Right Wing Nut House

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Much has been made of the fact that the President’s appointment of Michael Brown to head up the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was a matter of pure politics, a plumb assignment given to a loyal partisan who was a college roommate of Bush confidante and former FEMA head Joseph Allbaugh.

This may be true. And it also may be true that although Brown proved himself competent in other disasters, his performance in the aftermath of Katrina has been almost universally condemned both by partisan Democrats and even many Republicans. The criticism is usually attributed to the fact that Brown’s appointment was based not on his competence to do the job but rather his political connections.

The one does not necessarily preclude the other. There are numerous examples in history of Presidents appointing cabinet officials for political reasons who turned out to be outstanding, even brilliant public servants.

Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet was made up almost entirely of men who had opposed him for the Republican Presidential nomination. Salmon P. Chase was a former senator and governor who Lincoln named Secretary of the Treasury and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. A lawyer with no experience in finance whatsoever, Chase proved himself to be an able and innovative Treasury Secretary. He is generally credited with keeping the government on sound fiscal footing while raising the cash necessary to pay for the Civil War.

Another political appointee of Lincoln’s was Secretary of State William H. Seward whose policies helped to keep England and France on the sidelines during the war. Intervention by either of those two European superpowers could have spelled doom for the union. Edwin Stanton, who took over at the War Department for Simon Cameron, a corrupt political appointee, was an outstanding administrator and oversaw the rapid expansion of the armed forces.

Lincoln’s most unusual and most successful political appointee may have been newspaper publisher Gideon Welles who served as Secretary of the Navy. It was Wells who commissioned the ironclad Monitor whose famous battle with the CSS Virginia changed naval warfare forever. Wells also came up with the plans for a naval blockade of the South that eventually contributed mightily to ending the war.

None of these men were especially suited for the tasks assigned them. And yet, each performed magnificently in very trying times. Lincoln, like all Presidents, chose his subordinates based on a wide variety of factors, not the least of which was loyalty. And in Lincoln’s case, the political factor of geographic balance was vital to maintaining the support of a majority of northern citizens.

But by far the most spectacularly successful political appointee of all time came about as a result of one the first acts of the Second Continental Congress of 1775; the naming of a Commander in Chief of the citizen army encamped outside Boston.

Up to 12,000 militia had gathered to lay siege to the city following the April battles of Lexington and Concord. The Congress wanted to claim the army as its own but to do that involved some very delicate political maneuvering. The army was made up almost entirely of Massachusetts militia with a smattering of units from other New England states. Clearly, a way must be found to nationalize the army so that it at least appeared to represent all 13 colonies.

Enter a young lawyer from Massachusetts named John Adams who had a burning desire to see America independent of Great Britain. Adams originally had plans of his own to lead the army but realized what was needed most was the naming of a commander who would nationalize the effort.

There were candidates galore for the job. President of the Congress John Hancock had the advantage of being one of the wealthiest men in America but shared the same disadvantage as Adams; he hailed from Massachusetts. Israel Putnam, the pugnacious Major General currently in charge of the motley collection of militia and volunteers occupying the heights outside of Boston, was from Connecticut and had fought at Bunker Hill. But he was considered too provincial and perhaps too old by some to lead the army. Other General officers serving in the “New England Army” as it was called either weren’t well known or didn’t have the experience to lead such a large body of men.

Besides, “the business needs a Virginian” as John Adams was said to have remarked. Adams recognized that if the Congress were to name a Commander from the south, it would unite the colonies behind the army and make it easier for the states to support its functions. Since Congress itself had no money, the army would be entirely dependent on contributions from the states for its sustenance - a fact of life that the Continental army dealt with until the end of the war.

If the “business” did indeed require someone from the largest and oldest colony, Virginia obliged by supplying three qualified candidates for the job as Commander in Chief. Two of the candidates had extensive if not distinguished service in the regular British army. Charles Lee had joined the army at age 12 and steadily moved up the ranks. He served as an officer under General Braddock during the Fort Duquense expedition, a military adventure that saw his other rivals for command - George Washington and Horatio Gates - also present at that famous but ill-fated battle. After marrying the daughter of a Mohawk chief, Lee went back to England where he served in Portugal and Poland. Considered a brilliant tactician, he was nevertheless thought to be arrogant and eccentric - two qualities that came to the fore later in his career.

Horatio Gates was another officer in the regular British army whose experience outshone even that of Lee. In addition to service in the colonies during the 7 Years War, he also participated in the capture of Martinique, one of the more spectacular British victories of the war. He rose to the rank of Major but due to his lowly social status was prevented from further advancement. He retired in 1769 and moved to Virginia.

Almost to the end of the Revolutionary War, Gates had admirers both in and out of Congress who believed that he was the best man to lead the American armies to victory. The reason for this is largely hidden from us as Gates’ military abilities were more than once found wanting. However, in 1775 he looked like a pretty good bet except for one thing; many in Congress simply didn’t trust the fact that he had recently immigrated from England.

John Adams had his own candidate from the beginning; a Virginia planter and former Commander of the Virginia militia named George Washington. Washington had the advantage of being well known throughout the colonies for his service during the 7 Years War, having in effect started the conflict with France by attacking a small party of French regulars near today’s Pittsburgh. He also distinguished himself in retreat during the Fort Duquense fiasco for which he became something of a hero . Otherwise, Washington’s military experience was extremely limited. In fact, he resigned his commission in the militia in 1759 because the British refused to make him an officer in the regular army.

But Adams had bigger fish to fry than simply naming a commanding general. Washington had served in the Virginia House of Burgess and was as well known a political figure in the south as he was a military commander. It was part of Adams intent to cement the planter class in Virginia and the rest of the south to the cause. For that reason as well as the necessity to name a commander based on geographic balance, Adams successfully nominated and shepherded Washington’s election to the position of Commanding General of the Continental Army.

There’s no doubt on paper that Washington was the least qualified of the three Virginians to lead the Continental army. While obviously a capable man, there was really nothing in his background to suggest greatness as a military commander or leader of men. As it turns out, Washington began his career as Commanding General with the disastrous New York campaign during which the Continental Army was almost destroyed. But Washington eventually developed a strategic sense that far outstripped both his rivals for command and his enemies. It was George Washington who saw early on that if he could keep his little army from being destroyed, the Revolution would go on. Following his brilliant victories at Trenton and Princeton, Washington stuck to that strategy until the end of the war. It is doubtful that the European trained Gates or Lee would have been any where near as successful.

Appointing people to positions based mostly on politics - even to positions of enormous importance - has been done by every President in history. Harry Truman named Jame Byrnes, a long time politician with zero experience in foreign affairs, as Secretary of State in 1945. In his less than two years in that position, Byrnes proved himself to be pretty much of a non-entity, eventually being eased out by Truman in 1947.

