Who would win a new American Civil War?

Talk of another American Civil War is going mainstream. The MAGAts don’t seem to mind. They think they’ll win one if it happens.

They are, of course, wrong.

Wars are generally won by the organized. Most of the MAGA-hats have never organized anything bigger than a church potluck, and a lot of them couldn’t even manage that. Meanwhile we here in the civilized states have organized some of the biggest corporations known to man, with world-wide supply chains and millions of employees. We control the logistical supply chain of the nation from the civilized states. The ships, trains, trucks, and planes that keep the nation’s goods moving are owned by us and run from our states.

The MAGA-hats are expecting the police and military to enter the fray on their side as their margin of victory. That expectation is the only reason why they would even dare try to wage civil war. But that was true in the first American Civil War too, where most of the U.S. Army and its equipment and gear went to the South. In the end it didn’t matter, the South proved unable to manage its economy to maximize its assets and was beset by inflexible leadership that chose generals based upon compatibility with Jefferson Davis rather than based upon competence (thus the sidelining of their best general, General Joseph Johnston, at multiple critical points because Jefferson Davis didn’t like him). In the end guns win battles but logistics are what wins wars — and we have the logistical expertise here in the civilized states.

My guess — in a second American Civil War the eventual outcome would be the same as in the first — the bubbas will mismanage their economy to the point where their armies collapse for lack of food and boots while at the same time food rots in the field because they cannot get it from where it is grown to where it is needed because they lack the logistical expertise, equipment, or mindset. Things would get bloody long before then, of course, and they could probably win some quick victories before lack of a logistical tail takes its toll, but in the end logistics will tell.

– Badtux the History Penguin

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Take the statues down. Every fucking one of them

Every Southern town, it seems has its memorial featuring a statue of some Confederate general or another. And whenever you point out that these were evil motherfuckers who fought a war to defend keeping human beings as livestock, I get the invariable whines of “but what if it was *your* ancestor there in the public square?”

Yeah? What if? I’d say the same goddamn thing: Tear the evil sonofabitch’s statue down. These evil motherfuckers killed more Americans than Hitler. You don’t see statues glorifying Hitler in every public square of America, do you? No?

And in fact, one of my ancestors did fight (and die) for the Confederacy. I tracked the family tree back to some dude who moved from North Carolina to the Cajun prairie of Southwest Louisiana in order to breed human beings as livestock. Yep, he had himself a regular business there, he had a big honkin’ stud, a fine collection of brood mares, and made his living renting his stud out to all the plantations in the area when he wasn’t selling the kiddos who popped outta his brood mares. Except these were human beings that he was breeding like livestock.

In short, he was one evil motherfucker. And for his sins, he condemned the next three generations of his family to bone-crushing poverty when he went out to fight to defend his right to own human beings as livestock and promptly got his ass capped by a Union bullet. (Or maybe he just died of dysentery in one of the unsanitary military camps of the area, whatever, all I know is that he never came back). He’d married a Cajun wife, who had been happy to marry this wealthy Anglo and escape her life of poverty. Guess what. She ended up back in the swamps with her relatives again, raising her kiddos, Anglo last name and all, as Cajuns. It always baffled me how my father’s side of the family for three generations back had spoken Cajun French at home as their native language and been raised in the Cajun culture despite their Anglo last name. Now I know. It was the family punishment for my great-great grandpappy’s sin.

Now, if I found out that my great-great grandpappy had been a high muckety muck in the Confederate army, would I want a statue in some public park commemorating his bravery? Fuck no. He was an evil motherfucker who went out to kill Americans in order to maintain the right to treat human beings as livestock. He no more deserves a statue in a public square than Adolph fucking Hitler does. Both wanted to kill Americans in defense of their right to do some evil, evil shit. If my ancestor had a statue on some public square, I’d fucking spit on the goddamn thing. Then pee on it for good measure. Because he was evil, evil, EVIL, and that evil does not need to be glorified in public, it needs to be documented in history books and in museums where that evil can be presented in its proper context.

Fuck these evil American-killing bastards. Melt down their statues for scrap. They were fucking evil, through and through, and deserve no statue, only disdain.

