Transcript of Niall Ferguson on "Honestly with Bari Weiss"

 

Niall Ferguson on "Honestly with Bari Weiss" 

Transcript 

 Bari Weiss Niall, welcome back to Honestly 

 Niall Ferguson Oh hello. What an unexpected call. 

Bari Weiss Now everyone who listens to this show surely knows the name Niall Ferguson, but in case you're new to this podcast, Niall is a historian. He's an opinion columnist at Bloomberg. He's a senior. Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, he is the author of something like 20 books. Most recently, he published doom, the politics of Catastrophe. And he is also and most importantly, one of the founders of me of a new university, which is the University of Austin, or UATX. There you go for a plug, Niall, we. I really appreciate you being here. Niall Ferguson Good to be with you, Bari. 

Olly Wiseman (Honestly co-host) OK, so we thought that we sort of go through some of the hot spots and then ask you to tie together what all of. These things mean. Obviously, there's so much going on in the world right now that I think many people can feel almost overwhelmed by one of those. The War in Ukraine, Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, and I can't believe. This but next month is. Going to mark the two years. Anniversary of that war hundreds of thousands have died in that war, and Russia, as of today, and we're at the very beginning of 2024, appears to be winning. There are also these horror stories I keep reading about Zelinsky calling up really older men to serve who are sort of being ripped out of lines at the grocery store and sent to the front. Lines and Zelensky. Saying that he needs an additional half a million troops even still, and in the meantime, at least among many people I know, it's anecdotal. Polls, though, seem to back this up. Americans seem less and less supportive. Of a war that maybe two years ago they hadn't sort of viscerally supported. Who does this go in your view. 

 Niall Ferguson Well, when the war began nearly two years ago, I thought the best analogy might actually be with the Korean War. You have to frame what we're going through as Cold War two in my view, and Ukraine was the first hot war of the second Cold War. And in just the same way that in 1950, the outbreak of a hot war made many people understand better. The world that they were in, I think that was true when the war broke out in Ukraine. It's obvious that Russia would not have launched that offensive without Xi Jinping's OK, that was what Putin got before the offensive was launched. And without Chinese support, Russia would not be able to sustain the war effort. Massive. Exports of microprocessors and other things keep the Russian war machine going. The problem with the analogy, and that was why I drew it, was what happened. Career because what happened in Korea was you had a year of extraordinary kinetic warfare and then two years of attrition affected stalemate and then a kind of Armistice, not really a full-scale piece that left the country divided with an extremely dangerous border. And it's still there as we speak. And I I've always felt that that was a plausible outcome for Ukraine, and not by any means the worst-case scenario, because after all, South Korea ended up being a very prosperous country despite. Something and Ukraine might manage that, but it's going to be very hard for Ukraine to win this war now for the reason you gave the United States has essentially lost interest. It's stopped supporting financially Ukraine and Ukraine is always to be truly running out of ammunition. This is a war of attrition. Therefore, Zelensky needs bodies. He needs men because the Russians have. A lot of them, and that that was always one of the asymmetries of this conflict. So, I expect the war to drag on through 2020. 4/2 at some point. What happened to the kids of the Korean? What was Stalin died. That was one of the ways in which the war was possible to end. I don't know whether Putin will oblige us by dying at some point soon. If he doesn't, I think this drags on. There's a worst-case scenario, of course, which would be that Russia begins to make significant gains. Significantly degrades Ukraine's infrastructure. It's failing to do that right now with a massive air campaign, but if you just take that analogy as something to work with, I think we're entering that phase of our version of the Korean War that. Will be called. 

 Bari Weiss Stalemate and Niall, one thing that we'll be looking out for in 2024 is what happens here in the US, but to what extent does Ukraine's future hinge on the election in November? I mean, is that going to make a big difference for? Me or the other? Well, people were. 

 Niall Ferguson Saying that in. Ukraine, when I was last there back in September, but it turns out you don't need. Donald Trump to get reelected for the aid to Ukraine to stop stopped. Ready and the election is, what, 10 months away? I think it's possible that the aid will restart cause Congressional leadership does not want to leave Ukraine entirely reliant on the Europeans, which right now it is. So. It's not entirely over Trump's real. I'll give at this point 55% probability. Would be a terrible blow for Ukraine. Not necessarily fatal Europeans understand. I've been spending a lot of time in Europe at the moment that they now have to face the possibility of being on their own. All that fine talk of strategic autonomy which we used to hear from President Macron will have to become a reality very swiftly. The alternative, they now realize, is too awful to contemplate, because if Ukraine loses after all the fine rhetoric of 2022 that puts Russia in an extremely threatening position for the whole of Europe. And remember, one thing that Putin has shown is that sanctions don't stop. A great power which Russia is not a superpower anymore. It's a great power with the backing of a superpower, Russia has mobilized in a way we haven't really seen in a very long time. And that large scale military mobilization is going to put Putin in a very threatening position. So, the Europeans can't really afford for Ukraine to be completely defeated. Because it will require them massively to increase their own defense budgets, which from a domestic political point of view is very difficult. 

 Olly Wiseman Indeed, you mentioned what's at. Stake for Europe? What? Is at stake for. The world more broadly. If Ukraine loses this war in a significant. 

 Niall Ferguson Well, it wouldn't be the first time that the United States said we'll back you and your independence and your democracy for as long as it takes. And then that turned out to be for as long as we feel like it. You know, as the South Vietnamese, the United States not done terribly well since the late 1960s. In honoring this kind of commitment. Read the Quiet American and you'll find a certain familiar ring to it. Think of Afghanistan and the Biden administration's track record is much worse than you'd think. If all you read was the New York Times because it failed utterly to deter the Taliban from very quickly reasserting their hideous. Barbaric regime. In 2021, it failed to deter Putin from escalating his invasion of Ukraine, and it failed to deter Iran from unleashing its proxies against Israel. And my question for 2024 is. Who will they? Fail to deter this year because there is more that they can. 

