Cigar Room of Books

The Killer Angels

2011-12-27T10:27:00.003-05:00

The Killer Angels
By Michael Shaara

I enjoy history novels as they provide lessons from the past to navigate the shoals of the present. They do so in an entertaining way. Known and unknown, two sides of the same coin, the currency of war, could benefit from history when making ‘either-or’ decisions. Without it, beyond a coin flip, unknown has the upper hand in shaping not only the strategy but he outcome of at least the battle and on occasion the war, including why you fought it. In this review I conclude with lessons learned than may be applied to decisions you make in November 2012.

In our American Civil War, the troops from both sides were converging on Gettysburg, neither side knowing exactly who or how many as late as the day before the first day of the battle. Then there was the dynamic of what to believe from your Scouts. Robert E. Lee suffered from this in two ways. He didn’t trust his spies, and he trusted General Stuart of the Confederate Calvary who was out doing anything but following orders. The Union's Buford's Calvary strategy on day one was, based on limited intelligence and counting on battle instinct. Buford was already digging in on Cemetery Hill and Lee discounted that information as being a Militia of townspeople. This author portrays the first shot early morning of Gettysburg came from a picket line soldier from Buford's Calvary acting on Buford's orders into the advancing Rebel Army.

The first day…Buford’s stand held the Rebels at bay long enough for Union reinforcement to arrive and hold the high ground While Buford’s acts were courageous and strategic, two dynamics made the difference. First General Lee, not having accurate intelligence as to who was on Cemetery Hill, gave orders to proceed with caution. The orders were due to the unknown that should have been known had his Cavalry General Stuart followed orders and already been to Gettysburg. This combined with General Ewell freezing ‘like a pond in the dark” gave the Confederates the town of Gettysburg, but left the advantageous high ground to the Union Army. It was an inverse predicament to Fredericksburg, where the Confederate Army held the high ground and prevailed. Like Fredericksburg, there was too much momentum to reverse the pending conflict. The unknown set the stage for unmerciful carnage.

Lee's second day strategy dealt with some known and unknowns. He knew the first day's victory was due to numeric superiority against a Union Army that was just beginning to form, unbeknownst to him. He gave instruction to his Generals to proceed to Gettysburg with caution. Not having surveyed the town with that order he was not aware of the importance of achieving high ground immediately south of the town. Arriving in Gettysburg during the first day's battle he gave orders to General Ewell to take Cemetery Hill, the first hill. Ewell froze; they had the advantage in terms of battle momentum but did not take Cemetery Hill.

This allowed Union forces to dig, and bought time to replenish and reinforce in mass. Had General Stuart’s Calvary been available Lee would have had advance lay of the land and knowledge of Union troop strength. Instead of an order to preceed with caution, Lee would likely have stated Cemetery Hill and all high ground as an objective. Failures of Stuart and Ewell left the Rebels with a captured town and the Union digging in on high ground.

Lee's second day strategic orders were an ‘en echelon’ assault. Longstreet's orders were to sweep right and attack Cemetery Hill by surprise. In the middle of his march he realized he needed a different route than planned. This took extra time. When they were finally in position his army was tired from the march before and General Hoods regiment was facing a charge up a hill where the hill alone wad insurmountable. Both Hood and Longstreet knew at this time. Had Lee held better intelligence in the morning, an attack from the rear would have been included in the morning orders. Missing was intelligence that would have come from Stuart. What was missing was Stuart that would have carried out Lee’s orders.

The folly of day one battle was a clear display of undisciplined orders leading to lack of intelligence. Lomgstreet knew Lee’s strategy was flawed. He had the intelligence of a spy that Lee gave half hearted attention to. With General Stuart gallivanting his cavalry across Pennsylvania, not in accord with Lee’s orders, he gave Longstreet orders to attack straight up Cemetery Ridge. But Longstreet insisted on following Lee's morning orders. On day one the battlefield intelligence was much better in the afternoon than the morning, but the orders of the morning prevailed. Communications in that era did not allow for change in strategy. Strict army discipline let orders get in the way.

The high ground, creative initiative, and shear instinctive courage gave Colonel Chamberlain’s Maine regiment gave the Union army a strategic battle second day victory that forced an even more difficult battle plan for Lee on the third and final day of the battle of Gettysburg. In the days leading up to Chamberlain’s march to Gettysburg he was ordered to discipline Union deserters from his home state of Maine. He could not find it within him to shoot them so he gave them a speech to convince them to join his regiment. The result was an additional 200 men that would prove essential in defending the Rebel charge up Cemetery Ridge on day one.

The Rebels charged up the hill with what seemed to Chamberlain’s regiment and infinite supply of men. They came in waves and drained the Union army of their ammunition. In preparation of the Rebel last charge of that day, Chamberlain ordered bayonets to the rifles and a counter charge down the hill at the Rebels. It was that act of courage, akin to the Charge of the Light Brigade, observed by the Rebels that sent them back down the hill never to return. Had the Rebels knew Chamberlain’s troops were out of ammunition, they may had reacted differently. That Rebel charge not only cost Longstreet half of his men, he did not achieve the high ground advantage that forced an even more desperate battle strategy on Lee for the third and final day of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Had Stuart and his cavalry been in Gettysburg for that second day, a flanking attack from the rear would have doomed Chamberlain long before his famous bayonet charge. Since Longstreet’s charge was at the end of the Union defense, a quick victory on that portion of the whole battle field would have allowed the Confederate Army to storm right through the Union Army from the rear. Without this key advantage, the ‘what if’ drama unfolded with the Union army digging in on both flanks forcing Lee to order on day three an attack right up the middle of the Union Army.

Longstreet had grave regret for the events ordered for day and the predictable results. This gave him reason for extreme contempt for Stuart and a high degree of disdain towards General Lee. Lee had, to a fault recognized by Lee himself, a fatherly approach towards his Generals which allowed for critical failures at Gettysburg. General Ewell’s failure to take Cemetery Hill when he had clear opportunity in conjunction with Stuarts failure to show up until the evening of the second day cost the Confederate Army half its troops. Together these were major contributors to the losses on day two and the eventual loss of the Battle of Gettysburg. Lee recognizing there was no one to back fill those senior ranks of General Officer was forgiving and consoling. Longstreet stressed and strained as he was the one officer with the vision to see Lee’s failure. He cried visibly at the beginning of day three, sucked it up and gave the general orders for the slaughter that he knew was ensuing.

Rounding out the strategy of the Battle is on was Sharra’s tapestry of character building through the dialogue of the Generals, .Shaara portrays the Generals and high command of the Southern Army to be gentlemen of a worldly view well studied with a shared longing for their Union counterparts. The dialogue of the Generals intended to espouse the rationale as to why the Rebel Army took to the offensive. With the battle of Fredericksburg having ended in their favor their confidence in the troops was high. Additionally, it was in there character makeup down to the individual troop to be an offensive army. Hence the infamous Rebel YELL. Yet the Generals had been more defensive in their strategy.

Robert E. Lee knew that a defensive strategy couldn’t last forever. The Confederate Army was always on the defense of her country but now they were the invading force. Old and busted up from a fall from a horse Lee tells his troops, “No matter no matter. We end this war the best we can". He put his hand to his chest. Napoleon once said, 'the logical end to a defensive war is surrender.' The collective thought from troop level through the General rank was to attack. For the Civil War student wondering why a Confederate Union looking to for secession form a country would exercise a strategy to conquer that which you have just discarded; here you have an answer. General Longstreet the veteran warrior was the exception. Yet as a General he followed orders from Lee.

The voice of the Union Army’s Colonel Chamberlain becomes the reason why the North is rallying troops to defend their capitol. A colonel a brigade from Maine, he found himself with orders to shoot deserters, fellow countrymen from Maine. Rather than shoot them he gave them a speech, He drew on the reasons for the fight. Not slavery, not independence, but liberty. The same liberty his founding fathers gave their lives for, a liberty not known anywhere but in America. Thus is a liberty once known but seems to have been forgotten by too many in 2011 America; an America whose galvanized difference approach the same legal pitch as did the Dred Scott case.

It was the voice of the character Fremantle who was an English reporter allowed to mix above the Generals to fill in the misunderstanding of views. His purpose in the book is to draw a third party perspective, a European view. He notes to himself the difference between the people of the North and those of the South is simple quality of the man and society. He notes the higher standards in English customs in Southerners. He finds they are still very much of English tradition whereas the Northerners are a collection of big cities with a cacophony of people from all parts of the world. There were no British customs permeating their culture. They were different people and that is what the war was about. In Fremantle’s view this war was about different ideology in two groups of people. In my mind, should Fremantle’s view be accurate, the Americans were fighting British ideals for a third time in the span of four score and seven years. In the next 150 years is seems America has defended Britain with their ideals aside and then suffered from her legacy of Empire.

In an immediately succeeding chapter Chamberlain, an educated professor from Maine, encounters his first black slave. He is alarmed at his adverse reaction to the wounded man. He was alarmed at his negative interpretation of their physical differences, holding
himself superior to the black man. He does not know he had that in him. He wondered if in fact with this new revelation that perhaps Southerners had a point. There exists, in 2011 two very obvious questions in this dialogue going on inside Chamberlains mind. First is the 1863 mindset of superiority, and second the reader cannot help but observe that poorly conceived differences in man at society level too often and too sadly brings them to war, where on the battlefield, eye to eye they see their mistake only an instant too late.

What is apparent is there is no truth in nominalist man, says an author of that time, Emerson. That truth is attempted as each man brings his truth to bear upon another where truths may merge like two primary colors. Emerging is now a new color of truth waiting for its next encounter. There appears only a representation of truth in the mind of man, where acceptance of what is ... Is. Lincoln had to amend our Constitution to deny a society's right to their truth to bring truth beyond society to the individual. In the unforeseen delivery of truth to the individual, the right to State level of society has given way to federalized democracy. The firebreak gap was mistakenly removed to allow for a fire storm of democratic administration, as opposed to segmented pursuit of liberty brought on by the voice of people. There exists today in the wake of Obamacare a parallel argument. Obama signed a bill as opposed to amending the Constitution. Obama ushered in a wave if administrative law akin to Hitler in the 1939s that denied liberty of one in favor of another that pits this country on a decision the betterment through unconscious plebiscite to the whole at the cost of the individual. Do we carry forward our forefather's cause to liberty and to what extent? Do we repeat, honor, and validate, the deeds of 1863 or 1776 in some 2011 fashion?

Ironically in 1915, yet another chapter of prevailing unknown, tells of a British navy fighting an unprepared Turk resistance in Constantinople. Had that Navy Admiral in command known that at the time he chose to retreat from battle on day one, the Turks were out of ammunition, he could have sailed into port and taken the city without a shot. Instead we are the proud owners of a history that provides us with a year long tragic tale of Gallipoli which ended in favor of the Turks and Germans. This changed the scales of military balance and strategy leading to a stalemate and Armistice as opposed to a declared victory, which led directly to yet another World War. Can the world learn from her past?” I ask this simply because in America we are facing difficult international challenges that are taking the same back seat to domestic woes as that in the 1930’s. We have in our leadership a President completely blind to the lessons of history with absolutely no experience for the job, pitted against a candidate pool where an historian and leader experienced in beltway protocol exists. Is the collective conscience of America willing to put aside any question of personal character, for a leader that can lead from the wisdom of history? I say read Newt Gingrich’s books…all of them. And then decide if the method of his thinking and the result of his thoughts, ie Welfare Reform, a preferred alternative to our current leadership.

Cool metaphors

He froze like a pond in the dark.
Eyes sad as a trout
Like wind in wheat

Bibliography:

Page 17: Longstreet thought: new factor. He Spurred the horse, but he couldn't move fast because of the dark. Lee must listen. God blessed politicians. Reynolds was their best man. Why did they give it to Meade? But I am sorry to see Hooker go. Old fighting Joe. Longstreet said “it was then not Reynolds?"

" Rumor was that Reynolds was offered the job but wouldn't have it on
a plate. That's what the paper said." [said the spy]

Note: When you read the preface and the first book of this series you come to appreciate that the senior officers of the war were at one time good friends with common history at West Point. While they were on opposite sides their respect for one another brought on a drama. This also told them how the other would make strategic decisions. This dynamic of the civil war is unique to most wars. The reader of the book becomes intrigued to see the affects of this dynamic from a historical view.

Page 29: [Chamberlain] He walked slowly toward the dark grove. He had a complicated brain and there were things going on back there from time to time that only he dimly understood, so he relied on his instincts, but he was learning all the time. The faith itself was simple: he believed in the dignity of man. His ancestors were Huguenots, refugees of a chained and bloody Europe. He had learned their stories in the cradle. He had grown up believing in America and the individual and it was a stronger faith than his faith in God. This was the land where no man had to bow. In this place at last man could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he wished to become. This was the first place on earth than man mattered more than state. True freedom had begun here and it would spread eventually all over the earth. But it had begun here. The fact of slavery upon this incredibly beautiful new clean earth was appealing, but more even than that was the horror of old Europe, the curse of nobility, which the South was transplanting to new soil. They were forming a new aristocracy, a new breed of glittering men, and Chamberlain had come to crush it. But he was fighting for dignity of man and in that way he was fighting for himself. If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere and there was no such reality as a foreigner; there were only free men and slaves. And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom, for the people not the land.

My comment: My only consternation in this comes of Shaara’s choice of words. Could he have better chosen liberty over equality? I say this in the wake of Lincoln’s actions America has drifted from a Republic to a democracy. Today’s entitlement democratic society demands equality in the form of material comforts, which is much more than the liberty to ferret out those comforts on your own. Rome fell on this same slippery slope.

Page 70: They stood up as Longstreet approached. Sorrel’s face was flush. Jim Kemper was not finished with argument, Longstreet or no. To Freemantle he went on: “You must tell them, and make it plain, that what we are fighting for is our freedom from the rule of what is to us foreign government. That’s all we want and that’s what this war is about. We established this country in the first place with strong state governments just for that reason, to avoid a central tyranny.

My comment: The contradictions in this run rampant. First, to be clear, this is the dialogue in the Southern camp with a European journalist. Sorrel’s argument is from that of a succeeding group of States calling themselves a new country by the name of Confederate States of America, speaking to the values of the Nation they have succeeded from. When you contrast this with the previous words of Chamberlain, you find that the South succeeds from the North in aspiration to reclaim the values of old Europe, of whom their forefathers fought to ‘succeed’ from four score and seven year prior.

Looking at where we are in 2011, both the North and the South lost their way.

Page 84: Lee said “I once swore to defend this ground.” He looked across the misty grove. “No matter. No matter. We end this war as best we can.” He put his hand to his chest. “Napoleon once said, ‘The logical end to defensive warfare is surrender.’

Page 144: Lee said. “I had hoped you would move on through the town and take that hill.”

Ewell blinked, rubbed his nose, looked as Early, looked at Rodes, patted his thigh. Lee watching, felt a sudden acute depression.

Ewell said, “I didn't think ir was ah practical. We were waiting ah for many reasons. We had marched all day, and fought, and your orders were caution against bringing on a general engagement.”

Page 145: Ewell went on nodding. Lee looked at Rodes, who said, “You may remember, sir that I passed over this ground a few days ago and am familiar with it. The hiss is named Cemetery Hill. It has another hill beyond it, also occupied. It will be a vary strong position.”

Page 146: Rodes looked up, glanced away, shrugged. [Rodes to Ewell] “We’ll attack, of course. But the men have had a good fight. And it will be a strong position.” He looked up at Ewell, then quickly away. “I’m sorry we did not take it today.”

“Well” said Lee, “Today is done”

My comment: Shaara makes it clear that Lee accepted the fact that he was out of Generals and that he had to deal with their mistakes in a forgiving manner. Lincoln had the same problem in incompetent Generals. However he had reserves to call upon.

Page 147: “Longstreet is on the defensive again.” Erly grinned. “I suppose that’s to be expected. But really sire, it seems to me, we are here and the enemy is there, and Hill and General Ewell have engaged and Longstreet has not. If Longstreet can be induced to attack on the right, we can give you this hill tomorrow.”

Lee said, “ If we do not withdraw, and if we do not maneuver in the face of the enemy, then we must attack. There is no other alternative.” He rose not waiting for a answer.

My comment: a fate accompli

Page 171: Freemantle, [the European reporter] says [to Longstreet] “I say sire you wont be attacking for a bit?

Longstreet shook his head
“Then, ah, if I may be so bold, what’s to prevent the Yankees from attacking you?”

Longstreet looked at Hood.
“I mean ah, I don’t’ see that you have bothered to entrench,” Freemantle went on/

Longstreet grinned at Hood.
“ An interesting thought.” Longstreet smiled, I confess, it had not occurred to me.”
“Me neither Hood said.”

“well.” Longstreet hedged. He grinned, reached up along the edge of his hat, and scratched his head. ‘I guess not.” More soberly, he turned to Fremantle. “it would be most unlike General Mede to attack.

Page 173: [Freemantle’s view of the South] Um great experiment. In democracy. The equality of rabble. In not much more than a generation they have come back to class. As the French have done. What a tragic thing. That Revolution. Bloody George was a bloody fool. But no matter. The experiment doesn’t work. Give them fifty years and all that equality rot is gone. Here they have that same love of land and of tradition, of the right form, of breeding, in their horses, their women.

My comment: Envy as the opposite to greed. Equality – could it be the opposite of liberty?

Page 179: [Upon tending to a run away slave] Chamberlain felt an oddness, a crawly hesitation, not wanting to touch him. He shook his head, amazed at himself. He saw: palm of the hand almost white; blood dries normally, skin seems dusty. But he could not tell whether it was dust or a natural sheen of light on the hair above the black skin. But he felt it again a flutter of unmistakable revulsion….He had not expected this feeling. He had not even known this feeling was there. He remembered suddenly a conversation with a Southerner a long time ago, before the war, a Baptist minister. White complacent gace sense of bland enormous superiority” ‘my dear man, you have to live among them, you simply don’t understand.’

Kilrain said, “ and this is what it’s all about.”

[Chamberlain] backed off. He stared at the palm of his own hand. A matter of skin. A matter of color. The reaction is instinctive. Any alien thing. And yet Chamberlain was ashamed; he had not known it was there.He thought: if I feel this way, an educated man… what was in God’s mind?

He remembered the minister: and what if it is you who are wrong after all?

Page 187 - 188: Kilrain said; I tried to point out that a man is not a horse, and he replied, very patiently, that that was the thing I did not understand, that a Negro was not a man.

“But then he pointed out that he could not apologize for his views because they were honestly held. And I had to see he was right there. … I had one of those moments when you feel that the rest of the world is right, then you remember you yourself have gone mad.

“ Colonel, you’re a lovely man.” He shook his head. “I see at last a great difference between us, and yet I admire ye, lad. You’re a idealist, praise be.

Kilrain rubbed his nose, brooding. The he said “The truth is Colonel, that there is no divine spark, bless you. There’s many man alive no more value than a dead dog. Believe me, when you’ve seen them each hang together…Equality? Christ in Heaven. What I am fighting for is the right to prove I am better than many. Where have you seen this divine spark in operation, Colonel? Where have you noted this magnificent equality? The Great White Joker in the Sky dooms us all to stupidity or poverty from birth. No two things on earth are equal or have an equal chance, not a leaf or a tree. There is many a man worse than me and some better, but I don’t think race or country matters a damn. What matters is justice. T’is why I am here.

Page 267: : God in Heaven,” Longstreet said, and repeated it, “there’s no strategy to this bloody war. What it is, is old Napoleon and a hell of a lot of chivalry. That is all it is. What were the tactics at Chancelerville, where we divided the army?”

My comment: The chivalry was aimed at Lee who as a gentleman General apologized for mistrials of his Generals, and commanded as though the mistakes could be overcome by the rebel yell.

Page 280: [thought Lee] He saw in his minds eye: his boys backing off, pulling out, looking up in wonder and rage at the Yamkee troops still in possession of the high ground. If we fall back, we will have fought here for two days and we will leave knowing that we did not drive them off, and if it was no defeat, surely it was no victory. And we have never yet left the enemy in command of the battlefield.

We have been out gunned. Our strength is in our pride.

My comment: and that is what Lee sent up the hill on the third and final day.

Page 282: [Lee to Stuart when he showed up for battle on the third day] “You were in my eyes. Your mission was to screen this army from the cavalry and to report any movement by the enemy’s main body. That mission was not fulfilled.”

Stuart stood motion less.

My comment: For any fault that one may want to apply to others for the Confederate loss at Gettysburg, none surpass the blatant and arrogant disregard for not just orders, but for the honor of warriors.

Page 285: [Lees thoughts at the beginning of the third day] The decision was clear. It had been there in the back of his mind all that night, as he worked, remembering every moment the sight of his blue Virginia flags goin up that long slope to the top, almost to victory, so close he could feel the world over there beginning to give like a rotten brick wall. He could not retreat now. It might be the clever thing to do, but cleverness did not win victories; the bright combinations rarely worked. You won because the men thought they could win, attack with courage, attack with faith, and it was faith more than anything else you had to protect; that was the one thing in your hands, and so you could not ask them to leave the field to the enemy. And even if you could do that, cleverly, there was no certainty they would find better ground anywhere else, not even any certainty that they could extricate themselves without trouble, and so he had known all along that retreat was simply no longer an alternative, the way a man of honor knows that when he has faced the enemy, and exchanged one round of blows and stands there bleeding, and sees the blood of the enemy, a man of honor can no longer turn away..

My comment: how does Shaara know these thoughts? If accurate one could simply say the Confederates lost the battle to chivalry; a chivalry that had one General gallivanting around Pennsylvania stirring up discontent everywhere, and another General first excusing him and second sending men to their deaths on blind faith..

Page 317: [just before the start of the third day’s battle, an exchange between Lee and Longstreet] Lee asked his advice on artillery support. Longstreet gave it quietly. They rode back down the line. A quietness was beginning to settle in over the field. The sun was rising toward noon. They came back toward Longstreet’s line. Lee said “Well, we have left nothing undone. Its all in the hands of God.”

Longstreet thought: God is not sending those men up that hill. But he said nothing. Lee rode away.

Page 320: “Meede wanted to pull the whole army out. He had a meeting of corps commanders last night. He really did.” Pitzer sneezed emphatically…..” Meede wrote an order for the whole army to withdraw, and then held a meeting of corps commanders and asked for a vote….”well hell, all the corp commanders stay. I mean the only one felt like pulling out was Meede.

My comment: Churchill writes that the difference between the Allies and Hitler was consensus management over the dictation of one man’s orders.

Contract with the Earth

2011-12-27T10:14:00.002-05:00

Contract with the Earth
By Newt Gingrich

This was a refreshing and insightful book from a political figure with a bipartisan message for us all to appreciate. I got on to this book when listening to an interview of Gingrich on NPR. I am curious if it were not for the timing in fall of 2007, with rise to a high visibility political season, would the interview had taken place. In that interview Gingrich was asked if he is running for President. He said he was not, for the same reason Al Gore is not running. He feels he can accomplish more for the world with regard to the environment as a citizen than he could as President, being encumbered with politics.

What is Gingrich’s message? First is unity in the cause. Not just across national party lines but across international lines as well. Second is recognition that we do not have all the facts, in terms of the full balance of the ecosystems of our planet earth. Third is the facts should not be proprietary but rather universally shared. Fourth, is government at all levels and business need to come together with effective participation and policy, in a cooperative posture. Fifth is education of our youth and remedial education of our elders on the individual contributions through consumerism, philanthropy, voting, and life style changes that can lead to a cleaner environment. All this says a collective conscience with one unified goal is essential. The key yet silent word through out the book is balance.

I was somewhat intrigued at a couple byproducts brought about with a collective conscience on the environment. First was recognition that democratic societies, where the free will of the people is prevalent, are more apt to participate as each individual can identify with their earth experience. Second is that our national security hangs in the balance of our recognition of the fossil fuel problem. Would focus on the environment reduce our focus on a major cause of our threat to our national security provided largely by volatile, non-democratic countries; or would it increase it? In my mind it depends on how you apply your focus. Reduce demand in fossil fuel by improving our technology and then sharing it refocuses everyone on being a good neighbor.

I find is interesting that while the still standing in Feb. 08 and probable presidential candidates they all have agreeable environmental platforms, I find Obama’s record and platform a bit more impressive. His voting record is superior to the other two and his platform calls for stronger international leadership where I have not heard the others reach beyond our boundaries. Interesting, it seems a popular cry today from our “Bush bashing talking heads” is that we should dampen our critique of other nations on their values and policy as though we are an arrogant nation. This would be to ignore specifically speaking to their environmental record as the reason for not endorsing the Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile Gingrich is extolling the export of our technology commercially, and a call for international policy. There is a reason for my intrigue where leadership requires a genuine personal appreciation of a cause that translates to courage to advocate policy and practice towards that cause.

I did a search on the Internet and most easily found Obama willing to step up to the plate with right message. As a traditional Republican, I make the first move in reaching across lines with a call for good voting conscience as opposed to the “you go girl” mentality in choosing your candidate. We need to be for something, not against something. Its time we look for more than someone who is a divisive “I am not George W. Bush” as we hear from Clinton, but someone who actually has substance with leadership qualities as in Obama or McCain. On the environment we need unity and we need leadership, and if we saw a Presidential run off between McCain and Obama, for once either side would be voting for someone, whereby on the environment issues Obama stands tallest.

I am including notes in my review once again for those who do not make the time to read books. Shame on you who defer your information funnel solely to talking heads with agendas. It is my hope that the snippets will inspire you to read the book and get beyond the headlines or the five-minute take on TV or radio. If you are an Internet surfer, the back of the book provides a list of sites to surf. The more you know the issues and more specifically THE FACTS in depth the better you will appreciate what you as an individual can play as your part in this symphony we call Earth.

End Notes

p. 40 We don’t have a perfect understanding of Earth’s systems and processes; it may be unachievable in the face of such complexity. However, we continue to develop imperfect but useful mathematical models, and we have been able to isolate physical variables in the laboratory. We should celebrate our capacity to learn quickly about such things; and we need to continue funding the search for this vital information. We need to commit to the International Environmental Year project similar to the International Geophysical Year in the late 1950’s

p. 74 Conservation International has identified thirty-four hotspots in its most recent analysis. The degree of lost habitat can be expressed by comparing the 15.7 percent of original habitat with the remaining 2.3 percent of Earths surface now occupied by 34 hotspots, a precipitous loss of 86 percent. Amount them they contain 150,000 plant species as endemics, 50 percent of the worlds total…Hotspots are profoundly rich locales for the world’s wildlife, and the amount of biodiversity in hotspot is extremely high, so these remarkable hotspots represents an urgent priority for conservation. By protecting wildlife, especially undiscovered species, we also protect our opportunity to discover valuable new organic material.

p. 94 Non governmental organizations are driving those conservations because of the NGO’s inherent flexibility and speed…and their willingness to cooperate rather than criticize.

p. 119 Fred Kavli who is funding basic research for fairly open-ended projects in nanotechnology, neuroscience, and astronomy. He has launched fourteen research centers based at Yale, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and Cal Tech.

P 122 One model for the new philanthropy is the Clinton Global Initiative that aims to accelerate active philanthropy, especially when it is confronted with global emergencies….

P132 with regard to the decrease in air pollution in Loa Angeles, This is a significant decline, and new technology can take most of the credit for this change. For example, it is estimated that it would take twenty of today’s new cars to generate equivalent air pollution by just one mid 1960’2 car. This goal was accomplished through recognition and regulation. Gingrich adds (paraphrased)Los Angeles is seeking greater federal policies on emissions of locomotives, cargo ships, and airplanes that come in to the Los Angeles basin from outside jurisdictions

P 140 Our national security and our nation’s economy depends on supply and demand shifts that are orderly, predictable, and carefully managed. Chaos is the enemy of national security.

By reducing expectations, it is easier to enable fossil fuel to retain its grip on the American consumer, an it becomes more difficult for competitive industry to gain a foothold, even if the industry is spawned by Big Oil…..our nation will need tax incentives to continue research on alternative fuels…a continued heavy handed policy will only limit the progress in research.

P156 With regard to leadership in environmentalism….In his best selling book, Good to Great, Jim Collins observed that effective leaders channel their self interest into the larger goal of building a great company. Their ambition is mostly for the good of the institution rather than themselves…Clearly , a sustainable environmental culture will require staying power. Today’s leaders must be tenacious advocates for the natural world, driven by results and guided by evidence. Where will we find such leaders? According to Collins…look for a well run company.

P157 A recent study published in the Journal of Peace Research demonstrated that democracies exhibit stronger international environmental commitments the non democratic nations.

P 159 In the book Green to Gold the authors identified many ways leading edge companies go beyond mere compliance to adapt environmental perspectives into all aspects of their company operations. These companies mindful of the increasing transparency provided by Internet access to the business world offer proactive pathways to an environmental business culture. Examples are provided

P 167 Because adventure capitalists tend to fund ideas that are nearly ready for the marketplace, the type of arduous research that produces real breakthroughs can only be funded by astute governments. America needs to be that kind of government, but our commitments have wavered in recent years so government incentives for energy research will be issues in future political campaigns.

P168 Mobilizing other countries to join us will not be as easy as it may appear. Many nations that signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol are lagging behind on their commitments. Canada’s commissioner Johanne Gelinas, said in 2006 that her country has “done too little and acted too slowly” in addressing climate change.

P177 On wild-life preserves, Crane-Medows ( a government preserve) does not live in a vacuum. It owes much of its success to Omaha-born entrepreneur Peter Kiewit, a generous philanthropist who died in 1979, but who left much of his fortune to his foundation….(paraphrased) contributing to the improvement of preserves.

P 188 A return to the subdued style and scholarly depth of the storied Lincoln-Douglas nineteenth-century political debates is a reform badly needed in our time. Media corporations should be working to achieve an unbiased, in-depth presentation of the original ideas, platforms, and philosophies of all political candidates so the American people can select their leaders based on trusted, reliable information sources.

P 189 We recognize that global climate change is supported by a wealth of scientific data derived from a diversity of measurement techniques….However we still cannot be certain about the variance introduced by distinctly human activities. Should human behavior be a cause, to any extent, it wouldn’t be surprising, given the role human beings have played in other environmental event…however, the debate about the origins and sources of climate change should not be left to scientists alone

P190 In three recent reports from the National Academy of Sciences, climate scientists decry the lack od adequate systems for collecting, sharing, and modeling climate data. We must heed these calls and provide the scientific community with the resources to improve future climate projections. A key first step is the development of a sophisticated data-gathering system with appropriate investment in gathering and analyzing data….The data should be available to everyone. Scientific debate and descent should be encouraged in pursuit of a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the complexities of our environmental systems

A Nation Like No Other

2011-12-27T10:13:00.000-05:00

A Nation Like No Other
By Newt Gingrich

Grounded in the ideals that formed this country, Gingrich has religious orientation but is not a religious zealot. His basic premise is; to give man a footing of moral consciousness, founded through any religion [or facsimile thereof] that distinguishes between good and evil, and allow the individual the power of society that begins with inalienable rights bestowed upon all men under one God. Gingrich is an ardent proponent to the study of history and this book is a reminder of these core American values, just in case any one of us has lost sight of them.

Gingrich sets the tone of the book building the scene in Manhattan as the American revolutionaries prepared for battle against the King of England. He depicts a battalion aid reading the Declaration of Independence to the troops that creates an air of exceptional reception to its ideals. He describes exceptionalism as the fabric that wrapped this new nation child at birth. Exceptionalism meaning American is an exception to all other nations. This does not imply a ‘Molly Brown’ better than persona but rather just unique. The reader is thinking aaah a good history book. Gingrich sets you back from that just a little bit when he mildly draws contrast as early as page three by introducing Obama as an example of how far we have drifted from that character that once wrapped us and sheltered us. Gingrich defines exceptionalism as that which 'leads inevitably to a smaller, more effective, accountable, and limited government.' he suggests that the American revolutionaries did not fight to have a future standing president 'fight in Libya for the liberties of man in that foreign country, as a nation of exceptionalism obligated to lead the world’, and then turn on our citizens with oppressive policy; forcing free men to purchase health care as his first on a list of policy that contradicts liberty of the individual in America. By page thirteen the book's theme is well stated. I like books like this. The reader is compelled to see it's depth, whether he agrees or not. Says Gingrich; ‘Our exceptionalism is being eroded by those who acquiesce to policy that undermines it.’

The first part of the book draws on a historic review of five principles that constitute American liberty. As the casual reader relives the story of a few of our founding fathers he would likely be saying to himself ' these virtues that brought us American liberty are
being eroded and are now under attack by an over reaching president, Obama and his party of democrats. Gingrich closes part one by stating the obvious and then prescribes a way back. He intrigues the reader to read parts II and III to explore how the five habits listed below of liberty evolved, how they helped to make America exceptional, how they are dangerously undermined, and how we can revitalize and restore American Exceptionalism. He first takes a moment to quote a few notable people to stress the importance of American Exceptionalism.

Ben Franklin: The expression of that principle [liberty to all], in our Declaration of Independence, was most happy and fortunate. Without this ... We [still] could have declared independence of Great Britain; but without it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government, and consequent prosperity.

Abe Lincoln: No oppressed people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better, than a mere change of masters.

There is no doubt that our Founding Fathers were deists. They arrived in this new America from Christian Europe. They brought their religion with them and purposely held on to its virtues that provided a moral compass and a basis for a new constitution, and the foundation of American law. In our Constitution Gingrich speaks to the higher authority that American man heeds to with no intermediary, be it a religious authority or a government authority. "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness." [not a life span to 150] This assertion makes some key assumptions about the relationship between man and God.

1. It assumes that God created man.
2. It assumes that God is Sovereign over the universe.
3. It assumes that man must obey an order of justice that God has instituted.

I note first that Gingrich assumes that God is a metaphor for nature. It seems evident however, throughout history that it is the nature of man to violate nature beginning with his violation of another man borne in his belief in scarcity. (Hobbs). Hence man must transcend his nature, I am not sure Gingrich, has given much thought to that. Second I find little coincidence that Gingrich quotes a Founding Father on liberty and then Abe Lincoln who ushered in liberty to all men…in America.

In quoting Franklin “My dear lady we have given you a republic - if you can keep it." Gingrich writes; ‘In a single sentence, Dr [Ben] Franklin summed up the extraordinary drama that would play out for all American history between two vital forces that sustain American Exceptionalism: freedom and responsibility.’

Gingrich writes there are five habits of liberty that come under the heading of Personal Responsibility – Virtue found in Religion, Morality

A. Faith and family
B. Work
C. Civil society
D. Rule of law
E. Safety and peace

Emphasis on these habits are vital to cultivating an engaged, informed citizenry which is needed to sustain a free republic... These habits set America apart from its European counterparts, where monarchs were intent on cultivating passive, obedient subjects unlikely to challenge their rulers claim to power.

I ask myself; where does one observe the erosion of these five habits? In a conversation with a friend of mine, a staunch Democrat and loud evangelist of atheism (a real irony), he said of conserving energy; Look at my toys. I have an Escalade, four other cars, two jet skis. All consume gas. We need to pass some laws or otherwise I wouldn't change my habits." I then think of Al Gore a democrat nominee for president of these United States, who writes a book on global warming and advocates the need for stringent federal regulation while at the same time has one of the largest carbon footprint of any US Senator in history. My friend voted for Gore. Neither acquiesces to personal responsibility. Both advocate though, laws for others to follow, of which only then will they conform ... Or will they?

It is no coincidence that Gingrich lists faith and family on top. He writes; ‘an America that openly rejects faith and the faithful will undermine the surest supports of human dignity in American life. That anti-religious America would soon cultivate a utilitarian culture, described in the above paragraph that elevates the powerful and crushes the weak. But an America that continues to welcome faith and the faithful as integral to American public life will transmit to the poorest and most forgotten segments if society the hope that they too have the right to the American Dream.

I am sure Gingrich is not espousing the fanatical right, but rather the faith found in our founding fathers, like Thomas Jefferson who picked out the parts of the Bible that work for him. Note that I used work in the present tense as his work transcended his body and far out lived its expiration. There is no coincidence that Jefferson’s Bible is limited to Christ’s message. Our Founding Father’s held out an expectation that emphasis on man’s moral compass would enable management of a civil society.

I know these people who advocate the adoption of rules, imposed by a supposed 'neutral' government that conform people to society. Gingrich writes ‘It is a utilitarian method that ignores man’s moral footing. In their mind the rules they envision are done so only by those with some innate ability to see right from wrong. Those assumed abilities in this context are what we know as morals. The Church, in theory but not always in practice, makes no assumption that morals are born in the human psyche. The church does not take morals for granted; rather it uses the message of Christ, as did Jefferson, as a moral compass. Contrarily these people claim the utilitarian higher ground, write the laws and then create institutions to correct those who have lost there cardinal headings. In my opinion if the ‘church’ or like kind were allowed to flourish those people of utilitarian methods would find their goal obtainable at a much lower cost to the government than what they have put in place of the Church.’ I can’t help but notice in writing this paragraph that the Caliph of the Ottoman Empire, commonly referred to by the 19th century as the Sick Old Man adopted a similar posture. It prompts a question in 2011’s world drama: where did Christ’s message get it right and Mohammad’s message gets it wrong? I know Christ’s message to be about transcendence through love {unconditional love meaning acceptance of things as they are] to one God, nature.