George Bush miscalculated when he named Michael Brown to the position of FEMA Director. But that doesn’t mean he appointed Brown thinking he wouldn’t be capable of doing an outstanding job. There are usually good reasons for appointing some one to fill an important position in the federal government. Sometimes, those reasons are political. Call it “cronyism,” the fact is that President’s want people they can trust implicitly in key positions. It’s just at times, the individual named just doesn’t seem up to the challenges posed by the office. In that case, good Presidents cut their losses and get rid of the appointee as soon as that becomes evident as Bush has now done.

And while it may not satisfy his critics, Bush has a tremendous ability to expertly judge talent. Don’t be surprised if his recently named FEMA Director R. David Paulison proves himself more than capable of handling the job.

CORRECTION

Despite initial reports that Michael Brown was a college roomate of former FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh, they are apparently untrue. Allbaugh and Brown were friends in college but not not roomates.

I apologize for the error.

America is a country constantly moving downhill. Looking neither right nor left and definitely not backward, the pace of American life is the wonder of the world. Usually derided by Europeans, it has fascinated most of the rest of humanity that Americans can move and adapt so quickly to changing times. It has allowed us to accomplish truly amazing things without giving the slightest thought to the past. To do so would force us to pause in our headlong rush toward the future and think of where we’ve been and how we got where we are.

This myopia has had some very strange consequences. For the first 85 years of our existence, it allowed us the to concoct the perfectly reasonable fantasy that we were a nation that stood for liberty while holding in bondage millions of human beings. This schizophrenia was best summed up by British author Samuel Johnson who is reported to have written to a friend prior to the American Revolution “Why is it we hear the loudest yelps for freedom from the drivers of Negroes?”

It took a civil war that cost more than 600,000 lives to wipe the stain of slavery from our Constitution and several generations more to make a beginning toward bringing to life the words in our Declaration of Independence that promised equality for all men. All the while, Americans continued with their mad dash toward an unknowable destiny with only faith in progress and a belief in the righteousness of American ideals as a guide. Studying America’s narrative was something you were forced to do in school or a pastime for professors toiling away in the dusty halls of academia. It was not for those who were more eager to make history than to examine its subtleties for any lessons or insights.

This is why American myths have always been so important. They have allowed us a touchstone with the past without giving the consequences of our place in history much thought. This is virtually unheard of elsewhere because mythology is usually associated with the distant past, hearkening back to a time before history was written down and hence, dependent on storytelling or song singing. The Robin Hood myth in Great Britain is a good example of myth creation by such a method. The medieval troubadours who went from village to village singing about Robin Hood were unconsciously creating a national data bank of mythology from which ordinary people could draw on for inspiration. Never mind that the historical character from which the myth is drawn was very different than the heroic figure enshrined in the hearts of the British people. That fact was not the point of the myth.

But America, by comparison, is a very young country. Our myths are created instantly. They go from news, to history, to myth in the blink of an eye. The power of the myths surrounding George Washington can never be underestimated not only for their impact on how we look upon Washington today but also how we define our founding as a nation. Less than a year after Washington’s death, Parson Weems published “The Life of Washington”, a book that is so laughably inaccurate about the real Washington that it did a huge disservice to our understanding of the man and his times. For instance, the myth of the cherry tree and Washington saying to his father “I cannot tell a lie” helped place Washington on a pedestal so high that when other, more scholarly books were published, they seemed to diminish his accomplishments and character.

The same holds true for other Americans whose lives have achieved mythical status like Daniel Boone and Abraham Lincoln whose real life deeds and attributes outstripped the myths created to lionize them. Even the historical impact of events like the winter at Valley Forge have suffered because of this peculiarly American custom of nearly instantaneously mythologizing our history.

So it is with 9/11. That date represents the great divide in American politics and culture. One one side are those who see that day as a tragedy. Others see it as an act of war. Both have embraced the power of myth to explain and justify their politics.

The myth that “the world was with us” after 9/11 was one advanced shamelessly by the Kerry campaign during the election last year. In fact, most Americans embrace this myth because of the outpouring of sympathy from around the world for the victims in the aftermath of the attack. However, even a cursory look at what was going on in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 shows that far from being with us, the rest of the world pretty much took the Ward Churchill view that we had it coming.

The confusion comes as a result of the rest of the world - including friends like Great Britain and Canada - clearly delineating the difference between feeling sympathy for the American people and exhibiting enormous satisfaction at the blow to the American government. At the same time that the British people were laying wreaths of remembrance in front of the American embassy, former American ambassador Philip Lader was almost reduced to tears on the BBC program “Question Time” as a result of being nearly shouted down while trying to defend American foreign policy. The ferocity of the barbs and criticisms directed toward Ambassador Lader just two days after the attacks resulted in an unprecedented apology from the BBC for not taping and editing the show.

Even more remarkable was the reaction to the headline of a front page editorial in the French newspaper La Monde entitled “We are all Americans.” Constantly cited as “evidence” that the world stood shoulder to shoulder with America following the attacks, the editorial, in fact, skewers American foreign policy and the American government while blaming our “unbalanced” middle east policy for the tragedy.

From Arabs dancing in the streets of refugee camps in the West Bank to Iranians shouting Bin Laden’s name in adulation on the streets of Tehran, to even Canadians booing the American national anthem at a baseball game shortly after the season resumed, the myth was nevertheless created that world solidarity with America was undermined by the policies of the President. Despite all evidence to the contrary, even those who support the President believe in and perpetrate this myth so ingrained into the 9/11 narrative it has become.

Other myths surrounding the attack are more conspiratorial rather than historical. The shooting down of Flight #93 is one such conspiracy myth that refuses to go away. More recently, former Bush Administration economist and retired professor Morgan Reynolds has kept alive the myth that the World Trade Center towers were felled by demolition rather than a terrorist attack. These kinds of myths are common following world-shattering events in that they seek to put into context things that literally cannot be contextualized. Rather than grasping the historical significance of so large a tragedy, the conspiracy monger trivializes the event by positing fantastic plots that not only place the story teller in a privileged position of “being in the know” but allows for an emotional frame of reference that can give meaning to what amounts to a meaningless tragedy.

The history of 9/11 is still being written. The farther the event recedes into the past, the more we will mythologize that terrible day. It says something that is perhaps unflattering about America that this will be so. But it also indicates how dynamic our society truly is and how the power of myth continues to shape our politics and culture in ways that are almost unfathomable.

See also Alexandra’s “Remembrance of Things Past.”

New Years 1979 in Chicago was one for the books. While revelers were still out partying, a heavy snow began to fall that eventually blanketed the city and suburbs with 10 inches of the white stuff. “The City that Works” shrugged off the blizzard and went about its routine, bragging as only Chicagoans can brag that no force of nature will keep Chicagoans from going about their business.

The city was to eat those words less than two weeks later.

On Friday night January 12, the snow began to fall. It fell all day Saturday. It fell all of Saturday night and into Sunday afternoon until 22 inches had piled up on the streets of Chicago. Mayor Michael Bilandic, confident that the city snow removal department could handle the crisis, ducked out of the city for 24 hours to attend a function in Florida. By the time he got back, all hell had broken loose.

