Blog Them Out of the Stone Age

My colleague Hasan Kwame Jeffries, who visited the Army War College late in May to discuss Black self defense groups with the students in my “American Insurgencies” course — they loved him, by the way — has just published his first book. From the New York University Press web site:

Early in 1966, African Americans in rural Lowndes County, Alabama, aided by activists from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), established an all-black, independent political party called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO). The group, whose ballot symbol was a snarling black panther, was formed in part to protest the barriers to black enfranchisement that had for decades kept every single African American of voting age off the county’s registration books. Even after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, most African Americans in this overwhelmingly black county remained too scared even to try to register. Their fear stemmed from the county’s long, bloody history of whites retaliating against blacks who strove to exert the freedom granted to them after the Civil War.

Amid this environment of intimidation and disempowerment, African Americans in Lowndes County viewed the LCFO as the best vehicle for concrete change. Their radical experiment in democratic politics inspired black people throughout the country, from SNCC organizer Stokely Carmichael who used the Lowndes County program as the blueprint for Black Power, to California-based activists Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, who adopted the LCFO panther as the namesake for their new, grassroots organization: the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. This party and its adopted symbol went on to become the national organization of black militancy in the 1960s and 1970s, yet long-obscured is the crucial role that Lowndes County—historically a bastion of white supremacy—played in spurring black activists nationwide to fight for civil and human rights in new and more radical ways.

Drawing on an impressive array of sources ranging from government documents to personal interviews with Lowndes County residents and SNCC activists, Hasan Kwame Jeffries tells, for the first time, the remarkable full story of the Lowndes County freedom struggle and its contribution to the larger civil rights movement. Bridging the gaping hole in the literature between civil rights organizing and Black Power politics, Bloody Lowndes offers a new paradigm for understanding the civil rights movement.

“Jeffries has written the book historians of the black freedom movement have been waiting for. His beautifully written account rescues Lowndes County from its role as merely a backdrop to Black Power,’ to being one of the key battlegrounds for democracy in the United States. Here are local people whose local struggles have contributed mightily to the kind of politics we desperately need in the Obama age—the politics of freedom democracy,’ a politics born in Reconstruction, rooted in social justice and human rights, and honed in the Alabama cotton belt.”
- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

“Jeffries’s Bloody Lowndes is an important contribution to the literature of the African American freedom struggle. Jeffries reveals the deep historical roots of black struggles against racial and economic oppression in the Black Belt. He makes clear that the civil rights reforms of the 1960s were insufficient responses to the ‘freedom politics’ that spawned the Lowndes County Freedom Organization—the first Black Panther Party.”
- Clayborne Carson, author of In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s

“Excellent scholarship, important history, and an invaluable contribution to understanding current and future “conversations” on race and politics in a dynamically changing political environment.”
- Charles V. Hamilton, co-author of Black Power: The Politics of Liberation

The book’s introduction is available online. (PDF format).

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

Empty Chair No More

by Scott Jaschick

When conservative critics look at the field of history, one much repeated charge is that departments have obliterated fields like military history in favor of multiculturalism. And for those who have questioned the academy’s commitment to military history in recent years, no institution has been more of a target than the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Wisconsin has for several years been trying to fill an endowed chair in military history and the length of the search (extended in part to raise more money) left some suspicious. “The ostensible reason for the delay is that the university wants to raise even more money, so that it can attract a top-notch senior scholar. There may be another factor as well: Wisconsin doesn’t actually want a military historian on its faculty,” said a 2006 article in National Review. The piece added that “for all intents and purposes, military history in Madison is dead. It’s dead at many other top colleges and universities as well. Where it isn’t dead and buried, it’s either dying or under siege.”

As of Wednesday, military history is in fact alive and well at Madison — with John W. Hall in place as the first Ambrose-Hesseltine Professor in U.S. Military History. And as to other fears expressed in that National Review article and elsewhere, such as that leading universities were keeping military history alive only by setting loose cultural studies scholars to analyze the military, Wisconsin landed itself an Army major with an impressive combination of military and academic credentials.

