Founding Fathers

Imagine the kind of courage it takes to tell the most powerful nation on earth that they have no dominion over you, that their king is no longer your sovereign, and that you rebel against the only kind of government that most men of your day have ever known.

Brave men did precisely that on this day in 1776.

They committed treason against the king, putting their lives at risk by signing their name on a declaration of independence that would simply be known forever after as the Declaration of Independence.

Thank you, gentlemen, for embarking on that journey into liberty.

Thank You

This weekend I was fortunately enough to be able to exercise my rights as an American thanks to the sacrifice of generations men and women who came before us. They laid down their lives for us, and I try to keep that sacrifice in my heart. Because of them, every day is a Memorial Day, a tribute to the freedoms they won for us with their lives.

"Thank you" just doesn't seem like enough, but it is sincerely meant.

So, thank you.

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus

In I897, eight year old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of the New York “Sun.” The response of Francis Pharcellus Church in an unsigned editorial spawned the immortal, widely known phrase: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” but many don't know the whole story. For all of us who have never lost hope--not hopenchange, but real hope in all that is kind, comforting, honorable and loving--here’s little Virginia’s letter and Church’s timeless response.

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old. 
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. 
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.' 
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"

VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.

"

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.



Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.



Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.



You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. 



No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
 

 

The Magic and Miracles of "Messiah"

It is, once again, the season of Christmas. Many people of many faiths celebrate the season. Some as a profound religious observance, others to take part in the giving, the music, the colors, sights, smells and tastes. But all can share in a centuries old tradition: George Fredrich Handel’s ‘Messiah.” A small taste of the magic of Messiah can be seen here. While I delight in sharing the honor of blogging here with Bob and Brigid, I delight too in sharing another honor, that of regularly performing with a fine choir and symphony orchestra. I thought it might be interesting, at this time of year, for our readers to experience a performance of “Messiah” from the stage, and to learn of its history, through the eyes of a classically trained singer, a first tenor, one of the many of the chorus. It is surely being performed near you. If you've never experienced it, you owe it to yourself and to your family to take advantage of the opportunity.

As befits the Christmas season, random acts of magic are breaking out around American and in Canada. In shopping mall food courts, in huge department stores, choirs are singing the “Hallelujah” Chorus from Handel’s “Messiah.” As recorded in many clips on the ubiquitous You Tube, those present first react with surprise, amazement and ultimately delight and emotion. Such is the miracle of music. Such is the transcendent, transformative magic of “Messiah.”

[It is September 14, 1741 in London, England. After 24 days of working like a man possessed, George Fredrich Handel bursts from his composing chamber clutching the finished 259 page manuscript of “Messiah” in his trembling hands. Confronting a stunned servant, Handel, tears streaming from his eyes, exclaims “I did think I did see all of heaven before me and the great God Himself!”

Considering the mystical power and majesty of the work, this dramatic story is plausible, but it is almost certainly an exaggeration. Handel, a transplant from Germany, was not known as a devoutly religious man, but was, without doubt, a passionate man. There are many “he did what?!” stories of Handel’s adventurous life, such as his mid-performance, orchestra pit fistfight with a friend over one of the finer points of conducting, or his duel with another friend, a duel that nearly resulted in his death. As the story goes, Handel’s opponent produced a deadly thrust, but the point of his sword hit one of the large metal buttons of Handel’s coat, snapping the blade of his sword. The duelists, perhaps with considerable relief, took this as a sign, embraced and became fast friends again.]

Fast forward 269 years: It is December 6, 2010, Bass Hall, Ft. Worth, Texas. The annual performance of “Messiah” begins in an hour. This, of all the performances held in Bass Hall, is always sold out. The forty one members of the Ft. Worth Symphony who will be playing the Oratorio and the 110 members of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Master Chorale have already begun to arrive and prepare, but their preparations are different, unusual.

At virtually any other “classical” concert, the players can be heard practicing sections of the work that are challenging, unfamiliar, passages not quite under their fingers. Singers do the same, working on passages that force them to keep their eyes only on the music rather than on the conductor. But not tonight. It’s not necessary. Virtually every member of the Symphony has played “Messiah” many, many times. It’s familiar, comfortable. The Master Chorale is comprised almost equally of Seminary students and community singers, musicians from 18 to 70 from around the world, and like the Symphony, most have performed “Messiah” many, many times. But it is part of the magic of “Messiah” that in every choir, some are singing “Messiah” for the first time, and in every audience, some are hearing “Messiah” for the first time. Some will sing, or hear, it for the last time. The experience will touch them all.

One of the great powers and pleasures of good art is that one can, one must, return to it over time, because each and every time they will experience it anew. They will find new insights, new ideas, new wonders, not only because of the depth and transcendent beauty of the work, but because they are new each time they return. Their experiences, their knowledge acquired since the last exposure to the work allows them to see, to understand, to appreciate what they could not before. In music, “Messiah” is one of these essential works, a work that is never tiring for listener or performer, a work that holds new, undiscovered surprises and joys at each hearing and each performance. One cannot be said to truly know music without knowing “Messiah.”

[It was Charles Jennens (1700-1773) who approached Handel with the libretto for “Messiah.” The son of a wealthy landowner, Jennens, a devoted Christian, received a fine classical education at Oxford. His careful, harmonious choice of scripture from the Old and New Testaments combined seamlessly with Handel’s music. “Messiah” was written in three parts: The first extolls the prophecy about and coming of Christ. The second, begins with the chorus “Behold the Lamb of God (That taketh away the sins of the world)” and ends with the triumphant “Hallelujah,” (praise ye the Lord). The section concerns the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ. The third, which speaks of the triumph over death and sin purchased by Christ begins with the achingly beautiful soprano solo “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth,” and ends with the thunderous, joyful chorus, “Worthy Is The Lamb That Was Slain/Amen.]

“Messiah” is an Oratorio. Think of it as an opera, but without costumes, sets and props. The same types and level of singing are required. It consists of 53 separate pieces of music, beginning, like opera, with a solemn, powerfully soaring overture, which is only one of the two pieces the orchestra plays alone. The other is the brief, beautiful, contemplative “Pastoral Symphony” in the first section. The other pieces are recitatives (short solos, usually with sparse accompaniment, known as “dry” recitatives), arias (also known as airs; technically demanding, longer solos characterized by long runs sung on a single vowel) and choruses, sung by the entire choir, which can be quite short, such as #17, the 49 measure long “Glory to God,” or #53, the 159 measure long “Worthy Is The Lamb That Was Slain,” which incorporates the final, thrilling “Amen” (so be it) chorus. If performed in its entirety, “Messiah” lasts for a bit under three hours. Modern audiences, having a multitude of entertainments at their fingertips, generally lack the patience for the entire work, so this performance will last only about one hour and forty minutes, which is common for contemporary “Messiah” performances.

The musical life of classical musicians consists of learning long, complex works, and usually performing them only once. They have one chance to get it right, to create magic, and it is put aside for the next work. Still, there are some works, such as the Mozart Requiem Mass in Dm, that a musician will perform many times over the years, but for singers, even singers who can sing most of the score from memory, “Messiah” provides an unusual opportunity to truly master the score. It is always challenging, inspiring them to sing more perfectly, more artistically and beautifully with each performance.

[Writing “Messiah” in 24 days was an amazing feat, but was not uncommon for Handel who usually wrote with a specific performance--even performances--in mind. He was not afraid of recycling his own previous musical ideas, a number of which appear in “Messiah.” Like most composers of his time, plagiarism was not only not forbidden, but widely embraced. Speaking of his pilfering of the works of others, Handel once said: “I know what to do with these tunes and they don’t.]

