RUTHFULLY YOURS

op-culture has never seen anything like this: Unprecedented ratings, a cult-following without a rival and the kind of events no other show has ever pulled off,” gushed Troy Smith in Cleveland.com on October 13th. “This past Friday night, ‘The Walking Dead’ drew more than 13,000 zombie-crazed fans to Madison Square Garden in New York City for a special premiere of Season 6.” This degree of enthusiasm for what barely counted as a B-movie genre a generation ago is one of the strangest, and most revealing, features of American popular culture.

In the 1930s, when Universal Studios brought out its classic monster films, one out of 300 features was a horror film. Monsters were different back then: exotic imports, party-crashers who clearly did not belong. We humans always guessed their hidden weaknesses, then drove a stake through their hearts. Towards the end of the Vietnam War, though, the monsters began to win for the first time. Satan successfully begat an heir in “Rosemary’s Baby,” and the devil’s child wiped out the competition in The Omen.

Ten years ago the horror genre, thrillers with an expressly supernatural element, supplied one out of 25 film industry products. By 2013 the proportion had risen to one in eight. Horror films touch a number of sore points in the American psyche. Vampires embody a perverse eroticism, which Anne Rice was tasteless enough to make explicit. Satanic apocalypse stories address a more generalized fear. The Frankenstein monster and his emulators speak to our fear of technology. Intelligent scripts and artful acting occasionally have found their way into these themes.

Whatever else was accomplished, the congressional hearings on Benghazi last month were a reminder that the Obama administration’s Libyan expedition failed. Libya has been in turmoil since the beginning of the Libyan civil war in 2011. American airstrikes and a no-fly zone helped a mix of moderate and Islamist groups topple Moammar Qaddafi’s brutal regime in 2011, but the country is no more stable. Libya descended into civil war again in 2014, with the internationally recognized government fighting for control of the country against Ansar al-Sharia and the Islamist New General National Congress.

The situation is much worse today. As of October 2015, the Islamic State (IS) has taken military control of the area around Sirte, Qaddafi’s birthplace. Sirte lies along the Libyan coastline, positioned between the major ports of Tripoli and Benghazi. The Islamic State now has full control of a strategically positioned coastal area in an unstable country that has become a proxy battlefield for Middle Eastern powers, and through which millions of refugees from Africa might be allowed to pass on their way to Europe.

On November 19th, Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain and Senator Ben Cardin expressed concern over what they fear is an apparently weakening relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan. The letter noted the Obama administration’s lack of arms transfers to Taiwan for the past four years, particularly as the PRC’s power rises on the high seas. With Chinese aggression increasing, especially in the South and East China Seas, and Obama’s term drawing to a close the time is right to restate the case for American support of Taiwan, and to chart a wise course of action for invigorating the ROC’s ability to defend itself.

The relationship between U.S. and Taiwan dates to the 1930s, when Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalist Kuomintang controlled the mainland. The U.S. supported the Nationalist Chinese in their war against Imperial Japan. The U.S. imposed an embargo on Japan in 1940 because of its invasion of mainland China, and some of the first U.S. combat operations in World War II supported the Nationalists. The U.S. unofficially sponsored an air wing called the American Volunteer Group to support the Nationalists in the summer of 1941. Known as the Flying Tigers, this unit was critical to the Nationalists’ defense in late 1941 and early 1942, and gave the U.S. and its allies critical breathing room to respond to Japanese offensives in the Western Pacific.

“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.

Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And, while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

At 7:53 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, the first assault wave of Japanese fighter planes attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, taking the Americans completely by surprise.

The first wave targeted airfields and battleships. The second wave targeted other ships and shipyard facilities. The air raid lasted until 9:45 a.m. Eight battleships were damaged, with five sunk. Three light cruisers, three destroyers and three smaller vessels were lost along with 188 aircraft. The Japanese lost 27 planes and five midget submarines which attempted to penetrate the inner harbor and launch torpedoes.

Three prime targets; the U.S. Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers, Lexington, Enterprise and Saratoga, were not in the harbor and thus escaped damage.

The casualty list at Pearl Harbor included 2,335 servicemen and 68 civilians killed, and 1,178 wounded. Over a thousand crewmen aboard the USS Arizona battleship were killed after a 1,760 pound aerial bomb penetrated the forward magazine causing catastrophic explosions.
Three days later, December 11th, Japan’s allies, Germany and Italy, both declared war on the United States. The U.S. Congress responded immediately by declaring war on them. Thus the European and Southeast Asian wars had become a global conflict with the Axis Powers; Japan, Germany, Italy and others, aligned against the Allied Powers; America, Britain, Soviet Russia and others.

President Obama’s Sunday night speech was about three-quarters of what the cynics and his critics expected. The lone bits of good news were the president’s belated acknowledgement that the Fort Hood shooting was terrorism – not “workplace violence” – and that he didn’t announce any new executive orders dealing with gun control.

For starters, the optics of this speech were very strange – why stand in front of the desk in the Oval Office? Did he get poked or get makeup in his left eye right before he went on air? He seemed to be squinting. The only other time the president addressed the country on Sunday night, he announced the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. One expected something new, groundbreaking, or different. Instead, he offered the same proposals and same arguments.

