RUTHFULLY YOURS

Next month, Obama will be in Japan for the G-7 Summit. There are rumors that he will visit Hiroshima and formally apologize for the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on that city and Nagasaki in August 1945. Maybe that’s why John Kerry didn’t apologize during a recent visit to the Hiroshima memorial, but merely set the stage for Obama by lamenting the suffering and calling for a “world free from nuclear weapons.”

The debate over whether or not Truman should have authorized dropping the bombs is an old one. And any objective evaluation of the decision shows that it was correct, for it shortened the war and saved millions of Japanese and American lives. More interesting than rehashing what should be a settled debate is the ideological prejudices and moral incoherence of those who continue to want the U.S. to express regret for swiftly ending a war it didn’t start and paid for with nearly 112,000 lives.

First is the idea, serially displayed by Obama since the beginning of his presidency, that the U.S. has been a bad international actor and so must atone for its sins. As the leftist tale goes, America’s corporate greed, imperialist depredations, and racist nationalism sowed the seeds of all the world’s disorder and ills. Whether poverty in Africa, violence in the Middle East, or global warming, the default response is “When all else fails, blame the Americans.”

Just watch Oliver Stone’s 10-part “documentary” on the Cold War, “The Untold History of the United States,” or read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. This is the “Yankees done us wrong” school of factually challenged historiography that has spread into popular culture, high school curricula, and whole departments in most universities. With Obama it has now reached the presidency, where its malign effects have been obvious in his foreign policy disasters caused by feckless “disengagement” and “leading from behind” predicated on reversing America’s malign interventionism.

The dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 remains the only wartime use of nuclear weapons in history.

No one knows exactly how many Japanese citizens were killed by the two American bombs. A macabre guess is around 140,000. The atomic attacks finally shocked Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese militarists into surrendering.

John Kerry recently visited Hiroshima. He became the first secretary of state to do so — purportedly as a precursor to a planned visit next month by President Obama, who is rumored to be considering an apology to Japan for America’s dropping of the bombs 71 years ago.

The horrific bombings are inexplicable without examining the context in which they occurred.

In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted on the unconditional surrender of Axis aggressors. The bomb was originally envisioned as a way to force the Axis leader, Nazi Germany, to cease fighting. But the Third Reich had already collapsed by July 1945 when the bomb was ready for use, leaving Imperial Japan as the sole surviving Axis target.

Japan had just demonstrated with its nihilistic defense of Okinawa — where more than 12,000 Americans died and more than 50,000 were wounded, along with perhaps 200,000 Japanese military and civilian casualties — that it could make the Americans pay so high a price for victory that they might negotiate an armistice rather than demand surrender.

Tens of thousands of Americans had already died in taking the Pacific islands as a way to get close enough to bomb Japan. On March 9-10, 1945, B-29 bombers dropped an estimated 1,665 tons of napalm on Tokyo, causing at least as many deaths as later at Hiroshima.

On Monday April 18, 2016, China officially broke ground on its first naval base in Djibouti, Africa, a country which has also been the home of the United States (U.S.) African intelligence-gathering base for the past 15 years. The Chinese base will be encroaching upon a major U.S. military installation with 4,000 troops and has the largest drone installation base outside of Afghanistan.

Djibouti may be a proving ground for China’s foreign policy as the nation looks to further expand its influence in Africa. China has participated in anti-piracy missions off the coast of Somalia since 2008 and increased those missions in 2010. Chinese President Jinping donated $100 million to the African Union (AU) and said it was to help build a standby force as well as an emergency response and quick response force.

American Ambassador to Djibouti Tom Kelly warns that Djibouti is the forefront of U.S. national security policy in Africa and raised concerns of Chinese military efforts to intercept American intelligence.

The U.S. also has to deal with Djibouti president Ismali Omar Guelleh, viewed by many locals as a dictator, who curtails free speech and human rights, makes arbitrary arrests, and uses torture on opposition. Guelleh may be increasing his ties to China following the Chinese purchase of the Port de Djibouti for $185 million. Chinese investment has also establish a $4 billion dollar railway project from Djibouti to Ethiopia; and is expected to Djibouti $20 million per year for the Djibouti naval base over the next decade.

The president musn’t express guilt over U.S. use of nuclear weapons during World War II.

“I think the president would like to do it,” John Roos, President Barack Obama’s former ambassador to Tokyo, said the other day about a possible Obama visit to Hiroshima when he attends the Group of Seven Summit next month in Japan. “He is a person who bends over backwards to show respect to history, and it does advance his agenda.”

That a visit to Hiroshima, on which President Harry Truman dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb, would advance Obama’s agenda is clear. He has long envisioned a world without nuclear weapons, announced steps to pursue it in a high-profile speech in Prague in April of 2009, and continues to push for U.S.-Russian cuts in nuclear arsenals and global efforts to secure loose nuclear materials.

