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BOOK LIST/LISTA DE LIBROS I

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I do not endorse any of these books nor do I recommend their authors. It is simply to offer a list of some of the books that I personally had read and others for the interesting reviews by literary critics.

However there is a Great Book that I emphatically recommend and that is THE HOLY BIBLE, KING JAMES VERSION 1611 (KJV):

Este servidor no endorsa ni recomienda ninguno de estos libros ni sus autores. Simplemente ofrecer una corta recopilación de algunos de los muchos libros que he leído y que estoy leyendo y que también uso como referencia en comparación con otras fuentes.

(Where some or all of the Constitution Framers those that God referred in Isaiah 5:20, or were they “Half Truthers” or both?  (We’ll continue pronto amigos and friends for our Nation’s sake and this Mondo Cane’s sake as well)

Sin embargo existe un Gran Libro que enfáticamente yo sí recomiendo y es LA SANTA BIBLIA, VERSIÓN REINA-VALERA 1960: But I will show thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth. / Pero yo te declararé lo que está escrito en el libro de la verdad. Daniel 12:21. Thus said the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches. But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, thst I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgement, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, said the Lord. / Así dijo Jehová: No se alabe el sabio en su sabiduría, ni en su valentía se alabe el valiente, ni el rico se alabe en sus riquezas. Mas alábese en esto el que se hubiere de alabar: en entenderme y conocerme, que yo soy Jehová, que hago misericordia, juicio y justicia en la tierra; porque estas cosas quiero, dice Jehová. Jeremiah/Jeremías 9:23-24

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(Y BIEN, ‘HERMANOS AND SISTERS’ IN CHRIST JESUS THE FAMILY OF THE GOD OF THE BIBLE IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT. Let me ‘compartir’ with you all something Wonderful from God Our Father the True Teacher of the Bible (John/Juan 6:45). For I’m not a teacher of the Bible, I never was and I never will. This servant, the smallest one, “little aguijón”, only shares the Precious and Great News of the “Gospel del Amado”, our Beloved Lord Jesus, and nothing else. My writings you ‘puedes tirar al viento’ and you haven’t lost anything. Ah, but, behold, not the Word of God, that, the Words of the Bible you keep in your heart and in your mind, for they are Faith, Life and Hope, which the Three Words combined spell Jesus Christ our Living Hope.)

(Listed : 5 February 2012) “GOD’S SECRETARIES”, 2003 by Adam Nicolson. “LOS SECRETARIOS DE DIOS”, 2003 por Adam Nicolson.

“MAYFLOWER”, 2006 by Nathaniel Philbrick. “FLOR DE MAYO”, 2006 por Nathaniel Philbrick.

“THE MARCH OF FOLLY” FROM TROY TO VIETNAM”, 1984 by Barbara W. Tuchman. “LA MARCHA DEL DESATINO” DESDE TROYA A VIETNAM”, 1984 por Barbara W. Tuchman.

“PAPAL SIN STRUCTURES OF DECEIT”, 2000 by Garry Wills. “PECADO PAPAL ESTRUCTURAS DE ENGAÑO” por Garry Wills.

(Listed: 28 February 2012) “THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE”, By Michael Grant, 1976, Revised Edition of 1990– “LA CAÍDA DEL IMPERIO ROMANO”, Por Michael Grant, 1976, Edición Revisada de 1990.

“THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE”, by Edward Gibbon, 1772-1789. “LA HISTORIA DE LA DECADENCIA Y CAÍDA DEL IMPERIO ROMANO”, por Edward Gibbon, 1772-1789.

“AD 1000, Living on the Brink of Apocalypse”, by Richard Erdoes, 1988- “1000 DC, Viviendo al Borde del Apocalipsis”, por Richard Erdoes, 1988.

(What follow are quotes from: “AD 1000, Living on the Brink of Apocalypse”, by Richard Erdoes, 1988, and we quote: The Millennium Is at Hand, and Sings Portend the World’s End: “In Aquitaine, it rained blood, bespattering folk’s clothing with crimson spots which could not be expunged. This caused apprehension that great wars and bloodshed were about to occur-a surefire prophesy in an age of uninterrupted violence and warfare. Not only victims of soldierly brutality but also the soldiers themselves took fright in the face of such omens. In 968, the men of Emperor Otto I, marching against the Saracens of Calabria, panicked when an eclipse darkened the sky, diving head first into empty barrels and supply chest or crawling underneath carts. Fanatic preachers kept up the flame of terror. Every shooting start furnished occasion for a sermon, in which the sublimity of the approaching Judgement was the principal topic.... Many sings and omens were seen in Italy, not surprisingly, as many people believed that the dissolution of the world would begin at Rome, spreading out from there until all the earth should be consumed. Raoul Glaber took note of this.... ‘Mount Vesuvius, which is also called Vulcan’s cauldron, gaped far more often than its wont and vomited forth numberless vast stones mingled with sulphurous flames that fell to a distance of three miles around; and thus by the stench of its breath, like the stench of hell, made all the surrounding province uninhabitable.’ ”-from AD 1000

AD 1000 It is New Year’s Eve, A.D. 999. Pope Sylvester II, a visionary so brilliant that many believe he has made a secret pact with Satan, says a midnight Mass in the basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome. As the bells toll the new year this pope intones the sacred rite, fulfilling a dark prophecy. It is the dreaded eve of the millennium, the Day of Wrath when the earth is to dissolve into ashes. The faithful lie prostate and trembling on the floor, awaiting the Final Hour. Others are seized by holy ecstasy, anticipating the Second Coming of Christ.

Noted author Richard Erdoes has composed a vivid tapestry of a century frighteningly similar to our own. Drawing on fascinating original material and combining powerful vignettes and brilliant character sketches, the author has brought to life the terror and frenzy of a society ravaged from without and within as it faces the dawning of a new epoch and an uncertain future.

It is an era filled with visions of mass destruction. There are reports of fire-breathing dragons appearing in the clouds, the sky has rained blood, and a mysterious disease known as St. Anthony’s fire eats away at the human body and soul. Europe is torn apart by wars-besieged by fanatic Moslems Saracens, Spanish Moors, pagan Bulgars, axe-wielding Thor-worshiping Vikings, and fierce Magyar horsemen-the proverbial Scourge of God. Christian barons slaughtered each other with a vengeance over a piece of land, killing their enemies’ serfs-men, women, and children to weaken them economically, burning villages and crops, and cutting down fruit trees for good measure. Within Christendom, according to the Archbishop of Rheims, as early as 909, at the Council of Trosly, Hervèe, archbishop of Rheims, lamented, “men live without law and fear of punishment, abandoning themselves to their passions. Everyone does as he pleases, defying the laws divine and human.... The strong oppress the weak. Everywhere there is violence against the poor, who are helpless to resist, and equally helpless the churches and cloisters who cannot defend what is theirs. And we ourselves, bishops, shepherds of the people, we who should correct, protect, do not fulfill our task. We neglect to preach, see our flock abandoning God and wallow in vice without speaking to them, advising them, offering them our hands. They tell us that the burdens we lay upon them are too heavy, that we do not even offer them our little finger. And therefore the flock, our Lord’s sheep, perish by our silence. In the meantime we think only of our own well-being. But the moment approaches when we must give accounts. Soon we shall see approach the day, majestic and terrible, when we, together with our flock, shall stand before the Great Shepherd of all”

Such warnings occurred again and again throughout the century. Glaber wrote, “Close to a thousand years after the Virgin gave her son to the world mankind threw itself into the most fatal errors. The people were bound for evil from childhood, like a dog returning to its own vomit, sinning again and again like a swine that was washed wallowing once more in the muck. They waxed fat and proud, and kicked against God’s laws. For even princes and bishops had their hearts set on ill-gotten riches, turning to theft and greed. And the lower sort of people followed the example of the higher so that never before had there been such base crimes of incests, adulteries and fornication between close kindred, such immorality and keeping of concubines.”

Elsewhere he lamented, “A mixture of frivolity and infamy corrupts our way of life; therefore our minds have lost their taste for what is serious and dwell upon what is shameful. Honor and justice cannot be had now at any price. Women walk about in shortened dresses, moving wantonly. Among men, degeneracy gives way to effeminacy. Fraud, violence and every imaginable vice vie with each other for dominance. Not even the ravages of the sword, famines and pestilences can keep men from sinning and if the goodness of the Almighty had not suspended His anger, hell had already swallowed up mankind in its bottomless pit. Such is the power of crime that the more evil one commits, the less one fears repeating it and the more one doubts the Last Judgment.”

Carnage, famine, cannibalism, pestilence, rapine, murder, and madness plague the continent. Corruption is rampant in high places. Popes and kings plot each other’s assassination. In Rome, rival popes imprisoned, starved, mutilated, castrated, blinded, and assassinated each other. Sons murder their fathers, husbands kill wives, sister fights brother for the possession of a castle or manor. It is a time of incredible poverty and opulence. It is the thousandth year of Christianity. The end of the millennium is fast approaching and with it the nightmare visions of Armageddon and Apocalypse.

As rich as any fantasy, this chilling historical account provides a distant mirror to our own troubled times.
Richard Erdoes was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and educated in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. Mr. Erdoes lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A.

(Listed: 9 April 2012) “A HISTORY OF GOD”, by Karen Armstrong, 1993. “UNA HISTORIA DE DIOS”, por Karen Armstrong, 1993

(Listed 22 April 2012) “Fifty Years in the Church of Rome”, by Charles Chiniquy, 1885. “Cincuenta Años en la Iglesia de Roma”, por Charles Chiniquy, 1885

“The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional”, by Charles Chiniquy, 1875. “El Sacerdote, la Mujer y el Confesionario”, by Charles Chiniquy, 1875

(Listed 8 May 2012) “THE JEWS OF SPAIN” A History of the Sephardic Experience, by Jane S. Gerber, 1992. “LOS JUDÍOS DE ESPAÑA” Una Historia de la Experiencia Sefardita, por Jane S. Gerber, 1992

(Listed 12 November 2012) “THE IMPERIAL CRUISE” -A SECRET HISTORY of EMPIRE and WAR-, by James Bradley, 2009. “EL CRUCERO IMPERIAL” -UNA HISTORIA SECRETA de IMPERIO y GUERRA-, por James Bradley, 2009

(Listed: 12 Noviembre 2012) “ANCIENT ROME” -THE RISE AND FALL OF AN IMPIRE-, by Simon Baker, 2006. “ROMA ANTIGUA” –LA SUBIDA Y CAÍDA DE UN IMPERIO-, por Simon Baker, 2006

(Listed: 2 Diciembre 2012) “RELIGION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE”, by James B. Rives, 2007. “RELIGIÓN EN EL IMPERIO ROMANO”, por James B. Rives, 2007

(Listed: 14 Enero 2013) “THE MIDDLE AGES”, by Morris Bishop, 1970. “LA EDAD MEDIA”, por Morris Bishop, 1970

Excerpts, extractos del libro “THE MIDDLE AGES”, “LA EDAD MEDIA”, y citamos: Chapter 1, pages 19-22: THE LONG DARK: On Christmas Day, 800, Charlemagne and his army attended mass in St. Peter’s, with Pope Leo officiating. Charlemagne wore the long Roma tunic and cloak, a golden belt, and jewel-studded sandals. On the shining reposed a magnificent crown. Charlemagne rose from his knees; the pope took the crown from the altar and placed it on the monarch’s head. All the Romans, obviously well drilled, shouted three times” “Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, crowned by God the great and pacific emperor of the Romans!” Pope Leo knelt at Charlemagne’s feet and kissed the hem of his garment, adoring him, according to Byzantine custom. Thus was made the first Roman, emperor in the West in more than three hundred years.

What did it all meant? Apparently Charlemagne did not take the coronation very seriously. He continued to style himself “king of the Franks and Lombards.” He never again visited Rome or wore Roman dress.

Charlemagne’s world was organized in great domains, or manors, descendants of the large states o villas of the later Roman Empire.

Charlemagne conceived of himself as the father of his country. He thought it his duty to provide for the material, spiritual, and intellectual welfare of his subjects. This was a new concept of the duties of a Christian king. The emperor appointed his bishops and supervised them as well as the lower clergy. He was very high-principled, imposing the death penalty for breaking fast in Lent, for eating meat on Friday, for refusing baptism. He fostered the great abbeys, many of which grew to be enormous. The lands of St. Martin of Tours were worked by 20,000 serfs. The monks were fully occupied with celebration of the liturgy and with prayer. At Centula St. Riquier 300 monks and 100 clerks prayed continually for Charles’ health and salvation, working in three shifts, day and night, and employing 30 altars, 12 bishops, 15 bells, and the relics of 56 martyrs, 34 confessors, 14 virgins, and 14 other saints. Charlemagne sought to impose a new culture on his empire, a combination of Roman, German, and Christian elements.