Full article
(Jaschik is interested in getting your views and encourages you to use the comment link at the end of the article. Naturally I’d like your comments as well.)

Claire Bond Potter at Tenured Radical has a wonderful demolition of the New York Times story, “Great Caesars Ghost! Are Traditional History Courses Vanishing?” (June 10).  An excerpt:

Aside from what you have already noticed — that “tradition”=”quality”=”what you really need to know to live in the world” — the association of “tradition” with “male” is sealed by the fact that not a single woman is quoted in the article, not even women working in the fields in question. Because, you know, once you add gender or race to your inquiry, you aren’t really in those fields any more. Tu comprends, mon chou?

In case you are still in doubt as to the destructiveness of women’s history to the profession at large, you have the helpful graphic pictured at left which demonstrates (without the appropriate gross numbers) that women’s history is eating the profession alive. And then, to provide appropriate pathos about the extinction of men from the historical profession, there is a lonely little petunia in an onion patch, a first-year (male) grad student whose name is being withheld by me out of mercy, who whimpers that he feels “a bit like the last woolly mammoth at the end of the Ice Age. ‘Being a young historian in this field is thus a rather lonely and sobering experience,’ he wrote, adding that some historians treat his chosen specialty with ‘genuine derision.’”

Do we have any doubt that these monsters are — women? No, we do not. Because why else would you ask a first year graduate student in any field for his or her opinion before consulting any one of the distinguished women in the fields in question?

The entire post is incisive, persuasive, and funny as hell.  Read it.

(Hat tip to History Carnival 78, hosted at TOCWOC)

Today is the 146th Anniversary of Day 1 of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg.  Some weeks ago, Brett Schulte at TOCWOC (The Order of the Civil War Obsessively Compulsed) asked a number of Civil War bloggers to list their top ten Gettysburg books. Here’s my contribution, cross-posted from Civil Warriors.  Ethan Rafuse and Eric Wittenberg have also weighed in, and others will do so over the next few days.  Links to all the lists are here.

Actually, this list makes no pretense of being authoritative, in the sense of representing some sort of objective appraisal of the most important works on the battle. They’re simply the ones that have most strongly influenced my understanding of Gettysburg. I offer them roughly in the order that I encountered them.

1. Bruce Catton, The Battle of Gettysburg (1963). Checked it out from my junior high school library at age 13. It was so vivid and I read it so closely that for years thereafter it formed my basic template for understanding the battle. Last autumn I ran across a first edition — for four dollars! — at The Horse Soldier in Gettysburg. I was thrilled.

2. Edwin B. Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (1968). Purchased a copy at the Gettysburg NMP Visitor Center on June 9, 1973. The first book on the battle I ever owned. I paid $15.00 for it, which for a 13-year old was a lot of money — and as it turns out, would have been a lot of money for a 50-year old professor. Adjusting for inflation, fifteen bucks in 1973 dollars comes to almost 72 bucks in 2008 dollars. It was and remains the best single-volume study of the campaign.

3. William A. Frassanito, Gettysburg: A Journey in Time (1975). Not sure when I came across this, but surely it was during my salad days. An extraordinary study of the Gettysburg photographic evidence base. I never again saw historical photos as mere illustrations, but rather as documents. Plus it was wicked cool to learn how photographers dragged around corpses to compose the images they sought.

4. Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels (1974). Encountered the novel at age 15. Totally captivating. Would have devoured it in a single sitting were it not for school, chores, etc. Even then I could see some historical inaccuracies (the presence of a slave recently imported from Africa — WTF? — and the idea that “there is no good ground south of here” — there’s loads of good ground south of Gettysburg), but The Killer Angels formed my introduction to Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and challenged my pre-conceptions about James Longstreet. And Shaara’s taut prose style taught me a lot about good writing. Still a very good introduction to the battle — the Army War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership assigns it as preparatory reading for strategic leadership staff rides. But one should also read the antidote, D. Scott Hartwig’s excellent A Killer Angel’s Companion (1996).

