Command Responsibility and War Crimes: general discussion

[Rifleman]

As to Sherman, why don't you put together a complaint vs WTS based on the "Neo-Confederates and Confederate apologists" viewpoint ?

LOL, don't know where I'd begin. I suppose I could find something on the League of the South website to cut and paste but I'm not sure I'd want to do that.

That doesn't seem to be your bottom line, but why not play devil's advocate.

Because if I was advocating, I would advocate that he was not.

And I'd like to point something out to Southerners who think he is: what Sherman did to your Confederate ancestors wasn't too much different than what their ancestors a generation earlier did in campaigns against the Creek and Cherokee.

Whatever people believe they need to be consistent in their reasoning process.

[Ken White]

own namesake's tribe. Much less what his northern neighbors did to the Kiowa, Pawnees and others as they moved west...

And I'd like to point something out to Southerners who think he is: what Sherman did to your Confederate ancestors wasn't too much different than what their ancestors a generation earlier did in campaigns against the Creek and Cherokee.

Whatever people believe they need to be consistent in their reasoning process.

Unlikely to happen, we're all prone to bias and prejudice -- as well as flawed logic -- mine's more flawed than most but my bias (among other things) is tiny ...

[bourbon]

This is a broad generalization, but:

History is written by the victors; so war criminals are only on the losing side.

[Infanteer]

This is a broad generalization, but:

History is written by the victors; so war criminals are only on the losing side.

I was just going to post that very same thing.

"War criminal" is likely more of a liberal status for "loser" then any sort of strict legal catagorization.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Bob,

I suspect that if Grant had focused solely on the defeat of Lee's army or the capture of Richmond that the war would have been much more likely to have devolved into a decades long insurgency.

Have to agree to this statement, the only way to convince the South to surrender was too make the cost of continuing the conflict too much to bear. The strategy was appropriate, and while we can only speculate I suspect it reduced suffering the long run by limiting the duration of the conventional war.

As stated by ganulv, the insurgency did continue. The militants were the KKK, the subversives were various politicians who inacted laws (which the local police enforced violently) that continued to oppress the recently freed slaves until MLK led a mostly peaceful and successful revolt against legal discrimination, and much as our development efforts continue to fail in Afghanistan, or development efforts in the South largely failed due to resistance to industrialization and other factors.

The south now is becoming an economic powerhouse in its own right, and blacks in the south have considerable political power (at least in the larger urban areas). What facilitated that transformation? That might be helpful in determining how to facilitate social and economic change in foreign nations (since we seem determined to do so).

Taking it back to the topic, Sherman's march helped bring the war to an end, but it didn't solve the core issues that the war was fought over. In my opinion, if we desire to defeat the Taliban, then we need to carry the fight into their safehaven and make the price of continuing war too costly. If that is politically infeasible, then we probably need to change our policy and associated objectives. If you want the military to win, then you have to accept that war is war and endure the ugliness that comes with it.

Sherman was no war criminal, he was a soldier that executed his mission very effectively. A tactical mission tied to strategic ends.

[jmm99]

Sherman operated under GO 100 - in pertinent part (paras 15 & 17 being determinative):

14. Military necessity, as understood by modern civilized nations, consists in the necessity of those measures which are indispensable for securing the ends of the war, and which are lawful according to the modern law and usages of war.

15. Military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government, or of peculiar danger to the captor; it allows of all destruction of property, and obstruction of the ways and channels of traffic, travel, or communication, and of all withholding of sustenance or means of life from the enemy; of the appropriation of whatever an enemy's country affords necessary for the subsistence and safety of the Army, and of such deception as does not involve the breaking of good faith either positively pledged, regarding agreements entered into during the war, or supposed by the modern law of war to exist. Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God.

16. Military necessity does not admit of cruelty--that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. It does not admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of the wanton devastation of a district. It admits of deception, but disclaims acts of perfidy; and, in general, military necessity does not include any act of hostility which makes the return to peace unnecessarily difficult.

17. War is not carried on by arms alone. It is lawful to starve the hostile belligerent, armed or unarmed, so that it leads to the speedier subjection of the enemy.

On the other hand, "war crimes" and associated death penalties were not limited to the "losing side":

44. All wanton violence committed against persons in the invaded country, all destruction of property not commanded by the authorized officer, all robbery, all pillage or sacking, even after taking a place by main force, all rape, wounding, maiming, or killing of such inhabitants, are prohibited under the penalty of death, or such other severe punishment as may seem adequate for the gravity of the offense. A soldier, officer, or private, in the act of committing such violence, and disobeying a superior ordering him to abstain from it, may be lawfully killed on the spot by such superior.
....
47. Crimes punishable by all penal codes, such as arson, murder, maiming, assaults, highway robbery, theft, burglary, fraud, forgery, and rape, if committed by an American soldier in a hostile country against its inhabitants, are not only punishable as at home, but in all cases in which death is not inflicted the severer punishment shall be preferred.