It’s 7:20 PM. Most of the orchestra is seated. The choir files in, folders in their left hands--away from the audience--and remains standing until all are present. A few players run portions of the work, but only to warm up. The concert master, the first chair first violinist, takes the stage to applause and directs the initial tuning of the orchestra to A 440--concert pitch. In Handel’s time, concert pitch was a half step lower. One instrument unusual on the modern concert stage is the double manual harpsichord. The piano had not yet been invented in the 1700’s; the only keyboard choices available were the organ and harpsichord. The two-keyboard instrument which resembles a small, angular grand piano, gets its characteristic sound by means of tiny picks that pluck the strings, guitar-like, when keys are depressed rather than striking them like the hammers of the piano. This creates a quaint, sparkling sound that reaches back to Handel’s time, reminding the musicians of the long, sacred tradition in which they are about to take part.

Tuning complete, the soloists--bass, alto, soprano and tenor--take the stage to the eager applause of the audience which renews for the conductor, Dr. David Thye (“Tea”), Professor of Church Music and Chair of Conducting. Dr. Thye came to the Seminary after years of directing at Carnegie Hall. He’s a conductor’s conductor, authoritative, precise, but friendly, passionate, funny, even outrageous. Every movement of his baton and hand have meaning. There is an old joke about the beginning conductor who takes the podium to find a note on the music stand: “Wave stick until music stops, then bow.” With Thye, there is no doubt about the performance he desires. He is a superb interpreter of the score and every musician on stage watches and follows him closely. He will gauge the performers and audience carefully and will direct some portions of the work differently than he did in rehearsal to better fit the mood.

After the overture, the mood is established. The audience watches with absolute quiet and rapt attention. The burden of first impression falls on the tenor
soloist, John Cornish, Associate Master Chorale Conductor and doctoral graduate student at the Seminary. He will be the first singer heard by the audience, performing the recitative “Comfort Ye My People,” followed immediately by the fast, bright, demanding aria “Every Valley Shall Be Exalted.” The aria is an opportunity for a good singer to show off, to make the audience smile, or to experience the musical equivalent of a fiery NASCAR crash. John is a good singer, a strong singer who sings the high notes with such ease and assurance they don't sound high, and the audience smiles in satisfaction. He has made the right impression. They’re expecting a technically accomplished, moving performance. They’re expecting magic.

For those who have done the solos--and there are many in the choir--it is hard to sit still, but sit still they must while keeping emotion off their faces. It’s unseemly to facially review a soloist’s performance in real time while sitting onstage behind them. The theater lights make it impossible to see most of the audience except the first few rows. The singers also avoid reading the music, merely opening their scores to their next chorus. All performing arts are about properly focusing the attention of the audience, and all attention must be on the soloist, so the choir remains silent and still while mentally taking it all in, analyzing the performance of the orchestra, the response of the audience and the obvious confidence and mastery of the conductor, which in turn gives them confidence.

[It is April 13, 1742 in Dublin Ireland. “Messiah” will be performed for the first time, with Handel conducting, for charity. The Charitable Musical Society, hoping for space for as many patrons as possible, begged “the Favour of the Ladies not to come with Hoops” and the Gentlemen “to come without their Swords.” The audience listened and approximately 700 people heard the first performance, which was a financial and critical success. The Dublin Journal wrote: “Words are wanting to express the exquisite Delight it afforded to the admiring crowded Audience. The Sublime, the Grand, and the Tender, adapted to the most elevated, majestick and moving Words, conspired to transport and charm the ravished Heart and Ear.]

In the first section, the choral highlight is “For Unto Us A Child Is Born,” with its uplifting chorus: “And His name shall be called: Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” The chorus, like many in "Messiah," contains difficult runs sung on a single vowel made doubly difficult by the necessity of every singer being perfectly coordinated, light and energetic. Tonight, the runs flow, the consonants are well placed, the vowels true and the piece dances joyfully. The bass soloist, Dr. David Robinson and Alto Soloist, Dr. Angelo Cofer, Seminary Professors of voice, add strong, dramatic performances, as does soprano soloist Lynda Poston-Smith.

After intermission, the second section passes quickly as musicians and audience alike anticipate the “Hallelujah” Chorus. At the downbeat, the audience, following centuries of tradition, rises. The story goes that when the King of England first heard “Messiah,” he spontaneously rose for “Hallelujah. ” Of course, when the King stood, everyone stood. It has since been tradition, a tradition that pays homage to the most widely known and emotionally affecting piece of music of the oratorio. Another lasting tradition has become the performance of “Messiah” during the Christmas season.

In classical concerts, protocol dictates that applause be reserved until the end of the entire work. Tonight, at the dying of the final chord of "Hallelujah," applause breaks out, hesitantly at first, but the audience quickly abandons tradition and propriety and delivers a long, heartfelt ovation. Dr. Thye, and all of us, gratefully soak it up. Live performance is irreplaceable for its ability to, upon occasion, deliver moments of magic, magic that lives on in the hearts of those fortunate enough to experience it. This was one of those moments. But the ovation is also a challenge to surpass its inspiration with the remainder of the work. Musicians are always only as good as their last performance.

[Despite its initial success in Dublin, Messiah was not well received in London. Many thought it near blasphemous for opera singers to perform scripture in, of all places, a music hall, and Handel advertised “Messiah” not by its true title, but as “a sacred oratorio,” obviously anticipating just this sort of trouble. Yet, the work inevitably, gradually won over the public and by 1750, began to be regularly performed at Covent Garden in London in April or May. A young man later to be recognized as one of Christendom’s great theologians, John Wesley, attended a rare performance of “Messiah” in a church (church performances are now common) in 1758 and wrote: “I doubt if that congregation was ever so serious at a sermon as they were during this performance.]

A highlight of the third section is "The Trumpet Shall Sound," which features soloist Dr. David Robinson and Steve Weger playing a true, tasteful, wonderfully controlled and era-perfect trumpet part. Near the end of the section, Lynda Poston-Smith, accompanied only by a single violin, cello and harpsichord, sings the soprano aria “If God Be For Us, Who Can Be Against Us.” The delicate grace of Handel’s instrumental and voice writing sparkles, as do the performances. Dr. Thye does not direct, but merely stands, unmoving, as captivated by the music as everyone present. Turning the piece over to the musicians is a mark of confidence and generosity that few conductors would make, but it is amply rewarded by yet another delightful moment of magic.

The final chorus, “Worthy Is The Lamb, That Was Slain,” begins with great volume, intensity and majesty and ends in the same way, giving birth to the slow, soft and gentle “Amen” section which builds in intensity, volume and power, as if sung by the hosts of Heaven, to the final chord. Dr. Thye swells the last chord, and the choir gives every last ounce of focus and energy. At his cut off, it is as if all the sound has suddenly gone out of the world. Everyone in the hall holds their breath...until the applause begins and does not stop for the departure and the return of the soloists and the conductor: Two vigorous standing ovations. As Dr. Thye acknowledges the choir, we are pleased at the increased volume and intensity of applause. When Dr. Thye and the soloists leave the stage for the last time, the choir sits, drenched in sweat, exhausted--few realize how physically demanding singing on this level is--but satisfied, fulfilled and already looking forward to next year.

