prevail.”

God help us because I do not believe that our leaders have the capacity in themselves to do anything.

Peace

Padre Steve+

A Tuesday in DC: Lunch with a Dear Friend and a Night walk through the Monuments

Today was another good day, in fact really good day at the conference I am attending with the George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health. At lunch I was able to spend some time with my former commanding officer at Marine Security Forces. It was good to see Mike again. He and I went through some very trying times together and I treasure his friendship as well of that of his family. I think that of all the commanding officers that have served under which have included some incredible men that he was the best. We are a lot alike in many ways both rather cerebral and out of the box thinkers. We basically are the same generation as far as military service goes, when he was a young Marine Corps Officer I was a young Army Officer.

We reminisced about the way the country was back then how our leaders still worked together and even if we disagreed with the policies of those in the opposing party that we still knew that we were Americans and that at the end of the day we were friends. I guess that Mike and I are dinosaurs now; we tend to look at the big picture and both being career officers of the same generation have seen the country change. We both entered the military during the Cold War and after the loss of Vietnam. Our teachers were the men that served in that war, those who came home to a then hostile country. Neither Mike nor I are service academy types nor the products of conservative military schools, Mike went to Harvard and attended Navy ROTC and I went to a California State University School, CSU Northridge and took Army ROTC at UCLA. We both come from strong yet tolerant religious traditions and were influenced by chaplains early in our careers. Mike’s academic background is Economics mine Theology and Military History and both of us hold advanced degrees in those subjects. We both graduated from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. We have both served overseas and in combat. We love our country and treasure our military service and that of the men and women that we have served with over so many decades.

I am honored that Mike will administer the Oath of Office when I am promoted on September 1st at Harbor Park in Norfolk Virginia. By the way Mike loves baseball too and being from Boston he is a Red Sox fan. His dad, a die hard fan died a few months before the Sox broke the “Curse of the Bambino” in 2004. My dad died a few months before his San Francisco Giants won the World Series in 2010.

Talking with Mike today made me think back to a time when things were not like what they are now, where political opponents were simply opponents and not “the enemy.” I shared with Mike the terms the German Military used in the Second World War to describe those that they fought against. The Western Allies were “die Gegener” or simply opponents and for the most part the German military observed the Geneva Convention and Laws of War when fighting the Americans, British and French. However with the Soviet Unionit was different. The Soviets were “Der Feind” or the enemy.

As divided as we were in the 1970s and 1980s there was still a modicum of respect for the other side and ability to work together when we needed and Mike brought up the relationship of Ronald Reagan and Thomas “Tip” O’ Neill, vigorous political opponents who remained friends. However there is today and has been for the past 20 years or so for members of the extreme wings of both major parties to identify their opponents as “enemies.” The language difference is significant. An opponent is a adversary that you hope to defeat but there is not a hatred involved and when the competition ceases the opponents remain friends and even colleagues even as they prepare for the next “game” so to speak.

Enemies are another matter. To be an enemy is to assume that the other side poses an existential threat to your side or your agenda. Thus there can be no compromise and the opponent is not simply to be defeated but destroyed and annihilated much like the Old Testament when the Israelites were commanded by God to kill everything even the babies and pregnant women. So much for being pro-life but I digress….

Today we are more divided than any time since the Civil War, blood is boiling and if there is compromise it will be a mere truce until the next round of political bloodletting which if we are not careful may become actual bloodletting and the enemies allow their unbridled hatred of each other spill out into open conflict. Such affairs never end well and if we remember our history our Civil War’s military conflict was over in a few years and yet with the relatively primitive weapons of the ay killed more Americans than any other conflict. The after effects well, frankly Scarlett took over a hundred years to recover from and I would dare posit that some believe that the war is not yet over.

Tonight I went to dinner alone cancelling my plans to head out to watch the Nationals play the Marlins. I needed the time and solitude and somehow a trip on the DC Metro seemed the last place that I would find it. I walked to the Gordon Biersch where I had dinner, drank a few beers and watched the Orioles beat the Blue Jays. After dinner I detoured from my normal route back to my campus housing which takes me in front of the White House.

