Father of the Navy: GW

Review by Bill Doughty

Was George Washington the first Chief of Naval Operations? Was the Revolutionary War the first world war? Did the colonial navy provide the decisive power that achieved America's independence?

Author Sam Willis brings an objective international perspective to these questions in "The Struggle for Sea Power: A Naval History of the American Revolution" (W.W. Norton & Company, 2016). Willis shows how and where privateers and sailors fought up and down the East Coast, across the Atlantic, and in Canada and the Caribbean.

The book opens with how to burn a wooden war ship in the age of sail. Not as easy as it sounds. A group of Americans – angry about authoritarian British customs rules – set fire to a grounded British schooner, HMS Gaspee, in June 1772.

There were other incidents leading up to the war, too, along with the burning of Gaspee and the first shots fired at Lexington.

Rebels launched whaleboat attacks against the mighty Royal Navy and burned another armed schooner, HMS Diana, in Boston Harbor in 1775. It was "a hostile act in the lion's den itself that displayed both American courage and resourcefulness and convinced many of the direction that the revolution was taking," Willis writes. The act planted the idea to create an American navy.

"The man with the idea was George Washington: by profession a surveyor and farmer from Virginia, by limited experience a frontier soldier, by political demand the new commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. In 1775 Washington knew more about farming than anything else."

Washington had fought with the British in the Seven Years' War, but his experience with sea power was nearly nonexistent. But, Willis writes:

"Washington may have lacked experience in sea power, but it is too easy to overlook his knowledge of waterways and skill in boatmanship. He may well have been a 'farmer' – a traditional seaman's insult – but he was a farmer in Virginia, and in the 1770s all farmers in Virginia had a keen nose for matters maritime. Virginia was a colony that constantly looked to the sea. The most significant aspect of the Virginian economy was the exportation of tobacco, and vast fleets, well over 100 ships strong, made an annual migration to Virginia to move the tobacco crop from its magnificent natural harbour at Hampton Roads back to Europe."

We're reminded of Washington's crossings of the Delaware (three crossings and returns) and of his profound faith in the Navy. He told Count Rochambeau: "In any operation, and under all circumstances, a decisive naval superiority is to be considered as a fundamental principle, and the basis upon which every hope of success must ultimately depend."

Faith and hope was embodied in the innovation and industriousness of American shipbuilders from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island, North Carolina and other colonies.

Building the Navy for national defense required a centralized government – a fiscal-military nation state to provide oversight. "This is why the birth of the American navy reflects the birth of America itself."

In fact, the Navy directly contributes to the spread of liberty and broadcasting of the Declaration of Independence worldwide. In the week after July 4, 1776 American ships carried printed copies of the Declaration to the rebels' potential allies including to France and to the Dutch island of St. Eustatius. From there, news of the document and copies of its text quickly traveled to Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Germany and Scandinavia.

Willis calls Part 3 of his four-part book "World War, 1778-1780."

He shows how France and Spain became committed allies. French help was invaluable to America's maritime war effort, despite "a fascinating and paradoxical mixture of distrust and exceptional high levels of expectation."

Like the British, the French suffered from overconfidence in their own maritime prowess.

And on several occasions major strategic mistakes were made when control over the navy was given to army leaders who tried to apply land tactics to the maritime domain.

Both the British and French underestimated the problem of providing adequate logistics, "finding the realities of prosecuting an aggressive naval strategy 3,000 miles from home extremely difficult."

Lessons apply today in the exercise of forward presence, the need for strong allies, and the importance of protecting sea lanes to ensure the free flow of trade.

In the 18th century, from Europe and the New World to Asia and the Silk Road, "trade ran from Britain and America to Newfoundland, Africa, South America, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the Baltic, the Indian Ocean and beyond, and where trade went, navies followed."

The 13 colonies had strong affinity for India, which was also under the shadow of the British Empire. A warship in the Pennsylvania State Navy was named Hyder Ali, after an Indian warlord.

The British Navy in Quebec.

