Paradise Lost

 Most of us have heard of the World War II Nazi holocaust,  and many have heard of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 during World War I (WW I), but who has heard of the holocaust that occurred in  Smyrna in September, 1922, committed by the Turks - four years after the end of WW I?  Why we have not heard about it is a good question.   Paradise Lost - Smyrna 1922, the Destruction of a Christian City in the Islamic World, by Giles Milton,  is one of the most compelling history books of the century.  The book was published by Basic Books in 2008.  Brilliantly written, documented and researched, it tells the heart wrenching and most astounding story ever told - a story that will shock the reader with the brutal genocide by Turkish forces immediately after  WW I.  Man's inhumanity to man is the best example of what happened in Smyrna in September 1922.  The Turkish holocaust is only one of the astounding stories that comes alive in every page; the other example is how the Allied forces watched people being butchered in front of them and they not only refused to intervene but passively let it happen. 

Smyrna, one of the seven Biblical cities of the New Testament, was a majority Christian city that had prospered in the Muslim world of the Ottomans; it was the jewel of Asia Minor, very successful and prosperous. Its inhabitants were unlike the rest of the Ottoman world, mainly of European stock, British, Levantines, Greeks, Italians, Jews and Armenians.  Most of these people's roots went back to the Byzantine period.  Smyrna was the Hong Kong of its day.  Many of the top citizens were successful businessmen who hired hundreds of thousands of Turks to work their factories.  A port city as cosmopolitan as Paris or London with a great night life, culture, music and the arts; an oasis in a sea of Islam.

After the Ottoman Turks were defeated in WW I the European powers could not decide what to do with the defeated Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey.  They finally decided that they would let Greece send troops to occupy Smyrna which they did in  May 1919.  After landing troops in Smyrna, the Greek soldiers, along with the majority Greek population of Smyrna, started celebrating as if they had just won the lottery.  As they're marching through the city a shot is heard.  The Greek troops go crazy and proceed to murder about 500 citizens, mostly Turks, as they shoot randomly all over the place.  It was believed that the shot was an intentional provocation by an Italian military officer stationed in Smyrna.  It is later discovered that the Italian government had supplied arms to the Turks.   After securing Smyrna the Greek Army moved to occupy a large part of the interior of Turkey.  Initially, they had many successes, but as they stretched their forces out deeper and deeper they suffered setbacks when their rear supply lines were successfully attacked by the Turks. Milton describes how the Greek soldiers committed atrocities as they rampaged through a large swath of Turkey.  When a Greek commander was questioned as to why his soldiers were committing atrocities he responded that he liked the idea.

The Greek occupation of Turkey was condemned to failure from the beginning.  They had no hope of success.  After fighting wars since 1912, the Greeks were near collapse, physically and financially.  Additionally, they were led by incompetent civilian and military leaders.  Their defeat was a foregone conclusion.  The Greeks called their adventure in Turkey, the "Megali Idea," the great idea to re-establish a Greek empire.  The British mistakenly saw them as the up and coming power in the Mediterranean.  The French and the Italians, perhaps jealous of the Greeks, stabbed them in the back by supplying the Turks with weapons and sabotaging the Greeks whenever possible. It was the most pathetic picture.  All the Turks, led by the future founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk, had to do was bide their time; which they did to perfection.  Besides being a brilliant military commander and a charismatic leader, Kemal was a shrewd politician as well; he played the allies like a violin.  Milton describes Kemal as a heroic figure.

After the defeat of the Greek Army, the Turks advanced toward Smyrna.  They advanced as the defeated Greek soldiers moved on their own as best they could to reach Smyrna where they hoped to get on ships which would rescue them.  Milton is at his best in telling the story of what happened once the Turks arrived in Smyrna.  The Turkish Army, which included many irregulars called "chettes," were on their own and each soldier did whatever he wanted to whomever he encountered. Most soldiers acted like gangs of thugs on a rampage.  They began by robbing and raping young women.  They would force their way into a house, steal valuables, money and whatever they wanted and rape the women.  After raping the women they would kill them and dismember their bodies.  Milton is more descriptive, but to save the reader revulsion, I'll be less descriptive.  It was as worse as you could imagine it.

At other instances, armed Turkish soldiers would stop people on the street and demand all they had; if someone had nothing the person was tortured and killed.  In one instance, a man who had nothing for them to steal was hacked to death in front of the others.  As Milton describes it, the troops were completely undisciplined and without leaders.  Whether this was by design is not stated, but my impression is that this was by design.  The Turkish leaders basically told them to do whatever they wanted.