Amid the lights and the amazing splendor of the buildings adorned with American and District of Columbia Flags I walked and simply observed people. Tourists from across the nation and the world were taking pictures, business people and government workers hurried about, vendors hawked their patriotic wares, mostly made in China I might add or snack foods. Here and there a protester sought to draw attention to their pet cause, there is the anti-nuclear weapons protestor that has been camped across from the White House since 1981, people demanding to see the Birth Certificate, those protesting for the removal of various Arab dictators and others peppered about. Capitol Police and Secret Service officers were out in force and amid the fortress like surroundings of many government buildings and the offices such as the World Bank and major business and financial institutions armed police and private security stood watch with cameras watching every move.

When I passed the White House I was rather down. So I decided to walk the monuments that adorn the Capitol Mall. I passed the Executive Office Building and Washington Monument and crossed the street to the World War Two Memorial. At each place I paused before I continued to walk into the night. I then stopped by the Korean War Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial, the stark reminder of the men and women killed and missing in that war as well as the rip in the fabric of the nation that I am not sure we have ever gotten past. I then went and paused before the Lincoln Memorial and I thought of the immortal words spoken by President Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address shortly before he was cut down by a bullet fired by John Wilkes Booth. They are words of reconciliation spoken even while Americans fought Americans in the last months of the war.

Fellow-Countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

As I walked through the warm and humid night air I imagined what it must have been like for officers of the United States Army, Navy and Marine Corps as the nation split in 1861 with many Southerners leaving the service to enter the service of their own states. Many tearful goodbyes were spoken by men that had served together in war and peace and on the lonely frontier of the nation, men who in a few moths time would be commanding American armies and killing their fellow Americans. My family fought for the South being from Virginia. I cannot say that I would have done different like them and so many Southerners or if like General George Thomas of Virginia I would have remained with the Union incurring the wrath of his family for the rest of his life. Since I have never taken my Oath lightly I can only imagine that I would have done what Thomas did even if it meant the loss of family.

Today I fear that even if our leaders can avert a default on or debts that they have now set the stage for worse I the coming months and years. The open hatred and contempt of our leaders for one another and the ideas that each stand for has wounded the nation more deeply than any default or government shutdown could ever do. This is not simply partisan discourse it is a deep enmity and hatred that has not been seen in this country for 150 years. If cooler heads do not prevail soon the damage may be irreparable and the consequences more terrible than we can imagine and why anyone would willingly continue down this road is beyond me, but hatred does terrible things to people and nations.

Since it was nearing10 PMI hailed a taxi by the Lincoln Memorial. I entered into a conversation with the driver, an immigrant from Morocco who has been in the United States 22 years. I mentioned my concern and he was far more hopeful than me. He said he believed that a shutdown would be averted. I love immigrants especially recent ones who have left home and family to become Americans. My dad’s side family has been in this country since 1747 and my mother’s even longer. It was inspiring for me to hear this man still be in awe of this nation despite all of our troubles. When I left the cab I thanked him, gave him a decent tip shook his hand and in my woeful Arabic said “Assalamu alaikum” or peace be unto you.

As a historian I tend to see the dangers in what is happening in our country and I do have legitimate concerns, but when I hear the words of hope and awe that this country engenders in those who come here to be free I hope again in spite of myself.

Meditations on a Wednesday Night in Washington DC

I was reflective tonight and thinking about all of those great men and women who sacrificed so much to the sake of this land and also the world as I walked the capitol late this evening. As I saw the flags around the Washington Monument at half staff in honor of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili my thoughts turned to the words of America the Beautiful.

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

Today was another very good day in regard to the conference I have been attending at the George Washington University Medical School Institute for Spirituality and Healthcare. Today was a day to practice what we have earned so far with men and women that are employed by the Medical School as “model patients.” These are people that work with medical students before they even see a real patient and that simulate what the students might encounter when they actually start seeing patients as senior medical students and then as in their various internships and residencies following graduation. I was very enlightening as we had the chance to be the physician in our encounters with the various actors. Mine went very well and I thank God for the fact that I have worked with some very fine physicians that have modeled wonderful, compassionate and human care of patients on the various ICUs that I have worked in.

