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Global warming is a big fat lie and the science behind it is fake: John Coleman

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Walter Waters helped lead the Bonus Army as its members expanded from camps in a row of condemned buildings in downtown Washington into a well-organized, well-run shantytown (top) just across the Anacostia River from Capitol Hill. They used the camps as a base for a series of peaceful, patriotic demonstrations below demanding their promised payments. (National Archives)

Army Chief of Staff and Major General Douglas MacArthur watched a brigade of steel-helmeted soldiers precisely align themselves in a straight four-column phalanx, bayonets affixed to rifles. He nodded his head in satisfaction. Discipline was wonderful. Up ahead, Major George Patton kicked his heels against his mount, and the big horse reared forward to signal a line of cavalry. The riders drew their sabers, and the animals stepped out in unison, hoofs smacking loudly on the street. Five Renault tanks lurched behind. Seven-ton relics from World War I and presumably just for show, the old machines nonetheless left little doubt as to the seriousness of the moment. On cue, at about 4:30 p.m. on July 28, 1932, the infantry began a slow, steady march forward. Completing the surreal atmosphere, a machine gun unit unlimbered, and its crew busily set up.

This was no parade, although hundreds of curious office workers had interrupted their daily routines to crowd the sidewalk or hang out of windows along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol to see what would happen. Up ahead, a group of weary civilians, many dressed in rags and ill-fitting, faded uniforms, waited in anticipation amid their sorry camp of tents and structures made from clapboard and sheets of tin covered in tar paper. Some loitered in the street. They had heard something was afoot — expected it after what happened earlier. Now, a murmur rose from the camp crowd. Upon seeing the Army’s menacing approach, they were momentarily stunned, disbelieving.

Recovering their senses, a few of the men cursed and sent bottles and bricks flying toward the troops — ineffective weapons against so formidable a force. The missiles shattered on impact on the hard pavement or bounced off the flanks of horses and soldiers. Undaunted, the roughly 600 troops maintained their discipline with tight-lipped determination. The extra training MacArthur had recently ordered was paying off.

Some of the camp inhabitants had already begun running from the oncoming soldiery, but angry packs held their ground, defiantly wielding clubs and iron bars, yelling profanities. An officer signaled, and the infantry halted to don masks and toss gas grenades. Forming into two assault waves, they continued their push. Clouds of stinging, gray fumes wafted through the air, forcing most of the remaining unarmed veterans to flee in panic. One particularly pesky truckload continued to throw debris, prompting a quick response from Patton: ‘Two of us charged at a gallop and [striking with the flat of our swords] had some nice work at close range with the occupants of the truck, most of whom could not sit down for some days.’

As cavalry dispersed a group of outnumbered veterans waving a U.S. flag, a shocked bystander, his face streaked with tears from the gas, accosted MacArthur as he rode along in a staff car. ‘The American flag means nothing to me after this,’ the man yelled. The general quieted him with a stern rebuke, ‘Put that man under arrest if he opens his mouth again.’ The energetic officer was in his element. One reporter observed, ‘General MacArthur, his chest glittering with medals, strode up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, flipping a riding crop against his neatly pressed breeches.’

Following what the D.C. police commissioners had labeled a’serious riot’ by the Bonus Army, a beribboned Maj. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was charged with using U.S. troops, aided by machine gun–laden trucks, to clear the demonstrators from the center of the city. (National Archives)

MacArthur could not help being euphoric. If the tactics were not textbook, the results were everything he hoped for — a complete rout. The troops had exercised perfect restraint in completely clearing the downtown area without firing a shot. Within hours it was all over. Troopers set the abandoned camp ablaze as the former inhabitants retreated, demoralized and beaten, across the Third Street bridge. MacArthur called a halt to allow his troops to rest and eat while he considered his next move.

As many as 20,000 former soldiers and their families had converged on Washington in the summer of 1932, the height of the Great Depression, to support Texas Congressman Wright Patman’s bill to advance the bonus payment promised to World War I veterans. Congress had authorized the plan in 1924, intending to compensate the veterans for wages lost while serving in the military during the war. But payment was to be deferred until 1945. Just one year earlier, in 1931, Congress overrode a presidential veto on a bill to provide, as loans, half the amount due to the men. When the nation’s economy worsened, the half-bonus loans were not enough, and the unemployed veterans now sought the balance in cash. Known as Bonus Marchers, they came in desperation from all across the nation, hopping freight trains, driving dilapidated jalopies or hitchhiking, intent on pressuring Congress to pass the legislation. The administration vehemently opposed the measure, believing it inflationary and impractical given the $2 billion annual budget deficit.

At first the march was a trickle, led by Walter Waters, a 34-year-old former sergeant from Portland, Ore. It soon became a tidal wave, drawing national press attention. The first contingent reached the nation’s capital in May 1932. They occupied parks and a row of condemned buildings along Pennsylvania Avenue, between the White House and the Capitol. When new arrivals overflowed that site, they erected a shantytown on the flood plain of the Anacostia River, southeast of Capitol Hill. Theirs was a miserable lot, alleviated somewhat by the beneficence of the city’s superintendent of police, Pelham Glassford, himself a war veteran.

Glassford pitied the beleaguered itinerants and solicited private aid to secure medical assistance, clothing, food and supplies. During a May 26 veterans meeting, Glassford suggested they officially call themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force. Adopting the name — which was commonly shortened to Bonus Army — they asked him, and he agreed, to serve as secretary-treasurer of the group. Working together, Waters and Glassford managed to maintain enough discipline and order in the ranks to ward off eviction. Glassford likely hoped that the horde would eventually lose interest and return home, but Waters had other ideas. ‘We’ll stay here until the bonus bill is passed,’ Waters told anyone who would listen, ’till 1945, if necessary.’ He staged daily demonstrations before the Capitol and led peaceful marches past the White House. President Herbert Hoover refused to give him an audience.

In June the House of Representatives narrowly passed the Patman bill, but the Senate defeated the measure with a lopsided vote of 62 to 18. Congress was scheduled to adjourn in mid-July, and about one-quarter of the veterans accepted the government’s offer of free transportation home. Hoover had apparently won. Perhaps now he could concentrate on an economic recovery plan and the upcoming reelection campaign. But many of the marchers felt betrayed and disillusioned. With nowhere else to go, they decided to stay. Ominously, their disappointment festered in Washington’s muggy summer heat. To complicate matters, at this point the American Communist Party saw an opportunity to cause trouble, and sent forth John Pace as the catalyst with instructions to incite riot. The degree of his success is uncertain and will be forever a matter of debate, but his presence alarmed the Washington power structure.

The almost constant tension between the marchers and Washington police, coupled with the stifling summer heat, fueled frustrations on both sides, leading to confrontations that caused the police to ask for federal assistance. (National Archives)

Historian Kenneth S. Davis theorizes that Pace may have had a hand in escalating the tensions, goading the angry veterans to become more aggressive. A more plausible explanation for rising tension may simply be that frustrations finally reached a boiling point. In any case, Secretary of War Patrick Hurley had had enough. On July 28 he ordered Glassford to immediately evacuate the occupied buildings, which were scheduled for demolition to make way for new government offices. The veterans stubbornly refused to budge. For whatever reason, Glassford and his police officers became the target of bricks and stones, and one officer suffered a fractured skull. As the melee got out of hand, an angry veteran, apparently feeling that Glassford had betrayed the Bonus Marchers, tore off the chief’s gold police badge. Fearing for their safety, police opened fire, killing one veteran and mortally wounding another.