Plows had broken down. His suggestion that residents move their cars to school parking lots so that side streets could be cleared had gone unheeded because the school parking lots themselves were buried under nearly 30 inches of accumulated snow. De-icing the electric rails with tons of salt resulted in interrupting the current so that the “L” train system was almost totally shut down.

But that wasn’t all. Bilandic ordered CTA buses and whatever trains that were running to bypass inner city neighborhoods so that white sections of the city could keep working. Another storm dumped 18 inches of snow on the city at the end of January adding to the misery. The city ran out of salt. The side streets still weren’t plowed. Uncollected garbage piled up to impossible heights. Those side streets that were plowed had buried people’s cars under 10 feet of snow in some case (many were not able to get the cars out until spring).

The press had an absolute field day. It was discovered that one of Bilandic’s cronies had gotten a $90,000 contract to come up with a study on snow removal needs for the city - a study that nobody could seem to find. Bilandic himself seemed to become unhinged. His sessions with city hall reporters became a series of rambling, incoherent defenses of his actions during the weather crisis.

Meanwhile Bilandic’s primary opponent, a little know politician named Jane Byrne, was making huge amounts of political hay at the hapless Mayor’s expense. Her media-savvy staff never had a photo-op without a pile of snow 10 feet high in the background. She was seen commiserating with snow victims. She had one famous confrontation with a city official who claimed that things were going well. For the rest, she let the Chicago media take over.

Columnist Mike Royko wrote a series of articles on the Mayor’s leadership that that were absolutely devastating in their impact. This was in a time when simply everyone read Royko. He was the Chicago version of Art Buchwald, a cynical, hysterically funny, grumpy watchdog whose book Boss, which told the story of the original Mayor Daley’s shenanigans was a runaway national bestseller. People were now not only mad at Bilandic, they were laughing at him at the same time.

The story’s end was predictable. Bilandic lost to Byrne in the Democratic primary in February (following another 15 inch snow storm) and Byrne went on to become the first female mayor of Chicago.

A study carried out by the city following the crisis - a study done at the behest of the new mayor - showed several major flaws in the city’s snow cleaning efforts, the biggest of which was a decision not to tow cars parked on side streets that failed to clear the curbsides to make room for plows. In addition, Bryne spent millions of dollars on new snow removal equipment, doubling the city’s snow removal capacity.

Every mayor since has silently thanked her.

Lost in all of this drama was the fact that the city actually responded to the best of its ability during the snow crisis. The snow removal plan worked quite well for the 8-10 inch storm that fell on New Years. The breakdown occurred during the once-in-a-century snow fall that followed. There was very little the city could have done differently that would have made the situation any better.

Now, before I hear howls of rage from most of you about trying to compare a snowstorm with the unmitigated disaster being experienced by the people along the Gulf Coast, let me assure you that it’s not my intention to belittle or minimize in any way the suffering of the people in New Orleans and elsewhere. Nor is it really my intent to excuse the government of any failures in planning for the disaster. Rather, I believe there are certain parallels between what the press and the left is trying to do to the President and what the press and Jane Byrne did to Michael Bilandic.

For what ever reason - and I believe that reason has less to do with ideology and more with a genuine feeling of helplessness felt by people who are watching what is going on in New Orleans - the press has pretty much decided that there has been a monumental failure of leadership by the Administration in responding to the disaster.

The President’s political enemies are moved by more partisan emotions of course. But perhaps the scope of the tragedy has blinded them as well to the fact that quite simply, no government on earth could have been prepared in any way, shape or form for the mammoth problems faced by city, state, and federal officials in the aftermath of Katrina. You can plan until you’re blue in the face but what faced government officials starting on Tuesday afternoon was something never before confronted by any government anywhere.

In effect, government officials have had to create an entirely new city on the fly; a city of 100,000 people. A city that not only had to feed and shelter those people, but supply medical services both for the injured and those already sick - even those near death! It had to supply maternity wards for hundreds of women. It had to create out of whole cloth a distribution system to supply those 100,000 people with food and water. And it had to carry out rescue operations that have already saved the lives of nearly 5,000 people. It had to do all this and much, much, more with access to few vehicles and travel on roads that for the most part were underwater.

And to make matters even worse, in the middle of creating this new city, it was decided that those 100,000 people would all have to leave New Orleans and go…somewhere. So the relief effort went from being an attempt to create an entirely new city to the even more difficult task of rounding up and transporting 100,000 people as well as necessitating the finding of shelter for them - many thousands of whom are old and infirm and have special medical needs.

These facts are not being recognized by the press and are being ignored by the President’s enemies. And because of that, Bush is quite simply being “Bilandicized” - he is being set up to take the fall for something that is essentially beyond his or anyone else’s control.

In the end, it may not matter. The Democrats seemed poised to blame the natural disaster on Bush and the Republicans regardless of what the facts are. If that’s the case and if the left’s allies in the press succeed in spinning the story that way, the Republicans are in trouble in 2006.

When J. Robert Oppenheimer walked out of the hearing room on that beautiful spring day in May 1954 he was, by all accounts, a broken man. The United States government had been looking into the question of whether or not to renew his access to classified material, a question made pertinent by Oppenheimer’s past associations with communists. The dangling cigarette - as much a part of his public face as the hooded eyes and sharp, aquiline features - seemed to hang from the corner of his thin, expressionless mouth and a look of rueful sadness was on his face, as if he didn’t quite believe what had befallen him.

Later that summer, The Atomic Energy Commission revoked his security clearance because of “[c]oncern for the defense and security of the United States.” His loyalty to the United States an open question, Oppenheimer withdrew from public life to spend the remainder of his years teaching, lecturing, and writing about science and man’s place in the universe.

It could be said that the years following his humiliation were an anti-climax to one of the most remarkable scientific careers in history. For despite taking over Albert Einstein’s old job at Princeton as Chair of the Institute for Advanced Study as well as being a respected and well traveled writer and lecturer, nothing could compare to what Oppenheimer accomplished in the war years when he headed up the scientific team that built the atomic bomb. And, more importantly, his post war fall from grace was a far cry from the heady days following World War II when for a brief instant, it seemed as if Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists who unlocked the secrets of the atom and allowed mankind to control the lightening, would achieve what politicians and diplomats could not - international control of nuclear power.

Born in 1904 to wealthy, immigrant parents, Oppenheimer’s early years were marked by astounding academic achievement. A delayed entrance to Harvard due to a bout with colitis didn’t slow him down as he graduated in three years with a degree in Chemistry. After a very brief and unsatisfying stint with Ernest Rutherford’s famous Cavendish Laboratory of Experimental Physics, Oppenheimer realized his ability tended more to the theoretical aspect of the science and proceeded to study with the brilliant Max Born at the University of Cottingen in Germany where he received his PHD in Theoretical Physics in 1927.

The history of physics from the turn of the century to the early 1930’s will be remembered as one of the most remarkable periods of discovery in human history. Oppenheimer’s contributions to this explosion of knowledge has been generally dismissed as inconsequential, although some have pointed to his seminal work regarding the relationship between protons and electrons - the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation - as extremely important to the ultimate understanding of sub-atomic particles. He also predicted both the existence of one of those particles, the positron, as well as the existence of black holes.