I have been very pensive this week due to the chaos that seems to reign in the halls of Congress in regard to the debt ceiling and intransigence of the members of that esteemed body to bother to work with each other or the President.

This evening I went out with my cousin Becky, actually she is my wife Judy’s cousin and works with one of the “Men in Black” law enforcement agencies headquartered in our nation’s capitol. She was with a co-worker who has served at the end of the Cold War in Germany and in the Gulf War and we had a wonderful night talking, eating and drinking good beer at the Rock Bottom Brewery in Arlington. After we were one I had Becky drop me off near the White House because I wanted to wander again about some of the monuments this time with my good camera as I wanted some good pictures from what I observed Tuesday night.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet

Whose stern impassion’d stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat

Across the wilderness.

America! America!

God mend thine ev’ry flaw,

Confirm thy soul in self-control,

Thy liberty in law.

Since I have been at the conference or out most of the day I have only heard bits and pieces of the news, just enough to know that the Republicans and Democrats are still driving the train over the cliff even as some in each party attempt to throw the emergency brake to try to stop disaster from overtaking our fragile economy as well as that of the world. The problem as I see it is that a vocal minority is hell bent on forcing their agenda at any cost and sabotaging the cooler heads in their own and the opposition party.

O beautiful for heroes prov’d

In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country lov’d,

And mercy more than life.

America! America!

May God thy gold refine

Till all success be nobleness,

And ev’ry gain divine.

Last night I was out and was a bit melancholy as I walked the monuments but came home encouraged by an immigrant cabbie from Morocco who still holds this nation in awe and wonder. It was something that I didn’t expect because it seems that so many of us that have lived here for all of our lives no longer have that sense of awe, wonder and appreciation for this now battered land.

I started at the White House and the proceeded past the Washington Monument to the World War Two Memorial, down the National Mall and pat the reflecting pool to the Korean War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial before walking the 7 or 8 blocks back to the GWU campus where I am staying.

O beautiful for patriot dream

That sees beyond the years

Thine alabaster cities gleam

Undimmed by human tears.

America! America!

God shed His grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea.

Tonight I took my time and did not get back to my room until 1230 AM. I was more deliberate than last night and really pondered then things that made this country great and the sacrifices made by so many that we might enjoy freedom that most of the world cannot imagine. I realized that it was not our economic or military might that made us great but the ideals that this country was founded upon and the sacrifices of men and women of many races and faiths who have each in their own way worked for the cause of liberty many at the cost of their lives in war or sadly in some cases at the hands of their own countrymen.

I do pray that the politicians, pundits and preachers, that “unholy Trinity” who have so terribly afflicted out nation and people with their loathing of all that are different than them will realize the damage that they have done to the peace and the very fabric of this country. I pray that we are able to be one nation, or as it so well expressed on the Great Seal of the United States E Plurbus Unum, “out of many one.”

As I settled down and prepared for bed I came across a poem in a book of prayers that Judy put together for my birthday during one of those very lean seminary years. It is by Alan Paton, a South African educator, writer and anti-apartheid activist who died in 1988 five years before the end of that evil system. It is a poem but also a prayer and I think that it speaks as much to me now as the first time that I read it when Judy gave me this gift.

O Lord, open my eyes that I might see the needs of others;

Open my ears that I may hear their cries;

Open my heart that they need not be without succor;

Let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong,

Nor defend the poor because of the anger of the rich.

Show me where love and faith are needed and bring me to those places;

And so open my eyes and my ears that I may this coming day

Be able to do some work of peace for thee. Amen.

A Physically Painful Thursday Night in DC: Dinner with a Classmate and watching Our Government Implode

I have spent most of the day in some bad physical pain. Last night while walking around the National Mall taking pictures I hurt myself. I was walking from the Washington Monument toward the World War Two Memorial looking at the Lincoln Memorial and trying to figure out a good camera angle. I wanted good pictures so instead of walking down either of the sidewalks that line the Mall I wanted to stay in the center which meant walking “cross country” so to speak in the dark.

