Wanting above all else to be on the winning side, the Obama administration is trying to decide who to back, if anyone, in the Syrian civil war. I spoke to a Washington insider familiar with the White House discussions, and he said he was at a loss for words.

I fear I’m at a loss for words

Who shall I back, the Turks or Kurds

The Chechens now are not nice guys

And Assad should have stuck to eyes

Egyptians want to blast the Sphinx

It’s dangerous for one who thinks

That finding partners in this fight

Will turn out easy, turn out right

But Obie’s running things right now

And searching for to find out how

To smile and use the press to spin

That we have helped the last man win

Which makes us friends both wise and kind

And all from leading from behind

Today is the anniversary of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, an attack that left the battleships of the US Pacific Fleet burning hulks on the bottom of the harbor. Guts and valor are words not usually associated with inanimate objects, but ships are not inanimate objects. Ships are live, living things. Ships, as well as men, can be tough and resilient. Such were the ships of Battleship Row.

0755 SUNDAY, 7 DECEMBER 1941

A quiet, peacetime Sunday morning. Seven battleships swung gently at their moorings; Maryland, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, Arizona, Nevada and California. Pacific Fleet flagship Pennsylvania was in drydock. When the attack came, half their crews were ashore, and most of the officers. None had steam up, for it was Sunday, and all was at peace. Except Nevada. Nevada had steam. Nevada could move. At the height of the attack, with burning and exploding ships all around her, already severely hurt by a torpedo to her port side, Nevada, under Lt. Commander Francis J. Thomas, senior officer aboard, broke out her big battle ensign and stood down the channel, heading for the open sea. Sailors on the burning ships cheered and threw their caps in the air, but Nevada’s gallant sortie was short lived. Five Japanese dive bombers laid her low, beaching her.

The battleships were ultimately raised and rebuilt, those that were salvageable. They rejoined the fleet, but the war had passed them by. It was a carrier war now, and the World War 1 era battleships were too slow, could not keep up with the fast carriers. They were relegated to fire support, and accompanied the Marines in their march across the Pacific, bombarding the beaches, their 14 and 16 inch guns trained on palm trees instead of dreadnoughts, declared unfit to do the job for which they were built. Until Surigao.

SURIGAO STRAIT, 0351 TO 0409 hours, 25 OCTOBER 1944

Vice Admiral Nishimura, with a force of battleships, cruisers and destroyers, was heading for the Leyte beaches and the soft-skinned, vulnerable transports, still loaded with troops. Standing across his path was Admiral Oldendorf, and six old fire support battleships, all but Mississippi on Battleship Row that Sunday morning in December. The other five were California, Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Oldendorf put his weary old battleships in line ahead, a Battle Line, as battleships had fought since the 17th century, and waited for Nishimura. At 0351 the big guns lit the sky. Oldendorf brought his big ships across the Japanese front, crossing the T, the dream of every admiral down the centuries, doing to the Japanese what Togo had done to the Russians at Tsushima nearly forty years earlier. The Japanese fought back, but when Nishimura turned away his battleships were gone, along with most of his heavy cruisers.

Surigao was the last battleship to battleship action of WWII, and very likely the last big gun surface action battleship fight the world is likely to see, and it was fought by ships that had been sunk at Pearl Harbor and returned to life. Ships, like men, can be judged by their deeds, and some, like the ships of Battleship Row, by their sheer stubbornness, their refusal easily to die. Ships, like men, are alive, and though it took the ships of Battleship Row almost three years, they gained their revenge in the only way they knew how. With their guns.

