Deja vù All Over Gain: The Loss of the Eastern Roman Empire

Since the death of Muhammad in 632 AD the Muslim Turks have been gobbling up territory like the current ISIS conquest; much like the old video game of Pacman.  Muhammad was ruthless, killing all who opposed him. One of his first atrocities was the murder of the remaining Jews in Medina in 627, a few years before his death.  From there the Muslim Empire expanded throughout the Near East, as it was known then, all the way to Russia, North Africa, the Balkans and parts of Europe, including most of Spain, Sicily and Southern Italy.  In 1453 they conquered Constantinople, the seat of Christianity and capital of The Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire). The Muslim Turk empire was known as the Ottoman Empire.

Where were the Europeans while the Turks conquered half of the world?  They were all sitting on their hands, thinking it did not concern them.  Sounds familiar today too.  The Europeans paid the price for their inaction:  They had to fight the Muslim Turks for the next thousand years.  Recall that Vienna was besieged by the Turks, not once but twice, in 1529 and in 1683.  Recall the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. The Muslim Ottoman Empire ruled half of the world until World War I.

The Ottoman Turks were defeated in World War I.  The West had their opportunity to get all the territories they lost to the Turks but they failed to do it.  The decisions made by the victorious allies at the end of World War I was nothing short of disastrous, if not laughable.  Not one decision made any sense.  Let's look at their decision to give the City of Smyrna to the Greeks.  A third grader could have told you that this was a very bad idea.  The Greeks and the Turks hate each other with such a passion that no good was going to come out of it.  Indeed, this was what happened.  The Greeks, trying to regain territories lost to the Turks in the past invaded the interior of Turkey but were defeated by the Turks.  Two fine books recount this story very well in fine detail.  Paradise Lost, Smyrna 1922 and The Great Fire.  The Greeks, in turn, were stabbed in the back by their European friends such as Italy who gave the Turks weapons.   France and Britain both refused to help the Greeks.  Had the Europeans cooperated in this matter, the world map would look very different today.

Talking about bad decisions by the victories allies after World War I, consider what they did in redrawing the map of the Middle East.  Can you say, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, just to name a few.  We are still paying the price of these bone-headed decisions made after World War I. This map looks like it was drawn by elementary school children, without regard for any facts, such as ethnic identities for the Kurds, Shiites or Sunni Muslims.  We're now paying a heavy price for these mistakes.  What is even more worrisome is that we have not learned from our mistakes.  The Europeans are still clueless about their threat.  I suppose that they will not wake up until the hordes are at their doors.

FDR: A New Perspective

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) has had a wonderful reputation in the United States as one of the great Presidents.  He was the only one in history to serve more than two terms.  Indeed, FDR was a gifted leader, speaker, and a most charismatic and charming man.  He was an able war leader and deserves some praise and accolades.  I have a different view of FDR that I want to present here.  Below I will list some of the many flaws and damaging things that he did as president that cannot be ignored or swept away under the rug.

FDR was a liberal's liberal.  He was the first liberal president of the United States who, in many ways, transformed America - for the worse. An example:

• Economically, he was a follower of John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who was an advocate of big government spending.  FDR spent like a drunken sailor, through his failed New Deal.  He truly believed that big government spending was the fix for economic problems.  We now know that this was wrong.  Let's take the 1930s depression as an example.  Did all the government programs of FDR fix the economy?  In 1932, when he took office, the unemployment rate was 23.5%.  In 1939, after eight years of massive government spending the unemployment rate was still at 17%.  Do you call this an economic success?  The economy was revived after WWII when taxes were slashed by a Republican Congress, which among other things, reduced the highest income tax rate from the astronomical amount of 94% for earners of $200,000 and above, and other incentives for economic growth were passed by Congress, reversing FDR's failed New Deal policies.  Click here for a short essay on this.  Economically, FDR was a failure.