When the Turkish military commander of Smyrna, General Noureddin finally appears on the scene, he calls for a meeting with the leader of the Greek church, Metropolitan Chrysostom.  The meeting lasts less than a few minutes.  The General turns the bishop over to the mob outside and tells them to do whatever they want with him.  The mob proceeds to hack him to death.

After a month of pillaging and killing at will, the Turks set the city on fire by bringing in barrels of gasoline, spreading it everywhere and lighting it.  The city, with the exception of the Turkish quarter, is set ablaze.  Over 500,000 screaming Christians fled to the waterfront desperate to escape.  Professor M.H. Dobkin in his book on the Smyrna genocide describes how the European powers watched from  their ships in the Smyrna harbor: "While a flotilla of twenty-seven Allied warships - including three American destroyers - looked on, the Turks indulged in an orgy of pillage, rape and slaughter; which the Western powers condoned - eager to protect their oil and trade interests in Turkey - through their silence and by their refusal to intervene. Turkish forces then set fire to the legendary city and totally destroyed it. A massive cover-up followed, by tacit agreement of the Western Allies, who had defeated Turkey and Germany during World War I. By 1923, Smyrna 's demise was all but expunged from historical memory."

No one would offer a hand.  All requests were coldly turned down by the Europeans and Americans.  As the fire got bigger and closer to the waterfront the mass of humanity could go nowhere else, they were trapped by the Turks who refused to let them escape.  No food or water was allowed to the desperate people who, by now were hysterical.  Many were driven mad and they jumped into the ocean where they drowned.  Milton describes how the bay of Smyrna was filled with bodies; yet all those warships just stood there as if nothing was happening.

There is a heroic story in the book which gives some hope for the human condition.  Milton describes the heroic exploits of a Methodist preacher from New York, Asa Jennings.  A short, diminutive man with a large face, he arrived in Smyrna determined to do all he could to save as many as he could.  In one occasion he boarded an Italian ship and confronted the captain.  He asked for people to be let on board; the captain refused, saying he had orders not to intervene.  Refusing to take no for an answer he then went to the Italian Consul in Smyrna and confronted him.  He was able to get the Italian Consul to give the ship's captain permission to take on refugees which he did.  Later on Jennings goes to the nearby Greek Island of Mytilene.  He confronted the cowering remnant of the Greek fleet and convinced them that they need to go to Smyrna to save their fellow Greeks (most of the refugees were Greeks).  Over 20 empty ships were sitting in the harbor doing nothing.

The Greek Navy was hesitant to go back to Smyrna, fearing a Turkish attack.  Jennings tricked them by saying that the American ships there would protect them, although he had no approval of this.  The Greeks gave in and appointed Jennings as an Admiral and gave him command of about 20  Greek ships.  Jennings orders all ships to head to Smyrna to rescue the desperate people who would otherwise perish within days.  Through his efforts, over 300,000 people were rescued from the waterfront.  One man, on his own, did what the Allied powers, including the Americans, should have done, yet they watched a Christian city being raped and destroyed.

Smyrna, the jewel of Asia Minor, the Paris of the near east was completely burned to the ground.  It is estimated that over 100,000 Christians were slaughtered by the Turks in Smyrna; all civilians, all innocent people living in their homes as they and their forefathers had for centuries.  160,000 were deported into the interior by the Turks, most died from exhaustion on the way and many other were shot dead at the whim of their captors.  All of this happened while representatives of all the European powers watched.  How can this have happened?

Divided We Fall

When it comes to the conflict between Christians and Muslims the lack of any cooperation among Christians stands out.  A few examples:

1.  The Byzantine Empire falls to the Muslim Turks in 1453.   The Byzantine Empire was the eastern half of the Roman Empire.  After the fall of Rome around 460 AD, the eastern empire continued and prospered until its defeat by the Muslim Turks in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople.  The Muslims had been on the march, conquering surrounding territory ever since the death of Muhammad in 632 AD.

After the Christian schism  between the Roman church and the Greek church in 1054 AD the Roman and Greek (Byzantine) churches became enemies and have never reconciled to this day.  Nothing could have been more tragic in the history of Christendom.   This is the equivalent of a family divided.   In 1453 total victory arrived for the Muslims with the conquest and destruction of Constantinople, the seat of Christianity for 1300 years.  No Christian country in Europe offered any help.   Only seven hundred private soldiers from Genoa, Italy, led by Giovanni Giustiniani, a brilliant siege commander, came to aid Constantinople; they fought valiantly against overwhelming odds until they were overrun by the superior Turkish forces.  The Muslims did not stop with the Byzantine Empire; eventually they reached to gates of Vienna Austria in 1529 in their thirst for territory. The Europeans failed to see that the loss of the Byzantine Empire was not just a loss of territory but a religious defeat that would continue to harass them to this day.  We're still paying the cost of the loss of the Byzantine Empire today.  Lars Brownworth, in his book, Lost to the West, tells the story of the fall of the Byzantine Empire.