The officers retreated while Glassford sought the advice of his Board of Commissioners. Quick to pass on the responsibility, and perhaps overreacting, the commissioners called the president to deploy the Army from nearby Fort Myer to restore order. Describing the attack on police as a’serious riot,’ the commissioners asserted, ‘It will be impossible for the Police Department to maintain law and order except by the free use of firearms.’ They went on to argue that only the presence of federal troops could resolve the crisis.

Hoover, upset by the continued presence of the Bonus Marchers, now had the excuse he was looking for to expel them from the capital. He directed Secretary Hurley to unleash MacArthur, who received the following instruction: ‘You will have United States troops proceed immediately to the scene of the disorder. Surround the affected area and clear it without delay. Any women and children should be accorded every consideration and kindness. Use all humanity consistent with the execution of this order.’

Not surprisingly, MacArthur now executed his orders in a manner seemingly designed to maximize media attention. In a highly unusual but characteristic decision — one purportedly against the advice of his aide, 42-year-old Major Dwight Eisenhower — he chose to oversee the operations in the field with the troops. Military protocol called for a commanding officer to remain at headquarters. This was especially true for MacArthur, whose post was administrative rather than operational. So while he charged General Perry Miles with carrying out the eviction, MacArthur assumed the real responsibility. Although no other situation offers an exact comparison, MacArthur’s action was as if General Maxwell Taylor, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1963, had led National Guard troops to the University of Alabama to confront Alabama Governor George Wallace.

Having driven the veterans from the downtown area, MacArthur had fulfilled his mission. But whether his blood was up, or he merely sensed a need to inflict a coup de grâce against the purported Communist element — an enemy he considered more insidious than disgruntled veterans — MacArthur did not rest on his laurels. He ordered his troops to advance upon the 11th Street bridge leading to Anacostia Flats. Someone, waving a white shirt as a flag of truce, came racing across to plea for time to evacuate the women and children. MacArthur granted an hour’s reprieve.

Though accounts differ, the president now seemed suddenly to exhibit an untimely case of nerves. Fearing repercussions, he twice sent word that the Army was not to cross the bridge. MacArthur refused to listen, saying he hadn’t time to be bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders. He sent the troops across against explicit instructions. Using more gas, the soldiers moved into Bonus City. Its occupants fled in terror, refugees rousted from their pitiful camp.

‘One of the soldiers threw a bomb,’ said one woman hiding in a nearby house with her family. ‘…[W]e all began to cry. We got wet towels and put them over the faces of the children. About half an hour later my baby began to vomit. I took her outside in the air and she vomited again. Next day she began to turn black and blue and we took her to the hospital.’ Either veterans or soldiers torched the entire area — no one knows for sure. In the confusion, one baby was left behind, dead from gas inhalation.

Endeavoring to eliminate any doubt as to his motives, MacArthur next conducted an impromptu press conference — a job more appropriately left to civilian authorities. The conference allowed the general to expound on the claim that Reds had concocted the riot, the president’s safety was at stake, and the government was threatened with insurrection. Describing the mob, MacArthur said: ‘It was animated by the essence of revolution. They had come to the conclusion, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they were about to take over in some arbitrary way either the direct control of the government or else to control it by indirect methods. It is my opinion that had the president let it go on another week the institutions of our government would have been very severely threatened.’ It was a masterful performance. In praising the president and war secretary, MacArthur nearly absolved himself of responsibility — perhaps a calculated move.

Hoover watched the red glow of the bonfire at Anacostia Flats from a White House window. If he had second thoughts, he didn’t include them in his record of the event; and in any case, it was too late. MacArthur’s boldness had boxed him into a corner. The president’s best option now was to vigorously support the general.

‘A challenge to the authority of the United States Government has been met, swiftly and firmly,’ Hoover said in a statement the next morning. ‘The Department of Justice is pressing its investigation into the violence which forced the call of army detachments, and it is my sincere hope that those agitators may be brought speedily to trial in the civil courts.’

Hysteria colored much of Washington’s official view of the Bonus Army. In defense of both men, MacArthur and Hoover seem to have genuinely believed that Communists controlled the organization, with Walter Waters merely serving as the Bonus Army’s titular head. Hoover believed that veterans made up no more than 50 percent of Bonus Army members, while MacArthur set an even lower number — 10 percent. Waters said that was a ‘damned lie.’ While Communist operatives certainly tried to infiltrate the ranks of the Bonus Army and instigate trouble, evidence indicates they had little real influence. The president and Army chief of staff’s estimates were badly overstated. A postevent study conducted by the Veterans Administration revealed that 94 percent of the marchers had Army or Navy service records. Nevertheless, the Communist Party was happy to take credit for what was billed as an uprising.

After forcing the veterans out of Washington, MacArthur’s troops crossed the 11th Street bridge and, using gas grenades and wielding bayonets, drove the marchers from their Anacostia camp. (National Archives)

Events elsewhere help explain Hoover and MacArthur’s state of mind. Students loudly interrupted the general’s commencement address at the University of Pittsburgh that summer as he spoke against demonstrators protesting the government. More alarming, a union-inspired hunger march at a Detroit auto plant that spring had turned ugly. Police killed four civilians while trying to maintain control, injuring 60 others. Communist Party leaders retaliated, organizing a 6,000-man funeral procession, waving red banners and marching in cadence to the party’s anthem, the ‘Internationale.’ Fearing a similar or worse result in Washington, Hoover and MacArthur acted with dispatch when confronted by a large group of disgruntled citizens. Throughout their lives, both officials clung stubbornly to the claim that subversive elements bent on destroying capitalism were behind the veterans. Neither man ever accepted the Bonus Army as primarily a group of destitute, desperate, hungry men trying to support their families.

The day’s toll was three dead, 54 injured and 135 arrests. In the rush to point fingers, in addition to the Communist element, Congressman Patman and colleagues received their share of the blame. The Chicago Tribune editorialized that responsibility for the incident ‘lies chiefly at the door of men in public life who have encouraged the making of unreasonable demands by ex-service men and inflamed their mistaken sense of judgment.’ But Alabama Senator and future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black directed his venom at a different target.

The U.S. Army torched the camp to ensure that the marchers would not return. What had once been an orderly if ramshackle camp was left a devastated smoldering ruin. (National Archives)

Arguing that Hoover had overreacted to the situation, Black said, ‘As one citizen, I want to make my public protest against this militaristic way of handling a condition which has been brought about by wide-spread unemployment and hunger.’ The New York Times hinted that other senators felt the same. Indeed, it was a common charge hurled by the opposition party during that fall’s presidential election. Senator Hiram Johnson, speaking in Chicago a few days before the presidential vote, dubbed the incident ‘one of the blackest pages in our history.’ Hoping to evoke feelings of sympathy and patriotism, he continued, noting that the displaced veterans had been hailed as heroes and saviors only a decade earlier: ‘The president sent against these men, emaciated from hunger, scantily clad, unarmed, the troops of the United States army. Tanks, tear-bombs, all of the weapons of modern warfare were directed against those who had borne the arms of the republic.’

The public soon followed Black’s lead. Frustrated by Depression-era economics and in tune with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s comparatively more aggressive assistance programs after he assumed the presidency, the public increasingly questioned the government’s response to the plight of the Bonus Army. Many came to see it as callous and heavy-handed. Theater audiences reacted to Bonus Army newsreel footage with choruses of boos.

Ever conscious of his own place in history, MacArthur blinked. At least publicly the general would voice a more sympathetic view of the marchers he once routed. At first he had called them a ‘bad mob,’ but gradually time, or concern over public opinion, softened his expressed view. In his memoirs, MacArthur took credit for supplying the marchers with tents and rolling kitchens, and declared them a ‘vanguard of a starved band,’ remembering the whole affair as a ‘poignant episode.’

