Category: HISTORY

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Someone Else Talking 1932

     Dominic Sandbrook of London’s Daily Mail looks to 2012 as a year that portends an ominous future for Europe.  The specter of the series of events regarding the progressive economic calamity  surrounding Europe and its Euro currency mirrors the underpinnings of trouble that enveloped Europe in 1932, and Sandbrook recalls the political reaction to them with apprehension for Europe’s future.  1932 is a year that Ramparts of Civilization has explored before. The natural tendency of drowning people is to panic and pull down those who would attempt to save them, and politically the reaction is inevitably self preservation and personal security first. The comfort provided by dictatorial fascism has repeatedly reared its head on such primitive, reactionary impulses.  Read Sandbrook’s entire article and see if you don’t think he is on to something.

     On an equally cheery note, Mark Steyn of National Review Online ruminates on the passive nature of people and governments to fail to recognize the impending view of unsupportable debts and their effect on future prosperity.  The clamor of 1932 was for governments to do something, anything, to stop the progressive slide into the myre, and people were willing to overlook the loss of personal freedom and the dark underbelly of fascistic and communist movements to at least find someone who would aggressively overcome the societal passivity to problem solving.  Read Steyn’s entire article and decide whether you think he is a false prophet.

     Happy New Year.

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2011- Annus Horribilis or Mirabilis?

   

    The end of the year leads defenders of the Ramparts to reflect as to whether the year preceding advanced the ideals of western civilization, or damaged them. The year 2011 had its positive moments that suggested some slivers of hope as to the ultimate triumph of man’s battle with himself to secure a better future, but there were also dark clouds galore. It seems to be fundamentally a year in transition, the middle set of a three set match, the pawn takes pawn of a chess battle. We at the Ramparts project the events as threads of a tapestry, that show why this site and others like it that look at events with some perspective of history, have their place. Lets work our way through the significant moments and reflect upon them from our perspective as guardians of the Ramparts of Civilization.

     January 8th – U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords experiences an attempted assassination :     In a horrific moment in time, a deranged sociopath severely wounds congresswoman Giffords and kills six others during a political event in her home district in Tucson, Arizona.  Though the murderer is quickly identified as a disturbed individual with no identifiable rationalization beyond anarchy and medical evidence of schizophrenia, the killer is trumpeted in the media as a presumptive right wing “tea party” extremist possibly inspired by an innocuous graphic on a Sarah Palin website using targets as a means of identifying potentially politically vulnerable politicians for the next election. President Obama declares the event at a memorial for the fallen as an example of an outgrowth of our lack of civility in our discourse, then proceeds to vilify the rest of the year those who civilly disagree with him.  The use of a national tragedy to advance political  ends – not unique, but certainly not our shining hour.

     February 6th – the Green Bay Packers win Superbowl XLV 31-25 over the Pittsburgh Steelers : A win for western civilization as a team with numerous injuries and the worst starting position of all the teams in the playoffs triumphs over adversity to win the game of games.  Okay, maybe not earth shaking in terms of the effect on preservation of our western ideals, but as a part owner of said team, I felt a need for some shameless trumpeting.

     February 7th – Southern Sudan celebrates its ‘peaceful’ independence from Sudan and forms the Republic of South Sudan- President Woodrow Wilson would take pride in the principle of the right of self- determination of indigenous people (excepting his own country), but the founding of South Sudan from Sudan divided one of the poorest nations of the world and managed to create two economic and health care basket cases from one.  The previous battle for the secession of southern Sudan from Sudan was marred by genocidal tendencies on both sides in what was termed by one international aid official as “human rights abuses off the Richter Scale”.  The world continues to confuse the concept of the rights of a collective people to self govern regardless of their ability to be sustainable, thereby promoting the generation of conflict after conflict without the possibility of any hope or life improvement of the individual people suffering within the conflicted lands.  Basket case governments continue to proliferate.

     February 11th – Arab Spring Revolution brings the resignation of President Mubarak of Egypt – The most populous Arab nation in the world throws out its President dictator of nearly three decades in a tumultuous revolution.  The initial exuberance of the international elite to declare a victory for freedom and individual liberty, however, is chastened over the year as the military remains entrenched and a series of elections turns the government over to Islamists antithetical to the rights of minorities, personal liberty, and western concepts of human rights and justice, and with more than a little passion for the concept of “jihad”. The popular liberal naivete of clamoring for democracy before the societal principles of rights and responsibilities are encrypted and political and judicial institutions are in place to assure its unbiased utilization remain a damning weakness of the clamor for unfettered democracy as a cure all tool for civilization.  Across the Arab world, the individual must continue to live in fear of what “democracy” may mean to his individual freedoms, a harrowing thought.

     March 7th – President Obama renews military tribunals at Guantanamo – President Obama declared upon his inauguration that within a year the penitentiary at Guantanamo, Cuba would be closed and the terrorists held within, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 murderer, would be tried under domestic civil courts and laws. Two years later, the well thought out process of the Bush administration to deal with country-less war combatants, so impugned by Obama and his Justice department, proved to be unassailable.  The cave in of the President on this issue hurt him severely on his support from the left, and exposed the rank political nature of the arguments that followed the 9/11 tragedy. The consideration of providing the rights of a U.S. citizen under the constitution to enemy combatants who claim no country as their own was shown to be illogical, and served only to reflect the administration’s disdain for the special nature of those rights, when they later in the year killed remotely the American citizen terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, without a trial or tribunal of any kind.

