Tyrants in the World Stage

 The evil Russian tyrant, Vladimir Putin is losing the war in Ukraine.  He sent 150,000 of his countrymen to fight an evil and unjust war.  His glory at the cost of his soldiers.  I suppose that he thought that Ukrainians would just surrender at the sight of a Russian military column.  Bad mistake.  Did he not have any intelligence?  As of this date, it is estimated that 80,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded.  This is typical tyrannical insanity.  The tyrants wants glory so they will sacrifice their people to get it.  Let's look at historical tyrants:

Stalin.  Stalin was a crazed tyrant.  He killed as many of his own people as his enemy, the Nazis.  Let's take Ukraine, for example.  Over four million Ukrainians were starved to death by order of Stalin. Stalin wanted to get rid of private farms so he could replace them with his communist system. Click here for details.  During the Nazi invasion of Russia, Stalin sacrificed his own soldiers with mind boggling military orders to his commanders.  When a trained, experienced, Russian military commander would recommend a certain plan of defense, Stalin preferred inexperienced commanders with little experience, as long as they were loyal to him.  Any commander he saw as not loyal, whether in fact or not, he would either remove them or have them killed.  It is estimated that Stalin killed about 20 million of his own people.

Mussolini:  The Italian dictator had visions of a remake of the Roman Empire. The reality was that he did not have the means to do it under any conditions.  His military was in bad shape; they lacked the proper weapons, the training and the leaders.  Like Hitler, his insanity led him to declare war on the world, basically, when the truth was that he could not even beat a small country such as Greece.  To please Hitler, he sent 250,000 soldiers to Russia, without even the proper clothing, let alone the proper weapons.  Over half of these soldiers were killed, either in combat or by the fierce Russian weather.  The soldiers that managed to return, came back in such bad shape that he withheld showing them to the country.

Hitler.  I don't think I'm off by stating that Hitler was insane.  Let's take his Russian invasion for example. It is estimated that about three million of his soldiers perished in Russia.  He did not consider the size of Russia, the freezing winters nor the problems with supplying such a large army for so far away.  In the Siege of Stalingrad, Hitler refused to let his army retreat when it was clear they had no way of advancing nor surviving.  

We could go on and on with examples of the insanity of tyrants.  In our lifetime we now have Putin repeating Hitler's mistakes, we have the lunatic in North Korea, Rocked Man and the Chinese tyrants who want to flex their insane muscles.  The beat goes on.

Give Peace a Chance?

"Give Peace a Chance"  was an anti-war song by John Lennon recorded in 1969.  The  refrain is "All we are saying is give peace a chance."  Vietnam was the war. I was a participant in this war as an American soldier; I can understand the refrain.  Over 59,000 of my fellow soldiers gave their life in Vietnam for a misplaced political neurosis of the Washington politicians who really did not know what they were doing, starting with John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. The US Congress can be included here too.

We now have a war going on in Ukraine.  Many nations are appalled by the evil brought on the Ukrainian people and have provided weapons to Ukraine.  The United States and many others have imposed sanctions on the evil Russian regime led led by the tyrant Vladimir Putin. In the September 24, 2022 edition of the Wall Street Journal, there is a story about the Italian elections coming up this week.  One of the biggest controversies in Italian politics is should Italy provide weapons to Ukraine as well as sanctions on Russia.  The Italian people are divided; about half of the people do not favor sanctions, fearing economic retaliation by the Russians.   The leader of the right leaning party, La Lega, Matteo Salvini, a Putin supporter, is against sanctions and ignores the evil Putin has done in Ukraine. Some others on the right favor sanction and providing weapons.

Italian politicians not favoring sanction or poroviding weapons to Ukraine, repeat the same refrain, give peace a chance.  In their words, Italy should be mediating between the warring factions.  Now, either these people live in an alternative universe or they are denying reality.  So, you just call up Putin and talk him into ending his war, right?  Have they tried that?  If so, what result did they get?  We tried this type of diplomacy in 1938 with Hitler.  After he conquered half of Czechoslovakia, the Europeans entered into an "agreement" with Hitler providing that he not attack another country.  How did that work out?  When will they learn? Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former Russian oligarch and the richest Russian until he displeased Putin. His empire was seized by Putin and he spent 10 years in jail, says that Putin only understands force.  Diplomacy is useless.

Back to John Lennon's song "Give Peace a Chance."  So, what were the Ukrainians supposed to do when 150,000 Russian soldiers, their armored cars and ballistic missiles raining down on Ukraine?  Should they just play John Lennon's song to the approaching Russians and have a big sign saying "give peace a chance"?  As a former soldier who participated in a war, I agree that war is not the answer, but what do you do when attacked; just lay down?

The Italian politicians, and anyone else for that matter, who does not support sending weapons to Ukraine and supporting sanctions is cooperating with evil, I have just some questions for them: what will you do when the same evil comes to your back door? What will you do after the Russians conquer Ukraine and then go for the rest of the former Soviet Union?  Will you just sing "Give Peace a Chance"?  Will you not want others to help you?  Denying reality will not solve the problem.

Armenia: A Tortured Land, a Crucified People

 Armenia is under military attack, again by their neighbor, Azerbaijan.  Few other countries  have been tortured as much as Armenia has.  The Ottoman Turks conquered Armenia in the 15th Century and held it until the end of World War I, then the Soviet Union seized it.  Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Azerbaijanis have taken up the task of brutalizing Armenia with constant armed conflict.  All this while the world just looks on.  In Bob Dylan's classic song, Blowing in the Wind, he starts the song with this lament:  "How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail Before she sleeps in the sand?"

