Book Review - Operation Snow by John Koster

John Koster's Operation Snow is the most comprehensive account in the English language of Harry Dexter White role in provoking war with Japan. This period of history is still an emotionally charged subject as several of the reviews demonstrate. There is still lingering hostility towards Japan and this is supplemented by the need of progressives to maintain many of the myths that surround the period. Were the Japanese ruthless? Certainly. Koster is accused of "glossing over" Japanese atrocities which Christopher Best found "disgraceful." The Chinese have condemned the Japanese for not dealing with the subject of the Rape of Nanking in their textbooks. Do the Chinese deal with the tens of millions of deaths under Mao in their textbooks? Chris might check out The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Planning for atrocities that have been "glossed over." Chinese workers were migrating to Manchuria while it was under Japanese rule.

Koster's critics are very revealing. A book review that begins with, "I have not read Koester's (sic) book," is bound to be informative. Another critic states, "this book did not hold my attention long." This individual is an authority because he once sat on Stalin's toilet seat. Other criticisms include, the book "truly demonstrates the paranoid nature of some in these times." "The Reds under every bed conspiracy theory still has legs." And "only conspiracy theorists and the very gullible would believe." In other words if you believe Koster's theory you are either stupid or crazy. Name calling is not a convincing argument.

One criticism of the book involves the subtitle. It states that White "triggered" Pearl Harbor. This led Kenneth Goff to ask, "Could an assistant treasury secretary have precipitated the attack on Pearl Harbor?" Steve Daugherty "was unconvinced . . . that HDW was almost exclusively responsible for the US-Japan war." I did not draw that conclusion from the book. Koster deals with Stanley Hornbeck in the State Department who was part of the pro-Chinese group and certainly Lauchin Currie and Harry Hopkins, White House advisors, supported White pro-Soviet position. White played a key role in composing the "ultimatum" sent to the Japanese as well as in the oil embargo that preceded it.

White still has his defenders. He was a "victim of prejudice and bias," who "got seduced by falsified claims of Soviet economic gains." It has been pointed out that White helped the Soviets because he "wanted to help whoever was fighting Hitler." This is an excellent argument except for the fact that White met with Pavlov in May 1941 while the Soviets and Nazi were still allies. White is frequently referred to as a humanitarian. Dietz Ziechmann claims White, "felt the need for . . . government action against poverty and human suffering."

HDW was not merely a Communist. He was a Stalinist. He conscientiously worked for the second greatest mass murderer of all times. He also played a role in bringing the greatest mass murdered in history to power in China.

It has been pointed out that White had an incredible impact on history. Yet he is virtually unknown even to many members of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; two organizations he was instrumental in founding. There is indeed "a great deal more to this story." White played a major role in eliminating the two world powers containing the Soviet Union. His story is yet to be told. Koster's book and The Morgenthau Plan are a good start.

Politicians Frequently Vote In Opposition To The Wishes Of Their Constituents

Why do Politicians pass legislation that is obviously contrary to the wishes of their constituents?   Undoubtedly there are politicians who vote contrary to their constituents’ wishes out of principle.  But, at the risk of sounding paranoid, there may be more sinister reasons.

It is not a secret that the government occasionally spies upon it citizens.  We know that Attorney General Robert Kennedy authorized the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr.  It is a matter of record that First Lady Hillary Clinton had more than 900 FBI files in her possession during her time in the White House.  It is also a matter of record that Kathleen Willey’s Privacy Act protected information was released to the public. Also during the Lewinsky affair, officials at the Department of Defense leaked Linda Tripp’s personal information to the press.

These may be considered isolated cases where a small number of individuals violated the law.  These things happen.  However, what if government surveillance is more extensive? Perhaps Congresswoman Maxine Waters let that particular cat out of the bag.  On February 4, 2013 Congresswoman Waters told journalist Roland Martin:

The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life.  That’s going to be very, very powerful. That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They’re going to go down with that database and the concerns of those people because they can’t get around it. And he’s [President Obama] been very smart. It’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.

If Congresswoman Waters is correct this could be a powerful tool for any administration.  Could it be used to influence legislation?  Could it influence court decisions? 

Government officials are vulnerable in two areas: sex and money. State Department officials are warned about what Soviet defector Victor Kravchenko called “Liubyanka ladies.” These young ladies are employed by the government to entrap unsuspecting government officials, journalists and businessmen. More often, however, people engage in extramarital affairs that could possibly destroy their careers. Is it plausible that intelligence agencies are unaware of these activities even when they do not initiate them?  This knowledge can be kept in reserve for when it is necessary to remove an uncooperative official. How long did the FBI know about General David Petraeus’ affair before he was induced to resign? There are also those who indulge in more unconventional sexual appetites.  Former Speaker of the House, Denis Hastert, appeared to be a stodgy and respectable politician, yet he had a past that he was desperate to conceal.  Were officials in the government unaware of his past?  Rep. Mark Foley and Senator Larry Craig also had unconventional sexual preferences. What compromises would they be willing to make in order to conceal their behavior? 

The second area of vulnerability is money.  It would be interesting to know how many congressmen and senators enter government with modest means and retire as millionaires. How did Speaker Hastert, a former school teacher, acquire a fortune large enough to pay a 3.5 dollar bribe?  Where did Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. acquire the funds to buy a $40,000 Rolex? 