     April 5th – Justice David Prosser wins re-election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court – The story that perhaps best outlines the progressively titanic battle of the forces of government statism and the rights of individuals has been running non-stop in the state of Wisconsin since the November, 2010 election of Republican governor Scott Walker and an accompanying republican legislature.  Faced with the strangulating deficits accrued by incompetent and irresponsible predecessors in office, Governor Walker campaigned on a platform of budgetary discipline and solvency that once in office, he fulfilled almost immediately.  A balanced budget required by law was achieved partially by restraining the unfettered perks of government unions and asking government employees to pay a percent of their health and pension benefits, more reflective of what the private sector employee faces.  In an explosion foreshadowing the cataclysm to come on a national level when even more spectacular debt is finally faced up to, the unions fought back with a vengeance and furor, pouring tens of millions of dollars and thousands of protesters into the maelstrom that became the Wisconsin capital of Madison. Having little sway in effecting the popularly elected governor and legislature, the unions turned the ratchet tightly onto their own, demanding legislative obstruction and obtaining the flight to Illinois of their democrat legislative stoolies, and using the courts to attempt to obstruct the legislative process.  County liberal justices put forth restraining orders on the legislative process restricting the democratic will of the populous from the previous election, and the restraint came down to the ultimate control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the election between sitting judge David Prosser and his rabidly liberal opponent Joanne Kloppenberg, as to whether a democracy would function through its elected legislature or its courts.  In a race with huge implications and massive turnout, Prosser beat back Kloppenberg by 7000 votes out of over a million and a half cast, and the voice of the elected legislative process was preserved.  The result in Wisconsin has been a balanced budget for the first time in over a decade without federal stimulus dollars or stolen funds from other constituencies, an emerging national hero for governmental sanity in Walker, and a never say die anarchist strategy of the unions who fear their power over the democrat party is at risk.  The result has been never ending special recall elections to attempt to overturn the results of the previous election, and one that is planned to threaten Walker himself in April, 2012.  Will the perks of the privileged and protected be preserved in the face of obvious crisis?  The question is one that all western governments are facing and will likely determine our future as responsible democratic republics. Stay tuned. In a Wisconsin microcosm, this is The Story of our times.

     May 2nd – American special forces kill Osama Bin Laden –  A spectacular raid into Pakistan leads to the cornering and killing of the central figure of the 9/11 attack and murderer of 3000 people,  who premeditatively ignited a world wide war on terrorism that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands.  The principle concept of a death cult that saw the suppression of the rights of millions and slaughtering of innocents for the ‘assured’ reward in the afterlife came to a instantaneous end in the identification of a pathetic old man who watched himself endlessly on videos and titilated himself with pornography.  The inherent emptiness of a philosophy that determines for others at the threat of a gun a righteous life was once again exposed.  For President Obama, and a world that believes in human worth, a huge victory.

     September 17th – Occupy Wall Street begins its sit in in New York City-  The reverse mirror image to the Tea Party first presents itself in New York as the people’s representative of the economic inequities that exist in society, as emblazoned in their chant, “we are the 99%”.  Unlike with the Tea Party of the previous year, the clarity of the message quickly degenerates into the concerns of multiple special interests, that have as their core philosophy, they have it, we want it! .  The stated cohesion of the eventual demonstrations that broke out the world over is that society has an obligation to assure the security, comfort, and health of all, and the concept of self actualization and personal responsibility an outdated concept.  Like so many events of recent years in western society, Occupy is driven by the desire to separate the will of a society to provide from its means of production, and as Hayak surmised, would inevitably lead to the demise of free will and the power of the market to improve the life experience.  TEA PARTY vs OCCUPIERS , the battle royale of the 21st century.

     October 5th – Apple founder Stephen Jobs dies –  the genius behind the development of the personal computer, the portable music library, the smart phone, and the interactive tablet started his dream in his parent’s garage, daring to be different and self reliant, and ended it feeling the same way.  Jobs’ very being was tied up in providing to each individual sufficient connection to the surrounding universe to assure each  maximal freedom in interpreting their place in it.  He made the world forever an interconnected place, and disdained the idea of a government picking technology winners.  At a time when creative invention was felt all but lost, Jobs sent it soaring towards the heavens.   

     October 18th – Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, five years in capitivity is exchanged for over 1000 Palestinian prisoners –  The only functioning democracy in the middle East respecting the rights within the government of religious and political minorities, shows its vulnerability in the commitment made to one of its own.  Israel, in weighing the trade of a single human life, for many who sought the death of innocents to further their cause, shows the way for all belligerents to wear down the will of the nation state that believes in its citizens.  For Gilad Shalit, freedom.  For the nation of Israel, the strength of the commitment to one of its defenders, threatens its very defense.  The most difficult of trades, for sure.

