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Skydiver: I agreed with this on GB when you posted this argument. But maybe Westmoreland was not so much inept as tied down to McNamara’s policy. I don’t know, Vietnam was fought wrong on many fronts.
The Japanese were sending out feelers to the U.S. for peace terms. The Japanese knew they were beaten, and all that they originally fought for was already lost by the time we were firebombing Tokyo. We, however, wanted an unconditional surrender and the removal of the emperor from power. Had we agreed to a conditional surrender, the Japanese would have taken it and saved face with the realization that their homeland remained in tact. Having said this, I think that we made our terms unconditional just so that we could demonstrate our new atomic weapons to our current and future enemies. Of course, this is just my opinion and there are other interpretations that can be and have been made.
Well articulated post Skydiver! The only thing that I might disagree with is the Kursk thesis. Kursk was the largest tank battle in the history of warfare with around 10,000 tanks engaged. Germany did not hold total air superiority over Russia by the time of the Battle of Kursk. The Russians had rebuilt their forces behind the Ural Mountains where they retreated from the initial onslaught of 4 million German troops. The Russians had tank and plane factories up and running and were beginning to effectively challenge the Germans on all fronts. Further eastward, the Soviets had many divisions of troops preparing for the great counter strike that occurred after Kursk. Hitler needed to destroy as much of the Soviet forces as he could, and so he gambled at Stalingrad and Kursk. He was hoping for a psychological blow that would end the will to resist. Of course he failed, and from that point forward, the Soviets had growing momentum all the way to Berlin. Was it a blunder or inevitablity that the Germans lost at Kursk? I think no matter what the Germans did, whether they won Kursk or not, the Soviets were going to overwhelm the Germans with superior numbers eventually.
A bigger question in my mind is whether or not Titus and the Roman Legions destroyed the evidence to cover up their barbarity in order to squash the Masada defenders’ legacy? It would have been in Rome’s interest to kill the heroicism that Masada represented. I’m sure they didn’t want a future Joseph Maccabeus to arise from the ruins of Masada.
The guy is actually somewhat intelligent. It’s a shame he wastes his intelligence on silly junk. But he knows where the money is, and he can’t go head to head with Limbaugh……..he’d be destroyed in the ratings.
I had to vote for Hannibal. His march across the Alps with a column of elephants and some 25,000 heavy infantry into the heart of Rome itself was the single greatest feat in the history of warfare. He laid waste to several Roman armies at Lake Trasimene and Canae. For 17 years he roamed the Latin countryside unopposed as Fabius Maximus dared not challenge the wiley Carthaginian in an open field contest. Only when Scipio Africanus took the war to Carthage itself, thus luring Hannibal away from Rome, did Hannibal’s scourge end. Yet, even after his defeat at the Battle of Zama, Hannibal lived to fight Rome another day as he fled to the Hellenistic East and became an advisor to the Seleucids. His whole life was dedicated to fighting the Roman Empire, and because of his efforts, Rome’s conquest of the known world was held in check for nearly two decades. 😉
America should have entered the war because no matter who won (Germany or Russia), freedom was going to suffer for the rest of Europe. At least we saved Western Europe from the thrawldom of Soviet occupation.
But Mel Gibson proved that the Christian audience is a cash cow almost on par with the Star Wars crowd. Disney is just too stubborn to admit that the Christian audience has the most money to spend. Christians nailed Oliver Stone by boycotting The Last Temptation of Christ. You would think what happened to Oliver Stone and what Mel Gibson proved, would make Hollywood stand up and take notice. Arguably, the Golden Age of Hollywood was during the fifties and sixties when Christian epics were in vogue. Movies like The Robe, The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, Quo Vadis, King of Kings, and Barabbas come to mind. Sooner or later, I believe Christianity will once again recapture Hollywood and then we’ll see the movie industry return to profitability. Until then, our moral decline will continue and Hollywood’s box office slide will continue.
Just like with all ancient historians, we have to take their histories with a grain of salt. They were not objective and scientific about what they wrote. They had a singular purpose for writing their histories….for Thucydides he thought he was writing about the most momentus war in history, for Polybius; he was writing about the most prolific empire that ever was, and for Josephus, he was writing for the legacy of his people in the wake of Roman oppression. We just cannot verify all of the details these old historians jotted down. What we can do is recapture the imagery and emotion from their writings, which arguably was more important to them in the first place. 😉
What I would like to know is when and how did Hollywood come to be so anti-Christian? It has been a long time since Charleton Heston was running around in robes and driving chariots. Mel Gibson’s Passion would never have stirred the controversy it has back in those days. Even Disney is downplaying the Christian element of the Narnia Chronicles as depicted by Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. Is Christianity dead in Hollywood? ❓
Rush Limbaugh said it best when he said the liberals view the Supreme Court as “their nine-headed god.” The Supreme Court is the last bastion stronghold of liberal hopes to legislate their worldview. Alito will tip the balance completely to the right and they are scared to death of what this might entail. Hollywood’s money will not save them from this inevitablility. 😉
And there are plenty of useful fools out there spreading the propaganda. Of course you know of who I speak. 8)
The short answer………the South would still have lost. Lee would not have been able to sustain a protracted incursion into Northern territory. Lincoln would have moved his government to Philadelphia, reorganized the Army of the Potomac and re-armed it in short order. He then would have ordered another invasion of Virginia until he bled Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to death. The South just simply could not sustain the carnage forever. Grant came to understand this in 1864 and built his strategies with the understanding that he could replace his men while Lee could not. The Wilderness Campaign, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor comprised the most bloody period of the war. In just a few months time, over 100,000 casualties were incurred on both sides with little to no significant territorial gains. In many ways, Gettysburg was anticlimactic. Vicksburg did more to kill the Confederacy than any other single campaign.