If it was indeed a world war, Willis writes, "the first shot of this war was fired between soldiers at Lexington Commons in 1775, but did you know that the last was fired between warships at the battle of Cuddalore in the Bay of Bengal on 20 June 1783."

The rise and fall of empires is a theme in "The Struggle for Sea Power." So is the nature of naval warfare, which included littoral combat. Rivers and lakes presented deadly challenges to mariners. Contemporaries did not see distinction between the importance of command of the seas and control of inland navies, considering both "command of the water."

"If you are struggling to see a lake in the same terms as an ocean, I urge you to stand on the shores of Lake Michigan in a storm. You will not want to go out in a boat. Shallow it may be, but that shallowness and the relatively short fetch of the shores make for particularly brutal conditions on the water. And what about rivers? Rivers were to an eighteenth-century army as railways were to armies of the nineteenth century, but these were no passive, gently bubbling streams but evil and treacherous tongues of brown water whose currents could create whirlpools big enough to suck down a fully manned cutter. Figures do not survive, but it is safe to assume that during this war hundreds, perhaps thousands of sailors drowned in rivers or otherwise died fighting on, in or near them. Most of the riverine warfare I describe in this book, moreover, happened on the lower reaches, where powerful ocean-bound currents met relentless land-bound tides. Operating vessels in such conditions was the ultimate test of seamanship."

"Struggle" offers more than a dozen pages of cool contour maps and charts, beautiful photos, and strange political cartoons of the time. Willis provides extensive notes, bibliography and even a glossary of nautical terms.

The author credits today's U.S. Navy, especially the Naval History and Heritage Command, along with other entities, with providing the background and information necessary to bring his book to print.

"These focused studies are supported by an ongoing project of astonishing scale to publish significant documents pertaining to the war at sea. Under the aegis of the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, the 'Naval Documents of the American Revolution' series has been running since the mid 1960s and has become an important historical document in its own right. It now stands at twelve volumes, each over 1,000 pages long, with forewords from several generations of American presidents: from Kennedy through Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush to Obama."

Willis offers a compelling perspective, and it's obvious he achieves the goal he set in writing this important history. The book's opening epigraph is by Herman Melville: "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme."

'Salt-Sea Mastodon' Masterpiece, Navy Legacy

By Bill Doughty

Herman Melville's genius was not recognized widely during his lifetime. Today, his novel "Moby-Dick" about one man's obsession with a great white whale – and the call of the sea to sailors – is considered universally as one of the greatest novels of all time. What makes it so great?

Herman Melville

"A gripping adventure, rich allegory, and technical tour de force, the novel draws on Melville's own seafaring experience," including in the South Pacific, according to Caroline Kennedy.

One hundred and seventy five years ago this month Melville set sail aboard the whaler Acushnet, sailing from Massachusetts around Cape Horn and into the Pacific Ocean. (He said his life began when his ship sailed in January 1841.)

Melville's real-life adventure included living in the Marquesas Islands with Typee natives, purported cannibals. He served on other whalers and traveled through Polynesia/Tahiti, ending up in Honolulu before signing on as an "ordinary seaman" to work on the frigate USS United States, which returned to Boston, Massachusetts in the fall of 1844.

To appreciate Melville's literary skills at painting pictures with words, read his somewhat fanciful description of the insulated island culture that was Nantucket in the 1800s. Nantucketers – owners of the sea – more comfortable aboard ship that on land. For a time, Nantucket was America's center for hunting the "salt-sea mastodon" nearly two centuries ago:

Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it - a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don't grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day's walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snowshoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.

Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an infant Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the same direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket, – the poor little Indian's skeleton.

What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at Behring's Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!

And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a noah's flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.



The preceding excerpt from Chapter XIV of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" is published in Ambassador Caroline Kennedy's "A Patriot's Handbook," reviewed Jan. 24. Melville's description of Nantucket is a nice companion piece to a Navy Reads review last month of Nathaniel Philbrick's "In the Heart of the Sea."

Melville had a lasting legacy on the Navy.

He achieved his greatest success with his novel "Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life." In addition to "Moby-Dick," he wrote "Billy Budd, Sailor" and "White Jacket" or, "The World in a Man-of-War." The latter was read by members of the U.S. Congress and is considered by historians to be instrumental in abolishing flogging in the U.S. Navy.