If it was a purposeful attempt to improve his image, it failed. His reputation has remained forever scarred. MacArthur biographer William Manchester called his actions that day ‘flagrantly insubordinate’ and ‘indefensible.’ Another historian, echoing Manchester’s sentiment, said the general acted ‘with overzealous determination and reckless impulsiveness.’

Likely influencing the judgment of historians was MacArthur’s demonstrated knack for upsetting his supe-riors. Twenty years after the Bonus Army incident, President Harry Truman would relieve the general of his Korean command for perceived insubordination. In the end, the general’s personality and ambition proved too great an obstacle for history to erase its view of his performance against the Bonus Army.

Along with MacArthur, two other soldiers who participated in the action would go on to write their names large in history — Eisenhower and Patton. Eisenhower would eventually undergo an even more dramatic transformation than his boss in describing the affair. Normally a frank diarist, Ike merely noted at the time that he ‘took part in Bonus Incident of July 28,’ and went on to say, ‘A lot of furor has been stirred up but mostly to make political capital.’ By the time he published At Ease 30 years later, Ike portrayed himself as a frustrated hero of sorts, claiming that he tried to dissuade MacArthur from personally leading the charge. He advised him that Communists held no sway over the marchers, and he reiterated the old claim that his boss ignored White House orders to halt operations. Interestingly, Ike waited until after MacArthur’s death in 1964 to present this version. If it distorted history, MacArthur was not around to contest it.

It was a messy affair for everyone. Patton, a man who revered duty, had mixed emotions, calling it a ‘most distasteful form of service.’ Within months he criticized the Army’s tactics, believing they violated every precept of how to handle civil unrest. Still, he commended both sides: ‘It speaks volumes for the high character of the men that not a shot was fired. In justice to the marchers, it should be pointed out that had they really wanted to start something, they had a great chance here, but refrained.’ And while Patton was disgusted that ‘Bolsheviks’ were in the mix, he considered most of the Bonus Army ‘poor, ignorant men, without hope, and without really evil intent.’ To his dismay, the routed marchers included Joseph Angelo, who 14 years earlier had saved the wounded Patton’s life by pulling him to safety from a foxhole.

The episode would dog President Hoover in his attempt to win a second term of office in the fall of 1932. Presidents had called out federal troops before to suppress civil unrest, but this was the first time they had moved against veterans. It left a bad taste in the mouths of voters. A letter to theWashington Daily News expressed the sentiments of many. ‘I voted for Herbert Hoover in 1928,’ one disgusted woman wrote. ‘God forgive me and keep me alive at least till the polls open next November!’

Hoover’s Democratic challenger in that fall’s presidential election, Franklin D. Roosevelt, understood the political significance of the president’s use of force. Like his opponent, the New York governor did not support payment of the bonus, but he found Hoover’s tactics appalling. ‘He should have invited a delegation into the White House for coffee and sandwiches,’ Roosevelt told one aide as he perused the morning papers. Already confident of success, Roosevelt now felt victory was certain. This was a black eye no one could overcome. Roosevelt won decisively, capturing 42 states with 472 electoral votes compared to just 59 for his Republican rival.

Hoover had no illusions, but he could not help but feel bitter. Stopping just short of calling Roosevelt a liar, the former president later wrote of the campaign: ‘This whole Democratic performance was far below the level of any previous campaign in modern times. My defeat would no doubt have taken place anyway. But it might have taken place without such defilement of American life.’ The vision of Regular Army troops marching on veterans would provide propaganda for the Left for years to come.

Long before that, the remnants of the Bonus Army drifted home, stopping for a brief period in Johnson, Pa., until that community too urged them on. The government buried the two Bonus Army veterans slain by police at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. One year later, another contingent of veterans came to Washington to press the issue of the bonus payment. The new president was no more receptive than the last, but instead of the Army he sent his wife, Eleanor, to speak with the former servicemen. More important, he created the Civilian Conservation Corps, which offered the men employment. And three years later, Congress passed legislation over FDR’s veto to complete the bonus payment, resolving one of the more disturbing issues in American politics.

This article was written by Wyatt Kingseed and originally published in June 2004 issue of American History Magazine.

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home > great depression > hoover > the bonus army

