The Anti-Che

By  Jay Nordlinger AUGUST 7, 2013 12:00 AM at NRO

Miami, Fla. — Felix Rodriguez seems fated to be linked to Che Guevara. This is not entirely just. Rodriguez loves freedom, and has worked tirelessly for it; Guevara loved tyranny, and worked tirelessly for it. “Two sides of the same coin,” some people say. Maybe — but only in the way that light and dark are two sides of the same coin. Rodriguez had a role in stopping Guevara. He was there, in the Bolivian mountains, in 1967. He was the last person to talk with Guevara — a man who did so much to tyrannize the country where Rodriguez was born, Cuba.

The captured Che, Felix is to the left. "One, Two, many Vietnams"? 

The revo continues.

The story of Guevara’s last day has been told many times, in many ways. Rodriguez told it in his 1989 memoir, Shadow Warrior. It is told in a book published earlier this year, Daybreak at La Higuera, by Rafael Cerrato, a Spaniard. La Higuera is the village where Guevara met his end. Cerrato’s main sources for the book are Rodriguez, who was working for the Central Intelligence Agency, and Dariel Alarcón Ramírez, whose nom de guerre was Benigno. A Cuban, Benigno was Guevara’s lieutenant in Bolivia. He was also a member of Fidel Castro’s inner circle. He defected in 1996 — and now he and Rodriguez are friends.

Just a week ago, Rodriguez made a donation to the CIA Museum: ashes from Guevara’s last pipe. But he has a few more of those ashes here, in his Miami home. His den is chock-a-block with mementos. On the wall, for example, is a bond signed by José Martí, Cuba’s national hero. [If you can, go and see his equestrian statue at the head of the Avenue of the Americas at 57^th St. here in NYC, in a line of these his is the most dramatic, Sherman’s, at Fifth Ave., is the most solemn] In this den, we talk about events past, present, and future. Rodriguez is an excellent talker (as well as doer). He is large, sharp, and commanding.

He was born in 1941. His hometown is Sancti Spíritus, in central Cuba. His father was a storeowner; his mother helped out in the store and tended the house. Rodriguez’s earliest memory is of being with his mom while she talked about what Hitler was doing in Europe. The little boy was scared that the Nazis would come to Cuba. Among his forebears are notable figures from Cuba’s wars of independence. One of these figures is Alejandro Rodríguez Velasco, who would become the first popularly elected mayor of Havana. In 1895, Máximo Gómez sent a letter to this man’s wife — who had asked whether her husband might come home from the field. Gómez wrote her a tender letter about the value of fighting for freedom. This letter is one of Felix Rodriguez’s treasures.

And who was Máximo Gómez? Cubans know: He was an officer from the Dominican Republic, who went to Cuba to help that country win its independence from Spain. For Cubans, he is a Lafayette. In the 1980s, Felix Rodriguez went to El Salvador, as a private citizen, to help that country defeat a Castro-backed Communist insurgency. The alias he adopted: Max Gomez. Here in his den, he reads out the letter from the original Gómez — and chokes up.

When he was about twelve, an uncle offered him the chance to study in the United States. Felix was reluctant at first, because he loved his life in Cuba. But another uncle, who had studied in Paris, said, “Think hard about this. This is a rare opportunity, and if you pass it up, you’ll regret it.” Felix heeded this advice. And he chose a school in Pennsylvania, because he wanted to see snow. The school was called Perkiomen, in Pennsburg, not far from Philadelphia. When he was a junior in high school, his country experienced its cataclysmic event: the takeover by Castro and his fellow revolutionaries. Felix’s parents were on vacation in Mexico. (It turned out to be a long vacation.) Felix, just 17, determined to fight the Communists, as soon as possible.

It was possible through something called the Anti-Communist Legion of the Caribbean, being formed in the Dominican Republic — which itself was ruled by a dictator, Trujillo. Felix joined up against his parents’ will. He arrived in Santo Domingo — or Ciudad Trujillo, as it was then — on July 4, 1959. He hoped that this date, the Fourth of July, would be as auspicious for Cubans as it had been for Americans. The Anti-Communist Legion staged just one mission into Cuba, a disaster: Castro was waiting for them, and all the troops were killed or captured. Rodriguez had been excluded from the mission at the last second. A friend of his, Roberto Martín Pérez, was captured and spent the next 28 years in Castro’s prisons. Rodriguez vowed to keep doing what he could.

One of the themes of his life is that too few people know what it is to have your country seized by totalitarians. In a 60 Minutes piece, aired in 1989, Mike Wallace asked Rodriguez why he was helping the Salvadorans. “What is it, are you a war-lover? Is that it? Are you constantly in search of adventure?” Rodriguez replied, in short, that people in general are clueless. You can read about Communism, but until you have experienced it for yourself, you have no idea. Also, there is the experience of exile: to be ripped from your country and family and friends, and not be able to return.

Many people think of Castro and his brother as Northern European–style socialists who occasionally get a little rough — or as traditional caudillos who flavor their speech with Marxism-Leninism. In reality, they are in the mold of Hoxha or Ceausescu, monsters. And the Castros’ grip on Cuba is monstrous. Like many Cubans and Cuban Americans, Rodriguez often refers to Fidel Castro simply as “he” or “him.” Equally often, he refers to him as “the son-of-a-bitch.”

At the beginning of 1961, he had an idea: He would assassinate the son-of-a-bitch. It would avoid or shorten the coming war, he reasoned. He and a friend volunteered their services — and the CIA accepted. The Agency equipped Rodriguez with a German rifle, which had a telescopic sight. The Agency also added a radio operator to the team. Three times, this team headed to Cuba on a luxurious yacht, whose captain was American and whose crew was made up of tough, hardened Ukrainians and Romanians, bearing East Bloc weapons. Rodriguez later heard that the yacht belonged to Sargent Shriver, President Kennedy’s brother-in-law. All three times, something went awry, and the Agency changed its mind about the assassination mission. In late February of ’61, Rodriguez was sent into Cuba as part of an infiltration team, whose mission was to help the Cuban resistance in advance of the invasion: an invasion that would be known as the Bay of Pigs.

Rodriguez’s mission was, of course, harrowing, with many close calls. But it was not without its amusing elements. One day, Rodriguez and a companion approached a beach. Not thinking, Rodriguez said to a militiaman, “Is it okay to use this beach or is it private?” The militiaman said, “Compañero, where you been? There aren’t any private beaches anymore. They all belong to the people!” “Oh, right,” said Rodriguez. “Thanks, compañero. Power to the Revolution!” But Rodriguez was soon warned away from a particular stretch of beach: which was marked off for Fidel Castro himself.