From Naval History and Heritage Command's "Brief History of Punishment by Flogging in the U.S. Navy":

"Meanwhile in March 1850 Herman Melville's novel, White-Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War was published. It contained a chapter on flogging and others on its evil effects and unlawful use. He called for its abolition. Some naval officers took exception to Melville's remarks and wrote rebuttals, a few of which were published in newspapers or pamphlets. The document reproduced above, A Plea in Favor of Maintaining Flogging in the Navy, may have been inspired by Melville's novel, by the action of Congress, or by the campaign of some officers and civilians to restore the practice of flogging. This effort was decisively defeated after a speech in the Senate in 1851 by Senator Robert F. Stockton of New Jersey, a former Navy captain. Naval officers had to adjust to new conditions, and there was increased pressure on Congress to enact new regulations. In March 1855 Congress passed a law for the more efficient discipline in the Navy. This established a system of summary courts martial for minor offences. It could sentence guilty men to a solitary confinement, with or without single or double irons, and/or a diet of bread and water for a limited time. It could also give bad conduct discharges. In 1862 Congress gave the force of law to a major revision of all Navy regulations that reflected a more progressive view of discipline."

Melville's work had a lasting influence on the Navy, literature and history. But unfortunately, according to Ambassador Kennedy, "Melville died in poverty; 'Moby-Dick' was not recognized as a literary masterpiece until the 1920s."

Antislavery Writings in Resolving Hypocrisy

Review by Bill Doughty

George Washington ensured his slaves were freed but not till after his death.

By the time George Washington died he had resolved the greatest hypocrisy of his life. 

Much of the "Last Will and Testament" of the first American president, a man who fought the Revolutionary War for liberty and equality, is dedicated to freeing his slaves and funding their care and education. In many parts of the young country at the time it was illegal to teach slaves how to read.

Jefferson did not resolve the same hypocrisy and, in fact, compounded it through his actions.

Lincoln confronted and resolved the issue on behalf of the nation five decades after Washington's death.

"American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation," edited by James G. Basker and published by the Library of America, offers hundreds of stories, narratives, poems, letters and songs. The book includes Washington's will related to his slaves.

Among the several passages written by Abraham Lincoln in this book is Lincoln's "Peoria" speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which permitted slavery in the new territories leading to the West. Lincoln argued for the blessings of freedom and against those who found legal and biblical justification for slavery as morally justified.

"Let us turn slavery from its claims of 'moral right,' back upon its existing legal rights, and its arguments of 'necessity.' Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it; and there let it rest in peace. Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. Let north and south -- let all Americans -- let all lovers of liberty everywhere -- join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations."

One of the highlights in this exceptional compilation is an excerpt from "Twelve Years a Slave," the 1853 narrative of Solomon Northrup.  "Northrup presents a detailed sketch of the sadistic slave master Edwin Epps that is almost mesmerizing in its graphic horror," Basker writes. (Northrup's memoir was depicted in a top movie of 2013 directed by Steve McQueen and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong'o, Michael K. Williams, Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt.)

From the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Another highly recommended gem in "American Antislavery Writings" is the poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Slave Ships."

Of course, this book includes abolitionist writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and John Brown.  It also includes words of patriots and poets such as Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster, Edmund Quincy, Emily Dickinson, William Cullen Bryant, Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Former president John Quincy Adams represented Joseph Cinqué and other African captives who had freed themselves from captivity while aboard a Spanish schooner slave ship. Amistad was discovered off Long Island by the U.S. Navy brig Washington. 

President Martin Van Buren ordered the Amistad's slaves be returned to Spain, but Adams argued before the Supreme Court, "the right of personal liberty is individual." He said, "The moment you come, to the Declaration of Independence, that every man has a right to life and liberty, an inalienable right, this case is decided."

One of the strongest condemnations of slavery in America comes at the end of the book in Charles Sumner's "Eulogy on Abraham Lincoln."

