Here’s the latest in chain email warfare I received the other day. First, let’s get the premise out of the way.

This venerable and much honored WW II vet is well known in Hawaii for his seventy-plus years of service to patriotic organization and causes all over the country. A humble man without a political bone in his body, he has never spoken out before about a government official, until now.

He dictated this letter to a friend, signed it and mailed it to the president.

When a 95 year old hero of the “the Greatest Generation” stands up and speaks out like this, I think we owe it to him to send his words to as many Americans as we can. Please pass it on.

Whether or not the actual Harold Estes wrote this is not yet verified, but that’s not really the point. Some idiot obviously did write it, and although its infamy as a public screed in the form of a chain email originated in Florida rather than Hawaii; and even though the exact same out of context misquotes appeared in a Pat Boone tirade in WorldNetDaily, let’s just assume that it did originate from the source claimed in the preamble above.

The author clearly does have a political bone in his body contrary to the claim. And just because he is a member of “the greatest generation” and served in WWII, that does not give the dittoheads who pass this crap on a reason to do so. Guess who else was a WWII vet? Holocaust museum shooter and neo-NaziJames von Brunn. Thankfully, I don’t see many people passing on his rants.

Dear President Obama,

My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don’t believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert.

More set up, folks. I think the key point here is that the author claims only to be “pretty much” mentally alert. Good thing we have that caveat.

I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos’n Mate. Now I live in a “rest home” located on the western end of Pearl Harbor, allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country.

One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man.

That’s not really a benefit of age. Five year olds don’t have this issue either. Come to think of it, neither do I.

So here goes..

I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do, but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish.

Uh oh, looks like this guy must have just watched 2012.

I can’t figure out what country you are the president of.

That would be the United States of America. And now we know what he meant by only “pretty much” mentally alert.

Now comes the Pat Boone rehash:

You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies like:

“We’re no longer a Christian nation”

Well, Obama never exactly said this. He did say, in 2006:

“Given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.“

One little word does wonders for actual meaning doesnt it? Not to mention the entire context of a quote. And demographically speaking, it’s not untrue. In fact the only thing possibly wrong with Obama’s statement is that we cannot “no longer” be what we never were.

See, it’s not like he said something like:

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion“

Because, you know, that would just be a silly statement that happened to be part of a treaty begun under George Washington’s administration, signed by John Adams, and voted unanimously by the Senate after being read aloud on the floor and published in major newspapers without complaint.

Does our nation have moral roots that come partly from Christianity? Sure. But we are a nation of laws, not a theocracy. That would be what those of us with 100% mental alertness call “entirely different”.

“America is arrogant” – (Your wife even announced to the world, “America is mean-spirited.”

Again, this is not something Obama said. What he did say, during a townhall in France, was:

“In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.

But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what’s bad.

On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise. They do not represent the truth.”

Yeah, real scathing anti-American sentiment there. If you live in an alternate reality devoid of context, history, or objectivity.

Please tell her to try preaching that nonsense to 23 generations of our war dead buried all over the globe who died for no other reason than to free a whole lot of strangers from tyranny and
hopelessness.)

Let’s test Mr. Pretty Much Mentally Alert’s math skills. A generation is roughly 25 years. 23 generations takes us back to before Columbus. Fail.

I’d say shame on the both of you, but I don’t think you like America, nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do, for the obvious gifts this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.

I’ve seen several occassions on which Obama has expressed gratefulness and humilty over the position he has attained. But it’s absolutely a true statement that to be without shame is dangerous for the man in the White House. Perhaps he should have written his letter to our last president, the one who couldn’t think of a single mistake he ever made.

After 9/11 you said,” America hasn’t lived up to her ideals.”

Another fake quote. Firstly, it seems “after 9/11″ means eight years after. And still, it’s not very close to the actual quote from a speech in Cairo:

“And finally, just as America can never tolerate violence by extremists, we must never alter our principles. 9/11 was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.

So America will defend itself respectful of the sovereignty of nations and the rule of law. And we will do so in partnership with Muslim communities which are also threatened. The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities, the sooner we will all be safer.”

That’s not a condemnation of, nor an apology for America. It’s an affirmation. To think otherwise is simply ignorant.

Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000 farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British? Or maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man, that 500,000 men died for in the Civil War? I hope you didn’t mean the ideal 470,000 fathers, brothers, husbands, and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for in WWII, because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us around, because we stand for freedom.

Now it starts to get even more confusing. Apparently casualty numbers from selected wars (all 23 generations worth!) have some bearing on… well… some sort of argument. And interestingly, the author seems to include Confederate soldiers in his figures for the civil war. I think I can safely say that Obama was probably not talking about the ideal of seceding from the Union. Sorry. I guess you win a point there. Or something.

But since you ask, perhaps he was refering to the whole suspending habeas corpus thing, effectively slashing the bill of rights, and then torturing those we detained. Just a guess.

I don’t think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than discrimination.

Quite an egalitarian ideal there. Downright socialist.

You know the one that a whole lot of white people understood when they helped to get you elected.

What does race have to do with anything? Does this guy realize that more than just white people can vote now?

Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man. Shape up and start acting like an American. If you don’t, I’ll do what I can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue.

And so start the veiled threats. Since there is no question this fellow wouldn’t be voting for Obama in the next election, the only conclusion is that he must be referring to something else.

You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their
people like slaves.

Oh really. Having already established that he has no understanding of what the president is elected to do (i.e preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States), the author now claims enough credibility to opine on what the president is elected not to do. I mean we all know Bush Sr didn’t apologize for barfing on the Japanese Prime Minister, and Dick Cheney didn’t apologize for dressing like he was about to shoot somebody in the face while remembering the horrors of Auschwitz. Because that’s what Americans do.

At least he has precedence on his side. Here is Eisenhower not bowing to Pope John XXIII:


He’s just checking out his wrinkle free skin and admiring his mental alertness. Pretty much.

And here’s W after Pope Benedict XVI apparently advised him to XYZPDQ:


Decidedly not bowing.

Oh, here’s Nixon admiring Hirohito’s kicks. He can’t possibly be bowing to the Japanese leader who bombed Pearl Harbor, can he? Of course not.

Here’s Eisenhower again, after Charles de Gaulle just disappeared a quarter from his hand!! Not photographed is when he reproduced it from behind Ike’s ear.


I tell you, that Eisenhower was a man who loved not to bow. A real American he was.

Then of course, there’s W again, playing kissy face and holding hands with Saudi King Abdulluh. They make a cute couple:

And though only a presidential special envoy for Reagan, here’s Donald Rumsfeld either giving Saddam Hussein a stink palm or shaking his hand in the course of making a deal to supply him with weapons of mass destruction for use against Iran.

And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more.

He probably thinks he’s the President of the United States. That could be because he is, or it could be for some other reason. And since when is jumping to conclusions a good thing?

You mean you don’t want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that
black college professor in Massachusetts, who was putting up a fight?

Yeah, that’s the same thing. And as a matter of fact, yes, that’s exactly what he wants you to not do. By the way, you forgot the ‘in his own house’ part. Funny how there are people on Harold Estes’ side of the political spectrum who claim to stockpile ammunition in the event of just such a scenario.

You don’t mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don’t want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are, terrorists.

Firstly, saying a department acted stupidly is not the same as calling police stupid. And I believe that issue was resolved quite amicably. Secondly, the definition of terrorist is not “Muslim fanatic”. No really. Look it up.

One more thing. I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life, but you’re the Commander-in-Chief now, son. Do your job.

You mean like Dick Cheney and W? Oh, I guess you don’t. And, wow, why don’t you just call him ‘boy’? Haven’t we already covered the job part?

When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him.

Unlike the troops Bush-Cheney dithered about until Obama was finally about to grant them. And as the author should know, completing the mission requires a strategy, not just a number. War is not magic, and 40,000 women can’t have a baby in ten minutes anymore than the presence of 40,000 troops can automatically complete a mission that isn’t effectively defined. And that is what has been missing the past eight years. Furthermore, didn’t you just admit that Obama was Commander-in-Chief (of the country you can’t identify)? Then, that is where the decision rests, unless I missed a military coup somewhere.

But if you’re not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is not worth the best political strategy you’re thinking of.

See Iraq, invasion of.

You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge ever presented to any president.

Finally, the first reasonable thing said throughout that entire rant. Hmm, I wonder what challenge(s) he refers to? Oh, it must be all the ones the last guy completely screwed up and left for the rest of us. Thanks for the reminder

You’re not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated economy.

Sooo, you want the economy to fail?

That’s not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who we are as Americans is our big fight now.

Sooo, we aren’t living up to our ideals or something. But didn’t you just… yeah, nevermind

And I sure as hell don’t want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle.

And it’s back to the subtle violent rhetoric. As if there is any question this guy doesn’t already see the President as “the enemy”. The corollary of course, is that this guy is an enemy of the President and an enemy of America. See, most people get the benefit of the doubt for simply being misinformed, wrong, or stupid; but this guy has intentionally phrased his rhetoric as part of “the final battle”. Maybe, like Sarah Palin or Roland Emmerich, he believes the rapture or the Mayans are upon us one way or the other. But the fact is it’s dangerous to talk of the President as an enemy using war imagery in a country with a long history of political violence and civil unrest. And passing it along will make you culpable when one of the idiots out there does decide to act.

Eisenhower and Washington gave the two most-quoted “Farewell Addresses” by presidents. Most of these quotes, at least in my lifetime, have been offered up by isolationists, pacifists, and the like-minded. Washington’s has been creatively interpreted by subsequent generations who ignore its context and meaning within its time. Eisenhower’s has been cherry-picked to great effect. (Notice how often references to the military industrial complex fail to include the line “We recognize the imperative need for this development.”)

One important section of the Eisenhower address today seems—in light of recent revelations concerning the Great Global Warming Scare—unusually prescient. Here it is (emphasis mine):

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

Does this not seem to be what has occurred? Whatever fascistic dynamic may (or may not) have taken hold of us through the growth of what Eisenhower himself viewed as the necessary evil of the military industrial complex, our core governing institutions—our universities, our think tanks, our regulatory agencies, our journalism, huge swaths of our national legislature, the U.N. (with its hydra head of related and subsidiary agencies)—all of them have coalesced around what increasingly appears to be a hoax. And in exactly the way Eisenhower described both military industry and science. I am as amazed by Eisenhower’s vision as I am appalled by what we have allowed to occur.

How did this breakdown happen and how do we keep it from happening again?

SIXTY-FIVE years ago, in November 1944, the war in Europe was at a stalemate. A resurgent Wehrmacht had halted the Allied armies along Germany’s borders after its headlong retreat across northern France following D-Day. From Holland to France, the front was static — yet thousands of Allied soldiers continued to die in futile battles to reach the Rhine River.

One Allied army, however, was still on the move. The Sixth Army Group reached the Rhine at Strasbourg, France, on Nov. 24, and its commander, Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers, looked across its muddy waters into Germany. His force, made up of the United States Seventh and French First Armies, 350,000 men, had landed Aug. 15 near Marseille — an invasion largely overlooked by history but regarded at the time as “the second D-Day” — and advanced through southern France to Strasbourg. No other Allied army had yet reached the Rhine, not even hard-charging George Patton’s.

Devers dispatched scouts over the river. “There’s nobody in those pillboxes over there,” a soldier reported. Defenses on the German side of the upper Rhine were unmanned and the enemy was unprepared for a cross-river attack, which could unhinge the Germans’ southern front and possibly lead to the collapse of the entire line from Holland to Switzerland.

The Sixth Army Group had assembled bridging equipment, amphibious trucks and assault boats. Seven crossing sites along the upper Rhine were evaluated and intelligence gathered. The Seventh Army could cross north of Strasbourg at Rastatt, Germany, advance north along the Rhine Valley to Karlsruhe, and swing west to come in behind the German First Army, which was blocking Patton’s Third Army in Lorraine. The enemy would face annihilation, and the Third and Seventh Armies could break loose and drive into Germany. The war might end quickly.

Devers never crossed. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander, visited Devers’s headquarters that day and ordered him instead to stay on the Rhine’s west bank and attack enemy positions in northern Alsace. Devers was stunned. “We had a clean breakthrough,” he wrote in his diary. “By driving hard, I feel that we could have accomplished our mission.” Instead the war of attrition continued, giving the Germans a chance to counterattack three weeks later in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, which cost 80,000 American dead and wounded.

