Pope Pius IX, Pope, King and Tyrant

As a life-long Catholic, I had no idea who Pope Pius IX was, other than a past pope.  That all changed after reading the fine book, “The Pope who Would be King” by David I. Kertzer (2018).  What follows is mostly taken from this book.  Pio Nono, as he was known in Italy, became Pope in 1846 and reigned until 1878.  His life as Pope was overshadowed by his rule as the temporal leader of the Papal States. The Papal States comprised of about one quarter of Italy.  Click here for a map.  The Papal States had been ruled by the Popes for over a thousand years.  The Pope was the head of state, the law and the judge of all his citizens. He was the all-powerful king of his subjects.  All government jobs were held by the clergy. The Pope’s government advisors were his Cardinals, usually two or three of his most trusted clergymen.  The most important advisor to Pio Nono was Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli.  A shrewd and ambitions man, Antonelli was not a priest, but a Deacon when he was named Cardinal.  Antonelli was no spiritual man; he was a power broker extraordinaire above all else.

Pope Pius IX saw his rule of the Papal States as a mandate from God and ruled that way.  “He believed that God had bestowed on him the right to wield absolute power.” “Parliamentary government and individual freedoms, according to Pio Nono, were not only incompatible with the divinely ordained nature of his own states but inherently evil.  It was a belief that he would hold for the rest of his life.”  When he encountered resistance to his clerical rule, he was dumbfounded to see that his subjects did not see it the same way. The Papal States were bordered on the north by the Kingdom of Lombardy and Venice, which was controlled by the Austrian Hapsburg Empire and Tuscany which was an independent state.  To the South it was bordered by the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, ruled by King Ferdinand II, of the Bourbon Dynasty.

Revolution was in the air for all of the time  Pio Nono reigned.  France had a revolution in 1848 which deposed King Louis Phillipe, creating the Second French Republic headed by Louis Bonaparte, a nephew of Napoleon.  In Italy the entire peninsula was on fire for Italian unification and the removal of foreign armies, especially the Austrian Army which controlled the North East part of Italy.  In the Papal States, the citizens hated the rule of priests and longed for Italian unification. They were tired of the oppression of the clerics.  In the South, the Kingdom of Two Sicilies was in turmoil and revolting against their ruler, King Ferdinand II.  This was the climate Pio Nono found upon being elected pope.

Citizens of the Papal States loved the Pope but hated being ruled by the heavy-handed priestly rule. Clergy were the police commanders, usually a bishop or a monsignor.  The courts were also headed by clergy.  The rule was nothing short of tyrannical.  A priest could barge into a home and inspect it to make sure no religious rules were being violated.  Any dissent or talk critical of the Pope was dealt with severely.  People lived in fear of arrest and torture, even killing for not supporting the Pope and his rule.  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.

Subjects of the Papal States wanted a constitution and rule by civilians.  They wanted a separation between the church and the state.  The Pope refused.  They wanted Italian unification; the Pope refused to consider it. Revolution was in the air and things were getting hot.  When thousands of people besieged the papal residence and killed the Pope’s top government administrator, Pellegrino Rossi, as he was leaving his office, the Pope decided he needed to escape before they got him.  With the help of the Bavarian ambassador, Pio Nono escaped to a small coastal town of Gaeta, near Naples in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, riding in a horse drawn carriage all night.  King Ferdinand II welcomed him with open arms.  After the Pope escaped Rome, the citizens established their own government headed by a triumvirate which called themselves the Roman Republic. Soon after settling down in Gaeta, the pope, meeting with his advisors and foreign dignitaries, plotted to regain his rule by using military force.  He debated whether to ask the Austrian or the French for military help.  He decided the French were more to his liking.  The French agreed to send a military expedition to restore the pope to Rome.  

