Sunday, March 3, 2024

What is “Separation of Church and State” and is it in the Constitution?

At a church group gathering discussing the Ten Commandments, part of today’s (3/3/24) Sunday readings, I made the comment that in today’s culture you are not allowed to have the Ten Commandments displayed in a public facility.  Immediately one person responded that that is because of the “separation of church and state.”  This is a typical response; many Americans have adopted this misleading impression that the United States Constitution has a separation of church and state:   The United States Constitution does not have such separation.  You will not find it in the Constitution.  This refers to a misunderstanding of what is called The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.  Here is what it states:  

 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

What qualifies as “church” and what does not?   The misunderstanding has been appropriated by many, including, the Supreme Court, in the 1947 case of Everson v Ewing Township, legal professionals such as Erwin Chemerinsky, a well-known law school dean at Cal Berkeley.    The misunderstanding refers to a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Church in 1802 in which he gave a sort of clarification of the Establishment Clause.   Professor Robert P. George, a Constitutional law expert and professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University explains it this way: 

 “The separation of church and state” is a phrase that appears nowhere in the Constitution. We have heard of those words because they were written by Thomas Jefferson to a Danbury Baptist Church community in explaining our Constitution’s stance toward religion. He drew the metaphor of a “wall” of separation between church and state.  The truth in what Jefferson is saying is pretty straightforward. When understood correctly, it means that the institutions of the state and the institutions of the church are separate. Under our Constitution, no political figure holds office by virtue of an ecclesiastical appointment, and no ecclesiastical figure holds office in virtue of a political appointment.”

Click here to read Professor George’s entire opinion.  For another terrific explanation of the “the separation of church and state”  Click here for a five-minute video by former Chapman University Law School Dean, John Eastman.

When people make this type of argument, what they are doing is claiming that something is religion when it is not.  What is religion?  Is the First Amendment religion? Was Jefferson’s letter religion? I don’t know of anyone who has made such an argument.  Different people will define it as they wish.  By calling something religion, as in the claim of the “separation of church and state,” they are putting it in a category where it can be easily dismissed without evidence, that is, arbitrarily asserted.  But what can be arbitrarily asserted can be arbitrarily denied.  This falls under the Principle of ReasonNon-contradiction, complete explanation, objective evidence.  To argue that something falls under “religion” or "church" without objective evidence, is an egregious attempt to prove your point by creating a straw man. 

Are the Ten Commandments religion?  How do you define religion?  Is the prohibition against killing or stealing or adultery, or not bearing false witness religion?  And, if so, who would argue that they are wrong or not acceptable?  The Ten Commandments are a manual for right living and a well-ordered society. They can easily fall under natural law; that is, a law written on each person’s heart.  In fact, government is dependent on a such ordered society.  For example, everyone would agree that stealing is wrong.  If you had to prove it, steal someone’s property, and see if they disagree.   Would you have less crime or more crime if a society followed the Ten Commandments?

The United States Constitution is neutral on religion.  It simply states that you cannot have a state religion nor favor one religion against another.  It does not prohibit having a Bible study at a public institution such as a school, as long as it is not required or done by employees of the school.  If you read the article linked above by Professor George, religious activities are allowed if they are balanced and not favor one or the other and if you allow one, you must allow the other. 

 

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Corrosive Racism: The Jews

 The history of racism, prejudice and oppression of certain ethnic groups is long and brutal as is the list of ethnic groups.  They include such people as Asians, Hispanics, Blacks, Armenians, Southern Europeans like Italians and Irish, just to name a few.  The Jews, however, have the first position on racism, oppression, and genocide against them, such as the holocaust of World War II.

 

For this piece I will concentrate on Jewish racism and oppression.  From the time of Jesus Christ, the Jews have been persecuted; no, lets back up, they were persecuted even before Jesus, by the Greeks and Romans, for instance.  After the crucifixion of Jesus, the Jews were accused of killing Jesus.  Even the Christian Church, and by that, I mean most of Christianity, oppressed the Jews because they accused them of killing Jesus.  Here is the biggest problem:  Accusing the Jews of killing Jesus totally misunderstands and misrepresents what the crucifixion was all about.  No, the Jews did not kill Jesus:  we did by our sins; you and me.  This is what is called redemption. That is why Jesus was crucified, to pay for our sins.  The Jews no more killed Jesus than we did.  The Romans killed Jesus.  The Jews condemned Him to death, but the Romans could have declined to kill him. This misunderstanding of the crucifixion goes on today among Christians.  In my piece about Pope Pius IX posted in January of 2020 on this blog, titled Pope Pius IX, Pope, King and Tyrant, I made this statement about how Pius IX treated Jews in Rome in the mid 19th Century: “In Rome, the Jewish population was kept in a ghetto by law.  Jews could not own property, they could only work in some professions, but not others; they could not testify in court.  The Jews even had to pay a large sum each year to support the House of the Catechumens, the church organization dedicated to their conversion.”  On top of that Jews had a curfew.  Anyone not inside the ghetto by a specified time had to sleep in the streets outside of the ghetto.  Suffice it to say, the church was one of the worst offenders against the Jews.

 

After the Hamas massacre of Israelis of October 7, 2023, many Jews all over the world, and especially in the United States were attacked randomly.  Harvard University as well as most of academia, refused to condemn the persecution of Jews.  This is akin to persecuting all blacks because two blacks committed a crime in your city. Stupid is as stupid does as the philosopher, Forrest Gump would say. 

 

In World War II, Hitler rounded up all Jews and sent them to the gas chamber to be murdered simply for being Jewish.  During the Spanish Inquisition, Jews were forcibly expelled from their own country.  I’m from a small Sicilian town of around 3,000 residents in the Madonie Mountains of north central Sicily.  My town had about 53 Jewish households that were expelled during the Spanish Inquisition (Sicily was a Spanish colony at the time).  These people lost their home, their property and everything they had.  The people and governments that expelled these good people ended up suffering for the loss of these good citizens which is immeasurable.  For Jews, in general, are self-reliant, industrious and some of the most productive people on earth.  Some of the best minds in history were Jews:  Einstein and Niels Bohr in science, for instance, and Gustav Mahler and George Gershwin in music, just to name some.  What country would not want to have such people?

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Et tu Brute? The Ugly Face of Racism and the Betrayal of Japanese Americans During WWII

 

First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

A Poem by Martin Niemöller  


Et tu Brute? And you Brutus?  Is what Caesar is alleged to have said when he was stabbed in the back by his good friend Brutus in 44 BC.  The annals of betrayals are filled with many examples.  I’ve always been fascinated with such great injustices like the atrocious decision of President Franklin D. Roosevelt after the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, to arrest and imprison 110,000 innocent, loyal American citizens, and immigrants of Japanese origin. This screams out loud of racism, prejudice, and wonton lawlessness.  Remember that not one, not one case, was ever brought against any of the Japanese Americans that were interned in what they called “relocation camps.”  When I first wrote on this subject in another post on this blog, I called these camps Concentration Camps; my sister-in-law read it and reminded me that they were called “relocation camps” not concentration camps.  They were concentration camps, without the ovens or the killing of the Hitler camps. I’ve read three books on this subject trying to wrap my mind around the atrocities.  The latest one, is a book first published in the early 1970s called “Farewell to Manzanar” by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and her husband James D. Houston.  This book is a personal account by Wakatsuki, who was at Manzanar as a young child.   


The history of this brazen racism goes back to the middle 19th century.  It heated up in the early 20th century when racism against Asians rose to a fever pitch, leading to laws that put in stone such racism.  In 1911 the US Bureau of Immigration declared that Japanese Americans born in Japan could not become citizens.  In 1913 the Alien Land Bill prevented Japanese aliens from owning land in California.  The Immigration Act of 1924 severely restricted immigration even from Europe.  A quota was initiated giving Southern Europeans a tiny quota compared to northern Europeans.  Italians, for example, and others were limited to 2% of the Italian American and other Southern European population of 1890.  For Japanese Americans, it was more severe:  Japanese Americans were no longer allowed to immigrate to America.  Prior to WWII Japanese Americans were not allowed to have a fishing license in California, thereby preventing fishermen from practicing their trade.  The act was an insult to the Japanese and other European governments of which they protested vigorously. 


Eugenics is believed to have been a driving force for the rampant racial discrimination.  Sir Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin and collaborator was the father of Eugenics.  From 1880 up until the mid 1950s Eugenics was popular among the U.S. and world Intelligentsia, scientists, corporate leaders, politicians such as Winston Churchill, and even presidents such as Woodrow Wilson.  As many as 31 states had Eugenics laws on the books.  The famous Eugenics U.S. Supreme Court case of Buck vs Bell (1927) is one example, where a young woman, Carrie Buck, as well as her child, were accused of being  “imbeciles” or “feeble minded” without any proof.   She was forced to be sterilized.  The child she had prior to sterilization ranked at the top of her class.  Carrie lived a normal life, married, and survived two husbands.  The accusation was patently false and without merit.  It is no coincidence that racial discrimination had a strong connection to Eugenics.  Many other women were sterilized without their knowledge.  As many as 70,000 women were sterilized without their knowledge. Click here.