Hoover & the Depression: The Bonus Army

The Bonus Army Draft Notice, 1918 The saga of the Bonus Army was born out of the inequality of the Selective Service Act (1917), the failure of the government to provide any meaningful benefits to the veterans of the First World War, and the fear and anxiety produced by the Great Depression.  During WWI, for the first time in America’s history, a wartime army went off to fight composed of more than half draftees.  Despite the rigorous propaganda efforts of George Creel’s Committee on Public Information, only 97,000 men had volunteered for the war three weeks after America’s declaration of war against Germany.  Although 2 million men ultimately did volunteer, another 2.8 million were drafted.  Draftees were organized into 4 categories, one of which exempted draftees who worked in essential defense industries.  By the end of the war, these industrial workers had earned about ten times what the category I troops had earned. They had also avoided the physical, mental, and spiritual hardships of combat, and they were better positioned to survive in the nation’s shrinking economy.  It didn’t take returning combat troops long to recognize the inequity of their situation.  Meanwhile, Black American troops, bared from combat duty with American units, had fought in the trenches under the French flag.  Having experienced a measure of equality and dignity from the French, they too arrived home with a heightened awareness of inequality. Soon, American veterans began to argue that they should receive “adjusted compensation” for the wages they had lost while serving overseas, a term carefully chosen to suggest equality.  Critics, however, were successful at labeling these veterans as “bonus seekers”, suggesting some special treatment above and beyond what they deserved.  In 1924, after several years of lobbying, congress finally awarded the WWI Sheet Music: “Give A Bonus To Our Men” (1922) Sheet Music: “I’ve Got Those Bonus Blues” (1922) Still image from a newsreel (shown in movie theaters) reporting that bonds are being printed (1924) Adjusted Service Certificate veterans “adjusted universal compensation”—a bonus—in the form of government bonds that would collect interest over two decades and be paid out no earlier than 1945.  The bill was passed by overriding a veto from President Calvin Coolidge, who remarked, “Patriotism which is bought and paid for is not patriotism.” Although the provision that allowed for the bonus to be paid immediately upon the veteran’s death earned it the nickname, “the tombstone bonus,” the veterans were satisfied. But then, in 1929, the economy collapsed.  President Herbert Hoover’s reluctance to recognize the severity of the economic crisis exacerbated the problem.  Although the president ultimately did authorize some massive public works projects to put money back into the economy, it was too little, too late.  By 1932 veterans, desperate for economic relief, wanted the bonus to be paid immediately.  Such a bill was introduced in congress by Congressman Wright Patman of Texas, himself a war veteran. This bill caught the attention of a former sergeant named Walter W. Waters, now unemployed in Portland, Oregon.  Waters grew increasingly frustrated as the bill languished, while Washington lobbyists appeared successful at procuring legislation that benefited corporate interests. On March 15, Waters met with other veterans in the Portland area, and urged them to march on Washington, D.C., to lobby for the bonus in person.  He had no takers that evening, but after the bill was shelved on May 11, the Portland veterans reconsidered. Soon, about 300 of them began “riding the rails” toward the nation’s capital. Walter Waters Bonus Army vets heading for Washington by “riding the rails” Bonus marchers en route from Pennsylvania As they headed east, the media took an interest in the story.  Radio, newspaper, and film crews reported on the veterans favorably.  Suddenly, the Bonus Expeditionary Force (a play on the “American Expeditionary Force,” under which they had been organized in France) became a movement of hope.  Veterans across the country started jumping on freight trains, sometimes with their families, and headed for Washington.  They came on buses, old trucks, and even on jitney Fords with up to 20 veterans hanging off the sides of them.  Sympathetic railroad men, many of them veterans themselves, refused to turn in these illegal passengers.  In town after town, supporters donated food, money and moral support. On May 21, railroad police tried to stop Waters and his men from hopping eastbound freight trains just outside of St. Louis in Illinois. In response, the veterans uncoupled cars and soaped the rails, refusing to let trains depart. Illinois governor Louis L. Emmerson called out the Illinois National Guard, and in Washington, the Army deputy chief of staff, Brig. Gen. George Van Horn Moseley, urged that U.S. Army troops be sent to stop the Bonus Marchers, on grounds that they were delaying the U.S. mail. But his boss, Army chief of staff and WWI veteran Douglas MacArthur vetoed the plan. To resolve the issue, the veterans were escorted onto trucks and transported to the Indiana state line. Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland each sent the veterans by truck on to the next state. On May 25, 1932, the first veterans arrived.  Waters and his men arrived on the 29th. Within a few weeks another 20,000 had joined them.  They made camp wherever they could find space—in vacant lots and abandoned buildings.  One large “Hooverville” sprang up along the Anacostia River, where veterans and their families erected crude structures from materials scavenged from an old dump at one end of the camp.  The camp quickly became a local attraction.  Washingtonians brought them much needed supplies, from sleeping bags to vegetables, to cigarettes, and often tossed coins to camp musicians.  Soon the camp, named Camp Marks in honor of Camp Marks Library at Camp Marks Smedley Butler the police captain in whose precinct they were encamped, came to resemble a small city.  There were named streets, a library, a post office, and a barber shop.  Classes were set up for the children. They published their own newspaper, and staged vaudeville shows and boxing matches. Camp rules prohibited alcohol, weapons, fighting, and begging.  And since the veterans wanted their motives to be unambiguous, communists were not allowed. Dozens of American flags could be seen waving above the shacks and mud.  Marine Corps legend and retired Major General Smedley Butler turned out to praise and encourage them. It was the largest Hooverville in the nation. Police Chief Pelham Glassford, himself a decorated WWI general, sympathized with his fellow vets.  He toured the camp almost daily, organized medical care, provided building materials, solicited local merchants for food donations, and even contributed $773 out of his own pocket for provisions.  Glassford once drove with Evalyn Walsh McLean, heiress to a Colorado mining fortune and owner of the famed Hope diamond, to an all-night diner where they ordered 1,000 sandwiches, 1,000 packs of cigarettes, and coffee. When McLean learned that the marchers needed a headquarters tent, she had one delivered along with books, radios and cots. But Chief Glassford also knew that congress was not in a mood to pay bonuses.  And Glassford also viewed the camp as symbolic of the vast army of the nation’s D.C. Police Chief Pelham Glassford tours Camp Marks on a motorcycle Evalyn Walsh McLean Donations for the Bonus Veterans unemployed.  He was wary of events getting out of hand, of creating widespread social disorder across the nation. Despite the camp rules, a few of the veterans apparently did have some Communist sympathies, a not uncommon phenomenon in 1932, since it appeared to many that capitalism had failed. And the press did report on this small communist faction of veterans. Rumors about communist revolutionaries soon spread throughout the city, and deeply affected the highest levels of government. At the Justice Department, J. Edgar Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation labored to find evidence that the Bonus Army had communist roots, evidence that never existed.  President Hoover’s press secretary, Theodore Joslin, wrote in his diary that “The marchers have rapidly turned from bonus seekers to communists or bums.” Government authorities also noted the absence of Jim Crow in this Southern event. They chose to interpret this racial camaraderie between former brothers-in-arms as symptomatic of left-wing radicalism. For several years, as the Great Depression had settled in, the government had been fearful of the possibility of an armed insurrection against Washington.  Even before the arrival of the Bonus Army, the army had developed a plan to defend the city with tanks, machine guns, and poison gas. Within days of his arrival, Walter Waters had a full-blown lobbying operation under way. On June 4, the B.E.F. marched in full force down the streets of Washington.  Veterans filled their representative’s waiting rooms, while others gathered outside the Capitol building. On June 14, the bonus bill, opposed by Republicans loyal to President Hoover, came to the floor. When Congressman Edward E. Eslick (D-TN) was speaking in support of the bill, he suddenly fell dead from of a heart attack. Thousands of Bonus Army veterans marched in his funeral procession, while congress adjourned out of respect. The following day, June 15, the House of Representatives passed the bonus bill by a vote of 211 to 176. On the 17th, about 8,000 veterans gathered at the Capitol, feeling confident that the Senate would pass the bill. Another 10,000 were stranded behind the Anacostia drawbridge, which police had raised to keep them Bonus Army march, 6/4/32 Rally at the Capitol Awaiting the Senate vote, 6/17/32 out of the city. Debate continued into the evening. Finally, around 9:30, Senate aides summoned Waters inside. He returned moments later to break the news to the crowd: the bill had been defeated. For a moment it looked as if the veterans would attack the Capitol. Instead, at the suggestion of a reporter, Waters asked the veterans to sing “America”. When the song was over, they slowly filed back to camp. In the days that followed, many bonus marchers went home. But Waters and 20,000 others declared their intention “to stay here until 1945 if necessary to get our bonus.” They continued to demonstrate. On July 13, 1932, Police Chief Glassford addressed a rally on the Capitol grounds. He asked the veterans to raise their hands if they had served in France and were 100 percent American. As the weeks passed, conditions at the camp worsened.  Evalyn Walsh McLean contacted Vice President Charles Curtis, who had attended dinner parties at her mansion. “Unless something is done for these men, there is bound to be a lot of trouble,” she told him. McLean’s efforts backfired. Vice President Curtis became paranoid when he saw veterans near his Capitol Hill office on the anniversary of the day the mobs stormed France’s Bastille. President Hoover, Army Chief of Staff MacArthur, and Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley, increasingly feared that the Bonus Army would turn violent and trigger uprisings in Washington and elsewhere. Hoover was especially troubled by the veterans who occupied abandoned buildings downtown. Chief Glassford addresses rally, 7/13/30 On July 28, on President Hoover’s orders, Police Chief Glassford arrived with 100 policemen to evict them. Waters informed Glassford that the men had voted to remain. Just after noon, a small contingent of vets confronted a phalanx of policemen near the armory, resulting in a quick, but violent skirmish.  Veterans threw bricks while policemen used their nightsticks. Shortly after 1:45 p.m. another fight broke out in a building adjacent to the armory. Shots rang out. When it ended, one veteran lay dead, another mortally wounded. Three policemen were injured. MacArthur and Eisenhower on the streets, 7/28/32 At this point, Army Chief of Staff General MacArthur had had enough.  He decided to put their practiced plan into action, and assumed personal command. For the first time in the nation’s history, tanks rolled through the streets of the capital. MacArthur ordered his men to clear the estimated 8,000 veterans from the downtown area, and spectators who had been drawn to the scene by radio reports. Fred Blacher was 16 years old and standing on a corner waiting for a trolley. “By God, all of a sudden I see these cavalrymen come up the avenue and then swinging down to The Mall. I thought it was a parade,” Blacher later said.  “I asked a gentleman standing there, I said, do you know what’s going on? What holiday is this? He says, ‘It’s no parade, bud.’ He says, ‘the Army is coming in to wipe out all these bonus people down here.'” Nearly 200 mounted cavalry, sabers drawn and pennants flying, rode out of the Ellipse, led by Major George S. Patton. They were followed by five tanks and about 300 helmeted infantrymen, armed with loaded rifles with fixed bayonets. The cavalry drove them all off the streets–pedestrians—curious onlookers, government workers and Bonus Army vets, including their wives and children. Soldiers with gas masks released hundreds of tear gas grenades at the crowd, setting off dozens of fires among the veterans’ shelter erected near the armory. Mounted Cavalry Tanks in the streets U.S. troops use tear gas on the Bonus Army (3 views) Naaman Seigle, 7 years old that day, happened to go downtown to a hardware store with his father. As they emerged from the shop, they saw the tanks and were hit with a dose of tear gas. “I was coughing like hell. So was my father,” Seigle recalled. 16-year-old Fred Blancher later said, “These guys got in there and they start waving their sabers, chasing these veterans out, and they start shooting tear gas. There was just so much noise and confusion, hollering and there was smoke and haze. People couldn’t breathe.” By evening, the army arrived at Camp Marks. There, General MacArthur gave them twenty minutes to evacuate the women and children. The troops then attacked the camp with tear gas and fixed bayonets.  One baby died, allegedly from tear-gas inhalation. They drove off the veterans and set fire to the camp, which quickly burned. The sky turned red in the dusk and the fire could be seen from all over Washington. Thousands of veterans and their families began a slow walk toward the Maryland state line, four miles away, where National Guard trucks waited to drive them to the Pennsylvania border. Eyewitnesses, including MacArthur’s aide Dwight D. Eisenhower (later Supreme Allied Commander of WWII and two-term President of the United States), insisted that Secretary of War Hurley, speaking for the president, had forbade any troops to cross the bridge into Anacostia and that at least Camp Marks ablaze Bonus Army encampment burned two high-ranking officers were dispatched by Hurley to convey these orders to MacArthur. Eisenhower later wrote in his book,At Ease, that MacArthur, “said he was too busy and did not want either himself or his staff bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders.” Eisenhower put it more bluntly during an interview with the late historian Stephen Ambrose. “I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch he had no business going down there,” he said. Around 11:00 p.m., MacArthur called a press conference to justify his actions. “Had the President not acted today, had he permitted this thing to go on for twenty-four hours more, he would have been faced with a grave situation which would have caused a real battle,” MacArthur told reporters. “Had he let it go on another week, I believe the institutions of our Government would have been severely threatened.” Over the next few days, newspapers and newsreels (shown in movie theaters) showed graphic images of violence perpetrated on once uniformed soldiers (and their families), those who had won the First World War, by uniformed servicemen.  In movie theaters across America, the Army was booed and MacArthur jeered.  The incident only further weakened President Hoover’s chances at re-election, then only three months away. Franklin, D. Roosevelt won easily. For each of the next four years, veterans returned to Washington, D.C., to push for a bonus. Many of the men were sent to rehabilitation camps in the Florida keys. On September 2, 1935, several hundred of them were killed in a hurricane. The government attempted to suppress the news, but the writer Ernest Hemingway was aboard one of the first rescue boats, and he wrote an angry piece about it. Resistance to the bonus withered. Finally, in 1936, the veterans received their bonus Gallery of Additional Bonus Army Imagery & Sounds Poems, Stories & Recitations sold by the Unemployed World War Veterans (under the auspices of the National B.E.F., Washington, D.C.) The Bonus Army at the Capitol Building, Washington, D.C. Bonus Army veterans from Brooklyn, NY Camp Marks Postcard: Next (the barbershop) Camp Marks Postcard: Looking Them Over Camp Marks Postcard: A Western Leader Camp Marks Postcard: From the Sidewalks of New York Camp Marks Postcard: Our Gang Camp Marks Postcard: No Dancing Here (Recreation Hall) Camp Marks Postcard: 1732-1932 Camp Marks Postcard: Until 1945 Notice promoting bi-racial return of the Bonus Army later that December, 1932 “That Bonus Done Gone Through” by Lil Johnson (1936) “When I Get My Bonus” by Peetie Wheatstraw (1936) | top |

