Presidents Of War

Joseph C. Goulden, a veteran journalist and author of Korea: The Untold Story of the War and Truth Is the First Casualty, on the Tonkin resolution, offers a good review in the Washington Times of Michael Beschloss’ Presidents Of War.

A distinguished historian who has written 10 outstanding books perhaps can be excused for a single outrageous sentence that leaves a reader shaking his head in disbelief.

Michael Beschloss makes just such a misstep in his otherwise magnificent account of how American presidents went to war over the centuries. He writes that the way the nation entered World War II “did so much to elevate [President] Roosevelt’s standing that it increased the temptation for later Presidents to elevate their reputation by seeking foreign conflict.”

Pardon my dissenting blink. As Washington correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer 1967-68, I witnessed Lyndon Johnson’s open agony on a daily basis as he fought a war that essentially destroyed his presidency. And I thought of the frustrations endured by President Truman by waging the Korean conflict into which he was abruptly thrust. Neither man felt that war “elevated” their reputations, to be sure.

That quibble aside, Mr. Beschloss offers fascinating insight about how presidents have dealt with what is surely their most demanding responsibility: That of asking Congress to put the nation into war.

The men who created the United States wisely decided that such a decision should not be left to the president alone. Memories of European wars commenced by unrestricted monarchs haunted the Founding Fathers. In their view, “war would be a last resort under the political system they had invented.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/1/book-review-presidents-of-war-by-michael-beschloss/ 

Why The United States Must Stay In Syria

Gary Anderson, a retired Marine Corps colonel who was a U.N. observer in the Middle East and a Department of State governance adviser in Iraq and Afghanistan, offers a piece in the Washington Times on why we should stay in Syria.

Defense Secretary James Mattis was right to resign. President Trump is hard to help. When your enemies tell you that you are screwing up, chances are that at least some of what you are doing is right. When your friends tell you are screwing up, it may be a good time to at least re-evaluate your plan. But when everyone tells you that you’re screwing up, you are probably really screwing up. Mr. Trump is in danger of thoroughly screwing up in withdrawing our troops from northeastern Syria. He should re-evaluate his decision.

Mr. Trump’s Democratic Party enemies in Congress jumped on his announcement immediately as did The Washington Post, but so did many of his erstwhile Republican allies. He is also going against the recommendations of his secretary of Defense, James Mattis, and his senior military advisers as well as the majority of Middle East experts in the national security community.

The irony here is that — in cutting and running from Syria — the president is doing in Syria the same thing that he successfully criticized President Obama for doing in Iraq. The Democrats will have a field day with it in 2020. There is absolutely nothing to be gained politically by the Syrian withdrawal. This is a self-inflicted wound.

… The only people applauding the Syrian withdrawal are the Syrian government, the Iranians and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. At a time when he is being investigated for colluding with Moscow, the last thing Mr. Trump needs is to hand the Russians a foreign policy victory with no corresponding quid pro quo for us.

The American presence in the remote backwater of northeastern Syria has served three very important purposes. First, it prevents the 2,000 or so survivors of ISIS who once ruled the area from regrouping in the political vacuum that allowed them to gain power in the first place.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/dec/23/why-the-united-states-must-stay-in-syria/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=20171227&utm_

term=newsletter&utm_content=morning&bt_ee=rsbontWoVt20Gk%2F%2F4FxxeYxfiOF4WPl2i

Lr%2FddkCk1H1eGEzmqXDlq3uyTT4Lb8t&bt_ts=1545651491396

The Witch Elm

Carol Herman, my editor at the Washington Times, offers a good review in the Washington Times of Tana French’s The Witch Elm.

There’s nothing like a good mystery to distract from a wrenching news cycle. And the award-winning Tana French does not disappoint with her latest, “The Witch Elm,” a novel powered not by one but three mysteries, and the deft narrative skills of its author.