• How about Social Security?  Was that not a stroke of genius?  Well, no, it was not.  Let me ask you a question.  Can you live on what you make on Social Security?  Probably, 95% cannot and would be in deep poverty if they only had Social Security.  Let me give you a personal example.  I prepared for retirement by making private investments in an IRA and a 457 Plan from work.  Together, I invested less than $30,000.  These two investments now give me double the monthly income I get from Social Security.  Oh, you say, most people don't know how to invest.  It's not rocket science; all you need it the willingness to put money in investments that will produce on a regular basis throughout your working life.  I had zero training; I learned it myself.  Very easy.  If I had invested all I paid into Social Security in my 45+ years of working I'd have a multi-million dollar investment now.  Social Security has very limited benefits.

Now for the second part:  FDR's damaging legacy:

•   Government spending.  Because of the huge government spending legacy that he started we now have out of control government spending.  As of this writing the national debt is over 18 Trillion dollars.  In 1945, at the end of World War II, and after spending $296 Billion on the war, our national debt was $259 Billion.  Today, it's 18 Trillion dollars.  Click here for the history of our national debt.

• The internment of Japanese American and to a lesser extent Italian and German Americans.  What FDR did to loyal, good, if not the best, American citizens of Japanese ancestry is beyond forgiveness.  If you were a Japanese-American in 1942, you're life would be changed forever.  You would end up in a concentration camp, accused of crimes you never committed.  You never got your day in court, or your due process under the Constitution, you were arrested by FDR's government and imprisoned like a common criminal.  Many people lost all their property and never got it back.  Italian and German legal immigrants not born in America were labeled enemies of the state just for their ethnicity.  Many Italian and German Americans were rounded up and imprisoned for no reason at all.  Many lost their business and livelihood.  The Italian-American Mayor of San Francisco, Angelo Rossi was publicly humiliated by innuendo as a Mussolini follower, with zero evidence.  All untrue.  So was FDR a great man?  Depends on whom you ask.  To some he was, to others, and I'm one of these, I believe FDR did more harm than good.  Granted he was a gifted leader, but even tyrants such as Mussolini and Hitler were gifted leaders.  What was the fruit of their labor?  You will know them by their fruits.

The Fonz Factor: Mussolini and the Rape of a Nation

"Happy Days" was a very popular TV show in the 1970s and 80s in which one of the main characters, Fonzi, was so charismatic and charming that everyone followed him blindly.  Young girls thought he was the greatest gift to women.  In Fonzi's world, he, and only he, could make a coke machine give you a bottle free by just tapping on it, his magic touch.  Such were the miracles that Fonzi could perform.  In actuality, Fonzi was just a neighborhood hoodlum who could get all his friends to follow him off the cliff just by the power of his personality.

In  Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini's Italy, by Christopher Duggan, the fascist era of dictator Benito Mussolini,  comes alive.   The Fascists that emerged after WWI Italy were basically groups of organized thugs, squadrismo, who meted out justice to anyone who did not agree with them, including murder, beatings and the ruining of a person's business.  The Fascists of the early period ruled their own territory by intimidation and murder.  Each city had a Fascist boss, referred to as a ras, a word borrowed from Ethiopian tribal leaders.  Each city's ras was judge, jury and executioner.  The Italian police force was basically neutralized.  The Fascists had managed to hijack the entire country, much as the terror group ISIS has done in Syria and Iraq today.

Mussolini wrestled the leadership of Fascist Italy by the sheer force of his personality, cult image and guile; he was the "Fonzi" of his day.  He ruled the same way as the city ras did, eliminating opposition by murder as needed and intimidation.  Mussolini saw himself as the ultimate in manliness; a gift to women.  When he spoke he took on a stance that emanated strength, manliness and arrogance.  Women, in turn, saw him the same way and were attracted to him.  Mussolini envisioned a new Roman Empire.  He always wore his military uniform and projected a masterful command of his audience.  Click here for some pictures. Many Italians looked on him as having godly powers.

By 1926, many Italians had fallen for Mussolini too, regarding him as a savior with unusual powers that would bring Italy honor and prestige.  A schizophrenic adulation of the man followed. Mussolini, could see that he could have his way with the entire country.   He saw himself as the new Roman Emperor, a new Caesar,  who would restore Rome to its former glory.  Toward this goal, he embarked on many disastrous military adventures, Ethiopia, in those days the Italians called it Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, and finally the coup de grâce, World War II.