5. The Haskell Letter (1863). Highly influential first-person account of the battle that really supplies a “you are there” feel. Available in numerous places, perhaps most authoritatively in Frank L. Byrne and Andrew T. Weaver, eds. Haskell of Gettysburg: His Life and Civil War Papers (1989).

6. Jay Luvaas and Harold W. Nelson, eds. The U.S. Army War College Guide to the Battle of Gettysburg (1986). When I first saw this in a book store I just didn’t get it — it looked like a very thin tissue of commentary connecting excerpts from the Official Records. But in December 1993 I took it out on the battlefield and it absolutely changed my life. Hitherto I had been at best semi-literate in my understanding of battlefields. I could connect the terrain and events only in very rough terms and was in most respects what Ed Bearss derisively calls “a plaque reader.” The genius of the guide is not the text but the locations to which Luvaas and Nelson direct the reader. When you read the book from those carefully selected spots, you see the battlefield through new eyes and with a depth of understanding you’ll never get from conventional books. I saw ways to improve on the concept. This eventuated in the battlefield guide series that Brooks, Steve Woodworth and I co-edit, and frankly I think our Gettysburg guide is better. But without the Luvaas / Nelson guide our series would surely not exist. Very much a case of standing on the shoulders of giants.

7. Harry W. Pfanz, Gettysburg: The Second Day (1987). This appeared in book stores at the same time I began my PhD studies, so naturally I regarded it with the complete contempt of a typical graduate student. A 600-page book on one day of the battle? Get the hell out! I literally didn’t touch it until the Luvaas / Nelson guide whetted my appetite to understand the details of the battle. When I did, I found it to be an incredibly detailed yet lucid and accessible guide to the most complex and important aspect of Gettysburg: Longstreet’s assault. Pfanz went on to publish Gettysburg: Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill (1993) and Gettysburg: The First Day (2001). Both are good, but The Second Day is a real keeper. PS - I had a similar change of heart about Gary W. Gallagher’s wonderful series of edited volumes on Gettysburg, which as a grad student I also sniffed at as being too narrow and too redolent of “drums and trumpets” history (more true of the earlier than later volumes). They are now collected in two books: Three Days at Gettysburg: Essays on Confederate and Union Leadership (1999) and The Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond (1994). They’re indispensable for serious students of the battle, but I doubt I would have read them had I not first read Pfanz.

8. Earl J. Hess, Pickett’s Charge: The Last Attack at Gettysburg (2001). The best study of the engagement by one of the best Civil War military historians. Carol Reardon’s Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory (1997) is excellent, as Ethan rightly notes, but deals only in part with the attack itself, and had less impact on me than it might have done otherwise because I had elsewhere received my introduction to public memory.

9. Jim Weeks, Gettysburg: Memory, Market, and American Shrine (2003). For years I visited the battlefield but paid scant attention to the town and had disdain for the souvenir shops, etc. But gradually I’ve come to love the town, the sub-culture, and all the schlock. In time I may even buy a ticket to one of those ghost tours. To understand Gettysburg as a slice of Americana, there’s no better guide than this scholarly but compulsively readable study.

10. Margaret S. Creighton, The Colors of Courage: Immigrants, Women, and African Americans in the Civil War’s Defining Battle (2005). Just when you think you know pretty much everything about Gettysburg, Creighton comes along and adds an unexpected and fresh dimension. Full disclosure: I’ve not yet finished reading it.

George S. Patton sounded nothing like George C. Scott.

My father initially objected to my having a G.I. Joe, saying he didn’t want his 5-year old son playing with dolls. Looking at this 1964 commercial, I can see why I found that preposterous, yet hard to argue with.  Thank goodness Hasbro hit upon the term “action figure.”

Here’s a list sent to a friend of mine by a member of an Ohio National Guard unit now deployed in Iraq.

1. You run in terror from a controlled detonation your first week, then stand in the open to watch real mortars landing, a month later.

