it's a solid book, although a little ethnocentric in hindsight with regard to the Vietnam aspect. Or, as Pickett said, when asked why his side lost after his fateful charge, "I think the Yanks had something to do with it".

Crazy thing is that he wrote this as a major in the Army, and probably developed his thesis at the Army school called CGSC, the Command and General Staff College, or his previous time as a history professor at West Point. Not a lot of lateral or divergent thinking going on there back then.

Edit: the book is likely the reason he got passed over for brigadier general at first.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

He was my office mate when we both taught military history at the US Military Academy at West Point. Dude owes me a serious amount of copenhagen from bumming it off me cause he didn't want Katy knowing he was dipping so he wouldn't buy the shit. Sure brave hero of 73' Easting but won't let the little woman know you're dipping again. He's seriously smart--and he knows it. The book is his PhD dissertation from Ohio State which some allege is an institution of higher learning. It's a good book and a clearly presented argument that the Joint Chiefs were derelict in their duty in not standing up to LBJ as the war in Vietnam escalated. Book was so controversial in the community (that and H.R.s penchant for self promotion being rivaled only by Petraeus) that it nearly caused him not to be invited into the ranks of the general officer corps.

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Steve

Read it this past fall, thought it was really good. Not only were the generals derelict in their duty to stand up to LBJ, but Johnson, McNamara, and others should be hung by their thumbs for the lies they told and for having zero real strategy other than to try and influence the behavior of the North Vietnamese, which was folly from the get go.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

I understand the allegation of West Point not having a lot of original thinking going on. Do you have any personal knowledge of this or are you merely repeating what you've heard?

Having graduated from West Point and gone back to teach history there I can tell you the following. If you know all this and want to double down on your assertion than by all means carry on

To go back and teach cadets at West Point a mandatory self imposed restriction is that more than half of the instructors be non-Academy graduates. So as to prevent West Pointers teaching West Pointers how to be West Pointers and their foreheads start to protrude and their eyes narrow. So as an Academy graduate it was actually harder for me to get back there in a teaching slot relative to ROTC or OCS graduates

All of us going back to teach are sent off to get ABD'd at major research universities. In my particular case I was to be the "US Civil War" guy so the choices were Temple (to cold), UGA (to close to my MIL) and Texas A&M--this was purely a function of the quality of the tenured professors and the relative quality of the program. Other friends in various departments went off to: Duke, Rensler PTI, Michigan, Standford, The Ohio State, etc.

I'd assert that there is a very forward looking and open minded-ness going on in the teaching of our new LTs at USMA. But again, your opinion may differ and that's ok too.

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Steve

I meant to refer to CGSC, the big Army, and the field grade officer corps in general in the 90's. My sentence structure was poor, and West Point got rolled up into it. My fault.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

NP amigo. Spent my time out in Kansas. I'd ride across the Missouri R and up that side for my long rides. Windy and hot or Windy and cold seemed to be the only two options. Great year tho and after grad school it wasn't very academically rigorous I'll fully admit. FYI if you're interested is a great book by Carol Reardon entitled "Soldiers and Scholars: The US Army and the Uses of Military History, 1865-1820" We had Dr Reardon up as a guest lecturer at WP and she gave a great pitch on this subject.

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Steve

All of us going back to teach are sent off to get ABD'd at major research universities. In my particular case I was to be the "US Civil War"

Interesting.

I've started a goal of reading all the Pulitzer Prize winning novels in History, Biography and General Non-Fiction. I'm currently on "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James McPherson, which I'm sure you've read. It's my first reading of anything to do with the Civil War and it is fascinating. I'd heard bits and pieces over my life but had no idea of the main issues.

I've often thought of going back to school to get a history degree but there are so many good books to read on my own, without paying tuition, that I never bothered.

McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom' is probably the best one volume history of the US Civil War. It's the book I used when teaching my general/survey US Civil War history class at West Point. There's a truncated version that strips out the politics and concentrates solely on the military campaigns. Don't go down that road. How can you separate the politics that drove the war and entire campaigns? McPherson does a great job of laying all that out in context and within the current state of the historiography he's spot on in naming the cause that drove the war. Slavery--that peculiar institution. You can talk of State's Right (gotta say that with a southern twang), King Cotton, blah blah blah. It all comes back to slavery.

PM me or start another thread if you're interested in more military history. Its one of my passions.

and while McPherson's maps are fair I'd also recommend getting ahold of "The West Point Atlas of American Wars, Vol.1" so you can see the battles and campaigns unfold in space and time as you also read about them.