[As Messiah became accepted in London, Sir John Hawkins wrote: “a change of sentiment in the public began to manifest,” and “Messiah was received with universal applause.” In a letter to her brother in 1750, Mrs. Dews wrote: “His wonderful Messiah will never be out of my head; and I may say my heart was raised almost to heaven by it. It is only those people who have not felt the leisure of devotion that can make any objection to that performance."]

It is perhaps a truism that Christians may experience the work more intimately and intensely than others through their appreciation not only of the brilliant music, but of the message and inspiration of the libretto which is, after all, holy scripture. Yet, one would truly have to have a heart of stone to fail to appreciate such beauty. As long as civilization persists, “Messiah” will be performed and continue to inspire faith, devotion and magic. Works such as “Messiah” might well be said to reveal the presence of God’s inspiration, and of God Himself. Surely, I cannot perform "Messiah" without seeing the hand of God.

POSTSCRIPT: Four days earlier the musicians of the Master Chorale and Ft. Worthy Symphony Orchestra gathered at historic Truett Hall, a majestic, domed building at the Seminary, for the annual, free performance of “Messiah” done for the community. After the performance, dripping in sweat, my voice raw and barely functional, I stepped through the front doors onto the portico of historic Truett Hall and there, 20 feet away, was a young man actually, dramatically on his knee, holding an open wedding ring box, in mid proposal to a small, beaming brunette woman. It was a moment far better than the movies because it was unposed, unrehearsed and absolutely delightful. She nodded and he carefully slid the ring onto her slender finger, stood and they embraced with relief and abandon. I immediately broke into the opening bars of “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” Everyone around, including them, laughed and applauded. Some might call it a small miracle, others magic, but those who know “Messiah” know that such miracles are always present when and wherever it is performed.

Merry Christmas to all of our Confederate Yankee readers and Hallelujah!

Bloody-Minded Tyrants Are Never Subtle

Veteran's Day (Repost)

The monuments in Washington all seemed false in the cool morning mist. They were big and white and extravagant, yet the tourists cheapened them somehow as they gawked, took photos, and scurried to the next place on their list of things to see. Their attention seemed to focus on what things were rather than why they were. The scene was a poor example of Americana. Even Honest Abe seemed to frown from his throne. Of all the walls of stone only one seemed real.

This wall's long black marble slices into the ground. On it are engraved fifty-eight thousand American names from an undeclared war that no one wants to remember in the jungles of a country half a globe away. There are no ornate scrolls or stenciled directions, no fancy faded pieces of parchment, no self-serving sentiments, just names.

There's also a statue some distance away. Three bronze soldiers stare into the wall, waiting for word of their fellow soldiers, or perhaps morning their loss. The soldiers don't talk; they simply stare. They are all just boys, most of them only six years older than I was then: nineteen.

Under the statue-soldier's gaze, an elderly man lagged behind a tour at the wall. He caressed it and knelt to leave a single rose at its based. He sobbed. He had difficulty standing up. A nearby park attendant helped him and asked, "One of yours, sir?" The old man shook his head and replied, "Not just one of them. All of them."

I penned those words in the fall of 1989... 21 years ago.

They are an excerpt of a story I authored as an 18-year-old college freshman. It was based upon a trip to Washington D.C., and to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, simply known to all as The Wall. It is fictionalized, but only just. To this day it remains one of the most emotional places I've ever visited.

At the time, Vietnam was our most recent "major" conflict, though I know all wars are major are those who fight them. We were still several years away from the first Gulf War, and more than a decade from 9/11 and the wars that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq that we still fight today.

I'm met dozens of veterans since that time, from World War Two, Korea, Vietnam and our current wars. I've tried to thank them for their service, but mere words always feel inadequate to capture the gratitude I feel for all they have sacrificed so that I can live in a land of freedom and liberty.

I've tried to explain the sacrifices they've made as best I can to my older daughter. I've told her some of what I know about my Uncle Bobby's war in Korea, where he had the harrowing duty of splicing damaged communications lines for forward observers while in combat. I tried to tell her of how her grandfather—who we buried just before last Veteran's Day—stood guard against saboteurs in the wet salt spray as victory ships burned from to the torpedoes of German U-boats off the Carolina Coast.

I've told her what I know of some of our local heroes that I know she's heard of and seen, and of those who quietly walk among us with little recognition at all.

Today is the day we thank all veterans who have served this nation and who put their lives on the line to preserve our way of life.

Words are not enough, but all the same, thank you.

Update: I'm blessed to live in a community where veterans and their families aren't just remembered, but celebrated.

Happy Birthday, America

Sometimes it is difficult to see past the hot dogs and fireworks to remember that the Fourth of July is that day that brave and determined colonists declared themselves independent from the most powerful nation on earth, and in so doing, took the first bold steps towards developing a nation that become the bulwark of liberty and freedom for the following centuries.

Remember our founders on this day and the importance of the Declaration they created.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Saville Report on "Bloody Sunday" Released

The 60-page executive summary of the report seeks to explain the actions of January 30, 1972, where British paratroopers massacred unarmed Irish civil rights protesters, shooting many of them as they ran away.

CNN Commentor: Confederate Soldiers Were All Terrorists

How horrible it must be to view your world through a prism like that that blinds CNN's Roland Martin. The poor man is so conflicted by his own bigotry that he can't tell the difference between Confederate soldiers of the Civil War and al Qaeda terrorists.

When you make the argument that the South was angry with the North for "invading" its "homeland," Osama bin Laden has said the same about U.S. soldiers being on Arab soil. He has objected to our bases in Saudi Arabia, and that's one of the reasons he has launched his jihad against us. Is there really that much of a difference between him and the Confederates? Same language; same cause; same effect.

If a Confederate soldier was merely doing his job in defending his homeland, honor and heritage, what are we to say about young Muslim radicals who say the exact same thing as their rationale for strapping bombs on their bodies and blowing up cafes and buildings?

If the Sons of Confederate Veterans use as a talking point the vicious manner in which people in the South were treated by the North, doesn't that sound exactly like the Taliban saying they want to kill Americans for the slaughter of innocent people in Afghanistan?

Defenders of the Confederacy say that innocent people were killed in the Civil War; hasn't the same argument been presented by Muslim radicals in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places where the U.S. has tangled with terrorists?

We can't on the one hand justify the actions of Confederates as being their duty as valiant men of the South, and then condemn the Muslim extremists who want to see Americans die a brutal death. These men are held up as honorable by their brethren, so why do Americans see them as different from our homegrown terrorists?

Implied Roland Martin's bizarre comparison is a direct parallel between Fort Sumter and the 9/11 terror attacks.

Does CNN really want to stand behind this view?

On Tyranny, And The Illusions Of Hope

No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope that it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen, if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve.

This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty towards the majesty of heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?

For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth -- to know the worst and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House?

Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with these warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation -- the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motives for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies?

No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer on the subject? Nothing.

We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer.

Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament.

Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope.

If we wish to be free -- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending -- if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak -- unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?

Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable -- and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, "Peace! Peace!" -- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Patrick Henry - March 23, 1775. 235 years ago, today.

Alternative History Prof Dies

Howard Zinn, who wrote The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, died yesterday, leaving a generation of weepy, self-loathing Marxists in his wake. He will be missed... just not by anyone who should be taken seriously.

Correction: Zinn wrote A People's History of the United States.

My apologies, but from where I sit, one fantasy history book is little different than another.

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Speech

I thought President Obama did a stellar job reciting his Nobel Peace Prize speech in Oslo today, and that Presidents Clinton and Bush did an excellent job writing it.

