Today In History - 11 June: Troy Is Sacked, Stalin Purges, Buddhists Burn, & Justice For McVeigh

Art: Procession Of The Trojan Horse Into Troy, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
1184 BC – Troy is sacked and burned after the Greeks use the ruse of the Trojan Horse to gain entry into the city. This brought an end to the Trojan War which had begun over a decade earlier when Paris of Troy stole Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. Some 300 years later, these events would be famously memorialized by Homer in the Iliad. Other related works include Homer's Odyssey, Virgil's The Aeneid, and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.

1429 – St. Joan of Arc leads the French in their first sustained - and successful - offensive in a generation, engaging the Enlish at the Battle of Jargeau during the Hundred Years' War.

1509 – Henry VIII of England marries his first wife, the beautiful and cultured Catherine of Aragon, widow of Henry's brother, Arthur. Their marriage lasted 24 years and produced six children, though only one that survived, Mary I. Henry, fixated on producing a male heir, would petition the Pope for an annulment, ultimately leading to England's break with the Catholic Church.
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1776 – The Continental Congress appoints Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston to the Committee of Five to draft a declaration of independence.

1837 – The penultimate donneybrook, the Broad Street Riot occurres in Boston when a company of Yankee firefighters met with an Irish funeral procession on Broad Street. Fighting broke out, and eventually 1000 people were included in the melee, though no one was killed.

1937 – As part of the Great Purge that reached its height in 1937 and 1938, Joseph Stalin brutally repressed and terrorized the people and leadership of the Soviet Union in order to insure unquestioning loyalty. On this date in 1937, Stalin had eight of his top army leaders executed. According to official Soviet archives, in 1937 and 1938, the NKVD detained 1,548,367 victims, of whom 681,692 were shot - an average of 1,000 executions a day. According to historians, the best estimate of deaths brought about by Soviet Repression during these two years is the range 950,000 to 1.2 million.

1938 – During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Battle of Wuhan starts and the Chinese Nationalist government creates the 1938 Yellow River flood to halt Japanese forces. 500,000 to 900,000 civilians are killed.

1963 – Alabama Governor George Wallace stood at the door of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in an attempt to block two black students,Vivian Malone and James Hood, from attending that school. Later in the day, accompanied by federalized National Guard troops, they were able to register.

1963 – In what became memorialized in a horrific photo, Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burns himself to death with gasoline in a busy Saigon intersection to protest the lack of religious freedom in South Vietnam.

1970 – After being appointed on May 15, Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington officially receive their ranks as U.S. Army Generals, becoming the first females to do so.

2001 – Justice is finally done when Timothy McVeigh is executed for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 and injured more than 800.


Births

1572 – Ben Jonson, English dramatist whose Ode To The Belly is a hilarious poem on the joys of obesity. Find it here.

1776 – John Constable, English painter (d. 1837)

1864 – Richard Strauss, German composer and conductor (d. 1949)

1879 – Max Schreck, German actor of Nosferatu fame.

1910 – Jacques-Yves Cousteau, French explorer and inventor (d. 1997)

1933 – Gene Wilder, American actor

1959 – Hugh Laurie, English actor and comedian


Deaths

1488 – King James III of Scotland

1727 – King George I of Great Britain (b. 1660)

1796 – Samuel Whitbread, English brewer and politician (b. 1720)

1879 – Prince Willem of the Netherlands, disgraced heir apparent to the Dutch throne. Sex, drinking, gambling, incest - this story has it all.

1979 – John Wayne, American actor (b. 1907)

2001 – Timothy McVeigh, American terrorist (by execution (b. 1968)


Holidays and observances

Kamehameha Day, official state holiday of Hawaii, in honor of its first monarch, celebrated with floral parades, hula competition, and festivals

And in ancient Rome, today was the celebration of Matralia in honor of Mater Matuta, a goddess associated with the sea harbors and ports, where there were other temples to her. Her festival of Matralia, celebrated on June 11 in her temple at the Forum Boarium, was only for single women or women in their first marriage, so sort of a girls day out in the ancient world.

Don't miss Rougeclassicism for their ancient world dates in history.

And for the most interesting in links of current event import, see Larwyn's Linx at Doug Ross's Journal.