In his Miami den, Rodriguez gives a detailed account of the Bay of Pigs, an operation that earned the name “fiasco.” The blunders of the American planners are almost unbelievable. The Cubans had confidence until the end, says Rodriguez: America was John Wayne. And John Wayne never loses. Until he did. After the Bay of Pigs, Cuban hopes sank, and Castro cemented his power. Fear gripped the island. People shrank from resistance, understandably. Rodriguez managed to get to the Venezuelan embassy in Havana, where he was sheltered for five months: He left Cuba in September 1961. He would not be sheltered in the Venezuelan embassy today: The government in Caracas regards the Castro dictatorship as a model. Venezuelan oil helps sustain the Castro dictatorship. As Rodriguez sees it, Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, is loyal to the Castros, like a son to a father (two of them). Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, was the same way.

Rodriguez married a Cuban girl he met when he was 14 — “It was love at first sight.” He and Rosa had two children, Rosemarie and Felix Jr. The family settled into American life — but not entirely. They were between countries, in a sense, as so many others in South Florida were. Then, in 1967, came Felix’s rendezvous with Guevara.

The old Argentinean guerrilla was in Bolivia to lead a revolution, to impose on that country what he had already helped impose on Cuba. The “old” guerrilla was 39; Rodriguez was 26. He was assigned by the CIA to assist Bolivian forces in tracking Guevara down. What was his role in ultimate success? We can say the following: Rodriguez’s skillfully gentle interrogation of a young guerrilla prisoner helped the Bolivians home in on the guerrilla leader. On October 9, Rodriguez met this leader face to face, in the mud-brick schoolhouse in La Higuera. You can imagine some of the emotion. Guevara had killed many people, personally, back in Cuba — mainly at La Cabaña, his fortress headquarters. Before they died, the Cubans shouted, “Viva Cuba libre!” (“Long live free Cuba!”) and “Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the King!”). And now Rodriguez had him at his feet.

Guevara was a cocky killer, but he was not so cocky at this moment. Still, he had an air of command. Said Rodriguez, “Che Guevara, I want to talk to you.” Said Guevara, “No one interrogates me.” But talk they did — about philosophy, life, and death. Rodriguez asked him about the people he killed at La Cabaña. Guevara said they were all “foreigners.” He himself had been a foreigner in Cuba, of course. And as Rodriguez pointed out to him, he was a foreigner in Bolivia. Guevara answered, “These are matters of the proletariat that are beyond your comprehension.” Rodriguez asked how he, an Argentinean physician, could have become president of the Cuban national bank. Guevara told him a funny story: One day, Castro said to his top cadres, “Who here is a dedicated economist,” or economista? Guevara thought he had said comunista — and raised his hand. That’s how he became president of the national bank. Rodriguez thought he might be kidding — but later, Benigno, the Cuban defector, confirmed the story. He had been present, sitting right next to Guevara.

Rodriguez’s orders from Washington were to do everything he could to keep Guevara alive. Then, the prisoner would be transported to Panama, to be interrogated by the Americans. But the Bolivians had the authority in this matter. It was their war, their country — and they wanted him dead. Rodriguez gave the prisoner the news. “It’s better this way, Felix,” said Guevara. “I should never have been captured alive.” Rodriguez said to him, “Comandante, do you want me to say anything to your family if I ever have the opportunity?” After an interval, Guevara said, “Yes. Tell Fidel that he will soon see a triumphant revolution in America” (i.e., South America). “And tell my wife to get remarried and try to be happy.” The two men embraced. Then Rodriguez walked out of the schoolhouse. (He was never to meet Guevara’s family.)

The Bolivian officer in charge, Joaquín Zenteno Anaya, had offered Rodriguez the chance to finish Guevara off. Guevara had done Rodriguez’s country so much harm, Zenteno said. It was only right that he have the opportunity. But he declined. It was left to a Bolivian sergeant. Rodriguez has always maintained that Guevara died with courage and dignity. He admired him for it, and still does. But that’s as far as his admiration goes.

He remembers meeting a woman some 30 years ago, whose son had been executed at La Cabaña. He was 15 years old. She went to the fortress to beg for his life. Guevara received her. This was on a Monday. He called an assistant and said, “When is this prisoner scheduled to be executed?” On Friday, he was told. The prisoner’s mother thought Guevara was going to grant a reprieve. Instead, he said, “Get him and execute him now, so his mother doesn’t have to wait until Friday.” She fainted. Says Rodriguez, “He was a very, very cruel man.”

What does he think when he sees Guevara’s face on all those T-shirts? What does he think of the people who wear those T-shirts? Mainly that they are ignorant, having no idea who Guevara was or what he did or what he stood for. One day, Benigno and his wife saw a young Frenchman in a Che shirt. His wife asked him, “Who is that fellow on your shirt?” The young man answered, “A rock singer.”

Rodriguez became an American citizen in 1969. And he volunteered for Vietnam. From 1970 to 1972, he was in special operations. He told the Vietnamese with whom he worked, “I’ve already lost my country,” meaning his original country, “but it’s not too late for you: You can fight for your country.” One Christmas, after he was back home in Miami, he received a card from a Vietnamese comrade named Hoa. “Do you think the United States will ever abandon us?” asked Hoa. Rodriguez wrote back and said no. In his view, the U.S. did in fact abandon the Vietnamese, in 1975. He is of the school that says the U.S. won the war militarily but lost it politically, and shamefully. After their triumph, the Vietnamese Communists killed about a million.

In 1976, Rodriguez left the CIA, for several reasons. One had to do with security. In May of that year, Zenteno, the Bolivian, was gunned down in Paris. He had been serving as his country’s ambassador to France. Claiming responsibility was a group that called itself the International Che Guevara Brigade. Not long after, Rodriguez received a call at home. In Spanish, a man asked for “Felix Ramos.” Then he said, “You’re next.” That name, Felix Ramos, had been Rodriguez’s alias in Bolivia. (Unlike “Max Gomez,” it had no political or historical significance.) The Agency offered to give Rodriguez and his family new identities and move them to a different state. But Rodriguez decided against: too disruptive. So, the Agency added security enhancements to his house, bullet-proofed his car, and took some other measures. They also gave him a very high award: the Intelligence Star, for valor.