Pages 31-32: The empire crumbled. The papacy was powerless and almost comically corrupt. One pope’s mistress, Marozia, made her bastard son and grandson popes in their turn, and is said to have arranged the murder of another pontiff. John XII, her grandson, was deposed by Emperor I in 963 on grounds that he had ordained a deacon in a stable at an improper season, turned the papal palace into a brothel, castrated a cardinal, drunk the devil’s health, and invoked the aid of Jupiter and Venus while playing at dice. Pontificates were quickly fatal; three in succession lasted, respectively, four months, one month, seventeen days. Within a century six popes were assassinated and two were starved to death in prison. The French bishops declared at a council in 991: “We seem to be witnessing the coming of Antichrist, for this is the falling away of which the Apostle speaks.”

Chapter 2, pages 36-38: THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES: Western Europe took the initiative away from the lands of the east and south. The great High Middle Ages had begun.

The eleventh and twelfth centuries were a period of advance and innovation. Men built cities, castles, and cathedrals, created wealth, wrote poems, fought in crusades.

The optimistic spirit of the thirteenth century was encouraged by rising material prosperity.

To be sure, the commercial prosperity did not alter the lot of the lowest classes of society. The peasant had his constant enemies-warfare, taxation, epidemics, famine. During the reign of Philip Augustus of France (1180-1223), eleven famine years are recorded. Countrymen ate roots, bark, and carrion, and died. The poor people of the cities were no better off. They suffered from the added menaces of city diseases, fires (Rouen burned six times in twenty-five years) and dismal and prolonged periods of unemployment.

Pages 40-41: Two great powers emerged in the Middle Ages: the Roman papacy and the German Empire. The papacy held that its responsibility for souls entitled it to supervise and direst the conduct of all men-even emperors. The scholars employed by kings and emperors replied that the monarch receives his power directly from God and is answerable only to Him, and that the church’s concern should be with the affairs of heaven rather than those of earth. Kings and emperors had their armies; the popes had none, but they possessed divine authority and spiritual weapons-excommunication, interdict, anathema. As a result the opposing forces were almost evenly balanced.

The rulers of Germany were descendants of tribal chiefs. The strongest, cruelest, and greediest among them survived, to become even kings. In the tenth century one of the tribal dynasties of northern Germany, the Saxon line, emerged as the strongest of the strong. From its ranks came Duke Otto of Saxony, who was elected king of Germany by his fellow dukes in 936. He took his title seriously, thus provoking a series of ineffectual insurrections by the nobles who had elected him.

Otto campaigned against the Slavs and the Bohemians, and won a great victory over the Magyars en 955, ending forever their threat to western Europe. Pope John XII asked him for military aid against the Lombard king. Otto crossed the Alps, took the Lombard crown for himself, and in 962 had himself anointed imperator et augustus bay the pope, who evidently had never learned one of the major lessons of history: one should never ask a mighty man for help against one’s rival. Thus Duke Otto became Emperor Otto I, repeating the work of his ideal and idol, Charlemagne, and restoring the Roman Empire in the West, which eventually came to be known as the Holy Roman Empire-“holy” because of its consecration by the pope, and “Roman” in recollection of the time when Europe had enjoyed unity.

In 1053 the German princes elected as king Henry IV, heir of the Saxon line. Henry, who came to the throne as a young child, developed into an intelligent, even brilliant man. He was a competent king and attempted to revitalize the empire that he had inherited; he might have become a great emperor had he not come into conflict with an equally brilliant pope, Gregory VII, who was filled with a passionate zeal to make the papacy the effective ruler of Christ’s kingdom on earth.

Pages 42-44: To Henry IV Gregory’s decree came as a dangerous blow. The church held more than a third of German territory. High churchmen were governors of Henry’s most loyal dominions; they served as directors of his political, financial, and administrative organization, and provided most of his revenues. They were a mighty bulwark against his perennially rebellious barons. The appointment of these great officers of state by the papacy would mean anarchy. Henry thought the pope had gone crazy. But for the moment he made no reply to Gregory’s decree; he was busy putting down a revolt in Saxony. Gregory threatened Henry with deposition and excommunication if he did not immediately promote the papal program of reform. Henry answered by calling a council of German bishops, which decided by vote that Gregory should be deposed from his holy office. Henry communicated the decision to the pope in a letter that concludes: “Thou, therefore, damned by this curse and by the judgment of all our bishops and ourself, come down and relinquish the apostolic chair which thou has usurped. Let another assume the seat of St. Peter, one who will not practice violence under the cloak of religion, but will teach St. Peter’s wholesome doctrine. I, Henry, king by the grace o God, together with all our bishops, say unto thee: “Come down, come down, to be damned throughout all eternity’!”

This was no way to talk to Pope Gregory. He immediately excommunicated Henry and declared him deposed. “I absolve all Christians from the oath they have taken to him, and forbid anyone to recognize as king.” Excommunication would not have disturbed Henry greatly if Germany had been united behind him.

Henry had to admit defeat. His one change to recoup his fortunes was to intercept Gregory while the latter was traveling to Germany and regain his favor. In January, with his wife and young son, Henry made the bitter journey across the Alps. The party zigzagged up the mule path of the Mont Cenis pass, met the ice-flecked wind at the summit, and slipped and stumbled down into Italy. Gregory, already on his way to the Augsburg council, received Henry at the castle of Canossa, a seat of his devoted supporter Countess Matilda of Tuscany. Canossa stands on a mountaintop, no far from Parma. To reach it the visitor must climb a weary way, as up de Mount of Purgatory itself. Its ruined walls are still grim, still hostile, as they were to Henry. The gates were closed against him. At Gregory’s order, Henry stood without in January snows, barefoot, gowned in coarse penitent’s garb, and stripped of all his regalia. Gregory kept him there for three days and two nights until at last the pope, in Christian charity, deemed the emperor’s humiliation to be sufficient. The gates opened and Henry was admitted, to kiss the papal toe and beg forgiveness, which was granted.

Henry’s surrender turned-as he had hoped it would-into political victory. The rebellious German princes thought that the pope has abandoned them. Their coalition disintegrated, and Henry regained his power. With his control over the empire restored, he promptly renewed his defiance: he could not long remain at peace with Gregory. He was excommunicated again and responded by leading an army into Italy and seizing Rome: only the papal fortress of Castel Sant’ Angelo held out against him. Henry summoned Gregory, safe within the fortress, to crown him Roman emperor. Gregory refused, but offered, so they say, to lower the crown onto Henry’s head by rope. Unsatisfied with this compromise, Henry then appointed an antipope, who crowned and anointed him properly. Gregory begged the aid of Robert Guiscard, the Norman ruler of southern Italy. Robert appeared with an army that was largely made up of Saracens, drove Henry from Rome, and then subjected the city to a thoroughgoing pillage, selling thousands of Romans into slavery. Gregory, abandoned by most of his cardinals and execrated by the people, left Rome together with the Norman army and promptly died, broken-spirited.

Pages 47-50: Meanwhile, Robert Guiscard’s younger brother, Roger, had taken Sicily from the Saracens. Roger’s son, Roger II, united Sicily and southern Italy, and even added a considerable part of the African coast to his domain. This roger, known as the Pagan, shocked Christendom by good-fellowship with the Moslems. He spoke Arabic, patronized Moslem architects and poets, and had an Arabic inscription embroidered on his coronation mantle. The amenities of his capital, Palermo, dazzled the west. A visitor in 1180 describes the palace, where even the floors were tricked out with gold and silver. On a ship splendid with silver and gold the king basked with his women as they floated on an artificial lake in the royal gardens.

On January 5, 1066, Edward the Confessor died, having first recommended Harold instead of William as heir to his kingdom. The English nobles approved of the choice; on the very day of Edward’s burial in his New Westminster Abbey, Harold was crowned king by the archbishop of York. Nevertheless, William was still determined to be king of England. The pope blessed his enterprise and sent to Normandy a bull excommunicating Harold and his partisans, a consecrated battle banner, and a diamond ring containing a hair a tooth of Saint Peter. Feudal society approved any action taken against the perjurer. William gave his gentlemen alluring promises of land, loot, rank, and feudal privileges. In the summer of 1066 he assemble is expeditionary force along the Norman coast; there were perhaps seven thousand combatants plus thousands of service troops.

Aided by a fair following wind, the pilots found their way by the starts and by intuition, for they had no compasses and there was no moon. Only two of the fleet’s seven hundred vessels were lost. One of them carried the expedition’s soothsayer, “No great lost”, said William, “he couldn’t even predict his own fate.” Above Hastings he found a strong position for an entrenched camp.

On the morning of October 14 William advanced to the attack. At the alarm of his approach, the English rushed to take their posts, forming a shield wall, the housecarls in the front, the fyrd behind. Before them the ground dropped away, not sharply but enough to wind an attacking foot soldier wearing a thirty-pound suit of chain mail. Halfway up the slope William deployed, with his foot soldiers in the van. The banner blessed by the pope waved overhead. William, with a bag of relics hanging at his throat, rode to and fro giving orders.

(Chapter 2, page 38: “The peasant had his constant enemies-warfare, taxation, epidemics, famine.”)

Pages 52-54: The native Anglo-Saxon culture would have developed in unimaginable ways, and William the Conqueror would be dimly known in history only as William the Bastard.

But as it was, the Normans won at Hastings, not only the battle but the war. With the death of Harold and his brothers, Anglo-Saxon leadership was lost, and William has no serious rival for the English crown. From them on it was all mopping up. A month after the battle William entered London, and on Christmas Day, 1066, was crowned king of the English.

The new king then proceeded to divide the spoils. His principle was a simple one: he owned all the soil of England, and he allotted certain portions of it to his deserving followers as tenants; if they had no lineal heirs, the land would revert to the crown. England was the perfect feudal state. The holders of the great fiefs were tenants-in-chief or barons. They provided for their retainers by subinfeudation, granting them land with the usual obligation of vassals. Thus there were about five thousand knights at the king’s all. To enforce his rule, William decreed the immediate construction of royal castles throughout the kingdom.

A good and greedy businessman, William ordered a complete census and inventory of his kingdom, not only of every man but of every cow and pig. This extraordinary operation provoked riots and perjuries, for William new subjects were certain that they would be taxed heavily for all the property that was registered. The disorders were cruelly punished in court sittings that were compared by the populace to Judgment Day. Hence the census report was and is called the Domesday, or Doomsday, Book. It is one of the world’s most precious historical sources.

The conquest transformed the social structure of England. The old Anglo-Saxon aristocracy disappeared with hardly a trace, absorbed mostly into the ranks of the peasantry. By 1087 about two hundred thousand Normans and French had settled in England, dominating the native population of something over a million. Many of the newcomers were adventurous bachelors; they married local girls, and their children spoke English more readily than French.

(Chapter 2, page 38: “The peasant had his constant enemies-warfare, taxation, epidemics, famine.”)

Then in 1154 Henry II came to the throne.

Thanks to his mighty energy England prospered.

Henry’s great achievement was to lay the foundations of common law, on which English liberty and even the institution of limited monarchy rest.

Henry, therefore, devised a substitute-the jury system. A group of responsible citizens (jurati, or “sworn men”) were assembled and put on oath to tell the truth.

Henry’s efforts to establish a workable judicial system brought him in conflict with the church, which had its own courts, with jurisdiction over al clerics, or clerks. To prove himself a clerk and save his neck, a man had only to read aloud some Bible verses, called necks verses. In 1164 Henry issued the famous Constitutions of Clarendon, somewhat limiting the jurisdiction of the church.

The archbishop of Canterbury, Tomas à Becket, King Henry’s former playfellow, signed the Constitutions at first, but then he repudiated them. He demanded rights for the church that not even the pope asserted, among them exemption from capital punishment for al clerks, even those guilty of murder. After years of conflict the king was moved one day to exclaim: “What sluggish knaves I have brought up in my kingdom! Is there no one who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” Four of his gentlemen took the hint. They rode to Canterbury, found Becket in his cathedral, and struck down the still-defiant churchman before the Chapel of the Virgin Mary.

Pages 56-58: Henry’s second son married the heiress to Brittany, and died shortly thereafter.

The third son, Richard the Lion-Hearted, or Richard Yea-and-Nay, became king of England in 1189. He did not like England and was there only twice in his life, once for his coronation and one to raise money. “I would sell London if I could find a bidder,” he said. Richard was a romantic hero, a handsome warrior-poet, a brilliant military strategist end engineer. He went on a crusade to the holy Land, gallantly stormed and captured the stronghold of Acre, but failed to take Jerusalem. As he was returning home he was shipwrecked in the Adriatic, seized as he was passing through Austria, and then held for ransom by Emperor Henry VI of Germany. King Philip Augustus of France and Richard’s brother John tried to arrange for Richard to be kept in prison indefinitely, but England met the German emperor’s ransom terms by heroic efforts (incidentally initiating the taxation of personal, as opposed to real, property). Released after more than a year’s imprisonment, Richard carried on a ferocious war with Philip until he died of a gangrening crossbow wound in 1199, to be succeeded by his younger brother John.

(Chapter 2, page 38: “The peasant had his constant enemies-warfare, taxation, epidemics, famine.”)

