As we all relax and enjoy our paid holiday Monday; let’s all take a moment during our cook-outs, camping and fishing trips, mattress sales, and home improvement projects; to ponder the true significance of Memorial Day. Whether we agree with administration policy or not, now or in the past, it is certain we all owe a debt we cannot repay to the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure we always reside in the land of the free.
Memorial Day. As a working nation we all look forward to Memorial Day as the unofficial beginning of the summer season. For most of us it’s a day spent with family and friends; sitting on porches, playing pick-up games of softball, barbecuing, and just renewing or extending acquaintances with friends and neighbors.
Some of us go to the lake or go camping to enjoy the sun, the water, and our parks. The more seasoned of us, knowing how crowded such places are, avoid then at all cost. Others of us go shopping, take in a baseball game, or just hang around the house. Few, if any of us, appreciate the origins of this national holiday. While there are many stories as to its actual beginning; with well over twenty different towns and cities laying claim to being the original birthplace of what was once called Decoration Day.
There is irrefutable evidence that organized ladies groups in the South were decorating the graves of fallen Confederate Soldiers before the end of the Civil War. A hymn first published in 1867 entitled Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping carried the following dedication; “To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead”.
While no one can say with any certainty exactly where this commemoration began. It is highly likely that Decoration Day had many separate beginnings; as each city and town either planned or hosted a spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead of the 1860′s. One of the most moving stories, according to Professor David Blight of the Yale University History Department, centered on the Washington Racecourse (today the location of Hampton Park) in the City of Charleston, South Carolina.
The racecourse had been used as a temporary Confederate prison camp in 1865 as well as a mass grave for Union Soldiers. Immediately after the cessation of hostilities, formerly enslaved people exhumed the bodies from the mass grave and reinterred them each properly in a series of individual graves. They built a fence around the graveyard with an entry arch and declared it a Union graveyard. The work was completed in only ten days. On May 1, 1865, the Charleston newspaper reported that a crowd of up to ten thousand, mainly black residents, including 2800 children, processed to the location for a day that included sermons, singing, and a picnic on the grounds, thereby creating the first Decoration Day.
Memorial Day was first proclaimed on May 5th 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic to honor fallen Union soldiers of the American Civil War, and was first observed on May 30th of that year. The South refused to acknowledge the day until well after WW I when the holiday was changed in order to honor all military dead from any war. Eventually President Lyndon Johnson declared Waterloo New York as the birthplace of this holiday in 1966. By then the holiday; now officially known as Memorial Day had changed. Memorial Day was now about the human need to honor those who gave their lives in service to our beliefs. It no longer signified division. Memorial Day had become a day of reconciliation; not only between the families of a once split nation, but of all Americans paying thankful tribute to those who have paid and continue to pay the ultimate price for our benefit.
Congress officially recognized the day with the National Holiday Act of 1971. The result was to move the holiday from a fixed May 30th on each year to the last Monday in May, which had the effect of producing an annual, ensured, federal three-day holiday each year. Many feel that this legislation, more than anything else, has contributed to the debasement of the original intent of this day of remembrance. The traditional observance of this day has diminished quite a bit over the years; with most people believing that this holiday marks little more than the start of summer.
However; as with all things, there are some wonderful exceptions to this. Some organizations, most notably the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) and the K of C (Knights of Columbus) strive to uphold the unique, original purpose of this holiday. Local councils and posts decorate cemeteries with American Flags, and American Flags at these locations are flown at half-staff from dawn until noon in the traditional commemoration of the honored dead.
Every year since the late 1950′s on the Thursday before Memorial Day, the 1,200 soldiers of the 3d U.S. Army Infantry place small American flags at each of the more than 260,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol the grounds 24 hours a day during the entire weekend to ensure that each flag always remains standing.
In 1951, the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of St. Louis began placing flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as an annual Good Turn, a practice that continues to this day. More recently, beginning in 1998, on the Saturday before the observed day for Memorial Day, the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts place a candle at each of approximately 15,300 gravesites of the soldiers buried at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park on Marye’s Heights (the Luminaria Program). And in 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years. http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html
In December of 2000 Congress passed a resolution calling for a National Moment of Remembrance which asked that at 3PM local time
” …all Americans to voluntarily and informally observe, in their own way, a moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence and contemplation.”