Racism and prejudice in general have no rhyme nor reason; it goes against any rhyme or reason; it is counter intuitive and evil because it leads to great injustices.  Asians, and Japanese Americans, in my estimation, and I think it is correct, are some of the best citizens any country could have.  They are self-reliant, industrious, law-abiding, and productive people that contribute to any culture or civilization.  Besides the cruelty of imprisoning innocent people and all that follows from it, the incarceration of entire families was mentally and psychologically abusive.  The dignity of the person was taken away and the result was traumatic and permanently life changing for most, especially men and fathers.  Here is where you see how important human dignity is to the individual; without it you emasculate the person; you suck the soul out of the individual. Wakatsuki’s father who was born in Japan, for instance, was a proud man, a successful farmer and family man.  When they deprived him of his role as a husband and a father, he suffered immeasurable physical and psychological harm.  This is something that cannot be fixed or repaired.  He was first arrested and removed from his family and sent to a camp in Jerome, Arkansas for nine months.  In an emotional reunion when he was reunited with his family at Manzanar, he gets off the bus upon arrival and his family is there to greet him.  Both him and his family are frozen in place for a long time just looking at each other, unable to hug each other.  The pain that was going on with him and his family was palpable.  This was psychological abuse of the worst kind to innocent people.  Psychological terrorism. 


I don’t know if this evil perpetrated against these innocent good citizens was pre-meditated but consider this:  Many of the places where the “relocation camps” were installed were some of the worst places for anyone to live.  Manzanar, for example, was at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in the Owens Valley desert of California.  An unforgiving place.  The summers are brutally hot and the winters brutally cold with gale force winds.  On top of that, the ramshackle buildings the Army put up were of primitive construction.  Wood slats that had openings for the dust to get in making the winters unbearable.  In “Farewell to Manzanar” Wakatsuki describes an episode where they were covered with a half inch of dust in their beds during a windstorm.  I personally visited Manzanar in 2019 in the month of July; the temperature was 105 and the wind was so strong I could not stay outside of my car.  At Heart Mountain, in Wyoming it was brutally cold as well in the winter.  Click here for a fine documentary made years ago by David Ono, a TV anchor on the ABC Channel 7 in Los Angeles.  I highly recommend you watch this. 

In 1945 the camps were closed, and the people released on their own recognizance with no financial aid. Many had lost everything, house, business, and personal property.  They had no job nor anyone willing to hire them due to the heavy prejudice that existed at the time.  Wakatsuki and her family relocated to Long Beach, California and found a place to live on the westside in a communal barracks boarding house.  Racism was still raging unabated. Wakatsuki managed to befriend a Caucasian girl her age. When she asked if she could join the girl scouts with her, the answer was no.  In a powerful example of the racism, they had to endure, she recalls this story about what happened one day when she and her sister were traveling: “We were sitting on a bus stop bench in Long Beach, when an old, embittered woman stopped and said, “Why don’t all you dirty Japs go back to Japan?” She spit at us and passed on.  We said nothing at the time.  After she stalked off down the sidewalk, we did not look at each other.” 


In another black eye for America, there is the United States Supreme Court case of Korematsu vs United States in 1944.  The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, approved of what FDR did with Executive Order 9066 imprisoning innocent American citizens and alien immigrants without due process.  So much for innocent until proven guilty; so much for Stare Decisis.


Recommended Reading:


1.     Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston

2.    Infamy; The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II; Richard Reeves

3.    The Eagles of Heart Mountain, A true Story of Football, Incarceration and Resistance in World War II America, Bradford Pearson

         My previous Blog post: The Rape of Japanese Americans in World War II 

Sunday, February 4, 2024

Papal Infallibility?

 Papal Infallibility is defined as: “A dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, in virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope when he speaks ex cathedra is preserved from the possibility of error on doctrine "initially given to the apostolic Church and handed down in Scripture and tradition.”  There is much misunderstanding, both among Catholics and Protestants about what this means.  It does not mean that whatever the pope says is infallible.  Since the start of the tenure of Pope Francis we’ve seen constant mixed messages and thoroughly confusing pronouncements.  Many pronouncements look to be contrary to Biblical truth and church teaching, such as the blessings of homosexual couples. No, this does not fall under infallibility.  Infallibility must be “ex cathedra,” from the Chair, and only on issues of Biblical or moral truth.  History has shown that many popes have been dead wrong, such as when they opposed and persecuted Galileo for his scientific findings which were confirmed by other scientists and are today accepted science without debate.

 

Given all of this, as a Catholic myself, I find papal infallibility problematic in general and dubious in particular.  Let’s start from the history of this doctrine.  Pope Pius IX made this proclamation, and it was affirmed by the First Vatican Council in 1869-70 and Vatican II in 1963-65. This dogma remains controversial to this day.  First, Pope Pius IX, known as Pio Nono in Italy, I personally consider a bad pope; perhaps one of the worst popes of all time.   I wrote about him in a post on this blog titled “Pope Pius IX, King and Tyrant.”  Click here to read it.  Pius IX had a very turbulent and troubling papacy.  During his reign, the pope was the head of a country, besides the Vatican:  The Papal States which included most of central to Northern Italy; from Rome to Bologna.  The pope ran the Papal States with an iron had.  He was the king; opposition to him was considered equal to a sin and dealt with ruthlessly.  My blog post mentioned earlier gives the details.  Also, the reign of Pope Pius IX was a very turbulent period with rebellion and war.  In 1850 after a rebellion against him, Pius IX called upon France to rescue him.  France sent 30,000 soldiers who attacked and sacked Rome, killing over 2,000 Romans.  After the French took Rome, and against the advice of the French leaders and authorities to not take revenge on rebels, Pius IX executed many Romans who had opposed him, without trial and in public; some in the main square of Rome, Piazza del Popolo.  France even sent the pope a gift:  Two new guillotines.  Again, the details are in the blog post mentioned earlier.  In 1870 the new unified Italy finally took control of Rome and the Papal States.  The pope lost all his territory except for the Vatican.  A final note on Pope Pius IX:  Pope John II in 2000 proclaimed him “Blessed,” the first step to sainthood.  Who am I to judge?  as Pope Francis famously stated.

