Dick Hubert’s Worldview: A visit to the ‘Mighty Mo’ battleship prompts historical reflection, and more
February 14, 2024 at 11:28 p.m.
Nothing is more bracing for American citizens than to remember the last “hot” war we successfully fought to victory: World War II.
Not the Korean War. Not Vietnam, the various Gulf wars, nor our intervention in Serbia, not to forget our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, nor our various encounters with Iranian inspired and financed militias from Lebanon to Yemen to various points in Africa.
Depending on your point of view, it’s been a miserable few decades, a Gulliver tied down by Lilliputians all over.
Thus on a trip to Hawaii, a scheduled visit to the Pearl Harbor Memorial, where the battleship Missouri (the “Mighty Mo”) is a featured attraction, was a personal must.
Standing on the decks of the Missouri, you can see the memorial to the USS Arizona and the men who are permanently buried in that underwater tomb. It is a reminder of the dangers of letting our collective military guard down.
Today we no longer have the advantage of vast oceans on either side of our country to act as a buffer to aggressors wherever they are. Nor do we have the time our nation had in World War II to gear up our factories to rearm as the “Arsenal of Democracy.”
A guide on the Missouri stands on the exact spot where General Douglas McArthur accepted the unconditional surrender of the Empire of Japan. A photo of the ceremony, with McArthur signing the surrender documents, is in the background.By Dick Hubert
North Korean, Iranian, or Russian intercontinental missiles can strike our cities anywhere in minutes, unlike the Nazi submarines that destroyed shipping on our East Coast, the Japanese aircraft carriers that launched the Pearl Harbor attacks, or the Japanese military balloons which floated the occasional bomb over the Western USA.
What was a surprise for me on the Missouri was the tiny space in which the surrender ceremony took place. In square footage it looked about the size of our living room. The photographs and newsreels of the occasion had swarms of officers representing all the Allied forces, with the Japanese delegation off in a corner. Those newsreels and still photos made it seem to me like a huge space, which it definitely was not.
The technology of that era looks and feels…ancient, as does all WWII fighting gear. The Missouri was retired after seeing service in the First Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, when it was equipped with Tomahawk missiles. Those missile batteries are now frozen in time on the upper decks, as out of date as the battleship herself.
The Pearl Harbor Museum is as modern as the National Park Service and the US military can make it.
Most striking for me: the video showing the American mindset leading up to Dec. 7. The isolationists in Congress then, determined to look the other way as Germany rampaged through Europe and Japan raped Manchuria and invaded all its neighbors, have come back in a new form as Trumpists on the far right of the Republican Party, determined this time to undermine American support for Ukraine in its battle to maintain its democracy against Russian imperialism.
And even worse yet, as the Washington Post reported last Saturday, Trump said in South Carolina that he suggested to a foreign leader that he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO member countries if he views them as not spending enough on their own defense.
A note about my own military service here: I volunteered for the draft after the Berlin Wall went up and was shipped to France. My job was to help in whatever way I was assigned to make sure that an aggressive Soviet Union did not invade Western Europe.
I am clearly part of a generation the bulk of whom cannot comprehend in their bones how any American could deny our military equipment and financial support to brave Ukrainians who are fighting and dying to save their democracy and our Western freedoms.
Or, for that matter, denounce NATO, which is first and foremost crucial to US national security interests to prevent another world war originating in Europe.
We look upon those who want to deny aid to Ukraine, the Tucker Carlsons and Trumpist Republicans of this world, as, to use the phrase ascribed to Lenin for Westerners who supported Soviet Communism, “useful idiots.”
They are dangerous, and our fellow citizens who get their worldview from Fox and other media organs of the far right, desperately need an education in 20th and 21st century American history. Help them if you can.
Our courts bring political chaos
to our neighbors in Harrison
The Second Department of the New York State Appellate Courts in Brooklyn—four judges in all—has unanimously ruled that Rich Dionisio should remain as the Supervisor in the Town of Harrison, even though a White Plains based State Supreme Court Judge, Lewis Lubell, counted all the write-in ballots and determined that challenger Ron Belmont had actually WON the November election for Town Supervisor.
Lubell had also ruled that Dionisio’s effort to keep Belmont from ever again being Town Supervisor, with a proposed Town law on the November ballot (which passed) that no Supervisor could serve more than five terms (as had Belmont), was also legal, as the vote count had been certified by the County Board of Elections.
The voters who put Belmont over the top and also approved the new Town law clearly believed that the law would apply to FUTURE candidates, meaning that if Belmont won, he’d have four more potential terms.
Belmont’s lawyers thought so, too, and appealed on that basis.
But to their consternation and to the delight of Dionisio and his legal team, the judges declined to overrule Lubell.
The problem is that Belmont’s lawyers could have appealed to the State Court of Appeals, one level above the Second Department, if the Second Department’s ruling had NOT been unanimous. But it was. And as John Ciampoli, Dionisio’s lawyer, explained to me in an email, that means the Belmont legal team would have to get the Second Department’s permission to appeal.
The odds of that happening are slim to none. What group of four judges wants to risk being overruled and looking like…legal fools?
I’ve asked Belmont’s legal team if they are giving up at this point. At this writing, I have yet to get a definitive response. However, one member of the team said they were thinking of appealing to Attorney General Tish James to get Dionisio unseated as a “usurper.”
Since both Belmont and Dionisio are Republicans, and James is a Democrat, that would be a ruling sure to echo with Trumpists nationwide.
The Latimer-Bowman Democratic primary race for our 16th Congressional District is equally unsettling.
Incumbent Congressman Jamaal Bowman’s team recently used the epithet “Genocide George” to describe his opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who is now endorsed by every Democratic municipal organization in the Westchester part of the district, which also includes northern parts of the Bronx.
I’m saving an analysis of that race for another day.
Dick Hubert, a retired television news producer-writer-reporter living in Rye Brook, has been honored with the Peabody Award, the DuPont Columbia Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award.
Editor’s Note: This column, written by Dick Hubert, represents his opinion and not that of this newspaper.
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