Heroes, past, present and future
Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us.
No matter how long it may take...the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt, December 8, 1941
This is an especially poignant Memorial Day. There's a great deal of attention being paid- and rightly so- to the soldiers of what is, I think, rightly called "The Greatest Generation;" after all, the 60th Anniversary of the D-Day invasion is coming up in a few days.
A decorated war hero who belongs to my own "Baby Boom" generation will, in the space of a couple of months, be nominated by the Democrats for President of the United States. There are some who have raised questions about his decorations. I, who did not serve in the military even though I am of the proper age to have gone to Vietnam, am not going to become involved in that discussion today. But there is nevertheless a poignant contrast between the quiet heroism of the generation that went before us and Lieutenant Kerry's behavior when he returned from Vietnam- discharged early for the specific purpose of running for Congress, with personal political ambition in his heart and with slander toward the men with whom he had served on his lips.
This current generation, too, is being asked to risk its lives in a world war. But this war is barely acknowledged by a substantial segment of the population. Some, like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, say they aren't really sure that it's a war at all.
Yet Islamofascism- Wahabism gone berserk- is every bit as much of a threat to our security and freedom as were Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Iraqi bandit and political pipsqueak Muqtada al-Sadr has shown signs of having learned lessons from Hitler and Tojo about the making and breaking of promises, but Islamofascists as a class have pretty much the same policy toward us as that of Auric Goldfinger had toward James Bond. They do not want us to talk. They want us to die.
They are implacable fanatics who do not control a military machine in the conventional sense, and are easily defeated by us in conventional warfare. But they command generations of poor, jealous, proud Muslims who hate us with every fiber of our being, and many of whom consider it the highest possible honor to die while taking an American or an Israeli with them.
Their enmity is not the result of American foreign policy, no matter what the Democrats might find it convenient to say. Bill Clinton, the consummate internationalist, placed all the emphasis on diplomacy and outreach toward the downtrodden one could wish, but he still had to deal with the crimes of Osama bin Laden. While he lacked the resolve to follow through, his analysis of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, as he himself has said, was identical to that of George W. Bush.
There is something more atavistic going on here; something more basic and fundamental and unchangeable. This is not, at least as far as we are concerned, a clash of civilizations; we have Muslim allies all over the world, including nations which, like Saudi Arabia, are most affected by that peculiar brand of militant, fanatical, Puritanical Islam called Wahabism. It is rather a clash very much like the clash between the Democracies and fascism- a clash between fundamental value systems, and diametrically opposed visions of the nature, dignity, and future of the human race.
The soldiers of my generation suffered and bled and died largely without thanks. In no small measure because of the antics of people like John Kerry, they returned home to be spat upon and cursed, rather than thanked. Another generation would have to pass before we, as a nation, would be ready to recognize that the warrior deserved our unreserved gratitude and honor, whatever we individually might have thought about the particular war in which he fought. There is a great deal of irony in the fact that this moment should be marked by the political ascendancy of Lieutenant John Forbes Kerry of "Winter Soldier Hearings" fame- colleague of Jane Fonda, first confessed war criminal ever to be nominated for the Presidency, and a man who expects us to remember his honors where Vietnam is concerned, but not his dishonor.
Yet thankless though the task of my contemporaries may have been, in some ways the task of the current generation of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines is even more thankless. There can be no serious doubt that the war that they are fighting is a war for the survival of our way of life. Yet they are being undercut in victory, not in defeat. Their countrymen seem not to notice the difference between a war of debatable value and winnability and a war about which the only real question is not whether Saddam Hussein threatened us with weapons of mass destruction, but rather how and when he got rid of them- and whether, even if he did get rid of them, we ever could have slept safely knowing that he remained in power, and retained the ability to build them once again.
There will be more 9/ll's. Today, I fear for my country. I fear that where, as President Roosevelt put it, "the American people in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory," we will enter an age in which naive idealism and dithering partisanship will sap our determination and our sense of purpose, leaving us open to constant attrition, and freedom to the death of a thousand cuts. I fear that the conclusion which tyrants all over the world reached from our defeat in Vietnam- regardless of what one thinks of the geopolitical merits of the conflict itself- is being proven true at this very moment: that, when all is said and done, the American people now lack the character and the will to stay the course and to pay the necessary price to defend our interests in the world, and freedom's.
We hear an outcry today over eight hundred casualties sustained in a little over a year, as if that price were simply too high. We paid that price in weeks in Vietnam, and in days during World War II. Yet as always, the citizen soldier is more willing to pay that price than the citizen.
Whether we are worthy of those citizen soldiers or not we will discover, in no small measure, in the election returns on the night of November 2. But whatever that verdict- which will be a judgment upon ourselves as a nation every bit as much as upon George W. Bush and John F. Kerry- my thoughts on this Memorial Day are even more on the present and the future than on the past.
I do not only remember. I marvel at the heroism of the American soldier, sailor, airman and Marine of past wars, too. But mostly my thoughts are with the heroes of Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the wars surely to come- even more surely should we fail to stay the course in Iraq.
I fear that they will be undercut to a degree that our soldiers in Vietnam never were. The critics of that war (myself included, by the way) could point to the lack of any specific moment of decision and resolve like that expressed before Congress by FDR, or before the American people by George W. Bush. And the fighting men and women of the Vietnam era, at least, enjoyed a continuity of purpose between administrations of both parties. But now, I fear that our resolve will come and go with every change of administrations, and will depend, in no small measure, on which party happens to occupy the White House at any given moment.
At such at time, those who put their lives on the line for our freedom deserve our admiration, our thanks, and our gratitude perhaps even more than the heroes of the past. And they will certainly have even greater need of our prayers and our voices.
