Tag Archives: World War II

national news, political news

How would Ike fare in today’s GOP?

2 Comments

ike

EISENHOWER STATE PARK, Texas — Sitting here amid the trees that are rustling in a light breeze, my mind tends to wander.

I’m thinking at this moment about the man after whom this beautiful park is named: General of the Army Dwight David Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States of America.

I am thinking especially of how he might react to what has become of his beloved Republican Party. My hunch? He’d be furious at what has happened to it.

Think of any contemporary Republican today who’d have the courage, as Ike did in 1960 — as he was preparing to leave after two terms in the White House — to warn the nation of the perils of the “military-industrial complex.”

Ike knew all about that. He retired from the Army with five — not just four — stars on his uniform. He earned general of the Army status merely for leading Allied forces in their successful fight against Nazi/Fascist tyranny in Europe.

When he ordered the D-Day invasion at Normandy, France, he wrote two statements, one in the event our forces succeeded — and one in the event they failed. He obviously never delivered the second set of remarks.

We’ve heard much this election cycle about “anointment” of presidential nominees, namely Hillary Rodham Clinton. In 1952, just seven years after returning home from World War II, Ike was anointed by the Republican Party to be its nominee. He won in a landslide and was re-elected four years later in similarly impressive fashion.

He wouldn’t like the rancor that has developed today. He wouldn’t condone efforts to shut down the government to suit the tastes of a minority wing of his party. He wouldn’t tolerate the intense partisanship that stalls important projects that need to be done for all Americans.

Ike’s signature achievement as president arguably was the development of the massive interstate highway system that connected a nation along its three coasts. These days, members of his GOP are fighting efforts just to maintain the system that President Eisenhower pushed through Congress.

Ike’s birthplace in Denison is just a few miles south of the park that carries his name. We visited it once years ago, so we likely won’t return on this visit. We’re going to enjoy the park named in this great man’s honor.

And I’ll keep wishing his once-great party eventually returns to its senses.

 

 

national news, political news

‘Boxcars’ no more acceptable than ‘ovens’

1 Comment

hillary

Admission time.

I’ve been goaded into saying something about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s remark concerning Donald Trump’s “immigration reform” idea, which is to round up 11 million or so undocumented immigrants and ship back to where they came from.

She said recently that Trump and other Republican candidates intend to ship immigrants back to their homeland in “boxcars.” The remark drew understandable rebuke from those on the right who said the Democratic presidential front runner is invoking images of the Holocaust with that kind of analogy.

Clinton’s campaign has denied any connection.

You decide.

The campaign flacks are mistaken if they do not believe many Americans understood the juxtaposition of “boxcars” and “Holocaust.”

These presidential candidates need to understand that gravity of making such highly offensive comparisons.

Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, you’ll recall, criticized the Iran nuclear deal by declaring President Obama would march Israel to the “oven door” if the deal is approved by the Congress. That remark also drew expected — and deserved — criticism from those on the left.

A critic of this blog reminded me that I had been silent about Clinton’s nasty reference to boxcars. I took the criticism as a challenge to be as vigilant on both sides of the political divide about comments that deserve rebuke.

Clinton, Huckabee and the whole crowd of presidential candidates should declare a moratorium on comparing anything that occurs presently to what happened between 1939 and 1945.

World War II — and all its ghastly consequences — stands alone.

 

 

State news

Nuke the Muslims? Stick to ag policy, Mr. Miller

sid miller

Sid Miller wouldn’t like this comparison; then again, neither would the man with whom I am making the comparison.

But the current Texas agriculture commissioner is making as many waves with his occasionally goofy behavior as former Ag Commissioner Jim Hightower.

Miller’s Facebook page recently featured a social media statement that said the United States has been at peace with Japan since Aug. 9, 1945 — when we dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki; then the post said “It’s time we made peace with the Muslim world.”

Hmmm. Does that mean he supports the idea of dropping nuclear bombs on Muslim nations? To be fair, Miller or his staff did not post the item, nor did Miller personally share it. But they aren’t going to apologize for its appearance on his department’s Facebook page. As the Texas Tribune reported: “The commissioner has no plans to figure out which of his staffers shared the posting, or to apologize, (Miller spokesman Todd) Smith said.”

The social media post has drawn the expected criticism. Indeed, this kind of message borders on the unbelievable.

Nuke the Muslim world? Does this guy really mean to obliterate all of it?

Good grief! We’re engaged in a death struggle with Muslim extremists, religious perverts — who do not represent the majority of those who worship one of the world’s great religions.

Miller is on a trade mission in China. I’ve got an idea: Why don’t you stick to promoting Texas agricultural products overseas, commissioner?

Outrageous social media posts have this way of diverting the commissioner from the message he was elected to deliver.

 

 

International news

V-J Day plus 70: Japan says it’s sorry

Shinzo Abe

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said it once again this week.

Japan has expressed profound grief and remorse for the events that led to and included all that happened during World War II.

