On Killing Civilians

"While in Afghanistan over the past month, I found myself reading a lot of U.S. Civil War history. Despite the fact that I am from Chattanooga, Tennessee, I have never really been too interested in the U.S. Civil War. (And when I have read U.S. Civil War history, I have often found myself more drawn to heroes of the North like Buford and Grant and Reynolds -- and the more skeptical Southern generals like Longstreet. I am 100% East Tennessean in that way, I guess.) But I had been meaning to read Grant's memoirs for some time, and my friend Mike Sulmeyer gave me Shelby Foote's history of the Gettysburg Campaign for my birthday in June. As I was reading both books and with my mind on their protagonists, I found myself wondering whether Gen. McChrystal might be considered to be more like U.S. Grant or Robert E. Lee? Grant, of course, was chosen to save a foundering war by an Illinois lawyer turned president, so the comparison is obvious. Lee, however, embarked on his second invasion of the North with a glittering military reputation -- but found "the stars in their courses" fighting against him. Shades of the U.S./NATO mission in Afghanistan?"
Abu Muqawama