**************ALL copy credits as annotated herein*********

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• The rich man ought not be taxed at all~~Instead, the rich man ought be compelled to employ and train the poor man~~directly~~personally~~man to man~~

•  

   

   

  ~~In sunshine and in shadow~~I hold tight to the Republican view of time and money~~I write night and day~~yet~~while impecunious~~I am vastly overpaid~~in that taking pay to do what I love is unfair~~to my employer~~in a fair system~~under such circumstances~~I should pay him~~not he me~~I am far, far too old a man to be sexually confused~~praise Jesus~~but I am yet young enough to be politically confused~~is anyone not~~in an absolute sense~~I am a Catholic Royalist~~in a practical sense~~I am a Classical Liberal~~a Gaullist~~a Bonapartist~~an American Nationalist  Republican~~in either sense~~my head is soon for the chopping block~~to hasten my interlude with Madame La Guillotine~~I write without fear~and without favor of~any man~~ 

  ~

   

  Non Sibi~~

   

  Finis Origine Pendet~

   

    ~~Κύριε ἐλέησον~~

  Rejoice and Glad!!

  Amen~~

   

  

~The Original Angry Bird~~The Catholic University of America Screaming Red Cardinal Mascot~~

   

~~EX LIBRIS~~

 

~~THEOS EK MĒCHANĒS~~

 

~~

 

Monday, 20th  Day of October,  Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi, 2014 

Website:

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"Jean-Marie Le Pen is a friend. He is dangerous for the political set because he's the only one who's sincere. He says out loud what many people think deep down, and what the politicians refrain from saying because they are either too demagogic or too chicken. Le Pen, with all his faults and qualities, is probably the only one who thinks about the interests of France before his own."~~
French actor~~Alain Delon

CONCEPT OF THE CATHOLIC AND ROYAL ARMY OF AMERICA (CRAA)

The Catholic University of America

Seal of The Catholic University of America

Motto~~Deus Lux Mea Est~~

 ~~

 

~~Our Ubiquitous Presence

~~

The Queen

~~

In office now 63 years on

~~

Simply the best President we could ever hope to have~~

I say, Chopra, do Injuns live longer than normal people?

1. 66.21 years (2012)

   India, Life expectancy

   196019701980199020002010002020404060608080

   •

   United States of America

   78.74 years

   •

   China

   75.20 years

   •

   India

   66.21 years

   Explore more

   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   

   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   

   • The rich man ought not be taxed at all~~Instead, the rich man ought be compelled to employ and train the poor man~~directly~~personally~~man to man~~

   •  

      

     ~~In sunshine and in shadow~~I hold tight to the Republican view of time and money~~I write night and day~~yet~~while impecunious~~I am vastly overpaid~~in that taking pay to do what I love is unfair~~to my employer~~in a fair system~~under such circumstances~~I should pay him~~not he me~~I am far, far too old a man to be sexually confused~~praise Jesus~~but I am yet young enough to be politically confused~~is anyone not~~in an absolute sense~~I am a Catholic Royalist~~in a practical sense~~I am a Classical Liberal~~a Gaullist~~a Bonapartist~~an American Nationalist  Republican~~in either sense~~my head is soon for the chopping block~~to hasten my interlude with Madame La Guillotine~~I write without fear~and without favor of~any man~~ 

     ~

     Non Sibi~~

      

     Finis Origine Pendet~

       ~~Κύριε ἐλέησον~~

     Rejoice and Glad!!

