At 03:18 PM 12/16/2003, Jim Dixon wrote:

You should try to remember how the US Civil War ended. The armed forces of the South surrendered. Lee handed his sword to Grant. I believe that Grant returned it - and allowed each Southern soldier to keep a rifle and a mule. Lee and the other leaders of the South lived out their lives in peace. There were of course acts of terror on both sides, but on the whole the combatants behaved decently. There was considerable mutual respect, because both sides recognized that the other had behaved honourably. The same cannot be said of Saddam Hussain.

I have no idea what led to believe this. The North behaved so dishonorably during the war that it essentially rewrote the book on the rules of war for the rest of the world. Most academic historians, without legal training, have played down the war crimes issue, as if it has no bearing on those who win a war. It does. In the early seventeenth century, Hugo Grotius, a Dutch lawyer, came forth with The Law of War and Peace, which was translated into English in 1646. It immediately became the bible of the law of nations and found its way into the courts, libraries, and governments of Europe. Grotius soon became "the father of modern international law." Grotius held that states, like people, are bound by a code of law, with duties and prohibitions that are universal, reasonable, and unchangeable. One nation, for example, may not attack another. After reviewing the practices of ancient nations, philosophers and legists, Grotius concluded that "authorities generally as-sign to wars three justifiable causes: defence, recovery of property, and punishment." Grotius noted that the German barbarians of the north had a strong code and "were the most just: they refrained from war unless attacked." The Ro-man lawyer Cicero would have been the father of ancient international law. In his De Republica (30.23) he set forth the principle that "wars undertaken without reason are unjust wars. Except for the purpose of avenging or re-pulsing an enemy, no just war can be waged." By the nineteenth century, the concept of a just war became a part of the law of nations even though it had been an unwritten rule of society since the Middle Ages. Many of the tax rebellions in Europe, Spain, and England were resisting revenue demands of unjust wars, wars that were not for the defense of the realms. That same principle became part of the U.S. Constitution, which restricted tax expenditures for "the common Defense." At West Point cadets were taught the principles of Grotius and international law under General Order no. 12, by none other than Lincoln's top commander, General Henry Halleck, who wrote the book. No general dur-ing the Civil War can claim ignorance of the laws of wars, especially the laws against the plunder and devastation of private property. Here is an ex-cerpt from General Order no. 12, written by Halleck on the wanton plun-der of private property: "The inevitable consequences . . . are universal pil-lage and a total relaxation of discipline; the loss of private property, and the violation of individual rights . . . and the ordinary peaceful and non-combatants are converted into bitter and implacable enemies. The system is, therefore, regarded as both impolitic and unjust, and is coming into gen-eral disuse among the most civilized nations." But Halleck's book and teachings weren't the only condemnation of plunder of civilian property. On 24 April 1863, under Lincoln's signature, the army promulgated to its officers General Order no. 100, which came to be known as the Lieber Code and eventually received acclaim throughout the military in the Western world. Halleck was a close friend of its author, Professor Francis Lieber of Columbia University. A month after this order was given to the officers in the Union army, Professor Lieber wrote to the top commander, General Halleck "I know by letters . . . that the wanton destruction of property by our men is alarming. It does incalculable injury. It demoralizes our troops, it annihilates wealth irrevocably and makes a return to a state of peace and peaceful minds more and more difficult. Your order [to the offi-cers] . . . with reference to the Code, and pointing out the disastrous consequences of reckless devastation, in a manner that it might not furnish our reckless enemy with new arguments for his savagery." Halleck remained general in chief until Lincoln fired him in 1864 and appointed Grant as top commander. 1t was under Grant that the Lieber Code, now in the hands of all leading officers, was disregarded, and pillage and plunder became the general order of the final year of the war. Sherman and Sheridan could not possibly have undertaken their devastation of the South if they had followed this new military code on the laws of war. They also turned away from their education at West Point and the laws of war they had learned there under Halleck. Years after the war Sherman wrote a letter to a friend in which he acknowledged that he knew better that at West Point he had been taught that the pillage he brought to the South was a crime, punishable by death: "1 know that in the beginning 1, too, had the old West Point notion that pil-lage was a capital crime, and punished it by shooting." American generals were frilly aware that Napoleon was punished and banished from Europe for engaging in aggressive wars over a twenty year period. The law of warfare was being enforced for the first tune against a loser. But winners need not worry, then or now, as war crimes, by and large, are only committed by defeated leaders. In the Civil War, Lincoln and his generals were immune from the laws of war because they won. Unfortunately, during the nineteenth century, Americans seemed to believe that they had a divine right to aggression. It was the destiny of the American people and government to rule over North America--all of it. And this was God's plan. This made the war against Mexico justified, even though in General Grant's memoirs he condemned the war as one of ag-gression, and so did Lincoln as a congressman at the time. This may explain why so much has been written about who fired the first shot of the Civil War, as if that justifies the total war that engulfed America, even though that Fourth of July display of cannon at Fort Sumter didn't hurt any-one. It was not Pearl Harbor. The laws of war not only focused on the aggressor defender issue, they also set forth rules about how armies and especially its leaders and gen-erals had to conduct themselves. Historians with a strongly Northern Lincoln idolizing viewpoint do not realize the criminal element in the way the war was conducted criminal by the laws of nations. The end clearly justified the means. Consider this observation by a prominent historian, Stephen Oates, who describes Lincoln's method of warfare in glowing terms: "Lincoln's armies were mopping up the Confederacy in all direc-tions, waging scorched earth warfare against the Rebel economy and civil-ian morale with ruthless efficiency .... Lincoln fully endorsed Sheridan's burning of the Shenandoah Valley, Sherman's brutal March to the Sea through Georgia, and the Carolina's Brigadier General James H. Wilson's destructive raid across Alabama. Such warfare earned Lincoln and his gen-erals undying hatred in Dixie, but it brought victory."