     November 12th – Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resigns – The burgeoning crisis of the Euro and its underlying exposure of the frailties of the concept of a social democracy, progressed through Italy with the fall of the elected government of Berlusconi and the appointment of a pan- European techi-bureaucrat, showed the progressive failure of European democracies to convince their populations of the need to show fiscal discipline and improved self reliance.  Like the Greek government before it, the Italians faced an intolerable situation of more citizens receiving the bounties of society than those capable of underwriting it, and collapsed under the weight of burgeoning debt.  The inflexibility of the Euro to allow the southern European  Union nations to manage their debt led to a crisis in the pan European economic union and the eventual fragmentation of the united front governing single market policy, with great Britain on one side and Germany and France on the other.  Far from solved, the temporary fix through “market fracture” only delays into 2012 the telling bill of this crisis.  In a continent where previous wars were measured in decades and even centuries, the inequities that are developing are an ominous sign of what could develop.

     December 18th – the last American troops leave Iraq ending eight years of American military involvement –  The quiet withdrawal seems anti-climatic to a military force that overthrew a vicious dictator in Saddam Hussein, endured a violent, costly guerilla war, birthed a messy arab democracy, and crushed a world wide terrorist network on the battle fields of the Tigris and Euphrates.  Whatever the outcome to Iraq (and the fragile democracy within hours of the withdrawal already seemed perilously close to collapse), the incredible performance of the military force in the face of severe conditions and variable public support stands as an epic performance in the annuals of western military actions.  The dominant conqueror in the field, they left with no territory ever as the goal, only the sacrifice to bring the fragile sprout of human freedom a tenuous root in an ancient soil of humanity that had been so long without.  It was a supreme ramparts of civilization effort, and no outcome can ever diminish it.

 

     2011 ended with little settled and many open ended story lines.  Historically, the perspective is too soon to discern titanic shifts in the human experience.   The defenders of the Ramparts will have to stay vigilant, as the enemies to freedom are many and persistent. 2012 will be the palate upon which the varied colors of the mosaic of history will be drawn.  Here’s hoping for the good guys winning out.

    

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People We Should Know #19 – Vaclav Havel

    

   This weekend of December, 2011, continues to experience the loss of some of the true giants defending the ramparts of western civilization. The dissident playwright who became his country’s founding father, Vaclav Havel, passed away today at the age of 75.  Mssr. Havel would be pleased to be recognized as a defender of the Ramparts – no life in the 20th century is more tied to the concept of the free expression of ideas as the fundamental weapon in the liberation from totalitarianism. He may have been a little put off to share the ramparts stage with his alter-ego Czech nemesis, Vaclav Klaus, current President of the Czech Republic, and Ramparts People We Should Know #1 – but he would probably have shrugged his shoulders and moved on.  He was always a calm estuary in a turbulent sea of dangerous events, and was always about the achieving the ultimate goal in a steady non-violent fashion.  This quiet, steady playwright, though, was truly one of the momentous figures of the 20th century, participating in a 25 year struggle to lift his country and in effect all of Eastern Europe from the suffocating embrace of totalitarianism, and in celebration of his unequivocally triumphal life, deserves to be Ramparts People We Should Know #19.

     Vaclav Havel was the epitome of what proved to be the ultimate weapon of the Cold War, a starry eyed intellectual professing ideas.  A modestly popular playwright with a gift for beautiful expression in his native tongue, Havel grew into adulthood in the 1960’s into a stultifying blanket of oppression behind the so called iron curtain of Soviet dominated eastern Europe.  He was every bit a child of the sixties, yearning for the right to listen to the Rolling Stones, or participate in freestyle relationships.  Unlike the “hippie” culture of the west, however, Havel as an intellectual, saw the reflection of such superficial rights in the greater context of fundamental and universal human rights that were savaged by the all powerful few running the Politburo and her Soviet puppet clients.  The final straw for him was the short lived Prague Spring in 1968 which Communist leader Alexander Dubcek made the mistake of assuming the Communism could co-exist with basic human rights. Havel participated in the briefly permitted public forums under Dubcek and became recognized as a national figure in Czechoslovakia.  The Soviet impulse to crush any dissent culminated in the invasion of Warsaw Pact forces, and the ruthless toppling of Dubcek’s short lived experiment. 

     The effect on Havel was galvanizing, and despite enormous pressures and multiple imprisonments, he proceeded to devise a long term strategy for the exposure of the farce of the propped up system and its collapse, forming Charter 77, a group of writers and dissidents who would expose the system’s frailties, contradictions, and crimes.  With other movements such as Solidarity in Poland the pressure on monobloc began to grow and cracks progressively developed, climaxing in the spectacular year of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall and sequential loss of control over events by the tyrants of the the Warsaw Pact group.  The week of November 24th, 1989, proved to be Czechoslovakia’s turn, with the presence of daily massive demonstrations in the hundreds of thousands in what was eventually termed the Velvet Revolution culminating in the November 24th resignation of the entire Czech communist leadership.  Typical for the heady times, the populations of eastern Europe turned to their revolutionaries to lead, with variable results, but in Czechoslovakia’s case, Havel as President despite the lack of training was up to the task.  He shepherded the progressive movement of Czechoslovakia into the European Union and NATO and managed to navigate the dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in a peaceful and successful transition in 1992.

