68 years later, we still remember…
Here is a collection of images from the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command.
Posters from the National Archives.
FDR’s “Day of Infamy” speech
After the Day of Infamy: “Man on the Street” Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor (via the Library of Congress)
Also from the Library of Congress, Pearl Harbor Oral Histories
[Backup is on the way…]
I listened to President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan at West Point and it was not entirely encouraging. His reluctant admission that more troops are needed was welcome but I am concerned he is not supportive of an effective counterinsurgency program as was approved by President George W. Bush during the “surge” in Iraq.
Perhaps a better way of putting it is I am puzzled whether his speech argued in favor of letting facts on the ground determine the length of American involvement or whether he is committed to removing American troops in eighteen months. I was left thinking he was trying to say too many different things to too many different audiences at the same time.
As I tell my students before they give their oral presentations, “always be aware of your audience.” In their case determining the audience is easy. They are doing the presentation for me, in order to receive a grade, as well as their colleagues, in order to edify–but not confuse–them.
President Obama finds himself in a far more difficult situation. He has multiple audiences he needs to appeal to. Making matters worse, what one group wants to hear is often in opposition to another group.
The most obvious audience is that of the West Point cadets and experienced officer corps. If I were grading Obama regarding his appeal to this audience it would be a D. The primary reason is he never once mentioned victory as an outcome of his strategy. Why does this matter? Put yourself in the mindset of an officer who has (or will soon have) enlisted soldiers under his command. One question that would likely spring to mind is, “if my commander in chief is not convinced victory is possible, what do I tell my troops?” That is not a situation an officer wants to find himself in, to say the least.
Another audience are the legislators, activists and partisans of the president’s political party. As the health care debate has shown, Democrats are not united on much of anything. Regarding military action, one the one hand, most Blue Dog Democrats support a strong military and the use of force. But the wing of the Democratic Party that was largely responsible for the president’s victory are the progressives. Most of them want the troops home yesterday. The president’s speech contained some tough talk regarding Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the Blue Dogs and a clear timetable for the progressives. Or, was that a clear timetable? What was that mention of “facts on the ground” all about? Isn’t that what President Bush said time and time again when asked when we would withdrawal from Iraq? Obama did better with Democrats but not great, C-range territory.
The final audience to consider are Republicans, the political opposition. They do not seem very pleased with the president’s speech either. Some dismissed his strategy out of hand before he even gave his speech while others have been railing against him for taking so long to get his act together. Many wanted–but did not expect–Obama to commit to the 60,000 troops that General McChrystal asked for. They were also perturbed by his references to torture and shutting down Gitmo. So he gets another D.
Final Grade: D+
Setting aside how he did with these audiences, just a few words about my own perspective. First, I am not as critical as some that Obama took a while to put his Afghanistan plan together. Yet I agree that it is was too long, especially for someone who made a more effective Afghanistan strategy a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. Progressives seem to have forgotten about that. Second, I concur it is important to let President Karzai know we are not going to be there forever. But did President Obama have to announce the timetable to the entire world? Couldn’t he have done this more diplomatically? Third, the political cheap shots were a disappointment. So how did he do for this audience of one? I give him a C-.
Read More:
Full transcript of the president’s speech here.
Clive Crook at the Atlantic found the speech contradictory:
Obama tried to have it both ways: he gave the generals another 30,000 soldiers, almost as many as they had asked for, but told the country (and anybody else who might have been listening) that disengagement would begin in just 18 months.
At its center, in other words, the speech contradicted itself. You cannot argue, as he tried to, that (a) this is a war America must win to safeguard its own security, and (b) whether the US is winning or not, the troops will start to come home in 2011. If they can start to come home in 18 months regardless, why not start to bring them home now?
That was not the only contradiction. We are against “nation building” (again). But as well as creating the country’s own security forces out of next to nothing, we want a civilian surge to build capacity and foster development. Run that by me once more.
Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard found it disapopinting:
I had hoped Obama would declare that nothing will deter him, as commander-in-chief, from prevailing in Afghanistan. But it turns out a lot of things might deter him. He listed a few of them: the cost of the war, its length (if more than 18 months from January 2010), the failure of Afghans to step up to the task sufficiently. He hedged.