By the time he invaded Ethiopia in 1935, he had managed to cripple the Italian economy which was in ruin by his actions as well as the world wide depression.  During his rein the Italian armed forces were fighting wars in Libya, Ethiopia and Spain.  These disastrous adventures were then followed by World War II where his forces suffered disastrous defeats, such as in North Africa, Greece, the Balkans and Russia.  These defeats were not at all the fault of the armed forces, for they were not only stretched to the breaking point but did not have the equipment, the training nor the capabilities to wage the wars that they were forced to wage. Very little planning was done for these military adventures.  In many cases, the military leaders were not told of their coming wars until they were declared.  This proved to be a calamity of monumental proportions.

Dictators such as Mussolini and Hitler share a common character:  Both were extremely delusional.  Both suffered from some form of mental dysfunction.  Both thought they were invincible.  Both were detached from reality.  Both fought wars they could not possibly win.  In the process they condemned an entire nation to death and destruction unparalleled in human history.  All because a madman had taken control of their nation.  The world still has such dictators who are responsible for the annihilation of their people:  Syria, North Korea, Iraq of Saddam Hussein, and many African countries such as Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Somalia, just to name a few.

Suggested readings:
Fascist Voice, An Intimate History of Mussolini's Italy by Christopher Duggan, 2013, Oxford University Press.
Duce, by Richard Collier, 1971, Viking Press.
Mussolini by Denis Mack Smith, 1982, Alfred A. Knopf.
The Ciano Diaries, Edited by Hugh Gibson, 1945, 1946, Doubleday & Co.

Who Was Chè Guevara?

How many times have you seen someone wearing a Chè Guevara T-shirt?  Just the other day, I ran into a person with such a T-shirt.  I could not help but think that the person had no idea who Chè Guevara was or what he stood for.  I get a feeling that people who wear such T-shirts, just think that the Chè icon is just another "cool" clothing option that makes them fit in with the crowd.

Let's cut to the chase.  Who was Chè?  Was he a hero, a charismatic figure, a villain or a brutal thug?  If you look into the history of this person you will find that he was a cold blooded murderer, a communist, a henchman of Fidel Castro and a criminal of the worst kind.  A few facts:

• He was born Ernesto Lynch; his parents were Spanish and Irish.  He later changed his name to fit his ambition as a communist revolutionary. After graduating from medical school in 1953 he decided that what he really wanted to do was  fight in communist rebellions anywhere he could find one,

• After a failed attempt to stir up trouble in Guatemala, he fled to Mexico where he met Fidel Castro, who was on ice there waiting to return to Cuba and take over from the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in the Cuban communist revolution of 1959.  While fighting with Castro in Cuba Chè hones his killing instinct and discovers that he loves killing. In an article by David W. Thornton published by Yahoo, he is described like this: "Che' becomes Castro's chief lieutenant and then the comandante of one of the largest guerilla bands. He is ruthless, frequently executing suspected traitors quickly and dispassionately. In a 1957 letter to his first wife (he remarried to a fellow guerilla in 1959), Che' writes, "I'm here in Cuba's hills, alive and thirsting for blood." In a letter to his father, he writes, "I really like killing." Che's instructions to a subordinate are simple: "If in doubt, kill him."
• Thornton further describes the extent of his bloodthirsty mania this way: "He is placed in charge of La Cabana prison, where the majority of the executions take place. According to the Black Book of Communism, by the mid-1960s, 14,000 Cubans have been executed without fair trials. 500,000 Cubans were incarcerated in labor camps. At one point, in 1961, one of every 19 Cubans was a political prisoner. Che' plays a major role in developing Castro's penal system and defends the executions publicly in 1964 after he had ceased to command the prison. He even dismisses his victims as "all CIA agents" before his death in 1967."

This is just a short list of his many attributes.  There is much more.  So, next time you see someone wearing a Chè T-shirt, ask him or her if he/she knows who that man on his/her T-shirt was.

