Pelosi, Biden say there is a difference between removing Confederate leaders, past presidents

[LBJer]

We should no more celebrate them and their accomplishments than we should celebrate men like Rommel, Yamamoto, Benedict Arnold, Ho Chi Minh, or other exceptional military leaders who fought against the United States in the name of deplorable causes.

My views on Confederates and the issue of honoring them are extremely complex and nuanced, so much so that it would take a lengthy discussion to do justice to them.  But right now I'd like to address the last part of your post.  

The issue with Benedict Arnold isn't that the British/American loyalist cause was terrible--even today, I don't think you can argue it was, even if you sympathize with the Patriots.  It's that he was on the Patriot side and went over to the British.  It's not at all clear to me that Ho Chi Minh's cause was a bad one--clearly much of the Vietnamese population, North and South, supported him.  And while Rommel and Yamamoto served governments that did not have morally good causes, I don't think they should be condemned either --they were also serving their respective countries, and as someone once remarked, if you serve in your country's military you don't get to decide whether you're on the "right side."  And both men have, in fact, been widely respected even in the countries they fought.  

[LBJer]

I think Badger tried to quote JimRTex but quoted Mr. Reactionary instead. Robert E Lee was a traitor, Jim. You arguing the validity of that is... sad. Let's go with "sad".

Do you think the so-called "loyalists" who moved to Ontario after 1783 were traitors?

Post July 4th 1776 oh, yes. The fact that they fought to re-establish the Crown's control over the USA makes it no less so. I'm sure from their point they were merely loyalists fighting traitors, but, history and all that.

If you have sympathy for them, pack your bags and join them.

Then the term "traitor" is utterly meaningless.  By any honest assessment, the patriots were the traitors in that war if we define "traitor" the way people use it regarding the Confederates--as rebelling against the already existing, established government.  Why did the loyalists owe allegiance to a self-proclaimed new country they had never accepted and never sworn loyalty to in the first place, and that was the creation of neighbors who were themselves traitors to the mother country?

[LBJer]

We should no more celebrate them and their accomplishments than we should celebrate men like Rommel, Yamamoto, Benedict Arnold, Ho Chi Minh, or other exceptional military leaders who fought against the United States in the name of deplorable causes.

My views on Confederates and the issue of honoring them are extremely complex and nuanced, so much so that it would take a lengthy discussion to do justice to them.  But right now I'd like to address the last part of your post.  

The issue with Benedict Arnold isn't that the British/American loyalist cause was terrible--even today, I don't think you can argue it was, even if you sympathize with the Patriots.  It's that he was on the Patriot side and went over to the British.  It's not at all clear to me that Ho Chi Minh's cause was a bad one--clearly much of the Vietnamese population, North and South, supported him.  And while Rommel and Yamamoto served governments that did not have morally good causes, I don't think they should be condemned either --they were also serving their respective countries, and as someone once remarked, if you serve in your country's military you don't get to decide whether you're on the "right side."  And both men have, in fact, been widely respected even in the countries they fought.  

Fair on Benedict Arnold.  I probably should have left out the "deplorable causes" part, and just said "fought against the United States" in general.

If Germans, Japanese and Vietnamese want to celebrate Rommel, Yamamoto and Ho Chi Minh, good for them.  The largest city in Vietnam is named after the guy after all.  Here in the United States, we aren't going to build statues to men who fought against our country and did their utmost to kill as many American soldiers as possible.  Even if, in the case of Rommel, there are a lot of folks who think he was low-key a good guy on the wrong side.  In the same way, we here in America should not celebrate men like Jackson, Lee, or Davis, who declared war on our country and led an army that killed hundreds of thousands of American men with the goal of permanently breaking the country in two and perpetuating chattel slavery forever.

I'd actually compare Rommel pretty closely with Lee.  Both are men who were loyal servants to the leaders of their regime, led their armies to a lot of decisive and brilliant victories, seemed remarkably incurious, at best, about the atrociously amoral regime they were defending, and had their reputations refurbished after the war.  In both cases, their former enemies had political reasons to acquiesce to the rehabilitiation -- the lionizing of Lee was a symbolic victory northerners were willing to give away as a bargaining chip during reconstruction, and "Rommel and his troops were alright blokes" was key to the allied justification for re-arming ex-Nazi West Germany during the Cold War.