The pope during these years was the great Innocent III, who attempted to maintain papal supremacy, spiritual and temporal, over all earthly rulers. King John fell out with him; Innocent slapped an interdict on the country and released John’s subjects from their oaths of allegiance to the king. John fought back, seizing all ecclesiastical property in England and taking over the revenues as well as the operations of the church, thus setting a precedent for Henry VIII’s break with Rome. Under threat of a crusade against him by Philip Augustus, John was forced to back down. In 1213 he surrendered England as papal fief to the Apostolic See, promising a yearly service of a thousand silver marks. The pope then handed England back to John, who was now his vassal. This arrangement did not last long.

John’s defeats in war and diplomacy released the long-pent rebelliousness of the English barons. The summoned him to a conference at Runnymede, on the Thames below Windsor, and there presented for his signature a charter listing all their liberties. John squirmed but signed this Great Charter, Magna Carta, on June 15, 1215.

The Magna Carta is primarily a statement of the barons’ feudal rights in relation to their overlord-a reactionary statement, in fact. But to gain the support of other groups, the nobles inserted clauses favorable to the church, cities, merchants, the Welsh, end even the king of the Scots. The charter abolished burdensome taxes and made the king declare” “No free man shall be taken, or imprisoned, or deprived of his land, or outlawed, or exiled or in any other way destroyed, nor shall we go against him or send against him except by legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” This is an important statement of due process of the law. Momentous also was the establishment by the Magna Carta of a requirement calling for the barons’ consent before the king could impose extraordinary taxation on them.

The Magna Carta has become a sort of sacred icon, solemnly exhibited under bristling guard. It is taken as a symbol of British freedom, a declaration of independence of common man. This is considerably more than the framers intended.

King John struggled for a year against his barons and solved his problems by dying, in1216.

Pages 64-71: Philip Augustus’ pious grandchild, Louis IX, succeeded to the throne of France in 1226, at the age of twelve. Saintly as he was, Louis was not, however, the most extraordinary ruler of the Middle Ages.  That distinction most be reserved for the Emperor Frederick II, called Stupor Mundi, the Marvel of the World.”

Born in 1194, Frederick grew up in Palermo, poor, unregarded, though heir to the Sicilian throne. He associated by preference with low company, grooms, and Moslems. He was precocious, learned to speak half a dozen languages, notably Arabic. He had an insatiable curiosity about everything, including science, especially zoology. As a boy Frederick dreamed of restoring the empire, uniting Germany and Italy, and annexing the temporal possessions of the pope. He pushed his claims in Germany, and in 1220 was crowned emperor, having gained papal support in his campaign for the imperial post by offering to yield Sicily to the pope as e fief. Despite his promise, he could never bring himself to fulfill his part of the bargain and surrender Sicily. He antagonized Roma further by vowing to go on a crusade, and then delaying his departure; finally Gregory IX excommunicated him.

In 1228 the excommunicated emperor embarked on the most remarkable of all crusades, taking along a detachment of Arab troops and a Moslem teacher of dialectic for his instruction. Upon landing, he sent princely gifs to the Saracen leader, Sultan al-Kamil, a broad-minded scholar-poet like Frederick. The Sultan responded with equally princely gifts, including an elephant. The two rulers concluded a ten-years’ truce, which ceded Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth to the Christians, along with a corridor from Jerusalem to the sea, and gave the Moslems full rights to retain their own shrines in the Holy City.

Frederick visited Jerusalem more as tourist than as a pilgrim. Out of regard for Christian sensibilities the sultan ordered the muezzin to omit the calls to prayer during his visit. Frederick protested; he had gone to Jerusalem for the local color. Pope Gregory was enraged at the news of Frederick’s pact. The excommunicate had liberated the Holy Sepulcher, but he had done it in the wrong way, without striking a blow, without shedding a drop of paynim blood. The pope proclaimed a crusade against the crusader, but elicited little response, and eventually he was forced to revoke Frederick’s excommunication.

Frederick returned to Europe, carried on long, indeterminate war to united his empire, and established a brilliant Oriental court at his castles in Sicily and southern Italy. There he had everything he loved-gardens, pools, woods, strange beats, singing birds, dancing girls, and wise men of good conversation. Among the latter was Michael Scot, scientist, astrologer, translator of Aristotle and Averroës, something of a charlatan, and still legendary in Scotland and Italy for his wonder-workings. Frederick’s broad-mindedness shocked everyone. He gave a banquet commemorating Mohammed’s hegira for some Moslem guest, and to their surprise sat them down beside bishops and Christian nobles.

Frederick failed in his great aims of reducing the power of the popes, uniting Italy, creating a viable Holy Roman Empire with its capital in Roma. After his death in 1250, the empire ceased to be a functioning reality, and the power of the imperial line of Hohenstaufen disintegrated. Modern men have been fascinated by Frederick because he was so modern. That was just his trouble; he would probably have been much more successful if had been more medieval.

Like Frederick II, the popes failed to realize many of their aims: educing the power of the emperors, uniting Europe and al Christendom under their leadership, discerning and combating widespread abuses in the church. The struggle of the papacy for political domination complicated and sometimes undercut church efforts to seek reform, but reformers were never silent, and often they were extremely effective. A problem never finally resolved was of clerical marriage seemed no more heinous than it does to most of the world today. Peasants certainly preferred a married priest to a lusty bachelor who was free to roam the village while they were at work in the fields. The trouble was that ecclesiastic fathers were inclined to pass on their post to their sons, and church livings became, in effect, private property, Iceland even had hereditary bishoprics. Priests’ wives and concubines were often dreadful troublemakers. In 1072 they lynched the archbishop of Rouen for preaching against them. The second Lateran Council made celibacy mandatory in 1139. Though the decree helped purify the church, many clerics, high and low, simply substituted promiscuity for marriage. In the thirteenth century Bishop Henry of Liége had sixty-one children, fourteen of them within twenty-two months, setting perhaps a record of clerical philoprogenitiveness.

A more serious problem was posed by the church’s wealth. Centuries of pious bequest had given the medieval church enormous holdings. Some bishops were great feudal lords, with establishments that outdid those of kings in luxury and display. The church’s wealth and secular powers brought corruption in their train, particularly the abuse, or sin, of simony-payment in one form or another for an ecclesiastical post. A king or noble who legally controlled the appointment to a rich bishopric or abbey might well feel justified in taking a commission from his appointee, as a modern state considers itself justified in leasing productive rights to the highest qualified bidder. Insofar as the cleric held and exploited land, he was a part of the feudal system. He owed certain obligations to his overlord in payment for protection: why should he not make an advance to the overlord against his future revenues. A simoniac cleric argued, moreover, that he was paying not for the spiritual function he would fulfill, but for the material property he would administer. Similarly, if he had paid for a living, he had a right to recoup his expenditure by selling the living to the next incumbent. Thus simony became nearly universal.

The church’s efforts to reform were directed at laymen as well as at churchmen. Dreaming of peace on earth at a time when warfare was the only honorable occupation for an aristocrat, clerics attempted to put an end to all fighting. In the year 989 a church council called on men to abstain voluntarily from attacking priests, churches, and peasants’ livestock. Other exemptions were added later: mills, vines, merchants, and persons on their way to church. The movement was known as the Pease of God. Its aims were difficult for men to understand, and eventually it was extended, with its concept somewhat modified. In 1017 a ban was imposed on all fighting from the ninth hour on Saturday to daybreak on Monday. This primitive weekend vacation, called the Truce of God, was later extended to include the period from Wednesday evening to Monday morning, and all the seasons of Lent and Advent. There was evidently a party of outright pacifist in the church. In 1054 another council declared: “A Christian who slays another Christian sheds the blood of Christ.” But pacifism presented too many problems in a wicked world. Gregory VII often quoted with approval Jeremiah: “Cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.” Before long the church itself was the instigator of political wars, and its enemies were those who cried for peace.

(Chapter 2, page 38: “The peasant had his constant enemies-warfare, taxation, epidemics, famine.”)

The leaders of the reforming movements were generally monks,.........

One of the most important of these orders was the Cluniac, so called from its mother abbey at Cluny in Burgundy, which had been founded in 910, with a charter providing that it be responsible only to the pope.

Since human efforts to tread down triumphant evil had availed little, Cluny proposed to assail heaven with concentrated and continuous prayer and worship. On holy days the Opus Dei, God’s work at the altar and in the choir, lasted from midnight to noon, or from dusk to dawn, allowing the monks little time to commit a sin, except in thought.

The greatest Cistercian was Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a mystic and statesman, who was personally responsible for the establishment of dozens of abbeys. In his sanctity as well as in his fervor, Bernard typified the spirit of medieval Christianity. His attentions were devoted to the next world-here, he wrote, men were but “strangers and pilgrims”-but he was completely at home in this world, exerting a profound political influence, appeasing the conflict of church and state, swaying papal elections, advising popes and the kings of France.

Chapter 3, pages 73-76: KNIGHTS IN BATTLE: “What is the function of orderly knighthood?” wrote the twelfth-century English philosopher John of Salisbury. “To protect the Church, to fight against treachery, to reverence the priesthood, to fend off injustice from the poor, to make peace in your own province, to shed blood for your brethren, and if needs must, to lay down your life.” This was a splendid ideal, often put into practice during the Middle Ages. It lingers still in the army-officer tradition of France and Germany, in the public-school tradition of England. To medieval men knighthood was more than a career; it was a spiritual and emotional substructure for an entire way of life.

Fighting was the gentleman’s trade. He had been bred to it from babyhood, with all his education directed toward toughening his body and spirit. His school was a guardroom in a military post; his home a castle, perpetually prepared against assault. As a vassal he was frequently summoned to wars of lord against lord, to be paid for his service with booty taken in the capture of an enemy castle or with goods plundered from merchants on the road. Or he might receive a summons from his king, who found profit in making war. “Only a successful war could temporarily fill royal coffers and re-endow the king with fresh territory,” writes the scholar Denys Hay. “Every spring an efficient king tried to lead his warriors on aggressive expeditions. With peace came poverty.

War was also the gentleman’s joy. Peacetime life in a grim castle could be very dull, for the typical noble had almost no cultural resources and few diversions besides hunting. Battle was the climax of his career as it was often the end. The noble troubadour Bertrand de Born speaks for his class: “I tell you that I have no such joy in eating, drinking, or sleeping as when I hear the cry from both sides: “Up and at ‘em!’, or as when I hear riderless horses whinny under the trees, and groans of ‘Help me! Help me!’, and when I see both great and small fall in the ditches and on the grass, and see the dead transfixed by spear-shafts! Barons, mortgage your castles, domains, cities, but never give up war!” (It is true that Dante, in the Inferno, saw the bellicose Bertrand de Born in hell, carrying his severed heas before him as a lantern.)

Commercialism altered the noble caste; around 1300 Philip the Fair of France openly sold knighthoods to rich burghers, who thereby gained exemption from taxes as well as social elevation. In our end of time the chevalier has become a Knight of Pythias, or Columbus, or the Temple, who solemnly girds on sword and armor to march past his own drugstore.

Around the year 1200 the church took over the dubbing o the knight and imposed its ritual and obligations on the ceremony, making it almost a sacrament. The candidate took a symbolic bath, donned clean white clothes and a red robe, and stood or knelt for ten hours in nightlong silende before the altar, on which his weapons and armor lay. At dawn mass was said in front of an audience of knights and ladies.

The initiate took an oath to devote his sword to good causes, to defend the church against its enemies,..........

The knight was bound to serve his master in his wars, though in the early period of feudalism for only forty days a year. Wars were, then, necessarily brief-raids rather than actual wars. Few pitched battles occurred unless the party sent a challenge to fight at a set time and place. The commander’s purpose was not to defeat the enemy but rather to harm him by burning his villages, massacring his peasants, destroying his source of income, while he raged impotently but securely in his castle. “When two nobles quarrel,” wrote a contemporary, “the poor man’s thatch goes up in flames.”

A chanson de geste of the period happily describes such an invasion: “The start to march. The scouts and the incendiaries lead; after them come the foragers who are to gather the spoils and carry them in the great baggage train. The tumult begins. The peasants, having just come out to the fields, turn back, uttering loud cries; the shepherds gather their flocks and drive them toward the neighboring woods in the hope of saving them. The incendiaries set the villages on fire, and the foragers visit and sack them. The distracted inhabitants are burnt or led apart with their hands tied to be held for ransom. Everywhere alarm bells ring, fear spreads from side to side and becomes general. On all sides one sees helmets shining, pennons floating, and horsemen covering the plain Here hands are laid on money; there cattle, donkeys, and flocks are seized. The smoke spreads, the flames rise, the peasants and shepherds in consternation flee in all directions... In the cities, in the towns, and on the small farms, wind-mills no longer turn, chimneys no longer smoke, the cocks have ceased their crowing and the dogs their barking. Grass grows in the houses and between the flag-stones of the churches, for the priests have abandoned the services of God, and the crucifixes lie broken on the ground. The pilgrim might go six days without finding anyone to give him a loaf of bread or a drop of wine. Freemen have no more business with their neighbors; briars and thorns grow where villages stood of old.