For some years, the Cuban dictatorship had a price on Rodriguez’s head. From Benigno, Rodriguez learned that Raúl Castro had a special interest in him. There were at least three plots against Rodriguez. Is there still a price on his head? He thinks not: “The Cuban government has enough problems without worrying about me. But it’s always possible that some crazy guy will try to do something to congratulate himself.”

Rodriguez has a lot to say about the Carter years — none of it good — but we will skip ahead to the Reagan years. In 1985, Rodriguez went to El Salvador, as a private citizen, and as Max Gomez. He flew hundreds of combat missions with Salvadoran forces, applying what he had learned about counterinsurgency. [For those that remember the Iran-Contra hearings, he is the gentleman who spoke of his “Helicopter concept” for hunting insurgents from the air] He told the Salvadorans exactly what he had told the Vietnamese: “It may be too late for Cuba, but it’s not too late for you.” El Salvador remained out of Communist hands and took a democratic path (however stony). Like all astute observers, Rodriguez sees a general threat to Latin America today: The threat is from little Castros who are elected democratically — once. Then they go about Castroization. Rodriguez cites Evo Morales, among others: He will rule Bolivia for a very long time, presumably.

While in El Salvador, Rodriguez received a request from a White House staffer, a man soon to become famous: Oliver North. Would Rodriguez help with the resupply of the Contras in Nicaragua? They were fighting the Castro-backed, and Soviet-backed, junta in Managua. Rodriguez agreed — but fairly rapidly became disillusioned with the whole “Enterprise” (as North called it). Equipment for the Contras was shoddy and unsafe. Operational security was shaky. What really stuck in Rodriguez’s craw was war-profiteering. In 1987, he testified at the Iran-Contra hearings, without a lawyer, and without holding back. That was the end of his involvement in scandal, he thought.  

But a month later, there was an eye-popping story in the Miami Herald: A convicted money launderer for the Medellín cartel had accused Rodriguez of soliciting drug money for the Contras. This was a leak supplied by “unnamed congressional sources.” And who might they be? It was no mystery. In the Senate, John Kerry was chairing a subcommittee known to one and all as the “Kerry Committee.” He was keen to establish a link between the Contras and drug-running. He was especially keen to link the vice president, George Bush, to any such drug-running. Rodriguez had a tie to Bush, because the vice president’s national-security adviser was Donald Gregg, who had been Rodriguez’s superior in Vietnam. Rodriguez wanted to testify before Kerry’s committee in an open hearing, so he could clear his name. But Kerry insisted on a closed hearing.

Toward the end of that hearing, Rodriguez said to Kerry, “Senator, this has been the hardest testimony I ever gave in my life.” Kerry asked why. “Because,” said Rodriguez, “it is extremely difficult to have to answer questions from someone you do not respect, and I do not respect you and what you are doing here.” The senator was not pleased. “Boy, did he blow his top,” Rodriguez says. But after almost a year — and considerable Republican pressure — Kerry apologized to Rodriguez and acknowledged that the money launderer’s accusation was false. Fine, says Rodriguez. But if you Google his name, you will find plenty of references to the Medellín drug cartel. The endurance, the permanence, of the 1987 lie rankles Rodriguez. [for good or bad the interwebs are forever]

While Kerry had Rodriguez before him, he took the opportunity to question him about Che Guevara and Bolivia. For one thing, had he really done all he could to save the guerrilla’s life? Kerry was sarcastic in this questioning. It seems to Rodriguez that Kerry, at that time, had sympathy for Guevara, and the Sandinistas, and Castro. In 2004, when the senator was the presidential nominee of the Democratic party, Rodriguez spoke against him at a rally on Capitol Hill organized by Vietnam Veterans for Truth. Today, of course, Kerry is secretary of state — which pains and disgusts Rodriguez. “I despise that guy. He is a phony. He was a phony during the Vietnam War. He’s a self-promoter.” His voice trails off: “I don’t like the guy at all . . .”

Cubans such as Felix Rodriguez expected the Castro dictatorship to last a year, two years, maybe three. He was 17 when Castro took over; Castro, with his brother, still rules the island, and Rodriguez is 72. Communism in Cuba has lasted longer than Communism in Eastern Europe, by ten years and counting. Obviously, this is more painful and disgusting to Rodriguez than John Kerry’s current status as U.S. secretary of state. Cuba was no Jeffersonian democracy when Castro took over. But it was nothing like the totalitarian hell he and his partners made it. And it has had no chance to evolve in a democratic direction, as the Dominican Republic and lots of other places did. When will it end? When will the Communists fall? Cubans are weary of answering this question, after almost 55 years. Rodriguez, though, points to the Castros’ friends in Venezuela: If the oil ever stopped coming, the brothers would be in trouble. Needless to say, Rodriguez is unsure whether he will see Cuba again.

Twenty-five years ago, he wrote in his memoir, “Sometimes I feel a little bit like Ulysses. . . . Like him, I am from an island nation. Like him, I went to war. And like him, I am having a hard time getting home.” How about today? Does he still feel that way? Is he still trying to get home? Where’s home? “It’s complicated,” Rodriguez says. Yes, it is. It is complicated for virtually all Cuban Americans of his generation. Rodriguez is a patriotic Cuban. He is also a patriotic American. Under normal circumstances, this would be a bald contradiction, but the circumstances of the Cuban exile are peculiar, not normal. Rodriguez says that the Cuba he knew has been destroyed, over these 50-plus years. He doesn’t know anyone over there anymore. The Communists long ago expropriated his family home in Sancti Spíritus. If the regime fell, he wouldn’t claim it. But he might like to negotiate to buy it, “for sentimental reasons.”

The 60 Minutes piece done on him in 1989 is an exercise in soft-Left condescension. It portrays anti-Communism as some kind of mental disorder, or at least a sign of immaturity. Of Rodriguez, Mike Wallace says, “He has never lost his love of war nor his anti-Communist ideals.” Rodriguez doesn’t love war: But he is willing to fight in order to keep or gain freedom and peace. At the end of the segment, Wallace wonders, “What does the future hold for this 48-year-old foot soldier in a fading Cold War?” Arthur Liman, who was chief counsel to the Iran-Contra Committee, says, “I think that Felix Rodriguez will probably end up — and I hate to say this — in an unmarked grave in some faraway place, fighting the remnants of Communism.” Wallace responds, “A little bit like Che Guevara.”