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"Senator, You're No Jack Kennedy"

The title of this post is from a memorable quote from the late Sen. Lloyd Bensten, eviscerating Dan Quayle during a VP debate. But it could equally be the words of James Piereson, the author of a book on JFK, Camelot and the Cultural Revoltion, as he responds to those on the left who equate Barack Obama to JFK. Indeed, as he notes, the progressives of today have nothing in common with the hawkish liberals of old.
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This from Mr. Pierson in an e-mail posted at the NRO:

. . . Theodore Sorenson, JFK's close aide and speechwriter, has said recently that Barack Obama is the natural successor to President Kennedy because of his skills as a speaker and his message of "hope and change." This idea has been augmented by endorsements of Obama by Ted and Caroline Kennedy.

. . . From the standpoint of ideas and philosophy, there is little in Obama to remind us of JFK. Kennedy was a firm cold warrior who believed in the American mission in the world. His memorable inaugural address was entirely about foreign policy and the cause of liberty. Kennedy, in fact, tried to run to the right of Richard Nixon in 1960, blaming the Eisenhower administration for a "missile gap," the embarrassment of the Castro revolution next door, and the downing of a reconnaissance aircraft over the Soviet Union in May, 1960. He brought up comparisons to Chamberlain, Munich, and "appeasement." On the domestic front, while JFK is viewed as a hero of the civil rights movement, in fact he came around gradually to support a civil rights bill in 1963. Kennedy was in fact a cautious politician, unwilling to get too far ahead of public opinion on this critical issue.

The reason that JFK left such a powerful imprint on the liberal movement had little to do with his actual policies, which were generally centrist. President Kennedy’s legacy was more cultural than directly political: he spoke beautifully, (thanks to Sorenson) he drew on images from literature and classical culture, he was a young president in the midst of a burgeoning youth culture, he was a highly attractive man, he had a beautiful family, he was rich, he was an author, he hung around with Harvard professors and Hollywood stars and starlets. He practiced the old politics but with a decidedly new cultural approach. Lyndon Johnson was much more of a liberal in terms of policy, but his cultural persona (in contrast to Kennedy's) was of the old school.

This latter fact is the reason that some observers seen Sen Obama as the new incarnation of JFK. He seems culturally to be of an avante garde, like JFK, though his policies internationally and domestically have little in common with the late President's. This says less about Sen Obama or about JFK than about contemporary liberalism, which is far more concerned with style and one's posture toward the world than about actual policies.

Read the entire post. Just to add, in his three years in office, JFK oversaw a vast expansion of our military involvement in Vietnam, the attempt at a coup in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs invasion, repeated failed assassination attempts of Fidel Castro, and the assassination of South Vietnam's President, Diem. It would be hard to find a more complete contrast between two individuals on foreign policy than Obama and JFK.

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Cut, Run & Dominoes

Aurthur Hermann, writing at the WSJ, gives us a retrospective on the laundry list of effects resulting from the America's legislated surrender in Viet Nam and then the complete refusal to further support the South Vietnamese government. As he says, America cannot afford another retreat.

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This from Mr. Hermann in the WSJ:

Most people have never heard of Operation Frequent Wind, which ended on April 30, 1975, 33 years ago. But every American has seen pictures of it: the Marine helicopters evacuating the last U.S. personnel from the embassy in Saigon, hours before communist tanks rolled into the city. Thousands of desperate Vietnamese gathered at the embassy gate and begged to be taken with them. Others committed suicide.

Those scenes are a chilling reminder of what happens when a great power decides to cut and run. Two of the three presidential candidates are proposing to do just that in Iraq. We need to remember what happened the last time we gave up on an unpopular foreign policy, not only in humanitarian terms but in terms of American power and prestige.

Actually, the U.S. had won the war in Vietnam on the battlefield, just as the surge has done today in Iraq. Over Easter 1972, South Vietnamese forces, backed by U.S. airpower, crushed the last communist offensive, killing nearly 100,000 North Vietnamese troops.

The North was forced to sign peace accords in Paris recognizing the Republic of South Vietnam. The last 2,500 U.S. support troops went home. What they left was a fragile but sustainable peace, and an elected government in Saigon that was growing stronger every month.