Presumably, They Pay This Guy

If we needed to point out the failures of today's educational system, we don't need to look much further than historically ignorant reporter Josh Krahshaar:

Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio is the latest to make his own curious comparison drawn from the Iranian demonstrations — that the protesters would have more success if they had a constitutional right to bear arms.

"I have a feeling the situation in Iran would be a little different if they had a 2nd amendment like ours," Rubio tweeted on Sunday.

Not sure if Rubio was advocating an armed uprising from the otherwise peaceful protesters, but his follow-up tweet was a bit more dovish: "Hoping police and military in Iran will refuse to attack unarmed civilians if ordered to do so."

God forbid! Citizens should never use arms to revolt against a tyrannical government that is trying to suppress their natural rights.

Why, its unAmerican.

D-Day +65 Years

65 years ago today, brave, scared men on spray-drenched landing craft saw their landing ramps drop on the Normandy coast, and they charged out into German artillery and machine gun fire in the largest amphibious invasion in history, daring to take Hitler's Fortress Europe. They joined thousands of paratroopers and glider-borne infantry that has slipped in the night before under the cover of darkness.

Today, we pause to remember those brave men of the Allied Expeditionary Forces who risked—and in many cases died—in a bid to take back Europe from the forces of fascism.

I can do no better than direct you to Blackfive's excellent tribute, A Struggle to Preserve Our Republic, and repost the following:

General George S. Patton's Normandy Invasion Speech:

"Be Seated."

"Men, this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out of the war, not wanting to fight, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight - traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble player; the fastest runner; the big league ball players; the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win - all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost, not ever will lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to an American."

"You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Every man is frightened at first in battle. If he says he isn't, he's a goddamn liar. Some men are cowards, yes! But they fight just the same, or get the hell shamed out of them watching men who do fight who are just as scared. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour. For some it takes days. But the real man never lets fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to this country and his innate manhood."

"All through your army career you men have bitched about "This chickenshit drilling." That is all for a purpose. Drilling and discipline must be maintained in any army if for only one reason -- INSTANT OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS AND TO CREATE CONSTANT ALERTNESS. I don't give a damn for a man who is not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready. A man to continue breathing must be alert at all times. If not, sometime a German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit."

"There are 400 neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily all because one man went to sleep on his job -- but they were German graves for we caught the bastard asleep before his officers did. An Army is a team. Lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting, under fire, than they do about fucking. We have the best food, the finest equipment, the best spirit and the best fighting men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor sons-of-bitches we are going up against. By God, I do!"

"My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That's not just bullshit, either. The kind of man I want under me is like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Lugar against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand and busted hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German: All this with a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you."

"All real heroes are not story book combat fighters either. Every man in the army plays a vital part. Every little job is essential. Don't ever let down, thinking your role is unimportant. Every man has a job to do. Every man is a link in the great chain. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells overhead, turned yellow and jumped headlong into the ditch? He could say to himself, "They won't miss me -- just one in thousands." What if every man said that? Where in hell would we be now? No, thank God, Americans don't say that! Every man does his job; every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important to the vast scheme of things. The Ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the Quartermaster to bring up the food and clothes to us -- for where we're going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man in the mess hall, even the one who heats the water to keep us from getting the GI shits has a job to do. Even the chaplain is important, for if we get killed and if he is not there to bury us we'd all go to hell."

"Each man must not only think of himself, but of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this army. They should all be killed off like flies. If not they will go back home after the war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men."

"One of the bravest men I ever saw in the African campaign was the fellow I saw on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were plowing toward Tunis. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at that time. He answered, "Fixing the wire, sir." "Isn't it a little unhealthy right now?," I asked. "Yes sir, but this goddamn wire's got to be fixed." There was a real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time."

"You should have seen those trucks on the road to Gabes. The drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting around them all the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of these men drove over forty consecutive hours. These weren't combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it -- and in a whale of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost. All the links in the chain pulled together and that chain became unbreakable."

"Don't forget, you don't know I'm here. No word of the fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell became of me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamn Germans. Someday I want them to raise up on their hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the goddamn Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again.'"

"We want to get the hell over there. We want to get over there and clear the goddamn thing up. You can't win a war lying down. The quicker we clean up this goddamn mess, the quicker we can take a jaunt against the purple pissing Japs an clean their nest out too, before the Marines get all the goddamn credit."

"Sure, we all want to be home. We want this thing over with. The quickest way to get it over is to get the bastards. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin. When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually, and the hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one. We'll win this war but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans we've got more guts than they have."

"There is one great thing you men will all be able to say when you go home. You may thank God for it. Thank God, that at least, thirty years from now, when you are sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knees, and he asks you what you did in the great war, you won't have to cough and say, 'I shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named George Patton!'"

"That is all."

This Day

Many of my fellow bloggers are posting tributes to those who fell on 9/11, or recollections of a sort — mine is closest to Ace's, if you care — but I can't form anything of which I'm proud.

I hate to say it, but can't be sure I clearly recall 9/11 anymore, and in fact, I'm pretty sure I don't.

I remember flashes of details, but what I archived of that September morning were little more than a swirl of naked unformed emotions I've never been able to articulate and I know I never will, and I know the memories of that day were rewritten and rewritten again in my mind in the days that followed.

One thing I recall with perfect certainty, without reservation. How unbelievably, beautifully crisp and blue the sky was that morning in the Hudson Valley after it all happened.

I lived in a little town on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River at the time called New Windsor.

In the days and weeks that followed, as the rest of the country was coming to grips with the magnitude of the total loss, we were watching funerals of our neighbors in the surrounding small towns, and hearing the survival stories of others. Again, I don't trust the memories and can't channel the emotions, and I won't cheapen the memories of those lost with what I do recall with forced sentimentality.

Those of you who lost someone that day or part of yourself, you have my sincere condolences. For my neighbor across the street, the NYPD cop that aged years in the months that followed, I'm sorry I could not take on part of your burden.

For the rest, I simply have nothing worth saying.

Sorry.

"We Were Soldiers" CMoH Hero Pilot Passes

Ed Freeman, a helicopter pilot that flew fourteen missions into a hot landing zone to re-supply the 7th Cavalry and evacuate wounded soldiers in the Ia Drang Valley, has died at 80.

Check out Argghhh! for more.

Live and Let Pie

Chef Julia Child: OSS spy?

We're All Going to Burn Up or Drown... If We Don't Freeze To Death First

Your latest global warming hysteria, courtesy of one Oliver Tickell:

We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, "the end of living and the beginning of survival" for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction.

The collapse of the polar ice caps would become inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the world's coastal plains would be lost, complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial infrastructure, and much of the world's most productive farmland. The world's geography would be transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose by about 120 metres to create the Channel, the North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather would become extreme and unpredictable, with more frequent and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes. The Earth's carrying capacity would be hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die.

Why, isn't that just peachy?

Tickell's solution to the problem? He doesn't actually have one, but he won't tell you that because he's busy whoring a book, trying to cash in on the fear to the same easily-fooled people who bought into the end of the world event known as Y2K... and we know how that turned out.

Here's the facts, folks.

The temperature of the Earth rose nearly one whole degree over the past century, but has actually been falling for the past decade (PDF).

As it now stands, the global temperature now is roughly near the median temperature of the last 2,400 years.

The highest temperatures, as recorded via the chemical record of deep-core Greenland glaciers, were during the height of the Roman Empire. Obviously, this was due to Nero's fiddling while Rome burned fossil fuels.

