Thursday

                         Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“Joan Collins has had so many men that she is known as The British Open.”

                                              Joan Rivers

Trivia question of the day:

In the movie “The Ten Commandments” who played the pharaoh Rameses the Great? Answer at the end of the blog.

A while back at a Republican debate one of news people tried to embarrass Trump by asking about him saying that he would have no problem killing any terrorists...and their families. I am no hardcore Trump supporter but that reminded me of a quote made by US Generals George Patton and Curtis Lemay. They said “There are only two ways to win a war, you kill them all or prosecute the war so severely that the enemy surrenders.”

I invite all of you to look at what happened to Coventry, Bristol, London and several other cities in England in the spring of 1940...they were bombed day and night by the German Luftwaffe and thousands of civilians were killed. Also look at what happened to Leipzig, Hamburg, Regensburg, Berlin and several other German cities in 1943, 1944 and 1945 by the RAF and USAAF, not to mention Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Nagoya and several other Japanese cities. Why were these cities destroyed...most had very little military value? It was to “prosecute the war so severely that the enemy surrenders”...civilians were killed wholesale. The problem with Germany was all that bombing did not make them surrender, so the “kill them all” part came to bear when the US and the Allies sealed off western Germany and would not accept a surrender. The Russians attacked from the east and southeast and killed anything German they encountered especially after seeing what happened at Buchenwald and Dachau which they had liberated. After this display of unbridled savagery by the Russians, hopefully the world will never see again, Germany surrendered completing an Allied victory in Europe.

Since then the USA has engaged in wars that we did not and will not win like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan because we did not listen to Lemay and Patton. Thousands of American soldiers have died or are being killed for nothing because there is no final goal. We are neither “killing them all” nor “prosecuting the war severely”, it is a fight for “containment” of the enemy. This accomplishes nothing.

The loss of civilian lives goes back to the Bible when Joshua was instructed by God through Moses to kill every person, man, woman or child, they encountered on their way north up the Jordan river valley to Canaan so there would be no army arrayed behind them. It is nothing new.

If you were considering being a terrorist like we saw in Paris, San Bernadino, 9-11, etc. would you proceed knowing that if you (or your corpse) was identified your entire family would be destroyed top to bottom? Well, would you? I can hear it now...that is not what we Americans are about...really? The USAAF firebombed Hamburg, Germany and 76,000 civilians died in one night (see the book The Night Hamburg Died)...or the firebombing of Tokyo and over 110,000 civilians died in three days, not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It sounds cruel but it put a stop to Americans being killed and and put a stop to hostilities by “prosecuting the war severely”. Make no mistake, we are at war. By the way, before all of this the US cavalry did not have a problem with raiding Native American villages and destroying their livestock and crops knowing that the very old and very young would starve to death. The first concentrated attack against United States civilians was US General William Sherman's “March to the Sea” during the Civil War. His army laid waste to a 60 mile wide swath of Georgia from Chattanooga to Savannah. Thousands of civilians died of starvation, exposure and disease. I can assure you that we in the land of the free and the home of the brave have proven time and again that we have no problem with destruction of non-combatants. Remember “prosecute the war severely...”? Vladimir Putin understands this concept...and his enemies know it.

This Date in History March 7

1862 Earlier CSA General Sterling Price had to withdraw from Missouri and was being chased by US General Samuel Curtis. General Price and his army of 8,000 met up with CSA General Ben McCullough and another small army led by CSA General Earl Van Dorn and they combined into an army of 14,000 and turned to face General Curtis and his army of 10,000. General Earl Van Dorn was selected to be the battlefield commander. On this date the two armies met at Pea Ridge, Arkansas near the Elkhorn Tavern. Van Dorn sent Ben McCullough and his troops on a flanking maneuver early on but McCullough was killed and his troops were soon in disarray. After seeing this, US General Curtis launched a counter-attack and after prolonged bitter fighting the Confederates withdrew. This battle was a serious loss for the Confederates because they never again were a viable power in the state of Arkansas. By the way, CSA General Earl Van Dorn was literally caught in the saddle by a jealous husband and killed ending a brilliant military career.

1981 On this date 23 year old Karen Barnes is found dead in her San Francisco apartment with her skull crushed and stabbed 27 times in the face and neck. Earlier Karen had allowed Susan and James Carson to live in her apartment. Susan and James were children of privileged parent but decided to live a life on the dark side. Karen, James and Susan went for weeks walking around naked and all were arrested for indecent exposure and a variety of drug charges more than once. As you might suspect, James and Susan were no where to be found after the police found Karen. They had moved to small town in Arizona and into a mobile home with a man name Gary Ferguson. One night Gary said something that Susan considered an insult and James whipped out a pistol and capped Gary. In 1983 James and Susan end up out on the highway hitchhiking and were picked up by John Hillyer. Poor old John said something that Susan thought was offensive and James came to the rescue with his trusty sidearm and dispatched John with three shots to the head. The police finally caught up with these two demons and they are tried for the murder of Karen Barnes, Gary Ferguson and John Hillyer. Their defense was that all three of them were witches and the Bible and the Koran allows the killing of witches. Although a novel defense, the jury didn’t by it and sent them to prison for life without parole. It is too bad that they were tried in California. If it had been Texas or South Carolina they would have met their maker fried to golden brown and meet their mentor in a place a lot warmer.

Answer to the trivia question:

In the movie “The Ten Commandments” Rameses the Great was played by Yul Brynner.

               Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow