The Past is Prologue

“There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity; it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.” — George Washington, Fifth Annual Message — 1793

Today is the 14^th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and the failed attack on the Capitol. Most everyone over the age of twenty can remember where they were and what they were doing at 8:45 a.m. (EDST) on a clear Tuesday morning, an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

It was a mere 18 minutes after the first plane hit, a second Boeing 767–United Airlines Flight 175–appeared out of the sky, turned sharply toward the World Trade Center and sliced into the south tower near the 60th floor. The collision caused a massive explosion that showered burning debris over surrounding buildings and the streets below. America was under attack!

As millions watched the events unfolding in New York, American Airlines Flight 77 circled over downtown Washington, D.C., and slammed into the west side of the Pentagon military headquarters at 9:45 a.m. Jet fuel from the Boeing 757 caused a devastating inferno that led to the structural collapse of a portion of the giant concrete building. All told, 125 military personnel and civilians were killed in the Pentagon, along with all 64 people aboard the airliner.

Less than 15 minutes after the terrorists struck the nerve center of the U.S. military, the horror in New York took a catastrophic turn for the worse when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and smoke. The structural steel of the skyscraper, built to withstand winds in excess of 200 miles per hour and a large conventional fire, could not withstand the tremendous heat generated by the burning jet fuel. At 10:30 a.m., the other Trade Center tower collapsed. Close to 3,000 people died in the World Trade Center and its vicinity, including a staggering 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 New York City police officers and 37 Port Authority police officers who were struggling to complete an evacuation of the buildings and save the office workers trapped on higher floors. Only six people in the World Trade Center towers at the time of their collapse survived. Almost 10,000 others were treated for injuries, many severe.

Meanwhile, a fourth California-bound plane–United Flight 93–was hijacked about 40 minutes after leaving Newark International Airport in New Jersey. Because the plane had been delayed in taking off, passengers on board learned of events in New York and Washington via cell phone and Airfone calls to the ground. Knowing that the aircraft was not returning to an airport as the hijackers claimed, a group of passengers and flight attendants planned an insurrection. One of the passengers, Thomas Burnett Jr., told his wife over the phone that “I know we’re all going to die. There’s three of us who are going to do something about it. I love you, honey.” Another passenger–Todd Beamer–was heard saying “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll” over an open line. Sandy Bradshaw, a flight attendant, called her husband and explained that she had slipped into a galley and was filling pitchers with boiling water. Her last words to him were “Everyone’s running to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.”

The passengers fought the four hijackers and are suspected to have attacked the cockpit with a fire extinguisher. The plane then flipped over and sped toward the ground at upwards of 500 miles per hour, crashing in a rural field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:10 a.m. All 45 people aboard were killed. Its intended target is not known, but theories include the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland or one of several nuclear power plants along the eastern seaboard.

The attackers were Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia and several other Arab nations. Reportedly financed by Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist organization, they were allegedly acting in retaliation for America’s support of Israel, its involvement in the Persian Gulf War and its continued military presence in the Middle East. Some of the terrorists had lived in the United States for more than a year and had taken flying lessons at American commercial flight schools. Others had slipped into the country in the months before September 11 and acted as the “muscle” in the operation. The 19 terrorists easily smuggled box-cutters and knives through security at three East Coast airports and boarded four flights bound for California, chosen because the planes were loaded with fuel for the long transcontinental journey. Soon after takeoff, the terrorists commandeered the four planes and took the controls, transforming ordinary commuter jets into guided missiles.

The man behind these attacks was Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden the son of a Saudi billionaire. Osama bin Laden was a radical Islamic terrorist who began his terrorist career fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan with the assistance of our CIA and U.S. Weapons. One would imagine he would have been grateful to the U.S., but that was not the case. As soon as the Soviets left Afghanistan he turned on his benefactors with a vengeance. He wanted the U.S. out of Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Muslim world.

Our CIA and other intelligence agencies knew who and what bin Laden was. There was even a small group within the CIA charged with tracking bin Ladens moves, tactics and alliances.

On February 26, 1993, a truck bomb was detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The 1,336 pounds urea nitrate–hydrogen gas enhanced device was intended to send the North Tower (Tower 1) crashing into the South Tower (Tower 2), bringing both towers down and killing tens of thousands of people. It failed to do so but killed six people and injured more than a thousand. The mastermind behind this attack was bin Laden’s second in command, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This was the opening shot by bin Laden and al Qaida against the United States. Soon after there were attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing hundreds. Then there was the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. During the 2000 presidential run up bin Laden and his al Qaida crew attacked the USS Cole (a U.S. Warship) in the Yemeni port of Aden. 17 American sailors were killed, and 39 were injured.

All of these attacks were masterminded by bin Laden and al Qaida yet the U.S. intelligence and criminal agencies were not reading the signs of things to come or ignoring them. We were going about our business as usual more concerned with hanging chads and domestic issues. The signs were there. The United States was in denial.

After the 9/11 attacks President George W. Bush issued orders to send Special Forces into Afghanistan to search for bin Laden with no success. Soon after the U.S. invaded Iraq following faulty intelligence that Sadam Hussein processed weapons of mass destruction. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars were long a bloody giving the U.S. thousands of causalities.

As these wars wound down under the Obama administration a new threat began to surface. This threat came from ISIS (or ISIL). ISIS is a Salafi jihadist extremist militant group and self-proclaimed Islamic state and caliphate, which is led by and mainly composed of Sunni Arabs from Iraq and Syria. They are much more brutal than al Qaida and have no problem killing Muslims who oppose them. Also, ISIS is supported by Iran, the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world.

While the Obama administration forces his deal with Iran on the United States against the will of the majority of Americans ISIS continues its march towards a caliphate through Syria millions of refugees are being created. These refugees are flooding into Europe creating a mass problem. Germany's plan to take in 500,000 Middle East refugees per year is being hailed as humanitarian around the world, but uneasy critics inside the European power fear the huge influx could not only skew the nation’s demographics in a hurry, but could also include terrorists hiding among the war weary masses.

The United States is making plans to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming budget year, a significant increase from the 1,500 migrants that have been cleared to resettle in the U.S. since civil war broke out in the Middle Eastern country more than four years ago, the White House said Thursday.

There are various explanations for the hundreds of thousands flocking to Europe, but the ultimate responsibility for the crisis is the Western refusal to commit itself to two issues: a solution to the strife and Islamist control of a considerable part of Iraq, and ending the slaughter in the civil war in Syria. That war has so far led to about 250,000 deaths and millions being displaced inside and outside Syria. The whole world is threatened by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS) and the self-styled caliphate that organization has established.

The main problem in the area is the contending Arab and Muslim political and religious groups, yet the refusal of the West, particularly the U.S., to play a role is crucial. In 2003 a major mistake was made, during the Bush administration, by Paul Bremer when he disbanded the Iraqi army and the Baath party in Iraq, leading to unemployment, resentment, and the empowerment of a corrupt and inefficient Shiite minority.

But even more important has been the overly cautious foreign policy of Obama. Somewhat surprisingly, it was Hillary Clinton, after she was secretary of state, who remarked that Obama's phrase "Don't do stupid stuff" is not an organizing principle for foreign policy. It is true that no policy can solve all problems. However, it is now apparent that the initial Obama mistake was the failure to build up or to aid a credible fighting force of those originally opposing the Assad regime in Syria.

Many in the U.S. applauded Obama's refusal to commit ground troops of any kind to the region. Yet the total withdrawal of the Obama administration from Iraq and refusal to render sufficient help to Syria, as well as the refusal of European countries to intervene directly after the Arab Spring, meant losing the opportunity for moderate elements to emerge in the Arab world.

As a result, the countries of the EU had neither the will to participate nor the willingness to secure their borders sufficiently to prevent smuggling of people, some of whom were terrorists, from North Africa and the Middle East. Those countries, except Germany, are today hesitating — partly for economic reasons, but even more for political and security reasons — to absorb the mass of migrants.

Those migrants will exacerbate conditions in and among European countries. First, the migration has caused friction among the European countries because of the difficulty in agreeing on a quota system for claims for asylum. It will put pressure on economic resources as far as welfare and benefits are concerned. It will almost inevitably increase the strength of the anti-immigrant, far-right parties, with unfortunate consequences in both national and global politics.

Moreover, the danger of the migration influx has already become apparent. Media reports have shown migrants in Bulgaria, and some on a train in France, shouting "Allahu Akbar" and obscene language in struggles with police. Migrants in a camp near Milan have resorted to violence, destroying traffic signals and attacking shops in riots over "poor living conditions." The Greek island of Lesbos, six miles from the Turkish shore, has been invaded by thousands and become a war zone, with frequent violence and riots. Mytilene, the main town of Lesbos, has become a public urinal.

Despite media coverage that plasters images of women and children on this centuries-old invasion, it is worthy to note that, per the United Nations, 72% of these “Mediterranean sea arrivals” are single men. (“Mediterranean sea arrivals” being innocuous terminology for Islamic conquest.)

Breitbart also reports: “They are young. They are fit. They clearly know what they want. Yes, there are families. Plenty with young children. But if you stand and take a rough count it is hard not to come to the conclusion that young men are in the overwhelming majority.”

Without a doubt, young Muslim males often pose a special kind of threat. However Muslim women present a risk, as well, because traveling with them and their children is a totalitarian ideology that is incompatible with Western values. And that is the problem.

When many in the West look at photographs of Muslims arriving en masse to the southern shores of Europe they fail to see the hatred that lies in the hearts of many of these imports from Islamic nations – hatred, I might add, for us, our values, and our way of life. Hatred we have seen played out here and across Europe, from creeping Sharia to overt acts of terror and everything in between.

And so, not unexpectedly, this mash up of Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa are causing an outbreak of violence across Europe, along with a hefty dose of entitlement as these conquerors make demands.

The U.S. role cannot be misunderstood. Candidate Barack Obama on July 14, 2008 called for the phased redeployment of combat troops that he had long advocated, which he thought was needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States. He pledged that, if elected president, on his first day in office, he would give the military a new mission: to end the war. On January 21, 2009, his first full day in office, he did as he promised by asking the U.S. military leadership to plan for a responsible military drawdown from Iraq.

U.S. policy must take account of present realities: the threat of Islamic terrorism and militancy, essentially in the case of Iran but more immediately with the Islamic State. ISIS, originally an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq, had been weakened after 2006 but became stronger with the emergence of Baghdadi as leader in 2010 and his merger of the various jihadist groups in 2013. This happened during the Obama administration, which failed to appreciate this development and did little to help destroy the caliphate that IS established. With control over some 80,000 square miles and a population of 10 million, and a fighting force of more than 30,000, ISIS has created a brutal state based on Islamic law and made notorious by its cruelty, public beheadings, full veils for women, and special taxes imposed on non-Muslims.

So on Thursday, September 10, 2015 after Republican leaders spent months colluding with the Democrats, the Washington cartel ensured that our children and grandchildren will live in a world with a nuclear Iran. This is to be Obama’s legacy as bin Laden was Clinton’s legacy and Iraq and Afghanistan is Bush’s legacy. None of these legacies are based on solid intelligence and an understanding of the radical Islamic mind or goals. Iran, under its current leadership (and no doubt its future leadership) will not live up to is agreements. Obama will be gone to Hawaii and his Presidential Library will be full of propaganda but Iran and ISIS will remain for the next man or woman to occupy the White House.

Addressing the Republican’s role in Thursday’s outcome, Mark Levin had this to say:

“And I want Mitch McConnell to know something. You will have blood on your hands for the rest of your life and so will the Republican Party. You have taken a once great party, that stood on principle, that stood against slavery, that stood against segregation, that stood against the Nazis and the fascists, that stood against the communists, led by great men…And you, Mr. McConnell, you’re a quisling. You’re a little man. You’re a no nothing.

And this is on your head. You could have stopped this simply by following the Constitution. You claim to support the Constitution. You don’t support it any more than Barack Obama…You violated the Constitution. You’re no better than him. As a matter of fact, you’re worse than him. We know what he is. And you pretend to be something that you’re not.

The wrath of the nation should fall on your head, Mr. McConnell. And all the fools, all the lemmings who follow you over the cliff in the Republican party in the Senate.

And these fools will be all over TV this evening. They’ll be all over TV tomorrow and over the week-end, lamenting Barack Obama, lamenting what the Senate Democrats did, lamenting how dangerous this all is when they created the circumstances for this.

They have a majority. A majority in the Senate means everything. All they had to do was say this is a treaty in every respect. We’re going to treat it as a treaty…Obama can treat it as a cucumber. He can do whatever he wants. We’re going to treat it as a treaty. And you need 67 out of 100 votes, or 2/3rds of the senators present to get it ratified.

McConnell didn’t want to do it.

McConnell didn’t want to stand up, this man of very few brains; very inarticulate. This is a man who wouldn’t even have an Assistant Managers job at McDonalds. Look how high he’s gone in the Byzantine world of the United States Senate.

And so we now not only have a 9/11, but a 9/10 – when our leaders sold us down the river. Yet again. But this time the stakes are as high as they get.”

Today, as in the past 12 years there are ceremonies for the victims of 9/11. There are museums and memorials. There will be speeches by politicians and bureaucrats and comments by analysts. There will be the laying of wreaths and the playing of taps. Then all will be forgotten until next year when we will do it all over again.

Perhaps many elected officials don’t care about America, their oath of office, or our children. Apparently their allegiance to party and power trump concern for even their own children.

Yes, Mark Levin is right. The wrath of the nation should fall upon them.

Yes, the Past is Prologue.

Who Knows About The Ukraine?

“My ardent desire is, and my aim has been...to comply strictly with all our engagements foreign and domestic; but to keep the U States free from political connections with every other Country. To see that they may be independent of all, and under the influence of none. In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home.” George Washington, letter to Patrick Henry — 1795.

On April 13, it was announced that U.S. Army paratroopers were arriving in Poland on as part of a wave of U.S. troops heading to shore up America's Eastern European allies in the face of Russian meddling in Ukraine.

Fox News Reported:

“Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said an initial contingent of about 600 troops will head to four countries across Eastern Europe for military exercises over the next month.

First, about 150 soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team based in Vicenza, Italy, are arriving in Poland.

Additional Army companies will head to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and are expected to arrive by Monday for similar land-based exercises in those countries.

The show of strength comes as the United States, European allies and Ukraine try to ease tensions with Russia and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. All sides struck a diplomatic agreement last week, but it remains unclear whether pro-Russian demonstrators, who took over a series of government buildings in the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea, will back down.

Under the current plan, U.S. troops would rotate in and out of the four Eastern European countries for additional exercises on a recurring basis.

"We're looking at trying to keep this rotational presence persistent throughout the rest of this year," Kirby told reporters, adding that over time the exercises could expand to other countries.

The exercises are part of an effort announced last week by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel aimed at reassuring NATO allies of America's commitment to the region's defense.

Kirby said the U.S. will likely plan other exercises and will continue to work through NATO on joint measures that could be scheduled in the future.

"It's a very tangible representation of our commitment to our security obligations in Europe, and the message is to the people of those countries and to the alliance that we do take it seriously. And we encourage our NATO partners to likewise look for opportunities of their own to do this same kind of thing for one another," said Kirby. "And I think if there's a message to Moscow, it is the same exact message - that we take our obligations very, very seriously on the continent of Europe."

Armed pro-Russia groups have occupied areas in eastern Ukraine and have refused to leave until the country's acting government resigns. There was a burst of violence Sunday, with three people killed during a shootout at a checkpoint manned by pro-Russian troops. The U.S. has asserted that some of the troops are Russian special operations forces, and officials are pressing Russian to abide by an international accord aimed at stemming the crisis in Ukraine.”

So what does this mean? If you want to know I suggest you read “Command Authority” by Tom Clancy and Mark Greaney. Most of know who Tom Clancy was, but not many know about Mark Greaney. He has a degree in international relations and political science. He is the author of the Gray Man novels, the most recent of which is Dead Eye. In his research for those novels, he has traveled to a dozen countries and trained alongside military and law enforcement in the use of firearms, battlefield medicine, and close-range combat tactics. In essence he is an expert in foreign relations and what is going on in the world, probably as much if not more than the State Department or the CIA.

Over the years Clancy’s books have been somewhat prophetic. His Clear and Present Danger foretold the U.S. involvement in the drug wars in Colombia and his 1994 Debt of Honor predicted an airliner used as a guided missile crashing into the Capital Building — seven years before September 11, 2001.

Over the past few years until Clancy’s death in 2013 Clancy had franchised his novels to several authors The latest and final being Mark Greaney. Most critics believe that the bulk of Command Authority is the work of Greaney and that Clancy had little to do with it except for franchising the characters.

The story first takes us back 30 years, to a meeting between a GRU Special Forces Captain and a special member of the KGB. The purpose of this meeting is not fully revealed until much later as events unfold, piece by piece. Present day finds Jack Ryan Jr in London working on not military or political but financial intelligence - and a case involving Russian intelligence and criminal elements that will ultimately lead him into the upcoming fray. Meanwhile, Ryan Sr. meets with a former foe and now friend (a retired SVR chief) at the White House, who warns the president that the new Russian chief-of-state seeks to return his country to the days of old - just prior to dying due to being poisoned with a radioactive isotope. In Moscow, a Croatian assassin takes the fall after pulling off a devastating bombing that takes out someone in addition to, and much more important than the "targeted" UK finance man (and former British agent) - the current head of the SVR.

The new president of Russia has what most would call skeletons (literally) in his closet and he will do anything - everything - to keep those tucked away and out of sight as he continues executing his plans (and opposition) for what he envisions as Russia's domination. He will stop at nothing to achieve his agenda, including merging the separate FSB (internal) and SVR (foreign) intelligence agencies into one, under the leadership of his chosen man.

In the fictional novel the President of the United States is able to expose the Russian president for the scoundrel he is and curb his incursion into the Ukraine at the Crimea He was able to accomplish this with black ops and Special Forces along with a few bold moves.

Today’s real world is much different. When Vladimir Putin first came to power in 1999, he talked ideologically but acted rationally. He listened to a range of opinions, from liberal economist Alexei Kudrin to political fixer Vladislav Surkov — people willing to tell him hard truths and question groupthink. He may have regarded the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century, but he knew he couldn't re-create it. Perhaps the best metaphor is that while he brought back the Soviet national anthem, it had new words. There was no thought of returning Russia to the failed Soviet model of the planned economy. And as a self-professed believer who always wears his baptismal cross, Putin encouraged the once-suppressed Russian Orthodox Church.

He was a Russian patriot, but he also was willing to cooperate with the West when it suited his interests. One of the first leaders to offer his condolences after the 9/11 attacks, Putin shared Russian intelligence on al Qaeda with the United States. He did not hesitate to protect Russia's interests against the West -- in 2008 Putin undercut any thought of NATO expansion into Georgia by launching a war against its vehemently pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili — but Putin's challenges were carefully calibrated to minimize repercussions while maximizing gains. He shut off gas to Ukraine, unleashed hackers on Estonia, and, yes, sent troops into Georgia, but he made sure that the costs of asserting regional hegemony were limited, bearable, and short term.

But that was the old Putin. Today, the West faces a rather different Russian leader.

According to Foreign Policy Magazine:

“In Putin's actions at home as well, the Russian president is eschewing the pragmatism that marked his first administration. Instead of being the arbiter, brokering a consensus among various clans and interests, today's Putin is increasingly autocratic. His circle of allies and advisors has shrunk to those who only share his exact ideas. Sober technocrats such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu played seemingly no role in the decision-making over Crimea and were expected simply to execute the orders from the top.

This has become one of the new themes of Russian politics: the conflation of loyalty to the Kremlin with patriotism. It says much that dissidents at home, from journalists failing to toe the official line to protesters on the streets, are castigated either as outright "foreign agents" (every movement, charity, or organization accepting foreign money must register itself as such) or else as unknowing victims and vectors of external contamination -- contamination, that is, from the West, whose cosmopolitanism and immorality Putin has come to see as an increasing threat to Russia's identity. As a result, Putin's relationship with Russia's elite -- now often foreign-educated, usually well-traveled, and always interested in economic prospects abroad -- has become tortuous. Having provided members of the elite with opportunities during his first presidency, Putin not only mistrusts the elite now, but sees it as unpatriotic. Some $420 billion has flowed out of Russia since 2008, and in 2013, Putin decried those who were "determined to steal and remove capital and who did not link their future to that of the country, the place where they earned their money." In response, he launched a program of "de-offshorization" that has prompted major Russian telecom, metals, and truck-manufacturing companies to announce their return to Russia. And Alexander Bastrykin, the powerful head of the Investigative Committee and one of Putin's closest acolytes, promised a crackdown on schemes designed to transfer money out of the country.

These efforts are representative of a broader reconsolidation that requires the West to stay out of Russia's politics and that prevents its ideas and values from perverting Putin's country. In this context, Yanukovych's ouster from the Ukrainian presidency was the inevitable catalyst for a decisive expression of a new imperialism. From the Kremlin's perspective, a Western-influenced and -supported opposition movement in Kiev rose up and toppled a legitimate leader who preferred Russia over the European Union, in the process threatening the liberties and prospects of the ethnic Russian population in Ukraine's east.”

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“The pragmatic political fixer of the 2000s now genuinely believes that Russian culture is both exceptional and threatened and that he is the man to save it. He does not see himself as aggressively expanding an empire so much as defending a civilization against the "chaotic darkness" that will ensue if he allows Russia to be politically encircled abroad and culturally colonized by Western values at home.

This notion of an empire built on the basis of a civilization is crucial to understanding Putin. There are neighboring countries, such as those in the South Caucasus, that he believes ought to recognize that they are part of Russia's sphere of influence, its defensive perimeter, and its economic hinterland. But, he stops short of wanting forcefully to bring them under direct dominion because they are not ethnically Russian. Even when Moscow separated the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia in 2008, for example, it set them up as independent puppet states; it did not annex them into the Russian Federation.

Putin does insist, however, that Moscow is the protector of Russians worldwide. Where there are Russians and Russian-speakers and where Russian culture and the Russian Orthodox faith hold or held sway, these are nash -- "ours." Despite his mission to "gather the Russian lands" like the 15th-century's Prince Ivan the Great, this does not necessarily mean occupying Crimea today, Donetsk in eastern Ukraine tomorrow, and Russian-settled northern Kazakhstan the day after, but it helps define what he thinks is Russia's birthright. In his defense of the annexation of Crimea, he said that the Soviet Union's collapse left "the Russian nation … one of the biggest, if not the biggest, ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders."

Crimea, after all, is historically, ethnically, and culturally Russian, which is why, after its residents voted in favor of annexation, Putin approvingly noted that "after a long, difficult, exhausting voyage, Crimea and Sevastopol are returning to their native harbor, to their native shores, to their port of permanent registration -- to Russia." By contrast, the case to reach out to Transnistria in Moldova, for example, or even eastern Ukraine, is less clear. The Transnistrian Russians are relatively new colonists, arriving after World War II, and eastern Ukraine has Russian cities, but also a Catholic, Ukrainian countryside.”

But what he once merely frowned upon, Putin now wants to ban. The conservative backlash, with laws against gay "propaganda," the heavy-handed prosecution of members of punk band Pussy Riot after their "blasphemous" performance in a church, and renewed state control of the media, all speak to a new moral agenda -- a nationalist and culturally isolationist one. Just as Putin has been trying to "de-offshorize" the Russian elite, he is now launching what could be called a "moral de-offshorization." His more recent pronouncements have been full of warnings about the "destruction of traditional values," threatening the moral degradation of Russian society.”

The two things that Putin believes in and is doing are the incorporation of all ethnic Russians into a homogeneous empire and the destruction of NATO. Even though the Ukraine is a part of NATO’s Partners for Peace, a paper tiger at best, Putin see any involvement by NATO in the Ukraine as a threat to his plans.

Some 80 years ago another nationalist concerned with the ethnic security of his people had a plan. His plan, like Putin’s, involved expansion of his Third Reich into neighboring countries for the purpose of protecting ethnic German’s from the hordes polyglot populations created by the League of Nations after the end of the First World War. First was the Saarland where a plebiscite was promoted and voted in by the majority of ethnic Germans living there. Then came the Rhineland occupation to liberate more ethnic Germans from the French occupiers while the European powers, Mainly Britain and France looked on. Next was the Sudetenland (a part of Czechoslovakia – and artificial nation created by the League of Nations when the carved up the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This part of Czechoslovakia was one Bohemia- a part of Germany). Then came another “peaceful” takeover when the people of Austria voted to annex themselves to the larger Third Reich. This Anschluss, as it was called, was a vote created by Nazi provocateurs working inside of Austria. Finally ,after promises to Britain and France not to expand anymore, Adolph Hitler’s army tore down the border barriers at the border between Germany and the rest of Czechoslovakia and moved in to annex (take over) the remaining part of the country. Hitler had now consolidated his power over much of Europe without firing a shot while the allied power stood by helpless to stop him. Next came Poland and the beginning of the Second World War.

I am not comparing Putin to Hitler. There are many differences, but the parallels in the strategies do not escape me. Also we have seen feckless actions of NATO in the recent debacle in Libya. The member nations did not even have enough cruise missiles, aircraft, bombs, bullets, or communications to conduct the establishment of the no-fly zones to protect the Libyan rebels from the forces of Coronel Gadhafi.

In realty there is no NATO. What NATO member will risk lives and treasure to protect the Ukraine or Estonia or Latvia and Lithuania? These countries all have substantial numbers of ethnic Russians. Also Germany gets most of its natural gas from Russia and I don’t think they are too anxious to risk Putin turning off that supply so sanctions have will have little effect.

The only nation that can protect the Ukraine or the Baltic states is the United States and I firmly believe that will not happen. There will be blustering and threats from the White House but they will amount to nothing. Putin knows this. The American people will never support military action in Eastern Europe especially after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and our suffering economy. We can’t even decide to rid ourselves of Middle Eastern oil by building the Keystone Pipeline. Putin holds the winning hand and he knows it. Time is on his side.

All this helps explain the difficulty that Western governments have in understanding and dealing with him, especially this most aggressively cerebral U.S. administration. It seems that much is lost in translation between the Kremlin and the White House. Putin is not a lunatic or even a fanatic. Instead, just as there are believers who become pragmatists in office, he has made the unusual reverse journey. Putin has come to see his role and Russia's destiny as great, unique, and inextricably connected. Even if this is merely an empire of, and in, his mind — with hazy boundaries and dubious intellectual underpinnings — this is the construct with which the rest of the world will have to deal, so long as Putin remains in the Kremlin.

The Drone Problem

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” — Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS), also known as drones, are aircraft either controlled by ‘pilots’ from the ground or increasingly, autonomously following a pre-programmed mission. (While there are dozens of different types of drones, they basically fall into two categories: those that are used for reconnaissance and surveillance purposes and those that are armed with missiles and bombs.

The use of drones has grown quickly in recent years because unlike manned aircraft they can stay aloft for many hours (Zephyr a British drone under development has just broken the world record by flying for over 82 hours nonstop); they are much cheaper than military aircraft (about $4 million a copy) and they are flown remotely so there is no danger to the flight crew.

While the British and US Reaper and Predator drones are physically in Afghanistan and Iraq, control is via satellite from Nellis and Creech USAF base outside Las Vegas, Nevada. Ground crews launch drones from the conflict zone, then operation is handed over to controllers at video screens in specially designed trailers in the Nevada desert. One person ‘flies’ the drone, another operates and monitors the cameras and sensors, while a third person is in contact with the “customers”, ground troops and commanders in the war zone. While armed drones were first used in the Balkans war, their use has dramatically escalated in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the CIA’s undeclared war in Pakistan.

USAF MQ-1 Predator Drone Engages Insurgents & Insurgent Vehicle. Afghanistan from 10,000 feet

The US has two separate ‘squadron’ of armed drones – one run by the US Air Force and one run by the CIA. Using drones, the USAF Air Force has increased the number of combat air patrols it can fly by 600 percent over the past six years; indeed at any time there are at least 36 American armed UAVS over Afghanistan and Iraq. It plans to increase this number to 50 by 2011. Former CIA Director Leon Panetta has recently said that drones are “the only game in town.” The CIA have been using drones in Pakistan and other countries to assassinate “terrorist leaders.” While this program was initiated by the Bush Administration, it has increased under Obama and there have been 41 known drone strikes in Pakistan since Obama became President. Analysis by The Brookings Institution on drone attacks in Pakistan has shown that for every militant leader killed, 10 civilians also have died.

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, has said that the use of drones is not combat as much as ‘targeted killing’. He has repeatedly tried to get the US to explain how they justify the use of drones to target and kill individuals under international law. The US has so far refused to do so. In a report to the UN he has said the US government (and by implication the UK government) “should specify the bases for decisions to kill rather than capture particular individuals and should make public the number of civilians killed as a result of drone attacks, and the measures in place to prevent such casualties”.

A further question is the extent to which operators become trigger happy with remote controlled armaments, situated as they are in complete safety, distant from the conflict zone. Keith Shurtleff, an army chaplain and ethics instructor at Fort Jackson, South Carolina worries “that as war becomes safer and easier, as soldiers are removed from the horrors of war and see the enemy not as humans but as blips on a screen, there is very real danger of losing the deterrent that such horrors provide.” This is becoming a real life computer war game where its not simulation, but actually remote assassination.

The most publicly known instance of assassination was on September 30, 2011, in northern Yemen's al-Jawf province, when two Predator drones, based out of a secret CIA Base in Saudi Arabia, fired Hellfire missiles at a vehicle containing Anwar al-Aulaqi and three other suspected al-Qaeda members. A witness said the group had stopped to eat breakfast while traveling to Ma'rib Governorate. A Predator drone was spotted by the group, which then tried to flee in the vehicle. According to U.S. sources, the strike was carried out by Joint Special Operations Command, under the direction of the CIA. U.S. President Barack Obama said:

“The death of Awlaki is a major blow to Al-Qaeda's most active operational affiliate. He took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans and he repeatedly called on individuals in the United States and around the globe to kill innocent men, women and children to advance a murderous agenda. [The strike] is further proof that Al-Qaeda and its affiliates will find no safe haven anywhere in the world.”

What makes this strike different than other strikes against known or suspected terrorist is that Anwar al-Aulaqi was an American citizen. Al-Aulaqi was born in 1971 in New Mexico in the United States, where his father was doing graduate studies. In 1978, when he was seven years old, he returned with his family to Yemen. He lived in Yemen for 11 years, where he studied at Azal Modern School.

In 1991 Al-Aulaqi returned to the U.S state of Colorado to attend college. He earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University (1994), where he was president of the Muslim Student Association. He attended the university on a foreign student visa and a government scholarship from Yemen, apparently by claiming to be born in that country, according to a former U.S. security agent. He spent a summer of his college years training with the Afghan Mujahideen.

Al-Aulaqi also studied Education Leadership at San Diego State University, though he never completed his degree there. He worked on a Doctorate degree in Human Resource Development at George Washington University Graduate School of Education & Human Development from January to December 2001.

Fort Hood shootings suspect Nidal Malik Hasan was investigated by the FBI after intelligence agencies intercepted at least 18 e-mails between him and al-Aulaqi between December 2008 and June 2009. Even before the contents of the e-mails were revealed, terrorism expert Jarret Brachman said that Hasan's contacts with al-Aulaqi should have raised "huge red flags". According to Brachman, al-Aulaqi is a major influence on radical English-speaking Jihadis internationally. The Wall Street Journal reported that "There is no indication Mr. Awlaki played a direct role in any of the attacks, and he has never been indicted in the U.S."

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”

Obviously Al-Aulaqi was denied both his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights when that Hellfire missile blew him and Samir Khan, an American born in Saudi Arabia, who was editor of al-Qaeda's English-language web magazine Inspire, to smithereens

Blogger and current columnist for The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald, argued that killing Aulaqi violated his First Amendment right of free speech and doing so outside of a criminal proceeding violated the Constitution's due process clause. He mentioned doubt among Yemenese experts about Aulaqi's role in Al Qaida, and called United States government accusations against him unverified and lacking in evidence.

Another American critic of the War on Terror Paul Craig Roberts wrote Aulaqi gave "sermons critical of Washington’s indiscriminate assaults on Muslim peoples" who "told Muslims that they did not have to passively accept American aggression." He called the operation "The Day America Died" as the U.S. lacked evidence either Aulaqi or Khan were real threats or Al Qaeda operatives.

One might make a case using the line in the Fifth Amendment that states:

“..except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger”

This, however, might be a stretch as we have not declared war on anyone. During WWII there were German-Americans who were born in the United States of German parents and returned to Germany to fight with the German forces. Our soldiers did not ask the citizenship of enemy soldiers when they encountered them on the battlefield — they simply killed them. But, this was 1940 and we had a congressionally declared war at the time. This is 2013 and no war to my knowledge. Who would we declare war on? Would it be Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Afghanistan?

Where is the outrage? For all the anger over the Bush-era enhanced interrogation policies, where is the commensurate condemnation over President Obama’s justification for killing American citizens with no due process, no transparency, and no accountability?

An administration memo uncovered by NBC reporter Michael Isikoff strips the veil from Obama’s oft-Orwellian justification for assassinating American citizens believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or an associated force--even if there is no evidence of an imminent attack against the U.S.

“The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” the memo states.

Instead, it says, an “informed, high-level” official of the U.S. government may determine that the targeted American has been “recently” involved in “activities” posing a threat of a violent attack and “there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities.” The memo does not define “recently” or “activities.”

Killing suspected terrorists who happen to be American “is not an assassination,” according to the president’s Justice Department. “In the Department’s view, a lethal operation conducted against a U.S. citizen whose conduct poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States would be a legitimate act of national self-defense that would not violate the assassination ban.”

Oh, and disregard that part about imminent threat: Although Attorney General Eric Holder told the public in March that killing Americans could be justified if government officials determine the target poses “an imminent threat of violent attack,” his memo creates a massive loophole. It coins a chilling little phrase--“broader concept of imminence”--to absolve the government of the responsibility to find a clear and present danger.

According to a Reuters report Eric Holder stated:

"We'll have to look at this and see how, what it is we want to do with these memos. But you have to understand that we are talking about things that are, that go into really kind of how we conduct our offensive operations against a clear and present danger to this nation."

The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.

This is not an abstract theory. We’re already killing our own in the name of war. Under Obama, the antiwar candidate who campaigned against Bush’s trimming of U.S. civil liberties, the United States has escalated the number of drone strikes against Qaida suspects, including deadly attacks on American citizens, such as the 2011 strike in Yemen that killed alleged Qaida operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. They were U.S. citizens who had not been indicted or charged with a crime.

You might wonder whether Democrats who accused Bush of attacking the Constitution will hold Obama to a similar standard. It will also be interest to watch hawkish Republicans who oppose virtually every Obama policy: Will they fight this one? It is one thing to send a covert team into capture a suspected terrorist leader. It’s quite another to drop a bomb on his head from 10,000 feet killing him and anyone standing close by.

At the very least, Congress, the media and public should be pressing for answers to some basic questions including:

1. Where does this slippery slope end? If killing Americans with no due process is OK when their alleged crime is consorting with al-Qaida, it’s not a huge intellectual leap to give government officials the same judge-and-jury authority over other heinous acts. If the targeted group today is al-Qaida, why couldn't a president two decades from now have the authority to kill, say, Marxists?

2. Shouldn't there be a higher standard? In the enhanced interrogation debate, many Americans seemed to buy the concept that extreme measures might be necessary to prevent an imminent attack against the U.S. Should the standard be higher for torture than murder?

3. Why the doublespeak? Holder told the public months ago that killing Americans can be justified if “capture is not feasible.” But the memo gives more leeway to government officials, condoning the killing of an American if U.S. troops would be put at risk in an attempted capture, for example.

4. Why the secrecy? Obama promised to run the most transparent administration of modern times, and in many ways he’s kept the pledge, but not on this life-and-death issue. A group of 11 senators, led by Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, has urged Obama to release all Justice Department memos on targeting killings. There are many more, and more important, documents than the Isikoff memo that need exposure. The public deserves to know why its president, without due process or visibility, is issuing death sentences to alleged terrorists, some of them Americans. They learned today that the public statements of administration officials on this matter can't be trusted.

5. Where are the checks and balances? This core principle of American democracy is absent from the Obama memo, which insists that courts have no role in the decision to kill a U.S. citizen. Congress, it seems, lost its voice in the matter when post-9/11 lawmakers authorized the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against al-Qaida. "Judicial enforcement of such orders would require the court to supervise inherently predictive judgments by the president and his national security advisers as to when and how to use force against a member of an enemy force against which Congress has authorize the use of force," the memo reads.

“This is a chilling document,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, which is suing to obtain administration memos about the targeted killing of Americans. “Basically, it argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen. it recognizes some limits on the authority it sets out, but the limits are elastic and vaguely defined, and it’s easy to see how they could be manipulated.” In particular, Jaffer said, the memo “redefines the word imminence in a way that deprives the word of its ordinary meaning.”

“A lawful killing in self-defense is not an assassination,” the white paper reads. “In the Justice Department’s view, a lethal operation conducted against a U.S. citizen whose conduct poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States would be a legitimate act of national self-defense that would not violate the assassination ban. Similarly, the use of lethal force, consistent with the laws of war, against an individual who is a legitimate military target would be lawful and would not violate the assassination ban.” But, again I ask who are we at war with? Is it individuals, organizations, or nations? Who decides these matters? Is it congress or the Executive Branch?

We are slowly losing constitutional rights to the progressive statist and masterminds of the administrative state through executive orders, regulations and court decisions. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments are in shambles. There is a vicious attack on the Second Amendment and every attempt has been made to remove the right to practice religion in the public square from the First Amendment. Now the Executive branch is attacking the precepts of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. Soon the Bill of Rights will be a mere parchment to view in the National Archives. As Benjamin Franklin stated: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

This blog has been updated with a video showing the latest advancements in the Micro Aerial Vehicles.

Remembering Pearl Harbor

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941--a date which will live in infamy--the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” — President Franklin Roosevelt, Speech to Congress, December 8, 1941.

At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time on a beautiful Sunday morning 71 years ago on this date, a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its wings appeared out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 353 Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II.

With diplomatic negotiations with Japan breaking down, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisers knew that an imminent Japanese attack was probable, but nothing had been done to increase security at the important naval base at Pearl Harbor. It was Sunday morning, and many military personnel had been given passes to attend religious services off base. At 7:02 a.m., two radar operators spotted large groups of aircraft in flight toward the island from the north, but, with a flight of B-17s expected from the United States at the time, they were told to sound no alarm. Thus, the Japanese air assault came as a devastating surprise to the naval base.

Much of the Pacific fleet was rendered useless: Five of eight battleships, three destroyers, and seven other ships were sunk or severely damaged, and more than 200 aircraft were destroyed. A total of 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded, many while valiantly attempting to repulse the attack. Japan's losses were some 30 planes, five midget submarines, and fewer than 100 men. Fortunately for the United States, all three Pacific fleet carriers were out at sea on training maneuvers. These giant aircraft carriers would have their revenge against Japan six months later at the Battle of Midway, reversing the tide against the previously invincible Japanese navy in a spectacular victory.

The day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, President Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress and declared, "Yesterday, December 7, 1941--a date which will live in infamy--the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." After a brief and forceful speech, he asked Congress to approve a resolution recognizing the state of war between the United States and Japan. The Senate voted for war against Japan by 82 to 0, and the House of Representatives approved the resolution by a vote of 388 to 1. The sole dissenter was Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana, a devout pacifist who had also cast a dissenting vote against the U.S. entrance into World War I. Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States, and the U.S. government responded in kind.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was intended to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and hence protect Japan's advance into Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, where it sought access to natural resources such as oil and rubber. War between Japan and the United States had been a possibility of which each nation had been aware (and developed contingency plans for) since the 1920s, though tensions did not begin to grow seriously until Japan's 1931 invasion of Manchuria. Over the next decade, Japan continued to expand into China, leading to all-out war between those countries in 1937. Japan spent considerable effort trying to isolate China and achieve sufficient resource independence to attain victory on the mainland; the "Southern Operation" was designed to assist these efforts.

From December 1937, events such as the Japanese attack on the USS Panay and the Nanking Massacre (more than 200,000 killed in indiscriminate massacres) swung public opinion in the West sharply against Japan and increased Western fear of Japanese expansion, which prompted the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to provide loan assistance for war supply contracts to the Republic of China.

The attack had several major aims. First, it intended to destroy important American fleet units, thereby preventing the Pacific Fleet from interfering with Japanese conquest of the Dutch East Indies and Malaya. Second, it was hoped to buy time for Japan to consolidate its position and increase its naval strength before shipbuilding authorized by the 1940 Vinson-Walsh Act erased any chance of victory. Finally, it was meant to deliver a severe blow to American morale, one which would discourage Americans from committing to a war extending into the western Pacific Ocean and Dutch East Indies. To maximize the effect on morale, battleships were chosen as the main targets, since they were the prestige ships of any navy at the time. The overall intention was to enable Japan to conquer Southeast Asia without interference.

Striking the Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor carried two distinct disadvantages: the targeted ships would be in very shallow water, so it would be relatively easy to salvage and possibly repair them; and most of the crews would survive the attack, since many would be on shore leave or would be rescued from the harbor. A further important disadvantage—this of timing, and known to the Japanese — was the absence from Pearl Harbor of all three of the U.S. Pacific Fleet's aircraft carriers (Enterprise, Lexington, and Saratoga). Ironically, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s top command was so imbued with U.S. Admiral Mahan's "decisive battle" doctrine — especially that of destroying the maximum number of battleships — that, despite these concerns, Yamamoto decided to press ahead.

Japanese confidence in their ability to achieve a short, victorious war also meant other targets in the harbor, especially the navy yard, oil tank farms, and submarine base, could safely be ignored, since — by their thinking — the war would be over before the influence of these facilities would be felt

The American contribution to the successful Allied war effort spanned four long years and cost more than 400,000 American lives. There were many naval and land battles during the ensuing years including such names as Midway, The Battan Death March, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa that saw some of the most vicious fighting of the Second World War. Finally after 1,347 days and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced his country's unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of "a new and most cruel bomb."

Today I wager that not many people in the United States under the age of forty are familiar with the causes and effects of the Japanese attack on our naval base at Pearl Harbor. I am sure they are ignorant of the viciousness of the Japanese soldiers and the many atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese forces, especially to their captives — including men, women and children. They are also not aware of the horrific medical experiments carried out on civilians by Unit 731 in Manchuria to develop chemical and biological weapons — more horrific than anything the Nazis did in their concentration camps.

