What’s Going On?

There’s a meme going around this week, picturing Forest Gump saying, “And just like that your social media friends change from infectious disease experts into international relations experts.”

I am neither. Just a curious person who reads and listens to a lot of different sources in my efforts to understand what’s going on. I think I’ve gotten better at understanding, the more I educate myself. Right now I’m just beginning to try to understand this Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I’m going to step back from that and look at some history, starting with a prophecy.

Doctrine and Covenants 87:1-2

1 Verily, thus saith the Lord concerning the wars that will shortly come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina, which will eventually terminate in the death and misery of many souls;

2 And the time will come that war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at this place.

That was given December 25, 1832. It was reiterated April 2, 1843:

Doctrine and Covenants 130:12

12 I prophesy, in the name of the Lord God, that the commencement of the difficulties which will cause much bloodshed previous to the coming of the Son of Man will be in South Carolina.

The Civil War indeed began in South Carolina, not quite 30 years after the 1832 prophecy was given. After that time, what has war looked like throughout the world? It may not look to us as if war has been continuous, but since that time, somewhere in the world there have been nation-entangling wars.

screenshot from the PragerU video "WWI: The War That Changed Everything"

This is more obvious when we get to World War I, in 1914. As historian Andrew Roberts explains in a Prager U video,

If there had been no World War I, there would have been no Russian Revolution, no World War II, no Holocaust, no Cold War.

And that doesn’t even consider the millions who died in the war itself.

It happened after a period of growth and prosperity brought on by the Industrial Revolution. As Roberts puts it, “The future of civilization never looked brighter. And then, suddenly, it all went up in flames.”

It was kind of a forest fire, with one tree lighting another. Roberts makes the connections for us:

The fuse was lit in June 1914, in a street in Sarajevo, Bosnia. It was there that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. It should have been no more than a sad footnote in history. Instead, it changed history.

In its attempts at revenge for the murder, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. They got the blessing of their ally Germany to do so.

Small and vulnerable Serbia then reached out to its ally Russia for protection, which Russia agreed to do.

Russia sought support from France, in case war broke out. France was suspicious of Germany’s intentions and agreed.

Germany then thought it wise to move pre-emptively against France, invading through neutral Belgium. This invasion got Britain’s attention, and they stepped in to protect France from Germany.

And just like that an obscure murder led to the outbreak of war across a continent. Germany’s long-time Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, had designs on dominating Europe—and then the world. (As I read that description, I picture the mad laughter that must accompany such a declaration.)

Fighting raged on for three years, and then seemed to be at a stalemate, with appalling casualties heretofore unseen.

Andrew Roberts, screenshot from PragerU video
 "WWI: The War That Changed Everything"

Then the US got involved. Woodrow Wilson, who was elected on the promise that he would keep America out of the war, changed his mind. Canada, as part of the UK, was involved and pressuring their American neighbors, if I’m remembering right. But, as Roberts explains,

[Wilson’s] attitude changed when Germany attacked American merchant ships in the Atlantic.

The final straw was the infamous Zimmerman Telegram in which Germany promised to give Mexico, in exchange for its military support, much of the American southwest, including Texas.

A year later the war ended. There were massive casualties. And the outcomes did not really look like peace:

Russia was now in the hands of Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. France and Britain were physically and morally shattered. Germany, forced into a humiliating surrender treaty at Versailles, would soon be further decimated by runaway inflation that destroyed what was left of its economy. Meanwhile, the United States retreated into isolationism.

It was pause, not a peace. The stage was being set for a new and very much worse disaster—a second World War, one that would lead to three times the deaths of the first one.

It would be instigated by a madman who fought for the Kaiser and shared the same dream of world domination.

Had it not been for WWI, we would have never heard of him.

But we did hear of him. A literary time-traveler question is, if you could go back in time and assassinate Hitler before he could come to power, should you do it?

You can’t change history after it has happened. And evil has a way of finding those willing to perpetrate it.

So, the years between WWI and WWII were really just a pause while pressure built up.

screenshot from PragerU video "What Was the Cold War?"

WWII ended without completely ending—which led to the Cold War. Andrew Roberts does another Prager U video about that. In describing it, he says,

It was cold only in the sense that the Russians and the Americans never came to direct blows.

But it was certainly not cold for the Cubans, Koreans, Vietnamese, and others who got caught up in the Communists' relentless drive to destabilize the free, democratic, capitalist world.

There were, to be sure, many morally complex moments during this long struggle, but the Cold War was, at its core, as clear a conflict of good versus evil as World War II had been. Just like that war, the Cold War was a death match between the forces representing freedom and the forces representing totalitarianism.

