Category: History

On this day, in 1963 John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas.

While I have no doubt Oswald was shooting, and his skill and the rifle he used were ‘adequate to the task’, there’s been so much controversy in the several investigations, that short of the Eschaton, I think we’ll never know the whole truth of it.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 at 12:30 p.m. while riding in a motorcade in Dallas during a campaign visit. Kennedy’s motorcade was turning past the Texas School Book Depository at Dealey Plaza with crowds lining the streets—when shots rang out. The driver of the president’s Lincoln limousine, with its top off, raced to nearby Parkland Memorial Hospital, but after being shot in the neck and head, Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1 p.m. He was 46 years old…………

The first lady and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had been three cars behind Kennedy in the motorcade, returned to Air Force One at Dallas Love Field with Kennedy’s body, in a bronze casket.

Johnson was sworn in at 2:38 p.m. as the 36th president of the United States while aboard the airplane prior to takeoff. Jacqueline Kennedy, still in a pink suit splattered with blood, stood at Johnson’s side. An autopsy on Kennedy’s body was performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.

“This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed,” Johnson said in his first public statement as president. “For me, it is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help—and God’s,”

On this day in history, November 17, 1871, National Rifle Association founded by Civil War veteran officers

Former Union officers, who had led the costly battlefield effort to free 4 million Americans from bondage, chartered the National Rifle Association (NRA) in New York City on this day in history, Nov. 17, 1871.

Civil War veterans Col. William C. Church and Gen. George Wingate created the organization after they were “dismayed by the lack of marksmanship shown by their troops,” states the NRA in its online history.

The association was determined to “promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis,” Church wrote in a contemporary magazine editorial, the NRA reports.

Ambrose Burnside was the first president of the fledging organization.

General Burnside led federal troops in many of the early encounters of the Civil War. He served as governor of Rhode Island after the war, from 1866 to 1869.

Following his stint as NRA president (1871-72), Burnside served as a U.S. senator from Rhode Island from 1875 to 1881.

Continue reading “”

On the morning of November 11th, 1918, American fighter ace Captain Eddie Rickenbacker defied orders, jumped in his airplane, and flew out over the front…to watch the war end.

I was the only audience for the greatest show ever presented. On both sides of no-man’s-land, the trenches erupted. Brown-uniformed men poured out of the American trenches, gray-green uniforms out of the German. From my observer’s seat overhead, I watched them throw their helmets in the air, discard their guns, wave their hands.

Then all up and down the front, the two groups of men began edging toward each other across no-man’s-land. Seconds before they had been willing to shoot each other; now they came forward.

Hesitantly at first, then more quickly, each group approached the other. Suddenly gray uniforms mixed with brown. I could see them hugging each other, dancing, jumping. Americans were passing out cigarettes and chocolate.

I flew up to the French sector. There it was even more incredible. After four years of slaughter and hatred, they were not only hugging each other but kissing each other on both cheeks as well. Star shells, rockets and flares began to go up, and I turned my ship toward the field.

The war was over.

Happy Veterans Day

O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin, Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.

God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.

No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland , through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.

This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day!

Westward Ho!

On October 20, 1803, the Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase Treaty by a vote of twenty-four to seven. The agreement, which provided for the purchase of the western half of the Mississippi River basin from France at a price of $15 million, or approximately four cents per acre, doubled the size of the country and paved the way for westward expansion beyond the Mississippi.

Spain had controlled Louisiana and the strategic port of New Orleans with a relatively free hand since 1762. However, Spain signed the Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800 under pressure from Napoleon Bonaparte, a secret agreement retroceding the territory of Louisiana to France.

News of the agreement eventually reached the U.S. government. President Thomas Jefferson feared that if Louisiana came under French control, American settlers living in the Mississippi River Valley would lose free access to the port of New Orleans. On April 18, 1802, Jefferson wrote a letter to Robert Livingston, the U.S. minister to France, warning that, “There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans…”

Napoleon, faced with a shortage of cash, a recent military defeat in Santo Domingo (present-day Haiti), and the threat of a war with Great Britain, decided to cut his losses and abandon his plans for an empire in the New World. In 1803, he offered to sell the entire territory of Louisiana to the United States for $15 million.