These younger citizens while not knowing much about the causes and atrocities of the Japanese during World War II are able to quote page and verse about the evils of our dropping the two atomic bombs to end the war. This is what they learn in our schools today. The other day while listening to a radio talk show I heard a caller state that his fourth grade daughter came home with an assignment that was based on a child’s book about a little girl who had lived through the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The caller, a former Marine, after reading the book was so incensed that he requested a meeting with the teacher to discuss what he was teaching. The caller went on to state that when he confronted the teacher on the lack of context for this atomic bomb book and the reasons we were at war with Japan and the ferociousness of the atrocities of the Japanese Imperial Forces he said the teacher had no answer. All the teacher could say is that this was the required reading according to the prescribed lesson plan. In other words the teacher was clueless about the events of the Second World War and Japan’s involvement.

We have revised and perverted history in our public school system to such an extent that our K-12 students no virtually nothing about our involvement in the Second World War — or much anything else. All they seem to learn today is about civil rights, Gay marriage, and redistribution of wealth. The latest example of this is a new animated video released by the California Federation of Teachers that shows the rich “1 percent” urinating on and stealing money from the less fortunate and middle class. The purpose of the video is to explain “economic inequality” and the need for wealthy people to pay their “fair share of taxes.”

According to the Blaze:

“Tax the rich: An animated fairy tale, is narrated by Ed Asner, with animation by award-winning artist Mike Konopacki, and written and directed by Fred Glass for the California Federation of Teachers. The 8 minute video shows how we arrived at this moment of poorly funded public services and widening economic inequality. Things go downhill in a happy and prosperous land after the rich decide they don’t want to pay taxes anymore. They tell the people that there is no alternative, but the people aren’t so sure. This land bears a startling resemblance to our land. After you watch this video, click here to share with friends, and send an email to your elected officials to let them know they need to restore higher federal tax rates on the wealthy so that we may once more enjoy properly funded public services.”

Tax the rich: An animated fairy tale, is narrated by Ed Asner

There have been several films made about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Three come to mind; Tora, Tora, Tora; Pearl Harbor, and Air Force.

Of all of the films Tora, Tora, Tora (Tiger, Tiger, Tiger) is by far and away the best and most accurate portrayal of both the Japanese and American sides of the attacks. Made in 1970 with the cooperation of the United States Navy the film details the intelligence and tactical failures of our government leading up to the attack and how the Japanese planned the attack. It also has a fantastic musical score by Jerry Goldsmith along with some terrific aerial combat scenes that are not computer generated.

Air Force, made in 1943, before all was known about the attack is based on the story of the nine B-17 bombers flying into Hickham Field during the attack. It’s basically a true story based on the crew of this B-17 Bombers.

The worst film by far is the 2001 soap opera Pearl Harbor. This film follows the story of two best friends, Rafe and Danny, and their love lives as they go off to join the war. Eventually they have a conflict over a Navy nurse (the soap opera part) and end up flying two P-40 fighter planes to take on the Japanese. The film ends with the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. If you view this film to get your history you will end up knowing nothing. Don’t waste your time on this 2001 chick flick starring Ben Affleck, it’s basically a love story with very little historical accuracy — pure Hollywood.

Over the years there have been numerous books and articles promoting a conspiracy at the highest levels of our government to drag us into a war in Europe. Most of these “theories” blame Roosevelt for pushing Japan into a corner and forcing them to attack the United States. Due to Japan’s three party agreement with Germany and Italy after we declared war on Japan the Germans and Italian would be forced to declare war on the United States (which they both did).

It is oft times easier and more comfortable to believe fiction than the truth. In 1941 there were two major bureaucracies in the United States. One was the alphabet soup of federal agencies created during the past eight years of the Roosevelt administration. These bureaucratic agencies grew out of the efforts to mitigate the effects of the Great Depression and often worked at odds with one another. The other and more entrenched bureaucracy was the United States military. Since the end of the First World War the military had been dramatically downsized. In 1941 U.S. Army ranked seventeenth among armies of the world in size and combat power, just behind Romania. It numbered 190,000 soldiers. (It would grow to 8.3 million in 1945, a 44-fold increase.) When mobilization began in 1940, the Army had only 14,000 professional officers. The average age of majors — a middling rank, between captain and lieutenant colonel — was nearly 48; in the National Guard, nearly one-quarter of first lieutenants were over 40 years old, and the senior ranks were dominated by political hacks of certifiable military incompetence. Not a single officer on duty in 1941 had commanded a unit as large as a division in World War I. At the time of Pearl Harbor, in December 1941, only one American division was on a full war footing.

There was a constant conflict over dollars and appropriations between the Army and the Navy and the services did not share intelligence easily. This was very similar to the situation prior to 9/11 with the various intelligence agencies. It should also be noted that there were two air forces; one under the control of the Army and the other belonging to the Navy. They flew different airplanes and trained their pilots differently. The Army Air Corps wanted strategic bombers while the Navy wanted carrier-based attack fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers for fighting a war at sea.

It was this military bureaucracy that created the intelligence breakdown and lack of tactical preparedness at Pearl Harbor causing both Lt. General Short (Army commander) and Admiral Kimmel (the navy commander) to be relieved of their commands after the attack for negligence and disgraced throughout history. An example of the tactical errors was General Short’s commanding that all USAAF fighters (P-40) be parked in the center of the tarmac to avoid potential sabotage thus making them a perfect target for the Japanese planes. As for the Navy it was purely by luck that Adm. Kimmel ordered his three carriers out to sea before the attack thus saving these incredibly valuable naval assets from the Japanese.

By late 1941, many observers believed that hostilities between the U.S. and Japan were imminent. A Gallup poll just before the attack on Pearl Harbor found that 52% of Americans expected war with Japan, 27% did not expect war, and 21% had no opinion. While U.S. Pacific bases and facilities had been placed on alert on multiple occasions, U.S. officials doubted Pearl Harbor would be the first target. They expected the Philippines to be attacked first. This presumption was due to the threat that the air bases throughout the country and the naval base at Manila posed to sea lanes, as well as the shipment of supplies to Japan from territory to the south. They also incorrectly believed that Japan was not capable of mounting more than one major naval operation at a time.

The U.S. government has had ten official inquiries into the attack – the inquiry by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox (1941), the Roberts Commission (1941–42), the Hart Inquiry (1944), the Army Pearl Harbor Board (1944), the Naval Court of Inquiry (1944), the Hewitt investigation, the Clarke investigation, the Congressional Inquiry (1945–46) and the top-secret inquiry by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, authorized by Congress and carried out by Henry Clausen (the Clausen Inquiry; 1946). The tenth inquiry, the Thurmond-Spence Hearing, took place in April 1995. The Dorn Report resulted from this tenth hearing. (Click here to read Vice Admiral David Charles Richardson’s critical analysis of the Dorn Report)

All ten reported incompetence, underestimation and misapprehension of Japanese capabilities and intentions, problems resulting from excessive secrecy about cryptography, division of responsibility between Army and Navy (and lack of consultation between them), and lack of adequate manpower for intelligence (analysis, collection, processing).