Some say that "war is not the answer."  The Europeans believed this and did nothing, but war continues to be waged upon Christians to this day without ceasing.  There are those who see a mountain and refuse to recognize it.  This is what most Christians are doing today when it comes to their Muslim opponents.

2.  At the end of World War I, the European allies, which included Britain, France, Italy, and Greece defeated the Ottoman Turks and Germany.  After 500 years, the Europeans had a chance to reverse all the Muslim advances of territory conquered by the Muslims.    When the victorious allies of WW I sat down to decide what to do with the defeated Ottoman Turks, they squabbled and could not come up with a cogent decision.  Finally, they acted - they decided to let Greece occupy Smyrna, a coastal city in Turkey - called Izmir today.  The Greeks, desiring to re-occupy their Byzantine land lost in 1453, moved out and occupied a large portion of Turkey.  They blundered militarily very badly and were crushed by the Turks, who took horrific revenge on anyone not of Turkish descent; committing unspeakable atrocities, including the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians.  No one knows of the atrocities committed by the Turks after the end of WW I.  We've heard of the Armenian genocide but not anything else.  I will review the book Paradise Lost, Smyrna 1922 in a later post.  This book details the Turkish atrocities in Turkey after they defeated the Greeks.

3.  Today, we still face a hostile Muslim foe.  The difference today is that it is not one country against another, but a fanatical part of Islam, in the name of Al Qaeda, Jihad and many others who still fight against the infidel, non-Muslims.  This war exploded on 9/11/2001 when Muslim terrorists attacked and murdered 3,000 Americans who were busy working at their desk in New York City.  Whereas before armies would attack and overrun territories, today the Muslim terrorists attack innocent people wherever they are. and murder them at will.  Muslim terrorists also attack other Muslims they disagree with such and they do in Pakistan and Iraq.

Historical Amnesia

According to the politically correct worldview, anyone who opposes the building of the World Trade Center Mosque, is intolerant, a bigot, or a racist; perhaps all of these.  When Bill O'Reilly appeared on the "View," a daytime soap opera of a TV talk show, two of the very liberal hosts, Joy Behar and Whoopie Goldberg, were so incensed when Bill suggested that building a Mosque next to the World Trade Center was an abomination that they stormed out of the set.  I'm sure they thought that Bill was all of the above.

I'm afraid that most people, including Bill O'Reilly, are for the most part, ignorant of history.  I find that most people I talk to are about the third grade level when it comes to history.  This is devastating to our worldview and our culture.  You cannot have a proper world view without knowing basic history.  Let's review here quickly why a Mosque near the World Trade Center in not appropriate.

 1.  Since the beginning of the Muslim religion, around 632 AD, the Muslims have made it their goal to conquer, convert, destroy and obliterate all vestiges of Christianity and replace it with Islam.   Why were we attacked on 9/11, for instance?  Whom had the United States attacked?  What was the reason for Pearl Harbor type of an attack on the United Sates?   When the Muslims conquer an area or a people, the will destroy all vestiges of the conquered people's religion, including churches.  They will take a Christian church and turn it into a Mosque. Historically, Muslims will erect a Mosque on the spot where there used to be a church, such as, Constantinople, Jerusalem and Cordoba in Spain.  Why did they call the Ground Zero project, "The Cordoba House"?

Let's take some examples of this destruction of conquered people's religion.  In the Sudan, there has been a war on Christians for over 30 years.  The goal of the Muslims in the Sudan is total elimination of Christians in Sudan.  Does Darfur mean anything to you?  A genocide against Christians is going on right now.

In 1974, Turkey, a Muslim country, forcibly conquered the island of Cyprus.  They've occupied half of the island ever since.  The other half is semi-independent.  The entire island, with a small Turkish minority had been Christian majority.  The Turks have demolished most, if not all of the Christian churches in their occupied half of the island. 