Torn by bombs, wracked by fire

They settled slowly to the harbor floor

Breathing their last, or so some thought

But not they

Rising, they joined their kind

Who scorned them now

As the young scorn the old

The slow

They did their job

Plodding the vastness of the central sea

Island to island

A supporting cast

Gaining no praise

No, that was for the young

The swift

The carriers

Until

Until

That blessed night

When called upon to be themselves

They were

Themselves and more

Syria is an ancient country, old when the Pharaoh Ramses II fought the Hittites near the little Syrian town of Kadesh more than three thousand years ago. So Syria will probably survive the current civil war that bids fair to destroy it. It appears the winners will be the Muslim Brotherhood, but that too will pass. What the future holds for Syria no one can answer, but one thing is sure. Syria will still be here when the Muslim Brotherhood is a footnote in the history of the Middle East. The ancient land has seen many armies, many conquerors. There have been many long nights in the history of the land we know as Syria, and yet the people survive. We are witnessing the arrival of another of those long dark nights. And now we learn the Syrian army is loading bombs with Sarin gas, and if Assad gives the order to use it, then many thousands will die a horrible death. But many have died horrible deaths before, from Roman swords in Carthage to RAF bombers in Hamburg. And yet the land survives.

Syria has long been around

Many and many a year

The Hittites came, the Hittites left

And yet Syria’s still here

Ramses’ heavy regiments marched

Along the Damascus Road

To Kadesh fields and steep sloped hills

That the Hittite army strode

Lawrence fought the Ottoman here

No quarter from either side

Versailles bequeathed the ancient land

To France to act as a guide

In bringing Arab culture up

To the standards of the West

And Lebanon became the jewel

Of that noble minded quest

But that was then and this is now

And distantly come the sounds

Of chariots and bowmens’ laughs

And the barking of the hounds

As pestilence and famine ride

With the closing of the light

As lengthened shadows signal that

In hours it will be night

The Arab/Muslim war against Israel simmers just beneath the surface of all out war. Rocket attacks on Israeli cities followed by ceasefires, followed by more rocket attacks. Israel responds but not with all out force. No, the pot is simmering at the moment, but when it comes to a boil, as it surely must when Iran nukes Tel Aviv, the Arabs and Iranians will be surprised, those who are still alive, that the Jews have responded so decisively.

Beneath the surface, ‘neath the sands

There simmers war that’s hidden

Engaging whole the Muslim lands

Determined that what’s bidden

By Allah in regard to Jews

Be followed to the letter

And so Israelis have to choose

To go them all one better

And strike them high and strike them low

From air and sea while staying

Their hand and walking soft and slow

While firmer plans they’re laying

For Israel the price is death

Should they become defenseless

And so their nukes with bated breath

Are ready and the senseless

Raged Muslim murder of the Jews

Moves on with senses deadened

To all the facts and all the clues

That they’ll be Armageddoned

Israel, for unknown reasons, concluded a cease fire with Hamas on condition that Hamas not obtain replacements for the rockets they used to kill Israeli children on school busses, a deal in which Egypt pledged to see that Hamas did not re-arm. Naturally Hamas is now busy replenishing its stock of Iranian rockets, while Egypt looks on impassively. I spoke to a Palestinian friend about this, and questioned him about the reluctance of his people to honor their word. He smiled and said every Arab knows from birth the difference between treachery, perfidy and a ruse. Not only that, but they memorize it in the following childhood rhyme.

Treachery

Like lechery

Finds minds wherein it lurks

Any ruse

To kill the Jews

Ain’t wrong so long it works

A surfeity

Of perfidy

Will surely make you sick

So be aware

That some will care

Which of these three you pick

At great cost we tried to bring peace and prosperity to people who do not want it. At great cost we tried to change a tribal land only to leave it as we found it. Listen, deep in the night, when all is silent save the stirring of the leaves in the trees, and you will hear the American war dead quietly ask, what for?

Goodbye to all those castles in the air

Goodbye to all the dreams we tried to share

Goodbye to freedom and what freedom taught

Goodbye to all our guys who died for naught

Goodbye to dreams of bringing region peace

Goodbye to giving life there a new lease

Goodbye to nation building and what’s more

Goodbye to all our dead who cry what for

Goodbye

The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years War, created the modern European nation state, and the rest is, as they rightly say, history. A history of science and music and art and military supremacy. The Middle East contains one Westphalian state, Israel, which is how they have single-handedly and repeatedly defeated the combined armies of their Arab neighbors. Threatened once again by its neighbors, who rain rockets down on the civilian population, the Israelis restrain themselves from eliminating the problem instantly and forever. But their patience and forbearance cannot last forever in the face of Arab attacks. One day, and very possibly soon, Israel will show the Arabs what a Westphalian nation state is all about.