The instigator, Roberts asserts, was the mass-murdering Russian dictator Joseph Stalin. As he says,

Stalin knew that his Soviet armed forces could not take on the might of the free West. Instead, he decided to wage this fight through the use of proxies, and by a massive use of disinformation and misinformation.

screeenshot from "What Was the Cold War?"

Did we mention that he was mendacious? At the end of WWII, he had troops in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. He promised President Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference that he would remove them, but he never had any intention of doing so. Instead, he easily took control of their governments, pulling them into the Russian-dominated Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

When he threatened Greece and Turkey, that’s when Pres. Truman stepped in and declared the Truman doctrine of containment. It was at this point that:

The Cold War was on.

For the next five decades, and across four continents—Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America—the US and the Soviet Union battled for influence—sometimes overtly, like in Korea and Vietnam; and sometimes covertly, through their various spy agencies. But the moral lines of this battle never changed: the freedom of the West versus the communist tyranny of the Soviet East.

Containment wasn’t really enough. Stalin and his successor made it clear then—and archival evidence now proves—that there was no appeasement possible. The intention was always to make Communism the worldwide preeminent ideology—which is tyranny.

It was thanks to three strong leaders—Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II—that liberty prevailed in the Cold War. The USSR at this point was defeated—and broken up. Roberts explains,

The Soviet Union was, at the close of the 1980s, to use historian Paul Johnson's description, “a bewildered giant”—economically bereft, militarily exhausted, no longer able or willing to enforce its will.

Communism, he reminds us, failed economically, politically, and morally—as it always has. All that suffering was for a “never-viable and now badly discredited cause.”

The Cold War ended. Take a breath, and almost immediately thereafter was the Gulf War. That ended with a treaty that was never kept, so ills just kept brewing.

Then in 2001 came 9/11, and that meant war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Relative peace was forfeited in Afghanistan just months ago. Now Russia has invaded Ukraine.

Wars and rumors of wars are mostly continuous now.

Are there reasons and intrigues that it would help to understand? Yes. But our understanding won’t prevent them.

Another scripture, about the approach of the Second Coming of Christ:

Matthew 24:6–7

6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

I think this means the wars we’re seeing now are not temporary. Specific ones may end, but others are likely to rise up elsewhere.

If you want to understand what’s happening, study the scriptures and read about the last days. And then, instead of being in fear, stand against tyranny and savagery, and stand up for freedom and civilization. Stand on God’s side. Then watch, with personal peace, as His coming, for you, is the long-anticipated Great, rather than Dreadful, Day of the Lord (Malachi 4:5-6).

Pearl Harbor Awoke the Heroes

This Saturday is the 78^th anniversary of the date that continues to live in infamy, the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

image from here

I’ve written about it a couple of times before, offering some of the history, here and here. I’ll just repeat some of the stats, so we can see how big this attack was.

Nine US ships were sunk, 21 damaged, 3 beyond repair. Some 2,403 were killed, including 68 civilians. An additional 1,178 were injured. (Japan lost 29 out of 350 attacking aircraft, plus their midget sub.) Until 9/11/2001 there was never as large an attack on the United States. The following day, President Roosevelt gave the speech including the phrase, “a date that will live in infamy.” The US declared war on Japan. Four days later Hitler declared war against the US, and from that point on isolationism was out of the question. Instead, the goal was to completely thwart the tyrannists trying to put the world under their control, and to offer freedom as widely as possible. No other outcome was acceptable, and the United States was the special part of the world given the mission.

Following the war, the US did not subsume the losing parties; we helped them recover and live up to their promises to avoid future aggression. Japan and Germany could not have suffered loss to a greater victor. After the war, US generosity helped rebuild the war ravaged areas.

We still need to have the same mission—to thwart tyranny and offer freedom as widely as possible. There’s no room for cynicism in this effort. And I prefer that we wake to the need for heroes to stand against tyranny without yet another existential attack to get our attention.

I was pleased that the new movie Midway is a respectful look at this historical moment. The first quarter of the movie recounts the attack on Pearl Harbor. Then comes the rest of the Midway story—the Doolittle bombing raid of Japan in April 1942, then the Battle of the Coral Sea in May, followed at last by the Battle of Midway in June—which thwarted the tyrannical aims of the Japanese and pushed them back away from our shores.

The guys in our family always like a good war movie. I don’t always feel that way. There are some standouts, but they tend to be about specific people more than overall strategy for me. I’m always pleased if the movie can tell the story in a way that covers the strategy in a way that my non-strategic mind can understand. This one does that (with a couple of minor fails on my part, when I didn’t know why Nimitz was moving certain pieces on the big map table).

scene from the 2019 movie Midway
image found here

I understood the intelligence officers and code breakers, and the way they presented their evidence. I understood the trap they were setting for Admiral Yamamoto. And I understood the essential need to stop the Japanese onslaught.

