Trent Telenko

Happy VJ-Day, Plus 72 Years

by

Happy Victory over Japan Day!

On August 14th in 1945 Imperial Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and averted Operation Downfall, the two stage invasion of Japan. On Sept 2, 1945 the surrender was signed on the USS Missouri in Tokyo bay, This invasion would have resulted in at least a million American casualties (see below) and likely millions of Japanese dead from direct effects of the invasion plus the mass starvation that would have been sure to occur in its aftermath.

Since August 2010, it has become an eight years and counting tradition (See link list at the end of this post) for the Chicagoboyz web site to commemorate the major events closing out World War II in the Pacific and address the leftist agitprop surrounding those events. Where the worst recorded war in human history became a nuclear war via the August 6th and 9th 1945 A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, followed by the Imperial Japanese acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and the Sept 2, 1945 formal surrender on the battleship USS Missouri.

This years year’s Chicagoboyz commemoration will focus on the academic “revisionist history” controversies regards American casualties in an invasion of Japan versus the use of two Atomic Bombs.

  • The controversy traces from the rise of the leftist “Atomic Diplomacy” revisionism in 1946-1965.
  • Atomic Diplomacy’s subsequent credibility collapse of  “Atomic Diplomacy” historical underpinning in the 1995 Smithsonian Enola Gay Exhibit controversy.
  • Its enshrinement as a leftist academic virtue signaling cult in the aftermath.

 

Color Photo of the Sept 2, 1945 Imperial Japanese Surrender ceremony marking the conclusion of WW2 on the Battleship USS Missouri.

Color Photo of the Sept 2, 1945 surrender ceremony marking the conclusion of WW2 on the Battleship USS Missouri.

Read more

Remembering the 6 June 1944 D-Day Landings at Normandy

by

For this Anniversary,   please see these two previous 2013 and 2014 Chicago Boyz columns on D-DAY —

History Friday — Books to Read for the D-Day 70th Anniversary

June 6th, 2014

Men of the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, rush toward the shelter of amphibious tanks at the water’s edge of Easy Red sector, Omaha Beach, on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Left and right in the foreground are M4 Sherman tanks with wading equipment. The troops in the photo, expecting weak defenses, are loaded down with food and equipment for several days of combat. Most of which was discarded on the beach in their desperate fight for survival. Source: Britannica Online for Kids, http://kids.britannica.com/comptons/art-40275

and also —

Royal Air Force at Omaha Beach

6th June 2013

A pre-D-Day picture of a RAF Lightweight AMES Radar and crew landed on Omaha Beach
A pre D-Day picture of the RAF Lightweight AMES Radar and crew from the 21 BDS (Base Defence Sector) landed on Omaha Beach   Source: http://www.therafatomahabeach.com/?page_id=2697

The FBI Director Meets Pres. Trump’s Hatchetman

by

The no-leak, no-warning, firing of FBI Director Comey is riling up Washington D.C. like nothing I’ve seen in years. So many powerful people, so many lost minds.

This Instapundit tweet about covers it, as removing “unwritten limits on executive power” was only supposed to help the Deep State power club, not anyone else.

This   USA TODAY piece at the following link (James Comey memo: Why his bosses say they fired the FBI director) outlines the five key points in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s firing recommendation memo:

1. “The FBI’s reputation and credibility have suffered substantial damage, and it has affected the entire Department of Justice. That is deeply troubling to many department employees and veterans, legislators and citizens.”

 

2. “I cannot defend the director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unifies people of diverse perspectives.”

 

3. “The director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General’s authority on July 5, 2016, and announce  his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution. It is not the function of the director to make such an announcement. At most, the director should have said the FBI had completed its investigation and presented its findings to federal prosecutors.”

 

4. “Compounding the error: The director ignored another longstanding principle: We do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject  of a declined criminal investigation.”

 

5. “Although the president has the power to remove an FBI director, the decision should not be taken lightly. I agree with the nearly unanimous opinions of former department officials. The way the director handled the conclusion of the email investigation was wrong.”

Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein was right, whatever way you cut it, Comey violated a basic trust.

The problem here is that DC is about power, not ethics. And Comey was acting in the mainstream of Wash. DC political deep-state culture of the last 25 years. This was one of the reasons Trump was elected President.

And please carefully note — Pres. Trump’s firing of Comey was staged in a way to completely cut FBI Director Comey off from all of his political connections and most especially his personal FBI Director eyes-only files with no notice.

The fact that the Deep State just lost control of America’s chief federal investigative and counter intelligence agency with no warning has made them all lose their collective minds.

They haven’t had time to coordinate a story because too many are calling their lawyers.

The Battle of Coral Sea — Plus 75 Years

by

May 4th 1942 was the beginning of the Battle of Coral Sea. The world’s first naval engagement where surface forces of both sides never saw one another.

The engagement happened as a Japanese invasion force covered by headed towards Port Moresby covered by two large Imperial Japanese Combined Fleet aircraft carriers, Zuikaku and Shokaku, and the light carrier Shoho.