 Bari Weiss Fail to deter well, now that segues perfectly into. My next question, which is about China and. It feels as though she. Thing is becoming more and more explicit about Taiwan and what China's plans are. I think the US official kind of intelligence prediction is that they think the range when kind of might try and take Taiwan might be between 2025 and 2027. Obviously, there's a chance that she acts earlier than America. Aspects so. What do we do with all this information? With all this forecasting? What's your feeling about where things stand and what we should be doing to be prepared for that? 

 Niall Ferguson I remember two years ago all the experts on Russia said no, no, no. Putin's not going to launch a full-blown conventional force invasion of Ukraine. And I was one of the few people who said. War is coming. I have a similar feeling the experts say China's not ready to make a move until in Taiwan. Until 2027, Bill Burns, director, Central Intelligence, has said this couple of times and I just wonder about that because as you say, she has most recently in his new year. Said that, this is still his priority, the Taiwanese election is. Is a way. And it seems. It is likely that a candidate will win. William Lai, who has in the past expressed his support for the idea of Taiwanese independence. That seems like a good pretext. As you get. For launching some kind of action. I think the mistake many experts make is assuming that action means full blown amphibious invasion. That's a really difficult thing to do across the Taiwan Strait and I don't think the People's Liberation Army is remotely ready to do it, but they don't need to do that. They just need to blockade Taiwan and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's sometime this year. China imposes some kind of economic blockade. If I were advising Xi Jinping, I would say do it. You'll never have a better opportunity. You'll never have an administration that will be more wrong suited if you do it, they're not ready. They've talked to talk about Taiwan. Remember Joe Biden on more than one occasion has sounded like he has an. Unambiguous commitment that to the defense of Taiwan after 50 years, where the United States kind of ambiguous about its commitment and yet at the very time when. The US is least. People honor such commitments. This is not the 1990s, when Bill Clinton could send a naval force and the Chinese were like, whoa, back down. Chinese now has the capacity to sink US aircraft carriers. If Joe Biden finds himself in an election year having to send a naval force across the Pacific to run that. Blockade. It's the Cuban missile crisis. Only this time we get to be the Soviet. And Joe Biden gets to be Khrushchev, and that that analogy is another Cold War analogy that I find useful. Cuba was an island just off the United States, tried to effectively turn into a missile base, and John F Kennedy imposed A blockade called it a quarantine. But it was a blockade. And this naval force. We sent. The closest we came to World War Three in the whole of the. If there's a Taiwan crisis of the sort, I'm imagining it will be like the Cuban missile crisis, with the rules reversed, the Chinese will be the ones doing the blockading, and we'll be accused of sending a naval force and risking World War three. So, I hope I'm wrong about this. I hope Bill Burns is right. We don't really have to worry about this until 2027, but. Let's put it this way. Our intelligence experts have been wrong in the past and I wouldn't be entirely surprised if there was a Taiwan crisis potentially this month.

 Bari Weiss Wow. Yeah. In the Middle East, it feels like there. Potential escalations the whole time, which the US just kind of ignores, which are those attacks on U.S. troops. Let's move on to that region and focus on the focal point of the conflict there, which obviously is the Gaza Strip and the war between Hamas and Israel. Give us your sense of what stage that war is at, what the next phase of the war looks like, what you think will happen next in Gaza. 

 Niall Ferguson Well, I think so far as I can tell from sources I have. That's the idea is to strike him up. It is not. Being given as much time as it would like. But the noises that come out of Washington along the lines of all these needs to get done, you. Have to stop. I don't think. Those noises are being accompanied by anything that really would stop Israel finishing this war, insofar as it's possible to destroy Hamas, I think it's happening. The problem is that there is another theater that can explode into life at any point, and that's the Lebanese border with Israel, where Hezbollah has a far greater, far powered disposal. The IDF would certainly like to act preemptively against that. It's not really able to for a political reason. That is something that Washington won't condone. So, I think the critical question is not what happened in Gaza. I think that's now fairly clear. I think it's what happens with Hezbollah in Lebanon that is crucial and the fact that Israel is taking the first steps against Hezbollah is, I think. 

 Bari Weiss What do you think the odds are of that kind of escalation and a broader sort of regional escalation in the kind of worst-case scenario involving Iran? And I guess the US? Some not necessarily direct conflict, but something approaching that. 

 Niall Ferguson And the US is. Extraordinarily reluctant to get into any kind. Of a war with Iran. Another administration might have taken October the 7th as the opportunity to impose major costs on Iran, and I think that would have been the correct thing to do. But this administration has been, from the outset, to me, inexplicably wedded to the idea that it could resuscitate the Iran nuclear deal, that projects of the Obama administration, and it never has really exerted to seek serious pressure on Iran. So, I worry a lot that this. Reluctance to confront the source of the trouble. Which is Tehran? One means that Iran's proxies have a sense of impunity. It's not only a must, but also not only Hezbollah, The Who sees in other proxies are feeling, you know, this is our moment because there's not really significant pressure being exerted on Iran itself.

 Olly Wiseman You know, if you're Israel, post October. 7th and one of the great lessons are you can't actually allow a jihadi genocidal group to remain at one of your borders. Isn't the lesson there that Israel must at some point strike Hezbollah to say nothing of Iran? 

 Niall Ferguson That would be strategically logical. The problem is. That Israel is so reliant on the United States and has been throughout its history, that it's very hard for it to act unilaterally in defiance of a very clear instruction from Washington. So, I think there's a real tension there that may persist throughout the year until the new administration comes along and says back to where we were, but that may not happen. As I said, it's 55% probability at this point in my view that. Trump is elected. I think Trump's election is really important, potentially because of its consequences for all that we've discussed and his. To reelect of Trump is very bad news for Ukraine. It's probably quite good news for Israel. I'm not clear what it implies for Taiwan so. It will be. A significant change, but. It won't be all one way, and that's one of the things that makes the interplay between domestic politics and geopolitics so difficult this year. 

 Olly Wiseman So, we, we've touched on Ukraine, we've touched on China, we've touched on Israel and the broader Iranian threat through Hamas and all of these other proxies. And I wondered if you could help us connect the dots. You tweeted something that I. Thought was really. Scary, but rang very true to me on. New Year's Eve. Here's what you said. Future historians will marvel at all this. It will seem obvious by 2033, if not sooner, that the Pax Americana faced a well-coordinated challenge from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea in the early twenty 20s. The first move was the invasion of Ukraine, the second was the war of Iran's proxies against Israel. The third will most likely be a Chinese challenge to American primacy in the Indo Pacific. Perhaps if Xi Jinping is bold, a blockade of Taiwan, can you elaborate a little bit more on what you mean when you say well-coordinated, like how? How much are they coordinated? 

 Niall Ferguson No2 world leaders have met more frequently in the last decade than Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. And I can assure you, they're not discussing the respected merits of Russian and Chinese cuisine. The fact that they met immediately prior to the offensive against Ukraine at that, at that meeting, there was a kind of no limits partnership. Declaration is surely evidence enough. The fact that Iran is a major source of drones for the Russian air assault on Ukraine is further evidence. The fact that the attacks on Israel were preceded not only by meetings in Tehran, also leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, not to mention Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but also by Chinese intervention, which is in some ways quite novel in the Middle Eastern diplomacy. To bring about some kind of rapprochement between the Saudis and the Iranians, all of this I. Think is part of a. The jigsaw that you can put together without knowing the classified information, obviously that people inside the government know a lot more than I do and I'm sure Jake Sullivan, as national security adviser, has far deeper insights than I can ever have. And I think on the basis of open-source Intel. Clear that there is coordination and although there is no ideological homogeneity between these regimes, China, which still nominally Marxist-Leninist communist regime, Russia, which is some kind of imperialist nostalgia trip back to Peter the Great. And Iran and Islamist Shia theocracy. And they don't have anything really in common except that they want American predominance to end and Pax Americana, which you know has had its. Effect haven't been such a bad international order that one would wish it to be replaced by a Chinese version. I certainly don't want to live in that world, and I wouldn't have thought you believers in the Free Press would want to either, so that's really where I think I would argue we are going. It's a major challenge to American predominance. The Biden administration said. We understand that better than Trump because we understand alliances and these alliances are our superpower, and that seemed to be. Who would reflect Ukraine? Because the Western alliance, broadly defined, also including Japan and some Asian countries, did come together, and it's supported Ukraine very strongly through that first-year party. Totally. But I don't think that alliance will look remotely as strong if things escalate in Israel. It's already pretty fragmented on the Palestine, Palestinian, Israel question. And as for Taiwan, I don't think any Europeans will show up if there's a crisis over Taiwan. And so, the Pax Americana, insofar as it was about. American economic might, plus alliances. I think it's more vulnerable than at any time since the end of World War 2. 

 Olly Wiseman Isn't it one of the other great distinctions between Cold War one and Cold War two? Are demoralization, like I'm sure you saw the videos meal of the past few days, the spectacle of young progressives marching in the streets of American cities praising. The hoochies of Yemen. Literally to say nothing of their praise of Hamas and back then maybe I'm have a revisionist idea of things, but it seemed like that. General Young Americans and Young American Liberals were on the side of the West, and it was self-evidently good that our freedoms were good and better than their lack of them. Is that a real shift, or am I just looking at the past with rose colored glasses? 

Niall Ferguson Think you are a bit. I mean, I think what's interesting about Cold War two is it seems to be going faster than Cold War one. So, we've kind of we're racing from the Korean War to the Cuban missile crisis. And when it comes to young people's attitudes, we somehow got to 1960. Yay already, because if you go back to 68. There is this enormous revulsion against the Pax Americana from within, and instead of chanting their support for our math, they were chanting their support for Ho Chi Minh right on the Harvard campus. Then in that, in that sense, part and parcel of, yeah, I mean, part of part of the Cold War is the useful idiots that you'll always find. 

 Olly Wiseman It was ever thus, right? 

Niall Ferguson On the Harvard campus and. In that sense, I think there's a kind of familiarity to this pattern, but I do think that it's easier, much easier for China to mobilize. And sentiment or anti-Israeli sentiment through social. Media than was ever. Possible in the first Cold War and. That that. Means that I think our task is harder. The way I. Would put it is cold. War Two has a lot in common with Cold War one, but economically the other side is much stronger. And it was true in Cold War one. Secondly, I think we are more divided and more capable of being divided and. In that sense, I think that there's a decent chance we'll lose. Cool. Do and that's what people find really hard to visualize. The reason people are worried is kind of think oh we you know we we're always going to win it's going to be fine. Don't worry and I'm like no I used to contemplate the possibility of losing the United States did not inevitably win Cold War when it looked like it was losing for most of the 1970s by 1979. It really looked like it was in trouble, and I think we just don't get across to people what losing might be like and why it might be bad. Ukrainians understand what losings like because they saw Bucca. They saw the bodies in. The streets of Bucca. It's really not what losing is like because they know that October 7th is like the dress rehearsal for Holocaust too, but we don't really know what losing would mean. And young Americans absolutely have no concept. Now, young Americans are so complacent about freedom that they're basically against it now, which is a kind of bizarre turn of events. And so, I kind of want everybody to read books like SSGB lend date and fantastic. He imagined Britain losing World War 2. What it would be like if the Germans had taken over. That's great. As it completely captures what it would have been like, we need a bit more about what it would actually be like if we lost. Suppose just let's just. Imagine that there is a Taiwan crisis, and they send two aircraft carrier groups, and the Chinese have sync both the carrier. And the US finds it has to sue for peace, and Taiwan has taken over, and seizing ping. Does the ticker tape parade through Taipei? What then? What does that mean? And I think a lot of people haven't really got anywhere close to thinking that through. They don't realize that they are losing. He seemed to be #1 losing the Pax Americana has massive costs. Like suppose suddenly the cost of borrowing for the United States government is no longer where it currently is. Suppose the. Dollar is no. Longer just seen as the fact that. The world's number one currency, all of. Could make life a lot worse. Supposing the Free Press was no longer really capable of operating because of the sustained campaign against it. Run out of Beijing. These are the things that people don't spend enough time thinking about because they are just complacent. Assume that somehow. All of this stuff is going on over there in in Ukraine and in Israel and Taiwan, and somehow, we'll be fine. But the reality is we will definitely not be fine anymore. We than we would have been fine if the Soviets. Had won the first Cold War. 

