[GPSCC-chat] Memorial Day speech by Pete McCloskey

[Wes Rolley]

The following it the final draft of the Memorial Day speech that Pete 
McCloskey is to give at the Golden Gate National Cemetery today.  
McCloskey was a company commander and silver star winner from the Korean 
War.  He was also the first (and possibly only) major Republican to 
challenge Nixon on the conduct of the war.

_____
Memorial Day, 2011

For over 145 years, we have set aside a day at the end of May to honor 
our nation's war dead.   It is a sacred day.  We pause for a brief 
moment to look out over the white crosses, and honor those young men who 
lie beneath them. War is the work of young men, not old.   It has been 
thus since the greatest and most tragic of our wars, the Civil War.  
Most of those buried here served when one of the nation's values was 
that it was a duty to serve the country.

150 years ago this spring, our nation broke apart.   Eleven states 
seceded from the Union, believing that the Constitution, as they read 
it, entitled them to do so.  Young men died on both sides, one believing 
that it was right to preserve the Union, the other believing with equal 
sincerity that the North had no right to change the way of life and 
values of those in the South.

Of a new nation of some 32 million people, over 700,000 died in combat, 
or in prison camps.   No war since has matched that sacrifice.

By World War II , our population had quadrupled to over 130 million, but 
we suffered only slightly over 400,000 deaths.  In Korea, some 36,000 
died, and in Viet Nam, with our population now over 160 million, 56,000 
died.  Most of those buried here died in those three wars.

But since, in a series of small conflicts, in Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, 
Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan,  less than 12,000 have died.   Since 
1971, we have had an entirely volunteer Army.  In nation of over 300,000 
million people, less than one per cent of our families have sons or 
daughters at risk.

Significantly, during the eight years of the Viet Nam War authorized by 
our Congress in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, no sons of Members of 
Congress or Presidents fought there.

And while we honor the dead, perhaps this Memorial Day, we should stop 
and consider the hope expressed by Abraham Lincoln at the Gettysburg 
battlefield that "these "honored dead shall not have died in vain."   We 
might well stop and consider  the disconnect mentioned by Secretary of 
Defense Gates the other day about the world's most powerful and 
prosperous nation fighting its wars with only a fraction of its 
citizenry bearing the burden.

Perhaps we should reconsider that ethic of a national duty to serve 
shared by the young men who lie underneath these crosses.......perhaps 
some sort of national service where the children of the privileged and 
wealthy also serve, where the perils of combat are shared by young men 
and women of means and education.

And today, we should perhaps honor the most the few young soldiers, 
largely from rural or impoverished areas, who have died in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, or been maimed for life by the most terrible of modern 
guerrilla weapons, the improvised explosive device or I.E.D.

For we ourselves make war with terror-inducing weapons.  No longer do we 
fight with rifles, grenades and bayonets, as did most of the young men 
lying here in these beautiful rolling hills.

We now fight with weapons of "shock and awe," the blockbuster bomb, or 
guided missile delivered by an unmanned drone directed by people in 
air-conditioned buildings here in the United States.  The so-called 
"collateral damage" when these weapons suddenly land without warning in 
a village in the Muslim World  virtually guarantees the continuing
hostility of their inhabitants and sympathizers around the world.

I can recall only one instance where this war by massive air power had a 
favorable result, that being the overwhelming bombardment in Serbia 
which effectively halted a cruel genocide, and led to the trial of the 
murderous generals before the World Court at The Hague.

Of late, we have turned away from the concept of world peace through 
world law for which we fought in World War II.  We have abandoned the 
principles of Nuremberg and Geneva which we led the world to adopt.

There could be no better time than Memorial Day to spend a few moments 
in quiet consideration of where and when we loose the dogs of war.   The 
time draws near when our enemies will possess that most terrible of 
weapons we introduced to end World War II.

Last week, our Congress gave thunderous approval to the idea of going to 
war against Iran to prevent their acquisition of atomic weapons.   At 
the same time the Congress gave similar applause to the Prime Minister 
of a country which has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation 
Treaty, but is known to possess over l00 nuclear warheads.

A famous Marine General and former National Security Advisor has 
suggested that the evolving aspirations of people in North Africa and 
the Mideast  gives us the opportunity to reach out to those people and 
presumably aid in overthrowing their leaders.  In the past we have 
overthrown the elected leaders of countries with whom we disagreed, 
Mossadeq in Iran and Allende in Chile, example.  The end results have 
not been fortuitous.

When and how will this all end?  I wonder if the dead we honor today 
were alive, might they not echo of one of this continent's most famous 
warriors, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, who, with his young men having 
mostly died in battle, and with Canada in sight, surrendered his forces, 
saying "I will fight no more, forever."

We will of course fight, but I think it well also to consider the advice 
Abraham Lincoln gave us at Gettysburg:   "It is for us the living, 
rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus 
far, so nobly carried on.  It is rather for us to be here dedicated to 
the great task remaining before us- that from these honored dead we take 
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full 
measure of devotion."

150 years ago, that cause was the preservation of the Union.    Today, 
it may be the preservation of the concept of World Peace Through World 
Law, as it was in 1945.



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cagreens.org/pipermail/sosfbay-discuss_lists.cagreens.org/attachments/20110530/59b78a6f/attachment.html>