Alex de Tocqueville observed, “In the United States that associations are established to promote the public safety, commerce, industry, morality, and religion"...The Founders' insistence on limited government and created the space for the flourishing of civic life. In turn, to this day civic groups check and balance government power by fulfilling roles that government is tempted to assume, and by cultivating habits of personal responsibility that make individuals more capable of challenging government encroachments in their affairs. Tocqueville presciently predicted that government would eventually usurp many of the duties that private associations performed so effectively. Look at the American Red Cross as well as many other institutions that are the avant-garde of disaster relief. I ask does FEMA encroach on this society. Or should a limited version of FEMA merely complement all the non-profits that constitute the virtues of American man. Gingrich writes of a society that assumed the role of FEMA and note that post Katrina FEMA is now eroding away at the moral fabric conducive to society of Americans, I’ll also note as a case study that Bill Clinton, a self proclaimed public servant, has done more in the NPO sector in terms of humanitarian aid after his presidency than he ever hoped to do as president of the United States. And finally I remember hearing Gingrich say in 2005 that he would not pursue the office of President of the United States because government is too constraining to get anything done. So what is he really doing in 2011 as a presidential candidate? He is either running for President or laying the blanks for the Republican Party. Given his effort to date it is the latter.

Turning to our struggle with Islamic Terrorists, one would think Gingrich has drifted away from the theme of his book, and has garnered a listening ear with this book in his quest for his presidency of the United States. What follows are excerpts to catch the general gist of his message. He writes: ‘The courage to be free is sustained by the moral capacity to distinguish between good and evil. If evil cannot be called by name [Obama doctrine], we will not be able to deter - or even recognize - threats to our nation. Likewise, if we cannot proclaim the righteousness of our traditional values, then we won't be able to mobilize the fighting spirit necessary to defend America. Throughout most of American history, our American leaders have not been hobbled by the kind of moral ambiguity that characterizes our present administration. [Obama]. Looking at the poor results of [President] Carter's foreign policy, we see that the president failed to understand the natural consequences of scaling back American power- it creates a vacuum that is typically filled by the most aggressive actors.’

My reaction to the previous paragraph goes as follows. You can read in history as early as the Peloponnesian Wars, that a society fears another society that is more powerful, not just in terms of military strength buying terms of economic prowess. The inferior will lash out at the superior as Iran does to the United States as an act of hybris, a term that has evolved to hubris. They impose an affront to your superior to show you are not the lesser society. With this as the nature of mankind as documented by philosophers and historians a U.S. President is derelict in his duties when adopting doctrine such as Carter or Obama. Kowtowing to those who aim to harm us is an imposition on our American spirit of liberty, let alone sending an invitation for attack. Kowtowing to our adversaries makes us slaves to an ideal that is foreign to our sovereignty as a nation. We lose that exceptionalism, exception to the rest of the world. We become like Europe whose history is fraught with strife and international conflict and intrigue. With this reaction I find Gringrich’s inclusion of the subject to be fitting with the theme of his book. Otherwise he is taking advantage of a captive audience.

After a foray into our economic situation of which I am in no adequate position to judge whether he has a good solution or not, Gingrich suggests what you the average citizen can do to incrementally contribute to that which makes America and exceptional nation. Below is a simple list.

Ten Steps to Restoring American Exceptionalism

1. Americans should learn about the issues and analyze how they relate to the principles and history of American Exceptionalism.

2. Once you feel comfortable in your knowledge start speaking out in favor of American Exceptionalism.

3. Question government and argue for the right policies.

4. Educate your [any child, defined as an enlightened(able) of any age person] Talk to them about our founding principles.

5. Insist on schools bringing the principles of our founders back to the classroom.

6. Defeat and replace bad judges. Replace activist judges who feel their elite status prevails over the will of the people or the principles of our founders and their Constitution

7. Reestablish work ethic; do so mostly with your children. Teach them to work hard toward their dream. This is still the one country called the land of opportunity.

8. Celebrate American holidays. Don't just take the day off to buy some furniture, remember the reason for the holiday and talk about it with others.

9. Volunteer. Alex de Tocqueville observed this in early America. Our society is [was] more capable than our government. Regain our societal footing.

10. Run for office. Be a prime mover in reducing it imposition on the principles of our founders and restore the values that go along with liberty.

Oddly enough the list is ten. Why does the individual need to pay attention to these ‘steps’? In short, the central failing of big-government welfare state is that it's designers and current champions [Obama] do not think of people as individuals with inherent dignity who are capable of both self- government and compassion for their fellow man; they think of citizens as groups of people to be organized, placated, and for some radicals on the Left, to molded into "New Americans." That radical goal is too ominously close to 1932’s New Germans. Each American’s adherence to any or all of the above steps is an incremental ‘fire fence’ to the same fate of 1932 Germany, and today’s European social problems. We started out an exception to that rule…it is that exception that allows us liberties still not achieved anywhere else. I have traveled to many different countries. There has yet to be a time where when I clear US customs on my return trip I breathe a deep sigh and say ahhh, no place like home.

Song of Wrath

2011-11-02T21:13:00.000-04:00

Song of Wrath
By J.E. Lendon

For those interested in historical trivia, I can save you from reading this book with the following chronicle. From the time of the ‘Age of Heroes’ to 450BC Athens ranked number one. The 30 Year Peace agreement of 450 BC leaves Sparta as number one. The battle of Sphacteria between Athens and Sparta in 425BC signaled a quest for Athens to reclaim hegemony of Greece. Her over reaching and loss, not to Sparta but to Boetea, leaves Athens’s quest an illusive butterfly of illusion. She found supremacy for a brief span of a few years time where inevitably war returned and she eventually lost her grip. Ironically the triumph of Athens over Sparta or vice-versa it never came with terms that held complete sway over all of Greece or the outside world. The lesson learned was it was all in the minds of ego, an ego that was portrayed in this book primarily through the oration of Thucydides.

Comparing Athens-v-Sparta with its 30 Year Peace and USA-v-USSR with its 40 year cold war, finds parallel characteristics. Many proxy wars were waged. With the close of the Athens Sparta drama, Argos gained time and space to reenter the fray for supremacy found in ‘‘TIME’’. With the close of the USA-Soviet drama, the sick old man of Ottoman Empire, seems to have awoke with a bankroll of oil money. In the wake of the fall of the USSR, mankind found room for the resumption of ‘TIME’ to be tested once again between Muslims and the world. Hence we have ominous parallels for any reader of the 21st century.

‘Time’ with an overscore on the 'e' was how the Greeks ranked themselves. It was a measure of their worth. ‘Time’ was thought to give a real, almost physical existence in the world: it could for example be taken by one man from another. It could be captured in war. It was not just a Greek trait. I once heard from my Iranian Muslim friend. “Iranian’s do not want anything more than a seat at the table with world powers”, in essence ‘Time’. He also helped me see that they lost that seat in 646 when Islamic Arabs invaded Persia. The path to war follows these steps: ‘time’, hybris, wrath, revenge. With this undercurrent in the psyche of the Thucydydeian man we find it odd the bloodless way we now write about relations between states and the whitewashed diplomatic language of our ‘time’ have weakened our grasp on the power of emotion and psyche in foreign affairs.

Playing this theme in Lendon's introduction on our current world affairs that pits in my mind Muslim's on a similar path against the West asking the question: does the trail fit the story? If so then would you conclude hybris is at the core of psyche the Muslims or the West? Hybris is defined in this book as the act of essentially thumbing your nose at he who holds ‘time’ over you. Contrarily, it is popular opinion today for Western liberal thought, at least among the Press to acquiesce the allegation of Western hubris, a derivative word. Using Greek thinking, considering the superior standard of living, observing obvious status of Western ‘Time’ or superiority, should not the Muslims be charged with hubris/hybris instead? Evidence of this can be found not in Terrorist agenda, but rather in the Madrassas formulation of the Muslim terrorist psyche. The terrorist's actions are only the result of madrassas rooted in their quest for ‘Time’ where wrath and revenge are their modality.

This book uses the Peloponnesian War, the first ten years, to study foreign policy and statesmanship in examining the causes of war. It is interesting to read that all the States of Greece practiced ‘Time’ in their relationship with each other and as well in their war with Persia. In 570BC Persia was a world leader and was so for 1100 years before surrendering to the Muslim moniker and fall from world leadership. At the time Persians, Zoroastrians by faith, were transformed by Arab Muslims. They assimilated to the Muslims, yet to come to terms with their loss of their Zoroastrian faith they made a diversion and founded the Shiite schism sect of Islam. That schism is as deep today as it was 1600 years ago. Its depths are as great as the schism between Islam and the West. Like the ominous parallel of the Peloponnesian era where Argos stood on the sidelines, Shia and Sunni have still to find their place in ‘Time’ with each other. As a western strategy; is now the time to be engaging them?

With history as an answer, after ten years of war where Athens had the upper hand over Sparta who was not without victory, the belligerents came to a truce. The truce was born not in what victories were inflicted on each other or any slim advantage one side might have, but for the mitigation of risk of losing control over those they once mastered. Athens feared revolt from within her colonies. Sparta feared a loss of her allies. The truce and following alliance made Athens the victor without surrender. Athens' goal was to prove equal to Sparta. Sparta's goal was to prove her superiority. Truce being equated to a draw left Athens a shallow but meaningful victory in Greek terms. That victory was short lived. For within a few years after, inter-state intrigue found Athens an ally of Argos and Sparta an ally of Persia where a sound and thorough defeat was Athens' fate.

In conclusion a reader of this book may be found thinking the following. Look around the world for ‘Time’. Look at India – Pakistan, North -South Korea, Japan- China of the 1930s, France –Germany, dormant at the moment, every North American Indian tribe pre European conquest of North America. This book alludes to that character in “Time” vested in society as a root to war. Its symptoms are civil unrest, either through oppression or through economic stress. Thucydides points out: "Civil strife- stasis is the Greek word - has a fearful dynamic of it's own. Whatever it spark, civil strife burns high and soon consumes within it all the forms of division between men, giving license to wickedness under the cover of party and enforcing by a principle of tit-for-tat escalation to ever more fearful methods. When a person looks to another as superior in any way they might respect that person, but underneath their ego gives way to fear driven hybris of which carries through to wrath and finally vengeance. Is there a deed or a characteristic that he who holds ‘time’ can bestow on the rest those who may be prone to hybris to end the cycle of war? My only answer is transcending ‘time’

Below is my bibliography with nested notes. The last note in particular is worth reading. While I look to find a lesson in all that I read, I would have preferred a different author. I view Lendon as a PhD professor who fully subscribes to the ‘publish or perish” doctrine. And forcing his students to purchase and read his books.

Cool metaphor; not yet the cry of trumpets, but the moans of low bassoons

Bibliography

Page 64 understanding the ethos of alliances first and the in particular the status of Argos and Athens is key to understanding the rest of the mid century war.

Note: Argos held ‘time’ over Athens even though Sparta held ‘time’ over Argos. Since Athens and Sparta were rivals, Athens bent her homage towards Argos if for anything else to have an ally.

Page 81: Lacking in the Spartan victory in 446BC was the crucial psychological component that made victory "stick"- that made the defeated take their defeat, and therefore their inferiority in rank, to heart and therefore behave with lowly deference to the victor.

...it is best not to puff yourself up because of the misfortunes opponents says a speaker much later than Thucydides, "but only be confident when you have conquered their spirits". Said Churchill in response to the German smashing of French will, only they be responded to in kind in 1945, thus drawing to a conclusion of two countries propensity for war for hegemony.

Note: this book notes that it's not so much the sued terms at the conclusion of a war but the actual battle that marks the defeat. Making this point 2500 years later we find examples of Germany's defiance of the world in the 1930's and likewise Iraq thumbing it's nose at the world, the United States in particular, in 2003.

Page 86: What broke out in 431BC is one if the most famous passages in his narrative and one of the most quoted passages from ancient Greek historians today, for it encapsulated the cold principles of the contemporary realist school of international relations. "The truest cause of the war" wrote Thucydides, " was the growing greatness of Athens and the fear that this inspired, which compelled the Lacedaemonians to go to war."... This "growing greatness" more exactly atmosphere increase of Athenian' power, dynamis, was a threat to Spartan and her allies. ... This cause is distinguished sharply from the immediate. Events that led up to the war, which Thucydides terms the "charges" or the "grounds for complaint" (aitiai) and "points if difference" (diaphorai), which are not the “truest cause" of the war.

Note: I made it a reading project to analyze the causes of war using the 20th century Germans. I did not land on Thucydides’ theory but won’t challenge it as I may look back and add the theory to the mix in my thought. Does power and it's cousin "fear of power" underwrite the practical causes of war?

Page 87: ... Thucydides and Hobbs, who translated him into English, are the progenitors if the theoretical realism that abides in today’s universities and think tanks, perhaps more important they have molded the vulgate of age. Power and fear are the tools for thinking about relations between states unreflectively employed in the media. Thus if looking out the window we approve of Thucydides’ landscape, we do so unaware that it was Thucydides who cited the window in the first place.

Note: the different primary causes were not prevalent in Greece, nor if there in the 20th century Europe. Is this a mistake mankind has failed to correct? Or is Thucydides’ theory correct? The Cold War never fired a shot because there was no real fear between the contestants. That is only if you exclude the proxy wars, being the complaint underwritten by the Keannan Theory of 1950.

Page 103: the Spartans in ‘time’ would feel that they were waring to refuse arbitration and that their neglect of this term of the 30 Years Peace Treaty had offended the Gods.

Note: I find this correlating to the Gods parallel at least to the message of Christ, the basis of Christian faith. (Though too often obliterated by religious sects over 2000 years) Thucydides, Hobbs, contemporary think tanks and Christianity are the entire same mind yet they quarrel with each other much like Athens did with Sparta. The quarrel appears to be more for supremacy or in context of the thesis of Thucydides, ‘TIME’. Is the spirit of competition found in the Greek Olympic Games, with it's unintended byproduct transcendent in our modern world? Are the unintended consequences really the cause and not the effect or are they symptoms? Is Marx right? The internal philosophy of a corporation is in deed communal where surrendering to corporate missions is required of it's individual business units. Yet corporations compete with each other. This only applies to economics which is a philosophy with money as the metric. How does this translate to nations in competition? Clearly you see this correlation in the 2011 budget debate where the competition in international currency is central to the American way of life. Very rich people understand this and therefore are willing to contribute to America. But at large the middlemen (politician, press) and their pawns are lost.

Page 168; in 1888 Julius Von Pflgk-Hartung had a passive policy of no clear cut victory. He said to active engagement "No Pericles' plans were well conceived 'strategy of exhaustion' had every prospect of winning the war by wearing out the resources of Athens’s opponents. In fact however Pericles' strategy was one of communication: by carefully judged reprisals for the Spartan ravaging of Attica, by humiliation of the Spartans through attacks on Sparta’s allies and by exaltation of Athens by helping Athen's allies, Pericles planned to impress the rank and renown of Athens upon the Spartans and upon the wider world of Greeks.

Page 206: Slaves were, after all, the natural enemies of all free men in a society that kept them in shackles. In a poor world , too, much of a city's wealth was tied up in it's slaves, because buying slaves and putting them to work was one of the few ways free capital could be invested for profit - capital that would be consumed in the holocaust of a single moment were the slaves to be set at liberty. For men locked in civil strife to bid for the support of slaves, then signaled that an unnatural frenzy had come upon Corcyra: there was nothing the men of the island would not do or waste, if helped them to overcome their foes.

Page 211: Thucydides points out: "Civil strife- stasis is the Greek word - has a fearful dynamic of it's own. Whatever it spark, civil strife burns high and soon consumes within it all the forms of division between men, giving license to wickedness under the cover of party and enforcing by a principle of tit-for-tat escalation ever more fearful methods. It is war itself and the resulting scarcity, says Thucydides that destroys human morals and ideas. “War proves a teacher of violence that brings most men's characters to level with their fortunes." War is why “ancient simplicity into which honor so largely entered was laughed down and disappeared."

Yet Thucydides' diagnosis of the cause of stasis - his argument that domestic strife is usually the child of foreign war - was not true as a rule even in Thucydides' own ‘time’, and was certainly not true in the case of Corcyra, which was untouched by the wider war and hardly, in 427BC, confronted with "imperious necessities"

Note: while the wider war was between Sparta and Athens, there was a civil war between the oligarchs and democracy of Corcyra, where civil strive of that island prevailed over the larger rules of honor held between Sparta and Athens.

Note: Clearly the world witnessed this in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Page 224: in 426 Athens took a new tact on Sparta. Rather than simple revenge, Athens took a posture of Hybris. If Athens neglected Boeotia [an active ally of Sparta] it was not because they considered her a threat. But just as a southern gentleman jostled by another in the streets of Charleston, could coolly decide not to construe the contact as an insult and thus avoid a duel, so did an ancient Greek state in a war over rank, as we have seen, enjoy a certain latitude to fail to "notice" acts of their adversaries - by framing their acts too trivial to deserve revenge.

Page 232: this Greek checkerboard of loyalties in the northwest was no creation of the Athenians or Spartans but simply reflected the hostility of Greek states to their immediate neighbors: thus when one perhaps on the basis of ancient kinship, called the Athenians or Peloponnesians for assistance against a neighbor, that ally naturally allied itself to the other great power. Although Greek in language and habits, for the most part these continent dwellers lived as tribes and clans spread over the land, rather than owing their loyalty to individual cities, as was custom in Southern Greece. They were, then, and old fashioned folk, their men still carrying weapons on their daily rounds, leading to a more forthright, rambunctious, even Homeric notion of mine and thine than prevailed in
the city-states to the south.

Note: oh the ominous parallels of that neighboring track of land from the Middle East through central Asia, post 1919. The fall of the Ottoman Empire has yet to find the civility of the Southern Greek city- state of the forth century BC .

At this juncture of 2011 Barak Obama is making the same mistake as British Prime minister Lloyd-George did in 1919. It was for the same reason: his Empire was war weary and in economic despair. Iraq through the legacy of GW Bush mission and policy will prove to be an oasis of civilization in a sea of 'tribes in turmoil', if history does have a pattern, for the next 20 years. More ominous of historical patterns would be found in the dynamic of US-Sino relationships on a Greek canvas, and the allies of choice of those warring tribes.

Page 275: But the personal hurt of the Spartans and the trampling of the Greek warrior code by the Athenians were not the only forces at play in the Spartan decision to surrender. A singularly Spartan factor also contributed. For Spartans, far more than other Greeks, looked to be commanded in war, and the absence of command [the commanders were killed early in the battle] forced to form a tiny parliament of the wounded to debate their own fate, they proved different men from those, who under orders, were so dauntless. The Spartan authorities had expected their men to behave like Achilles,to choose noble death. But Spartans had not brought up their sons to act like Achilles; they had brought them up to obey orders. Never does the strange contradiction at the heart of Spartan society show so clearly here: Spartans were expected to live the Iliad, but an Iliad set in a totalitarian Sparta.

Page 276: The Spartans surrendered on the seventy-second day after the sea battle in Navarino Bay, in the middle of August, 1 the year 425BC. Thucydides pretends to read the minds of the greater Greek nation as they savored every appalling detail. Luke mere humans, the Spartans had surrendered because they were hungry. They had yielded their weapons to the Athenians: they had not been disarmed and helpless but surrendered with weapons in their hands. They had not fought until they were killed. The root of Spartan power, the martial mystique of the Lacedaemonians that the Athenians had so long both feared to confront on the field of battle and feared to encourage by compelling the Spartans to die fighting, was given a mighty yank halfway from the ground by this surrender. And as for rank of Sparta, the primacy that Athens and Sparta were fighting was over. The answer was obvious to any Greek. “the glory of the Lacedaemonians was cast down," wrote a later author, " because of thei loss of their men on the island."

Page 337: Bresadis [Spartan], pledging to revolt if he should come to them Amphipolis]. The kindly terms hebhag given at Amphilipolis urged along this movement, as did, the earnestness of his proclamations that he had come to free the Greeks from empire rather
than simply replace Athenians rule with Spartan. For he pledged to leave the constitutional arrangements of the rebels unchanged and to impose no garrisons or governors. After a seven year pregnancy, Sparta seamed finally to have brought to birth a son who was in earnest about freeing the Greeks from Athens, the slogan under which Sparta had gone to war in 431BC and that had brought Sparta such
goodwill at war's beginning.

Cool metaphor; not yet the cry of trumpets, but the moans of low bassoons.

Page 380: At the same ‘time’ as she became more successful at shaming Sparta, Athens also saw her estimation if value of shaming acts, as well as her definition of the make up of ‘time’, prevail in the minds of Greeks. Put positively, in terms of honor rather than shame, the Athenians managed over the course if Ten Years' War subtly to shift the definition of ‘time’, of the rank of states, from a preponderance emphasis on Andrei, the courage displayed particularly in hoplite battle, to place greater value on charis (helping friends and taking revenge upon enemies) and metis ( the cunning display of tactics and trickery). Since metis and charis played to Athenian strengths, while Sparta was supreme in Andreia, this change in the way Greeks estimated ‘time’ was decidedly to Athens' advantage. The war over the definition over ‘time’ chiefly depended not on convincing the Greeks directly but appearing to have convinced the enemy. And so it was that in the eyes of the Greeks, the Spartans slowly yielded the battle over the definition of ‘time’ to the Athenians. This was the legacy of Pericles.

Page 381: (Thucydides') realism is the theory of international relations that considers power, the dread of the power of others, and the quest for power that dread imposes impartially upon all as the primary drivers of acts of states.

Note: This book on page 382 makes a case that war is an idea of man, not of God. The US Constitution, 2000 years later fixed that mistake. 21st century liberal America appear poised to remake that same mistake. Power is not of strength Andreia but of previous combination of dominion over ideas and way of life. If one loses his way of life, liberty, his power is threatened of if not avenged then defeated.

And then in the end out of nowhere, within the pages of this book the author makes war about the complex nature of revenge, leaving the dynamics of ‘time’ and hybris as inconsequential. Lendon aside from the detailed spaghetti of events, is found a maddening author.

A Nation Like No Other

2011-10-03T09:26:00.000-04:00

Contract with the Earth

2011-10-03T09:23:00.000-04:00

Known and UnKnown

2011-09-12T09:25:00.003-04:00

Known and Unknown
By Donald Rumsfeld

It seemed often enough to draw a general summary of Rumsfeld to be a man who stated his mind in so sufficient detail that he lay groundwork for disagreement. Throughout his political career, among those that friction existed you would find names such as GHW Bush, Kissinger, and Rockefeller. Even within the GW Bush Cabinet, Rumsfeld takes numerous critiques of Colin Powell. Though never a direct challenge, Rumsfeld provides enough narrative framed with ample detail to draw lines of critique or at least question marks around Powell. He does the same with Condoleezza Rice. So why with so much controversy would you read this book? To discover the history of a well thought executive. You could preface this book with the phrase “May it please the ‘people’ ” Though his beginnings were in elective office most of has career as a public servant was in administration at executive level.

Rumsfeld was a Young Turk Congressman turned career beltway executive. What is remarkable about this book is Rumsfeld's detail in description knits together with a ‘frictious yarn’ the relationships of many prime movers from 1960 his political career inception, to 2006 its close. The most notable was his relationship with Dick Cheney a man he first hired in government who later ‘hired’ him back to government. As an additional bonus Rumsfeld's detail lays a landscape in beltway activity that intersects many issues and biographies making this book a required cross-reference for all historians and biographers. There is a continuous thread in his government work with only a couple of side tracks.

He was most passionate in international commitments, making note that being weak was provocative. From Vietnam; through Carters failed Salt II prompting Russian expansionism and Iran's Hostages, to Reagan's who while strong elsewhere was not strong Lebanon, to the EIGHT weak responses to terrorism by Clinton, Rumsfeld felt an about face in American response to being pushed around was in order. While Kennedy and Johnson were devious though largely ineffective, Carter had proven to be totally unqualified, Clinton was marginally strong in the Balkans but weak in executing and response elsewhere, it was Bush ‘41’ and ‘43’ that put the world on notice. This qualified Rumsfeld as a Cabinet member in GW Bush’s presidency and it was Dick Cheney who made the case to the president elect and then sought him out.

Rumsfeld rubbed folks in power with difficult questions, which created adversaries and respect at the same time Asking the difficult question or going against the grain can be found in examples like Rumsfeld asking LBJ, as the Senate's youngest Congressman, if his actions against North Vietnam had any affect. Johnson admitted a reluctant no. In another example, while being assigned the Space Committee in Congress he asked why are we going to the moon when developing technology and capability in orbiting earth would be a better way of staying even with the Soviet space race. In 1963 Rumsfeld moved against his constituents for LBJ's Civil Rights Bill. This happened to be a move JFK wouldn't take. He noted that while Kennedy achieved legendary status he achieved little as a President. Kennedy’s mission to the moon spent much but accomplished little. Kennedy’s record noted by Rumsfeld; on the foreign front Khrushchev came away from the Vienna talks feeling Kennedy was young and inexperienced. Khrushchev demonstrated this feeling by building a wall in Berlin and engaged Kennedy with a missile crisis. On the domestic side Kennedy would not stand up to Southern Democrats on Civil Rights, giving the issue only lip service. As a note of caution, we find an exact parallel in President Obama.

This tendency to let his convictions from well formed thought, some of known facts some in anticipation of what wasn’t yet known, found friction that comes out even in GW Bush’s administration. Rumsfeld goes on record of not being fond of Condoleezza Rice. He suggests that consensus was formed as opposed to decisions being made. You would think that consensus was more democratic and therefore more effective. As a result decisions were not clear nor were the resulting actions. While it may have created an impression of disharmony to the outsider it only existed between Rumsfeld and Rice and possibly Rice and Powell with a little of Rumsfeld and Powell. Rumsfeld writes 'Our NSC discussions were nothing like what was described by the book chroniclers and so-called experts, none of whom had ever attended an NSC meeting. While he critiques Rice's style as NSC Chief he in a backhanded way admits that Bush's cabinet was more harmonious than the other presidential administrations he served on. This is a mark of a good leader in GW Bush.

Circling back to the 1960’s in drawing on the knitted patters of lessons learned that led to decisions made in government, Rumsfeld's 'Young Turks' chapter of the 1960's is quite intriguing to see that while alienating most from the left and a select group from the out dated right, it found a formulation of relationships of GOP leaders that would shape our country in the last half of the 20th century. On the list were Reagan, George Romney, and GHW Bush. Their first prize accomplishment however was Rumsfeld’s who reshaped parliamentary procedure allowing more transparency in legislature. This accomplishment was lost under his tenure as Secretary of Defense as he was too often accused of underhanded closed door decisions. Let us be reminded that an executive of Department of Defense works under very different circumstance that a US Congressman. Also let us not forget that too often the accusations came from a Press with an adversarial agenda and no real proof.

In decision making at a personal level, in those defining days the known and unknown theme comes out as he describes his position for appropriation of $700M for the Vietnam War in May of 65. He writes: "basing my decision, as I wrote at the time, "on for fundamental fact that we cannot know what is in the mind of the President and certainly we cannot function if we operate on the assumption that his motives were bad." I concluded, "Frankly I did not have the vaguest idea whether I voted properly.” Fact is he voted on fundamentals not detail. The fundamental that Rumsfeld worked from was that LBJ was well intended and honest. Fact is LBJ may have been well intended, but asking a simple detail question like what is the $700M for, may have flushed out the truth in the massive troop increase that Johnson deployed in 65. His unknown was one question away, though never asked.

Further on lessons learned leading to future decisions we find a long term memory, and with that appreciably a lesson never to forget. What is interesting is to speculate on is how Rumsfeld was real close to the political damage caused by body count reports in our newspapers during the Vietnam War. He knew it affected our strategy as well as that of Le Duc Tao's negotiating position with Kissinger during the Paris Peace Talks. Was it this experience that affected the troop count in the 2003 Iraq war? Or was it Tommy Frank's new technology strategy? Or both? Both strategists were deeply entangled in Vietnam with lessons learned. In the end, although it took a few more years for success in Iraq, it's my opinion that we gave the enemy less to send home in body bags. We took away that political opportunity that defeated us in Vietnam. We saved lives of American troops. I am satisfied with Rumsfeld’s unpopular decision. This was a decision from a known perspective.

Bringing details to a higher level the book brings out Rumsfeld’s pre-emptive posture in defending America. As early as 1984 as a prime mover himself, in this role of Middle East envoy for Reagan, Rumsfeld found his beginnings to the 2001 anti-terror policy of GW Bush. In an era where America where still at the affect of Vietnam, the bombing of the Marine barrack in Lebanon left an impression. He writes "It should be clear: the way to successfully deal with terrorists is to not only try to defend against them, but also take the battle to them. Beirut demonstrated to me the profound truth that weakness is provocative. Our withdrawal from Lebanon contributed again to an impression among our friends and enemies of a vulnerable and irresolute America." In a speech in 1984 Rumsfeld registers his position on terrorism saying: “Increasingly, terrorism is not random nor the work of isolated madmen. Rather, it is state-sponsored, by nations using it as a central element of their foreign policy...A single attack by a small weak nation, by influencing public opinion and morale, can alter the behavior of great nations or force tribute for wealthy nations. Unchecked, state-sponsored terrorism is adversely changing the balance of power in our world.”

The GW Bush Administration and Rumsfeld’s role as Secretary of Defense during the Iraq war would be the prime reason one would read this book. Rumsfeld, like many other auto biographers, hopes that the preceding half of the book helps shapes the reader's mind with the same paradigm Rumsfeld held while serving at a post fraught with many controversial issues. The theme known and unknown by this time has not just an appreciation by the reader, but it also has a personality. What follows here is a summary of a may it “please the people” defense summary dissertation

Rumesfeld writes "While it may look like trivia, the Bush administration gained 90 coalition partners in the War on Terror." This flies in the face of the liberal pundits and their democrat protagonists that I have come to despise. What I find remarkable is that like Bush, Rumsfeld takes the heat and calls it a communication short fall on their part. They din not blame it on Clinton. What was not effectively communicated was the purpose of the alliance. The fact is Rumsfeld followed the advice of a close ally in Benjamin Netanyahu who cautioned against building a permanent alliance that would restrict flexibility in the future. Rumsfeld advised that the mission should define the alliance not the other way around. Calling it a war on terror implied a message that we were defending our country; not exacting revenge. Calling it a war enabled a coalition to form with multifaceted missions. The facets were not made know to the world. Both Bush and Rumsfeld take the heat, for which when looking at roles and responsibilities of a Cabinet, one would normally look to the Secretary of State who in this case is Colin Powell and in succession Condoleezza Rice.

There is much criticism of our handling of Afghanistan in terms of not finishing the job before starting a war with Iraq. This criticism comes from not clearly defining the job in a region where no one country trusted the other, beginning with the factions within Afghanistan. Here is an interesting fact: the Clinton administration through CIA officials advised Massoud, Afghanistan's Northern Alliance leader, not to kill bin-Laden if the opportunity arose. "You guys are crazy," Massoud responded. "You haven't changed a bit." So why would the leaders of Afghanistan trust Bush? Bush made one thing clear; the government that sponsored terrorism was to be properly disposed of. And that was accomplished. More importantly was how we did it. Nearly all Muslim countries concurred that the Taliban had to go. They also advised that a US backed war spearheaded by Afghans would do wonders inside Afghanistan and in the larger Muslim world, in terms of American-Islam relations.

With regard to 'finishing' and the Tora Bora question; Rumsfeld's General Tommy Franks reasoned against an Afghan winter in a mountain pass that holds much military history in favor of the local Pashtun people who had no affinity with any country, 'The insertion of a large number of our own forces would have taken time, providing a window for the terrorists to escape. The marshaling of American troops could also have led to fierce engagements with local Pashtuns, causing casualties on both sides. Further, an intrusion into the Pashtun heartland with thousands of American conventional ground forces, who were unfamiliar with the language, the cultures, and the territory, might have reversed the hard work that had convinced a large number of the Pashtuns to cooperate with us.

With as much criticism for timeline wars and immediate gratification of victory, as though the war was a sporting event led by presidential candidate Obama, the patience in both Iraq and Afghanistan allowed for achievement of the goals at the lowest possible cost of American lives. In retrospect gaining field victory, allowing the rebels, the Pashtuns, to claim victory. This is exactly what appears to be Obama's agenda in Libya. Sadly he either doesn't know this yet as of 90 days post Libyan invasion, or he won't claim that he is once again following GW Bush war policy against a country that has actually assisted America in
it's war on terror. In Bush we had a President. In Obama we have the same as we did in Clinton a candidate, making all moves by the polls in pursuit of a second term.

Trivia fact: in 1998 the Hill in Washington DC passed a bill (Congress 360 to 38, Senate unanimous) for regime change in Iraq and Clinton signed it. Clinton failed to act however. He sited UN sanctions that were actually funneling millions in un-designated aid the Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld requested a NSC principals meeting on Iraq in July of 2001 to set predetermined options on the table. All declined. It was Rumsfeld who had a war agenda alone, contrary to popular belief under strong encouragement of Democrat pundits. One has to look at what was known and unknown as the harsh facts that 9/11 put the United States on a war footing that was not of its choosing. Bush did not come in to office with a war agenda. He campaigned on a education theme. 9/11 forced Bush to re-examine everything.

In the WMD quagmire Rumsfeld and others at senior level would engage intelligence officials in briefings. This process brought a deeper investigation on intelligence causing some within the intelligence community to complain the process was politicized. In response to this Rumsfeld removed himself from direct participation of which brought complaint that absence of senior participation caused undesirable results and diminished the clarity of the objective. Who in the general public knows and appreciates this inner dialogue of decision making? Yet we the people, not at the benefit of Rumsfeld’s closing statements of 'his-story' if not to read this book would miss it. Amazingly on page 433 the now unclassified list of WMD evidence is published. At summary level it provides a list that all governments agreed to.

The list is not long. The last two bullets are the most provocative:
1. Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an
organization such as al-Qaeda - with world wide reach and extensive
terrorist infrastructure, and already engaged in a life-or-death
struggle against the United States - could perpetrate the type if
terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct.

2. In such circumstances, he might decide that the extreme step if
assisting the Islamist terrorist in conducting CBM [chemical or
biological weapon] attack against the United States would be his last
chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.

It is essential to note that there was no coercion by Bush on intelligence supporting WMD. There was no challenge by Powell on WMD or troop quantity. Rumsfeld defined a process and engagement of key principals that helps one visualize a rise to a decision by the most qualified of person in Colin Powell. He did not push back on troop count, though he was given ample opportunity to do so in the pre-launch phase of the war. He made no objections. The situations to do so make it clear Powell was on board with troop count. Powell the most seasoned Cabinet member on intelligence was allowed his own ascent to a determination. He made his own decision that there was conclusive evidence for WMD. The narrative that he was duped sprung from the live interview in Riyadh. It took off and Powell never retreated from it. This was Powell's fall from my graces. He could have stepped up and simply said what Rumsfeld and Bush said...'I was wrong

Rumsfeld takes the heat for a misstatement he made saying he knew where the WMD were as opposed to saying "suspected". Again we find one statement made out of context exploited with a negative spin for political reason alone. There were no winners and this country will continue to lose its footing when we the people respond to coined phrases without reading the books. The popular phrase chanted "Bush lied, people died" was the simple phrase that too many people latched on to foolishly. It was as viral as “hell no we won't go". I despise vehemently those who participated in that chant and associated actions, including some in my family. It suggests a tendency of mob rule by the ignorant. Rather to learn and consider the wider context they prefer to be ignorant in the vain of partisan politics at the cost of national security. I say this on June 19,
2011 when our current president has taken us to war with Libya, a brutal regime but in line with US security and helpful to us in the war on terrorist. Obama, like Johnson waged war not simply without declaring it, but actively denying it. He hides behind NATO and says we have no boots on the ground while boots are in the air. And yet there is no cry of foul from the partisan morons.

In the end I found reading Rumsfeld’s book, a autobiography of a controversial person, as rewarding as reading all of Kissinger’s work. Both authors are strong in detail and rationale. For that reason alone the read is a great mental work out that recharges a discipline lost among too many people. In reading their testimonies, while one may still struggle with concurrence, he does become enlightened on the notion that the decisions were always complex and there was no evil agenda. Books like these should be required reading before a person goes to the ballot box.

Interesting Notes

It was a Democratic Congress that actually passed a bill that gave Nixon the power to impose wage and price control as a way to show the public they were doing something about inflation. They never dreamed Nixon would enact it. Carter also made the same imposition on Corporate America with the same dismal results. It was in Rumsfeld's opinion the worst thing Nixon did. Oddly enough he was persuaded by John Connelly an ex-Democrat known for being shot along side Kennedy, turned Republican, as Secretary of Treasury, who received all the powers enacted by the new and broad economic controls. They were akin to obamacare. The saving grace was the controls were temporary. Rumsfeld was eventually assigned the job to manage it mostly because he was against it and therefore would ensure that it was temporary.

It is popular opinion that the president's position is influential in abortion decisions. It is also popular opinion the Republicans are pro life and Democrats are pro choice. It was Republican Nixon who chose the Supreme Court Justice that wrote the majority position in Roe-v-Wade that favored abortion-choice.

It is quite clear in the book that Rumsfeld and GHW Bush did not have an affinity for one another. There are no occurrences of disagreement but a few occurrences of competitive rivalry when the political landscape of Washington D.C. Shrugged. Rumsfeld writes that GHW Bush was in the running to be selected by Ford as his Vice President. He suggests that Bush was lobbying for the job. Having just read All the Best, Bush's memoirs, I don't recall any position that Bush was appointed where he lobbied fir the job. Here is the irony; in both memoirs every appointment was met with modesty. Rumsfeld seems to hold the record for turning down but later accepting appointments. He is convincing with his detail in his case each time.