But with 160,000 North Vietnamese soldiers still in South Vietnam, keeping the South free was going to require continued U.S. help, especially air support and military equipment if the North ever attacked again.

Democrats and American public opinion, however, had had enough. Much like Iraq today, the vast majority of South Vietnam had been pacified. Its government was taking on difficult but essential political changes, including land reform. The Democratic-controlled Congress, however, did not want to hear about success. They assumed failure in Vietnam would complete their rout of the hated Richard Nixon, who was already out of office thanks to Watergate, and position them for victory in the 1976 presidential election.

Meanwhile, the American public had been conditioned by the media to see Vietnam as a failed policy, and taught that America had gotten itself in the middle of a "civil war" which the Vietnamese had to sort out themselves. Once the last American troops left Vietnam, public opinion would never tolerate re-entry into a war widely seen as a blunder and endless quagmire.

In early 1975 the communists launched a massive attack. President Gerald Ford asked for $1 billion in supplemental funds to help the South Vietnamese, and Congress refused. They had already pulled the plug on the U.S.-supported government of Lon Nol in Cambodia. Ford had no choice but to order the evacuation of remaining U.S. personnel.

After nearly two decades of devastating war and 58,000 American combat deaths, the U.S. left Southeast Asia. As the last helicopter lifted off from Saigon, the New York Times's Sydney Schanberg wrote an article with the title, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." And the Times's columnist Anthony Lewis asked, "what future could possibly be more terrible than the reality" of a war that had cost so much in lives and treasure?

With the North Vietnamese Communists and the Khmer Rouge taking over, the world was about to find out.

At least 65,000 Vietnamese were murdered or shot after "liberation" – the equivalent in terms of Vietnam's population at the time, of killing three-quarters of a million people in today's U.S. The new communist regime ordered somewhere between one- third to one-half of South Vietnam's population to pass through its "re-education" camps, where perhaps as many as 250,000 died of disease, starvation, or were worked to death (the last inmates were not released until 1986).

That number does not include the thousands of "boat people" who tried to flee the totalitarian nightmare of communist Vietnam, and perished at sea.

Cambodia's fate was even worse. At least one and a half million innocent Cambodians were butchered or starved to death in the Khmer Rouge's killing fields and re-education camps, put to death by a fanatical regime that believed that anyone who wore eyeglasses must have "bourgeois intellectual tendencies" and be shot.

The scale of moral collapse and suffering went beyond Indochina. The pullout had a ripple effect on U.S. power and prestige, just as the proponents of the so-called "domino theory" had warned. American foreign policy, crippled by remorse and self-doubt, stood helplessly as others rushed into the power vacuum.

Marxist-Leninist regimes emerged not only in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but in Ethiopia and Guinea Bissau (1974), Madagascar, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Angola (1975), Afghanistan (1978), and Grenada and Nicaragua (1979). Soviet troops were welcomed in Fidel Castro's Cuba for the first time since the 1962 missile crisis. Cuban troops traveled freely to Africa to prop up Marxist regimes there.

In 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini was able to establish his brutal theocratic rule over Iran, confident that America, having learned "the lessons of Vietnam," would never intervene. . . .

Read the entire article. I've always found it interesting that it was Democrats who got us into the Vietnam War in the first place, starting with Truman and then major increases in involvement, first under JFK than under LBJ with the Gulf of Tonkin incident leading to massive intervention. Yet, within a period of a few years, it was as if the Democrats absolved themselves of any responsiblity whatsoever and, indeed, by 1972 the war was being portrayed as a Republican albatros. That is a turn of events that still mystifies me.

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Assessing Ayman

Ayman al Zawahiri is al Qaedas’s second in command. He gave an interview to al Sahab in December, 2007, and, most recently, answered written questions in a kind of jihadi talk radio show. Both provide a wealth of information and insight into the mind of a man who is in equal measure a religious fanatic and psychopath.
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I've been going through Zawahiri's most recent communiques as time has allowed over the past week. They are worthwhile for spelling out the goals and intentions of al Qaeda, as well as for giving a window into the logic of a true Salafist:

1. Iraq remains al Qaeda’s central front:

As-Sahab: And what is the most important field in which this Mujahid vanguard is wrestling with the enemies of Islam?

Zawahiri: Iraq is the most important of these fields.

