Major U.S. Mistakes in the Vietnam War (and others)

 

Part 7 of Series  (the 8th out of 13 mistakes the author will cover in this series)

By Mike Scruggs- Prussian General and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) insisted that any successful theory of warfare had to balance what he called “the trinity of war.” This concerned the motivation and morale affecting the people, the government, and the Army. The support and will of all three had to be mobilized to accomplish strategic objectives and victory. 

Moreover, successful military strategies should undermine the morale of the enemy’s people, government, and Army.

The French did not withdraw from Indo-China solely because of their defeat at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. They withdrew because the French people were war weary from World War II and Algeria, and the Communists had been relentless in exploiting this war weariness by undermining the morale of the French people and Parliament. It is a significant footnote in history that Marx, Engels, and Lenin had studied Clausewitz’s 1831 unfinished work: On War, and incorporated many of his principles, including “the trinity of war” in Communist political and military doctrine. Mao also studied Clausewitz.

New academic theories of “limited war” and “gradualism,” however, had begun to undermine the appreciation of Clausewitz, military experience, and common sense during Robert McNamara’s 1961-1968 tenure as U.S. Secretary of Defense. Military force was not primarily for fighting and victory but “signaling” possible threats of military escalation to the enemy.

More @ The Tribune

Irretrievably Bad Schemes in South Carolina

 

In the 1876 gubernatorial election in South Carolina, incumbent carpetbag Governor Daniel H. Chamberlain “bombarded the North with lurid accounts of the [Hamburg, SC riot] based on the excited claims of Negro participants” and that this act of “atrocity and barbarism” was designed to prevent Negroes from voting, though, as a matter of fact, the riot occurred five months before the election.” A Massachusetts native and carpetbagger of dubious reputation, Chamberlain left much evidence of a willingness for making his office pay.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com  The Great American Political Divide

Irretrievably Bad Schemes in South Carolina

“In an Atlantic Monthly article published twenty-five years later, ex-Governor Chamberlain stated that] “If the [election] of 1876 had resulted in the success of the Republican party, that party could not, for want of material, even when aided by the Democratic minority, have given pure or competent administration. The vast preponderance of ignorance and incapacity in that [Republican] party, aside from downright dishonesty, made it impossible . . . the flood gates of misrule would have been reopened . . . The real truth is, hard as it may be to accept it, that the elements put in combination by the reconstruction scheme of [Radical Republicans Thaddeus] Stevens and [Oliver] Morton were irretrievably bad, and could never have resulted . . . in government fit to be endured.”

While federal troops were still holding the State House in Columbia, The Nation informed its readers, “Evidently there is nothing to be done but to let the sham give way to reality . . . to see without regret . . . the blacks deprived of a supremacy as corrupting to themselves as it was dangerous to society at large.”

As Congressman S.S. Cox of New York and Ohio remarked:

“Since the world began, no parallel can be found to the unblushing knavery which a complete history of carpet-bag government in these [Southern] States would exhibit. If the entire body of penitentiary convicts could be invested with supreme power in a State, they could not present a more revolting mockery of all that is honorable and respectful in the conduct of human affairs. The knaves and their sympathizers, North and South, complain that the taxpayers, the men of character and intelligence in South Carolina and other States, finally overthrew, by unfair and violent means, the reign of scoundrelism, enthrones by ignorance. If ever revolutionary methods were justifiable for the overthrow of tyranny and robbery, assuredly the carpet-bag domination in South Carolina called for it. Only scoundrels and hypocrites will pretend to deplore the results.”

(Wade Hampton and the Negro: The Road Not Taken; Hampton M. Jarrell, USC Press, 1949, excerpt, pp. 54-55)

Wade Hampton Teaches Racial Tolerance

 

Astutely recognizing the new political reality in postwar South Carolina, Wade Hampton hoped to build a harmonious political relationship between the two races based upon mutual trust and affection. With the Radical rejection of Andrew Johnson’s moderate Southern policy toward the conquered South, no chance of racial harmony in the South was possible. While the Radicals and carpetbaggers looted the South and incited race war, discrimination and Jim Crow laws continued in the North.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com   The Great American Political Divide

Wade Hampton Teaches Racial Tolerance

“Hampton told of an incident before the war when he and his family were in Philadelphia. At the train station he purchased tickets, including two for the black servants travelling with them.

The ticket agent informed Hampton that his servants would not be allowed in the same car, as, Pennsylvanians “did not like to ride with Negroes.” Hampton protested. He had been required to pay full price for their tickets, “and one of them is the nurse of my children.” The agent still refused.