Rumsfeld writes that as Chief of Staff for Ford he made a long list of candidates for Director of CIA. GHW Bush was on his list but below the 'short list' candidates. He says Bush was eager to get back from then remote China and into the main stream. Having just read Bush's Auto biography I note a differing story where Bush was thoroughly enjoying China. The request to be CIA Director came as a surprise to Bush. Rumsfeld taken by the controversy called Ford for a clarification. Ford sided with Rumsfeld. In 1988 after a brief attempt at A presidential run Rumsfeld found Dole preferable to GHW Bush. As a result the close relationship Rumsfeld held with Cheney
over the years saw a period of frost while Cheney was Secretary of Defense under GHW Bush.

I find it simply classic that Clinton's rhetoric brow beating on GHW Bush over the phrase 'read my lips' but raised taxes anyway got him elected. Yet Clinton too raised the same taxes he beat Bush up on. It is classic Democrat strategy to beat up the opponent rather than take a stand. This same tactic was used by Obama who has in two short years confirmed more GW Bush legacy policy than any of his own campaign promises.

A quip of wit to Putin in 2001: 'money is a coward'- that is when potential investors see instability and uncertainty, they tend to invest their money elsewhere... When businessmen see that Russia's closest associates are Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Libya and the like and see corruption and periodic opposition to American policies, they
conclude Russia is an uncertain place and that their investments could be at risk.

Interesting trivia: LBJ had approval from Cambodia and Laos to bomb. Nixon never crossed what was he was approved to do.

All the Best

2011-08-02T08:12:00.000-04:00

All the Best
GHW Bush

In three words; friendship really counts. After reading this book if there is only one lesson I could take away that would be it. If I could do it over, I'd first read this book and then model friendship after GHW Bush. GHW Bush’s life was primarily pre computer age and certainly pre internet. In friendship Bush found that a letter here and there allowed a person to convey what is in his heart towards another. Myself, having lived the first forty-five years of my life with the same technological disadvantage, wrote and received few letters. Do the letters start the circle of meaningful friends and then the opportunity that follows? This book, where Bush uses those letters in his memoirs, answers that question with an absolute yes. Along with his dedication to his friends he had a resume that solidified and already conservative view and qualified him as a candidate for President of the United States.

GHW Bush went straight from high school against his father’s wishes to the Navy. He was the youngest naval pilot to receive his wings. He was a Torpedo pilot for three years in WWII. He flew off ships in the Pacific. Was shot down and rescued. His letters suggest he was a Dewy man and also leaves hints that many on his ship were as well. He down plays the election that not much was said because they knew it would be a FDR victory. He also leaves hints that he was not keen on the New Deal policy. He went from high school to military to Yale. Albeit of some money, his letters portray a blue collar life. He had no silver spoon. Probably the most notable letters he wrote pertinent to his time served were the ones he wrote to the families of the crew that were with him when his plane was shot down. Bush took full responsibility for their deaths, though through the tragedies of war, one could hardly blame being shot at as your fault.

In early business it appears as though his father's connections helped with getting an entry job in the oil supply business. It was on self motivation that Bush made his foray in to the oil field. The letters imply that his success was of his own making. It was at this time his father first became Senator of Connecticut. If there were connections to money, the GHW Bush wealth only saw tangential benefit. Against the facts there is the myth on the Bush silver spoon. The antidote is found in a letter on to a critic, written after his presidency where Bush positions himself appropriately writing: " Look, yes I was lucky enough in the depression to have three square meals and a Dad that could pay the hospital bills when I got sick; but Walt, I never felt the world owed me anything - 'class' in that sense. I never felt superior to some other guy who had less.” I said, “You sound like Soc. 10 or even Soc [society] 22." The tenor of this letter says, his financial stature was overblown only to deride a person of sound principle, regardless of the actual facts.

His first job was in oil supply. He learned the business and patched together investment backing just like any other entrepreneur would do. Whether his father’s name or money may have helped raise the money the book never says. But from reading the letters, it took hard work in terms of long hours, enterprise thinking, and lots of letters to friends always demonstrating sincere thanks and friendship. This was a practice that I am sure saw no conclusion as a collection in the book of a United States President.

As Bush's first foray in to politics he was chairman of the Republican Party in Houston. around solid principle and hold to it. In the transition from business to politics Bush sold his controlling share of the company he founded. To those with cynical views on his oil money, I find nothing but cynicism. I found it interesting that his letters to reach for the black vote in 63 were genuinely respectful to first conservative principal found in black business owners knowing he did not have to have to bend party principles to cater to their vote. It was a mark of strong moral conviction. In the aftermath of the 1964 Democrat landside victory, Bush wrote to Republican Party leadership to maintain conservative principle, but broaden the base. He felt you didn't have to bend or mold either side buy rather create room for productive debate. I have read elsewhere, that to be successful you must form a sound strategy. As a Congressman in 1968, his opinions formed form past experience joined with his on the ground inspection of America’s landscape found two causes to stand on first was home ownership for minorities fighting for our country. Second to promote what is now known as NPO’s to more efficiently disperse aid to those in need. This marks a fair and balanced conservative, with a compassion for the poor and an eye for the most efficient means to help them. I find that Bill Clinton was much too handicapped as President to do what he now does in the Non Profit world. The difference is Bush held his strategy as President; Clinton only found the NPO value after his presidency.

April 29, 1975 while serving as Ambassador to China in response to John Small's (of Canada) reaction to the South Vietnamese surrender while experiencing the news in Peking; Bush wrote to Small the following; ‘it is important that the U.S. stand firm in Korea, and it is important that this slide and decline be halted. It is important that these people stand for something. Where is our ideology? Where is our principle? What indeed do we stand for? These things must be made clear, and the America people must understand that, as soon as America doesn't stand for something in the world, there is going to be a tremendous erosion of freedom.’

In accepting the job as the Director of the CIA, Bush allowed duty to take precedence over politics. There was a lot of talk inside the beltway for a Bush presidential campaign. Our country needed to fix some problems in the CIA and President Ford tapped on him for the solution. At the time Rockefeller was the heir apparent Republican nominee. As a practical decision he saw, from his diplomatic experience in the UN and in China that the need for international intelligence should be second to none. He accepted this post over the quest for the top slot. As a reader of Known and Un Known, I find it possibly a trend for men of power to write in their memoirs how they humbly accepted their call to duty in their rise to power. Rumsfeld writes in his book that the distant Bush stationed in China pined for a presidential run. How would Rumsfeld know this? Neither book tells. I tend to believe Bushes story because in 1975, technology around communication put substantial limitation to access the republican political machine.

In the Iran hostage taking Bush writes "I firmly believe that all of us, citizens and presidential candidates alike, should stand behind the President in the handling of this extremely sensitive matter. I say this with the conviction of having worked in two presidential administrations in a foreign policy and seeing the United States weakened in the eyes of the world because potshots were taken at the President for political reasons. To do this in this crisis might help me as a presidential candidate but would be wrong for this country. Keep in mind Bush was not in politics at this time of Carter. He had license to be a pundit rather than a politician. But he stuck to his principle, perhaps a trait he handed to his sons.

As President and in conjunction GHW Bush's resume, in particular his tenure in China, he was able to write a sincere letter to Chairman of China's Deng Xiaoping after the Tiananmen Square slaughter of citizens. The letter made clear the position of condemnation of the action and at the same time held together a level of respect that held our two nations in a productive dialog. Having a sincere previous relation that was held in tact through letters gave a lot more gravity to the words in the letter. Perhaps this moment helps a common voter to more carefully consider the qualifications of a presidential candidate and forget the campaign advertisements and rhetoric of debate. Clearly our current President came into office with absolutely no resume, and we have seen very questionable results in terms of our international relations.

In 1990 a time of spawning democracy in Eastern Europe and Russia, Bush writes in comment to those asking for American leadership and who is the enemy; "It's apathy; it's the inability to predict accurately; it's dramatic change that can't be foreseen; and it's events that can't be predicted like the Iran-Iraq war... There are all kinds of events that we can't foresee that requires a strong NATO, and there are all kinds of instability that requires a strong US presence. Here you see an echoing of early formed principle. Basically it is a principle that was indeed passed to his son GW Bus. That being that weakness is provocative.

By Oct 1990 Bush passed deficit abolishing budget and writes ' We eventually did get a budget deal, and although it was not as good as our original one, it was a major step in the direction of getting our deficit under control. Through a combination of tax increases and spending cuts, it slashed the accumulated deficit by $500 B over five years. We also set strict limits on discretionary spending. I will confess to feeling a little vindicated in 1998 when the federal budget deficit was finally erased and a net of economists, journalist, and government officials cited "Bush's budget compromise as the beginning of the end of our deficit problem."

Did Perot or the Press cost GHW Bush his second term? I remember Murphy Brown a TV sit-com. The show was comprised of brilliant comedy with political satire at the cost of Republicans; much like Boston Legal did to his son. Add to this weekly half our info-mercial events championed buy the rising ‘phenom’ news network, where in 1992 during a commencement speech at Notre Dame, Bush was preceded by a liberal speaking harshly against Bush. The crowd was maybe touched but unmoved by her long speech. When Bush was announced he was received with standing ovation and his speech was well received. CNN covered only the girl, the barbs in her speech and said nothing of Bush or the reception a very conservative Notre Dame crowd gave him. This is biased reporting with an agenda and is clearly not the whole truth that Americans deserve. Did the campaign environment of the new media age cheat us on a president of easily found principle with a solid and consistent strategy giving way to a President with questionable character and a strategy that blew in the wind of the polls? I think so. Did our country get what we asked for? I think so. So what does that say about our country?

As a person who has hired many people. As a person who has sent many a resume, and participated in many an interview I come away with a cheated feeling every time. The tools and the process never seem adequate to the decision being made. I think the same goes for presidents. The choice is as much about the people selecting the applicant as it is the applicant themselves.

Lets look at the past fifty years After Johnson, we needed someone we could trust, someone with a resume. Nixon was vindicated in 1968, regardless of his quirks, simply because he was not a Democrat. After Nixon we needed anything that did not come from the Republican Party and literally got a peanut farmer. After Carter we needed a president that could give us confidence in ourselves. We got Reagan the actor, turned governor with solid performance in California. Bush followed on his coat tails. With GHW Bush we were bamboozled, by a spinning press where sound bites prevailed over everything else. We got an easily distracted Clinton who in concert with Moris’s polls and a polar opposite Hill got little done. After Clinton all we were looking for was a president that could keep his pants on. And still with the bar that low it took a 7-2 Supreme Court decision to make up our minds. Why? Our other choice was a wooden indian with a huge geo footprint, and claim to fame after a lame duck vice presidency was supposedly inventing the internet. After GW Bush, we voted for anything not Bush and got a community organizer.

Of this entire list of American Presidents over the past fifty years, GHW Bush has the stellar resume. He was a business executive, a Congressman, an Ambassador, an Administrator, he had a voting record. Yet the fickle people fell prey on the phrase ‘read my lips’ and gave him one term in the White House. We have now evolved to an ‘entertainment tonight’ type society where we actually are looking at a half term governor as a legitimate contender to a standing President who had only the claim as a part time Senator, a full time campaigner, and a community organizer. We have a president who has never had to make a payroll who has yet as of August 1, 2011 to put forward a responsible budget and his Party Lobbying for an 18 month term on a budget that is six months late. In contrast, in the days immediately following the 1991 Gulf War, I saw Bush as a shoe-in in 1992. The Gulf War being his pinnacle and with our country’s moxy back, everything else was…well boring; so boring that we fell prey to one phrase. From 1980 to 1992 We saw 12 years of solid presidential performance. Did we learn nothing? We have since seen 18 years of question marks. I come away from this book vowing to convince as many people as possible that the resume and the interview are important. Pay attention to the presidential candidate, not the pundits. Look at the resume. Look at the voting records. Turn off the TV sets. Make up your own mind.

Decision Points

2011-08-02T08:09:00.000-04:00

Decision Points
By G.W. Bush

Drinking. A decision Bush made. After reading the chapter he was a robust social drinker. I call him a "Molly Brown" drinker. I suspect you could have put Bill Clinton in that category. The difference is Bush voluntarily took himself to task. In retrospect I asked why was that chapter in the book anyway. I think it sets the tone for all the decisions GW Bush made in his presidency. It was a presidency where a man of great conviction was taken to task, first by a divided country and second by events on par with Roosevelt, Lincoln, and Washington.

In the chapter on the decision to run for president you read how ordinary Bush was. Or you could characterize it as honest. I use the word honest because what comes out is akin to the first decision, in that he reconciled all pertinent decisions of a presidential run with himself. When people take Bush to task on his God orientation, I find that taking your self to task on par with taking yourself to God. Bush didn’t ask God if the decision was right, he went beyond the surface, the rational, to his heart to ask is the decision morally right as well. As a goal for a moniker Bush entered office in 2000 with an aspiration to be the "education president". He teamed up with Ted Kennedy to legislate the No Child Left Behind bill.

On this hyperbole notion that Bush was managed note, you learn that Bush was not a person managed by his handlers that may or may not met the test of conviction. You learn that Bush purposefully sought out a reluctant Cheney as a running mate. In fact the people around him, starting with his father, would not have sought out Cheney. Demonstrating the divisiveness of the GW Bush presidency the reader learns that it was not as simple 5-4 Supreme Court decision as the liberal for years etched on to the memory of Americans. There was first the actual vote count that had Bush victorious by 529 votes. You then have a 7-2 vote that held that the recount was chaotic and inconsistent. Non the less Bush started his first term under an extreme handicap where conviction to stay the course was a requirement

When I contrast Bush's failed nomination of Harriet Meyers to the Supreme Court to that of Obama's first selection; Meyers was not selected because she had no judicial record and she was currently working a close aid to Bush. By contrast, Obama's appointment, Kagan, carried the exact same baggage. Plus Kagan’s sexual orientation gave the view that "political correctness" compromised the clarity required for prudent confirmation. This selection once again demonstrates Bush being his own man in terms of selecting those around him. As it turned out Meyers was not a good decision yet it was Bush who rightly or wrongly saw in Meyers a juror who would not be swayed in Supreme Court decisions by her own personnel agenda and held that as a priority over he lack of bench experience. Bush's convictions did not always prevail.

When I turned to the stem cell chapter I thought why this would be a land mark decision, a test of Bush's conviction. I was unaware that it was this issue above all the rest where the poignancy in his critics struck deep. It was also this issue that galvanized the thick skin required to be the president of the United States. On the stem cell decision, this was his hardest decision, the one decision that was close and personal. He lost a sister where research may have helped. It was the one decision that the Press was most vitriol in Bush as a person. And it had the greatest ‘bash’ affect on him personally. What I did not know until I read this book is that it turns out Bush was right. Science found a way without using government funding, during his term, to harvest the same cells from skin. Killing embryos was then as is now not required for stem cell research. I am amazed at the non-reporting of the science discovery or the lack of any apology from the Press or his opponents.

9/11: Clarification points Bush had been told that a plane flew into the Trade Center when they were walking into the class room. It was not made clear it was a terrorist act. He was told about the second aircraft in front of the children. It was a purposeful decision to not look frantic. This was not for the children sake alone but for the terrorists that would be seeing his reaction on camera. It was a decision of courage. Not of a non-decision of frantic panic. Even Bush's advisors said don't say anything to the public yet. Bush was the voice of America not just the Commander in Chief giving immediate direction to first responders. He purposely made the decision to frame his reaction to that of undaunted. It was his personal and private conviction, confidence in that decision that enabled him to endure the merciless and reckless criticism from the liberal left that insisted on dividing the country for mere political reason.

In War Footing you come to understand the obstinacy and the agenda of the Democrats when Bush was establishing the Department of Homeland Security, the Democrats pushed back in an effort to make sure the Labor Unions that would staff it were sufficiently organized to secure collective bargaining. Let's compare Bush's Patriot Act with Obama's Health Care Bill. When the Patriot Act was signed it had a 98:1 vote of support. Obamacare required a Democrat Partisan cloture vote of 60:40. When the Patriot Act was signed, Democratic senator Patrick Lehey from Vermont and Chuck Schumer from New York both said we read this Act and it is fair and balanced. Nancy Pelosi said after Obama signed Obamacare "we don't know what's in it. But we will figure it out. The Patriot Act proved over and over as a critical component to our nations security. Bush however required conviction to endure the reckless criticism from the liberal left over this decision.

On water boarding; first contrary to the impression the Left including Obama on the campaign trail and the Press for six years implying that water boarding was standard practice to all POWs called it an egregious compromise of American values. I myself, a staunch defender of Bush, fell victim to the Press brain washing. It was not until 2008 that I became fully aware of the scope of water boarding, the whole truth Said Zubaydah one of the THREE people water boarded, "water boarding was a technique that allowed him to reach that threshold, fulfillment his religious duty and the cooperate.".
You must do this for all the brothers," he said.

Afghanistan: Bush closed with "Ultimately the only way the Taliban and al Qaeda can retake Afghanistan is if America abandons the country. Allowing the extremists to reclaim power would force Afghan women back into subservience, remove girls from school, and betray all the gains of the past nine years. It would endanger our security. After the Cold War, the United States gave up on Afghanistan. The result was chaos, civil war, the Taliban takeover, sanctuary for al Qaeda and the nightmare of 9/11. To forget that lesson would be a dreadful mistake. My fear is Obama even with his troop surge, has committed the United States to a deadline to abandon Afghanistan. He set the stage for a mood of American exhaustion on war. And we are witnessing an extreme sentiment now to abandon what was seen only 10 years earlier as a lesson learned. With the reality that Pakistan is very capable of harboring terrorists, we have gone from a conviction of Bush to stand up a free people focused on anything but international terrorism to a political agenda of Obama that will gradually find Afghanistan as equally dangerous as it was on September 11, 2001.

Iraq: on page 234 you read the question put in a way I had not heard before in the context of that time It’s a question that has a person pause. Perhaps be a little less critical. Bush puts it this way, "Letting a sworn enemy of America refuse to account for his weapons of mass destruction was a risk I could not afford to take. That question was asked to a brutal "elected" dictator who simply would not cooperate. UN resolution 687 mandated not only that Iraq be rid of WMD but also be rid of the ability to produce them. I, a pretty tuned in person on this subject, cannot recall from any Press report, the status of Iraq’s ability to produce WMD. I read in Known and Unknown of the official report on WMD, of which got very little press coverage. In that report it stated that Hussein had the capability to convert industrial sites in to WMD factories in as little as two weeks time. While the report said there was no capability for nuclear attacks, it made the following to provocative points. 1. Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qaeda - with world wide reach and extensive
terrorist infrastructure, and already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States - could perpetrate the type if terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct. 2. In such circumstances, he might decide that the extreme step if assisting the Islamist terrorist in conducting CBM [chemical or biological weapon] attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him. When asking whether Bush’s ‘conviction” effected his Iraq decision, one must be sure to put that decision in the context of 911 and then ask that critical question: would you take the risk of letting a sworn enemy of America refuse to account for his weapons of mass destruction.

The Mission Accomplished banner was not at any order of the Bush administration. Evidence to this was it was NOT consistent with his speech. He said the major combat mission has ended. And that was true. He also said we have a lot of work left to be done in order to leave behind a free Iraq. And the Press torched him. Contrarily Obama went to the cameras to announce the conclusion of combat in Iraq, with less than proper recognition of Bush, and still to leave behind four thousand combat troops who were still engaged with the enemy. Reports from the Press have become at best second page news. No one Has asked Obama about the combat troops still in Iraq a year later. I raise the contrast to once again examine the convection required of one president compared to his immediate predecessor who was his number one critic, finding his place in the White House specifically through criticism of conviction.

The strategy of the insurgents of Iraq in 2006 said Bush on page 260 was to present an image of Iraq as hopeless and un-win-able, swinging American public opinion against the war and forcing us to withdraw as we had in Vietnam. This lesson that our enemy, enemy in waiting, will wait as long as it takes as a strategy leverage political agendas has yet to be learned by our President Obama. As I read this with the news of Qaddafi murder on the radio, I can only surmise that Obama's campaign stance against Iraq and Afghanistan portrays Obama making the right call. Yet his abstinence to react properly and with full conviction to a crime he is witnessing has positioned America as an accomplice to murder. The mere facts that he has retreated behind the guise of NATO and has used the distant voce of Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State, only further develops the quagmire of international intrigue today versus the clear cut lines ever to be criticized found in Bush

In the events behind the Surge of troops in Iraq, Bush met with the survivors of over 550 fallen soldiers. He also read 14 biographies on Lincoln. He modeled after Lincoln in the midst of the reality of his unpopularity. Underscoring this introspective view Bush received daily briefings from the Situation Room, of the terror inflicted on Iraqi people. He also was apprised of the Iraqi people after realizing the Insurgents were not acting in their best interests, switching sides to the Americans. These were events that the Press chose to play down amidst the anti Bush drumbeat. It took real courage to put it all in the balance and make the right decision for the Surge. Courage and conviction will mark his presidency as even his successor in the announcement of success in Iraq failed to give proper recognition to the courage it took to lead not by popular opinion. I write this on the same day that I read about the UN voting, to restrain Qaddafi from his murderous terror. The difference here is Bush made it clear to the World what his convictions were. Obama simply followed the leadership of a foreign body. Amazingly, Americans once again find no fortitude to fight for freedom of ‘One Man’ as they let a border come between that which unites all men. And we have a president Obama, who like Clinton, who chooses to follow the leaders of Europe. In the end lives are at stake, no matter who leads. A sad note on American values when Obama and Clinton are favored over Bush. What Bush makes real clear in his book is the freedom of ‘One Man’ is the security of all men, including the United States of America.

Bush's chapter called Freedom agenda was a forty page summary of his diplomacy. What came out the ‘trot around the globe’ was a common theme. This is a mark of leadership akin to his father GH Bush, Reagan, Kennedy, Truman, Roosevelt, Churchill, Wilson. He set a standard and formed a policy around that standard, and he produced a strategy, enabling him to execute on a tactical plan. That standard was an individuals right to freedom. Policy around that standard stated that where there is institutionalized freedom, there is a mitigation of risk on American security. Tactically, where freedom did not ring and those leaders responsible who also pledged eminent danger or threat to the United States were challenged first through diplomacy, and diplomacy's big brother...war. Like his decisions or not, they were clearly vetted, communicated and executed upon. When contrasting to his immediate successor as well as his predecessor I felt more secure in the same way 20th century Americans felt with the aforementioned leaders. This will be Bush’s legacy.

Other challenges:

The Bush presidency sponsored prescription drug programs under a Medicaid reform bill. It was well defined, well debated, and passed with a compromise bipartisan vote. It distributed risk which made it one of the few bills to come in significantly under budget.
Contrasted against Obamacare where a cloture vote along strict party lines against the will of the majority of the people finds the dichotomy in moral fortitude between Bush Republicans and Obama Democrats.

Looking at Bush's failed Social Security reform efforts finds a well stated case for reform and hardened uncooperative Democrats trumpeting that Bush was "privatizing Social Security which was inaccurate. The sad result on this the general public was trained to see Bush as a spender and his reform would have reduced the budget by xxxx and would have fixed the problem instead of passing it on to the next generation , not two generations but the very next one, where it will see it's doom.

The Katrina drama is explained in traditional memoir fashion rose colored lens, or was it? When told- from first person you come away with only criticism of the Press for admonishing a President for playing the role of President in a cast of incompetent leaders in Louisiana. The governor never allowed federal troops in to assist. By day five Bush over rode her. The Mayor did not order the evacuation in time. From a Presidential standpoint Bush admits that his performance was appropriate technically, but his public relations response deserved the outcry it got. Has Obama been guilty of PR gaffs? My first response is the Boston police incident, where he over reacted inappropriately. My second is Libya, where he has enough evidential authority to bring Qaddfi to justice for Lockerbee and does nothing while human beings are being murdered. While the world
looks for a President, Obama once again "votes present." Rather than simply take Qaddfi as a criminal, he abdicates the action to NATO of which the USA is the leading partner. The only fool in the scheme is Obama himself.

I dreaded the challenge of reading the last chapter Financial Crisis. Early on Bush brings me back over to his side. He first puts his personal view of economics forward to set the tone against the noise of the Press and his opponents ranging from Hillary Clinton to Barak Obama to Keith Oberman. Then he sets a few things straight First is our surplus was based on projections of a tech bubble that would continue which didn't. Second 9/11 caused a collapse of that galvanized a recession that was officially under way one month after he was sworn into the first term of office.

This I knew. What I didn't know was. GW Bush's debt to GDP ratio was a percentage point below the mark of the 20th century average. Additionally to assuage my criticism of his spending, he could not line item veto pork or earmarks. He had to look at a Bill in whole and sign it or not. Oddly enough now that Obama era Republicans in have sworn away earmarks, Democrats who were so quick to criticize Bush on the same now claim earmarks only represent four percent of the budget. I now find the need for an apology first to myself for allowing myself to be drawn in by rhetoric from the left. And then to our 44th president for conceding ground to the left.

On Freddie & Fannie: in Bush's 2003 budget in recognizing that they had morphed into an institution that exceeded it's charter beyond promoting home ownership, he proposed a bill that would regulate the GSE’s. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, ranking Democrats on the Fed Committee with friends, former Clinton administration officials running the GSE's, went on the record and said "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not facing any kind of financial crisis". In 2005 Bush raised a more alarming call for action and put forth through Senator Richard Shelby a bill to regulate the GSE's. The Democrats blocked the bill from passing. A President can only sign into law bills put in front of
him. Democrats prone to criticize Republicans for not regulating failed to do just that at a most critical point in our nations financial 21st century history. By 2008 Bush called for reform seventeen times before the threat of a credit melt down and the eighteenth call was finely acted on. In 2010 we continue to harangue Wall Street for their role when the house of cards collapsed on failed mortgages which are directly connected to the GSE's and legacy policy of the Clinton administration.

In reading Bush's account I am curious as to how much paper in housing George Sorros and people like him had and sold it short. Could the stanch supporters of the Democrat Party who are so quick to criticize Republicans for failing to regulate have benefited from Barney Frank infamous statement? I believe the right investigative journalist could write a good book on this subject. Keep in mind it would put no one in jail because the Democrats blocked any regulation. But would have a new emphasis on the term full disclosure. One could only pray there is a wiki-leak as the key to an investigation.

Decision Points

2011-07-27T08:42:00.007-04:00

The Argumentative Indian

2011-05-29T08:57:00.002-04:00

The Argumentative Indian
by Amartya Sen

Is mankind free to speak his mind? Does differing opinion add value to civilized society? The argument begins millennia ago with creation. It finds only argument on these questions with no real value placed on either side. Oddly enough at the root of much of the debate is religion where the same balance goes with the need or not, to subscribe to any religious orthodoxy; hence heterodoxy best describes the Argumentative Indian. By page four I found argument with Sen. Having read the Bhagavad-Gita I came away with a different scenario on allegorical portrayal of a principle. That of non attachment to the physical world is central to the Gita, I was impressed that it was Arjuna making the argument for fate. It was Krishna doubting the reason for war. It was Arjuna rationalizing on the separation of body and soul, making material outcomes not important. Oddly enough My argument is only technical in merit an so, why should I argue. None the less, surely I the reader must make way to the well studied author; a modest degree of skepticism shadowed my reading of this book. When you think of it do not skepticism and argument find them selves bookends to leaves of theories put to the test of debate.

Basically the book is a collection of essays that Sen has written over the course of his career as an author, amongst many other accomplishments, including a Nobel Prize. His main thrust is that giving man the power to freely debate his views is the reason for hope in a future for man kind. He makes clear that fertile ground for debate is democracy. The reader becomes keenly aware that India is now the world’s largest democracy. To make sure the reader appreciates this Sen demonstrates that democracy is intimately connected with public discussion and interactive reasoning where Indian history is rich with evidence. Lesson learned; traditions of public discussion exist across the world, not just in the West. And to the extent that such a tradition can be drawn on, democracy is easier to institute and also to preserve. As I read through this book I was always looking for a that evidence supporting a general theme and characteristic in Sen’s argument. Upon entering my last foot note I landed on it. This last foot note is an example of Sens many posed arguments, where he sites two antonym notions and finds congruency in the application of their outcomes. Just when you have caught on to one side of an argument he would reverse the strategy. It paints a complex picture, where there is always room for two winning sides of an argument and therefore unity through politics.

Hinduvta having roots in Hindu is a recent movement, relatively speaking, in what appears to be an effort to attach a religious identity to India. Accidentally or on purpose, Hindu’s characteristics in doctrine are one that brings unity to people by accepting all walks of life. Hinduvta is actually a heterodoxy faith and the root of Indian Democracy. To qualify Sen’s views one must appreciate that he is Bengali, a culture with strong Muslim influence. Yet he himself is a secularist with acceptance of all and at the same time no real attachment to any religion. Ironically, a prime tenant of Hindu is non attachment. The aforementioned makes Hindi a religion different from the major religions, yet it does practice a belief in one god.

Sen makes a lengthy argument against the Hindutva movement basically because of his secular orientation. He advocates heterodoxy separate from a Hindu policy which seems to me superfluous. Why argue about things that don’t need argument. I wrap with one anecdotal question on this. His argument lay with the fact that there are many religions comprising India today and Hindu is simply the majority. He continuously argues for equal distance the Indian government must maintain, which is different from separation of church and state here in the United States. As a secularist and in conjunction with the coincidence that he is a native Bengali he makes a strong argument that Hindu is not a religion of the same unity as Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Hindi are a people that by their doctrine embrace all religions not just their own. So I am a bit puzzled by Sen's concern with Hindutva. It appears that Hindutva is the solution to found a multi-religious state around Hindi doctrine. Sen speaks to the secular Carvaka system and went further and suggested the need for methodological scrutiny of knowledge that is services - directly or indirectly from perception. I suggest he take that same approach in his argument with the Hinduvta movement. I could say in a with all due respect yet as an American, what is his beef?

Enfolded within Sen’s argument he uses the phrase "homogenize to ‘hegemonize’". He associates that with the violence foisted on the people by some policy of the State of India. While I see numerous intervening steps here in America, I can surely see through the departure from 150 years constitutional interpretation, Roosevelt ushered a slippery run of Federal hegemony over the individual States of our Republic. Obama has done it with Obamacare, his law suit against the State of Arizona and his deployment of funds to support his position against the Governor of Wisconsin. Franklin D. Roosevelt was accused of much the same maneuvering in the 1930s. History will remember Obama the same way. These draw ominous parallel to Hitler's consolidation of power from 1932 to 1936, In America the protests may be of agitated spirit but rarely of violent nature to the degree found in India. I can only suspect that as economics improve, India’s people will be become less desperate and therefore less violent towards one another. In this ominous parallel I find fertile ground for Sen’s concern. The safeguard both governments have is term limits in power.

With regard to India’s culture front through literature Sen first talks on the author, lecturer and educator, Tagore in an essay aimed and literature in India. with it's influence on diversity. He follows with an essay on Satyajit Ray and the film industry's influence on India. The theme of Tagore is mostly introspective. Ray drives home the notion of India's cosmopolitan nature; one that while embracing Asian borne diversity, there is not much that convinces me on the reception of this in the Western ways. While received thru force, I am not convinced Western culture runs very deep in India. In saying this I am also suspect that India does not require Western culture. In fact they may receive it but like two year olds playing next to each other, it is not essential to share their toys to have a relationship. Hence a deep India-Western relationship may be rare for a reason. And then when I read about the abject indifference the wealthy have on their surrounding poor, I suspect perhaps there is some common ground in capitalistic democracy. Ironically right after I made this note, Sen deals with this under the headings of External Sources and Modernity, The Elusive 'Asian Values'. He answers it directly in his concluding paragraph under the section title Ours and Theirs: The essences of his conclusion that so much parallel the ideology of the United States :

The difficulties of communication across cultures are real, as are the judgmental issues raised by the importance of cultural differences. But these recognitions do not lead us to accept the standard distinctions between ‘our culture” and ‘their culture’. Nor do they give us cause to overlook the demands of practical reason and of political and social relevance in contemporary India, in favor of faithfulness so alleged historical contrasts….

The celebration of these differences – the ‘dizzying contrasts’ – is far from what can be found in the labored generalizations about ‘our culture’ and the vigorous pleas, increasingly vocal, to keep ‘our culture’, ‘our modernity’ distinctly unique and immune from the influence of ‘their culture’, ‘their modernity’. In our heterogeneity and in our openness lies our pride, not our disgrace. Satyajit Ray taught us this, and that lesson is profoundly important to India. And for Asia and for the world.

Sen illustrates many cases in Indian literary history in making the argument that public discussion (argument) is a tradition much older in India than the West. At high level we are familiar with the phrase, “never talk religion and politics in family discussion”. Well think of a people that transitioned from Buddhism to Hindu, while mixing in home grown Jainism and Sihk and importing Islam, Christianity, Judaism and a few others all having equal distance from the government. And Sen is careful to distinguish the ideas of “equal distant from religion” from “separation of church and State” Just the analysis of the two phrases suggest India’s diverse religious beginnings where even in conquest, the conquerors adopted or embraced the religions of the conquered. These are described in events centuries before America’s rooted in a Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman foundation. Sens key word through the book is heterodoxy: the inclusion of religion as opposed to the separation from religion

Sen delves into the popular subjects on India such as Class, India’s international positioning, and calendars. I have captured the high points in the notes section of this review. What I most appreciated were Sens views on the subject of Reason. After three hundred or so pages of reading his rationale, brought forth in an ‘argumentative setting’, Sen comes out with his views on Reason. Sen attempts to excuse those who cling to Cast by saying: “Attacks on ethics based on reason have come recently from several different directions. Apart from the claim that the ‘Enlightenment view of human psychology’ neglects many human responses (as Glover argues), we also hear the claim that to rely primarily on reasoning in the ethics of human behavior involves neglect of culture specific influences on values and conduct. People’s thoughts and identities are fairly comprehensively determined, according to this claim, by the tradition and culture in which they are reared rather than by analytical reasoning.” He adds “Indeed, the importance of instinctive psychology and sympathetic response should be adequately recognized, and Glover is also right in believing that our hope for the future must, to a considerable extent, depend on the sympathy and respect with which we respond to things happening to others. To this I say: How about calling a person out for mindless adherence to tradition. How about simply telling a Brahman that systematically denigrating those of lower class only adds to the weight of the anchor on the Indian economy? To Sen’s credit his agreement is seemingly balanced in the end, so much so that if there is a point to be made, it is obscured by the balance beam of justice leaving lady justice so blind that a way forward becomes something that you must feel for.

This book will certainly add to ones ability the appreciation for eloquent argument. It grapples with many difficult topics. And in the end Sen leaves it open for argument. If you want to survive a cocktail party and be well recognized as being well versed in controversy this book is worth your time. India has yet to master, though may be on the verge of it, an Indian-ness of democracy that could one day master the world. As debate would have it, the jury is still out. However I believe that on Sen’s ring of keys, one of them is the master key to success. The key is placing it in the correct box. So there are two options accept argument as essential to agreement or if your are not up to the argument, find some value in perspective and simply say to another’s opinion….aaaahhh I see.

Notes:

Page 16 Ashoka tried to codify and propagate what must have been the
earliest formulations of rules for public discussion- a kind of ancient
version of the nineteenth century 'Roberts Rules E
of Order'....Even when in arguing 'other sects should be duly honored
in every way on all occasions'

Page 26: the Carvaka system went further and suggested the need for
methodological scrutiny of knowledge that is services - directly or in
directly from perception.

My comment: this can only be made from the assumption that non
interactive minds are just that, virtually dead and un able to draw
from that kernel that produces judgment. When judgment is based on
the survival of the body one direction is taken in the assembly of
knowledge. If one can transcend the body, at least in thought, a
different perception allows of a different assembly of knowledge.
Hence the need for Carvaka skepticism to be rooted in the original and
possibly "born again" thought. The key is transcending the paradigm
of time being a linier phenomena to one where time is vertical.

Page 27: Buddhaghosa, a Buddist philosopher in fifth- century India,
thought that even though Lokayata can literally interpreted as the
discipline that bases knowledge only on the “material world", it
could perhaps be better described as the 'discipline of arguments and
disputes'. In this respect, the rationale of the Lokayata approach is
quite close to the methodological that Francis Bacon would make with
compelling clarity in 1605 in his treaties The Advancement of Learning

My comment: India was 1100 years ahead of the west.

In the chapter India Large and Small, Sen makes numerous arguement
against the notion that India is not a Hindu country. He diluted the
over all 4/5 Hindu majority using a series of sub classifications. Then he challenged history to site Buddhism as the first religion of India. He attempts to make a case that Hindi and Islam share equally in India's history. As he defends Islam he becomes much like the inverse of what he accuses the Hindutva of; rewriting history to make his argument. I find this fare play, given the title of the book. In his argument on the Muslim population he uses a comparison of Muslim India to countries out side India. I find this delusionary on statistical basis due to the fact that India is One Billion people. When you pro-rate one country the other India is still 4/5 Hinduism. Sen's conclusion makes the argument that while Hindu is 4/5 that even Hindu doctrine promotes doubt and skepticism as a means to heterodoxy or more-so Sen, being non-aligned with any religion, would promote non-religious secularism. In contrasting America's "separation of church and state" doctrine where the concept of exclusion prevails to the idea of inclusion through heterodoxy; I find strong agreement to the positive spirit of inclusion.