2. One of the points I have repeatedly made is that pulling out of Iraq would have dire long term consequences for our ability to conduct foreign policy and gather allies, particularly among nations threatened by radicals. Zawahiri thinks so too. He fully expects the U.S. to retreat from Iraq, repeatedly referring to Vietnam. He later explains that he forsees al Qaeda reasserting itself after America leaves Iraq and that the Anbar Awakening cannot keep al Qaeda out of Iraq without American support:

Zawahiri: And I also call on all Muslims to stop supporting the armed groups which have cooperated with the Americans against the Muslims and mujahideen. And I warn those individuals from among the armed factions who have been involved in cooperating with the occupation against the mujahideen that history is recording everything, and that they will lose both their religion and life, and that the Americans will soon be departing - Allah permitting - and won't keep defending them forever. And let them look at the fate of America's agents in Vietnam and the fate of the Shah of Iran, and intelligent is he who learns from other's mistakes.
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That is why those who conspire against the Jihad and Mujahideen in Lebanon with American weapons, Zionist collusion and Saudi money must know that they are digging their graves with their own hands, and that the Americans and Jews will not defend them, because they are looking for those who will defend them, and whoever doubts this should remember Vietnam and look at Iraq and Afghanistan."
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I expect the Jihadi influence to spread after the Americans’ exit from Iraq, and to move towards Jerusalem (with Allah’s permission). As for the militias mentioned, they have failed to eliminate the Jihad with the help of what is called the strongest power in the history of mankind, so will they succeed by themselves or with the help of Iran?

3. Zawahiri, whose al Qaeda organization that regularly slaughters women and children of whatever faith, has the same difficulty with veracity that our own politicians seem to have. When confronted with some very angry questions as to why al Qaeda was slaughtering Muslims in Algeria and in Iraqi marketplaces, Zawahiri claims that al Qaeda kills no "innocents" while, at the same time, accusing the U.S. of taking human shields.

1/1: The questioner Mudarris Jughrafiya [Geography Teacher] asks, "Excuse me, Mr. Zawahiri, but who is it who is killing with Your Excellency’s blessing the innocents in Baghdad, Morocco and Algeria? Do you consider the killing of women and children to be Jihad? I challenge you and your organization to do that in Tel Aviv. Why have you – to this day – not carried out any strike in Israel? Or is it easier to kill Muslims in the markets? Maybe it is necessary [for you] to take some geography lessons, because your maps only show the Muslims’ states."

My reply to Mudarris Jughrafiya is that we haven’t killed the innocents, not in Baghdad, nor in Morocco, nor in Algeria, nor anywhere else. And if there is any innocent who was killed in the Mujahideen’s operations, then it was either an unintentional error, or out of necessity as in cases of al-Tatarrus [taking of human shields by the enemy]. . . .

I would like to clarify to the brother questioner that we don’t kill innocents: in fact, we fight those who kill innocents. Those who kill innocents are the Americans, the Jews, the Russians and the French and their agents. Were we insane killers of innocents as the questioner claims, it would be possible for us to kill thousands of them in the crowded markets, but we are confronting the enemies of the Muslim Ummah . . .

The scale of untruth on this one is amazing, and it is obviously not lost on Muslims in the Middle East - a reason why al Qaeda's popularity is in a tail spin in the Middle East. As a side note, what appears to be going on here is actually pretty typical among Salafists like Zawahiri. They routinely engage in Koranic linguistic contortions to justify their actions. And in that vein, the word "innocent" has been so interpreted as to mean anything the Salafist’s want it to mean. A little later on, Zawahiri adds:

"It is not hidden from you that the enemy intentionally takes up positions in the midst of the Muslims, for them to be human shields for him. And here I emphasize to my brothers the Mujahideen to beware of expanding the issue of al-Tatarrus, and to make sure that their operations targeting the enemies are regulated by the regulations of the Shari’ah and as far as possible from the Muslims.

Evidently, U.S. soldiers handing out candy and the like to Iraqi children classifies the children as human shields during the seconds in which that occurs. Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah regularly make use of human shields. Zawahiri does not not address that practice, but I assume that it is justified both on some passage in the Koran that likewise has been interpreted beyond the bounds of any reasonable logic.

