A few days ago, I, your humble servant, flew from LAX to Denver and from Denver to (as I thought) Fargo, North Dakota. The best part of the trip by far was sitting next to my beautiful and saintly wife. The second best part was meeting an astoundingly gorgeous Fox News fan named Sara Bard at my gate at LAX. Her husband owns an Italian restaurant in Nashville. She loves Cavuto and she’s a knockout. How bad can it be? The trip went great until we got on our little Embraer to Fargo–and the Embraer was in no way the problem.
For those of you in Washington, D.C. today, I’ve got a deal for you — free empanadas. For breakfast, go to the Capitol South metro station. For lunch, head to Farragut Square. Did I mention they are free? The empanadas will be from the food truck, DC Empanadas . You’ll get coffee and other beverages too. This is so exciting and long overdue. Our sister publication, Human Events , is going through a whole sale makeover and relaunch today. It is important and I am excited about it. I have seen the new site and printed page. They are gorgeous. Why all the fuss? Because Ronald Reagan’s favorite newspaper is headed back into actual, full time news gathering and generation. If you ask me, we charting a redirected course away from one of the singularly major, yet unheralded, accomplishments of President Bill Clinton. You can read that last sentence again. Let me explain. One of my great laments in the past few years has been about one of Bill Clinton’s least heralded accomplishments — the destruction of the conservative movement. As I noted in in Time a few months ago, Prior to Clinton, the conservative movement existed in a symbiotic relationship with the Republican Party but had a separate culture because of the need to build coalitions with conservative Democrats who shared their policy goals. During the early years of the Clinton presidency, leading up to 1994, scores of conservative Democrats became Republicans. By the time George W. Bush arrived in Washington, the conservative movement had fully moved to within the Republican Party. Conservative Democrats had walked across the aisle, making bipartisan outreach unnecessary. By the the midpoint of Bush’s presidency, people were talking nonironically about “Big Government conservatives,” which before Clinton’s term would have been merely Republicans who put party ahead of principle. As George Bush left office, conservatives who had seen his father put David Souter on the Supreme Court were championing Harriet Miers, fighting one another over immigration policy, supporting TARP, okaying the saving of General Motors and turning a polite blind eye to Bush’s claim that he had to kill the free market to save it. (Read the rest here ) When all this happened, many conservative publications drifted slowly, slowly toward more opinion than news. Besides, with George Bush in the White House after January of 2001, conservatives needed defenses. Defenses come most easily from opinion. Human Events , like many other conservative outlets, still did news, but more and more it was news analysis and opinion. Today, Ronald Reagan’s favorite paper gets back to hard news. Sure, it will be news with a conservative world view and a clear editorial line, but news nonetheless. As a guy with a 50,000 watt microphone on the most listened to talk radio station in the country, I absolutely look forward to routinely citing our sister publication’s news scoops and stories. If you are in D.C. today, be sure to pick up a hard copy. The redesigned print publication is gorgeous.
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3…2…1… Blast Off!
