Tag Archives: World War II

national news, political news

Yep, VPOTUS is an important office

Jeffrey Frank’s essay in The New Yorker lays it out clearly.

The office of vice president of the United States is the second-most important office in the country, if not the world. It took the death of a president to make that fact abundantly clear.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/how-f-d-r-s-death-changed-the-vice-presidency

Frank writes about Franklin Roosevelt’s death 70 years ago, on April 12, 1945. Vice President Harry Truman was told of FDR’s death in Georgia. He was rushed to the White House and sworn in as president.

It’s what President Truman didn’t know at the time that has been the subject of discussion ever since.

He didn’t know about the Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic bomb, which then ended World War II in August 1945.

Truman only that there was something afoot in New Mexico. Secretary of War Henry Stimson told the president he had something to tell him involving a top-secret project. He informed him of the bomb and said, in effect, that if we use this device it could end the war in a hurry.

The gist of Frank’s essay is that the vice presidency was fundamentally changed after FDR’s death. Presidents have had to rely on their No. 2 men, required to keep them briefed on everything of importance that goes in the government. Why? Well, as we’ve learned, presidents can leave office quickly and without warning.

President Kennedy was murdered in November 1963. President Nixon resigned in August 1974. Both men had selected steady and seasoned men as their vice presidents who could take over at a moment’s notice. Lyndon Johnson did so while the nation grieved JFK’s death and Gerald Ford took the oath after Nixon’s resignation and reassured us that “Our long, national nightmare is over. The Constitution works.”

Presidential nominees have picked well since FDR’s time. Some have chosen not so well, as Frank notes.

But the notion that vice presidency — in the (sanitized) words of Texan John Nance Garner — “isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit” was laid to rest forever when Harry Truman was handed the keys to the Oval Office.

We’ll be sure to keep this in mind when the next nominees for president pick their VPs.

 

military news

Do we need to ID remains from Pearl Harbor?

1 Comment

I’ve been struggling with this story since I first heard about a couple of days ago.

The Pentagon is going to exhume the unidentified remains of more than 400 sailors and Marines who died on Dec. 7, 1941 aboard the USS Oklahoma, one of several warships sunk in the sneak attack that brought the United States into World War II.

http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/uss-oklahoma-victims-exhumed-identified/2015/04/15/id/638587/

Why the struggle?

I cannot decide if it’s totally necessary to use DNA technology that’s now available to identify the remains that have been resting in peace in “unknown” graves since “the date which will live in infamy.”

Their remains were reburied in a Honolulu national cemetery in 1950. Some of the remains reportedly were “co-mingled” with others’ remains. So it’s not clear who’s buried in each of the graves.

I understand that the technology now available will allow — through painstaking work — forensics experts to identify the remains. It will take time, perhaps years, to finish the job. Indeed, the family members deserve some closure and identifying the remains will give it to them.

However, the family members of the 429 sailors and Marines who were lost have known they were lost aboard the Oklahoma when it capsized at its mooring after being hit by enemy bombs and torpedoes.

Does it do any good now to exhume those remains and subject them to meticulous DNA research?

Why not simply let those heroes rest in peace?

I’m open to comments on this one. Your thoughts? Please?

 

International news, military news

Our former enemy shares his wisdom

Kaname Harada once fought against the United States of America.

He was a Japanese fighter pilot. He’s 98 now. Frail. Near the end of the line … apparently.

Harada has some wisdom for his government, one that sent him and other young warriors to fight in World War II: Don’t get involved again, ever, in war.

Harada is concerned that Japan might rewrite its constitution to allow its fighting forces to deploy abroad. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is thinking about revising the document, which prohibits Japanese armed forces from doing anything other than protecting the island nation from attack.

Abe was incensed at the Islamic State’s brutal murder of two Japanese journalists. Indeed, the world was incensed.

He ought to heed to advice of an aging Japanese Zero pilot.

Harada spoke recently to an audience about his experience in WorAS ld War II. They were enthralling and chilling all at once. According to the New York Times: “Nothing is as terrifying as war,” he began, before spending the next 90 minutes recounting his role in battles, from Japan’s early triumph at Pearl Harbor to its disastrous reversals at Midway and Guadalcanal. “I want to tell you my experiences in war so that younger generations don’t have to go through the same horrors that I did.”