Garrison Davidson, then Devers’s engineering officer and later a superintendent of West Point, believed Devers’s attack would have succeeded and pre-empted the Bulge, writing, “I have often wondered what might have happened had Ike had the audacity to take a calculated risk, as General Patton would have.” Patton wrote in his diary that he also believed Eisenhower had missed a great opportunity; the Seventh Army’s commander, Lt. Gen. Alexander Patch, felt the same way.

Why did Eisenhower refuse to allow Devers to cross? Eisenhower disliked Devers — a prim teetotaler who rubbed many gruff Army commanders the wrong way — and refused to include him among the generals fighting in northern France. Devers was appointed to lead the southern invasion by the Army chief of staff, George Marshall. Eisenhower would likely have fired Devers once the Sixth Army Group fell under his command in September 1944, but Devers had powerful patrons in Marshall and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Eisenhower was also a cautious, some would say indecisive, commander who favored a “broad front” strategy with all Allied armies moving in tandem on a solid front. His military objective was Germany’s main industrial area to the north, the Ruhr. Devers was operating too far south to help that effort.

True, the Germans knew the Ruhr was vital to them and fiercely defended it. But, as we know from several of their generals’ postwar memoirs, what they really feared was an incursion across the Rhine, which would have been a military catastrophe and a devastating symbolic blow to the German people.

The Rhine wasn’t crossed until March 1945. Had Eisenhower let Devers make his attack, we might now be celebrating the 65th anniversary of a cross-Rhine attack that quickly ended the war in Europe. Instead, we will soon mark the anniversary of the costliest battle in American history, the Battle of the Bulge.

__________

Full article and photo: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/opinion/23colley.html

Good morning everyone. Here are a few mix & match news stories from the last week that have been bouncing around in my empty cranium.

BREAKING NEWS:  Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh insist upon saying that the Obama administration is raping the citizens of this country. Why do these two ultra right-wing pundits so frequently use the rape analogy? Is it some sort of racist insult wherein they insinuate a certain race is more likely to commit a vicious sex crime? Consider these quotes:

Glenn Beck:  “People in New York, you’re being raped by your government — raped.”, and “We’re the young girl saying ‘No, no, help me,’ and the government is Roman Polanski.”

Rush Limbaugh:  “Feinberg is following orders and I guaran-damn-tee you Obama said: “You get up there and you rape ‘em. And you make ‘em poor. And you make ‘em pay.”, and “Get ready to get gang-raped again, folks.” There was also this gem, “We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president.” How about this defense of Sarah Palin, “This is pure sexism in Alaska on the part of these old boys trying to get rid of Sarah Palin, and she didn’t put up with it, and she didn’t bend over and let them have their way.”

These guys and their perverted adolescent talk are sickening.

THIS JUST IN:  We have oft commented on Lynnrockets’ Blast-Off that everything that Sarah Palin touches somehow turns to manure. Remember when she dropped the puck at the St. Louis Blues hockey game during the campaign after which the team promptly went on a multi-game losing streak? Or when she vehemently defended the character and anti-gay marriage position of former Miss California, Carrie Jean Prejean, after which the woman’s character was called into question because of a potential 15 to 20 explicit sex tapes that she made and transmitted to others. How about when Palin most recently got involved in New York’s 23rd District Congressional race by shunning her own Republican Party nominee as being too moderate and endorsing the Conservative Party candidate only to split the vote and lead the Democrats to victory in a district in which they had not won since the Civil War? Well, Palin has done it again. After appearing on Oprah this week, Oprah Winfrey has now taken a cue from the former ex-quitting governor and announced that she too will now quit arguably the most popular talk show in television history. The curse of the “Alaska Disaster” lives on.

BREAKING NEWS:  Fox News was exposed as being anything but “Fair and Balanced” once again this week. Only a few weeks after being caught by Jon Stewart of the Comedy Channel’s The Daily Show of having attempted to falsely inflate the number of protesters at Michele Bachmann’s recent Tea-Bagger rally in DC by means of showing video footage of a different (better attended event), Fox has done the same thing again. This time Fox attempted to falsely inflate the number of Sarah Palin supporters at a book signing by showing video footage of a campaign rally which took place more than a year ago rather than footage of the actual book signing. This is another example of why the Fox News network simply cannot be trusted to honestly report the news.

THIS JUST IN: To be fair, we must admit that at least one Fox News pundit held a Republican’s feet to the fire this week in a segment of an interview which was not simply a bunch of softball questions. On Thursday evening, while interviewing Sarah Palin the former ex-quitting governor of Alaska, Bill O’Reilly brought up the topic of the disastrous Katie Couric interview as follows:

O’Reilly: Katie Couric’s a different story. Katie Couric asked you an easy question and you booted it, governor.

Palin: I sure did.

[Plays video]

COURIC: What newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them …

O’Reilly: Why did you boot it? I mean, if somebody asks what do you read, I say I read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, I could reel them off in my sleep, you couldn’t do it.

Palin: Well, of course I could. Of course I could.

O’Reilly: Well, why didn’t you?

Palin: It’s ridiculous to suggest that or say I couldn’t tell people what I read. Because by that point already, although it was relatively early in that multi-segmented interview with Katie Couric — it was, it was quite obvious that it was going to be a bit of an annoying interview with a badgering of the questions. It seemed to me that she didn’t know anything about Alaska, about my job as governor, about my accomplishments as mayor or governor, my record. And a question like that, though, yeah, I booted it, I screwed up, I should have been more patient and more gracious in my answer, it seemed to me the question was more along the lines of — Do you read? How do you stay in touch with the real world?

O’Reilly: See, that was your inexperience.

BREAKING NEWS:  Thank goodness for small miracles. The Boston Globe reported Thursday that Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will never again seek public office of any kind. Now if he will only stay out of the movies and consequently, out of our collective sight.

THIS JUST IN:  How about all of that hypocritical Republican outrage at President Barack Obama’s respectful bow to Japan’s Emperor  Akihito ? Do they remember Eisenhower’s bow to Charles DeGaulle of France of all places? Nixon’s bow to Japan’s  Emperor Hirohito who by the way, was the person who ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor? Or how about George W. Bush’s hand holding and kissing of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah? This type of criticism simply exposes the Republican Party as a bastion of pettiness with a lack of serious political ideas.

BREAKING NEWS: This is good news. The U.S. Senate last night voted in favor of opening debate on its version of a health care reform bill (why don’t they simply refer to it as what it is, a health insurance reform bill?). It passed by a vote of 60 t0 40. The 60 votes in favor prevented a Republican filibuster at this stage of the process although all 40 Senate Republicans voted against the bill. The “Party of No” has lived up to its reputation once again by voting not against the substantive content of the proposed bill, but against even having a debate which would weigh the pros and cons of the bill. Why are the Republicans afraid to even allow Senate members to debate a bill? Isn’t public congressional debate the foundation upon which our country and its rule of law was created. The Republicans are always quick to allege that know what the “founding fathers” would have done. Does anyone believe that the “founding fathers” would attempt to stop debate in the congress that they just created? We do not think so. The Republicans should steal their party motto from Nancy Reagan, “Just Say No.”

Inasmuch as the Republican Party is doing everything within its power to hasten its own extinction, we thought that it would be appropriate if today’s song parody was based upon a tune about another extinct animal, the unicorn. Please remember to click on the song link below to familiarize yourselves with the tune and to have more fun singing along with the parody.

The Unicorn Song link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch4N4KB3XaI&feature=related

THE REPUBLICAN SONG

(sung to the Irish Rovers song “The Unicorn Song”)

A long time ago when the States were new
There were lots of political parties so let’s name a few
They bickered and they fought in this land that was free
But always the sore loser was the G.O.P.

There were Whigs and Tories, Greenbacks, also too
The Progressive Party of 1 – 9 – 1 – 2
Democrats and don’t forget the Labor Party
Yet the sorriest of all was the G.O.P.

The Lord seen some sinnin’ from some of his men
So he grouped ‘em all together in a single pen
He said, “I need a name for you barbarians”
“You’ll be Republicans”
And behave like those…

Whigs and Tories, Greenbacks also too
The Progressive Party of 1 – 9 – 1 – 2
Democrats and don’t forget the Labor Party
The sorriest bunch was still the G.O.P.

Wise Abe Lincoln was there to answer the call
He set free all those slaves so there’d be freedom for all
Teddy Roosevelt did his duty too
These were good deeds well overdue
Just like…

Whigs and Tories, Greenbacks also too
The Progressive Party of 1 – 9 – 1 – 2
Democrats and don’t forget the Labor Party
It looked like there was hope for the G.O.P.

Then came the late 20th century
Them Republicans were up to their old tricks again
Dick Nixon and Watergate led to defeat
Oh, that crooked G.O.P.

There were Whigs and Tories, Greenbacks, also too
The Progressive Party of 1 – 9 – 1 – 2
Then came Ford and Reagan and George Bushes one and two
And reduced the G.O.P. to an old worn shoe

The voters started movin’ to the other side
And with them the hopes of all Republicans died
The Democrats came down and wooed Arlen Specter away
That’s how the Republican Party died and floated away

You’ll see Independents and Democrats too
Green Party members from states both Red and Blue
Libertarians and members of the A.I.P.
We’ll never hear no more from the G.O.P.

I had great meetings Mr. Potts at Sudlow and Ms. Artman-Andrews at North High this week. I really look forward to their participation in the East Davenport Review. I have yet to talk to the folks at Central, McKinley, or Eisenhower. They are on the agenda for this coming week.

The most important thing for me now is getting the word out and helping everyone on the East Side understand the purpose of the EDR. I think that as people come to see the value we provide we will get more and more hits, more conversations started and more benefits seen in our neighborhoods.

Stay tuned and help get the word out. The best is certainly yet to come!

Dave

I’d like to hear what the U.S. Generals, Eisenhower, Patton, and Schwarzkopf  have to say about Obama’s fear of making a military decision. It is clear to me that if Obama was Commander-in-Chief during World War Two that Hitler would have us all goose stepping to his favorite marches.

Why does he make such a huge deal about selecting options from his advisors? Could it be that they gave him honest appraisals, and he was looking for the option that said, “GET OUT.”  Obama does not have a clue about leading a war. He doesn’t have the knowledge, the will, or the guts to fight  the biggest threat the world has ever known. There is a good chance that his final policy decision will be “to not win.” The final result will be another Viet Nam, and we will have sacrificed our finest young people to liberal politics.

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Murder Inc, and the New World Disorder

At first blush, one would think that the Republican Party is making much ado about nothing with their staged outrage over the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his 9/11 conspirators in the U.S. Federal court. With the macho stance that they generally take against Al Qaeda, one would think that they’d be saying “bring it on”, and be anxious to drag the conspirators back to the scene of the crime to face the consequences of their horrific act. Having to answer for their crimes before the people of New York represents the epitome of poetic justice.

But all of a sudden these swaggering chicken hawks seem to be trembling in their boots at the mere thought of bringing these terrorists on American soil to face justice. That’s quite a curious reaction from this group – not just that they’re afraid, but that they’d be so freely willing to admit it. Ordinarily they’d die before they’d admit being afraid of terrorists. So something is definitely afoot. Something has to be terribly important to these conservatives for them to risk being seen as cowards – especially since there’s actually nothing to fear. But as usual, whenever one is uncertain about Republican thinking, you simply follow the money.

These people aren’t afraid that trying the 9/11 conspirators on American soil is going to place the United States in jeopardy. After all, if terrorists are going to attack us in retaliation for putting their cohorts on trial, it doesn’t matter where the trial is held. Even if the trial is held at Gitmo, they’re not going to attack Cuba, they’re going to attack the United States. So what’s the real deal?

The Republicans are actually concerned about perception. They want to prevent these terrorists from looking like the common criminals that they are at any cost. They’re afraid that will cause the American people to wake up and recognize that we could save billions of dollars a year by letting law enforcement go after these people.

Thus, by insisting on a military tribunal, the Republican Party is protecting the perception that these people are military combatants. That will both protect the war industry, that continues to feed from America’s trough to the tune of billions of dollars a year, and keep the American people from recognizing what a wild goose chase they had us on for seven years.