     Amen~~

      

     

   ~The Original Angry Bird~~The Catholic University of America Screaming Red Cardinal Mascot~~

      

   ~~EX LIBRIS~~

   ~~THEOS EK MĒCHANĒS~~

   ~~

   Monday, 13th  Day of October,  Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi, 2014 

   
   Website:

   http://johndanielbegg.wordpress.com

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    http://www.tumblr.com/blog/theoldsoldiershome1952

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   "Jean-Marie Le Pen is a friend. He is dangerous for the political set because he's the only one who's sincere. He says out loud what many people think deep down, and what the politicians refrain from saying because they are either too demagogic or too chicken. Le Pen, with all his faults and qualities, is probably the only one who thinks about the interests of France before his own."~~
   French actor~~Alain Delon

   

   CONCEPT OF THE CATHOLIC AND ROYAL ARMY OF AMERICA (CRAA)

   The Catholic University of America

   Seal of The Catholic University of America

   Motto~~Deus Lux Mea Est~~

    ~~

    

   ~~Our Ubiquitous Presence

   ~~

   The Queen

   ~~

   In office now 63 years on

   ~~

   Simply the best President we could ever hope to have~~

This article originally appeared as an essay in 1987 while Mr. Begg was assigned to the United States Navy as chief speechwriter in President Reagan’s second government. It appears here as it did then for the reader to consider how remarkably things remain the same as they were two and one-half decades ago.

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“Assad, Hussein, Mubarak, Hussein, Jerusalem calls to you, usurpers of the throne of God.”

With this cryptic message delivered in broken English from the cockpit of TWA flight 847 in June, 1985, Moslem fanaticism took yet another torturous, calculated swipe at its primary enemy, The Great Satan, the United States of America.

It is well to remember, however, that while America was the target in that particular episode and that an American Navy man was publicly murdered before the final curtain fell on the tragedy, the hijackers’ message was aimed not at the West, but rather at indigenous Middle Eastern rulers deemed moderate, decadent or modernist.

The particular rulers singled out for mention by the hijackers were Hafez Assad, President of Syria, King Hussein of Jordan, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. It is somewhat curious that the first and last of these – Assad and Saddam Hussein were castigated by the hijackers as pro-western. Assad, in particular, is widely believed in Washington circles to be a primary benefactor of many terrorist groups, most operating in Lebanon.

This article specially addresses Middle Eastern terrorism, although of course the author is not unmindful that terrorism is not confined to that troubled sector. In fact, terrorism is more the rule than the exception in many parts of the world. Witness Northern Ireland, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Latin America, small indigenous separatist elements such as the ETA or Basque nationalist movement in Spain, and what is perhaps the largest organized terrorist state in the world, the USSR. One can, unfortunately, go on and on with a recitation of such a litany of the violent.

Today we are engaged in a new, very deadly world war with groups small in number, vacillating in their support and allegiance to crown or country and, concomitantly, posing an extremely frustrating logistical problem for those nations which must confront this elusive enemy.

While politicians speak of peace, we are at war. We are fighting a world war directed against modern life, technological advancement and what has for centuries in the West been called progress.

These accoutrements of modern life which we hold dear hold no thrill for the anti-modernists who have declared a unilateral and all-out war on the modern world. In the eyes of the fanatics who wage war against advanced society, not merely the military of the modern world are targeted for harassment, torture and death; we are all vulnerable.

On October 28th, four months after the TWA hijacking, a 69-year old American, Leon Klinghoffer, confined to a wheelchair and enjoying a Mediterranean vacation with his wife aboard the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro, was savagely beaten, shot and thrown overboard during the takeover of the ship by four members of a splinter group of the Palestine Liberation Front. Klinghoffer’s body later washed ashore near the Syrian port of Tartus—a grim tribute to the efficiency and wantonness of his killers. Klinghoffer’s crimes—to be American and to be Jewish, to be part of a group of well-to-do passengers engaging in a high-priced Mediterranean cruise, were proof positive of true decadence and indulgence in modern frivolity and deserved the death penalty.

The West and the rest of the progressive states are not without recourse in these matters, not totally defenseless in the face of terror. In fact, in the aftermath of the Achille Lauro hijacking, the United States acted with deliberation and expedition. On President Reagan’s orders, the EgyptAir Boeing 737 carrying the hijackers to a safe haven in Tunis was intercepted at night by United States Navy F-14 fighter aircraft and forced to land in Italy. However gratifying that retaliatory response may have been, the West is a consistent and steady loser in the war against modernity.

That we should be losing the war is no real surprise. The enemy is elusive, attacks primarily civilian targets and is not, in any strictly formal sense, the agent of an established state. All this tends to render our diplomacy, overwhelmingly superior fire power and our military know how useless and the enemy knows this.

Identifying the Terrorist

In fact, the enemy appears to know a great deal more about us than we do about him. That this works in his favor is axiomatic. What is also an axiom is that if we are ever to systematically crush the world war of terror now ongoing, we must first learn more about our enemy and then develop a coherent, international prescription.

First, who is the terrorist? Where is he when he lies inactive and protected? And—most important of all—what does he really want to accomplish, beyond the excitable rhetoric and random violence?

A bit of theory history will prove useful at this point. The First Great War left many things in its wake when it groaned to an exhausted end in 1918. I deliberately say “end” and not “conclusion” because more was left unresolved than resolved, particularly regarding the formulation of new national boundaries and the dissolution of three great, yet by then antiquated empires—those of Russia, Austro-Hungary and the Ottomans.

It is the dissolution of the Ottoman, or Turkish Empire which is of interest to us because with its dissolution, come helter skelter, the unleashing of some of the most fanatical and barbaric brands of Mohammedanism the world has ever known. To be sure, the Ottomans were themselves fascistic and of a strongly fundamentalist religious bent. However, they kept a certain order in the lands then known simply as Persia to the Western mind. From its founding in 1603 until the end of the First War, the Ottoman Empire was a ruthless, yet comparatively stable state. After the war, the pent-up fury of those forces kept in check by force from the Ottomans, sprung free. Their freedom is our scourge today. It is those forces, loosely drawn together, which comprise the frontline threat to the modern world.

The unfettered forces of the fundamentalist Muslims represent many and disparate interests. They are joined together in a commonality of spirit only in their mutual hatred of the West—America in particularly; Israel, as America’s puppet, vassal state in Persia; moderate Arab states; and above all modernity which all four of the other objects of hate collectively represent.

Motivating Factors

So the terrorist is first and foremost a man from a radically different culture, fervently religious and dedicated to making his particular part of the world pure and completely free of the contamination of foreign influences. The desire for purity and this rejection of modernity extends to the brutally absurd.

Shortly before the Shah of Iran knelt and kissed the soil of the airport in Teheran, a movie theatre in that embattled capital was burned to the ground with some 600 patrons inside—the doors nailed during the performance. A Muslim mullah, or religious leader, explained with an increasingly evident loss of patience to an incredulous Western media that it was the theatre itself, not the material in the movie being shown that was in conflict with Islam. Moving pictures represented modernity and the decadent West. The revolution that was to follow the Shah’s departure was to be a revolution of fire—a first designed to burn out and exorcise all vestiges of modern Western intrusion.