Sen begins the book two by contrasting Tagore and Gandhi. And Tagore's view on Nationalism and Colonialism

Page 40: The features of India’s unity vary greatly with the context. Some of them are more often recollected than others, though they all have their specific relevance. Consider, for example, the emergence, far less often discussed than it should be, the city Ujjain, in early centrist of the first millennium CE, as the location of the ‘principal meridian’ for Indian calendars, serving fro Indian astronomers as something like and Indian Greenwich. As discussed in Essay 15, it is still the base of Indian standard time today…

Page 44: Of course, it is impossible to foresee the future turn of event. In politics and history, perhaps in everything, that unknown power the ancients call Fate is always at work. Without forgetting this, I must add that, in politics as well as in private life, the surest method for resolving conflicts, however slowly, is dialogue.

Page 56 While the statistics of Hindu majority are indeed correct, the use of statistical argument for seeing India as a pre-eminently Hindu country is based on conceptual confusion: our religious is not our only identity, no necessarily the identity to which we attach the greatest importance.

My comment: this is clearly Sens opinion of which he finds much argument.

Page 69 Despite the veritable flood of religious practices in India, there is also resilient undercurrent of conviction across the country that religious beliefs, while personally significant, are socially unimportant and should politically in consequential. Ignoring the importance and reach – of this underlying conviction has the effect of systematic overestimating the role of religion in Indian society.

Page 70: It is important to understand the hold of the skeptical tradition in India, despite the manifest presence of religions all across the country. In responding to the exploitation of religious demography in the politics of Hindutva, the defenders of secular politics of the take for granted the Indian population would wan religious politics in one form or another.

Page 71: Rabindaranath Tagore thought that the idea of ‘Indian’ itself militates ‘against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one’s own people from others’

Page 93: Given the vast range of his creative achievements, perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the image of Tagore in the West is its narrowness; he is recurrently viewed as ‘the great mystic from the East.’ An image with putative message for the West, which some would welcome, others would still find deeply boring.

Page 104 The two remained deeply divided over their attitudes towards science. However, while Tagore believed that modern science was essential to understanding physical phenomena, his views on epistemology were in interestingly hetrodox. He did not take the simple ‘realist’ position often associated with modern science. The report of his conversation with Einstein, published in the New York Times in 1930, shows how insistent Tagore was on interpreting truth through observation and reflective concepts. To assert something is true or untrue in the absence of anyone to observe or perceive truth, or to, or to form a conception of what it is, appeared to Tagore to be deeply questionable…Truth said Tagore is realized through men.

Page 119: in India, Tagore wrote, 'circumstances almost compel us to learn English, and this lucky accident has given us the opportunity of access into the richest of all poetical literatures of the world.'. There seems to me much more force I'm Rabindranath's argument for clearly distinguishing between the injustice of a serious asymmetry of power (colonialism being a pre example of this) and the importance nevertheless of appraising Western culture in an open minded way...

Rabindrabath insisted on open debate on every issue, and distrusted conclusions based on mechanical formula, no matter how attractive that formula might seem in isolation. The question he persistently asks is whether we have reason enough to want what is being proposed, taking everything in to account.

Page 123: in the Vienna conference on human rights in 1993, the Foreign Minister of Singapore, citing differences between Asian and European traditions, argued that 'universal recognition of the ideal of human rights can be harmful if universalism is used to deny or mask the reality of my diversity

Page 124: There is I think, much wisdom in what we can call his ‘critical openness’, including the valuing of of a dynamic, adaptable world rather than one that is constantly ‘policing’ external influences and fearing ‘invasion” of ideas from elsewhere

Page 127: There is, for example, nothing false about Indian poverty, nor the fact – remarkable to others – that Indians have learned to live normal lives while taking little notice of the surrounding misery.

Page 131: The growing tendency in contemporary India to champion the need for indigenous culture that has ‘resisted’ external influences lacks credibility as well as cogency.

Page 132: Even in matters of day-to-day living, the fact that the chili, a basic ingredient of traditional Indian cooking, was brought to India by the Portuguese from the ‘new world’, does not make current Indian cooking any less Indian….

Given the cultural and intellectual interconnection, the question of what is Western and what is ‘Eastern’ (or Indian) is often hard to decide, and the issue can be discussed only in more dialectical terms. The diagnosis of a thought as purely ‘Western’ or purely Indian can be very illusory. The origin of ideas is no the kind of which ‘purity’ happens easily.

Page 144: Even though Alberuni’s was almost certainly the most impressive of these investigations, there are a great many examples of serious Arabic studies of Indian intellectual traditions around that time. Brahmagupta’s pioneering Sanskrit treatise on astronomy had first been translated into Arabic in the eighth century and several works on medicine, science and philosophy had an Arabic rendering by the ninth century.

Page 147: The invention of the decimal system with placed values and the placed use of zero, now used everywhere, as well as the so called Arabic numerals, are generally known to be Indian developments.

Page 150: Gandhi himself was severely attacked in [Mayo’s] book, but, given his campaign against caste and untouchability, he might have actually welcomed her exaggerations because of its usefully lurid portrayal of caste inequities. But while Gandhi may have been right to value external criticism as a way of inducing people to be self critical, the impact of the ‘magisterical approach’ certainly gives American perceptions of India a very clear slant.

Page 151: There are various other accounts of exotic Indian travels by ancient Greeks. The biography of Apollonius was, we are assured, richly rewarded in India: ‘I have seen men living upon earth and not upon it; defended without walls, having nothing, an yet possessing all things. How such contradictory things can be seen by the same person from the same observational position may not be obvious, but the bewitching charm of all this for the seeker of the exotic can hardly be doubted.

Page 195: While we must give credit where credit is due, Indian democracy has to be judged also by the strength and reach of public reasoning and its actual accomplishments.

Page 202: The remedy for many of eh central failures of Indian society is closely linked to broadening the force and range of political arguments and social demands.

Page 210: Class is neither the only concern, nor an adequate proxy for other forms of inequality, and yet we do need class analysis to see the working and reach of other forms of inequality and differentiation

Page 211: When I come to discuss the issue of what I call “friendly fire”, the role of such manifest concurrence in the lives of the extreme underdogs of society will become particularly relevant. Many of the distributional institutions that exist in India and elsewhere are designed to defend the interests of groups with some deprivation but who are not by any means the absolute underdogs of society. There is the understandable rationale for seeing them as “friendly fire” institutions in the battle of against class divisions. Yet they also have the effect of worsening the deal that the real underdogs get, at the bottom layers of society, the overall impact may be to strengthen class division rather than weaken them.

Page 213: In this context, it is particularly remarkable that India has continued to amass extraordinarily large stocks of food grain…the stocks substantially exceed one tonne of food grain for every family below the poverty line.

Page 217: Effective elementary education has in practice ceased to be free in substantial parts of the country, which of course is a violation of a basic right. All of this seems to be reinforced by a sharp class division between teachers and poorer families. Yet teachers unions – related to the respective parties – sometimes vie with each other in championing the immunity of teachers from discipline.

The Reach of Reason

Page 277: Attacks on ethics based on reason have come recently from several different directions. Apart from the claim that the ‘Enlightenment view of human psychology’ neglects many human responses (as Glover argues), we also hear the claim that to rely primarily on reasoning in the ethics of human behavior involves neglect of culture specific influences on values and conduct. People’s thoughts and identities are fairly comprehensively determined, according to this claim, by the tradition and culture in which they are reared rather than by analytical reasoning.

Page 278: Indeed, the importance of instinctive psychology and sympathetic response should be adequately recognized, and Glover is also right in believing that our hope for the future must, to a considerable extent, depend on the sympathy and respect with which we respond to things happening to others.

My comment: How about calling a person out for mindless adherence to tradition. How about simply telling a Brahman that systematically denigrating those of lower class only adds to the weight of the anchor on the Indian economy?

Page 279: Adam Smith argued that our ‘first perceptions’ of right and wrong ‘cannot be the object of reason, but of immediate sense of feeling’. But even these instinctive reactions to a particular conduct, he argued, rely – if only implicitly – on our reasoned understanding of casual connections between conduct and consequences in a vast majority on instances’. Furthermore, our first perceptions may also change in response to critical examination,….

My comment: Sen’s eloquent way of foisting both sides of an argument to cast a light on a solution.

Page 267: There might have been pleasure in official circles at the success of President Clinton’s visit to India and the asymmetrically favoured treatment he got in that visit vis-à-vis Pakistan, but the tendency to attribute that asymmetry to Indian nuclear adventure, rather than to India’s large size, democratic politics and its growing economy and technology, is difficult to understand.

Page 269: Strengthening of Pakistan’s stability and enhancement of its well-being has prudent importance for India, in addition to its obvious ethical significance. That central connection between moral and the prudential – must be urgently grasped.

Page 284; It is of course easy to find the advocacy of particular aspects of individual liberty in Western classical writings. For example, freedom and tolerance both get support from Aristotle (even though only for free men – not women and slaves). However, we can find championing of tolerance and freedom in non-Western authors as well. A good example is the emperor Ashoka in India, who during the third century BCE covered the country with inscriptions on stone tablets about good behavior and wise governance, including the demand for basic freedoms for all- indeed, he did not exclude women and slaves as Aristotle did…

Page 285: because of Western bias…Different cultures are thus interpreted in ways that reinforce the political conviction that Western civilization is somehow the main, perhaps the only, source of rationalistic and liberal ideas – among the analytical scrutiny, open debate, political tolerance and agreement to differ….

Once established, this view of the West, seen in confrontation with the rest, tends to vindicate itself. Since each civilization contains diverse elements, a non-Western civilization can then be characterized by referring to those tendencies that are most distant from the identified Western traditions and values. These selected elements are then taken to be more authentic or genuinely indigenous that the elements that are relatively similar to what can be found also in the West.

Page 289: When he died in 1605, the Islamic theologian Abdul Haq concluded with some satisfaction that, despite his innovations Akbar had remained a good Muslim. This was indeed so, but Akbar would have also that his religious beliefs came from his own reason and choice, not from blind faith, or from the marshy land of tradition.

My comment: Clearly in this passage Sen defines the traditional Muslim one lost in blind faith and thus you put credit to Ashoka’s good deed to Ashoka before you include Muslim foundation. Yet Sen makes numerous argument elsewhere painting the Muslim culture under Ashoka as part and parcel to the heterodoxy of India.

Secularism and Its Discontents

Page 295: Despite this broad and forceful challenge, secularist intellectuals in India tend to be somewhat reluctant to debate this rather unattractive subject. Reliance is placed instead, usually implicitly, on the well established and unquestioning tradition of seeing secularism as a good and solid political virtue for a pluralist democracy. As an unreformed secularist myself, I understand, and to some extent share, this reluctance, but also believe that addressing these criticisms is important.

Page 295: Secularism in the political – as opposed to ecclesiastical – sense requires the separation of state from any particular religious order. This can be interpreted in at least two different ways. The first view argues that secularism demands that the state be equidistant from all religions – refusing to take sides and having a neutral attitude towards them. The second – more severe – view insists that the state must not have any relation at all with any religion. The equidistance must take the form, then, of being altogether removed from each.

My comment: and here is the fundamental difference between India, adopting the former and the United States adopting the latter view.

Page 310: In fact, seeing Hinduism as a unified religion is a comparatively recent development. The term Hindu was traditionally used mainly as a signifier of location and country, rather than any homogeneous religious belief. The word derives from the river Indus or Sindu (the cradle of the Indus valley civilization which flourished from around 3000bce) and the name of that river is also the source of the word India itself. The Persians and the Greeks saw India as the land around and beyond the Indus and Hindus were the native people of that land.

Page 313: The principle of secularism, in the broader interpretation endorsed in India, demands ( as was discussed earlier) symmetric treatment of different religious communities in politics and in the affairs of the state. It is no tobvious why such symmetric treatment must somehow induce inescapable violence to achieve and sustain ideologies as the new opiates of the masses.

My comment: thru much of the book Sen makes a continuous argument against the Hindutva movement. His argument lay with the fact that there are many religions comprising India today and Hindu is simply the majority. He continuously argues for equal distance the government must maintain, which is different from separation of church and state. As a secularist that Sen is in conjunction with the coincidence that he is a native Bengali (largely Muslim oriented) on page 310 he makes a strong argument Hindu is not a religion of the same Unity as Muslims and Christians. Hindi are a people that by their doctrine embrace all religions. So I am a bit puzzled by Sen's concern with Hindutva. It appears that Hindu is the solution to found a multi-religious state.

On page 313 Sen uses the phrase "homogenize to ‘hegemonize’". He associates that with the violence imposed on the people by the State of India. While I see numerous intervening steps here in America, I can surely see from the departure from 150 years constitutional interpretation, Roosevelt ushered a slippery run of Federal hegemony
over the individual States of our Republic. Our President Obama has done it with Obamacare, his law suit against the State of Arizona, and his recent deployment of funds to support his position against the Governor of Wisconsin. These draw ominous parallel to Hitler's consolidation of power from 1932 to 1936. In this ominous parallel I find fertile ground for Sens concern.

Page 322. My comment: Thru the book and fro other sources of read that Kerala is
one of the more socially advanced States of India. I read on page 322 that Jews fled to Kerala at the fall of Jerusalem. Kerala uses the Judaic Calendar, suggesting a parallel between today's Palestine and Kerala. I find just a thread of a clue. But perhaps the thread is worth testing it's strength in validity. The first question I would ask is why is it that Jews and Kerala’ians live side by side, but Palestinians cannot do the same?

Page 331: Buddhist, Jain, Judaic, Christain, Parsee – were already flourishing in India, along with Hindu calendars, when the Muslim conquest of the north led to influence of the Hijri calendar. Islam’s arrival further enriched the religious – and calendrical diversity of India.

On page 339: It is in particular, important to distinguish between the inclusionary role identity and exclusionary force of separatism. To want to do something in the interest of a country is not the same thing as wanting the country to be distanced from the rest of the world, or to be isolated from it. The sense of identity leaves the issue of appropriate actions and policies entirely open to scrutiny and choice. This applies to science and technology on the one hand and to economic, social and cultural relations on the other. India’s relations with the world may demand significant use of Indianan identity, but they also call for critical scrutiny of specific ends and particular ways and means through which those relations may be appropriately advanced. Since identity politics and communitarian reasoning often have the effect of nurturing and promoting separatism, the distinction is important to seize.

My comment: This last foot note is an example of Sens many posed arguments, where he sites two antonym notions and finds congruency in the application of their outcomes. Just when you have caught on to one side of an argument he would reverse the strategy. It paints a complex picture, where there is always room for two winning sides of an argument and therefore unity through politics.

Complimentary books:

Mahabharata
Bhagavad Gita
Four Quartets, Elliot
India After Ghandi
Ramayana

Luka and the Fire of Life

2011-03-01T08:39:00.003-05:00

Luka and the Fire of Life
By Salman Rushdie

This book is a unique blend of Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz. Staring Luka
[akin to Dorothy], Nobodaddy [akin to jabberwakkie], and Dog the bear and Bear the dog [akin to Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion]. The adventure is not a Yellow Brick Road, or a Rabbit Hole, but rather a metaphor of a computer game where each of Luka’s challenges represents an actual real life experience where Luka has yet to master either.

Rushdie uses metaphor and rhyme in both painting the back drop and the telling of his story. For example he describes the ninth level scene as follows: “In the Heart of the Heart, which is to say inside the Circular Sea, where the Lake of Wisdom is bathed in the Eternal Dawn, things are different.” In placing the characters in each scene, the following is an example is how the reader should interpret him: “after all, you yourself are a little drip from the ocean of notion, a short blurt from the aha of blah. You, of all boys should know that man is a story telling animal, and that stories are his identity, his meaning, his life blood.” [I could add his spirit] The author is speaking directly to the reader in his dialogue between Nobodady and Luka.

The thread line of the story is wound around Luka's father, Rashiad. Rashiad has taken ill and is on his deathbed. Luka must undertake a quest in a surreal world to obtain the fire of life to save his father’s life. There is a blend of the movie Back To The Future where Luka’s guide, Noboddy a surreal incarnation of his dieing father, is a hazy image at first but becomes more real as death draws near. Luka’s surreal guide greats him and together they cross in to the surreal game world, but like his real life father, Nobodaddy only provides sage allegoric advice and leaves Luka to figure things out on his own.

The first lesson producing challenge of the quest for the fire of life found Luka facing a riddle master where Luka's winning riddle found an answer that in real life Rashid didn't know. Luka had the answer. There are actually ten levels in the computer game that correlates to ten lessons in life. Oddly enough in one of the lessons the reader learns about is the coincidental mystical power of ten.

As Luka achieves his third level of this storybook fable on a modern video game setting, he penetrates the Mists of Time. The narrative interpreted by me a one time airplane pilot now reader of the book drew the same emotions of transcending a cloud deck, where breaking through to the sun light was an epiphany on eternity. Eternity, where there is a coincidental confluence on the notion of the trinity of the past, present, and future. I tie this to the father and son being equated to body and soul where soul is spirit, the spirit of man. It is in these moments one can suddenly find a vernacular and a story where a religious oriented person can speak to a tech science oriented person and find common ground and transcend space and time.

Upon reaching the Grandmaster of Flame in the world of magic, Luka finds a direct correlation to his real life nemesis, the Circus Ring Master. Rushdie accomplishes this by first setting the real life episode at the beginning of the book where Luka condemns the Ring Master of the circus that had come to town for treating his subjects poorly. Later in the book Luka meets his nemesis again only this time in the fantasy of a video game world. Here he is to find its life’s lesson. The author lures the reader into a reflective state of mind. In my lesson, I drew from my own memory banks, now realized as elements of the illusion of time, upon Richard Bach's book Illusions. It was a book I read twenty-five years ago. All of a sudden the thin veil between mystical and real becomes dramatically porous; where man finds him self simultaneously the scientist and subject in the world of illusion with its practitioners Space and Time, becoming paramount.

The book is a metaphoric journey down the river of time and questions fate; it's worth. Rushdie captures our inner and outer worlds with Rhyme & Story for in spirit we are our stories. Or it could be said in our stories lay our spirits? Rushdie suggests there exists the dynamic in the trinity of time; where the past, present, and future is in constant forward motion in the real world. Transcendence comes to this readers mind. Can time be a vertical phenomena rather than a horizontal illusion? Both words, one of science and the other of mystery, depict the “surreal”. Both require faith to find an answer. If science has one believing that the death is our end, he may find solace that our stories survive and live on. So for the American Indian who has a motto to leave no trace behind, he is speaking to the material world, leaving legend to a life on its own.

This book suggests that only in spirit can one transcend time; live forever. Allegorically only in our story do the deeds of our body live forever. Metaphysically your story only lives on in the lives of those willing to accept your story and retell it. For example do you accept Christ, coincidentally also a partner to a trinity? Or do you enjoy Bach who experienced his death at the completion of his famous fugue finally finding perfect symmetry in patterns of music? This is where Luka “learns”, code for “accepts” all that already is, the truth in the stories his father told him through the years. Hence the morale of this story being: making your story real in truth stands the best chance to live on in minds of future man.

Poetry inspired by the book

Truth
by Paul Murphy

Truth is what it is
What is is
All that is
Not yet recognized

A rose simply is
Until man observes it
While it is still s rose
Man in truth makes it beautiful

If not for man
If not for his truth
Would a rose surrender
Its' beauty for what merely is

The Grand Alliance

2011-02-01T11:09:00.004-05:00

The Grand Alliance
Winston Churchill

This is the third in Churchill’s series of which I purchased the original publication of the whole set for fourteen dollars at a used book store in New York City. In this book the reader becomes intimately acquainted with the British experience of WWII during the period between the collapse of France and the alliance with the United States. As Churchill would say, this is the time when we would go it alone. What first catches the readers eye as impressive is how Churchill communicated and held consensus with his people, cabinet, the ministers, the War Council, the Prime Ministers of the British Empire, the Viceroys of India, Israel, Singapore, and Egypt., The Generals of the Home Army, the field Generals of The Mediterranean, North Africa,, India, the Heads of State in the conquered countries, The Heads of State of the free World, and saved time for private dialogue with Franklin Roosevelt, his King majesty, and then saved more time for his wife. I have read books that take a critical attack or a lesser passing swipe at Churchill and can only conclude that they were selfish authors for an audience and mad ( to sound British)at the same time.

I think the real plot of this tale of 1941 – 42 was found with the falling dominoes of Europe. Churchill, though try as he may, could not muster enough to stop Hitler’s advance. It give birth to the Domino Theory of the 1950’s. The book details the strategy of Churchill, and glosses over Hitler’s. You are left with the impression that the German Warmacht (war machine) was the prime strategy. It was indeed a Clawsitezian strategy that worked until the machine of his foe out produced him. So one is puzzled as to why Hitler turned to Russia without first consolidating his gains.

Churchill endeavors to make a case, modest though it may be, that it was his strategy of continuous annoyance in the Mediterranean and in North Africa that simply mesmerized Hitler with British valor and chivalry in the face of certain defeat. Meanwhile was it Hitler’s thinking leave him at bay while he looked East to defeat a people he had nothing but hatred toward? Hitler hated Stalin and was impressed with Churchill. He literally felt that by defeating Russia, Churchill would come to his senses and sue for armistice.

The question becomes was it strategy or failed strategy that prevailed? In the end we now see that it was Churchill that prevailed, but not because of Churchill’s strategy of maneuver but his strategy to hold on long enough for the United States to join in the fight. The strategy that failed was Hitler’s sense of an invincible warmacht that in reality failed him. And likely it was the strategy of the Gods as in winter that really prevailed. The reader eventually becomes aware that Hitler’s failure to formulate a sound alliance with Japan was as much a tribute to failed strategy as was the strategy to keep pressing his warmacht against Russia’s winter. So failure in Stalingrad and Moscow combined with Pearl Harbor brought a formidable opponent for Hitler to deal with. Hitler did not conceive the notion that even though the United States were attacked by Japan the Grand Alliance would hatch the strategy of Germany first. This strategy was first in the mind of Churchill and then through a deep private exchange of letters that found fertile soil in the mind of Roosevelt.

When looking at where a Head of State should have best spent his time, the reader learns that it first belongs to his own people and then international politics. Here is where Churchill excelled. He first built a Home Army and at every step incorporated Captains of industry to run the supply chain to a war machine. Production and supply chain management was that of civilian energy leaving war strategy to the benefiting Generals. In the international front, Churchill first looked to the appropriate Heads of State in each of his dominions. Second, during this time frame he looked to Roosevelt, and finally he spent time with the rest of the world. There became a time where the world was accusing Britain of roping them in to their fight. Then contrast this to Hitler who dictated to first his army through official orders, then his people through the lecture and press, and then the world through his warmacht. It was a battle for the world where Hitler lost it all and Churchill’s world empire saw the dawn of a new world order.

Britain is now an island country as opposed to a country who’s “fertile crescent” ran up the east coast of Africa, spanned the Middle East and then ran back down the Asian contenant to include India, ending up in Australasia. Against the world order pre WWII, contrast the belligerents and bring Japan and Italy in to the fold. Imagine Germany spanning from the English Channel, through the Middle East to Korea. Imagine Japan spanning the South Asia. Would India have been spared? Imagine Italy owning all of Africa. Should the United States have joined that axis, the western hemisphere would be her natural land grab. This was Rudolph Hess’s dream described in its own chapter.

Churchill brings in a chapter of the Rudolph Hess intrigue that leaves the reader with food for thought. How would Hitler’s Germany have handled today’s Muslim problem? Imagine the post two WWII juggernauts of industry owning three quarters of the worlds resources. How would they have dictated world culture? Certainly English would not be the world’s international business language. Certainly capitalistic democracies would not exist. There would be no USSR, China, France, or Britain. (all major votes in the United Nations) Would strict conformity to two basic leaders have brought on a world peace that is today still a dream? Would the United States have been rendered in Splendid Isolation in her western hemisphere? Free from the obligation of the world’s policeman. Free to continue is pursuit of capitalistic democracy, un-encumbered with the pressures of European socialism. Would an isolated Western Hemisphere leaped ahead of a war torn world that would not receive the recovery assistance they received? I only pose these scenarios as a prelude to the question especially to those who make sport of criticizing Churchill: Is Churchill the man or the goat of humanity’s twentieth century? I welcome your answer.

Churchill catch phrases:
• Nemesis personifies “the Goddess of Retribution"' who brings down all immoderate good fortune, checks the presumption that attends it... And is the punisher of extraordinary crimes.
• In somber wars of modern democracy chivalry finds no place. Dull butcheries on a gigantic scale and mass effects overwhelm all detached sentiment.

Below is a bibliography. Notes that influenced my reaction to the book. Integrated with the notes are specific reactions of mine that may be worth reading.

Page 5... We felt free to send over seas all troops... To wage
offensive war in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Here was the
hinge on which our ultimate victory turned.

Page 17.... General Smuts to Prime Minister; The question is whether
Germany can afford to set the Balkans ablaze with Russia in
incalculable factor and Turkey hostile. The Italian defeat in Africa
and Greece, together with the failure of the Gamma Air Force against
Britain, have profoundly changed the position, and German
concentrations may only be intended to pacify the Italians, and to
lure British forces away from Britain, where the main attack has to be
made.

Page 19 Prime Minister to General Wavel. Nothing must hamper
capture of Tobruk, bit there after all operations in Libya are
subordinated to aiding Greece up to he limits prescribed.

Page 21 Prime Minister to General Smuts. Weather, maintains, Danube
crossing, fortified Greek-Bulgarian frontier, all helpful factors.
Turkey, Yugoslavia, Russia, all perhaps favorably influenced by
Evidences of British support of Greece.

Whatever happens in the Balkans, Italian army in Abyssinia probably
destroyable. If this should come off, everything useful from Kenya
should go forward to Mediterranean.

Page 30...if Hitler had been able, with hardly a fight, to bring
Greece to her knees and the whole of the Balkans into his system and
the force Turkey to allow the passage of his armies to the south and
east, might he not have made terms with the Soviets upon the conquest
and partition if these vast regions and postpone his ultimate
inevitable quarrel with them to a late part of his program? Or as
is more likely, would he not have been able to attack Russia in great
strength at am earlier date? The main question which the ensuing
chapters will probe and expose is whether His Majesty's Government by
their action influenced in a decisive or even in an appreciable manner,
Hitler’s movements in Southeast Europe and moreover whether that action
did not produce consequences first upon the behavior of Russia and
next upon her fortunes.

Page 32... The Reich Government believed that this action (troop
movement in the Balkans) was serving Soviet interest as well, which
would be opposed to England's gaining a foothold in these regions.

Page 42. His [Hitler's] optimistic time-table assumed that the Soviets
like the French, would be overthrown in a six-week campaign and that
all German forces would then be free for the final overthrow of
Britain in the autumn of 1941. Meanwhile the obstinate nation was to
be worn down first by the combination of the U-boat blockade sustained
by long range air, and secondly, by air attacks upon her cities and
especially the ports. For the German army "Sea Lion" was replaced by
"Barbarossa". The German Navy was instructed to concentrate on our
Atlantic traffic and the German Air Force on our harbors and their
approaches. This was far a more deadly plan than indiscriminate
bombing of London and the civil population, and it was fortunate
forbid that it was not pursued with all available forces and greater
persistence.

The conquest of Italy in Africa exposed the strategic consequence of
Britain's effort. The reader of 2010 is made aware of the mapping of
world power in the final days of the colonial period that in my
opinion only ended with Vietnam. The chapter was described as a
perquisite though not main thrust at either Italy or Germany. The
prime strategic advantage was the control of the Eastern
Mediterranean. Learning of the collapse of Italy's aspirations of a
larger Roman Empire was added largely as Churchillean historic drama.

My comment: In the chapter on Greece the reader realizes the immediate benefit of the conquest of Italy in Africa and also realizes that this victory was a mere pittance of strategic advantage against a larger and more mature German war machine. The strategy of England and Germany is revealed from a Churchill view. While Churchill clearly knew what England could bring to the table was too little too late, he very much realized the diplomacy required to sway Turkey and Yugoslavia to stand with the allies. Reading this chapter on the heels of the Rudolph Hess chapter this reader at least romanticized the consequence of Hess's view. That being a main land Germany/Europe, an Italian/Rome in north Africa and the English Empire from South Africa up the east coast of that continents, across the Middle East, through India and ending in Austral-Asia with Canada as a kicker. One has to wonder first why Churchill wouldn't have given that serious consideration and more-so why Hitler pursued Soviet Russia as opposed to the Balkans. Clearly the Balkans and Hess's dreams were obtainable. Imagine Germany owning all the oil. It becomes clear that the personalities of both Hitler and Churchill weighed in on the fate of the whole world and millions of lives.

While the above is an impression left on the reader, Churchill makes it very clear the importance of international diplomacy to engage a vacillating Greece, Greece did nit want British help as it was too little too late. Yet Greece needed her help for fear of certainty against a German war machine building in Bulgaria. In the end the English engagement struck the right diplomatic chord but the reader is led to believe that Eastern Europe fate was forestalled only through Hitler's turn northeast to Russia where history tells the rest.

Page 121: again this reader finds evidence of a questionable German
character:

Meanwhile the Hipper [German] had fallen upon a homeward-bound Sierra
Leone convoy near the Azores which had not yet been joined by an
escort. In a savage attack lasting an hour she destroyed seven out of
nineteen ships, making no attempt to rescue survivors, and regained
Brest two days later.

My Comment: One could argue that Hipper left the rescue to the remaining convoy and here may lay German stay of conviction. In my view against the plethora of German atrocity this question is worth probing. One could begin with examining German orders, German SOP, and looking at German code of conduct with the rest of the tonnage they sent to the bottom of the sea.

Page 184: in a minutes document from Ribbentrop to Japan’s Matsuoka
on 27 March 1941 disposition the status of Germany's war, he
concludes:

If, then, we summed up the military situation in Europe we should come
to the conclusion that in the military sphere the Axis was completely
master of Continental Europe. A huge army, practically idle, was at
Germany's command, and could be employed at any time and at any place
the Fuhrer considered necessary.

My comment: Why Russia? Here is the probing with evidence presented by Churchill. There was only a modest resistance in Greece. The victory in Africa was minor and a turn for Germany would throw England back out. Spain could be had by Germany even over reluctance from Franco.

Why did Hitler not work with Japan to first consolidate his position and then second have a formidable alley in Japan to take on his despised Russians from the east while he would consolidated power from the west? This would have knocked out England for sure, without drawing in the United States. I have read elsewhere of Hitler’s deep regard for the English. Was it Hitler's regard that caused refrain
from the finishing blows to England? Or did Hitler despise Bolshevism and Russian Jews so much as to make such a critical strategic mistake? Did the personal views of one man bring the Third Reich to it's knees fir never to be a Forth Reich.

Page 188: [said Matsuoka]. The ideological struggle in Japan was
extremely bitter, but those who were fighting for the restoration of
old ideals were convinced they would finally win. The Anglo-Saxons
represented the greatest hindrance to the establishment of the New
Order. He had to Stalin that after the collapse of the British
Empire the differences between Japan and Russia would be eliminated.
The Anglo-Saxons were the common foe of Japan, Germany, and Soviet
Russia. After some reflection Stalin had stated that Soviet Russia
had never got along with Great Britain and never would.

My comment: if the natural allies were as such, imagine the world
powers today if Hitler had not turned on Russia and Japan had not
attacked Pearl Harbor. Neither of those two strategic made military
sense let alone international sense of power.

Page 200: [Churchill of General Rommel]. In somber wars of modern
democracy chivalry finds no place. Dull butcheries on a gigantic scale
and mass effects overwhelm all detached sentiment. Still, I do not
regret or retract the tribute I paid to Rommel, un fashionable though
it was judged.

My comment: when the reader comes to appreciate the time frame of
decisions being the first six months of 1941, the questions of
Hitler's decision on Russia became influenced by his megalomaniac
illusions of world power. Hitler already had in mind enough power to
easily sweep in through Churchill's back door in North Africa, of
which he did anyway [Tobruk]. This made Greece and the Balkans look easy and afforded the march on Moscow. None the less this was a lot of fast moving
world strategic decisions for any one man. Churchill makes mention of
this and pays tribute to the machine that fed him the information.
Tribute aside the amount of information and decisions made are/were
daunting, while being bombed nightly.

Page 229: of the decision to fight on in Greece Churchill’s position;
I am most reluctant to quit, and if the troops were British only and
the matter decided on military grounds alone, I would urge Wilson to
fight if he thought possible. Anyhow before we commit ourselves to
evacuation the case must be put squarely to the Dinions after
tomorrow's Cabinet. Of course, I do not know the conditions in which
our retreating forces will reach the new key position

My comment: contrast page 229 with the leadership methods of Hitler.
One of deference to Generals in conjunction with consensus of the
Cabinet as opposed to a pure dictator.

Page 233: from April 21 until the end of the evacuation twenty-six
ships were lost by air attack. Twenty-one of these were Greek and
included five hospital ships.

My comment: did German dive bomber pilots know they were bombing
defenseless hospital ships? Of everything I have read to date, I
suspect they knew and indiscriminately bombed away.

Page 265: on a successful Iraq campaign; The Germans, of course, at
a their disposal an airborne force which could have given them at
thus time. Syria, Iraq, and Persia, with their precious oil fields.
Hitler's hand might have reached out very far towards India, and
beyond to Japan. He had chosen, however, as we shall soon see, to
employ and expand his prime air organism in another direction
[Russia]. We often hear military experts inculcate the doctrine of
giving priority to the decisive theater [Clawswitz]. There is a lot
to this. But in war this principal, like all others, is governed by
facts and circumstance, otherwise strategy would be too easy. It
would become a drill book and not an art; it would depend upon rules
and not on an instructed and fortunate judgment of an ever changing
scene. Hitler certainly cast away the opportunity of taking a great
prize for little cost in the Middle East. We in Britain, although
pressed to the extreme, managed with scanty forces to save ourselves
from far reaching or lasting injury.

My comment: this agrees with and at the same time challenges the
American policy of Clawswitz that prevailed in the decision for
Normandy as opposed the Lubjana Gap strategy in Yugoslavia. I
could argue that either location would have been the main thrust of
the war. But who I really see is the prime strategic player was
always Hitler of which all others countered.

Page 301: they [British refugee soldiers] and the Greek soldiers were
succored by the villagers and country folk, who were mercilessly
punished whenever detected. Barbarous reprisals were made upon
innocent or valiant peasants, who were shot by the twenties and
thirties. It was for this reason that I proposed to the Supreme War
Council three years later, in 1944, that local crimes should be
locally judged, and accused persons sent back for trial on the spot.
The principal was accepted, and some outstanding debts were paid.

My comment: Would Germany, winners or losers as they were, have initiated
the same justice? I have come across no evidence that would support
an affirmative answer.

Page 311: [Bismarck's fatal decision ]. She had the choice of
returning home victorious [after sinking the Hood, to repair her
severe oil leak as well], with all the options of further enterprises
open, or going to almost certain destruction. Only the extreme
exaltation of her Admiral or imperious orders by which he was bound
can explain the desperate action which he took.

Page 319: It was the cruiser Dorestshier that delivered the final
blow [to the Bismark] with torpedoes, and at 10:40 the great ship
turned over and foundered. With her perished nearly two thousand
Germans and their Fleet Commander, Admiral Lutjens. One hundred and
ten survivors, exhausted but sullen, were rescued by us. The work of
Mercy was interrupted by the appearance of a U-boat and the British
ships were compelled to withdraw.

My comment: The British had enough ships to sink the U-boat and rescue
the survivors. But they deferred to the humanity of the survivors as a
priority. The difference between Germans and the English.

Page 352: Nemesis personifies “the Goddess of Retribution"' who
brings down all immoderate good fortune, checks the presumption that
attends it... And is the punisher of extraordinary crimes

My comment: of the finest yet obscure Churchillian phrases to mark down and make reference to in moments of vengeance and revenge.

Page 369: [in choosing the lesser of two evils on the eve of
Germany's invasion of the USSR] ... 'I have only one purpose, the
destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby. If
Hitler invaded Hell I make at least favorable reference to the Devil
in the House of Commons.'

My comment: a classic Churchill quote though not so well known

My comment: as I read on into Book 3 of this Volume, I'll be looking for the first vestiges of the Domino Theory of Kennen circa 1950s. Was it apparent in Churchill's mind long before Keenen and US international policy.

Page 431 on Sunday morning August 10, Mr Roosevelt came aboard the HMS
Prince of Wales and, with his Staff officers and several hundred
representatives of all ranks of the United States Navy and Marines,
attended Divine Service on the quarterdeck. This service was felt by
us to be a deeply moving expression of the unity in faith if our two
peoples, and none who tool part in it will forget the spectacle
presented that sunlit morning on the crowded quarterdeck - the
symbolism of the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes side by side.,,,

My comment: You often hear the cliché claim that religion starts wars. This passage exemplifies my rebottle to such comment. Here you find that religion did not start any war but rather it was a common unity found in religion that helped two peoples endure a war. If this were today’s Britain’ Brown and our Obama, would such a ceremony occur?

Page 440:[on positioning with Japan, in the first meeting of Churchill
and Roosevelt of the coast of Newfoundland]. At the end if the Note
which the President will hand to the Japanese Ambassador when he
returns from his cruise in about a week's time he will add the
following passage, which was taken from my draft: "Any further
encroachment by Japan in Southwest Pacific would produce a situation
in which the United States Government would be compelled to take
counter measures, even those might lead to war between the United
Statea and Japan."

My comment: Here you find Churchill manipulating Roosevelt? Was that
Note passed on? Was that Note an invitation to Pearl Harbor? Were we,
Imperialist of the Philippines, accomplices with Great Britain,
Imperialists of Singapore, [claimed in the previous chapter to be more
vital to England that Egypt] in a threat to impede Japan's Imperial
aspirations?

