100% agree.

I was just listening to Jocko Willink's podcast and the question of 'collateral damage' came up. Jocko was the Seal commander in charge of "task force Bruiser" during the Battle of Ramadi and his unit is the most decorated special forces unit in history. He was pretty matter of fact about it. Described the kinds of things that the US forces did to minimize civilian casualties - things that put themselves in tremendous danger. But at some point, with the enemy using innocent citizens as human shields, those casualties were unavoidable. His snipers had such control over some avenues, for instance, that the bad guys started using children as shields when they wanted to cross the street. Literally grab a child and hold him/her as a shield from the snipers. He still had them take the shots and sometimes kids got killed. It was tragic and the snipers paid the psychological price for it. (Chris Kyle was one of his guys).

But he contrasted the criticism of these casualties with WWII, where we firebombed entire cities in order to defeat the Nazi's. Or Viet Nam, where we napalmed entire stretches of jungle or entire villages on sketchy evidence that the enemy was there. GOP candidate rhetoric aside, we don't carpet bomb cities anymore because we have more precise ways to kill the bad guys. Do some innocent people die from drone strikes and smart bomb attacks and door-to-door 'take and hold' urban warface tactics? Sure. Is it anywhere near the 'collateral damage' that would have been caused a generation or two ago, where we might have just bombed the city to rubble? Not even in the same neighborhood. A generation or two from now, we may have smart bullets that never miss and precision drones and who knows what else that make the current military tactics may seem barbaric. But not today. 

Context and perspective. 

Certainly I can not speak with experienced authority as I never served in the military.  But I'm enough of a well-read historian to have a bit of a perspective of what the experience of war might be like.

I know it isn't a video game.  And I know bad things happen that are regrettable.  But there is no "Do Over" button to eliminate that "collateral damage." 

Doc, your post was top shelf.  Two thumbs up from me.

Robert E. Lee was regarded in his day as the perfect model of a classic American gentleman.  He was unimpeachable in all things.  Never had a demerit at West Point, for goodness sake.  Yet he was the owner of people. To overlook today all that was admirable, gentlemanly and worthy in the man because he held an opinion that was quite common in his day and age misses him entirely.  He was no demon, no matter how much we might detest his belief system today.

Thomas Jefferson?  My goodness, what shall we do with him?

We're I to yesterday oppose the idea that same-sex marriage is somehow guaranteed in the Constitution, does that make me a cretin tomorrow....once the Supreme Court has ruled upon it.

Do you think Abraham Lincoln felt that women should be given the vote?  Imagine how his name might be dragged through the mud in some college courses today.

Weirdly, I think it is accepted today to lambaste historical figures for the positions they held which were common in their day but antitetical to modern belief systems and at the ame time overlook the worst parts of modern figures to laud their other qualities.

How does Bill Clinton get a pass?  Or Tiger Woods?  Or Ray Lewis?  Ah...but they sparkle in other areas supporters will say.

Nobody sparkled more than Robert E. Lee.  Sigh.

...positions they held which were common in their day but antitetical to modern belief systems...

I entirely agree on Lee.  If I remember correctly, Lincoln recruited him to lead the Union army...but he decided he had to be true to his state and its peolple.  

But in what way do Bill Clinton and Tiger Woods fit into thi scenario?  Because the modern belief system holds to rigid celebacy--as evidenced by Donald Trump?

The logic eludes me...

Their serial womanizing, while married, is legendary.  Yet such is not the way we most remember them, is it?  Nor do most of us hold it against them.  Well, maybe Bubba.  They have certainly not been removed from the modern Pantheon of their respective fields.  Few feminists attack them today.  

Yet Lee's ownership of people was no more illegal in his day than the activites they engaged in.  Washington, Jefferson....heck Woodrow Wilson (a product of the south), et al.

And Doc hit the Ray Lewis thing on the head.  By common account, he was a pretty undesiralbe character at one point.  Today he makes big green as a TV analyst.  All is forgiven.  He's given a pass.

But not so Wilson (an overrated President in some regards, btw)?

I certainly wasn't lauding Donald Trump, or giving him a pass. He's not my guy.  I was just trying to point out that we often give "contemporary" historical figures a pass, as we are comfortable with them.  But the modern trend to judge every classical American historical figure through the lens of modern belief systems is both wrong and blinded.

If Abraham Lincoln wasn't the great man of his day, then Robert E. Lee was*.  I'm not excusing his "seccesh" support, but Lee was a Lee and his roots grew deep in Virginia soil.  About the only criticism you can find ofLee anywhere is that he was "Granny" Lee or "The King of Spades" (for his defensive positioning at times in the war....at odds with his audacious aggressiveness at times).  But nobody who met Lee wasn't totally impressed with him as a man. He defined the phrase, in all its gentleman-warrior-learned-honorable qualities.

*a short list might also include Frederick Douglas, Thaddeus Stevens, etc.  

Historians give John Brown an interesting pass.  He was a stern father who laid the whip to his sons (what does our belief system say about that today?) but his childeren were entirely devoted to him.  At one point, after whipping his son for some accumulated list of wrongdoings he then stripped off his shirt and asked the very same son to now lay it on him; for he felt his son's transgressions were his, too.

He was truly  a believer in the worth and equality of the black man.  This was not just word to him, but a moral/religious certainty.

Yet he engaged in an act that wasn't merely criminal but would be regarded today (as then) as treasonous and likely (were he to have moved south) terrorist.

But mostly he's remembered as a man of admirable conviction.  

Modern table-top history often takes deep and complicated classical Amercan figures and paints them in a few broad strokes.  More and more so, those broad strokes are unflattering.....those classical figures being so frequently Dead White Males, you know.    Being "classical" figures they often adhered to philosophies at odds with our "enlightened" modern view, fair enough.   But the broad brush strokes often miss the man and encourage a pretty superficial view of even modern subjects.  

Sigh...I'm rambling.  Enough.  

I don't think you could find a better example of viewing a historical figure distordedly through a modern day lens. Objects may be different than they appear in the mirror?

However, I'd have to disagree on 'overrated'--I'd contend that the opposite is true.

In any case, I highly recommend the recent biography on him by A. Scott Berg. The single story of how he went from quiet and respected president of Princeton to Governor of New Jersey to President of the U.S. in what was effectively the blink of an eye is remarkable in its own right.