If one were to travel back in time to tell most observers of the events on the original Good Friday that the day would be remembered as “good,” they would have thought it a sick joke and you a madman. It was wall-to-wall awful. Judaism of the first centuries was a messiah-rejecting machine. One after another, would-be redeemers of Israel would amass a following, come into conflict with the authorities, and be killed or flee. Those followers that weren’t put to the sword would scatter, and it was back to square one. And on this day almost 2,000 years ago, it looked very much like the wheel of history had ground another one under. This time Rome had seemed more reluctant than usual. Its vassal ruler, Herod Antipas, and its Judean prefect, Pilate, passed Jesus around like a hot potato. Pilate had sought to punish him and then he appealed to the mob. Yet ultimately it was Rome’s right hand who gave the kill order. This is memorialized in the creed: “He was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered, died, and was buried…” That’s what Good Friday is about: suffering, death, burial — failure, really, and what we do about it. Jesus’ closest followers were betrayed, taken by surprise and scattered. Their likely leader Peter denied his association with this messiah so forcefully that any regrouping looked impossible. They had thought this man the anointed one, but his lonely, embarrassing death had proved otherwise. Crucifixion was a particularly heinous way to go: it was humiliation, torture, and slow suffocation wrapped into a neat, splintered wooden package. The condemned would be stripped down to nothing, or almost nothing, and nailed to a cross at the joints: wrists and ankles. The nails would exert constant pain and as the victim pressed on upper and then lower nails for relief, it would become more difficult and then impossible to breathe. All of this would take place in front of a taunting crowd. No wonder many today prefer to hurry past the events of Good Friday and think about Easter instead. That is a mistake, I think. For people who believe in the truth of the Gospel stories, today ought to be a day of prayer, of fasting, of scripture reading and somber reflection. Besides, those that hurry to Easter too quickly, might miss a few things. Like what? Here are a couple of lessons I’ve gleaned from Good Friday readings past: One, when the high priest Caiaphas
Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales stands accused of murdering 17 Afghani civilians in two different villages on the night of 11 March. From the charges themselves (which include six counts of assault, bringing the total number of civilians believed hurt to 23) we know the army believes it has sufficient evidence to support the charges of premeditated murder which, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, can carry the death penalty. And there is much we do not know. Bales’ civilian lawyer has said several times that his client has no memory of the events of that night, obviously thinking of an insanity plea. Under the UCMJ, that requires the defense to prove the insanity by “clear and convincing” evidence, a much lower standard than the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard by which Bales would or would not be found guilty. There is a cacophony of other facts we — and probably the defense and prosecution — still don’t know, and all will likely affect the results of the continuing investigation and probable trial. What did Bales say when he turned himself in after the incidents? What did he do when he supposedly returned to his base between the two killing sprees — if two there were — and did anyone speak to him or even know he was there? This is no “CSI Miami” episode. We don’t know if any bullets matching Bales’ weapons were recovered, what other forensic evidence there may be or what witnesses there may be who can positively identify Bales. The army has reportedly paid $50,000 in compensation to the family of each of the dead and $11,000 to each of the wounded. How does that affect the witnesses’ credibility? The ongoing investigation will continue for weeks or months after which an Article 32 hearing — the military equivalent of a grand jury — will be convened before a military judge. That hearing will result in a decision on whether Bales will be brought to trial. There is every reason to be confident in the military justice system. It is equal to or better than the civilian criminal justice system in every way, not the least of which is that the members of a court martial panel are drawn from the military not the random civilian population. Justice will be done and it must be our highest priority . The context of Bales’ case is important. First, this is not another My Lai. From everything we know now, this is the act of one man not a group or unit. Second, it does not appear to be a politically created media event such as the Fallujah shootings in Iraq years ago that resulted in the courts martial of several Marines, all of whom were acquitted. Third, it’s also nothing like some of the inevitable and trivial incidents in war, such as the widely reported case of some Marines urinating on Taliban corpses some months ago. This is different. This is, apparently, the wanton killing of civilians. There are other issues we fail to consider at our peril, and at great peril to our military. These things can happen even among the most well-rested, battle-ready troops. But too many of ours, as great as they are, do not fall into that category. I still have my notes of a conversation that occurred one day in Baghdad. I was speaking to the general commanding an infantry division. (I can’t name him because of the rules established for the interview.) After we talked about a whole bunch of other things, I asked him about