Cassi Creek: Old
soldiers and sailors never die; they just sail/fade away. It is a nice sentiment that was voiced, in
part, to make it more politically correct to ignore the veterans of prior wars
while ramping up the current forces for the next trip down the pipeline.
But old soldiers
and sailors do die. The men and women
who were fortunate to survive their particular bit part in the ongoing
battlefield theater find that they are suddenly no longer the well-muscled, sharp-minded
troops who once planned campaigns, or flew planes off carrier decks. The strong ones who could shoulder their
field gear and a few rations, then slog off across the colder parts of Europe
during a blizzard now find it difficult to carry in groceries if the bags are
too full. They passed safely through the
gates of armed combat. Now they are
facing another series of gates, ones that depend more upon genetics and diet
than upon ability to shoot accurately and at necessity.
The Japanese
attack upon Pear Harbor happened barely 6 years, plus or minus some months before
my birth. I grew up surrounded by
veterans of WWII. The Civil War, Spanish
American War, and WW I were not distant dry history for me. I knew men who fought in those wars. They were able to convey to me a portion of
their experience.
The Pearl
Harbor attack angered the nation and that anger, carefully stoked and tended,
was part of the reason we were able to fight what were essentially two separate
wars in two theaters of operation. The
demand for ships to transport men, weapons, and the materials needed to fight a
war up the island chains; while simultaneously protecting convoys and hunting
submarines in the Atlantic forced the United States into becoming the world’s
largest and most powerful navy. We’ve
maintained that capability through several periods of mostly-peace and through
several wars. Our carrier battle groups
allow us to project force against nearly any nation we choose. Our Air Force can fly missions that take the
aircrews around the world and back.
As always, we
prepare for the last war and are never allowed to repeat that last war. The financial problems that the U.S. faces today
indicate that we should be pulling out of ongoing wars and downsizing our
combat forces. Of course, the
GOP/teavangelists are insisting that we ramp up the military to Cold War levels
so that they can fund defense contractors and manufacturers, building weapons
platforms and fielding units that the Pentagon does not want to build or
deploy. The days of two ocean wars and 600
combatant ship navies are behind us, or should be for the time.
We’ve learned
and forgotten the reality of an unannounced attack upon our troops and upon our
shores. The attacks of 11 September 2001
were as deadly as Pearl Harbor. Like
Pearl Harbor, we had warning that the attacks were planned and underway in
sufficient time to have taken appropriate action. At least, we tell each other that we could
have.
As with the
Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants, we over-reacted in episodes of
blind stupidity and are currently showing the world just how intolerant and
poorly informed we could be. There are
real threats from Islamic terrorists to be tracked and dealt with at home and
around the world. But repeating our history
of intolerance and declaring war on the wrong groups of people just wastes
lives, money, and intelligence collected at great cost.
We’re going
to find ourselves facing the necessity of stepping into the Syrian Civil War in
order to prevent the use of chemical weapons and to secure the Syrian arsenal
before those nerve agents can be sold or traded for the new home of the Syrian
dictatorship. Iran will take them in and
try for the weapons. Iran is already
making their position all too clear by targeting U.S. UAVs. They will, if allowed, attack at least one
Carrier battle group. And they will
provide logistics support for any terrorist group that presents a working
operational plan for a clandestine attack upon the U.S.
Today, the
ceremonies at Pearl Harbor are attended by fewer survivors. The gates of age are closing behind
them. VietNam veterans are now in a
position of equivalence to the WWI vets I knew.
We stage pseudo-patriotic circuses on September 11th while
the Pentagon remembers the reality of the attacks. I can’t say how long it will be until the WTC
attack memorial becomes just another opportunity for legislators to make a
speech about something that very few people at the event still show up. I can say that the Military will honor its
dead and wounded as it always has. They’ll
do their best to maintain the watch that will warn us of the next sneak
attack. If Congress can quit playing
patronage and pork barrel games with our armed forces, they just might be able
to stop the next group of attackers.
In the mean time,
it’s the VietNam veterans who are now fading/sailing away.
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