First Battle of Manassas/Bull Run; Which Should it Be?

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Patrick Shrier

First Manassas/Bull Run

This post is more in the nature of a question. I am currently putting together a post on the First Battle of Manassas/Bull Run. Typically, those from the South refer to the battle as First Manassas and the North as First Bull Run. I personally like First Manassas both because I am from the South and I just think the name rolls off the tongue better. I have to admit though that First Bull Run is more descriptive as that creek bisects the battlefield while Manassas is just the nearest decent sized town to the battlefield.

My question is: What should the battle be named; First Manassas or First Bull Run and why do you think that?

Please answer in the comments.

Pearl Harbor Day

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Patrick Shrier

Today is Pearl Harbor Day, 71 years ago this morning at 0755 Hawaiian time the Japanese Navy began its attack on the US Navy Fleet anchorage in Pearl Harbor Hawaii. The attack lasted for two and a half hours and cost the lives of 2,402 Americans and 64 Japanese. The navy lost 6 Ships sunk, 4 of which were Battleships and additional 13 sips were damaged to a greater or lesser degree.

The US Ships on Battleship Row burning in the wake of the Japanese attack on the morning of December 7th, 1941.

Let us all take a minute today to reflect on the attack on Pearl Harbor and the war it started. Most importantly, let us remember the men who lost their lives that day and the hundreds of thousands who followed them in WWII.

War and the Modern Mind

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Patrick Shrier

I have been pondering why modern Westernized man has had such a problem successfully waging war post-WWII for a few days and had a breakthrough recently. Before we can really get to that, a few brief thoughts are in order.

First, what is war? Most people would probably agree that war is armed conflict between states, at least that is the classical definition. I would add the modern caveat of armed conflict with what are euphemistically called non-state actors (IRA, AL-Qaeda, FARC, etc.). These two definitions are good enough for my current purposes although I don’t think they really cover everything that we should or could call war.

Second, what constitutes victory? According to Clausewitz victory is “the destruction of the enemy’s armed fores and the conquest of his territory.”¹ Sun-Tzu does not specifically define victory although it is possible to deduce that he envisions victory in essentially the same terms as does Clausewitz. Personally, I define victory in war as forcing the enemy to capitulate through destroying his army and occupying enough territory that the enemy capitulates or ceases to offer resistance. It is not enough to declare victory as Bush famously did on the deck of an Aircraft Carrier, the enemy has to know it and acknowledge it too. Then again, I am positively medieval in my outlook on what constitutes victory. My main point about victory is that it should be undisputed, like a win by knockout in boxing.

Third, what does war consist of? This is the difficult one for the modern Westerner to accept. War is violence, but not just violence in general, and here is where the modern mind fails to make a connection. Violence in war is directed, purposeful violence. Many like to say that violence is war is nonsensical and that is simply not so. All, and I mean all violence in war has a purpose, even if some people cannot discern that purpose.

Consider this, Western leaders like to claim that terrorists commit random violence. That is a lie and pure propaganda. Terrorists commit their acts of violence for a specific purpose, to generate terror. They hope that terror will compel their enemies to come to terms. Terrorists don’t just pick random target for the most part although they do commit random violence as well, also to generate terror. Terrorists hope that by creating terror they will influence public opinion. Sometimes it works as in Spain in 2004, which influenced the Spanish lection and was directly responsible for Spain pulling their troops out of Iraq. Mostly, it does not, as in the 9/11 attacks on the US or the London bus and underground bombings of 2005. One could say that most terrorist attacks fail in thei purpose, but you cannot say they are purposeless. Terrorists do apply random violence, as in the rockets fired at Israel from Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon or suicide bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan. These attacks also have a purpose. In the final analysis though terrorism is a strategy of the weak.

Consider war as waged by Western armies. In World War II, the Nazis used terror in the east in an attempt to subdue the Slavs of Poland and Russia. A task they signally failed at. The Nazis also used terror in their bombing campaign against Britain, another failure. All the combatants of World War II tried to destroy the fighting forces of their enemies and they used violence to try and achieve this. The allied bombing of Germany in World War II was violence with a purpose. Actually a dual purpose, to spread terror and destroy Germany’s ability to logistically support their armies in the field. In World War I all the combatants eventually settled on trying to kill off all their opponents soldiers in a macabre last man standing contest that was only cut short by US entry on the allied side. In Korea, violence was used to kill the enemy and conquer territory, in Vietnam the US tried to kill off the insurgents attempting to overthrow the RVN government. The VC and NVA tried to kill as many Americans as possible to influence US public opinion and used terror to intimidate the RVN leadership and people into submission. In Iraq and Afghanistan the US and NATO are trying to use violence to kill the insurgents while attempting to protect the population from the terror violence of their enemies.

In Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, we see the effects of the modern Western approach to war. The West flinched and is flinching from applying all the violence they could/can to achieve decisive victory.

The final point is that war is about violence, it is nt about training the armies of others, nation building, or peacekeeping. It is about violence, directed violence that seeks to kill the enemy and demoralize the surviving remainder to the point that they capitulate rather than continue to fight. Modern Westerners forget that ground truth and thus the West continues to end up in wars that turn out to be tar babies. The West’s opponents know that war is violence and fight that way, it is time for the Western public to accept that truth once again as well before non-Westerners end up colonizing the West the way the West colonized the rest of the world.

1. von Clausewitz, Carl. On War. Edited by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976 (p. 92)

Veterans Day 2012

Aside

Happy Veterans Day! To all my fellow veterans, I say thank you for your service and dedication in protecting this great nation from her enemies, both foreign and domestic

Book Review: The Color of War: How One Battle Broke Japan and the Other Changed America by James Campbell

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Patrick Shrier

[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the publisher for purposes of reviewing it. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own]

The Color of War is one of those strange history books that seems both bipolar and unified at the same time. It is the story of the invasion of Saipan and the Port Chicago naval disaster told mostly convergently. At first the somewhat bi-polar nature of the way the story was told was off-putting but the more I read the book the more the method made sense. The two different but temporally convergent narratives reinforce the separation of black and white service members during World War II. This is not immediately apparent, but true nonetheless. The book is 362 pages with almost 100 pages of notes and a 18 page bibliography.

The story of the invasion of Saipan is told from the view of several marines the author interviewed personally and whose memoirs were made available to him. It easily transmits the variables and uncertainty of the war in the pacific to the reader. Where the author makes an impact is his description of race relations and the conditions under which black sailors worked at Port Chicago. Those of us who grew up after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have only a vague idea at best of what life was like for black Americans prior to then and even that view is skewed. The author does an excellent job of describing that life. He does an even better job of describing how select individuals reacted to that situation. The wonder is not that blacks put up with such treatment but with what dignity they endured it. The author does an outstanding job of describing the situation faced by both white and black marines in Saipan but also that faced by black sailors forced to endure the intolerable at Port Chicago.

My only complaint about the book is that by trying to tell two stories at once it seems they both are somewhat neglected. I cannot point to anything concrete, but I was left with the impression that there was more to both stories than the author had room to say. Both narratives are worthy of book-length treatment individually and I would love to see that. that being said, The way the stories are told is enlightening and it’s somewhat original organization will probably lead to the story of Port Chicago reaching a wider audience than if it had been published as a stand alone work. One thing that is clear from this book is that the stories of Black soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines in WWII is both interesting and compelling and needs to be told now before the people that experienced pass away and we lose their stories forever.

This is an excellent book that deserves to be on many historians bookshelves. It tells an important story of WWII in a sensitive and compelling manner. I highly recommend this book.