The slave master from South Carolina was out of patience with Philadelphia prejudice. “I told him that I had paid their fare,” recounted Hampton, “that I thought them good enough to ride with me, and therefore quite good enough to ride with his fellow citizens, and that they should get into my car. So I brought them in and kept them there.”

(Wade Hampton, Confederate Warrior, Conservative Statesman, Walter Brian Cisco, Brassey’s, excerpt, pp. 185-186)

A Conquered and Foreign People

 

Most, if not all, foreign observers recognized the fiction that the Union was saved by Lincoln. Americans in the South were put under military rule and the Republican Party moved quickly to enlist and manipulate the freedmen vote to attain political dominance and ensure the election of Grant in 1868 – lest their military victory be lost with the election of New York Democrat Horatio Seymour.  Grant won a narrow victory over Seymour, by a mere 300,000 votes of the 500,000 newly enfranchised freedmen.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com   The Great American Political Divide

A Conquered and Foreign People

“Not everything was settled on the day the Federal flag was raised once again over the capitol building in Richmond. The nation had to go forward resolutely to complete the revolution begun by the Civil War . . . It was needful not only to impose obedience on the conquered inhabitants but also to raise them up again after having subjugated them, to bring them back into the bosom of the Union; to rebuild the devastated countryside and enlist the people’s sincere acceptance of the great reform about to be inaugurated.

They must be made to feel the firm hand of a determined government that would not, however, be a threat to their liberties. Armed repression must give way to politics . . .

[In dealing with the Southern States, they] might be considered conquered territory and be told that when they left the Union they gave up all their rights under the Federal Constitution that they had ceased to be sovereign States.

In that case they must be treated as a conquered foreign people; their State and local governments must be destroyed or allowed to collapse and then reorganized as territories . . . Then someday, when the memory of the Civil War had been completely erased, they would be readmitted to the Union.

This procedure, the Radicals argued, would be merely the literal application of the United States Constitution, the sole method of ensuring respect for national authority. It would be the only way to restore the former Union on a solid foundation, having levelled the ground beforehand by stamping out all tendencies to rebellion . . .

It would be a good thing for the Southern States to be subjected for a time to the rigors of military rule and arbitrary power, or at least for them to be kept for a number of years under the guardianship of Congress, that is to say, under the domination of the North.

Their delegates might come, like those from the territories, and present their grievances or defend their interests; but they would only have a consultative voice in Congress and would have no share in the government. Great care must be taken not to give back to the South the preponderant influence it had exercised for so long.

The rebellion is not yet dead, the Radical orators declared; it has only been knocked down and it may get back on its feet if we are not vigilant. Never has the Union been in such danger as in this moment of victory when peace seems to prevail, but when the future depends on the decisions the people and the government now adopt.

If the [Democratic Party] is once again allowed to reorganize, if the Southerners renew their alliance with the Northern Democrats, it will be all up for national greatness and liberty. The same arrogant claims and the same quarrels will reappear . . . all this will someday or another lead to another civil war which will encompass the total destruction of America.”

(A Frenchman in Lincoln’s America, 1864-1865, Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne, Volume II, R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company, 1975 (original 1866), pp. 543-545

Enemies And How To Treat Them

Via David

Certain mechanisms dictate tactical choices in political interplay. A great deal of ink and trillions of pixels have been expended upon the rudeness and indecency of the tactics that currently prevail. The commentary from the Right has been disapproving: explicit denunciations of those tactics and of those who publicly employ them, and exhortations to conservatives’ to observe traditional standards of civility in discourse.

     Those denunciations are wrong. Those who issue them are shortsighted, deluded, pink-glassed believers that we live a society that no longer exists. And I’m here to tell you why.

     Two pieces of significance, and a truly great documentary, are upper
most in my thoughts this morning. First up is this piece from David Marcus at the Federalist.

Here’s how it opens:

     Progressives have found a rallying cry in their opposition to Donald Trump’s presidency. Whether in the New York Times, on the John Oliver Show, or in protests in the nations’ streets, they are insisting that Trump is “not normal.” News media and elected officials not considered critical enough of Trump are criticized for normalizing him and his ideas. Suddenly progressives, of all people, are deeply concerned about our culture’s long-held norms and traditions.

     The irony in all of this is crystal clear. These are the same people who over the past few years have insisted that five-year-old boys becoming five-year-old girls is normal. They tell us that a guaranteed basic income and running for president as a Socialist is normal. Forcing Catholic hospitals to offer birth control, undocumented immigrants voting in our elections, and abolishing the police:
 normal, normal, and normal.