(Chapter 2, page 38: “The peasant had his constant enemies-warfare, taxation, epidemics, famine.”)

(P.S., El apellido del autor es Bishop, Obispo, pero este señor no era un obispo, pues yo no compro libros de obispos, y aunque este libro me costó veinticinco centavos usado, ni aún eso pagaría para leer las babosadas y sandeces que pueda decir uno de ellos no importa de qué denominación es tal obispo. Desconozco si se puede encontrar en español u otro idioma. En Ingles se encuentra en actual publicación)

(Listed 13 Junio 2013) “THE BALFOUR DECLARATION” -THE ORIGINS OF THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT-, by Jonathan Schneer, 2010. “LA DECLARACIÓN BALFOUR” –LOS ORIGENES DEL CONFLICTO ÁRABE-ISRAELITA-, por Jonathan Schneer, 2010. ¡Last words of the book, and cited: During World War I, then, Britain and her allies slew the Ottoman dragon in the Middle East. By their policies they sowed dragon’s teeth. Armed men rose up from the ground. They are rising still)

(Listed: 4 Agosto 2013) “EL MANUAL DEL CIUDADANO CONTEMPÓRANEO”, por Ikram Antaki, 2000. (Publicado en Español, y desconocemos si ha sido traducido a otra lengua)

Ésta bien intencionada varona que fue, digo que fue porque falleció al poco de publicar este libro por el año 2000, parece como que se adelantó a su época por unos pocos años, esto es, desapareció de la escena de este mundo justo antes de que una Mano Poderosa, adivina cual Mano Poderosa es, cambiara el ritmo de la Historia de este Mundo. Mejicana hasta los huesos, aun habiendo nacido y ser criada y crecer en Siria, nunca llegó a ver el desatino de las naciones en pleno auge a los principios del segundo milenio. Se empeñó, por amor a su pueblo me imagino yo, en publicar este Manual Para Los Hijos Contemporáneos De Este Mundo con fórmulas para que hiciesen su estancia en su casa, este mundo, mejor y más llevadera. Es cierto que acertó en el clavo al decir que si las “masas” no dejaban de ser eso, masas sin cerebro propio a merced del bamboleo de los grandes malvados que hoy hacen historia, su querida nueva patria mejicana terminaría siendo un desastre y un caos, no solo un desatino. Cierto es todo esto pero se quedó corta. Este mal afectaría no solo a su amado Méjico sino a prácticamente toda nación. Este mal se regaría como plaga Bíblica a una velocidad vertiginosa: como plaga anunciando el fin del mundo. Esta plaga no es otra cosa que el Pecado. Tal Pecado hoy es devorado con gusto por todas las esferas de la suciedad, sociedad, comenzando con la religión que anunciaban los grandes hombres como la respuesta a la maldad del mundo: la Cristiandad.

Los Hijos de Dios tienen su propio Manual en el cual confían plenamente. No es de este mundo su Manual y Mapa de Ruta, como ellos tampoco son de este mundo, ya que su Rey y Autor de este Santo Manual tampoco es de este Mundo. Este Manual es La Palabra de Dios, el Verbo, La Biblia, Las Santas Escrituras del DIOS DESCONOCIDO (Hechos 17:23). Hay Buena Nueva para no solo los Hijos de Dios, y es, que Dios Todopoderoso ha hecho fácilmente asequible hoy este su Santo Manual a todo ser humano.

(Listed: 6 October 2013) “Why Nations Go to War”, by John G. Stoessinger, 1998. “Porque las Naciones van a la Guerra”, por John G. Stoessinger, 1998

Este buen intencionado escritor e historiador, aparentemente de renombre, se hubiera evitado el tener que buscar arduamente la respuesta a este dilema si hubiese consultado con el Dios de La Biblia, aunque si esto hubiese hecho, ¿de qué iba a vivir?

“Why Nations Go to War”, ¿Por qué las Naciones van a la Guerra?:  

From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. And the whole world lieth in wickedness. Santiago/James 4:1, 4; 1 Juan/1 John 5:19

¿De dónde vienen las guerras y los pleitos? ¿No es de vuestras pasiones, las cuales combaten en vuestros miembros? ¡Oh almas adúlteras! ¿No sabéis que la amistad del mundo es enemistad contra Dios? Cualquiera, pues, que quiera ser amigo del mundo, se constituye enemigo de Dios. Y el mundo entero está bajo el maligno. James/Santiago 4:1, 4; 1 Juan/1 John 5:19

Excerpts, extractos del libro “Why Nations Go to War”, “Porque las Naciones van a la Guerra”; y citamos:

 

THE IRON DICE: WORLD WAR I

CONCLUSION

It is my conviction that during the descent into the abyss, the perception of statesman and generals were absolutely crucial. For the sake of clarity and precision, I should like to consider the fallowing dimensions of this phenomenon: (1) a leader’s perception of himself, (2) his perceptions of his adversary’s character, (3) his perceptions of the adversary’s intentions, (4) his perceptions of the adversary’s power and capabilities, and (5) his capacity for empathy with his adversary.

All the participants suffered from greater or lesser distortions in their images of themselves. They tended to see themselves as honorable, virtuous, and pure, and the adversary as diabolical...........

When a nation designates another nation as its enemy and does so emphatically enough and long enough, the perception will eventually come to be true.

Perceptions of power during the crisis were particularly revealing. During the early phases, leaders notoriously tended to exaggerate their own power and describe their enemies as weaker than they really were...........

Finally, one is struck with the overwhelming mediocrity of the people involved. The character of each of the leaders, diplomats, or generals was badly flawed by arrogance, stupidity, carelessness, or weakness. Ther was a pervasive tendency to place the preservation of one’s ego before the preservation of peace. There was little insight and ni vision whatsoever. And there was an almost total absence of excellence and generosity of spirit. It was no fate or Providence that made these people fail so miserably; it was their own evasion of responsibility. As a result of their weakness, a generation of Europe’s young men was destroyed. The sins of the parents were truly visited on the sons, who forfeited their lives. Of all the cruelties that people have inflicted on one another, the most terrible have always been brought by the weak against the weak.

(Respuesta sobre todos estos individuos que en este libro no se encuentra pero que en el “Libro de la Verdad” sí se encuentra: Pero yo te declararé lo que está escrito en el libro de la verdad. / But I will show thee that which is noted in the scripture Daniel 10:21

Como está escrito: No hay justo, ni aun uno; No hay quien entienda. No hay quien busque a Dios. Todos se desviaron, a una se hicieron inútiles; No hay quien haga lo bueno, no hay ni siquiera uno. Sepulcro abierto es su garganta; Con su lengua engañan. Veneno de áspides hay debajo de sus labios; Su boca está llena de maldición y de amargura. Sus pies se apresuran para derramar sangre; Quebranto y desventura hay en sus caminos; Y no conocieron camino de paz. No hay temor de Dios delante de sus ojos.

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable: there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes. Romanos/Romans 3:10-17)

BARBAROSSA: HITLER’S ATTACK ON RUSSIA

Thus German soldiers, sure of a summer victory, entered Russia wearing their light uniforms. No provisions have been made to procure winter clothing, nor had preparations been made to cope with the Russian winter. Men and machines were tooled to perfection, but only for another blitzkrieg. The lessons of Charles XII of Sweden and of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had met their doom in the snows of Russia, were ignored. Yet Hitler chose for his greatest military venture two symbols, the murky significance of which is strange indeed. Barbarossa after whom he named the campaign, had been a crusader of the Holy Roman Empire who had failed in his mission to the East and had drowned. His corpse and the site of his burial were lost. Even more peculiar was the choise of June 22 as the day of reckoning. As Hitler never mentioned the fate of the Grand Armée in the retreat from Moscow in 1812, it has never been established whether he knew that this was the anniversary of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia almost a century and a half before.

CONCLUSION

How was it possible for Hitler to inflict himself on the German people, to mesmerize them, and to take them with him to disaster in the wastes of Russia?.........

During the 1930s the catalytic agent that offered the possibility of escape from this vicious cycle was Adolf Hitler. In the Führer’s world the adolescent could feel emancipated. The motto of the Hitler Youth, “Youth shapes its own destiny,” was profoundly appealing to a youth whose psychological quest for identity was often thwarted. Erikson points out that Hitler did not fill the role of the father image. Had he done so, he would have elicited great ambivalence in German youth. Rather, he became the symbol of a glorified older brother, a rebel whose will could never be crushed, an unbroken adolescent who could lead others into self-sufficiency—in short, a leader. Since he had become their conscience, he made it possible for the young to rebel against authority without incurring guilt. Herman Goering echoed the sentiments of the Hitler Youth when he stated categorically that his conscience was Adolf Hitler. It was this complete official absolution from guilt that made the German pattern of authoritarianism unique.

Parents were to be silenced if their views conflicted with the official doctrines of the Third Reich: “All those who from the perspective of their experience and from that alone combat our method of letting youth lead youth, must be silenced.” The young Nazi was taught that he was destined by Providence to bring a new order to the world. Young Nazi women, too, felt a surge of pride to learn that childbirth, legitimate or illegitimate, was a meaningful act because “German women must give children to the Führer.” I recall how, on numerous occasions, large groups of young women would march through the streets chanting in chorus: “We want to beget children for the Führer!” National socialism made it possible for the young to rid themselves of their deep-seated personal insecurities by merging their identities with the image of a superior and glorious German nation. This image of a common future was well expressed in the famous Nazi marching song sung by German soldiers as they advanced into Russia: “Le everything go to pieces, we shall march on. For today Germany is ours; tomorrow the whole world!”

Gregor Strasser summed up Hitler’s appeal concisely: -Hitler responds to the vibrations of the human heart with the delicacy of a seismograph ... enabling him, with a certainty with which no conscious gift could endow him, to act as a loudspeaker proclaiming the most secret desires, the least permissible instincts, the sufferings, and the personal revolts of a whole nation-.

The only way for the German people to break this fatal bond with Hitler was to drink the cup of bitterness to the end and go down with him to destruction.

What was Stalin’s role in the Soviet recovery from the initial disaster? No doubt, the Soviet leader received a great deal of help from Hitler. The Nazi leader’s policy of treating Russians as subhumans to be shipped as Ostarbeiter to the German Reich soon encountered fierce resistance. Early Russians defections to the German side quickly ceased, and the Nazi invaders found themselves confronted by a nation fighting for its survival.

Even more important, Stalin immediately perceived that the Russian soldier would not give his life for Communism, the party, or its leader, but that he would fight to the death for his Russian homeland. In his broadcast after the invasion on July 3, Stalin appealed to “Comrades, citizens, brothers and sisters, fighters of our Army and navy” to repel the invaders in a “great patriotic war.” This was something new. Stalin had never spoken like this before. He conjured up images of Napoleon and Wilhelm II, who also had been smashed by a people fighting for their motherland....... In short, Stalin appealed to the national loyalties, rather than to Communist loyalties, of the Russian population. It was going to be 1812 all over again.

After the story of the outbreak of this terrible war is told, one final truth emerges with striking clarity: Hitler ultimately lost the war because he despised everything and everybody including the German people whom he professed to love. In the end, Stalin emerged triumphant despite his blunders and his purges because he was able to convince the Russian people that he loved them and was committed to the preservation of their homeland. Hitler never learned from his mistakes when the fortunes of war began to go against him in Russia. He compounded them again and again until disaster became a certainty. Stalin, on the other hand, did learn from his initial errors and thus was able to turn a rout into a final victory. The war in Russia became the supreme character test for both men and revealed them to the core. In Stalin, madness never gained the upper hand; in Hitler, madness conquered.

(Nunca se nos debe olvidar que Alemania era, y creo que sigue siendo, una Nación Cristiana y que La Iglesia Romana, la misma que representa el Santo Imperio Romano, sin quedarse atrás las Iglesias Protestantes, apoyaron la subida y continuidad de ese Régimen Diabólico hasta un momento en que se arrepintieron. Cuál fue tal momento algunos se preguntarán: “en cuanto divisaron a lo lejos que el Régimen podía estar encaminándose peligrosamente al garete y ellas también con él”. También Rusia era, y creo que sigue siendo, una Nación Cristiana.

Respuesta sobre todos estos individuos, especialmente las pobres masas engañadas de ambos bandos, que en este libro no se encuentra pero que en el “Libro de la Verdad” sí se encuentra: Los opresores de mi pueblo son muchachos y mujeres se enseñorean de él. Pueblo mío, los que te guían te engañan, y tuercen el curso de tus caminos.

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. Isaías/Isaiah 3:12

Porque los gobernadores de este pueblo son engañadores, y sus gobernados se pierden. Y el mundo entero está bajo el maligno.

For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed. And the whole world lieth in wickedness. Isaías/Isaiah 9:16; 1 Juan/John 5:19.

Espada contra los adivinos, y se entontecerán; espada contra sus valientes, y serán quebrantados.

Espada contra sus caballos, contra sus carros, y contra todo el pueblo que está en medio de ella, y serán como mujeres; espada contra sus tesoros, y serán saqueados.

