RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Obama took pains in his State of the Union speech Tuesday to warn Americans not to exaggerate the threat from terrorists. “As we focus on destroying ISIL,” he said, using an alternative acronym for Islamic State (ISIS), “over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands.”

On Monday ISIS murdered 51 people in suicide attacks in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. On Tuesday an ISIS suicide bomber in Istanbul killed 10 German and one Peruvian tourists. On Thursday two people were killed and 23 injured by an ISIS suicide bomber near a Starbucks coffee shop in Jakarta.

This bloody spate follows last month’s murder of 14 office workers in San Bernardino by an ISIS husband-and-wife team, November’s Paris massacre by ISIS of 130 people, the killing a day earlier of some 43 people in Beirut, and October’s downing by ISIS of a Russian jetliner over Egypt, in which 224 civilians perished. Last June’s attack at a Tunisian beach resort, in which 38 mainly British tourists were murdered, is already beginning to feel like a distant memory.

It was also an election year and Papa Kim, the present tyrant’s daddy humiliated America.

On January 23, 1968, the USS Pueblo, a Navy intelligence vessel, engaged in a routine surveillance of the North Korean coast was intercepted by North Korean patrol boats. The North Koreans captured lightly armed vessel and demanded surrender of its crew. The Americans attempted to escape, and the North Koreans opened fire, wounding the commander and two others. With capture inevitable, the Americans stalled for time, destroying the classified information aboard while taking further fire. Several more crew members were wounded.

The Pueblo was boarded and taken ashore where the crew was bound and blindfolded and transported to Pyongyang, where they were charged with spying within North Korea’s 12-mile territorial limit and imprisoned.

The United States maintained that the Pueblo had been in international waters and demanded the release of the captive sailors, but President Lyndon Johnson ordered no direct retaliation, but the United States began a military buildup in the area. North Korean authorities, coerced a confession and apology out of Pueblo commander Bucher, in which he stated, “I will never again be a party to any disgraceful act of aggression of this type.” The rest of the crew also signed a confession under threat of torture.

The prisoners were forced to study propaganda materials and beaten for straying from the compound’s strict rules. In August, the North Koreans staged a phony news conference in which the prisoners were to praise their humane treatment, but the Americans thwarted the Koreans by inserting innuendoes and sarcastic language into their statements. Some prisoners also rebelled in photo shoots by casually sticking out their middle finger; a gesture that their captors didn’t understand. Later, the North Koreans beat the Americans for a week.

On December 23, 1968, 11 months after the Pueblo‘s capture, U.S. and North Korean negotiators reached a settlement to resolve the crisis. Under the settlement’s terms, the United States admitted the ship’s intrusion into North Korean territory, apologized for the action, and pledged to cease any future such action.

That day, the surviving 82 crewmen walked one by one across the “Bridge of No Return” at Panmunjon to freedom in South Korea. Commander Bucher, who was a decorated Navy Commander in World War 11 , Korea and Vietnam, but suffered ignominy for his apology, died in January 2004.

If you buy the State Department line that two American Naval vessels strayed into Iranian territorial waters when one boat suffered mechanical problems, and that the rapid return of our sailors is a triumph of diplomacy…well then I have an island in the Persian Gulf I’d like to sell you.

We have seen photos and video of our sailors kneeling on the deck of their vessel, with hands behind their heads — a posture that can only indicate surrender at gunpoint. Keep in mind, they were surrendering to the forces of a nation into which we’re about to pump billions of dollars in cash in exchange for a 10-year hiatus in its nuclear weapons program.

The following are just a few of the questions we need to ask based on the information we already have:

What are the odds that two lightly armed American vessels would attempt an incursion into Iranian, or even disputed, territorial waters, hours before President Obama would deliver a State of the Union salute to his own foreign policy prowess?
What is the likelihood that all GPS devices on board both U.S. vessels were inoperable?
Why do you suppose the Navy sent two boats on this mission?
Why do you think the second craft didn’t tow the “broken” one?
What admirable “diplomatic” purpose was served by forcing our sailors to their knees at gunpoint, and then publicly releasing the video thereof?
Why were our sailors not immediately returned, but held overnight?