 Bari Weiss Well, Niall, let's just. Take that cherry thought. And with I'm.

 Niall Ferguson I don't want to be cheery? I want everybody to be to be scared because unless you're properly scared, you won't take the requisite actions to avert.  Bari Weiss I peed my pants during that. 

Olly Wiseman Let's ask you one final short question, which you can use to scare. Listen as if they're not already terrified like me, and that is, this is a, you know, 2024 predictions podcast. So, I want you to paint the picture of January 1, 2025, and tell me how things looked in Cold War. Two like, what's your best guess in terms of how we're doing in a year? 

 Niall Ferguson Before Democrats stormed the capital in protest against the obviously stolen election. Yeah, I mean I would. Say when you're doing predictions over. 12-month time horizon. The important thing is to remember that most things won't be massively different. So, Europe will still be kind of stagnating. The growth will be down. There may be a recession and parts of Europe and the far right will be gaining ground. So that's a kind of easy prediction. And Putin will still be President of Russia. Modi will still be Prime Minister because their elections are a foregone conclusion. So, lots of this is kind of. Easy to foresee. The hard thing to foresee is decision Ping. Take a risk in Taiwan. Suppose he does. He does by this time next year we'll know if the United States was able to deter or prevent or reverse the Chinese move, or whether. Buy this. Trying to walk. And so, it will be quite that will be the key I think, because I think the Ukraine war won't be over, Russia won't have won, Ukraine won't have won, Israel will still be dealing with the remnants of Hamas. It'll be either at war with Hezbollah or on the brink of it. Some of this is not going to change massively and. I don't think the Biden administration is radically going to change in its final year in office. So, I think Taiwan is what to focus on and if you have been to Taiwan, I really like Taiwan because Taiwan shows that the Chinese can do democracy. Well, and they do market economy really well. The question is, can they do defense really well and at this point the answer is probably not. And so there is a I think a real probability that there is some kind of Taiwan Strait crisis in the coming 12 months and on that will hinge I think the future of this. This Cold War that we've been discussing, there's other stuff one could talk about. Labour government in Britain, but that's all chump change by comparison with that. Olly Wiseman Niall Ferguson, thanks so much. 

 Niall Ferguso Thank you very much indeed.

Jefferson Davis Was Not Tried for Treason: America still suffers from that decision

 

The following is the beginning of a long article in the New Yorker magazine on December 4, 2023.  If you want to read more, send me an email at ngussman@yahoo.com and I will send you a copy.  

What Happened When the U.S. Failed to Prosecute an Insurrectionist Ex-President After the Civil War, 

Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, was to be tried for treason. 

Does the debacle hold lessons for the trials awaiting Donald Trump? 

By Jill Lepore December 4, 2023

Jefferson Davis, the half-blind ex-President of the Confederate States of America, leaned on a cane as he hobbled into a federal courthouse in Richmond, Virginia. Only days before, a Chicago Tribune reporter, who’d met Davis on the boat ride to Richmond, had written that “his step is light and elastic.” But in court, facing trial for treason, Davis, fifty-eight, gave every appearance of being bent and broken. 

A reporter from Kentucky described him as “a gaunt and feeble-looking man,” wearing a soft black hat and a sober black suit, as if he were a corpse. He’d spent two years in a military prison. He wanted to be released. A good many Americans wanted him dead. “We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour-apple tree,” they sang to the tune of “John Brown’s Body.” Davis knew the courthouse well. Richmond had been the capital of the Confederacy and the courthouse its headquarters. 

The rebel President and his cabinet had used the courtroom as a war room, covering its walls with maps. He’d used the judge’s chambers as his Presidential office. He’d last left that room on the night of April 2, 1865, while Richmond fell. Two years later, when Davis doddered into that courtroom, many of the faces he saw were Black. Among the two hundred spectators, a quarter were Black freedmen. And then the grand jury filed in. 

Six of its eighteen members were Black, the first Black men to serve on a federal grand jury. Fields Cook, born a slave, was a Baptist minister. John Oliver, born free, had spent much of his life in Boston. George Lewis Seaton’s mother, Lucinda, had been enslaved at Mount Vernon. Cornelius Liggan Harris, a Black shoemaker, later recalled how, when he took his seat with the grand jury and eyed the defendant, “he looked on me and smiled.” 

Not many minutes later, Davis walked out a free man, released on bail. And not too many months after that the federal government’s case against him fell apart. There’s no real consensus about why. The explanation that Davis’s lawyer Charles O’Conor liked best had to do with Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, known as the disqualification clause, which bars from federal office anyone who has ever taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and later “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” O’Conor argued that Section 3’s ban on holding office was a form of punishment and that to try Davis for treason would therefore amount to double jeopardy. It’s a different kind of jeopardy lately. 

In the aftermath of the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, legal scholars, including leading conservatives, have argued that the clause disqualifies Donald Trump from running for President. Challenges calling for Trump’s name to be blocked from ballots have been filed in twenty-eight states. Eleven cases have been dismissed by courts or voluntarily withdrawn. The Supreme Court might have the final say. The American Presidency is draped in a red-white-and-blue cloak of impunity. Trump is the first President to have been impeached twice and the first ex-President to have been criminally indicted. 

If he’s convicted and sentenced and—unlikeliest of all—goes to prison, he will be the first in those dishonors, too. He faces four criminal trials, for a total of ninety-one felony charges. Thirty-four of those charges concern the alleged Stormy Daniels coverup, forty address Trump’s handling of classified documents containing national-defense information, and the remainder, divided between a federal case in Washington, D.C., and a state case in Georgia, relate to his efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election, including by inciting an armed insurrection to halt the certification of the Electoral College vote by a joint session of Congress. 