Smyrna, a coastal city in Asia Minor, part of Turkey, was majority Christian until 1922.  After the Ottoman Turks lost WW I they blamed the Christians of Smyrna for their troubles and accused them of undermining them.  They systematically killed all of them and burned the city to the ground.  This story is told in the new book "Paradise Lost" by Giles Milton, published in 2008.  This book is a compelling story that cannot be put down.  Superbly researched and written.  Milton recounts how the Christians were forcibly removed from their homes and marched through the desert until they died from exhaustion or were summarily murdered in cold blood.  Reading the story of Smyrna is a human  tragedy and a Holocaust of epic proportions, yet no one knows anything about it.  After the destruction of Smyrna, one of the seven cities of the seven churches of the New Testament, they re-named the city Izmir.  The Turks also renamed their capital of Constantinople - a thousand year old city, to Istanbul at the same time. Could there have been an anti-Christian reason for it?  Constantinople had been the capital of Christendom until it was conquered and destroyed by the Turks in 1453.  Smyrna, as noted earlier, was one of the original seven churches of the New Testament.  The entire country of Turkey was conquered from the Christian Byzantine Empire and made into an Islamic country.

2.  Amnesia, is a condition where one cannot remember even  one's own name.  The ignorance of history, especially the history of the persecution of Christians by Muslims is another amnesia.  This amnesia will do grave damage to our country.  Does anyone care?

3.  We can agree that not all Muslims are terrorists nor do they share the hatred of the United States. However, the Muslims of the world, in general, and the the Muslims of the United States in particular have failed to condemn the Muslim terrorists.  On the contrary, after 9/11, the Muslims of the Middle East celebrated the murder of US citizens. The developer of the Ground Zero Mosque, Faisal Abdul Rauf, stated in an interview by"60 Minutes" stated that the United States shares responsibility for 9/11. Click here to watch what he said.  He also refused to say if Hamas was a terrorist organization. Additionally, he refuses to discuss where the finances come from for the Mosque.

We Have Met the Enemy and it's Us

We just lost one of the best military commanders of our day, General Stanley McChrystal, the last commander in Afghanistan.  Those of us who love history and learn from it, know that no military, no matter how large or competent, can win without a brilliant military commander.  A good military commander is crucial to winning.  There are many examples:  General David Patreaus in Iraq.  As soon as General Patreaus was appointed to lead the Iraq war, he turned it around and we were successful.  General Norman Schwarzkopf the brilliant commander of the 1991 Gulf War.  It was in no small measure the ability of General Schwarzkopf that the US and coalition forces had such blitzkrieg success.

In World War II, it was the brilliance of Generals Eisenhower, Patton (check out this youTube video on Patton) and the British General Bernard Montgomery that the US and its allies won the war decisively.  On the German side, it was the brilliance of Generals such as General Erwin Rommel that they had the success that they had.  If you study the war in North Africa, you can see the military brilliance of this, one of the greatest military mind of all time.  Another brilliant German commander was General Friedrich Paulus, the commander of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad in the Eastern Front.  Although the Germans lost this battle, it was not because of the leadership of General Paulus, but the insanity of Adolf Hitler who, basically condemned those who perished there to an avoidable death.  Hitler refused all advice by the commanders on the ground that they could not succeed given the weather, lack of equipment, food, proper winter clothing, and the obstacles that they faced.  Hitler refused to have his forces withdraw and condemned them to death.  The battle of Leningrad is, perhaps the saddest story in military history. Man's inhumanity to man screams out at you when you watch a documentary of this battle.  About two million soldiers and civilians died in 900 days of the siege.  Many starved to death or died of the freezing weather. Among the dead were soldiers from Russia, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania and other European countries.

In Roman days, the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC stands out.  A better equipped,  trained and numerically superior Roman Army was defeated by a lesser army commanded by one of the most brilliant military commanders of all time - Hannibal, the famous Carthaginian General and son of another famous Carthaginian General, Hasdrubal.  The Romans lost most of their 50,000 troops who engaged Hannibal at this site, the worst military defeat the Romans had ever had.  Again,  Hannibal won by his military brilliance over his Roman counterpart, the Roman Consul Varro.  When the battle was over, there were an estimated 60,000 dead bodies on the battlefield.  In comparison, the United States lost 59,000 dead in 10 years of the Vietnam war.  The battle of Cannae was so significant for military strategy that the US Military studies it to this day in the War College.

Back to General McChrystal.  As you are aware, the General was forced to retire after an unflattering article by the leftist magazine, Rolling Stone, called "The Runaway General."  Rolling Stone and their supporters are anti-war and  set out to sabotage the US military.  They caused our best general to leave the field.  As the saying goes:  with friends such as these who needs enemies.  The left is an enemy of the United States.  They only care for their ideology, not for the welfare of the United States - they are the enemy as much as the Taliban.

Mosque at Ground Zero & No Church in Saudi Arabia

In my last post I argued why it is a very bad idea to build a Mosque at Ground Zero in New York City. The mind boggling contradictions are never ending and stupefying as to why no one notices them. For one, in Muslim countries, Christians are not only persecuted but it is illegal to bring a Bible into one. In Saudi Arabia, as in all other Muslim countries you cannot build a Christian church anywhere. Can you imagine if we in the West had this rule? Can you imagine how the Muslims would be rampaging everywhere? Yet in Christian lands this discrimination goes unnoticed. We approved a Mosque on the site where the Muslims committed the worst atrocity in U.S. history, but no one complains about Christian persecution in Muslim lands.