QED.

Regards

Mike

[Polarbear1605]

Jmm, thanks for getting the discussion back on course but you need to understand that professional military officers don’t like discussing war crimes…it makes them think and uncover cracks (actually gapping holes) in their strategic war fighting doctrine. Yes “warfighters”, that is a gauntlet you are staring at in front of your corfammed toes. In order to get this discussion going I will gladly defend Sherman and state he is not a war criminal (and maybe some of you will take five minutes to read the Lieber Code).
Sherman is not a war criminal because he followed and obeyed his Laws of War (the Lieber Code – GO 100). The Lieber Code, at just over 9000 words, is a thing of beauty that served the US military well through the Civil War, the Indian Wars, the Spanish American War and the Philippine American War. The Lieber Code not only established the protection for wounded, POWs, and civilians but also demonstrated little tolerance for treachery. Because it did not enable treachery, it provided for the successful occupation of the Confederate States at the end of the civil war. An interesting study is the occupation at the end of the Civil War compared to the botched occupation of Iraq. One of the guiding principles of the Lieber Code in Article 29 states “The more vigorously wars are pursued the better it is for humanity. Sharp wars are brief.” That principle is long forgotten by our senior military leadership.

[Ken White]

One of the guiding principles of the Lieber Code in Article 29 states “The more vigorously wars are pursued the better it is for humanity. Sharp wars are brief.” That principle is long forgotten by our senior military leadership.

Sherman applied not only the Lieber Code but also the prescription of a nominal enemy:

""War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to throw up breastworks, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time. This will involve great destruction of life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be of brief continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property in the end. To move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure all the fruits of victory is the secret of successful war.""

As quoted in Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (1904) by George Francis Robert Henderson, Ch. 25 : The Soldier and the Man, p. 481

[ganulv]

The Lieber Code, at just over 9000 words, is a thing of beauty that served the US military well through the Civil War, the Indian Wars, the Spanish American War and the Philippine American War. The Lieber Code not only established the protection for wounded, POWs, and civilians but also demonstrated little tolerance for treachery.

At the risk of taking the discussion back off course… Laws are as good as individuals’ and societies’ willingness and ability to enforce them. In the context of the Indian Wars Sheridan’s refusal to call Major Baker to task for the 1870 attack on Heavy Runner’s camp is a glaring lapse in enforcement (I’m not necessarily saying Baker was a war criminal, but there was enough evidence available to Sheridan to suggest negligence at the least) and in the context of the Philippine-American War the water cure was used in spite of Lieber’s Article 16. One should of course acknowledge that both occurred amongst professional soldiers called upon to administer ill-conceived and poorly articulated policy. Plus ça change.

[Rifleman]

This is a broad generalization, but:

History is written by the victors; so war criminals are only on the losing side.

Look at the two famous green dragoons from an earlier war: Banistre Tarelton and Henry Lee.

One account of the "Waxhaws Massacre" says Tarelton had a horse shot out from under him during the initial attack. His troops saw their commander go down and went wild. They cut down men trying to surrender before Tarelton could remount and get them under control. So Tarelton is remembered for "Tarelton's Quarter" which is to say no mercy.

Lee's Legion wore green uniforms similar to Tarleton's British Legion. They once overtook some Loyalists by surprise who thought Lee was Tarelton until the last minute. An incident similar to Waxhaws happened with Lee's men out of control and cutting down men who may have been trying to surrender. And Lee didn't have the excuse of trying to remount and gain control of troops that thought their commander had gone down. Historian Robert Bass commented, "The quality of Lee's mercy here was far worse than Tarleton's at the Waxhaws."

These two men seem to have been strikingly similar in many of their experiences and operational methods. Yet, "Bloody Ban" is remembered as a villain and "Light Horse Harry" as a hero.

[ganulv]

Whatever people believe they need to be consistent in their reasoning process.

A need most frequently honored in the breach, in my experience!

And I'd like to point something out to Southerners who think he is: what Sherman did to your Confederate ancestors wasn't too much different than what their ancestors a generation earlier did in campaigns against the Creek and Cherokee.

The actions weren’t too much different—the Sullivan Expedition has been called war on vegetables, after all—but the rules were that the rules were different when the adversaries were Indians (Wayne E. Lee has published a few papers on this topic). I’m not claiming that that wasn’t hypocrisy, but rather just trying to historicize things.