His very infamy is unprecedented. The insurrection at the Capitol cost seven lives. The Civil War cost seven hundred thousand. And yet Jefferson Davis was never held responsible for any of those deaths. His failed conviction leaves no trail. Still, it had consequences. If Davis had been tried and convicted, the cloak of Presidential impunity would be flimsier. Leniency for Davis also bolstered the cause of white supremacy. First elected to the Senate, from Mississippi, in 1848, Davis believed in slavery, states’ rights, and secession, three ideas in one. Every state had a right to secede, Davis insisted in his farewell address to the Senate, in 1861, and Mississippi had every reason to because “the theory that all men are created free and equal” had been “made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions,” meaning slavery. Weeks later, Davis became the President of the Confederacy. 

His Vice-President, Alexander Stephens, said that the cornerstone of the new government “rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.” Trump could win his Lost Cause, too. Davis fled Richmond seven days before Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. “I’m bound to oppose the escape of Jeff. Davis,” Abraham Lincoln reportedly told General William Tecumseh Sherman, “but if you could manage to have him slip out unbeknownst-like, I guess it wouldn’t hurt me much.” After Lincoln was shot and killed, on April 15th, his successor, Andrew Johnson, issued a proclamation charging that Lincoln’s assassination had been “incited, concerted, and procured by” Davis and offering a reward of a hundred thousand dollars for his arrest.

Top Blog Posts of 2023: Meeting Friends and Perennial Favorites

 

In 2023, various stories from my blog were opened more than 20,000 times. The two most popular with more than 1,500 reads each were the story about Larry Murphy's amazing rear-wheel-only landing of a Chinook Helicopter on the roof of a shack on the side of mountain in Iraq.  A local artist turned the photo into the painting above. The story is here.

The other most-popular post is titled "Task, Conditions, Standards" the basis of all Army training.  That story is here.

Next are several stories about meeting friends, new and old.

The Summer Social at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College this summer.

In Paris, following a Facebook post, I went to a gallery opening featuring my high school classmate and artist Paul Campbell and his wife Susan. 

Several years ago, I was a guest on the Cold War Conversations History Podcast. I visited Ian Sanders and got a tour of Cold War and World War II Manchester, UK. He also treated me to lunch with fish and chips and mushy peas!

On the same trip I caught up with Katharine Sanderson, a writer for Nature magazine I have know for almost 20 years. 

I write often about books but they are not usually popular posts.  But this post about the book and HBO video series Band of Brothers has been read every year since I wrote in 2017.  

In 2016 I wrote a post based on an essay by C.S. Lewis. He says during most of history in most places, men looked at military service with dread.  The American all-volunteer Army is a big exception.  The essay got a few hundred readers in 2016. Not much since, then all of a sudden in December 2023, more than 120 new readers. Who knows why now? 

The most popular post I ever wrote was about Myles B. Caggins getting promoted to Colonel.  He retired early this year, but I still get people reading his story. 

Happy New Year to all. 

Books of 2023, Part 2

Part Two of my 2023 update begins with fiction and a book recommended by my daughter Lauren; Anxious People  by Fredrik Backman. This book is so funny I was laughing on every other page. Read and laugh out loud! I wrote about the book here.

After watching the movie "Living" by Kazuo Ishiguro, I re-read The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy, on which the movie is (loosely) based. It is such a lovely story that and a haunting view of life and death. 

After reading a story about the main character dying, I read Eternal Life by Dara Horn, about a woman who could not die.  It was strange and beautiful and reminded me of novels I read fifty years ago. 

Poetry for 2023 includes a seventh re-reading of Inferno by Dante Aligheri, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Thank You For Your Service, poems about the Vietnam War by Richard Epstein, and Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney.  

In philosophy, I read The Jewish Writings by Hannah Arendt, a book of hers I had not read before. I read two books with the title Free Will. One was the "Oxford Very Short Introduction" to the subject which I read after reading Sam Harris' book of the same title.  I deeply disagree with the premise of the Harris book, which is that we have no free will.  But in one of the weird coincidences of modern life, I subscribed to his podcast last month after hearing his long essay on the events of October 7. I could not agree with him more on Israel and the necessity of destroying HAMAS and all other Jihadist groups if we want to live in a civilized world.

In the category biography I read Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. It's the book on which the movie "Oppenheimer" was based.  I saw the movie four times in three countries, the last time with French subtitles.  The book has much more depth and reveals even more of the complexity of Robert Oppenheimer's character.  The two complement each other well. 

I also read Someday You Will Understand by Nina Wolff. It is a biography of her father who escaped The Holocaust, came to America and served in the American Army in World War II. The book is based on her father's letters. It's an amazing story of survival and building a life in America after the war.

Another biography of a very young man who became a great man twice was Hero of Two Worlds by Mike Duncan, a biography of the Marquis de Lafayette, the young French general who made American independence possible and then helped to pull France together after the fall of Napoleon.  

Finally, my favorite book of the year: That All Shall Be Saved by David Bentley Hart.  In the book Hart, an Eastern Orthodox Theologian asserts that there is no eternal Hell.  Further he says that Hell is contrary to the character of God and is a terrible thing to believe about God.  

Hart made me realize that the belief in an eternal Hell is so deep in western culture that I believed in Hell even as a vaguely agnostic teenager.  Not sure about God, sure about Hell. 

A beautiful part of Hart's argument is that God intends every person who ever lived to live forever, together.  He deals with Hitler and other horrible people in the argument.  And says that belief in eternal Hell means being separated forever form those we love: which ever side of the Heaven/Hell divide we would end up on.  

Before I read this book, I re-read Inferno and felt even more revulsion at Dante's celebration of eternal punishment, which only echoes the theology of Thomas Aquinas.  Hart showed my why I was so repelled.

I agree with Hart completely and since reading the book have looked at the world differently.  

I wrote about the other books I read in 2023 here.