No matter how long it may take...the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt, December 8, 1941
This is an especially poignant Memorial Day. There's a great deal of attention being paid- and rightly so- to the soldiers of what is, I think, rightly called "The Greatest Generation;" after all, the 60th Anniversary of the D-Day invasion is coming up in a few days.
A decorated war hero who belongs to my own "Baby Boom" generation will, in the space of a couple of months, be nominated by the Democrats for President of the United States. There are some who have raised questions about his decorations. I, who did not serve in the military even though I am of the proper age to have gone to Vietnam, am not going to become involved in that discussion today. But there is nevertheless a poignant contrast between the quiet heroism of the generation that went before us and Lieutenant Kerry's behavior when he returned from Vietnam- discharged early for the specific purpose of running for Congress, with personal political ambition in his heart and with slander toward the men with whom he had served on his lips.
This current generation, too, is being asked to risk its lives in a world war. But this war is barely acknowledged by a substantial segment of the population. Some, like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, say they aren't really sure that it's a war at all.
Yet Islamofascism- Wahabism gone berserk- is every bit as much of a threat to our security and freedom as were Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Iraqi bandit and political pipsqueak Muqtada al-Sadr has shown signs of having learned lessons from Hitler and Tojo about the making and breaking of promises, but Islamofascists as a class have pretty much the same policy toward us as that of Auric Goldfinger had toward James Bond. They do not want us to talk. They want us to die.
They are implacable fanatics who do not control a military machine in the conventional sense, and are easily defeated by us in conventional warfare. But they command generations of poor, jealous, proud Muslims who hate us with every fiber of our being, and many of whom consider it the highest possible honor to die while taking an American or an Israeli with them.
Their enmity is not the result of American foreign policy, no matter what the Democrats might find it convenient to say. Bill Clinton, the consummate internationalist, placed all the emphasis on diplomacy and outreach toward the downtrodden one could wish, but he still had to deal with the crimes of Osama bin Laden. While he lacked the resolve to follow through, his analysis of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, as he himself has said, was identical to that of George W. Bush.
There is something more atavistic going on here; something more basic and fundamental and unchangeable. This is not, at least as far as we are concerned, a clash of civilizations; we have Muslim allies all over the world, including nations which, like Saudi Arabia, are most affected by that peculiar brand of militant, fanatical, Puritanical Islam called Wahabism. It is rather a clash very much like the clash between the Democracies and fascism- a clash between fundamental value systems, and diametrically opposed visions of the nature, dignity, and future of the human race.
The soldiers of my generation suffered and bled and died largely without thanks. In no small measure because of the antics of people like John Kerry, they returned home to be spat upon and cursed, rather than thanked. Another generation would have to pass before we, as a nation, would be ready to recognize that the warrior deserved our unreserved gratitude and honor, whatever we individually might have thought about the particular war in which he fought. There is a great deal of irony in the fact that this moment should be marked by the political ascendancy of Lieutenant John Forbes Kerry of "Winter Soldier Hearings" fame- colleague of Jane Fonda, first confessed war criminal ever to be nominated for the Presidency, and a man who expects us to remember his honors where Vietnam is concerned, but not his dishonor.
Yet thankless though the task of my contemporaries may have been, in some ways the task of the current generation of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines is even more thankless. There can be no serious doubt that the war that they are fighting is a war for the survival of our way of life. Yet they are being undercut in victory, not in defeat. Their countrymen seem not to notice the difference between a war of debatable value and winnability and a war about which the only real question is not whether Saddam Hussein threatened us with weapons of mass destruction, but rather how and when he got rid of them- and whether, even if he did get rid of them, we ever could have slept safely knowing that he remained in power, and retained the ability to build them once again.
There will be more 9/ll's. Today, I fear for my country. I fear that where, as President Roosevelt put it, "the American people in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory," we will enter an age in which naive idealism and dithering partisanship will sap our determination and our sense of purpose, leaving us open to constant attrition, and freedom to the death of a thousand cuts. I fear that the conclusion which tyrants all over the world reached from our defeat in Vietnam- regardless of what one thinks of the geopolitical merits of the conflict itself- is being proven true at this very moment: that, when all is said and done, the American people now lack the character and the will to stay the course and to pay the necessary price to defend our interests in the world, and freedom's.
We hear an outcry today over eight hundred casualties sustained in a little over a year, as if that price were simply too high. We paid that price in weeks in Vietnam, and in days during World War II. Yet as always, the citizen soldier is more willing to pay that price than the citizen.
Whether we are worthy of those citizen soldiers or not we will discover, in no small measure, in the election returns on the night of November 2. But whatever that verdict- which will be a judgment upon ourselves as a nation every bit as much as upon George W. Bush and John F. Kerry- my thoughts on this Memorial Day are even more on the present and the future than on the past.
I do not only remember. I marvel at the heroism of the American soldier, sailor, airman and Marine of past wars, too. But mostly my thoughts are with the heroes of Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the wars surely to come- even more surely should we fail to stay the course in Iraq.
I fear that they will be undercut to a degree that our soldiers in Vietnam never were. The critics of that war (myself included, by the way) could point to the lack of any specific moment of decision and resolve like that expressed before Congress by FDR, or before the American people by George W. Bush. And the fighting men and women of the Vietnam era, at least, enjoyed a continuity of purpose between administrations of both parties. But now, I fear that our resolve will come and go with every change of administrations, and will depend, in no small measure, on which party happens to occupy the White House at any given moment.
At such at time, those who put their lives on the line for our freedom deserve our admiration, our thanks, and our gratitude perhaps even more than the heroes of the past. And they will certainly have even greater need of our prayers and our voices.
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