Over a longer-term view, the relative stability of the global temperature during the most recent interglacial period is more pronounced.

Again, current global temperatures are roughly around the median temperature of the past 10,000 years. Thag the caveman must have had a Buick.

Now let us look at the past 100,000 years, so that we understood how good we've had it as humans—there wasn't a bikini season for the previous 90,000 years.

"Ah-hah!" I can hear Global Warming true believers shouting. "See how the rise of human civilization coincides with global warming? Die, Heretic!" Rest assured I will at some point, but it most likely won't be because of global warming, as an even longer view reveals. Let's look back 420,000 years.

I'm pretty sure we weren't burning many fossil fuels way back when, as "we" didn't exist.

Once again, global temperatures seem to be part of a natural, poorly understood cycle, and our current interglacial period seems ominously close to being at an end.

I'll now turn you over to Drs. Richard A. Muller and Gordon J. MacDonald, whose charts I've been so shamelessly borrowing thus far from the introduction of Ice Ages and Astronomical Causes: data, spectral analysis, and mechanisms, for the big let down for the Global Warming Faithful.

From this plot, it is clear that most of the last 420 thousand years (420 kyr) was spent in ice age. The brief periods when the record peaks above the zero line, the interglacials, typically lasted from a few thousand to perhaps twenty thousand years.

These data should frighten you. All of civilization developed during the last interglacial, and the data show that such interglacials are very brief. Our time looks about up. Data such as these are what led us to state, in the Preface, that the next ice age is about to hit us, any millennium now. It does not take a detailed theory to make this prediction. We don't necessarily know why the next ice age is imminent (at least on a geological time scale), but the pattern is unmistakable.

The real reason to be frightened is that we really don't understand what causes the pattern. We don't know why the ice ages are broken by the short interglacials. We do know something – that the driving force is astronomical. We’ll describe how we know that in Chapter 2. We have models that relate the astronomical mechanisms to changes in climate, but we don't know which of our models are right, or if any of them are. We will discuss these models in some detail in this book. Much of the work of understanding lies in the future. It is a great field for a young student to enter.

Muller and MacDonald end their book's introduction noting that we'll probably see gradual rises in temperature through the middle of this century, but the historical record suggests that it is a cooling, nor a warming, that is in the Earth's future, and that the mechanisms are not understood, clearly predate human influence, and that there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.

Feel free to disagree. However, as you run to higher ground, please just leave me the keys to the beach house, will you?

JUNE 6, 1944. Patton: Links in a Great Chain

[Repost]

General George S. Patton's Normandy Invasion Speech:

"Be Seated."

"Men, this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out of the war, not wanting to fight, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight - traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble player; the fastest runner; the big league ball players; the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win - all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost, not ever will lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to an American."

"You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Every man is frightened at first in battle. If he says he isn't, he's a goddamn liar. Some men are cowards, yes! But they fight just the same, or get the hell shamed out of them watching men who do fight who are just as scared. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour. For some it takes days. But the real man never lets fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to this country and his innate manhood."

"All through your army career you men have bitched about "This chickenshit drilling." That is all for a purpose. Drilling and discipline must be maintained in any army if for only one reason -- INSTANT OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS AND TO CREATE CONSTANT ALERTNESS. I don't give a damn for a man who is not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready. A man to continue breathing must be alert at all times. If not, sometime a German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit."

"There are 400 neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily all because one man went to sleep on his job -- but they were German graves for we caught the bastard asleep before his officers did. An Army is a team. Lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting, under fire, than they do about fucking. We have the best food, the finest equipment, the best spirit and the best fighting men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor sons-of-bitches we are going up against. By God, I do!"

"My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That's not just bullshit, either. The kind of man I want under me is like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Lugar against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand and busted hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German: All this with a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you."

"All real heroes are not story book combat fighters either. Every man in the army plays a vital part. Every little job is essential. Don't ever let down, thinking your role is unimportant. Every man has a job to do. Every man is a link in the great chain. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells overhead, turned yellow and jumped headlong into the ditch? He could say to himself, "They won't miss me -- just one in thousands." What if every man said that? Where in hell would we be now? No, thank God, Americans don't say that! Every man does his job; every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important to the vast scheme of things. The Ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the Quartermaster to bring up the food and clothes to us -- for where we're going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man in the mess hall, even the one who heats the water to keep us from getting the GI shits has a job to do. Even the chaplain is important, for if we get killed and if he is not there to bury us we'd all go to hell."

"Each man must not only think of himself, but of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this army. They should all be killed off like flies. If not they will go back home after the war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men."

"One of the bravest men I ever saw in the African campaign was the fellow I saw on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were plowing toward Tunis. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at that time. He answered, "Fixing the wire, sir." "Isn't it a little unhealthy right now?," I asked. "Yes sir, but this goddamn wire's got to be fixed." There was a real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time."

"You should have seen those trucks on the road to Gabes. The drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting around them all the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of these men drove over forty consecutive hours. These weren't combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it -- and in a whale of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost. All the links in the chain pulled together and that chain became unbreakable."

"Don't forget, you don't know I'm here. No word of the fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell became of me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamn Germans. Someday I want them to raise up on their hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the goddamn Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again.'"

"We want to get the hell over there. We want to get over there and clear the goddamn thing up. You can't win a war lying down. The quicker we clean up this goddamn mess, the quicker we can take a jaunt against the purple pissing Japs an clean their nest out too, before the Marines get all the goddamn credit."

"Sure, we all want to be home. We want this thing over with. The quickest way to get it over is to get the bastards. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin. When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually, and the hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one. We'll win this war but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans we've got more guts than they have."

"There is one great thing you men will all be able to say when you go home. You may thank God for it. Thank God, that at least, thirty years from now, when you are sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knees, and he asks you what you did in the great war, you won't have to cough and say, 'I shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named George Patton!'"

"That is all."

God Bless the veterans of the Great Crusade launched on this day in Normandy, France in 1944, and the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen that today carry on that same fighting spirit.

Happy Patriots Day

On this day in 1775, the minutemen first stood their ground and started a revolution. Jules Crittenden compiles a series of first-hand accounts in April Morning.

Veterans Day Repost: Thirteen Folds

Originally posted on Nov 11, 2005

Our church was honored this past weekend when three American soldiers presented our congregation with a flag in recognition of the small acts we have performed for our military at home and aboard. As they presented the flag, the sergeant leading the detail explained the significance of each fold.

Via US History.org:

1. The first fold of our flag is a symbol of life.
2. The second fold is a symbol of our belief in the eternal life.
3. The third fold is made in honor and remembrance of the veteran departing our ranks who gave a portion of life for the defense of our country to attain a peace throughout the world.
   
4. The fourth fold represents our weaker nature, for as American citizens trusting in God, it is to Him we turn in times of peace as well as in times of war for His divine guidance.
5. The fifth fold is a tribute to our country, for in the words of Stephen Decatur, "Our country, in dealing with other countries,
   may she always be right; but it is still our country, right or wrong."
6. The sixth fold is for where our hearts lie. It is with our heart that we pledge llegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it tands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
7. The seventh fold is a tribute to our Armed Forces, for it is through the Armed Forces that we protect our country and our flag against all her enemies, whether they be found within or without the boundaries of our republic.
8. The eighth fold is a tribute to the one who entered in to the valley of the shadow of death, that we might see the light of day, and to honor mother, for whom it flies on Mother's Day.
9. The ninth fold is a tribute to womanhood; for it has been through their faith, love, loyalty and devotion that the character of the men and women who have made this country great have been molded.
10. The tenth fold is a tribute to father, for he, too, has given his sons and daughters for the defense of our country since they were first born.
11. The eleventh fold, in the eyes of a Hebrew citizen, represents the lower portion of the seal of King David and King Solomon, and glorifies, in their eyes, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
12. The twelfth fold, in the eyes of a Christian citizen,
    represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies, in their eyes, God the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost.
13. When the flag is completely folded, the stars are uppermost, reminding us of our national motto, "In God we Trust."