     Havel lived long enough to see his beloved homeland take a proud irrevocable position in the European community and experience the flowering of a truly free society.  Like all idealists he found himself somewhat disappointed with the eventual compromises required in a society where all views require respect, but like the calm contemplater he was, lived to accept the realities of the modern world. What he achieved with the quiet but overwhelming power of the ideas of liberty was stunning and historical, and the changes to the world once assumed impossible, as a result of courageous visionaries like Havel, blossomed into the brilliant sunshine of freedom peaceably, in one of the true miracles of this or any other era.

     The story of Havel deserves a special place in our hall of heroes who have manned the ramparts defending the fragile ideals of our western civilization.  He passes quietly into a elite group of warriors who will be remembered for their understanding, that the most devastating weapon against totalitarianism is not the number of military divisions, but the simple power of ideas.

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A War Comes To An ‘End’

     The Associated Press reports today on the final withdrawal of American forces from the territory of Iraq, ending an 8 year ordeal that strained the fabric of American society and cost an estimated 800 billion in resources and over 4000 American lives.  The withdrawal of the forces was successfully navigated by a President and administration that had declared their very presence in Iraq a massive mistake and primary incitement to further violence in the region, yet in the end, declared the outcome of a functioning democratic Iraq a worthwhile sequelae of the original action.  The contrarian notion of abhorring the action and celebrating the outcome is part of the conflicted nature of almost all the thought processes that developed out of the stunning violence of September 11th, 2001, and the protracted aftermath of the United States through both its actions and inactions.

     History takes significant time and measured thought to provide the informative feedback that brings clarity.  The “off the cuff” reactionaries that inhabit many of our academic and governmental institutions base much of their comments on the cacophany of unfiltered stream of information of the day and innate biases of their political persuasion, rather than any inciteful analysis of history and the foundations that led to the actions of the last ten years.  As the decision to take action in Iraq and the measure of the outcome gets appropriate perspective over time, perhaps we will be able to better synthesize the thought processes that led to the better outcomes and discern those that failed, in a ongoing mission to forge a better society and civilized existence.  The politicians will keep score with a skewered scorecard that maximizes their best impulses and hides their worst for their own benefit.  A society is more than a politician’s means of employment, though, and a healthy society takes the time to understand itself and its actions that allows for progress and development that transcends politician’s egocentric interpretations.

     The recently departed Christopher Hitchens was quoted as saying a pseudo-intellectual is a person who is sure he is right about what ain’t so. At Ramparts we will try to not make that mistake. The Iraq war was a component of many considerations that grew out of the Soviet incursion into Afganistan in the late 1970’s and the mujahideen response to the invasion, the overthrow of the Shah and eventual rise of Islamo-fascism, the Palestinian Israeli conflict, the invasion of Kuwait in 1991 by Saddam Hussein, and the successful development of a world wide nihilistic terror organization that culminated in 9/11.  Try as we might to extricate it as a separate, unrelated,  and perhaps unnecessary diversion, history will not allow.  Thanks to Instapundit and the producers of Uncommon Knowledge, we have today a unique snapshot of perspective of two discerning thinkers in 2002, prior to Iraq, that provides a reminder of what was going through our minds we did not know what we know now, and didn’t have the confident swagger of the pseudo-intellectuals of today for whom it all seems so obvious.  It is no small gift of history that the two participants were Christopher Hitchens, recently departed, and Newt Gingrich, who now hopes to be President.

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The Dish and the Duke of Wellington

     The holiday season was made for re-connecting with the family and engorging on great food.  I am lucky to have a mother who is a fabulous cook and upon the occasion of holiday, I get to sit back and experience great culinary events.  Thanksgiving is as traditional as they come in food selection, celebrating the seasonal turn and culmination of the harvest, but my mother is not limited to the traditional.  For this Thanksgiving, the fare of celebration was not fowl nor ham, but rather – Beef Wellington.  Definitely a menu item ‘against the grain’.  Regardless, the dish is certainly celebratory, and has a celebratory origin.  Beef Wellington, a filet of beef braised with a pate’ of mushrooms and meat, and encased in pastry, bespeaks a richness in both taste and history.  The creation has been linked to Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, and indirectly savors the victory of the defender of anglo-saxon civilization against the monolithic and aggressive French dictator Napoleon.  In fitting fashion for reflecting  such a place in history, it just happens to be delicious as well.

     Our erstwhile hero the Duke of Wellington may have had, in actuality, nothing to do with the dish attributed to him.  Most culinary experts tie the origin to permutations of the french filet de boeuf en crote’, with the connection to Wellington his love of Madeira wine, beef, and truffles. The more romantic connection is the heroic nature of the meal and the namesake.  Achieving the synthesis of a perfectly temperatured filet, maintaining its succulence, and preventing the pastry from turning into a soggy mess is no mean feat.  These are cooking logistics that would make a genius logistician like Arthur Wellesley quite proud. Crowned with fresh asparagus spears tendered in chicken stock, cauliflower, and mashed potatoes, the centerpiece becomes elevated to a delicious, rather elegant plane.