A nation that’s Westphalian

Is much like unto Pygmalion

In that strength resides beneath the edges rough

It’s cohesive and resilient

In Israeli case it’s brilliant

They’re inventive and resolved and they are tough

While surrounded by the haters

Who are only imitators

And whose countries are behind a thousand years

Peopled with uneducated

Masses vastly overrated

As a military force that no one fears

So the tiny land of Zion

Seems to prosper and get by on

Wits and brains and work and pure Westphalian guts

While the Arabs cannot share it

They refuse to grin and bear it

And the Jewish state just laughs and drives them nuts

The first four years of the Obama administration turned out to be all smoke and mirrors, a carney ride carnival, where nothing was ever exactly as it seemed. And yet the American public, in its infinite wisdom, again chose the carnival and the carney barker midway over substance, laughing and singing as they boarded the carousel for another four years.

The Midway smelled of smoke and beer

And hot dogs crackerjack and booze

The carousel ride hid no fear

As couples boarded two by twos

Calliopes sang out the tune

As slowly spun the wooden horse

As couples circled ‘neath the moon

The carousel slowly changed course

And gliding slowly through the dark

The Midway fading in the light

The riders frightened by the bark

Of feral beasts deep in the night

Around them mirrors gleamed and glowed

Projecting images surreal

The carousel grew dim and slowed

The only sound a frightened squeal

For mirrors showed a world aflame

With monsters whipping all on board

They seemed within the mirror’s frame

And seemed to be of one accord

The mirrors showed Obama, Rice

And Jarrett and the White House crew

Proclaim that if we all were nice

They wouldn’t turn the Feds on you

To search your emails for a phrase

That implicates you in their eyes

And if you think it’s just a phase

You have, my friend, a big surprise

For carousels are for the fools

Who thought so well of change and hope

And sold their freedom for deep pools

Of poisoned ice and hanging rope

Islam has been licking its wounds since Lepanto and the gates of Vienna, and now sees its opportunity in the perceived weakness of the West. But they are wrong. The West is not weak, it is only temporarily indecisive, temporarily indulgent. As an elephant will ignore the ants biting its ankle only for so long, the West will, when it can ignore the ankle bites no longer, without further thought stamp out the ants.

Lepanto, Vienna, the Muslim tide surged

And dashed itself upon the rock

Of the Cross and the Crowns until Muslims were purged

From the lands of those they sought to mock

They were driven back unto their bare tribal lands

Where they sat and lamented their lot

Sitting round their campfires in the soft shifting sands

Beginning their thousand year plot

Revenge on their minds for the infidel race

But deep down inside they all knew

The West was too strong for a war face to face

And so they would wait one or two

Thousand years catching up to the strong Christian West

By buying and stealing our stuff

And so they rearmed and they gave it their best

Then saw it was never enough

They’ll always be backward ‘cause that’s who they are

Still they dream of the new Caliphate

Where they’ll be in charge in a time that’s not far

Another five centuries or eight

Europe is on the verge of collapse, both economically and spiritually. They have invited the Muslims in, and will soon turn the graves of their fathers over to them. Islam is and has always been a mortal threat to Western civilization, but Europe no longer sees or cares.

The Muslims faced stout Christian men

At Tour and Vienna’s gates

Lepanto saw the Crescent set

The Cruses held their own fates

In hands of rock and hearts of steel

And trusted they in their faith

But now the Cross is déclassé

A ghost, a far distant wraith

Adrift the Europe that once stood

Athwart all of time and space

Have given up their father’s graves

In false favor of the Grace

Bestowed on them by Mammon’s smile

And Brussels’ slick oily ways

And so the States that once were great

Have entered their final days