 

Papal infallibility has been used only twice since 1854 when the same Pope Pius IX proclaimed it in connection with the Immaculate Conception of Mary and the second time when Pope Pius XII affirmed the same in 1950; in both cases after polling of bishops.  In defense of papal infallibility, whatever is considered under these auspices must meet certain strict standards, and that is Biblical truth and the agreement of the entire Magisterium, not just a Papal Bul.  There are universal truths that cannot change.  The truth of the resurrection cannot change for example.  The truth of Christ’s redemptive work on the cross cannot change. 

 

 

Monday, January 1, 2024

A House Divided Cannot Stand: World War I and the Failure of the Allied Decisions at the End

 It is often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result.  War, in general, fits this definition perfectly.  There are many examples. I will use one – World War I, 1914-1918. This is not the first piece I’ve done on WW I.  I recently read another good book on WW I, “A Peace to End All Peace” by David Fromkin (1989), published by Holt Paperbacks.  The thrust of the book is on the British, their Middle East (ME) campaigns, and the disastrous decision made at the end of the war on how to divide the defeated Ottoman Empire.  The title of the book is very descriptive of the reality and madness of this war and the decisions made at the end.  The expansive British Empire was still intact during this war.  An empire that reached around the world, from the ME to Africa, India and Asia, such countries as Malaysia, Burma, and Singapore.  Click here for a map of British India prior to 1947.  Britain also had the help of their dominions and former colonies such as Australia and New Zealand and African colonies in the war effort.  A huge empire.  In my reading, of the Fromkin book, the British deserve much of the blame for fanning the flames of war.  With one million British and empire troops, and with help from France, the British were the main fighting force against the Ottoman Empire.  At war’s end they occupied most of the former Ottoman territory.  The main aim of both Britain and France was colonial gain, not a thoughtful division of the defeated Ottoman Empire.  Greed was number one.  What the British did in the ME turned out to be a catastrophe.  They made agreements with the French and the multiple indigenous Arab tribes which they reneged on, over and over.  One such example was the Sykes-Picot Agreement.   

Being the dominant military power in the ME, Britain had a lot of influence.  They made promises to the Jewish people about an independent Jewish Palestine that they could not or would not keep.  They made deals with the French which they never kept, unless they had no choice either financially or practically.  They played the Arabs against each other and the French against the Arabs.  They made ill informed decisions based on the opinion of their appointed ME representatives.  They were basically driving half blind; pretending they understood the Arabs when they did not.  They had lone-wolfs in the ME like T.E. Lawrence, who is portrayed as a hero of the Arabs, but left a lot to be desired.  Lawrence even fooled his own government with his bravado.  In the early 1960s, a big movie was made about him called “Lawrence of Arabia” which lionized him.  The Fromkin book is not so kind to him.  The British treated Lord Kitchener, their “expert” ME representative, as their go-to man on everything ME or Arab where in fact Kitchener was self-deluded, and certainly overrated, and mostly wrong on military decisions he recommended.  They made decisions that proved to be disastrous, such as their attack on the Dardanelles in February 1915 which turned into a humiliating defeat for them.  They lost some 200,000 casualties just in this campaign, the Turks lost an equal number and the French some 47,000.  Many of the British casualties were empire troops from Australia, India and New Zealand. 

The French and the Arabs were not the only ones stiffed by the British.  In Chapter 41 of the Fromkin book, he gives the example of the promises made to Italy to get her to join the war on the Allied side.  Britain, France, and Italy signed an agreement, known as the St. Jean de Maurienne Agreement, promising Italy part of the Ottoman Empire after its defeat.  A deal that neither France nor Britain meant to keep and in fact, reneged. Italy, a country of 35 million people at the time did join the war and lost over 650,000 casualties and got nothing in return.  Sure, they got the Alto Adige area from Austria, but within three years after World War II, they were forced to cede the area south of Trieste called Istria, which included the city and port of Fiume to the Communist tyrant, Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia - They were stabbed in the back by their “friends,” Britain and France.  It gets worse.  After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Italy landed troops in the area they understood were to be given to them, Anatolia, the western area of what is today Turkey, The British double-crossed them by playing the Greeks against the Italians; sending the Greek Army there too, not to help them out but to compete for the same territory. After it was clear they had no support, the Italians pulled out, but the Greeks stayed and fought a war with the Turks.  By 1922 a resurgent Turkey, led by the brilliant Turkish military commander, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, crushed the Greek Army.  Ataturk became the first leader of Turkey and is worshipped as the George Washington of Turkey. 