If Osama Bin Laden didn’t exist they would have had to invent him in order to sustain America’s most thriving industry – the war machine. The most clear evidence of that is the fact that if the Bush administration had continued its efforts in Afghanistan immediately after 9/11, they would have had Bin Laden by now. But instead, while on the very threshold of victory over the Taliban, they did an about face to engage in the much more lucrative Iraqi campaign – and to this day, they’re still trying to find reasons to justify that action.

The fact is, they knew they couldn’t justify the expenditures they were seeking by engaging a gang of criminals. They needed a government to fight to justify their greed. In addition, since the Bush administration was made up of oil men, Iraq’s oil fields were irresistibly seductive. The fact is, as any thinking person should know by now, Bush wasn’t engaged in a war on terror. His war was on the United States treasury. Bush even admitted at one point that,”I don’t think about Osama - he is irrelevant.” Oh, really? Then what is relevant?

With all of the treasure and manpower that we spent in Iraq, we could have surrounded Bin Laden, cut off his escape routes, and simply closed in on him. If Bush had done that Bin Laden would have been dead by now. It simply strains credulity to believe that the entire United States military can’t run down and capture a group of thugs – especially since they knew where they were hiding. But Bush couldn’t do that, because that would have destroyed the war machine’s cash cow. They needed Bin Laden out there to scare the American people into giving up their rights, keeping Republicans in power, and emptying their piggy bank.

Thus, this so called “war on terror” has been a farce from the very beginning. Nations go to war against other nations, not criminals. By declaring war on individuals who don’t like us, they’re guaranteeing that we’re going to be at war forever, since every time we kill an innocent “non-combatant,” we create more enemies. But that’s exactly what the Republicans and their war machine want. They have just as much of a vested interest in waging war as General Motors has in selling cars.

As one of his final acts of office President Eisenhower warned us about these people. He said, in part:

“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”President Obama should take counsel from his Republican predecessor and bring this nonsense to an end. No one was more of an authority on the war machine than President Eisenhower. After all, as the commanding general of the allied effort during WWII, he created the war machine, and he had an intimate understanding of the thinking and character of the men who ran it. Thus, his warning to the American people.

Using the United States military to go after a few terrorists is like trying to swat flies with a sledge hammer. We’re wasting both lives and treasure, and the carnage that we’re leaving behind is creating more terrorists than we’re killing. So President Obama should allow the CIA to go after the top people in Al Qaeda and simply cut off its head. We should then pull our troops out of Afghanistan, then deploy enough troops in Pakistan to assure the security of their nuclear arsenal.

Finally, and just as important as going after Al Qaeda, the president should remember his oath of office and allow the rule of law to take its course with regard to Bush, Cheney, and the rest of their cronies. Al Qaeda can only do peripheral damage to this nation, while Bush and Cheney have struck at the very pillars of America’s soul.

We cannot protect America by sacrificing our values. If we allow that to happen, Bin Laden has won. So let us not allow the collapse of the twin towers to become a metaphor for the destruction of American ideals.

-Care to Duel (Andrew Jackson)
-John Quincy Adams and the Alligators
-World War Fun (Woodrow Wilson)
-Lou Reed and the Primitives (Dwight Eisenhower on violin and bass)

Original research submitted by Clustence P. Blatz.

I will never stop being amazed at the number of idiots in this country who are still so spiteful and so jealous of ‘That One’ that they come up with such ridiculous theories and attacks. I understand they think these attacks actually work, but it’s beginning to get old and frankly embarrassing.

I will also NEVER for the life of me understand what is so awful, so anti-American, so dangerous about our President trying to restore some of the diplomacy lost during the Bush/Cheney years? Nor will I ever understand what the crime is in knowing your audience.

We lost a lot during those eight years and did very little to maintain or create new allies or relationships. Any wonder why we’re falling behind.

Since when do we want a President that offends other world leaders? Since when do we want a President that is embarrassing because he doesn’t know the customs of another country? Since when do we want a President that makes our relationships with other countries tenser and more tenuous?

Do we really want a President that offends the very people he’s attempting to have discussions with?

Has the right become such a jealous and hateful bunch that they’d rather he go around the world kicking butt and taking names?

I for one prefer to see my President not only show respect for their customs, but their people as well. I want a President that is admired by other world leaders and citizens even if his politics may not be. I want a President that leaves a positive and long lasting impression on our fellow citizens of the world. I want a President that other world leaders view as not only intelligent, but respectful, yes I said respectful, which is conducive to progress.

Do we want our President to be a laughing stock in other countries?

Or rather a person who is admired and appreciated if nothing else his understanding of the rest of the world.

I know what the majority of us would like, but the rest just want him out of the way.

This little snippet from The Washington Times editor Wesley Pruden’s column on Nov 17 illustrates just how delusional they still are about Barack Obama winning the White House, their White House.

Obama lacks “blood impulse” for what America “is about” due to “Kenyan father,” “mother attracted to men of the Third World”

A little traveling, like a little learning, can be a dangerous thing. Barack Obama on the loose in a foreign land is enough to frighten protocol officers and embarrass the rest of us.

He went off to Asia to tell the Chinese a thing or two about world trade, to prepare the world for a treaty to make the sun change its spots, and of course to pay his respects to assorted heads of state, with particular attention to any royal head (perhaps even including Miss Universe) who crosses his path.

Courtesy of Life Magazine

So far it’s a memorable trip. He established a new precedent for how American presidents should pay obeisance to kings, emperors, monarchs, sovereigns and assorted other authentic man-made masters of the universe. He stopped just this side of the full grovel to the emperor of Japan, risking a painful genuflection if his forehead had hit the floor with a nasty bump, which it almost did. No president before him so abused custom, traditions, protocol (and the country he represents). Several Internet sites published a rogue’s gallery showing how other national leaders – the prime ministers of Israel, India, Slovenia, South Korea, Russia and Dick Cheney among them – have greeted Emperor Akihito with a friendly handshake and an ever-so-slight but respectful nod (and sometimes not even that).

Now we know why Mr. Obama stunned everyone with an earlier similar bow to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, only the bow to the Japanese emperor was far more flamboyant, a sign of a really deep sense of inferiority. He was only practicing his bow in Riyadh. Sometimes rituals are learned with difficulty. It took Bill Clinton months to learn how to return a military salute worthy of a commander in chief; like any draft dodger, he kept poking a thumb in his eye until he finally got it. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, seems right at home now giving a wow of a bow. This is not the way an American president impresses evildoers that he’s strong, tough and decisive, that America is not to be trifled with.

Some of the president’s critics are giving him a hard time, and it’s true that this president seems never to have studied much American history. Not bowing to foreign potentates was what 1776 was all about. His predecessors learned with no difficulty that the essence of America is that all men stand equal and are entitled to look even a king, maybe particularly a king, straight in the eye. Can anyone imagine George Washington, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson making a similar gesture of servile submission? Or Harry Truman? Or FDR, who famously served the lowly hot dog, with ballpark mustard, to the king and queen of England? John F. Kennedy, on the eve of a trip to London, sharply warned Jackie not to curtsy to the queen.

Douglas MacArthur, who ranked above mere heads of state in his own mind, once invented his own protocol on greeting Emperor Hirohito. The emperor, the father of Akihito, wanted to meet MacArthur soon after he arrived to become the military regent of Japan in 1945, perhaps to thank him for saving the throne at the end of World War II. When the emperor invited MacArthur to call on him, the general sent word that the emperor should call on him – speaking of breaches of custom – and the two men were photographed together, astonishing the Japanese. The emperor arrived in full formal dress, cutaway coat and all, and MacArthur received him in summer khakis, sans tie, with his hands stuffed casually in his back pockets. Further astonishing the Japanese, he towered over the diminutive emperor.

Courtesy of Life Magazine

But Mr. Obama, unlike his predecessors, likely knows no better, and many of those around him, true children of the grungy ’60s, are contemptuous of custom. Cutting America down to size is what attracts them to “hope” for “change.” It’s no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of “the 57 states” is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.

He no doubt wants to “do the right thing” by his lights, but the lights that illumine the Obama path are not necessarily the lights that illuminate the way for most of the rest of us. This is good news only for Jimmy Carter, who may yet have to give up his distinction as our most ineffective and embarrassing president.

The Washington Times might want to get a new editor since Mr. Pruden seems not only challenged in his history and facts, but also appears not to understand quite how ‘The Google’ works. For that matter maybe he needs a lesson in ‘The Internet’ because he doesn’t seem to realize that it is full of proof that President Obama isn’t the only US Leader to show respect.

Maybe Mr. Pruden would have seen this article in The New York Times about one George H.W. Bush……………………….

Then came the moment: When Mr. Bush approached the emperor’s casket, he bowed deeply.

Those of us who had lived in Japan thought nothing of it. That is how respect is shown in Japan. But the pre-cable pundits were screaming, and soon one of our colleagues, the late Gerald Boyd, asked Mr. Bush about it at a news conference.

Mr. Bush danced around an answer for a moment, mentioning members of his squadron who never came home, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s decision to keep the emperor system, as a way of unifying the Japanese people. Then he said this:

I’m representing the United States of America. And we’re talking about a friend, and we’re talking about an ally. We’re talking about a nation with whom we have constructive relationships. Sure, we got some problems, but that was all overriding — and respect for the Emperor. And remember back in World War II, if you’d have predicted that I would be here, because of the hard feeling and the symbolic nature of the problem back then of the former Emperor’s standing, I would have said, “No way.” But here we are, and time moves on; and there is a very good lesson for civilized countries in all of this.

So did President Obama violate protocol? Well, yes, but not by bowing. He made the mistake of both shaking hands and bowing at the same time, a big breach of etiquette. The truth was that he was supposed to choose one or the other.

Maybe Mr. Pruden needs a refresher course on etiquette AND history?

Posted by Audiegrl

President Barack Obama bows as he is greeted by Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko as he arrives at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo

If they are going to attack him for bowing to foreign leaders, they really need to work on getting rid of all the photos and video of Republican President’s doing exactly what they are accusing President Obama of doing.

Ultra-right wing internet news outlet Newsmax had a screaming headline “No American President Ever Bowed to a Foreign Leader — Until Now”. TheFoxNation brays “Should a U.S. President Ever Bow to a Foreign Leader?” Fox News has been questioning bowing all day, with Fox and Friends anchor Steve Doocy, idiotically parroting right-wing blog Hot Air, that “in 230 years since the country was founded in 1776, that no other U.S. President has ever bowed to a foreign leader“.

Come on now! These right-wing folks are making it way too easy. My Google and Wikipedia are in for some fun. I’ll start chronologically, and leave President Bush for last.

A September 2, 1959 Associated Press photo shows President Dwight Eisenhower bowing his head while meeting French President Charles De Gaulle. The caption of the photograph read: “President Dwight Eisenhower bows as he acknowledges speech of greeting by French President Charles De Gaulle on his arrival at Le Bourget near Paris on Sept. 2, 1959. Between the two chief executives is Ludovic Chancel, French Chief of Protocol.”

We also have a photo of President Eisenhower and First Lady Mamie looking pretty chummy with Nikita Khrushchev and his wife Nina at a state dinner in September of 1959. Khrushchev’s US visit resulted in an informal agreement with President Eisenhower that there would be no firm deadline over Berlin, but that there would be a four-power summit to try to resolve the issue, and the premier left the US in general good feelings.

This February 1972 photo shows President Richard Nixon bowing to Japanese Emperor Hirohito. You know, the guy who ordered the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? Under his orders, on December 7, 1941, Japan struck the US Fleet in Pearl Harbor and began the invasion of Malaysia. At the end of the American occupation of Japan, Hirohito was prepared to apologize formally to U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur for Japan’s actions during World War II – including an apology for the attack on Pearl Harbor. MacArthur refused to admit him or even acknowledge him.

In February 1972, President and Mrs. Nixon traveled to China, where the president was to engage in direct talks with Communist Party Leader, Mao Tse-Tung. Yes, the same Mao who is Glenn Beck’s favorite boogy-man . Here is a photo of President Nixon shaking hands and grinning at Mao on February 29, 1972.

Last but not least, we have the hand-holding and cheek-kissing President George W. Bush. On a April 2005 visit to the President’s ranch, Saudi Prince Abdullah is greeted with a kiss on both cheeks and taken by the hand to the house. Jon Stewart did a segment about this on The Daily Show’s. Thanks to Jed Lewison of DKosTV, we have a mash-up video below.