Books of 2023, Part 1

With just two weeks before the year ends, I should finish my usual fifty books in 52 weeks. I am currently at 47, but very close to the end of a book The Lion and the Unicorn a book of essays by George Orwell and The Ionian Mission the 8th book in the Master and Commander series of novels by Patrick O'Brian. I started re-reading the series this year.

I hope to finish Churchill and Orwell by Thomas Ricks before midnight on December 31 for the final book.

In addition to the eight Master and Commander novels, I read two naval histories by Ian Toll.  One is about the birth of the American Navy titled Six Frigates. The other is The Conquering Tide about the war in the Pacific between 1942 and 1944. A total of ten books about war and life at sea.

Six of the books I read were on science including The Dawn of Everything the long book about the origins of life and humanity--with some very tough criticisms of the most popular books in the genre: Sapiens and Guns, Germs and Steel. 

Eight were on politics, including the delightful How to Spot a Fascist by Umberto Eco and Identity by Francis Fukuyama.   I also re-read The Prince for the 11th time and On Tyranny for the 5th time. 

That adds up to 26 books and the three largest categories. Next Post will include poetry, fiction, philosophy and faith.

Eternal Hell Does Not Exist: Says David Bentley Hart and I Agree

 

In the book That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell and Eternal Salvation, the Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart asserts that there is no eternal Hell. 

I had an odd accumulation of ideas on the topic of an eternal Hell, but never doubted that Hell existed, even early in my life when I was not sure that God existed. Some of the loveliest poetry ever written is a travelogue of journey down through Hell, up Mount Purgatory and into Heaven itself by Dante Aligheri. 

Earlier this year I re-read Inferno and was repelled by the way Dante and Virgil his guide happily torment those already in Hell.  

Reading Hart showed my why I was so uncomfortable and gave me clear reasons that eternal Hell does not exist.  The best of these reasons is that God is going to somehow keep all of the souls that have ever been born. Hart says that was the whole intent of creation: to eventually bring everyone into eternity.  

Hart deals with the objections head on. What about Hitler? I could do not justice to his reasoning, but Hart shows the problems with believing that even Hitler will somehow be tormented eternally.  

My belief for many years was that Hell existed, but everyone in Hell chose to be there. I got this from CS Lewis' novel The Great Divorce. Hart mocks the idea that we could choose Hell and asks how anyone could take the limited information even the most brilliant person has and choose eternal Hell? He's right. We are all mostly ignorant and bound by time and space.

Earlier this year, I read That All Shall Be Saved twice. The Kindle version has more than fifty highlighted passages. I read the book with my friend Cliff and am hoping to have a larger discussion about the book in the future.  

The book is written by a Christian for Christians, but many Jews and others believe Hell exists. Some of us have quite a list of people we think should spend eternity there. For anyone who believes an eternal Hell exists, Hart's book is eye-opening. 

Since October 7, I would have happily consigned every member of HAMAS to Hell along with every Nazi and a host of other criminals. But I now believe, with Hart, that even the worst people who ever lived will not be in eternal Hell, because the kind of god who would put limited beings in an eternal Hell is not the God of Israel.  

Henry Kissenger and The Nazi Pope: Long Lives Addicted to Power

Two terrible twins in my mind and probably no one else's are Henry Kissenger and Pope Pius XII, the pope who bowed to the Nazis to preserve the Vatican and ignored the pleas of Catholics in France, England, Poland and other countries. He also never said the word Jew or acknowledged The Holocaust during World War II. The Pope's wretched performance in World War II is well documented in The Pope at War by David I. Kertzer. 

Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII, chose preservation of The Vatican over preservation of Catholic lives.  

In 1957, Henry Kissenger wrote his best book, A World Restored--arguably the book that defined his life's work.  In that book Kissenger wrote about the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 and how it restored stability to Europe.  Kissenger decided stability was the proper goal of diplomacy. No moral considerations could stand in the way of stability: the same reasoning that Pius XII used to put the preservation of The Vatican over the lives of Catholics and Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe.

Kissenger was in his mid-30s when Pius XII died in 1958 at 82 years old.  Kissenger lived longer, reaching 100 years, but both men clung to power and relevance until their last breath.  

After his pro-Nazi war years, Pius XII conspired with surviving Nazis by supporting the "Rat Line" that got Nazis and their looted wealth out of Europe to South America after World War II.  

Kissenger in his preference for stability opened relations with China and brought great prosperity to the communist nation, assuming that the world would benefit by bringing China into the world economy.  Fifty years later, China has the second largest economy in the world and is using it to build it its Navy and Army and threaten its neighbors, most notably Taiwan.  Building up a totalitarian country leads to a more powerful totalitarian country. 

Kissenger's path to the Vietnam peace deal includes abandoning our allies and giving consent to dropping more bombs on Cambodia and Laos than America dropped on Nazi Germany and its allies during World War II. 

In his 90s, Kissenger still craved relevance. He insinuated himself into the Trump administration through Jared Kushner--giving credibility to the biggest abuser of power for personal wealth ever to work in the White House. Kushner's Saudi Sovereign Wealth deal may exceed Trump himself in abuse of power.  

Both men chose power over every moral consideration. Both strove for relevance until their dying breath. Each made the world a better place by breathing no more. 

Austria 1938--The Sudden Betrayal

 

In September I walked through this square in the center of Vienna where Hitler spoke from a balcony announcing the Anschluss (joining) of Austria and Nazi Germany.  This sudden tragedy haunted "The Sound of Music" one of the annual movies of my childhood.  

When Trump was elected, I read many books and articles about how The Holocaust happened. Each country was different.  Each was a tragedy. In some ways, Austria was the worst.

Jews in Austria, Vienna in particular, had very good lives. They lived in a country of long cosmopolitan tradition. So when the Nazis took over on March 11, 1938, the change was sudden, dramatic and terrible.  Teenagers planning to be in college the following year were in ghettos.  Many lost one or both parents to suicide or beatings. Doctors, lawyers, professors, artists, writers and others middle class professionals were broke, shunned by all, their property confiscated, humiliated in public.  

