Posted on 03/27/2002 7:05:44 PM PST by JohnHuang2
In my opinion, they should have kept them separate instead of making it easier for the men so that the women could participate.
So now that they have been spreading throughout the United States Government since the days of Bernard Baruch and FDR's "brain trust", how would you cure the contagion?
Personally, if it were up to me, I'd use eminent domain to seize the campus, distribute the library, exile the faculty with nicks in their ears, embargo their graduates from public life, and turn their campus into a public park.
But, that's me.
You mean other than the fact that he beat every Southern general sent against him? If Grant was that bad then what does it say about his opponents?
There are many differents kinds of military generalship. While Grant may not have been a "great field commander," he was rare among the military talents of the day in several ways: 1) he won battlefield victories, something most of his Federal colleagues couldn't or wouldn't do; 2) he had a good strategic sense, in his plan to invade the south by using the Tennessee River as a "logistical highway;" 3) he had a knack for picking good corps and division commanders and promting men of talent (e.g., Sherman, Sheridan) and getting rid of those without it (e.g., McClernand); 4) like Lord Montgomery of Alamein, Grant was not imaginative or dramatically innovative on the battlefield -- he was simply bulldog tenacious. After accidentally colliding with Lee's army in The Wilderness, in forty days he drove the Confederates into box perimeter around Richmond from which they could not break out. When they finally did in April 1865, the war was quickly forced to conclusion; 5) most importantly, Grant had the confidence of his Commander-in-Chief, President Lincoln and in our system, the military is always subordinate to civilian authority. All other Federal commanders were found wanting in some key respect -- Grant carried out the policy directives of his superiors and did it without incessant demands for more men and material (which he got, in any event).
Grant's reputation as a butcher is undeserved. No Civil War general was able to solve the tactical problem presented by the rifled musket, which made traditional Napoleonic battlefield tactics obsolete. Indeed, this problem was not really solved finally until after the bloodbaths of The Great War, with the advent of the tank, which returned mobility to battlefield action. Until then, defense, trench warfare, and high body counts dominated the tactical playing field. One cannot denigrate Grant as a butcher without also doing the same to Lee, whose aggressive and inexhaustable use of irreplacable southern manpower was often commented upon by many Confederate civilians. Only after the war, as part of the rise of the Myth of the Lost Cause, was Lee elevated to secular military sainthood.
Grant was a good general because he accomplished his military aims. You can criticize a much of his performance, but he understood the stakes and dimensions of the War and was unwilling to adopt a tentative, hesitant tactical approach. His doctrine of "pursue the enemy army, wherever he goes" was the key to finally defeating the Army of Northern Virginia.
Grant was at most competent - amoung other totally incompetent Generals.
Hackworth should have used Lee for his example - but I will forgive him.
We have 8 years of liberal control of the military, and he could help clean that up, and get the "perfumed princes" out of the system, "retire em all" let God sort em out LOL.
I don't care for General Franks and neither does Rumsfeld - especially after the incident - where the remote spy plane could have taken out Mullah Omar - you all remember - Rummy got so mad he threw the chair through a glass wall.
So then what you are saying is that Lee spent the first half of the war fighting and on several occasions being beaten by incompetent generals. And once he faced a merely competent general - your description not mine - he never once held the initiative and was forced to react rather than act for the duration of the war until he surrendered. That doesn't say much about Lee then, does it?
A very PRECIOUS national resource, and I wish a lot of these other guys who 'know the score' would make themselves heard ( before it's too d*mn late).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.