The Katyn Forrest Massacre by the Soviets - Deja Vù All Over Again

This morning, at my regular morning coffee in Downtown Manhattan Beach I was discussing the downing of the Malaysian Airliner by Russian thugs in eastern Ukraine with a casual friend.  I expressed to my friend that it was perfectly clear to me that Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, was responsible.  In the course of our conversation I mentioned to him some historical bad behavior by the Russians, such as the Katyn Forest Massacre of 1940.   Most people have no idea what this was.  Click here for a summary of what happened in the Katyn Forest.

In 1939 the Russians invaded Poland.  In September 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland too.  The Nazis and the Soviets agreed to divide Poland between themselves.  Sometime between 1939 and 1941   The Russians proceded to arrest a large number of Polish soldiers and their officers.  In a bizarre decision, the Soviets decided that they would murder all of their Polish prisoners; a sort of ethnic cleansing.  About 22,000 Polish soldiers, officers, and Polish intellectuals were brutally massacred and buried in the Katyn Forest.  The Nazis discovered the mass graves in 1943.  The Russians denied it and blamed the Nazis.  The Russians finally confessed in 1990, fifty years later, that they were responsible.  Does anything sound familiar with the current Ukrainian situation?  Did the Russians admit to shooting down the Malaysian airliner?  Again, my motto:  Those who fail to learn from history will be condemned to repeat it.  Another short summary of the Katyn Forest massacre is in this link.  Click here to read it.

No One Paid a Price for the Internment of Japanese Americans in World War II

As an immigrant to America, I started school in the United States in the fifth grade at the age of 12 at Angeles Mesa School in Los Angeles.  I have fond memories of that experience that I still cherish to this day, at age 70.   My subject in this piece, however, is about something else:  The internment of the Japanese Americans during World War II.  I don't recall ever hearing about this dreadful episode in American history in my US History books.  I only heard it from outside sources and my own study of it.  It still amazes me to this day how this horrible episode happened and how nobody paid a price for it, let alone the single perpetrator of it, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Occasionally, something comes out that reminds us of what happened.  David Ono, a news anchor at the ABC affiliate in Los Angeles, recently made a wonderful short documentary about the Heart Mountain Internment Camp in Wyoming.  Click here to view this wonderful short documentary that summarizes what the innocent Japanese Americans went through during World War II.  In an earlier piece in 2011, on this blog, I detailed what happened to the Japanese Americans.  You can check it out by clicking here.

I can understand war hysteria.  In the 1950s and 60s we were paranoid about communism and the dreaded "Domino Theory," The Vietnam War was started, in part, for this reason. In the 1960s we were also paranoid about a Russian nuclear bomb.  Many people built shelters in their back yards.

To put what happened to the Japanese Americans in today's perspective,  let's say that after Vladimir Putin took over the Crimea and then invaded the Ukraine, the United States in it's paranoia, arrested and confined all Americans of Russians descent.  So, as Maria Sharipova is playing at the Paris Tennis Tournament she is taken into custody, just because she is  Russian.   This, in short, is what happened to the innocent Japanese Americans.  They spent three to five years in a concentration camp just for being of Japanese ancestry, nothing else.  Nobody in the government paid a price for it.

Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind: How World War I Started

Ask anyone with an elementary knowledge of world history how World War I (WWI) started and nine out of ten will probably say the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the Austria-Hungary Empire.  This answer is very simplistic.  Most people have no idea what was behind the assassination and how Europe fell into a war they had no idea of the whirlwind that it would bring: 65 million men mobilized; 20 million dead, including civilians; 21 million wounded; three empires destroyed, Ottoman, German and Austria-Hungary.  The assassination was just the match that lit the fire, but the wood for the fire was there.  Since history is one of my passions, I've recently read two great books on WWI, The Lost History of 1914 by Jack Beatty, and The Sleepwalkers, How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark. The information I discuss here is from these two fine books. On this, the 100th anniversary of this most tragic war, we must learn its lessons or be condemned to repeat them. Indeed, we failed to learn these lessons and repeated the slaughter in World War II.