"Traitorous assassination struck him down. But do not be too vindictive in heart towards the poor atom that held the weapon. Reserve your rage for the responsible Power, which not content with assailing the life of the Republic by atrocious Rebellion, has outraged all laws human and divine; has organized Barbarism as a principle of conduct; has taken the lives of faithful Unionists at home; has prepared robbery and murder on the northern borders; has fired hotels, filled with women and children; has plotted to scatter pestilence and poison; has perpetrated piracy and ship-burning at sea; has starved American citizens, held as prisoners; has inflicted the slow torture of Andersonville and Libby; has menaced assassination always; and now at last, true to itself, has assassinated our President; and this responsible Power is none other than Slavery. It is Slavery that has taken the life of our beloved Chief Magistrate, and here is another triumph of its Barbarism. On Slavery let vengeance fall."

This book also includes a chronology of the slave trade in the colonies and efforts to abolish it in the new nation under the 16th president and 13th Amendment.

This week my generation remembered the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the Beatles from Britain to the United States. In 1964, the Beatles, like Elvis before them, skyrocketed to fame playing music inspired by African-American Rhythm & Blues. (Recommended: timeline  in Dr. Portia K. Maultsby's "History of African American Music.")

The 50 year marker back to 1964 can be used as a yardstick back in time.

Muddy Waters helped plant seeds of rock & roll.

Subtract another 50 years. What were people listening to in 1914, the year World War I began?  The great blues artist Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield) was born the year before. Big Bill Broonzy, who would be a key influence to John Lennon years later, was already playing music and getting ready to move to Chicago. It was the very early beginning of commercial jazz and blues, but the hot group was the American Quartet, who performed top hits, "It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary," "Rebecca of Sunny-Brook Farm" and "Do You Take This Woman for Your Lawful Wife."  Sobering to think that, in 1914, women did not yet have the right to vote.  

Back another 50 years -- 1864, popular forms of music were "parlor" and "minstrel."  That was the year songwriter Stephen Foster died.  Foster's complicated and evolving views about slavery are discussed in an online essay by Matthew Shaftel in University of California at Santa Barbara's "Music and Politics" journal.

Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln fought for emancipation.

Another 50 years -- from 1864 to 1814 -- puts us in the midst of the War of 1812 and four years before the birth of free-thinking philosopher Frederick Douglass. Beethoven and Schubert produced music of the time and Francis Scott Key wrote the Star-Spangled Banner ("O'er the land of the free...").  Key was a slaveowner who helped found the American Colonization Society, which strove to send free African Americans back to Africa and led to the establishment of Liberia.

Back another 50 years: Fifty years prior to 1814 takes us to 1764, when Bach and Mozart were producing music 12 years before 1776. 

Phillis Wheatley, 1753-1784

Those few 50-year yardsticks take us back quickly to the beginning of our nation when slavery was the norm but when the voices of abolition were already building. 

"American Antislavery Writings" includes a number of songs and poems starting with the brilliant Phillis Wheatley, America's first African American woman writer.

Wheatley addressed the hypocrisy of slavery in a letter to the Rev. Samson Occum just two years before the Declaration of Independence, addressing her thoughts to "those whose avarice impels them" to support slavery.  "This I desire ... to convince them of the strange Absurdity of their Conduct whose Words and Actions are so diametrically opposite. How well the Cry for Liberty, and the reverse Disposition for the Exercise of oppressive Power over others agree, -- I humbly think it does not require the Penetration of the Philosopher to determine."

Basker's compilation includes uncredited Anonymous authors, with many voices rising to a crescendo in the 1840s. Women used verse to illuminate the plight of mothers separated from children and vice versa.

Margaret Lucy Shands Bailey of Virginia wrote for anti-slavery periodicals including "National Era," in which Harriet Beecher Stowe first serialized "Uncle Tom's Cabin."  Bailey's "The Blind Slave Boy" was put to music and published in 1844.

"Come back to me mother! Why linger away from thy poor little blind boy, the long weary day!I mark every footstep, I list(en) to each tone, And wonder my mother should leave me alone! There are voices of sorrow, and voices of glee, But there's no one to joy or to sorrow with me; For each hath of pleasure and trouble his share, And none for the poor little blind boy will care."