Foreign intelligence agencies also maintain files on American politicians. With widespread computer hacking they are obviously aware of activities that these politicians would prefer to keep secret. Would a foreign power hesitate to attempt to influence legislation? Within the government there are also competing power blocks that have embarrassing information.  According to Edward Klein in his book, Unlikeable: The Problem with Hillary, former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, told the President to, “Call off your (bleep) dogs.”  She was more concerned about the damaging leaks of her emails than the investigation by the FBI.  The Obama administration obviously has information Hillary Clinton would prefer not to have made public. Hillary Clinton also has information that the Obama Administration would prefer to keep secret.

The Subversion of History

John Stuart Mill wrote, “A portion of mankind may be said to constitute a Nationality if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others.”  These common sympathies induce people to cooperate with each other more willingly than with foreigners.  He gave several possible causes for this affinity.  Among them are race, decent, common language or religion and geographical limits. He stated that the strongest of all these causes is the possession of a national history.  A knowledge of a national history should result in a common sense of community, common “recollections; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past.”

A basic understanding of the history of one’s nation is essential for the continuation of a society.   It is what binds a people together.  Our knowledge of the past forms a large part of our identity.  This knowledge provides a framework for interpreting events that take place in the present.  A knowledge of past mistakes or successes can be an invaluable tool for planning for the future.  Bertrand Russell described the importance of the study of the past in his essay On History:

Of all the studies by which men acquire citizenship of the intellectual commonwealth, no single one is so indispensable as the study of the past.  A knowledge of history is capable of giving to statesmanship, and our daily thoughts, a breadth and scope unattainable by those whose view is limited to the present.

The importance of history has been commented on since ancient times.   The Roman orator Cicero remarked, "He who is ignorant of what happens before his birth is always a child."  A more modern comment on the importance of a knowledge of the past was provided by columnist Ann Coulter who stated, "If history always begins this morning, the world holds exciting surprises around every corner."  Jeffrey Hart explained that, "History is to a civilization what personal memory is to an individual: an essential part of identity and a source of meaning."  C.S. Lewis commented, "men without a past are forever children, easily manipulated and enslaved."

Yet the commitment to the study of history is weak in our institutions of higher learning.  Harvard historian David Donald provided an example in a 1977 article in the New York Times entitled, "Our Irrelevant History."  Donald claimed,  "The ‘lessons’ taught by the American past are today not merely irrelevant but dangerous. . . . perhaps my most useful function would be to disenthrall (students) from the spell of history, to help them see the irrelevance of the past, . . .  (To) remind them to what a limited extent humans control their own destiny." Donald’s view of history is not unique.  It appears to be shared by a large section of the academic community. Worse than the neglect of history is the emphasis placed on the negative aspects of the nation’s history.

Richard Bernstein described in his book, Dictatorship of Virtue, what he learned at the 1987 convention of the American Historical Association.  "The unvarying underlying themes were the repressiveness inherent in American life and the sufferings of groups claiming to be victims of that repressiveness.  ... The history of the United States was the history of suffering for all but the white establishment."

Commentator Tammy Bruce has remarked that, "the purging of history courses is no accident." The animus toward the teaching of history goes back at least as far as the Enlightenment.  Bertrand Barere, a member of the French revolutionary Committee of Public Safety, commented, "All memories of history, all prejudices resulting from community of interest and of origin, all must be renewed in France; we wish only to date from to-day."  A knowledge of history fosters prejudices that stand in the way of the universal community desired by the progressives.  Author Milans Kundera wrote in his novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, "You begin to liquidate a people by taking away its memory.  You destroy its books, its culture, its history.  And then others write other books for it, give another culture to it, invent another history for it.  Then the people slowly begins to forget what it is and what it was."  Alexander Solzhenitzyn has stated, "To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots."  Tammy Bruce asserted, "The first step for the Intellectual Elite is to unmake and then remake history itself.  Smear the Founding Fathers, cast patriotism as jingoistic, and classify the United States as a genocidal nation bent on terrorism."  This is also the conclusion of Jim Nelson Black who has asserted, "The game plan of the deconstructionists in the universities has been to eradicate the past and indoctrinate the young men and women of this nation with a new view of society and a radical political ideology.  They know a great deal more about Madonna, Ice-T, and the 2 Live Crew than Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms." 

This has resulted in a reduced emphasis on history and the near elimination of what might be described as traditional history.  One example is the New Jersey Department of Education omitting America’s founding fathers, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, from the revised version of the state’s history standards.    One justification for this omission is that the founding fathers, were "racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, Eurocentric bigots."   

What are the consequences of this new interpretation of history?  The appalling ignorance of what might be called traditional history has been amply documented by several commentators.  A study by Prof. Judith Remy Leder of 100 students at California State University at Fullerton revealed that fewer than half could identify either Geoffrey Chaucer or Dante Alighieri, and 90 per cent could not identify Alexander Hamilton.  A study sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities of a representative national sample of 7,812 17-year-olds found that less than a third could place the Civil War in its correct half-century and that more than a fifth thought the radio and telephone had been invented since 1950.  This caused the study’s co-author, Chester E. Finn Jr., to remark, "We're raising a generation of historical and literary incompetents."  A 2001 Colonial Williamsburg Foundation study found that a quarter of American teenagers didn't know what Independence Day is supposed to celebrate.19  A National Assessment of Educational Progress in History survey found that 57 percent of our high school seniors lack a basic understanding of American history.         

According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni: "As we move forward into the 21st century, our future leaders are graduating with an alarming ignorance of their heritage - a kind of collective amnesia - and a profound historical illiteracy which bodes ill for the future of the republic."   As if to emphasize this point, in 1995 vice-president Al Gore commented that the national motto of the United States, "E pluribus Unum," was translated as "Out of one, many" in a speech praising multiculturalism.    Vice President Joe Biden claimed, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed.”