Category Archives: Presidents

Guests of the Ayatollah

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guests-of-the-ayatollahThe subtitle of this book by Mark Bowden is “The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam,” and I think a better subtitle would have been “The Iranian Hostage Crisis.” This book was recommended to me by a Great Nephew who is studying to be a high school history teacher, and it is a very worthwhile book. I was worried when I saw it is well over 600 pages and decided I could probably skim some of it. I asked myself something to the effect, “After all, how could the lengthy hostage situation have interesting information for several hundred pages?” I was wrong. I found myself reading the details each time I thought of skimming. There is very little information in the book that isn’t interesting, and I learned why someone beginning a career as a history teacher would recommend it to person who has given himself the title of “amateur historian.”

The book begins with a description of Iranian students who had become more interested in the revolutionary politics of opposing the United States than in university studies. They began planning a siege of the American embassy in Tehran, and many of them expected to die. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the hated Shah of Iran, had been a staunch ally to the U.S. against Soviet expansionism. He had been put in power by a CIA-funded coup that had been masterminded by Kermit Roosevelt, Theodore’s grandson that overthrew the elected government in 1953. The shah had to flee to the United States when the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers landed at the Tehran airport, revolution swept the country, and the United States became the “Great Satan.” “The prosperous middle and upper classes of Iran prayed that they weren’t going to be abandoned to the bearded clerics, but they were in the minority. To the great stirred mass of Iranians, afire with the dream of a perfect Islamic society, the U.S. embassy was a threat…What plots were being hatched by the devils coming and going from its gates. Why was no one stopping them?”

A dozen young Islamist activists who named themselves, “Muslim Students Following the Imam’s Line” to differentiate themselves from those they thought were not completely loyal to the Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, planned to take advantage of a large planned demonstration against the embassy. The students knew Khomeini had a stake in preserving the provisional government, and they feared he might order them to not carry out the assault. That was probably the most brilliant part of their plan.  The activists planning the assault decided they would not harm the Americans. They expected to have some attackers killed, and decided they would pass the bodies of any martyrs killed by the Marines out to the crowd. Continue reading →

Temperature Changes in Alaska

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President Obama recently visited Alaska and stirred the urge to check into the global warming controversy. He visited the Exit Glacier and mentioned that it had retreated 1.25 miles in 200 years. I was inspired to check into temperatures in Alaska and found one web site that says it is managed by members of the “American Association of State Climatologists.” They observe that, “The topic of climate change has attracted widespread attention in recent years and is an issue that numerous scientists study on various time and space scales. One thing for sure is that the earth’s climate has and will continue to change as a result of various natural and anthropogenic forcing mechanisms.” (Bravo!)

The site presents a graph showing that temperatures since the late 1970s have trended upward. However, they point out there has been little warming “…with the exception of Barrow (on the coast above the Arctic Circle) and a few other locations. The stepwise shift appearing in 1976 corresponds to a phase shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from a negative phase to a positive phase.” That causes “…increased southerly flow and warm air advection into Alaska during the winter, resulting in positive temperature anomalies.” I don’t understand how increasing levels of carbon dioxide could have caused that, but I’m not a climatologist.

One article I read about President Obama’s visit to Alaska should have been checked more closely for errors before it went to print. It said (and I’m certain this must have been an error) that “The administration asked Congress to speed the acquisition of a new heavy-duty Coast Guard ice breaker from 2022 to 2020 and begin planning for the acquisition of additional ships that could help maintain year-long access to polar regions.” Why am I so convinced this must have been an error? It makes no sense to build ice breakers when the global warming models indicate polar ice will be mostly melted in the next few years.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center web site shows current levels of ice are less than those measured in 2013 and 2014, equal to 2011, and much more than 2012. A quick look at the graphs for the last five years indicates the levels of ice are about constant. Perhaps we should hope the data eventually will begin to track with the predictions from the global warming models and we can save money by not needing ice breakers.

Ponderer was kind enough to comment on the information above and points out that Dr. Strangelove would have wanted us to not have an icebreaker gap with the Russians reminiscent of the fallout shelter gap of that movie (not the exact words, but sorta close). Ponderer also thought it would be fair to show a chart of Arctic sea ice from the 1950s, which dramatically demonstrates that there is much less ice today. Point taken. However, I continue to have the suspicion that nature (including solar activity) has more to do with the extent of sea ice than the influences caused by man.

Grant

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front cover of Grant biographyI posted a review of the more than thousand page Ulysses S. Grant autobiography and thought I should follow that with the 173 page biography by John Mosier for those who want to know more about Grant but don’t have many days of reading time to commit. I understand that, although I will comment that the autobiography gives a much richer insight into the man and his remarkable accomplishments as a general. My primary complaint about Moiser’s book is that he could have reduced it by any number of pages if he hadn’t spent so much time comparing Grant’s military actions to those of other great generals. A couple of instances would have been appropriate and instructive, but there are dozens of instances.