Ms. French, a Vermont-born writer who has lived in Ireland since 1990, gets down to business quickly. Her protagonist, Toby, inadvertently becomes part of a minor art scam at work that he fears will cost him his job. Thereafter, his apartment is raided by two masked burglars who escape with his computer, TV and other valuables, but not before leaving Toby severely injured. And then there is the matter of the human skull found at his uncle’s house, where Toby heads after a prolonged hospital stay for further recovery.

Although pursuing clues to the burglary bears the hallmarks of a traditional whodunit, complete with two detectives named Gerry Martin and Colm Bannon (Flashy Suit), the art shenanigans and the mysterious appearance of the skull in particular give Ms. French the opportunity to excavate the interior lives of her main characters, her singular gift. While the plot hinges on the unraveling of the mysteries, the book also pores over the deeper matters of human desire and its limits.

 “I’ve always considered myself to be, basically, a lucky person. I don’t mean I’m one of those people who pick multi-million euro Lotto numbers on a whim, or show up seconds too late for flights that go on to crash with no survivors. I just mean that I managed to go through life without any of the standard misfortunes you hear about.”

Toby’s words that open the novel reveal much about how the novel will proceed. It is Toby’s voice that guides the tale, with all its charming cadence and understated self-consciousness.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/4/book-review-the-witch-elm-by-tana-french/ 

Mussolini And Hitler

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Christian Goeschel’s Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance.

Might we call it “the pact made in Hades?”

In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, tyrants who did not especially care for one another personally, signed onto a partnership that was a major step toward the war that devastated much of Europe.

Hitler wanted his southern flank protected, recognizing the ability of the Royal British Navy to land a force in Italy that could cut the legs beneath his campaign centered on France.

Mussolini had his eyes on converting much of North Africa into Italian colonies, ousting the British and French.

The “partnership” — the alliance deserves the quotation marks — was fraught with betrayal and mistrust. Many historians have depicted the duo as “vain, pompous, and jealous rivals.” Mussolini especially has been described as, a “boob” and opportunist.

Nonetheless, British historian Christian Goeschel contends, convincingly, that the partnership, despite its many flaws, was “decisive in destroying the inter-war Wilsonian order.”

At first glance, the men were ideological opposites. Hitler bullied his way to leadership with rhetoric promising to “restore” war-ruined Germany. Mussolini, a sometime editor, started as a socialist; by the time he achieved power in 1921, he cared naught for democracy.

Initial relations were restrained. Mussolini ridiculed Hitler’s putsch as a “caricature of Italian Fascism” — a backhanded acknowledgement of his power. After some early slurs, Hitler recognized Mussolini as a “tough anti-Marxist” in his book, “Mein Kampf.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/1/book-review-mussolini-and-hitler-by-christian-goes/ 

My Washington Times Review Of 'Carmine The Snake: Carmine Persico And His Murderous Mafia Family'

The Washington Times published my review of Carmine the Snake: Carmine Persico and His Murderous Mafia Family.

"Carmine the Snake” Persico has been identified by the FBI and the Justice Department as the longtime head of the New York Cosa Nostra Colombo crime family.

Although incarcerated in 1987 due to his conviction in the 1986 famous Mafia Commission federal RICO case, he reputedly still runs the Colombo crime family from prison. He made his name in the Profaci crime family as part of the hit team that shot and killed mob boss Albert Anastasia in a New York barbershop in 1957.

Anastasia, known as “The Mad Hatter” and “The Executioner,” was the co-creator of Murder Inc., the notorious enforcement arm of organized crime in New York in the 1940s. A famous photo was taken of the slain Anastasia, lying dead next to a barber’s chair as detectives look on.

In 1961, during a conflict between the Gallo crew and Joe Profaci, the Profaci crime family boss, Persico switched sides and attempted to strangle and kill his friend and fellow hit man Larry Gallo, which earned him the nickname “the Snake.” The attempted strangulation in a darkened bar was fictionally re-created in “The Godfather, Part II.”