2. The most intimate contact you’ve had in months is with the shower curtain.

3. Your most successful pick-up line is “I’ve got a vehicle”.

4. All the Air Force people look like glow-in-the-dark Power Rangers and you can’t see the Army Folks.

5. Your 6:00 am wake-up call is “BOOM” Alarm Red, Alarm Red, Alarm Red”.

6. They actually give weapons to the Air Force personnel.

7. You give directions using T-Wall & Bunker murals.

8. You realize AAFES is their own country, and can print their own money.

9. The amount of sand in your boots is only surpassed by the amount in your nose.

10. Something as simple as taking a shower or going to the bathroom at 2:00 in the morning requires preparation equal to the Apollo moon landing.

11. The Texas Style Brisket is not from Texas, is not brisket, and has no style.

12. You are watching a “chick-flick” with 300 guys with machine guns.

(Continued)

Today’s New York Times has another meditation on the intellectual world we have allegedly lost.  This one focuses more on diplomatic than military history, but the thrust is familiar.  The appraisal is rather more thoughtful than most.

Great Caesar’s Ghost! Are Traditional History Courses Vanishing?
By PATRICIA COHEN

To the pessimists evidence that the field of diplomatic history is on the decline is everywhere. Job openings on the nation’s college campuses are scarce, while bread-and-butter courses like the Origins of War and American Foreign Policy are dropping from history department postings. And now, in what seems an almost gratuitous insult, Diplomatic History, the sole journal devoted to the subject, has proposed changing its title.

For many in the field this latest suggestion is emblematic of a broader problem: the shrinking importance not only of diplomatic history but also of traditional specialties like economic, military and constitutional history.

The future of the history profession (as well as the journal’s title) are the subject of a roundtable discussion to be held this month at the annual convention of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Many historians “are on the defensive,” said Thomas W. Zeiler, the executive editor of Diplomatic History and the moderator of the panel. (Mr. Zeiler, who floated the name change, said he did not have a particular replacement in mind.)

To Mr. Zeiler there is no doubt that the days when diplomatic history dominated the profession are gone. Fewer traditional courses in the subject are taught, fewer articles are published in refereed journals, and graduate student training has changed. Nonetheless Mr. Zeiler is not as worried as some of his colleagues. The shift does not necessarily mean students aren’t learning the material, he noted, but rather that a new approach to teaching it has developed.

The shift in focus began in the late 1960s and early ’70s, when a generation of academics began looking into the roles of people generally missing from history books — women, minorities, immigrants, workers. Social and cultural history, often referred to as bottom-up history, offered fresh subjects. Diplomatic historians, by contrast, generally work from the top down, diving into official archives and concentrating on people in power, an approach often tagged as elitist and old-fashioned.

Over the last three decades the number of history faculty members at four-year institutions has more than doubled to 20,000-plus, said Robert B. Townsend, assistant director for research at the American Historical Association. Yet the growth has been predominantly in the newer specializations, spurring those in diplomatic, military, legal and economic history to complain they are being squeezed out.

Full article

Abu Muqawama, the counterinsurgency blog founded by analyst Andrew M. Exum, has migrated from its old home, Blogger, to a new one ensconced within the Center for a New American Security.  Be the second kid on your block (I’m apparently the first) to subscribe to the new incarnation through Bloglines.

http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Society of Civil War Historians will host a conference from June 17 through 19, 2010, at the Marriott Richmond in Richmond, Virginia. The SCWH welcomes panel proposals or individual papers on the Civil War era, broadly defined. The goal of the conference is to promote the integration of social, military, political, and other forms of history on the Civil War era among historians, graduate students, and professionals who interpret history in museums, national parks, archives, and other public facilities. The deadline for receipt of proposals is September 15, 2009. Proposals should include a title and abstract for the papers (approximately 250-300 words) and a short curriculum vitae of participants. Panel submissions should have an overall title and statement about the thrust of the session. Submit all proposals to Dr. William Blair, Director, Richards Civil War Era Center, The Pennsylvania State University, 108 Weaver Building, University Park, PA 16802. (814) 863-0151. Email RichardsCenter@psu.edu. Website: http://www.richardscenter.psu.edu. Final decisions on panels will be made at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association in Louisville. The program committee consists of J. Matthew Gallman, chair, assisted by Carol Reardon, Wendy Venet, Aaron Sheehan-Dean, and Thavolia Glymph.