After crushing the Greeks, Ataturk attacked the City of Smyrna, which in those days was an international city with a mostly Christian population.  After crushing the defenders of Smyrna, Ataturk’s forces burned Smyrna to the ground, killing about 200,000 Christians, Greeks, Armenians, and others, and committing unspeakable war crimes.  The Greek Archbishop of Smyrna, Metropolitan Chrysostom, was captured by marauding Turkish forces and turned over to a mob which savagely mutilated him before killing him.  A fine book on what happened in Smyrna in 1922 is called “Paradise Lost, Smyrna 1922,” by Giles Milton.  A most disgraceful episode in history that no one knows about.  Another disgraceful episode was the fact that many western naval vessels were docked at the Port of Smyrna and refused to help the people desperate to flee the fires.  Many drowned in the harbor, fleeing the fire.  The world stood quiet and to this day very few know of this atrocity; like the Armenian Genocide of 1915.  For more details on this despicable historical episode, I wrote an entire piece on it in 2010 in this blog.  Click here to read it.  Another book on the Ataturk destruction of Smyrna is called “The Great Fire” by Lou Ureneck, Harper Collins, 2015; re-named in the paperback version “Smyrna 1922.”  Both books are well researched and written.  Excellent reading. 


Backstabbing, promises and agreements not kept, inner fighting among allies was the dominant theme of the Fromkin book.  Self-interest, delusion, bone-headed decisions based on guesswork were common everyday occurrences.  If these leaders were a classroom full of 3rd graders, you would call he principal and have them put in detention until they wised-up.  The best example of these shenanigans perpetrated by the allies, but mainly Britain and France was when Britain decided to play the Greeks against the Italians in Turkey.  Here was the first opportunity that came up in the 465 years since the Turks conquered the Byzantine Greek Romans in Constantinople in 1453.  The Greeks had a chance to regain their former territory, but they were abandoned by France and Italy.  Britain gave them verbal support but would not lift a finger to aid them.  All were looking at their own interest, not common interest. The allies, after the defeat of the Ottomans, were left with insufficient military forces to maintain the peace in Turkey.  It was estimated that they would need close to 1,000,000 troops to enforce the armistice. Britain did not have the troops nor the money to do this, nor the will; exhausted by the war.  This provided the Turks the opportunity to rearm, unimpeded.   Allied bickering was their undoing, almost as much as an opposing army.  Good leaders matter: unfortunately, there were very few on the allied side.  Without Ataturk, the Turks would have never been able to mount a resistance.


This sorry situation with supposed allies, betraying each other at every turn is a familiar playbook.  When the Byzantines were on their knees against the marauding Turks in the 15th Century, they begged their Christian friends in Europe for help.  Constantinople, a grand city, and capital of Christendom for centuries was down to a population of around 50,000.  All appeals for help were denied by their brother Christians in Europe.  One exception was a Genoese military commander, Giovanni Giustiniani, who gathered 700 volunteers to go help Constantine XI, the last emperor of the Byzantines.  The Byzantines had only 7,000 troops vs a Turkish force of over 80,000.  The Turks surrounded Constantinople, breached the city walls with a new cannon they had acquired, and went on a killing spree, killing all the Christians they encountered.  The Moslem Turks had completed their conquest of the Byzantine Empire.  This is what isolationism looks like. For an excellent history of what happened to the Byzantine Empire, read the fine book, “Lost to the West” by Lars Brownworth (2009), Crown Publishers. 


War makes men in power delusional and dangerous.  Such bad actors as Hitler, Mussolini or Stalin are prime examples.  All three were certainly mad men, detached from reality.  This type of delusion is widespread, however, not just confined to lunatics such as these three.  The British, with their greed for more power and land launched a catastrophic war that did the opposite of their greed:  Within 25 years they lost their entire empire and caused another catastrophic world war.  I recently read a book on the history of the Habsburg, Austria-Hungary Empire.  The leaders of this empire had many problems they could not solve.  Going to war, was thought of as an opportunity for a better future.  It did the opposite – they lost their entire empire like the British some twenty years later.  War is madness.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               


Both Britain and France were happily anticipating earning a large piece of the Ottoman Empire.  It never materialized.  It never occurred to them of how to keep the peace after the war. First, the two parties fought each other on how much France got, second the local people yearned for independence, and they did not want neither one governing them; third, both the British and French would have to have a large military presence in the acquired territories.   They did not have the money, nor the troops to do it.  Fourth, neither one could afford the cost of having a large military presence in the acquired territories.  So, within twenty years and huge expenditures both France and Britain lost the entire former Ottoman territory, and the area became independent and divided into what we have today in the ME.  So, the result:  a lot of blood and human beings killed and maimed, a lot of money spent with zero gain.  This debacle led also to the end of the British, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, and German empires.  Welcome to the madness of war.    We are still paying the price of these bad decisions.  constant turmoil 100 years later.   