– Badtux the Southern Penguin

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How the South won the American Civil War

The South gave the North two options after the Civil War: draconian rule by the North enforced by hundreds of thousands of soldiers that would be resisted by guerrilla warfare, or they could allow the South to re-join the Union on an equal basis as long as they pretended to no longer have slavery and pretended to be part of the United States. Given that one option meant generations of Union soldiers in the South and the other option meant peace, it’s no wonder that in the compromise of 1876, the North accepted the South’s offer of the second option.

Still, during the ten years that the North attempted to enforce democracy in the South, they should have taken the opportunity to hang the whole lot of traitors who were the top military and civilian leadership of the Confederacy by the neck for treason. Instead they let those people go free and create the legend of the “Lost Cause” where it wasn’t about slavery, it was about a way of life, and the North won not because they had better generals and better political leadership (which, at the end of the war, was 100% true — Lincoln had weeded out the weak leadership ruthlessly and arrived at a team that was ludicrously effective), but because of sheer industrial might.

The reality is that the South had better guns and powder for most of the war, and if everybody who had been drafted had shown up to fight, would have been able to match the North man-for-man. The South lost because of failures of its political and military leadership, not because of lack of manpower or lack of weapons — but by allowing the traitors to live, the North allowed the traitors to re-write history to where they were the valiant victims of Northern industrial might, rather than incompetents who lost the war through their own stupidity and arrogance. By allowing the traitors to live, the North gave credence to their arguments that treason was an ordinary and respectable thing. Thus the North, eventually, lost the Civil War, if not in 1876, then most certainly when a tool in the pay of the Russians became President with Russian help because treason — accepting the aid of a foreign power in expectation of quid pro quo — has been rendered an ordinary and respectable thing.

— Badtux the Geopolitical History Penguin

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Like a dog crapping in its own crate

One of the People of Walmart bombs a Walmart store. This is like man bites dog. Walmartians usually bomb stuff like abortion clinics and pesky neighbors upset about the five cars up on blocks in the front yard, not their favoritist store in the whole wide world.

Here is what a Walmartian looks like:

Apparently this loser was upset that Walmart quit carrying his favorite flag, the flag of the side that lost, the flag that losers fly everywhere — the Confederate flag, of course. Duh. The loser flag. So rather than protest and stuff like that, or set up a stand at the sidewalk in front of the store selling Confederate flags just to show them how much business they’re losing, instead he… bombs the place?

Just goes to show you the mentality of some of the inbred bucktooth white trash cretins who inhabit Mississippi…

– Badtux the Baffled Penguin

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So yesterday I missed VV day

Yesterday, of course, being the 40th anniversary of our glorious victory in Vietnam, where, after failing to figure out what exactly we were fighting for and who we were dying for, the very last American left Saigon via helicopter from the American Embassy roof.

What, you say? We *didn’t* win in Vietnam? Don’t say that to the fine soldiers at the VVA, they’ll claim up and down that while *they* were fighting, the war was over and won! But of course it wasn’t, because the only way to win the war was to invade North Vietnam, and China promised to send “volunteers” if the US did that. So that left a huge army at the borders with South Vietnam, a huge army which invaded and won the war. Contrary to popular belief and the front page of the Washington Post on that day in 1975, Saigon did not fall to the “Vietcong”. Saigon fell to regular units of the NVA, North Vietnamese Army. The Viet Cong had largely been destroyed by the 1968 Tet Offensive and did not present any existential danger to the government of South Vietnam after that time.

On this day 40 years ago, if you wanted a M-16 rifle, there was plenty of them lying around the streets of Saigon, never fired and only dropped once, with abandoned ARVN uniforms littering the gutters. While there were a few South Vietnamese army units that fought hard, the majority of the ARVN melted away. Pretty much like the Iraqi Army when ISIS started shooting in their direction.

