RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the closet of Abdalrahman, eighth-century caliph of Spain, this note was discovered after his death: “I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honours, power and pleasure, have waited on my call.…In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen: O Man! place not thy confidence in this present world.”

In a footnote to this item, in the fifth volume of “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Edward Gibbon writes: “If I may speak of myself (the only person of whom I can speak with certainty), my happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty number of the caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add, that many of them are due to the pleasing labour of the present composition.”

America’s role in the Global War on Terror grows stranger by the hour. President Obama’s fight against ISIS and other radical Islamic terrorists — such as it is — has entered the Twilight Zone. That is the only explanation for Obama’s increasingly bizarre tactics and statements against these existentially dangerous savages.

• After 15 months of airstrikes against ISIS, America finally managed to bomb 116 trucks that smuggle oil out of ISIS territory, generating some $1.2 million in clandestine cash daily. That sum buys plenty of knives for beheadings, Kalashnikovs for mass shootings, and plastique for suicide vests. France now leads the War on Terror, in the wake of ISIS’s November 13 massacre in Paris. Obama must have reckoned that, with France bombing from in front, he might as well bomb from behind.

But even this is kinder and gentler.

“This is our first strike against tanker trucks,” Operation Inherent Resolve Colonel Steve Warren told journalists from Baghdad on November 18. (A November 23 raid destroyed 238 more trucks.) Then he added this detail:

“To minimize risks to civilians, we conducted a leaflet drop prior to the strike.” Each leaflet reads, “Get out of your trucks now, and run away from them.” It continues, “Warning: Airstrikes are coming. Oil trucks will be destroyed. Get away from your oil trucks immediately. Do not risk your life.”

Reminiscing after World War II, former chief of staff Gen. George C. Marshall remarked: “With Chennault in China and MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific, I sure had a combination of temperament.” If Marshall had also recalled the European Theater, he doubtless would have included George Patton among the exasperating commanders he had to manage.

Winston Groom is a best-selling author of both fiction and nonfiction, including accounts of the Civil War battles of Shiloh and Vicksburg and, most recently, “The Aviators,” a look at the trio of Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle and Charles Lindbergh during the early years of flight. In “The Generals,” he sets his sights on Patton, MacArthur and Marshall. “Their stories are linked as closely as any other set of generals in history,” he writes, “and when they died they passed into legend.”

One strength of Mr. Groom’s effort is the portrait he draws of these men in their formative years. He is a good storyteller, and after a chapter devoted to the ancestors and early years of each, he weaves together their exploits on the Western Front in World War I. There are gripping tales of Patton urging tanks forward and MacArthur assuring his superiors that he will take an enemy position or his name will head the casualty list. Marshall, meanwhile, was learning the intricacies of operational planning, initially with the 1st Infantry Division and later with Gen. John J. Pershing’s headquarters in France. Pershing, commanding the American Expeditionary Forces, had close ties to all three men, including romantic interests in Patton’s sister and the heiress Louise Cromwell Brooks, MacArthur’s future first wife.

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and—Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favor, able interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other trangressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Kerry Calls Russia to Urge ‘Calm and Dialogue’ with Turks After Shootdown By Bridget Johnson
Secretary of State John Kerry hopped on the phone with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, today to “offer condolences” for the “loss of life in yesterday’s incident with Turkey,” the State Department said, referring to Turkey’s shootdown of a Russian jet that Ankara said crossed into Turkish airspace.

Kerry “urged for calm and for dialogue between Turkish and Russian officials in the days ahead.”

“He also stressed the need for both sides not to allow this incident to escalate tensions between their two countries or in Syria,” the State Department added in a readout of the call. “The Secretary underscored the importance of progress toward a diplomatic solution in Syria continuing unabated.”

That comes on the heels of a call President Obama had with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday in which Obama “expressed U.S. and NATO support for Turkey’s right to defend its sovereignty.”

Pink Floyd is an English rock band formed in London. Roger Waters, the black belt Israel basher and boycotter is their lead singer. rsk

WE DON’T NEED NO EDUCATION BY PINK FLOYD

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey teacher leave them kids alone
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall

With even Obama supporters now questioning the deal with Iran, with the revelation Iranian leaders made a side deal with the IAEA, with recognition that al Qaeda has a sanctuary in Iran, with the U.S. excluded from the inspection team, with leaders in Iran shouting “death to America” and with the Supreme Leader indicating that Israel must be “annihilated,” why does President Obama insist on this arrangement?

From a perspective that is coming into focus, President Obama and his colleagues see themselves as the Sykes and Picoh of the Middle East. That is to say, like members of the British and French foreign offices in 1916 who drew lines in the sand creating states out of the dismembered Ottoman Empire, President Obama regards the nuclear deal with Iran as a way to redraft Middle East geography and, simultaneously, have the U.S. withdraw from the region.