George Washington fought against Great Britain and tried to kill as many British soldiers as possible.  Yet there's a statue of him in Trafalgar Square in London.  Just a thought.

As for Rommel, one might ask what would satisfy you as showing sufficient concern about the Nazi regime on his part.  After all, the Third Reich was a dictatorship.  It's not like even the July 20th plotters ran out into the streets shouting "Hitler is evil!" (and Rommel may have been involved in that plot to some extent).

[LBJer]

We should no more celebrate them and their accomplishments than we should celebrate men like Rommel, Yamamoto, Benedict Arnold, Ho Chi Minh, or other exceptional military leaders who fought against the United States in the name of deplorable causes.

My views on Confederates and the issue of honoring them are extremely complex and nuanced, so much so that it would take a lengthy discussion to do justice to them.  But right now I'd like to address the last part of your post.  

The issue with Benedict Arnold isn't that the British/American loyalist cause was terrible--even today, I don't think you can argue it was, even if you sympathize with the Patriots.  It's that he was on the Patriot side and went over to the British.  It's not at all clear to me that Ho Chi Minh's cause was a bad one--clearly much of the Vietnamese population, North and South, supported him.  And while Rommel and Yamamoto served governments that did not have morally good causes, I don't think they should be condemned either --they were also serving their respective countries, and as someone once remarked, if you serve in your country's military you don't get to decide whether you're on the "right side."  And both men have, in fact, been widely respected even in the countries they fought.  

Fair on Benedict Arnold.  I probably should have left out the "deplorable causes" part, and just said "fought against the United States" in general.

If Germans, Japanese and Vietnamese want to celebrate Rommel, Yamamoto and Ho Chi Minh, good for them.  The largest city in Vietnam is named after the guy after all.  Here in the United States, we aren't going to build statues to men who fought against our country and did their utmost to kill as many American soldiers as possible.  Even if, in the case of Rommel, there are a lot of folks who think he was low-key a good guy on the wrong side.  In the same way, we here in America should not celebrate men like Jackson, Lee, or Davis, who declared war on our country and led an army that killed hundreds of thousands of American men with the goal of permanently breaking the country in two and perpetuating chattel slavery forever.

I'd actually compare Rommel pretty closely with Lee.  Both are men who were loyal servants to the leaders of their regime, led their armies to a lot of decisive and brilliant victories, seemed remarkably incurious, at best, about the atrociously amoral regime they were defending, and had their reputations refurbished after the war.  In both cases, their former enemies had political reasons to acquiesce to the rehabilitiation -- the lionizing of Lee was a symbolic victory northerners were willing to give away as a bargaining chip during reconstruction, and "Rommel and his troops were alright blokes" was key to the allied justification for re-arming ex-Nazi West Germany during the Cold War.

George Washington fought against Great Britain and tried to kill as many British soldiers as possible.  Yet there's a statue of him in Trafalgar Square in London.  Just a thought.

As for Rommel, one might ask what would satisfy you as showing sufficient concern about the Nazi regime on his part.  After all, the Third Reich was a dictatorship.  It's not like even the July 20th plotters ran out into the streets shouting "Hitler is evil!" (and Rommel may have been involved in that plot to some extent).

If you want a German officer who did more than Rommel, look no further than Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who regularly (and sometimes successfully) opposed Germany's awful treatment of prisoners, conspired to remove Hitler, and regularly passed information to Allied intelligence. He was also the head of German Military Intelligence from 1935 until the Gestapo and SS finally caught up with him in early 1944.

My point wasn't that Rommel did the most of anyone, it was that if you're going to be critical of him for supposedly not showing enough concern about the nature of Nazism, that raises the question of what would have been "satisfactory" for him to have done.  Moreover, it seems to me that someone in that situation could have realized that Hitler and his regime were horrible but still concluded that they had a duty to fight for their country.