A few aging ARVN generals still hang around this area. I avoid them. They’re as annoying as the “Lost Cause” types in the American South. The reality is that South Vietnam fell because the South Vietnamese weren’t willing to fight for it. There was plenty of guns and ammunition in South Vietnam, the fact that Hanoi used captured ARVN guns and ammunition for most of their offensive after capturing the first two cities with armories should make that clear. What there was a lack of, was bodies willing to fight for a government that had become corrupt, autocratic, and divorced from the people it purported to rule. Pretty much the same reason the Confederacy fell, now that I think of it.

The North Vietnamese sent the generals and top politicians that they captured to “re-education” camps. The Union sent the generals and top politicians that they captured back to their homes in the former Confederacy. There was no equivalent in South Vietnam to the KKK and White Leagues that took the Southern USA back for the former Confederacy (as long as they pretended to be part of the USA and pretended to not have slavery) after the final surrender happened. Anybody who could have led such organizations was busy dying in the “re-education” camps. It was a harsh way of doing things, but probably saved many lives over the long run compared to the lenient way that the US government treated the rebellious Southern states. But then, I suppose that there were different goals at stake here. The average Northern politician or general didn’t give a shit about how Southerners ran their states or how harshly they treated their Negros, as long as they pretended they were part of the United States and pretended they didn’t have slavery. For the North, the war had always been about preserving the unity of the nation and only incidentally about ridding the nation of an institution (slavery) that had become a global embarrassment, not about the fate of black people. Meanwhile, for North Vietnam, they not only wanted to re-unite the nation, they had an ideology they wanted to impose on the South — and so any leader in the South had to be removed and sent to prison camps. Which they did.

Different goals, different end results. Vietnam got the unity they wanted. Their South is just Vietnam. Nobody flies the flag of the former South Vietnamese government in their South, not only because it would result in them being shot, but because the majority of Vietnamese in the South were born after the war ended and would be completely baffled as to why they would want to do such a thing. Meanwhile, the USA never did get the unity it desired — the South has always sat restless down on the USA’s southern flanks, with the flag of the defeated rebellion still flown regularly over state buildings and private businesses and homes, never really part of the nation until the 1960’s and the communications revolution started bringing it closer to the rest of the US.

Which tells you something about victory versus “victory”. The North Vietnamese knew that simply defeating the ARVN wasn’t enough to get the unity they desired. They acted ruthlessly to insure that there was only one Vietnam, run from Hanoi, with no trace of the old South Vietnamese government left in place, and anybody who dared disagree was sent to the prison camps or simply killed. The United States has never really done that kind of thing. Which makes us better than the Vietnamese, I suppose, on some moral scale. Some moral scale that doesn’t include the fate of the thousands of blacks who died after the Civil War at the hands of the KKK and White Leagues, or the millions of people killed by US guns and bombs around the world over the past hundred years, or …

– Badtux the History Penguin

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Time to pull William Tecumseh Sherman out of his grave

150 years ago today, General William Tecumseh Sherman was in the midst of burning down the city of Atlanta. He actually intended only to burn down the war materials warehouses, railroad facilities, and manufacturing facilities, but firefighting in those days being rather ineffectual, the fires swiftly got out of control and burned down over half the city. On November 16, he set out on his march to the sea.

By doing so, Sherman won the war. He knew it would win the war, because he knew the real secret of winning wars: Logistics. He ripped the logistical guts out of the Confederacy. General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Virginia disintegrated when food and ammunition stopped arriving in Richmond, there were only 28,000 soldiers left in his army when he surrendered to four times that many Northern soldiers because the rest of his starving soldiers had deserted. The Confederacy started the war to preserve slavery (every single Confederate state that seceded said in its articles of secession that they were seceding to defend slavery) by firing upon Fort Sumpter, Sherman ended it by starving the Confederate armies into submission. Lee’s surrender to Grant was just the post-script to Sherman’s victory.