World War I estimated deaths:   

Allies including Britain:  900,000  

France:  1.3 million

Italy:  651,000

Russia:  1.9 million

USA:  116,708

Serbia:  275,000  

Other Nations: 5.4 million     


By the end of World War II, the British, Japanese and French Empires ended.  In all nine million combatants and five million civilians died.  Costs are estimated at 337 billion dollars in 1918 money, or about 7 trillion dollars in today’s money.   The madness of war. Did any nation gain anything? I don’t think so.

In reading the Fromkin book, you get the impression that the British were herding cats; they had an impossible situation in their hands for which no one could solve.  The Arabs were in competition for land and independence.  The established Arab aristocracy was in a race to find their own leaders. There was the House of Saud and the House of Hashem who competed for who was going to win the top price of leader of areas yet undetermined.  The Arab prince, King Hussein of the Hejaz, an area along the western coast of what is today Saudi Arabia, curried favor with both other Arabs and the British to support his leadership.  Then there was Abdullah of Transjordan, another Arab prince who eventually became king of Jordan.  The British, eager to have powerful Arabs support them, would pay them a yearly subsidy.  Hussein of the Hejaz, for example, was paid 100,000 Pounds yearly.  Then there was the question of Zionism, the Jewish homeland question which the British tried to negotiate.  This was a huge challenge for which there was no answer.  One hundred years later, the problems still exist.  As of this writing the nation of Israel is in a war with Hamas, the rulers of the Gaza Strip.  Arabs and Jews are killing each other at record pace. Just within the last month over 20,000 people have been killed.  Without fear of equivocation, the British were swimming against the tide in the ME. By the beginning of World War II, both the French and British left the ME.  By 1948, the British would lose their entire empire, except for a few African countries which they lost by the early 1960s.  The French were defeated in Indochina by 1954, then they had another war in Algeria which they also lost.  So much for the dream of empire. 

Greed, selfishness, and betrayal are the fruits of what happened in the ME and during WW I.  You can’t help but feel exhausted by the treachery among supposed allies.  The depravity of man is clearly exhibited in this story.   

Final Thoughts:

You may say that looking back with the convenience of time and results is “Monday morning quarterbacking.” This may be so, but there is one glaring lesson:  Failure to learn from history is condemnation to repeat the same mistakes,” as George Santayana would say.  Some examples:

1.     Vietnam.  The United States failed to learn the lessons of the French failure there after WW II.  The Americans plans in Vietnam failed to take in consideration the Vietnamese culture, their customs and what would work there.  They then failed to consider, how to keep the peace once they withdrew.  Within a year after their withdrawal, South Vietnam was conquered.  They also failed to learn that Ngo Dinh Diem was considered by his people as a legitimate leader.  Once he was murdered, with the approval of the US, everything went to hell.  They also failed to understand that their “Strategic Hamlet Program” was designed to fail, even though the South Vietnamese told them it would.  What Diem always told the Americans turned out to be true and their position proved utterly wrong.  For more details on the Vietnam disaster seem my 2016 post here. 

2.     World War I.  The world, and specially Britain and France failed to understand the Moslem mind; they pretended to know.   We’re still paying the price of this failure – Israel and Palestinian wars.  The allies brought their European ways and politics which were totally rejected  in such a world.

3.     The Gulf War of 1991.  The United States failed to learn from the utter failure of every decision made in dividing the Middle East after WW I.  They failed to anticipate how to keep the peace in Iraq after defeating Saddam.  They failed to learn that democracy is a foreign term in Moslem areas.  They do not wish to have democracy.  They also failed to learn that in Moslem areas, religion and tribes are uppermost (something not understood by Europeans). 

Although the French and the British share to largest percentage of the blame for their disastrous decisions, they are not alone.  Leaders in the world make such mistakes on a regular basis, as pointed out earlier.   What is most disturbing, though, is their arrogance which lead them to believe that they know better than the natives, and their way is the right way – it is usually not.

 

 

                                                                                                                                                              

Saturday, November 4, 2023

A Pilgrim's Story

 It was a brutal Atlantic Ocean crossing; bad weather almost every day for two weeks it took for the crossing. Our ship was the Italian Cruise Liner, Saturnia.  The stormy sea was so bad that one day many of the dishes in the ship's kitchen were thrown down and broken.  We were all sea sick.  It was the first time we had seen the ocean and the first time on a ship.  By the time we arrived in New York Harbor, I could not remember getting off the ship.  We headed straight for the train station that would take us to Los Angeles; with a stop to change trains in Chicago.  The entire train trip to Los Angeles took three days.  The food they gave us on the train was unfamiliar to us so we ate sparsely.  We had never seen mustard, for instance.  In all, we were in transit for 18 days.