But Oppenheimer’s was a restless mind. He migrated to Berkeley to teach and advise the brilliant Ernest O. Lawrence with his cyclotron experiments. Lawrence’s experiments needed a theoretician to explain what the experimentalists were seeing with their cyclotron work and Oppenheimer’s collaboration with with University of California scientist turned out to be both intellectually satisfying and profoundly relevant to advancing scientific knowledge of the atom.

Oppenheimer’s brilliance could be overwhelming. He had an extraordinary knack for grasping a concept immediately and cutting to the heart of a problem. His memory was legendary. In addition, the broad reach of Oppenheimer’s intellect was startling. This probably contributed to his lack of recognition as a top level theoretical physicist. His long time friend Isidor Rabi:

Oppenheimer was overeducated in those fields which lie outside the scientific tradition, such as his interest in religion, in the Hindu religion in particular, which resulted in a feeling of mystery of the universe that surrounded him like a fog. He saw physics clearly, looking toward what had already been done, but at the border he tended to feel there was much more of the mysterious and novel than there actually was…he turned away from the hard, crude methods of theoretical physics into a mystical realm of broad intuition.

All the while, Oppenheimer maintained relationships with communists. As most intellectuals during the 1930’s, Oppenheimer saw the depression as a failure of capitalism and communism as the wave of the future. Using his vast inheritance, he bankrolled many left wing causes while marrying a former communist Kitty Harrison. It was these associations that would come back to haunt him later although it appears Oppenheimer himself was never that interested in politics. In fact, once Stalin’s horrors started to become known, Oppenheimer began to cut his ties with most left wing organizations and individuals. Cynics also point to the fact that it was at this time that the federal government was getting interested in the potential for building the atom bomb and that Oppenheimer’s associations would have precluded his participation.

Whatever the reason, Oppenheimer threw himself into the early atom bomb work with enthusiasm. He assembled a theoretical team in California that included future Nobel Prize winners Hans Bethe and Edward Teller who dealt with some of the early problems of bomb design. And later, when looking for someone to head up the scientific enterprise that became the Manhattan Project, the Project’s director General Leslie Groves found in Oppenheimer someone who was familiar with the many scientific disciplines that would be required to build a successful bomb as well as a driven personality that would see the project through to completion.

In September of 1942, Oppenheimer accepted the position as Scientific Director of the Manhattan Project. Starting from scratch in the New Mexico desert, Los Alamos became a magnet for the best minds in physics, chemistry and engineering. Oppenheimer rode herd on this diverse group, amazing his colleagues with his grasp of the problems associated with turning the theoretical into the practical. Victor Weisskopf , a brilliant theoretical physicist in his own right, gives us a sense of what it was like at Los Alamos working under Oppenheimer:

“He did not direct from the head office. He was intellectually and even physically present at each decisive step. He was present in the laboratory or in the seminar rooms, when a new effect was measured, when a new idea was conceived. It was not that he contributed so many ideas or suggestions; he did so sometimes, but his main influence came from something else. It was his continuous and intense presence, which produced a sense of direct participation in all of us; it created that unique atmosphere of enthusiasm and challenge that pervaded the place throughout its time.”

The closer the bomb got to becoming a reality, the more unease was demonstrated by scientists working on the project. This was especially true after it became clear in early 1945 that Germany was nowhere near completing a bomb and in fact had never really started. This fractured the scientific consensus that was responsible for the idea of building the bomb in the first place. The fear that Germany would construct an atomic b0mb is what gave impetus to the entire effort and once that threat was gone, many of the scientists began to have second thoughts.

Notable among them was Leo Szilard, the diminutive Hungarian immigrant who first conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction (he actually patented the process, later giving it to the British government to maintain secrecy) and who was present at the creation of the first nuclear chain reaction in Chicago in 1942. Szilard was horrified at the prospect of actually using the bomb, believing the threat would be enough to deter either Japan or Germany and cause them to surrender. Szilard’s naivete regarding Hitler and Japan carried over into a belief after the war that only a committee of scientists from all over the world should be entrusted with nuclear secrets.

Szilard drafted a letter as a cover to a report that came to be known as The Franck Report and circulated it among scientists not only in Chicago, but also at Los Alamos and at Berkley where Ernest Lawrence was busy working on uranium isotope separation. The Franck report not only opposed the use of the bomb on Japan but called for atomic secrets to be shared openly with all nations after the war. Groves was livid with Szilard believing that the scientist had not only violated security, but that he was undermining the dedication of his scientists at Los Alamos.

While the debates over whether or not to use the bomb raged in the laboratories and dormitories at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer remained committed to at the very least, testing the weapon. In that respect, Oppenheimer convinced almost all the scientists that they should view the project as a physics experiment which needed to have the main hypothesis tested. And he promised some of the more outspoken advocates for not using the bomb that as member of the scientific advisory group to the Interim Committee on using the bomb, he would make their views known to both military and civilian authorities.

By May of 1945 with Germany out of the war, The members of the Committee came up with three options on what to do with the bomb:

1. Inform the Japanese of the existence of the bomb and threaten to use it unless they immediately surrendered.

2. A demonstration of the bombs destructive power at a remote location.

3. Drop the bombs on Japanese cities with no warning.

Oppenheimer was part of a group of scientists who contributed to the report that advocated using the bomb on Japanese cities without warning. The reasoning was that any warning given would allow the Japanese to move thousands of American POW’s into the area where the bomb would be dropped. Plus, it was felt that the psychological effect of the bomb would be lost if any advance notice was given the Japanese. The report stated that since “we can purpose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.”

Oppenheimer was always torn on taking this position. On the one hand, he sympathized intellectually with his colleagues from Chicago who didn’t want to use the bomb. On the other hand, Oppenheimer was privy to intelligence that indicated unless the Japanese were shocked by using the bomb without warning on one or two of their cities, they would not surrender without a massive invasion. To the end of his days, his public statements reflected this dichotomy as he alternately would justify his support for using the bomb and curse himself for not taking a stronger stand against the post-war plans for nuclear power that, for the most part, shut scientists out of the decision making process.

Oppenheimer did oppose the quick use of the second bomb on Nagasaki reasoning that the Japanese government should have time to evaluate the bomb’s effects. In this, he may have been correct in that the Japanese at first disbelieved President Truman’s announcement that one, lone bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and secondly, the Japanese government was unable to get to the city and evaluate the damage until August 8th, less than 24 hours before the second bomb was used on Nagasaki.

