Civil War 2.0?

​The American Civil War is filled with lessons for politicians and warfighters alike. You could write a book about all that we could learn from the losses that were suffered by soldier and civilian alike. The war that our new nation was immersed in was an entertaining spectacle for the rest of the world. The Civil War changed warfare for the world in some ways, but in other ways, it took WW1 for the rest of the world to see the light. From my understanding of the Civil War, we are running a parallel course and at risk of repeating some of the same conceptual mistakes made back then. In this article, I am just going to hit some of the wave top subjects, or else this piece will take forever to get published.

TACTICAL ATROPHY

Prior to the Civil War kicking off, Americas military was tiny. What military there was had been studying and admiring the tactical concepts set by Napoleon. Cannon support, infantry bravely marching in shoulder to shoulder up to the enemy, tight micro-management by superiors, etc. West Point alumni were plucked for Generalship where their dogmatic focus on ‘conventional fighting’ was a root of unnecessary loss of life and even loss of opportunities to end the war faster. The ironic thing is that Americans were now fighting the way the British were fighting in the Revolutionary war. Sadly, the Revolutionary War tactical lessons were largely forgotten. America was at a relative peace before the Civil War, just after securing Texas from the Mexican military.
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This parallels a lot of what I am seeing in the military today. People look at tactical manuals and seem to think combat is like a football game. You hear leaders talk as if battle drills done exactly as written is the key to victory. If you can’t force the battle drills to work as written, you are just not doing it right. They think that if ambushed, you always just assault through on line or in bounds as the battle drill says. If you move, it MUST be in buddy teams and you have 3-5 seconds to be fully upright in the open. If you attack, you always laying down a base of fire and then run in the open fully upright like courageous cannon fodder. So sad that the concept of tactics has atrophied today to the point of thinking you can just apply a certain battle drill to every conceivable situation. Many people are going to die because of leaders taking tactical EXAMPLES and treating them as gospel.

LACK OF TRAINING

Generals largely discouraged initiative and completely relied on strict obedience to orders from junior officers. Being a soldier was pretty simple in those days. Get orders, obey. There was not a lot of tactical reasoning or planning going on. Your every move was already plotted out ahead of you and all you needed to do was follow through on it. Also, training/drill was virtually nonexistent at the outset of the war, causing confusion, panic, and tactical mishaps in battle. But, when drill became a common practice later in the war, it was taken so far that it actually had detrimental effects. The order of the day was drill, hardtack, drill, coffee, and more drill.
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Today, training in the conventional military rarely takes the form of practical exercise but rather involves sexual harassment PowerPoints, equality of the million genders, pronoun adherence, gear and uniform inspections, and indirect skill training that has little to do with maneuvering and fighting. The closest you will see troops get to practical exercise is being gone in patrol bases for a week at a time and just patrolling around so team leaders can get navigational experience and practice in formations. Range time is rare and isolated to a flat range in the name of safety. Time using blanks or simunition is even more rare and is relegated to trying to perfectly replicate the battle drills in manuals. The expectation is that the troops will just rise to the occasion when in an actual fight.

UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE UNEXPLOITED

Though there were a couple of examples of unconventional warfare from the Confederate side, the concept was not fully exploited. Based on the strategic results from Nathan Bedford Forrest and Mosby, unconventional fighting could have done so much good. The generals in the Union were so obsessed with sticking to old styles of fighting, all the way until the end. They disregarded the idea of small units doing ambushes, raids, sniping leadership, and all the things that were widely used by the dwindling American militia to get the upper hand on the superior numbered British force in the Revolutionary war. If you weren’t exposing yourself to the enemy to get shot in the face, you were a coward. If you shot an officer, you were dishonorable. You fought to give your General the glory and reputation. Rarely was it the private soldier who was credited, to this day, with holding and fighting. The private soldier is just some mindless automaton, devoid of an independent thought or existence.

Current military leaders think that we can still fight a war like Word War 1. Just look at the manuals. Harassment ambushes and raids are not a thing. Sneaking in and infiltrating an enemy position is the stuff of snakes and cowards. Ambushing an enemy in their rear echelon base or bombing an enemy mess hall is considered a terrorist act. These practices were used by regular soldiers in the NVA in Vietnam and Japanese military in WW2. Dropping a few fire teams off to cut off communications, supplies, and delay reinforcements is too risky and is not in the playbooks. Current leadership would rather have you march upright against the enemy prepared positions like true cannon fodder. Totally counter to how our past and future enemy train. I dare say that our current leadership is not in it to spare the lives of their troops but rather seek glory. Often senior leadership does not recruit the imagination and inventive capabilities of the lower echelon fighters, but rather direct them as if they are just chess pieces devoid of rational thought. That plays into how the military trains its soldiers to fight. Shut up and blindly follow orders like a robot. Don’t think, just do what you are told.

WRAPUP

Upright warfare looks good on paper but has never worked out for those that adhere to it with the dogmatic view our military currently does. I don’t mean to be too harsh on the military, but there are things about the leadership that I just cannot ignore. America as a whole seems to have a short memory. By the time the Civil War kicked off, the military had forgotten what gave us victory over the British, who used the same tactics. Leaders failed to learn from their enemy, even when the lessons were right in front of them. These problems are not isolated to history and we are always at risk of repeating these mistakes. As the saying goes: Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.