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is not just an entertaining movie, it’s a 144-minute rebuttal to everything the Obama administration has been saying about the attack since it took place on September 11, 2012.

The “true story” of Benghazi, as told by the secret soldiers, is a powerful rebuke to the “tall tales” that were told by the White House, the State Department and their defenders. There was no “fog of war” that prevented the Department of Defense from sending military assets to Benghazi — just a foggy narrative that was created by the commander in chief and secretary of state to explain the debacle without looking weak and feckless two months before an election.

The movie is based on the book of the same name, written by Boston University journalism professor Mitchell Zuckoff with the five CIA contractors who were on the ground in Benghazi that night: Jack Silva, Mark “Oz” Geist, John “Tig” Tiegen, Kris “Tanto” Paronto, and Dave “Boon” Benton.

Doctor Zhivago was transformed during the Cold War from a Siberian soap opera into a worldwide symbol of resistance to tyranny. How a competent but unexceptional novel came to achieve this status is a story far more interesting than the book itself
Helen Andrews

The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book
by Peter Finn & Petra Couvée
Vintage, 2015, 368 pages, $22.99

Twilight of the Eastern Gods
by Ismail Kadare
Grove Press, 2014, 224 pages, $29.99

When Doctor Zhivago reached number one on the New York Times best-seller list in November, 1958, the book it displaced from the top spot was Lolita. Nabokov was not pleased. He did not think much of Boris Pasternak (left) as a novelist, and to make matters worse, he felt bound to keep his low opinion to himself for fear of seeming jealous. “Had not Zhivago and I been on the same ladder,” he griped in a private letter, “I would have been glad to demolish that trashy, melodramatic, false, and inept book, which neither landscaping nor politics can save from my wastepaper basket.”

Nabokov was right that Doctor Zhivago, as literature, is nothing to crow about—not that the author of Lolita was in a position to look down his nose at a book for owing its success to extra-literary considerations. Pasternak does not rank with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. He nonetheless deserves to be classed with such perfectly creditable writers as, say, Margaret Mitchell. Indeed, Gone with the Wind may be the closest thing to an English-language equivalent of Doctor Zhivago: a sweeping romantic epic set against the backdrop of a civil war, with enough sympathy shown for the losing side to attract the ire of the politically correct. Both books transitioned very well to the big screen, and in neither case was that entirely a compliment to the literary quality of the source material.

Yet during the Cold War Doctor Zhivago was transformed from a Siberian soap opera into a worldwide symbol of resistance to tyranny. The story of how this occurred is the subject of The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée.

pasternak PW coverThe book’s road to international fame began in 1956, when the Khrushchev thaw led Pasternak to hope that his newly completed first novel might find a Soviet publisher, despite its criticisms of Bolshevik excesses. His friend Kornei Chukovsky, who had more experience with the Moscow literary bureaucracy, was less naive. He knew that Doctor Zhivago would be suppressed, thaw or no thaw. But he also knew that Khrushchev would be wary of handing the West an easy propaganda victory. According to the gossip Chukovsky had gathered by September, “the current plan is as follows: to stem all nasty rumours (both here and abroad) by putting the novel out in three thousand copies—thereby making it inaccessible to the masses—and at the same time proclaiming that we are placing no obstacle in Pasternak’s path”.

On December 16, 1944 three German armies (more than a quarter-million troops) launched the deadliest and most desperate battle of the war in the west in the rugged, and freezing Ardennes. American units were caught unprepared and fought desperate battles to stem the German advances. The Battle of the Bulge, so-called because the Germans created a “bulge” around the area of the Ardennes forest in pushing through the American defensive line, was the largest fought on the Western front.

The Germans threw 250,000 soldiers into the initial assault, 14 German infantry divisions guarded by five panzer divisions-against a mere 80,000 Americans. Their assault came in early morning at the weakest part of the Allied line, an 80-mile poorly protected stretch of hilly, woody forest (the Allies simply believed the Ardennes too difficult to traverse, and therefore an unlikely location for a German offensive). Between the vulnerability of the thin, isolated American units and the thick fog that prevented Allied air cover from discovering German movement, the Germans were able to push the Americans into retreat.