One perspective is given by Vice Admiral Frank E. Beatty, who at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack was an aide to the Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and was very close to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's inner circle, with perspicuous remarks as:

"Prior to December 7, it was evident even to me that we were pushing Japan into a corner. I believed that it was the desire of President Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Churchill that we get into the war, as they felt the Allies could not win without us and all our efforts to cause the Germans to declare war on us failed; the conditions we imposed upon Japan — to get out of China, for example — were so severe that we knew that nation could not accept them. We were forcing her so severely that we could have known that she would react toward the United States. All her preparations in a military way — and we knew their over-all import — pointed that way."

Another "eye witness viewpoint" akin to Beatty's is provided by Roosevelt's administrative assistant at the time of Pearl Harbor, Jonathan Daniels; it is the telling comment about FDR's reaction to the attack — "The blow was heavier than he had hoped it would necessarily be. But the risks paid off; even the loss was worth the price. "

Ten days before the attack on Pearl Harbor", Henry L. Stimson, United States Secretary of War at the time entered in his diary the famous and much-argued statement - that he had met with President Roosevelt to discuss the evidence of impending hostilities with Japan, and the question was “how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”

In the 71 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor no credible evidence has been uncovered to point to a willful conspiracy by members of the Roosevelt administration or the U.S. Military to allow the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. Sometimes as Sigmund Freud stated “a cigar is just a cigar.”

The attack on Pearl Harbor began at 7:55 am Hawaiian Island time, which equates to 12:55 pm Eastern Standard Time. If you were at the New York’s Polo Grounds you would have been watching the Brooklyn Dodgers getting ready to Kick Off against the New York Giants. At Washington D.C’s Griffith Stadium where the Washington Redskins were playing the Philadelphia Eagles you would have heard the public address announcer page high-ranking government and military personnel who were in attendance, but did not mention the attack. Reporters were told to check with their offices.

President Roosevelt did not learn of the attack until sometime that afternoon and within a few hours his Solicitor General, Charles Fahy, was in the White House recommending the detention of some 1,000 Japanese-Americans in the Hawaiian Islands on suspicion of espionage. This was the beginning of one of the greatest civil rights violations in the history of the Republic.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized military commanders to designate “military areas from which any or all persons may be excluded.” The result: More than 110,000 Japanese-Americans, plus several thousand German — and Italian-Americans, were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated to remote internment camps — “War Relocation Camps,” — Roosevelt and other officials called them where they remained until 1945.

The Roosevelt administration argued that the internment of Japanese-Americans, most of who lived on the West Coast, was a matter of military necessity. Persons of Japanese ancestry living in the United States were, the administration said, suspected of disloyalty, espionage, and otherwise aiding their fatherland, with which the United States was at war. Moreover, wrote Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, head of the Western Command, “it was impossible to establish the identity of the loyal and the disloyal with any degree of safety.” Therefore, the administration maintained, the government had little choice but to relocate and incarcerate them all.

Some of the wronged parties fought back through the courts. In 1943, Gordon Hirabayashi challenged a curfew the government had imposed on Japanese-Americans, while the next year Fred Korematsu took on the internment policy. Both clearly had the Constitution on their side. Roosevelt had unilaterally suspended habeas corpus for Japanese-Americans, though the Constitution — Lincoln's precedent notwithstanding — only permits Congress to undertake such a drastic action, and then only “in cases of rebellion or invasion.” The Fifth Amendment prohibits both the curfew and the relocation because both deprived individuals of their liberty (and, in the case of relocation, their property) without due process of law. The 14th Amendment mandates that all persons be afforded “the equal protection of the laws,” yet Americans of certain ethnicities were being singled out for unequal treatment.

The Roosevelt administration, never much concerned with the document FDR swore four times to “preserve, protect, and defend,” was determined to defend its policies toward Americans of Japanese descent at all costs, even to the point of lying to the highest court in the land. Solicitor General Charles Fahy defended the administration’s policies before the Supreme Court in the cases brought by Hirabayashi and Korematsu. Fahy argued that the curfew and relocation were matters of “military necessity” and “military urgency.” The court bought Fahy’s arguments and upheld Hirabayashi’s and Korematsu’s convictions, thereby declaring the administration’s policies constitutional.

Fast-forward to 2010. In the course of doing research on some immigration cases, Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal began looking into the World War II internment cases. On May 24, 2011, at a Justice Department event honoring Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Katyal revealed the following:

“By the time the cases of Gordon Hirabayashi and Fred Korematsu reached the Supreme Court, the Solicitor General had learned of a key intelligence report that undermined the rationale behind the internment. The Ringle Report, from the Office of Naval Intelligence, found that only a small percentage of Japanese Americans posed a potential security threat, and that the most dangerous were already known or in custody. But the Solicitor General did not inform the Court of the report, despite warnings from Department of Justice attorneys that failing to alert the Court “might approximate the suppression of evidence.” Instead, he argued that it was impossible to segregate loyal Japanese Americans from disloyal ones. Nor did he inform the Court that a key set of allegations used to justify the internment, that Japanese Americans were using radio transmitters to communicate with enemy submarines off the West Coast, had been discredited by the FBI and FCC. And to make matters worse, he relied on gross generalizations about Japanese Americans, such as that they were disloyal and motivated by “racial solidarity.”

“It seemed obvious to me that we had made a mistake,” Katyal added. “The duty of candor wasn’t met.”

The Roosevelt Justice Department had done far more than simply make a “mistake.”

“This was a deliberate, knowing lie by Fahy to the Supreme Court,” University of California at San Diego Professor Peter Irons told the Los Angeles Times. In the 1980s, wrote the paper, Irons “had found reports in old government files that showed the U.S. military did not see Japanese Americans as a threat in 1942. His research led to federal court hearings that set aside the convictions of Korematsu and Hirabayashi. Congress later voted to have the nation apologize and pay reparations to those who were wrongly held.”

This internment was simply another act of a nation on the verge of panic after the attack on Pearl Harbor. We had been through 10 years of a devastating depression, giant dust storms on the Great Plains, migrations of thousands of unemployed, and the 1938 Orson Wells radio program scare of an invasion by Martians as he dramatized H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds.” The nation was ready to take almost any action to prevent the fear of an invasion of the West Coast by the Japanese. There are many today that point fingers at the civil liberties advocates who did not speak out in 1942 against executive order 9066, but I doubt they would have done much better in the context of the times.

The final chapter of the war with Japan ended on August 6, 1945 when a B-29 bomber named the Enola Gay dropped a 20 megaton atomic bomb on Hiroshima and 3 days latter a similar bomb on Nagasaki. On August 15, six days after the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan announced its surrender to the Allies, signing the Instrument of Surrender on 2 September, officially ending World War II.

To explain to students that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan was ethically and morally wrong is pure nonsense. Without a thorough explanation of the causes that led to the dropping of these bombs the teacher or writer does a tremendous disservice to the students and the nation. This is one more example of how revisionist history plagues our K-12 school system today. I wonder, with trepidation, how the attack on Pearl Harbor will be remembered on the 100^th anniversary of the attack.

You can read a more detailed account of the attack on Pearl Harbor in my December 7, 2010 blog “Remember Pearl Harbor.”