Opus 2021-245: If at First You Don’t Succeed...

On August 6 I kept reading about the bombing of Hiroshima.  I didn’t read the articles because there are two general approaches.  The first is the revisionist approach that ignores all of the facts and weeps bitter tears about how mean the United States was to commit this war crime.  If you are ignorant, stupid or evil that all makes sense.  The second is that it ended the war quickly and saved hundreds of thousands of American lives and since the Japanese as a nation were committed to suicidal resistance, it also ended up saving millions of Japanese lives.  That is a net savings, not gross.

I thought it might be interesting to bring in a bit of the thinking expressed at the time.  I offer you Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain.  He was in on the research leading up to the development of the bomb.  He was involved with the decision to drop it.  This comment was published in 1953 and reflects an insiders view of what was going on.

“At any rate, there never was a moment’s discussion as to whether the atomic bomb should be used or not.  To avert a vast, indefinite butchery, to bring the war to an end, to give peace to the world, to lay healing hands upon its tortured peoples by a manifestation of overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions, seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance.” p. 639

Two issues are clear here.  This weapon was viewed as a release from the butchery that started in 1939 and consumed at least 20 million lives.  Also no one had any serious doubts about using it.  You may not like history.  You may not like reality.  Picture what the world would be like today if they had refused to drop the bomb.  The butchery in China and Korea would have continued.  Millions more would have died.  The Soviet Union would have made a land grab in Asia.  Two cities in the country that initiated the Bataan Death March is a small price to pay.  And keep in mind that the slaughter of the first bomb was not enough to bring surrender.  The allies had to do it again.

Churchill, Winston S.  Triumph and Tragedy.  Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953.

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Opus 2021-230: How High Does Baloney Pile?

I wish I had a patent on baloney meters.  I keep thinking it is getting worse but I am not so sure the real situation isn’t that we are becoming more aware.  I came across this while reading Churchill.  He is quoting a cable he sent to President Roosevelt.

“I see a Reuter message, emanating no doubt unofficially from Paris, that it was agreed France should be assigned certain areas - the Ruhr, the Rhineland, etc. - for their troops to garrison.  There is no truth in this, and it is obvious that nothing of this kind can be settled on such a subject except in agreement with you....  I could of course issue something which would be a disclaimer of any loose statements made by Reuter, but you may not think this necessary in view of the obvious facts.”  pp. 252-3

We see this kind of thing going on all down through history.  I have read about how Walter Duranty wrote glowing reports about the Soviet Union while Stalin was starving millions in Ukraine.  He received a Pulitzer prize for his lies.  I keep remembering the way Walter Cronkite came on and lied about how we were badly beaten in the Tet offensive of 1968.  Which one of our recent talking heads talked about dodging fire in a helicopter.  And of course you have just about everything that comes from the CDC today.

We need to stay alert and do our best to wake up the Snow Whites around us.  If we can’t wake them up then what does the job may not be a kiss from a handsome prince.

Churchill, Winston S.  Triumph and Tragedy.  Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953.

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Opus 2021-228: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Eyes

I just finished reading the six volume set The Second World War by Winston Churchill.  I have had the set for at least 20 years.  I tried to start it once before but quickly lapsed.  This time the tyrants, from petty to national, who locked us down and drained away our liberty kept me from using the libraries and I was forced onto my own resources.  

It has been a rich time.  

Churchill openly announces that he is writing from his perspective as Prime Minister of Great Britain.  He makes no apologies.  Much of the volume was made up of the documented communications that he sent.  

One of the surprises to me was the vision of Churchill being duped by Stalin.  I had always understood that Franklin Roosevelt had been fooled by the Communist.  That came through in these volumes.  I had been under the impression that Churchill had seen through him.  I no longer believe that.  Even at the end of things, when he seems to have had an epiphany, he was still easily swayed by the charm and charisma of Joseph Stalin.  Take this description of possibly the last meeting he had with Stalin.  FDR has died.  The war in Europe is over.  Soon the atomic bombs will be dropped on Japan and that will come to an end.  Churchill is on the verge of finding out that he has been voted out of office.  In other words, this is his final word.

“Then a very odd thing happened.  My formidable guest got up from his seat with the bill-of-fare card in his hand and went around the table collecting the signatures of many of those who were present.  I never thought to see him as an autograph-hunter.  When he came back to me I wrote my name as he desired, and we both looked at each other and laughed.  Stalin’s eyes twinkled with mirth and good-humour.  I have mentioned before how the toasts at these banquets were always drunk by the Soviet representatives out of tiny glasses, and Stalin had never varied from this practice.  But now I thought I would take him on a step.  So I filled a small-sized claret glass with brandy for him and another for myself.  I looked at him significantly.  We both drained our glasses at a stroke and gazed approvingly at one another.”

It seems to me that Churchill is still not willing to admit the evil in Stalin.  It is also a good reminder that just because someone is the epitome of evil, you cannot assume that they have no social skills.  

Remember that when you are evaluating political and business leaders in our day.

Churchill, Winston S.  Triumph and Tragedy.  Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953, p. 669.

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Opus 2017-200: Afghanistan Viewed with a Little History

President Trump is preparing to send more troops into Afghanistan.  We need to try to get an historical perspective on invaders of this country.  We are familiar with the way in which the Soviets were decimated.  I believe even Alexander the Great bumped up against these people.  Let’s look back a hundred years.

At the turn of the 20th century Great Britain was in the process of subduing the Subcontinent of India.  When Winston Churchill, as a young man, took time off from the cavalry to be a journalist he was a front line observer of the cultures they were dealing with.  When he was there the British had the lower area under control but the tribesmen from the mountains were continually raiding and causing problems.  The Empire decided to take on the tribesmen.  Here is how Churchill described these people.

    “They, when they fight among themselves, bear little malice, and the combatants not infrequently make friends over the corpses of their comrades or suspend operations for a festival or a horse race. At the end of the contest cordial relations are at once re-established. And yet so full of contradictions is their character, that all this is without prejudice to what has been written of their family vendettas and private blood feuds. Their system of ethics, which regards treachery and violence as virtues rather than vices, has produced a code of honour so strange and inconsistent, that it is incomprehensible to a logical mind.”  Kindle location, 128-132

I am not sure that anything has changed in the last hundred years.  I doubt if much changed for a thousand years.  I am not sure what we think we can do to change the situation.

Churchill, Winston S.  The Story of the Malakand Field Force, Project Gutenberg.

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Opus 2017-193: Why Barak Repatriated Winston

I am finding new reasons why the Progressives hate Winston Churchill.

Do you remember the scandal when Barak Obama removed the sculpture of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office and sent it back to England?  It was a slap in the face to the British but it was even more a statement about Progressive’s attitudes toward a man who saw the evil in Communism while FDR was calling Stalin “Uncle Joe”.  For the left it was a win/win.

I came across another reason while reading Winston Churchill. 

“Indeed it is evident that Christianity, however degraded and distorted by cruelty and intolerance, must always exert a modifying influence on men's passions, and protect them from the more violent forms of fanatical fever, as we are protected from smallpox by vaccination. But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist.”  Kindle location 459-464

Churchill was in the India/Afghan area of Asia at the time.  He was acting as a reporter in the same area that our troops are operating now.  He faced the reality of the situation on a day by day basis. 

Doesn’t it sound like what you are seeing and what the media are ignoring?  Keep in mind that the left keeps calling it a religion of peace in spite of the evidence.  Keep in mind that Obama did everything he could to weaken America and the West and strengthen the power of Islam.  Is it any wonder that he, and they, don’t like Winston Churchill?

Churchill, Winston S.  The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War.  Project Gutenberg download.

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