William Tecumseh Sherman Knew the Enduring Cruelty of War

[Sherman A1]

It is doubtful the tragic devastation of the Russia-Ukraine War would surprise William Sherman were he alive today. The iconic U.S. Army soldier was a student of war at home and abroad.

Sherman, who lived from 1820 to 1891, concluded that war – what the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz defined as “an act of force to compel [an] enemy to do [one’s] will” – is a fixture of human nature.

“Neither you nor any set of men have a right to say that your labors are lost,” Sherman told graduates of the Michigan Military Academy in 1879, “for wars have been, are now, and ever will be as long as man is man.”

Sherman also understood from experience – what he regarded as “the best of all possible schools” – that “war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.”

https://www.military.com/benefits/2022/04/03/william-tecumseh-sherman-knew-enduring-cruelty-of-war.html

[snowybirdie]

1. One would hope

Society has moved on and up from the gratituous barbary of the 19th Century. But we haven't. Depressing!

[multigraincracker]

2. I have a small picture of the General in

the back window of my van and a passive aggressive attack on all of those with Confederate Flags on their trucks, here in Michigan.

[Sherman A1]

3. I like your style

even if most of them won't get it.....

[multigraincracker]

5. One time a guy asked who it was.

I told him the Greatest Republican General that ever lived.