William F. Buckley Jr. once came up with a formulation: Say that Smith pushes an old lady out of the way of an onrushing bus. Then Jones pushes an old lady into the way of an onrushing bus. It would be absurd to say that these are two men who push old ladies around. Felix Rodriguez will always be linked to Che Guevara, and they both fought. But they are not alike. Rodriguez’s face will probably not grace a T-shirt. He is what they call a “right-wing Cuban exile.” Guevara is a “romantic revolutionary” and “idealist.” His face sits on a billion T-shirts. Pilgrims flock to La Higuera, to worship at his shrine there. But of the two men, Rodriguez and Guevara, only one deserves honor.

All Eyes on North Korea

by Barry S. Strauss

Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar professor in humanistic studies, Cornell University
member, military history working group

From the Strategika page at The Hoover Institution

US 2518, Hoover Institution Archives poster collection

North Korea is a peculiar place but it should not be considered in isolation. Although a small state, it takes part in regional relationships that go far back in history and in global networks of more recent vintage but great consequence. But what precisely is North Korea?

At first blush, North Korea looks like Sparta with nuclear weapons. Like Sparta it is a garrison state–communistic, militaristic, austere, isolated, secretive, totalitarian (much more efficiently so than its ancient counterpart), and often brutal to its own inhabitants. True, North Korea does not have helots, as Sparta’s large population of serfs was called, but it does have prison camps and national priorities that put guns very far ahead of butter. Famine devastated North Korea in the 1990s, killing perhaps two million people or ten per cent of the population. Although the worst is over, reports of micro-famine and even cannibalism persist.

On second thought, the analogy is imperfect because Sparta was a constitutional monarchy offering a degree of political freedom to its citizen elite. Observers disagree as to whether North Korea is best characterized as communist, fascist or nationalist, but one thing is clear: since its founding in 1948, North Korea has been a hereditary dictatorship run by one family. Kim Il-sung (r. 1948-1994), known as the “Great Leader” and “Eternal President,” his son Kim Jong-il (r. 1994-2011), known as the “Dear Leader” and “Supreme Leader,” and his grandson Kim Jong-un (r. 2011-present), another “Supreme Leader,” have been the sole rulers as well as the objects of a massive cult of personality. Sparta preferred gray, company men.

A pirate state may be a better analogy. Like pirates, North Korea engages in crime–in its case, blackmail [not to mention counterfeiting, and drug and human trafficking]. It uses the threat of nuclear weapons to get the outside world to provide the food and aid that it needs to keep going. Yet North Korea does not engage in a thoroughgoing war, let alone nuclear war, because that would end the game. Ancient Mediterranean pirates hated Rome but knew enough not to enrage it by helping the rebel gladiator Spartacus when he came calling. So too North Korea knows enough to limit its provocations. It learned its lesson from the Korean War (1950-1953), a North Korean invasion of South Korea that led to ruin.

Kim Il-sung promised Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin a great victory if Stalin unleashed him. Since 1945, when Japan’s colonial empire collapsed, Korea was divided into two occupation zones at the 38th parallel. The Soviets occupied the northern zone and the Americans the southern zone. Lines hardened during the Cold War. In 1948 the United Nations supervised elections that set up two separate governments: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north and the Republic of Korea in the south. Each side aimed at reunifying the peninsula and extending its control to the other half. The year 1949 saw border skirmishes followed by heavy fighting along the 38th parallel but neither side was strong enough to conquer the other and both were restrained by their respective hegemons.

Then, in 1950, the Soviets changed their mind. After the victory of the Chinese Communists in 1949, the Americans decided to withdraw from the Asian mainland and to build instead a defense perimeter in Japan, the Philippines, and other Pacific islands. Along with other factors such as the creation of NATO in April 1949 and the Soviet atom bomb in July 1949, American withdrawal convinced the Soviets to allow North Korea’s leader, Kim Il-Sung, to invade the south.

The war that followed did not go as planned. Before the Korean War was over, both the Americans and Chinese sent massive numbers of ground troops to Korea while the Soviets and Americans fought an air war over North Korea. The North nearly conquered the South–twice. The Americans were nearly driven off the peninsula–twice. The Americans conquered North Korea before the Chinese drove them out in turn. Much of the 85,000-square-mile peninsula was devastated. Nearly 3 million people, soldiers and civilians, were killed, wounded, or went missing. In the end, the peninsula continued to be divided on only slightly different lines as before.

Since then, North Korea has continued to behave violently but in measured doses. It has attempted to assassinate several South Korean leaders [it succeeded with the mother of the present President of the ROK], tunneled under the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two states, bombed a South Korean civilian airliner, [sank a ROK frigate] and shelled a South Korean island. Armed to the teeth, it threatens the heart of South Korea without actually attacking it. The southern capital, Seoul, lies 35 miles south of the DMZ, about the distance of Palo Alto from San Francisco. The Seoul metropolitan area is not only South Korea’s largest, but also home to half of the country’s population.

As far as the United States, North Korea has, over the years, axe-murdered two American officers in the DMZ and boarded the USS Pueblo, an American ship that it claimed had entered its waters, and then held the crew hostage under tough conditions for nearly a year. In commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Korean War this year, the North has stepped up threats and bluster.

And then, there is the North Korean weapons program. After conducting three nuclear tests, North Korea is widely thought to have a small stockpile of nuclear weapons. It is also thought to have chemical weapons. North Korea has an extensive ballistic missile program that can reach South Korea and Japan and, according to North Korean claims, continental North America as well [though their three stage missiles tend to break up over the Pacific]. American intelligence agencies are divided as to the truth of the claim, although the U.S. government is playing it safe by deploying more missile interceptors on the West Coast.

Intelligence officials also debate whether North Korea has mastered the technology of delivering any nuclear weapons by ballistic missile at all. But most expect that it will achieve that capability within five-ten years.

Nor does anyone doubt that North Korea sets a very bad example for a world that does not want to see nuclear weapons proliferate. Pakistan helped North Korea develop its nuclear weapons program. North Korea exports ballistic missiles widely to such countries as Pakistan, Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Vietnam.

What then, is North Korea’s piracy all about? It aims at regime survival, certainly; a sense of power and importance, no doubt; and an attempt to move toward long-cherished regional goals as well as to settle scores. The nuclear weapons program is an insurance policy against all outsiders. It gains the attention of China and the United States, both of which are concerned about nuclear armament by Japan and South Korea in response to the North. North Korea’s nuclear program might lead to war with the South and to a far broader conflict.