Areas I've some interest in and entire bookcases devoted to are: US Civil War, Frontier/Indian Wars, Airpower, Seapower, WWII on Western front, US War in Vietnam, and Counterinsurgency or Guerilla War.

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Steve

I was almost going to start a discussion about the dynamic between Colonel Kit Carson and Major General Carleton in the southwest Indian battles. I've been on a Carson reading binge, and he does come off as a really sympathetic figure in terms of his ideas about the treatment of Indians, despite him tragically ending up as maybe the most famous "Indian killer" in populist history. Carleton considerably less sympathetic. Carson seems to have gotten really tired of the strategy of Carleton's strategies, and nearly resigned, but never did. It's sort of poignant that at the end of his life, while suffering from apparent heart failure, he was escorting Indians to Washington to help them negotiate treaties.

Correction: The book is based on hid PhD dissertation from when he was at UNC-Chapel Hill. I would say it was a paired down version of the dissertation, often most a lot dissertations get published as books through the University Press.

Not only is the reason he got passed over for Brigadier, it's quite possibly the reason he never got a field command as MG and LTG.

Interesting book overall.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Ive just finished readying DeVoto's "Across the Wide Missouri" about the mountain men/fur trade/opening of the American West. Really tragic reading about the demise of the great Mandan village on the Missouri. The traders knew the Mandan's were f'd when small pox came up the river from St Louis on a steamer and tried to keep the Mandans out of their trading posts and away from the steamer crew and property so as to protect them. But the Mandan's were adamant it was some sort of trick to put them at a disadvantage and stole the very blankets and items that were the seeds of their destruction.

Ive got Cozzens' "The Earth is Weeping" qued up to read for my next rotation.

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Steve

Are you an Aggie? We can even count grad students as Ags.

Class of '82 from West Point
Class of '92 from TAMU

I had thought about getting an Aggie class ring but hell my West Point ring has been sitting in my gunsafe for over a decade and I don't even wear it.

Go Army--Beat Houston

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Steve

Aggies and West Pointers are always quick to make sure that you know where they went to school. How is so much insufferable school pride able to be contained in one person?

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Suffer Well.

I will endeavor to persevere ;-)

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Steve

When I was was in the Marines there were two types of fellow officers who were very, very proud of their alma mater -Aggies and Boat Schoolers -most had the ring to knock at the most annoying opportunity. I understand the West Point folks are equally proud of their school.

The fact that you don't have a TAMU ring and don't wear your USMA ring tells me you have the right amount humility to, in fact, persevere.

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Suffer Well.

Can you imagine his pride if he'd gone to a better military academy like Navy? ;-)

Gig 'em!
Fighting Texas Aggie Class of 1989 and still wearing my ring!

No. But somehow your post proved my point.

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Suffer Well.

Ha!

My cousin Brian Hawley (USNA '84) did go to canoe U. And I cheer for Navy 364 days of the year. Unfortunately Brian's A-6 went into a mountain out in WA state.

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Steve

What did you think of Shelby Foote's trilogy? I greatly enjoyed those and am considering re-reading them. Just finished "Big Week" about the huge bomber raids in early 1944 with the stated goal of breaking the back of the Luftwaffe prior to D-Day; highly recommended. Right now I'm on "Directorate S," although I must say it is more than a bit depressing. The chapter on torture really turned my stomach.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Waterboarding is torture. We should have no truck with it and shame on us for having done so.

Directorate S is depressing to read. Time and time again you're reading the book and saying to yourself '...don't make that bad policy decision..' and yet we do time and time again. Yet if you want to understand our unique dilemma in the Af/Pak theater you have to read this book and wrestle with it.

Shelby Foote is a solid historian and a superb raconteur. He just knows how to tell a tale so well. It's popular history so easy to read--but it's good history if a bit biased towards the Southern side. You get a full dose of "The Lost Cause" from good old Shelby. But it's damn good history in general terms.

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Steve

PM me or start another thread if you're interested in more military history. Its one of my passions.


Once I get through the book I'll start a thread on the military history, this is fascinating for me so I would imagine a lot of others both in and out of the U.S. I am only at page 150 so he is laying the political groundwork which I find fascinating. I can already see how you need to look at the politics when looking at the war. The whole issue of the expansion to the West and if States were going to be free or slave really shows how the battle lines were forming long before the fighting started.


It's a reminder to me that although the U.S seems divided now, when you look back to the mid 1850's, it seems tame in comparison.

Sorry to hear about your cousin.
I lost a couple Aggie buddies outside of combat.

Glad to see Army kick butt today.
I really pulled for you guys against Oklahoma.