Imagine a world map where Imperial Germany extended across the Middle
East to include all of India and half way across Russia., to meet up
with Imperial Japan, who 40 years earlier was at war with Russia and
now the conquerors of China. Then Italy would own all of Africa. The
Western Hemisphere would today be working as partners with Japan,
Italy, and Germany. The Middle East would be their problem.
Communism and the Cold War with all is ancilary wars including Korea
and Vietnam would have never happened. Russia, China, and England
would NOT be in existance let alone sitting at the top five security
table. How different would our problems be today? Would the be the
same only with different names?

Page 459: [Prime Minister to Monsieur Stalin 4 Sept 41]
We are ready to make joint plans with you now. Whether British
armies will be strong enough to invade the mainland of Europe during
1942 must depend on un foreseeable events. It may be possible however
to assist you in the extreme North when there is more darkness. We
are willing to raise our armies in the Middle East to a strength of
three- quarters of a million before the end of the present year, and
there after to a million by the summer if 1942. Once the German-
Italian forces in Libya have been destroyed, all these forces will be
available to come into line on your southern flank....,

My comment: history shows Stalin requesting a second front to
distract and dilute the German effort on Russia. A year later the
Americans pushed a second for Clawzwitizian reasons. Why a flanking
maneuver from the south after the Allied win back Africa and defeated
Italy was not pursued is yet to be sorted out in this readers mind.
Churchill's vision of 1941 was over run by his Allied partners. We
merely armed The USSR to first survive and then to consolidate her
victory in the counter attack to rule Eastern Europe for 50 years.
Churchill who fought alone for two years found his vision and strategy
stymied by two powers that would build nuclear muddled that would fly
over Churchill’s empire that is reduced to an island country. This was
the humble reward for the man that saved the world firm Hitler.

Page 480: it was clear from their message of August 6 1941 that the
Persians would not meet our wishes regarding the expulsion of German
agents and residents from their country, and that we would have to
resort to force. The next stage was to coordinate our plans,
diplomatic and military with those of the Russians

My comment: this represents why I say that our troubles with Iran
first start with the British. Iranians do not trust the British
because if their oil agenda openly discussed in this chapter of the
book. They equally don’t trust the Russian because of their conquest
aspirations. The prefer the United States yet our association with
Britain over the years has tainted their appreciation for our culture.

Page 583: in 1936 Japan had concluded with Germany the Anti-
Comintern Pact, which was originally negotiated by The Japanese War
Ministry, with Rippentrop representing the Nazi Party behind the backs
of both the then Foreign Ministers. This was not yet an alliance, buy
it provided the basis for one. In the spring of 1939 the Army
Ministers in the Cabinet, headed by Baron Hiranuma, tried to conclude
a full military alliance with Germany. He failed owing to the
opposition of the Navy Minister, Admiral Yonai. In August, 1939,
Japan not only engaged in the war with China which had begun in July,
1937, but was also involved in localized hostilities with Russia about
the boundary between the newly created State if Manchukuo and Outer
Magnolia. Alondra and behind this smoldering front large armies
lay. When, on the eve of European War, Germany made her Non-
Aggression Pact with Russia without consulting or informing Japan, her
Anti-Comintern partner, the Japanese felt with reason that they had
been ill-used. Their dispute with Russia fell into the background,
and Japanese resentment against Germany was strong. British support
and sympathy for China had estranged us from our former ally [Japan]
and during the first few months of the European war our relations with
Japan were already by no means friendly. There us however in Japan
little or no enthusiasm for Germany.

My comment: and there you have a explanation why Japan remained
fundamentally isolated from all World Powers in her quest to become
The World Power

Page 586: the drastic application of economic sanctions in July 1941,
brought to a head the internal crisis I. Japanese

Embargo imposed by Britain, United States, and Holland

Page 628: 5 Jan 42 [Eden to Churchill from Moscow]
...At my first conversation with M. Stalin and M. Molotov on December
16 M. Stalin set out in some detail what he considered should be post
war territorial frontiers in Europe and in particular his ideas of the
treatment of Germany. He proposed the restoration of Austria as an
independent state and the detachment of the Rhineland from Prussia as
an independent state or a protectorate, and possibly the constitution
of an independent State of Bravaria. He also proposed that East
Prussia should be transferred to Poland and the Sudetenland Land
returned to Czechoslovakia. He suggested that Yugoslavia should be
restored, and even receive certain additional territories from Italy;
and that Turkey should receive the Dodeanese, with possible
adjustments in favor of Greece as regards islands in the Aegean
important to Greece. Turkey might also receive certain districts in
Bulgaria, and possibly also in Northern Syria. In general the
occupied including Czechoslovakia and Greece, should be stored to
their pre-war frontiers, and M. Stalin was prepared to support any
special arrangements for securing bases for the United Kingdom in
Western European countries....As regards to the Soviet Union, M Stalin
desired the restoration of the position in 1941, prior to the German
attack in respect to the Baltic States, Finland, and Bessarabia. The
Curzon Line should firm the basis for furrier Soviet-Polish frontier.

My comment: Here you find clear argument in the political
perspective that A dominant powerful USSR would take any land she
could get. And while she was weak willing to make enormous
concessions. Thus our American insistence on a Normandy invasion over
Churchill's Lubjana Gap invasion in Yugoslavia allowed Russia to be
come powerful in Eastern Europe during WWII setting the stage for a
fifty-year Cold War

Our Finest Hour

2011-02-01T10:55:00.002-05:00

Our Finest Hour
By Winston Churchill

This book is a second in a series of five and spans the historical moment of a man who wrote his own history. As a continuation of the first book The Gathering Storm, Churchill begins with the grave World situation at the very moment he took the office of England’s Prime Minister. After 12 years of arm waving and foot stomping about the German build up, England and the World gave Winston Churchill the opportunity once denied him at the close of The Great War. It was at this time in history that Churchill formed a government under his leadership. With Churchill’s accounting of the job he undertook, the reader of this series gets to learn the merit of diplomacy and war and the intrigue of how they work hand in hand.

In the opening Churchill continues to criticize the French. This continues throughout, with the exception of de Gaulle. In the first book it was the governments inability to recognize a threat and do anything about it. This book opens with two chapters of narrative on how poorly prepared and organized the French army was. They were poorly prepared in terms of capability at all levels. Churchill is most critical of the leadership of the French Army and the Vichy government. And today the French arrogance continues, even though there exists museums that document the betrayal of the Vichy government we allow it…I am guessing or hoping it is because of their wine, women, food, and appreciation for the good life.

While the French government and her Army were politely criticized at many important junctures leading up to and during their quick fall to Germany the reader would be inclined to have a feeling of empathy towards the French people. After all it is cliché to say “it’s the government not the people”. But in this book is where the reader gets to the story describing events in the face of German army being three days from Paris, and an Italian declaration of war on France, the French people were found moving country carts and lories on an airfield to prevent British bombers from launching an attack on Milan and Tourin; one begins to wonder about “things French”.

Contemplating this in the wake of the excessive war reparation France imposed on Germany after WWI compels one to think even twice about things French. It is nice to believe that the world could be peaceful, but if world history were studied in the Science Colleges or vice-versa there would be a higher level of rational thought dedicated to applying lessons learned? Perhaps a step in that direction would be for our Universities to do a better job providing our youth with an appreciation of all the other aspects beyond their specific majors of our interrelated world. I’d recommend a curriculum entitled “Putting It All Together, Personally, Professionally, & Socially”. I know the reader might hand me Poly Si curriculum but then only 2% of those who needs to learn this actually do…and the rest of the 98% call the Poly Si majors and/or Law grads (Lawyers) crooks. Beware of the broth cooked in a black kettle or which kettle is black.

To punctuate the French fall with French request for Britain to agree to a French surrender, which was agreed they would never do three months earlier, exposes the fortitude of the French culture once again. This in conjunction with the French request to Roosevelt for help and Roosevelt’s refusal pressed by American people in the face of very apparent eminent domination of the world by an evil axis of power, reminds me of how dangerously French-like we are here in America. To punctuate this with an exclamation point, reading this fresh off of Churchill’s Gathering Storm, America cannot continue making alliances involving military protection as the French did to all of Europe and then falling short at the first or any sign of difficulty. In war there are no predictable outcomes. Making an alliance means exactly what Churchill wrote to France’s leadership at the time when Reynuad asked for relief of the French commitment to fighting Germany… in short he said NO. Churchill’s book includes the three-paragraph letter, which makes it an honorable and respectful no. I hope this passage of diplomacy in itself compels this reader to read Churchill.

Without the benefit of reading this book, my generation of Americans does not appreciate Churchill’s deeds to the same degree as one experiencing the same in first person. While the book is fraught with communiqué to an from key participants in history the following passage strikes at the heart of Churchill’s profound leadership. As The Battle of France closed Churchill wrote the following to his people and published it to the world. As I know it is unlikely for my readers to read the book…I provide this excerpt.

"""However matters may go in France or with the French Government or another French Governments, we in this island and in the British Empire will never lose our sense of comradeship with the French people…If final victory rewards our toils they shall share the gins-aye, and freedom shall be restored to all. We abate nothing of our just demands; not one jot or tittle do we receed… Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, have joined their causes with our own. All these shall be restored.

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our British life, and long the continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, “ This was their finest hour”.""""

What I find most honorable is that these words were written by a man who had experienced years of French capitulation on commitment to common cause. He saw it immediately preceding this with French reneging on the Pols and Czecs. And most dramatically while the Battle of France was actually happening a large contingent of the French Government Ministers were taking action to surrender to the Germans as they would prefer to be subservient to a German regime as opposed to being a Anglo/French Union. What the reader also learns in this book it that while Churchill held a place in the future for the French, so did Herr Hitler, as was stated and documented in the dialogue minutes between Molitov and Rippentrop in the meeting preceding the Tripartite Act. What I find interesting and at the same time amusing is that while Molitov and Hitler were meeting relative to their interests in the “Pact”, Churchill sniffed out the meeting and bombed the city indiscriminately. He did this to show Stalin that England is indeed a lethal threat.

Mixed in with the above notes in history are the events, among many, of Dakar where it became imperative to defend the West African Coast so that England could sail around the Cape and the Atlantic Ocean would be safe for shipping to and from the Americas. In preparation to land in Dakar, under fire from French War Ships, Churchill made the importance of this painfully clear to Roosevelt, and the book describes the tribulation Churchill observed in Roosevelt in how to “sell” American involvement to a French (head in the sand) thinking American public. The reader is once again and not purposefully, I believe, drawn to question things French.

An intriguing strategy at the fall of France was Churchill’s immediate decision to swiftly capture or destroy the French Fleet. This was done the day after France signed an armistice with Germany. The reader becomes aware of the Naval consequence of world dominance by the Axis Powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy. As Britain drew her fleet home, the Pacific lay now free for Japan to roam. And Japan did just that. To those with wild conspiracy theories against Roosevelt, I say bunk. What occurred whether there existed details of Roosevelt folly prior to Pearl Harbor is immaterial to our national security derived from our “head in the sand” mentality as an American people with French traits. I fear those traits exist still today. I say this as I reflect on these words of Churchill that represent his mind set as he wrote those famous “Finest Hour” words to the world:

"""During our first four years of the last war the Allies experienced nothing but disaster and disappointment…We repeatedly asked ourselves the question “ How are we going to win? And no one was ever able to answer it with much precision, until at the end, quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, our terrible vision collapsed before us, and we were so glutted with victory that in our folly we threw it away."""

Of Things French “ because I think a certain way, so must the world” my quote and critique of the French. This book and Churchill’s first book The Gathering Storm indirectly leads one to draw this conclusion. In my opinion the French lifestyle could be convincing. However history tells a darker story that would lead one to look at the other side of a coin to guarantee its authenticity.

Things American contrasted by things Roosevelt in the face of an American public opinion in 1940 that matched that of the French of the 1930’s you read in the letters from “Former Navel Person to President Roosevelt” (Churchill when he was Prime Minister) the influential hand in guiding Roosevelt to the eventual pearls becoming eminent upon the United States. While I can be critical of Roosevelt’s handling of the economy, I can be grateful for his attention to the words of Churchill. In this book those letters are made public and in my opinion should be mandatory history lessons to our American people, if for no other reason but to ward off the head in the sand mentality to looming international dangers. Also made apparent were the anxieties of Churchill, as he had to decipher the American newspapers to get a feel for American support towards the cause for freedom. Roosevelt’s deal on 50 destroyers and some of the details, from Churchill’s perspective of the precedent setting move of a Lend Lease Act are included in this book. While Churchill was a guiding light, Roosevelt did have to find a way to wake up his people and he did. Although December 7 is a day of infamy, much credit must be given to leaders who were prepared to respond accordingly.

Things magnanimously Churchill: among many was his un wavering allegiance to the French people, despite the Vichy government’s betrayal to not only her Continental allies but to England as they gazed upon the opportunities of subservience to Germany. In spite of this was his memorial statement to Chamberlain, a person of whom he was very critical of in the handling of the looming German threat in the 1930’s. When I read the passage I marked the pages for documentation in my closing. And now having finished the book I close with the statement as I strongly feel that we must continue to use history as written by the participants to mold our children as our future leaders and therefore guide our destiny.

“""At the lychgate we may all pass our own conduct and our own judgment under a marching review. It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events. In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have been wrong. Then again a few years later, when the perspective of time as lengthened, all stands in a different setting. There is a new proportion. There is another scale of values. History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all of this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield. Because we are often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the Fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honour”

“Whatever else history may or not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating acts in which we are now engaged…”""

Can we learn two things from this piece of history? First can we learn to be undaunted in the travails of a war of any kind? Second, can we do a better job in managing the peace? I think the answer in those questions lay largely in the character of the British as since then America has struggled to match those qualities. And to be more specific, perhaps the qualities are not generally British but specifically Churchill.

Simple notes of corollary conversation to today:

Here at the beginning of the German invasion of France is an interesting bit of information gleaned from Churchill’s accounting of the British retreat from Belgium. This combined with more yet separate collection of history makes for not just interesting, but ironic turns of events. There are more to come. The Germans leaving the British to have to fight their way to Dunkirk for an escape by the sea encircled the essential Generals of the British army. The German Panzer tank supremacy could have stopped this if it were not for direct orders from Hitler to not risk the tanks in the honeycombed cannel geography of Belgium. I read an earlier book called What If. Hitler was a Private in WWI and was part of a defeated division in that exact place. “What If” described an event where Hitler almost lost his life..What IF he did. Well not losing his life, lead Hitler to make a blunder that allowed the British command to escape, regroup and though much had to occur it was these same Generals that led the liberation of Europe five years later where Hitler took his own life anyway.

Page 322 Churchill gave orders to shoot down German Red Cross aircraft. This was in the face of the cry from German doctors that called a violation of the Geneva Convention. Churchill boldly said bunk to a country that violated every treaty it signed with other nations. Both the World and England accepted and praised Churchill’s actions. There were no indictments or criminal investigations. Churchill closed this section sighting that England rather picked up the airmen from the “shot down aircraft” in fishing boats and then the Germans blew up the fishing boats.-

Page 364 I found it interesting that Churchill had an open sense of retaliation towards German in a tit-for-tat war. HE equally endorsed the indiscriminate bombing of German cities. The strategy was the same...to demoralize the German citizens. In today’s Terrorist War, we experience an agenda by the terrorist to sway public opinion and vote (Jimmy Carter, Spain) and it worked both times. However somewhere in war history and the Geneva Convention as interpreted by today’s far fetched anti war mongrels, we must raise above the character of the enemy as though we are running a police action as opposed to a war. If President Bush made his war message more clear in 2001, there would have been a lot more support for all the domino action that followed and will continue. He did say the War on Terror will be long, protracted, and with a hard to identify enemy. He only said it once.

In the development of Operation Compass a plan to take the offensive in Egypt, I found it interesting that the Generals who developed the plan did so in secret, even from Churchill. They did so to maintain a high level of surprise on Mussolini and Hitler. When Churchill found out about it in due course, he was pleased and approved it into action. I contrast it with today’s far fetched left news “investigative journalist” who are prone to site some concoction of our laws to indict the plotters; all in a frenzy to fulfill the political agenda of their respective agencies. In 1940, this level of secret operative planning led to freedom. In 2006, the treasonous exposure is leading to the demise of our way of life.

The Gathering Storm

2011-02-01T10:52:00.002-05:00

The Gathering Storm
by Winston Churchill

The following poetic quote sums up the words on the pages of the age of ink press:
He who will not when he may
When he will, he shall have Nay
Churchill’s prose interpretation of the same:
“In this Twilight War…It was after France had been flattened out that Britain, thanks to her island advantage, developed out of the pangs of defeat and the menace of annihilation a national resolve equal to that of Germany.
I personally noted that it were those same pangs of defeat that gave Germany the resolve to rise up to the world in the way they did. In reading this remarkable account of history by a leader who was part of it makes you the reader in want to take decisive lesson from the time spent between the covers of this book. The following summarizes what I learned.

It has been claimed at dinner parties that Britain and France had been the policemen of Europe in the prelude of World War II. Churchill makes in plainly clear in this book that they were champions of appeasement and diplomatic folly. In his careful and colorful description of events, using excerpts of speeches, and correspondences, blended with dialogue; the reader becomes painfully aware that appeasement was simply a term used in the press to lull the citizens towards a false hope for peace. Rather, the reader becomes clearly appraised as to the miss-steps in diplomacy in the nature of French Richelieu’s balance of power. A diplomacy where France instead breaks her commitment of balance of power through failed obligation in defense of smaller nations in domino succession, leaving Poland as the last domino to fall coinciding with the outbreak. Britain simply followed suit, as there were no formal commitments to counter act the overwhelming call in the press for peace. In the end such folly rendered both policemen as accomplices to a world tragedy. Churchill writes that the tale was not about diplomacy aimed at national security guised as justice; it ended up being a fight for our lives.

While the copyright is 1948 Churchill claims many words published were actually written eighteen years earlier as a message to prevent what he calls the second conclusion of mankind. I took grave note that Britain and France' roles aside, Churchill makes clear that most of all the immense power and impartiality in the United States allowed conditions to be gradually led to the very climax that peace dreaded most. In 1948 he is certain to caution any notion that the United States should make the same mistake for a third convulsion from which none may live to tell the tale. In almost every strategic decision to prepare England and her allies for defense, Churchill found himself perplexed with the prevailing sentiment of defensive –v- offensive stratagem. Where you actually call the start of the war didn’t matter. For instance just before Hitler attacked Norway and France it was learned that Hitler planned to attack Norway to defend herself and as well, maintain the industrious raw material from Sweden. Churchill faced absolute refusal to land troops in Norway or supply bombers to an offensive plan of defense of the world. Churchill writes of a French communiqué from his interlocutor: “The president of the Republic himself had intervened and that no aggressive measure must be taken which might only draw reprisal upon France. “ He again writes his personal frustration of well laid offensive plans in the defense of his home land

“The idea of not irritating the enemy did not commend itself to me.”“

To help the reader comprehend such a grim summary view the beginning is a good place to start. Churchill spends a chapter describing how the German leadership began their rearmament as early as 1923 and could have been stopped with out the risk of a single life up to 1934. Even when he sounded the alarm in 1930, there were eight years to arrest the build up of which not only did the allies reject but they also proceeded to reduce their own militaries.

In describing Hitler, in immediate Post Great War, Churchill describes a man capable of rationalizing a hatred for Jews and Bolsheviks, not for any other reason than it was they who exploited the defeated German people. But Hitler found himself not alone as he discovered a party of people of the same mind. They held a defeated passionate hate for those who exploited them in a time of defeat. With the collapse of the German mark Hitler, the new leader of the National-Socialist Party, found hungry AND THUS EASY RECRUITS. A PARTY FOUNDED IN HATRED. While in prison in 1924, Hitler outlined Mien Kampf. A Hitler doctrine adopted by the German people that appeared to have its sole basis in nothing but hatred of anything not German. It was a doctrine that mandated men to fight for freedom, a word guised in supremacy. Ironically, freedom arrived at a cost of individuals surrendering ones mind to the Fuehrer. In Churchill’s chapter on Locusts the reader of twenty-o-four cannot help but draw an Ominous Parallel to current world situation, but also to a theory analyzed on Piekoff’s book Ominous Parallel.

It took more than a desperate people for Hitler to spring to power. It took the coalescence of military organizations bent on power. As they viewed each other as foes that could bring each other down against the political enemy, being communist Bolsheviks, they united in a fashion that brought down the Bruening Cabinet, thus creating a political vacuum. There existed a vacuum; not of ideas, but of a leader to execute on his ideas. It should be noted that while the elite palace leaders were in no way impressed with Hitler, 13,000,000 Germans were behind him. While Churchill does not address the philosophical foundation of the German mind he makes a case for opportunity for a leader to take advantage of a willing mind, for whatever reason. In essence it takes willing people, but a cacophony of political stratagem must also coincide for such a catastrophe of an elected Hitler leadership to occur. In a note on humility, Hitler’s predecessor Hindenberg once said that Hitler is suited for no more than Postmaster, "where he can lick stamps with my head on them".

Meanwhile in the course of European debate over weapons of war (WMD) Churchill gave his first warning to England of the eminent danger being sown in 1936. While Europe was disarming, Germany was ripe to rearm. Meanwhile British public opinion concluded that all doubts of a peaceful Germany should be cast aside. After the takeover of the Rhineland of which without a challenge Hitler assumed un- questionable authority over his Generals. All of Germany was succeeded in the easy gain of ground against its former adversaries, so divided and tame. There is no doubt that had His Majesty's Government chosen to act with firmness and resolve through thru League of Nations, they could have led a united Britain on a final quest to avert war. In 1939 Churchill writes
“in keeping with a 400 year history to avert a dominance by a dictator from any country We ought to set the life and endurance of the British Empire and the greatness of the this island very high in our duty, and not be led astray by illusions about an ideal world, which only means that other and worse controls will step into our place, and that future direction will belong to them.''

In a speech to the House of Commons Churchill said the credit of the Government has been compromised by what has occurred. The House has been consistently misled about the air-position. The Prime Minister himself has been misled. He was misled right up to the last moment, apparently. Look at the statement, which he made in March when he spoke about our armaments:
“The sight of this enormous, this almost terrifying power which Britain is building up has a sobering effect, a steadying effect, on the opinion of the world.”

When I compare the political debate surrounding National Defense of 1936-1938 and compare it to 2001-2004, I am again struck by the similarities. History will again decide if G.W. Bush made the correct strategic decisions in Iraq. The notion to bring Bush up for war crimes comes from minds not incapable of examining the multi layered landscape of issues with a focus on National Security. And thus with absence of personally formed bias our ill informed public opinion leaves our current world vulnerable to Churchill’s greatest fear. Back to the book review specifically Churchill’s views were opposite those of Baldwin and Chamberlain. Attack through diplomatic channels and then with arms were his messages. The measured results of Churchill’s time where an immediate World War with grave loss of life ensued, yet it’s conclusion drew an apparent beginning of lasting peace in Europe. That conclusion did not have to weigh so heavy a price on the world. Credit is given to leaders such as Churchill, Roosevelt & Truman, of WWII and then Reagan who pushed for the close of the Cold War. Can history be used to chart our future in twenty-o-four?

Some lessons are never learned; this one being harmony in leadership. In 1937 and in the midst Italian buildup Secretary of British Foreign Affairs Eden was knitting together a plan to ally France and England against Italy on submarine attacks. Of course there are a few dynamics to be noted that draw a parallel with slight departure in terms of role reversals to current events in 2004. At first it should be noted that Eden, Secretary of State was placed at odds with his Prime Minister, Chamberlain of who replaced Baldwin. He did his duty at odds with his cabinet in a Machiavellian setting and eventually was neutralized in Chamberlains circle. His course of action was to play a strong hand and tendered an offer to Mussolini that the powers of the Mediterranean will join together to sink all submarines as pirates and requested Italy’s participation. With firm resolve of a united front Mussolini agreed to enjoin in the anti pirate campaign, and suddenly his Italian subs refrained from sinking any more merchant ships. The outlook Churchill held as he encouraged Eden to continue in the face political headwinds he wrote

“Poor England! Leading her free, and careless life from day-to-day, amid careless good-tempered parliamentary babble, she followed, wondering, along the downward path which led to all she wanted to avoid, She was continuously reassured by the leading articles of the most influential newspapers, with some honorable exceptions, and behaved as if all the world were as easy, uncalculating and well-meaning as herself.”

He further writes:
“Mr. Roosevelt was indeed running great risks in his own domestic politics by deliberately involving the United States in the darkening European scene. All the forces of isolationism would have been aroused if any part of these exchanges had transpired. On the other hand, no event could have been more likely to stave off or even prevent war than the arrival of the United States in the circle of European hates and fears.”

Churchill’s following words damning Chamberlain’s decision to not accept Roosevelt’s offer must be left for the reader, who would by page 255 of the book be in a Churchill frame of mind to appreciate the gravity of Chamberlains mistake.

” I must remark here though there is at least on consistent parallel and that is the influence of the press to tilt an uniformed population with incomplete information, and the necessity of a press secretary to spin leadership policy against these winds. And we the people must vote a leader and allow him to lead with a willingness to view and seek out the complete story as opposed to submit to the whirlpool of partisan politics found in the press at the fate of National Security. “

Churchill’s story makes this ever clearer in my mind and puts me on the look out for Colin Powell’s book. I must personally say that I have making a case for clarity and thoroughness in reporting. As well I have been condemning those with a voice of hatred towards our leadership when I find them banking all their emotion on the whims of our American press. If only in the heat of debate could I remember such eloquent words?

I also learned that the Domino Theory that prevailed in the 50s and formulated a tenant of our involvement in Viet Nam becomes none too original when reading the succession of events in the late 1930s where England and France, mishandled their “world policemen” obligations. France was bound by treaty to defend Czechoslovakia in the case of invasion by Germany. England had no such obligation. However without the commitment of one or the other, neither would defend Czechoslovakia over the Hitler proclaimed issues of the Sudentland area of German speaking Czechs. To this extend a French envoy to the Czechoslovakia government since 1925 resigned and became a Czech citizen when he heard of the folly of the French and Brits over Czechoslovakia. “Honor among men existed somewhere.” Were Churchill’s words. Underpinning the whole situation was a bent towards world peace through disarmament against a world axis menace of Germany, Japan, and to a lesser degree Italy. As a student I remember the film reels of Neville Chamberlain boarding tail-dragger planes of DC3 form, in his last ditch attempt of diplomacy with the Fuehrer. In the letters between all parties, held within the pages of this book, and Churchill’s description, the reader clearly becomes aware, how innocent and ill-informed leaders can play the wrong cards in the high stakes game of world dominance of that time. Chamberlains trip to Berchtesgaden proved to be a pinnacle mistake in diplomacy. Churchill in my opinion describing the events makes a clear case for a strong hand i.e.: T.Rex “speak softly and carry a big stick” or Ronald Reagan’s clear stand with Gorbechov in Reykjavik and then Berlin. Churchill in his book asks for history to be the judge of diplomacy’s hand. When I read of Carters handling of Iranian affairs in 1979 along with Chamberlain Berchtesgaden in contrast to Reagan and Bush(s), I must again stand behind a leader who plays a strong hand in matters of National Security, at high sacrifice to world opinion or ACLU protests of encroachment upon civil liberties. Both are a small price to pay for inalienable rights of freedom. I fully appreciate that there is a difference and a hierarchy between and within the two.

The most striking “news to me’ was to read of the high ranking German Generals plot to arrest Hitler and his leadership just prior to Chamberlains lack luster attempts at diplomacy. Churchill’s conclusive words are most appropriate at this point:

“If it should eventually be accepted as historical truth, it will be another example of the very small accidents upon which the fortunes of mankind turn.”

I am quickly reminded of Jimmy Carters week-handed diplomacy that was followed two days later of the capture of the American embassy in Iran. If only fate fell into the hands of stronger leaders?

In the aftermath of the Czechoslovakia invasions and the prelude of Poland and Albania by Germany and Italy respectively, Churchill continues to detail the errant decisions carried out in diplomatic relations; not only with his allies but also with his adversaries. The familiar phrase of appeasement becomes clearly understood, in terms of miscalculations, by the emotional words of Churchill standing in the wings waiting his turn to lead. His words towards Neville Chamberlain are typically British, as he allows history to redress Chamberlains leadership into disaster.

Coincidently mentioned but not delved into in this book was the quality of intelligence available to Chamberlain. Churchill claims a superior level of intelligence, and questions Chamberlains and the British Admiralty lack of preparedness against Mussolini’s invasion of Albanian. Ciano, a cabinet member of Mussolini, writes these British are not those of Drake, they are tired old rich men. As I listen to John Kerry not knowing hunger and the Democratic candidate of Presidency of 2004. He who claims he would have gotten up from a school room and done something on the morning of 911, without specifying what he would have done, gives me reason to draw a parallel to Chamberlain; rich men compelled to say I’m in charge and make decisions without trusting the service of his administration and his advisors. Churchill paints an emotional picture of failed diplomacy when placed in the hands of a leader with a self-centered leadership, bent on decision-making in a closet. Perhaps this could be a lesson in history.

As the book transitions from the sad tale of failed diplomacy to a declaration of war, Churchill describes his feelings upon inspecting the naval positions in Scotland as the reappointed Minister of the Admiralty, a position he once held in the onset of the Great War. He first writes a short poem reflecting his reaction to a new generation of crew placed upon the same ships of a previous war. It goes like this:

I feel like one
Who treads alone,
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed.

After reading of the failed preparations at cost of appeasement, Churchill while having a picnic lunch on a hill overlooking a Scottish harbor writes:
“Poland is in agony; France but a pale reflection of her warlike ardour; the Russians Colossus no longer and ally, not even neutral, possibly a foe, Italy no friend, Japan no ally. Would America ever come in again? The British Empire remained intact gloriously united but ill prepared.”

I was struck in reading these words written by a man who was placed in political exile for many a year, waved his flag of alarm to a deaf ear of England, and could place claim on a gloriously united spirit of his countrymen. I am struck by what it took to unite England, as it was not Churchill’s flag waiving. And then I am awe-struck at Churchill’s immediate gratification to be once again in a position to defend his fellow man. Churchill is immediately forgiving of his fellow mans penchant for peace at any cost. In a prefect world it is the higher road. In a real world of 1930 thru 1939, 1991 thru 2004 history proved that perfection was yet to be met.

As the story plunges deeper into the reality of war, the Cabinet officials were busy consuming themselves with the affairs of their own offices and vying for priority with the Prime Minister. Churchill spends a chapter describing his private letters to key officials, putting forward his concerns, recommendations and commitment for support. What Churchill had in his favor were actual experience in many posts of government, a continued study of the government while in 10 years exile, and as sense of raising above any grudge with an aim of National Defense in a headwind of war. The lessons in diplomacy on paper are well worth reading to glean the art of apprising your friend of unsolicited advice. This nature of diplomacy at an individual level is in my opinion a tenant of his countrymen’s call for his Prime leadership.

With Poland in ruins, the Baltic States parlayed to the Soviet Union, Churchill describes the strategy and diplomacy in building the defensive lines along it Belgian frontier. Herein, Churchill describes two tenants of diplomacy finding them tangled in military strategy. The first tenant is quite simple and basically prescribes that no military strategy involving the occupation of Belgian soil in the defense of France could be permitted without Belgian approval. As no approval came forth, plan B was quickly acquiesced to with no hard insistence by either party to Belgium for a plan of mutual benefit. One could easily draw a parallel to the Cambodian circumstance along the Ho Chi Min Trail question and find that world standards caused extreme compromise on a military battlefield. The questions placed upon our leaders are far more complicated than the average bear comprehends. And in too many cases our journalists as simply average bears. Second tenant was the military question of success of attack -v- defend, being argued largely by diplomats as opposed to military strategists. While history at that time proves that attacking leaves one in a more vulnerable position in terms of battlefield and supply lines, Hitler defied history as his Armies broke through the Allied lines on the Belgium frontier and proved that attack can be done while defending ones self. Churchill simply notes that Germany was first to put heavy plates of armor in vehicles. This lesson seems to have been over looked in 2004 by the greatest military planners in man kind.

The combination of the two issues draws into question preemptive attack, which is as a popular question today as it might well have been in 1961 with regard to the Cuban missile crisis. When war is eminent not in terms of days but years, building a case for preemptive action as a defense seems plausible, as Churchill makes clear. However on a world stage of hundreds of countries, this leaves the country of preeminence vulnerable to technical objection reverberated into a frenzy of biased views and exacerbated by journalist. The real questions may be when do the people entrust in our leaders, elected via due process and allow them unabated, but questioned execution of a plan. Churchill’s history makes it clear that the challenge for a unanimous world coalition in the winds of the minority objectors requires a strong leader to stay a course in National Defense, regardless of the popular view.

With regard to making strategic war decisions involving small countries soil, Churchill is mindful of international law but willing to abrogate to the laws of humanity, and allow history to be his judge. Here is a man willing to chart a new course if required; the mark a great leader on a world stage, in my opinion. This said, Churchill describes his efforts to not be confrontational with his “Commander in Chief” Neville Chamberlain; a requisite step in becoming a world class leader, teacher in history, professor in journalism, and spokesperson for personal integrity on a world stage. He was appointed Prime Minister of England by the King on the day Germany invaded Belgium and Holland; not because of the invasion but because of Chamberlains resignation over the poor performance in Norway. His words spoken and written are a hallmark of great leaders worth reading from. Had we only listened in 1936?

Post Script: To draw an ominous parallel to today’s popular venue in Michael Moore’s film, I read in this book of two days prior to the German invasion of Norway, German officials invited the civilians of Oslo, including Western Allies to view a film reel of the capture of Warsaw. With the falling of the bombs the caption at the bottom of the screen read: “This if not for the hand of France and England”. It seems Moore is a student of Hitler. It is too bad our general population is one of “30 second sound bites” students as opposed to one of conscientious study of grave matters. We can be so easily duped. Like the Communists of France who denounced the war as “an imperialistic and capitalist crime against humanity”, there are those factions here in the United States who continue in those ways of the French. As much as I can say I enjoy French culture and would endorse a world of it, I have yet to read of French politics where there was not a selfish French end in mind, blind to the realities of the world.

Catch phrases
1. Death stands at attention, waiting the command to pulverize civilization.
2. Long his victim - for once his master.
3. The world lifted its head, surveyed the ruin
4. The vessel of peace has sprung a leak at every beam.
5. Of all this let history be the judge. We now face events.
6. The veils of the future are lifted one by one, and mortals must act from day to day.
7. Facts are better than dreams.

Master and Commanders

2011-02-01T10:50:00.002-05:00

Master and Commanders
By Andrew Roberts

This book is an analysis of the prime movers in WWII strategy for the allies. Chief among them were Franklin D. Roosevelt and George C. Marshall for the Americans and Winston Churchill and Sir Allen Brooke for the British. The first question I raised in reading the inside of the jacket cover was who is Brooke? I found out five hundred plus pages later. The author does a convincing job in portraying Sir Allen Brooke as the grand master who got things done in spite of his boss, Sir Winston Churchill. While I give praise to the character the author builds in Brooke, I disparage the character built in Churchill. Having been the benefactor of reading Churchill’s accounts that are backed by a plethora of correspondence with key players of the war, I completed the book prepared to defend Churchill against yet another critic with a skewed opinion based in assorted fact, standing in shallow and murky water.

Aside from character building, which the author believes was an essential ingredient to decision making on a strategic level, the strategic planning of every Allied initiative are discussed in detail, where the page count of five-hundred-eighty-four was its only limitation. As the chronology progressed through time, I could not help but asking myself about Stalin and Hitler. In 1941 Roosevelt characterized the situation where ‘the principle objective was to help Russia,’ since ‘It must be constantly reiterated that Russian armies are killing more Germans and destroying more Axis material than all the twenty-five United Nations put together.

Through much of the war, the prevailing strategy seemed to be more the failure of Hitler’s strategy than the brilliance of any of the allied Commanders. As I closed the back cover of his book, I wrote a big question mark on my reading list. I have read in many accounting at surface level description of the inner works of the Hitler command, at least from a resulting decision perspective. But I have yet to read a comparable accounting of equal measure specifically from the German side, where Hitler’s strategy trumped his generals. I have learned that there was great disagreement, but how is it that the strategy that told the fate of this world conflict was really a losing strategy as opposed to a winning strategy and why have we left the details to that question uncovered? I generally understand that the western leaders drew a strategy from consensus, while Hitler dictated a strategy against the advice of clearer thinking Generals, excluding Goering. I ask only because I am ignorant to any book on such a theme.

As the Grand Strategy was taking its form, there was an overriding idea that it should be a Germany first strategy. This strategy was largely British driven and bought in to because the Americans were of a junior partner status and did not as well have a better strategy. While this strategy prevailed it was periodically tested as Japan drew the United States in to the war. The timing of Germany first seems to have been controversial throughout the war. Intervening events and competing strategies were played out. In the fog of a couple hundred pages it seems that the Russian’s advance across eastern Europe post Stalingrad, and Hitler strategy held sway over the timing than anything else, including victories in Africa. I am once again not certain that Stalin and Hitler, though little was written between the covers, should not have had their pictures on the cover of this book. While the book did much in terms of the timing of the Normandy invasion, Operation Overlord, It seems that the narrow one tracked thinking of Marshal and Eisenhower, borne in classic Clauswitzian military mentality, forced an invasion that cost millions of lives and only got the Allies to Berlin after the Russians.