Robert Livingston and James Monroe, whom Jefferson had sent to Paris earlier that year, had only been authorized to spend up to $10 million to purchase New Orleans and West Florida. Although the proposal for the entire territory exceeded their official instructions, they agreed to the deal. The Louisiana Purchase Treaty was dated April 30 and formally signed on May 2, 1803.

The bounds of the territory, which were not clearly delineated in the treaty, were assumed to include all the land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, at that time known as the Stony Mountains. Just twelve days after the signing of the treaty, frontiersmen Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, younger brother of Revolutionary War officer George Rogers Clark, set out on an expedition to explore the newly acquired territory.

The purchase of the Louisiana Territory and the Lewis and Clark expedition marked the beginning of a century of conquest. As explorers, speculators, adventurers, and settlers pushed the territorial boundaries of the United States westward toward the Pacific coast, the notion of America as a nation always pushing toward new frontiers took hold in art, literature, folklore, and the national psyche.

THE 9/11 GENERATION

There are events that have occurred in our lifetimes that become engrained in our minds.  We often ask ourselves, “Where were you when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon?”  And over the last 21 years, I am sure many of us asked ourselves, “Where were you when the planes flew into the World Trade Center towers, and into the Pentagon, or into a Pennsylvania field?”  Those of us who witnessed the planes flying into the World Trade Center on TV – that image, I will suggest, will be engrained in our memories forever.

On September 11 we saw fire fighters running into a burning building as everyone else was running out.  On September 11 we saw the loyalty among fire fighters as they searched for their own within the tons of rubble.  On September 11 we saw perfect strangers bond together in self-sacrifice, to deny the terrorists flying over Pennsylvania to complete their mission.  On September 11 we heard men and women who knew of their imminent demise spend their final moments telling their families how much they loved them.

As General Casey said when he took the reigns as our former Chief of Staff of the Army … “We are locked in a war against a global extremist network that is fixed on defeating the United States and destroying our way of life. This foe will not go away nor will they give up easily, and the next decade will likely be one of persistent conflict.  At stake are the power of our values and our civilization, exemplified by the promise of America, to confront and defeat the menace of extremist terrorists.  At stake is whether the authority of those who treasure the rights of free individuals will stand firm against the ruthless and pitiless men who wantonly slay the defenseless.  At stake is whether the future will be framed by the individual freedoms we hold so dear or dominated by a demented form of extremism.  At stake is whether we will continue to expand freedom, opportunity, and decency for those who thirst for it, or let fall the darkness of extremism and terror.”

Continue reading “”

Mythology II: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Oppenheimer.

The film Oppenheimer has made a lot of noise in the run-up to the anniversaries this month of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — and not just from Christopher Nolan’s bombastic soundtrack. As happens every year, these anniversaries prompt debate over the the decision to use atomic weapons, and whether they were necessary to end the war with Imperial Japan.

The film itself seems timed to influence those debates. As Axios reported over the weekend, it has at least stirred controversy in Japan, although perhaps not exactly as its producers intended:

“Oppenheimer” has generated backlash in Japan, for what critics argue is its failure to fully grapple with the destructive reality of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and its celebration of the “father of the atomic bomb.”

Why it matters: While the film does chronicle J. Robert Oppenheimer’s guilt over the deployment of the weapon he helped create, it doesn’t truly show “what happened under the mushroom cloud,” Keiko Tsuyama, a former staff writer for Kyoto News who covered the aftermath of the bombing in Nagasaki, tells Axios.

It has also been deeply uncomfortable for some Japanese people and Japanese Americans to see the development of weapons that killed upwards of 200,000 people in 1945 become part of a pop culture phenomenon.

Part of this aims at Warner’s efforts to promote the tongue-in-cheek “Barbenheimer” social-media memes, which the living survivors understandably find offensively trivializing. Some of this, however, comes from efforts in Japan and the US to strip the decision to use the bombs from the context of the war, especially in the way Imperial Japan itself conducted its genocidal campaigns and their refusal to deal with the consequences and realities of their own choices.

The film contributes to this revisionist impulse, either intentionally or accidentally. In a scene between J. Robert Oppenheimer and Harry Truman after the war, Oppenheimer laments that “I feel I have blood on my hands,” an anecdote taken directly from the biography American Prometheus on which the film is based. Truman calls Oppenheimer a “crybaby” behind his back after trying to ease his conscience by reminding Oppenheimer that the decision to use the bombs was Truman’s.