France sent an expeditionary force of 30,000 troops to help the pope regain his kingdom.  The troops landed in Civitavecchia, a port near Rome and marched into the city.  The French troops underestimated Roman resistance.  Although lacking a unified and trained army, they put together a defense made up of university students, former members of the papal army and local citizens who took up arms.  They did have one ace in the hole; Giuseppe Garibaldi had by this time returned from leading military wars in Brazil and Urugary.  He brought with him about 1200 of his trusted soldiers from South America.  These were seasoned troops.  When the French tried to break into Rome they met heavy resistance and were driven back with heavy losses.  Garibaldi, one of the best military commanders of his day, led his troops aboard his white horse.  His constant companion was a black man and a fierce warrior from Uruguay, the son of a former slave, Andrea Aguyar.  Garibaldi was wounded in the first encounter, shot in the stomach, but survived.  Aguyar, was killed in action on the last day of the battle.  The French commander, General Charles Oudinot, stung by his initial defeat, withdrew to the rear to wait for additional troops which arrived shortly thereafter.  Not only additional troops but additional heavy cannons were brought in to demolish the thick Roman defensive walls. Faced with overpowering odds, the Roman defenders had no chance.  The French troops breached the walls, poured in and occupied Rome.  Over 2,000 Romans were killed defending their city.  Much of Rome lay in ruins, although the French were careful not to destroy many of Rome’s treasures.  Upon the Pope's return, brutal reprisals were meted out to his opponents. Many were shot to death.

Pio Nono was ecstatic at the defeat of his enemies, although he said he lamented the loss of life. After the French occupation of Rome, French representatives, led by the famous Alexis de Tocqueville, and other French and Europeans emissaries begged the Pope to be lenient with his subjects. They all strongly asked him not to arrest the people who supported the new Roman Republic.  Pio Nono would have none of it.  He wanted punishment.  After returning to Rome that is what happened.  All those who had shown support for the Republic were arrested, many of them were tortured or killed.  In Rome, the French placed warnings on Roman walls that anyone found with any weapon would be summarily executed.  The executions were done in public squares.  One man accused of carrying weapons was brought before a firing squad in Piazza del Popolo, one of the biggest Piazzas in Rome where a large crown gathered to watch his execution.  The usual method of execution was by guillotine, but the guillotines were no longer working so they used firing squads.  Later on, a French Archbishop sent the Pope two new guillotines which were later used to execute the Pope’s enemies.

It did not end there.  After the French occupied Rome, many of its defenders managed to escape north. Giuseppe Garibaldi gathered his troops and his pregnant wife, Anita in St. Peter’s Square and they were led out of the city by fellow Romans.  Anita had earlier come to Rome from Nice (Nizza), Garibaldi’s home town, against his wishes.  The 27-year-old Brazilian beauty was also a seasoned warrior in her own right, having fought alongside her husband in Brazil and Uruguay.  Later in their escape north, she fell ill and died in his arms, along with the unborn baby, seven months in gestation. 

 While the French were attacking Rome, the Austrians were occupying Papal State cities Bologna, Ferrara and Ancona with their troops. Upon reaching the tiny principality of San Marino, Garibaldi released many of his troops from their vow to fight to the death with him. The San Marino authorities mediated a compromise for Garibaldi’s released troops.  The Austrian Army promised to let them go home if they would give up their arms; 900 of them did.  They would soon come to regret it. The following day, these same men were marched in chains into Bologna; their fate unknown. Garibaldi continued with 300 of his ardent followers.    

Ugo Bassi, a priest and chaplain serving Garibaldi’s troops, succeeded in reaching the town of Ferrara.  There a local person reported him to the Austrians. The Austrians arrested him and sentenced him to death, without trial, on a bogus charge that he had been carrying arms. He was shot by a firing squad.  Another popular Roman hero and a former supporter of Pio Nono nicknamed Ciceruacchio met even a crueler fate.  He was captured with his two young sons and, without a trial, all three were sentenced to death.  Tied together with his 13-year-old son, he begged the Austrians to spare the boy. All three were shot dead; the younger boy first then Ciceruacchio  and lastly, the older boy.  All for being part of the Roman Republic which opposed the pope. All in the name of Pio Nono.