And finally I must be critical be critical of yet another author’s inability to see a folly of strategy that led to a Russian victory of WWII and a postponement of the Allied victory, where victory is defined by the liberation of Europe, that had to wait 45 years for the end of the Cold War. I say this because riddled throughout this book are arguments between Brooke and Churchill and then between the British and the Americans. In all arguments the author goes through pains to color Churchill as the cigar smoking, drunken strategy zealot, and in that course clouded his vision to draw that reality to the forefront is fogged over. The big decision to attack Germany from the beaches of Normandy, as we did, or to have attacked the Germans from the Italian front was a vexing intrigue on many levels, in the strategy for the race to Berlin. It was a protracted debate that could only have been equaled by the Germany First debate. All these debates carried the background references of each of the participants to readings of past great war strategies where the decision makers banked their views upon.

Here is my argument on both who the Masters and Commanders are, and what was the winning strategy. The early strategy was clearly a counter strategy to anything Hitler had already accomplished. The Brits when in to North Africa first because it was their only option at the time and second then needed to shore up their empire along what I refer to as the English Tierra; the arc from the horn of Africa through the Middle East down to India and through to Singapore ending at Australia. This was the heart of the English Empire and thus a worth prize to protect. Meanwhile the Americans agreed to participate merely because they had to do something of consequence to keep the American people bought in to the war effort. Meanwhile the Americans were formulating a Clausweitizian front across the same Channel that the Germans failed to see through in 1940. To think this massive attack could overshadow the wisdom of an assault from already conquered shores in Italy can only be rationalized by weak arguments provided both the actors of the book and the author. One can only wonder that if half the Herculean effort applied in Normandy was applied to the Ljubljana gap between Yugoslavia and Italy, the Allies could have first had an easier and shorter route to Berlin and second have precluded the Russians of their land grab of eastern Europe which set the stage for a forty-five year long Cold War.

I don’t know whether to compliment or criticize Andrew Roberts for his effort. There is enough granularity in this snap shot of history to reveal an alternative ending to World War Two, if only the masters and Commanders under the American flag had paid closer attention to Britain and namely Churchill. Roberts delivers this enlightenment through first person views and his narrative of the events. Yet he camouflages this nugget of insight at an alternative ending with unnecessary coloring of Churchill as a reckless egomaniac. In this review I interlace ‘My Comments’ with pertinent bibliography notes to demonstrate how the enlightenment makes itself apparent, in the shadow of ridicule of one of the most important men of the twentieth century.

Notes

Page 24: …it was at Forth Benning, in Georgia for five years head of infantry school , that Marshall showed his capacities as a reformer. His experience of the later stages of the Great War had convinced him that, in any future conflict, officers would not be able to wait for perfect orders written out over four pages of single-spaced foolscap sheet, such as the ones GHQ had provided then, especially with un reliable intelligence reports that might be expected from a fast moving battlefield.

Page 26/26: In July 1938….Marshall was ordered to Washington DC to become assistant chief of staff in the War Plans Division of the War Department. This was a key position, overseeing all future offensive operations of the United States. Three months later and a fortnight after the Munich Agreement, he was appointed chief of staff. It was In that post that he attended a conference at the White House on November 14, 1938 to discuss the Presidents plans to build fifteen thousand war plans

According to Arnold’s notes of the White House meeting the President did most of the talking, emphasizing that ideally he would have liked to build twenty thousand warplanes and create an annual capacity for twenty-four thousand, but acknowledged that this would be cut in half by Congress.

Page 27: Marshall well understood Roosevelt’s way of suborning people in this way, and refused to be drawn in to it. As chief of staff he didn’t visit Roosevelt’s country estate in Hyde Park (ever), saying that he found informal conversation with the President would get you ion trouble.

In this paragraph is an interesting end note: (it was suspected in the Churchill family that Marshall disapproved on moral grounds of the President’s affair with Lucy Mercer Rutherford.) This is not common knowledge in 2010.

Page 33: Whether Marshall had a “feel” for operations and a sense of strategy is a central question that this book will seek to answer.

Page 37: The BEF escaped destruction of Dunkrik. Even Pownall admitted in June 1946 that Brooke ‘came out trumps’. As we shall see, the experience of the campaign taught Brooke a number of important lessons about how he believed the rest of the war should be fought, lessons that diverged sharply from te ones Marshall had learned at Fort Leavenworth, Chaimount and Fort Benning.

Page 42 On 11 October 1940, staying at Chequers for the weekend, Churchill and Brooke disagreed over the use being made of the eccentric but occasionally brilliant Major-General Percy Hobart, who was then languishing as a lance-corporal in the Home Guard due to the War Office’s extreme inclination to employ him. Brooke said he was too wild , recorded Colville but ‘Winston reminded him of the Wolfe standing on a chair in front of Chatham brandishing a sword. “ You cant expect, he said “to have the genius type with conventional copy-book Style” That exchange could almost be taken as a template for their future relationship.

My comment: At this point I notice the difference in the dynamics between Marshall and Roosevelt and Brooke and Churchill. Where Marshall was smart enough to keep his boss at arms length, Brooke was not. In this case where Brooke challenged Churchill, even his own command was hesitant to use him militarily. Thus leaving a little grandstanding as a viable play to inspire the English people. Churchill used all the faculties of his people, ( and other Presidents, people) where Brooke’s vision was strictly military.

Page 45: The adoption of the memorandum, first by Marshall and then by Rossevelt- though not in writing – and then by the US Joint Planning Committee, meant that te United States had an outline plan to use durning the secret, arm'-length Anglo- American Staff talks, code named ABC-I which were about to start. No such talks could be organized before Roosevelt’s third inauguration on 20 January 1941, because during the election campaign he had promised American parents that ‘Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.’

Page 52: In a nine page hand written letter on 4 August, 1940 to his cousin and confidante Margaret ‘Daisy’ Suckley, who lived close to him in Dutchess County, New York, Roosevelt described how he had been secretly transferred from his presidential yacht the Potomac on to the heavy cruiser USS Augusta, and, with another cruiser and five destroyers as escort had made his way to Newfoundland. The Potomac had continued to fly his presidential flag once he’d left her, in order to maintain deception: “even at my ripe old age I feel the thrill in making a getaway, especially from the American Press.”

Page 68: The Grand Strategy Arcadia (1940) agreed was summarized in a document written by Churchill entitled WW1, which was to represent the Allies overall position until superseded by another document, CCS 94 in August 1942. This enshrined the concept of Germany first.

Page 69: Eisenhower agreed with Admiral Stark’s original assessment in ‘Plan Dog’ that the defeat of Germany would make the defeat of Japan a matter of time, whereas the defeat of Japan would not materially weaken Germany.

Page 77: Marshall’s institution of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could not, however, wholly alter the disorganization in the American system which Jacob had commented on so tartly. Roosevelt’s desire to retain power closely in his own hands, and to keep Administration officials competing for his favor, les him to adopt methods that seem indescribably Byzantine, even administratively dysfunctional, to modern eyes.

Page 91: On January 18 1942, in a memorandum to Roosevelt, Marshall identified what was for Brooke also a key aspect of the war, and one that the British believed justified the Gymnast operation. ‘The future effort of the Army is dependent on shipping, he wrote. ‘More shipping than is now insight is essential if the national war effort is not neutralized to a serious extent.’ Marshall estimated that by December 1942 there would be 1.8 million American troops ready for over seas service and by the end of 1943 about 3.5 million.

Page 110: Eden wanted to abolish the Defence Committee altogether, but recorded that Churchill was ‘obstinate about it, and maintains that it is better to have one place where service members have a show’ Eden thought that since it effected little and tended to attract criticism in parliament, it ought to go, but Churchill spotted that is would be better for an important committee to attract criticism than the real power-house of the war which were the Staff Conferences – meanwhile Ismay was the oil-can that greased the relationship between Churchill and Brooke.’ Says General Fraser – much as Dill oiled that between Brooke and Marshall.

Page 111: Dining with John Kennedy at the Savoy Grill on 4 June 1942, Ismay said Churchill ‘needs someone to use as a whipping boy on whom to blow off steam’ and he was ‘quite frank in admitting this as his chief function’ He added that someone with sounder and stronger judgment could hold his job it would be doubtless better, but chances are that such a person would soon be thrown out.’ Kennedy concluded that he would never have Ismay’s job ‘for anything in the world.’

Page 117: Like Brooke, Kennedy considered the bombing campaign against Germany ‘ineffective’ and ‘beyond our means.’ He repeated to his diary the views he injudiciously blurted out at Chequers the previous year, that if it came to worst, ‘It is certainly more important to hold India and Ceylon than to hang on in Egypt. We are getting very little for our effort in the Middle East and certainly not enough to compensate for serious losses of positions in the Indian Ocean. After hearing Churchill’s views on Singapore, Kennedy reiterated: ‘It is wrong to depend so much on one man who is so temperamental, so lacking in strategical knowledge and in judgment, despite his other great qualities.’ This summed up the view of Churchill that was held most universally among senior British Planners and especially Brooke., though none failed to praise those ‘the great qualities’, principally the fillip he gave national morale.

Page 119: Brooke’s adamant opposition to an early Second Front alienated plenty of liberal intellectuals …..who believed that Marshall’s judgment was ultimately better that Churchill’s and far ahead of General Brooke…whose judgment about Russia, was abysmal. In fact had a far more hard-headed attitude towards the Russians, who had until very recently been allies of the Nazis and had been supplying them with grain and oil right up to the night of Barbarossa was launched…Brooke was rather impatient with our attitude of giving everything Russians ask and getting nothing in return. Pf course the Russians are fighting - but for themselves and not for us.

Page 140: Brooke’s experiences in France in the two BEF expeditions of 1940 had a deciding influence on the assumptions underlying his formulation of grand strategy in the Second World War, principally in convincing him that the French could not be relied upon and that the Germans were very formidable opponents indeed.

Page 141: According to Hopkin’s notes of the trip, from 4p.m. to 6p.m. Marshall presented the broad outlines of his Memorandum to Churchill’s, who ‘indicated that he had told the Chiefs of Staff that, in spite of all the difficulties, he was prepared to go along.’ Churchill repeated the objections that the Chiefs of Staff had put, ‘all of which he had heard in Washington before coming to England’. Marshall was more optimistic about the interview than Hopkins, thinking that ‘Churchill went a long way and he Marshall, expected far more resistance than he got..

What Hopkins guessed, but Marshall seems not to have, is that Churchill privately opposed an early Roundup and Sledgehammer just as much as Brooke.

Page 155: Brooke then stated unequivocally that ‘The Chiefs of Staff entirely agreed that Germany was the real enemy. At the same time, it was essential to hold Japanese and ensure that there was no junction between tem and t Germans. He conjured up the by now familiar lurid scenario in which the Japanese won control of the Indian Ocean, allowing the Middle East to be gravely threatened and oil supplies prevented from going though the Persian Gulf. Under those circumstances, Germany would seize Persia’s oil, the southern route to Russia would be cut off, and Turkey would be isolated, destroying any hope of her joining the Allies, while Germany and Japan could exchange any hardware they needed

Page 156: Of Brooke he explained that the Germany First policy had been adopted because the US High Command wanted to fight on land, at sea, and in the air, as well as in the most useful place, and in the place where they could attain superiority, and they were desirous above all of joining in an enterprise with the British. He might have been more honest if less comradely, if he added that Roosevelt and Marshall realized how more difficult the task would be if Britain lost to Germany darning the time that it took for the United States to defeat Japan.

Page 170: ‘On 13 January last’ Marshall wrote to Roosevelt, on 5 May, ‘you authorized an increase in the enlisted strength of the Army to 3.6 million by 31 December 1942. Authorization for additional men in 1942 is now essential to out plans.’ In the intervening four months the Army had to garrison the lines of communication to Australia, and rush reinforcements to Hawaii, Alaska, and Panama.

Page 171: Roosevelt characterized the recapture of previously British- and Dutch-owned islands as ‘premature’. In the Near East and East African theaters, the responsibility was against the British, although America “must furnish all possible material’ in Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and the Persian Gulf. Britain and America would split responsibility for the Atlantic, while ‘The principal objective was to help Russia,’ since ‘It must be constantly reiterated that Russians armies are killing more Germans and destroying more Axis material, than all the twenty-five United Nations put together.’

Page 198. So, just as Marshall, King and Eisenhower were trying to consign Gymnast to a strategic, logistical and even ‘logical’ grave in Washington – hardly resisted by an almost equally skeptical Brooke- Churchill resurrected it at Hyde Park. In getting Roosevelt on his own there, Churchill had a considerable advantage, as ‘amateur strategist’ President tended, at least at this stage of the war, to defer to him on military matters in a way that he would not have done had Marshall been present. ‘I must emphasize’, admitted Wedemeyer, after the war.

Page 200: The American response to the news about Tobruk was instinctive, and was often later recalled with powerfully nostalgia by all Britons present. ‘For a moment or two no one spoke,’ recalled Ismay, but then the silence was broken by Roosevelt. ‘In six monosyllables he epitomized his sympathy with Churchill, his determination to do the utmost to sustain him, and his recognition that we were all in the same boat: “What can we do to help?”

Page 214: Churchill himself admitted being haunted by the ghosts of the Somme and in the Closing Ring he wrote of Roundup: “The fearful price we had to pay in human life and blood for te great offensives of the First World War was graven on my mind….

Yet is wasn’t so much getting to Passchendaele and the Somme that worried the British strategists in 1942-4 as the Dunkirk and Brest campaigns of the summer of 1940. Rommel’s and Guderian’s seemingly unstoppable blitzkrieg campaign across France featured more in their fears – especially Brooke’s and Dill’s – than the mud and blood of Flanders of a quarter century before.

Page 220: Brooke explained his view and thus his fundamental difference of view from Marshall. “ Having been forced to fight on two fronts during 1914-18 War’ he began te Germans ‘had further developed their East-West communications with double railway lines and autobahns, to meet the possibility of being again forced to fight on two frontiers. They were capable of moving some six to eight divisions…simultaneously from East to West. That the Germans had far less maneuverability ins southern Europe and the Mediterranean, where he argued the rail and road communications from northern France to southern Italy and the Mediterranean were very poor.

Page 233: ‘I have carefully your estimate of Sunday’ wrote Roosevelt to Marshall and Stimson on Tuesday 14 July, before his return to the White House the next day. “My first impression is that the [Pacific Option] is exactly what Germany hoped the United States would do following Pearl Harbor. Secondly, it does not in fact provide American troops in fighting, except in a lot of [Pacific] islands whose occupation will not affect the world situation this year or next….

Page 235: Dill also mentioned another un-welcomed fact to Churchill in his telegram, namely that the American Chiefs of Staff were reading Field Marshall Sir William Robertson’s two-volume memoir about grand strategy of the Great War, Soldiers and Statesmen, and that Marshall had sent him a copy with the third chapter of the first volume heavily annotated. Churchill would have understood immediately what that meant. Robertson, whi had been CIGS from 1915 to 1918, was a Clausewitizian, and volume I chapter III of his book covered the Dardanelles expedition. ‘An essential condition of success in war being, the concentration of effort on the decisive front, ….

Over the Dardanelles, Robertson did not deny that ‘it might be desirable to threaten interests which are of importance to the enemy, so as to oblige him to detach for their protection of force larger than te one employed making the threat, thus rendering him weaker in comparison on the decisive front,’ which was precisely Churchill’s and Brooke’s Italian strategy for 1943-4, but Marshall is unlikely to have underlined that for Dill’s attention. Much more likely candidates for annotation were Robertson’s strictures on ministers – primarily Churchill himself – who were indifferent to, or ignorant or, the disadvantages which always attend on charges of plan and t neglect to concentrate on one thing at a time’ Churchill was also criticized by name for having briefed the supreme strategy-making body, the War Council, directly, instead of allowing the Admiralty professionals to do it, ‘as was, in fact done after Churchill left the department’.

My Note: First the Clauswitzien strategy of WWI only produced an armacist and planted the seeds of the Second World War. To be direct it was a failed strategy that cost millions of lives. Of this excerpt there is far too much conjecture. First the author attempts to connect the dots of history back to the Dardanelles and pin full blame on Churchill, when other accounts find that there was nothing wring with Churchill’s strategy in the Dardanelles if only the Admiral of the Fleet at the time had sailed into the ports of a Turk army who was completely out of ammunition. Additionally in his concluding sentences to indict Churchill of over reaching his authority, the author does not concede that at the time of Churchill’s address to the War Council, that it was his place and duty to do so, regardless of future changes in structure. The author is guilty of “piling on” in wrongful criticism of a leader who with faults led the world to victory in WWII. Form this point, on through the rest of the book the reader witnesses the bias of the author. Where as the strategy unfolds Churchill’s idea of attacking Germany from the south, may have inflicted lives cost in terms of lives and blood, and as well have reached Berlin far ahead of the Russians which would have stalled the Russian land grab of which was known for forty-five years as the Eastern Bloc countries that fell under the heel of the USSR.

Page 238: On the evening of 14 July, at a meeting at No 10 Downing Street of representatives of Allied countries grandly entitled the Pacific War Council, Kennedy recorded: “Winston in his blue romper suit but with clean white shirt with cuffs…looked well and serene, lit a cigar and proceeded to give a general survey of the war, speaking slowly and without effort.”. After asking the New Zealand High Commissioner Sir William Jordan to stop taking notes because it distracted his attention, he talked of shipping losses, the efforts to sustain Russia, and the Eastern Front, and pointed out that Germans had only seventy-five days before winter fell there. He believed ‘The Japs would attack Russia when the moment came the- they would stab her in the back…. But for the moment they were gorged with their prey’.

Page 251: Eisenhower reacted somewhat melodramatically to the news, telling Butcher that Wednesday 22 July 1942 could well go down as ‘the blackest day in history’ if Russia was defeated by ‘the big Boche drive now so alarmingly under way’ and the West had done nothing to save her.

Back in Washington, Stimson insisted on seeing the standoff in terms of ‘a fatigued and defeatist government which lost her initiative, blocking the help of a young and vigorous nation whose strength had not he been tapped so much as wrecked, and Britain’s along with it. The experience of these negotiations with Marshall and King must have been rather like reliving his June 1940 conversation with Churchill at Lamans.

That day John Kennedy was given a full briefing on the negotiations by Brooke, who told him that Roosevelt had given instructions to Marshall to the effect that the American Army must get into action somewhere against the Germans and that he was to go and make plans accordingly. This is so remarkably accurate that Brooke simply must have known or at least the gist of the secret instructions that Roosevelt had given Marshall and Hopkins before they left. Had Hopkins leaked them to Churchill, who passed them on at 11:00 PM meeting at Downing Streets? However he came by the information, Brooke knew that if he stayed utterly intransigent over Sledgehammer – if he kept ‘looking into the distance’ – Marshall was under orders to finally buckle.

Page 254: Like Portal, Kennedy also thought that superior British arguments rather than presidential diktat had won the day, ‘The last week has seen a development in our planning with Americans that may govern the future outcome of the war’ he wrote.

Page 255: As so often in hard-fought compromises between Staffs m the key detail was to be found towards the end, almost in the small print. Under paragraph C subsection 4 it stated: ‘That it be understood that a commitment to [Torch] renders Roundup in all probability impracticable of successful operation in 1943 and therefore that we have defiantly accepted a defensive encircling line of action for Continental European Theater, except as to air operations and blockade.

That might sound like Brooke’s strategy, but there was a catch, pone that Michael Howard has even likened to Faustian compact made between British Chiefs of Staff and the Americans, CCS 94 seemed to imply that Churchill’s original WWI document from Arcadia Conference had now been officially superseded, and that instead of Germany First, the phrase ‘defensive encircling line of action, meant that Americans could now concentrate more on the Pacific.

My Note: seems to imply is always a warning sign that the author may be attempting to add a new color to history. Robert Andrews does this often to cast Churchill in a critical light.

Page 258: The change of Allied policy from attacking Cherbourg in France to attacking Casablanca in Africa, swiveling the whole focus of grand strategy 1,250 miles to the south, cannot have but rankled with Marshall. Even ten months later walking to a meeting together in Washington, he told Brooke: ‘I find it very hard even now not to look upon your North African strategy with jaundice eye!!’

Considering that even the US secretary for War had bet the President that the American invasion of Morocco would fail – something that would surely have forced his resignation if know publicly – there was much ground to be made up.

My Note: The reader must be very careful to note where the end quotes are and where the conjecture begins in the above second paragraph. Earlier in the book the author portrays the North African Strategy as the only one available at the time where action must be made to demonstrate deterrence and affirmative action on the Allied part. For Marshall, there could only be a tactical interpretation of the North African campaign as he was always a Clausewitz advocate and North African distracted that effort. I’ll share my views in the body conclusion.

Page 267: On Brookes decision to remain Churchill’s strategist and not assume command in the field, deferring the job to Montgomery: Brooke was not persuaded by Smuts, not least because he was a gentleman, he couldn’t bear the idea that Auchinleck ‘might think that I had come out here on purpose to work himself into his shoes!’ He thought over the offer throughout the day, but remained convinced that his decision was the correct one, and that he could ‘do more by remaining CIGS’…..we assume that politicians are driven by personal ambition, but soldiers are too, and although in career terms to swab the job of CIGS for Near East commander-in-chief might have looked like a demotion, in fact it would have afforded, Smuts intimated, a ‘wonderful future’.

Page 268: Brooke and Churchill also agreed that Alexander Should succeed Auchinleck in Cairo, Lieutenant- General Thomas Corbett and Brigadier Eric Dorman-Smith were to leave their commands altogether, and Lieutenant-General William ‘Strafer” Gott was to lead the English Army, although Brooke had misgivings about this. Yet on his way to take up his new command on the very next day, 7 August, flying the Burg el Arab to Heliopolis route, which was considered safe, Gott’s slow transport plane was shot down ‘inflames’ by a lone German fighter. Churchill and Brooke then quickly settled on the man whom Brooke had wanted originally, Lieutenant General Bernard Law Montgomery.

My note: By now the reader is cautious on an author’s bent to color history. With an agenda to criticize Churchill’s credibility, Roberts could have provided evidence as to Brookes preference of pick.. While the story may or may not an accurate reflection of Brooke’s preference, this book does not stand on its own on this point.

Page 270: Everyone cheered up once Churchill passed on to what he called operation Torch, at which Stalin ‘became intensely interested’

Page 273: On the failed Operation Jubilee : A small German convoy in the Channel alerted the shore defenses before the assault could take place, so the element of surprise was lost, yet Mountbatten ordered it to go ahead anyhow.

Although no German troops were moved from East to West as a result of the debacle, coastal defenses were massively strengthened. ‘If I had the same decision to make again,’ Mountbatten nonetheless answered, ‘I would do as I did before. It gave the Allies the priceless secret of victory.’ This is trip, unless the lesson of not attacking a well-defended town without proper intelligence and a preliminary aerial and naval bombardment is a ‘priceless secret’….Yet even as late as 2003 historians would still take Mountbatten at his word, with one writing” ‘The catastrophe provided priceless lessons for a full scale amphibious invasion”.

My note: While this time I agree with Robert’s assessment or coloring of Mountbatten’s decisions, Roberts falls prey of criticizing other historians where his narrative stands on its own. In my view Mountbatten’s strategy and tactics has not been the benefactor of history’s long view on numerous other occasions; specifically post war India.

Page 276: It was Stalingrad that finally, in Stimson’s words, ‘banished is the spectre of a German victory in Russia, which had haunted the Council table of Allies for a year and a half.’ IT also greatly reduced the likelihood of a German attack through Spain, cutting off American forces from their supply lines. Just as Wellington’s campaign in the Iberian peninsula had been small but significant “ulcer’ for Napoleon, but certainly not the Russian ‘coronary’ that destroyed him, so too the North African and Italian campaigns would be ulcerous for Hitler, but it was the Eastern Front that annihilated the Nazi dream of Lebensraum for the mater race.

My note: To my observation on the missing strategy are those of Stalin and Hitler. Each of which contributed to the outcome of the Second World War, yet over looked in this book.

Page 279 We are undertaking something of a quite desperate nature and which depends only in minor degree upon professional preparations we can make or upon the wisdom of our military decisions,’ wrote Eisenhower in his diary that week. “in a way it is like the return of Napoleon from Elba – if the guess as to psychological reaction is correct we may gain a great advantage in this war; if the guess is wrong, it would be almost certain that we would gain nothing and lose a not.’ He feared that there might be a ‘very bloody repulse’ and that Vichy France and even Spain might enter the war against the Allies.

Page 281: When Roosevelt’s cable duly arrived on Monday 31 August it caused consternation.’ I feel very strongly that the initial attacks must be made by an exclusively American ground force supported by your naval and transport and air units,’ it read. This was because Roosevelt believed that the French would offer less resistance ‘to us than they will to the British’.

Page 293: Smuts suggested that the real victory front was to be found ‘from the South not from the West’, and Churchill agreed,

Page 297: It was a magisterial rebuke, and the figures still have the power to impress. An army of fewer that two hundred thousand when the European war broke out in September 1939 would grow into one seven million – thirty-five times its size- a mere four years later. In divisional terms, the US Army had 37 trained divisions at the time of Pearl Harbor, 73 by Operation Torch, 120 by the summer of 1943 and 200 by D-Day. By contrast the British Commonwealth had seventy-five divisions by the summer of 1943 and hardly any more the nest year. Nor was the American Revolution confined to the Army; on 13 November 1942 a US shipbuilding yard built a standard 10,500-ton merchant vessel - a Liberty ship in exactly four days and fifteen hours. Two days later the ship was fully equipped and ready for service. No other country or alliance could begin to match such efficiency and productive power.

Page 299: Had the entire German and Italian army in Tunisia- approximately a quarter of a million men- not been captured, they might well have stalled the later Allied advances into southern Europe. It might be, therefore, that the very lack of early success immediately after Torch paradoxically increased the success later, given Hitler’s unwillingness to retreat even tactically, a characteristic that American strategists were about to note with glee.

Page 301: With Churchill and Brooke now tending to agree on the big issue – that the next stage in the war ought to be in the Mediterranean rather than across the Channel – Brooke allowed himself to be irritated only by small issues, such as Churchill’s love for rodomontades during meetings. At one Defense Committee with Winston holding forth, he passed a note to Grigg saying ’15 minutes gone and no work done’, which he subsequently altered to 20, 30, 35, 40 and then 45, before the real business of the beating began. ‘Winston is really stupid the way he tries his team’ concluded Kennedy after he heard this…

My comment: Other than to tarnish an otherwise brilliant performance of Churchill , the author spends too much print like above to make his disenchantment with Churchill known.

Page 303: CIGS is quite determined to go flat out in the MED recorded Kennedy

We can waste German strength there and tackle him on equal or better terms in outposts like Sardania, Sicily, tip of Italy, Crete. We cannot develop an an offensive on both fronts. The essential condition for France is still a crack in German morale and strength. Italy may be knocked out of the war by a combination of landing attacks and bombing. The Balkans are a weak spot for the Axis. If we can get near enough to bomb the Roumanian oilfields and cut the Aegean and Turkish traffic (chrome, etc) we can go far to hamstring the Germans

My comment: What is missed by the author and the western strategists is had we marched from Yugoslavia to Berlin, the Russians would not have taken that territory and we would not have had a fifty-year Cold War.

Page 311: The strategy of North Africa-Ital-France, stated the American historian Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison in an Oxford lecture series in the 1950’s ‘was a perfectly cogent and defensible strategy; but Sir Alan Brooke disclosed it only bit by bit, which naturally gave Americans the feeling that they had been had.. He cited Admiral King’s prediction that once forced to the Mediterranean, We would be forced to go on had proposed North Africa as a stepping stone to mainland Italy and the Balkans, and possibly beyond, right at the start, the Americans would never have undertaken Torch.

Page 317: Broke thought it best to put the war against Japan high on the agenda, reasoning that if Admiral King ‘was able to get everything about the pacific “off his chest”, then perhaps he ‘would take a less jaundiced view vis-à-vis the rest of the world’

Page 323: At 5:30 PM the Combined Chiefs, along with Eisenhower, Alexander and Tedder, met Roosevelt and Churchill in the first of three plenary sessions- ‘at which we did little’, recorded Brooke, ‘except that the President expressed views favoring operations in the Mediterranean’. Far from little, this was the first glimpse that as with Torch, the Americans were split over strategy, and therefore might be prevailed over isolating Marshall again. This time it would take much detailed argument, especially by Staffs, rather than the point-blank veto that Brooke had exercised in London backing July.

Page 334: When the Combined Chiefs of Staff met again at 3p, the compromise paper was accepted with only a few minor alterations. The recapture of Burma through Anakim and a south-west Pacific offensive to Rabaul and then on to Marshall and Caroline Islands would be conducted with whatever means could be spared without compromising the objective of defeating Germany.

Page346: Ian Jacob believed that being expelled from North Africa ‘would be shattering for Italians. Their vitals would be exposed to attack.’ The surrender of Italy would present Hitler with a tough choice: either to let her go or else reinforce her by taking troops from elsewhere, such as Russia and the Balkans. There was an aspect to the Fuhrer that was only just becoming apparent to the Allied High Commands: it seemed clear from the orders that he gave both to Paulus in Stalingrad and to Rommel at El Alamein (and again in Tunisia) the he could not countenance even strategically justified with drawls.

Page 347: Churchill insisted on th President being carried up on to the roof of Villa Taylor, ‘his paralyzed legs dangling like limbs of a ventriloquist’s dummy, limp and flaccid’ in the words of an on looker, and together they watched the purple mountains changing color in the setting sun. It was from that roof that Churchill painted his only picture of the war, despite taking his canvases and paint box on several trips.

Page 384: In a Cabinet discussion on war criminals on 7 July, Churchill reported that FDR [was] inclined to let our troops shoot them out of hand! ‘I suggested the United Nations [should] draw up list of fifty or so who would be declared as outlaws by the thirty-three nations. (those not on the list might be induced to a rat!) If any of these were found by advancing troops, the nearest officer of Brigade rank should call a military court to establish identity and then execute without higher military authority.’

Page 402: On Monday 16 August, Brook and Marshall returned to the Trident system of off-the-record meetings. The secretaries and Planners left the Salon Rose, and for three hours after 2:30 p.m. the Combined Chiefs undertook ‘the difficult task of finding a bridge.’ These discussions were ‘pretty frank’ with Brooke opening by saying that ‘the root of the matter was that we did not trust each other’. He went on to accuse the Americans of doubting the British commitment ‘to put our full hearts into the cross Channel operation next spring’, while their part the British were not certain that Americans ‘would not in future insist on our carrying out previous agreements irrespective of changed strategic conditions’. This was a veiled reference to the seven divisions due to be withdrawn from the Mediterranean theatre only eleven weeks hence.

Page 403: Vast amounts of construction work had to be done – hard roads, railways to beaches, exits, fuel and storage tanks, railway sidings. The amount of construction in southern England was terrific. It is interesting to note that millions of pounds were spent from early 1943 onwards, when there was only COSSAC Staff; millions spent on a plan which had not been approved

‘It was the logic of events resulting from a loss of time more than logic of argument’

Page 404: Meanwhile, Churchill was still pressing hard for an attack on the northern tip of Sumatra, code named Operation Culverin. Rather condescendingly Brooke wrote that ‘Winston…had discovers with a pair of dividers that we could bomb Singapore’ from Sumatra, ‘and he had set his heart on going there’. Brooke believed Sumatra to be unsuitable place for any long term projects against the Malay States, and told the Prime Minister at a meeting at t Citadel at noon on 19 August the ‘when he put his left foot down he should know where the right foot was going to go’. In cold black and white print, that does not look too rude, but we cannot know the tone of voice and the body language that accompanied it. The result was Churchill lost his temper completely and shook his fist in Brook’s face saying ‘I do not want any pf your long term projects that cripple initiative!

Page 419: So the meeting served no useful purpose other than blowing off ministerial steam. It was not mentioned at all in Churchill’s war memoirs, probably because he did not want readers to appreciate how doubtful he was about Overloard.. Yet he was, and so – at least on this occasion –was Brooke.

My comment: Operation Overloard was clearly from the military books and minds of the Americans. It proved to be a victory or at least in my mind we didn’t lose. It was a victory at the cost of immense loss of life. Likely more so than the strategy being argued by the British at the time; which was to advance in to Germany from the south through a landing in what was then Yugoslavia. War was won by the Russians as much as the Allies. Overloard was the seed of the Cold War. Overloard was pushed by American who buy 1944 were contributing more to the war effort and therefore carried the commanding voice, without listening to alternative strategy.

Page 427: reported by Sir Alan Lascekes: great problem at the moment is to teach th Americans that you cannot run a war by making rigir ‘lawyers’ agreements’ to carry out preconceived strategic operations at a given date (ie Overloard), but you must plan your campaign elastically and be prepared to adapt it to the tactical exigencies of the moment. They don’t seem to grasp that a paper-undertaking made in the autumn to invade Europe (or any other Continent) in the following spring may have to be modified in accordance with what the enemy does or does not do in the intervening winter.

Page 428: With only days to go before the Cairo Conference began, The British crystallized their ideas about what they wanted out of it. The main desiderata would be to continued the offensive in Italy, to increase the flow of supplies to the partisans in the Balkans, to try to induce the Balkan powers to break away from Germany, to induce Turkey to enter the war, and to accept a postponement of Overloard. Of these five British hopes only the first two were adopted.

Page 433: Roosevelt evinced yet more hostility towards Britain in the COSSAC proposals for the division of post war Germany into zones, codenamed Rankin. He believed that ‘the British wanted the north western part of Germany and would like to see the US take France and Germany south of the Mouselle River. ‘ He said ‘he he did not like that arrangement’. Other than mentioning its Roman Catholicism, the President did not explain what he had against ‘southern Germany, Baden Wurttemburg, everything south of the Rhine’, but clearly preferred America to control the Protestant north-west of the Reich The reason was doubtless because that was generally where the manufacturing industries were located.

…continued onto page 434: King added that the military plans for Overloard were too far developed to permit any changes in deployment. Roosevelt then astonishingly suggested that American forces might instead be sent around Scotland and land in northern Germany, adding that “He felt that we should get out of France and Italy as soon as possible, letting the British and the French handle their own problem together. There would definitely be a race for Berlin. We may have to put the US divisions into Berlin as soon as possible

My comment: Again we find within his own words an author taking the ever popular attack on a religious argument when he also includes the practical argument for ones desires on the spoils of war. Andrew Roberts expounded on the religious points and glossed over the practical. And you wonder why there is a popular view against religion.
Page 436: Although the British wanted an agreement on Overloard and the Mediterranean before they all me the Russians in Tehran, the Americans needed a decision on south-eat Asia immediately, but wanted to discuss Overloard and the Mediterranean only at Tehran, where the knew they would be supported by Stalin, who was desperate for Overloard as he was opposed a Western presence In the Balkans. Furthermore, Roosevelt and Marshall rated Chaing Kai-shek highly and saw China as a post-war great power, where as Churchill saw him as a peripheral figure and Brooke considered him “Evidently [had]…no grasp of war in its larger aspects…

Page 440: Roosevelt had wanted to invite Moscow to Cairo but the Russians wouldn’t meet the Chinese generalissimo for fear that it might compromise the uneasy truce the Russians maintained with Japan since 1941.

Page 444 The Russian dictator stated unequivocally that Overloard should be the overriding priority for 1944, that the Italian campaign was a mere diversion (and an unimpressive one at that); that Turkey would not enter the war so Britain’s Aegean planes were still born, and that southern France needed to be invaded before Overlord.

Page 451
Stalin promised to declare war on Japan after Germany surrendered, and to launch an offensive during Overlord to discourage the Wermacht from moving troops westwards during the initial stages.

My comment: a convenient promise by Stalin, but it is not mentioned that Stalin did not declare war on Japan, and we fought on resorting to the Atom bomb.

Page 453: The realities were spelt to Stimson by Roosevelt after Marshall had specifically refused to ask for t Overlord post: ‘The President said that he had decided on a mathematical basis that if Marshall took Overlord it would mean that Eisenhower would become Chief of Staff. Yet Eisenhower was unfamiliar with the war in the Pacific and, in Stimson’s view he ‘would be far less able than Marshall to handle the Congress’…

Page 463: Brooke added that, when he visited Italy that December, ‘The terrain defies description. It’s like the North-West Frontier: a single destroyed culvert can hold up an army for a day.’ He then went on to talk about the Germans, saying they were fighting magnificently: ‘Marvelous it is perfectly marvelous.’ Hitler’s strategy was all wrong, however, in trying to establish a front in Italy so far south while simultaneously holding Nikopol on the lower Dnieper, for “While one is on the wave of victory no one can successfully violate all the established rules of war. But when one starts to decline, one cannot violate them without disaster.

Page 476: …when the War Cabinet was informed that there could be as many as 160,000 civilian casualties as a result of bombing the French railway network prior to Overloard, Cunningham noted,’ Considerable sob stuff about children with legs blown off and blinded old ladies but nothing about saving of risk to our young soldiers landing on a hostile shore. It is of course intended to issue warnings before hand’

Page 477: From Cunningham’s journals it is evident that the Chiefs of Staff were looking towards the post-war situation, with a suspicions eye towards Russia, almost before any other British government agency or institution.

My comment: yet they insisted on a text book attack of Overlord as opposed to attacking through the Balkans.

Page 490 The day after D-Day, Alexander reported that if he were left with his twenty-seven divisions in Italy, and not lose any to Anvil, he could break through the Appennines into the Po Valley, take eighteen divisions north of Venice and force the Ljubljan Gap between Italy and northern Yugoslavia. Once there, he stated in his memoirs, the way led to Vienna, an object of great political and psychological value’. The prospect appealed to Churchill and Clark, but not very much to others…

Marshall vociferously opposed forcing Ljubljana Gap, arguing that Eisenhower needed the southern French ports so that he could deploy on a much wider front, and that the Germans would merely withdrawal from north Italy to the Alps under Alexander’s attack, which could then be held with far smaller forces.