Moiser is indeed a Grant fan. The fly cover says, “…Mosier reveals the man behind the military legend, showing how Grant’s creativity and genius off the battlefield shaped him into one of our nation’s greatest military leaders.” Grant had many critics, and the book attributes much of the criticism to other generals (read Halleck) who feared Grant’s successes would detract from their careers. Newspapers were filled with stories about the horrible slaughters of Civil War battles, and there emerged an image that Grant was a drunken butcher who won battles by sacrificing the lives of thousands of the soldiers in his overwhelmingly large forces. My belief is that Grant was indeed a master strategist who cared deeply about human life, understood the need for solid logistics, and was amazingly quick at determining proper tactics to take advantage of terrain. In short, I believe Grant was a leader in the true definition of what would make the average soldier in the trenches or on the march look at him and decide he was a man worth following. I submit the absolute trust given Grant by William Sherman, who famously said something to the effect “I know that you will come save me, if alive.” I can’t think of a more powerful endorsement of trust between comrades in arms. Continue reading →

Castro!: An Impact Biography

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castroI recently posted a commentary about President Obama’s initiative to normalize relations with Cuba. I noticed this small book by Don E. Beyer at the library and I’m glad I checked it out.  The book quickly gets to the point of explaining Fidel’s origins and how he became the face of revolution in Cuba. The first sentences of the book are, “Fidel Castro is a man at odds with the world. He likes to say he came into it under conditions natural for a guerrilla fighter. He was born on August 13, 1926, as an explosive storm swept over the mountains of the Oriented Province, the wild land that has long served as an incubator of revolution in Cuba.”

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born illegitimate, one of seven children from two mothers. His father, Angel Castro, and his mother, Lina Ruz Gonzalez, were not married until several years after Fidel’s birth.  Fidel’s combative nature was displayed frequently in childhood. He was described as rebellious and combative. His brother Raul described him as dominating every situation. “He challenged the biggest and strongest ones, and when he was beaten, he started it all over again the next day. He would never quit.” As a student he displayed a photographic memory. “In later years, Fidel’s prodigious memory enabled him to give the impression of knowledge and competence where it did not exist.” Spanish Jesuit teachers taught him to admire Spanish Fascists such as Francisco Franco. He later admired Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. “He was described as walking around his school with a copy of Mein Kampf under his arm.”

Fidel began to move into revolutionary politics when he went to Havana in 1945 to study law. He admired the stories of Jose Marti who had become a Cuban independence martyr in 1895 when he was killed fighting with a revolutionary army. Castro “…saw himself as Marti’s spiritual heir.” Continue reading →

Killing Patton

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killing patton book cvrThis is another in the series of “Killing” books written by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, and my wife says this is her favorite book in the series. The subtitle of the book is “The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General.” The book does present some compelling evidence that Patton may have been killed. He did create some powerful enemies, including some in the U.S. military, Stalin, and some Germans.

The book begins with a description of Private First Class Robert W. Holmund, an explosives expert in Patton’s army. Private Holmund and his fellow soldiers have been ordered to attack a heavily fortified and mostly underground fortification called Fort Driant. The bombing and artillery strikes that preceded the assault have had no effect on the Wehrmacht fighters who have remained safe within the fort’s fifteen-food thick walls and hidden forest pillboxes. Machine guns that the soldiers have named “Hitler’s Zipper” because of the high-speed ripping sound as it fires twelve hundred rounds a minute open up on the attackers as their advance stalls at the barbed wire around the fort. The machine guns are joined by rifle fire, mortars, and artillery. The Americans eventually disengage and crawl back to safety. Eighteen have been killed or wounded. And that’s just the start.

The soldiers try again a few days later, and this time they make it through the barbed wire to again be faced with precision fire from everything the Germans have. The survivors are forced to hastily dig foxholes to escape the barrage. The medics race from foxhole to foxhole to tend to the wounded until they are killed. The soldiers find a way into to the tunnels and battle the Germans underground. The survivors withdraw to the foxholes and the Germans mount a counterattack. There are only four of Holmlund’s squad left alive by the time a sniper’s bullet fells him. The descriptions of the combat are vivid.

The book intersperses descriptions of Patton and the speeches he gave his troops to prepare them for war with descriptions of the war. He said, for example, “Americans despise cowards.” “Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.” I wondered whether the parents of Private Holmlund wished he had been a little less brave. Continue reading →

The Truman Presidency: The History of a Triumphant Succession

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the truman presidencyThere are several books about Harry S. Truman, and I started this book by Cabell Phillips with a bit of skepticism. The book was published in 1966, and it does suffer from the fact that much of the information about Soviet spying was still classified at that time. The author therefore writes disbelievingly about reports of espionage activities by government officials. One example involves the separate revelations by two people who turned themselves in to the FBI admitting they had been Communists and couriers for large Soviet espionage networks. The author refers to them as “A tense, overwrought spinster named Elizabeth Bentley and a moody senior editor of Time Magazine.”  Their stories “…were so incredible that the FBI at first refused to countenance them.” It is true that the liberal media chipped away at the credibility of both people and their testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The media had stories that questioned the mental state of both people and portrayed them as unsavory or at least unattractive. The eventual declassification of counterespionage information and the opening of Soviet archives validated the testimony of both people.

Getting that quibble set aside, I did find the book to have good information that is well presented. The dustcover sets the tone of admiration the author has for Truman. He describes the Truman’s story as “…one of the most heartening and surprisingly personal success stories in the annals of politics. From the day in April 1945 when the news of FDR’s death shocked the nation, Harry Truman, the unprepossessing ‘little man from Missouri,’ grew slowly and haltingly to become one of the ‘great’ American Presidents.” That tone continues with the first two sentences of the Preface. “Harry S. Truman was a quite ordinary man. He was also a quite extraordinary President.” The author acknowledges the help of Dean G. Acheson, Clark M. Clifford, and Averell Harriman, three people I have read were trusted Truman confidants. I thought that gave the book a stamp of credibility. Continue reading →