More @ Liberty's Torch

Entire Pro-Obama Senior Management Team At State Department Forced Out By Trump!

Via Billy

CNN is reporting that Senior State Department was actually forced out by Trump.
From CNN:

Two senior administration officials said Thursday that the Trump administration told four top State Department management officials that their services were no longer needed as part of an effort to “clean house” at Foggy Bottom.

Patrick Kennedy, who served for nine years as the undersecretary for management, Assistant Secretaries for Administration and Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Joyce Anne Barr, and Ambassador Gentry Smith, director of the Office for Foreign Missions, were sent letters by the White House that their service was no longer required, the sources told CNN.

More @ The Gateway Pundit

Trump hits back at Mexico’s Nieto: Cancel our meeting if you won’t pay for the wall & Obama Made Canada Pay For A $2 BILLION Border Bridge

Via Billy

President Trump said Thursday that it may be for the best if Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto cancels his planned visit here next week, unless he’s willing to pony up money for the border wall.

Mr. Trump’s Twitter post came a day after Mexican officials, angered over his new executive orders on immigration, said they were considering nixing next week’s trip.

“The U.S. has a 60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning of NAFTA with massive numbers of jobs and companies lost. If Mexico is unwilling to pay fo the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting,” Mr. Trump said in his new tweet.

More @ The Washington Times

*****************************

  Obama Admin Made Canada Pay For A $2 BILLION Border Bridge

U.S. Border Patrol chief ousted from job

Via Billy

Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan will be leaving job, the agency announced Thursday, after just seven months on the job.

His departure comes just a day after President Trump issued a broad set of new directives to Border Patrol agents to step up enforcement of existing laws.

Customs and Border Protection announced the move in a brief statement thanking Chief Morgan for his long government service, including 20 years in the FBI.

His last day will be Jan. 31.

Chief Morgan made news last year when he disagreed with the Obama administration’s stance on the new illegal immigrant surge, saying lax enforcement policies were enticing more migrants to attempt to breach the border.

He also said he was having to pull his trained agents off their duties to act as “child care providers” for the children being nabbed at the border.

More @ The Washington Times

Tyranny of environmentalists is over

Via Billy

 

For the last 30 years the greens have had it their way in Washington.

 

No more.

President Trump recently signaled that the federal government was no longer going to be the personal power tool of the environmental movement.

With a few flicks of his executive pen, Trump overruled the edicts of President Obama and cleared the way for the eventual construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and the Dakota access pipeline.

More @ The Hill

US halts refugee resettlement interviews

Via Billy

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has temporarily suspended refugee interviews overseas, according to a new report.

The DHS’s decision to suspend staff trips to conduct the interviews effectively pauses future refugee admissions amid speculation that President Trump may drastically change U.S. refugee policy, Reuters said Thursday.

Reuters said the interviews are a critical step in the often years-long process of resettling people in the U.S.

More @ The Hill

Meet the “Big Mac ATM” That Will Replace All $15 Per Hour Fast Food Workers, Good Going Bernie!

Via Billy

Let this serve as a lesson for those who believe that voting for Bernie Sanders is a going to help them get a better job. Voting for Bernie Sanders and politicians like him is a sure fire way to guarantee that you will most likely lose your job.

Across the country low skilled workers have been pushing hard for a $15 minimum wage believing that they are entitled to earn more. While it certainly is hard making it on less than $15 an hour it’s even harder to make it if you don’t have a job.

Forbes points out that those pushing for the $15 minimum wage are just shooting themselves in the foot.

From Forbes:

I worked for the company for three decades, and served as its USA President for 13 years. I can assure you that a $15 minimum wage won’t spell the end of the brand. However it will mean wiping out thousands of entry-level opportunities for people without many other options.

If companies are forced to pay workers more than they are able to afford then they will have to look to alternatives in order to stay profitable.

From Zero Hedge:

More @ The Gateway Pundit

Fenwick Will Ignore State Law and Vote To Tear Down Robert E. Lee Monument In Charlottesville

Via Susan

Vows to join disgraced Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy & extreme leftist Kristen Szakos in their crusade to destroy history and further divide the community.

In a press conference this morning, Charlottesville City Councilman Bob Fenwick continued to play political games at the expense of Charlottesville taxpayers by announcing that a motion would be made at the upcoming February 6th council meeting to tear down the Robert E. Lee monument and that this time, he would vote to remove it.

                                                      More @ The Virginia Flaggers