The film, clearly sympathetic to that perspective, fails to explain why Truman made that choice, other than as a decision based on choosing between dead Americans and dead Japanese. That in itself is enough of a legitimate wartime calculation, but the issue was far more complicated than that, and even more complicated than calculations about the cost of an invasion.

Continue reading “”

On Point: The Korean Armistice’s Iffy Anniversary: Korea Is a Forever War

The Korean War Armistice agreement was signed July 27, 1953 — 70 years ago this month. It’s a very iffy anniversary, for the Korean War remains unfinished business.

Internet factoids claim the armistice concluded the war with “a complete cessation of hostilities.” Dub those factoids “faketoids” — disinformation posing as historical fact. First point: an armistice is not a peace treaty. Second point: along the Korean peninsula’s Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the fighting has never stopped.

Examples abound. The DMZ Conflict is a collective name for skirmishes, raids and assassination attempts that occurred from October 1966 to October 1969. The fighting cost South Korea 299 dead and 550 wounded. Forty-three Americans were killed and 111 wounded.

The fighting included the January 1968 Blue House Raid. Thirty-one North Korean commandos infiltrated South Korea to assassinate South Korea’s president. They attacked the president’s residence (the Blue House) but failed to kill the president. Ultimately South Korea suffered 26 killed and 66 wounded; 29 communist commandos were slain, one captured. Call it “gray zone war” and you nail it.

At this immediate moment we see a kinda-sorta conflict lapse, except for nuclear warfare threats and missile launches.

This July 12 North Korea test fired an intercontinental ballistic that traveled some 650 miles and splashed into the Sea of Japan. The missile’s loft trajectory and flight time indicates it can hit Guam and Hawaii — a nuclear Pearl Harbor. Seattle, San Francisco and Phoenix, stay tuned.

The Biden administration’s Afghanistan skedaddle debacle has ongoing security consequences. The Taliban, however, hasn’t tested ballistic missiles and acquired nukes.

Was North Korea’s test a bluff? The Wall Street Journal quoted Sung-Yoon Lee (Korea expert at Tufts University) as saying “North Korea excels in pretextual provocations… resorting to illegal and menacing behavior while blaming the U.S. or South Korean actions or statements as the pretext for its kinetic ‘protest.'”

Lee believes North Korea “is gearing up for a major provocation.”

Which makes my third point: The Korean War isn’t over. When you hear TV talking heads call Afghanistan America’s longest war, click the remote and silence the ignorant poseurs.

On the armistice’s 70th anniversary, North Korea’s major export is the threat of war magnified by potential nuclear holocaust. It’s an international version of an alley bully’s extortion game. “Pay me off,” the punk waving the pistol says, “or I’ll burn your store.” The analogy, however, goes only so far. North Korea’s Kim waves a nuclear weapon as his miserable people suffer from endemic communist famine.

Maybe North Korea’s nuke is still a primitive fizzle nuke. But quick tech help could modernize the Kim regime’s nukes. Next door China is a possible culprit. Historical point: At its height the Korean War was a war between the U.S. and communist China.

The more likely nuke upgrade culprit– a desperate Vladimir Putin seeking political leverage. A nuke detonation in Asia might shake Ukraine.

Far-fetched? Let’s hope so. However, dictators experiencing a crisis of authority grasp at horse hairs — an indirect reference to the Sword of Damocles.

Twenty years ago, I wrote a column reflecting on the Korean War armistice’s 50th anniversary. In 1951 my father was in combat in Korea. My mother told me that year more than anything she wanted a quick end to the Korean War.”

Dad fought in the Punch Bowl, a collapsed volcano where the Chinese and American armies slugged it out in a series of bitter attrition battles. He censored his own letters. He didn’t tell Mom about the human wave assault that overran his bunker, with Chinese soldiers racing past him as he fired his pistol at fast shapes in the night.

For years, Dad’s commentary on Korea amounted to little more than “I was always too damn cold.”

Korea wasn’t the first post-World War Two “war of integration and disintegration.” That distinction arguably goes to China, where the fighting never stopped. Red China still wants to invade Taiwan.