Indeed, I have learned in recent years that the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor is attracting aging Japanese warriors who are coming to the United States to pay their respects at the memorial that stands over the sunken hulk of the battleship sunk during the Dec. 7, 1941 attack — which brought the United States into the world war. These men are now getting old, just as our brave men and women are aging. They were following orders and doing their duty as they saw it.

As Harada told the Times: “I fought the war from the cockpit of a Zero, and can still remember the faces of those I killed,” said Mr. Harada, who said he was able to meet and befriend some of his foes who survived the war. “They were fathers and sons, too. I didn’t hate them or even know them.”

This old man’s wisdom is profound. It is gripping. It needs to be heard by all those who believe war ever is a sane option to any dispute between or among nations.

It isn’t.

 

International news

Iran nuke deal: good or bad for the world?

I’m going to withhold final judgment on the Iran nuclear deal for a little while as I try to wrap my arms around what President Obama calls “historic” and what his critics — to no one’s surprise — call an “appeasement.”

I remain hopeful that the framework, as I understand it, is going to cut off “pathways” for Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, as the president said today.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/237747-obama-hails-historic-iran-nuke-deal

If I had one misgiving about the impending deal it is the end of the economic sanctions. The European Union is going to end the sanctions on Iran almost immediately, while the United States will lift them in accordance with verification that Iran is remaining faithful to the terms of the agreement.

The U.S. portion of the sanctions removal sounds reasonable and verifiable, to my understanding of what was hammered out over the course of several months.

There are lots of nuts and bolts to this deal. The Iranians are going to stop enriching uranium at some locations, will transfer capabilities from one nuclear plant to another and juggle all kinds of contingencies in accordance with what the bargaining nations agreed on.

The result, though, must ensure that Iran does not build a nuclear weapon.

The Israelis, of course, oppose the deal. They’ve said all along that no deal is better than virtually anything that was discussed publicly with regard to the negotiation.

Congressional Republicans are blasting the framework. One GOP lawmaker used the “appeasement” language, conjuring up memories of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s declaration that Europe had found “peace in our time” in negotiating with Adolf Hitler just before all hell broke loose in September 1939.

Let’s not go there.

Instead, the principals have until June to hammer the details out. Congress will get to weigh in.

Iran’s nuclear program appears headed in another direction — away from its construction of a nuclear bomb.

I’m left to wonder initially: What can be so wrong with that?

 

national news, political news

What makes a good commander in chief?

Scott Walker says that being an Eagle Scout prepared him to be commander in chief of the greatest military force in the history of the world.

So, there you have it. Join the Scouts, earn enough merit badges and you, too, can serve in the Oval Office.

The Republican Wisconsin governor was answering the question on a conservative radio talk show.

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/election-matters/scott-walker-suggests-being-an-eagle-scout-has-prepared-him/article_a8f0957e-5f09-504b-961d-c67c2927eb23.html

I won’t dismiss Walker’s Eagle Scout accomplishment as being irrelevant as Walker prepares to enter the 2016 GOP presidential primary donnybrook.

In truth, I don’t know what prepares someone to be commander in chief. The qualifications of the 44 men who’ve served as president are a mixed bag, to say the least.

A couple of our greatest presidents — Republican Abraham Lincoln and Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt — didn’t serve in the military. Yet they saw the country through two horrific wars. Virtually all Lincoln’s presidency was eaten up by the Civil War and yet he held the Union together. FDR mobilized the nation after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor and led the nation beautifully as it carried the fight to enemies in the Pacific and across the Atlantic in Africa and Europe.

Republican Dwight Eisenhower ascended to the rank of general of the Army, but didn’t have to mobilize the nation during his two terms as president. Republican Ulysses S. Grant became an Army general, but his presidency was marred by scandal.

Our three most recent presidents among them have very little combined military experience. Democrat Bill Clinton didn’t serve in the military and in fact avoided the draft back in the 1960s; Republican George W. Bush served for a time in the Texas Air National Guard, flying fighter jets stateside; Democrat Barack Obama also has no military experience.