I was sizing up the shot of the Lincoln Memorial while walking forward and I turned briefly to look back to see if I had a good shot of the Washington Monument and the Capitol Dome. As I made this slight turn I found that there was nothing under my right foot and I went crashing down onto a sidewalk about three feet below. I landed on the side of my right leg with the main impact seeming to be at the place where the fibula and tibia come together just below the knee. I felt a sharp pain but got up and limped back to GWU while getting shots of the WWII Memorial, the Korean andVietnamand Lincoln Memorials. I got back to my room in a substantial amount of pain and it took forever to get comfortable enough to get to sleep. When I got up all I could do was hold onto walls as I made my way across the room and put my leg up on the coffee table in the living area. Eventually I made my way over to the conference site where thankfully I was able to keep my leg up most of the day.

When the conference was over I changed clothes to meet my friend Pat, a Marine Lieutenant Colonel who I attended the Marine Corps Command and Staff College with and met up with inIraqin 2007. We met at Fado’s an Irish Pub where I had a very tasty Shepherd’s Pie and several pints of Kilkenny Ale which I have not had since traveling in the Mediterranean and the Gulf. On the way there I rode the DC Metro and was very careful to not put any extra pressure on my leg than was absolutely necessary until I got caught in a crosswalk and had to try to run across to beat the light. I am in good physical shape and I figured since I could walk I could probably still run. I was wrong. The first time my right foot hit the ground a shock wave went through my leg with the area that I had injured erupting in pain bad enough to bring tears to my eyes.

After dinner I left the Metro station near GWU and stepped off what I thought was a short one step which were actually two steps again landing on my already throbbing leg. I managed to get to my room where after a couple of Aleve tablets the edge is starting to come off of the pain. Tomorrow I will check out of my room and the conference and about 900-930 AM will hit the road out of town. I am in enough pain that as soon as I get into Virginia Beach I will stop at the Navy Clinic at Joint Base Little Creek or the Naval Medical Center to get my leg checked out.

I was very glad to get together with Pat and to enjoy the fellowship. There is something about the shared military experience including war that binds people together. It was as if we had seen each other yesterday, but then we chat often on Facebook and comment a lot on “The New Adventures of Doctrine Man!”

While we were talking another stake was placed in the talks to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. I believe that the nation is now being held hostage by a minority of people on the political right and left who have decided it is better for them to destroy the economy of the nation and livelihood of the vast majority of Americans to gain a short term political advantage in the 2012 elections.

This is not the first time this national suicide pact has happened. It is now so late and the sides so far apart with such great enmity between them that even if in the now unlikely event a debt ceiling deal is reached the damage is done. Our national credit rating will be downgraded and although the nation will survive life will become exponentially more difficult for most Americans and the chaos will spread around the globe.

Back in the late 1920s the radical left and radical right in the German Weimar Republic represented by the German Communist Party on the Left and Hitler’s National Socialist Party of Germany on the Right sabotaged the more moderate politicians of the Center Party and the Socialist Party of Germany. When Wall Street Crashed and the World entered the “Great Depression” the parties of the Left and Right became even more polarized leading President Paul Von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler to form a government.

Of course the rest as we historians are prone to say is history. The short sighted policies and actions of the German political parties after the collapse of the Empire eventually brought about the Nazi dictatorship. If our political leaders continue down this path we can expect that the already fragile economy will take a terrible hit. We can expect that many people in the United Statesand around the World will suffer the economic effects of the actions of these so called leaders. As things get worse the extremists in both major political parties aided and abetted by those that think that they can gain by this tragedy will fight it out until one or the other beats the other party into submission.

This will not be good and I expect that the pain of what our political leaders inflict on us will be far greater than the physical pain that I feel now. God help us all.

Be Careful…there is a point of no return and we may have crossed it

Be careful with your thoughts because they turn into words

Be careful with your words because they turn into actions

Be careful with your actions because they turn into habits

Be careful with your habits because they become your character

Be careful with your character because it defines you

Ezra Taft Benson (former Secretary of Agriculture) quoted by Buck O’Neil

On Wednesday night I took a walk about our Nation’s Capitol. It was a beautiful night and the buildings and monuments were illuminated in the most spectacular ways. It was inspiring in a sense to see them, symbols of the greatness of the country and the people how sacrificed themselves to build it. I can understand why so many millions of people have come to this country from all over the world to become Americans and be part of our dream.