One particularly effective German trick was the use of English-speaking German commandos who infiltrated American lines and, using captured U.S. uniforms, trucks, and jeeps, impersonated U.S. military and sabotaged communications. The ploy caused widespread chaos and suspicion among the American troops as to the identity of fellow soldiers–even after the ruse was discovered. Even General Omar Bradley himself had to prove his identity three times–by answering questions about football and Betty Grable–before being allowed to pass a sentry point.

The battle raged for three weeks, resulting in a massive loss of American and civilian life. Nazi atrocities abounded, including the murder of 72 American soldiers by SS soldiers in the Ardennes town of Malmedy. Historian Stephen Ambrose estimated that by war’s end, “Of the 600,000 GIs involved, almost 20,000 were killed, another 20,000 were captured, and 40,000 were wounded.” The United States also suffered its second-largest surrender of troops of the war: More than 7,500 members of the 106th Infantry Division capitulated at one time at Schnee Eifel. The devastating ferocity of the conflict also made desertion an issue for the American troops; General Eisenhower was forced to make an example of Private Eddie Slovik, the first American executed for desertion since the Civil War.

A crucial German shortage of fuel and the gallantry of American troops fighting in the frozen forests of the Ardennes thwarted Hitler’s ambitions. Lieutenant General George S. Patton’s remarkable feat of turning the Third Army ninety degrees from Lorraine to relieve the besieged town of Bastogne was the key to thwarting the German counteroffensive. The Battle of the Bulge was the costliest action ever fought by the U.S. Army, which suffered over 100,000 casualties.

On January 12, 1045, the Nazis began their retreat and the battle ended on January 25,1945.

Presidential rhetoric is much less effective in a final year, after a leader’s statements and approach have become rooted in reality. And in his final State of the Union address, Barack Obama will have a tough time persuading a skeptical nation that the world he inherited eight years ago is somehow more manageable and secure as a result of his efforts.

In his speech Tuesday, Mr. Obama is likely to claim success on a number of issues. He has reached out to Cuba, concluded an agreement to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and negotiated a trade accord with Pacific nations as well as a historic framework on climate change. But all of these accomplishments are works in progress; the first two depend on changes in the behavior of authoritarian regimes; the latter on (uncertain) congressional approval and the compliance of numerous international actors. The success or failure of these endeavors won’t be determined until long after Mr. Obama leaves the White House, and a Republican successor might well try to undermine, delay, or alter some or all of them.

When it comes to terror attacks at home, Mr. Obama will seek to reassure but it’s going to be a heavy lift. Two-thirds of the public disapproves of his approach to Islamic State. Mr. Obama can point to recent successes by the Iraqi army against ISIS in Ramadi, but that victory is less a turning point than a successful turn in a long and winding road. The image of a president who underestimated the rise of ISIS and has been reluctant to use more military muscle is increasingly criticized by the many Republicans running for president. Mr. Obama’s former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has sought to distance herself from the president on the issue of a “no-fly zone” for Syria. Fair or not, more San Bernardino-style attacks, a Paris-like assault, or the downing of a U.S. commercial airliner could undermine Mr. Obama’s foreign-policy legacy.

The Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon published a thorough report last Friday about how President Obama’s Iran deal has strengthened the hand of Iran’s hardliners. What is most breathtaking in the story is the degree to which American policy is divorced from reality.

How could the deal, which injects over $100 billion (probably way over that amount) into the Tehran regime’s coffers, have done anything but strengthened the hardliners’ hand? Of course it could not. Yet Obama’s policy walks an incoherent line between conceding that fact and wishfully thinking it were not so. Thus, Mr. Solomon writes,

The Obama administration’s nuclear deal was intended to keep Iran from pursuing an atomic bomb, and raised hope in the West that Tehran would be nudged toward a more moderate path.

U.S. and European officials had hoped the nuclear accord would broaden cooperation with Tehran, and empower Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to promote democratic change. He was elected in 2013 on a platform to end the nuclear standoff and build bridges to the West.