     The great man befitting such a dish was born in Ireland in 1769 to noble birth, but it was not until he entered the army that a hint of the man that was to come made an appearance.  He entered at the lowly station of ensign, but his connections lead to rapid advancement, when it became apparent that a once drifting youth proved to be premier leader of men.  Wellesley found his footing in the battles the British Empire fought in subduing the subcontinent of India, specifically in the actions against the Sultan of Mysore, Tipu Sultan.  The young soldier led men to victories in the battles of Mallavelly and Seringapatam against the Sultan that secured British influence over the southern Indian land mass. He continued his success in further campaigns against the powerful and larger Maratha Empire highlighted by the violent battle of Assaye, in which his personal bravery, coolness under fire, and willingness to be in the midst of battle endeared him to his troops.  His rank swelled with the victories and he achieved the rank of general by the time he left India in 1804. 

     He returned to Britain to enter politics, but the threat to the realm presented by the brilliant French general Bonaparte through his military domination of the continent would dominate the next decade of his life.  The land mass of Europe was Napoleon’s running experiment in new battle tactics in massed forces, logistics, use of cavalry and artillery.  Wellesley’s specific personality trait of patient battle development and assurance of favorable conditions made him a worthy opponent, and progressively, a threat to Napoleon’s dream of world dominance.  Wellesley’s reputation was assured in his contribution to the destruction of the French flank in the Peninsula Wars for Spain and Portugal, and helped lead to Napolean’s first abdication and eventual confinement on Elba in 1813.  The battle of Salamanca, freeing Madrid from French forces, and subsequently the crushing of the residual French redoubts at Vitoria, resulted in the retreat of the French army led by Field Marshal Soult and the elevation of Wellesley to Field Marshal status himself, and appointment by the King as 1st Duke of Wellington. 

     The momentous escape by Napoleon from Elba and the rapid return to power had all Europe shuddering. An allied force of northern Europeans and British was rapidly assembled, and Napoleon saw the need to sweep out of France into Belgium to destroy the alliance and return France to its dominant position.  The battle was met in the town of Ligny, and a momentary victory was achieved by Napoleon against the Prussian forces led by General Blucher, resulting in the retreat of the allied armies to a ridge just outside the town of Waterloo.  On June 18th, 1815, Napoleon set forth to destroy the Prussians and then the British sequentially.  The titanic battle fought among several hundred thousand troops has become known as one of the pivotal battles in history.  The many layered strategy of  Napoleon this time found his equal in craft and strategy in Wellington.  the typical French maneuver of overwhelming directed force this time ran into Wellington’s willingness to hold, draw in, and ambush. The chaos of battle, so often in the favor of the superbly trained and experienced French troops, proved all consuming and brought to bear Wellington’s carefully manged reserves and counter thrusts.  The result was a crushing French defeat, and Napoleon’s final abdication four days later.

     The battle for Waterloo against one of history’s greatest military tacticians brought Wellington the status of international hero, a label he would wear through the rest of his 83 years.  It served him through a brief interlude as Prime Minister of England, and as Commander in Chief of the Forces for the rest of his life.

     The occasion of his state funeral in 1852 was a level of non- royal adoration that would be known only to Lord Nelson and Winston Churchill.  The 1st Duke of Wellington secured his position in history as the stone that broke the sword of Napoleon, and as such is worthy of the greatness of the culinary preparation perhaps inappropriately named for him.  it is apropo that the selected dessert to climax such a magnificient meal is the multi-layered creme filled cake, the mille-feuille, otherwise known as – the Napoleon.

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Another Tyrant Down the Rabbit Hole

  

   If you are a tyrant with an extended period of totalitarian rule over an oppressed people, there seems recently to be a tendency for you to realize the End of Days ignominiously down a rabbit hole.  Saddam Hussein in 2003 was discovered hiding in a underground pipe absurdly demanding an interaction with the president of the United States upon capture. Today the dramatist African king of kings was discovered in a similar rabbit hole and, despite his pleas, meted out  a more acute sentence by his captors.   There is a certain sympathy that develops with  a surrounded individual who faces ruthless justice, no matter the circumstances.  The president for life  of Romania Nicoli Ceausescu came back from a state trip in 1989 to discover Romania had determined to significantly shorten his tenure of life president to something more like president of the week.  The Italian Caesar Mussolini at the end of World War II had his fascist rule end hanging naked upside down from a lightpole in a definitive end to the fascist experiment.  Today the tyrant Muammar Gaddafi of Libya was pulled from a rabbit hole  by combatants in the fight for his home town in Libya and the long rule of the king of kings was ended with a bullet to the head, his body paraded like a lifeless puppet by jubilant executioners.

     It is easy to feel some sympathy, perhaps a tug of regret in the digusting way his mortally injured body was paraded like a clown corpse for amusement.  It is doubly ironic to reflect that the powers that  contributed to his downfall fairly recently supported his nation’s nomination to the head of the United Nations Human Rights Council, bought his oil, turned their heads to his violent suppresion of his own people the Berbers, his ruthless military adventures in North Africa, and the decades log support for the most radical of terrorist activities. Well, no surprise regarding the hypocritical actions between nation states should be contemplated.  Its been going on as long as there have been nation states.  Gaddafi has played the west for decades like a fine fiddle, brandishing the victim card, while carrying out a targeted program of some of the most cowardly and vile actions against innocents.  Watching the balding old man on video today paraded like a mannequin almost made one forget all that.