The Decision 

            Adolf Hitler gathered with the Chiefs of Oberkommando des Wehrmacht on September 16^th 1944 at his “Wolf’s Lair” headquarters in East Prussia.  The situation was critical; he had recently survived an assassination attempt by Army officers led by Colonel Klaus Von Staufenberg at his Wolf’s Lair headquarters in East Prussia.  When the assassination attempt took place the German situation in Normandy was critical. The Americans broke out of the Bocage at St. Lo and spread out across Brittany and the interior of France with Patton’s 3^rd Army leading the way.  Even as his commanders in the West pleaded for permission to withdraw to the Seine Hitler forbade withdraw and ordered a counter attack at Mortain to try to close the gap in the German line and isolate American forces. When the German offensive failed the German front collapsed. 40,000 troops, hundreds of tanks and thousands of vehicles were eliminated when the Americans and Canadians closed the Falaise pocket. Despite this cadres of decimated divisions including SS Panzer, Army Panzer and elite Paratroops made their way out of Normandy.  With the Germans in full retreat the Allies advanced to the border of the Reich itself. On the Eastern Front as well disaster threatened when the Red Army launched an offensive which annihilated Army Group Center and advanced to the border of Poland before outrunning supply lines and stalling on the Vistula.  

Tiger II Advancing in the Ardennes

            Since Normandy Hitler had wanted to counter attack but had neither the forces nor the opportunity to strike the Allied armies. As the Allied offensive ground to a halt due to combat losses, lack of supplies and stiffening German resistance Hitler maintained a close eye on the situation in the West.  He believed that despite their success that the Americans and British alliance was weak and that a decisive blow could cause one or both to drop out of the war. During a briefing an officer noted the events of the day on the Western Front including a minor counterattack by kampfgrüppen of the 2^nd SS Panzer and the 2^nd Panzer Divisions which had made minor gains in the Ardennes, Hitler rose from his seat ““Stop!” He exclaimed. “I have come to a momentous decision. I shall go over to the counterattack….Out of the Ardennes, with the objective Antwerp.””[i]

            Thus began the planning for the last great German offensive of WWII.  Hitler “believed that sufficient damage could be inflicted to fracture the Anglo-American alliance, buy time to strike anew against the Soviets, and allow his swelling arsenal of V-weapons to change the course of the war.”[ii]  It was a course of born of desperation, even admitted by Hitler in his briefings to assembled commanders in the week prior to the offensive, one officer noted his remarks: “Gentlemen, if our breakthrough via Liege to Antwerp is not successful, we will be approaching an end to the war which will be extremely bloody. Time is not working for us, but against us. This is really the last opportunity to turn the war in our favor.”[iii]

US Soldiers manhandling a 57mm Anti-Tank Gun into Position

            Despite shortages of men and equipment, continuous Allied assaults and over the objections of General Guderian who argued to reinforce the Eastern Front[iv], the OKW staff secretly developed detailed plans. The planning was so secretive that the “Commander in Chief West and the other senior commanders destined to carry out the attack were not informed.”[v] The plans were submitted to Hitler on October 9^th [vi] and presented to Field Marshalls Von Rundstedt and Model at the End of October. General Hasso Von Manteuffel, commander of 5th Panzer Army commented that: “The plan for the Ardennes offensive…drawn up completely by O.K.W. and sent to us as a cut and dried “Führer order.”[vii]  Likewise Model and Von Rundstedt objected to the scope of the attack. Von Rundstedt stated: “I was staggered…It was obvious to me that the available forces were way too small for such an extremely ambitious plan. Model took the same view of it as I did….”[viii]  Model reportedly said to General Hans Krebs: “This plan hasn’t got a damned leg to stand on.”[ix] And “you can tell your Führer from me, that Model won’t have any part of it.”[x] Sepp Dietrich, the old SS fighter and commander of 6^th Panzer Army expressed similar sentiments.[xi]  Despite the objections by so many senior commanders Hitler scorned Model’s attempt to float a less ambitious plan to reduce the Allied salient at Aachen. Likewise Von Rundstedt’s desire to remain of the defense and wait for the Allies to attack using the armored forces to launch against any breakthrough was rejected.[xii] Hitler’s mind was set and the preparations moved forward.  The plan was complete down to the timing of the artillery bombardment and axes of advance, and “endorsed in the Führer’s own handwriting “not to be altered.””[xiii] Such a plan flew in the face of the well established doctrine of the Auftragstaktik which gave commanders at all levels the freedom of action to develop the battle as the situation allowed and opportunities arose.  

SS General Sepp Dietrich Commander of the 6th SS Panzer Army           

          The Germans who the Allies presumed to be at the brink of collapse made a miraculous  recovery following their ghastly losses in Normandy. Kampfgrüppen and remnants of divisions bled the Americans White at the Huertgen Forrest and blunted the British attempt to leapfrog the Northern Rhine at Arnhem decimating the British First Airborne division and causing heavy casualties among other British and American units. The German 15^th Army avoided disaster when the British failed to close their escape route from Walchern island allowing 60,000 troops and much equipment to escape.   The Germans re-formed and reorganized the front.  They pulled back many units of the 5^th and 6^th Panzer Armies for re-fitting and diverted nearly all tank, armored fighting vehicle and artillery production to the West at the expense of the Eastern Front.  The Germans called up 17 year olds and transferred young fit personnel from the Navy and Luftwaffe to the Army and Waffen SS.  Here they were trained by experienced NCOs and officers and brought into veteran units alongside hardened veterans who showed taught them the lessons of 5 years of war.[xiv]  However the rapid influx of new personnel meant that they could not be assimilated as quickly as needed and thus many were not as well trained as they might have been with more time.[xv] Many infantry and Parachute units had received inexperienced officers, taken from garrison duty to fill key positions a problem that would show up during the offensive.[xvi]

Panzer IV Ausf H of an SS Panzer Divsion in the Bulge

            The Germans were aided by the caution displayed by the Allies throughout the campaign in France which allowed the Germans to reconstitute formations around veteran headquarters staffs.[xvii]  The Germans built up the 5^th and 6^th Panzer Armies as the Schwerpunkt of the offensive giving them the lion’s share of reinforcements and pulling them out of the line during the fall battles along the Seigfried line and in the Alsace and Lorraine.  The plan was for the two Panzer armies and 7^th Army to punch through the Ardennes, cross the Meuse, drive across Belgium, capture Antwerp and severe the link between the British and the Americans. 

             The spearhead of the assault was 6^th Panzer Army Commanded by SS General Sepp Dietrich. It was composed of 1^st and 2^nd SS Panzer Corps and Army’s LXVII Corps.  The 6^th SS Panzer Army included some of the best formations available to the German Army at this late stage of the war including the 1^st  SS Panzer Division, the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, the 2^nd  SS Panzer Division Das Reich, the 9^th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen and the12^th  SS Panzer Division Hitler Jügend. It’s ranks were filled out by the 3^rd Parachute Division, the 501^st SS Heavy Tank Battalion (attached to 1^st SS), the 3^rd Panzer Grenadier Division and the 12^th, 246^th, 272^nd, 277^th and 326^th Volksgrenadier or Infantry divisions. The 6^th Panzer Army would be the northern thrust of the offensive and its ultimate objective was Antwerp.  The 6th Panzer Army would be aided by a hastily organized parachute battalion under Colonel Von Der Heydte[xviii] and the 150^th Panzer Brigade under SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny which included teams of American dialect speaking soldiers in American uniforms and equipment that were to spread confusion and panic in American rear areas.[xix]

Bradley, Eisenhower and Patton at Bastogne   

       To the south was the 5^th Panzer Army commanded by General Hasso Von Manteuffel.  The 5^th Panzer Army was to advance alongside of the 6^th Panzer Army with Brussels as its objective.  Composed of the XLVII and LVIII Panzer Corps and LXVI Corps the major subordinate commands included the best of the Army Panzer divisions including the 2^nd Panzer, Panzer Lehr, 9^th and the16^th Panzer division. It also had the elite Führer Begleit Brigade composed of troops from Panzer Corps Grossdeutschland and commanded by Otto Remer who had help crush the coup against Hitler in July.  The 5^th Panzer Army also included the 18^th, 26^th, 62^nd, 560^th and later the 167^th Volksgrenadier divisions. 

             The south flank was guarded by 7^th Army commanded by General Erich Brandenburger composed of LIII, LXXX and LXXXV Corps.  It included the Führer Grenadier Brigade and later the 15^th Panzergrenadier division.  It was the weakest of the three armies but eventually included 6 Volksgrenadier divisions of varying quality and strength[xx] and the veteran 5^th Parachute division.[xxi]  However with only 4 divisions at the start of the offensive the 7th Army was the equivalent of a reinforced corps.

             While this force seemed formidable it had a number of weaknesses beginning with tank strength.  The 1^st and 12^th SS Panzer divisions were only at approximately half their established tank strengths and faced severe shortages in other vehicles.[xxii]  2^nd SS and 9^th SS of II SS Panzer Corps reported similar shortages.[xxiii]The shortage of other motorized vehicles, even in Panzer divisions was acute.  “Even the best equipped divisions had no more than 80 percent of the vehicles called for under their tables of equipment, and one Panzergrenadier division had sixty different types of motor vehicles, a logistician’s nightmare.[xxiv] Panzer Lehr was so short in armored half tracks that only one battalion of its Panzer Grenadiers could be transported in them while others had to use “trucks or bicycles.”[xxv]

             Limitations on equipment as well as fuel were not the only challenges that the Germans faced. The US V Corps launched an attack on the Roer River Dams just before the offensive making it necessary for the Germans to divert 6^th SS Panzer Army infantry divisions and Jagdpanzer units to be used by 6^th SS Panzer Army.  One regiment of 3^rd Parachute Division and over half of a second division could not take part in the initial 6^th Panzer Army attack. Likewise some Jagdpanzer and Sturmgeschutzen units did not arrive until three days after the offensive began.[xxvi]

Allied Response: Before the Battle

            While the German commanders sought to implement Hitler’s plan Allied commanders looked only to completing the destruction of Germany not believing the Germans capable of any major operation.  The Allied commanders with the exception of Patton did not believe the Germans capable of any more than local counter attacks.  Patton’s 3^rd Army G-2 Colonel Koch was the only intelligence officer to credit the Germans with the ability to attack.[xxvii]  Most allied commanders and intelligence officers discounted the German ability to recover from disastrous losses, something that they should have learned in Holland or learned from the Soviet experiences on the Eastern front.  Bradley noted in his memoirs hat “I had greatly underestimated the enemy’s offensive capabilities.”[xxviii]  Carlo D’Este noted that “there was another basic reason why the Allies were about to be caught with their pants down: “Everyone at SHAEF was thinking offensively, about what they could do to the enemy, and never about what the enemy might do to them.””[xxix]   This mindset was amazing due to the amount of intelligence from Ultra and reports from frontline units that major German forces were no longer in the line.[xxx] Additionally nearly all commentators note that American units in the Ardennes did not conduct aggressive patrols to keep the enemy off balance and obtain intelligence.[xxxi]  One describes the efforts of 106^th Division as “lackadaisical” and notes that enemy before the offensive was not the Germans but the cold.[xxxii] Max Hastings noted that: “the Allies’ failure to anticipate Hitler’s assault was the most notorious intelligence disaster of the war.”[xxxiii]

            The Allies also were in the midst of a manpower crisis. Eisenhower did not have enough divisions to establish a clear manpower advantage as “there were not enough Anglo-American divisions, or enough replacements for casualties in the existing divisions.”[xxxiv]  No more American Infantry divisions were available as the Army had been capped at 90 divisions and infantry replacements were in short supply.  This shortage meant that Eisenhower could not pull divisions out of line to rest and refit. He could only transfer divisions such as the 4^th and 28^th Infantry divisions to the relative quiet of the Ardennes. He had no ability to “create a strategic reserve unless he abandoned the broad front strategy.”[xxxv] The Germans knew of the allied weakness and believed that they could achieve local superiority even if they did not believe they could reach Antwerp. Model believed that “he was sure that he would reach the Meuse in strength before the Americans could move sufficient reserves to halt his armies or even head them off.”[xxxvi] 