A sword is upon the liars; and they shall dote: a sword is upon her mighty men; and they shall be dismayed.

A sword is upon their horses, and upon their chariots, and upon all the mingled people that are in the midst of her; and shall become as women: a sword is upon her treasures; and they shall be robbed. Jeremías/Jeremiah 50:36-37. (el que lee, entienda) (whoso readeth, let him understand) Mateo/Matthew 24:15)

THE TEMPTATIONS OF VICTORY: KOREA

The reasons for the outbreak of the Korean War remain a mystery; we can only speculate about the motivations for the North Korean attack of June 1950. Four possible explanations, given here in descending order of probability, suggest themselves.................

Meeting with reporters in Washington, President Truman pointed to Korea on a large globe in his office and said to an aide: “This is the Greece of the Far East. If we are tough enough now, there won’t be any next step...........

In addition, the president recommended stepped-up military aid to the Philippines and the French forces engaged in fighting Communist Vietminh troops in Indochina. No mention was made of ground troops in Korea, but it was clear that American sea and air cover were logical preludes to such a commitment........

MacArthur, the, believing that he was faced with 40,000 instead of 200,000 Chinese soldiers whom he believed to be badly in need of rest after their encounter with the American army, advanced northward again for the “final offensive.” The Chinese watched for three weeks until finally, on November 27, they attacked in overwhelming force, turning the American advance into a bloody rout. Thus a peasant army put to flight a modern Western military force commanded by a world-famous American general. In one bound China had become a world power, and the image of the Chinese ward, almost half a century in the making, was finally shattered at a cost of tens of thousands of battle casualties on both sides. MacArthur, incredibly enough, did not learn much from the experience. In the words of his aide-de-camp, Major General Courtney Whitney, the general “was greatly saddened as well as angered at this despicably surreptitious attack, a piece of treachery which he regarded as worse even than Pearl Harbor.” The stark truth was that MacArthur had fallen blindly into the trap of his own misperceptions.

The paternalistic attitude of American leaders toward Communist China died hard. It remained extremely difficult for the United States to admit that the new China was growing in power and was fiercely hostile, and that this attitude was more than a passing phenomenon............

CONCLUSION

The outbreak of the Korean War may be divided into three separate and distinct phases: the decision to repel the North Korean attack; the decision to cross the thirty-eighth parallel; and MacArthur’s drive to the Yalu River that provoked the Chinese intervention. In my judgment, the first decision was correct, the second dubious, and the third disastrous........

Disaster struck at the Yalu largely because of the hubris of General MacArthur. The UN commander lacked all the respect for the new China and preferred instead to act out of hopes and fears rather than realities and facts. By provoking the Chinese intervention, MacArthur probably prolonged the war by another two and a half years, and it turned into one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history. Aside from the 34,000 American dead, South Korea suffered over 800,000 casualties, and North Korea more than 500,000. The Chinese suffered appalling losses of 1.5 to 2 million men. The war ended indecisively in a draw in June 1953, with the two Koreas remaining fully armed and bitterly hostile to one another.

Yet, paradoxically, the violent clash between the United States and China at the Yalu River might in one sense have contributed in the long run to improved relations between the two countries, for the effectiveness of China’s intervention in Korea established her as a power to be reckoned with. It shattered once and for all the condescension that had previously characterized the American view of China. One cannot, of course, answer with certainty the question of whether China and America would have gone to war over Vietnam in the 1960s if they had not fought in Korea. But it is highly probable that the Korean War served as a powerful corrective and thus as a restraining memory.

(Aun la mejor de todas las racionalizaciones del hombre solo alcanzan a ser misperceptions, folly, the way of vanity and vexation of spirit: disastrous; malinterpretaciones, desatino, el camino de la vanidad y aflicción de espíritu: catastrófico)

Respuesta sobre todos estos individuos, especialmente las pobres masas engañadas de ambos bandos, que en este libro no se encuentra pero que en el “Libro de la Verdad” sí se encuentra:  Todos los caminos del hombre son limpios en su propia opinión; Pero Jehová pesa los espíritus. / All the ways of man are clean in his own eyes; but the LORD weigheth the spirits.

Todo camino del hombre es recto en su propia opinión; Pero Jehová pesa los corazones. / Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the LORD pondereth the hearts. Proverbios/Proverbs 16:2; 21:2)

Jehová hace nulo el consejo de las naciones, Y frustra las maquinaciones de los pueblos. /The LORD bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect. Salmo/Psalm 33:10

Hay camino que al hombre le parece derecho; Pero su fin es camino de muerte. / There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Proverbios/Proverbs 14:12

Por cierto, vanidad son los hijos de los hombres, mentira los hijos de varón; Pesándolos a todos igualmente en la balanza, Serán menos que nada. No confiéis en la violencia, Ni en la rapiña; no os envanezcáis; Si se aumenta las riquezas, no pongáis el corazón en ellas. Una vez habló Dios; Dos veces he oído esto: Que de Dios es el poder, Y tuya, oh Señor, es la misericordia; Porque tú pagas a cada uno conforme a su obra. / Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men o high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity. Trust no in oppression, and become not vain in robbery: if riches increase, set not your heart upon them. God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God. Also unto thee, O LORD, belongeth mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work. Salmo/Psalm 62:9-12

Los dejé, por tanto, a la dureza de su corazón; Caminaron en sus propios consejos. / So I gave them up unto their own hearts’lust: and they walked in their own counsels. Salmo/Psalm 81:12

Hay camino que parece derecho al hombre; Pero su fin es camino de muerte. / There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Proverbios/Proverbs 16:25)

A GREEK TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS: VIETNAM

Vietnam was the Thirty Years’ War of the twentieth century. In the course of a single generation five American presidents misperceived reality in Indochina and substituted their own phantoms, first called fear and later called hope. These fears and hops obscured reality until they produced a nightmare that could not be denied: the longest war in American history and the most divisive conflict domestically since the Civil War.

I do not believe that history will show that five evil men deceived their people and led them into war in Indochina. I do believe, however, that each of these five men, in his own particular way, made a concrete policy decision that escalated the war and contributed to the ultimate disaster. It is for this reason that this chapter will deal with the Vietnam war in five “acts,” each to be seen as a quantum leap in a gradually escalating conflict.

In retrospect, the tragedy of the American encounter with Vietnam is plain. But the question remains whether it was an example of Greek tragedy, the tragedy of necessity, where the feeling aroused in the spectator is “What a pity it had to be this way” or of Christian tragedy, the tragedy of possibility, where the feeling aroused is “What a pity it was this way when it might have been otherwise.” The main thesis of this chapter is that in Vietnam the misperceptions of five presidents transformed a tragedy of possibility into a tragedy of necessity.

ACT ONE: TRUMAN—ASIA WAS NOT EUROPE

President Truman’s perception of Indochina underwent profound changes between 1945 and 1952. In 1945, when hostilities erupted between France and Ho Chi Minh, the president was decidedly sympathetic to the latter. He regarded the war as France’s problem and what France deserved for her colonial ambitions. An American OSS officer who has worked closely with Ho Chi Minh for several months before V-J Days had described him as an “awfully sweet guy whose outstanding quality was his gentleness.”...........

In May 1950 the Griffin mission recommended an aid program of $23 millions in economic assistance and $15 millions in military ais to the French in Indochina. A few days after the outbreak of the Korean War President Truman authorized the first shipment of aircraft to Indochina. In addition, $119 million in military aid was made available to France under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program. This aid increased to $300 millions in 1952. Thus before he left the presidency in 1953 Harry Truman had underwritten the French war effort in Indochina...........

While President Truman’s attention in Asia was, of course, focused primarily on Korea, by 1950 he believed that the French were fighting for the free world in Indochina just as the United Nations was fighting for it in Korea. He never committed combat troops to Southeast Asia as he did to Korea, but he authorized material aid in 1950 and raised the level of this assistance steadily until he left office in 1953.By that time the United States was paying almost on third of the total cost of the French war effort in Indochina. President Truman had transferred his Cold War images from Europe to Southeast Asia and based his policies there on facile analogies rather than specific Asian realities. Bust Asia was not Europe, and what had worked in Europe would turn out to be a disaster in Indochina.

ACT TWO: EISENHOWER—THE LESSON OF FRANCE IGNORED

President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles were absolutely convinced that China would intervene in the Indochina war on the side of Ho Chi Minh against France, just as it had intervened on the side of North Korea against the United States. To forestall such an intervention, Eisenhower and Dulles had increased American military aid to France to $500 million by 1953. By 1954 this assistance had reached the $1 billion mark. The United States was now paying over one-half the cost of the Indochina war.

The American expectation of the Chinese invasion was so powerful that it defied all evidence to the contrary. Neither the fact that the anticipated invasion failed to materialize nor the lack of evidence that it was actually planned lessened American apprehension. Instead, the very strength of the expectation produced its own substantiation. Time and again, unfounded rumors were accepted as proof of impending intervention. The result was a recurrent pattern of false alarms......... President Eisenhower, looking back upon this period in his memoirs, declared that “the struggle ... began gradually, with Chinese intervention, to assume its true complexion of a struggle between Communist and non-Communist forces rather than one between a colonial power and colonist who were intent on attaining independence”.

By 1954, largely as a result of these perceptions, the Americans were fighting a proxy war in Indochina.........

Chinese aid to Ho Chi Minh was at times considerable, but never decisive. It consisted mostly of light weapons, trucks, and radios, largely of American manufacture, that had been captured from the Chinese Nationalist some years before. In view of economic needs at home and the burdens imposed by the Korean War, China could hardly afford to become a bottomless reservoir of military assistance for the Vietminh forces. The best analysis of the Chinese relationship with Ho Chi Minh has probably been provided by Robert Guillain, the frontline correspondent for Le Monde in Indochina: “China adheres to a very simple principle: that the balance of power never inclines in any permanent direction toward the French side. There is no need—and this is the difference from what has happened in Korea—of direct intervention, of an invasion.” Thus, when France received more American aid following the outbreak of the Korean War, the Chinese stepped up their own aid program just enough to reestablish a rough equilibrium. As Melvin Gurtov put it: “The Indochina campaign eventually became a crude game in which the French could never permanently regain the high ground.” Thus Chinese military intervention on the side of the Vietminh never materialized. Instead, the Chinese used the Vietminh as their proxy.

The Geneva Conference of mid1954 and the formation soon thereafter of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) marked the end of French military involvement and the beginning of an American military presence in Indochina. The Geneva Conference resulted in the signing of several agreements to cease hostilities in Indochina and to establish the three independent sovereign states of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. the accords on Vietnam provided for a “provisional military demarcation line” at the seventeenth parallel. Vietminh forces were to regroup north of the line, while the forces of the French Union were to regroup to the south. The line was to have military significance only, and the political unification of Vietnam was to be brought about trough a general election two years hence under the supervision of a neutral three-power International Control Commission consisting of Canada, India, and Poland.

France had little choice in the matter, but her exit was made relatively gracefully. Ho Chi Minh’s Vietminh forces were dominant in more than three-quarters of Vietnam and were poised to overrun considerable more. To Ho, the terms of the accords were acceptable because he was convinced that the general election o 1956 would win him all of Vietnam. From his point of view, the certainty of a military victory was simply replaced by the certainty of a political victory. Both the Soviet Union and China, reflecting their recently adopted line of “peaceful coexistence,” applied pressure on Ho to accept the terms of the accords, reassuring him that his victory at the polls was certain.

The United States never signed the Geneva Accords. But in a unique lateral decision at the end of the Geneva Conference the United States government pledged to “refrain from the threat or the use of force to disturb” the settlement and added that it would view any violation of the accords with grave concern..........

The Vietminh, on the other hand, regarded SEATO as a clear violation of the spirit of the Geneva Accords. Ho Chi Minh saw the American position as an effort to deprive the Vietminh in the political arena of what it had gained militarily on the battlefield. Nevertheless, Ho withdrew his forces from the South, assuming that he would get enough votes there in 1956 to emerge with a clear national majority at election time. His electoral strength in the North was certain, and if only a minority supported the Vietminh in the South, his election would be ensured. President Eisenhower also thought that elections, if held on the basis of the Geneva Accords, would lead to a Communist victory. As he put it in 1954: “Had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai.”

In the meantime, Ngo Dinh Diem, an American-backed Roman Catholic from a Mandarin family, began to challenge Emperor Bao Dai in the South. The United States strongly supported Diem in his bid for power, and in October 1955 Diem proclaimed the establishment of a Republic of Vietnam, with himself as president.

Hence Geneva and the SEATO treaty meant the end of French power in Indochina and the beginning of the American efforts to enter the struggle with its own military presence. As yet, there had been no significant military encounters between Vietminh and American forces. But the path had become continuous. The Vietminh saw the Americans as following the course of French imperialism, and the Americans perceived Geneva as a well-laid Communist trap to engulf all of Vietnam. The end of the colonial war merely signified the beginning of a war between Americans and Communist.

As East-West conflict superseded the colonial war, the tenor of battle gradually intensified. A pattern of escalation emerged in which every failure at diplomatic negotiations paved the way for yet another upward step on the scale of violence.