    Careful focus regarding this man’s legacy causes the sympathy to fade very rapidly, however.  The singular event that makes his humiliating treatment today gratifying was his direct role in the massacre of innocents , in the perpetrated mass murder he achieved over Lockerbie Scotland in 1988.  Stung by President Reagan’s direct attack for his earlier attempt to  mass kill US servicemen in a Berlin  nightclub in 1986, Gaddafi hungered for revenge and in typical cowardly fashion determined a means of indirect slaughter against the citadel of democracy, the United States.  Through his agents, Gaddafi  had a pressure sensitive bomb placed on the Pan Am  New York to London flight on December 21st, 1988, the bomb exploding just prior to the Boeing 747’s decent over Lockerbie, Scotland, resulting in the horrific slaughter of 243 passengers and 16 crew members. The destruction of innocents included 189 American and 43 British citizens as well as citizens of 19 other nations, as well as 11 individuals on the ground from falling debris.  The tyrant never saw any irony in continuing to interact with the countries whose citizens he had murdered for spite, and in a particularly onerous hypocrisy, the British government who had lost so many in this attack, gave Gaddafi last year the ultimate triumph by releasing the bomb-maker from British prison for “medical” reasons, soiling forever the memories of all the innocents who died in the horrific terrorist attack.  The deaths included high school students, artists, musicians, authors, and business officials, all cut down in the prime of life by this vainglorious clown.  It was weeks before all the spewed body parts could be identified and removed from Lockerbie gardens and rooftops.   Gaddafi always took special pride in his moment in the sun as an unstable state terrorist, and nothing in his future years, the cozy relationships with other humanity stalwarts such as Mugabe, Assad, Chavez, Arafat, and Farrakan, seemed to fulfill for him the sense of triumph that he felt when he was a party to the special killing fields he achieved over Scotland.  The price to so many for the world kowtowing to this cowardly bully was immeasurable and the bully’s death decades later doesn’t come close to evening the score.

     For Lockerbie alone, the despoiling of the tyrant’s pathetic worldly vessel performed today is simply insufficient.  No matter how the end was inappropriately reached, or what eventually replaces this pathetic figure, the End, like those of Hussein, Bin Laden, Zarqawi, and Awlaki , and hopefully soon, Assad and Mugabe, can’t come soon enough.  Sic Semper Tyrannis.

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9/11

     Ten years ago, at 8:46am under an impossibly clear blue sky, American Airlines flight 11 under the control of committed assassins struck the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The world shuddered perceptively on its axis. The intent of men to whom the achievements of western civilization were an abomination were clarified 17 minutes later when United Airlines flight 175 similarly struck the south tower at 9:03am. The reign of terror from the air continued that morning with American Airlines flight 77 striking the Pentagon building in Washington DC at 9:37am, and was culminated by the downing of United Airlines Flight 93 by its own passengers at 10:03am to prevent the hijacked plane from completing its murderous intent of destroying the Capitol building in Washington.

     77 minutes of premeditated destruction and death affecting thousands of lives of which the lasting effects we are still living through today. To what end was the calamitous decision to throw the world into violent struggle made by Osama bin Laden and his ilk? A war against history. A war against individual will. A war against humanity. The deaths of 2996 individuals on that day, tragic accepting the 19 terrorists who willingly gave their lives to destroy others, know no compensation. The children who lost fathers, the husbands who lost wives, the colleagues who lost colleagues.   The sacrifices were for the fantasies of men who preferred a world where men could again be dominant kings, their women subjugated, science used to suppress freedom, and free thought and will to be eliminated.  This was the event that was to ignite the collapse of history’s forward drive of the past thousand years, and reduce humanity to the rule of the ignorant and the deluded.

     It was the fantasy of such men that led to such destruction on that morning. Pathetic fantasy.  Through ten years of war, death, economic strain, and challenge to principles of freedom promulgated by the events of that day, the residual image that captures the pathetic nature of such fantasy was the last view of bin Laden sitting in a filthy room in Pakistan, watching videos of himself, the last person left still  interested in his words and philosophies.  He was tried and convicted by Navy Seals for his crimes against humanity this summer, the sentence was executed, and we are all the better.

     9/11 taught us that the capacity of man for self hate runs deep within us, and is an enemy that needs to be exposed and rejected.  There can be no diversity of opinion when it comes to the worthiness of each individual life, the ability to achieve maximal potential, the respect for and defense of individual freedom.  The tyrants will always seek to crush the spirit of man and reinforce his self hate, to secure the tyrant’s fantasy of domination of free will.     We do well to use the anniversary of this tragic day in history as a reminder to forever be on the Ramparts against the tyrants never ending hatred of humanity’s positive thread.

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Los Alamos

 

    I have been away for a well deserved trip and traveled to a favorite corner of the world, northern New Mexico.  As a humbly self described amateur historian, the pulse of history that surges through this unique land could occupy me for months.   The visible chapters of the untold millennia of earth’s history is unrivaled in the geologic variety and infinity vistas, and the area is just as rich in the human story of civilization since the last Ice Age.  The historical books come together in the special corner of the world that forms the mesa on which the little town of Los Alamos rests.  The several hundred million years since the inland seas receded and left the spectacular vistas of New Mexico at the base of the southern rockies seems, at times, eternally fixed, but the past thousand years, a geologic eyeblink, saw amazing human intersessions upon this timeless land.  From the civilized mesa dwellers at Bandolier, to the Pueblos of the native American, the intense migration of the Spanish civilization, and the American merchant invasion via the Santa Fe Trail the land at Otowi, New Mexico has seen a special immersion of cultures.  No migration, however, has probably had the permanent and profound effect of the human experience as did the most recent one – the 1942 migration of the scientist clan onto the Otowi mesa assuming their new home in the Los Alamos County Ranch School and changing science and history forever.  From 1942 to 1945, the ancient mesa at Otowi became the center of scientific research and development that opened the secret of the atom and resulted in atomic energy and the most devastating weapon ever devised by man, the atomic bomb.