Following Japan’s surrender, a tug of war ensued between the scientists and the government on who would best control the awesome power of the atom. It is perhaps instructive that at this time, scientists believed that anything short of international controls on nuclear secrets would result in an arms race. Intellectually they were right. But in the practical world of post war domestic and international politics, there was never a chance for any such plan to succeed. The Soviets had proved themselves duplicitous in eastern Europe and the cold war was well underway. Oppenheimer was made an adviser to the newly minted Atomic Energy Commission which oversaw America’s efforts to both build weapons of mass destruction and use the knowledge gained from the Manhattan Project for peaceful purposes. He correctly predicted that the Soviets would have a weapon much faster than the military’s estimate of 10 years (1955). This was born out when the Soviet’s exploded their first atomic bomb in September of 1949. What the scientists had feared became a reality; an arms race was underway that was to divert massive amounts of both money and scientific expertise to bomb making.

The dilemma faced by Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists echoes down to this day as more and more scientists are opting out of weapons building even with the promise of exciting, breakthrough work as part of the bargain. But perhaps Oppenheimer and his fellows should be remembered as much for their patriotism as they are for the work they did. For it was the belief that their nation’s survival was at stake that drove them to achieve the breakthroughs necessary to bring the Manhattan Project to fruition. Because of that, and even with their doubts and feelings of guilt about how it was used, we should be eternally grateful for their work.

It happens every year. A gigantic spasm of anti-Americanism breaks out all over the world on August 6th as people gather in every major city to condemn the use by the United States of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

And yet, there is no similar day set aside by the world to remember other tragedies of that war - tragedies that when taken together reveal that our incineration of Hiroshima was a godsend to both the American people and millions of people across Asia.

The city of Hiroshima was rebuilt as a “Peace City.” A large part of the city has been given over to remembrances of August 6, 1945. There are arches, monuments, a museum, and a Peace Bell.

Dedicated in 1964, the Peace Bell has become a focal point for the annual gathering of remembrance. Tens of thousands of people gather in Peace Park to hear the ringing of the bell at 8:15 AM, the time the bomb exploded. There follows a minute of silence.

I wonder what those tens of thousands of people are thinking of when that bell tolls?

Are they thinking about the 2200 Americans who were killed on December 7, 1941? Are they thinking of the sailors from the Oklahoma and other ships who were strafed by machine gun fire from Japanese airplanes as they fought for their lives trying to swim in the oil choked and flaming water.

When the bell tolls are they thinking of the Batan Death March where tens of thousands of Americans were shot, beaten to death, bayoneted, and left to die after collapsing due to the heat and exhaustion?

Any prisoner found with Japanese souvenirs was executed immediately, because the Japanese believed the soldier must have killed a Japanese soldier in order to get it. Many soldiers had found these items, such as money and shaving mirrors. Their own personal property was usually stolen as well.

Any troops who fell behind were executed. Japanese troops beat soldiers randomly, and denied the POWs food and water for many days. One of their tortures was known as the sun treatment. The Philippines in April is very hot. Therefore, the POWs were forced to sit in the sun without any shade, helmets, or water. Anyone who dared ask for water was executed. On the rare occasion they were given any food, it was only a handful of contaminated rice. When the prisoners were allowed to sleep for a few hours at night, they were packed into enclosures so tight that they could barely move. Those who lived collapsed on the dead bodies of their comrades.

When the bell tolls, are they thinking about the 230,000 prisoners of war who died while in Japanese custody?

One in three died in captivity at the hands of the Japanese, starved to death, worked to death, beaten to death, dead of loathsome epidemic diseases that the Japanese would not treat. From the beginning, what the Japanese did to their prisoners, body and soul, was humanly appalling. Even so, the prisoners stayed and took it. For them the stakes were: try to escape, with the chances of suffering and dying almost a hundred percent, or stay with what turned out to be a two-to-one chance of surviving.

When the bell tolls, are they thinking about the 80,000 women who were raped and more than 350,000 massacred in Nanking, China in 1937?

Between December 1937 and March 1938 at least 369,366 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered by the invading troops. An estimated 80,000 women and girls were raped; many of them were then mutilated or murdered.

To this day the Japanese government has refused to apologize for these and other World War II atrocities, and a significant sector of Japanese society denies that they took place at all.

When the bell tolls, are they thinking about the estimated 200,000 Korean, Filipino, and other Asian women the Japanese army used as “comfort women?”

During World War II the Japanese Imperial Forces Ministries, the Foreign Office, the secret police, the military and naval police and local ‘recruiters’ ran a highly organised prostitution network to supply the military brothels with Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese and Filipino women. It should be added that this trafficking also included Dutch women from PoW camps, Eurasian and Indonesian females. It is important to note, too, that this trafficking was carried out by official Imperial Edict and was an established policy known and approved by such as convicted Class A war criminal and General Vice-Minister of War, Yashijiro Umezu.

Women, some as young as twelve when their ordeal began, endured years of coercion, violence, abduction, rape and wrongful imprisonment at the hands of the Japanese.

When the bell tolls are they thinking about the 15,000,000 Chinese civilians killed during the unprovoked war brought about Japan’s greed and militarism?

When the bell tolls are they thinking about the thousands of infants that Japanese soldiers used to impale on their bayonets just to amuse themselves?

When the bell tolls, are they thinking of the thousands of American soldiers killed after Japanese soldiers pretended to surrender only to pull the pin on a grenade and kill themselves and their erstwhile American captors?

If we’re going to remember the victims of Hiroshima, then we damn well should be remembering the victims of Japanese militarism. It was at least as odious an ideology as fascism. And the brutality it engendered in its soldiers had no parallel in modern history.

The arguments for and against dropping the bomb have been raging for decades. Each new bit of evidence that comes out changes few minds. My own view is that anyone who thinks the Japanese were ready to surrender before August 6, 1945 is sadly mistaken. My belief was buttressed recently by this excellent article in the Weekly Standard by Richard B. Frank that details some Japanese intercepts which make it clear that the militarists were bound and determined to fight to the bitter end.

At the time the bomb was dropped, there was hardly a stick or a stone left standing in any major city in Japan. The militarists were determined to resist any additional bombing campaign - a campaign that had already claimed the lives of as many as 1.5 million Japanese civilians. As for the Navy’s idea of blockading Japan and starving the island nation into surrender, that too would have killed millions of additional Japanese as well as failing to bring the Japanese government to heel.

As for an invasion, it’s been correctly pointed out that the Navy was extremely reluctant to participate in a venture that would have allowed it’s fleet to be exposed to as many as 10,000 suicide planes from the mainland of Japan. It’s problematic whether an invasion even would have been attempted much less succeed.

But what nobody can argue is that while the war raged, thousands of civilians in dozens of country were dying every day at the hands of the Japanese army. Despite all the protestations about why the US used the bomb, no one can refute this one simple point; dropping the atomic bomb saved lives.

The bell is silent now. It will remain so for another year. Do you think by this time next year the world would have begun to put our actions at the end of World War II into some kind of perspective? Or do you think that’s asking too much?

There are times when Clio, the muse of history, decides to play the role of Shakespeare’s mischievous fairy Puck whose antics in A Midsummers Nights Dream drove the mortals crazy, much to the amusement of his fellows. “Lord, what fools these mortals be” Puck sighs as another one of his tricks hits its intended mark.