Frank DiMatteo, who describes himself as a mafia survivor and previously wrote “The President Street Boys: Growing Up Mafia,” offers a “street level” view of the Colombo boss in “Carmine Carmine the Snake: Carmine Persico and His Murderous Mafia Family.” Michael Benson, a true crime author who wrote “Betrayal in Blood,” is the co-author of this book.

… “Using a combination of brashness, cunning, and an appetite for extreme violence, Carmine Persico Carmine Persico rocketed from gangbanger on a Park Slope, Brooklyn street corner to boss of the Colombo crime family, where he reputedly became the longest-reigning godfather in modern Mafia history — mostly from behind the bars of a federal penitentiary,” the authors tell us.

The book covers in detail the internecine mob war between the Gallos and the Profaci crime family, with each faction murdering and attempting to murder each other. The Gallo crew put a bomb in Persico's car, but the detonation failed to kill him. The war ended with Profaci’s death and the murder of Crazy Joe Gallo in a restaurant.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/7/carmine-the-snake-persico-biography-looks-at-infam/ 

The Secret World: A History Of Intelligence

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Christopher Andrew's The Secret World: A History of Intelligence. 

At hand is a truly magisterial work, a sweeping history that stretches from the biblical era to the present. Christopher Andrew is the leading academic intelligence historian of our time. A professor at the University of Cambridge, he has written a veritable shelf of books on intelligence.

“The Secret World” is a must-read for any person with a serious interest in intelligence. But be forewarned. The more than 800 pages of text require more than a casual scan, but are well worth the investment of serious time.

His evidence, buttressed in 111 pages of documentation sources, is rich with anecdotes and opinions of world leaders who relied on — or ignored — intelligence as a tool of office.

Despite his overall admiration of the intel trade, Mr. Andrew is coldly objective about instances where matters were flubbed. Consider, for instance, Israeli spies who scouted Canaan as the Promised Land centuries ago. The Canaanites, they claimed, “included giants who made them feel no bigger than grasshoppers.” He also notes that some glitches are timeless, citing a biblical operation where spies ended up in a brothel, thus melding “the two oldest professions.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/19/book-review-the-secret-world-by-christopher-andrew/ 

Protecting Americans From Violent Offenders

Thomas T. Cullen, the U.S. Attorney for the U.S. District Court, Western District of Virginia, offers a piece in the Washington Times.

As we enter the 2018 midterm season and the attendant legislative interregnum, Congress can and should take bipartisan action to protect us from repeat violent offenders.

In 1984, President Reagan signed into law the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). Under the ACCA, felons convicted of unlawfully possessing a firearm face a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years if they had three or more prior convictions for a “serious drug offense” or a “violent felony.”

This federal statute, along with other criminal-justice initiatives, including parole abolition, bail reform, and the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, were passed to address an alarming two-decade increase in violent crime.

As Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently noted, between 1964 and 1980, the number of robberies and rapes tripled, aggravated assaults nearly tripled, and murders doubled.

The ACCA and these other reforms were a resounding success. Between 1991 and 2014, the murder and aggravated-assault rates decreased by half. Robberies decreased by two-thirds and rapes by more than a third.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 dealt a severe blow to the ACCA and violent-crime reduction efforts. In Johnson v. United States, the Court considered whether Samuel Johnson, an avowed white supremacist who had confessed to planning multiple acts of domestic terrorism, should be subject to the mandatory 15-year sentence under the ACCA after pleading guilty to the possession of an AK-47 rifle, several other firearms, and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition as a previously convicted felon.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/aug/2/why-congress-should-take-action-on-the-armed-caree/ 

Ignored No More: 'Gosnell' Movie Targets Women, Looks To Change Minds About Abortion: Filmmaker John Sullivan Ready To Challange Media Silence on Horrific Philadelphia 'Serial Killer'

Christian Toto at the Washington Times offers a piece on John Sullivan, who is making a film about the Philadelphia abortionist doctor and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell.