The first such discernible moves after Geneva were the American effort between 1954 and 1956 to strengthen President Diem’s military establishment, and Ho Chi minh’s visits to Moscow and Peking in 1955 to negotiate aid and friendship treaties with the two Communist powers. Diem declared in July 1955 that since South Vietnam had not signed the Geneva Accords, he was no prepared to permit elections under the conditions specified by them. He also added that there was no freedom in the North to campaign for any opposition to Ho Chi Minh. President Eisenhower supported this view, and July 1956, the date scheduled for general elections in the accords, passed without any elections being held. Ho, in retaliation, began to train Communist cadres for guerrilla warfare in the South.

During the remaining years of the Eisenhower administration the United States continued to support the increasingly unpopular President Diem with military advisers, and by 1960 almost 1,000 Americans were serving South Vietnam in that capacity. Thus Eisenhower and Dulles, ignoring the terrible lesson of the defeat of France, nevertheless decided to take on the burden of Vietnam. Communism had to be stopped, even though in this particular case “Communism” was an obscure Asian peasant country that by no stretch of the imagination could have posed a threat to the United States. Once again, fear rather than facts determined policy.

ACT THREE: KENNEDY—THE MILITARY

During his brief presidency of 1,000 days John F. Kennedy deepened the American involvement in Vietnam considerably. By the time of his death, the United States had greatly increased the numbers of military advisers in Vietnam; napalm and other antipersonnel weapons had been authorized for limited use against the enemy; and the United States had become identified with the highly unpopular regimen of President Diem. The Vietnamese leader’s violent death preceded Kennedy’s own by only three weeks.

Even though Kennedy felt compelled to demonstrate his toughness in the international arena, after the disaster at Bay of Pigs and his abrasive meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, he was deeply skeptical about the possibility of a decisive American victory in Vietnam. In a revealing moment, he exclaimed: “In the last analysis, it is their war; it is they who must win it or lose it.” He was pressed relentlessly by the military to commit combat troops to Vietnam but refused to do so to the end. Yet under his leadership the United States entered a crucial period of transition, from a marginal commitment to a fateful and direct involvement. The reason for this tragedy was that most of the men around the president, including his secretary of defense and the chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, perceived Vietnam essentially as a military rather than political problem. In their view, greater quantities of more sophisticated weapons would guarantee victory in a relatively short period of time. Kennedy’s instincts told him that this assumption was probably wrong, but he permitted the facts and figures of the military experts to sway him. Shortly before his death, his doubts prevailed, but by then it was too late. Close to 17,000 Americans were serving as advisers in Vietnam by the end of 1963..........

In April 1961, in order to boost President Diem’s morale, Kennedy decided to ask Vice President Lyndon Johnson to visit Vietnam on his Asian tour. Johnson was less than enthusiastic, but the president coaxed him into accepting: “Don’t worry, Lyndon,” he said. “If anything happens to you, Sam Rayburn and I will give you the biggest funeral Austin, Texas ever saw.”

Johnson was favorably impressed with Diem. He hailed him publicly as “the Winston Churchill of the Southeast Asia,” though when asked by a reporter for the Saturday Evening Post whether he really believed that about Diem, Johnson answered: “Dung, man, he’s the only boy we got out there.” In his official report to the president, Johnson declared that: “The battle against Communism must be joined in Southeast Asia with strength and determination to achieve success there. Vietnam can be saved if we move quickly and wisely...... The most important thing is imaginative, creative American management of our military aid program.” Thus, Johnson committed the president more deeply to Vietnam and in addition committed himself personally to the war....

The performance of the South Vietnamese army did not improve despite the presence of the new American advisers. The Vietcong had escalated their own guerrilla activities, and by late 1962 the situation had become desperate. Generals Taylor and Harkins persisted in transmitting overly optimistic military reports to the president. As one firsthand observer succinctly put it: “It became increasingly a policy based on appearances; Vietnamese realities did not matter, but the appearances of Vietnamese realities mattered because they could affect American realities. More and more effort went into public relations because it was easier to manipulate appearances and statements than it was to affect reality on the ground.”......

Robert McNamara, Kennedy’s secretary of defense, was also certain of an American victory. He visited Vietnam frequently, but he was so much the prisoner of his own limited experience that he constantly tried to apply American production techniques to an Asian political revolution. His relentless emphasis on quantifiable data and statistics blinded him to the essential quality of his Vietcong enemy: a total commitment to the task of expelling the Americans, who by now had become identified as the successor of French colonialism.

In the did-1963 Kennedy was jarred by reports about the growing unpopularity of President Diem. Increasingly he felt that the United States would have to dissociate itself from the repressive harshness of the South Vietnamese ruling family. The new United States ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, advised that if a coup d’état materialized against Diem, the United States should not attempt to thwart it. During September and October the Diem regime resorted to particularly brutal measures to crush Buddhist dissident. More and more the United States looked like the ally of a reactionary government because that government had the single virtue of being anti-Communist. In November Diem was killed, and three weeks later John Kennedy was murdered. Lyndon Johnson, who admired Diem and always opposed the planned coup against him, allegedly said in an almost mystical way after the president’s death, that “the assassination of Kennedy was a retribution for the assassination of Diem.”

Kennedy and his military advisers never took seriously the statement made by many Vietcong soldiers that it was the duty of their generation to die for their country. They believed that the Vietcong, in their “black pajamas,” were a fake army and that the South Vietnamese had the real and legitimate army. In reality, the reverse was closer to the truth. Taylor and Rostow, in their crucial report, had equated Vietnam with Korea. They had ignored the all-important difference that the Korean conflict had been a conventional war with a classic border crossing by an enemy in uniform, whereas in Vietnam there was a political struggle conducted by guerrillas feeding on subversion and taking advantage of a jungle terrain where front lines became virtually meaningless.

Thus president Kennedy—essentially a man of reason with a profoundly skeptical bent—became the victim of that particularly American form of hubris that blithely assumed that technology, computer-like efficiency, production, air power, and above all, competent American management could overcome any adversary. This set of mind ignored the reality of an army of guerrillas who were quite prepared to die for their cause, would match the American escalation man for man, if not weapon for weapon, and were prepared to fight for a generation or more. At the time of President Kennedy’s death, 17,000 Americans were serving in Vietnam, but only seventy had died by the end of 1963.

ACT FOUR: JOHNSON—THE CATASTROPHE

“I can’t get out. I can’t finish it with what I have got. So what the hell can I do?” Shortly after he made this remark to his wife in March 1965 President Johnson authorized sending massive combat troops to the war in Vietnam. By taking this step, he involved the United States deeply and consciously in a war that he could not win but that he also felt he could not afford to lose.

The record of the Johnson presidency in Vietnam is a story of self-delusion and misperception so vast that it turned into a national catastrophe. Despite relentless bombing raids on both North and South Vietnam and the introduction of more than half a million American troops, the enemy was not defeated. Stead, Johnson’s ego, stubbornness, and pride destroyed his presidency and divided his people in a spiritual civil war.....

In a revealing “Pentagon Papers” memorandum to McNamara, John McNaughton, a former Harvard law professor and then assistant secretary of defense, set forth American goals in South Vietnam in terms of the following priorities: 70 per cent—To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat; 20 per cent—To keep South Vietnamese territory from Chinese hands; 10 per cent—To permit the people of South Vietnam to enjoy a better, freer way of life.

One notes that the official reason given to the American people for the intervention in Vietnam with air power and ground troops made up only one-tenth of government’s actual rationale.

The specific incident that triggered the bombing of North Vietnam was the encounter of two American warships C. Turner Joy and Maddox with North Vietnamese PT boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. The administration maintained that the ships had been fired upon in neutral waters and that retaliation was mandatory. Subsequent studies have cast serious doubts on this official version. After painstaking research, one scholar reached the dramatic conclusion that there had been no attack on the Maddox and the Turner Joy at all, that the president had misled Congress and the people and trough that deception had been able to obtain congressional authorization for a war the he had decided on months before while promising the voters peace. Whether or not one regards this conclusion as too harsh, there can be little doubt about the fact that the American retaliation was disproportionate. On August 4, 1964, American bombers destroyed twenty-five North Vietnamese PT boats and blew up the oil depot at Vinh in North Vietnam. McNamara reported to the president that, at Vinh, “the smoke was observed rising to 14,000 feet.” Johnson was overheard to say to a reporter, “I didn’t just screw Ho Chi Minh; I cut his pecker off.”.......

During his campaign for reelection in 1964 Johnson tried to keep Vietnam out of the public eye as much as possible. When later asked why, he answered: “If you have a mother-in-law with only one eye and she has it in the center of the forehead, you don’t keep her in the living room.” Vietnam decisions were closely guarded secrets and were made by half a dozen men. Escalation proceeded by stealth......

On February 7, 1965, the Vietcong attacked the American barracks at Pleiku. Eight Americans were killed and sixty were wounded. Bundy, after a quick visit to Pleiku, recommended a reprisal policy of sustained bombing against the North that would cease only if the Vietcong ended their insurrectionist activities. An old Eisenhower aide, Emmett John Hughes, asked Bundy what he would do if the North Vietnamese retaliated by matching the American air escalation with their own ground escalation. “We can’t assume what we don’t believe,” Bundy replied.

Thus Lyndon Johnson began the relentless bombing campaign that was to devastate North Vietnam for the next three years. Though he probably had his own reservations about its effectiveness, his enormous ego and machismo played a considerable role. Moreover, his inner circle was supportive: McNamara considered victory trough air bombardment technologically feasible; Bundy made it intellectually respectable; and Rusk thought it historically necessary.

The bombing campaign, or “Operation Rolling Thunder,” as it was referred to in The Pentagon Papers, did not produce the desired effect. Ho Chi Minh did exactly what Bundy had thought impossible: He matched the American air escalation with his own escalation, through infiltration on the ground. Since withdrawal was unthinkable, there was now only one possible response: to meet the Vietcong challenge head on with American combat troops on the ground.....

A few months before he left the Department of Defense, McNamara authorized a comprehensive study of all the materials pertaining to Vietnam, going back to the 1940s. When he read the first chapters of these “Pentagon Papers”,” he told a friend that “they could hang people for what’s in there.” His successor was Clark Clifford, who assumed the role thus far played unsuccessfully by George Ball. He finally succeeded in making the president face, slowly and in agony, the true dimensions of the catastrophe....

There was to be no light at the end of the tunnel for Lyndon Johnson. In March 1968 he announced a bombing halt and withdrew from the presidential race. Vietnam had made the man elected by the largest landslide in American history into a one-term president.

Lyndon Johnson, totally ignorant of Asia in general and of Vietnam in particular, was governed exclusively by his own misperceptions of Asia reality. In his view, aggression had to be stopped “at the source” and the “source” was Communism in North Vietnam and China. The fact that Communism had broken up into numerous diverse political and ideological fragments appears to have been lost on him. He never understood that this was a revolutionary war in which the other side held little to the revolution because of the colonial war that had just ended. Revolution and anti-revolution were the real issues, not Communism and ant-Communism. That is why the Vietcong were willing to fight and die and the South Vietnamese were not. That why McNamara statistics were valueless: They overlooked the fact that even if the South Vietnamese forces outnumbered the Vietcong by a ratio of the to one, it did no good because the one man was willing to fight and die and ten were not.

And then there was Ho Chi Minh—a man totally unlike anyone Lyndon Johnson had ever met. The president dealt with his adversary by means of all the time-honored American political techniques; when the force did not work, he tried manipulation. But neither bombs nor dollars would tempt Ho Chi Minh. Johnson, unable to understand an adversary who was unwilling to bargain, resorted to the use of military force, the only instrument of compulsion he had.

Because he believed he could not lose, Johnson dropped still more bombs and sent still more men to their death. He shielded himself with the belief that America was fighting in Vietnam for selfless and idealistic reasons. A credibility gap had become a reality gap: The myth of false innocence enabled the United States to wreak destruction on a grand scale in Indochina, all in the name of kindliness and helpfulness. Gradually, the means became so horrible that it became increasingly difficult to justify the ends. The war in Vietnam finally became a los crusade.

Ho Chi Minh the man was very different from Lyndon Johnson’s image of him as Mao Zedong’s puppet. True, the North Vietnamese leader was an old Bolshevik who had been one of the founders of the French Communist Party in 1920. But he was a more senior member of the Communist world than Mao and was a unique figure in his own right. He was as much a Vietnamese nationalist as a Communist. David Halberstam described him as “part Gandhi, part Lenin, all Vietnamese.” After his victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Ho not only enjoyed the veneration of his people but also treated with special respect throughout the Third World. Mao Zedong has simply defeated other Chinese, but Ho Chi Minh had defeated a powerful Western nation.