American Response: The Breakthrough

            The German assault began on December 16^th. Some breakthroughs were made especially in the vicinity of the Losheim Gap and the Schnee Eifel by the southern elements of 6^th Panzer Army and Manteuffel’s 5^th Panzer Army. However the Germans could not break through around Monschau and Elsenborn Ridge held by the inexperienced but well trained 99^th Infantry division and elements of the veteran 2^nd “Indianhead” Division.  In the far south near Diekirch the 4^th Infantry Division held stubbornly against the attacks of 7^th Army’s Volksgrenadiers. The Germans achieved their greatest success at Losheim where SS Colonel Josef Peiper and his 1^st SS Panzer Regiment had driven off the US 14^th Cavalry Group and penetrated 6 miles into the American front.  5^th Panzer Army made several breakthroughs and isolated two regiments of newly arrived 106^th Infantry Division in the Schnee Eifel. Manteufel also pressed the 28^th Division hard along the Clerf River, Skyline Ridge and Clairvaux.  Yet at ‘no point on that first day did the Germans gain all of their objectives.”[xxxvii]  The credit goes to US units that stubbornly held on, but also to the poor performance of many German infantry units.  German commanders were frustrated by their infantry’s failure even as the panzers broke through the American lines.  Manteuffel noted his infantry was “incapable of carrying out the attack with the necessary violence.”[xxxviii]

US Airborne Commanders James Gavin (R) and Matthew Ridgeway (L)

            The initial Allied command response to the attack by senior commanders varied.  Bradley believed it was a spoiling attack “to try and force a shift of Patton’s troops from the Saar offensive back to the Ardennes.”[xxxix] Courtney Hodges of 1^st Army agreed with Bradley and refused to allow General Gerow, commander of V Corps to call off 2^nd Infantry Division’s attack against the Roer dams on the 16^th in order to face the German offensive.[xl]  Gerow was one of the first American commanders to recognize the scope of the German attack but Hodges, perhaps the least competent senior American commander in Europe failed to heed Gerow’s advice. Soon after making this decision Hodges “panicked” and evacuated his headquarters at Spa fearing that it would be overrun by the advancing Germans.[xli] Eisenhower when informed of the news realized that something major was occurring and ordered the 7^th Armored Division from the 9^th Army and 10^th Armored Division from 3^rd Army into the Ardennes. On the 17^th he made other dispositions and released the 82^nd and 101^st Airborne Divisions from SHAEF reserve at Rheims to the Ardennes under the command of XVIII Airborne Corps.[xlii]  However during this short amount of time Mantueffel’s panzers had advanced 20 miles. 

SS Colonel Joachim Peiper leading his Kampfgruppe 

            At the command level Eisenhower made a controversial, but correct decsion to divide the command of the Bulge placing on a temporary basis all forces in the northern sector under Montgomery and leaving those to the south under Bradley.  Montgomery according to one commentary initially “had been astonishingly tactful in handing his American subordinates.”[xliii] However he quickly made himself obnoxious to many American commanders.[xliv] Following the battle Montgomery made the situation worse by claiming to have saved the Americans and giving credit to British units which scarcely engaged during the battle.[xlv]  Eisenhower also ordered Patton to launch a counter-attack along the southern flank of the German advance.  However Patton was already working on such an eventuality and promised to be able to launch a counterattack with three divisions by the 22^nd.[xlvi]  Bradley praised Patton highly in his memoirs noting: “Patton’s brilliant shift of 3^rd Army from its bridgehead in the Saar to the snow-covered Ardennes front became one of the most astonishing feats of generalship of our campaign in the West.”[xlvii]

American Response: the Shoulder’s Hold

                The 99^th Division’s position was precarious, its right flank was subject to being turned and it was suffering severely at the hands of 12 SS Panzer and several Volksgrenadier divisions.  Gerow reinforced the 99^th with elements of the 2^nd Infantry division even before he had the final authorization to end its attack.  The two divisions stubbornly held Elsenborn Ridge and the villages of Rockerath, Krinkelt and Büllingen. By the 20^th the 9^th and 1^st Infantry divisions arrived to strengthen the defense and lengthen the line to prevent it from being rolled up by the Germans.  The stubborn resistance of the Americans and arrival of reinforcements meant line was proof “against anything Sepp Dietrich might hurl against it”[xlviii]  By the 23^rd Dietrich and 6^th SS Panzer Army conceded defeat at Elsenborn and “turned its offensive attentions to other sectors.”[xlix]  German commanders like General Priess the commander of 1^st SS Panzer Corps believed that terrain and road network in this sector was unfavorable to the German offensive and had proposed moving the attack further south.[l]  The Panzers could not deploy properly and the German infantry was not up to the task of driving the Americans out of their positions before the reinforcements arrived. 

            In the south the 4^th Infantry Division held the line though heavily pressed by Brandenburger’s 7^th Army.  The division was reinforced by elements of both 9^th and 10^th Armored divisions on the 17^th and generally held its line along the Sauer River around Echternach “largely because the left flank of the enemy assault lacked the power-and particularly the armor-of the thrust farther north.”[li]

Turning Point: The Destruction of Kampfgruppe Peiper

            While V Corps fought the 6^th Panzer Army to a standstill, to the south 1^st SS Panzer Division led by Kampfgrüppe Peiper split the seam between V Corps and VIII Corps. The Kampfgrüppe moved west leaving a brutal path of destruction in its wake, including massacres of American POWs and Belgian civilians.[lii]  However its advance was marked with difficulty. On the night of the 17^th it failed to take Stavelot. After clearing the American defenders from the town after a hard fight on the 19^th it failed to capture a major American fuel dump a few miles beyond the town.  When the Germans approached the American commander ordered his troops to pour 124,000 gallons down the road leading to the dump and set it on fire, depriving the Germans of badly needed fuel.[liii]  Combat Engineers from the 291^st Engineer Battalion blew a key bridge across the Ambleve at Trois Ponts and another bridge across the Lienne Creek which left the Germans bottled up in the Ambleve River valley.  This bought time for the 30^th Infantry Division to set up positions barring Peiper from the Meuse.  The 30^th would be joined by Combat Command B of 3^rd Armored Division and elements of 82^nd Airborne. These units eventually forced Peiper to abandon his equipment and extricate some 800 troops by foot by the 23^rd after a hard fight with the Americans who had barred his every effort to break through to the Meuse.

Turning Point: The Crossroads: St Vith & Bastogne

            The battle rapidly became focused on key roads and junctions, in particular St. Vith in the north and Bastogne in the south.  At St. Vith the 7^th Armored Division under General Hasbrouck, who Chester Wilmont calls one of the “great men of the Ardennes”[liv] completed a fifty mile road march from Aachen to St. Vith.  On his arrival he deployed his combat commands around the town which was the key to the road network in the north and also to the only rail line running west through the Ardennes.[lv]  Hasbrouck gathered in Colonel Hoge’s Combat Command B of 9^th Armored Division and the 424^th Infantry Regiment of the 106^th Division into his defensive scheme as well as the survivors of the 112^th Infantry Regiment of the 28^th Infantry Division which had escaped the German onslaught after holding as long as possible along the Clerf River and Skyline Drive.[lvi]  With these units Hasbrouck conducted “an eight-day stand that was as critical and courageous, as the defense of Bastogne.”[lvii]  After holding the Germans at St. Vith the units were withdrawn to another defensive position along the Salm and Ourthe Rivers and the village of Viesalm.  This was done at the behest of Montgomery and General Ridgeway of XVII Airborne Corps whose 82^nd Airborne had moved into that area on the 19^th.  The arrival of the 82^nd greatly assisted Hasbrouck’s force holding St. Vith whose defenders had lost an estimated 5000 casualties.[lviii]

            The stand at St. Vith confined the “confined the Sixth Panzer Army’s penetration to a chokingly narrow corridor.”[lix]  It also posed a problem for German command and control which because it was out of the 6^th Panzer Army’s area of operations Dietrich was unable to lend his weight into the fight.  “Hitler himself had strictly prohibited deviations from the zonal boundaries”[lx] which left the fight for St. Vith in the hands of 5^th Panzer Army who felt the impact of the stand as the Americans “also choked off one of the Fifth Panzer Army’s best routes to Bastogne, almost nullifying the significance of the captured road junction at Houffalize.”[lxi]

            To the south of St. Vith lay Bastogne, another key road junction needed by 5^th Panzer Army for its advance.  On the night of the18^th Panzer Lehr division came within two miles of the town before being checked by resistance by units of the 10^th Armored division, remnants of 28^th Division and misdirection by “friendly” Belgian guides onto a muddy path that helped halt their advance.[lxii]  This gave the 101^st Airborne just enough time to get to the town and prevent its capture. The siege of Bastogne and its defense by the 101^st elements of 9^th and 10^th Armored Divisions and 28^th Division became an epic stand against Manteuffel’s Panzers which had surged around the town.  Wilmont comments that “had the Germans won the race for Bastogne, Manteuffel’s armor would have had a clear run to Dinant and Namur on December 19^th and 20^th” [lxiii] when there were only scattered American units between them and the Meuse. Manteuffel b bypassed Bastonge after the failure to capture it and masked it with 26^th Volksgrenadier Division and a regiment of Panzer Lehr.  The remainder of Panzer Lehr and the 2^nd Panzer Division moved to the west. [lxiv]  The garrison endured numerous attacks and on the 22^nd one of the most celebrated incidents of the war took place when Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe responded to a demand for the surrender of the town with the reply; “Nuts.”  The town would continue to hold until relieved by 3^rd Army on the afternoon of December 26^th.[lxv]

Allied Response: The Counterattack

            The Allied counterattack began with 3^rd Army in the south on 21 December.  Patton’s initially proposed to attack toward the base of the Bulge in order to cut off the largest number of Germans possible.  Eisenhower dictated an attack further west with the goal of relieving Bastogne.  Eisenhower wanted to delay the attack to concentrate combat power while Patton wanted to attack sooner in order to ensure surprise. Patton got his way but attacked on a wide front.  The attack lost its impetus and bogged down into a slugging match with 7^th Army’s infantry and paratroops along the southern flank. [lxvi]  Patton’s failure to concentrate his forc forces for the advance to the north diminished his combat power.[lxvii] While Patton attacked from the south the 1^st Army dealt with the advanced spearhead of 2^nd Panzer Division which had reached the town of Celles and ran out of gas just four miles from Dinant and the Meuse. The 84^th Infantry Division stopped the 116^th Panzer division from being able to effect a relief of the 2^nd Panzer the US 2^nd Armored Division and allied fighter bombers chopped up the virtually immobile 2^nd Panzer division completing that task by the 26^th.[lxviii]

            To the north Montgomery launched a cautious counterattack which slowly and methodically took back lost ground but allowed many Germans to escape. While Montgomery moved south Patton faced heavy German resistance from elements of 5^th Panzer Army, reinforced by 1^st SS Panzer Corps and 7^th Army.  The rupture in the American front was not repaired until 17 January when the American forces met at Houffalize.[lxix] Bradley took over for Montgomery and the Americans pushed the Germans slowly back across the Clerf River by the 23^rd.  The advance was hampered by tough German resistance and terrible weather which forced much of the attack to be made by dismounted troops as the roads had completely frozen over.[lxx] 

            The Allied counter attack has been criticized for allowing too many Germans to escape what could have been a major encirclement.  Patton recognized the incompleteness of the victory in the Ardennes stating: ““We want to catch as many Germans as possible, but he is pulling out.” The “but” clause, the note of regret, the awareness of the imperfection of his victories typified Patton.””[lxxi]  Patton in his memoirs notes: “In making the attack we were wholly ignorant of what was ahead of us, but we were determined to strike through to Bastogne.”[lxxii] Max Hastings simply said: “the Allies were content with success.”[lxxiii]  Murray and Millett place blame on Bradley and Hodges for choosing “merely to drive the enemy out of the Ardennes rather than destroy him.”[lxxiv]

Analysis: Could Wacht Am Rhein Have Worked?