Americans and our allies were looking for more, I believe. To have rallied the country and the world, Obama needed to indicate he would lead a fight to win in Afghanistan, with the help of allies if possible, but with the armed forces of the U.S. alone if necessary. He didn’t say anything like that. He didn’t come close.
While Joan Walsh over at Slate has this to say:
At the moment he needed all of his persuasive powers, Obama gave the worst major speech of his presidency. I admit: I expected to be, even wanted to be, carried away a bit by Obama’s trademark rhetorical magic. But I wasn’t, not even a little. I found the speech rushed, sing-songy and perfunctory, delivered by rote. I despise the right-wing Obama-Teleprompter taunts, but even I wanted to say, Look at your audience, not the damn Teleprompter, Mr. President. Obama looked haggard, his eyes deeper set, and I believe this decision pained him. But I’m not sure even he believes it’s the right decision.
Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban) responsible for a wave of suicide attacks across Pakistan, was killed in a missile strike fired by a CIA Predator drone according to Pakistani officials. Mehsud, one of Pakistan’s most wanted terrorists, was widely regarded the mastermind of the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
The U.S. considered Mehsud less of a priority than Taliban operatives active in Afghanistan but nevertheless placed a $5 million bounty on his head back in March. CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies increased their efforts against Mehsud because they were concerned of the increasing brazenness of his attacks and the possibility that the Pakistani Taliban could destabilize Pakistan, a country considered integral to the U.S. war against Islamist extremists.
The U.S. has not confirmed that Mehsud was killed. American officials are conducting an investigation, including DNA tests, to see if the individual killed in the missile strike was indeed Mehsud. Pakistan and U.S. officials have confirmed that Mehsud’s second wife was killed in the blast.
Added (08/07):
U.S. counterintelligence official claims it is increasingly likely that Mehsud was killed
Pakistan Taliban confirm Mehsud is dead
[Drone airstrike video]
[H/t to ZWord. Michelle Sieff’s interview with Paul Berman is well worth reading. An excerpt is below.]
How have you judged Israel’s actions against Hamas? Do you think Israel used disproportionate force against Hamas?
There is an obligation to live, which means that Israel has not just the right but the obligation to defend herself. Judging the proportionality of the Israeli actions runs into a complication, though – something of a logical bind.
It is now and then noted in the press that Hamas, in its charter, calls for the elimination of Israel – though, actually, the charter goes further yet, which is almost never noted. Article Seven of the charter, citing one of the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, makes clear that Hamas acknowledges a religious duty to kill the Jews. It’s all pretty explicit. Which Jews in particular must be killed, in order to bring about, as the charter puts it, the “Last Hour?” Article Seven merely stipulates “the Jews” – which leaves open the possibility, I would think, of killing all of the Jews, or at least (judging from other sections of the charter) the Jews who inhabit any place that is now or used to be Islamic. In any case, the Jews of Israel.
What is Israel trying to fend off, then? Two possibilities. First: it’s not so hard to imagine that, if Hamas were allowed to prosper unimpeded, and if its allies and fellow-thinkers in Hezbollah and the Iranian government and its nuclear program likewise prospered, the goal announced in Article Seven could be largely achieved. History has some experience with political movements that proclaim in their founding documents the intention of killing the Jews. And so, a first possibility is that Israel is up against military enemies who have every intention of committing a genocide, and who might conceivably succeed. The possibility that Israel is defending itself against a genocide ought to lead any reasonable person to grant the Israelis a degree of latitude in judging what is a proportionate action – even if, as Michael Walzer points out, an invocation of genocidal dangers could also end up as a justification for doing too much.
However, a second possibility. The Hamas charter is full of wild language – not just the part about killing the Jews, but also the invocation of the Protocols of Zion and of an antisemitic theory of history. But maybe all of this stuff should be regarded merely as an overwrought cry of pain – an expression of powerlessness. Maybe there is a kind of pathos of victimhood and suffering in Hamas’ ideas, and not much more.