In fact I became so engrossed I taking pictures that night that in the darkness I did not see an unilluminated ledge not far from theWashingtonMonument. I fell from it onto the waiting sidewalk below and crunched my right leg pretty bad. I had it checked out and x-rayed at the Naval Health Clinic at Joint Base Little Creek when I returned to Virginia. The doctor assumes that there is a good chance that I have a hairline fracture of either my tibia or fibula just below the knee and I am being referred for further tests when I return to Camp LeJeune Monday. Until then I am on crutches and pain meds.

I fell over the ledge that I had no idea was where it was. It was inadvertent and even when I got up and looked at it I had a hard time making it out. However there are those in the country including many in the political leadership and media that seem to want us to go over a cliff because they perceive that it helps them and their agenda. They see the ledge and they know the danger but they unfortunately enabled by “we” press on to the abyss.

For many years the political ideologues on the extremes of the Left and the Right in the United States have harbored the worst thoughts about those that do not match up with their ideologies. I have been writing for quite some time about how divided our body politic is and how dangerous the situation has become.

The contemptuous thoughts of the Left for the Right and Right for the Left first turned to words and those words became commonplace, so common that they became habitual. In a sense they have become part of the political DNA of the most extreme among us.

The attitudes that we have formed and angry words which we now use so ubiquitously are reflective of a deep hatred that now is becoming what defines us as a people. In fact the deep and abiding hatred which now permeates our society is now threatening the international standing and I would say the national security of the United States. We have only ourselves to blame because through our actions and inactions of the past decade we have made our choice to be what we have become and there is no one group especially in our political, media and business elites that have served us well. In fact we have as voters chosen this toxic mix of elected officials often more influenced by hate spewing pundits and our own self interests rather than that of the nation and future generations much as we would like to claim that we are looking out for the future.

We have chosen badly and we are paying for it. We are being held hostage by those that we elected, men and women who supposedly know better than to destroy the country in order to save it as was about the village of Bien Tre in the Vietnam War… “we had to destroy the village in order to save it.” The Left and right have racked up massive debt over the past decade which has made previous debt pale in significance. Each like to blame one another as “mostly to blame” but each has a major part of the responsibility for the mess that we are in. However the amazing thing is that neither side nor we the electorate seems to be able to hold ourselves responsible.

Without going into the whole debt ceiling debacle which now has us on the edge of a default which we can only pray will not be as bad as real economists around the world say it will be; the fact is that we have made the mess and now our leaders are failing us. I have to say that all of them have used this made up crisis to some extent to further their goals and agendas at the expense of the country. That is a shame and our elected leaders of all parties and factions are at fault and it comes back to character, theirs and ours.

You see it is about more than the budget or the debt ceiling. It is about hatred of fellow Americans which has been preached by hypocritical ideologues for decades on the radio, television and now the internet. Much of it is as raw, hateful and disingenuous propaganda disguised as “news” as was Julius Streicher’s Nazi Der Sturmer and the Communist Party Die Rote Fahne were in Weimar Germany. That poison has infected us and most of us line up on one side of the propaganda machine or the other. We know what happened to the Weimar Republic, racked by bills it could not pay, massive unemployment brought on by the Great Depression and a desperate population led by politicians that intentionally used their misery to derail the efforts of government after government to try to manage the crisis. They ended up with Hitler, the head of a large and vocal political movement which refused to compromise with anyone to bring down the Republic that they hated.

Whatever happens in regard to the debt ceiling and future budget negotiations the damage has been done. The soul of our nation and our national character has been damaged perhaps irreparably. Our leaders hate each other and the most influential media in the country, the talk radio and cable news pundits of all stripes throw gasoline on the fire every day. The social and political anarchy will reign until one side or the other has crushed their opposition. Those in the middle lose either way as they will be crushed by whichever side wins unless they ally themselves with the winning side no matter who it is.