Does prior military service equate to preparation for being commander in chief? I don’t know.

And does such service mean more than achieving an Eagle Scout ranking? I don’t know that, either.

It seems to boil down to judgment and whether a president has the right judgment — and perhaps the temperament — to lead the world’s premier fighting force.

Maybe a stint in Scouting helps develop those traits. Then again, maybe it doesn’t if the individual doesn’t already possess the innate skill and judgment required to do the most difficult job on Earth.

 

 

military news, Uncategorized

Code Talkers provided unique heroism

NAVAJO COUNTY, Ariz. — I guess it goes back to the first time I ever heard of the Code Talkers.

Every time I see the word “Navajo,” I think of those brave men.

We blazed through Navajo County today on our way home and the thought of the Code Talkers came pouring through.

Equally compelling, in my view, is thinking of the individual who conceived the mission our armed forces handed these brave Americans. Credit for employing the Navajo Code Talkers has gone to Philip Johnston, a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles. He was raised on the Navajo reservation as the son of missionaries … and spoke the language fluently.

The Navajo weren’t the first Native Americans to answer the call to become Code Talkers. Their language is believed to be the only one the enemy never  decoded.

The mission handed to Navajo Indians was to devise a code that would baffle the Japanese in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

Someone in the War Department figured that the enemy couldn’t possibly understand what was being said between Americans who spoke a language that was as unique as any on the planet.

Japanese cryptographers were able to decipher some coded messages during the war. So, to get around their knowledge of how to break our codes, U.S. war planners devised a code using the Navajo language.

Imagine sitting in a Japanese communications monitoring station, listening to individuals speaking to each other in a language you’ve never heard. You cannot identify it as, say, French, Russian or Spanish — let alone English.

That was the work of the Code Talkers. They’re all gone now. They were heroes in the absolute truest sense of the word.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/06/04/r-i-p-heroic-american/

I’ve long honored them for the heroism they performed. I also have honored Philip Johnston, who concocted this crazy notion of employing a language the enemy couldn’t decipher.

Brilliant, I tell you. Brilliant.

 

International news, national news, political news

Foes 'all too willing to test us'

Here’s a tiny part of what former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said before a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“Here’s the simple truth of our foreign policy: Our allies doubt us and our adversaries are all too willing to test us. No one should be surprised, no one should be surprised that dictators like Assad would cross the president’s red line because he knows the president will not even defend the line that separates our nation from Mexico.” 

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/perry-compares-middle-east-troubles-texas-border

Did you get what he’s inferring here? Perry is possibly going to run for the Republican nomination for president of the United States — again — in 2016. To make the case to GOP voters, he must lambaste the president from the other party.

I understand how it works. Democrats do the same thing to Republican presidents as well, as U.S. Sen. Barack Obama demonstrated when he won the presidency in 2008.

But is this “testing” of U.S. power and prestige limited to just this president?

Let’s see: President Richard Nixon was tested when Arab nations executed an oil embargo in 1973, causing near-panic at gasoline service stations throughout this country. President Ronald Reagan was tested in 1983 when terrorists blew up the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 of our young Marines. President George H.W. Bush was tested in Panama when the dictator Manuel Noriega kept looking the other way while drugs were pouring into this country from Panama. President George W. Bush certainly was tested when terrorists flew those hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11.

Yes, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were tested too. Carter faced the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979-80  and Clinton had to deal with those warlords in Somalia.

Testing of U.S. presidents has been the norm perhaps since the end of World War II, when this nation emerged from that global conflagration as the world’s pre-eminent military and economic power.

It goes with the territory. It’s part of the president’s job description.

 

military news

Hey, how does 'conflict' sound?

A good friend of mine has an idea about how to deal with the word games being played over what we call the current war we’re waging with international terrorists.

My pal Jim, who lives in Arizona, writes: “Let‘s call it a conflict. Didn’t we use that term before to soften the impact?”

Boy, howdy! We sure did.