While the radical Arabs do not speak with one voice—there are nearly 50 competing power groups with different agendas in Lebanon alone—they agree that the West’s influence in the region must end. These groups are willing to accomplish this exorcism in the most violent of manners. Hosni Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar Sadat, was dramatically murdered by Muslim extremists at a military parade. Sadat’s crime? Being a party to the Camp David Accords, which were designed to establish some semblance of Arab/Israeli rapprochement. This was an unforgivable sin to those who view Israel as blight in the Holy Lands of the Muslims. Completing the composite of the Middle Eastern terrorist is this important ingredient: he is quite willing to die for his goal of establishing a Pan-Arab Islamic Republic in the Middle East.

An enemy who is fanatical, elusive, dedicated and who actively seeks death for the cause—heaven awaits God’s martyrs—is a dangerous man indeed. There is no simple solution to the challenge he presents the West. But he has thrown down the gauntlet and civilized society must respond.

Who gives succor, training, arms and support to the terrorist while he lies inactive? His chief benefactor is Ayatollah Ruhallon Khomeini and his Islamic Republic Iran. While the make up and membership of Arab terrorist groups is extremely fluid and volatile, all seem welcome in Khomeini’s Iran. The Libyan government of Moammer Khadafi also supplies solace and support and fresh men for the ranks of God’s martyrs. In a less direct sense the Syrian government of Hafez Assad provides similar support as well as a Soviet connection. While much is made of Assad’s indebtness to Mother Russia, it is unclear exactly what Moscow gets for its support of Assad and its increasingly heated courtship of Iran. The best guess is that the Kremlin gets little more than Washington in its courtship efforts with these states. The shared premise both here and in Russia is that all the world is Red or Red, White or Blue.

The disquieting fact seems to be that while these radical states will not discourage our courtship, they are primarily teases. They do not intend to go to the altar with either of us. They despise the modern East at least as much as the modern West. Regardless, there is no question that when the terrorist goes on holiday, he is welcome as a rich uncle in Iran, Libya and Syria.

We know something about who the terrorist is and where he goes for guns, money, rest and relaxation. But what does he really expect to accomplish? The reality is that increasingly, beyond the vagaries and blandishments of creating a Pan-Arab Middle East, the new terrorist really has no goal beyond his basic job description: to create terror. Ten years ago when the

P.L.O. and Yassar Arafat ruled the roost in the international terror industry, there was a discernible power structure known to most Western intelligence agencies and a defined goal—the destruction of Israel.

Today, the myriad splinter factions within the P.L.O. itself, to say nothing of the sectarian factionalism among Moslems, make it far more difficult for Western intelligence to keep track of these groups. What is more, their goals are unclear. Some of these groups hate each other with a virulence equal to their hatred of the West. The much vaunted Islamic Jihad, or ‘Holy War’ is peopled mainly by aimlessly disaffected Shiite Moslem fanatics. They have learned from the wars of 1967 and 1973 that Israel can and will crush a united Arab onslaught. They seek now to wreak mindless, random violence on their many enemies. The Shiites, however, are a minority in the Arab world and have been at frequently violent loggerheads with their more dominant Sunni Moslem brethren for nearly a thousand years.

What helps to fan the fires of Pan-Arabic fervor in Iran is that of the 750 million Moslems in the world. 42 million reside in Iran—92 percent of these are of the Shiite sect. However, worldwide, only 20 percent of Moslems are Shiites. Obviously, the Khomeini regime has a hard row to hoe if it is to be successful in improving its brand of Moslem fundamentalism throughout the Middle East. For seven years Iran has been bogged down in a debilitating war with Iraq, mostly as a result of Khomeini’s insistence that his country’s sons will bring his brand of Islam to prominence or be God’s martyrs in the effort.

Seeking Solutions

Given the state of instability in the peaceful lands of the Middle East and the chaotic condition of the more warlike ones, what, realistically, can the United States and the Western Alliance do about the problem of global terrorism which has its base in those lands.

Some would suggest massive military intervention. For many reasons, some logistical some political, this solution is impractical and unwise. The primary problem with such a solution is that it fails to take into proper account the fragility of the governments in the region and the elusive, freelance nature of the enemy.

Others would suggest that in America ought to withdraw altogether from the region and, with the exception of our continued staunch support of Israel, forget about the problem. This may seem an easy and attractive way out of the woods, but it is a misguided for at least two crucial reasons. First, since World War II, the United States has enjoyed Empire status. With that status comes awesome power and equally pressing duty. A major power does not opt out of a region simply because the going gets a bit tough. Second, we cannot opt out of the Middle East calamity even if we desire to. The terrorist wants to cause us grief and misery and he will do so if we maintain a physical presence in the area or not.

What then to do? Since we no longer maintain military bases in the region but continue to engage in commercial enterprises, American transportation becomes a target to terrorism throughout the region from Gibralter to the Straits of Malaca. How then does the United States protect her sea lanes and her shipping? I refer specifically to our unarmed vessels and the support ships which are so vital to our combat readiness and projection of global power. They present a challenge that armed ships do not.

With regard to armed ships of the line, the Department of the Navy has certain contingency plans to combat and frustrate terrorist actions. While the particulars of these initiatives are of course highly classified, the generalities are not. Some of these actions include: Physical Security Measures; VIP Protection Initiatives; Modernized Material and Organizational Measures; Crisis Management Planning; Indication and Warnings Initiatives; Terrorist Investigations; Specialized Individual Actions and Precautions; Installation and Personnel Threat Assessments; and Terrorist Specifically Counterintelligence Measures.

Additionally, the Navy has undertaken, in conjunction with various federal agencies, specific anti-terrorist programs designed to protect civilian ports and commercial shippers. These include: efforts to implement and test now, tighten security measures at all shipyards; the rules of combat engagement for Navy ships have been revised to specifically address the new sort of war we are not asked to wage; the Marine Corps has formed a special reaction team to work in conjunction with the FBI in situations involving terrorist actions; it is now a standard practice for all Navy ships to plan for potential terrorism in any port before entering; and more .50-caliber machine guns and ammunition for these weapons have been outfitted on Navy ships.

These initiatives have been undertaken in the knowledge that terrorism is different from classic piracy—a condition navies have had to confront since ships first sailed.

Sealift Command

While in the case of classic piracy and politically inspired terrorism, the object of the enemy is to seize your ship, the new Department’s Military Sealift Command realizes that there is not a ‘distinction without a difference’ between the two acts. Counterterrorism measures must be custom tailored to meet today’s demands. America cannot rely solely on largely antiquated anti-piracy measures to combat the modern Holy War of Islam with which we must now grapple. This is especially true for the Military Sealift Command (MSC), which is charged with providing supplies and support and pre-positioning ships laden with material in strategically important parts of the world. Officially stated, the primary mission of MSC is to provide sealift for strategic mobility in support, of national security objectives.

MSC fulfills its mission through the peacetime activation of strategic sealift forces drawn from two principal sources. U.S. government-owned ships and ships chartered from the U.S. Merchant Marine. In time of war or national emergency, the vast majority of required additional shipping must be chartered or requisitioned from the U.S. flag fleet. These merchant ships will augment a small fleet of Navy owned ships maintained in an inactive or reduced operational status for use in war.

Throughout history, the U.S. Merchant Marine has been called our ‘Fourth Arm of Defense’. The U.S. Navy was born on Oct. 13, 1775 when the Continental Congress voted to requisition a merchant vessel, The Black Prince, and renamed her Alfred—the first ship in our nation’s fleet. Without the arming and supply delivery capability of U.S. merchant ships which crossed the Atlantic in both World Wars for example, our effort in those conflicts would have been futile. Moreover, many mariners give their lives in defense of our nation. For example, in the second war, the merchant marine casualty rate was exceeded only by the at sea sacrifice of the USMC—with in excess of 6,000 civilian mariners lost. During the conflict in Korea, the MSC fleet swelled from 92 to 467 ships.