History teaches us that such times are at best tumultuous and at worst cataclysmic. The consequences when great nations engage in such political fratricide it usually has grave consequences that effect it as well as nations and peoples far beyond its borders.

It is time for everyone to take a step back from the abyss before we plunge headlong into something that we will regret which will only benefit those that seek to benefit from it. Or are we too stupid to see what is happening?

Thoughts, words, habits, character….be careful.

God help us all

We won’t let this Happen again….Until the Next Time

“I am disgusted and worn out with the system that seems to prevail.” Brigadier General John Buford

The news is abuzz tonight about the bi-partisan deal that has been agreed to by the President, the Speaker of the House and Majority Leader of the Senate. The details will come out but certainly there will be those unhappy with the deal. I don’t know what is in it and the devil is always in the details.

I am a realist and the details seldom bode well. Like John Buford a career Officer during the Civil War I have become disgusted and worn out watching the men and women that we have elected to public office work so hard to fracture this country that I hold so dear.

Tomorrow I expect that the deal will pass in the House and Senate unless the hard core right and left work together to embarrass their respective leaders. Since neither side had enough votes to do this on their own despite weeks of impassioned and often bitter argument with neither side listening to the other it has come down to this moment. Personally in light of all that has transpired between the current Congress and the Obama administration even if this is passed Monday on Tuesday the death struggle will resume. Of course the deal may not pass and like Confederate General Robert E. Lee perhaps questioning his own rejection of Union we might someday say “the war… was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forbearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.”

That struggle has already begun as some Tea Party leader declared Congressman Allen West and three other Tea Party Supported House Members as “Tea Party defectors” for supporting Speaker of the House John Boehner’s plan over the weekend. On July 27th Tea Party Nation leader Judson Phillips urged Boehner “to go” and be replaced by a “Tea Party Speaker of the House” while The Party Patriot co-founder Jenny Beth Martin suggested a similar thing. Many Liberals are equally critical of the President and Majority Leader Harry Reid with a growing number stating that they believe that President Obama has betrayed their ideals one Democrat Congressman calling the deal a “sugar coated Satan sandwich.”

The battle lines are still drawn and the language except for the utilitarian language that compromise was necessary to stave off a default has not changed an iota. The language of compromise does not sit well with the most vocal members of the Tea Party faction nor those on the hard Left. Many Tea Party leaders and members continue to argue that their leadership to push the government into default to achieve their goals.

The default may not happen now but the crisis is not past. No it will be with us for a long time with more division, more bitterness and more fuel being poured onto the flames of hatred that have consumed us. Much like the various crises and compromises on the road to the Civil War nothing substantial has changed. In fact William Gross the head of PIMCO one of the major global investment groups said that a downgrade was “inevitable” and that “Congress has basically proven itself to be dysfunctional and this will carry on for months even if the crisis is basically resolved in the next few days.”

We have crossed the Rubicon and unless an external and existential threat to our nation forces our leaders to work together I seriously doubt that this will end well. The President failed to lead when he had a super-majority and his allies in Congress squandered the chance that they were given in 2008. The Republicans after taking the House in 2010 are doing the same. Neither side will admit to their behavior. Both will with good reason to point the finger of blame at their opponents while ignoring their own contributions to this sordid state of affairs.

I can see it as if has already happened. The Unholy Trinity of politicians, pundits and preachers will step up their rhetoric inciting their followers to adopt even more uncompromising positions. The already fearful enmity will deepen and the center will disappear. Emotion in the form of hatred will drive the arguments that neither side will listen to even as the United States and the world economy worsens and the wars continue. Young Americans will give their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan even as their political leaders on both sides of the aisle seek ways to reduce the force and even the pay and benefits that they have earned after 10 years of unending war that the rest of the nation while seemingly grateful does not understand nor share. “We few, we happy few…” William Shakespeare quotes Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt.

Tonight I have been watching the movie Gettysburg which I think is a fitting reminder of what happens when the Unholy Trinity finally achieves their goal of destroying the very fabric of the nation and pits brother against brother. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and somehow, some way we will get through this before we long for the day that makes what we are experiencing now look good.