the strain on the force of repeated deployments and the very tough operating conditions in Iraq. He told me about a young captain who he said was one of his best young warriors. The man had been on active duty for only four years and was in the middle of his third year-long deployment, one in Afghanistan and then two in Iraq. The captain’s wife had left him and his personal life was a shambles. Yet he soldiered on, his general’s protective eye on him. That was in December 2005, about six and a half years ago. Our forces, already at war for four years, were wearing out. Now we’re past a decade and still at it. Too many Marines have served three, four or even more combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are many heroes among them, and many more who just keep slogging through endless patrols in the hills of Afghanistan because they are dedicated to each other and their nation’s chosen mission for them. But it’s not enough. Morale among our troops, we’re constantly told, is very high. And it probably is, especially among the fliers and the irrepressible special operations guys. But what about the grunts, the guys who slog through the heat every day on endless patrols, frequently fired on by Taliban and others but unable to return fire because absurd rules of engagement have to be complied with before anyone pulls a trigger or calls in an air strike? As I understand these rules, if a Taliban shoots at one of our guys and then runs away from his weapon, you can’t shoot him because he’s unarmed. The troops hear what their generals tell Congress. For how many years have we heard that our “progress” in Iraq and Afghanistan is “fragile and reversible”? If it’s fragile, why haven’t we done what it takes to solidify it? If it’s reversible, why are we sacrificing the lives and well-being of troops to an already-failed cause? I have another note from the Baghdad trip I need to relate. At a dinner hosted by Gen. Martin Dempsey, now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I sat with two young colonels whose names I shall omit. I asked them about how their troops were doing and what effects on them did they see from the long war in Iraq. How long was too long? One of them said, “If you want to break this army, break your word to it.” We promised our troops a mission they could accomplish, a war they could win and our comprehensive support. We’ve broken those promises in Iraq and Afghanistan. The futility of the way we have fought this war must be felt by everyone fighting it. As I’ve written here often, if you don’t fight a war in a manner calculated to win it decisively, you will lose it inevitably. The corollary to that is that you will also weaken the spirit and readiness of your forces to fight again. Not permanently. Americans are resilient, and our armed forces are still the best in the world. But it may be a long time before we can unbreak our promises to them and restore their readiness to fight again. No man can fight forever. It took Odysseus a decade to fight his way back from Troy. We are now in our eleventh year of war in Afghanistan. It’s now time to bring our men home.
Excerpt from:
No Man Can Fight Forever
THE BASIC HISTORY of World War II’s European front is (or should be) well known to every western adult and schoolchild. From the offensives that brought the majority of the European continent under Axis control, to the D-Day invasion and Operation Overlord, to Hitler’s unthinkable campaign to exterminate Jews and other “undesirables,” the general flow of the first half of the 1940s has been the subject of countless books, films, and documentaries. The flow of events leading up to that period is less well known, though, particularly with regard to the role countries like Austria played in the years, months, and days leading up to the second world war. When Hitler Took Austria shines a bright light on the events of the late 1930s in Austria from a very particular point of view: that of a chancellor’s son who came of age during the events he is recounting. As may be expected, a significant portion of this memoir focuses on the author’s father, Kurt von Schuschnigg the elder, both as Chancellor of Austria prior to the German invasion (1934–1938) and as a prisoner of Hitler’s government. The recollections in the book as a whole, and in the pre-Anschluss portion in particular, are made up of a precise intertwining of history and personal memory, and the result is a narrative that is as intellectually informative as it is personally engaging. Von Schuschnigg sets his own youthful exploits and learning experiences against the backdrop of serious situations and events that his father and his country faced in the run-up to WWII, from Austria’s long and painful climb back from the economic knockout punch delivered it after the first world war to the desperate attempts by the chancellor to keep his nation independent and secure in the face of the growing Nazi threat across the German border and at home. The picture of Chancellor von Schuschnigg drawn by the author is the same as the man whom Marquess Falcone Lucifero, chancellor of the Italian royal household, referred to late in the war as “the herald to Europe and the world” about the threat Hitler posed. Unfortunately, as Lucifero went on to lament, ”because of our own preoccupations, this continent turned a deaf ear…until it was too late. That [von Schuschnigg] was left standing alone is our collective shame” (p. 297). In fact, Schuschnigg the elder was left standing alone in more ways than one, having lost his wife in a car accident (which may have been the result of a Nazi plot [pp. 48, 52]) before being arrested by the invading Germans and shipped off to Gestapo headquarters in Vienna, where he was kept in solitary confinement and subjected to horrific