Filmmaker John Sullivan has faced his share of obstacles in executive-producing his latest movie, “Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer.”

First came financing for the feature film, which recalls the barbaric practices of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell. The issue was resolved by a record-breaking crowdfunding campaign in 2014 that netted north of $2.1 million via Indiegogo.

Then a lawsuit filed by a judge depicted in the movie delayed its release, as did securing a distributor. The pro-life film is set for an Oct. 12 release on about 600 screens.

Now Mr. Sullivan his crew are bracing for a lack of interest by the left-leaning media, which gave little coverage of Gosnell’s 2013 murder trial, where it was revealed that he likely had killed hundreds of babies born alive on his operating table.

Gosnell, now 77, was convicted of three first-degree murder charges and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jul/26/kermit-gosnell-serial-killer-film-tackles-abortion/ 

You can also read my Washington Times review of Gosnell: The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer via the below link:

www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2017/02/my-washington-times-review-of-gosnell.html 

A Spy Called Orphan: The Enigma Of Donald Maclean

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Roland Phillips’ A Spy Named Orphan: The Enigma of Donald Maclean.

Even after the passage of more than half a century, anyone even vaguely familiar with national security clearances must blink at British handling of the coterie of Soviet spies known as “The Cambridge Five.”

Consider the rogue at hand, Donald Maclean. Although a blithering drunk for much of his career in the Foreign Office, he seemed on a path to be foreign minister while in his mid-30s.

Roland Phillips, who had a long career in London publishing, uses newly-released British archives to add fresh details on the oft-told story of the five Cambridge students recruited as Soviet agents the 1930s.

He also gained access to Maclean family papers.

Aside from H.R. “Kim” Philby who culminated his career as counterintelligence chief for British intelligence, Maclean was the most effective agent.

Campus communists inevitably drew the attention of Soviet recruiters. Maclean possessed four desirable qualities of a secret agent: “an inherent class resentfulness, a predilection for secretiveness, a yearning to belong, and an infantile appetite for praise and reassurance.” He was given the code name “Waise” in German, meaning “Orphan.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jul/10/book-review-a-spy-named-orphan-by-roland-phillips/ 

The Wounded Printed Page Strikes Back

Wesley Pruden at the Washington Times offers his take on print newspapers.

Fake news is everywhere, cluttering desktops, iPads, laptops, iPhones and all the other manifestations of the post-literate era when it’s just too much trouble to find a reliable read.

Who needs to read when there’s such an abundance of twits clogging up Twitterworld with the trivia, the trifling and the picayune — misinformation, usually the work of innocents, and disinformation, always the work of rogues spreading deliberate lies, exaggerations and confusion.

Farhad Manjoo, a technology correspondent for The New York Times, was tired of it all. Six months ago, he turned off all his digital news notifications, unplugged social networks, said goodbye to the cacophony and other noise of the news feed and took the radical step of subscribing to, of all things, three ink-on-paper newspapers and a weekly magazine.

He wanted to “slow-jam the news” but still wanted to know what was going on in the world. He was determined to find sources that furnished depth and prized accuracy over speed. It was an experiment, relying on print for news and not on “social media.” He learned several interesting things.

What he learned first was that the traditional formula taught to generations of cub reporters — the opening paragraph must answer the five W’s, who, what, why, when and where, and sometimes the how — is no longer in the curriculum. It’s now, he discovered, “more like a never-ending stream of commentary, one that does more to distort your understanding of the world than illuminate it.”

Commentary precedes and overpowers facts. The point of the story is often submerged in the 12th paragraph, sometimes deliberately so, where a reader may never see it because he gave up after the third paragraph. Relying on social media for the news, Mr. Manjoo learned, “is what other people are saying about the news rather than the news [itself] and that makes us susceptible to misinformation.”

