Stonewall Jackson and the jihadis

This was published over on The Athenaeum (my other blog) a while back.  In conjunction with the present Russian led campaign in Syria I think it is worth moving it to SST as a teaching tool.

It will be said as it always is said that the study of old wars is merely an antiquarian conceit, but I disagree.  I once team taught a course of "staff rides" on the WBS.  The Washington area is close enough to many of the major sites to make this possible.  Jeff White, now at WINEP, and I did this as colleagues.  We were adjunct faculty at what was then the Defense Intelligence College.  This was a course for hard skill Military Intelligence analysts both uniformed and civilian.  You know, the kind of people who actually try to get generals to listen to them about reality, operations, terrain and leadership.  This is an uphill task when dealing with people who are mainly concerned with career.

The drill was to load students, Jeff and me, a driver and a US Parks Service Ranger/Historian into a big bus and drive out to some stricken field where the Ranger would talk history and we would talk modern application.  The Rangers know more about these battlefields and campaign areas than any other living creatures.

I was told by many officers that this course was the most valuable part of their military education, but my executive level colleagues at DIA had a low opinion of the whole thing.  Those who dealt with "throw weight" and the like were particularly hurtful with references to "tree kicking," "bird watching" and the like.  Fortunately, the Director of DIA, LTG Ed Soyster did not agree with them.

 IMO it is a great mistake to think that war is a matter of technology and little else.  War is a social activity, fought by armed groups.  It is a process in which the mind of the enemy commander is the principle objective.

Stonewall Jackson understood that.  He had learned that in an autodidactic process of many years of study in his modest home in Lexington, Virginia where he taught. 

He understood that in war one must move fast, fast enough to get "inside" your enemy's cycle of information, decision and action and once inside that cycle you must remain there, dominating and in some cases paralyzing his movements by your dynamism.  That truth remains.

Stonewall's first and perhaps best biographer was Colonel GFR Henderson of the British Army.  The British have always appreciated Jackson more than the US Army, whom he abused fearfully.

General Sir Richard O'Connor the man who so badly defeated the Italian Army in Libya before the Germans sent Rommel was asked from whom he learned to operate with such purpose, drive and speed.  "From Stonewall Jackson" was the reply.

IMO the Russians learned the Stonewall way of thinking not in Afghanistan but rather in Chechniya and Georgia.  They seem to be applying it.  pl 

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/Articles/1985/1985%20lang%20hennessee%20bush.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O%27Connor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_Jackson_and_the_American_Civil_War

 

Comments

[YT]

RE: "Am a crank about old editions"

We are Kindred...

[turcopolier]

Trey N

I was a professor at USMA. While there I informed myself about the place. At the very beginning it only produced officers for the C of E, and only later began to send "surplus" graduates into the other arms, infantry, cavalry, artillery. the lone course in what could be called higher military studies was taught by DH Mahan and was thought to be not essential to the curriculum. On the other hand they learned to sketch beautifully, something essential as a skill for engineers. The tradition persisted for a long time that the very best graduates went into the C of E for the purpose of building national infrastructure; ports, dams, roads, etc. This remains an-undergraduate academic institution which does not emphasize the humanities or social sciences. pl

[Trey N]

A number of WP graduates later resigned from the Army Corps of Engineers to go to work in the burgeoning railroad industry before the war, George B. McClellan being the foremost example.

I assume the curriculum today includes more military studies than it did 150+ years ago. If so, what would the proportion be today and what courses would be included? Which classes did you teach?

[Larry Kart]

Colonel -- Any thoughts on Robert G. Tanner's "Stonewall in the Valley"? (I see that Tanner is a VMI graduate.) I have the revised 1996 edition.

[Ryan]

This is an excellent comparison and contrast you've written, Trey.

As for Old Jack's fatigue before the Seven Days too bad he didn't have a bunch of those lemons he liked!

[turcopolier]

Larry Kart

An excellent book. He cites my article on TJJ in his bibliography so it must be a good book. pl

[turcopolier]

Trey N

I am not a big fan of WP or any of the federal service academies. they are enormously expensive per graduate. I was ordered there to teach and begin an inter-departmental program in the Arabic language/literature and Middle East Studies. I taught Arabic and headed that program. The place is structured in such a way that faculty officers participate in the actual military training of the cadets and I did. You don't seem to know much about USMA. They have an on-line catalogue. This is still an undergraduate college that grants a degree and a commission in the US Army. Curricula are very heavy in science, math and engineering. Cadets are salaried while cadets and the whole place is paid for out of the budget of the US Army. Other than living in barracks in a life something like that of a soldier, cadets generally take a course each year that corresponds to what an ROTC cadet would be exposed to and do some sort of military duty in the summers, i.e., the first year in an introduction that is called "beast barracks," the second year at Camp Stilwell in the uninhabited western end of the USMA reservation. This is something like going to "outward bound with guns." The third year they go to units overseas to watch actual platoon leaders to see "how it is done" and at the end of the fourth year they graduate into the Army where they go their branch's basic course, infantry, armor, etc. along with ROTC graduates and begin to learn what it is to be a soldier rather than a cadet. many of the little darlings think that is a loss in status and they resign from the Army as soon as they can. There is a curriculum concentration called something like "Military Science." It is thought to be "the easy thing to do." and is not well regarded there. Retention in the Army is terrible. Wall Street is full of these guys. I was offered tenure and declined. pl

[Larry Kart]

Just ordered Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War" -- two vol. 1926 edition, with maps.

[Odin's Raven]

Thanks for that.

Would it have been better for the world if the Ottomans had been weaker and the Safavids stronger? If the Turks had not taken what is now eastern Turkey, would the Kurds have been happier under Safavid rule? Would the Safavids have prevented the Afghans from attacking India and as the result, might the Sikhs never have been created?

Why is Muslim spelling so variable? It looks as if 'o' and 'u' are interchangeable. We have variously, Mahommed, Mohammad and Muhammad, but not a version using 'i' or 'e'. Surely by the 16th c they had devised the system of marks (presumably copied from Hebrew),indicating which vowel was to be used?

Also I'm curious whether there is some connection linguistic or mystic, between the Arabian Kaa'ba and the Hebrew Kabalah?

[Trey N]

Thanks, Ryan! I'm glad you enjoyed the Jackson - Forrest comparison.

And I don't think even a whole crate of full of lemons would have helped with the level of physical exhaustion that Stonewall was suffering from after that grueling two days of travel. I guess that experience shows that the body of a middle-aged man definitely has limits to the amount of stress that it can endure....

[YT]

Col. sir,

I believe the "Parameters" link to your '85 article is 'broken.'

[turcopolier]

YT

It works for me. pl

[confusedponderer]

Ditto.