Like General James Longstreet I wonder “Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?”

The Deal is Done and are We? There are Always Results

“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.” Thomas Jefferson on the Missouri Compromise

I believe that Thomas Jefferson in describing the results of the Missouri Compromise aptly describes the mood of our times and the consequences of politicians that lead us to the dark abyss of hatred and civil war. There are times that I wish that I was not a historian or theologian for then I could simply be ignorant of the place that our elected leaders are leading us.

Yesterday and today I sat convalescing at home trying to stay off of my injured leg as the final actions were taken in the House and the Senate on the Debt Ceiling Compromise. I felt as if I was watching a national tragedy being marketed as by some as a triumph of cooperation. I was amazed that talk which was paired with the opponents of the measure in both parties. I felt that those praising their actions to pass the increase and related budgetary cuts were saying it all for show even as they sharpened their swords for the next battle even as the vast majority of Americans expressed anger and frustration with the behavior of their elected officials. A Pew Research poll indicated “72 percent of American characterized the recent budget negotiations as “ridiculous, disgusting, stupid, and frustrating.”

But we have no one to blame but ourselves. We voted them all into office and we have encouraged their repugnant behavior with our votes which more often than not were purchased by the fear mongering engaged by each side and our desire to have our special interests and or ideology come out on top. We have been engaged in what conservative columnist Pat Buchanan declared a “culture war” for the past two decades and wars be they cultural, ideological, and economic or military have consequences. The longer they go on the worse and more violent they become until one side finally loses and the landscape is destroyed. A conservative German newspaper noted “It is this war-like rhetoric that has so poisoned American politics.” The Germans should know something of this. The “Kulturkrieg” and the violent hatred of their countrymen in the wake of the defeat of the First World War and humiliation of Versailles brought about civil war. The pursuit of radical ideologies in the following years is what doomed the ill-fated Weimar Republic when the economic calamity of the Great Depression struck and led to the tragedy of the Nazi takeover and ultimately led to World War Two.

I believe that the actions of all parties in this forced crisis were a disservice to the citizens of this country, the memory of all who have gone before us and done more to damage our standing in the world than I could ever imagine. It is as if the leaders of the country have forgotten why they are even in Washington. There is no unity of purpose, only the language of war being used against fellow Americans. A German newspaper wrote “No one can forget the Civil War atmosphere in which this debt fight has taken place. It weighs on America’s international reputation. From the point of view of financial markets, the dysfunctional nature of Washington is a risk factor that must be calculated for in the future.”

The sad thing is that there is so much work that has to be done and it is more than reducing Federal Government spending. Our industries have been shipped wholesale overseas using the treaties that business has foisted upon their willing accomplices in both parties in the name of “free trade.” Our unemployment continues to rise and many economic experts believe that we are entering a “double dip” recession which some believe could easily become a depression. The infrastructure of the nation crumbling with the businesses that benefit from them refusing to contribute to their maintenance unless they receive government contracts and money in return. We are committed to long term ground wars that have sapped the economy and worn out the military which now seem to serve little strategic purpose. In fact the position of the Army in Afghanistan could be disastrous if Pakistan decides to stop cooperating and not allow us to supply the Army through it.

It is apparent to me that those that can afford it the least and the military will bear the brunt of the cuts that will come and that it will be a long time before this crisis passes. No one seems to be addressing the major issue of unemployment or economic growth without which there is no recovery. I heard the President and Senate Majority Leader McConnell repeat what they have said for years but no plans and no action. As for the military we are worn to a nub, our equipment needs to be replaced and modernized and our troops still deserve the best that we can give them, but even this is on the chopping block, military retirement is called “an expensive entitlement program” by those advocating that the military adopt a private sector pay and benefit plan of little value especially to those that have spent 10 years at war paying with their minds, bodies and spirit fighting wars that the Wall Street bunch has benefited from, the same Wall Street leaders that now call for reductions in military pay and benefits. It is obscene.