That Obama “bends over backwards to show respect for history” is less clear. Just a day before speaking in Prague in 2009, he dismissed American “exceptionalism” – America’s unique historical role in promoting freedom and democracy and, since World War II, ensuring global stability – as no more special than the “exceptionalism” that Brits, Greeks, and others feel about their own nations.

The debate over an Obama visit to Hiroshima – which would make him the first president to visit while in office – has focused almost exclusively on whether he would or should apologize for the bombing. That Obama would be tempted seems obvious, for he hasn’t shied away from publicly scolding America for its faults, from its toppling of Iran’s government in 1953 to its ongoing struggle with race at home.

“The Measure of a Man,” a film whose French title translates as “market law,’ is a condemnation of an economic system that treats its workers as disposable objects regardless of how diligently they have performed or how long they have been employed. Thierry, the protagonist played by Vincent Lindon in an award winning tour de force, is an everyman who has lost his job and been put through several retraining programs that were exercises in futility, never leading to an actual job. We see his frustration in dealing with the bureaucracy that sends people jumping through meaningless hoops only to be turned down time and again. We see him interviewed on Skype by a callow employer who whittles him down to the humiliating admission that he would welcome working for less money at a position lower than expected – only to be told that he has less than a 1% chance of getting the job – though it’s not impossible.

In the most moving part of the this film, we see him at home with a severely disabled son who is treated with dignity and acceptance by him and his wife. In one scene, the parents put on music and begin to dance together, eventually including the son and having Thierry step aside and beam as his son dances with his mother. These are scenes showing all three characters accepting their fate and moving on without self-pity as best they can. Thierry undergoes all sorts of duress : a version of group therapy in which his trial interview is critiqued by his peers; a lecture by an employment counselor who urges him to sell his house and buy life insurance; a patronizing speech by his son’s school director who now doubts that the boy can achieve his dream of going to college and a disappointment by a potential buyer of his mobile home who agreed to a price on the phone but tries to bargain him down after he sees it. His life is a series of reality bites which lead to his taking a job as a security officer at a large supermarket.

In the closing minutes of the film Moscow on the Hudson, Vladimir Ivanoff, a Soviet defector, sits in a New York coffee shop trying to make sense of the country he has come to. It is a free country, but the nature of its freedom appears both bewildering and destructive. The America he lives in has freedom, but no purpose. It often appears to be open to all the wrong things and none of the right ones. A place free of religion, of morality and of meaning, that offers mercantilism and hedonism, that allows individuals to lose themselves in a system that echoes with a freedom that is so vast as to be inhuman.

People from around the world are drawn to America by the idea of freedom. It is not difficult to envision what freedom is when you live under a dictatorship. Freedom becomes the opposite of tyranny. But the more complex question is what is freedom without the constant of tyranny? What happens when freedom is cheapened and when the founding principles of a nation are forgotten?

Those are among the subjects that author Alexander Maistrovoy explores in his book, Agony of Hercules or a Farewell to Democracy (Notes of a Stranger). Alexander Maistrovoy is no stranger to tyranny. But he finds himself a stranger in a West which has turned its back on its values and appears to be nihilistically embracing its own destruction at the hands of Islam and the radical left.

The world that Alexander Maistrovoy discovers is descending into totalitarianism, gripped by a senseless madness it abandons its values, forgets its past and embraces a chaotic hedonism that can never be equal to the full measure of its unhappiness. It is a world where human rights means tyranny and the tyranny of Islamic law means freedom, where dictators are heroes and democracy is a shell game.

As Maistrovoy writes, “The words ‘democracy,’ human rights,’ ‘social justice,’ ‘liberal values,’ ‘humanism,’ ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ rain down from all sides… they are repeated like a spell, a magic mantra, a prayer.” But the magic spell means nothing. Those using the words do not understand their meanings. Instead the invocation of lost principles becomes a cargo cult ritual that licenses destructive impulses. There is no mantra or spell that will transform Islamic law or leftist tyranny into liberal democracy. Instead the rituals and word games mask the scale and steepness of the descent.

Congressman Dave Trott (R-MI) blasted the Obama administration during a hearing last week for not designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Trott noted the group’s role in the targeting of Coptic Christians in Egypt, and how it continues to incite violence against minorities and U.S. allies.

Rep. Trott also expressed disbelief at the State Department’s excuses for continuing to meet with the group.

Both the House and the Senate are considering bills calling on the administration to designate the Muslim Brotherhood. Last November, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) introduced H.R. 3892, the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2015, which now has bipartisan support.

A Senate companion bill, S. 2230, was introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

On February 24 the House Judiciary Committee voted 17-10 to pass the bill and move the measure to the full House.

As a cosponsor of the House bill, Rep. Trott slammed the administration. He posted the video to his Facebook page:

Several U.S. allies in the Middle East have taken action against the Muslim Brotherhood, including U.A.E., Egypt, and Israel. Last week, Jordan closed the group’s headquarters in Amman:

The White House said President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin chatted on the phone today — but Obama did not bring up Russia’s too-close-for-comfort aerial actions near a U.S. ship and a reconnaissance plane.

