XPost: or.politics, or.general
From: LiveFromTheClocktower@gfy.com
"David Loftus" wrote in message
news:1151962312.869794.205570@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> I think that's a pretty acute and accurate reading of Paine.
>
> I just don't get how it applies to the current adventure in Iraq, since
> it's been hard for me to see how fighting over there serves our country
> -- as distinguished from discrete portions of our corporate and
> political power interest blocs.
The ones sending folks to war -- the "sunshine patriots" aren't the ones
going to war. The ones making the policy decisions in the war are, nearly
to a man, folks who dodged service in their own day.
I referred to "fire-eaters" before as an example. The Fire-eaters were the
adamant pro-secessionists who waved flags and hired brass bands to play
patriotic war tunes and whipped up the civil war. They were perfectly happy
to convince --and later force-- the common southerner to go fight their war
but few of the Fire-eaters actually marched off with them.
Sen. Louis Wigfall was one of them; he took command of the Texas brigade.
He'd go off on a drunk, pass out, have nightmares that the yanks were coming
and rustle thousands of men from camp and have them forced-marched through
the snow off into nowhere, sober up and bring them back. Eventually his
command simply ignored him and before long John Bell Hood took command. The
brigade's battle flags were made from his daughter's wedding dresses. Under
them, the brigade lost 90% of its men. Hood lost an arm and a leg.
Wigfall never saw action.
Edwin Ruffin claimed to have fired the first shot on Ft. Sumpter, but at
least he had the good grace to wrap himself in a Confederate flag and blow
his own head off with a shotgun after the war.
-c
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