     The story is best told in two wonderful books that are a must for anyone wants to understand the incredible tale of Los Alamos and the atomic quest.  The first is Richard Rhodes’ Pulitzer Prize winning book The Making of the Atomic Bomb .  There is no better and more understandable treatise of the incredible genius that ties Ernest Rutherford’s 1890’s discovery of the atom to the brilliant teamwork of the great collection of scientists that Robert Oppenheimer corralled in Los Alamos in the 1940’s.  The human story of discovery and commitment is best told in Jennet Conant’s wonderful book, 109 East Palace.  Ms. Conant captures the personalities, immense work and breathtaking achievements of the team at Los Alamos preforming under unimagined stress and complete secrecy in a more innocent time. 

     Los Alamos became the site for the most intense science project known to man due to a memory of the director of the search for the secret of the power of the atom, J. Robert Oppenheimer.  The secret project, assigned to the Army’s Manhattan Corp of Engineers, and thereafter known as the Manhattan Project, required a special individual to be in charge and attempt to achieve the impossible in an insufferably short period of time.  It required an individual of special brilliance, who could understand and coordinate physicists, mathematicians, engineers, metallurgists, explosives specialists, chemists, and warriors, hold them together, and finish the job under the enormous pressure of a country fighting for its very life in a race against its enemy for the ultimate weapon, harnessing the power of the atom.  The country found such a man in J. Robert Oppenheimer from the University of California.  Oppenheimer, in looking for the right secluded location for such an enterprise requiring space, water, and the capacity for secrecy, remembered the horse trails of his youth in the region of the Bandolier Indian ruins and went with General Leslie Groves to seek out the location as a home for the project in 1942.  The site proved perfect and the decision was to base the project at the site of the Los Alamos Ranch School in Otowi, New Mexico.  The school had been a place where children of wealthy parents could immerse their children in a life of rigor, scholarship. and self confidence that the life of the  West was considered to represent.  Oppenheimer assembled a team of hundreds of scientists whose average age was twenty five, who subjected themselves to the rigors of the task, with the spirit of the school that had preceeded their community at Los Alamos.  In less than three years, Los Alamos proved to be the most successful science experiment in history, taking a theoretical possibility, that the atom, held together by immense forces, could be, in a controlled fashion, be persuaded to release those forces.  On July 16th, 1945, in the desert outside of the town of Alamogordo, New Mexico, the forces of nature were released from a device conceived, created, constructed, and culminated by the geniuses of the little community of the Ranch School at Los Alamos, and the world for good and bad willl never be the same.   The test of the atomic weapon, referred to by the group as “The Gadget” proved to all that man holds the unique ability to covert thought into reality, limitless in scope when the effort was total.

     The town of Los Alamos continues to this day as a leader in science and atomic energy, and the Bradford Museum of Science located there, is very worthy of a visit to understand the task of nuclear scientists that continue to this day.  The Ranch School still stands and the little museum located on Bathtub Row brings to life the community Oppenheimer led, and reminds us of the world of 1940’s northern New Mexico that made it possible.

     The amazing story is told well in the documentary below, A Moment in Time.  Although an hour in length, it is worth every second to bring the unique story  of Los Alamos to life. The trip off Highway 25 onto Highway 502 in northern New Mexico to the little town of Los Alamos holds an unlimited amount of storyline to the human experience that make getting away to special places worthwhile.

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Passing the Buck

     President Harry S. Truman was proud of his sign displayed prominently on the Oval Office desk – “The Buck Stops Here”.   No other principle was as important to him.  He understood that the occupant of the office of the President held ultimate authority and ultimate responsibility for the events and actions that occurred during his watch.  The weight of the responsibility was clear to him from the very first moment he took the oath:

“I felt as if the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me. I got the most terribly responsible job a man ever had.”

        There was additional little doubt in Truman’s mind the process of politics created the critical energy and vetting needed to achieve real change, but it never occurred to him that anybody else could inevitably to be seen as the fulcrum of all credit and blame under a President’s watch.  He had no time for whiners.

     Our current President has made an art of being the anti-Truman. Wherever the responsibility for our current mess resides, he wants everyone to know it doesn’t reside with him.  For the umpteenth time in a recent interview, he looks at the economic chaos and stagnation before him, and nearly three years into his watch sees where the buck of responsibility clearly rests – George W. Bush. A clever device of the Democrat party in undercutting the previous President, candidate Obama brought the device to a fever pitchand, like a one trick pony, can not seem to divest himself of the role the SuperBush has played in preventing Obama from achieving sustained recovery. The mantra of Democrats in regards to the supernatural capacities of our supposedly mentally enfeebled former president to continue to reek economic havoc, nearly three years after he released control, is a wonder to behold. President George W. Bush, singularly responsible for .Com recession, 9/11, the lack of WMD, Abu Griab, the Iraqi debacle, global warming, Hurricane Katrina, the collapse of the housing bubble and Mortgagegeddon, World hatred of the United States, and the Banking collapse, apparently continues to wage nefarious control over our current President’s success.