The case against slavery was won with a combination of cold logic, warm emotion and hot passion that led to a necessary war to preserve the United States.

This book shows how the nation lived up to the ideals expressed by Jefferson, fought for by Washington and realized by Lincoln.

This is a recommended read for this Presidents Day and during Black History Month.

Boston Bombing Roots

by Bill Doughty

In thinking about the “why” behind the terrorist attacks by radical Islamic fundamentalists, can at least part of the answer be explained in books?  While the world was focused on the Middle East, the atrocity at the Boston Maraton last April 15 -- Patriots Day -- shifted some of the attention a bit north of Syria, Iraq and Iran to almost forgotten Chechnya and the fringes of the former Soviet Union.

To understand “why Chechnya?” several books provide helpful insight.  All of these were written before Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, ethnic Chechens with ties to radical Islam, conducted their vicious attack against innocent Americans.

“Chechen Jihad: Al Qaeda’s Training Ground and the Next Wave of Terror” by Yossef Bodansky introduces readers immediately to terrorists like Shamil Basayev, AKA Amir Abdallah Shamil Abu-Idris, once tied to bin-Laden and al-Zawahiri.

Like author and historian Bernard Lewis, Bodansky attempts to explain the violent reactions of some fundamentalists against western modernization and what their jihad hopes to accomplish.

“The story of the Islamist-Jihadists’ quest to seize the strategic ground of Chechnya and the Caucasus is a unique and critical case study for anyone seeking to understand the means and goals of the worldwide Islamist jihad.  And its failure -- if failure it can be -- contains lessons that may be infrastructure as the secular world confronts continued Islamist-Jihadist surges in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.”

War in Chechnya in 1994 is thought to have claimed 100,000 lives.

Bodansky shows how sharia law, which called for public violence against its citizens, restricted women’s rights, transformed society, destroyed the socioeconomic infrastructure and fomented violence.  He calls it Chechenization.

In the chapter “Why Should We Care?” he writes:

“Chechenization refers to the profound transformation of a predominantly Muslim society from its traditional, largely pre-Islamic structure to one dominated by Islamist-Jihadist elements that historically have been alien to that society.  Chechenization involving not only the Arabization of that society’s value system, social structure, and way of life, but a near-complete abandonment of a society’s own cultural heritage in favor of subservience to pan-Islamic Jihadist causes, even if those causes are detrimental to the self-interest of that society.”

Under sharia law there is no separation of church and state.  In a radical Islamic state there is no tolerance for "disbelievers," nonbelievers or so-called apostates (former Muslims).

Lawrence Scott Sheets describes in “8 Pieces of Empire” how clerics in Chechnya ordered public televised lashings and public executions.  A highlight of his personal reporter’s narrative is the chapter “Three Libertine Women” in which we meet three freedom fighters, “Sabotage Women,” who fought the Russians nearly twenty years ago.

Harassed by morality police and threatened because of their secular attitudes and behavior, the women -- strong and fierce and free -- “fled Chechnya for Europe, where they are today.”

Andrew Meier, in “Chechnya: To the Heart of a Conflict,” describes a land of suicide bombings, assassinations and ongoing act of terrorism, where assassinations in the years since the first Russian onslaught in 1994, the kidnapping industry replaced petroleum crude as the primary contribution to Chechnya’s gross domestic product.”

Meier says he wrote the book as a report to “trace the convulsions” in the region.

A highlight of Meier’s small book is a timeline from the 17th through 19th centuries when “Chechens adopt Sunni Islam, but retain many ancestral customs,” through the impact of Russia, ending with the Sept. 1, 2004 terrorist attack and hostage taking in Beslan, North Ossetia and killing and wounding of hundreds of children.

In Moshe Gammer’s “The Lone Wolf and the Bear: Three Centuries of Chechen Defiance of Russian Rule,” we learn of the history of the turmoil in the Caucasus going back to Catherine the Great in 1771, in the same decade as the birth of the United States, 1776.