Remember the Korean conflict? Or the Vietnam conflict? The “conflicts” in Korea and Vietnam turned into  “wars” eventually, but many headline writers and journalists writing about Vietnam often didn’t capitalize the “w” in “war,” as if to suggest that it wasn’t really a war.

Perhaps this sidesteps the issue. My earlier blog post noted the discussion about whether the Obama administration is right to avoid using the term “Islamic terrorists” to describe the enemy with whom we are at, um, war. My point is that we need not quibble over what to call the enemy, but we should instead concentrate our efforts solely on actually fighting these monsters.

Whatever we call the enemy, or the fight in which we are engaged, it’s a war by any known definition of the word.

I’ve noted before that we’re in a form of a world war, although it doesn’t resemble the two previous world wars in which we fought — Nos. I and II. Those wars involved nations declaring war on other nations. It involved mass mobilizations of men, who then were sent to battlefields to fight men from other nations that had done the very same thing.

Our wars since WWII, though, have materialized differently. We’ve had no formal declaration since President Roosevelt asked Congress on Dec. 8, 1941 to declare that “a state of war has existed” between the United States and Japan.

But we’ve fought actual wars. The men and women who’ve died in battle have been killed just as dead as they were in World Wars I and II.

I told my friend Jim that I’ve always hated the term “conflict” to describe war.

Instead, I prefer to call these fights what they are. And what we’re fighting today is no less gruesome and deadly than any war we’ve ever fought.

 

national news, political news

Degree not a requirement for White House

The mini-hubbub over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s academic credentials is rather funny.

Some Democrats are snickering at Gov. Walker’s lack of a college degree, suggesting that he’s somehow not qualified to be elected president of the United States — an office he’s considering seeking next year.

The GOP governor’s background was criticized, for instance, by former Vermont Gov. (and physician) Howard Dean, who sought to make light of Walker’s lack of a degree.

Walker attended the University of Wisconsin, but dropped out short of obtaining his degree.

I won’t belabor the point, but I should point out that degree-less men have served already as president. Indeed, a college degree isn’t a requirement for holding the Most Powerful Office in the World.

Let’s see, who can I cite as an example of what we’re discussing here?

Oh, yes. Harry Truman comes to mind.

You know, Give ‘Em Hell Harry acquitted himself well as president, getting thrust into the office upon the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in April 1945; he then had to decide quickly whether to use atomic bombs to end World War II; he had to act to save Greece and Turkey from communist rebellion after the war; he then had to send U.S. troops into battle to stave off another communist invasion, in Korea — and then relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his command in Korea for challenging civilian authority over the military.

President Truman did all right during his eight years in office, even without his college degree.

Do I intend to vote for Gov. Walker next year? Probably not. There’s a lot of things I dislike about his public service record. His lack of a college degree isn’t one of them.

 

national news

Hideous demonstration erupts at UC-Davis

How to describe what took place on a California university campus.

Hideous? Ghastly? Unconscionable? Reprehensible?

All of the above … and then some?

Sure, let’s go for it.

A group of anti-Israel students this past Thursday disrupted a University of California-Davis rally by Jewish students by shouting “Allahu Akbar!,” an Arabic phrase that means “God is great.” The pro-Israel students sought to protest a student government decision to divest from Israel as part of a student movement designed to protest Israeli policies in the Middle East.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/02/03/pro-palestinian-students-heckle-cal-davis-opponents-with-cries-allahu-akbar/

It got worse.

Some unknown vandals spray-painted swastikas on a fraternity house. Swastikas! The very symbol of the Nazi regime that exterminated an estimated 6 million Jews prior to and during World War II.

Some anti-Israel student posted a note on a Facebook page about Hamas and Sharia law taking over the UC-Davis campus. Whatever. Actually, Sharia law hasn’t taken over anything — let alone a major public university campus. As for Hamas — the notorious terrorist organization that runs the government in Gaza — it has been identified for what it is: a cabal of killers.

But the point here is that this kind of monstrous behavior shouldn’t be tolerated anywhere.

The anger expressed on the campus is preposterous in the extreme.

Free speech is worth protecting — but it ought at least to be civil.