          Could Wacht am Rhein worked?  If much was different, yes.  If the German had been stronger in tanks and vehicles and had adequate stocks of fuel; if their infantry was better trained, and had the Americans not resisted so stubbornly it might have at least got to the Meuse.  Perhaps if the the bad weather held keeping Allied air forces away from the Germans, or had St. Vith and Bastogne been taken by the 18^th or 19^th, they might have reached the Meuse.  Had the Germans executed their plan and coordinated their assault better[lxxv] in the 6^th Panzer Army sector and had the 7^th Army enough strength to conduct offensive operations in depth and secure the left flank the attack might have succeeded.  Because the Americans held the shoulders and road junctions, Manteuffel’s 5^th Panzer Army, the only force besides the regimental sized Kampfgrüppe Peiper to actually threaten the Meuse was forced to advance while attempting to take Bastogne and defeat 3^rd Army’s counterattack. Whether they could have made Antwerp is another matter.  Nearly all German commanders felt the offensive could not take Antwerp but did believe that they could inflict a defeat on the Allies and destroy a significant amount of allied combat power. 

            The German offense was a desperate gamble.  Too few divisions, scant supplies of petrol, formations that had recently been rebuilt and not given enough time to train to the standard needed for offensive operations coupled with Hitler’s insistence on an unalterable plan kept them from success.  At the same time the Allies were weak in troops as Eisenhower had no strategic reserve save the two American Airborne Divisions.  All reinforcements to the threatened sector had to come from the flanks and by the middle of the battle the 9^th Army was drawn down to two divisions. Russell Weigley notes the constraints imposed by the 90 division Army, and of the limited stocks of artillery ammunition.[lxxvi] If the Germans had more forces they might have inflicted a significant defeat on the Allies had they been able to reinforce their success in depth.  Despite this they still inflicted punishing losses on the Americans though suffering greatly themselves.  Hastings notes that the real beneficiaries of the Ardennes offensive were the Russians.[lxxvii]  It is unlikely that the offensive could have ever achieved Hitler’s goals of taking Antwerp and fracturing the British-American alliance. 

A Note About other Parts of the Campaign in France

The Riviera and Rhone

            The campaign in south France was strategically wise although opposed by the British to the last minute because they felt it would take away from Overlord.[lxxviii] Though delayed the campaign was well executed by 7^th Army, particularly Lt. General Lucian Truscott’s VI Corps of 3 American divisions. Truscott believed “destroying the enemy army was the goal”[lxxix] managed the battle well and skillfully maneuvered his small forces against Blaskowitz’s 19^th Army inflicting heavy losses, though some German commanders noted the caution of American infantry in the attack.[lxxx]  Only Blaskowitz’s tactical skills and the weakness of the American force prevented the Germans from disaster. The seizure of Marseilles and Toulon provided the allies with sorely needed ports that were invaluable to sustain the campaign.[lxxxi]

The Lorraine Campaign

            Patton attacked in the Lorraine with the goal of crossing the Moselle and attempting to break into Germany. He doing so he ran into some of the strongest German forces on the front and bogged down in the poor terrain and mud of the region.[lxxxii]  Patton was delayed in making his assault due to his place “at the far end of the logistics queue.”[lxxxiii] German forces skillfully defended the ancient fortress of city Metz forcing the Americans into a protracted campaign to clear the area with the last strongpoint surrendering on 13 December.  Patton is criticized for his failure to concentrate his forces[lxxxiv] but American tactics were less to blame than the weather, German resistance and shortages of infantry.[lxxxv] In some cases American infantry units performed admirably, particularly 80^th Division’s assault on the Falkenburg Stellung.[lxxxvi]Liddell Hart criticized the Allies for failing to attack through the then weakly defended Ardennes, commenting: “By taking what appeared to be the easier paths into Germany the Allies met greater difficulties.”[lxxxvii]

The Huertgen Forrest

            The Huertgen Forrest was the worst managed American fight Western European campaign. [lxxxviii] General Courtney Hodges leadership was poor.[lxxxix] In the Huertgen he fed division after division into a battle that made no strategic sense.  American infantry performed poorly and took extremely heavy casualties leaving four divisions shattered.[xc]  Poor American tactics demonstrated by attacking into a forest in poor weather without concentration negated all of Hodges’ advantages in tanks, artillery and airpower. The forest contained no significant German forces capable of threatening any American advance[xci] and its gain offered little advantage.[xcii] Hastings noted that the gains the only saving grace was that it made it easier for the northern shoulder of the Bulge to hold[xciii]   General Model and his subordinates expertly handled their handful of excellent but weary divisions in this battle using terrain, weather and prepared defensive positions to contest nearly every yard of the Forrest.[xciv]

Conclusions

            The lessons of the Bulge and the other campaigns on the German-French border are many and can be gleaned from Allied and German mistakes. On the Allied side the most glaring mistakes were assumptions prior to the German attack that the Germans were incapable of any serious offensive and ignoring the fact that the Germans had attacked through the Ardennes in 1940.  Likewise the self limitation of the American Army to 90 divisions for world-wide service meant that there were no more divisions in the pipeline and that worn out divisions would have to be reinforced with inexperienced troops while in the front line which ensured a lack of cohesiveness in many divisions, especially the infantry.  Allied intelligence failures as well as their reliance of forces much smaller than they should have had for such a campaign ensured that they would suffer heavy losses in the Bulge while poor planning and execution by Hodges wasted many good troops in a senseless battle.  The Germans were hamstrung by Hitler’s fantasy that the Western Allies could be forced out of the war or the Alliance split by a defeat in the Ardennes.  Likewise German forces, even those so quickly reconstituted were often short troops, tanks and vehicles.  German commanders were forced by Hitler’s rigid insistence on not altering the plan to not be as flexible as they might have been in earlier offensives to adjust according to the situation on the ground.  

[ii] Hastings, Max. Armageddon:  The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 Alfred A Knopf, New York NY 2004 p.197.

[iii] Reynolds, Michael. Sons of the Reich: II SS Panzer Corps; Normandy, Arnhem, Ardennes, and on the Eastern Front.  Casemate Publishing, Havertown PA 2002 p.186

[iv] Ibid. p.198

[v] Warlimont, Walter. Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939-1945 translated by R.H. Barry. Presidio Press, San Francisco, CA 1964. p. 480

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Liddell Hart, B.H. The German Generals Talk. Originally published 1948, Quill Publishers Edition, New York 1979 p.274.

[viii] Liddell Hart, B.H. The History of the Second World War G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York NY 1970. p.646.

[ix] MacDonald, Charles B. A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge William Morrow and Company, New York, NY 1985 p.35.

[x] [x] Newton, Steven H. Hitler’s Commander: Field Marshal Walter Model, Hitler’s Favorite General.DeCapo Press, Cambridge MA 2005. p.329

[xi] Ibid. Hastings p.198.  Hastings quotes Dietrich: “All Hitler wants me to do is cross a river, capture Brussels, then go on and take Antwerp. And all this at the worst time of year through the Ardennes when the snow is waist-deep and there isn’t enough room to deploy four tanks abreast let alone armored divisions. When it doesn’t get light until eight and it’s dark again by four and with re-formed divisions made up chiefly of kids and sick old men-and at Christmas.”

[xii] Ibid. Liddell-Hart The German Generals Talk p.276

[xiii] Wilmont, Chester. The Struggle for Europe Harper and Brothers Publishers, New York, NY 1952 p.576

[xiv] Ibid. p.557.

[xv] Ibid. Hastings. p.199. Hastings notes that Manteuffel said: “It was not that his soldiers now lacked determination of drive; what they lacked were weapons and equipment of every sort. Von Manteuffel also considered the German infantry ill trained.”

[xvi] Ibid. Dupay.p.47  Dupay notes that in 3^rd Parachute Division that most of the regimental commanders had no combat experience.

[xvii] Weigley, Russell  F. Eisenhower’s Lieutenants: The Campaign in France and Germany 1944-1945. Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN 1981 p.432.  Weigley speaks of Allied caution and predictable strategy, caution in logistical planning which did not allow the Allies to provide the fuel needs for a rapid drive into Germany and caution of operational commanders. 

[xviii] Liddell Hart discusses the issue of paratroops at length in discussions with Manteuffel and General Kurt Student. At the time of the operation there were very few jump trained paratroops available for the operation as most of the 6 organized Parachute Divisions were committed to battle as infantry during the 1944 battles in the East, Italy and in the West. German Generals Talk pp.282-285.  Although Liddell Hart makes note of the employment of these troops and talked with Model and student about why they were not used to seize bridges and other critical terrain featured ahead of the Panzers instead of the use as a blocking force, I have found no one who questioned why the Germans did not use small glider detachments for the same purpose.  The Germans had demonstrated with Skorzeny when they rescued Mussolini from his mountain prison that they still retained this capability.  The use of the SS Paratroop battalion which could have been assigned to Skorzeny as a glider borne force could have been decisive in capturing the key bridges and terrain ahead of 6^th Panzer Army.

[xix] Skorzeny’s operation was Operation Greif designed to sow confusion in the Allied Ranks.  His brigade numbered about 3500 men and had a good number of captured US vehicles including some tanks and tank-destroyers on hand to confuse American units that they came in contact with. 

[xx] Ibid. Hastings.  p. 199.  Hastings quotes the Adjutant of 18^th Volksgrenadier Division who “felt confident of his unit’s officers, but not of the men “some were very inexperienced and paid the price.”  MacDonald notes that the division had many Navy and Air Force replacements but was at full strength. p.646.

[xxi] See MacDonland pp. 644-655 for a detailed commentary on the German Order of Battle.

[xxii] Reynolds, Michael. Men of Steel: 1^st SS Panzer Corps;  The Ardennes and Eastern Front 1944-1945 Sarpendon Publishers, Rockville Center NY, 1999. pp.36-37.  Reynolds notes that the 1^st SS Panzer Regiment only had 36 Panthers and 34 Mark IV Panzers to begin the operation (excluding the attached 501^st SS Heavy Tank Battalion).  He also notes that many of the tank crew replacements had no more than 6 weeks of military training and some of the tank crews had never been in a tank.  Similar problems were found in all the Panzer Divisions.  Severe shortages of armored half tracks, reconnaissance vehicles and other vehicles meant that Panzer Grenadier and Motorized battalions lacked the lift needed and some went on foot or on bicycles.

[xxiii] Ibid. Reynolds. Sons of the Reich. P.183

[xxiv] Ibid. MacDonald. p.44.

[xxv] Ibid.

[xxvi] Ibid. Dupay pp. 27-28.

[xxvii] Ibid. MacDonald. p.52.  MacDonald notes that Koch warned that the Germans were not finished, that “his withdraw, though continuing has not been a rout or mass collapse.” He calls Koch a “lone voice” in the Allied intelligence world.

[xxviii] Bradley, Omar  N. A Soldier’s Story Henry Holt and Company, New York NY 1951. p.459.  Weigley makes some poignant calling Bradley’s comments  “contradictory” and states that: “his apologia is hardly a model of coherence. (p.461)

[xxix]  D’Este, Carlo. Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life Owl Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York NY 2002. p.638

[xxx] Dupay and others talk about this in detail. See Dupay pp. 35-44. 

[xxxi] Ibid. p.38. 

[xxxii] Ibid. Hastings. p.201

[xxxiii] Ibid. Hastings. p.199

[xxxiv] Ibid. Weigley. p.464

[xxxv] Ibid.

[xxxvi] Ibid. Wilmont. P.581.

[xxxvii] Ibid. p.583

[xxxviii] Ibid. Hastings. p.223

[xxxix] Ibid. Weigley. P.457

[xl] Ibid. p.471

[xli] Ibid. Hastings. pp.205-206

[xlii] Ibid. Wilmont. pp.583-584

[xliii] Murray, Williamson and Millett, Allan R. A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts and London England, 2000 p.470 The authors must base their conclusion on the fact that Montgomery who mentioned to Eisenhower that Hodges might have to be relieved, did not do so and by the next day told Eisenhower that the action was not needed.  A  few other American commanders in the north were favorable to Montgomery but this appears to be a minority view.

[xliv] Ibid. Weigley. pp.504-506.  Weigley and Wilmont both note the comment of a British Staff Officer the Montgomery “strode into Hodges HQ like Christ come to cleanse the temple.” (Wilmont p.592)

[xlv] Ibid. Hastings. pp.230-232.  Hastings is especially critical of Montgomery.  Weigley, equally critical notes regarding  the January 7^th press conference, Montgomery’s “inability to be self critical at any point.” p.566.

[xlvi] Ibid. Weigley. p.500.