4. One of the Muslim traditions has been that if you are allowed to live in a foreign land, there is a covenant of security and that no Muslim should carry out attacks in the country in which they are guests. This was the deal with the devil that kept Britian, home to the world's most radical Islamists, free of major terrorism through 7/7. Whatever the tradition may have been, Zawahiri no longer honors it:

I don’t believe that the entry visa of the infidels is a security contract, . . .

Later, Zawahiri goes beyond that, noting that such a visa is no excuse for refraining from "obligatory jihad against them."

5. Zawahiri is wholly opposed to democratic rule, seeing a theocracy as the only legitimate form of government. He is sharply critical of Hamas for taking part in the democracy in Gaza as well for the Muslim Brotherhood for their choice of attempting to gain power through existing political systems:

[T]he methodologies of the jihad movements must be founded on the rule of the Sharia, not on the rule of the majority. . . .

First: HAMAS abandoned the right of the Shari’ah to rule because it – contrary to the slogan "the Quran is our constitution" – agreed to enter the elections, then come to power on the basis of the secular basic law which does not rule according to the Shari’ah. This is one of the disasters of the Muslim Brothers. . . .

6. Zawahiri’s views of Moqtada al Sadr:

Muqtada al-Sadr is one of Iran's lieutenants in Iraq. . . . And the skirmishes which take place between him and the Americans are American-Iranian disputes over expansion of influence.

7. Jihad is an individual obligation so long as any piece of land once ruled by Islamists during the course of history is occupied and/or ruled by non-Muslims. And it should be noted that this includes much of Spain. Zawahiri takes the UN to task and deems it a legitimate target because it considers Andalusia – conquered in 718 by Muslim invaders, reconquered by Christians in 1248 – a part of Spain.

. . . [J]ihad in Iraq and the rest of the Islamic lands is obligatory against the invaders and Crusaders and their agents so everyone who is hostile to Islam and Muslims and allies himself with the Crusader invaders against the Muslims whether Iraqi or non-Iraqi must be confronted and jihad waged against him. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), (who) fought his polytheistic people, was hostile to them and invoked Allah against them as did the Companions (with whom Allah is pleased) and when the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) chose to ransom the prisoners of Badr, Allah sent down on him a verse of the Koran, in which he reproached him (peace and prayers of Allah be upon him), 'It is not for a Prophet to have captives until he inflicts great slaughter (or is empowered) in the land. You (O Muslims) desire the goods of this world while Allah desires for you the hereafter. And Allah is Mighty and Wise' (8:67) (Qu’ran verses; Al-Anfal 8:67).

. . . The United Nations is an enemy of Islam and Muslims: it is the one which codified and legitimized the setting up of the state of Israel and its taking over of the Muslims’ lands. It is the one which considers . . . Ceuta and Melilla inseparable parts of Crusader Spain.

8. And lastly, Zawahiri clearly spells out al Qaeda's intentions for jihad, quoting Osama bin Laden:

"I also reassure our people in Palestine in particular that we will expand our Jihad – Allah permitting – and will neither recognize the borders of Sykes-Picot nor the rulers whom colonialism put in place. We – by Allah – haven’t forgotten you after the events of the 11th, for can the man forget his family? But following those blessed raids which struck the head and heart of global unbelief and the biggest ally of the Zionist entity, America, we are today occupied with attacking and fighting it and its agents, especially in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Islamic Maghreb and Somalia. And if it and its agents are defeated in Iraq – Allah permitting – then it won’t be long before the armies of the Mujahideen set out, brigades followed by brigades, from Baghdad, al-Anbar, Mosul, Diyala and Salahuddin to bring back to us Hittin, Allah permitting.

"And we won’t recognize any state for the Jews, even if on one hand span of the land of Palestine, the way all the Arab rulers did when they adopted the governor of Riyadh’s initiative a few years ago. And it wasn’t enough for them to commit that major catastrophe until the people recently saw the shepherdess of surrender herd them in flocks to Annapolis, doing with them what the Americans did with their forefathers before, but not for them to be sold: no, for them to sell, and sell what? Sell Jerusalem, al-Aqsa Mosque and the blood of the martyrs, and there is neither power nor strength except with Allah. May Allah do to them as they deserve. . . .

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