USS Lexington before she was sunk by a gasoline vapor explosion caused by in experienced damage control after an Imperial Japanese Navy carrier strike -- NARA Photo # 80-G-416362
USS Lexington photo dated October 1941, months before she was sunk  by a gasoline vapor explosion caused by poor/inexperienced US Navy damage control after an Imperial Japanese Navy carrier strike during the Battle of Coral Sea — NARA Photo # 80-G-416362

 

American code breaking tipped off the US Fleet in time to dispatch the two fleet carriers USS Lexington and USS Yorktown under Admiral Fletcher to counter the invasion.

In the course of the 4 – 8 May battle the Japanese lost the light carrier Shoho, and over 100 carrier planes with 66 highly skilled and irreplaceable air crews lost in aerial combat.

The American fleet lost the carrier Lexington with the carrier Yorktown being heavily damaged plus the sinking of the fleet oiler USS Neosho.

The Battle of Coral Sea was a tactical victory for the Imperial Japanese fleet…but a strategic win for the Allies as the invasion of Port Moresby was checked.

However, the tactical victory the Japanese won at Coral Sea would echo in the Guadalcanal campaign months later.   In 1942-43 the USS Neosho was a hugely important strategic logistical asset whose loss would later play a large part in Adm Fletcher’s controversial decision to withdraw carrier coverage early during the invasion of Guadalcanal, and contributed heavily to the Imperial Japanese victory at the First Battle of Savo Island.

For those looking for a really good article on this battle, see Peter Dunn’s “Oz At War” website article at this link —

BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA
FOUGHT OFF THE FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND COAST,
4 – 8 MAY 1942

www.ozatwar.com/coralsea.htm

It is the most complete article you will find on the web showing the entire Battle of Coral Sea, including the air units participating and losing planes from Australia and New Guinea based RAAF and USAAF squadrons, Ultra intelligence reports, damage reports, maps and appendixes listing the names, planes (with serial numbers!) and ships lost in the 4 – 8 May 1942 battle.

Pres. Trump’s Policy Choice on Syria

by

In the aftermath of Pres. Trump’s cruise missile strike on a Syrian air field used to deliver chemical weapons of mass destruction on Islamist Syrian rebels, it is both a useful and needful thing to revisit my Sept 9, 2013 post on the policy choices Pres. Obama faced then.

Choices that Pres. Trump must now address in convincing a cynical and war weary American people that Syria is indeed a massive threat to American security — and especially individual freedom — at home.

See link:

Obama, US Military Victory, and the Real “Red Line” in Syria

This blog post made the argument that America had the military means to overthrow the Assad regime with an air-sea military campaign using air-laid sea and land mines, but that “Bush Derangement syndrome” on weapons of mass destruction made it impossible for American political elites in 2013 to take action.

The following is the close from that blog post that outlined the choices Pres. Obama flinched from in 2013 and Pres. Trump now faces with the American public:

The choice that the Obama Administration faces is that nothing America does or doesn’t do will change Syria from being a terrorist supporting, failed, 3rd World state. The choice at hand is what kind of terrorist supporting state our inaction or intervention will create, and the wider consequences of that choice, especially for American freedom at home.
 
Doing nothing means we will have a Iranian/Russian/Chinese supported WMD using Syrian terror state that harbors Iranian Nuclear, Chemical and Bioweapons production facilities.
 
Acting to depose Assad means we will have an ethnic cleansing, al-Qaeda supporting, economically & politically irrational terrorist state that hates Iran and the Syrian Alawites who staffed Iran’s WMD facilities.
 
The first is an existential threat to American freedom, the second is a manageable local problem for Israel and the Turks.
 
A wide ranging break-out of WMD across the world means they will be much more readily available to terrorist organizations. The tighter surveillance and security steps the American state will need to implement in order to address that threat at home will reduce the economic vitality of the American people as the national security state crowds out more and more freedom as the cost of “security.” Leaving us all very much where Benjamin Franklin predicted…neither having or deserving either.
 
It will take principled and competent American political leadership to persuade the American people to face these facts.
 
I don’t expect it to happen.
 
Our current American political elites won’t cross the “BDS Red Line” that American public elected Pres. Obama for anytime soon. Obama’s election and actions since were in accordance with the expressed will of the American people. Only horrible events, like British Prime Minister Nevile Chamberlain’s “Peace in our time” conference selling out Czechoslovakia swiftly followed by Hitler’s repudiation of it, will let the American people hear and see reality on the other side of the “Red Line.”
 
However, the first step down the road of invoking competent & principled American leadership is laying down a rhetorical marker against the day that WMD proliferation forces the American public to listen
 
This is the marker:
 
“It’s American Freedom at Home, STUPID!”
 
‘Nuff said.

The best place to fight WMD using terrorists is overseas with the military, not at home with emergency first responders in chemical warfare slime suits cleaning up the bodies after a WMD strike.

The Bush administration refused for numerous reasons to defend its policy choices or provide known intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, allowing Senate Democratic leaders Reid, Pelosi and eventually Pres. Obama to destroy all federal government credibility on the subject.

Pres. Obama when faced with the same issue flinched from crossing his self-made WMD “RED LINE.

We will now see if President Trump is better at communicating with the American people past the “Bush Derangement Syndrome” based WMD RED LINE than Pres. Obama was.