In looking for current information on Pius IX, I learned that Pope John II, beatified Pius IX in the year 2000; the last step before being named a saint. Pius IX was the pope who first established Papal Infallibility in 1870; the doctrine that the pope, acting on his authority, or ex cathedra (from the chair) cannot err when teaching on faith and morals.  It has been used only once, in 1950 by Pope Pius XII on the assumption of Mary.

I highly recommend the book.  Excellent research and great story telling.  Click on the link at the top of this essay.

Click here for an interview with the author of the book referred to here about Pope Pius IX.

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?   This question is more difficult than it first appears.  I’ve discussed this issue many times with friends and there seems to be a lot of confusion or misunderstanding about it.  About 15 years ago I recall reading a book on this issue. The book is titled “Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad?” by a prominent Protestant Theologian, Timothy George.  This will not be a thorough analysis of the question, but I will highlight some of the important issues as discussed in this book.

Muslims are followers of Muhammad, who organized the first Muslim community in the seventh century AD, over 600 years after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and thousands of years since the Hebrew Scriptures were first written.  Muslims do not regard Muhammad as their founder.  He claimed to have received the Quran as a revelation from God. Muhammad did not claim to be anything other than a mortal man and a prophet.  He died in 632 AD.  Before he died, he claimed that God had chosen Islam to be the true faith.  

Here are some critical issues to understand about Islam and Christianity:

·     Muslims reject the Trinity, the Incarnation and Divine Grace through the cross of Jesus Christ. The Trinity is the basis for the entire Christian life.  To Muslims the Christian belief in the Trinity is not only contradictory but derogatory,

·     Christians believe that the God of the Bible is the God who has forever known and who in Jesus Christ has revealed himself to us as the Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit – the Trinity, 

·     Muslims reject the fatherhood of God, the deity of Jesus Christ and the personhood of the Holy Spirit; each an essential component of Christianity.  On the Dome of the Rock, the holiest Muslim shrine in Jerusalem, are written these words: “God has no son.”  This is a total contradiction of the New Testament book of Matthew 3:17 “and behold, a voice from Heaven said this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

·     Christians believe, as the Bible teaches in John 14:16, that Jesus will ask God the Father to send “another helper,” the Holy Spirit.  Muslims believe this is a prediction of the coming of Muhammad, not the Holy Spirit,

·     Muslims do not believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross nor resurrected or ascended into heaven,

·     Christians believe, as the Bible teaches, that Christ’s death and sacrifice on the cross is redemption for all sinners who believe in Him.  Muslims do not believe in redemption. 

These are just some of the difference.  However, these are major and irreconcilable differences.  According to the Bible, the eternal word of God was made flesh and lived on earth as a Jewish peasant named Jesus.  For Muslims the eternal word of God was made “text” in the Quran revealed to Muhammad.  Unlike the New Testament, which tells the story of Jesus, the Quran provides almost no information about Muhammad’s life.  Salvation in Islam is not by faith alone, as the Bible teaches, but by works such as reciting Muslim prayers and by strenuous effort which includes all the pillars of Islam, belief, fasting and pilgrimage.  Redemption is not a category recognized by Islam; every Muslim is his/her own redeemer. This is the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches.

Is the father of Jesus the God of Muhammad?  Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that the father of Jesus is the only God there is.  He’s the creator of everything that has ever lived or existed.  No, because Muslim theology rejects the fatherhood of God, the deity of Jesus Christ and the personhood of the Holy Spirit – each of which is an essential component of the Christian understanding of God.  To put it simply, we have a different definition of who God is. The brilliant theologian and philosopher, William Lane Craig, explains the issue here in this five-minute video.

Christians believe, as the Bible teaches, that Jesus was put to death on a cross, died and was buried. The events leading to Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion are central to all four Gospel accounts.  The cross or death are mentioned in all 27 books of the New Testament.  Muslims deny Jesus ever suffered and died on the cross.  There can be no Christianity without the cross; there can be no Islam with it.  The Apostle Paul says this about the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus:

“Now if Christ is preached, that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we witnessed against God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied”(1 Corinthians 15:12-19).