At this point in his presidency, Obama speaks with only one tone, the slightly exasperated and sometimes not-merely-slightly exasperated “adult in the room” who constantly has to correct his fellow Americans, who are always flying off the handle, calling for options that “aren’t who we are,” betraying our values, and so on. He’s always so disappointed in us.

At certain points, Obama sounded as if he was speaking to children. “The threat is real, but we will overcome it.” “We will not defeat it with tough talk, abandoning our values, or giving in to fear.” “We will prevail by being strong and smart.”

President Obama showed Sunday night that he realizes the growing threat from Islamist terror is a grave risk to his political standing in his last year in office. What he didn’t show is that he is willing to consider any changes to his failing strategy to defeat the threat from Islamic State.

The President’s 13-minute Oval Office speech, only the third of his tenure, at last acknowledged that last week’s attack in San Bernardino by a radicalized Islamist couple was an “act of terrorism.” It would have been hard for him to say otherwise after his own FBI director, James Comey, had admitted this reality on Friday. Mr. Obama was looking increasingly detached from reality, and the speech was an attempt to recover from his claims that the growing jihadist threat is “contained.”

Yet the President devoted most of his speech to defending the strategy he has pursued for 16 months against Islamic State without much success. He cited his bombing campaign, but he didn’t mention that the vast majority of sorties drop no bombs because of the limits he has placed on the military. He mentioned the recent allied bombing of Islamic State’s oil infrastructure, but then why has the U.S. waited so long to take this initiative?

This must be Obama’s idea of gun control for the military.

Actually, it’s quite serious. The Air Force chief of staff, General Mark Welsh, said in a statement that we’ve dropped 20,000 bombs and missiles on ISIS since the war began 15 months ago and the supplies are not being replenished at a fast enough rate.

CNN:

As the U.S. ramps up its campaign against the Islamist terror group in Iraq and Syria, the Air Force is now “expending munitions faster than we can replenish them,” Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh said in a statement.

“B-1s have dropped bombs in record numbers. F-15Es are in the fight because they are able to employ a wide range of weapons and do so with great flexibility. We need the funding in place to ensure we’re prepared for the long fight,” Welsh said in the statement. “This is a critical need.”

The bombing campaign has left the U.S. Air Force with what an Air Force official described as munitions depot stocks “below our desired objective.”

1. Chanukah’s historical context according to the four Books of the Maccabees, The Scroll of Antiochus and The War of the Jews by Joseph Ben Mattityahu (Josephus Plavius): In 175 BCE, the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus (IV) Epiphanies of Syria (one third of the disintegrated Greek Empire) wished to exterminate Judaism and forcibly convert Jews to Hellenic values, suspecting that the Jews were allies of his chief rival, Egypt. In 169 BCE, upon his return to Syria from a war against Egypt, Antiochus (IV) devastated Jerusalem, massacred Jews, forbade the practice of Judaism and desecrated the Temple. The 167 BCE Jewish rebellion featured the Hasmonean (Maccabee) family: Mattityahu, a priest from the town of Modi’in, and his five sons, Yochanan, Judah, Shimon, Yonatan and Elazar. The heroic, creative battle tactics of the Maccabees, were consistent with the reputation of Jews as superb warriors, who were frequently hired as mercenaries by Egypt, Syria, Rome and other global and regional powers. The battles of the Maccabees inspired the Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire from the battle against Pompey in 63 BCE through the end of the Bar Kokhba Rebellion in 135 CE.

2. Israel’s Founding Father, David Ben Gurion: “The struggle of the Maccabees was one of the most dramatic clashes of civilizations in human history…. The Maccabees overcame one of the most magnificent spiritual, political and military challenges in Jewish history due to the spirit of the people, rather than the failed spirit of the establishment ….” (Uniqueness and Destiny, pp 20-22, Ben Gurion, IDF Publishing, 1953).

3. Chanukah has been a universal role model of national and religious liberation struggle against all odds, the victory of principle-driven faith and liberty over convenience-driven cynicism and opportunism, tenacious optimism over pessimism.

President Obama sold his nuclear deal with Iran with promises that the accord would be based on “unprecedented verification,” and this week we were reminded of how much that promise was worth. Witness the latest report on Iran’s nuclear program from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The IAEA is the U.N. outfit that is supposed to monitor Iran’s compliance with the agreement, which requires Tehran to answer the agency’s questions on its past nuclear work in order to obtain sanctions relief. On Wednesday the agency produced its “final assessment”—the finality here having mostly to do with the U.N. nuclear watchdog giving up hope of ever getting straight answers.

Hence we learn that “Iran did not provide any clarification” regarding experiments the agency believes it conducted on testing components of nuclear components at its military facility at Parchin. “The information available to the Agency, including the results of the sampling analysis and the satellite imagery, does not support Iran’s statements on the purpose of the building,” says the report. “The Agency assesses that the extensive activities undertaken by Iran since February 2012 at the particular location of interest to the Agency seriously undermined the Agency’s ability to conduct effective verification.”