A sincere thanks to all of you who have served our nation's military.

Your sacrifices are not forgotten.

Update: Jonn Lilyea (Sergeant First Class, US Army-Retired) has a post from Arlington National Cemetery, including video of the wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns over at This Ain't Hell.

Happy Independence Day

For one who was born and grew up in the small towns of the Midwest, there is a special kind of nostalgia about the Fourth of July.

I remember it as a day almost as long-anticipated as Christmas. This was helped along by the appearance in store windows of all kinds of fireworks and colorful posters advertising them with vivid pictures.

No later than the third of July - sometimes earlier - Dad would bring home what he felt he could afford to see go up in smoke and flame. We'd count and recount the number of firecrackers, display pieces and other things and go to bed determined to be up with the sun so as to offer the first, thunderous notice of the Fourth of July.

I'm afraid we didn't give too much thought to the meaning of the day. And, yes, there were tragic accidents to mar it, resulting from careless handling of the fireworks. I'm sure we're better off today with fireworks largely handled by professionals. Yet there was a thrill never to be forgotten in seeing a tin can blown 30 feet in the air by a giant "cracker" - giant meaning it was about 4 inches long.

But enough of nostalgia. Somewhere in our growing up we began to be aware of the meaning of days and with that awareness came the birth of patriotism. July Fourth is the birthday of our nation. I believed as a boy, and believe even more today, that it is the birthday of the greatest nation on earth.

There is a legend about the day of our nation's birth in the little hall in Philadelphia, a day on which debate had raged for hours. The men gathered there were honorable men hard-pressed by a king who had flouted the very laws they were willing to obey. Even so, to sign the Declaration of Independence was such an irretrievable act that the walls resounded with the words "treason, the gallows, the headsman's axe," and the issue remained in doubt.

The legend says that at that point a man rose and spoke. He is described as not a young man, but one who had to summon all his energy for an impassioned plea. He cited the grievances that had brought them to this moment and finally, his voice falling, he said, "They may turn every tree into a gallows, every hole into a grave, and yet the words of that parchment can never die. To the mechanic in the workshop, they will speak hope; to the slave in the mines, freedom. Sign that parchment. Sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the Bible of the rights of man forever."

He fell back exhausted. The 56 delegates, swept up by his eloquence, rushed forward and signed that document destined to be as immortal as a work of man can be. When they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he was not to be found, nor could any be found who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.

Well, that is the legend. But we do know for certain that 56 men, a little band so unique we have never seen their like since, had pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Some gave their lives in the war that followed, most gave their fortunes, and all preserved their sacred honor.

What manner of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, and nine were farmers. They were soft-spoken men of means and education; they were not an unwashed rabble. They had achieved security but valued freedom more. Their stories have not been told nearly enough.

John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. For more than a year he lived in the forest and in caves before he returned to find his wife dead, his children vanished, his property destroyed. He died of exhaustion and a broken heart.

Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships, sold his home to pay his debts, and died in rags. And so it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston and Middleton.

Nelson personally urged Washington to fire on his home and destroy it when it became the headquarters for General Cornwallis. Nelson died bankrupt.

But they sired a nation that grew from sea to shining sea. Five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep, 3 million square miles of forest, field, mountain and desert, 227 million people with a pedigree that includes the bloodlines of all the world.

In recent years, however, I've come to think of that day as more than just the birthday of a nation.

It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history.

Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.

Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people.

We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.

Happy Fourth of July.

Ronald Reagan
President of the United States
1981

Breaking Memo: Trapped in Fruitless Quagmire with Insurgents, President Considers Withdrawl

Oh, wait a minute. I might have read that too quickly.

It seems that the memo was from 1864, the President was Lincoln, and he told Meade to attack-attack-ATTACK until Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was destroyed, even as "peace Democrats" (gee, this sounds familiar) advocated for surrender and withdrawal.

I wonder if there is some sort of lesson to be learned here.... nah.

A Link in a Great Chain [Repost]

General George S. Patton's Normandy Invasion Speech:

"Be Seated."

"Men, this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out of the war, not wanting to fight, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight - traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble player; the fastest runner; the big league ball players; the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win - all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost, not ever will lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to an American."

"You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Every man is frightened at first in battle. If he says he isn't, he's a goddamn liar. Some men are cowards, yes! But they fight just the same, or get the hell shamed out of them watching men who do fight who are just as scared. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour. For some it takes days. But the real man never lets fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to this country and his innate manhood."

"All through your army career you men have bitched about "This chickenshit drilling." That is all for a purpose. Drilling and discipline must be maintained in any army if for only one reason -- INSTANT OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS AND TO CREATE CONSTANT ALERTNESS. I don't give a damn for a man who is not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready. A man to continue breathing must be alert at all times. If not, sometime a German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit."

"There are 400 neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily all because one man went to sleep on his job -- but they were German graves for we caught the bastard asleep before his officers did. An Army is a team. Lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting, under fire, than they do about fucking. We have the best food, the finest equipment, the best spirit and the best fighting men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor sons-of-bitches we are going up against. By God, I do!"

"My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That's not just bullshit, either. The kind of man I want under me is like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Lugar against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand and busted hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German: All this with a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you."

"All real heroes are not story book combat fighters either. Every man in the army plays a vital part. Every little job is essential. Don't ever let down, thinking your role is unimportant. Every man has a job to do. Every man is a link in the great chain. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells overhead, turned yellow and jumped headlong into the ditch? He could say to himself, "They won't miss me -- just one in thousands." What if every man said that? Where in hell would we be now? No, thank God, Americans don't say that! Every man does his job; every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important to the vast scheme of things. The Ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the Quartermaster to bring up the food and clothes to us -- for where we're going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man in the mess hall, even the one who heats the water to keep us from getting the GI shits has a job to do. Even the chaplain is important, for if we get killed and if he is not there to bury us we'd all go to hell."

"Each man must not only think of himself, but of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this army. They should all be killed off like flies. If not they will go back home after the war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men."

"One of the bravest men I ever saw in the African campaign was the fellow I saw on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were plowing toward Tunis. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at that time. He answered, "Fixing the wire, sir." "Isn't it a little unhealthy right now?," I asked. "Yes sir, but this goddamn wire's got to be fixed." There was a real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time."

"You should have seen those trucks on the road to Gabes. The drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting around them all the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of these men drove over forty consecutive hours. These weren't combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it -- and in a whale of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost. All the links in the chain pulled together and that chain became unbreakable."

"Don't forget, you don't know I'm here. No word of the fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell became of me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamn Germans. Someday I want them to raise up on their hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the goddamn Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again.'"

"We want to get the hell over there. We want to get over there and clear the goddamn thing up. You can't win a war lying down. The quicker we clean up this goddamn mess, the quicker we can take a jaunt against the purple pissing Japs an clean their nest out too, before the Marines get all the goddamn credit."

"Sure, we all want to be home. We want this thing over with. The quickest way to get it over is to get the bastards. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin. When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually, and the hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one. We'll win this war but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans we've got more guts than they have."