U.S. European Command said Saturday that a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane over the Baltic Sea was barrel-rolled by a Russian Su-27 on Thursday.

“The unsafe and unprofessional actions of a single pilot have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries,” Danny Hernandez, a spokesman for U.S. European Command, told CNN, noting that the plane “performed erratic and aggressive maneuvers” within 50 feet of the U.S. RC-135.

A week ago, two Russian SU-24 jets made “numerous close-range and low altitude passes” that led the U.S. ship to suspend flight operations until the Russian planes were gone. Last Tuesday, a Russian KA-27 Helix helicopter “conducted circles at low altitude around the ship, seven in total, at approximately 5 p.m. local.”

“The helicopter passes were also deemed unsafe and unprofessional by the ship’s commanding officer. About 40 minutes following the interaction with the Russian helicopter, two Russian SU-24 jets made numerous close-range and low altitude passes, 11 in total. The Russian aircraft flew in a simulated attack profile and failed to respond to repeated safety advisories in both English and Russian,” U.S. European Command said in a statement.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama had a conversation with Putin today about Ukraine and abiding by the Minsk talks.

“The United States continues to believe and President Obama continues to make a forceful case that Russia needs to abide by their commitments, and by doing so they can begin to relieve some of the isolation they have sustained as a result interfering in the sovereign activities of their neighbors in Ukraine,” Earnest said.

A New and Dangerous Great Game | London Center for Policy Research | National Security, Energy, and Risk Analysis

In 1904, after the long British struggle to control Afghanistan, and the Russian Empire’s efforts to expand into central Asia (and take control from the British), a British geographer, Halford MacKinder, published a paper suggesting that he who controlled the heartland of Asia would control Asia itself, and by extension, the world. In short, MacKinder explained why England and Russia had been vying for control of central Asia, what was known as ‘the Great Game.’ His theory, the Heartland Theory, was popular with the Russians (even before MacKinder gave it a name), and later with the Soviets, and has since been adopted by China.

Interestingly, an American strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, had postulated in 1900 that Asia could be controlled from the sea. Mahan suggested that control of the Suez Canal and control of Singapore and the Strait of Malacca on one side of the South China Sea (SCS) would give a great power – one with a powerful navy – the ability to control trade into and out of Asia and therefore accomplish the same thing the Heartland Theory later suggested.

In the years following WWII the US Navy had an extensive presence in the SCS. However, the US slowly stopped paying attention to the SCS during the 1990s, following the break-up of the Soviet Union.

In 1947 the Republic of China published a map claiming ownership of most of the islands in the SCS. This map – the ‘9 Dash Line’ – was later taken by the People’s Republic of China as defining their claim in the SCS, and after some minor variations, they have used it to justify their current activities.

But until several years ago the Chinese claim mattered little. In the last several years, however, recognizing the extent of the power vacuum, China has been aggressively building on reefs and islands in the SCS. China intends to control the SCS. A new great game, between two nuclear powers, has started in the South China Sea.

Nations operate in what they perceive to be their self-interest. It’s not always a good thing. When the Nazis marched into Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1939, it was under the policy of Lebensraum, the claimed need for food that those fertile lands offered. The people of Poland and Czechoslovakia and the Allies disagreed. When nations’ interests clash, differences must be decided diplomatically or war ensues, as happened in Europe in 1939. It has always been that way and, likely, always will.

But sometimes a nation’s interest serves the world’s. In the wake of World War II, America’s self-interest – guided by our values – benefitted not only ourselves and the nations who had allied with us, but the people of those countries we helped defeat. In a recent history, Harry & Arthur, Lawrence Haas, a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, tells of the remarkable working relationship between newly sworn-in President Harry Truman and Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg, then the leading Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. According to Mr. Haas, a former member of Al Gore’s staff, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, NATO and the U.N. Charter would have been impossible without the collaborative efforts of the two men. This was bi-partisanship at its best, relying on fundamental American values – to help those in distress, by serving our own interests. The consequence: the west saw seven decades of economic growth, Germany and Japan became economic powerhouses and the world saw the most rapid eradication of poverty it had ever known.

Things have changed. We have abandoned our magnanimous perch. Our values are on trial. A belief in moral relativism has replaced a sense of national self-confidence that had been driven by moral certitude. Political extremism has meant that our nation’s self-interest has been subsumed within the wants of party hacks; and immediate self-gratification has replaced the values needed for moral leadership. Republicans: consider the effects of the war in Iraq? Democrats: think of the consequences of the attack on Libya, and the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria? Keep in mind, 9/11was an attack on western civilization by Islamic jihadists – a fact that has all but disappeared from our collective memories. Non-threatening euphemisms used to describe those terrorists (and others since) have undermined a focus on the awfulness of what they did, and what they are still capable of doing.