While no one could have believed in 1938 how bad The Holocaust would be, Jews in other countries had experienced years of prejudice and open violence.  German Jews knew that rural white Christians, Catholics and Jews, led the coalition that put Hitler in power, knowing that Jews would suffer and die if he took office.  Once the Nazis invaded Poland, Jews across Europe knew they were in mortal danger. They had months, sometimes years, to adjust to knowing the entire world hated them.

Austrian Jews went from citizens to pariahs overnight. Which is why, I believe, the suicide rate was so high among Austrian Jews. Their world collapsed overnight.  

As an American Jew, I can barely imagine what it felt like to be a Jew when Nazis ruled much of Europe and had millions of sympathizers here in America.  Anyone who thinks it was easy for Jews in America between the World Wars should read People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn. 

Since 2016, I have experienced an emotional kinship with Jews under the Nazis. When Trump was elected and put the Nazi-enabler Steve Bannon in the White House, I was alarmed. When Trump winked at the Nazis in Charlottesville, I thought America would show the true Nazi basis of "America First."  The Tree of Life Synagogue shooting by a Trump lover is so far the worst violence against Jews.  

From Trump's election to October 7 of this year, I joined more than 300 protests from New York to Washington, but mainly in Philadelphia.  The only protest I have been to since October 7 was the Pro-Israel Rally on the National Mall. 

Beginning on October 7 and since, many organizations I protested with have become open Jew haters.  They have cheered HAMAS. The Jewish babies burned in their cribs, the Jewish women raped and killed, the slaughter of families in their homes is not even tragic, it is an acceptable cost.  

So I can no more ally with those groups than I can join with the Republicans who want to abandon Ukraine and support Christian Nationalism.  

Since October 7, Black Lives Matter, the Democratic Socialists of America, the World Workers Party, all of whom I have joined at protests, are now my enemy. If I am to ally with any feminist organization, I will want to see their condemnation of the barbaric violence against women on October 7. 

HAMAS celebrated their rape and torture and murder on videos they posted on social media. A transcript of one is here. 

The feeling I had on October 7 hearing BLM, DSA and other progressives is the sudden betrayal with an echo of Anschluss. Anyone who can cheer for HAMAS is the same as a swastika-wearing Nazi to me.  

  

On Tyranny 1

Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given in times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want than offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do. 

Anticipatory obedience is a political strategy. Perhaps rulers do did not initially know that citizens were willing to compromise in this value or that principle. Perhaps a new regime did not have, did not at first. Have the direct means of influencing citizens one way or another after the German elections of 1932, which permitted Adolf Hitler to form a government or the Czechoslovak elections of 1946, where the communists were Vic. 

The next crucial step was anticipatory obedience, because enough people, in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, Nazis and Communists alike realized they could move quickly toward full regime change. The first heedless acts of conformity could not then be reversed. 

In 1938, Adolf Hitler, by then securely in power in Germany, was threatening to annex neighboring Austria after the Austrian chancellor conceded it was the Austrian's anticipatory obedience that decided the fate of Austrian Jews. Local Austrian Nazis captured Jews and forced them to scrub the streets to remove the symbols of independent Austria. Crucially, people who were not Nazis looked on with interest and amusement. 

Nazis who had kept lists of Jewish properties stole what they could. Crucially, others who were not Nazis joined in the theft. As the political theorist Hanna Erent remembered, when the German troops invaded the country and Gentile neighbors started riots at Jewish homes, Austrian Jews began to commit suicide. The anticipatory obedience of Austrians in March 1938. Taught the high Nazi leadership what was possible. 

It was in Vienna that August that Adolf Eichmann established the Central Office for Jewish Immigration. In November 1938, following the Austrian example of March, German Nazis organized the national program known as Kristallnacht. In 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the US took the initiative to devise the method of mass killing without orders to do so. They guessed what their superiors wanted and demonstrated that. What what was possible? It was far more than Hitler thought. 

At the very beginning, anticipatory obedience means adapting instinctively without reflecting to a new situation, to only Germans do such things, the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram contemplating Nazi atrocities. Wanted to show that there was a particular authoritarian personality that explained why Germany behaved as they had. He devised an experiment to test the proposition, but failed to get the permission to carry it out in Germany. So we undertook it. Instead, in a Yale University building in 1961. 

At around the same time that Adolf Eichmann was being tried in Jerusalem for his part in the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews. Milgram told his subjects some Yale students some New Haven residents that they would be applying an electrical shock to other participants in an experiment about learning. In fact, the people attached to the wires on the other side of the window were in on the scheme with Milgram. And only pretended to be shocked as the subjects thought they shocked the people they thought were the participants in a learning experiment. 

They saw a horrible sight, people whom they did not know against, they whom they had no grievance. Seemed to be suffering greatly pounding the glass and complaining of heart pain. Even so, most subjects followed Milgram's instructions and continued to apply what they thought were even greater shocks until the victims appeared to die. 

Even those who did not proceed all the way to the apparent killing of their fellow human beings left without inquiring about the health of the other participants. Milgram grasped that people are remarkably receptive to new rules in a new setting. They are surprisingly willing to harm and kill others in the service of some new purpose if they are so instructed by a new authority. I found so much obedience, Milgrim remembered that I hardly saw the need for taking the experiment to Germany.

 

The Prince, Chapter 23, Avoiding Flatterers

 

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, Chapter 23 

In What Mode Flatterers are to be Avoided 

[Translated by Harvey Mansfield]

I do not want to leave out an important point and an error from which princes defend themselves with difficulty unless they are very prudent or make good choices. And these are the flatterers of whom courts are full. 

For men take such pleasure in their own affairs, and so deceive themselves. They defend themselves with difficulty from this plague and in trying to defend oneself from it, risks the danger of becoming contemptible, for there is no other way to guard oneself from flattery. 