by Williamson Murray
Reprinted from Footnotes, the newsletter of the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s  Wachman Center

May 2009
Vol 14, No 19

Williamson Murray is a senior fellow at the Institute for Defense Analyses. This essay is based on his talk at the FPRI Wachman Center’s History Institute for Teachers on What Students Need to Know About America’s Wars, Part 2: 1920 - Present, held May 2-3, 2009. The Institute was cosponsored and hosted by the Cantigny First Division Foundation at its First Division Museum in Wheaton, IL. See www.fpri.org/education/americaswars2 for videofiles, texts of lectures, and classroom lessons. The History Institute for Teachers is co-chaired by David Eisenhower and Walter A. McDougall. Core support is provided by the Annenberg Foundation and Mr. H.F. Lenfest. Additional support for the military history program is provided by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Stuart Family Foundation, and the Cantigny First Division Foundation.

On September 1, 1939, twenty years and three months after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, war broke out again in Europe. It is one of the great conundrums of history that after the catastrophe of World War I, another massive catastrophic war could have happened, one that brought even more destruction to Europe and world civilization than World War I.

One of the many explanations historians have given is that the origins of World War II are directly attributable to the Treaty of Versailles—that Versailles was much too harsh a peace, and that the Germans should have been given an easy peace that brought them into the European community. From my perspective, this is simply wrong.1 Too often historians fail to take into account the context within which events happen. Certainly from our perspective today, a wonderful, easy peace on Germany might have made some difference in preventing World War II. But that misses the context of 1919 and how World War I had broken out. It had been deliberately instigated and caused by the German Reich—perhaps not quite to the extent that World War II (at least in terms of Europe) was caused by Nazi Germany, but German behavior in the first months of the war was extraordinary by any account. This is something historians have begun to notice as we come to understand the profound impact World War I had on world history.

(Continued)

By Kelly Schlosser, U.S. Army War College Public Affairs
Reprinted from the Carlisle Barracks Banner, June 7, 2009

Sgt. Maj. Kenneth Preston, left, speaks with Lt. Col. John Kolasheski, Army War College graduate, after the graduation held June 6 on the parade grounds.  As the keynote speaker, Preston told stories of Soldiers and NCOs that the graduates would soon lead. Photo by Thomas Zimmerman.

CARLISLE BARRACKS, Pa. - More than 330 Army War College students celebrated the end of their 10-month resident course and the beginning of a more challenging set of senior leader responsibilities as they walked across the historic Carlisle Barracks parade grounds during a graduation ceremony held June 6.

“Graduation from the war college marks the beginning of my journey as a senior leader. I hope that I will be able to carry the leadership torch in a way that honors the men and women who have gone before me,” said graduate Col. Donald Bolduc.

“This year has provided me with the opportunity to apply my past experiences in an educational environment, to think strategically, to learn more about myself, and to learn from the views and opinions of others.” Bolduc’s next assignment takes him overseas to be the commander of the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines.

Maj. Gen. Robert Williams, USAWC Commandant, encouraged students to take the lessons learned and carry them to those they lead.

“Never forget your responsibilities to Soldiers and their need for leadership,” said Williams.

“Your skills must be put to work for the nation and the great servicemen and women and their families. Your leadership makes a difference,” he said.

(Continued)

This third Facebook album has pics of exhibits from the Vietnam and Iraq Wars.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

From OIEAHC web site

The War of 1812, the first declared war in the history of the United States, erupted in the midst of countervailing forces shaping America in the first decades of the nineteenth century. From the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 to the Seminole War of 1818; from the close of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 to the founding of the American Colonization Society in 1817; from the resumption of the Napoleonic Wars in 1803 to the second Barbary War in 1815; from New Jersey’s revocation of female suffrage in 1807 to Frances Wright’s arrival in America in 1818; from the publication of Tabitha Gilman Tenney’s parodic sentimental novel Female Quixotism (1801) to Washington Irving’s Sketch-Book (1819); from Charles Willson Peale’s The Exhumation of the Mastodon (1806) to Charles Bird King’s portrait of Secretary of War John C. Calhoun (1818), this understudied era was crowded with events destined to unsettle the so-called revolutionary settlement.