I would like to believe that this is a rough patch that we will get through, but right now with the terrible acrimony present in Washington and all the State Capitols I have a hard time believing that we will. The President has failed to enunciate any kind of plan or vision and the Tea Party leadership is acting like the Jacobins in Revolutionary France.

I have no idea who will “win” this “culture war” and does it really matter? The result will be a Pyrrhic victory with the winners celebrating on the ruins of the country. I only know that we all lose.

Thoughts on the Inauguration of President Obama and the Legacies of Abraham Lincoln and Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

No matter who the President is, what political party they were the candidate of and no matter if I supported them during their campaign I always try to partake of the inauguration. Today was like that, though this year I was on the road between Virginia and North Carolina and listened to the ceremony live on radio as I made my trip.

Radio is a wonderful way to take in a live event, be it something like today’s events as well as a baseball game. Radio forces you to actually listen to what is being said as well as use your imagination to envision the events themselves. If you are present at the actual ceremony you may not hear what is being said, or miss significant parts of it simply because of the way that sound travels, audio distortions and things happening nearby that distract you even as you take in the visual wonder of the event. Television is a wonderful thing that allows us to see an event live and can enhance our experience of it, but often it can be full of distractions.

Radio on the other hand forces us to imagine the spectacle of the event as well as the actual words spoken.

I watched President Obama’s first inauguration with a very sick and elderly African American woman in the ICU at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth. She held my hand as he took the Oath of Office and during his speech. She was in tears as she had lived through segregation, routine abuse by white people in the South, being treated as less of a human being on the basis of her race. She had lived the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement as a contemporary of Dr King. For her it was something that she never believed could happen in her lifetime coming true. It was at that moment I really began to appreciate the full impact of his election, what it meant to this dear woman, and what it meant to so many people. It was a watershed moment as she did not want me to pray for her medical condition, which was not good, but to pray with her for the new President.

The Second Inaugural Address was different as President Obama, now seasoned to the reality of the great political divide that has been part and parcel of our political climate went back to tradition to frame the current issues that are part of our daily life. He appealed to the Declaration of Independence, echoing it as Dr King had but continuing:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Today we continue a never-ending journey to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they’ve never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.”

The speech which touched on a number of potentially divisive issues echoed that of Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and the Gettysburg Address. It was an appeal to freedom, freedom for all and also the responsibility of each of us in the that endeavor.

“Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise, our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, these are constants in our character.”

His words near the end of the speech made that clear and he acknowledged the reality that American statesmen such as Washington, Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan understood so clearly.

“That is our generation’s task — to make these words, these rights, these values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American. Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life. It does not mean we all define liberty in exactly the same way or follow the same precise path to happiness. Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time.”

Somehow it was fitting that the inauguration was held on the observed holiday of the Birthday of Dr Martin Luther King Junior and in the 50th year of his “I Have a Dream” speech on the Capital Mall. Having walked that Mall, and made numerous visits to our Nation’s capital I could picture these speeches, not just today’s speech by President Obama, but those of past Presidents, those that I have heard, seen or read as well as Doctor King’s speech.

I do not have to agree with every policy of a President to support them and pray for them as President. Today as I listened to both the President and Vice President Biden take their respective Oath of Office I was reminded of the Oath that I and those that serve in the Military take and then as I listened to his speech I heard the President refer to those similarities and the responsibility of all of that take it.

“My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction. And we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service.”

After the ceremony was over I spent some time thinking about the closing words of Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and pray that we will be able to fulfill those words in our lifetimes.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under History, leadership, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as abraham lincoln, barak obama 2nd inauguration, dr martin luther king jr, franklin delano roosevelt, i have a dream speech, lincoln 2nd inaugural address, president barak obama, president ronald reagan, theodore roosevelt

Tag Archives: abraham lincoln

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Remembering the Deal with the Devil that Has Brought us the Sequester

Meditations on a Wednesday Night in Washington DC

A Physically Painful Thursday Night in DC: Dinner with a Classmate and watching Our Government Implode

Be Careful…there is a point of no return and we may have crossed it

We won’t let this Happen again….Until the Next Time

The Deal is Done and are We? There are Always Results

Thoughts on the Inauguration of President Obama and the Legacies of Abraham Lincoln and Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

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