Ho Chi Minh’s most distinctive quality, however, was his incorruptibility. In a country whose leaders invariably reached a certain plateau and then became more Western and less Vietnamese, corrupted by money and power, Ho Chi Minh remained a Vietnamese Everyman. The higher he rose, the less he sought the trappings of authority. He shunned monuments, marshal’s uniforms, and general’s starts, always preferring his simple tunic. The “black pajamas” that Lyndon Johnson mocked were in fact his source of strength, for the symbolized his closeness to the peasants, who both loved and obeyed him. The secret of his success was the ability to walk humbly among his own people; he was never separated from the people by police motorcades and foreign advisers.

What made He so effective was the contempt with which he was viewed by the West. For example, Time magazine once referred to him as a “goat-bearded agitator who learned his trade in Moscow.” By remaining a Vietnamese, a peasant like his ancestor, he became the only leader with title to the revolution: to drive the French, and then the Americans, from Vietnam. The Soviet Communist recognized his strength; the Communist Party of Vietnam survived the Stalin years without the slightest touch of purge. The leadership of Ho Chi Minh was such that even Stalin decided not to interfere. Ho even had a sense of humor. “Come on, you will have dinner with the President of the Republic,” Ho announced to Robert Isaacs, an old American friend and dinner guest in 1945, after the defeat of Japan. As they passed through a corridor, two young Vietminh guards snapped to attention and then, their revolvers showing, followed Ho to his car. Ho laughed. “How funny life is!” he exclaimed. “When I was in prison, I was let out for fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes in the evening for exercise. And while I took my exercise in the yard, there were always two armed guards standing right over me with their guns. Now I’m President of the Vietnam Republic, and whenever I leave this place, there are two armed guards right over me with their guns”. In his fundamental human qualities, Ho Chi Minh was the very opposite of Lyndon Johnson.

With Ho Chi Minh, Johnson followed the principal of the strong overpowering the weak. He believed that he could bend the enemy to his will and so avoid inflicting pain, death, and material destruction on the North Vietnamese. This strategy was feasible to someone who was rich, loved life, and feared pain. But in the Vietcong Johnson confronted the power of the weak. The weak defied the American president by their willingness to struggle, suffer, and die on a scale that seemed beyond reason. Interrogations of prisoners repeatedly revealed this phenomenon. When asked what would happen if more and more Americans came and bigger and bigger bombs dropped, the prisoners very often showed a fatalistic and dispassionate attitude: “Then we will all die.” Such defiance brought Lyndon Johnson face-to-face with the threat of ultimate escalation—in the parlance of the time, to bomb North Vietnam into the Stone Age, or put more simply, to commit genocide. Looking into the abyss, Johnson hesitated, remembering Hitler and Hiroshima. The only alternative was withdrawal. Withdrawal meant losing, but massive escalation also meant losing, because the soul of the United States would have been lost and our social fabric completely destroyed. Thus Ho Chi Minh’s strategy of weakness prevailed over Johnson’s strategy of strength. Ho had progressively less to lose by continuing to fight, while the stakes grew more costly for his American opponent. Time was always on the side of Ho Chi Minh.

Perhaps the essential truth about Lyndon Johnson and the men who made Vietnam policy during his presidency was that they had never experienced the kind of pain or tragedy that is the source of empathy. These men had only been successful, and their vision was limited to the American experience. None new that intelligence alone, without wisdom and empathy for suffering, is hollow.

One postscript to this analysis may be of relevance. In 1988, Richard Goodwin, an aid to Lyndon Johnson during the 1960s, published a memoir entitled Remembering America. The most fascinating part of this book was Goodwin’s analysis of Johnson’s personality during the height of the Vietnam War. Briefly put, the author argued, the president was probably clinically paranoid.

Like many paranoids, Johnson managed to live for most of his life with affliction. But under the increasing strain of the war, he began to be consumed by irrational resentments and fears of conspiracy. Goodwin revealed that as early as 1965 he had grown so alarmed by Johnson’s erratic behavior that he consulted several psychologists about his concern that the president was experiencing “sporadic paranoid disruptions.” The author also reported that his fellow White House aide, William Moyers, shared many of these worries. Goodwin’s belief that Johnson was becoming unbalanced helped persuade him to oppose the president publicly on the war and finally to work for his defeat in 1968.

Goodwin’s thesis is, of course, unprovable. But the fact that a thoughtful contemporary of Lyndon Johnson painted a chilling and convincing portrait of a president at war, descending into something approaching madness, is enough to give one pause and cannot be dismissed lightly. It merely deepens one’s concern at the awesome power that a single individual can hold in the American democracy, for better or for worse.

(“If you look too deeply into the abyss, the abyss will look into you.” F. N.)

ACT FIVE: NIXON—FULL CIRCLE

The presidency of Richard Nixon brought a painful groping for extrication and “peace with honor.” Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his main architect of foreign policy, devised a formula known as “Vietnamization,” whereby the war would gradually be turned over to the Vietnamese as American combat troops were withdraw. The American hope was to leave behind a viable anti-Communist South Vietnam with a friendly government firmly installed in Saigon. The central issue of the war remained the same. Who should rule in Saigon?

The withdrawal of American ground troops began in June 1969, when the peak figure of 541,500 men was reduced by 25,000 As withdrawal gathered momentum, a serious weakness became increasingly apparent in the “Vietnamization,” strategy. As American strength was slowly ebbing, Communist forces became better able to attack and try to topple the South Vietnamese regime, to which American prestige remained committed. President Nixon’s response to this challenge was twofold: the destruction of Communist sanctuaries by ground incursions into Laos and Cambodia, and increasing reliance on air power though bombing. Thus, as American participation in the ground fighting gradually diminished, the air war reached levels of unprecedented ferocity. This policy reflected the dilemma of a president who still believed in the essential mission of the United States in Vietnam but who wanted to attain his goal without incurring additional American casualties. Kissinger, in response to a question posed by an Asian diplomat as to whether President Nixon was going to repeat the mistakes of the Johnson administration, said, half in jest: “No, we will not repeat their mistakes. We will not send 500,000 men. We will make our own mistakes and they will be completely our own.” Quite unintentionally, this proved to be a prophetic statement.

In July 1969 the president announced the “Nixon Doctrine,” to the effect that, in the future, the United States would avoid entanglements like Vietnam by limiting its support to economic and military aid rather than active combat participation....

On April 30, 1970, in a nationally televised address, President Nixon announced an American-led South Vietnamese “incursion” into Cambodia to demonstrate that the United States was “no pitiful, helpless giant.” In that same speech he declared that since 1954 the United States had “respected scrupulously the neutrality of the Cambodian people,” but the discovery of Vietcong supply depots and sanctuaries had made this latest incursion necessary. It would shorten the war, the president explained. Three years later, in the midst of the Watergate hearings, it was revealed that in more than 3,500 raids during 1969 and 1970 American B-52s had dropped over 100,00 tons of bombs on Cambodia and Laos. In Tom Wicker’s words, the April 30 speech was “a deliberate and knowing lie broadcast in person to the American people by their president.” When confronted with this contradiction, the president’s spokesman at the Pentagon, Jerry Friedheim, said, “I knew at the time it was wrong and I am sorry.”

In March 1972 the North Vietnamese launched a major offensive with massed tanks and artillery in the most impressive show of force since the Tet assault of 1968. The North Vietnamese leadership has decided to make an all-out effort to size what it could in the South at the time when it was facing the danger of a new form of diplomatic isolation. The latest American overtures to China and the Soviet Union threatened to separate North Vietnam from its two major Communist allies. The offensive began shortly after Nixon’s visit to Peking in February but before his trip to Moscow, scheduled for May.

In April and May 1972 Nixon took two gambles that escalated the war to new levels of violence. In April B-52 bombers struck Hanoi and Haiphong in saturation bombings that far surpassed the ferocity of the Johnson raids. And on May 8 the president took a step that his predecessor had always ruled out as too perilous: He ordered the mining of North Vietnam’s harbors to cut off the flow of tanks, artillery, and other offensive weapons supplied to Hanoi by the Soviet Union and other Communist nations. At the same time, however, he offered a total troop withdrawal from South Vietnam four months after an Indochina-wide cease-fire and the return of prisoners of war. The risk of a Soviet-American confrontation at sea dominated world attention for several days, but only verbal denunciations emanated from Moscow and Peking. The Soviet Union by now place a higher priority on its own vital interests, which it perceived to lie in the growing détente with the United States, than on the interests of North Vietnam. The Soviet-American summit took place on schedule, and the president’s gamble paid off. North Vietnam now realized that it had been virtually abandoned by its own allies. Ths United States suddenly found itself in the anomalous position of having reached détente with 1 billion Communist—800 million Chinese and 200 million Russians—while it pursued a relentless war against a small peasant country precisely because it was Communist.

In July the Paris peace talks resumed and troop withdrawal continued. On October 26, in a dramatic announcement, Kissinger predicted that “peace was at hand.” This preelection optimism proved premature. Early in December Kissinger’s “final talks” with North Vietnamese were broken off, and he reported a stalemate.

On December 18 Nixon ordered all-out bombing attacks on Hanoi and Haiphong. Millions of tons of explosives were dropped on the North. The fierce intensity and relentlessness of the attacks produced an outcry of protest against “terror bombings” from many parts of the world. The raids were halted on December 30, and the Paris talks once again resumed. On January 23, 1973, after almost three decades of war in Indochina, a cease-fire was finally reached. The Paris Accords provided for the withdrawal of all American troops and military advisers, an exchange of prisoners, consultations between South and North Vietnam on general elections, new supervisory machinery, and the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Laos and Cambodia.

Essentially, what was achieved in Paris in 1973 was Vietnam’s reversion to its status at the time of the 1954 Geneva Accords. The United States had come full circle in Vietnam, and the clock was turned back twenty years. There was an Orwellian irony to the situation. Progress was regress: 1954 by 1973.

The hope, after the withdrawal of American troops, was that South Vietnam would be able to defend itself against the North with military and financial assistance from the United States. For two years that American hope seemed justified, but then the dam broke. In the spring of 1975 the Khmer Rouge, the Communist insurgents in Cambodia, marched into the capital, Phnom Penh, and forced Marshal Lon Nol, Cambodia’s American-supported president, to flee the country. Thus the American “incursion” of 1970 finally produced the opposite of what it had intended: a Communist instead of neutralist Cambodia. At the same time, the South Vietnamese army lost its fighting spirit and collapsed entirely. In a matter of weeks almost all of South Vietnam fell to the Communist. In the United States a test of wills took place between the administration of President Gerald R. Ford, who favored continued military aid to Cambodia and South Vietnam, and the Congress, which became increasingly reluctant to cooperate. Ultimately, the United States was left with the humanitarian responsibility of rescuing terror-stricken refugees who were fleeing the advancing North Vietnamese armies. In April Saigon surrendered to the Communist and was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Twenty tears of American effort had ended in failure. As Rusk, one of the main architects of American Vietnam policy during the 1960s, put it in April 1975: “Personally, I made two mistakes. I underestimated the tenacity of the North Vietnamese and overestimated the patience of the American people.”

By the mid-1970s both the supporters and the critics of the Vietnam war in the United States tended to regard the second Indochina as one of the most terrible episodes in the history of American foreign policy. There was a general consensus that it would take a long time for the wounds to heal, both in Indochina and in the United States.

CONCLUSION

The American involvement in Indochina began almost imperceptibly, rather like a mild toothache. At the end, it ran through Vietnam an America like a pestilence. Each president based his policies on exaggerated fears and, later, on exaggerated hopes. Consequently, each president left the problem to his successor in worse shape than he had found it.

The United States dropped more than 7 million tons of bombs on Indochina. This is eighty times the amount that was dropped on Britain during World War II and equal to more than three hundred of the atomic bombs that fell on Japan in1945. The bombs left 20 million craters that ranged from 20 to 50 feet wide and 5 to 20 feet deep. After the bombardments much of Vietnam looked like a moonscape. Nothing will grow there for generations.

America too was in anguish over the war. Her leadership lost the respect of an entire generation, and universities were disrupted, careers blighted, and the economy bloated by war inflation. The metal caskets in which 55,000 Americans returned from Vietnam became the symbol of the war’s ultimate and only meaning.

In the historical perspective, the great unanswered question about Vietnam will probably be: Which would have been less costly, an earlier Communist victory or the agony of this war? One cannot help but wonder what might have happened if not one American soldier had reached Indochina. Since history does not present alternatives, one cannot know where this road not taken might have led. Vietnam might well have gone Communist much earlier. But its form of Communism would probably have been of the Titoist variety, combining a strong dose of nationalism with a fierce tradition of independence vis-à-vis both Moscow and Peking. The United States could certainly have lived with that outcome. Its postponement was hardly worth the sacrifice of more than 55,000 American lives, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives, and 150 billion.