As we all relax and enjoy our upcoming holiday; let’s all take a moment during our cook-outs, fishing excursions, mattress sales, and home improvement projects to ponder the true significance of this day. Whether we agree with administration policy or not, now or in the past, it is certain that we all owe a debt we cannot repay to the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure we always reside in a nation blessed with such liberty.
I’m certain that the one Congressional action that all Americans can agree with is that National Moment of Remembrance passed by the Congress in 2000. Please let us pause as a nation; united in the thought of how exceptionally lucky we are to have been blessed with so many honorable men and women. We remain the land of the free, because of the brave.
Happy Memorial Day, everyone! May God bless us all: And may God continue to bless the United States of America.
Here is my salute to the men and women of the armed forces. Thank you for your service and devotion.
I’m proud to show that there is at least one American on the left that can separate the soldiers from the mission.
Reply to Martel732,
There are others on the left who can make this distinction as well. I’m one of them. My father was in World War II and suffered the rest of his life from wounds received in the Battle of the Bulge. He didn’t complain much, but believed he had fought to protect his country. And he was right. My favorite uncle was a Marine, wounded in the Korean War. He thought he had done his duty to his country, and so he had.
The flag flying from my front porch isn’t a conservative flag, it’s an American flag. Tomorrow I’ll march in our town’s Memorial Day parade as a member of our local Lions Club, carrying, as all of us, the flags of the states. The high school band will play, the Cub Scouts and Brownies will place flags on the graves of veterans in our town cemetery, and our state rep and state senator will speak. And we will remember the young men from our town who were killed or wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Both of my grandfathers fought in WWII and one of them fought in Korea. My uncle was in Vietnam. The Vietnam debacle, however, effectively ended my family’s involvement with the military.
I had considered reversing this trend, but I did not trust the American leadership’s decision making ability enough to put my life in their hands.
There are lots of ways in which the Vietnam war was a crucial watershed in the history of American wars. For me one of the most important things to keep in mind about Vietnam was that our leaders’ aims included the hopeless task of democratic nation-building. It wasn’t enough to defeat the Communists; no, Vietnam had to become a democracy. It never did become a democracy during the time we controlled it. Remember the revolving door of so-called ‘leaders’ we kept putting in place or taking down? And in the end, the US lost the war. Now that Vietnam has been a unified Communist state for 30 plus years, is it still a major threat to the region? No, we trade with Communist Vietnam and the rest of the region has not fallen prey to Communism.
Fast forward to the present: The US still tries to convert nations whose histories have not a trace of what was essential in the Western world to produce Western-style democracy. And this task remains as quixotic as ever.
Now someone might bring up the example of Japan and its conversion into a democratic nation. True enough, and its history was not conducive to such a result. I suggest a difference. In the case of Japan, the US did a full-scale military occupation for years, stripped the Emperor of his sacred qualities, and rammed democracy down the throats of the people. It did work. [By the way, American conservative icon Russell Kirk was horrified at our assault on the sacredness of the Emperor.]
The Japanese are perhaps the most obedient people on the planet. The occupation of Japan was perhaps one of the easiest in history because of the Emperor’s famous proclamation.
All other attempts at democracy “building” have essentially failed. South Korea doesn’t count, because the UN was protecting a democracy that was already established from aggressors. That is why that objective was attainable and the objective in Vietnam was not.
The differences are so stark, I can’t see why its not obvious to everyone. :\
I agree completely. Note how nothing at all came of the desperate appeals of the military leadership toward the end of the war for massive resistance against the US by the civilian population. The “100 Million Dead” campaign was dead in the water from the start. I also agree that South Korea doesn’t count.
There seems to be a complete lack of pragmatism in American leadership now. Objectives need to be properly labeled as 1) Impossible 2) Possibly doable, but absolutely not worth the cost 3)Possibly doable, AND the price might be right 4)Easily doable, but possibly not worth the cost 5) Easy and relatively cheap, a slam dunk.
To make these determinations, we would have to be able to look at situations in some kind of objective manner. And “the US military can do anything” is NOT an objective observation.