[Read it all here]
During the first Gulf War, several of my friends from school were in the reserves and were activated to fight the Iraqis. CNN reported that once the soldiers were deployed, they were faced with massive downtime and were restricted to their base due to the travel limitations set by the Saudi government.
I am a voracious reader and at the beginning of the Gulf War, I had a closet full of paperback books. Books that were not being used. So instead of selling them at the used book store, I packed them up in small care packages and sent them out to all the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen I had addresses for.
Within a few weeks, I ran out of books before I ran out of addresses. Friends and family members began donating their paperback books and in the end, over 1000 books were sent to the Gulf.
After the war, we received many thank-you notes from soldiers who got one of our books. Unless it was time for them to fly back home, mail-call days were one of the most anticipated events of deployment. Regardless of why the military is deployed, the men and women of our armed services are there for us. They deserve our support and if we can make their deployment easier, then all the better.
Currently, BFS is a non-profit corporation, operated as a ministry of the non-denominational, interfaith Order of the Red Grail church in North Carolina. Click here for our entry on the Secretary of State of North Caroina’s website.
[Holocaust Memorial in Paris, Pere Lachaise Cemetery]
[Jewish resistance fighter]
Visit the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation here.
Blogs you should be reading:
Contentious Centrist
Flesh is Grass
Z Word
[H/t to the Telos Press blog]
This talk by Fred Siegel was presented at the 2009 Telos Conference which was a couple of weeks ago. I had all intentions of attending but things came up and, well, you know how it goes:
When my wife and I arrived in Israel a few days before the Gaza war began, we were taken aback by the focus on the increase in rocket attacks from Gaza after Hamas had decided to end the “truce.” Friends from across the political spectrum were incensed. During the truce, Hamas used the Arabic world for lull as a dozen rockets and mortars a day came into Southern Israel, but the count had jumped to 70 to 80 a day, and Southern Israel was forced to live in constant fear. The attacks were barely mentioned in the Western press.
We were struck by the unusual concurrence on what to do about the attacks. Generally our left-wing, upper-middle-class North Tel Aviv friends and our middle- and lower-middle-class friends from Hadera, whose middle Israel population of Mizrahim (Jews from Arab countries) is hawkish, agreed on little. But to our surprise their responses to the Hamas rocketing were in both emotional tone and political conclusion virtually identical. They all wanted both separation and normality—meaning as much separation from the Arabs and as much of a conventional Western life as possible.
In effect, the left had won the argument with the right over the settlements. The current center-right Kadima government came into power after Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza on the platform of pulling out from the West Bank as well. But as in Lebanon the dovish hopes of land for peace had been replaced with land for rockets. When it came to Hamas, the right had won the argument over whether there was anyone to negotiate with.
[read it all here]
[No links in this post. Feel free to visit The Nation’s website if you are so inclined.]
I don’t read The Nation that much these days. What’s the point? The authors always provide a standard lefty perspective that is predictable to the point of boredom. But a good friend of my wife stops by on occasion to chat and she always drops off her old copies of the magazine (as well as the New Yorker, another magazine I find grating).
So, while I was in the restroom this morning, I happened upon The Nation’s Gaza extravaganza and there was plenty to get my bowels moving. First up was an editorial claiming:
Israel’s invasion of Gaza has dramatically worsened a grave humanitarian crisis and will benefit only those who always benefit from war. There is no military solution to what is fundamentally a political conflict.
My reply is, tell that to Hamas.They don’t seem to agree with you, Nation editors. Instead, the organization is ideologically dedicated to Israel’s destruction and the murder of Jews. Why do these authors feel the need to project their own politics onto Hamas? Why don’t they take the time to understand Hamas in their own words?
Next was Alexander Cockburn’s “Beat the Devil” column. Cockburn is a knee-jerk anti-Zionist and his hatred of Jews has been well documented. One sentence of his article was especially relavent:
[I]f the elites are as solidly a part of the amen chorus as they have been down the decades, once you leave the corporate and political highways and get on the side roads of the Internet, the picture is changing.