North Korea is twinned, of course, with South Korea. The two Koreas were unified for well over a thousand years before their division in 1945 and most Koreans consider the division of the peninsula unnatural. North Korea makes no bones about its desire to conquer the South and reunify the peninsula. As for the United States, the North considers it Enemy Number One, ever since the American invasion and air bombing campaign of the Korean War–not to mention the North’s anti-capitalist ideology. Yet the Korean peninsula is in turn a piece of a larger puzzle, that of Northeast Asia–or perhaps it is the lynch-pin.

Korea owns one of the world’s most strategic and vulnerable locations. Like Poland, it is a medium-sized country that lies between great powers. Korea is a land bridge between China and Russia to the north and Japan to the south, which is separated from Korea by a strait only 120 miles wide. Over the centuries, invaders have attacked Korea from both directions, exploiting a vulnerability summed up by the Korean proverb that “when whales fight, the shrimp’s back breaks.” Japanese have called Korea “a dagger pointed at Japan” and Mao Zedong referred to Korea as “the lips to China’s teeth.”¹ In recent years the United States has played a big part in Korean affairs as well. China and Japan loomed large in Korean affairs far earlier, and before Russian power arose in northern Asia, the Mongols and Manchus rode in from the north and conquered Korea.

China is historically Korea’s most important relation. China shaped many states lying on its periphery but none more so than Korea. For centuries, Korea was China’s closest client state but also the most successful manager of its patron. North Korea’s relationship with China is, if anything, more important than that of most Korean states in history. A massive infusion of Chinese ground troops saved North Korea from American invasion during the Korean War. The Soviet Union, to be sure, was North Korea’s chief patron, but since the end of the USSR, China has been the most important ally.

And that brings up what may be the most peculiar thing about North Korea of all. Much of North Korea’s leverage comes from the threat not of attack but of collapse. China fears that without foreign aid, North Korea will implode. The result will be a huge humanitarian, economic, and political problem. Many South Koreans feel similarly. They long for Korean reunification and they dread it. Many fear that the cost paid by West Germany for reintegrating East Germany would be minor compared to the cost of rebuilding the wreck that is North Korea.

One thing is certain. With its history, its ambition, its policies, its regional importance, and its international connections and repercussions, North Korea will keep the world’s attention.

^1. David McCann and Barry S. Strauss, eds., War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War (M. E. Sharpe, 2001), intro, p. 17 + xxviii n. 10.

The Siege of Byzantium

Posted by Raymond Ibrahim On August 16, 2013 @ 12:22 am In Daily Mailer, FrontPage.com Originally published at National Review Online.

 Constantinople

Yesterday, August 15, marks the anniversary of Constantinople’s victory over Muslim invaders in what historians commonly call the “Second Siege of Byzantium,” 717–18. Prior to this massive onslaught, the Muslims had been hacking away at the domains of the Byzantine empire for nearly a century. The Muslims’ ultimate goal was the conquest of Constantinople — for both political and religious reasons.

Politically, Islam had no rival but the “hated Christians” of Byzantium, known by various appellations — including al-Rum (the Romans), al-Nassara (the Nazarenes), and, most notoriously, al-Kilab (the “dogs”). The eastern Sasanian Empire had already been vanquished, and Persia subsumed into the caliphate. Only the “worshipers of the cross” — as they were, and still are, disparagingly known — were left as contenders over the eastern Mediterranean basin.

More important, Constantinople — from a theological perspective — simply had to fall. From the start, Islam and jihad were inextricably linked. The jihad, or “holy war,” which took over Arabia and Persia, followed by Syria, Egypt, and all of North Africa — all formerly Byzantine territory — was considered a religious obligation, or, as later codified in sharia law, a fard kifaya: a communal obligation on the body of believers, to be adhered to and fulfilled no less than the Five Pillars of Islam. As the famous 14th-century Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun put it: “In the Muslim community, the jihad is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. . . . Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.”

This concept of jihad as institutionalized holy war was first articulated and codified into Islam’s worldview by “warrior-theologians” (mujahidin-fuqaha) living and fighting along the Byzantine-Arab frontier (such as the mujahid Abdallah bin Mubarak, author of the seminal work Kitab al-Jihad or “Book of Jihad”).

The prevalent view was that, so long as Constantinople stood, the Cross would defy the Crescent. This is a literal point: Symbols played a great role in these wars. [As they had in the Iconoclastic wars that tore Byzantium apart before the coming of Islam when opposing Roman armies raged over the plains of Anatolia either carrying, or not carrying, great Icons of The Christ and the Virgin.] Less than a century earlier, at the pivotal battle of Yarmuk (636), where the Muslims crushed the Byzantines, leading to the conquest of Syria, one Muslim complained to the caliph, saying, “The dog of the Romans [Emperor Heraclius] has greatly frustrated us with the ubiquitous presence of the cross!”

Indeed, one cannot overemphasize the religious nature of these wars — which, if still codified in Islam’s sharia, has become all but alien to a Western epistemology that tends to cynically dismiss the role of faith. That the primary way of identifying oneself in the old world was based on religious affiliation — not race, ethnicity, or nationality, all modern concepts — is indicative of the central role of faith. Even useful terms such as “Byzantines” are ultimately anachronistic; “Byzantines” identified themselves first and foremost as “Christians.”

For these reasons, the conquest of Constantinople would take on increasingly apocalyptic proportions in Islamic literature. Ever since the Muslim prophet Mohammed sent a message in 628 to the Byzantine emperor Heraclius  summoning him to Islam, with the famous assertion, aslam taslam — that is, “submit [become Muslim], and you will have peace” — and the summons was refused, Constantinople became Islam’s arch-enemy. Mohammed even prophesied that the Christian capital would — indeed, must — fall to Islam, with blessings and rewards to the Muslim(s) fulfilling this prophecy. Fall the great city would — but not for some 800 years, in 1453, giving an inchoate Europe the needed time to mature, strengthen, and unify.

Beginning with Mohammed’s participation at the Battle of Tabuk (630), recorded in the Koran, Muslims had been harrying the Byzantines for decades, closing in on Constantinople. With the coming of the Umayyad dynasty (660) — which also saw the end of the first fitna (Muslim “civil war”), resulting in the Sunni-Shia split — Islam’s seat of power moved from Medina to recently conquered Damascus, mere miles from the prize of  Constantinople.

By the early 700's, the Muslim conquests were slowing down. There were several “disaffected” parties in the Muslim camp — particularly the losers of the first fitna, the Kharijites and Shia, the former a particularly ruthless sect. To prevent another civil war from erupting, a major campaign against the common infidel enemy was in order.