[xlvii] Ibid. Bradley. p.472  Other commentators differ in their view of Patton’s movement.  Wilmont notes that Patton had no “equal in the on the Allied side in the rapid deployment of troops. (p.589) Weigley urges readers that “it should be kept in appropriate perspective; it was not a unique stroke of genius.” And he compares it to Guderians disengagement with Panzer Group 4 and 90 degree change of direction and assault against the Kiev pocket in the 1941 Russian campaign (p.500)  Hastings notes that “Patton had shown himself skilled in driving his forces into action and gaining credit for their successes. But he proved less effective in managing a tough, tight battle on the southern flank.” (p.230)  Regardless of the perspective and criticism Patton’s movement was unequaled by any Allied commander in the war and had he not moved so quickly the 101^st Airborne might not have held Bastogne. Admittedly his attack north was dispersed along a wide front but part of the blame for this must be assigned to Eisenhower who dictated the attack toward the west vice the base of the Bulge where Patton desired to make it.  A note I would make is that being a cavalryman Patton thought like one and when faced with the tight battles in close quarters was not at his best.  Similar comparisons could be made to J.E.B. Stuart at Chancellorsville when he had to take command of Jackson’s Corps. 

[xlviii] Ibid. Weigley. p.475

[xlix] Ibid. p.474

[l] Ibid. Reynolds Men of Steel pp.51-52.

[li] Ibid. Weigley. p.470

[lii] The worst of these took place at the village of Malmedy where Battery B 285^th Field Artillery Observation Battalion of 7^th Armored Division was captured and about 150 soldiers were rounded up and machined gunned in a field with survivors killed with pistol shots in the head.

[liii] Ibid. Weigley. pp.478-479.

[liv] Ibid. Wilmont. p.584

[lv] Ibid. Weigley. p.487

[lvi] Ibid. Weigley. pp.486-487

[lvii] Ibid. Hastings. p.215. Hastings gives most of the credit to Brigadier General Bruce Clarke of CCB 7^th Armored Division for the stand.

[lviii] Ibid. MacDonald. 481-487.  MacDonald notes that following the war that the commanders of the units involved “would be grateful to Field Marshal Montgomery for getting them out of what they saw as a deathtrap for their commands. (p.487) 

[lix] Ibid. Weigley. p.487

[lx] Ibid.

[lxi] Ibid.

[lxii] Ibid. Hastings. p.217 Also  MacDonald. p.289 who talks of the confused situation east of Bastogne both for the Americans and Germans.

[lxiii] Ibid. Wilmont. p.598

[lxiv] Ibid. Liddel Hart. The German Generals Talk. p.288

[lxv] The defense of Bastogne would continue until after the 1^st of January as Hitler renewed the attempts to secure the town in order to push on to the Meuse. Other German formations including units of 1^st SS Panzer Corps shifted south from their original attack would make determined efforts to dislodge the stubborn American defenders.

[lxvi] Ibid. Weigley. pp.500-501.  Bradley gives Patton more credit than later commentators. Wilmont notes that the Germans though “amazed at the speed with which Patton had disengaged from the Saar and wheeled them northward…they received due warning of his movement by monitoring the radio net which controlled American traffic, and they were braced to meet his assault. (p.599).  

[lxvii] Ibid. Weigely. Pp.520-521

[lxviii] Ibid.  pp.535-537

[lxix] Ibid. pp. 558-561

[lxx] Ibid. pp.563-564

[lxxi] Ibid. p.566.

[lxxii] Patton, George S. War as I Knew It  Originally published by Houghton Mifflin Company NY 1947, Bantam Paperback Edition,  Bantam Books, New York, NY 1980 p.364

[lxxiii] Ibid. Hastings. p.230

[lxxiv] Ibid. Murray and Millett p.471.

[lxxv] Hastings notes that “Tactically, the Ardennes was one of the worst-conducted German battles of the war, perhaps reflecting that none of the generals giving the orders saw any prospect of success. (p.236)

[lxxvi] Ibid. Weigley. pp.567-572

[lxxvii] Ibid. Hastings. p.236-237.  Hastings believes that the employment of the 5^th and 6^th Panzer Armies in the East “made the task of Zhukov and his colleagues much harder.”

[lxxviii] Ibid. Weigley. p.236. I find it interesting that neither Hastings nor Liddell Hart mention the Riviera and Rhone campaign.

[lxxix] Ibid. Weigley. p.236

[lxxx] Giziowski, Richard. The Enigma of General Blaskowitz  Hippocrene Books Inc. New York NY, 1997. p.328

[lxxxi] Ibid.  Weigley comments on how much the overall supply situation was aided by the operation and capture of the ports and notes that the pace of the Cobra breakout had created a crisis in supply and “without the southern French ports the crisis would have been insurmountable.” (p.237)

[lxxxii] Ibid. p.397.  Weigley notes: “The immobilizing mud and the enemy’s recalcitrant resistance had fragmented the battle into affairs of squads, platoons, companies and battalions….and Patton’s juniors more than he controlled the course of action, to the extent that control was possible.”

[lxxxiii] Ibid. p.384

[lxxxiv] Ibid. p.390 Weigley states: “The American disinclination to concentrate power was rarely more apparent.” comparing the frontages of 1^st, 9^th and 3^rd Armies and notes that Patton attacked along his entire front.”

[lxxxv] Ibid. Weigley. pp.400-401.  Weigley spends a fair amount of time on American infantry shortages in 3^rd Army.

[lxxxvi] Ibid. Weigly. P.400.  Weigley notes a German General Wellm attributed part of that victory to the “prowess of the American infantry.”

[lxxxvii] Ibid. Liddell Hart. The History of the Second World War p.560

[lxxxviii] Hastings and Weigley both note how many American division and regimental commanders were relieved of command for their failures in the Huertgen.

[lxxxix] Ibid. Hastings. p.179.  Hastings notes that “instead of recognizing the folly of attacking on terrain that suited the Germans so well, Courtney Hodges reinforced failure.”

[xc] Ibid. Weigley. p.420.  Weigley notes the high numbers of ballet and non battle casualties in the 4^th, 8^th, 9^th and 28^th Divisions as well as CCR of 5^th Armored and 2^nd Ranger Battalion.

[xci] Ibid. Hastings. p.275.  Hastings notes that defending 275^th Division “were poor grade troops who-like the garrison of Aachen posed no plausible threat to the flanks of an American advance to the Roer.”

[xcii] Weigley compares the battle in its effect on the American army to Grants “destruction of the Confederate army in the Wilderness-Spotsylvania-Cold Harbor campaign expended many proud old Union army formations…” (p.438)

[xciii] Ibid. Hastings. p.215

[xciv] Ibid. Newton. p.324

AMERICANS HARBOR A QUAINT BELIEF THAT a new president takes charge of a government eagerly awaiting his orders. But there are huge power centers that have their own agendas.

The first anniversary of Barack Obama’s historic election finds many of his supporters already grousing. Fair enough: Obama has been more vigorous in some areas than others. But one essential question goes unasked: How much can any president accomplish against the wishes of recalcitrant power centers within his own government?

We Americans harbor a quaint belief that a new president takes charge of a government that eagerly awaits his next command. Like an orchestra conductor or perhaps a football coach, he can inspire or bludgeon and get what he wants. But that’s not how things work at the top, especially where “national security” is concerned. The Pentagon and CIA are powerful and independent fiefdoms characterized by entrenched agendas and constant intrigue. They are full of lifers, who see an elected president largely as an annoyance, and have ways of dealing with those who won’t come to heel.

Compound that with the Bush-Cheney administration’s aggressive seeding of its staunch loyalists throughout the bureaucracy, and you have a pretty tough situation. Obama, then, has to contend not only with the big donors and corporate lobbies. His biggest problem resides right inside his “team.”

The internal battles between American presidents and their national security establishments are not much reported. But if it is an invisible game; it is also a devious and even deadly one. Our civilian leaders end up mirroring the chronically nervous chiefs of state of the fragile democracies to our south.

Those who do not kowtow to the spies and generals have had a bumpy ride. FDR and Truman both faced insubordination. Dwight Eisenhower, who had served as chief of staff of the US Army, left the White House warning darkly about the “military industrial complex.” (He of all presidents had reasons to know.) John Kennedy was repeatedly countermanded and double-crossed by his own supposed subordinates. The Joint Chiefs baited him; Allen Dulles despised him (more so after JFK fired him over the Bay of Pigs fiasco), and Henry Cabot Lodge, his ambassador to South Vietnam, deliberately undermined Kennedy’s agenda. Kennedy called the trigger-happy generals “mad” and spoke angrily to aides of “scattering the CIA to the wind.” The evidence is growing that he suffered the consequences.

In the 1950s, the late Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, a high-ranking Pentagon official, was assigned by CIA Director Allen Dulles to help place Dulles’s officers under military cover throughout the federal government. As a result, Dulles not only knew what was happening before the president did, but had essentially infiltrated every corner of the president’s domain. One Nixon-era Republican Party official told me that in the early 1970s, there were intelligence officers everywhere, including the White House. Nixon was unaware of the true background of many of his trusted aides, particularly those who helped drive him from office. Remember Alexander Butterfield, the so-called “military liaison,” who told Congress about the White House taping system? Years later, Butterfield admitted to CIA connections.

In December 1971, Nixon learned of a military spy ring, the so-called Moorer-Radford operation, that was piping White House documents back to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Chiefs were wary of secret negotiations the president and Henry Kissinger were conducting with America’s enemies, including North Vietnam, China and the USSR, and decided to keep tabs on this intrusion upon their domain. Jimmy Carter came into office as revelations of CIA abuses made headlines. He tried to dismantle the agency’s dirty tricks office, but wound up instead a victim of it – and a one-term president.

Those who avoided problems – Johnson, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Jr. – were chief executives that made no problems for the Pentagon and intelligence chiefs. All embraced military and covert operations, expanded wars or launched their own. The agile Bill Clinton was a special case – no babe in the woods, he focused on domestic gains and pretty much steered clear of the hornets’ nest.

As for the Bushes, their ascension represented a seizure of power by the national security state itself. Their family had profited from arms manufacturing for decades. The patriarch, Prescott Bush, monitored US assassination plots against foreign leaders as a senator; and records indicate that the elder George Bush had been a secret agency operative for decades before he became CIA director – and then, 12 years later, president.

Obama seems to understand his narrow range of movement, and to be carefully picking his fights. He retained many of Bush’s top military brass, and even Bush’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who himself had served as a CIA director for Bush’s father. He has trod very carefully with the spy agency, and has declined to aggressively investigate Bush administration wrongdoing on torture and wiretapping. Obama’s campaign rhetoric about disengaging from Iraq seems a long time ago, and the war in Afghanistan is taking on the hues of permanency.

The old boys’ network is very much in place, and it is hard at work to force Obama’s hand, a la Vietnam. Witness the leaking of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s supposedly “confidential report” calling for escalation in Afghanistan. The leak was, not surprisingly, to the reliable Bob Woodward. The reporter was himself in Naval Intelligence shortly before he went to work at the Washington Post, where he soon built a career around leaks from the military and spy establishment. The White House was furious at the McChrystal release. But what could it do? Presidents come and go, and the security folks have ways to hasten the latter.

Covert alliances and payments to corrupt foreign allies continue, making creative diplomacy more difficult. In late October came a front-page story that the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, suspected of being a major figure in that country’s opium trade, has been on the CIA’s payroll for eight years. Anyone who finds this shocking should go back and read about the CIA and the drug trade in Southeast Asia.

Throughout its six-decade history, the CIA has resisted accountability, with even some of its own nonspook directors kept in the dark about the agency’s most troubling activities. As for the public’s elected representatives, Nancy Pelosi is the most recent in a long line of legislators to accuse the CIA of deliberately misleading Congressional overseers.

None of this is likely to change soon, and not without a huge fight. Half a century after Ike’s famous admonition, conflict and intrigue remain the engine of our economy, and everyone from private equity firms to missile makers to car and truck manufacturers count on that to continue. The homeland security industry, the most recent head to grow on this hydra, is now seeking permanency.

So Barack Obama is boxed in. But so are the American people, and so, really, is democracy itself. Bringing this inconvenient truth out in the open is the essential first step toward taking back control of our government – and our future. For all the reasons laid out here, Obama will need help. He may, in the rote formulation, hold “the most powerful office in the world.” However, the extent to which he controls the government he heads, is another matter.