The embers of violence continued to glow, flaring around the time of the American Civil War.

“In 1866 ... economic, religious, political and other tensions had gradually been building up, making Chechnya (and Daghestan) a powder keg waiting to explode.  The Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-8 was the match that ignited it.”

Gammer describes another milestone around the time of World War I.

“The Islamic leaders were interested in securing the monopoly of the sharia over life in the mountains.  In the Chechen congress in Groznyi they had already raised the questions of enforcing the sharia and establishing a Terek Muftiate.”

Gammer calls it an “alliance” between religion and nationalism.

In the ashes of the Ottoman experience and in the face of the Stalinist persecution by the Soviet Union, fundamentalist Islam attracted a greater following among the people.

A purge or “deportation” in WWII caused deep-seated resentment that took root for generations despite a “rehabilitation” during the Cold War.

Terrorism and war continued as the people adopted “Wahhabism,” the religious philosophy adopted by al-Zawahiri.

According to Gammer, “The war of 1994-6 strengthened the Islamic dimension of Chechen identity and brought to the fore memories of the Islamic resistance to Russia in the eighteenth and nineteeth centuries ... Furthermore, Islam poured he strongest rallying call inside Chechnya and more effective than secular ideologies in calling for unity and mobilising support among other North Caucasian nationalities...”

So, the history books help us understand the unholy war that has existed in the region.  Other books can also help explain the brainwashing, “divine purpose” and self-righteous attitude that causes such explosive violence.

Still, the more we understand, the more questions we encounter.  Especially as we consider the “why” behind the Tsarnaev attacks in Boston on Patriots Day, a Massachusetts holiday celebrating freedom and independence.  What caused the two jihadists to lash out and cause so much destruction?  Why would they reject the freedom and democracy they had adopted.  Perhaps their uncle Ruslan Tsarni has the reason that goes beyond the history books: “being losers.”

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being arraigned this week after the formal indictment was issued last month.

The Eclectic, Electric and Heroic

by Bill Doughty

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted to Navy Reads. Been too busy reading an eclectic list of books: Mary Roach’s “Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal” (sickeningly good), Scott McGaugh’s “Midway Magic” (long live CV-41), and several books that may help explain the violent extremist insanity that led to the Boston Marathon bombings (to try to understand the “why”).  

These books include “Chechen Jihad” by Yossef Bodansky, “8 Pieces of Empire” by Lawrence Scott Sheets, “The Lone Wolf and the Bear” by Moshe Gammer, and “The Black Banners” by Ali Soufan.  All provide insights into Chechnya, “Chechenization” and the twisted currents of Islamist-Jihadists.

Reviews of any of the above titles are on hold, though.  I also picked up a copy of “The Orphan Master’s Son” by Adam Johnson, a work of colorful imagination set in and around North Korea.  So far, this stark thriller is a work of art and beauty with ties to both the sea and Japan.

Speaking of novels... Coming soon, a very special post courtesy of retiring Adm. James Stavridis who stepped down this month as NATO Supreme Allied Commander.

ADM Stavridis is honored after stepping down at NATO May 13, 2013.

Stavridis has an electrifying intellect.  Watch his TED Talk on global security  -- building bridges, not walls, and protecting sea lanes -- to understand the U.S. Navy’s raison d’etre.

Two days ago Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced the naming of two future destroyers.

“As secretary of the Navy it is my privilege to name these ships to honor a respected naval leader and a true American hero." Mabus said. "For decades to come, the future USS Paul Ignatius and USS Daniel Inouye will represent the United States and enable the building of partnerships and projection of power around the world." 

Sen. Inouye speaks with a Navy Captain aboard USS Midway, year unknown.

Former Navy leader Paul Ignatius served as secretary of the Navy in the late 1960s under President Lyndon Johnson.  Inouye earned the Medal of Honor for his heroism in battle with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Italy. First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives when Hawaii became a state in 1959, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1963 and served there until his death at age 88.

This will be the first Memorial Day since Sen. Inouye’s passing last December.  He was a great American hero, consensus builder and forward-thinking visionary who, decades ago, understood the importance of rebalancing to the Pacific.