Japan has noted the end of the great war. The prime minister apologized on behalf of his government. He also noted that the vast majority of Japanese citizens were born after World War II and that his nation shouldn’t be expected to keep apologizing for the deeds of its forebears.

I get what the prime minister is trying to say. As the son of a World War II veteran who had served in the European Theater before being reassigned to the Pacific Theater, I appreciate the prime minister’s expression of remorse and grief.

He’s not alone, of course. Aging Japanese war veterans also have been seeking forgiveness for their actions in World War II. They travel to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii to pay their respects at the Battleship Arizona Memorial, where more than 1,000 American seamen are interred where their ship sank during the sneak attack on Dec. 7, 1941.

The coverage of Abe’s speech, though, takes note of the absence of a “new apology.” It makes me wonder: How many times and how many ways must a leader of a foreign government with which we once were at war apologize?

I believe Prime Minister Abe’s latest apology speaks quite eloquently.

 

International news, military news

Why we must avoid the next real ‘world war’

The world is pausing this week to look back on a pair of events that occurred 70 years ago.

On this date in 1945, a B-29 U.S. Army Air Corps bomber took off from Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean, flew to Hiroshima, Japan, and dropped an atomic bomb on the city.

Roughly 70,000 lives vanished in an instant.

Three days later, another B-29 took off en route to Nagasaki. That bomb did even more damage.

It was near the end of World War II. On Aug. 14, 1945, Japan surrendered. The war was over.

The nuclear age had been brought to bear in the most horrible fashion imaginable.

I remain committed to the notion that President Harry Truman made the correct call by dropping the bombs. Declining to do so would have resulted in the invasion of Japan by U.S. and allied forces, likely killing many more thousands of lives than were lost in those two blasts.

So, the president had to kill people to save people. It’s a terrible irony, to be sure.

But this look back also brings to mind something that one of the creators of this terrible weapon once said.

It comes from Albert Einstein, who noted: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

May we never forget.

International news

Truman faced a monumental choice … and never looked back

1 Comment

Seven decades ago, President Harry Truman — newly sworn into office upon President Franklin Roosevelt’s death — faced a choice no commander in chief should have to face.

Does he deploy a bomb he knows will kill tens of thousands of civilians but possibly spare the cost of many more tens of thousands of soldiers and sailors — on both sides — in a costly ground war?

The president chose to drop The Bomb. It was a nuclear weapon that exploded over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

It ushered in the nuclear age. A second bomb would detonate over Nagasaki three days later.

And about a week after that, the Japanese Empire waved the white flag of surrender. World War II came to an end.

Knowing what we know now about The Bomb, would the president have done it all over again? Truman said he would. He never wavered in his belief that he made the right call.

I happen to agree with him.

My late father, who was among the forces garrisoned in the Philippines when the bombs fell, could have been among those who died in the effort to subdue Japan using conventional means. Do I know that to be true? Of course not. He was a sailor who’d seen his share of combat in the European theater before being reassigned to the Pacific.

It never came to that, of course. Dad came home, got married and produced his family.

Because I am here today, I say without reservation: God bless President Truman.

political news

‘Huck’ tries to out-Trump The Donald

3 Comments

Donald Trump makes light of John McCain’s heroism during the Vietnam War and refuses to apologize for it.

His payoff? A surge in the Republican Party presidential primary polls.

Now comes Mike Huckabee to say the Iran nuclear deal brokered by President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and five other world powers will lead “Israel to the door of the oven.”

It’s an obvious and hideous reference to the Holocaust and has enraged some Jewish leaders for its insensitivity to the suffering that families of Holocaust victims feel to this very day.

Is Huck backing off? Oh, no. He’s keeping up the fiery rhetoric.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/jewish-groups-react-mike-huckabees-oven-remarks?cid=sm_fb_lastword

This, I fear, is what Donald Trump has introduced into the GOP primary contest. He has set a new standard for the level of commentary that voters will accept.

Huckabee has seized upon it and has now added a new twist: invoking the ghastly memory of Adolf Hitler and Neville “Peace in Our Time” Chamberlain to criticize the deal that seeks to end Iran’s nuclear program. You know about Hitler. Chamberlain was the British prime minister who met with Hitler in 1938 as the Nazi tyrant was about to launch World War II and said he was confident that the world could achieve “peace in our time” in Europe. Well, it didn’t work out that way.

Huckabee’s reference is as the National Jewish Democratic Council described it: The council called the remark “not only disgustingly offensive to the President and the White House, but shows utter, callous disregard for the millions of lives lost in the Shoah and to the pain still felt by their descendants today.”

But what the heck. A candidate’s got to do what he’s got to do to get on that debate stage with those who are atop the polls.

As Trump has shown, outrageousness sells these days.

national news, political news

Where have you gone, Capitol Hill collegiality?

A Facebook exchange with a friend today brought to mind a missing ingredient in today’s political recipe.

Collegiality is gone. Maybe forever, for all I know … although I hope it makes a comeback.

