[A-List] Why the wars can't be won

Todd Boyle toddfboyle at gmail.com
Fri Aug 27 13:43:08 MDT 2010


Thanks for your essay at 
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20707

Actually, your title could have been more specific.  You didn't 
establish why all wars cannot be won.  That would be a larger project.

But this essay is absolutely golden.   The Civil War as 
failure.  Getting people to think about that, especially in the South!

You missed an opportunity to point out the collapse of reconstruction 
under a hail of bullets, lynchings and near-revolutionary war in the 
1880s, as even large garrisons of federal troops failed to protect 
blacks' civil rights against the white populations.  Quote Ulysses 
Grant or speeches in congress where politicians warned against a 2nd 
civil war, and gave up on the black voting rights.    Hundreds killed 
by KKK in genocidal campaigns --this is terrorism.  Terrorism is what 
you get.  And terrorism won.

There's another weakness --  you've built your argument on the 
studies that correlate states' social indicators with whatever 
Duopoly party won the last election.   We need to correlate those 
indicators with only the confederate states, in order to begin the 
case about the Civil War.   And then we *still* need to establish 
that these crappy statistics were the result of the civil war, rather 
than the reverse, or something else.

There have been some other studies correlating Red/Blue states' 
divorce rates, alcoholism, traffic fatalities, gambling, and other 
"moral indicators" besides crime rates.   I'd recommend those indicators.

And drop the statistic about mobile homes.  Mobile homes are 
fine--what's that got to with your case?  Since I'm 58 and have no 
pension or savings, I'll probably spend my retirement years in one, 
if I'm lucky.

Todd Boyle   public intellectual, town drunk, and misanthrope  (425) 827-3107
9745 128th Avenue NE, Kirkland WA 98033-5286
antiwar  http://rosehill.net videographer http://vimeo.com/user1891999/videos




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