070505-N-3642E-385 GROTON, Conn. (May 5, 2007) – Sen. Daniel Inouye prepares to speak at the commissioning of USS Hawaii (SSN 776). Hawaii is the third Virginia-class submarine to be commissioned and the first major Navy combatant vessel class designed with the post-Cold War security environment in mind. U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Shawn P. Eklund (RELEASED)

Reading with Young People

(Thanks to technology, service members on deployment may be able to read to sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews, and sons and daughters.  Reading to children at bedtime -- or instead of computer games and TV time -- can have a lifetime of benefits: expanding imagination, improving vocabulary and strengthening bonds.  Reader, writer and thinker Becky Hommon offers her recommendations of books to read to young people (or vice versa) in this guest post to Navy Reads.)

By Rebecca Hommon

One would presume that adults who read appreciate the value of reading to children or encouraging children to read for themselves.  One of my favorite experiences is to switch roles and listen as a young person reads to me.  The following provides a few of my favorites, all oldies but goodies, for either an adult to read to a child or for a child to read to an attentive adult.  it's a great illustration of succeeding just by showing up and paying attention.  Many of the books involve geography and could help a child dealing with yet another family relocation drill.

“Make Way for Ducklings” by Robert McCloskey tells of a Boston police officer who protects a family of mallards as they experience life in the Public Garden in downtown Boston.  The book's popularity resulted in the duck family being honored with a statue of them in their beloved garden.   A matching statue of the ducks can be found in the park at Novodevichy Convent in Moscow as a gift from First Lady Barbara Bush to First Lady Raisa Gorbachev.  Imagine the joy of a well-traveled family recording their visits to both sites.

Heading across the globe to Japan, “Basho and the Fox” by Tim Myers introduces young readers to the Japanese poem form of haiku and the effort involved in writing those seventeen syllables.  A surprise ending teaches a bit about ego and  how the taste of the judge can affect the determination of the victor.  Japanese attire, shoji doors and cherry blossoms shine in the soft illustrations.  Outside of Kyoto is a public park with statues of foxes scattered along the trail.  Putting the book together with a visit to the park seems to have some potential for fun.

Kathryn Lasky's “She's Wearing a Dead Bird on Her Head!” is a humorous picture-book version of those orange-covered biographies that baby boomers recall from their early reading days.  This is the tale of Harriet Hemenway and Minna Hall  who in 1896 could not vote but knew the steps needed to generate legal change.  Their efforts yielded our nation's earliest bird protection laws.  A field guide to the birds could enhance a repeated reading as the illustrations contain many species.

Jack Prelutsky writes funny short poems that in “The Frogs Wore Red Suspenders” mention a variety of places including Minneapolis, St. Paul, the Grand Canyon, the Great Lakes, Fort Myers, San Jose, Seattle and Minot, North Dakota.  Reading his books with a good map of the USA sitting nearby increases the silly pleasure.  “Ride a Purple Pelican” extends the range to Canada.  His Hawaii poem is my favorite:  "Parrot with a pomegranate, pigeon with a peach flew to Honolulu to dance upon the beach.  They danced a pair of polkas, they danced a polonaise, then ended with a hula and slept for seven days."  The books are big format  with eye-popping laugh-generating illustrations that can probably be seen over a computer camera connection.

Shel Silverstein's “A Giraffe and a Half” is one long, silly illustrated poem with black and white drawings.  A child has a lead role which pleases kids and the poem uses the word "toot" often, which for some reason causes most kids to giggle and if in the company of other children often leads to joyous screams.

My favorite book for generating sleep in others is “Sam and the Firefly” by P.D. Eastman.  Everyone's asleep except Sam, the owl, until he meets Gus, the firefly.  There's a bit of tension when Gus gets caught and put in a jar but not for long as the two cause something good to happen.  They head to their respective homes until they meet again -- the next night.  It's a calming sweet story worthy of repetition.

I hope these find a way into your adult/child reading time and give both generations some special memories and joy.

