RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/lessons-from-the-united-states-showdown-with-the-barbary-pirates/

Jefferson’s example in dealing with the pirates supports the Soleimani strike.

As a fan of The Editors podcast, my ears perked up in the last episode’s tussle between Rich Lowry and Charlie Cooke over the U.S. strike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. I had argued on NRO last week that President Trump had authority, under the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations to Use Military Force, to kill Soleimani, who not only was responsible for a series of attacks on American forces but was in the middle of planning more to come. Even if a critic, such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, believed that killing fell outside those past acts, I argued that the Constitution gave the president the power as commander in chief and chief executive to use force without the need for congressional permission beforehand in the event that a foreign nation had already attacked U.S. forces.

Rich, I was pleased to hear, shared that view. It is the same understanding held by Republican presidents, such as Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes, as well as Democrats — until Obama. But Charlie, to my shock and dismay, disagreed. He argued that Congress’s power to declare war required that it authorize any uses of force abroad. Rich appealed to Charlie’s English respect for tradition by citing Thomas Jefferson’s attacks on the Barbary pirates as a precedent. Charlie responded that the Jefferson example did not support the Trump strike.

As someone who started his career as a law professor writing on war powers, and followed with a book on presidential power, I can’t resist the opportunity to come in on Rich’s side on the Barbary pirates question. While the precedent does not stand as clearly as other examples for the president’s commander-in-chief authority to use force without a congressional declaration of war, it comes very close. And when examined closely, it easily would support President Trump’s strike on General Soleimani with or without the AUMF.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/founders-feared-tyranny-more-partisan-rancor-bruce-thornton/

Maybe it’s the Christmas season, or maybe it’s the grotesquely rabid partisanship of the Democrat impeachment follies, but we’re hearing a lot of moaning and groaning about “partisan rancor” and what a threat it is to our “democracy.” But tyranny, not “partisan rancor,” is what we should fear, for freedom is the foundational good that our government was designed to protect.

An example of this misunderstanding about partisanship can be found in some comments by a very smart political analyst. He writes that the “partisan bitterness that is dividing us into two warring camps . . . is the greatest threat American democracy faces today. Democracy cannot exist when a country is divided into two camps, each of which sees the other as an enemy rather than an adversary. Democracy relies on the suspension of partisan rancor in the interest of the nation.”

First, this common claim that we are at a moment of unprecedented partisan division ignores a lot of history. What about the Civil War and the decades leading up to it? We were divided into two literally “warring camps,” and that divide culminated in over 700,000 dead Americans. Yet our democratic republic not only survived, but became a world power, which was made possible in part by the lancing of the moral infection of slavery, and the confirmation that the union could not be broken into vulnerable sections and become easy prey for foreign powers.

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/recalling-the-battle-of-the-bulge/

Seventy-five years ago, at the Battle of the Bulge (fought from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 25, 1945), the United States suffered more casualties than in any other battle in its history. Some 19,000 Americans were killed, 47,500 wounded and 23,000 reported missing.

The American and British armies were completely surprised by a last-gasp German offensive, given that Allied forces were near the Rhine River and ready to cross into Germany to finish off a crippled Third Reich.

The Americans had been exhausted by a rapid 300-mile summer advance to free much of France and Belgium. In their complacence, they oddly did not worry much about their thinning lines, often green replacement troops or the still-formidable Germany army. After all, Nazi Germany was being battered on all sides by Americans, British, Canadians and Russians. Its cities were in ruins from heavy bombers.

Yet the losing side is often the most dangerous just before its collapse.

In retreat, the Germans were shortening their interior lines. They had the element of surprise, given confident allies who assumed the war would soon be over.

The cold December weather would ground the overwhelming number of Allied fighters and bombers. The Germans aimed their assault through the snowy roads of the Ardennes Mountains to bowl over inexperienced or exhausted U.S. divisions.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/hanukah_the_first_battle_against_transnationalism_and_the_deep_state.html

Many think of Hanukah as a fight for religious freedom. While religious freedom was at stake, it was part of a broader battle in behalf of the concept of national identity. The Maccabees, local Judeans who spearheaded the revolt against the overpowering northern Syrian Greeks and who inspired the grassroots, did so for the overarching cause of retaining Judea’s identity and Jewish character, which were under assault by those trying to denude Judea of its distinctiveness.

The story begins in the waning years of the Greek empire, 150 years after the death of Alexander the Great. The eastern branch of the Greek empire was headquartered in Antioch, Syria and under the Seleucid monarch, Antiochus. He expected all countries under his jurisdiction to surrender their national sovereignty and independence and its citizens begin seeing themselves as citizens of the world, the Hellenic world. 

At first, there were the usual military attacks by the Seleucids against Judea. But that changed. Instead of undertaking costly military campaigns to accomplish this, Antiochus, circa 175 BC, reasoned it would be easier and less conspicuous to bring Judea under heel by simply de-Judaizing it, by forbidding Israel’s core and distinctive religious practices and educating its children in the mores of the hedonistic gymnasium. It worked.

In the beginning, many Judeans were lulled into feeling that the multicultural push would not endanger their own culture and distinctiveness and were actually open to the benefits of global Hellenism. Soon, however, the Seleucid’s moved beyond multiculturalism to demonizing the Judean and Jewish way of life as anachronistic and an impediment to Hellenistic fraternity and progress. Religious observance — that part of the religious milieu that was distinctively Jewish — and religious teachers were outlawed. 

1. Chanukah’s historical context is narrated in the four Books of the Maccabees, The Scroll of Antiochus and The Wars of the Jews. The Greek Empire was split following the death of Alexander the Great (323 BCE), who held Judaism in high esteem. In 175 BCE, the Syrian/Seleucid Emperor Antiochus (IV) Epiphanies – who claimed the Land of Israel – suspected that Jews were allies of his Egyptian enemy.  Therefore, he aimed to exterminate Judaism and convert Jews to Hellenism. In 169 BCE he devastated Jerusalem, massacred Jews and prohibited the practice of Judaism. The 166/7 BCE rebellion was led by the Hasmonean (Maccabee) family – Mattityahu, the priest, and his five sons, Yochanan, Judah, Shimon, Yonatan and Elazar – whose dynasty lasted until 37 BCE.

2. The first day of Chanukah – the holiday of light – is celebrated when daylight hours are equal to darkness, ushering in longer daylight hours – rising optimism.

3. The impact on the formation of the US spirit:

Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, December 1915: “Chanukah, the Feast of Maccabees…celebrates a victory of the spirit over things material… a victory also over [external, but also] more dangerous internal enemies, the Sadducees (the upper social and economic echelon); a victory over the ease-loving, safety-playing, privileged, powerful few, who in their pliancy would have betrayed the best interests of the people; a victory of democracy over aristocracy…. The struggle of the Maccabees is of eternal worldwide interest…. It is a struggle in which all Americans, non-Jews as well as Jews… are vitally affected…”