Clio was working overtime today as history and fantasy collided in such a way as to jar our sensibilities and shake our complacency about what the Greeks referred to as “the fates” - three sisters who sing of what was, what is, and what will be.

Today, a small part of our past died when James Doohan who played the character Scotty on the original Star Trek series passed away at the age of 85. In a delicious irony that Clio herself would enjoy, we also celebrate the 36th anniversary of what can honestly be described as the most significant technological achievement of the human race; placing the footprints of man on the surface of the moon.

At first glance, the two events would seem to have little in common. After all, Star Trek was off the air by the time Neil Armstrong stepped off the bottom rung of Eagle’s ladder to take the small step for man that sadly, seems to have stalled in mid leap. The last episode of Star Trek aired on June 3, 1969 much to the chagrin of the series’ fanatical followers. But in a very real sense, the death of Scotty and the remembrance of Apollo 11 has everything to do with what we humans dream and how those dreams inspire us and drive us forward to achieve great things.

James Doohan played the Chief Engineer, one of the more popular characters on Star Trek. His “can-do” attitude toward the technical problems associated with the complex and futuristic systems on the starship Enterprise called to mind those NASA engineers who made so much of the space program look effortless.

The scientists and technicians who sent Americans into space were thought of as our country’s best and smartest. They were for the most part young, talented men who graduated from the best schools and came to NASA to participate in the great adventure of space flight. And while the NASA PR machine made it seem as if just about everything was always perfect, behind the scenes - like Scotty on the Enterprise - the engineers in Houston dealt with one problem after another and through sheer brainpower and the occasional piece of good luck, brought the astronauts home.

Scotty would have felt right at home working at NASA in the 1960’s. Scotty, like the NASA techies, lived, breathed, and slept their jobs. To some extent, I’m sure they still do. But when you look back at that effort to place a man on the moon in fulfillment of President Kennedy’s pledge, one is awestruck at some of the figures:

1. Nearly 500,000 human beings laid their hands on one component or another of Apollo 11.
2. Almost 25% of all the man hours worked on the spacecraft were in unpaid overtime.
3. At liftoff, the massive Saturn V rocket generated 7.5 million pounds of thrust. It was as tall as a 37 story building.
4. It took the coordinated efforts of 20,000 people to make the mission a success from launch to splashdown.

The Apollo program dwarfed in size, cost, and scope any other endeavor in human history.

What fascinated so many of us at that time was the same thing that drew us to the TV every Wednesday evening to watch Star Trek - the belief that space flight would somehow change the world for the better. The society invented by Gene Roddenberry for Star Trek, I see now, was ridiculously simpleminded. As one wag put it: In a society where people can be anything they want to be and where there’s no longer any need for money or wealth, who will clean the toilets? The point being not everyone can be a starship captain like James Kirk nor a chief engineer like Scotty.

But that shouldn’t stop us from being inspired by Star Trek. Nor should it keep us from dreaming of a future where we can go from planet to planet as easily as we might travel from Chicago to St. Louis. Because without Star Trek and other fantasies, what would there be to challenge our notions of the possible? Because in the end, that’s what the Apollo program was all about. When the actual Apollo program became part of NASA planning to go to the moon, we had sent exactly 6 men into space for a less than 50 hours total. Not only entirely new systems would have to be invented but entire industries would have to spring from nothing to make a moon landing a reality. It was breathtaking in its audacity.

As we look back and remember both Star Trek and the moon landing, it may be well to also remember the dreams and aspirations of today’s children. What kind of technological future are we going to leave them? Will it be a nightmare future where the very few enjoy the benefits of the best that the human mind can dream? Or will it be a future where, like the world of Star Trek, most can share in the magic and the miracles and the unlimited potential of the human spirit realized through our dreams of what can be accomplished when we are inspired by the better angels of our nature.

Welcome to the House!

Here are links to my “Countdown to Gettysburg” series that Hugh was kind enough to mention:

June 27, 1863, June 28, 1863, June 29,1863, June 30, 1863, July 1, 1863, July 2, 1863 and July 3, 1863.

And here’s a link to an essay on the battle:

America’s “Love Battle.”

The votes are in and, according to the Discovery Channel, these are the top ten Americans of all time:

1) Ronald Reagan
2) Abraham Lincoln
3) Martin Luther King
4) George Washington
5) Benjamin Franklin
6) George W. Bush
7) Bill Clinton
Elvis Presley
9) Oprah Winfrey
10) Franklin D. Roosevelt

The only problem I have with the top 5 is Ronald Reagan winning the title of “Greatest American.” This is nuts. If Reagan hadn’t lived, I imagine things would have turned out differently with the fall of Communism and domestic policies would be skewed decidedly more to the left, but the fact is the United States would probably still be here and prospering nicely.

The same cannot be said about George Washington. I daresay that without Washington, there quite simply would be no United States - or at least a United States that we’d recognize as such. Therefore, I’d drop Reagan out of the top ten altogether (as I did here in this post) and put Washington in the top spot. Other than that, I have no quarrel with the top 5. Franklin may be a stretch but I’m comfortable with putting someone who’s impact on American life is still being felt today.

What is truly shocking and troubling is the fact that Thomas Jefferson isn’t in the top 5 or the top 10. Jefferson rolls in at #12. Here’s another individual that one can say if he didn’t live, America would be a very different place (if it existed at all). His impact on the formation of our Republic cannot be overstated. It can truly be said that he was not only the author of the Declaration of Independence, but that he is largely responsible for the Constitution, even though he was in Paris during the Summer of 1787. The reason? His disciples George Mason and James Madison more than any others were responsible for both the thinking behind the document and the writing of it. And he was the leader of the oldest political party in history; the Democratic Party. His ideas dominated American politics for the Republic’s first 50 years and his influence is felt down to this day.

Not including him was a travesty.

As for numbers 6 through 10 I’ll only say this: What. A. Crock.

George Bush? Bill Clinton (”Greatest” what? Serial adulterer?) Elvis? Oprah?

What this goes to show is that we Americans are not very interested in our past. There are cultural and traditional reasons for this. It’s part of our schizophrenic relationship with our ancestors. The fact that these ancestors wrote slavery into the Constitution (giving slaves a “value” of 3/5 of a human being) and practiced the deliberate and systematic genocide of Native Americans as well as performing heroic feats of settlement and exploration cannot be reconciled by most Americans.

In addition to this, we’ve embraced a political tradition that ignores the past in favor of looking toward the future. Politicians evoke images, events, and people from the past not to educate us but rather to connect to the future in a way that’s not done in any other democratic society. Reagan was a master of this. Clinton could also turn the trick on occasion. President Bush tries it and falls flat because his allegories inevitably seem to mix in religion. While the President’s piety is a strength both personally and politically, his major speeches that seek to invoke the past do so in order to illustrate a faith in God. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, it’s just as political theater, it doesn’t go over well.

This ignorance of history is nothing new. It’s been remarked on by observers of America from it’s founding. Here’s Alexis de Tocquville:

“Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.”