The people of the South did not walk in terror of Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis. The people of the North were not murdered, raped, and tortured by Grant and Lincoln.

In addition to abandoning the Constitution, the Lincoln administration established another ominous precedent by deciding to abandon international law and the accepted moral code of civilized societies and wage war on civilians. General Sherman announced that to secessionists all of them, women and children included--death is mercy. Lincoln and his generals violated the laws of nations, and Northern historians seem unaware of that. Another famous historian from Princeton, James M. McPherson, goes even further than Oates. He doesn't hesitate to call Lincoln's war strategy brilliant, even using the term "genius," and Sherman, with Lincoln's adoration, is a great noble general for his devastation of civilian property in his march to the sea. When a Southerner called Sherman a barbarian for what he was doing, Sherman replied that a commander "may take your house, your fields, your everything, and turn you out helpless to starve. It may be wrong, but that don't alter the case." His acknowledgment that "it may be wrong" may have come from his education at West Point, and contrary to the famous general's excuse, it does alter the case it makes Sherman a war criminal. Writing to General Halleck in September 1864, amid his infamous destruction of civilian property and life, Sherman again excused himself: "If people [civilians] raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty I will answer them that war is war." This is the same general who later, in the Indian wars, used the same philosophy when he said, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian," which he meant literally. Incidentally, l am not the only historian to see the commission of war crimes by Sherman and his confederates in arms. Otto Cisenschirnl, writing in the January 1964 issue of Civil War Times, less than twenty years after the Nuremberg war crimes trials, asserted that Sherman should have been hanged as a war criminal.' While the generals were quite pleased with themselves over their barbarism and war crimes, the soldiers who had to carry out these orders were not so pleased with the work. Robert Shaw, a student at Harvard who had risen through the ranks to be promoted to colonel in early 1863, was commanded by a superior officer to burn the city of Darien, Georgia. He wrote to his wife that "for myself, I have gone through the war so far without dishonor, and I do not like to degenerate into a plunderer and robber, and the same applies to every officer in my regiment." (This is the same Shaw portrayed in the movie Glory.) Too bad the top gun, General Sherman, didn't feel that way. Sherman lived, but Shaw, this remarkable officer, was killed in action on Morris Is-land, South Carolina, a month after writing the above letter. Lincoln's policy of crushing dissenters with overwhelming military might was continued after the war with the federal government's eradication of the Plains Indians by many of the same generals who had guided the North's war effort (particularly Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan). The stated purpose of this campaign against the Plains Indians was to make way for the government subsidized transcontinental railroads. The quest for empire had become the primary goal of government in America. Lincoln's policy of crushing dissenters with overwhelming military might was continued after the war with the federal government's eradication of the Plains Indians by many of the same generals who had guided the North's war effort (particularly Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan). The stated purpose of this campaign against the Plains Indians was to make way for the government subsidized transcontinental railroads. The quest for empire had become the primary goal of government in America. steve

On Dec 16, 2003, at 1:50 PM, Nomen Nescio wrote:

This makes me a bit curious. Tell me, is your opinion then that the U.S. has done nothing questionable here? You don't feel that treating a former head of state (regardless of what you happen to think of that person) in this manner and videorecording it AND transmitting it to the entire globe violates the spirit of the convention? You feel this was the right thing to do? You would have no problem seing a U.S. or European leader being treated the same way?

Who is the "you" referred to here? Please quote or refer to comments you ("you") are responding to, especially when you ask questions. --Tim May