Our culture today emphasizes a form of moral relativism, your truth is true for you and my truth is true for me.  There are many ways to God, or words to this effect.  This is a logical and philosophical contradiction.  There can be only one truth.  If I say this is white and you say this is black, we cannot both be right.  We can both be wrong, but not both be right.  In a terrific book called “Ten Universal Principles” by Robert Spitzer, the Principle of Noncontradiction is explained: “A real being cannot both be and not be the same thing, in the same respect, at the same place and time.” This goes all the way back to Aristotle and is the most fundamental principle in logic.  Accordingly, Islam and Christianity cannot both be true.

In the Book of Revelation (Rev 22:18-19), God states the following:

“ warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.”

Again, you cannot reconcile the Bible with the Quran.  To believe the Quran, you must reject the Bible.  To believe the Bible, you must reject the Quran.  There is no way around it.  To accept Islam is to deny the Bible or regard it as a best-selling novel. You have to deny that all the prophets of the Bible ever existed, or their story was a fiction.  You have to deny that God revealed himself and came to live on the earth as Jesus Christ.  You have to deny that all that the Old Testament prophesied was false. To accept Islam, you have to rely on one human being (Muhammad), whom we know next to nothing about for our salvation and deny all that came before him. This runs totally counter to documented history, Biblical prophecy and the word of God as revealed in the Bible.  

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The Shameless Abandonment of the Kurds

 

How many times will the Kurds be betrayed?  You recently heard that the United States will pull its military out of Syria, leaving their best ally, the Kurds, alone and vulnerable to an attack promised by the Turkish despot Erdogan. It has been the Kurds that have been the main source of the defeat of ISIS.  For all their heroic effort, they’re basically stabbed in the back, again.

The Kurds are spread between four countries, Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran.  In history, this area has been conquered by the Persian, the Greeks under Alexander the Great, the Ottoman Turks and after World War I ignored by the British and the French who were both responsible for carving out new countries from the defeated Ottoman Empire.  The 1916 document knows as the Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret British-French plan to carve out the Middle East after the defeat of the Ottomans.   At the end of the War, the Treaty of Sevres was drafted to deal with the dissolution and partition of the Ottoman Empire. This treaty provided for a referendum on the formation of an independent Kurdish state, Kurdistan. After the new Turkish nation rejected this plan, the Kurdish question was abandoned.  To this day nothing has been done.  For a further discussion of the history of the Kurds click here. 

The decisions made by the Allies at the end of World War I, led by President Wilson of the United States, and put in place by the British and French Empires were, to say the least, disastrous.  Two examples:  1) The Allies decided to give the job of securing the semi-independent city of Smyrna in modern day Turkey, to the Greeks.  Smyrna was the "Hong Kong" of the Middle East under the Ottomans, populated by Christians, Greeks, Armenians and other Europeans.  Since the Greeks and the Turks hate each other with a passion, this was the equivalent of pouring gasoline into a fire.  The Greeks were then crushed by the Turks and Smyrna was burned to the ground in 1922 by the Turks who raped and murdered most Christians in the City. For an exhaustive documentation of this read the books, “Paradise Lost” by Giles Milton and “The Great Fire” by Lou Ureneck.  2) The carving out of new nations in the Middle East was done with a blind fold, as we now know.  Every decision made failed. The British and the French carved out new Middle East nations, not in a thoughtful methodical way, but in a matter that would suit their own colonial interests.  The Kurds were left hanging.  As a result, they have remained a persecuted minority in all these countries.  In Turkey, the Kurds are considered terrorists for their ambition to be free and frequently attacked by Turkish military forces. 

In the early 1990’s the Kurds won a slim victory in that they were allowed a certain degree of autonomy in Iraq, but this, again was a weak olive branch.  Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Kurds have been our best friends.  They have carried the load in fighting both Saddam Hussein and later ISIS.  They managed to defeat ISIS and for their effort, they’ve been abandoned by the world, again.  A reasonable person would ask where is the UN on this?  As usual, the UN is useless and a total waste of time. They've never lifted a finger or raised one voice for the Kurds.