Perhaps the most important thing he learned is that it takes time, and experience and willingness, to sort fact from fiction and a lot of “news” on the Internet has never been sorted out. “Smartphones and social networks are giving us facts about the news much faster than we can make sense of them, letting speculation and misinformation fill the gap.” He might have included disinformation, too, because disinformation, the deliberate fuzzing and invention of facts, is worst of all.

The sorting of fiction from facts, he discovered, “was the surprise blessing of the newspaper. I was getting the news a day old, but in the delay between when the news happened and when it showed up on my front door hundreds of professionals had done the hard work for me.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/24/the-wounded-printed-page-strikes-back/ 

The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia And The Ghosts Of The Past

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a review in the Washington Times of Shaun Walker’s The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past.

Fellow writers take note: Your work is being monitored every day by a Russian agency that formerly was part of the Russian SVR foreign intelligence service, successor to the KGB of the old Soviet Union.

Officers examine the world’s press, searching for instances of what they term to be “Russophobia,” loosely defined as anything critical of the regime of President Vladimir Putin.

The agency’s director, Igor Nikolaichuk, maintains what is tantamount to an enemy list, ranking other nations’ hostility to Russia. One listing he displayed to Shaun Walker, author of this insightful look into Mr. Putin’s Russia, ranked Austria as the most hostile, followed closely by the U.S.

Depicting the West — and its “controlled press” — as an enemy scheming to overthrow Russia is one of the methods enabling Mr. Putin to maintain a considerable popularity. He is essentially unopposed as he seeks a fourth term in March, which would keep him in office until 2024.

Mr. Walker, a reporter for the Guardian, a British newspaper, has worked in Russia for two decades. His portrayal of Mr. Putin’s rule is based on interviews throughout Russia, from the Pacific shores to Europe. The man has astounding courage — seeking out, for instance, Chechen thugs who would happily put a bullet into his head.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/18/book-review-the-long-hangover-by-shaun-walker/ 

The Future Of War: A History

Joshua Sinai offers a review of Lawrence Freedman’s The Future of War: A History at the Washington Times.

The nature of warfare is constantly changing and evolving. New technologies such as unmanned systems, whether militarized aerial drones, remote-controlled robotic tanks or sophisticated cyber weapons that can remotely destroy an adversary’s critical nodes in their infrastructure, directed-energy (e.g., laser) weapons, as well as anti-ballistic defensive systems that can intercept in mid-air an adversary’s offensive missiles, are all changing the tactics of warfare for the countries that possess them.

In a parallel development, if some non-state adversaries, such as terrorist groups, achieve the capability to employ miniaturized tactical nuclear weapons or cyberwarfare weapons, they could inflict catastrophic casualties on their more powerful adversaries.

With today’s state and non-state adversaries seeking to exploit these and other new military technologies, military planners are aware that new concepts of warfare policies, doctrine, operation and organizational structures are required to address the challenges presented by the constantly evolving revolution in military affairs.

It is not only in the current era that military thinkers are forecasting the future of warfare; they have done this throughout history. As Lawrence Freedman writes, the future of warfare has always been a matter of concern along with “the causes of war and their likely conduct and cause.” Mr. Freedman is emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College, London.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/8/book-review-the-future-of-war-a-history-by-lawrenc/ 

Gun Rights Activists Celebrate House Approval Of Concealed Carry Reciprocity Bill

Andrea Noble at the Washington Times reports that the House passed the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act.

The House delivered a win for gun rights groups Wednesday with the passage of legislation that would force states to recognize concealed carry permits issued by other states and would strengthen the federal gun background check system.

The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, backed by Republicans, was adopted in a 231-198 vote that mostly followed party lines. The Senate now will take up the measure.

Supporters say the proposal would give law-abiding citizens the ability to protect themselves when they travel, but critics say it eviscerates states’ rights to uphold their own firearms standards by allowing gun owners who obtain permits in states with lesser requirements to carry in all 50 states.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/dec/6/concealed-carry-reciprocity-bill-passes-house/ 

You can also read my Washington Times piece on gun rights and concealed carry via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2017/08/a-distorted-view-of-concealed-carry.html 

My Washington Times Review Of 'The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, And A Friendship Made And Lost In War'

The Washington Times published my review of James McGrath Morris’ The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War.