All these factors — Umayyad consolidation of Muslim power in Damascus, a slowing down of the conquests in general, and the need to direct the bellicosity of the various idle or disgruntled warlike Muslim sects, not to mention an undying enmity for the obstinate infidels across the way — encouraged the caliphate to apply its full might against its arch-foe. Constantinople had been unsuccessfully besieged several times before, most notably during the First Siege, which lasted four years (674–78) and was ultimately turned back by the cyclopean walls of the city.

Muslim Warriors below the

Walls of Constantinople 

So it was that, upon his ascension to the caliphate in 715, the new supreme leader of the Islamic empire, Suleiman, decided that the time was ripe for a massive, all-out offensive against Constantinople. The Byzantines would go on to offer a hefty tribute, but nothing less than total capitulation to Islam would do. Mustering a mammoth army of some 200,000 fighters, with Suleiman’s own brother, Maslama, leading, the former commanded the latter: “Stay there [Constantinople] until you conquer it or I recall you.” (That a caliph sent his own brother is further indicative of the importance of this campaign.)

A single anecdote supports the chroniclers’ claims that a gargantuan army was being mustered. Two years prior to the siege, in 715, a report reached the Christians that the Muslims were felling countless trees in Lebanon, land of the cedar, in order to construct tens of thousands of warships for an “upcoming expedition.” This fact alone caused a mini-war to erupt on the island of Rhodes, where the Byzantines sent an army to intercept the Muslim expeditionary force. One Byzantine ambassador returning from Damascus reported that the “Saracens were preparing an armament by sea and land, such as would transcend the experience of the past, or the belief of the present.” In short, 120,000 infantry and cavalry, and a naval force composed of 80,000, were making their way to Constantinople.

Maslama, leading the land force through Anatolia, crushed and put to the sword all in his way. Women and children were enslaved; tens of thousands of men crucified. [The usual activities of the Mujahidin on the march.] While making their way through that great desolate no-man’s land between the Byzantine and Umayyad empires, frequented by nomadic tribes, the Muslims attacked, slew, and burned all in their path.

According to renowned Muslim chronicler al-Tabari, “The [Christian] inhabitants of eastern Anatolia were filled with terror the likes of which they had never experienced before. All they saw were Muslims in their midst shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!’ Allah planted terror in their hearts. . . . The men were crucified over the course of 24 km.” Al-Tabari later goes on to explain that the Muslim forces were successful owing to their adherence to Koranic verses such as 8:60: “Muster against them [infidels] all the men and cavalry at your command, that you may strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah, and your enemies.” (See also 3:151.) (Nearly a millennium and a half after the Koran’s compilation, modern-day mujahidin — “holy warriors” who are fond of exhorting their followers by referring to these otherwise arcane battles — continue relying on such verses and their exegeses to “terrorize” the “enemies of Allah.”) [Thanks be to God that they are such losers and can only muster the likes of the panty-bomber. If they had the strength and ingenuity of the Samurai we would be in a real pickle.]

To make matters worse, as Maslama was marching toward Constantinople, subjugating everything in his path, the Christian empire itself was internally divided — as evinced by the fact that, between 713 and 717, two emperors had come and gone.

Enter Leo III — also known as Leo the Isaurian, Leo the Arab, and, most notoriously, Leo the Heretic. There is little doubt that the Byzantine victory over the Muslims owes a great debt to Leo, who makes his appearance early in the pages of the chronicles as a general and strategist — living up to the Greek word for “general,” strategos.

Born as Conon in modern-day Syria (hence the “Arab” appellation), Leo, stationed in Anatolia, encountered the forces of Maslama early on. All the sources record Leo playing something of a cat-and-mouse game with the caliph’s brother, duping him in various ways. Tabari simply concludes that Leo dealt Maslama “such a deception as if he [Maslama] was a silly plaything of a woman.”

Byzantine Soldiers

At any rate, Leo gained the necessary time and advantage to slip back to Constantinople, where, as the ablest man to defend the empire from the coming onslaught, he was soon proclaimed emperor. Considering the empire’s strong walls that had withstood countless sieges for centuries, Leo knew that, as long as sea communications were open, the city would be relatively safe. The problem was that, as Maslama was nearing with his land force of 120,000, 1,800 vessels containing the additional 80,000 fighting men were approaching the Bosporus. The city would be surrounded.

On August 15, Maslama was at the city walls, laying siege to it with various engines of war; the navy arrived two weeks later, on September 1. After a few fruitless attempts to breach the walls, Maslama settled to reduce the city by blockade, much of which would depend on the navy.

A close reading of the sources reveals that two important factors saved the empire: Arab inexperience at sea warfare and Greek ingenuity. The Arab warships nearing the Bosporus were heavy-laden with equipment and, in general, cumbersome. To lure the ships, Leo, in another stratagem, had the ponderous chain that normally guarded the harbor cast aside. “But while they hesitated whether they should seize the opportunity . . . the ministers of destruction were at hand”: Leo had sent out his fleet, with the secret weapon of the day, “Greek fire” (an incendiary composition projected by means of siphons), which conflagrated the Muslim ships into “blazing wrecks”: “Some of them, still burning, smashed into the sea wall, while others sank in the deep, men and all.” [The Battle of the Blackwater in Game of Thrones.]

Soon after this pivotal defeat, the ambitious caliph Suleiman, who had meant to fulfill Mohammed’s prophecy by conquering Constantinople, died of “indigestion” (according to the chroniclers, by devouring two baskets of eggs [Raw, poached or boiled?] and figs, followed by marrow and sugar for dessert) [Yum!]. To make matters worse, the new caliph, Omar II, seemed, at least initially, not to be as attentive to the needs of Maslama’s army. Winter set in, and the Byzantines retired to their fortified city, leaving the elements to deal with the Muslim camp. “One of the cruelest winters that anyone could remember” arrived, and, “for one hundred days, snow covered the earth.”

Still, Maslama’s brother, the late caliph, had commanded him to “stay there [Constantinople] until you conquer it or I recall you.” Neither had happened; the latter option was no longer possible. All Maslama could do was wait, and assure his emaciated, desperate men: “Soon! Soon supplies will be here!” In the meantime, roaming Turkic tribes, particularly the Bulgars, who had yet to embrace Islam, began harrying the Muslim camp.

