"A Good War?"

[unionblue]

Friends, just read this article and had to post it and get your feedback on it.

The article is entitled, "What do you mean, "A Good War"? and is in the magazine, "The American Enterprise", March 2003 issue, Vol. 14, No. 2, and is written by Karl Zinsmeister, the editor in chief.

On page 8 of this article Mr. Zinsmeister writes the following:

...For it was the eventual fate of the Confederacy to be DEFEATED INTO PROSPERITY by the United States of America. "There was no time during the rebellion when I did not think, and often say, that the South was more to be benefited by its defeat than the North," wrote President Grant. He explained that the South was "burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people". The South's slave aristocracy "degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class." Skilled workers and entrepreneurs were not being raised up. Whites who took up manual toil were denigrated as "poor white trash." The soil was being exhausted by a feudal agrarian system, and restive slaves were in danger of out-numbering their masters. Grant's conclusion: "The war was expensive to the South as well as to the North, both in blood and treasure, but it was worth all the cost."

Interestingly, that was the eventual conclusion of almost all Southerners as well. They ended up part of the world's richest, most powerful, most self-expressive and free nation, re-knitted into levels of success and harmony that had never before been approached.

At the centennial celebration of West Point in 1902, Edward Alexander, who graduated with the class of 1857 and rose to Brigadier General in the Confederate army, was invited to speak from the standpoint of a CSA veteran. When he accepted, a large contingent of Southern alumni decided to attend as well. Alexander spoke bluntly: "It was best for the South that the cause was lost...The firm bonds which today hold together this great nation could never have been wrought by debates in Congress." It took a mighty cataclysm.

"The Civil War," concludes Naval War College historian Mackubin Thomas Owens, "was the original Good War, a necessary sacrifice, a noble mutual experience that in the long run solidified the nation."

Thoughts, comments, etc.? I await with interest and anticipation.

Unionblue

[tulip]

I consider the phrase, "a good war" an oxymoron. Still some wars cannot be avoided and must be fought. The only war that I put in this category is WWII. The price of not fighting that war is too horrible to contemplate.

The Civil War is to me more dicey and depended on the lens used to view the final tally. If you were one of the four million black citizens who lived without hope or choice, I am pretty sure you would have cheered when the guns at Sumter began to fire. If you were part of a wealthy prewar family living in a gracious mansion with a convenient and comfortable lifestyle and lost it all, I have no doubt you would consider the conflict a devastating waste. If you were a mother who grieved for her sons, a widow without means to support orphaned children, a soldier without arms or legs, or a refugee without home, hope or honor, then I think you would estimate the war as too high a price.

Having said that, I do believe that the future prosperity and muscular richness of the succeeding 14 decades have proven that it was good the south lost. Since Appomattox, not one state has ever tried to secede or wanted to do it.

[unionblue]

Connie, thank you for your thoughtful response. As a former soldier, I tend to agree with you the phrase "Good War" is kind of perplexing. Soldiers tend to fight for one another than for high ideals, but I can assure you that some WWII soldiers upon seeing the concentration camps of Germany may have changed their attitudes somewhat. Maybe they began to believe that they were fighting a great evil instead of a war goofed up by the leaders.

Perhaps some of the men in the Civil War fought for ideals that seem somewhat outmoded by us today. It's hard to die for an idea, but that seems to be what many of the men in that war did.

Maybe it is the end result that matters most, but to get men to go into battle, to enlist in a cause, they must get behind it, and most of all, believe in it.

Unionblue

[smilodon]

Here I go again, getting to a thread kind of late, but I haven't pontificated on this list yet today, so what the heck...

I agree with the point that the term "good war" is not really an accurate description of many, if any, armed conflicts. Wars have been and are being fought for noble causes, and the outcome of many of those wars are "good" in hindsight, but I can't see any situation where one man (or woman) deliberately takes another's life, or tries to do so, is a good thing. Necessary sometimes, yes. However, there are many people who have made the observations that war is the final result of failure in diplomacy.

That is a tough question indeed. I hope that, in 140 years, people will look back on our country's actions in this day and age and say that it was for the best causes and the outcome was a blessing for our adversary and/or the people of that region.

Smilodon