"There is one great thing you men will all be able to say when you go home. You may thank God for it. Thank God, that at least, thirty years from now, when you are sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knees, and he asks you what you did in the great war, you won't have to cough and say, 'I shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named George Patton!'"

"That is all."

God Bless the veterans of the Great Crusade launched on this day in Normandy, France in 1944, and the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen that today carry on that same fighting spirit.

This Memorial Day... (Bumped)

Enjoy your vacation, but always, remember them.

Also: The lyrics from Trace Atkins' tribute, Arlington (Video available here).

I never thought that this is where I'd settle down.
I thought I'd die an old man back in my hometown.
They gave me this plot of land,
Me and some other men, for a job well done.

There's a big White House sits on a hill just up the road.
The man inside, he cried the day they brought me home.
They folded up a flag and told my Mom and Dad:
"We're proud of your son."

And I'm proud to be on this peaceful piece of property.
I'm on sacred ground and I'm in the best of company.
I'm thankful for those thankful for the things I've done.
I can rest in peace;
I'm one of the chosen ones:
I made it to Arlington.

I remember Daddy brought me here when I was eight.
We searched all day to find out where my grand-dad lay.
And when we finally found that cross,
He said: "Son, this is what it cost to keep us free."

Now here I am, a thousand stones away from him.
He recognized me on the first day I came in.
And it gave me a chill when he clicked his heels,
And saluted me.

And I'm proud to be on this peaceful piece of property.
I'm on sacred ground and I'm in the best of company.
I'm thankful for those thankful for the things I've done.
I can rest in peace;
I'm one of the chosen ones:
I made it to Arlington.

And everytime I hear twenty-one guns,
I know they brought another hero home to us.

And I'm proud to be on this peaceful piece of property.
I'm on sacred ground and I'm in the best of company.
We're thankful for those thankful for the things we've done.
We can rest in peace;
'Cause we are the chosen ones:
We made it to Arlington.

Yeah, dust to dust,
Don't cry for us:
We made it to Arlington.

Now That You Mention it, Yes, Mine is Bigger Than Yours...

A little Presidential Directive here, a little tug there, and my friend Ward Brewer becomes the first blogger with a military vessel of his very own.

The ship you see is the E-01 Cuitlahuac, formerly and soon again to be the DD 574 John Rogers, the longest-serving of the World War II-era Fletcher-class destroyers.

Ward will restore the ship into a floating museum, or begin pillaging, depending on his mood.

Treacherous Sands

Got any idea how many times the balance of power has shifted in the Middle East over the past 5000 years, or how many empires have risen, rules, and fallen over the region?

See 5,000 years of history in 90 seconds, courtesy of Maps of War:

Veteran's Day With Doolittle's Raiders

Michelle Malkin interviews some the surviving Doolittle Raiders and Hornet crewmen over at Hot Air.

Background on the Raiders here, and here.

A special thanks to these brave veterans, the other 25 million surviving veterans of past wars, and the millions of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines that served before them to to ensure our freedoms.

Day of Denial

Today more than any other in the past five years, the Left continues to reveal how much they despise the essence of America.

They continue to mock the moment when our President found out that a sneak attack broader in scope and scale than Pearl Harbor was under way. They mock him for showing the same shock and dismay we all felt. They mock him for being moved near to tears as the realization set in that thousands of innocent Americans were dead or dying and that he, the most powerful single man on the planet, was powerless to stop it.

They belittle our pain as a nation, as if only those who had direct friends and family die had a right to grieve, feel pain, or remorse, or anger and resolve.

They lash out against those who do remember what happened under that bright blue September sky, and preemptively lash out against those who would remember future attacks before they've even come to pass.

They refer to memorial services as pornography, and seek to belittle every remembrance, every solemn moment, every tear, every voice raised in anger.

Well, not every voice.

They have plenty of time for their rage and anger. Anger that their peace and love and puppies plan for world peace came crashing down along with aircraft aluminum and structural steel and glass and human bodies that day in Manhattan, Washington, and Shanksville.

Five years later, American Democrats have more hate in their hearts for their own President than they do for the terrorists that killed almost 3,000 of their countrymen. They refuse to confront terrorism. Some would rather blame America and the world they think they understand, rather than face up to the fact that the world we all thought we knew was just an illusion. They are in catastrophic psychological denial, and cannot face the fact that "the other" they have spent their lives providing moral equivalence for were the ones who attacked our country.

It is so much easier to blame Bush than face the fact that we were attacked because we are the beacon of freedom for the world, and the greatest threat to radical Islam. It is so much easier to blame Bush, than realize that decades of denial led us to that horrific moment. If they can only blame Bush for that day—and every day since that their worldview has been shown to be vapid, self-serving, and a fraud—then their denial can go on, and "reality-based community" can continue to live in a world that has refuses to learn, to adapt, to change.

The Left refuses to learn from 9/11 and knows no way forward. It is why they grasp so insistently to the past, clinging to what was and what might have been, instead of moving forward to forcefully determine what should be and what must be done to secure our freedoms for the future. It is they that childishly insist for the "Perfect War" theory, stating a belief that any war not fought with perfect foresight and accuracy is wrong, while knowing securely no war has ever met their standard.

They show that they hate the present and don't understand the lessons of the recent past. They strive for stagnation and stasis and blaming ourselves, but they offer no hope for the future.

They blame Americans for radical Islamic plans for world domination. They vilify our troops instead of the terrorists they fight. They attack western governments fighting for freedom instead of eastern governments and the terrorists they sponsor that are fighting for oppression and destruction of our way of life.

The Left offers America and true liberalism a death sentence, seeking to repeat the failed policies of 30 years in denial.

We will not listen to them again.

That, perhaps, is their greatest fear of all.

Five Years After

Five years ago this morning, a mid-air collision nearly took place over my home in New Windsor, New York. I wish it had. One of the planes was American Airlines Flight 11. The other was United Airlines Flight 175.

Pajamas Media provides the old and new media round-up of the day that changed our reality, Five Years After.

Update: That was then, this is now:

Five years on, a psychosis has gripped millions who can't and won't fathom the true nature of the war we are in. For many of them, having been born and raised in an essentially post-Christian West, they can't imagine that anyone might be motivated to kill and die because of something a warlord wrote down centuries ago. They cannot imagine any religion other than the one they believe they have outgrown being violent or causing violence. They cannot imagine anyone fighting for a cause that offers no material gains and therefore cannot be negotiated away. In our essentially materialist West, millions lack the imagination to believe that bin Laden's pining for the return of Andalusia to Muslim rule is in his mind a legitimate reason to wage war on America now. They can imagine their own countrymen being so motivated, though, and I think that's key to understanding their state of mind. They can imagine the Rotary Club member down the street plotting mayhem because he goes to church and votes Republican, but they can't imagine that the Muslim in Karachi is a real, live enemy who is actually plotting an attack.

This lack of imagination has bred the anti-war madness we have now. Rather than accept the reality of an enemy that cannot and therefore will not negotiate away what he believes to be the will of God, and rather than accept that this enemy will understand nothing outside total victory or total defeat, and rather than understand that this enemy's goals include enslaving the entire world in a global caliphate, and rather than accept that this reality necessitates the use of all tools including military might to defend ourselves, millions have embraced an alternate reality. The reality of the enemy outside the West and its motivations being too terrifying and too far beyond their own control, millions now imagine that the enemy in this war is within. The enemy, to them, isn't the turbaned man behind the plot to hijack multiple airplanes and crash them into multiple buildings in America. The real enemy, to these millions, is the man in the Oval Office, and the man or men behind him.