     Obviously the blame game can only go so far. The farther one gets from BushHitler the harder it gets to connect the dots that link the barbarian to our current mess. In fact, the current stagnation in recovery and apparent drift toward a second recession is progressively being recognized as a pillar of President Obama’s time at the tiller, and the President may be the last to recognize it. Unlike Truman, who was politically able to rail against the “do nothing” republican Congress of 1947-48, President Obama’s Democrat party has been in control since 2007 and the opposition has had to mostly sit back and accept the massive increases in government size and regulation, stimulus spending, and the progressively creepy and destructive Obamacare.

     The crux of the matter for Obama is, the American public can tolerate a blowhard, barely tolerate a fabricator, but can not tolerate a whiner. Kind of unbecoming. Maybe somebody ought to get the President a copy of Truman’s sign.

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On the Bloody Road to Damascus


      Over 1900 years ago, a battalion of soldiers lead by Saul the Pharisee road on the road to the already ancient city of Damascus to rout out a major threat to the ruling hierarchy at that time, the cult of religious extremists known as Christians. Well educated and convinced of the righteousness of his task, Saul determined to deal firmly and resoundingly with the upstarts in a conclusive fashion. Just short of the gates of the city in the presence of his soldiers, Saul was struck from his horse by an unseen force and held paralytic to the ground while a voice heard by all spoke to Saul and revealed to him the error of his mission and proposed the path to his true calling. On the road to Damascus, Saul the Pharisee, destroyer of the breath of life, came to from his interaction with the Supreme Being, blinded but now clearly seeing, converted to his new life, as Paul the Apostle.

      No such moment has occurred yet on the modern road to Damascus to another educated man convinced of his own righteousness to violent action, the president of Syria, Bashar al- Assad.  Unfortunately the opthamologist from London has rapidly taken on the worst instincts of a base tribal instinct to dominate and destroy other that has brought horrific destruction to a country that has seen too large a share of domination over the ages from many invaders.  The city of Damascus may be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, extending as an identified destination back to before 6000 BC. Mentioned in Genesis, the city has seen the rule of Assyrians, Hittites, Canaanites, Arameans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Islamic Caliphates. The most recent period of independence has occurred since 1946 with withdrawal of French overseers, and the country has been left to its own devices since, with tribal fault lines suppressed under a nationalist Baathist civilian structure ruthlessly maintained by the army.  Since 1970, the government and army have been dominated by the minority Alawites with the Presidential power first in the hands of father Hafez, and now son, Bashar.  The overriding theme of Baathist “progress” in Syria has been the ruthless domination of all other political structures in Syria and the external focus of a belligerent permanent state of war with Israel.  The father Hafez laid the template for the dealing with internal opposition with the essential leveling of the uncooperative city of  Hama in 1982 with an estimated 25,000 casualties.  The son Bashar, the western trained physician, has now set an altogether different standard, sending troops, tanks, and internal security thugs nationwide to destroy the nidus of a unified opposition movement.  This is not the Muslim Brotherhood insurrection of the 1980’s.  The tenets of the Arab Spring are seen in the demographic of the modern Syrian opposition, and al-Assad’s carefully developed western face as a “reformer” has been exposed as a farce.

     The only residual support the increasingly butcher like Bashar has been able to maintain is the traditional Syrian ethnic and religious minority fear of the majority Sunni Islamic population.  Christians, Druze,  and Shia alike see the religiously nebulous Baathists as their best protection against the other culturally insensitive Sunni tradition.  This has allowed Assad thus far to crush the increasingly aggressive opposition with impunity, but the greater Arab world is noticing the effect of his actions potentially on their on restive populations and are no mood to see the Assad “example” grow as a rallying cry.

     The role of the United States as a supporter of individual human rights has come to an untenable position in Syria.  President Obama’s stated policy of middle Eastern non-interference has been exposed as hypocritical in Lybia, and rudderless everywhere else.  The current adminstration’s desire to “lead from behind” has left the door open for other countries to fill the vacumn.  Turkey, former home of the Ottoman Empire, and Iran, keeper of the fundamentalist Shia flame find themselves on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict and raise the possibility that the Syrian civil war could expand into a greater conflict.  President Obama, who appears progressively tired of the demands of the office, has made no visible moves to stop the Syrian government’s vicious actions, define a position, or engage a plan for the various potential dangerous outgrowths of the Syrian violence.  We may be in the midst of the most anti-philosophical foreign policy in American history, who has determined their only weapon of policy or diplomacy is the drone strike or Tomahawk cruise missle.
      The suffering people of Syria populating one of the most epic pieces of land in the human story, may unfortunately be the set pieces of a building tragedy that has no answer except pitiless individual demolition. It is sad to relate, that the only potential salvation of the people is the whisper of a chance of a modern miracle occuring on the road to Damascus, this time to the butcher of his own people, Bashar al-Assad.