Much of the story is told through a pilot named Lt. Dick Best, who was cockier before the lives of men were placed in his hands, but resolute in a way that made the difference. We also see Admirals Nimitz and Halsey (Nimitz was portrayed by Woody Harrelson, who not only looked the part, but didn’t look crazed as he often does in the parts he plays).

One difficulty I have with war movies is the quick cutting of scenes without full context. We’re shown the cockpit of one of the characters that has become important to us. Then we see a plane hit and exploding, and we can’t quite tell if that was the hero we just lost—until he shows up again a few scenes later. I have this same problem with Star Wars movies.

But the parts I do understand and see clearly were brilliant. It’s beautifully filmed. The CGI doesn’t call attention to itself. The acting is excellent. And, even knowing the outcome of the basic history of the Battle of Midway, it induced nail biting as we hoped we wouldn’t lose any more heroes.

Luke Evans (L) plays Lt. Wade McClusky; Ed Skrein play Lt. Dick Best,
who were real-life heroes in the Battle of Midway
image from the movie Midway, found here

There is some gore, particularly in the Pearl Harbor section of the film. But it’s at a PG-13 level, not R. I can’t stomach the gore in an R movie, but what is briefly shown in this one helps tell the story; it brings up some of the feelings I imagine 1940s Americans were feeling.

I’m so glad there wasn’t any pandering to an “America is also the bad guy” sophistry that shows up so often these days. In addition, this managed to be respectful to the Japanese as well.

There’s a good review of this movie in last week’s The Epoch Times, here. 

If you’re looking for a way to honor the Greatest Generation, that responded to Pearl Harbor and helped keep us free from tyranny, treat yourself to the new movie Midway.

The Date that Lives in Infamy

I’m taking a day to remember December 7, 1941, a date required to be committed to memory. My purpose is simply to honor and remind; my knowledge isn’t specialized enough to add much after 70 years.

Photo from Japanese plane,
early in the attack;
the explosion is the USS Oklahoma;
available on Wikipedia, "Attack on Pearl Harbor"

It was a Sunday morning. My dad, a WWII veteran, was not yet in the military. He had spent 2 ½ years overseas as a missionary, being sent home from neutral Sweden because of the surrounding dangers. During his shipboard trip home, he came very close to a major battle, leading the ship to remain well lit the remainder of the journey to avoid accidental attack. But by December he had gotten a job and was getting on with life. He took that weekend to drive from San Bernardino to Los Angeles, for a conference of young adults sponsored by the church. He had spent a day or two dancing and socializing. Then, that Sunday morning, he was driving to the church for a worship service and had the radio on. The announcement came that Pearl Harbor had been attacked by the Japanese.

The church meeting was subdued and emotional. People from the congregation got up to take turns voicing their trust in God and commitment to Him, no matter what was required. Before the meeting was over, an announcement came that all military were required to return immediately to their bases. The group gave them a tearful farewell.

My dad tried to enlist right away, but it took a year before he was accepted; I don’t know why, possibly because he was very thin for his height. A year later he was accepted into the Army. By then, he said, they were willing to take anybody breathing.

The purpose of the Pearl Harbor attack wasn’t to get America into the World War; it was to keep it out. There was an assumption, because the US had tried to remain isolated, feeling safe because of the two oceans separating it from ongoing conflicts, that the US was weak and unwilling to fight, and that the loss of a major portion of its fleet would leave us cowering. The Japanese admiral, Yamamoto, who worked up the tactical plan, was concerned that the attack would instead wake “a sleeping giant,” which turned out to be true.

Nine US ships were sunk, 21 damaged, 3 beyond repair. Some 2,403 were killed, including 68 civilians. An additional 1,178 were injured. (Japan lost 29 out of 350 attacking aircraft, plus their midget sub.) Until 9/11/2001 there was never as large an attack on the United States. The following day, President Roosevelt gave the speech including the phrase, “a date that will live in infamy.” The US declared war on Japan. Four days later Hitler declared war against the US, and from that point on isolationism was out of the question. Instead, the goal was to completely thwart the tyrannists trying to put the world under their control, and to offer freedom as widely as possible. No other outcome was acceptable, and the United States was the special part of the world given the mission.

Following the war, the US did not subsume the losing parties; we helped them recover and live up to their promises to avoid future aggression. Japan and Germany could not have suffered loss to a greater victor. After the war, US generosity helped rebuild the war ravaged areas.

It takes a lot of individual goodness to produce the national virtue the US portrayed in WWII. It is my hope that we still have enough of that goodness to win the day against today’s would-be world-dominating tyrants. If we live the laws of civilization, freedom, and free enterprise, I trust that God will help us come out on top again—to the benefit of the entire world.

You can read a couple of nice summaries on the attack on Pearl Harbor here and here.