Most of the world recognizes the Turkish Armenian Genocide of 1915.  Turkey does not to this day. Fearing the anger of Turkey, a Nato ally, the United States was reluctant to recognize the genocide until October 2019.  It is a sad tale that the world knows very little of these tortured people.  Click here for a fine piece on the Armenian Genocide in a 2015 article in the magazine, First Things.  The genocide was repeated seven years later, in 1922, in the ancient city of Smyrna, now called Izmir. Two books have recently been published detailing what happened in Smyrna in 1922:  The Great Fire by Lou Ureneck and Paradise Lost by Giles Milton.  These two books are well researched and brilliantly written. Highly recommended reading.  

The Turks, led by the brilliant military commander, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who later became the father of modern Turkey, after routing Greek forces, attacked and destroyed Smyrna and murdered at least 200,000 Christians, among them, Greeks and Armenians.  They were particularly brutal in the massacre in Smyrna; the Greek Bishop of Smyrna, was tortured to death in front of a cheering crowd.  Turkish soldiers went on rampages, looting, raping and killing women at will; with no one stopping them.  People desperate to escape the carnage were trapped in the Smyrna harbor and not allowed to escape; many drowned in the bay trying to escape the fire that was coming toward them. European ships anchored in the bay refused to help them.  Click here for a related story. The two books mentioned earlier go into great detail on the brutality. At the end of the rampage they set the city of Smyrna on fire and burned it to the ground.

It is estimated that as many as 1.5 million Armenian Christians were murdered by the Ottoman Turks in the 1915 Armenian Genocide.  Historians believe that the Turks blamed their decline on the Christians, and that was a contributing factor in the genocide.  History shows that the Ottomans were in decline for the prior century.  The brutality of the Turks had no bounds; it was an example of man's inhumanity to man;  The two books mentioned earlier go into great detail on how Armenian Christians were marched into the desert on forced marches without food or water.  Many died of exhaustion and others were simply shot by soldiers along the way.

Religion is the glaring thread in this Armenian Genocide.  Muslims, in general, did not keep it a secret that their goal was to eliminate all the "infidels."  From the start, in the seventh century after Mohammed, the Ottomans made it their goal to conquer the world for Islam.  A quick perusal of history will back this up.  In the Middle Ages, we had the conquest of the Byzantine Empire with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, followed by many battles against the "infidels" such as the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571, and the two sieges of Vienna, Austria in 1529 and the last one in 1683.  These wars have never really finished.  Today we have different actors such as the 9/11 terrorists, Isis, al Qaeda and the like.  The wars continue.

Another common thread is the passivity of the rest of the world, namely, the Europeans.  After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the eastern part of the Roman Empire continued under the name of the Byzantine Empire which lasted another thousand years.  During this last thousand years, the European Christian brothers watched and sat on their hands while the Byzantines were chewed up piece by piece.  Toward the end, prior to the fall of Constantinople, the Europeans denied the fervent pleas of their Byzantine brothers, preferring not to help.  One exception was a private military commander from Genoa, Giovanni Giustiniani, who collected a mercenary force of about 700 men and helped the Byzantines fight in the final battle for Constantinople in 1453.  After the fall of the Byzantines, the Ottomans went after the rest of Europe as pointed out earlier in the battles of Lepanto and the sieges of Vienna.  For the Europeans, it was see no evil, hear no evil. As the Spanish philosopher George Santayana once said, those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it.  And the beat goes on.

Monarchs, Emperors and Madmen

 Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain died this week.  Our TV coverage has been extensive, more than any other foreign dignitary that I can recall.  Britain has, perhaps, the best, most stable monarchy in the world. It is also true that Elizabeth was a great monarch; steady, smart and measured.  She deserved all the accolades she has received.  Under the British Parliament system, legislative power rests with it, not the monarch. This has been the case since the early 18th century.  

When the monarch ruled he/she had all the power.  The monarch was the king, the legislature and the judge.  He/she could order anyone to be killed at will, as did King Henry VIII.  I've always been fascinated at how a country, of say, 60 + million people can be ruled by one person as was the case prior to the parliamentary system.  The king/queen was selected by accident of being born to the right person and place.  No experience necessary.  No rationality need be demonstrated.  In many cases, as with Henry VIII, you could be insane and could be killed at will.  He could order your people to go to war, whether it was necessary or not; just on his/her whim.  Indeed a tyrant.  Tyrants are with us today.  Just look at China, North Korea, or Russia.  The people have no voice, only the tyrant.  The British corrected the sinking ship when they started the parliamentary ship.  Very few other countries has been able to throw off the tyrant.  For this reason, the British throne stands out as the best possible monarchy.  The rest of the world should take some lessons; few will ever do.

The Roman Empire started with a Republic, which was very successful until the time of Julius Caesar.  Most of the territory of the empire was already in place by the time the Emperors started, with Caesar Augustus who reigned from 27 BC to 14 AD.  Augustus was a good emperor but many who followed him were not.  Nero who was probably insane, as was Henry VIII of Britain, ended up burning Rome.  Other Roman emperors were equally bad.  These men were tyrants with total control.  They could order the murder of anyone who may be a threat to them, whether real or imagined.  

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, the Eastern Roman Empire took over and lasted another thousand years.  The Byzantines, as they were called were ruled by emperors, or tyrants.  By the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople by the invading Turks, the empire was left with the city of Constantinople by itself.  Each emperor, ran it down.  Suffice it to say, emperors and tyrants do not have a successful history of rule.