Page 490: Churchill’s dreams of British Commonwealth forces planting Union Jack over Schonbrunn and the Hofburg before the Russians arrived in Vienna was ended by Brooke, who knew Marshall’s view of it. There would still be plenty of teeth gnashing before Churchill relinquished his project,…

Page 498: said McMillan we should have to give in if Eisenhower and Marshall insisted upon ‘Anvil”. We can fight up to a point, we can ;eave on record for history to judge the reasoned statement of our views, and the historian will also see that the Americans have never answered any argument, never attempted to discuss or debate the points, but have merely given flat negative and slightly Shylock-like insistence which they conceive to be their bargain.

My comment: With all the negative color that the author puts on Churchill I don’t know what to make of him putting the most critical analysis of the most critical decision in terms of joint strategy in a first person voice of one of the actors of the story. Being that McMillan was not a prime mover of this book this critical analysis could have gone un noticed.

Page 499: Churchill’s reply on 1 July was anguished. Even though he began with first person plural – ‘We are deeply grieved by your telegram’ – he soon slipped into more intimate vernacular, saying that this was ‘the first major strategic and political error for which the two are responsible. At Teheran you emphasized to me the possibilities of a move eastward when Italy was conquered.’ He claimed that ‘N one involved in these discussions has ever thought of moving armies into the Balkans,’ but stated that Istria and Treste were strategically and politically important position ‘which, as you saw yourself, very clearly might exercise profound and widespread reactions, especially now after the Russians advances’ Finally Churchill stated that:

If you still press upon us the directive of your Chiefs of Staff to withdraw so many of your forces from the Italian campaign and leave all our hopes there dashed to the ground, His Majesty’s Government, on the advice of their Chiefs of Staff must enter a solemn protest…. It is with the greatest sorrow that I write to you in this sense. But I am sure that if we could have met, as I so frequently proposed, we should have reached a happy agreement.

That is precisely what Marshall had feared, and was one of the reasons Churchill did not meet the President at all throughout the nine months between December 1943 and September 1944, despite having seen him thrice in the seven months in 1943. Churchill‘s force of personality was blunted once it was translated on to printed telegraph slips…

My comment: The most critical turn of strategy is depicted in the book from page 436 through page 499. It bares the power to the phrase “let history” judge our actions. I am simply suspect that our author was so bent on the critique of Churchill that he missed an opportunity to expound on the genius of Churchill.

Page 505: Churchill agreed, telling Charles Moran ‘Good God, can’t you see that the Russians are spreading across Europe like a tide; they have invaded Polan, and there is nothing to prevent them into marching in to Turkey and Greece!...but the Americans would not listen to him….But The Americans would not listen to him. Moran concluded that Churchill was distraught, but you cannot get him down for too long.’He sat up in his bed as his speech quickened and he expounded on how “Alex might be able to solve this problem by breaking into the Balkans. Out troops are already in the outskirts of Florence. They would soon be in the valley of the Po.’ Churchill’s promise to Roosevelt on 1 July that ‘No on involved in these discussions has ever thought of moving armies into the Blalkans’ there for is obviously completely misleading.

My comment: I have learned that what an author in history uses words like obviously; it was a harbinger that the words immediately following is an attempt to either re-write history, bend it, or perhaps cast an undue judgment of history. In this point I find Andrew Roberts guilty as charged as history clearly finds that the period immediately after WWI was the dawn of the phrase Soviet Bloc which included all the countries that the USSR invaded while the Allies were spending all their effort in operation Overlord. So when the West say they won WWII I beg to differ. The USSR won WWII and the West won a Cold War that could have been avoided, had they listened to Churchill.

Page 510: That question then led to the next: what kind of front would the Allies choose in the drive to the Rhine and beyond? Would it be a broad one that comprehensively forced the Germans back towards the Fatherland, with two major advances on wide fronts north and south of the Ardennes or would the attack instead be on narrow fronts, spearheaded by several faster thrusts to try and capture important targets deep within Germany, possibly even including Berlin before the Red Army reached it? Here again Roosevelt and Marshall supported Esienhower’s inclination for the former, while Brooke and Churchill tended to opt for Montgomary’s and Patton’s preference for the latter.

On the question of what the armies in Italy under Alexander and Clark would do once Lucain Truscott’s fifth Army and Sir Richard McCreery’s Eighth Army broke through the Gothic Line, the Americans strongly deprecated moves towards Treste, Istria, the Ljubljana Gap, Vienna and the Balkans.

Page 511 On 29 August Churchill sent Roosevelt a telegram about the Mediterranean in which the final paragraph once again brought up their Tehran conversation. It ended, ‘I an sure the arrival of a powerfull army in purely military values.’ Although the condition of Hungary could not be predicted, he believes that having troops there would leave the Western Allies ‘in a position to take full advantage of any great new situation.’ Roosevelt passed this on to Marshall, who asked McNarney and Handy to work on a draft reply that covered Italy in full but deliberately bypassed Istria completely. Churchill cannot have failed to mark the implications.

My comment: In this paragraph you see Roosevelt’s hubris coming out. His economy was saved by a war. Are participation in that war was only granted the time to tool up by the British of who he arrogantly ignores the visionary words of an Allies with much more intimate experience in European affairs in than himself. While Roosevelt did much good in holding his country together through a great depression, his economic and war time strategy receives low scores from the 20/20 perspective of history.

Page 515[Brooke] believes that seizure of the Istrian peninsula ‘not only had a military value, but also a political value of the Russian advances in the Balkans’.

Page 525: That same day Roosevelt and Churchill, amazingly enough initialed the Morgenthau Plan, which said that Germany needed to be turned into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in character. Brooke was fundamentally opposed, already seeing Germany as a future ‘ally to meet the Russian threat of twenty-fie years hence.

Page 527: Churchill went on to claim, rightly, that Britain had nonetheless saved Greece from the flood of Bolshevism.

Page 528: Marshall later recalled: We were very much afraid that Mr. Churchill’s interest in matters near Athens and in Greece would finally get us involved in that fighting, and we were keeping out of it in every way we possibly could.’ On 13 December, Roosevelt cabled Churchill to say that ‘the traditional policies of the US’ meant that as head of state he had to be ‘responsive to the state of public feeling’ against Britain on the Greek issue, and concluded, I didn’t need to tell you how much I dislike this state of affairs between you and me. Churchill replied generously: ‘I have felt it much that you were unable to give a word of explanation for your actions, but I understand your difficulties.’ The new burden of combating Communism in south-eastern Europe therefore looked as if it would be carried entirely by the British

Page 531: On 29 November Churchill made clear his objections to the early liberation of the Channel Islands, telling the War Cabinet that while the twenty-eight thousand Germans there ‘can’t get away’, if they surrendered Britain would have to feed them.

Page 535: The battle of the Bulge, for the potential danger it posed in the west, was only half the size of the [Russian] battle of Kursk, for example.

Page 539: This was particularly so in regard to the Balkan states and the now-termed satellite states. ‘You can’t treat military factors in the way you do political factors. It’s quite a different affair.’ Marshall felt that his brief was not to save eastern Europe from Communism but instead to win the war in the shortest possible time and with the fewest possible Allied lives lost.

My comment: First it is Roosevelt’s job to tell Marshall what the objectives are. Had Roosevelt listened to Churchill earlier in the game of war strategy he could possibly have had his cake and eat it too. As much as the author took license to bend history and inject his comment elsewhere on to cast Churchill in poor light I find his vision slightly clouded by American hubris as well.

Page 532: In 6 February [at Yalta] [Marshall] summarized the Burmese campaigns for t Russians, and Marshall reported that ‘in the face of unparalleled difficulties’ 44,000 tons of supplies had been flown over the Himalayas the previous month, which he described somewhat hyperbolically, as ‘the accomplishment of the greatest feat in all history’ and beside which he said inter-Staff co-operation ‘should be relatively easy. One problem frequently encountered was the reluctance of even high-ranking Russian military officers to commit themselves to anything, however minor, until it ad been referred back to Stalin; the hitherto short life-expectancies of marshals of t Soviet Union made that a sensible precaution.

Page 553: Although Balaklava mattered much to men like Churchill and Brooke who had grown up with Tennyson’s poem, the Prime Minister complained that local Russian guides had shown ‘no sort of feeling’ there. Either they thought they had won the battle or they had never heard of it…. We stood on the little ridge on the end of that famous battlefield where the Charge of the Light Brigade took place. All around us were twisted remains of German anti-tank guns.

My comment: having read up on the Crimean War I noted to myself that while the Charge of the Light Brigade was eventually successful, the British actually lost the battle of Balaklava. This was at some level because that while the taking of the objective in the Charge of the Light Brigade, there was no coordinated effort with the rest of the British and French armies, hence they soon lost their prize back to the Russians. I must be critical of the author, a historian, who did not seem to portray history correctly.

Page 555: Because he is usually accredited the victor of Yalta, it is sometimes forgotten that Stalin made a number of concessions there. He gave a firm date of entry into the Japanese war (three months after the Tennyson’s poem e German surrender); agreed to observe the provisions of the Atlantic Charter in eastern Europe by signing the Declaration of Liberated Europe, which affirmed the right of all peoples to choose their form of government under which they live’; assent to France sitting on the Control Commission for Germany, and agreed that the USSR would join the new United Nations Organization, largely on Roosevelt’s terms. Taken together these seemed significant, yet in reality they amounted to relatively little.

Page 556: Speaking in 1974, Ed Hull made the sensible but rarely heard argument that: All that Yalta did was to recognize the facts of life as they existed and were being brought about…The only way we could have in any way influenced that in a different way was not to have put our main effort into France and the Low Countries but to put it into the Balkans…It might have meant that Bulgaria, Rumania, and possibly other of those Eastern European countries that are now Communist-dominated would have other type of control. But…it would also mean that all of Germany and probably a good portion of t Low Countries, Belgium, Holland, and even France, might have Soviet influence over them rather than Western influence. To me there was no choice to make.

My comment: Again since the author took critical license out on Churchill throughout the book, albeit slight; to take grave objection to him actually taking down Hull’s statement in this book and failing to be critical. Imagine the Russians leapfrogging over Germany to actually occupy Western Europe. To use that is a mitigating circumstance is absurd. The book is subtitled how Four Titans Won the War using superb strategy. He then proceeds to berate one of the titans, and then describes a missed strategy and writes it off as insignificant lesser of two evils. Who really won the War appears to have been the USSR. It was not until the USA won the Cold War that Europe was fully liberated from tyranny.

Page 557: It is hard to be naïve and cynical at the same time, but Roosevelt was both when it came to Stalin and the fate of the Poles. ‘of one thing I am certain’ he told the Polish Prime Minister-in-exile Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, ‘Stalin is not an imperialist.’ To the former American Ambassador to France, William C Bullitt, he also said: “I have a hunch that Stalin doesn’t want anything other than security for his country, and I think if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work for a world of democracy and peace’

My comment: When an author writes these words in a book one has to think his cover subtitle is off the mark.

Page 561: As there was no point in doing that, there was no race to Berlin between Montgomery and Patton, or anyone else. Berlin was in the Soviet zone, and if the Allies had reached it first they simply would have to withdraw.

Page 565: Roosevelt’s curt reply to Churchill –“I do not get the point’ – ended with his ‘regret that phrasing of a formal discussion should have so disturbed you but I regret even more at a moment of a great victory we should become involved in such unfortunate reactions. Churchill could hardly have felt that it was worth while ripping up various agreements made with the Russians over Occupation zoning in order to dash for Berlin. More likely he wished to put in writing that he was on the right side of the Cold War which he saw – earlier than anyone else except perhaps Brooke – was looming. Between Churchill’s wildly over-optimistic report to the War Cabinet on returning from Yalta and this doleful telegram to Roosevelt only two months later, Stalin had given no indication that his promises of free and fair elections in Eastern Europe had been genuine.

Page 567: despite the tension between the two Masters in the last year or so, there is no evidence to support the notion that Churchill’s absence was ‘because he felt the President had latterly become unsupportive’, or that ‘the emotional link was never as close as commonly thought,’ as some historians suggested.

Page 569: Truman, who in all military matters understandably tended to defer to Marshall, followed the Joint Chief’s line that it was best to adhere to the Yalta zoning arrangements whatever the legal or political circumstances. Brooke wanted Prague to be liberated by the Western Allies for the ‘remarkable political advantages’ that would accrue, but Marshall merely passed this information on to Eisenhower with the comment: ‘Personally, and aside from all logistics, tactical, or strategic implications, I would loath to hazard American lives for purely political purposes.

My comment: Here I struggle with American lack of consolidation of a military effort to not acquire a lasting peace. First the President is the Commander in Chief and Truman failed to lead. As a result we saw no real commitment from the Russians against Japan, which led to Truman’s calculated decision for the Atom Bomb. This lit the fuse for the nuclear arms race, and subsequent waves of nuclear proliferation around the world of which the world now. What if the Russians helped draw the Japanese War to an end without the benefit of the Manhattan Project; where would we be now?

Churchill’s Folly

2011-02-01T10:48:00.002-05:00

Churchill’s Folly
by Christopher Catherwood

This book is a history book spanning a short three-year period of time in the Middle East following WWI. The title suggests there is an agenda to foil the reputation of Sir Winston Churchill. It suggests that history should blame Winston Churchill for the boarders and subsequent 80 years of turmoil culminating to our situation in Iraq today. As Catherwood lets the pedals of his story unfold, the bloom of his story finds the British Prime minister pulling the strings rendering our poor Churchill a puppet of shortsighted policy. This is not to let Churchill entirely off the hook; as his prime agenda was British centric with sole aim to reduce British financial Mesopotamian exposure. This stands out as his Achilles Heel and there is a corollary lesson to be learned in today’s Iraq. It is a lesson that Senator Barak Obama is blind to and Senator McCain, gives his full appreciation. But let me ask you, which title would sell more books’ Lloyd George’s Folly, or Churchill’s Folly.

Catherwood creates a backdrop to the “folly” first by describing a snap shot of history of the Middle East beginning with the family Ur. I get no further than the 2nd page and I learn the word anachronism and the family Ur, the beginning lineage of Abraham began in Iraq, is in opposition to Michener’s book “The Source” where Ur began in Israel. You also learn that the Fertile Crescent is limited to the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and Israel has nothing to do with Fertile Land. By page 38 the reader is briefed on the history of the Middle East, which I found pretty concise. Added to the backdrop is a brief dossier on Churchill where the reader is then is introduced to Churchill’s fallibility. The son of a politician, he began as a liberal, and switched parties a few times in the early part of his career. Causes were more important to him than party. He is known to have had key failures leading to political exile. The first prominent one was Galapoli, which draws in Lloyd-George and haunts him throughout the book. I found it interesting to read in this book that in 1919 Britain was the largest Muslim power in the world. Finally Catherwood addresses what I call counter history where he disputes other historians including Sir Lawrence of Arabia.

Churchill was basically sent to the Middle East to settle on boarders for the area of land designated to Britain in 1919 as their sphere of influence (see my review on 1919). His mandate was to withdraw from the region with limited exposure. His challenges were first the Sykes-Picot Agreement when exposed appeared colonialist to the Arabs. Second was imperialism, as much with Feisal’s imperialism as British/French. Feisal was in import dictator. A case is made for the British to divert the alleged betrayal of the Arabs by the West on to Kemal Ataturk, who abolished the Caliph rule in the new Turkey. While not the main focus of the book the Greek-Turkey and the Palestine situations were also included as distractions to Churchill’s decisions in Iraq.

The appointment of Feisal as ruler of Iraq set in motion a minority rule of Sunni over Shia. The irony in today’s problems as portrayed in this book is there were ''democratically '' appointed Sunni Caliphs and Shia were not. Catherwood suggests installing a democracy goes against the majority within the boarders yet to be settled on. Outside the book however we find Iran is also ruled from a democratic foundation, albeit heavily influenced by Shia Umma. The reader learns that local leaders Naqib and Sayyid had aspirations to rule Iraq and this would have been in the interest of Iraqi’s. However this would have gone against the promises made to the Arabs that spawned from the British – France Sykes-Picot Agreement and perpetuated through the agenda Sir Lawrence of Arabia.

Pressure on Churchill for withdrawal came from five directions. First was Churchill’s penchant for an appointment to be the Exchequer of Britain, hence his overbearing conservative fiscal focus. Second a case is made for Churchill to appease the people of Mesopotamia as Britain was stretched too thin after the war. This plus the social discord and fighting in Britain was much the same as today. Britain walked away from an unsolved problem that they perpetuated. In 70 years what has changed both internally in any World Power country and internationally amongst the World Powers? Will we ever learn?

The third force in Churchill’s folly was Lloyd George second-guessing the decision to fight Turkey in 1914-1915 in Iraq. Had we left Kurdistan to Turkey, imagine its oil wealth Turkey, a democratically ruled and Western leaning country would hold today. Imagine that oil wealth in a democratic nation striving as hard as they do to be a part of the E U. That is indeed what is hoped for today in Iraq. Forth, in 1914-15 the prevailing world strategy was centered around colonialism, hence the Suez Cannel, hence Egypt. Fifth it was Sir Allenby and Sir Lawrence that pushed Hashemite rule in 1915 and on through this book. These five cards happened to be the only hand Churchill could play. He came to realize he was playing a losing hand while he was playing it. Hence the title of the book, Folly, which is as unfair as conceded in the letter Lloyd-George wrote to Churchill after he dealt the cards.

With Churchill’s dealt hand he formed a commission referred to by historians including Catherwood as Forty Thieves. Catherwood portrays Churchill’s task of bringing a consensus in Cairo in what was cast as a fate accompli as dictated by 10 Downing Street. It was a fate accompli giving Iraqi rule to the Hashimites’, Abdullah and clan. Israel was brought into the mix as well as Kurdistan only to represent distraction to Churchill in this book. At that time there were ''the people'' and a cause, and a rationale in both regions; but their was no leader to take immediate control and provide economic relief to the money thrown at the collapsed Ottoman Empire.

Churchill’s consistent refrain in Cairo was money driven. He had aspirations to head up the Exchequer in London so he sought all ideas that got Britain out of Iraq ASAP. Other factors contributing to the folly of decisions made in Cairo were France’s need for Aslace-Lorainne, a strong consideration for inclusion of Kurds into Iraq was to accelerate a reduction of British forces in lieu of Kurds to fend off Turkey. I have to make a note in the irony of the Kurds being commissioned by Turkey to exterminate Armenia only to be later met with Britain using the Kurds against Turkey and finally the Kurds being left with no sovereignty. I guess crime and violence that comes with being a “hired gun” doesn’t pay.

It was also interesting to read when the Allies liberated Arabs from Turkish rule; they also entitled them to a new rule over Kurds and Mesopotamians. They complied with Wilson’s 14 Points and violated them at the same time. Churchill’s did contemplate but did not execute on withdrawal plans to Basra that would have put in to affect the same partitions in Iraq as what Joe Biden proposes today, excluding a sovereign Kurdistan. Is there a final justice to be found in this equation? Imagine a Western leaning Turkey with expanded boarders to include Iraq’s northern providence, southern Kurdistan. Turkey would have oil wealth, but would they welcome in the large voice of the Kurds? Would the international voice accept this? All of a sudden Biden’s idea, while worth a closer examination, has question marks.

What Catherwood suggests in conclusion is that the job done right would have Churchill looking for a legitimate leader in the eyes of the people with a keen sense for a national identity coalesced around a.) A united international cause, b.) A shared enemy, c.) Separation of church and state, d.) Democratic process, or e.) Revert back to Ottoman style of local government, which is essentially to teach western city government, f.) Teach world humanities, g.) Focus/unite on economy, h.) Re focus on people assets. From 1921 to 1958 the government changed hands 58 times. Today in 2008 we need to be complete and on purpose this time or we may just be that common enemy.

Salammbo

2011-01-15T11:00:00.002-05:00

Salammbo
By Gustave Flaubert

Opined synopsis:

Carthage the alternative ancient history told in narrative novel fiction format by a 19th century classic author from France. In closing this book on the final page the knowing reader can draw distinct parallels of “world conflict” between the world of “then” which was merely confined to a flat world of classic western civilization and more narrowly the Mediterranean Sea of ancient times and those of the same place slow forwarded to WWII. Is time merely an illusion where place sees the same thing over and over? Mythical Salammbo is laced with the horrors of battle as was WWII. Those horrors encompass not just the soldiers, but the civilians as well. I am amazed at how little has evolved in the human spirit from ancient times to at least the 20th century. In the year 2011 I hold out hope with little to go on.

Amazingly enough the book is clearly Carthage centric yet takes a seemingly world view, to the extent that the reader becomes aware that other Mediterranean powers form allegiances to either the side of the Barbarians or the side of the Carthaginians with much the same rationale as you find in today’s world powers. The book does not elaborate, but the reader’s conscience is piqued to the notion that Western Civilization is not dominated by solely Rome or Greece, and perhaps there was a “Richelieu” notion of balance of power long before the 16th century France and even before the collapse of the Roman Empire. Keep in mind that while modern man feels the effects of the Roman civilization, this book makes it apparent that the Romans inherited the effects of civilization from the likes of their predecessors in the likes of Carthage. It sheds light on what some cal the Dark Ages. Flaubert, leaves only hints of these notions as his narrative is grossly lost in the horrors of a three year war.

There is also a foggy popular notion that religion is at the root of all war. The book’s main thrust from its title and prime subject, though not necessarily the leading actor, does not come out until the very last sentence. In that sentence you find not religion as the cause of war, but the spirit of man. It is only then that the reader pauses to think. Flaubert, primes the thought, but leaves the examination of its merits to the reader.

To the book itself:

Characters of prime concern are Salambo and Mathos, protagonists among the Carthiginians; a people who were forced by the harsh realities of war to offer their first born sons as a sacrifice to the Tanith, a mythical Carthaginian lunar goddess of the Phoenician pantheon. Salambo was a cherished daughter of the prime mover of Carthiginian wealth, Hamilcar Barca, the Suffet. Matho was the representative of the practical man filled with lust and contempt. He was one of the leaders of the bloody war waged on Carthrage by a people that were denied the physical comforts of a life that belonged to the Carthiginians. You could equate this to the Palestinians and the Jews in the book Son of Hamas. Within Matho’s curiosity for the power of the ziamph also lay the lustful love for Salammbo. In this vexing angst Flaubert speaks to the nature of man to want that which is not his.

As the story unfolds the Zaimph, the prize in the apparent real world, was the veil between the physical world and the truth found in the mythology of humanity. Its Owner Salammbo loses it to a thief Matho. In the story the zaimph represents the thin veil between good and evil within all of us as illustrated in character description of Carthiganians –v- Barbarians.

In the Course of Salammbo’s retrieval of the ziamph which gave mystical power to its owner, she actually saw the other side; Mathos as a genuine and fully justified existence. She made love to it, not strictly with Mathos in a physical state but the essence of his whole being, and saw in its eyes, the same passions of humanity as within herself. Yet she fought it, despised it, and allowed that angst to impede any prospect of love. Yet in the end, when she came eye to eye with that same passion it led to her own crossing into the mythology of our humanity.

Inspired reaction:

Unlike the author Richard Bach of one hundred years later, who examines in literary form what crossing the divide between the physical and eternal may be like, Flaubert does not. Was the collective conscience of the enlightened literary man of Western Civilization in the 19th century void of this? I only find evidence to the affirmative in this book and can wonder if Richard Bach had taken in Salammbo and used the unanswered question to write Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and One. Clearly Flaubert leaves the reader on the precipice of the divide, and begs the question; must one transcend his body to overcome the duality of man?

There is a commandment that demands effectively man to not covenant their neighbor’s belongings. Oddly enough that is what is implied with Matho and Salammbo where in their transcendence they could at last have each other, a social reality similar to that of Romeo and Juliet that was not to be in the physical world. The book begs the question; must humanity torture itself through the laws of scarcity found in the physical world and sanctity found in its interpretation to the extent that love can be blinded by something as simple as a ziamph? The reader is clearly compelled to transcend this thinking and search for insights to do this in the mortal-material world. West meets East………in a modern new world that begins with love, the unconditional acceptance of what is.

Madame Bovary

2011-01-15T10:58:00.000-05:00

Madame Bovary
By Gustave Flaubert

I picked this book up at a used bookstore in Traverse City a couple of years ago. I picked it up largely because it is an old French classic of original copyright printing & binding, simply to add to my bookshelf. I pulled it off my bookshelf to possibly discover in a classic, a lifestyle that may provide clues as to where or at what time in history man began his deference of self-accountability to his government. The book in modern times in a mid American crowd would be an Oprah chic book. So I was struck to find myself reading it. I had no clue of what I was getting in to. As it is a drama about the life of Madame Bovary, which could happen to anyone. The real beauty in the book is the French description, and the thought-provoking message. Character and setting introduction goes as follows.

The setting of the story is in the farm country of Western France. You could imagine slightly rolling hills carved by the intersection of two rivers, cultivated and rich in crop. The small towns are situated about fifteen miles from each other and each with a population of a hundred to two. The Bovary’s lived in town and from their house you get the impression that they could tune in to all that is happening by putting ones head out the window. The Bovary house came with one servant and was your typical middle-income house with a piano that may have had them in slight advantage over others. All in all it was a setting for a pretty quiet and uneventful life. The key characters help define the authors message.

Charles Bovary - was molded by his mothers drive. She set his life’s charter to be a doctor. His first effort was a failure due to the decision not being his own. However his second effort on the boot of his father proves successful. As he grew into his practice and got fat as his focused was on both his patients and his wife. He was well respected; a loving and caring husband, yet not refined to the manners of Paris. He fell into life.

Madame Bovary’s - (Emma) moral fabric was weaved in a convent. There she learned the morals of life’s decisions She came to appreciate art, music, and culture was well read. When her mother died she returned to the farm to help her father out. It was in this setting that she met Monsieur Bouvary, succumbed to a courtship out of limited choice and marriage partially arranged, partially promoted by her father. She battled through life.

Leon – a bit younger than Emma is a dreamer and also longing for the city. His longing for academic study and for culture led to his departure to Paris to pursue a career in law.

Rodolphe - was bachelor, a lady’s man. He was rich and developed selfish designs on Emma that go too far for a confirmed bachelor. He realizes her longing for arts and culture and plays into them only to have a mistress shackled in a marriage where he may have his way with her and also live his life of solitude.

Lormeaux - is the local merchant. I am always intrigued of the venue for distribution of goods of that time as well the understanding and practice of commercial exchange. Lormeaux extends credit to Emma and therefore plays the role of merchant and capitalist. This represents store credit cards of today. The main business difference is simple interest -v- compounding interest. Secondarily is today’s stores are much better situated to absorb losses for those that default on their loans. The personal interaction is less noticeable where one is not aware of the obligation to repay and consequence upon society and our economy for not doing so. Through the character of Lormeaux: the signing of a promissory notes, the negotiation of debt among other businessmen, and the tendering of debt paper as payment is described as common place of the times. Today that process is made as transparent as possible and I find that the average person may only witness with the transfer of a mortgage. Thus a stranger collecting on a debt, changing the unwritten understandings of the primary lender, do not occur.

In summary the story line picks up where marriage for Emma was an awakening where she soon discovered that her passion for a finer life could not be met with Charles. She was a good wife and tended to the house with elegance, yet inside she was burning for something more. Monsieur Bouvary was invited to a country party where she danced with a Viscount. The dance illuminated her desires for city life. Depression from absence of arts set in so drastically that Charles moved his practice to a new town in Yoneville, hoping a change in setting would cure her ailment. Coincidently their first child came along and Emma’s preoccupation with motherhood temporarily masked her passions. She discovers in young Leon someone she can share in her passion for art and culture. The passion for each other is lit, however restraint, founded in a moral code, prevails. It was Emma’s attempt to put mind over passion. Leon would eventually leave Yoneville for a Paris leaving a tremendous vacuum in Emma’s life.

This sets the stage for Rodolphe. In the vacuum he sweeps in and cultivates four years of escapade and rendezvous. In classic French style of the time the scenes are romantic, not naughty. While Rodolphe plays the cock that couldn’t crow with a strut instead, Emma plans a life together. Rodolphe plays along only to continue this perfect bachelor arrangement. Emma incurs tremendous debt arranging an escape to a new life only to find Rodolphe leaves her in a lurch. The scene draws a contrast of morals.

A moral code: “but one must bow to the opinion of the world and accept it’s moral code”
But there are two types “The small conventional, that of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that makes such a commotion here below. Of earth and earthy. But the other, the eternal, that is about us and the blue heavens that give us light”

This contrast sets the stage for the return of Leon. While there is at first an attempt for restrain an affair is lit by a carriage ride of lovemaking. This time however this time Emma is in control. This time Leon plays the part of the mistress. Emma spins a web of lies, waiting to be unraveled. Love turns to everyday life of which Emma funds through revenue from Charles’s patients and an over extension of her ability to repay her debt. She implores Charles to extend a power of attorney to manage the money of the house. Imagine this power not being implied through a marriage license. After this book one would be compelled to revert back to the ways of old. As an indication to the evolution away from personal responsibility the book includes a dialogue between Lormeaux and Charles with Lormeaux saying, “A man of science should not be troubled with matters of money”. This gives Lormeaux, with full knowledge of Emma’s agenda by way of the things she purchases, free access to the pocket book of unsuspecting Charles.

As events of the economy changed, Emma’s debt fell upon the decision making of persons not privy to the nature of her debt. And as such strict adherence to repayment was rudely and with great surprise introduced to Madame Bovary. Without knowledge of the custom of repayment to a stranger collecting on a debt, Bovary never considered changing the unwritten understandings of the primary lender, which previously allowed her a never-ending continuance of debt. As her passion for culture eroded to a lust for things she could not fairly gain she was rendered incapable of good business judgment. In the face of a bankruptcy process whereby the town official comes in to your home and prices all belongings for auction to facilitate repayment her solution an act was to take her own life.

In closing Charles, only after an honorable funeral, discovers the years of love letters and the deception. This discovery leads to the mysterious passing of Charles, where you conclude he simply lost all meaning of life. This left their daughter Berthe who you are left wondering about. The two metaphors from this book that give meaning to me are: When words fall short in the expression of ones heart: “They like a cracked kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance, when we long to move the stars” “A lifetime of passion can be fit in a minute”. These are only to think about, as I have not an answer. My preference for poetic expression is though renewed from words like these. For they ironically do paint a meaningful picture best left to poetic interpretation. I did find the answer to a much simpler question; which is how a person could loose sight of personal accountability.

The Secret History of Freemasonry

2010-12-12T19:01:00.010-05:00

The Secret History of Freemasonry
by Paul Naubon

This book is a paradigm shifter. A game changer. For all those teaching the mind-set of the Dark Ages I say tisk-tisk. Middle...Yes. Dark...No. Paul Naubon while enlightening the reader with a brilliant unfurling of the lineage of Freemasonry back to the coagulation of society of man from hunter gatherer to agrarian age to the industrial world, the original domino is not lost from view. In fact it gains in its energy, and with that immense sense of energy the reader is able to realize that behind the mystery of intrigue, there is a bit of truth to the simple act of connecting with the earth, the universe and being one with God.

The first domino begins with the rational for builders/masons to become a revered person in a new society where people actually pool their resources together and organize the harvest of their crops. It is then that builders became essential in building first houses, then utility buildings. An ancient mason looked at his work as he visualized the earth’s resources and transforming them into to a statement of mans existence. Hence one’s home became a spiritual place. As man began to meet with others in general assembly, the notion of Temples became a pinnacle of his work. Before he struck each rock to transform earth into a statement of himself and his extended society, he made a spiritual testament as to his purpose. While this gave meaning to his work he began to realize that this is special work that required codification, rituals, and a sense of a threshold to cross in order to enter into the practice. And hence my dear reader I introduce to you the worlds first college and trade union all in one felled swoop.

So with that introduction Naubon spends an appropriate amount of time on the history of architecture in a Western Civilization setting that clearly includes the Orient. This with extensive Muslim influence, twin to that of Byzantine world is work of the Benedictines of Cluny which really was exported to Constantinople from France, witnessed by the Basilicas built in the East, and then back to the West. The Templars became the bridge and guard as they most certainly gained their earliest knowledge of architecture, by virtue of proximity to the Masons themselves, and consequently its trade secrets, from the Benedictines and Cistercians. Secrets that were Christian in origin, influenced by Muslim minds and exported back to the Christian West. So while in the East, Persia to be more precise, The Templars benefited from Islam where they opened numerous doors for Christians toward social understanding and harmony. On the Muslim side, the principle artisans of is action were the Isaimli sects, particularly Karmates and the Assassins; all Persian, descendants of Zoroastrians and therefore Sunni converts who evolved into Shiite to find a way to accept the hostile rule of the Sunni. One has to wonder what happened to the peaceful Persians that we now refer to as Iranian? Was it 1,000 years of Islam? Or was it 1,000 years of Sunni’s influence, and then 80 years of Christan Western quasi colonization attempts? These questions do not get a any attention, raised or answered by the author. But what is clear is what the Templars adopted through their Mason builders was as a willingness for coexistence of peace with all men, something I find rare in Arab history with exception to Saladin, and ironically enough something that King Phillip of France took objection to.

Pulling the thread through time, the reader learns in order to build their church on Fleet Street, the Templars had to import an architectural brotherhood from the Holy Land and thus may well have been responsible for the formation of the original masons guild in London. To see Masons evolve to Freemasons within the covers of this book derives much more intrigue to the well founded speculation that our founding fathers of the United States were one and the same. Could it be that power still has its roots in heritage well beyond the dynasty of any King’s family? The question does not get answered, nor is it even stated or implied, but is merely the wild speculation of a novice student reader of the subject, me.

Where did this thread of power come from is answered early on in the book where one learns that the first trade union, the first college, and the first brotherhood; all speaking about the same group of men, were masons? They adopted a code of conduct, rituals and rites. Because the clergy of the church, Jewish Muslim and the royalty were equally dependent on this skill to convert the wondrous works of The Mason's minds in to the wondrous works of architecture. In making a statement of their civilization they were granted special privileges in society and as well were excused from certain civilian obligations including taxes. Early on the Church brought along all the royalties of the Holy Roman Empire and all of the Celtic Royalty to to the practice of embracing the strong arm of the Templar’s. These Templars were the protectors of the Masons which gave fertile ground for their power, not only be wielded by the sword, but through the political web and flow of commerce that came with their sheltering of the masons builders guild. Albeit this is only implied by the author; this reader took the bait to deep water.

The Templar’s actually ruled most of Paris among other cities through Masonic Order influence, which is thoroughly described in the book, a case is made for Phillip to wrest back that control through contrived cooperation with Pope Clement. So the reason for the condemnation of the Templars is not to be sought in a heretical deviation. In fact they were never condemned by the Pope – who was satisfied with simply dissolving the Order – but by temporal authority. The dissolution was forth coming from Rome in payment of a debt of gratitude owed the King of France. Be warned this drama is clearly not the main story line of the book, and only gets a couple of paragraphs. What does come out is that of the architecture and culture within “commanderis” as they were called under Templar control shaped early Paris and still has its say in the 21 century. That say is the "mind of the Middle Ages". With this in mind a tour of today’s Paris becomes that much more intriguing to a studied eye. In the course of this enlightenment, the reader cannot help at this juncture of the book to say the Dark Ages were much more enlightening than many modern scholars portray to their students. I believe it was that spiritual enlightenment that gave America’s founding fathers the courage and power to give rebirth to an ideology that King Phillip suppressed for a mere 400 years.

At the core of Masonry and its off shoot Freemasonry is found the ideology to treat all mankind as one. It is very much in keeping with the doctrine of Jesus Christ, and yet preceded him by a couple thousand years. Ironically Christ was a carpenter, Muhammed was a merchant. The signatories (of the members of builders trades, Freemasons) went on to list the two guiding principles for all the brothers activities” Love and cherish all men as if they were your brothers and kin; render to Ceaser that which is Ceasers’s and render unto God that which is God’s. Hence we pledge allegiance to the flag one nation (of many) under God. Its an idea of the masons that we are all one with the universe of the earth all animate and inanimate objects, and they were the first to make a science in molding that universe to suit an improved standard of living.

At the core of the code is the following that I took verbatim from the mind of Naubon through his well researched book. Call the rest of my review a distortion, but please as a reader of my work take the following to heart. With that came a code of ethics, found in the American Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. The code is very much Christian based as it follows the natural laws of the universe. But more so Masonic ideology is God based to include that of any faith and many trades and orders of business. I cannot improve on Naubon so I will close with his words:

Those who have faith in God don’t see him with the eyes of children, enthroned on top of a mountain of sugar between blessed rivers of honey. We refrain from talking of him too much and seeking to define him. It is preferable to envision the itinerary that allows us to approach him and to think that God constructed himself in such a way that man’s gravitation to the Spirit is, by virtue of reason, the best proof of God’s existence. This increasing number who do not believe in God or who turn him into an abstraction out of concern for tolerance, base what they deem to be just, good, and desirable on the good use of reason, on their own intelligence, and on the infinite perfectibility of humanity.

The difference between these two attitudes is essentially dependent on the value given to the origin of reason: God, still unknown to the believer; or unknown, for the nonbeliever another cause for natural laws that govern life. In one case or the other, if we use our ability to reason as best we can, to work with the certitude of the goal yet to be attained, what are we doing if not working under the auspices of and for the glory of this Unknown? And what better symbol for this Unknown than that of the Great Architect of the Universe?