The oft quoted Santayanna whose “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is used by both liberals and conservatives as a political talisman from which American’s are supposed to draw a lesson. The problem is American’s are not only ignorant of the past, they are unconcerned with it.

Is this good or bad? Well, it’s worked so far. As long as Americans never forget really big things like the Bill of Rights or Adolph Hitler, I doubt whether it will affect us one way or another.

UPDATE

I see where John Hawkins and I are thinking along the same lines (mostly). Here’s John’s top 10:

1) George Washington
2) Abe Lincoln
3) Thomas Jefferson
4) Ben Franklin
5) James Madison
6) Ronald Reagan
7) Andrew Jackson
Tom Paine
9) Teddy Roosevelt
10) Alexander Hamilton

I like Tom Paine, but I don’t think he’s anywhere near top 10 material. And Hamilton was a scheming son of a gun who allowed personal ambition to almost ruin the young Republic.

Teddy Roosevelt is an interesting choice and good arguments can be made in his favor. He pretty much invented the modern presidency. And his personna dominated American politics for a long time. Madison is an excellent choice seeing that he was largely responsible for sheperding the Constitution through the convention in 1787. And John has Jefferson right up front where he should be.

All in all, good choices, good rankings.

A STYLIZED AND UNREALISTIC PORTRAYAL OF CUSTERS LAST STAND

George Armstrong Custer surveyed the low, rolling Montana countryside before him on that brutally hot Sunday afternoon of June 25, 1876 and must have felt a twinge of anticipation. He was a warrior. And prior to every battle he was ever involved in, from his glory days in the Civil War to this, the last battle of his life, Custer felt the tingling of impending combat. He considered himself invulnerable. His confidence - some would say arrogance - inspired both intense loyalty and profound disdain from the men and officers under his command. This, more than anything else, led to his destruction.

The Battle of Little Bighorn (the Lakota call it “The Battle of Greasy Grass Creek”) is the most written about battle in American history. Custer’s every known move has been examined, debated, dissected, re-examined and criticized by historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and scientists. It’s also been one of the most popular subjects for artists as every generation since the battle has had both ridiculous and stylized portrayals as well as historically accurate reproductions. And thanks to Hollywood, just about everyone has heard of both the battle and its two major players - Custer and Tashunca-uitco AKA “Crazy Horse.”

The evolution of attitudes toward the battle is one of the most fascinating aspects of its history. Originally seen as a massacre of white soldiers by merciless Indians, the loss of of 267 American soldiers outraged and humiliated a country that was in the process of celebrating it’s Centennial. The resulting outcry sealed the doom of the Lakota, Cheyenne and other plains Indians tribes who had united for one last great war against white encroachment. Custer was portrayed as a great hero, thanks in no small part to his wife Libby’s hagiographic biography of their lives together called Boots and Saddles.

Then in the 1960’s, a welcome re-examination of America’s mythic heroes, including Custer, was initiated by historians eager to take advantage of the American people’s desire for the “truth” about our past. The pendulum swung in the opposite direction and Custer emerged as a vainglorious martinet of an officer, so eager for glory that he sacrificed his men on the altar of personal ambition.

By the late 1970’s, Custer’s image had been slightly rehabilitated thanks to a re-examination of his outstanding career as a Civil War cavalry leader. And along with authors like Jeffrey Wert and Evan McConnel, a new, more personal side of Custer emerged. The arrogant martinet became the loving and devoted husband whose letters to his young wife reveal a playful, likable man with a penchant for teasing.

But on that fateful Sunday, Custer allowed the darker side of his personality to take over. This was a Custer that was unconcerned with the lives of his men. This was the Custer who had been court martialed and suspended for a year for disobeying orders. And this was the Custer whose overweening confidence in his own abilities and suicidal disdain for the fighting skills of his adversary sealed his fate and the fate of so many in his command.

He was not technically in violation of his orders. General Terry who was making his way to the Little Big Horn with 2,500 infantry was due the next day but had not specifically ordered Custer to wait. So despite the warnings of his faithful Crow scouts (”Many Sioux” they had told him, a warning he didn’t heed because he thought the Indians couldn’t give an accurate count of warriors), Custer rode to his death.

His survey of the Indian encampment before him was superficial. All he could see from his vantage point was the north end of the village. This was due to a quirk in the topography of the battlefield. If you ever visit the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument, you’ll be struck by the gently, rolling hills that give the impression of a single valley stretching out in the distance. What Custer couldn’t see were intervening copses and indentations that hid not the 5,000 or so Indians he believed he was facing, but fully 15,000 men, women and children in a gigantic encampment that stretched for more than 5 miles across the plain.

At the sight of Custer’s men, the Indian warriors rushed to their families and helped to get them out of harms way. Custer interpreted this as a sign that the Indians were preparing to flee and divided his command into 3 sections. He sent Major Reno around to where he thought the south end of the camp was, ordering him to ride through the village and sow confusion while he attacked from the north and the other column commanded by Major Benteen attacked from the east.

It was stupid, rash, and doomed to failure. Reno, an inexperienced (some would say cowardly) officer took one look at the immense village before him and retreated. Some historians believe that if Reno had attacked while the warriors were busy looking after the safety of their families he could have in fact caused the kind of confusion that Custer was looking for. What this would have meant to the outcome of the battle is uncertain. It may have given Custer time to find better defensive ground as his subordinate Major Benteen was able to do by linking up with the incompetent Reno who had taken up a position on a steep bluff overlooking the Little Big Horn river. Given Custer’s impetuous nature, this probably wasn’t in the cards.

Custer’s 267 men rode along a bluff that he thought hid him from sight of the village. He was tragically mistaken. The Indians, alerted to his presence by the incompetent Reno were now swarming between the copses and in the shallow depressions that marked the north end of the battlefield. Too late, Custer realized his predicament and ordered his men up to the top of a gently sloping hill northwest of the village. Known as “Last Stand Hill,” approximately 900 Lakota and Cheyenne warriors were able to surround Custer’s command and wipe them out to almost the last man. (One of Custer’s Crow scouts escaped by wrapping a Lakota blanket around himself and simply wandering away).

In the aftermath of the battle, General Terry arrived and after hastily burying the dead, started after Sitting Bull and his people. Evading capture for two years by going to Canada, the starving Lakotans finally surrendered on their own and were forced onto reservations.

The spectacular victory of the Indians over the United States army was the last major engagement of the Indian wars of the 19th century. There would be other skirmishes and campaigns - most notably against Goyathlay AKA “Geronimo, the great Chiricahua Apache warrior - but Little Big Horn would be the last time so many warriors on both sides were involved.

As for history’s judgment, Custer’s legacy will be a mixed one. Perhaps it’s unfortunate that Little Big Horn will overshadow his real accomplishments as a cavalry commander during the Civil War. He remains one of the most fascinating characters in American history, reason enough for the continued fascination with the battle that claimed his life.

Most of us who follow politics know that both the House and Senate chambers are usually quiet, staid places full of dignified representatives going about the people’s business with a combination of monotony and boredom.

