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A song for Memorial Day — 7 Comments

1. It is very moving.
   But “I won’t be there to see the birth of our little girl
   I hope she looks like you
   I hope she fights like me
   And stands up for the innocent and the weak”

   at the military level is predicated on the falsehood that this Christian ethic extends to the CinC and the General Staff. Benghazi clearly shows it does not.
   The best single thing that could happen to our all-volunteer armed forces is that enlistments drop off precipitously. I am appalled by the frequent commerials that call on our private citizens to donate to assist in the support of the grievously and irreparably wounded, who have become crippled ‘heroes’ at the behest of the mad golfer in the White House.

2. This is always a time of mixed emotions. Sad and grieving for those I knew so well who gave their lives in the cause of freedom. Great empathy for all those legions of families and friends who have lost their loved ones. Deepest respect and honor for all those that I didn’t know who also gave their all in service to this nation. A sense of thanksgiving that I was allowed to know and serve with brave men.

   Though war has caused us so much pain, I gain solace from John Stuart Mill’s quotation:
   “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

   So true.

3. Don Carlos Says:
   May 26th, 2013 at 4:39 pm

   The best single thing that could happen to our all-volunteer armed forces is that enlistments drop off precipitously.

   I respectfully disagree. That is actually something I’ve been fearing for a long time.

   Currently, our volunteer military attracts the most patriotic, intelligent, and motivated young men and women. If recruitment and retention decline, there will be renewed calls for a draft.

   Then the ranks would be filled by ignorant, surly, unemployed youth. Perhaps even thugs, criminals, and gang members.

   I can think of no better composition for a military which could then be turned loose on the American people.

   I suspect Obama would regard that as a feature, not a bug.

4. Victor Davis Hanson, in “Carnage and Culture” pays tribute to the special nature of past American warriors. That we continue to have military ranks filled with so many noble and good men is a testament to the enduring power of military tradition kept alive by not the military as much as the military family. The cowardly and slanderous CIC and much of the General Staff should lie low today and let the real men and women be recognized.

   Here is what VDH stated about the torpedo pilots, who flew the incredibly lumbering “Devastator” planes without support and against the full firepower of the Japanese force, and distracted the Japanese allowing dive bombers to dive unscathed and send four enemy aircraft carriers to the bottom of the ocean at the battle of Midway:

   To the modern American at the millennium, these carrier pilots of more than a half century ago-Massy, Waldron, and Lindsey last seen fighting to free themsleves in sea of flames as their planes were blasted apart by Zeros-now appear as superhuman exemplars of what constituted heroism in the bleak months after World War II. Even their names seem almost caricatures of an earlier stalwart American manhood-Max Leslie, Lem Massey, Wade McClusky, Jack Waldron-doomed fighters who were not all young eighteen-year-old conscripts, but often married and with children, enthusiastic rather than merely willing to fly their decrepit planes into a fiery end above the Japanese fleet, in a few seconds to orphan their families if need be to defend all that they held dear. One wonders if an America of suburban, video-playing Nicoles, Ashleys, and Jasons shall ever see their like again.

5. rickl: in the days of the draft, “ignorant, surly, unemployed youth, even thugs, criminals, and gang members” were not grounds for exemption for service.

6. Yes, but the culture and educational system have changed greatly in the 40 years since we last had a draft, and not for the better.

   And we didn’t have a wannabe dictator as president. Say what you will about Nixon, but he didn’t have open contempt for half of the American people.

7. The current enlistees are the products of the selfsame culture and educational system which you decry. The military has a great culture of deference to the ultimate civilian-POTUS-authority, As long as that is the case, I prefer to defang the military by markedly reducing enlistments. Once we have a proper American Constitutionalist as POTUS and CinC instead of the mad golfer or the rabid Rodham we can rebuild.

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