At once postcolonial and neoimperial, the America of 1812 was still in need of definition. The decision to go to war catalyzed a critical era, one too often dismissed as an insignificant interregnum between the world of Jefferson and the world of Jackson. In contrast to the progressive experimentation of the 1780s and 1790s, the years surrounding the War of 1812 can be characterized as a period of narrowing possibilities and sharpening distinctions. Yet, the volatile elements that converged in the war and that emerged, transformed, point to the generative instabilities of the early Republic. This pivotal period merits further scholarly consideration.

The conference’s title, “Warring for America, 1803–1818,” seeks to uncouple the War of 1812 from its stale fixture as the finale of the revolutionary era. Henry Adams contended that “many nations have gone to war in pure gayety of heart; but perhaps the United States were first to force themselves into a war they dreaded, in the hope that the war itself might create the spirit they lacked.”  Historians have largely followed Adams’s lead, interpreting the War of 1812 as a second War for Independence, a crisis meant to “create the spirit” of American nationalism. This conference, conversely, will consider the war as a volitional conflict that resulted from a confluence of many social, cultural, and geopolitical pressures and that had divergent consequences for the future of the extended republic.

We invite scholars from a wide spectrum of disciplines — from history and literature to art history and material culture — to consider from new perspectives the struggles among Indians, Britons, Canadians, Euro-Americans, and African Americans throughout the North American continent, the Caribbean, and across the Atlantic Ocean. At issue were conflicting visions for control over territory, meanings of liberty, and distributions of power that came into focus through the upheaval of war. Proposals should address the connections between the new republic’s underlying tensions and the promulgation, execution, and explanations of the war itself. We encourage submission of proposals for new, original work that is not committed for publication elsewhere, as a volume of essays resulting from the conference is anticipated.

(Continued)

In response to a post showing the rifling in a Civil War 3-inch ordnance rifle, a reader sent this photo of the rifling in the deck gun of the World War II submarine USS Cod:

(Hat tip to Rani Conger)

Cross-posted from Civil Warriors

It’s been a decade since Bison Books published Gettysburg: A Battlefield Guide. And although it’s done well over the years, the fact remains that it needs to be updated, if only because the starting point for the tour — the Visitor Center — is now in an entirely different place.

Tomorrow co-author Brooks D. Simpson and I link up at Gettysburg to assess what revisions are required and/or desirable. It seems to me that the task divides into three parts:

1. Changes to the tour route and directions; e.g. the directions to Stop 1 obviously need revision.

2. Changes to the view shed; e.g., a large number of trees have been felled (and for that matter, planted) to restore the woodlands to their 1863 appearance.

3. Changes in interpretations of the action; e.g., Smith’s Battery on Houck’s Ridge is now thought to have been deployed atop the ridge, for counter-battery work, rather than at the edge of the Triangular Field, for anti-personnel work (no knowledgeable person believes the site of the unit monument is correctly located).

I’d also like to incorporate a concept that over time has become central to the way I conduct staff rides. When discussing a command decision, I like to go to the part of the field from which a given decision makes the most sense. I’ve noticed that the terrain makes a powerful argument in the minds of participants. Two quick illustrations:

Ewell’s decision to attack neither Cemetery Hill nor Culps Hill is usually discussed from somewhere on Seminary Ridge as a component of Lee’s assessment of the July 1 outcome and his plans for July 2. Given the historical tendency to regard Ewell as a chump, forcefully underscored by the film Gettysburg and Michael Shaara’sThe Killer Angels, the audience is primed to consider the decision a mistake. It isn’t really feasible to go to the exact ground from which Ewell made his decision, but his choice becomes more understandable if you stop on East Confederate Avenue just beyond East Middle Street, near the intersection with Lefever Street:

From here you can see Culps Hill in the distance. But more importantly, you are forcefully reminded of the presence of the town and the problem of making an attack through it.