Unless men understand that they do not offend you in telling the truth, but when everyone can tell you the truth, they lack reverence for you. Therefore, a prudent Prince must hold to this mode, choosing wise men in his state, and only to these should he give freedom to speak the truth to him, and of those things, only that. He asks about and nothing else. But he should ask them about everything and should listen to their opinions. 

Then he should decide by himself in his own mode. And with these councils and with each member of them. He should behave in such a mode that everyone knows that the more freely he speaks, the more he will be accepted. Aside from these, he should not want to hear anyone. He should move directly to the thing that was decided and be obstinate in his decisions. Whoever does otherwise either falls head long because of flatterers or changes, often because. 

Of the variability of views from which a low estimation of him arises. I want to bring up a modern example in this regard. Father Luke. A man of the present Emperor Maximilian, Speaking of His Majesty, told how he did not take counsel from anyone and never did anything in his own mode. This arose from holding to. Policy contrary to that given above. For the Emperor is a secretive man who does not communicate his plans to anyone, nor seek their views. But as in putting them into effect, they begin to be known and disclosed, they begin to be contradicted by those whom he has around him. And he an agreeable person, is dissuaded from them. From this it arises the things he does. On one day he destroys on another that no one ever understands what he wants or plans to do, and that he cannot. And that one cannot found oneself on his decisions. 

A Prince, therefore, should always take counsel, but when he wants, and not when others want. On the contrary, he should discourage everyone from counseling him about anything unless he asks it of them. But he should be a very broad questioner. And then in regard to the things he asked about a patient listener to the truth, indeed he should become upset when he learns that anyone has any hesitation to. Speak to him. And since many esteem that any Prince who establishes an opinion of himself as prudent is so considered not because of his nature, but because of the good counsel he has around him, without doubt, they are deceived, for this is a general rule that never fails. 

That a Prince who is not wise by himself cannot be counseled. Well, unless indeed by chance he should submit himself to one alone to govern him in everything who was a very prudent man. In this case, he could well be, but it would not last long because that governor would, in a short time, take away the state. But by taking counsel for more than one, a Prince, who is not wise, will never have United Counsel, nor know by himself how to unite them. Each one of his counselors will think of his own interest. 

He will not know how to correct them or understand them, and they cannot be found otherwise, because men will always turn out bad for you unless they have been made good by a necessity. So one concludes that good counsel. From wherever it comes, must arise from the prudence of the Prince and not the prudence of the Prince from good counsel.

Nigel's 24th Birthday

 

Nigel turns 24 today

My youngest child and youngest son is Nigel Garrison Gussman. He was born November 19, 1999, in Pittsburgh where he lived until he was six weeks old when we brought him to Lancaster. He was officially adopted a year later.

Nigel lived in Lancaster until 2021 when he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he lives now. His sister Lisa Stanton lives just a few miles away. 

Nigel is named after 1992 Formula 1 World Champion Nigel Mansell and the writer Garrison Keillor, host of Prairie Home Companion and author of several books, and his Mom's favorite pop culture personality.

Like me, Nigel is a fan of Formula 1 racing. We have both followed and cheered for 7-time champion Lewis Hamilton since his rookie year in 2006.  We are both hoping he will get one more championship before he retires at the end of the 2025 season.

Nigel raced bicycles and played basketball when he was in school and coached middle school basketball recently in Minneapolis. 

We won our age groups in Sunbury

At the start in Farmersville

Nigel rode the tandem with me beginning at 5 years old

Nigel was great at cheering. He cheered for Lisa on every lap at 3 years old.

Dressed up for a dinner

Visiting the Major Dick Winters Memorial in Ephrata

Family photo almost a decade ago

Visiting his brother JacariWaddell

5 years old

With favorite stuffed animal Elmo

Happy 24th Birthday Nigel!!!

Transcript of HAMAS Terrorist Bragging About Murder--To His Parents

From the podcast Making Sense by Sam Harris:

There’s a piece of audio from October 7th that many people have commented on. It’s a recording of a cell phone call that a member of Hamas made to his family, while he was in the process of massacring innocent men, women, and children. The man is ecstatic, telling his father and mother, and I think brother, that he has just killed ten Jews with his own hands. He had just murdered a husband and wife and was now calling his family from the dead woman’s phone. Here's a partial transcript of what he said: 

“Hi dad — Open my ‎WhatsApp now, and you’ll see all those killed. Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews!” 

And his dad says “May God protect you.” 

“Dad, I’m talking to you from a Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her, and I killed her husband. I killed ten with my own hands! Dad, ten with my own hands! Dad, open WhatsApp and see how many I killed, dad. Open the phone, dad. I’m calling you on WhatsApp. Open the phone, go. Dad, I killed ten. Ten with my own hands. Their blood is on their hands. [I believe that is a reference to the Quran] Put mom on.” 

And the father says, “Oh my son. God bless you!” 

“I swear ten with my own hands. Mother, I killed ten with my own hands!” 

And his father says, “May God bring you home safely.” 

 “Dad, go back to WhatsApp now. Dad, I want to do a live broadcast.” 

And the mother now says, “I wish I was with you.” 

“Mom, your son is a hero!” And then, apparently talking to his comrades he yells, “Kill, kill, kill, kill them.” 

And then his brother gets on the line, asking where he is. And he tells his brother the name of the town and then he says “I killed ten! Ten with my own hands! I’m talking to you from a Jew’s phone!” 

And the brother says, “You killed ten?” 

“Yes, I killed ten. I swear!” Then he says, “I am the first to enter on the protection and help of Allah! [Surely that’s another scriptural reference] Hold your head up, father. Hold your head up! See on WhatsApp those that I killed. Open my WhatsApp.” 

And his brother says, “Come back. Come back.” 

And he says, “What do you mean come back? There’s no going back. It is either death or victory! My mother gave birth to me for the religion. What’s with you? How would I return? Open WhatsApp. See the dead. Open it.” 

And the mother sounds like she is trying to figure out how to open WhatsApp… 

“Open WhatsApp on your phone and see the dead, how I killed them with my own hands.” 

And she says, “Well, promise to come back.”