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A big thank you to blogfriend Pundita for sending Rezko Watch readers my way!

Generally, local poltics are not my primary interest but for Rezko Watch readers outside of Illinois who are interested in the background of Chicago’s unique brand of politics, they might want to check out the following sources:

American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley – His Battle for Chicago and the Nation by Adam Cohen, Elizabeth Taylor

An excellent, highly detailed, social and political history both of the city of Chicago as well as the rise to power of the first, legendary, Mayor Daley, and his iron fisted rule over the Democratic Machine. The Shakman Decrees have changed he rules of the game  in the city of Chicago but the current Mayor, Richard M. Daley has adapted and is, in some ways, even more powerful than his larger than life father.

Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by Mike Royko

This book is a shorter but far more colorful and grittier read. Penned by the late Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko, it is filled with a cast of infamous Chicago characters such as Ed Kelly, Tony Accardo, Paddy Bauler, Cardinal Cody, William Dawson, John D’ Arco, Tom Keane, Charlie Swibel, Benjamin Adamowski and Saul Alinsky. Incidentally, Mayor Daley reportedly hated Royko for writing this book.

Chicago: City on the Make: 50th Anniversary Edition, Newly Annotated by Nelson Algren

One of Chicago’s great writers, as well as a friend of Royko’s, Algren painted a bitter picture of the Machine at the zenith of it’s power and corruption.

For contemporary coverage of the underworld of Chicago politics, I recommend former City Hall beat reporter turned columnist for The Chicago Tribune, John Kass. Kass is well versed in the current array of ward heelers, mobbed-up businessmen, buffoonish aldermen, ex-gangster disciples, crooked cops, shadowy fixers and Outfit soldiers under the latest Federal investigations (it’s a lot to keep track of).

” Chicago ain’t ready for reform!”  – Alderman Paddy Bauler, 1955.

 I decided that I didn’t have any better commemorative than this post from two years ago. Thank you to all of the veterans of D-Day for your courage and sacrifice: 

“This was an emotional day. The ceremonies honoring the fortieth anniversary of D-Day became more than commemorations. They became celebrations of heroism and sacrifice.

This place, Pointe du Hoc, in itself was moving and majestic. I stood there on that windswept point with the ocean behind me. Before me were the boys who forty years before had fought their way up from the ocean. Some rested under the white crosses and Stars of David that stretched out across the landscape. Others sat right in front of me. They looked like elderly businessmen, yet these were the kids who climbed the cliffs.*

We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved and the world prayed for its rescue. Here, in Normandy, the rescue began. Here, the Allies stood and fought against tyranny, in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, two hundred and twenty-five Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs.

Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only ninety could still bear arms.

And behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. And these are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men who in your “lives fought for life and left the vivid air signed with your honor.”

I think I know what you may be thinking right now – thinking “we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.” Well everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren’t. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.

Lord Lovat was with him – Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, “Sorry, I’m a few minutes late,” as if he’d been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he’d just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.

There was the impossible valor of the Poles, who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold; and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.

All of these men were part of a roll call of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore; The Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland’s 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots’ Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England’s armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard’s “Matchbox Fleet,” and you, the American Rangers.

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief. It was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the next. It was the deep knowledge – and pray God we have not lost it – that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought – or felt in their hearts, though they couldn’t know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4:00 am. In Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying. And in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D-day; their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer, he told them: “Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do.” Also, that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.

When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together. There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall Plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall Plan led to the Atlantic alliance – a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.

In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. The Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They’re still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost forty years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as forty years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose: to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars. It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent. But we try always to be prepared for peace, prepared to deter aggression, prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms, and yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.

It’s fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II. Twenty million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.

We will pray forever that someday that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.

We’re bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We’re bound by reality. The strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe’s democracies. We were with you then; we’re with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.

Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

Strengthened by their courage and heartened by their value [valor] and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.

Thank you very much, and God bless you all. ”

– Ronald Wilson Reagan, President of the United States, June 6, 1984

Lexington Green sent me this PARAMETERS review essay by Colonel Arthur C. Winn – on the five volume series on Strategic Intelligence [Five Volumes] (Intelligence and the Quest for Security) , edited by Dr. Loch K. Johnson and issued by Praeger Security International.

The five volumes present empirical inquiries, historical views, theoretical frameworks, memoirs, case studies, interviews, legal analyses, comparative essays, and ethical assessments. The authors come fromvarying backgrounds, including academia, intelligence agencies, think tanks, Congress, the State Department, the National Security Council, the legal field, and from seven countries. Each author has different personal experiences andwrites fromhis or her own perspective. The books provide an excellent reference for students of the military, political affairs, foreign policy, or strategic planning. The supporting notes at the end of each chapter are especially helpful and should not be overlooked by the reader.

Lex kidded me about putting this on my Christmas List but it looks to be a “must read” or at least a “must have reference” set for scholars of intelligence, IR, diplomatic or military history. Very DIME oriented format. I’m impressed as this is exactly what I was looking for years ago when I shifted outside of diplomatic and economic history to delve into intelligence and strategic studies.

Maybe a corporate card or institutional account order is a good idea with this one ($ 360 – Ouch!).

I meant to note this at the time of publication but America now has only one surviving veteran of the First World War, Frank  Buckles, age 107:

Now there is only one. When Harry Richard Lucas died recently, Frank Buckles was left as the only American soldier who can recount his personal experience in World War I. He is the last surviving American World War I veteran. The Great War, as it was once known, is receding into ancient history, an era as distant from us today as the Civil War or the American Revolution.But every war lingers, long after the last soldier has died. Generations hence, the ghosts still speak to us, even if we no longer acknowledge the voices. Look no further than our current travails in the Middle East, in large measure a result of the political consequences of World War I, which created the political boundaries of those tribal regions. And in an echo of the current presidential debate, Americans in 1917 were passionately divided about being drawn into a European conflict we had little direct stake in, arguably less than we have in Iraq today.

When Mr. Buckles went ” Over There” the nation was still more agrarian than urban and both the Civil War and Slavery remained within living memory, neither the electric light nor running water were taken for granted and motion pictures were silent. The changes that Frank Buckles has seen in his lifetime surpass that of most 500 year periods in history.

WWI had been overshadowed for decades by the sheer enormity of it’s larger and more lethal sequel, the Second World War but historians are coming to see the Great War as a watershed in modern history, the tipping point at which the twentieth century went unpredictably, horribly, wrong.  John Keegan elegantly writes of the war, despite having been “curiously civilized”, cutting down a generation like stalks of wheat and twisting the survivors, turning them against the liberal and rational civilization of the Enlightenment. The war’s unprecedented slaughter desensitized Europeans to violence and cultivated widespread disillusionment with the traditional order, leaving a spiritual and political vacumn that would be filled by the malevolent dynamism of Fascism and Communism.

For practical purposes, that “Lost Generation” is now gone and the “Greatest Generation” that had to fight WWII and “finish the job” is going fast. Let’s hope the hard lessons they learned do not pass from memory along with them.

The Department of State recently released Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XVIII, China, 1973-1976. This volume covers the critical period of the Nixon Adinisrtion’s watershed “China Opening”. I could have used this about ten years ago but better late than never.