The exchange was precipitated by a blog I posted about President Reagan’s 11th commandment, which the late president decreed should prohibit Republicans from speaking ill of other Republicans.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2015/07/23/what-happened-to-the-gippers-11th-commandment/

My friend responded by saying the blog post reminded him of why he still missed The Gipper. He added that Reagan and the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill, the tough Boston Democrat, liked each other’s company, even though they agreed on virtually nothing.

This all brings to mind some other unusual political friendships on Capitol Hill: Republican Orrin Hatch and Democrat Ted Kennedy; Republican Bob Dole and Democrat Daniel Inouye; Republican Barry Goldwater and Democrat George McGovern; Republican Everett Dirksen and Democrat Lyndon Johnson. (Indeed, the Dirksen-Johnson friendship carried over into LBJ’s presidency.)

Two of those friendships — Dole and Inouye, and Goldwater and McGovern — were forged by common experiences during World War II. Dole and Inouye suffered grievous injury fighting in Europe and spent time in rehab together, where they formed a friendship that would last a lifetime; Goldwater and McGovern both flew combat missions as Army Air Corps pilots and they carried that common bond with them into the Senate.

These are the kinds of relationships we don’t see these days.

What we see instead is a continuation of what then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich once admonished of his Republican troops in the House of Representatives. It was to treat Democrats as the “enemy of normal Americans.”

The enemy? Yes, that was the word he used.

The parties today seem to have carried that outlook well into the 21st century.

It’s shameful in the extreme and it has resulted in the kind of gridlock that stalls the progress of worthwhile legislation. Democrats sought to throw roadblocks in front of Republican President George W. Bush and we’ve seen the payback in the form of even more intense opposition from congressional Republicans who seek to block everything that Democratic President Barack Obama pushes forward.

Each side is pulled away from the center by extremists. “Compromise” has become a four-letter word. Both sides ignore the basis of how legislation is conceived, created and completed.

Remember when Sen. Mitch McConnell declared in 2009 his “main goal” would be to make Barack Obama a “one-term president”?

There you have it. The Age of Collegiality has given way to the Age of Confrontation.

And they call this “good government.” Give me a break.

International news

‘No’ means no, in Greece

In Greece, they celebrate something called “Oxhi Day.”

“Oxhi” — and this is the rough spelling of the word, given that the Greek alphabet looks nothing like ours — is the Greek word for “no.”

It’s meant to mark then-Greek Prime Minister John Metaxas’s refusal to let Italian troops use Greek ports during the early years of World War II. Metaxas told Italian dictator Benito Mussolini “oxhi!” to his ultimatum; Mussolini then invaded Greece on Oct. 28, 1940 — and promptly had his troops slaughtered by the Greek army as they sought to advance south from Albania.

The Italian invasion stalled in the face of the ferocious Greek resistance. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi troops came in to rescue Mussolini from further humiliation — and conquered Greece.

Oxhi Day has been a big deal for Greece.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/greece-enters-uncharted-territory-after-referendum-no-vote/ar-AAczLKj

Now the word takes on a fresh meaning. The Greeks have said “oxhi” to demands for more austerity, which was a condition of more bailout money from the European Union.

The result might be that Greece leaves the EU, becoming — in the words of some observers — a “fringe nation” in Europe.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras vows to renegotiate a better deal for Greece. His left-wing government has grown weary of the austerity demands that others have placed on his country.

But to be candid, the Greeks seem to need some more austerity to help them curb their spendthrift habits. They have spent themselves into a tremendous debt crisis that they cannot solve — seemingly — by themselves.

I wish my the people who live in the country of my ancestors had voted the other way. The future of a once-vibrant nation now appears at best to be murky.

Just saying “oxhi!” might not be enough to save this proud country from ruin.

International news

This man embodied greatness

Nicholas Winton lived 106 years on this Earth.

And for part of that long and glorious life, he managed to do something so astonishing it boggles the mind. He saved the lives of 669 children from death at the hands of the Nazi tyrant Adolf Hitler.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/01/europe/nicholas-winton-obituary/

Queen Elizabeth knighted Sir Nicholas in 2003 for the deed he performed during the late 1930s. He had been to Czechoslovakia and had seen the threat being posed to Jews throughout Europe. Many of them were children who were certain to die at the hands of the Nazi monsters.

He went home to Great Britain and set about to organize the systematic evacuation of those children. He saved their lives, giving them a chance to grow to adulthood and bring families of their own into this world.

His modesty was legendary. He hardly ever spoke about what he had done. “60 Minutes” profiled him a couple of years ago. And in the segment, the news show broadcast a reunion he had with dozens of the people he had saved. He sat among them at a gathering, not knowing these middle-aged individuals were children who owed their very lives to this humble stockbroker.

When they stood up — surrounding him — to recognize what he had done and to thank him publicly, this giant of humanity wept.

Sir Nicholas died today.

As British Prime Minister David Cameron said, “The world has lost a great man.”

Watch this video and you get a look at true, unvarnished greatness.