Whereas I firmly believe that the only morally defensible way to fight a war is total war, the war in Iraq is over. If the Iraqis still had organized armies in the field, I would agree with you whole heartedly on your suggestion.

But the war is over as far as wars go. We are now only faced with a feeble guerilla movement. It's important to kill all these guerillas and anyone who even harbors the idea of supporting them, nothing else is acceptable.

It's important to examine why Sherman displaced the Atlantans. By moving them out of the city that he was occupying, he was no longer responsible for feeding them. This had the marginal benefit of saving him a lot of trouble, but in a war where his enemy was struggling to maintain supplies, the added burden of feeding displaced Georgians was devastating to the Confederates and magnified their military and logistic problems.

I have no problem with inflicting any hardships on our enemies in Iraq, but the strategic goal is to win the support of as many Iraqis as we can, to build a stable and friendly government. If we throw everyone out in the streets, all the fence sitters in Iraq will hate the United States for as many generations as Georgians hate Sherman.

Georgians may hate Sherman but he did his job well. There hasn't been a second American civil war and southerners continue to serve disproportionately in the the American armed services (as do Native Americans, btw).

Sherman, Patton and McCaffrey. The last of the great generals who truly understood maneuver warfare and its devasting effect. These three would of destroyed the enemy without asking for permission. AND detroyed the vestiges of their defeated and depraved society; like the palaces and Abu Griab prison. The Iraqi's would have appreciated and feared the USA even more. I am afraid we have lost the intiative and it will be tough to re-gain it any time soon.

Sherman, Patton and McCaffrey. The last of the great generals who truly understood maneuver warfare and its devasting effects. These three would of destroyed the enemy without asking for permission. AND detroyed the vestiges of their defeated and depraved society; like the palaces and Abu Griab prison. The Iraqis would have appreciated and feared the USA even more. I am afraid we have lost the intiative and it will be tough to re-gain it any time soon.

Sherman, Patton and McCaffrey. The last of the great generals who truly understood maneuver warfare and its devasting effects. These three would of destroyed the enemy without asking for permission. AND detroyed the vestiges of their defeated and depraved society; like the palaces and Abu Griab prison. The Iraqis would have appreciated and feared the USA even more. I am afraid we have lost the intiative and it will be tough to re-gain it any time soon.

McCaffrey? Are you talking about drug warrior barry McCaffrey?

McCaffrey led 24th ID in the sweep west of VII Corps during the Persian Gulf War of 1991. It held the land-speed record in the Middle East until 2003 when 3rd ID (which is what 24th ID was reflagged as after the post-Cold War drawdown) claimed the title.

Brian J. Dunn

V. D. Hanson had an interesting take on Sherman.
Grant, who killed thousands of the South's sons is considered by the South to have been a noble opponent.
Sherman, whose fighting in his two great marches, killed an astonishingly few on either side is considered despicable.
What did Sherman do? He freed slaves and humiliated the bold (just ask them) cavaliers of the South in front of their women and slaves.
Some things are just too much.

Nevermind that it took 100 years to establish a representative government in the south after Sherman did his thing.

Sherman is considered despicable because of his practice of visiting war on civilians.

Why is this confusing? Ever heard of the Geneva Convention?

But the knee jerk reduction of everything Southern to "slavery" - instead of the obvious reason - is typical anti-Southern prejudice.

Regards,

Jim

I wonder how many know-it-alls who cite it have actually read the Geneva Convention. All versions are online and easily found. Its earliest version was signed in 1929 - hard to blame Sherman for that. And of course it is an agreement between signatory governments. It's not easy to pretend that rebels of any sort are governments, or signatories. The Convention is a set of very specific and very limited agreements, meant to apply only to very specific and limited parties. Read it yourself and see.

Posted January 22, 2003:

http://www.overpressure.com/archives/week_2003_01_19.html#000231

This reminds me of Victor Davis Hanson's last column in NRO where he notes "We are confronted with the paradox that our new military's short wars rarely inflict enough damage on the fabric of a country to establish a sense of general defeat — or the humiliation often necessary for a change of heart and acceptance of change. In the messy follow-ups to these brief and militarily precise wars, it is hard to muster patience and commitment from an American public plagued with attention-deficit problems and busy with better things to do than give fist-shaking Iraqis $87 billion."

Sherman's approach would be to spare the lives of the civilians but crush their support for the terrorists by destroying their property and possessions. The problem is that most of them probably don't support the terrorists and the Baathists. There Sherman's logic fails.

We may be forced politically into another retreat like Vietnam, which would be tragic for the Iraqis and for the U.S. They'll be victimized again by new Saddams, but we'll conclude that we can't really help anybody--all we can do is make things worse. That is tragic because it isn't true. It's just the insidious message that our media seems to be whispering to us. We're in danger of becoming like King Theoden, enchanted by the Sarumans and Worm-tongues in our media.

McCaffrey is a notorious liar.

His stint as Drug War Liar in Chief has tainted the rest of his service.

I was heartened when he was first appointed to the post because I figured honor might trump duty. No such luck.

why can't a leader, pick any of our most recent presidents, speak with such candor, conviction and authority as you portrayed in this piece? i guess i am one who subscribes to general sherman's philosophy of war.