Although the late, great writer Ernest Hemingway has many detractors, he remains popular and is still read, written about and discussed today. Not so for Mr. Hemingway’s contemporary, the late novelist John Dos Passos.

But Dos Passos gets his due in James McGrath Morris‘ “The Ambulance Drivers,” a book about both writers who came of age during World War I, and became popular and critically acclaimed novelists in the post-World War I era.

I’ve been a Hemingway aficionado since my teenage years in the 1960s and I learned of Dos Passos when I read biographies of Hemingway. I went on to read Dos Passos‘ “USA” trilogy, which I found interesting, but a tough read. As an anti-communist, then and now, I was interested in reading Dos Passos due to his anti-communism, which is covered in the book.

… Their long friendship dissolved over political differences. Ironically, Dos Passos had been the leftist idealist, while Hemingway was apolitical. Both of their views, and their friendship, would change during the Spanish Civil War.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/8/book-review-the-ambulance-drivers-hemingway-dos-pa/ 

FBI Report Finds Officers ‘De-Policing’ As Anti-Cop Hostility Becomes ‘New Norm’

Valerie Richardson at the Washington Times offers a piece on an FBI report on “de-policing.”

An unclassified FBI study on last year’s cop-killing spree found officers are “de-policing” amid concerns that anti-police defiance fueled in part by movements like Black Lives Matter has become the “new norm.”

“Departments — and individual officers — have increasingly made the decision to stop engaging in proactive policing,” said the report by the FBI Office of Partner Engagement obtained by The Washington Times.

The report, “Assailant Study — Mindsets and Behaviors,” said that the social-justice movement sparked by the 2014 death of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of an officer in Ferguson, Missouri, “made it socially acceptable to challenge and discredit the actions of law enforcement.”

PHOTOS: The most powerful people in the world-ranked

FBI spokesman Matthew Bertron said the study was written in April.

“Nearly every police official interviewed agreed that for the first time, law enforcement not only felt that their national political leaders [publicly] stood against them, but also that the politicians’ words and actions signified that disrespect to law enforcement was acceptable in the aftermath of the Brown shooting,” the study said.

As a result, “Law enforcement officials believe that defiance and hostility displayed by assailants toward law enforcement appears to be the new norm.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/4/fbi-report-officers-de-policing-anti-cop-hostility/ 

72 Convicted In U.S. Terror Cases Came From Nations Targeted For Vetting

Stephen Dinan at the Washington Times offers a piece on 72 terrorism cases where the people came from countries targeted for extreme vetting.

At least 72 convicted terrorists came from the seven countries President Trump targeted in his extreme vetting executive order, according to a new report this weekend that directly undercut part of the courts’ rulings halting the program.

Seventeen of those entered the U.S. under the refugee program that Mr. Trump has said is of special concern to him, according to the data compiled by the Senate Judiciary Committee and analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies.

The convictions came in terrorism-related investigations since the Sept. 11 attacks, but some were for relatively minor crimes such as identity fraud. Nevertheless, more than 30 of the convicts served at least three years in prison because of their terrorism-related crimes, the CIS report said.

Judge James L. Robart, who first blocked Mr. Trump’s executive order on Feb. 3, insisted in court that there were no such terrorists at all.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/12/terror-convicts-came-from-countries-targeted-for-e/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTVdZNU5qUmhOR014WWpWaCIsInQiOiJ5cDFvQUwrS3J0dDJhXC9neUZLQmJYdUM4K0VPaDN4bzFmWENMUFZIaGZBNUhQOXJjZ3RpTU9lbHNuZVZxNk5wbTNkSG1oS3E4ZTJDeGVKdGY4ZFpOSUJqQjlmN2pNXC9GZFA3TVhVSVF1TTNFWHFXS2xPVzlFbFBkRHgxU1dMcWtPIn0%3D

My Washington Times Review Of ‘Hemingway at War: Ernest Hemingway’s Adventures as a World War II Correspondent’

My review of Terry Mort's Hemingway at War: Ernest Hemingway's Adventures as a World War II Correspondent appeared in the Washington Times.