Our soldiers bleed, die, get burnt out, etc just like everyone else’s. They just have the best toys. They are not to be deployed on a whim or in the heat of the moment.
Many political scientists argue that American foreign policy is, and almost always has been, shaped primarily by the domestic political concerns of office-holders, presidential and congressional, along with the agendas of what is often called the ‘foreign policy elite.’ The foreign policy elite is a shifting collection of corporate, interest group, and, to a lesser extent, academic leaders who attempt to influence the government policy-makers. The net impact of all of these players on foreign policy is that foreign policy goals are often framed in very abstract ways, chosen for their ideological resonance. Thus, ‘human rights’ sounds great to liberals, even though aspiration in this area far exceeds accomplishment. Besides, there are so many violators of human rights around the globe that there is no conceivable way in which all of the regimes that do this can be transformed. And, on the right, militant expressions of ‘national interest’ and macho posturing (Bush in that flight suit!)sound good, but make for confused and failing foreign policies.
The kind of pragmatism you describe assumes something never seen in the real world: unitary, rational decision-makers who agree on priorities. The absence of such beings shows the limits, or, for me, the ultimate irrelevance of economics, the field from which this concept comes.
So, the US will keep making costly, bloody mistakes, and, no matter who is running the circus, the clowns still make all the decisions.
I do believe I have referred to economics as a pseudoscience. It can not be a science when literally all of its “laws” are subjective or arbitrary.
One of the truly annoying things about economics as a field these days is the fact that many economists now call their field “economic science,” and, among many political scientists, economics is regarded as being almost a real science, to be imitated and borrowed from. The result in political science is the predominance of ‘rational choice’ models of political behavior, governing, etc. that achieve heights of fantasy piled upon a plethora of logical proofs.
For logical proofs to be worth anything, all starting premises must be factually true. That’s a problem for our politicians, whom I’m not sure actually can distinguish fact from poll.
You’ll appreciate a tale I heard at a Memorial Day barbecue today from a friend who was describing radar technology he works on for a company with lots of federal contracts to a member of congress visiting the testing facility. My friend characterized a limitation on a particular process as the ‘laws of physics’ The congressman replied, “Well, then, we’ll get a waiver.”
That’s a very dismaying story.
Nice.
You know, the Soviet Union opposed all genetics research because the idea of people being different on a genetic level was anathema to the Communist Manifesto. What you describe very much reminds me of the mentality of the Soviet Union.
Martel732
“The Japanese are perhaps the most obedient people on the planet. The occupation of Japan was perhaps one of the easiest in history because of the Emperor’s famous proclamation.” I believe you have over-simplified the Japanese ‘conversion’.
Bushido (meaning “The Way of the Warrior) a code which had its beginnings in the prescriptive ‘House Codes” which originally guided the actions & behaviors of the retainers of the great houses of Japan. Beginning in the 12th century, this Bushido Code had developed into a ‘religion’ with the Emperor as its Deity, over the ensuing several hundred years. By the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937; the Japanese had developed one of the most brutal, repressive, hierarchical regimes on the planet. Actually their absolute faith in their own purity, their conviction of their destiny to lead all other people, and their certainty of eventual violent triumph over all others closely parallels the arrogance of belief of another threat to humanity asserting itself from another religious group in this present day.
The Japanese weren’t defeated because of their ‘obedience’. Although their absolute loyalty to the Emperor’s decrees made the reconstruction and re-education of the population easier. It didn’t have a thing to do with why they, through their Emperor, sued for peace. They were gearing up for, and training their civilian populations for, the defense of the homeland. They were willing to engage in literal house-to-house combat throughout Japan in defense of their lifestyle.
They were given a choice; “bIjeghbe’chugh vaj bIHegh.” (Pardon me, couldn’t resist. I spent most of a day and night over the Memorial Day Weekend watching every ‘Star Trek’ movie ever made. The Klingon to English translation is “Surrender or die!”)
On Monday, August 6th 1945 we dropped the first atom bomb on Hiroshima. The destruction of that single warhead was devastating. The Japanese were shaken, but not broken. On August 9th it happened again over Nagasaki and the Japanese had their ‘pass-or-fail’ historical test. They didn’t know how much longer the US could keep up such a bombardment, but they were fairly certain they could not survive very long while incurring an average casualty rate of over 82,000 people per day as they did across those three days. The Emperor privately begged for an end to hostilities and one of the most brutal, repressive, hierarchical regimes of history became one of the most industrious, peace loving, compassionate races on the planet. Hmmm? Wonder if there’s a lesson there regarding the solution to our present circumstance?