Why America is an Exceptional Nation: Reason two of 77

History is replete with examples of multiple times when nations have failed to come to the aid of a neighbor in mortal danger from aggressors who wish to conquer them.  When the Muslim Turks conquered what remained of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 no European country raised a hand to help.  One noble individual from Genoa, Giovanni Giustiniani,  led a small army of 700 private soldiers to help the Byzantines defend Constantinople.  Such small numbers were destined to be ineffective.  Giustiniani himself was severely wounded in the battle and could not continue; his forces and those of the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI, were crushed by the superior Turkish forces. The rest of Europe failed to act.

In modern day, the Turks attacked the Island of Cyprus in 1974 and captured half of it, which they still hold.  No one came to the aid of the helpless Cypriots.  In 2014 Russia invades and captures the Crimea from Ukraine.  No one came to their aid.  Russia invades eastern Ukraine and no one comes to their aid.  To this day, the Turks and the Russians hold these territories.  Where are the Europeans? They only care about getting their oil and gas from Russia, naked aggression does not bother them. The Italian Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, expressed his admiration for Vladimir Putin, the Russian despot. Click here to read more.

In 1939 Hitler invaded and took part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, and no one came to their aid. In the now famous appeasement speech by the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, he made an agreement with Hitler that if he stopped with the Sudetenland he would accept this naked aggression against a helpless country.  Where were the rest of the Europeans?  Asleep at the wheel. Hitler, proceeded to take the rest of Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Belgium, Holland and then he went after the UK and Russia. Europe was saved by American intervention, again.

Now lets look at America.  For the past 100 plus years, America has come to the aid of many countries.  In World War I it went to war to help the Europeans against German aggression.  In World War II it repeated the action.  Certainly, without American help Europe would have failed in both wars.  In modern day, we have the American examples of helping Korea from Chinese aggression in 1950-53, Vietnam in 1959-75, the Balkans in the 1990s to stop a genocide in Bosnia-Bosnia-Herzagovina; the Gulf war of 1991 to liberate Kuwait; Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003.  The list goes on and on.  What other nation in the world has a record of helping other nations from aggression like America? America is an exceptional nation. No one can match its record.  In all these cases, not one was done for American gain of territory.  Can you say it again, America is an exceptional nation.

Why America is an Exceptional Nation: Reason One of 77

I remember being glued to the TV in 1973 when they released a series on the history of World War II called "The World at War."  The documentary was narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier, the British actor with the fantastic voice.  Here is a clip from this legendary documentary. This documentary is still available on four DVDs, click here. What captured my imagination was the desperate human tragedy that unfolded on the screen.  Men, women and children who were hopelessly condemned to die in Russia, France and all of Europe. The Siege of Stalingrad, for example, was not only poignant for the immense loss of life, but for the sheer brutality.  It was the most heartbreaking scene on earth.  German soldiers dying for a worthless cause.   When the German cause was hopelessly lost in Stalingrad, Hitler refused to let his commanders retreat.  Win or die he told them.  This is the epitome of the mindless, insane case for war, for scenes like this have been repeated throughout history in all wars.

The brutality of war did not end with killing on the battlefield. If you were taken prisoner, chances were you did not survive to return home.  Certainly this was the case in Russia for German prisoners of war (POW). It is estimated that over three million German soldiers were taken captive in Russia.  According the the Wikipedea page of German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union, 381,000 died.  This is according to Soviet estimates which can be very unreliable.  Some German historians estimate that over one million died in captivity.  The Soviets are not known for their kindness to humanity.  All you have to do is read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or about Stalin's Great Purge of his people in the 1930s to see the savagery of the Russians.  After the end of The Siege of Stalingrad, it is estimated that 170,000 German soldiers were taken captive by the Soviets; less than 6,000 survived. The Russians used them as slave labor, maltreated them and failed to properly feed them or treat them for war wounds and other health issues.