A typical overcast Southern California sky appeared as we approached Los Angeles;  I had never seen such a sky.  Where we were from in the north central mountains of  Sicily, it was either foggy or sunny.  Upon arriving at Union Station in Los Angeles on March 18, 1956, we were met by my father's sister, our sponsor,  and another Italian-American couple of whom my mother knew, since the woman had lived in my hometown of Geraci Siculo for part of her life, even though she was born in New York. We got into my aunt's 1946 DeSoto and headed to our rented duplex in the Leimert Park section of Los Angeles.

I knew not a word of English.  Although I was 12 years old, Angeles Mesa grammar school in Los Angeles where I enrolled, put me in the 5th Grade.  I was the only foreign student in the entire school.  My 5th grade teacher, Mr. Fox, was a wonderful man.  He just left me alone at the back of the class.  This was actually a brilliant move.  I learned how to speak English from listening and playing with my classmates.  They treated me wonderfully. Within six months I was speaking English fluently.  By the fall of the same year and the start of a new school year my parents enrolled me at  St. Brigid Catholic School,  which was near the corner of Western and Slauson in Los Angeles.  Soon after our arrival, my parents met some Italian Americans of the area.  They gave us instructions on how to be Americans.  Before I knew it I had an American name.  All of my siblings got a new name.  My sister Francesca became Frances, my brother Giacomo became Jack; my mother, Nunziata, became Nancy.

Los Angeles in the mid-fifties was a wonderful city to live in.  Good  and safe transportation, no crime to speak of; no gangs.  I would equate it with the Mayberry of the hit 1950s TV show, the Andy Griffith Show.  We had the Fili bus, an electric bus that was very efficient.  Unfortunately, in the early 1960s, they ended the Fili bus, in one of the most bizarre decisions that I could think of.  I quickly adopted to my new environment.  Within a short time after arriving, I got a job delivering the Los Angeles Mirror News, an afternoon paper of the day, one of four newspapers in Los Angeles. My first day delivering the paper as a 13-year old I had a tough time finding addresses.  A new challenge that had to be overcome, which I did.

Baseball was one of the first American sports that my brothers and I learned to love.  In 1958 the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.  I attended many games at the odd shaped baseball diamond of the Los Angeles Coliseum.  We acquired a transistor radio, which we used to listen to games.  Listening to the master baseball announcer, Vin Scully, was a delight.  Not only his mastery of painting word pictures with his descriptions but by listening to him I learned to master English.  Vin was not only a good baseball announcer, he was also a master storyteller.  I learned the history of the Brooklyn Dodgers.  I could not help but feel sad that they left Brooklyn.  They were so much a part of that city.  In 1959, the Los Angeles radio station, KFWB,  re-broadcast the famous 1951 playoff game between the Dodgers and the New York Giants which they lost in spectacular fashion with the walk-off, three-run home run by Bobby Thompson in the 9th inning.  Just last night I was watching the fine baseball documentary by Ken Burns called "Baseball." This game was highlighted as one of the greatest baseball games of all time.  In 1961 when Los Angeles was awarded a new American League team, the Angels, we attended games at the old Wrigley Field in Los Angeles.

Van Ness Park was within a couple of blocks of our house.  There I had my first Coca Cola out of the red Coca Cola vending machine. Drop a ten-cent coin in the machine and out thundered a cold glass bottle of Coke.  Along with my two brothers, we quickly made friends there.  One of our friends was the groundskeeper, who took us under his wing and looked after us.  We would go to the park daily.  It was where we had community with others there.  It was there where I learned how to play the board game of caroms.  Not only did we polish our English but we familiarized ourselves with our new culture and environment.  Those were nostalgic days.  

Our two-unit, one-bed duplex at 5151 Third Avenue in Los Angeles had a vacant lot next to it.  Since I had loved being a  sheep shepherd with my dad in Sicily, I had a  natural connection with animals.  Obviously we could not have sheep or goats so my brothers and I built a ramshackle pigeon cage adjacent to the vacant lot and raised pigeons.  No one complained, to my amazement.  We had tumblers, rollers and fan-tails.  I don't think this would fly anywhere today, but in those days this was not out of the question.  This activity introduced us to other people in the area who had pigeons; another way of connecting with people.  This was a very satisfying experience.

It did not take us children long to adjust to L.A. living.  We quickly made friends with people on our block and hung out with other children in their homes.  We would frequently ride our used bike that I don't recall how we got.  One day I personally drove my bike  on Western Avenue all the way to Griffith Park.  On the way back, I got hit by a car as the car was making a left turn into a market parking lot.  the angles were looking out for me, for I was not injured, as I fell to the ground and ended up within a couple of inches of the rear tire of the car that hit me.  A passing off-duty policeman noticed the accident and came to help.  He personally drove me back home with my wrecked bike.  I still remember the look on my mother's eyes as this policeman knocked on the door to deliver me home.