Page 23: It is also worth noting that thin influence of these associations occurred in an era contemporary with that of Charles Martel, who, as legends in France and England have it and we shall see, played a prominent role in the formation of Freemasonry.

NOTES:

Page 25: Before studying the fate and evolution of their collegia, that continued to exist in those parts of Italy that remained free, as well as the collegia in Eastern Empire,, we need to look as to them in the Lombard Kingdom. This region has left behind the memory of renowned architects.

Page 33: Finally there is one important fact produced its own ramifications: The still thriving Byzantine collegia, with their traditions, rites, and symbols, were later discovered by the Arabs and the Crusaders, a discovery that both turned to their own advantage.

Page 34: at the time of the formation of Ecclesiastical formations in the Gothic regions, the Church did not merely represent a belief and form of worship, it also constituted a political organization.

Page 35: in 300 - 600 As a self contained body, the Church had retained its own rights. It remained subject to Roman laws. At this time, the Church did not merely represent a belief and a form of worship; it also constituted a political organization. As a veritable State, it exercised all the attributes of one and extended it authority over all Christian countries.

The builders from the collegia, who, as we have seen, found refuge with bishops, discovered themselves to be bound simply by close personal ties to these prelates. This was not the case for members of the collegia who were integrated into the monasteries. While their former status had vanished, they were better able to survive corporative preserving their practices and traditions and even their rites and secrets which allowed them to form veritable schools whose influence often radiated quite far.

Page 39: The Benedictine Order to which Romanesque art owes the greatest debt is definitely that of Cluny. During the twelfth century the abbey of Cluny was the center and regulator of civilization.

Page 61: in order to build their church on Fleet Street, the Templars had to import an architectural brotherhood from the Holy Land and thus may well have been responsible for the formation of the original masons guild in London.

Page 66: The Templars most certainly gained their earliest knowledge of architecture, and consequently its trade secrets, from the Benedictines and Cistercians. In fact, we have already pointed out the Romanesque Cistercian style of the basilicas built by the Crusaders in the East.

Page 67: In addition to their servant brothers, the Templars also employed Christian workers who were not officially members of the Order. These persons were sometimes Crusaders, but might also be local operatives especially in northern Syria, where the Armenian and Syrian population had remained entirely Christian and welcomed the Crusaders as liberators.
Huges Plagon, the second continuer of Guillame de Tyr, writes that in 1253 the Saracens of Damascus came to Acre, destroyed Doc and Ricordane and captured Sidon, “and slew eight hundred men and more and took prisoners, including masons as well as other folks, some four hundred persons.” This quote from a contemporary underscores the regard held for the masons on the part of the Crusaders.

Page 69: Legist of the time not only considered Roman Law as the science and law of the past. They endeavored, with deep faith, to bring these laws back to life, to restore them to common practice in both institutional and private arenas. In France, especially, government and administrative personnel were soon recruited primarily from among these legist. The evolution reached full flowering under Phillip the Fair, when French legist strove to formulate the power of the Roman emperor for the kings’s benefit.

Page 71: On the Christian side the Templars were always the most active artisans of these kinds of alliances. In 1129, the Templar grand master urged Baldwin II to come to an understanding with the Ismaili Abu Fewa. Under terms of their agreement, Baldwin exchanged Tyre for Damascus. In fact, “for some eighty years, the Templars maintained close relations with the heads of the Isamaili sect. Similarly, in 1136 the Templars of Saint John of Acre became friends with Turkish captain Unur.

Page 73: Islam opened for Christians numerous doors toward social understanding and harmony. On the Muslim side, the principle artisans of this action were the Isaimli sects, particularly Karmates and the Assassins

In the social sphere, Karmatism is characterized by the organization of labor and groups of workers into professional corporations which seem to have been in existence since the tenth century and were connected with religious brotherhoods. It is important to note the contemporary recollections of asnafs and turuq in Shiite sects emphasized both spiritually and socially education value and labor.
The Karmati movement, which is the source of these Muslim institutions, stands out both religiously and philosophically in its introduction to Islam of basic foreign assumptions – primarily those that were Hellenic, Neopaltonic, and pseudo Hermatic, and “Sabine”.

Page 75: It is this extensive Arab influence, twin to that of Byzantine world (the work of the Benidictines of Cluny), that prompted the first cultural and philosophical renaissance that took place in the West during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, especially France.

Page 78: Going beyond simple architectural instruction, the influence of the Ismailians and the Assassins also left a mark on Templar ceremonies as well as other of their customs. “Ismailism clearly seems to have been a practical model that the Templars adopted almost immediately .

It is also acceptable to believe that outside the respective dogmas of Assassins and Templars there were flexible interpretations of ideas and doctrines. … It becomes all more likely given that the faith of Eastern Christians showed such distinctive features that it was almost impossible to discern any demarcations between Christian sects and the derivatives of Islam. Both sides came closer to one shared ideal. The Fatimids of Cairo imagined the possibility of peace universalism that was the rebirth of the thought of the pharaoh Amenhotep IV.

Page 79: So the reason for the condemnation of the Templars is not to be sought in a heretical deviation. In fact they were never condemned by the pope – who was satisfied with simply dissolving the Order – but by temporal authority. … The dissolution was forth coming from Rome in payment of a debt of gratitude owed the king of France

Page80: In short, it is acceptable that the destruction of the Order was legitimized by reasons of stats; it was only the means used to accomplish this destruction that were iniquitous.

Page 90 : The religious order that appears most prominently at the origin of the franc métiers is that of Templars, a fact that has largely gone un noticed. In the jurisdiction of its commanderies, free craft was the rule, just as the bourgeois residents of Templar-controlled areas were free bourgeois. In the cities where the Templars had establishments, a distinction can be made in the same craft between franc craftsman living in the Templar domain, and artists who were merely free who worked in other quarters and were subject to royal an manorial charges and taxes as well as to their own trade regulations.

Page 91: The exemptions and privileges that craftsmen benefited from in Templar commanderies were particularly propitious for increasing the Orders’s influence and popularity. In the troubled times of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the craftsmen and bourgeois of the cities sought protection for themselves and their properties by free themselves from their cities’ control, the Temple offered them not only asylum but also the model of a free professional trade organization.

Page 101: 1.) the Templars formed monastic builders associations that possessed Greco-Roman traditions passed down by the Benedictines and Cistercians. 2.) The Templars had close ties to Christian and Muslim architectonic associations in the East and were subject to their operative and initiatory influences. 3.) In Europe the Templars were the source of the creation and development of builders associations that long enjoyed specific exemptions. The terms franc métiers and free masonry are derived from these associations. 4.) Following the dissolution of the Templar Order, a certain number of Templars were incorporated into the mastery associations.

Page 108: In Paris the Templars’ quarter, which was in full development at this time, must have been particularly appealing to them. “Because of the great hurt and great rapines they suffered in the provost-ship,” writes Joinville, “the little people dared no longer to remain on the grounds of the king, but sought instead to dwell in other provost-ships and manorial holdings; and thus it was lands of the king that became so sparse that when he held his plebiscite, no more than tem or twelve people would elect to attend
Craftsmen were all the more inspired to dwell in the Temple’s jurisdiction, for doing so, let us recall, gave those who came seeking assistance and protection the benefit of two important privileges: asylum and trade exemptions.

Page 110 Thus privileges of asylum and franchise were not common. They long made the Temple highly popular among craftsmen. It was the influx of these artisans that helped populate and enrich the Parisians establishment of the Order – so much so that is was chosen to be the Order’s headquarters when the Christians lost the Holy Land.
The Temple enclosed its population within a huge commandery, effectively a large city that manufactured everything needed to live there. The Parisian merchants, craftsman, bourgious who lived under the Temple jurisdiction were so numerous in comparison to those who were dependents of the royal provost- ship, and tutelary action of the Order was so powerful, that the Templars can be credited with the transformation of the hansa, home to the Hanseatic League of Paris, into a municipality under Saint Louis, with freedom and an administration that it helped to develop further. In support of this theory, we can note that the seat of municipal government was originall located within the Temple censive district.
My comment: and hence we detect the real reason why King Philip the Fair concocted a coup detente with a contrived story and blackmailed the pope to go along

Page 114 The Templar Order was abolished by Pope Clement V on March 22, 1312. In a bull issued on May 2 of that same year, he decreed that all Templar properties, with rights and privileges granted their owners, would be transferred to the possession of the Hospitellers of Saint John of Jerusalem. Philip the Fair ratified this transfer in France on August 24, 1212.

Page 132 The travelers of the Crusaders a Tour de France of guildsmen. Wondering the countryside echoed the rout take by those on pilgrimage, which was how they would obligatory visit Saint Baume to pay homage to Saint James, in whom they say their patron Maitre Jaques, who would have lived near Saint Magdalene and been buried in her famous cave.
They stated that their modern organization dated from the Templars and some identified Master Jacques as Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Templars.

My comment: It seems you could draw a line from these dots in history that connects our Founding Fathers, as Freemasons, to at least the origins of Christianity and possibly Christ himself.

Page 136 in a tour de Paris; To bring our stroll to an end, we cross the place de Greve and the Notre Dame bridge over the Sine. Now we are in the Cite. Here the Templars long held ownership of a large domain between Notre Dame and the palace. As we all recall, the rights of the Temple over this domain were the result of the accord concluded in 1175 by the Order and the prior of Benedictines of Saint Eloi.
Page 160 In the Purposes and Traditions of Brotherhoods; The purpose of Brotherhoods is defined as follows in an edict issued on March 1319 restoring a brotherhood of Saint James and Saint Louis that had been abolished in 1306. “to provide through one’s work the gifts of alms, to feed the indigent brothers, to have Masses sad for the living and the dead, and to busy oneself with various charitable works.” But the primary goal, not said outright here yet implied in all that was said and done was “ to elevate man to God and let him earn the Lord’s infinite grace.
We know about the organization and life of the brotherhoods thanks to eighteenth-century documents. Each trade community placed under the protection of a patron saint owned a private chapel in a church, where it held its meetings. Each had special officers who were elected to their posts-sometimes a provost and a chairman or two sworn masters would share the position.

Page 163 Of the Compagnonnages (brotherhoods, for all practical purpose); Much more than an association, it involved a state of mind, a bond and a means by which workers sharing a profession could recognize one another and thereby maintain the unity and traditions of the trade.
Page 164 But economic and social revolution soon gave the compagonnages a new purpose. More and more, the exercise of trade was becoming the privilege of masters and their sons. The journeyman could no longer move up the status to master nor buy their craft
Beaumanoir in his Costumes de Beaivais (written around 1280), considered it a serious crime to ally against the common good for the purpose of demanding a higher salary. Going on strike was punishable by prison and a fine of 60 sols.
Page 175 The signatories (of the members of builders trades, Freemasons) went on to list the two guiding principles for all the brothers activities” Love and cherish all men as if they were your brothers and kin; render to Ceaser that which is Ceasers’s and render unto God that which is God’s

Page 184 In the Organization of English Guilds; here we pause for consideration of the term free man. It is probably more effective for our purposes to use the ancient French term franc home, with connotations that we have already established: These is the franc hons who neither a serf nor a villain but has become a free bourgeois, independent of any lord Going further along these lines, we come upon the free man craftsman called a free burgess.

Page 185 In the Organization of English Guilds; As in other countries, things went differently for the professional brotherhoods that remained tied to the domain an suzerainty of the religious orders that held all rights to administer justice. This was the case in the jurisdictional areas of the Benedictine abbeys and the Templar commanderies.
My comment: this explains where Philip and Clement V fond their authority to banish the Templat Order.

Page 187 The lay mason dependent upon a guild and subsequently a ligier, lige,or vassal, could be opposed to the freemason, who is free because of his connection to the Church.
Only the Benedictines, and especially the Templars, assured trade franchises to everyone throughout the whole of their domains.
It was to the advantage of these kings to support the power and freedom of these professional associations-and it is now easier to understand the reason for the diametrically opposed policy of the French kings regarding them.

Page 191 The Cooke Manuscript dates from 1410-1420 but is a transcription of a compilation that was at least a century older. It is divided in to two parts. The first, consisting of nineteen articles, is a history of geometry and architecture. The second is a “book of duties”, including an historical introduction ; nine articles governing the organization of labor, which were allegedly promulgated at a general assembly that took place during the time of King Athelstan; nine counsels of a moral and religious nature; and four rules concerning the social life of masons. The word speculative actually appears in this document: “the son of King Athelstan was a true speculative master.” The Cooke Manuscript served as the foundation of the work of George Pyane, the second grand master of the grand lodge of London, who ensured that this organization adopted a first rule to Saint John in 1721. It also appears to have been the principal source from which Anderson drew his Book of Constitutions.

Page 206 Their religious foundation was the essential glue of all the builders groups of the Middle Ages. For the monastic brotherhoods, the propagation of the faith was the direct impulse for the construction of convents and churches. The vast brotherhoods that built the Gothic cathedrals responded to this religious inspiration. It was an era when “man looked up at the heavens with faith, in search of hope and consolation. He entrusted his misery to she who should no doubt understand it best, because she was weak and she was a woman, and she could best speak to He who could do all, because she was the Mother of God. He built the Lord of Lords; he built for Our Lady.
It is beyond doubt that religion and metaphysics were a part of the lodges’ practices, all the more so as they gave shelter to artists and scholars as well as simple craftsmen, and as the study gradually turned on a philosophy that was identical to theology.

Page 208 The hypothesis (on either side) is merely based on legend; not one historical element nor even any probability exists to accredit it. The same can also be said of similar theories suggesting that in connecting the Templars to the freemasons, the alleged heresies of one group are imputed by the other. Yes the builders associations were subject to Templar influence; this is clear. But there is no sound supporting evidence that these influences could have caused the builders, masons and carpenters to deviate from the orthodox Catholicism of that time – especially given, as we have seen that the Eastern, Muslim and Gnostic influences absorbed and transmitted by the Templars did not provide grounds enough to label them heretics.
In order to dispel any misunderstanding, it is helpful to emphasize here how the medieval mind conceives of religious orthodoxy. In the Middle Ages and up until the Reformation, though theology was the chief topic of debate, freedom of expression was quite considerable.
The apparent paradox concerning dogmas also stems from evolution-or rather change in modes of reasoning. Today’s logic finds it difficult to find a place in the framework of the dogmas and theories that medieval logic found entrance with no difficulty.

My comment: Sir Francis Bacon ushered in the change in reasoning with the dawn of modern science.
The fable that the Middle Ages were Dark Ages must be abandoned. With respect to certain crimes of intolerance, such as the Albigensian Crusade , or the condemnation of the Templars, medieval motives are much more easily explained as originating from politics rather than from any impulse to combat heresy. Heresy merely served as a pretext for seeming intolerance. True intolerance was born with the Reformation.

My comment: In this comment there is an implied indictment of the Muslim leaders of every era using religion to invoke power. The same could be applied to France, England, Germany, and Spain of the Renaissance. In modern day politics we find Muslims advocating intolerance towards Jews when really its about a hate for their supremacy in thought and entrepreneurial ism. With regard to science -v- religion it is also a fundamental struggle in politics as opposed to philosophy, when in the end the philosophy is the same study of the same universe with the same outcome.
My comment: I also find it intriguing that Martin Luther, a German brought on the dawn of true intolerance.

Page 210 It is most important to avoid viewing the audacious sculptures of the gargoyles and tympanums as merely a liberal manifestation of some satiric artists who have seen behind the scenes and grasped more than others what was really going on there. These fantasy depictions show that freedom of stone had been in practice for many centuries before freedom of the press. What was attacked were the mores of the clergy and not the religion itself.

Page 211 The international unity experienced by freemasonry was clearly displayed in the practice of the craft. The brotherhoods and communities fulfilled an educational mission insofar as each master instructed journeymen and apprentices in the craft (who transitioned across boarders, kingdom, countries).

Page 212 The Church was the sole power capable of granting and guaranteeing to builders of internationality that earned them “freedom of passage”
My comment: this was as much out of necessity of the regional power because each region did not have enough craftsmen to build their cathedral, a building that had a spiritual calling. This should not be confused with a purposeful claim to the power over the mind of the populace.

Page 213 This was why builders communities identified with monastic associations. Their ecclesiastical quality conferred upon craftsmen the privilege of inter nationality. The builders, both lay and clerical, who belonged to the Benedictine, Cistercian, and Templar brotherhoods could circulate freely, build, and settle any where in the whole of Christendom. Their freedom was guaranteed by the immunity and sovereignty of the Church to which they belonged.

More important, all craftsmen had the right to asylum and free exercise of their trade in the domains of the Templar commanderies and the popes maintained these privileged for domains held by the Knights Hospitaller or Knights of Malta until the time of the French Revolution. When we recall that the Temple numbered 900 commanderies, many of which were extensive, and 10,000 castles,, we can see how operative, especially masons who traveled widely, could be assured of finding hospitality, security, and work everywhere he went.

Mention has been made of the briefs that Popes Nicholas III in 1277 and Benoit IX in 1334 crafted with regard to mason corporations, confirming their status as a monopoly that encompassed the entire Christian world, granting them protection and an exclusive right to construct all religious edifices, and conceding to them “ the right to direct authority from only the popes” who freed them “from all local laws and statutes, royal edicts, and municipal regulations concerning conscript labor or any other obligatory imposition for all the land’s inhabitants.

My comment: you can see clearly that while Luther had a dogmatic difference to the Church of Rome/Avignon , there was a practical argument in terms of power and union busting that inspired the kings and rulers to get behind Luther’s argument. It is clearly the dogmatic argument that still prevails in the mostly Protestant prejudice over Catholics today. In intolerance that is accepted by mainstream power brokers and dealt and insensitively by the general populace (Dan Brown’s following) and received with a calloused upper lip by Catholics.

Page 214 The use of symbolism on its own constituted a universal language. Symbols were used by builders as much for spiritual teaching as for the transmission of operative craft secrets’ “During the Middle Ages,” Victor Hugo states, “the human race formed no important thought that was not set down in stone.” All form as Emile Male put it, the clothing of thought.

Page 215 The symbolism in architecture, sculpture, and staind glass, which was the work of artists under the direction of the clerics, was the expression of science and philosophy, akin to that of alchemists and Hermeticsts. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, philosophy, metaphysics, alchemy, and Hermeticism were closely co-mingled and these disciplines were inseparable from theology.

My thoughts: With the ushering in of Sir Francis Bacons decree of science, has his original decree morphed in to a monster of politics? Was Bacon simply wrong? Did he not evolve enough to have understood that the discovery of the universe is the discovery of heaven and is the agenda of both science and religion? One comes from the perspective of substance, the other from symbols. The migration of inanimate substance to animate beings that use inanimate materials to express thought which is neither animate nor inanimate.

Page 216 It is important to underscore that the immense symbolism, the true thought of the Middle Ages, was not only the philosophical province of great doctors and scholars; it had a universal teaching power and the Church understood how to impart it to the masses. This is why there exists such perfect unity between different works – though of course the artisans who crafted it, be they ever so humble, were admirable artists .

That masons may have benefited from outside contribution to their repertoire of symbolic expression is beyond doubt. But the terrain was prepared beforehand to receive them. Traditional symbolism was a framework that was ready to accept these diverse influences. A vital force full aware of its universal nature, it did hesitate to create the synthesis and transmutation of everything it found valid in its view as debatable syncretism, or even heresy. Furthermore, during the Middle Ages everything, even that which seems most profane to us remained within the universal vision, marked by connection between the visible and the invisible. Our modern mind, habituated as much to strictly logical method of reasoning as to crystallized dogmas, often finds it difficult to perceive such mentality.

Page 217 They have grasped the hidden meaning of their writing and have understood that the symbol is a suitable kind of approach and even an expression of truth. According to the priori of the transcendent.

Page 224 It is significant that, starting at the end of the fourteenth century, all symbolism that had been used in previous centuries to formulate the Christian truths that had experienced an apotheosis in the thirteenth century gradually fell in to misuse and became incomprehensible. …After around 1530 it no longer had any deep roots. …The Cathedral no longer took the place of all the books.

Page 225 The esoteric character of the operative ritual can be boiled down to the general symbolism of the building of Solomon’s Temple, which was one of the most popular myths of the Middle Ages. This popularity reveals an interpretation of the story that reaches far beyond the tale of the magnificent temple, which David began and Solomon completed in order to provide a dignified place to worship the Eternal One and house and house the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant containing the Tablets of the Law. To the medieval mind, Solomon’s temple was the replica of God’s true temple and must be visualized on two planes: that of the Universe and the Divine Creation and that of Man the reduced form of the Universe to which Christ’s in carnation had conferred a level of grandeur or some value sequal to it The temple was a symbol of both the universal macrocosm and the human microcosm. …symbolizing the union of heaven and earth, the uncreated and the created.
Page 229 The entire Christian doctrine can be found reinforced in this text: the immanence of God in man, the realization of the law by the Incarnation of Christ, the construction within man of God’s tru temple by obedience to the Law and by Love, the symbolic figure from the Hebrew Scriptures as a sign of the gospel. This interpretation was very familiar in the Middle Ages. Developed as early as the eight century by the Venerable Bede in his work De Tempo Solomonis, it can be found everywhere in Strabo’s Ordinary Gloss of the Bible.
Page 233 Each year at Christmas or Ephany or other religious feast days and commemorative celebrations, these figures (the prophets of Israel)and their retinues paraded in costume. The precessions they formed all entered the church or cathedral and each of them, at the call of their name stepped forth to give witness to the truth, reciting verso or monologue.

My thoughts: In the middle ages the statements carved in stone was the written word. It seemed to have an immense effect on the people, not deluged with other input from the printed word, 1600s, TV 1900’s, Internet, 2000’s. Is this the reason why new churches do not have the rich artistic message of churches even in the 1800’s?

Page 234 The mason’s legend connected to Hiram belongs within the general framework. The circumstantial and fixed death of Hiram, followed by his resurrection within his own person as well as in those who emulated him, is a reflection of the Passion in the fullness of its lesson. It is also a continuation and the Christianized spiritual finality of the ancient mysteries: the attainment of immortality and the understanding through by incorporating the divine substance within ones self and through this becoming a god.

My thoughts: becoming One with God.
Page 265
“one cannot be sensibly a Deist without being Christian, and one cannot be philosophically a Christian without becoming a Catholic”…This was both awell-intentioned and laudable beginning. Still it was necessary for Freemasonry to act as the centralizing factor of Deist sentiments and the catalyst of their transcendental unity around aspiration of betterment
Page 270
The facts, however, can speak clearly enough on hteir own to require no interpretation at all. It is necessary, of course, to connect them to the social structures of the past, but only the way we think has the power to distort how we see them

The Templars

2010-12-12T19:01:00.001-05:00

The Templars
By Piers Paul Read

If you are looking for proof that the Templars and the succeeding secret society of the Free Masons have something over on the Catholic Church, this book is not for you. If you want a thorough academic glimpse of a period of history that still reaches in to today, read this book. The author does a nice job putting the history in the context of the times and not only building a bridge to a current times paradigm, but he also crosses that bridge through the use of quotes from historians from intermediate eras along the way. What makes this book a prize is its collegiate delivery of the history with no appeal of hype to those looking to bash the Catholic Church by making martyrs of the Knights of the Temple. While it may have been the agenda for King Philip of France, this is one French trait that is put to rest.

As a fact finder, one would find more interest in the mechanics and strategy of civil governments on a world stage post collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of Western Civilization and European colonialism than who hid the Lost Sea Scrolls. More intriguing than any hype about the Templars is reading how the Church became a central influence over King, Queen, Prince, Princess, Baron, Duke, Knight, and serf of philosophy and hence a defacto government including financing of all causes espoused by said philosophy. What made the read intriguing was the sorting out of the back and forth chess match of politics between kings and popes where the Knights Templar and the average man, of any era, gets either caught in the cross fire or lost in the fog. The book in the process of history conveys first the selling and financing of crusades. In that process money and power overshadow what may have been honorable ideals where church and state collude to dismantle the Templars, the very arm that brought them both. In the end the Templars have every right to take a vengeance out on first the King of France and second the Catholic Church as a reluctant accomplice. For some reason Piers Paul Read leaves hyperbole surrounding the history of Christ and his family, and any Templar vengeance to the likes of Dan Brown.

The Pitch: From the time of the Prophet Muhammad’s first razzia, the Christians’ perception was that wars against Islam were waged either in defense of Christendom or to liberate and re-conquer lands that were rightfully theirs. The selling of the first crusades began with Bernard of Clairvaux, an appointee of the King of France. Pope Urban had a voice through Bernard. But in the rise to a decision to crusade the pope did not simply dream up the idea of crusading as a case had to be made. In the Latin Church, Alexius approached Pope Urban: His Ambassadors admitted to the Council at Piacenza and the Council fathers listened to their eloquent depiction of the suffering of their fellow Christians in the East.

In the chicken and egg quandary, the cause now properly sold to the Church ‘s highest authority, Pope Urban had a strong ally in France’s King Phillip where within his ranks was a charismatic preacher from Picardy known as Peter the Hermit who claimed to have had a letter from Heaven authorizing the crusade. So we have a collision course of tyranny, authority from God directly, and the Pope secondarily, and an ambitious King taking it to the people. The French nobles gathered in Vezelay, as had been arranged. Already the knowledge that Bernard was to preach had drawn admirers from all over France. At the core of his message was that a sojourn to the Holy Land was a once in a life time penance that all Christians should make. Sojourn, as it escalated up the ranks of the gentry and then the nobles morphed into a crusade, which went back down the social ladder compelling knights, sentinels, and servants to follow their king. When he had finished his address, so many French were ready to take the Cross that Bernard had to cut his habit into strips of cloth.

While sticking to the facts with a collegiate discipline the author spends time applying the sequence of event upon canvases of character building. Of the people in general, the church held a penitentiary obligation over the heads of their parishioners to trek and or crusade to the Holy Land, and you were guilty until you trekked. It is difficult, in the late twentieth century, when a monk is seen as an oddity on the margins of society, to understand how so many belonging to their country’s elite should have chosen a life of self-abnegation. Without necessarily doubting the sincerity of each one’s conviction that the choice for a scion of a noble house, or even the minor gentry, was then and was to remain for some time, between fighting and praying, warfare and ministry, the scarlet and black. Bernard’s power did not stem simply from influential connections: in a world where so many preached but so few practiced the Christian virtues, his piety and asceticism qualified him to act as the conscience of Christendom, constantly chastising the rich and powerful and championing the poor. Having the backing of King Philip of France only gave muscle to his message. To some modern historians, living in a period when most are indifferent to what awaits them after death, Bernard comes across as a self-righteous zealot – someone who ‘saw the world with the eye of a fanatic’ and had a disquieting tendency to take it for granted that his contemporaries were evil-doers who needed to repent. However, to Bernard, surrounded by secular brutality and clerical corruption, and utterly convinced of the reality of Hell, it was impossible to do too much to save the imperiled soul until the invention of the crusade.

Funding: With the politics of crusades, whoever really did make the final decision to crusade it had to be sold to t he people so that if could be funded. Albeit it was not always the case kings could ill afford to leave their people in a stir over an unpopular cause when he himself is embroiled in that far away cause. Leaving a Court and ministry behind that would not be tempted into a coup involved intrigue that is modestly covered in this book. The history is in the book, however because this author has little agenda towards intrigue you the reader must knit the facts together and make a case.

The funding of every crusade was essential to the politics of the crusade itself. The kings would look for funding first from their taxes and then through borrowing from the Church who saw their revenues from tithing who would lend at 10% interest and typically do so if the loan were backed by the Templars. These crusades and subsequent wars incurred enormous expense beyond what was initially envisioned, and the phrase a war that will be paid for by our children becomes prevalent where for example adding to the liability upon the people that Phillip had inherited from his father’s war against Aragon was around 1.5 million livres tournois. Every expedient available to the monarch was used to raise funds. Feudal obligations were exploited to the limit, and force used to extract taxes from the towns. While the author doesn’t brand the politics totalitarian, from a kings point of view it had every appearance to be as such when it came to collecting money, save the grace of the church who coerced the people into cooperation upon the crucible of guilt.

Political intrigue: What did Philip inherit you may ask: King Louis IX ‘s zeal for justice, and his scrupulous attention to the needs of the poor established his saintly reputation and an unparallel prestige, but it was taking of the Cross that set the seal of kingship: ‘crusading still held its place as the highest expression of the chivalrous ideas of the aristocracy in the west. Once the vow had been made, Louis prepared for the crusade with the same efficiency that he had shown in subduing his rebellious vassals and reorganizing the administration of France. His first objective was to raise money to fund his expedition overseas. This added a twentieth tax on the resources of the Church and subventions from the cities. And this alone was not enough for Louis did not foresee the costs of holding his winnings.

Paralleling the politics of the king and his people, the politics of all kings each individually with the Pope singularly is made clear where the Church may have sold the idea of crusading, it was the Kings and their subjects who individually made the decision to crusade. The Kings strategy included any war upon any select Muslim army and the employment of any Order including the Knights Templar to accomplish their goals. Given that the Pope had supreme authority over military orders, it shows some restraint that there was only one instance where Popes directly employed the service of any “Order” in their wars: that being in 1267 Pope Clement IV asked for Hosptaller help against the Germans in Sicily. Clearly, whether they were in the service of the popes or kings, individual knights belonging to their military orders were expected to take up arms to protect their master’s interest. That one case aside because it was through the church that taxes were collected, and it was through the Templars that funds were secured, the arrangement found the Pope, Kings, and Templars in a triangle of intrigue. The former two students of philosophy and higher learning and the latter a student of high minded honor and chivalry. The intrigue continues for close to 300 years until you read of King Philips’ disposal of the Templars in the early 1300’s and its not until the American and French revolutions that you see a bold separation of Church and State where the second shoe drops.

Appearance are not always what they seem to be: While it appears to be all about the money, not simply to launch off into a crusade but then to sustain the crusade and then support the conquered lands against re-conquest by Muslims or by rival Christian Kings led to schemes of power bestowed upon the Templars mostly by default. Honest tax collecting alone could not stand up to such goals. In the Kingdom of Aragon for example, the kings were constantly borrowing money from the Temple and in France the Order often had difficulty in meeting the royal demands to defend the lands for which their funds are underwritten. While the Church institutions were readier to lend money to the Crown if the Temple secured the loan it appeared as though the Templars were one up over both Church and State. While power is implied, the actuality of interest bearing profit did not always follow suit. In Syria and Palestine, too, the Templars’ wealth and power increased because the nobility of Outremer/Jerusalem, whose fiefs were now confined to enclaves around costal cities, could not afford to garrison their castles and so handed them over to military orders, including the Templars. In the same way that modern charities build up investments, the Templars used their funds not just to pursue the war against the Sacacens but also to extend their own estates in the East. But one must remember the expense to fortify the liberties for the people demanded by said clientele.

The appearance of cash and its accompanying power was deceiving, rising to the top of the heap of deception was King Philip of France. Despite the evidence that the Temple often had cash in hand, their running costs were considerable: in the Latin states they garrisoned and maintained at least fifty-three castles or fortified staging posts ranging from great fortresses like Castle Pilgrim to small watch towers on pilgrim routes. Though the Temple’s wealth had led to some envy, their annual income from landed property did not exceed 4,800 livers, not enough to inspire strong feelings of jealousy or a general dislike, with the exception of King Philip who was really in a power struggle with Pope Clement. James of Molay , the head of the order who at the time of French inquisition of the early 1300s had been warmly received by King Edward I when he visited England in 1294 was caught in the middle. He did not see it coming. The politics first between Philip and Pope Clement, and then the coalesced politics of neighboring kings of Europe who fell in line left the Molay and his Templar’s as the ‘odd man out’.

Due Process? While it is often called an inquisition the legal proceedings described in the book gave much to the transcendence of Jewish to Roman law as it survived through to the 14 century. Due process did exist in a primitive sense or should I say in the same way as we experience it today. The following dominoes had to fall in order for the Templars to meet their demise. First, founded to root heresy in Languedoc, and staffed by the friars of the Order of Preachers founded by Dominic Guzman, since 1234 a canonized saint, the Inquisition in France had become an instrument of coercion in the hands of the state. The chief Inquisitor, William of Paris, was King Philip’s confessor and given the King’s piety, was no doubt privy to his plans. On Sunday after the Templar’s arrest, it was Dominican preachers who first explained the reasons for the arrests at a public meeting in the King’s garden, appearing along side the officers of the King. Who was to argue?

King Philip using political maneuvering that I have come to know as typically French, put Pope Clement on the defense as a way to coerce his cooperation in the foiling of the Templars. When the trial eventually opened Clement himself defended the record of Boniface VIII, which was at the core of King Philips intrigue, before advocates of the French King, recalling his piety, his service to the Church and the many manifestations of his orthodox faith. After this, he allowed the trial to continue but, thanks to his knowledge of Roman law, was able to spin things out, either by calling for written depositions or in December 1310, by suspending the proceedings on the grounds that he was suffering one of the reoccurring bouts of his illness, thus leaving a complete distraction to evidence of Clements’ collusion with Philip against the Templars. In the end Clement only managed to slow Philip down as he found it easier to collude with the King that the head of the Knights Templar, who was not versed in politics, than to exonerate them.

While Hospitallers and the Masonic orders engaged the services of legal counsel, the Knights Templar ‘seem to have made little effort to recruit lawyers or to raise up legal experts from within their own ranks’ despite the vigilance with which the head protected their rights an immunities….James Molay later regretted his omission. Through ignorant chivalry where no prove of any allegations could be found in due process of a trial , so guilt was garnered through torture. Said Peter of Balongna of the torture of the Templar Knights to confess upon the allegations; ‘Torture, removed any freedom of mind, which is what every good man ought to have’ ‘It deprived them of memory, knowledge and understanding’ and therefore anything said under torture should be discounted, hence my earlier ascertain of a French totalitarian state which stood in varying degrees as such until 1892. What Philip won was his power back as he was persuaded by his brother, Charles of Valois, and his chief minister, Enguerrand of Marginy, that capitulating to Pope Clement on the question of the Templar’s property was a price worth paying to secure the definitive dissolution of the Order.

The evidence: King Philip IV of France was not making things up entirely. The Templar Knight left a trail of questionable activity that enabled the ‘French connection’ and conviction. in 1143; Of the seventy-three clauses in the Rule approved by the council of Troyes for the Knights of the Temple, around thirty are based on the rule of the Benedict of Nursia. Bernard and the Council fathers seemed more anxious to make monks out of knights than knights out of monks. Hence there was always an exclusive private mystery hanging over their day to day activities. When one thinks of the Knights Templar against the setting of the average educated person one must not get confused with the stories of King Arthur. The men of the order were of all sorts as it would require an Order to be completely self sustaining. They were not a band of merry chivalrous men banging mugs of mead on the table and reading scripture from the Dead Sea scrolls while shuffling the assets within their 401K accounts.

The Knights founder, Hugh of Payns proposed the incorporation of a community of knights that would follow the Rule of religious order but devote themselves to the protection of pilgrims, The Rule they had in mind was Augustine of Hippo, followed by the cannons of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Within that Order, living very Spartan lives the members of whom were not all knights, formed a close bond. They followed rigid rituals in daily life habits that may have drawn question, however the rituals were merely aimed at healthy eating and grooming separate from what may have been an imperfect world. Not intermixing with the common folks, women folk, it was easy to perceive that perhaps they were homosexual or at least homosexual activity was taking place. If it was, it was in no way a part of any Templar policy or sanction. If, therefore, one can avoid the distortions of late-twentieth century prejudice, one can be fairly certain that there was no institutionalized sodomy in the Temple as alleged by King Philip; and at the same the truth which has emerged from recent research is that the crusader frequently sold or mortgaged all his worldly wealth in hope of a purely spiritual reward. Unlike the Muslim jihad, the crusader commitment was always voluntary.
The conspiracy…or not.

Myth and history: There are 300 plus pages in this book and nothing is brought to the fore on the Mary Magdalene or the Lost Dead Sea Scroll conspiracy. There is a tremendous amount of dialogue surrounding the anti Christ and homosexual brought out by King Philip of France, home of the suggested burial of Mary Magdalene, only to be confessed to through torture. Was the Templars’ wealth extraneous in any one persons mind is a question answered only by King Philips’ condemnation of them in a power grab. Only time allowed for the culprits escape from this world where reputations live only in history books of all genres.

King Philips’ speculation did not end with the eighteenth century; in fact it has never been more feverish than it is today, creating, in words of Malcolm Barber, Britain’s foremost Templar historian, ‘a very active little industry, profitable to scientists, art historians, journalists, publishers, and television pundits alike’. Starting with esoteric claims of the Freemasons, the Templars are claimed to have been the guardians of the Holy Grail which in turn the chalice to have been used by Christ in the Last Supper, the blood line of the Merovingian kings descended from the union of Christ with Mary Magdalene, or simply the Templars’ most precious relic the Shroud of Turin.

Intriguing though such speculation may be, they betray by their use of language the lack of a plausible historical foundation: ‘the answer would seem to lie…’; ‘it seems very likely that’…’it seems certain that’…After some research, writes Andrew Sinclair in his book The Discovery of the Grail, these fantasists put forward a hypothesis. Was Christ or the Grail buried under a mountain in the south of France? Did Jesus marry Magdalene and provide the blood line of the Merovingian” Within a few pages, the assertion becomes the actual, the idea is changed into the proof… Or as Peter Partner succinctly puts it in relation to the Templars, Templarism…was a belief manufactured by charlatans for their dupes. It is this book that finally sheds light on the real culprit of the unjust case against both the Catholic Church and the Templar Knights. The first of many intrigues of French…imperialism?