(Rebecca Hommon is the environmental counsel for Navy Region Hawaii, who has personally seen both Make Way for Ducklings statues in Boston and in Moscow and the fox shrine outside of Kyoto.  For more information about reading to young people while on deployment, visit: United Through Reading. -- Bill Doughty)

Lt. Laura M. Morgan reads a book to her brother using the United Through Reading program in the library aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77). (U.S. Navy photo by MCSN K. Cecelia Engrums)

Sailors who read to young people can make a lifelong impression.

Freedom & Responsibility - United States Constitution

by Bill Doughty

What do the Casey Anthony trial, the right to vote, assault weapon restrictions, abortion debate, and the debt ceiling crisis have in common?  For one thing, the U.S. Constitution... 

The Constitution, Bill of Rights and the other amendments outline the rule of law, voting rights and federal-state balance of power, to “establish Justice, ensure Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Prosterity.”
People on both sides of political divides figuratively wrap themselves in the parchment of our founders.  

One side may feel the words are immutable, that the Constitution is a sacred “covenant,” to quote some; the other side may feel the ideas are more important than strict interpretations of the words, a “compass,” a “blueprint,” a “living document,” according to others.  

Both sides struggle with the meaning of the words, then and now.  

Some Supreme Court justices believe in interpreting and obeying the words of the Constitution as perfect, fixed and unwavering; others see the document as imperfect and evolving, an attempt “in Order to form a more perfect Union...”

On Jan. 5, 2011 the U.S. Congress read the Constitution aloud on the floor of the House of Representatives but purposely did not include the original parts allowing and extending slavery or counting African Americans as only three-fifths of a person.  The Constitution did not allow women the right to vote till 1920.  The eighteenth amendment initiated prohibition in 1919, only to be repealed by the twenty-first amendment in 1933. Native Americans did not have the right to citizenship until the 1924.

With all its imperfections and course-corrections, the Constitution -- along with the Declaration of Independence we celebrate this July 4th, 2011 -- is viable and strong for We the People and an inspiration for all people around the world.

The United States Constitution is worth defending for the liberty, justice and peace it tries to guarantee people everywhere; it’s worth reading and understanding for the robust give-and-take debate it most certainly guarantees in our country.

A wise U.S. Marine sergeant major, my dad, told me you cannot have freedom without responsibility.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (May 27, 2011) Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) 
Adm. Gary Roughead administers the oath of office at the U.S. Naval 
Academy Class of 2011 graduation and commissioning ceremony. 
(U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Tiffini Jones Vanderwyst)

Perhaps our greatest responsibility is to not only defend the Constitution but also read and appreciate how and why it was drafted.  What was George Washington’s critical role?  How did Alexander Hamilton and James Madison contribute?

The nation’s founders, especially Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, men who benefited from the Enlightenment, knew they were creating a work that would have to be amended. What they established for us was a sublime system for regulating government and balancing power, reaching compromise, and ensuring freedom with responsibility.

According to historian Eric Foner:

Americans have sometimes believed they enjoy the greatest freedom of all -- freedom from history. No people can escape being bound, to some extent, by their past. But if history teaches anything, it is that the definitions of freedom and of the community entitled to enjoy it are never fixed or final. We may not have it in our power, as Thomas Paine proclaimed in 1776, ‘to begin the world over again.’ But we can decide for ourselves what freedom is. No one can predict the ultimate fate of current understandings of freedom, or whether alternative traditions now in eclipse -- freedom as economic security, freedom as active participation in democratic governance, freedom as social justice for those long disadvantaged -- will be rediscovered and reconfigured to meet the challenges of the new century. All one can hope is that, in the future, the better angels of our nature (to borrow Lincoln’s words) will reclaim their place in the forever unfinished story of American freedom.

Our United States Constitution is one of the core documents recommended in the Navy Professional Reading Program and included in The Declaration of Independence and other Great Documents of American History.  NPRP was introduced to the Navy aboard USS Constitution in Boston on Sept. 19, 2006.

BOSTON (June 3, 2011) USS Constitution greets the guided-missile frigate USS Carr (FFG 52).
(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kathryn E. Macdonald)