We last left the president sailing aboard USS Iowa on November 14th, 1943, on his way to Teheran. To bring readers up to date, here are the daily logs of the president's activities:
November 20th, 1943;
November 21st;
November 22nd;
November 23rd;
November 24th;
November 25th;
November 26th;
November 27th;
November 28th;
November 29th;
November 30th;
December 1st;
December 2d;
December 3rd;
December 4th;
December 5th;
December 6th;
December 7th;
December 8th;
December 9th;
December 10th;
December 11th;
December 12th;
December 13th;
December 14th;
December 15th;
December 16th;
December 17th.
My comments:
FDR's travel to Teheran and participation in tense conferences in Cairo and Teheran was far from a pleasure cruise. This was hard work, and would have challenged even much younger men in better physical condition. A little more than a year after completing the Teheran conference, once again FDR would make another transatlantic voyage through the war zone, this time to Malta and to the war-ravaged Crimea for another conference with Churchill and Stalin. FDR left Washington January 23rd, 1945 and returned February 28th. The following day, March 1st, the president addressed a joint session of Congress, reporting on the Yalta conference. He died six weeks later during a visit to Warm Springs, GA.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Friday, December 13, 2013
Does History Repeat Itself Or Just Rhyme?
Mark Twain is said to have observed that history doesn't repeat itself - but it does rhyme.
Many of us read history not only for entertainment, but also in hopes of learning useful lessons about our own time and place. We seek to uncover history's lessons.
Those purported lessons are brought to our attention by journalists, political figures and academics on major anniversaries of important events.
One such event is the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on June 28, 1914 by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist in the town of Sarajevo. That was a shot not only heard round the world, but one that has reverberated now for an entire century.
Margaret MacMillan, professor of history at Oxford, University, has contributed an essay for the Brookings Institution examining the lessons of that event and the ensuing war.
I have read many of the diplomatic papers leading up to the war, tramped across the battlefields and pondered the issue of "war guilt" as it was called. After the 1918 armistice and collapse of the German government, the Western Allies insisted on assigning all of the guilt for the war on Germany.
I have concluded that no European power was without guilt. Nor was any power imbued with great resources of wisdom.
But the guilt at the outset plainly belongs to Serbia.
Professor MacMillan makes the case in her essay that the times in 1914 were much like our own.
We should read it as a cautionary tale.
But read it!
Many of us read history not only for entertainment, but also in hopes of learning useful lessons about our own time and place. We seek to uncover history's lessons.
Those purported lessons are brought to our attention by journalists, political figures and academics on major anniversaries of important events.
One such event is the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on June 28, 1914 by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist in the town of Sarajevo. That was a shot not only heard round the world, but one that has reverberated now for an entire century.
Margaret MacMillan, professor of history at Oxford, University, has contributed an essay for the Brookings Institution examining the lessons of that event and the ensuing war.
I have read many of the diplomatic papers leading up to the war, tramped across the battlefields and pondered the issue of "war guilt" as it was called. After the 1918 armistice and collapse of the German government, the Western Allies insisted on assigning all of the guilt for the war on Germany.
I have concluded that no European power was without guilt. Nor was any power imbued with great resources of wisdom.
But the guilt at the outset plainly belongs to Serbia.
Professor MacMillan makes the case in her essay that the times in 1914 were much like our own.
We should read it as a cautionary tale.
But read it!
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Liberty
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
-- George Orwell
-- George Orwell
Seventy-Two Years Ago: Pearl Harbor And Japanese Politics
Today's New York Times prints an op-ed article by historian Eri Hotta addressing similarities and differences between today's Japan and that of seventy-two years ago. Her article is very much worth reading. I also look forward to reading her book: Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy.
Japan in 1941 was not a military dictatorship or a totalitarian regime, and it never became one. Neither was it a democracy. It was, instead, a society built on strong networks of obligation, with decision making by consensus rather than by majority vote. The persistent belief that Japan in 1941 was a military dictatorship grows out of a deep misunderstanding of the way Japanese society worked. Ruth Benedict's wartime study of Japanese society, The Crysanthemum And The Sword, might have deepened our understanding, but it came out too late and has never informed our retrospective understanding of events leading to war. I look forward to reading Ms. Hotta's two books on the period.
Japan in 1941 was not a military dictatorship or a totalitarian regime, and it never became one. Neither was it a democracy. It was, instead, a society built on strong networks of obligation, with decision making by consensus rather than by majority vote. The persistent belief that Japan in 1941 was a military dictatorship grows out of a deep misunderstanding of the way Japanese society worked. Ruth Benedict's wartime study of Japanese society, The Crysanthemum And The Sword, might have deepened our understanding, but it came out too late and has never informed our retrospective understanding of events leading to war. I look forward to reading Ms. Hotta's two books on the period.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Seventy Years Ago: Thirty-One Knot Burke
Thanksgiving eve, 1943, Admiral Halsey ordered Captain Arleigh Burke, Commander Destroyer Squadron 23, with five Fletcher class destroyers, to intercept a Japanese squadron of five destroyers near the island of Buka in the Northern Solomons. One of Burke's destroyers had a minor engineering problem, previously reported, which limited speed to 30 knots instead of the normal top speed of 38 knots. Captain Burke reported to Halsey that he was proceeding at 31 knots. Halsey directed him to proceed to point Uncle: “THIRTY-ONE KNOT BURKE GET ATHWART THE BUKA-RABUL EVACUATION LINE ABOUT 35 MILES WEST OF BUKA….”