You can read the review via the below link or the below text:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/23/book-review-hemingway-at-war-ernest-hemingways-adv/  

As a Hemingway aficionado since my early teens, I’ve read all of Ernest Hemingway’s novels, short stories, his letters and most of the biographies written about him. I’ve also read collections of his journalism, including the six articles he wrote as a war correspondent for Collier’s magazine during World War II.

Since his suicide in 1961, there has been a steady stream of books about Hemingway, whom many suggest may be the greatest and most influential writer of the 20th century.

 

Of course, Hemingway has his detractors. Hemingway weaved his real life through his fiction, thus creating the Hemingway persona and the quintessential macho fictional Hemingway hero. This has made it easy for the Hemingway haters to zero in on his personal life and disparage both his life and his work by emphasizing his bragging, bullying and boozing. They have also delighted in deflating his tough guy image by zeroing in on his time as a World War II combat correspondent, branding him a coward, a liar and a fake journalist.

 

Terry Mort, a writer who has written seven novels and six nonfiction books, including “The Hemingway Patrols: Ernest Hemingway and His Hunt for U-Boats,” offers an evenhanded look at Hemingway’s wartime role in “Hemingway at War.”

 

“Hemingway had a talent for being at the center of important events. Those events — and some of the people connected with them — are a large part of this story. He was with the Allied landings on D-Day. He flew with the RAF on at least one bombing mission. He flew with them during an attack of V-1 flying bombs. He operated with the French Resistance and the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as the Allies advanced to Paris.

 

And he was present and indeed active during the horrendous carnage of the battle for the Hurtgenwald in Germany’s Siegfried Line. As such he provides a useful lens to examine these events and also some of the people, both the troops who fought and the civilian journalists who covered the fighting,” Mr. Mort writes in his introduction. “Inevitably and understandably, his exposure to people and events affected his journalism, and later his fiction. This book attempts therefore to place him in the context of this history and in so doing expand understanding of those events and their effect on him, personally and professionally.”

 

I believe Mr. Mort largely succeeded in his goal.

 

At the outbreak of World War II, Hemingway was a world-famous author basking in the critical and commercial success of his Spanish Civil War novel, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and living in Cuba with his third wife, journalist Martha Gellhorn. She took off to cover the war for Collier’s, while Hemingway remained in Cuba. With his fishing boat and friends he joined the “Hooligan Navy,” the hundreds of volunteer yachtsmen, fisherman and civilian pilots who took to the sea to provide intelligence to the Navy about Nazi German U-boat submarines.

 

He later contacted Collier’s editors and arranged to become their European frontline correspondent. Hemingway was nothing if not competitive, so perhaps he was in competition with his wife, who thought he was stealing her plum assignment.

 

Mr. Mort offers fine sketches of Hemingway’s fellow war correspondents, A.J. Liebling, Ernie Pyle and others, as well as the military people Hemingway accompanied throughout the war, such as OSS Col. David Bruce, Private Archie “Red” Pelkey and Col. Charles “Buck” Lanham, who commanded Hemingway’s favorite infantry outfit, the 4th Division’s 22nd Regiment.

 

In a letter Lanham wrote to his wife, he described Hemingway: “He is probably the bravest man I have ever known, with an unquenchable lust for battle and adventure.” So much for Hemingway being a coward. Lanham also confirms that Hemingway did indeed fight alongside his troops while under heavy attack.

 

But as a former naval officer during the Vietnam War, Mr. Mort disputes some of Hemingway’s piece on the D-Day landings, noting that Hemingway got some of the command terminology wrong and Hemingway’s descriptions of the actions of the landing craft’s officer and coxswain ring false.

