The Great Debate
Heard from my old pal Max Kennedy yesterday, about that trashing I gave the al-Qaeda angle and a couple of other points in his book “Danger’s Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her,” after a preliminary scan. Yeah, it’s exhaustively researched, well-written World War II history with an al-Qaeda angle.
Me: “So, I spelled your name right, right? Is that what this is about?”
Max: “You’re a blogger now?”
It sounded a little dirty the way he said it, though Max is pretty open-minded, as evidenced by his warm and fuzzy feelings for kamikazes and his preference for understanding jihadis over my “shoot first, ask questions later” philosophy.
Me, a little defensively: “Yeah, it’s a sideline … what’s with you and this soft spot for suicide bombers?”
It had been a while since we talked. I think the last communication was around the time I got back from Iraq. I was given to saying even more outlandish things then than I am today, and I seem to recall telling him, “You would have loved it.”
(He doesn’t like it getting around, doesn’t want to get labelled with the crazy Kennedy risktaker thing, but the fact is he has a bit of that crazy Kennedy risktaker thing. Maybe more like, a physically brave person who is also clearheaded in challenging circumstances.* He probably would have made a great Marine infantry officer and counterinsurgency warrior, though the peacenik tendencies could be a complicating factor.)
Anyway, we had a good chat. He informed me, I did not know this, that stalwart Kennedy basher/Herald columnist Howie Carr had him on his WRKO talk show and is a big fan of his book.
“I think he picked it up thinking he could take another wack at a Kennedy, but he loved it,” Max reports.
Turns out this is true. Here’s Howie:
“I’m amazed. It’s a really good book.”
No mean compliment, from Howie to a Kennedy. That’s an endorsement with something for everyone. WRKO interview here. I’m listening as I write. A rollicking ride and unlikely lovefest between Max and Howie.**
Anyway, Max wants me to actually read his book and know what I’m talking about before I trash it, which sounds like a damned nuisance, and then he wants to have some kind of online debate about the lessons Japan’s recruiting of kamikazes has for the GWOT vs AQ’s recruitment of suicide bombers. I said sure. I don’t doubt understanding recruitment techniques is useful to us. Understanding history is always useful. No debate on that, though as I mentioned earlier, I suspect virtually all circumstances, tactics and strategy of Japan’s program are entirely different from AQ. I also maintain that being willing to fight to the death, sacrificing oneself for one’s nation and friends, is an entirely different thing from becoming part of a human bomb program. Not culturally relative. I think Max also wants to debate whether we needed to A-bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Frankly, I think he ought to have both debates with Max Hastings, Brit military historian and author of “Retribution.” That would be a heck of prize fight.
Hubblog chimes in. Reminds us who MTK is named after.
* Max Kennedy’s Fishing Trip Nets A Swimmer, Boston Herald’s Inside Track, 11 August 2002
Why is it, whenever a Kennedy is out on the high seas, there’s always a tale to tell? But this one ain’t no fish story!
This time, it’s Max Kennedy, who just thought he’d go out fishing for some blues with his buddy, Richard Zuckerwar, the other day. But before the boys cast their lines, they came upon a mentally- disturbed man swimming out into Hyannis Harbor.
According to Max, the man was feverishly free-stroking and ignoring rescue attempts by other boaters.
So when Max arrived on the scene, he told the suicidal swimmer, “This is none of my business, but my uncle’s boat went down, and he was in the water for 36 hours, so this is going to take you a long time.”
I’m pretty sure that was not intended as a Kennedy DYKWIA*** moment.
He was, of course, referring to President John F. Kennedy and his gunboat, PT 109. Those family anecdotes do come in handy!
“Why don’t you just get in the boat and we can talk about it,” Max told the man. “Then, if you still want to do it, I’ll take you way the hell out there, and you can jump in.”
But when the guy got in the boat, Ethel and Bobby’s kid proceeded to ignore his rescuee, baited his line and started to fish!
After some time passed, Kennedy started asking the swimmer some questions and discovered that the cops were on the dock in Hyannisport waiting for his charge when he returned. Apparently, according to later reports, the man had appeared at the JFK Museum claiming to be the late John F. Kennedy Jr. Hence, the police chase.
Undaunted, Max told the man his problems weren’t going to vanish - even if he tried to. And besides, Max was late for dinner and was going to be in hot water with the wife! So Kennedy and Zuckerwar dumped their day’s catch at the dock and left the grilling to the local authorities.
So as a fishing trip, it was a bust, causing Max’s buddy to remark, “If it wasn’t for that guy, we would have been skunked.”
But did they make it home in time for dinner?