In the French Indochina War of 1945-54, it is estimated that over 40,000 French forces were taken prisoner, most did not survive.  Case in point:  After the final battle of the war, the Siege of Dien Bien Phu, when French forces were defeated, 10,000 French prisoner were taken.  After two months of intense battle where men could not even sleep or were so malnourished that they could hardly stand, the Viet Minh marched them on foot for a 500 mile trek to POW camps; most did not make it.  It is estimated that only 3,900 survived.  A very fine piece in The Weekly Standard magazine appeared in 2010, called "Theirs to do and Die," about the Siege of Dien Bien Phu and the hopeless struggle of the men there was captured by this piece.  Click here to read it.

At the end of World War I, between 1919-22, The new nation of Turkey fought another war with the Greece in which they crushed them and drove them back into the Mediterranean.  When the Turks took  the City of Smyrna (modern day Izmir) in 1922, they commenced the most horrific rape, killing and pillaging imaginable.  The Greek Orthodox leader of Smyrna, Metropolitan Chrysostom was taken and handed over to a murderous mob of local Turks.  The Turkish General Noureddin announced to the mob: "If he has done good to you, do good to him.  If he has done harm to you, do harm to him." The mob proceeded to torture him by cutting his body piece by piece while alive. This is detailed in the fine book about the burning of Smyrna in 1922, "Paradise Lost,"  by Giles Milton, 2008, Basic Books. 

 As many as 200,000 Greeks, Armenians and Christians were marched into the interior of the Anatolean desert, on foot, to die.  This was after the Turks slaughtered about 250,000 Christians, Greeks and Armenian in Smyrna and burned the city to the ground. Most deportees died from exhaustion, starvation or were bayoneted or shot on the way.  Here is a short article which appeared in the monthly magazine First Things which describes the horrendous scene.  Click here to read it.  On a positive note, an American Christian pastor by the name of Asa Jennings, on his own, rescued over 250,000 Christians before the murderous Turks could kill them.  Click here to read this story.  Another terrific book on the destruction of Smyrna is "The Great Fire" by Lou Ureneck, 2015, Harper Collins.  Certainly, these stories of brutality against unarmed, non-resisting prisoners show the depravity and moral broken compass of the nations who perpetrated such atrocities.

On the other hand we have the example of the United States.  In World War II, many German and Italian POWs were not only treated well, but they were brought to the United States; many of them chose to stay after release.  German soldiers preferred being captured by the Americans rather than the savage Russians because they knew what would happened to them in Russia vs America.  Click here for more info on this.  Fast forward to the situation today with Al Qaeda, Isis and other terrorists in American POW camps such as Guantanamo, Cuba.  Every prisoner is treated with the greatest respect.  He is allowed to dress, eat and worship as he wants.  He has all the rights of any person except his freedom of course. Compare this to the torture chambers of the Hanoi Hilton, for instance during the American Vietnam War, the treatment of prisoners by Russia in WWII and Turkey as described earlier.

Here is my point:  A country will be known by its fruit.  This is especially true when handling enemy prisoners.  Have you ever heard of any atrocities committed by any Americans against POWs?  Have you ever heard of Americans marching prisoners on foot to POW camps?  This is just one of the many reasons why the United States is not only exceptional but the greatest country in the world.  Can you name one other country that could match its moral compass?  In the First Gulf War of 1991 there is the poignant video of Iraqi soldiers surrendering to American troops. This 40 second clip will bring tears to your eyes.  Iraqi soldiers begging for their life and an American soldier trying to calm them and telling them they will be "well treated, we're Americans."

Failure to Learn From History is Deadly

The Spanish philosopher, George Santayana said that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.  The consequences are measured in the staggering loss of life.  Here are a few examples:

Napoleon invades Russia, 1812.  Among the many flaws that plagued Napoleon, and he had many, was his irrational belief that he could conquer the world militarily.  He started in his own back yard, Europe.  Not satisfied with his European conquests, he tried conquering Russia.  Of the 500,000 French troops that Napoleon sent to Russia, about 5,000 survived; Napoleon being one of them.  The Russian campaign was lost not only on the battle field but by the notorious Russian winter, which killed many soldiers.  For more details on the Russian campaign click here.  One of the hardest challenges for such an endeavor is the difficulty in supplying a huge army in such a huge territory. This proved to be one of the many fatal flaws in the campaign.  For a schematic dramatization of the French invasion click here for this YouTube video.