Which is why Sherman’s name was cause for spit on the part of Southerners for multiple generations, and the tales of his misdeeds on the March to the Sea grew and grew as generations went by. You hear tales about how he burned down every house on his path… while standing on the front porch of an antebellum mansion in Georgia that was clearly in his path but also quite clearly was *not* burned. But you know how it goes. A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Granted, Sherman did a lot of destruction on his march. His soldiers didn’t burn many houses, but aside from valid military targets such as weapons factories and ammunition warehouses they did burn down every cotton gin, cotton warehouse, and barn that they came across, as well as hauled off all the food they found. Sherman was unapologetic about that. Sherman wrote a letter at the time to officials in Washington: “If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity-seeking.” But other than Columbia, South Carolina, which he deliberately burned to the ground for terror purposes, his soldiers did not wantonly burn people’s houses, and did not rape, kill, or maim civilians. They were there for a reason, which was to destroy the South’s ability to wage war, and that mission did not involve abusing civilians. There are no — zero — credible stories of Sherman’s men systematically targeting civilians for rape or killing. Soldiers being soldiers undoubtedly there were a few rapes, but it was not systematic, and it was not in any way ordered or condoned by General Sherman himself, whose general orders reminded the soldiers that the civilians they encountered were Americans, regardless of whatever government they currently bore allegiance to, and thus should not be personally harmed though everything of economic value for sustaining an army was to be destroyed.

So that was Sherman. Tactics win battles. Logistics wins wars. By recognizing that fact, and ripping the logistical backbone out of the South, Sherman showed that he was the first modern warrior. Every war that we’ve won since has been won because of logistics. And every war that we’ve lost, has been lost for that same reason — because our logistics were tenuous while the enemy’s logistics were secure.

Now the only thing I think about today when I think about Sherman’s march to the sea is this: here was a man who understood reality in all its horrors, stared it in the face, and did not flinch at what he saw but instead did what he had to do to end the bloodiest war in American history, a war that left 20% of the South’s military-age men dead or disabled by its end and a greater number of Northern military-age men dead or disabled (though smaller as a percentage due to a much larger population base). Sherman is most famous for saying “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected” when Republican power brokers suggested that he run for President. But really, we need a leader today who can do the same — look reality hard in the face and do what needs to be done. Sad to say, our system today is set up to insure that instead we get pliant tools that our oligarchs can easily control.

Thus why the country is fucked, and fucked hard, and is going to continue to be fucked as the oligarchs rape it up the ass good and hard. There are no more Shermans. Alas.

– Badtux the History Penguin

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Nullification nonsense

So various state legislatures are trying to nullify Federal laws they don’t like? Good luck with that. We’ve been trying to do that with Federal marijuana legislation here in California for the past 30 years, but the DEA still does regular drug raids.

The typical argument is that the 10th Amendment gives all rights not explicitly dedicated to the federal government to the states. Yawn. William Tecumseh Sherman pretty much nullified the 10th Amendment when he burned and raped his way across South Carolina to punish them for putting state supremacy ahead of federal government supremacy. I’m seeing nothing saying any of this nullification legislation is going to be any more enforcible than South Carolina’s declaration of secession from the Union was. Well, South Carolina managed to enforce their secession from the Union for four years, but we all know what happened there in the end… as Governor Earl Long of Louisiana is reputed to have said when the Lege urged him to defy a Federal desegregation order in 1958, “Are you fucking nuts?! We’re talking about the U.S. government, they got the goddamned atomic bomb!”

In the latest silliness, the State of Texas is trying to “nullify” the TSA checkpoints in airports. Yeah, good luck with that. Governor Faubus of Arkansas tried something like that too back in 1957. Didn’t quite work out for him:

The 101st Airborne kinda outguns and out-mans the Texas Rangers. Just sayin’!

— Badtux the Reality-based Penguin

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150 years ago…

The South had declared full insurrection and William Tecumseh Sherman had turned down a job at the War Department, and also turned down a short-term commission to lead a Union regiment after the bombardment of Ft. Sumpter led to Lincoln calling for 75,000 short-term volunteers to put down the rebellion against the duly constituted government of the United States of America. From all appearances Sherman seemed to be settling down to run a streetcar company in Missouri. But the unsettled nature of things, and his continued concern about the fact that Lincoln’s administration seemed to not understand that this was going to be a long and bloody war requiring people who were willing to do things that maybe weren’t so nice, led him to change his mind. On May 8, 1861, Sherman dispatched a letter to Washington saying he was ready to serve in a position commensurate to his last rank in the military but for three *years*, not for some bogus three *months* because the war would take a minimum of three years to win (it actually took four). On May 14 his offer was accepted and he was placed in charge of a new regiment, the 13th Infantry, which was then in the process of being formed.