Yes, on the cesspools of the Internet like Cockburn’s Counterpunch the picture is not so much changing as it is getting more shrill regarding the so-called “Holocaust” and “genocide” in Gaza.
By the time I got to Naomi Klein’s “Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction” (BDS for short) I got the picture loud and clear. Like most of the loony left, the pundits at The Nation place an extremely negative emphasis on Israel while denying the war crimes and other human rights violations of Hamas. Hamas is rarely, if ever, mentioned in any of these pieces. Instead, we have a narrative where Israel (and the United States) are to blame for all of Gaza’s ills, rather that the genocidal, totalitarian, and theocratic motivations of Israel’s enemies.
Zombietime provides a comprehensive roundup of peace anti-Jew rallies around the world:
On January 10, the war between Israel and Hamas became a global conflict. No longer confined to the Gaza Strip, the fighting spread to cities around the world: what were billed as “anti-war” demonstrations from Los Angeles to Copenhagen and beyond were in fact overtly pro-Hamas demonstrations, and on Saturday, January 10 there was a unprecedented eruption of violence and extremism in dozens of European and American cities, surpassing anything seen at anti-war rallies in recent years.
Read it all here.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is a clown and does not need any more publicity, but did you read his article, “It Breaks My Heart to See Israel’s Stupidity” a little over a week ago? Here is a choice bit:
Israel’s attempt to wipe out Hamas is understandable, but stupid…
Killing 500 Palestinians and wounding 2,000 others (at the time of writing) is disproportionate. Hamas can harass, but it cannot pose any threat to the existence of Israel. And just as Hamas’s indiscriminate bombing of population centres is a crime against humanity, so is Israel’s killing of civilians (at least 130 so far in Gaza, not to mention the thousands in the years of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza).
Lerner received a lot of heat for that piece. Some of the more thoughtful critiques were provided by Eric Lee (Labourstart) and Ami Isseroff (ZioNation).
But you may have missed these posts by Rabbi Andy Bachman of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn (and Brooklyn Jews). Rabbi Bachman was in Israel when the Gaza assault started. Like Lerner, he would probably describe his politics as progressive, but he is as far away from Lerner as you can get regarding his interpretations of this recent conflict.
Rabbi Bachman is not responding to Lerner directly in any of these posts but they really spoke to me. This post was, coincidentally, published the same day as Lerner’s op-ed (January 5):
As Israel’s incursion into the Gaza Strip moves well into its second week, most of us watch from the sidelines or a distance with a heavy, heavy heart over the loss of innocent life. No one deserves to die who has not brought death on to him or herself, least of all an innocent child.
So to be fundamentally clear: even those of us who support Israel’s efforts to break Hamas and seriously damage its ability to torment Israeli towns with terror mourn loss of every innocent life and grieve with those families. In addition, our hearts go out to those terrified by bombs dropping in homes, on streets, in mosques.
But Israel’s war, I believe, is a just war.
When Israel pulled out of Gaza, tearing deeply at the fabric of its own society to uproot families there (a disengagement I strongly favored and still do) the entire world was able to see if it chose to look that Israel was willing to risk the unity of the nation to take fundamental steps toward peace. The Hamas leadership took the exact opposite steps, took no risk, brutally murdered its own in waging violent and bloody civil war with the Palestinian Authority, and continued on its self-destructive path of trying to wage existential war against Israel. Never has it seriously addressed Israel’s justified existence; never has it accepted Israel’s RIGHT to exist; and never has it seriously sought to make peace. Rather, it has embarked on a hundred years plan, to wear down the psyche of the Israeli population with terror, kidnapping, and the selling of a religio-fundamentalist viewpoint that completely de-legitimizes any Jewish claim to the land.
It’s truly depressing.
You have leaders who deny that a Temple ever stood in Jerusalem–archaeological and historical evidence to the contrary; you have posters at rallies all over Europe, the US and the Arab world saying, “Palestine from the River to the Sea,” the implication being, of course, that in the final analysis, Israel will be an historical footnote, soon to be no more.
[read it all here]
I also recommend reading “Adapt and Live” and “Just the Nasty Business“.
The New Centrist 