But it wasn’t always so. A little more than 150 years ago, those two bodies were full of quarreling, angry men, many of whom came to the floor armed with pistols. There was a daily potential for real violence and Southern representatives were especially cognizant of any slight, any slander directed at their state or their “peculiar institution.” Fistfights on the House floor were not uncommon over the issue of slavery. In fact, it could fairly be said that the first blows in the American Civil War were struck between the people’s representatives in the lead up to the formal break in 1860.

The Senate was a little different. The high-born Senators were much less likely to engage in the rough and tumble of politics. They were expected to maintain a level of decorum in their debates according to long standing rules and traditions.

But even the Senate was not immune from the whirlwind that the issue of Kansas created. Should Kansas be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state? The issue held the attention of the nation during the spring of 1856 as Massachussetts Senator Charles Sumner rose and began to speak about slavery.

Politicians back then were something like the celebrities of today. In a time when politics was theater, politicans were expected to be entertainers, giving stemwinding speeches designed to rouse the passions of the listener.

Sumner didn’t disappoint. His speech alluded to slavery in the crudest, most sexually suggestive terms. This was no accident. One of the most horrifying aspects of slavery to the puritan-like citizens of New England was the “freedom of the slave quarters” granted to southern masters (and their house guests). Sumners words were designed to recall that horror and in the process condemn not only the institution of slavery, but those who practiced it:

But, before entering upon the argument, I must say something of a general character, particularly in response to what has fallen from Senators who have raised themselves to eminence on this floor in championship of human wrongs. I mean the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Butler), and the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas), who, though unlike as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, yet, like this couple, sally forth together in the same adventure. I regret much to miss the elder Senator from his seat; but the cause, against which he has run a tilt, with such activity of animosity, demands that the opportunity of exposing him should not be lost; and it is for the cause that I speak. The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentimcuts of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight I mean the harlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this Senator. The frenzy of Don Quixote, in behalf of his wench, Dulcinea del Toboso, is all surpassed.

By insulting Senator Andrew Butler, Sumner had opened a hornets nest. One of Butler’s kinsman from South Carolina, Preston Brooks, took offense at the Senator’s slander. Here’s the official Senate history of the incident that followed:

Representative Preston Brooks was Butler’s South Carolina kinsman. If he had believed Sumner to be a gentleman, he might have challenged him to a duel. Instead, he chose a light cane of the type used to discipline unruly dogs. Shortly after the Senate had adjourned for the day, Brooks entered the old chamber, where he found Sumner busily attaching his postal frank to copies of his “Crime Against Kansas” speech.

Moving quickly, Brooks slammed his metal-topped cane onto the unsuspecting Sumner’s head. As Brooks struck again and again, Sumner rose and lurched blindly about the chamber, futilely attempting to protect himself. After a very long minute, it ended.

Bleeding profusely, Sumner was carried away. Brooks walked calmly out of the chamber without being detained by the stunned onlookers. Overnight, both men became heroes in their respective regions.

The aftermath was shocking. Sumner (who never fully recovered his faculties after the beating) was lauded as a man who told it like it was. Brooks, in the meantime, became a hero throughout the south. People sent him canes by the score, some of them inscribed with “Hit Him Again.”

Brooks attacked Sumner for his blood libel against a kinsman. And now we have a similar blood libel made by my home state Senator Dick Durbin whose stupidity and arrogance I’ve written about here and here. Durbin’s libel was much more serious than a slap at someone’s family honor. His words comparing American interrogators to Nazi’s and the detention center at Guantanamo to death camps debase the government and people of the United States.

What’s worse, instead of apologizing, this embarassment to my home state has called on the United States to apologize for abandoning the Geneva Convention. It seems to have escaped this clueless moonbat that the Geneva protocols were written to protect soldiers in uniform. Since the only identifying feature of an al Qaeda foot soldier is the number of dead innocents left in his wake, the protocols would seem not to apply in his case.

This hasn’t stopped not only Durbin, but the jubilant Kossaks who now feel they have the President and his Iraq policy on the run. They are fairly bursting with hope that at last, they can do what they’ve been dreaming of for two years; repeat the success of their ideological ancestors of the 1960’s and cause the people of United States to lose faith in both the eventual victory in Iraq and the righteousness of our cause. It’s sickening.

Durbin has gotten what amounts to a caning in the last few days from the Shadow Media. I’ve detailed extensive reaction to the intial comments of the Senator here. Some additional thoughts follow.

Michelle Malkin:

What America needs is for President Bush himself to directly challenge Durbin on his treachery.

What President Bush should do is to call on Durbin to retract his remarks (not just apologize) and ask forgiveness from our troops and the American people.

Palmetto Pundit:

Oh, the humanity! It looks as if Sen. Durbin has joined the ranks of congressmen who are stuck on stupid. He either a) has no knowledge of history or b) he is making these sick comparisons out of hatred for the Bush Administration, or c) a combination of the two. Frankly, I couldn’t care less which one it is. All three are equally pitiful in my opinion.

Captian Ed:

It seems that the Democrats have, for the past four decades, ever been ready to smear the American military during a time of war — particularly with analogies to Nazis — to bolster their political fortunes at the nation’s expense. This hysterical and self-righteous namecalling turned out to be almost completely false in Viet Nam, but we learned that well after we ran out on our erstwhile allies in the South. They are even more ludicrous today, when the Durbins, Kerrys, and others have gotten so desperate for political attention that they now feel the need to toss out genocidal equivalences three at a time for what amounts to nothing more than humiliation techniques, invoking Nazis, Stalinists, and most egregiously the Khmer Rouge that their propaganda allowed to take power in the 1970s.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars:

“The senator was totally out of line for even thinking such thoughts, and we demand he apologize to every man and woman who has ever worn the uniform of our country, and to their families,” said John Furgess, the VFW’s commander-in-chief.
“Our soldiers put the needs of others first, just like generations of Americans before them,” said Furgess, a Vietnam veteran who retired as a colonel in the Tennessee Army National Guard.

“They answered the call to create our country, to save our Union, and to help free the world from tyranny. And in return, all they ever asked for was to be appreciated for who they are and what they do, and for the country to care for their minds and bodies if broken or care for their families should they die,” he said

Froggy Ruminations:

I want Durbin’s job, and I want it now. I’ll be damned if a US Senator is going to get away with comparing my comrades to the Gestapo, or Stalin’s thugs. To the people of the Great State of Illinois, none of you have a hair on you’re a$$ if you do not demand a recall of this piece of trash. This guy isn’t some benchwarmer nutjob either, he is in the Democratic leadership and as such he speaks for the rest of the 44 Senators in his caucus. If you are a Democrat US Senator and you do not have a statement of categorical disavowal of Durbin’s remarks and a plea for him to recant and apologize for them released to the press by close of business today, you are wrong.

That sounds like a great idea. Here’s Durbin’s email address and phone number:

Phone: (202) 224-2152 or (312) 353-4952

E-mail: dick@durbin.senate.gov

Let’s get busy.