For over 60 years prior to 1914 Europe was in a state of constant turmoil, rising militarism and territorial expansionism.  Beginning with the Crimean War, 1853-66, there were multiple wars: The Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, two Boer wars, 1880-81 and again in 1899-1902; two Balkan wars in 1912-13, the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 and the Italo-Turkish war over Libya in 1911-12.

The causes of WWI are very complex.  There are many villains and it is extremely hard to pin the blame on one party or country.  There are some who are more to blame than others.  I will name them later.  The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 represents a major earthquake in European politics. With the victory over France, the Prussians established the new German Empire. The Germans humiliated the French, not only with their victory over them but by annexing two of their provinces, Alsace and Lorraine.  The new German Empire inaugurated a period of high tension and alarm for the remaining European powers.   Britain feared any threat to her dominance in the world, France, smarting from her defeat in 1870, remained bitter and bellicose.  Russia, smarting from its loss in the Crimean war and then from her loss to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War began a period of active militarism.  The German Empire, headed by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm II, wanted to capitalize on their new power.

With the decline of the Ottoman Empire, former Ottoman territories in the Balkans were taken over by Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania.  In 1878 Austria-Hungary took over Bosnia-Herzegovina.  In 1908 Austria annexed this area, thus alienating neighboring Serbia which became extremely belligerent to Austria-Hungary.  Ethnic Serbs were scattered throughout the Balkans, in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania and surrounding areas.  It was a Serbian dream to re-unite all Serbs into one Serbia.  The annexation  of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria was an event that set off the Serbians and basically put them on a belligerent status with Austria-Hungary.

To make a bad situation even worse, Serbia began to disintegrate politically.  On the morning of 11 June 1903, 28 Serbian Army officers approached the main entrance of Serbian King Alexander I's palace, disarmed the guard detail, went in and brutally murdered the king and his wife. Queen Draga.   After the murders a group headed by them began to rule Serbia in a form of a dictatorship.  From this time to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Serbia was nothing short of a fighter looking for a fight.  When the Archduke was assassinated on 28 June 1914, the Serbians were more or less apathetic, some even cheered the event.

World War I was triggered by the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  The Austrians, knowing that the Serbians had been tormenting them for over 40 years and supporting anti-Austrian terrorists, blamed Serbia for the assassination.  The Austrians knew that they had been challenged by this assassination; not reacting would have been a humiliation to them that they could not accept, so they made humiliating demands on Serbia.  If Serbia failed to meet their demands, they would declare war on Serbia.  Indeed, this is what happened.  Once Austria-Hungary declared war, it unleashed all the war horses in all of Europe. The Russians were strong supporters of Serbia, claiming the Serbians as their Slavic brothers.  This was not entirely their motive, for they wanted to have the Balkans in their sphere of influence.  Indeed, Serbia would not have acted without the backing of the Russians. The Serbians had considered meeting Austria's demands. Had the Russians not spurred the Serbians, there probably would not have been a WWI.  Knowing that they had the Russians for their support, the Serbians felt empowered. The Russians,  additionally, wanted for many years, to control the Turkish Straits, the passageway between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.  Having influence in the Balkans was a way to get close to the Turkish Straits. Russia was reassured of success due to their earlier treaty with France whereby they pledged mutual assistance.  France provided Russia with assurances that, in the event of war France would back Russia militarily.

One of the things that the two earlier mentioned books on WWI make clear is the pathetic leadership weakness in all the European powers.  The Ottoman Empire was the sick man of Europe, the Tsar of Russia was very weak, the Austrian emperor was a mere figure-head.  Politicians in most countries were self-serving and under-handed, worrying about their own power and not the good of their country. In France, for example, the president and the prime minister often would keep information from each other and at other times sabotage each other for political reasons.  In Germany, it was never clear who held the real power; in some cases military leaders had more power and influence than politicians or the emperor.  The period also highlighted a certain militarism that was uncanny for the glorification of war to gain influence or power.  Many European leaders would show up at international meetings wearing their military uniforms.

Weak leadership, made worse by infighting among each nation's hierarchy was a contributing factor leading to war. If I had to name one country to blame for the war, I'd pick Russia, followed closely by their French cohorts.