The Khmer Rouge Communist government of Cambodia, Led by Pol Pot, posed a different challenge. After this regime came to power in 1975, an estimated one million Cambodians were systematically murdered. Cities were emptied and some 4 million people were forced into the countryside on long marches. Survivors were herded into agricultural communes, and all vestige of previous Cambodia society were eradicated. Money, wages, and commerce were abolished, and travel and contact with the outside world were forbidden. The slightest infraction was punishable by torture and death. The end of this story was not without irony. In 1978 Vietnam, now A communist nation backed by the Soviet Union, invaded and virtually dismembered Cambodia, which was receiving the support of China. The genocide of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge thus was ended not through moral pressures brought to bear by an outraged humanity, but through the power interest of Sino-Soviet conflict. Very soon after the American withdrawal from Vietnam the only wars in Asia were fought by Communist against Communist. And by the 1990s, Communism the world over was in full retreat. Even Communist Vietnam was busy trading with United States, and Ho Chi Minh City was full of Americans looking for new business opportunities. The reason for the outbreak of the Vietnam war had become almost irrelevant. History had simply passed it by. When considered in this perspective, the awesome truth about Vietnam is clear: It was in vain that combatants and civilians had suffered, the land had been devastated, and the dead had died.

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Tocad la trompeta en Sion, y dad alarma en mi santo monte; tiemblen todos los moradores de la tierra, porque viene el día de Jehová, porque está cercano. Blow ye the trumpet in Zi’on, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand. Joel 2:1

El que da testimonio de estas cosas dice: Ciertamente vengo en breve. Amén; sí, ven, Señor Jesús. / He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Je’sus. Apocalipsis/Revelation 22:20, Santiago/James 4:1, 4; 1 Juan/1 John 5:19

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HABAKKUK / HABACUC

(#1) The burden which Ha-bak’kuk the prophet did see.  2) O Lord how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save!  3) Why dost thou show me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance? for spoiling and violence are before me : and there are that raise up strife and contention.

4) Therefore the law is slacked, and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceedeth.  5) Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvelously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you.  6) For, lo, I raise up the Chal-de’ans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling places that are not theirs.

7) They are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of themselves.  8) Their horses also are swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves: and their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat.  9) They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand.

10) And they shall scoff at kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them: they shall deride every stronghold; for they shall heap dust, and take it.  11) Then shall his mind change, and he shall pass over, and offend, imputing this his power unto god.  12) Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One? we shall not die. O Lord, thou hast ordained them for judgment; and O mighty God, thou hast established them for correction.

13) Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?  14) And makest men as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things, that have no ruler over them?  15) They take up all of them with the angle, they catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag: therefore they rejoice and are glad.  16) Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their drag: because by them their portion is fat, and their meat plenteous. 17)  Shall they therefore empty their net, and not spare continually to slay the nations?

(#2) I WILL stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved. 2)  And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. 3)  For the vision is jet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. 4)  Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.

5) Yea also, because he transgresseth by wine, he enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people. 6)  Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and say, Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his! how long? and to him that ladeth himself with thick clay! 7) Shall they not rise up suddenly that shall bite thee, and awake that shall vex thee, and thou shalt be for booties unto them? 8)  Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee; because of men’s blood, and for the violence of the land, of the city, and of all that dwell therein.

9) Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil! 10)  Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thy soul. 11)  For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it.

12) Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity! 13)  Behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts that the people shall labor in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity? 14)  For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea.

15) Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness! 16)  Thou art filled with shame for glory: drink thou also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered: the cup of the Lord’s right hand shall be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory. 17)  For the violence of Leb’a-non shall cover thee, and the spoil of beasts, which made them afraid, because of men’s blood, and for the violence of the land, of the city, and of all that dwell therein.

18) What profitheth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and a teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols? 19)  Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach! Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it. 20)  But the Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.

(#3) A prayer of Ha-bak’kuk the prophet upon Shi-gi’o–noth. 2)  O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy. 3)  God came from Te’man, and the Holy One from mount Pa’ran. Se’lah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise.

4) And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power. 5)  Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals went forth at his feet. 6)  He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: his ways are everlasting. 7)  I saw the tents of Cu’shan in affliction: and the curtains of the land of Mid’i-an did tremble.

8) Was the Lord displeased against the rivers? was thine anger against the rivers? was thy wrath against the sea, that thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation? 9)  Thy bow was made quite naked, according to the oaths of the tribes, even thy word. Se’lah. Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers. 10)  The mountains saw thee, and they trembled: the overflowing of the water passed by: the deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high.

11) The sun and moon stood in their habitation: at the light of thine arrows they went, and at the shinning of thy glittering spear. 12)  Thou didst march through the land in indignation, thou didst thresh the heathen in anger. 13)  Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for salvation with thine anointed; thou woundedst the head out of the house of the wicked, by discovering the foundation unto the neck. Se’lah. 14)  Thou didst strike through with his staves the head of his villages: they came out as a whirlwind to scatter me; their rejoicing was as to devour the poor secretly. 15)  thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters.

16) When I heard, my belly trembles; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he cometh up onto the people, he will invade them with his troops. 17)  Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: 18)  Yet i will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. 19)  The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.

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HABACUC/HABAKKUK

1 La profecía que vino al profeta Habacuc.

2) ¿Hasta cuándo, oh Jehová, clamaré, y no oirás; y daré voces a ti a causa de la violencia, y no salvarás?

3) ¿Por qué me haces ver iniquidad, y haces que vea molestia? Destrucción y violencia están delante de mí, y pleito y contienda se levanta.

4) Por lo cual la ley es debilitada, y el juicio no sale según la verdad; por cuanto el impío asedia al justo, por eso sale torcida la justicia.

5) Mirad entre las naciones, y ved, y asombraos; porque haré una obra en vuestros días, que aun cuando se os contare, no la creeréis.

6) Porque he aquí, yo levanto a los caldeos, nación cruel y presurosa, que camina por la anchura de la tierra para poseer las moradas ajenas.

7) Formidable es y terrible; de ella misma procede su justicia y su dignidad.

8) Sus caballos serán más ligeros que leopardos, y más feroces que lobos nocturnos, y sus jinetes se multiplicarán; vendrán de lejos sus jinetes, y volarán como águilas que se apresuran a devorar.

9) Toda ella vendrá a la presa; el terror va delante de ella, y recogerá cautivos como arena.

10) Escarnecerá a los reyes, y de los príncipes hará burla; se reirá de toda fortaleza, y levantará terraplén y la tomará.

11) Luego pasará como el huracán, y ofenderá atribuyendo su fuerza a su dios.

12) ¿No eres tú desde el principio, oh Jehová, Dios mío, Santo mío? No moriremos. Oh Jehová, para juicio lo pusiste; y tú, oh Roca, lo fundaste para castigar.

13) Muy limpio eres de ojos para ver el mal, ni puedes ver el agravio; ¿por qué ves a los menospreciadores, y callas cuando destruye el impío al más justo que él

14) y hace que sean los hombres como los peces del mar, como reptiles que no tienen quien los gobierne?

15) Sacará a todos con anzuelo, los recogerá con su red, y los juntará en sus mallas; por lo cual se alegrará y regocijará.

16) Por eso hará sacrificios a su red, y ofrecerá sahumerios a sus mallas; porque con ellas engordó su porción, y engrasó su comida.

17) ¿Vaciará por eso su red, y no tendrá piedad de aniquilar naciones continuamente?

 

2 Sobre mi guarda estaré, y sobre la fortaleza afirmaré el pie, y velaré para ver lo que se me dirá, y qué he de responder tocante a mi queja.

 

2) Y Jehová me respondió, y dijo: Escribe la visión, y declárala en tablas, para que corra el que leyere en ella.

3) Aunque la visión tardará aún por un tiempo, mas se apresura hacia el fin, y no mentirá; aunque tardare, espéralo, porque sin duda vendrá, no tardará.

4) He aquí que aquel cuya alma no es recta, se enorgullece; mas el justo por su fe vivirá.

5) Y también, el que es dado al vino es traicionero, hombre soberbio, que no permanecerá; ensanchó como el Seol su alma, y es como la muerte, que no se saciará; antes reunió para sí todas las gentes, y juntó para sí todos los pueblos.

6) ¿No han de levantar todos éstos refrán sobre él, y sarcasmos contra él? Dirán: ¡Ay del que multiplicó lo que no era suyo! ¿Hasta cuándo había de acumular sobre sí pendra tras prenda?

7) ¿No se levantarán de repente tus deudores, y se despertarán los que te harán temblar, y serás despojo para ellos?

8) Por cuanto tú has despojado a muchas naciones, todos los otros pueblos te despojarán, a causa de la sangre de los hombres, y de los robos de la tierra, de las ciudades y de todos los que habitan en ellas.

9) ¡Ay del que codicia injusta ganancia para su casa, para poner en alto su nido, para escaparse del poder del mal!

10) Tomaste consejo vergonzoso para tu casa, asolaste muchos pueblos, y has pecado contra tu vida.

11) Porque la piedra clamará desde el muro, y la tabla del enmaderado le responderá.

12) ¡Ay del que edifica la ciudad con sangre, y del que funda una ciudad con iniquidad!

13) ¿No es esto de Jehová de los ejércitos? Los pueblos, pues, trabajarán para el fuego, y las naciones se fatigarán en vano.

14) Porque la tierra será llena del conocimiento de la gloria de Jehová, como las aguas cubren el mar.

15) ¡Ay del que da de beber a su prójimo! ¡Ay de ti que le acercas tu hiel, y le embriagas para mirar su desnudez!

16) Te has llenado de deshonra más que de honra; bebe tú también, y serás descubierto; el cáliz de la mano derecha de Jehová vendrá hasta ti, y vómito de afrenta sobre tu gloria.

17) Porque la rapiña del Líbano caerá sobre ti, y la destrucción de las fieras te quebrantará, a causa de la sangre de los hombres, y del robo de la tierra, de las ciudades y de todos los que en ellas habitaba.

18) ¿De qué sirve la escultura que esculpió el que la hizo? ¿la estatua de fundición que enseña mentira, para que haciendo imágenes mudas confíe el hacedor en su obra?

19) ¡Ay del que dice al palo: Despiértate; y a la piedra muda: Levántate! ¿Podrá él enseñar? He aquí está cubierto de oro y plata, y no hay espíritu en él.

20) Mas Jehová está en su santo templo; calle delante de él toda la tierra.

 

3 Oración del profeta Habacuc, sobre Sigionot.

2) Oh Jehová he oído tu palabra, y temí.

Oh Jehová, aviva tu obra en medio de los tiempos,

En medio de los tiempos hazla conocer;

En la ira acuérdate de tu misericordia.

3) Dios vendrá de Temán,

Y el Santo desde el monte de Parán.

...................................................Selah

Su gloria cubrió los cielos,

Y la tierra se llenó de su alabanza.

4) Y el resplandor fue como la luz;

Rayos brillantes salían de su mano,

Y allí estaba escondido su poder.

5) Delante de su rostro iba mortandad,

Y a sus pies salían carbones encendidos.

6) Se levantó, y midió la tierra;

Miró, e hizo temblar las gentes;

Los montes antiguos fueron desmenuzados,

Los collados antiguos de humillaron.

Sus caminos son eternos.

7) He visto las tiendas de Cusán en aflicción;

Las tiendas de la tierra de Madián temblaron.

8) ¿Te airaste, oh Jehová, contra los ríos?

¿Contra los ríos te airaste?

¿Fue tu ira contra el mar

Cuando montaste en tus caballos,

Y en tus carros de victoria?

9) Se descubrió enteramente tu arco;

Los juramentos a las tribus fueron palabra segura.

...............................................................Selah

Hendiste la tierra con ríos.

10) Te vieron y tuvieron temor los montes;

Pasó la inundación de las aguas;

El abismo dio su voz,

A lo alto alzó sus manos.

11) El sol y la luna se pararon en su lugar;

A la luz de tus saetas anduvieron,

Y al resplandor de tu fulgente lanza.

12) Con ira hollaste la tierra

Con furor trillaste las naciones.

13) Saliste para socorrer a tu pueblo,

Para socorrer a tu ungido.

Traspasaste la cabeza de la casa del impío,

Descubriendo el cimiento hasta la roca.

...........................................................Selah

14) Horadaste con sus propios dardos las cabezas de sus guerreros,

Que como tempestad acometieron para dispersarme,

Cuyo regocijo era como para devorar al pobre encubiertamente.

15) Caminaste en el mar con tus caballos,

Sobre la mole de las grandes aguas.

16) Oí, y se conmovieron mis entrañas;

A la voz temblaron mis labios;

Pudrición entró en mis huesos, y dentro de mí me estremecí;

Si bien estaré quieto el día de la angustia,

Cuando suba al pueblo el que lo invadirá con sus tropas.

17) Aunque la higuera no florezca,

Ni en las vides haya frutos,

Aunque falte el producto del olivo,

Y los labrados no den mantenimiento,

Y las ovejas sean quitadas de la majada,

Y no haya vacas en los corrales;

18) Con todo, yo me alegraré en Jehová,

Y me gozaré en el Dios de mi salvación.

19) Jehová el Señor es mi fortaleza,

El cual hace mis pies como ciervas,

Y en mis alturas me hace andar.

Al jefe de los cantores, sobre mis instrumentos de cuerdas.

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Mirad entre las naciones, y ved, y asombraos;

porque haré una obra en vuestros días,

que aun cuando se os contare, no la creeréis.

Habacuc 1:5

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