Tennessee panel votes to remove monument of KKK leader from state Capitol

[WarGamer]

10. As an avid enthusiast of Military History...

(I'm happy the monument is being moved to a museum, the proper place)

It's frequently necessary to look past the personal traits to analyze a historical figure.

How can you analyze Rommel, Zhukov or Yamamoto if you focus on the person, their boss or their Party affiliation?

Should we preface any discussion of Napoleon with discussion about the Siege of Jaffra and the 4000 dead POW's? Or the brutal repression in Haiti?

Or Genghis Khan?

No. We learn to analyze the performance of the military leader, whether it's Rommel, Forrest, Lee, Grant or Stuart.

Forrest is arguably the most influential military leader of the 19th AND 20th Century. Heinz Guderian and other architects of the Blitzkrieg credited Forrest. Post WW2 US military tactics borrowed heavily from the Forrest playbook. Forrest tactics were taught at the US Army War College and West Point well into the 1980's... Patton wrote about Forrest.

Yes, a slave trading racist and a traitor... but a remarkable soldier and leader.

Fact: one of only two people in the USCW to rise from Private to General during the war.

And killed 30 men in hand to hand combat. I can't think of another military figure in the 19th or 20th Century to have done such.