The United States provides billions of dollars in aid to Muslim countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and so on yet we allow them to persecute our Christian brothers and sisters. Since 1979, for instance, the United States has provided Egypt with over one billion dollars in military aid. Just this past January, Egyptian Muslims killed six Christians as they were leaving their church. No one complains. Why does no one raise one finger against this?

In 1991, the United States went to war to liberate Kuwait, a Muslim country. Later in 1994 the United States went to rescue Muslims in Yugoslavia. In both campaigns many American soldiers were killed and the U.S. spent billions of dollars yet, we allow our Christian brothers and sisters to be persecuted in these same lands. In 2003, the United States went to war in Iraq to liberated the people from a murderous despot, yet no one notices all the atrocities against our Christian brothers.

Check out this short video on how Muslims like to build Mosques on sites they've conquered.

Condemned to Repeat it Again

Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it as the noted philosopher George Santayana famously stated. We have a perfect example of this today. As you may have heard, American Muslims are trying to build a Mosque on the Ground Zero site in New York City. City fathers, including the current Mayor Bloomberg have approved the project. How can such an abomination go without notice, you may have asked? It boggles the mind to think that these city fathers are totally blind, deaf and dumb to history. I may have the answer to this blindness. I believe this is because the political left does not think critically, but emotionally. According to the left, if we are just nice to our enemies they will become our friends. President Obama is a big believer in this. His idea of dealing with Iran, for example, is to speak nice to them and negotiate ad nauseam. "Stupid is as stupid does" said that other philosopher, Forrest Gump. This tactic has never worked - it is known as appeasement. History has shown that this is a bankrupt policy; just ask Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister in 1939.

Let's start with a little history. Muhammad charged his followers to conquer and kill the infidel according to Surah 9:5 in the Koran. When the Muslims first conquered what is now the area of Israel, they built their most important Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, on top of the Jewish Temple, the holiest site in Judaism. They did this for two major reasons: To show the world that they had replaced Judaism and Christianity as the only true religion and to show the world that they now rule - it was an "in your face" show of force and raw arrogance. Such humiliation of Judaism and Christianity later led to the Crusades.

To put this act in modern day terms, this Muslim act would be like having a Muslim army conqueror Rome, demolish the Vatican and build a Mosque right on top of it. Can you understand the arrogance of it?

Fast forward to what we talked about at the beginning of this piece. The scene is New York City. In the year 2001 AD Muslims hijack numerous American commercial jets full of travelers and crash them into the World Trade Center, a site very much representing American economic success and power. This murderous act killed over 3,000 innocent Americans. Now, nearly 10 years later, they want to build a grand Mosque on the site their followers destroyed in their attempt to kill the infidel. The city fathers not only not object but approved the project. Stupid is as stupid does. There is no other description here.

The Bankruptcy of Socialism

Socialism is a bankrupt political and economic philosophy. This is not just an opinion but is borne out by history and facts. Let's look at a socialist country such as Italy. In Italy, for example, unemployment in the last seven years has been between 7.5% to 9.10%. What is most disturbing though, is the youth rate of unemployment which usually hovers around 30%. This is devastating to any economy.

Why is this the case? It is very simple. A socialist system such as in Italy, discourages employers from hiring. This is due to the fact that unions have a virtual stranglehold on the economy. You see, in Italy workers are practically guaranteed a job once they're employed. An employer cannot fire them unless there are unusual circumstances. It is not hard to figure out that no employer would hire a worker, knowing that he can never get rid of him/her, so employers do not hire. This in turn has the devastating consequences that follow. In the United States, we just had an example of what socialist policies can do. One of the biggest companies in the world, GM, had to be rescued from bankruptcy by the U.S. government. The main reason for this failure was that the unions strangled GM into bankruptcy. GM was paying nearly full salaries to workers that were laid off - a requirement of the union. What started out as a movement to aid the workers, has resulted in the workers getting shafted by unions. Unions only care about their own power, they care little for the common man.

Despite this glaring example, socialism is on the rise in South America and now in the United States with the Obama Administration. Socialism flies in the face of sound economics policy, yet we keep on going to it. This type of behavior is self-destructive. When will they learn? They never will because socialism is not about sound economic policy, it's about making people feel good, it's an emotion not a reasonable position. Socialists will never understand this. This is what we have coming to America.