Hitler invades Russia, 1941.  Hitler, learned nothing from Napoleon's defeat in Russia for he repeated the same mistakes, with nearly similar results.  By 1944 the Germans were crushed in Russia, not just militarily but by the brutal Russian winters, disease  and starvation. Hitler was not the only one that did not learn from Napoleon's lesson.  Mussolini of Italy committed over 235,000 troops to the German Russian campaign with disastrous results.  Italian troops lacked the proper clothing, equipment and military resources to succeed.  The Hungarians and the Romanians contributed a similar amount of troops with the same disastrous results.  If the military resources did not succeed, the Russian winter did. In short all of the German, Italian, Hungarian and Romanian troops were doomed to death in a place they could not possibly succeed.  A terrific book on this subject is a historical novel called "The Red Horse" by Eugenio Corti, who was a surviving Italian veteran of the Russia campaign.  For a short article on the Italian catastrophe click here. The Germans alone estimate that they lost 4.3 million soldiers in Russia alone.

The Italian participation in Russia was nothing short of condemning innocent men to death for no reason.  First, the Germans never asked them for help.  They knew better.  They knew that the Italian armed forces were basically useless; badly armed, poorly trained and badly led.  The psychotic Mussolini demanded that he participate.  He was salivating at the possible territory gain after the Germans conquered Russia, so he thought; but psychotic people have never been known to think straight. He never learned the lesson of World War I.  Italy entered the war by promises it would gain territory, but even after being on the winning side it got very little territory: A small slice of Austria (the South Tyrol) and a return of the Italian city of Trieste.  All this at the price of 650,000 dead soldiers, not counting civilian deaths.  The allies basically renegaded on any promises they made to the Italians.  The Italians were basically snookered after WWI.  Again, they did not learn from history.  All told, it is estimated that of the 235,000 Italian troops sent to Russia 115,000 were killed.

French Indochina War, 1945-54.  The French ruled what was called French Indochina, which included modern-day Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The French controlled French Indochina from 1860 to 1954.  From 1945 to 1954 the French fought a war with the Viet Minh, the Vietnamese fighting for independence from France.  The Viet Minh were led by the brilliant military commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap, who later fought the Americans. The French fought brilliantly, but they were doomed from the start.  With the help of American arms, the French did all they could do but it was a losing battle. Defeat came on 8 May 1954 at the now legendary Battle of Dien Bien Phu. It is hard to get hard figures but estimates are that 500,000 Vietnamese were killed and 46,800 French troops died in the war.  In 2010 a terrific article appeared in the American weekly magazine, "The Weekly Standard" on the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.  Click here to read it. This article paints a great picture of the dire circumstances of the doomed French fighters.  At Dien Bien Phu, the French fought heroically; they gave their lives for a lost cause that should have been seen long before the war started, but again, learning from history is a lesson rarely learned.

The American War in Vietnam, 1959-1975.  I was a participant in this war from 1968-69 with the U.S. Army.  Over 59,000 Americans were killed and about 304,000 wounded in this war. With 550,000 American troops in Vietnam, the Vietnamese could not be defeated.  The Americans won most military engagements but they were all Pyrrhic victories.  As with the French, the Americans were doomed from the start.  There is a brilliant recently published book by a Canadian historian, Geoffrey Shaw, called "The Lost Mandate of Heaven."  This book details the mindless decisions made by the early U.S. Administrations of Kennedy and Johnson which basically doomed the operation before one combat soldier arrived.  The Americans refused to consider the opinions of the Vietnamese in preparing a war strategy.  The arrogance of the advisers of President Kennedy was stunning.  The biggest villain of Kennedy's advisers was Averill Harriman, the former Governor of New York.  President Kennedy is shown as incompetent and easily led by bad advice.  About half of Kennedy's advisers were correct, such as his military advisers, General Maxwell Taylor, CIA Saigon Station Chief, William Colby and his Vietnam ambassador, Frederick Nolting; Kennedy chose to follow Harriman and his acolytes into the abyss.  The seeds of destruction were planted by Kennedy between 1960 and 1963.  The fatal blow was Kennedy's support of the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963.  Following his murder South Vietnam unravelled, as his good advisers had predicted, never to recover.  As we've seen recently in Muslin countries like Iraq, once the strong leader is removed, chaos follows; this is what happened in South Vietnam after the death of Diem.  Again, if you don't learn from history, you're bound to repeat it.

