"Would Sherman Pursue Today’s Jihadists?" Topic

"In December of 1860, William Tecumseh Sherman delivered a speech to Louisianans on the subject of secession and articulated the kind of timeless logic Americans ought to apply before deciding to go to war. You can read his full remarks here. Sherman's entreaty, excerpted below, expertly distills the pragmatic and philosophical underpinnings of why nations should not go to war.

"The North can make a steam-engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth--right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with.

In 1977, CIA analyst Ray Cline applied mathematics to Sherman's intuitive logic and developed an objective equation for measuring national power. It sets a nation's materiel strength as an equal multiplier to its strategic purpose and will to pursue the strategy, with a nation's power as the product. Clines and Sherman's approach to national security offers a useful tool for contemporary Americans policymakers to evaluate the soundness of how America pursues its security interests. Do Americans support the strategic purpose? Do the materiel and moral side of the great power equation make sense? For the South in 1860 and America in 2019, the answer is objectively no…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Since when has logic determined whether or not you go to war? Anger, an emotion, leads to war. If humans relied solely on logic, war would be much rarer than it is. As we become more logical, war becomes rarer. As we rely less on logic, the threat increases. (It would seem there's very little logic being applied in the world today- which has me worried.)

Logic can still lead you astray if you start with the wrong assumptions.

War is (IMO) very rarely an irrational act.

B

Intangibles are always going to play a significant role, even when the odds, in this case economic and technological, are stacked against you, as Sherman detailed. One can quibble about the details but if just a couple of things had gone the other way, Jackson isn't killed and commands his division on the opening day at Gettysburg for example, it is very conceivable that those "unprepared for war, with a bad cause to start with" could have won.

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

Who cares what Sherman would have done? He was a textbook war criminal who would have been hanged in a just world.

SouthernPhantom,

If so, then every former US Officer who fought for the Confederacy would have been hanged as a textbook traitor in a just world.

Best, Lowell

Wow, so where and when is it we went wrong?

I fret over what might bring on the next conflict… perhaps a TWEET?
Hmmmm, sad times indeed.

I cannot take seriously a guy named after a tank. Still, at least he was not named Honey, Valentine or Matilda…..