No Southern homes or businesses had been burned yet. I am eagerly awaiting the time, three years from now, when I can 150-year-live-blog Sherman burning Atlanta then slashing and burning his way to the sea, gutting the heart of the treasonous Confederacy and doing more than anybody else to cause its collapse.

— Badtux the History Penguin

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Live blogging the American Civil War

On May 2, 1861, General Winfield Scott, hero of the Mexican War and commander of Union forces, introduced his Anaconda Plan to President Lincoln as a doodle on the back of a letter that had been sent to him by a young man named George McClellan who had proposed his own plan for attacking the Confederacy. General Scott thought McClellan’s plan was unworkable but had a few ideas that were useful for his own plan.

It was clear that this plan for strangling the Confederacy would require a lot more troops than had previously been envisioned. Thus Abraham Lincoln on May 3, 1861, called for more troops. In his “Proclamation 83 – Increasing the Size of the Army and Navy,” the President called for over 42,000 volunteers for three-year enlistments. Additionally, he called for the Regular Army to be increased to 22,700 and the Navy by 18,000. Unfortunately, President Lincoln also looked at the front of the letter and decided this young man named McClellan had promise and that he’d try McClellan’s plan to capture Richmond, which, remember, held the only forge and foundry capable of making steam engines in the entire South. That was a decision he would later come to sorely regret. In the end it was General Scott’s Anaconda plan with the addition of Sherman slashing another gaping hole through the heart of the Confederacy as another coil of the Anaconda which would win the War of Southern Treason for the United States.

Probably around 5PM on May 5, 2001, the news hit the St. Louis evening newspapers. A gentleman by the name of William Tecumseh Sherman who ran the local streetcar company read that news, and pondered it. A few weeks earlier in rejecting an offer of employment by the War Department he had chastised the President for what he felt were unreasonable expectations as to the length of the war and the resources needed to prosecute it. This new proclamation, he undoubted thought, meant that the President clearly had now been convinced that the war would be neither short nor cheap. He did not yet know of Lincoln’s infatuation with General George B. McClellan’s quick-and-easy Virginia invasion plan, so within a few days Mr. Sherman would make a decision that had profound implications upon the course of the war…

— Badtux the History Penguin

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150 years ago…

(Former) Major General W.T. Sherman had resigned his position at the Louisiana Military Academy (later known as LSU) and, after a brief meeting with Lincoln in Washington where he concluded that Lincoln was clueless about the nature of the upcoming war, which he was sure was going to be long, bitter, hard-fought, and bloody, was working for one of his relatives in Missouri running the St. Louis Railroad, a streetcar company. On April 6 he had received a telegram asking if he would come to Washington and go to work as chief clerk and Assistant Secretary of War in the War Department. His telegram in reply was short, sweet, and to the point: “I cannot accept”. In a longer letter following afterward he explained that he had a family and an obligation to them, and did not feel that Washington D.C. was the place for him.

Then of course on April 12, the War of Southern Treason started as South Carolina secessionists fired upon U.S. soldiers using weapons seized from U.S. arsenals. At this point Sherman started re-thinking his decision, especially after the pro-Union governor of Missouri offered to put him in charge of the Unionist forces in Missouri… but it would not be until May 8 that Sherman changed his mind and dispatched a letter to Washington saying he was ready to serve in a position commensurate to his last rank in the military but for three *years*, not for some bogus three *months* because the war would take a minimum of three years to win (it actually took four), and on May 14 his offer was accepted and he was placed in charge of a new regiment, the 13th Infantry, which was then in the process of being formed.

No Southern homes or businesses had been burned yet. I am eagerly awaiting the time, three years from now, when I can 150-year-live-blog Sherman burning Atlanta then slashing and burning his way to the sea.

— Badtux the History Penguin

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