Away From Me, I Never Knew You - A Vietnam Vet Returns Home to no Gratitude

When I returned from Vietnam in May of 1969, only my parents met me as I arrived at LAX.  We walked through a busy airport and no one noticed.  The same thing happened when we first landed at Ft. Lewis Washington.  There was no welcome, no thanks, just an eerie quiet.  I recall thinking about why not even the Army could have organized a welcome party.  No one did.  About eight years ago, I recall going to LAX with a group of church friends who organized a welcome event for a returning Iraq veteran.  I could not help but to recall the complete opposite of what happened to me when I arrived at LAX.

A few weeks later, I called my old employer, a company that serviced Telephone Company vehicles based in Santa Fe Springs, California, for which I had worked on a part-time basis before going into the Army.  They reluctantly hired me again.  They assigned me to a facility that I had never seen before. They gave me no duties and no one talked to me.   At the end of the first week, someone came by to give me my first check. He handed me the envelope without so much as one word.   As I opened it I saw the word "termination."  I left without saying a word to anybody.  I did not complain or ask for an explanation. The writing was on the wall.

I just finished reading Ron Kovic's new book, "Hurricane Street" about his very public protest of the abominable treatment by the Veterans Administration hospital he was confined to, the Long Beach Veterans Hospital in Long Beach, California.  Kovic has been a disabled paraplegic since his 1968 wound in combat in Vietnam.  The book details what a group of disabled, wheel chair bound veterans, did to get attention of the politicians. His story  is a compelling tale of pure betrayal by the political world.  Here are men who were sent on a mission far, far, from home, for a purpose that no one could explain properly or defend.  They were critically wounded to a point where they could not take care of themselves and were abandoned in a veterans hospital like a homeless person.

The book is a tale of the human cost of war.  Young men who could no longer function in society due to their injuries.  But, the tale also shows all the unintended consequences of war.  Kovic mentions that the Washington Post had printed a story about the fact that an average of 22 veterans commit suicide each day in America today.  Hurricane Street tells the other story of what happened to these injured veterans.  How one got into drugs, ended up in prison and died of an overdose;  one took a shotgun and blew his brains out one day.  Another died from an infection due to a bed sore that would not heal.  These are stories the public rarely hears or, for that matter, cares about, but this is one of the  the human toll of war.

In my last post, "How the Vietnam War was hijacked by the Press," I review a book about how the Vietnam War started and all the bone-headed decisions made by politicians in the Kennedy Administration who acted as if they were playing a video game. Elections have consequences, is a familiar saying in politics today, it usually refers to appointing judges.  Elections certainly do have consequences, but most people don't have the slightest idea; they know nothing about a candidate's positions and his world view.  Elections are akin to beauty contests, like the Miss America contest.  It's who talked the best or slickest, not who has experience or fortitude.

The Vietnam War was a war like no other in our history.  It was a war that could not be won.  Imagine, if you will, that Los Angeles County had declared independence from California.  You design a war in which you must only fight  inside Los Angeles County.  You cannot go out of the county to engage your enemy.  The enemy, on the other hand, has all the liberty to attack you from every corner of land and sea.  How likely are you to win such a war?  This was the Vietnam war. A war that was designed by clueless politicians who played it like a game.  The blog post I mentioned earlier details all the events that led to this was and the madness of the war architects.  Check out the cost in deaths for the Vietnam War; click here.