 

I was disappointed in Hemingway’s World War II novel, “Across the River and Into the Trees,” thinking he ought to have written a war novel more akin to his short story, “Black Ass at the Crossroads,” but Mr. Mort’s book makes me think differently about the novel and I plan to reread it.

 

“Hemingway at War” is about much more than Hemingway, offering what some might think of as padding, but I found Mr. Mort’s character sketches and descriptions of momentous events that were the backdrop to the Hemingway story to be interesting and informative.

 

This is a well-written and well-researched book that will interest admirers of Hemingway, as well as those interested in the war in Europe.

 

• Paul Davis is a writer who covers crime, espionage, terrorism and the military. 

Spies In Palestine: Love, Betrayal, And The Heroic Life Of Sarah Aaronsohn

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of James Srodes' Spies in Palestine: Love, Betrayal, and the Heroic Life of Sarah Aaronsohn.

In more than half a century of reading intelligence literature, seldom have I encountered an operative with the raw courage of Sarah Aaronsohn. Whatever spy tradecraft the woman knew was self-taught. She had to contend not only with hostile neighbors, but with Turkish security officers who delighted in fashioning new and gruesome ways to torture adversaries.

Ms. Aaronsohn’s story is grippingly told by James Srodes in an account that also explores, in brisk and incisive language, a phase of World War I that hisorians tend to skim past — the attempts of Kaiser Germany and allied nations of the Ottoman Empire to seize the Suez Canal, cutting Great Britain’s lifeline to India and the East.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/27/book-review-spies-in-palestine-love-betrayal-and-t/

The Late, Great William F. Buckley And 'A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives Of The Twentieth Century'

Michael Taube offers a review at the Washington Times of A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century.

William F. Buckley, Jr, the late founder of National Review, was one of the most talented and erudite writers the world has ever seen. Yet, for all that we have read and admired about his books, columns, reviews, essays and speeches, very little has been discussed about his mastery of a most difficult literary form: the eulogy.

To his credit, Fox News Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen has identified this missing field of intellectual study. His new book, “A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century,” collects more than 50 scintillating examples of lives lived — and how a great conservative interpreted their place and value in our society.

Mr. Rosen divides the eulogies into six categories: Presidents; Family; Arts and Letters; Generals, Spies, and Statesmen; Friends; and Nemeses. Each tribute is geared in a different fashion, depending on the individual, public profile, personal relationship, and list of accomplishments. As Mr. Rosen writes in the book’s introduction, “[a]t all points, these remembrances bring us Buckley’s distinct voice: the greatest pleasure of this volume.”

And what a voice it was.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/7/book-review-a-torch-kept-lit-great-lives-of-the-tw/ 

My Washington Times Review Of Tong Wars: The Untold Story Of Vice, Money And Murder In New York's Chinatown

My review of Scott D. Seligman's Tong Wars: The Untold Story of Vice, Money and Murder in New York's Chinatown appeared in the Washington Times.

Historian Scott D. Seligman offers an interesting and true tale about the Chinese gang wars in New York City from the 1890s through the 1930s. The 30-year-long gang wars resulted in many brutal murders, injustice, tragedy and rampant crime and corruption. The tong wars also made lurid headlines in the newspapers of the day. How the tong wars began, how they were waged, and how they finally ended is what Mr. Seligman’s book is all about.

“This is the story of four bloody wars and countless skirmishes fought intermittently over more than three decades inNew York’s Chinatown and the Chinese quarters of several other cities in America’s East and Midwest, with their attendant casualties, peace parleys, and treaties,” Mr. Seligman writes.

Mr. Seligman states that this is also the story of a veritable army of precinct captains, detectives, and uniformed officers bound and determined to stop the tong wars.

“Or at least to line their pockets,” he adds.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/9/book-review-tong-wars-the-untold-story-of-vice-mon/