treatment (p. 107), after which he was transferred to Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp along with his second wife Vera (whom he had married by proxy while imprisoned) and their young daughter. THE LION’S SHARE of the text after this is concerned solely with the exploits of the younger von Schuschnigg – and they are fascinating exploits indeed, seemingly recounted as vividly in print as they appear within the author’s memory. From being educated in Germany at the only school that didn’t refuse to turn him away because of his name, to the ever-increasing military and civilian workload borne by adolescents due to the long war’s human cost, the author’s teenage years seem to have lacked dull moments altogether. After receiving his “wartime diploma” (the term for the automatic graduation of all 17-year-old students in preparation for their conscription [p. 158]), von Schuschnigg avoided army duty by attending the Naval Academy and being stationed aboard a naval vessel in service of the very government that had annexed his homeland and was keeping his father, step-mother, and half-sister in a concentration camp. Following a tour of duty on the cruiser Prinz Eugen that saw him gravely wounded in an engine room explosion, von Schuschnigg deserted from the German military. The remainder of the text is primarily focused on his constant effort to stay one step ahead of the Gestapo while making it back first to Austria, and then safely out of Axis territory. Each scene is vividly presented, and the dialogue recalled from decades ago for this memoir is as sharp and noteworthy as the sights, sounds, and feelings the author describes. Further, the book’s subtitle, A Memoir of Heroic Faith , could very easily have been replaced by “A memoir of the man with the most over-worked guardian angel alive,” as the remarkability of von Schuschnigg’s own exploits is only matched by the amazing number of times that he avoids death and capture where others repeatedly fail, and by the number of people with whom his path crosses who are amazingly willing to lend assistance at great personal risk to themselves. THE AUTHOR’S RECOUNTING of the horrors witnessed at the concentration camp where his family was interned – which they were not subjected to due to their status, but which took place in plain view from the unshuttered windows of their small cabin at the camp’s edge – is but one example of this memoir’s deeply personal look at the horrors of Hitler’s Reich and the reign of terror he, his enablers, and his allies unleashed on Europe. As with all works that touch on this subject, most readers will likely search the text for some further assistance in understanding how peoples and nations went so mad as to allow and assist Adolf Hitler’s incomprehensibly evil acts. While its author cannot completely answer that question (and while portions of the book make that maddeningly distant answer seem farther away that ever), When Hitler Took Austria includes characters and dialogue that shed representative light on some mindsets of the time. For example, the reader meets several German officers who claim to think very little of Hitler, his plans, and his cult of personality, but who have taken up arms to serve the fatherland all the same. Additionally, a particularly illuminating conversation between von Schuschnigg and a school friend’s father is recounted, in which the author attempts several times to tell the Hitler supporter “the true state of affairs” at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (of whose existence it was illegal to speak) and in Hitler’s Reich. The latter doggedly refuses to believe that “the führer would…do anything that was unjust,” and instead insist that the concentration camps house only those who need protection or who make up “a hard-core criminal element that the National Socialist Party refused to put up with any longer” (pp. 146–47), and that Jews are only being held until they can be transported to countries which had offered them asylum. With the benefit of decades of hindsight, such naivete is too remarkable for words. A FAST-PACED, ENGAGING memoir that clearly communicates the author’s strength and suffering (both physical and mental) at Hitler’s tyrannical hands, When Hitler Took Austria outclasses a great number of its peers within the genre. The book is well-written, thanks in no small part to the narrator’s wife (and titular co-author) Janet, * who took on the large task of writing down her husband’s recollections, and whose first-person writing in the preface and acknowledgments should not be confused with the first-person narrative of the book itself. Further, its unique point of view and informative personal anecdotes make it a must-read for those interested in run-up to the war in Europe, as does its focus on events in Austria, a country whose story rarely receives the attention it deserves, perhaps due to the Austro-Hungarian role in WWI. Whatever the reason, When Hitler Took Austria makes up for a deficit of information and recognition on two fronts. The first is the story of Austria in the years before WWII, which has received precious little attention from the general public. The second, of a far less ephemeral nature, is the recognition this book provides for overworked and underappreciated guardian angels everywhere, without whom neither the author nor his family would have survived a fraction of the encounters recounted in this excellent book. When Hitler Took Austria: A Memoir of Heroic Faith by the Chancellor’s Son by Kurt and Janet von Schuschnigg (ISBN 9781586177096; 329 pages, 24 photographs; $24.95) is published by Ignatius Press. * Janet von Schuschnigg née Cook is also my lovely wife’s aunt.
The rest is here:
Over the Brink and Into the Abyss: A Memoir from World War II Austria