Thus was Burke's "Little Beaver" squadron dispatched to the Battle of Cape St. George and into US Naval history.
A little more than a year earlier, near Guadalcanal, the night of August 8-9, 1942, Japanese Admiral Mikawa hastily assembled a force of seven cruisers and a destroyer near Buka to counter the US/Australian invasion force of eight cruisers and fifteen destroyers at Guadalcanal. Mikawa's force lacked radar, while the allied cruisers and several of the destroyers had radar. But the Japanese had trained for night combat and they were equipped with the world's best torpedoes. US torpedoes had not been adequately tested and proved unreliable and ineffective.
When the clash began, it took about a half hour for the Japanese to sink four allied heavy cruisers, damage two destroyers and kill over a thousand allied sailors. Japan escaped with minimal damage and a loss of 58 sailors.
It was the US Navy's worst defeat ever in a sea battle.
Captain Burke's destroyers were all equipped with radar and knew how to use it at night. The problems with American torpedoes had been fixed. By late 1943, the crews were battle-experienced and, more important, the officers knew how to effectively use the new equipment.
Burke's squadron found the Japanese, sank three destroyers and damaged another, pursuing them in a long stern chase. Burke withdrew before daylight, as the squadron was well inside range of Japanese land based aircraft.
When Arleigh Burke later became Chief of Naval Operations, he wrote a personal, characteristically modest, account of the Battle of Cape St. George for Parade magazine here.
Thus was Burke's "Little Beaver" squadron dispatched to the Battle of Cape St. George and into US Naval history.
A little more than a year earlier, near Guadalcanal, the night of August 8-9, 1942, Japanese Admiral Mikawa hastily assembled a force of seven cruisers and a destroyer near Buka to counter the US/Australian invasion force of eight cruisers and fifteen destroyers at Guadalcanal. Mikawa's force lacked radar, while the allied cruisers and several of the destroyers had radar. But the Japanese had trained for night combat and they were equipped with the world's best torpedoes. US torpedoes had not been adequately tested and proved unreliable and ineffective.
When the clash began, it took about a half hour for the Japanese to sink four allied heavy cruisers, damage two destroyers and kill over a thousand allied sailors. Japan escaped with minimal damage and a loss of 58 sailors.
It was the US Navy's worst defeat ever in a sea battle.
Captain Burke's destroyers were all equipped with radar and knew how to use it at night. The problems with American torpedoes had been fixed. By late 1943, the crews were battle-experienced and, more important, the officers knew how to effectively use the new equipment.
Burke's squadron found the Japanese, sank three destroyers and damaged another, pursuing them in a long stern chase. Burke withdrew before daylight, as the squadron was well inside range of Japanese land based aircraft.
When Arleigh Burke later became Chief of Naval Operations, he wrote a personal, characteristically modest, account of the Battle of Cape St. George for Parade magazine here.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
John Warner Cox: August 13, 1941 - November 26, 2013
My brother John fought pancreatic cancer for nearly three years. He taught us how to live through such a time. How to seize the day for whatever the day offers. An inspiration to us all. He lived his life from beginning to end with great good humor. When he learned there were no further treatment options, he began planning for the end, including writing his obituary. When I visited him last month in Utah, he was still refining it. Now it is finished and is on line here: http://jandjutah.wordpress.com/
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Affordable Care Act - Medicaid
In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, columnist Timothy Egan describes the refusal to expand Medicaid as the South's new "lost cause." He makes it plain that this is irrational, but he rather dances around the reason motivating southern states to reject an obviously good deal.
Ed Kilgore, writing in the Washington Monthly, is more direct. Calling the decision to reject Medicaid expansion the "pure meanness litmus test," Kilgore explains what this is about: "...states refusing the Medicaid expansion are doing so on grounds that they don’t want their own citizens to benefit from it. And since opposition has centered in the South, there’s not any real doubt a big motive has been a continuation of that region’s longstanding effort to—choose your verb—(a) reduce dependence on government among, or (b) keep down—those people."
In the 1930's, it was the same region, then in thrall to racist democrats (who have since become republicans), that made sure the new social security program would exclude "agricultural workers."
There will be serious collateral damage inflicted on an already strapped health care system in the South. The health care industry understands this.
Ed Kilgore, writing in the Washington Monthly, is more direct. Calling the decision to reject Medicaid expansion the "pure meanness litmus test," Kilgore explains what this is about: "...states refusing the Medicaid expansion are doing so on grounds that they don’t want their own citizens to benefit from it. And since opposition has centered in the South, there’s not any real doubt a big motive has been a continuation of that region’s longstanding effort to—choose your verb—(a) reduce dependence on government among, or (b) keep down—those people."
In the 1930's, it was the same region, then in thrall to racist democrats (who have since become republicans), that made sure the new social security program would exclude "agricultural workers."
There will be serious collateral damage inflicted on an already strapped health care system in the South. The health care industry understands this.
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