Because the town has expanded since 1863, the issue actually applies more to Cemetery Hill than Culps Hill. Nonetheless, it becomes impossible to overlook the way the streets would have channeled any attack, forcing the regiments to advance in column until they reached the town’s outskirts and then to deploy into line of battle within musket range of the Federals. That’s not the only consideration — there’s also the fact that the divisions of Rodes and Early had been used up in the afternoon attacks and that Johnson’s Division only reached the field near dusk. And it doesn’t mean Ewell did the right thing (though I happen to think he did). But it does mean that his decision appears far more reasonable from this vantage point than it would from Seminary Ridge, where the audience is looking west toward open fields.
(Continued)

My review of Occupational Hazards:  Success and Failure in Military Occupation (Cornell University Press, 2008), by David M. Edelstein, appears in the new issue of Joint Force Quarterly:

Like most wars, the global war on terror has generated its share of simplistic pronouncements. In 2003, it was common to hear partisans of the George W. Bush administration scoff at warnings that a successful occupation of Iraq would be difficult. Why, they replied, just look at the successful post-World War II occupations of Germany and Japan. Common nowadays are assertions that the key to an easy military occupation is to damage an enemy so heavily that he knows he has been beaten, or that a successful occupation is more likely to occur if the occupier employs a conciliatory policy or if several nations cooperate in a multilateral approach. David Edelstein’s Occupational Hazards suggests that these pronouncements and assertions are largely misguided.

Full review -page 1 - page 2 (PDF)

“The Warrior traditions all affirm that, in addition to training, what enables a Warrior to reach clarity of thought is living with the awareness of his own imminent death. The Warrior knows the shortness of life and how fragile it is. A man under the guidance of the Warrior knows how few his days are. Rather than depressing him, this awareness leads him to an outpouring of the life-force and to an intense experience of his life that is unknown to others. Every act counts. Each deed is done as if it were the last.”

– Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine (1990)

I’m 15 for a moment
Caught in between 10 and 20
And I’m just dreaming
Counting the ways to where you are

I’m 22 for a moment
She feels better than ever
And we’re on fire
Making our way back from Mars

15 there’s still time for you
Time to buy and time to lose
15, there’s never a wish better than this
When you only got 100 years to live

I’m 33 for a moment
Still the man, but you see I’m a they
A kid on the way
A family on my mind

I’m 45 for a moment
The sea is high
And I’m heading into a crisis
Chasing the years of my life

15 there’s still time for you
Time to buy, Time to lose yourself
Within a morning star
15 I’m all right with you

15, there’s never a wish better than this
When you only got 100 years to live
Half time goes by
Suddenly you’re wise

Another blink of an eye
67 is gone
The sun is getting high
We’re moving on…

I’m 99 for a moment
Dying for just another moment
And I’m just dreaming
Counting the ways to where you are

15 there’s still time for you
22 I feel her too
33 you’re on your way
Every day’s a new day…

15 there’s still time for you
Time to buy and time to choose
Hey 15, there’s never a wish better than this
When you only got 100 years to live

– Five For Fighting, from the albumThe Battle for Everything (2004)

Reprinted with permission of World War II Magazine

In March 2006 a statue of Winston Churchill went on display in Norwich, England. It might have attracted little attention but for one disquieting detail:  it showed the prime minister in a straitjacket. The statue was part of a campaign by Rethink, the mental health advocacy group that commissioned it.

“We are trying to break down the stigma of mental illness,” explained a spokesman. “Churchill documented his depression and referred to it as his ‘black dog.’ Nowadays it would be described as bipolar disorder or manic depression. We all know that Churchill was a great leader and this statue is an illustration of what people with mental illness can achieve” —- that is, without the cruel caricatures that too often burden those with such illnesses.

Indeed, the controversy in the wake of the statue’s unveiling underscored the point Rethink was trying to make. Many Britons cried foul. “It’s not only insulting, it’s pathetic,” growled Nicholas Soames, grandson of the former prime minister. The outcry forced Rethink to remove the statue after only a few days. The organization had miscalculated the public’s receptivity to such a portrayal of a national icon. But had it been mistaken about Churchill’s illness itself?

Full article (PDF)