Likewise in Vietnam, it operated a force which escalated from 85 to over 400 ships supplying our armed forces from 1965-1975. The SS Mayaguez incident involved the seizure of an American flag-ship by Cambodian troops in 1975. Six MSC mariners volunteered to board SS Mayaguez to help get her underway when USMC forces liberated her on orders from President Ford.

Today, MSC operates integrally with U.S. Navy fleets providing the supplies, intelligence and scientific data that keeps ships deployed for extended periods. MSC considered itself to be a vital part of the Navy and proud of its heritage of valor.

What systems similar to those designed to protect Navy ships, supply and support vessels are underway to protect civilian transportation? Without giving away the store certain initiatives, which can be discussed publicly are designed to curtail and mitigate offensive terrorist actions against ships chartered to MSC from the Merchant Marine and U.S. Naval Ships (USNS) assigned to the command.

Chief among these are various forms of counterintelligence designed to address the problem earlier discussed—that the enemy knows more about us than we do about him. If we can become at least as informed about our adversary as he is about us, we can begin to tilt the scales in this new world war in our favor.

Training of MSC crews, both civil service and the crews of those time chartered ships under contract from the private sector to MSC, will also prove invaluable. Basic training to encourage all crew members to be on their guard may seem like pretty standard fare, but until recently such training was either inadequate or non-existent. Having aboard ship certain personnel trained in the nuances of terrorist thinking and behavior is also a valuable new initiative. And surely avoiding whenever possible those ports and sea lanes that are terrorist ‘hot spots’ is a necessary precaution in today’s highly volatile world.

A Worldwide Threat

Terrorism is not about to go away. It poses perhaps the greatest challenge to the free movement of people and shipping in history. Short of all out war, the elusive modern terrorism which emanates primarily from the Persian Gulf, is the single biggest threat to the fabric of civilized society. There are no simple solutions, no singular solution.

But what must be unequivocally understood is that this is a worldwide problem. The civilized nations of the world, in particular, the United States and her partners in the Alliance and even to a certain extent the Soviets, must recognize that modern life is the target of the terrorist. Those who savor modernity, who appreciate its magnificent potential, cannot permit the advance of primitive savagery, murder and hijacking. We must hold fast to our better values and fight the darkness with the light. One of the primary problems with terrorism has been the vacillation and equivocation on the part of the mighty nations who are it targets. We say one thing regarding our policy towards terrorism, but do another when confronted with the actual beast.

We owe such a coordinated and willful response to the terror tactics of the new world war to Navy diver Robert Dean Strethem, who was butchered on TWA flight 847 because he represented America and modernity and all the other forces which, in the crazed view of his Islamic captors, are ‘usurpers of the throne of God’. If we resolve to begin such a response, someday the back of the terrorist will be broken and Stethem and the many other victims will not have to reject the conscious, violent retreat into the darkness of primitivism.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• The rich man ought not be taxed at all~~Instead, the rich man ought be compelled to employ and train the poor man~~directly~~personally~~man to man~~

•  

   

  ~~In sunshine and in shadow~~I hold tight to the Republican view of time and money~~I write night and day~~yet~~while impecunious~~I am vastly overpaid~~in that taking pay to do what I love is unfair~~to my employer~~in a fair system~~under such circumstances~~I should pay him~~not he me~~I am far, far too old a man to be sexually confused~~praise Jesus~~but I am yet young enough to be politically confused~~is anyone not~~in an absolute sense~~I am a Catholic Royalist~~in a practical sense~~I am a Classical Liberal~~a Gaullist~~a Bonapartist~~an American Nationalist  Republican~~in either sense~~my head is soon for the chopping block~~to hasten my interlude with Madame La Guillotine~~I write without fear~and without favor of~any man~~ 

  ~

  Non Sibi~~

   

  Finis Origine Pendet~

    ~~Κύριε ἐλέησον~~

  Rejoice and Glad!!

  Amen~~

   

  

~The Original Angry Bird~~The Catholic University of America Screaming Red Cardinal Mascot~~

   

~~EX LIBRIS~~

~~THEOS EK MĒCHANĒS~~

~~

 Sunday, 12h  Day of October,  Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi, 2014 

Website:

http://johndanielbegg.wordpress.com

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"Jean-Marie Le Pen is a friend. He is dangerous for the political set because he's the only one who's sincere. He says out loud what many people think deep down, and what the politicians refrain from saying because they are either too demagogic or too chicken. Le Pen, with all his faults and qualities, is probably the only one who thinks about the interests of France before his own."~~
French actor~~Alain Delon

CONCEPT OF THE CATHOLIC AND ROYAL ARMY OF AMERICA (CRAA)

The Catholic University of America

Seal of The Catholic University of America

Motto~~Deus Lux Mea Est~~

 ~~

 

~~Our Ubiquitous Presence

~~

The Queen

~~

In office now 63 years on

~~

Simply the best President we could ever hope to have~~

It’s called…

Survival of The Fittest…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• The rich man ought not be taxed at all~~Instead, the rich man ought be compelled to employ and train the poor man~~directly~~personally~~man to man~~

•  

   

  ~~In sunshine and in shadow~~I hold tight to the Republican view of time and money~~I write night and day~~yet~~while impecunious~~I am vastly overpaid~~in that taking pay to do what I love is unfair~~to my employer~~in a fair system~~under such circumstances~~I should pay him~~not he me~~I am far, far too old a man to be sexually confused~~praise Jesus~~but I am yet young enough to be politically confused~~is anyone not~~in an absolute sense~~I am a Catholic Royalist~~in a practical sense~~I am a Classical Liberal~~a Gaullist~~a Bonapartist~~an American Nationalist  Republican~~in either sense~~my head is soon for the chopping block~~to hasten my interlude with Madame La Guillotine~~I write without fear~and without favor of~any man~~ 

  ~

  Non Sibi~~

   

  Finis Origine Pendet~

    ~~Κύριε ἐλέησον~~

  Rejoice and Glad!!

  Amen~~

   

  

~The Original Angry Bird~~The Catholic University of America Screaming Red Cardinal Mascot~~

   

~~EX LIBRIS~~

~~THEOS EK MĒCHANĒS~~

~~

 Thursday, 9th  Day of October,  Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi, 2014 

Website:

http://johndanielbegg.wordpress.com

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=122865699&trk=tab_pro

 http://www.facebook.com/JohnDanielBeggPublicAffairs

 http://www.tumblr.com/blog/theoldsoldiershome1952

http://www.facebook.com/john.begg.33

http://www.pinterest.com/johnbegg33/boards

http://independent.academia.edu/johnbegg/Papers?s=nav#add

http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/jtdbegg 

Tweets: @jtdbegg

 http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=122865699&trk=hb_tab_pro_top

"Jean-Marie Le Pen is a friend. He is dangerous for the political set because he's the only one who's sincere. He says out loud what many people think deep down, and what the politicians refrain from saying because they are either too demagogic or too chicken. Le Pen, with all his faults and qualities, is probably the only one who thinks about the interests of France before his own."~~
French actor~~Alain Delon

CONCEPT OF THE CATHOLIC AND ROYAL ARMY OF AMERICA (CRAA)

The Catholic University of America

Seal of The Catholic University of America

Motto~~Deus Lux Mea Est~~

 ~~

 

~~Our Ubiquitous Presence

~~

The Queen

~~

In office now 63 years on

~~

Simply the best President we could ever hope to have~~