My personal opinion is yes there is a solution here to our present circumstance. If the Iranians want nuclear weapons we should ensure they get them; about twenty megatons at a time.
They were given a choice; “bIjeghbe’chugh vaj bIHegh.” (Pardon me, couldn’t resist. I spent most of a day and night over the Memorial Day Weekend watching every ‘Star Trek’ movie ever made. The Klingon to English translation is “Surrender or die!”)
The Emperor made this decision, not the people. If the Emperor had said to fight on, they would have. So it does come back to obedience. And yes, they are also extremely arrogant; no one can obey like they do.
Why the super-macho interpretation of events? Isn’t the Emperor ordering a surrender good enough for you?
Yes, I know all about the atom bomb. Of course, they had already lost by that point, and I think that eventually additional firebombing would have brought the Emperor to the same conclusion.
You know, I think it might be best to just give Iranians a bomb just to see what they do with it. If they use it, then you can fulfill your hawkish fantasy.
On the other hand, if they just sit on it, then we will have saved India a lot of radioactive pollution. Remember the use of nuclear weapons has effects on neighboring nations.
Interesting discussions from the armchair. It appears that Bill Wavering and I are the only two vets making any comment. First regarding Viet Nam, the main stream media provided a convincing although contrived story against the war. Facts on the ground were that civilian oversight of the military managed to kill more of our troops than the cong. Idiotic rules of engagement like can’t destroy that sam battery because it is next to the historic pagoda and you might miss, or the shooters are inside a hospital hiding behind civilians (sound familiar?) so you cannot return fire…and the list went on. I was there for a short time and the blame for these feel good rules has never been laid on those responsible although one of them died recently.
The naive set of analysis parameters put forth by martel732 indicate the lack of intellectual capability and decision making competence in the general population. Look for the silver bullet not the solution.
As long as we have politicians that hate America we will fight worthless losing wars…look at the latest from Afghanistan. When we finally put America first politicians in place we will probably be able to call our troops back from the over 100 countries they serve. Why? Because the world would know that the old SAC (looke it up to see what it meant) emblem of a mailed fist within a velvet glove represents the new American foreign policy, bite us and we will make a massive retaliation, play nice and we will be your friend.
By the way our family still celebrate the dropping of the atomic bombs! Fools say the war was won and the bombs were not needed.
My uncle had returned from flying over 70 missions as a tail gunner in the ETO (look that one up too) where the average life expectancy of a tail gunner was around 3 missions. He was due to go to the Pacific since there was a shortage of bomber air crews. After Pearl Harbor it would not have distressed us if the entire country was obliterated. There is no percentage in loving an enemy that has attacked you.
I must be intellectually defective, because I have no idea what the hell Mickey G is talking about.
If I had been tasked with defeating North Vietnam, none of this nonsense you describe would have occurred. Not shooting at a SAM battery next to a pagoda? Where did I condone that? That’s absolute nonsense.
I’m critiquing the decision making processes that go into getting involved in these conflicts, not the conflicts themselves. I am very concerned with the decision making process because I believe war should be vicious, brutal and efficient. Hence, the need to be very careful before letting loose the dogs of war.
I don’t think any of the politicians “hate” America. I just think they have a lot of side agendas that they put in front of the greater good. There’s a big difference. Quit dramaticizing the issue by playing the “hate America” card.
By the way our family still celebrate the dropping of the atomic bombs! Fools say the war was won and the bombs were not needed.
The war was won. This is indisputable. The only question was how many more GIs were going to die to bring about the conclusion. Were the atomic bombs NEEDED? No. Were they a good idea? Yes.
Again, the drama. Remember that far more Japanese were killed by fire bombs in Tokyo than by the atomic strikes. So, again, I find the Emperor’s decision inevitable.
SAC is strategic air command; I don’t see how this has any relevance to anything. Play nice? Yeah, China’s playing real nice with us. What can our military do about it? Oh yeah, nothing.
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