By springtime, reinforcements finally came, by both land and sea. It was not enough; frost and famine had hit the massive army of Maslama hard, to the point that cannibalism was resorted to. The Greek chronicler Theophanes relates: “Some even say they put dead men and their own dung in pans, kneaded this, and ate it. A plague-like disease descended on them, and destroyed a countless throng.” The plausibility of the second sentence offers support for the improbable first one. An independent chronicler, Michael the Syrian, wrote: “The hunger oppressed them so much that they were eating the corpses of the dead, each other’s feces, and other filth.”

From the new caliph’s point of view, that such a massive force, years to mobilize, was already at the gates of Christendom, made it very difficult to simply give up. As caliph — successor to the warrior-prophet and his companions, who had subjugated much of the known world — he could not accept defeat so easily. While the army made do, a new navy, composed of two war expeditions, one from Alexandria, Egypt, the other from North Africa — nearly 800 ships total — made its way to Constantinople. Under cover of night, they managed to blockade the Bosporus, threatening to cut off all communications from the city.

Moreover, the Muslim commanders were warier of the Greek fire, and kept their distance. Aware of this, Maslama’s army, somewhat recovered owing to supplies and fresh conscriptions, was once again on the move, besieging the city with — considering the abominable trials to which they had recently been subjected — a feral fury. It seemed that the beginning of the end, though delayed, had finally arrived.

Delivery for Constantinople came from the least expected source: the Egyptian crew manning the Alexandrian ships, the Christian Copts. Because the vast majority of the caliphate’s fighting men, the mujahidin, were already engaging the enemy, the caliph had no choice but to rely on Christian dhimmi (second-class) conscripts for reinforcements. Much to the caliph’s chagrin, however, the Copts all fled at nighttime to Constantinople, and acclaimed the Christian emperor.

Theophanes writes that, as the Copts seized light boats and fled in desertion to the city, “the sea looked entirely made of wood.” Not only did the Muslim war galleys lose a good deal of manpower, but the Egyptians provided Leo with exact information concerning the Muslims’ ships and plans. Taking advantage of this, Leo once again released the fire-ships from the citadel. Considering the loss of manpower after the Copts’ desertion, the confrontation was more a rout than a battle.

It is worth noting that this little-known fact — that Copts abandoned the Muslim fleets in droves to join forces with the Christian emperor — indicates that, from the start, Christian life under Muslim rule was not as tolerable as later revisionist history (which claims that the Copts of Egypt welcomed the Muslims as “liberators” from the Byzantine yoke) makes it out to be.

Seeking to capitalize on this naval victory and the enthusiasm of the Christians, Leo had the retreating Muslim fleets pursued on land, and many Muslims were cut down. Simultaneously, the neighboring Bulgars — who, though occasionally hostile to the Christian empire, had no love for the new invaders, the Muslims — were persuaded by Leo’s “gifts and promises” into attacking and ultimately killing as many as 22,000 of Maslama’s battle-weary, half-starved men.

To make matters worse, “a report was dexterously scattered that the Franks, the unknown nations of the Latin world, were arming by sea and land in defense of the Christian cause, and their formidable aid was expected.” (It would be another three centuries before the Franks and Muslims would engage in a military conflict, spanning over two centuries, that would come to be known as the Crusades.)

By now, even the distant caliph realized that all was lost. Maslama, who could only have welcomed the summons, was recalled; and, on August 15 — according to most chroniclers, precisely one year to the day after it began — the siege of Constantinople was lifted.

Still, the Muslims’ troubles were far from over. Nature was not through with them. A terrible sea-storm is said to have all but annihilated the retreating ships, so that, of the 2,560 ships embarking back to Damascus and Alexandria, only ten remained — and of these, half were captured by the Byzantines, leaving only five to make it back to the caliphate and report the calamities that had befallen them (which may be both why the Arab chroniclers are curiously silent about the particulars of these events, and why it would be centuries before Constantinople would be similarly attacked again).

This sea-storm also led to the popular belief that divine providence had intervened on behalf of Christendom, with historians referring to August 15 as an “ecumenical date.” [Which in this time of Jihadic revival, we should celebrate.] Meanwhile, in the Islamic world, this defeat, earthquakes in Palestine, and the death of Caliph Omar II in 720 (having been caliph in the year 100 of the Islamic calendar) boded an apocalyptic end to the world.

Of the original 200,000 Muslims who set out to conquer the Christian capital and additional spring reinforcements, only some 30,000 ever made it back alive. By way of retribution and before dying, a bitter and vindictive Omar, failing to subdue the Christians across the way, was quick to project his wrath on those Christians, the dhimmis, living under Islamic authority: He forced many of them to convert to Islam, killing those who refused.

It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of this battle. That Constantinople was able to repulse the caliphate’s hordes is one of Western history’s most decisive moments: Had it fallen, “Dark Age” Europe — chaotic and leaderless — would have been exposed to the Muslim invaders. And, if history is any indicator, the last time a large expanse of territory was left open before the sword of Islam, thousands of miles were conquered and consolidated in mere decades, resulting in what is known today as Dar al-Islam, or the “Islamic world.”

Indeed, this victory is far more significant than its more famous Western counterpart, the Frankish victory over the Muslims at the Battle of Tours, led by Charles Martel (the “Hammer”) in 732. Unlike the latter, which, from a Muslim point of view, was first and foremost a campaign dedicated to rapine and plunder, not conquest — evinced by the fact that, after the initial battle, the Muslims fled — the siege of Constantinople was devoted to a longtime goal, had the full backing of the caliphate, and consisted of far greater manpower. Had the Muslims won, and since Constantinople was the bulwark of Europe’s eastern flank, there would have been nothing to prevent them from turning the whole of Europe into the northwestern appendage of Dar al-Islam.

 Leo III

Nor should the architect of this great victory be forgotten. The Byzantine historian Vasiliev concludes that “by his successful resistance Leo saved not only the Byzantine Empire and the Eastern Christian world, but also all of Western civilization.”

Yet, true to the vicissitudes and ironies of Byzantine history — the word has not come to mean “convoluted” for nothing — by the time Leo died, “in the Orthodox histories he was represented as little better than a Saracen” (hence the famous appellation, “Leo the Heretic”) owing to the Iconoclastic controversy. If Charles Martel would be memorialized as the heroic grandfather of the first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne, it would be Leo’s lot to be all but anathematized — an unfortunate fact contributing to the historical neglect of this brilliant victory.