As much as $100 billion in frozen revenues are expected to return to Iran after sanctions are lifted, which U.S. officials said could happen in coming weeks. The White House hoped the cash windfall would aid Mr. Rouhani’s political fortunes.

To summarize: you are to understand from this that the administration and its allies in the P5+1 negotiations over the deal believed that the deal would (a) moderate the regime’s behavior (notwithstanding that the more aggressively Iran behaved, the more inclined Obama was to appease it), and (b) strengthen the position of the purportedly moderate, reformist president Rouhani (notwithstanding that he is only president because he was allowed to run by the Shiite ayatollahs who actually control the country, and who he has made a career of faithfully serving).

Yet, at the same time, Solomon reports:

Iranian academics close to Mr. Rouhani are increasingly concerned Mr. Khamenei will use the money and diplomatic rewards [from the deal] to entrench hard-line allies, at the expense of the president.

Many of the companies about to be removed from international blacklists are part of military and religious foundations, including some that report directly to Mr. Khamenei. Those firms could be the first to benefit from the rush of international businesses looking to profit from the lifting of sanctions.

Moreover, we learn that:

“The guiding assumption was that Iran would not moderate its behavior,” said Rob Malley, President Barack Obama ’s top Mideast adviser. “The president considered [it] absolutely critical to get this nuclear deal because we had no assessment that in the foreseeable future, Iran would change its approach.”

In the summer of 1776, the celebrated diarist James Boswell visited the Edinburgh home of David Hume, where the philosopher lay dying. Hume, atypically thin and “ghastly” in pallor, was nevertheless “placid.” Interrogated by Boswell, he affirmed his view that the afterlife was an “unreasonable fancy.” With “death before his eyes,” Boswell reported, Hume blithely predicted his own annihilation. “I maintained my faith,” wrote Boswell, but “left him with impressions which disturbed me for some time.”

This scene often serves as a miniature representation of Hume’s career. Boswell’s watery piety crashes against Enlightenment reason. Superstition flinches before knowledge. The sang-froid of Hume’s godlessness amazed contemporaries, and modern atheists have treasured the tale.

James A. Harris’s “Hume: An Intellectual Biography” punctures most of this mythology. Though an atheist, Hume was nowhere near as dogmatic as his current admirers. He was certainly not a rationalist. His reputation for philosophical intrepidity, furthermore, has been overblown.

In a climate where just saying “Benghazi” can hint at a political agenda, Michael Bay’s new film “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” seems headed into an ideological skirmish that the director swears he wants no part of.

The movie “doesn’t get political at all,” says Mr. Bay, who directed the “Transformers” movies and “Pearl Harbor.” “We show you what happened on the ground. It was written with the men who were there.”

The drama, which opens Jan. 15, recreates the chaotic Sept. 11, 2012, attack on an American diplomatic compound and a CIA station in Benghazi, Libya. Militants killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Inquiries into what went wrong have dogged Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who as the Secretary of State at the time oversaw the diplomatic corps.

The movie isn’t about the aftermath, Mr. Bay says. The 50-year-old director wanted to make a tense film about American military heroes who rose to the challenge of a deadly sneak attack—something he has done before on a bigger budget. “Pearl Harbor” cost around $140 million in 2001 and made the Guinness Book of World Records for its massive explosions.
From left, John Krasinski, James Badge Dale and director Michael Bay on the set of ‘13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.’ ENLARGE
From left, John Krasinski, James Badge Dale and director Michael Bay on the set of ‘13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.’ Photo: Paramount Pictures

“It took 3½ months to set up one explosion, seven hundred events going off on seven ships, 20 planes in the air. The good old days!” he says.

“13 Hours” came in just under $50 million.

“I didn’t want all the expensive toys,” Mr. Bay says. “It was about shooting it very raw, over the shoulder of guys to make it feel like you are really there. Everything that I have learned from many, many soldiers is the confusion of warfare and how everything goes wrong. You kind of feel that in the movie.”

Of course there’s also a commercial aim, that “13 Hours” might follow the path of another January release about modern warfare, “American Sniper.” Made for about $40 million, “Sniper” opened widely last January and reached $350 million in domestic box office, becoming the highest-grossing war movie of all time and the biggest-grossing January movie ever.