As expected, many readers take exception. Two, for example:

“Americans don’t do ruthless well, never have (except maybe for Southerners like Nathan Bedford Forrest).” Puh-leeze. Not to marginalize the brutality and hatefulness of racists like Forrest, but American ruthlessness is far from a Southern phenomenon. Does the name William Tecumseh Sherman ring a bell? We may read different history books down here, but the way I recall it, the March to the Sea was hardly a tea party. It was also, lest we forget, highly effective – some might say the Louisville Slugger that broke the camel’s back. I suspect Americans have a fairly high tolerance for ruthlessness, as long as they think the ends have a decent chance of justifying the means.

And:

Jonah, Your long time friend makes a very good point about American willingness to tolerate extended wars, and about our willingness to enter wars in the first place. I completely agree that Roosevelt might not have been able to maneuver the country into war with Germany had Hitler not declared war on us. He is also correct in pointing out that other countries are much more vicious in making war than Americans are. His example of Japanese soldiers using living Chinese for bayonet practice is the most obvious but by no means the only example. But none of that is relevant to the question at hand. Once we are in a war can we be ruthless, which is very different from being vicious? Your friend says we have no history of being ruthless other than the Confederate warrior Bedford Forrest. He is just wrong. The whole Federal campaign against the Confederacy was a war of exhaustion. The Shenandoah Valley and than the whole southern heartland were made useless for the practical purpose of growing food. The destruction caused by Sherman’s march through Georgia cannot be overstated. It is better known but actually less destructive than the damage done by his army when they finally got to the home of the rebellion, South Carolina. When people ask me about nuclear bombs on Japan I respond by asking if Sherman would have used one on Atlanta. He would have gotten the job done with a lot less trouble. We can be ruthless and we need to be on occasion. That doesn’t mean we have to commit atrocities as most of enemies have and do. It just means that we occasionally need to remember that war is about killing people and breaking things. I’m sorry if that observation offends the folks who are overly endowed with ruth. Naw, we sometimes need to treat those folks ruthlessly.