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Russ Baker is an investigative journalist and founder of the nonprofit reporting web site whowhatwhy.com. His latest book, “Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years,” now available in hardcover, will be published in paperback November 10. Gore Vidal calls it “one of the most important books of the past ten years.”

Due to the holiday (learn more here), I am off work today — off from my day job at least – but I’m kicking it in gear with my writing hobby this morning!  Today, I will draft up chapter 11 of my NaNoWriMo WIP.  I’m very excited about my progress!

However…  Yesterday morning on the way to work, I was thinking of how to enrich my characters in this WIP.  Because I’m in NaNo/draft mode, I’ve been concentrating on beefing up my word count, so deeper characterization has been sacrificed in the process.  I mean, here I have a heroine being interviewed for her memoirs, and, well, um, I kinda skipped over her answers.  Hee.    But!  Plot and dialogue (and setting) are really taking shape in the WIP.  So, I suppose that’s the trade-off when I go all “NaNo” on a WIP — producing a higher word count, watching my plot and dialogue take shape, coming closer to a completed manuscript — but losing the essence of my characters.

Potentially, this is bad.  (LOL)

Bad because novels need engaging characters with believable motivations and actions.  In fact, some would argue (though not me) that compelling characterization is the backbone of any great novel.  (I, on the other hand, believe in theme-based novels.)  Anyway, I have to keep this urge to develop character sketches off my plate for now.  The point of NaNo is producing 50,000 words in one month toward completing a manuscript.  And, except for the work I will have to do on characterization later, I am on my way toward meeting that goal.

It is possible that the creation of an all-professional American army was the most dangerous decision ever taken by Congress. The nation now confronts a political crisis in which the issue has become an undeclared contest between Pentagon power and that of a newly elected president.

Barack Obama has yet to declare his decision on the war in Afghanistan, and there is every reason to think that he will follow military opinion. Yet he is under immense pressure from his Republican opponents to, in effect, renounce his presidential power, and step aside from the fundamental strategic decisions of the nation.

The officer he named to command the war in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, demands a reinforcement of forty thousand soldiers, raising the total US commitment to over 100 thousand troops (or more, in the future). He says that he cannot succeed without them, and even then may be unable to win the war within a decade. Yet the American public is generally in doubt about this war, most of all the president’s own liberal electorate.

President Obama almost certainly will do as the the general requests, or something very close to it. He can read the wartime politics in this situation.

The Vietnam war was opposed by the public by the 1970s, when according to the Pentagon Papers, the government itself knew that victory was unlikely. Today the public doubts victory in the war in Afghanistan. However the version of Vietnam history most Americans (who were not there!) read today says there really was no defeat at all.

It is argued that there was only a collapse of civilian support for the war, caused by the liberal press, producing popular disaffection both at home and inside the conscript army, with a breakdown of military discipline, “fraggings” (murders) of aggressive combat leaders, and demoralization in the ranks. This is the version most military officers believe today.

It is an American version of the “stab in the back” myth believed in German military and right-wing political circles after the first world war.

In the US case, the Vietnam defeat was painfully clear at the time, and few believed that either the US Congress or the Nixon Administration (which signed the peace agreement with North Vietnam) were parties to any betrayal of the United States.

Today the revised interpretation of the Vietnam war, claiming that it actually was a lost victory, has become an important issue because most Pentagon leaders are committed to the “Long War” against “Muslim terrorism.” An Obama administration order to withdraw from Afghanistan, Iraq (or Pakistan) would be attacked by many in Congress and the media, and by implicitly insubordinate elements in the military community, as “surrender” by an Obama government lacking patriotism and unfit to govern.

Conservative politicians are convinced that any policy not set on total victory for the US in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan – and in coming months, perhaps in Somalia, Yemen, or possibly in Palestine, or sub-Saharan Africa, (or even in an Iran determined to pursue its nuclear ambitions) – would mean American humiliation and defeat.

After Vietnam, Congress ended conscription (which in that war had become heavily corrupt: the poor and working classes were drafted, while many of the privileged had influential families and found complacent doctors or college deans willing to hand over unjustified draft exemptions to those – like the future Vice President Richard Cheney – who had “other priorities” than patriotism and national service.

Congress created a new all-volunteer army. The sociology of the new army was very different from the old citizens’ army. The new one was also composed of people who wanted to be soldiers, or wanted the college education that an enlistment could earn you, or often were high-school graduates who didn’t have much in the way of other career choices, but since 9/11, and the Iraq invasion, the new army has increasingly relied on immigrants or other young foreigners who can earn permanent US residence by way of a US Army enlistment. The US also increasingly has relied on foreign mercenaries hired by private companies.

Its professional character is fundamentally different from the old army. In the old army, career West Point officers were during wartime largely outnumbered by war-service-only officers, the graduates of Officer Candidate schools or Reserve Officers trained in universities (where much of the cost of higher education could be earned in exchange for a fixed term of duty afterwards as a junior commissioned officer).

Thus the US army from the start of the Second World War to the end of Vietnam was effectively a democratic army, with civilian conscripts, and the majority of its non-commissioned and commissioned officers peacetime civilians, with solid commitments to civilian society, often with families at home – doing their temporary (or “for the war’s duration”) patriotic duty.

Professional armies have often been considered a threat to their own societies. It was one of Frederick the Great’s own officers who described Prussia “as an army with a state, in which it was temporarily quartered, so to speak”. The French revolutionary statesman Mirabeau said that “war is Prussia’s national industry”. Considering the portion of the US national budget that is now consumed by the Pentagon, much the same could be said of the United States.

The new army also has political ambitions. It now dominates US foreign relations with a thousand bases worldwide and regional commanders like imperial proconsuls. Both General McChrystal and his superior, General David H Petraeus, have been mentioned as future presidential candidates. The last general who became American president was Dwight Eisenhower. He is the one who warned Americans against “the military-industrial complex”.

William Pfaff is the author of eight books on American foreign policy, international relations, and contemporary history, including books on utopian thought, romanticism and violence, nationalism, and the impact of the West on the non-Western world. His newspaper column, featured in The International Herald Tribune for more than a quarter-century, and his globally syndicated articles, have given him the widest international influence of any American commentator.

In a televised press conference, immediately following the attack at Fort Hood, it took this president almost two and a half minutes to acknowledge the tragedy. I guess discussing a meeting with Native Americans was more important than acknowledging that twelve people were killed and thirty wounded on a US Army Base.

To make matters even more unbelievable, this president gives a “shout out” during his opening remarks.

A “shout out.”

What world leader speaks this way? How can anyone expect to be taken seriously when they talk like this?

Could you imagine John F. Kennedy, George Bush, Bill Clinton, The Queen of England or any other world leader for that matter addressing the press and giving a “shout out” to someone?

Imagine FDR in his radio address following D Day. “I’d like to give a shout out to my man Dwight D. Eisenhower for a job well done.”

Imagine?

Is it me?

Once again this president shows his ignorance and his inability to act like a president.

He has no clue.

Way to go America. Hope this was the change you wanted.

Here are a few words from Dwight Eisenhower’s “Farewell Address” (January 17, 1961):

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Beware the military industrial complex

Dwight  “Ike” Eisenhower  was a five-star general in the United States Army and the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. During the Second World War, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, with responsibility for planning and supervising the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO.

As President, he oversaw the cease-fire of the Korean War, fought surreptitiously against Soviet Union during the Cold War, made nuclear weapons a higher defense priority and launched the Space Race. Despite all this in his farewell address to the American People he clearly outlined a warning that he felt they must heed or suffer for ignoring it. That warning was what he called the military-industrial complex. As a general seeing the aftermath and destruction of War up close, he sensed that at the time of his leaving the Oval Office the landscape was changing and changing very quickly. Not only outside of the USA but more importantly within the relationships of those who were in power especially in business, weapons manufacture, and the might of the American War Machine. Eisenhower went on to say..

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development”.

Ike knew the cost of supplying this arms a race and War Machine. He knew that for every Destroyer built, 800 homes were sacrificed. For every Fighter Plane ten High Schools and that each time money was portioned out to the weapons of war, people in the USA were missing out. Still he cautioned..

“Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. “

Blood Money

Only now do we really see the fruition of Eisenhower’s concern. With the rise of the Rome-erican Empire, we have seen the rise of the likes of Halliburton, and the pockets of men like Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld who have become the profiteers of War and its deadly aftermath. The complete selling out of contractors and Congress in the US Senate to the mighty dollar. Names like Blackwater, and private contractors are now synonymous with mercenaries, back door deals and a secret army more powerful and less accountable raging private battles in war-torn countries in service to greed and Mammon. Ike concluded with..

“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Eisenhower may well have been the Last Emperor of America before it became the Rome-erica that we see today. The Empire and Imperial force that it has become. Not that this is a slight on the American People of which I have met many and they are great people to be with, as this is not about them, more the people who represent them.

So why then does Ike get mention on this blog? Well because he is the last of many men in a position of trust that we may well have been able to look toward. A Man who stood by what he believed and despite seeing the darkness of mankind and the horrors of World War did not buy into the Art of War as a way to progress the world, but cautioned us to not mix business with War and for that to become an unaccountable entity. Sure..there are questions around his administration’s involvement in Guatemalan politics and the beginnings of the secret and clandestine work of the CIA. But he does in history become the man who saw the end of one and the beginning of another America.

And what do we say about his warnings of a military industrial complex. We need only look to the IRAQ conflict and Afghanistan. A conflict which looks to have no end and costs billions and billions of dollars that would have been better spent on people, families, schools, hospitals, enterprise, and progress rather than death and the mighty dollar. If ever there was a time that we needed good men to stand up and say no…they were silent.

Bringing to the Presidency his prestige as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower obtained a truce in Korea and worked incessantly during his two terms to ease the tensions of the Cold War. He pursued the moderate policies of “Modern Republicanism,” pointing out as he left office, “America is today the strongest, most influential, and most productive nation in the world.”

Born in Texas in 1890, brought up in Abilene, Kansas, Eisenhower was the third of seven sons. He excelled in sports in high school, and received an appointment to West Point. Stationed in Texas as a second lieutenant, he met Mamie Geneva Doud, whom he married in 1916.

In his early Army career, he excelled in staff assignments, serving under Generals John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur, and Walter Krueger. After Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall called him to Washington for a war plans assignment. He commanded the Allied Forces landing in North Africa in November 1942; on D-Day, 1944, he was Supreme Commander of the troops invading France.

After the war, he became President of Columbia University, then took leave to assume supreme command over the new NATO forces being assembled in 1951. Republican emissaries to his headquarters near Paris persuaded him to run for President in 1952.

“I like Ike” was an irresistible slogan; Eisenhower won a sweeping victory.

Negotiating from military strength, he tried to reduce the strains of the Cold War. In 1953, the signing of a truce brought an armed peace along the border of South Korea. The death of Stalin the same year caused shifts in relations with Russia.

New Russian leaders consented to a peace treaty neutralizing Austria. Meanwhile, both Russia and the United States had developed hydrogen bombs. With the threat of such destructive force hanging over the world, Eisenhower, with the leaders of the British, French, and Russian governments, met at Geneva in July 1955.

The President proposed that the United States and Russia exchange blueprints of each other’s military establishments and “provide within our countries facilities for aerial photography to the other country.” The Russians greeted the proposal with silence, but were so cordial throughout the meetings that tensions relaxed.

Suddenly, in September 1955, Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in Denver, Colorado. After seven weeks he left the hospital, and in February 1956 doctors reported his recovery. In November he was elected for his second term.

In domestic policy the President pursued a middle course, continuing most of the New Deal and Fair Deal programs, emphasizing a balanced budget. As desegregation of schools began, he sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to assure compliance with the orders of a Federal court; he also ordered the complete desegregation of the Armed Forces. “There must be no second class citizens in this country,” he wrote.

Eisenhower concentrated on maintaining world peace. He watched with pleasure the development of his “atoms for peace” program–the loan of American uranium to “have not” nations for peaceful purposes.

Before he left office in January 1961, for his farm in Gettysburg, he urged the necessity of maintaining an adequate military strength, but cautioned that vast, long-continued military expenditures could breed potential dangers to our way of life. He concluded with a prayer for peace “in the goodness of time.” Both themes remained timely and urgent when he died, after a long illness, on March 28, 1969.