My parents, were not educated but were wise.  Their education was dealing with life and its challenges, hardships and overcoming them.  My dad was a shepherd with only two years of school, first and second grade.  The same with my mom.  Both of my parents started working immediately.  My dad at a cheese company in Compton,  and my mother as a seamstress at a women's clothing manufacturer in the Hyde Park section of Los Angeles.  Before going to work, mom had to feed her six children, the youngest being less than one year-old.  Two busses had to be taken to get to work.  She was never late. We had no financial help from anyone, not the government and not from any individuals.  My parents had survived the depression of the 1930s and World War II so they knew survival skills.   The American and allied invasion of Sicily came within five miles of our home town in Sicily.  My mother was pregnant with me in July 1943 when the entire town was evacuated as the powerful allied armies swept by this part of Sicily, chasing the retreating German forces.  The Allied armies consisted of the best American and British combat units, led by the best American Generals like George Patton, Lucien Truscott and Omar Bradley. The  British units were led by Generals Bernard Montgomery,  Harold Alexander, and Admiral Andrew Cunningham. A Canadian army also took part.  Many of the small towns in Sicily were leveled by allied bombing.  Since our town was not on the favored route to Palermo, it was spared destruction.  The roads, though, were heavily bombed.  In those days there was no welfare and no assistance from anyone.  Everyone was on their own.  I never heard of anyone ever going hungry, though.  "Sicily '43" by James Holland is a fine book detailing the allied invasion of Sicily.  Highly recommended reading.  I just finished it.

Monday, October 30, 2023

War is Hell on Earth

 Man is a war-like being.  War has been a constant in human history.  I was born during World War II.  My father was in a war, and I was in a war (Vietnam 1968-69).  Since WW II, we’ve had the Korean War, 1950-53; the French Indochina War ending in 1954 with their defeat at Dien Bien Phu; the American Vietnam war of 1959 to 1975; the Falklands War between Argentina and Great Britain in 1981, Grenada, Somalia, the Gulf War of 1991, The Ukraine war of today, and on and on.  Now we have a new war between Israel and the Palestinians.  What other war have I missed? War makes men like animals, with no moral compass in some cases.  Most, if not all wars, have atrocities.  We had them in WW II and we had them in Vietnam., e.g. the My Lai massacre.  The Russians were, probably, the most prolific at atrocities.  They would execute their own soldiers if, for instance, they were captured and escaped.  Upon their return they were executed.  Russian soldiers in some cases were ordered to charge an enemy position in the open field; a sure death sentence.  If they refused they were killed by their commanders.  Most German prisoners did not survive to return home.  A German commission found that over three million German soldiers were taken prisoner in Russia; over one million died in captivity through 1950. 

I’ve just finished a book on the invasion of Sicily in July of 1943; “Sicily “43, the First Assault on Fortress Europe, by James Holland. I was born there in November of the same year.  Atrocities were committed there by the US.  The book lists at least two cases where American soldiers killed surrendered Italian soldiers.  In one of those two cases, an American soldier, takes it upon himself to execute multiple surrendered Italian soldiers just because he was mad at the loss of fellow soldiers.  Many small towns were levelled by Allied troops, killing innocent civilians.  Hundreds of tons of bombs were dropped by allied troops.  In the town of Gangi, one town next to my home town, in today’s local web site called “Madonie Press,” the town commemorates eight innocent civilians who were killed as allied troops swept by the town.  This is a beautiful small agricultural hill town of less than eight thousand people.

 

One thing that made an impression on me when I arrived in Vietnam in May of 1968 as a US Army soldier, was how soldiers went about their business as if their moral compass was absent.  The sad fact is that, in most cases, soldiers who commit war crimes do not get punished.  The American soldier mentioned earlier in Sicily faced no punishment.  During the Japanese American concentration camps (I know, I know, people refer to them as “relocation camps”).  They were concentration camps.  US soldiers shot dead Japanese Americans at the Manzanar camp, of whom they feared were trying to escape the camp, or who had just gone mad from the harsh conditions.  I visited Manzanar, which is in the harsh California desert a few years ago in July.  The wind was so strong that I could not stay outside of my car.  The nearest town was about 100 miles away.  No one ever paid a price for such actions, as far as I know.  In one case, the murdered Japanese American’s family was charged for the cost of the bullet that killed him.  These stories are chronicled in the fine book called “Infamy: The shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II; by Richard Reeves (2015). Another fine book on this subject is called “The Eagles of Heart Mountain” by Bradford Pearson.  Heart Mountain was another concentration camp in Wyoming for Japanese Americans. For a fine documentary on Heart Mountain see this ABC TV Los Angeles documentary by David Ono. Click here to view it.