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/the-siege-of-byzantium/

Defaming FDR 

And other great men besides. 

By Conrad Black AUGUST 16, 2013 4:00 AM

 

[Last month I posted an article by Diana West on Harry Hopkins, FDR’s top advisor, stating that he was a Soviet Agent who tied Roosevelt and Churchill around his little finger to aid Stalin in his conquest of Eastern Europe. As much as I've read about WWII I’m not that up to snuff on intelligence and counter-intelligence, I’m more a tactics and weapons buff. But there are those who are deeply involved in these fields, Ron Radosh, Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes and many others who went after Ms. West hammer and tongs. (see http://frontpagemag.com/2013/john-earl-haynes-and-harvey-klehr/was-harry-hopkins-a-soviet-spy/ ) After reading the ensuing articles, which can be found at Front Page Mag and Brietbart, I feel I must post the other side of the story. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “You are entitled to your opinions, not to your own facts.”

JimG33]

Conrad Black 

Rather than dwelling on the falsehoods of the West or (Oliver) Stone accounts, I hope it is useful to recount the salient facts, so obscured have they become in cant and emotionalism. The much-maligned Roosevelt was the only leader of a major power in the Thirties not to be ashamed of: neither a totalitarian dictator (Hitler, Stalin), nor a strutting mountebank of a dictator (Mussolini), nor an appeaser of dictators (Baldwin, Chamberlain, Daladier, et al.). He warned the French not to allow German remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, and was skeptical about Munich: He instructed his ambassador in London, the unfortunately selected Joseph Kennedy, that he could not congratulate Chamberlain on Munich, other than personally and verbally only. He warned Stalin in August 1939 not to make a non-aggression pact with Germany. He told Stalin in 1941 (a couple of months before Pearl Harbor) that the Japanese were moving their forces south to secure their oil supply in the face of the American oil embargo, which enabled Stalin to move 20 divisions from the Far East for the final and successful defense of Moscow and Leningrad.

Roosevelt was concerned that if the Western Allies did not seriously open a second front in Europe, Stalin would negotiate a separate peace with Hitler. Because Churchill and his senior generals feared becoming mired again in northeast France as in the hecatomb of World War I, Roosevelt had to enlist Stalin at the Tehran Conference to support cross-channel landings. Churchill and his staff believed that Stalin agreed to this only because he thought that such landings would distract Hitler but enable further Soviet penetration into Western Europe. This was probably true, but Roosevelt had more faith than Churchill or Stalin in the possibilities of a successful 1944 Allied landing in France, and, once again, he was right. This Ms. West decries as ignoring General Mark Clark’s advice, prompted by Churchill, to surge up the Adriatic and through the Ljubljana Gap and take Vienna. Eisenhower and Marshall advised that there was no such gap and it was a choice between Vienna and Paris. Because Churchill had generously had Austria designated a German-conquered state at Tehran, and therefore entitled to Four Power occupation like the rest of Germany but under gentler rules, we ended up without Soviet occupation of either of those capitals.

In 1940, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan had all been in the hands of dictators hostile to the Anglo-Americans; in 1945, all were entirely, or in the case of Germany, largely, occupied by the Western armies and were brought into or back into the West as flourishing democracies and allies of the Anglo-Americans, and the Russians had taken over 90 percent of the casualties in subduing the Germans. At Yalta, Stalin pledged that there would be free elections and that the Soviets would depart from the Eastern European countries. Roosevelt was advised by his military chiefs that the carnage on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, where the U.S. took 70,000 casualties on small islands [islands from which there was no possibility of retreat or resupply for the Japanese forces, they were to fight and die causing as many American casualties as possible], indicated that conquering the home islands of Japan would cost a million casualties — and that he should therefore try to secure Soviet cooperation in invading Japan until they were sure atomic weapons would be effective (they were tested successfully only at Los Alamos in July, three months after Roosevelt died).

Roosevelt had said to Churchill, Anthony Eden, Henry Stimson, Archbishop Spellman, Lord Keynes, and Admiral Leahy, among others, that Stalin could be a real post-war problem. He planned to offer demilitarization of Germany (the power Stalin feared, for obvious reasons), a $6.5 billion reconstruction program, and an unspecific brandishing of atomic weapons (if they worked) as incentives to Stalin to honor his Yalta commitments on Eastern Europe. The strategic team he assembled — Truman, Marshall, Eisenhower, Acheson, Kennan, Bohlen, and others — devised the containment strategy and applied it, and their successors applied it, nine administrations of both parties, until the Soviet Union disintegrated and international Communism imploded, without a shot being exchanged between the United States and the USSR. It was the greatest and most bloodless strategic victory in the history of the world; Roosevelt’s aid to the democracies in the first two years of World War II and his strategic conduct during that war were a historic masterpiece, entirely consistent with the military direction provided by Roosevelt’s personal selections of Marshall as army chief of staff and of Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Nimitz as theater commanders.

Henry Wallace was a flake, a mad choice for vice president; FDR made such choices occasionally, as with Kennedy for London and Joseph Davies for the embassy in Moscow. Wallace opposed the Marshall Plan and opposed NATO, and opposed atomic development. If he had succeeded to the presidency, he would have done a 180-degree turn or been impeached for incompetence on such a scale that it would be deemed a high crime, and for once, the impeachers would have been correct (which they were not with Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, who never should have been threatened with impeachment as they were). The seven terms of Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower were a golden age of the American presidency. All three had their faults, but FDR took over a completely economically and psychologically depressed country in 1933 and — as Mr. Churchill said in his parliamentary eulogy of him, FDR “raised the strength, might, and glory of the great Republic to a height never attained by any nation in history”; and his successors, both of whom he elevated from comparative obscurity, raised it higher.

These conspiratorialists are idiots: pernicious, destructive, fatuous idiots. West and Stone and Kuznick are entitled to freedom of expression, though they abuse it with their unutterable myth-making and jejune dementedness, as they hurl the vitriol of the silly and the deranged at people who should be on Mount Rushmore. The Yalta myth, inflated by Ms. West with the unfounded new flourish that Harry Hopkins was a Commie spy, like the unspeakable fraud that Truman, not Stalin, started the Cold War, is a revenance of the psycho-Roosevelt-mentia virus, like the pestilence of collaboration described by Camus in The Plague. “Only the mute effigies of great men . . . conjured up a sorry semblance of what the man had been.” That is the problem.

— Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, A Matter of Principle, and the recently published Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership. He can be reached at cbletters@gmail.com.