In prior reports:
Explorers find long-lost ships; Fleet may hold pirate lootJULES CRITTENDENBoston Herald, 13 March 1998
The remains of what may be a long-lost fleet of warships and pirates sent by the French to attack Curacao were discovered last week by explorers Max Kennedy and Barry Clifford near a Caribbean reef where the ships went down 320 years ago.
“I’ve seen a lot of shipwrecks and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Clifford, who found the wreck of the pirate ship Whydah off Cape Cod in 1984. “It is just an incredible archaeological site. It just blew me away.”
The two Cape Cod men, accompanied by a local conch fisherman, crawled over a razor-sharp coral reef through rushing surf Monday to get to the wreck site when bad weather prevented them from going by boat.
It was the last day of their five-day trip to the remote isle of Las Aves, to find and map the wrecked fleet Venezuelans have talked about for three centuries.
As they slid into the crystaline blue water beyond the reef, Kennedy, the son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, spotted a massive anchor 20 feet long lying on the sea floor.
“It was just huge. I couldn’t believe how big it was,” Kennedy said.
Nearby was a pile of coral-encrusted cannon. Bronze fittings, buttons and pottery shards lay everywhere. Somewhere in the wreckage, under only 30 feet of water, may lie silver and gold that the French Adm. Count Estrys intended to use to pay his soldiers, sailors and hired buccaneers.
“The pile of cannon looked like someone had picked them up and dropped them. Another cannon was balanced on a coral head, like it was just poised, ready to fire,” Kennedy said. “I floated up, and all of a sudden I realized that the entire area around me was a wreck site … everywhere I looked there were unnatural structures covered with coral.
“My first thought was the realization of that terrible night for those crews, and what they must have gone through,” Kennedy said. “At the end of it all, you’re strung out on a reef, 100 miles off Venezuela and your ship is going down. This is hallowed ground, where hundreds of men met their death.”
Kennedy said the site has long been known to local fishermen, who didn’t know what the old wrecks were.
“Angel (the group’s fisherman guide) knew where the wrecks were. His father knew where they were. His grandfather knew,” Kennedy said. Claiming discovery “is a little like Columbus saying he discovered America.”
Kennedy and Venezuelan friends are in negotiations with the Venezuelan government for permission to excavate the site. Ultimately, they want to build a museum in Caracas to house the artifacts.
They believe the wrecks they found are part of Estrys’ 35-ship convoy that was headed for Curacao in May 1678 when, according to historical accounts, it smashed into the reef in the middle of the night.
Estrys’ flagship, Le Terrible, struck the reef first and began firing its cannon to alert the other ships. But they apparently thought the flagship had engaged the Dutch and rushed into the action. As many as 18 ships are believed to be wrecked there.
About 1,200 men made it to bug-infested Las Aves Island. Over the next three months, about half died from hunger and disease. The rest were taken prisoner by the Dutch and exchanged for Dutch prisoners.
Clifford said he expects to be able to locate the other ships in the fleet fairly easily since they sank within a half-mile of one another. He plans to return to Venezuela in August with large research vessels.
English pirate expert David Cordingly expressed excitement at news of the find, adding: “All these wrecks that involve ships of that period tend to be accompanied by a considerable amount of treasure.”
** I’m a little surprised either of these guys are astonished to learn there was a social class system, anti-fraternization rules, and considerable privileges of rank dividing naval officers and enlisted swabs back in the day. Someone may want to tell them that hasn’t changed that much. I’d have thought Howie of all people could explain to Max there’s actually a social class system in this country that divides Kennedys from the rest of us. OK, some old swab is on now explaining how the Navy works.
*** Do You Know Who I Am?
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:23 am on Friday, December 12, 2008
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December 12th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
One of the base issues that causes so much difficulty in cultural translation when considering the issue of purposely suicidal actions by a foreign enemy is the erroneous belief that all such persons do so voluntarily or from any self motivation.
Much of it stems from life long indoc into full, complete and total submission to whatever will and whim of the social “betters” in that culture. Some of it stems from not being allowed any other option. Die as a suicide attacker, or die as a criminal that refused orders.
The Japanese system was just as based in old feudalism and the use of commoners as property as the current fundamental islamism is now.
Both sets of suicide attackers arise from the use/abuse of those born under ideologies that demand such unquestioning obedience and, generally, have had very little exposure to any other system or world view.
If you look a bit closer at the current jihadiscum suicide attacker, you’ll find many that do NOT volunteer for the task, but volunteer to fight, and then are forced into a suicide attack role by those who own them once they get in the AO.
With the Japanese, some were forced by threat of execution. Most who weren’t really had no other way of relating to events. They’d either become suicide attackers or die by suicide rather than surrender, because from the earliest age, such actions were taught as proper.