If Iran is in possession of nuclear weapons – a pathway created through the “deal” – it becomes the regional “strong horse,” a condition that justifies U.S. withdrawal. While there is the recognition Sunni nations will object to this hegemonic status for Iran, the Obama team contends that Iran will be a more reliable (Obama used the word “responsible”) partner in stabilizing the Middle East than Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan. That is a strategic calculation that many regard as misguided. Why would you put Iran, the major state sponsor of terrorism, in a position to stabilize a region it has helped to destabilize? This is the question that many, including Democratic officials, are asking.

I couldn’t agree more with my friend Charlie Cooke that the ineffable John Kerry’s remarks comparing January’s Charlie Hebdo massacre to the November 13 Paris terror attacks were despicable. What I don’t get is why anyone is surprised by Kerry’s sentiments. They perfectly reflect seven years of Obama-administration policy aimed at eroding the First Amendment in order to accommodate Islamic blasphemy standards.

As has been widely reported, Kerry initially said there was a “legitimacy” to the mass-murder of cartoonists and writers who satirized the prophet Mohammed. Instantly realizing he’d gone too far, Kerry watered “legitimacy” down to “a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, ‘Okay, they’re really angry because of this and that.’” By contrast, Kerry claimed, there really was no “this and that” to rationalize what happened in Paris November 13, a terrorist strike he described as “absolutely indiscriminate” and not done “to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong.”

Of course, this contention is as absurd as it is offensive. Both sets of terrorist atrocities were driven by Islamic supremacist ideology.

Kerry distorted the Charlie Hebdo episode as if it had involved only a reprisal over cartoons lampooning Islam. In fact, the jihadists shot and wounded a random jogger (consistent with the call to jihad against non-Muslims), killed a police officer (consistent with the ISIS call to assassinate Western security personnel as part of that jihad), took hostages at a kosher market, killing four of them (consistent with anti-Semitism, a core theme of Islamic supremacism), and took hostages at a printing factory (again, consistent with the call to jihad).

Captivity, the newly translated novel by the Hungarian writer György Spiró, offers a good reminder not to judge a book by its cover. When I first saw this particular cover, with its black background, stark white typography, and surreally floating sculptured bust, the imagery—combined with the book’s Central European provenance, gloomy title, and Jewish focus—made me think that this would be a brooding modernist enigma of a book, perhaps along the lines of Imre Kertész’s Holocaust fictions. In fact, Captivity turns out to be just the opposite—a sprawling (more than 800 pages), picturesque, old-fashioned historical novel about the Roman Empire, in the showy tradition of Ben Hur and I, Claudius. In fact, both Jesus and Claudius, the main characters of those books, make cameo appearances in Captivity, as do other boldface names of the 1st century CE, including Caligula, Pontius Pilate, and Philo of Alexandria. What sets Captivity apart is that it makes the rare attempt to view all these historical phenomena—from the rise of Christianity to the flamboyant vices of the emperors—through a distinctively Jewish lens.

Considering how little we know about the ancient world in general, the first century CE is a surprisingly well-documented era. In creating his pageant of Jewish Rome, Spiró can draw on the Roman histories of Tacitus and Suetonius, the Jewish writings of Josephus and Philo, and the Christian New Testament—in addition to the Talmud, which preserves many features of Second Temple-era Jewish life. These sources tell us about three distinct Roman cultures, each focused on a different metropolis: the grand politics of imperial Rome, the religious fervor of Jerusalem, and the ethnic strife of commercial Alexandria. Accordingly, these are the cities in which Captivity is set, in the period roughly spanning the death of Jesus, in 33 CE, and the destruction of the Temple, in the year 70.

It seems the world — the Western part of it at least — has been infected with a galloping derangement that insists on viewing events, motives and one particular creed not as they are but as so many would wish them to be. Get that straitjacket ready! I must be a suitable case for treatment.

Visiting an asylum for people who, to put it delicately, have intellectual deficits is a salutary experience. I entered a large open space where the inmates were gathering for communal recreation. It was hard to take it in at first, until my mind became more focused. Let me give you a taste of this delusional world inside the asylum.

A tall, careworn chap was plaintively explaining to anyone who would listen that there was a rationale for the Charlie Hebdo murders. The pen is mightier than the sword, he said with a grimace, as though this cliche were decisive and proved his point beyond all doubt. It’s a setback is all, his buddy euphoniously intoned when told of the latest massacre in Paris. He broke into song and a soft-shoe shuffle. ♫ You say Islam and I say ISAL. You say Muslim and I say peaceful. Islam – ISAL, Muslim – peaceful, let’s call the whole thing off, I needs me a round of golf.♫. It was completely unnerving.