Read the tagline above, folks.

Because liberalism is a persistent vegetative state.

It wasn't chosen lightly,and continues to manifest itself to this day.

Goodbye, Joe

Via CNN:

Photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his immortal image of six World War II servicemen raising an American flag over battle-scarred Iwo Jima, died Sunday. He was 94.

Rosenthal died of natural causes at an assisted living facility in the San Francisco suburb of Novato, said his daughter, Anne Rosenthal.

"He was a good and honest man, he had real integrity," Anne Rosenthal said.

His photo, taken for The Associated Press on Feb. 23, 1945, became the model for the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The memorial, dedicated in 1954 and known officially as the Marine Corps War Memorial, commemorates the Marines who died taking the Pacific island in World War II.

Update: The insipid nature of the anti-war left rears its misshapen head once more, as the malecontents at Sadly No! and their friends at Salon.com's Daou Report see my mention of Joe Rosenthal's passing as a chance to attack both myself and for some odd reason, Rosenthal. To using the passing of an iconic American photographer to attack a relatively obscure blogger betrays a pettiness I personally find repulsive and a bit unsettling, but sadly, par for the course. My response to Sadly No! in the comments of that site are as follows:

So the great “Sadly No!� catch of hypocrisy is what, exactly?

Some have postulated over the years that Joe Rosenthal somehow staged the second flag raising on Iwo Jima, yet not one human soul have ever been able to provide the first shred of proof that the allegations they raised were true, as even your own cited sources concur.

This is in stark contrast to copious evidence that some (I never said nor implied all, as you scurrilously and inaccurately charge) media photographers in Lebanon staged photos, and individual photos by several others were left suspect. No less an authority on photojournalism than David Perlmutter, a man who quite literally “wrote the book� on photojournalism, has come out strongly condemning the actions of these photographers and the media organizations that they represent in Editor & Publisher.

I've only played a small role in exposing some of the photojournalist fraud coming from Lebanon, but I am proud of the work I've done, as is Perlmutter, and at least one major combat photojournalist (a Pulitzer nominee, I may add) who has stated to me privately in e-mail that he is impressed with my ability to catch some of the things I've noticed in staged and biased photojournalism coming from Lebanon.

That you would try to make a comparison between the unproven and mostly discredited charges against Rosenthal that even your own sources cannot support, and the very real and proven charges that have been levied against some Lebanese war photographers, shows a sloppiness in thinking here that quite frankly, I've come to expect.

Not surprisingly, none of the commentors there has a substantive rebuttal.

Update 2:

Via email, from David D. Perlmutter, by permission:

The overwhelming evidence, including the testimony of everyone present at the flag-raisings--both of them--was that the photograph that has become the famous icon was NOT staged. In brief, what happened was that Rosenthal took a series of still pictures of both flag-raisings. At the same time, a movie cameraman recorded the full event. The second flag-raising occurred because the first flag was too small to be seen by Marines and other military personnel throughout the island and at sea. Joe Rosenthal did not ask anyone to raise a flag, did not pose anyone raising a flag, and the second flag would have been raised in same way even if there had been no photographers present. In other words, it was 100 percent NOT a staged photo. The complication occurred because at that time photographers rarely developed their own film in the field. Rosenthal put the role in a can and sent it off for developing. Subsequently, the picture of the second flag-raising, the shot that we now recognize as the great icon, became a sensation. Rosenthal, caught up in the battle, knew nothing about his own success. Weeks later, when told that one of his photographs had become celebrated, he assumed that the questioner referred to another photograph in which the military personnel posed around the flag and talked about it as one he helped set up. Unfortunately, even though the error was corrected very quickly, it has become a data virus in the history of photojournalism. I will add that it is also a very hurtful error, both to the men who raised the flag--some of whom were killed in the battle in the days to follow--and to a sensitive and decent photojournalist. As an added note, as any working Photog can tell you, the photo violates some basic schoolbook rules of photojournalism, so, for example, he would have gotten more faces in “staged� image.

Turtle Eggs and Cannons

John Donovan of Argghhh! and the rest of Ward Brewer's crew are getting a lot of work done on the John Rodgers/Cúitlahuac as they continue to prep the destroyer to take the long trip from Mexico's west coast to Mobile Bay. The Mexican Navy is taking great care of them... perhaps too good of care of them. I'm jealous.

Read the latest posts at Argghhh! here and here to find out why.

Bringing the Rogers Home-Day 1

Ward Brewer and his team from Beauchamp Tower Corporation (Operation Enduring Service web site, blog) have arrived in Mexico City on the first leg of their trip to bring home the DD-574 John Rogers/E-01 Cuitlahuac (photos from NavSource Online), the longest-serving of the World War II-era Fletcher-class destroyers.

They will push on today to Lázaro Cárdenas, a Mexican port city in the state of Michoacán, where the John Rogers is currently berthed.

The blogging community is very lucky to have an exclusive on the repatriation of the Rogers, with milblogger John Donovan reporting in on Argghh!, and his first post form Mexico is already online.

Read it here.

I'll hope to have some additional commentary posted here on Confederate Yankee, and my brother phin will be chiming in as well, which isn't necessarily a good thing. He promised to reveal "deep, dark secrets" about me to Ward and John in exchange for the recipe for the Avocado Ranch dressing they use to lace the fish tacos he got addicted to on his business trips to the southwest.

Whatever the charge, I maintain my innocence, and will remind my dear brother that that particular street runs both ways.

Update: John has another post here, and the first pic.

The Longest Trip Home

Long-time readers of this site know that one of my pet interests is Operation Enduring Service, an effort of not-for-profit Beauchamp Tower Corporation to make the best practical use of retired U.S naval vessels currently facing the cutting torches of scrapyards.

Most of my focus has been on one aspect of OES, the creation of a disaster response fleet I long ago dubbed the "Salvation Navy." Negotiations for that part of the program are currently being worked out at the highest levels of state and federal government, but another part of the program hasn't received as much attention, and that is the restoration of World War II-era warships, beginning with the DD-574 John Rogers, the last of the serving Fletcher-class destroyers.

DD-574 John Rogers served in the Pacific theater of World War II, serving in raids and amphibious landings in places with names like Tarawa, Wake Island, Bougainville, Kwajalein Atoll, and Guam, where Rogers fired more than 3,600 shells to knock out Japanense defenses. Rogers also served of Iwo Jima and the invasion of Okinawa, and in July of 1945, participated in what was the deepest naval penetration of the war. Destroyer Division 25's anti-shipping sweep that came within 1½ miles of the Japanese shoreline. John Rogers steamed into Toyko Bay in September of 1945, having fought in almost every major offensive campaign of the Pacific theater.

John Rogers was decommissioned after the war like many destroyers, and was transferred to Mexico in 1968. The destroyer was renamed the E-01 Cuitlahuac in honor of the Aztec emperor. On July 16, 2002, more than 60 years after being launched, the longest-serving Fletcher was retired by the Mexican Navy.

But that was not to be the end of the story.

On December 7, 2005, 65 years to the day that the Japanese launched an attack on Pearl Harbor plunging America into World War II, CEO Ward Brewer of Beauchamp Tower Corporation signed a transfer agreement to return the ship to American hands.

Tomorrow, Ward Brewer's team from BTC, milblogger John Donovan of Argghhh!, and documentary film crew will fly to Mexico to tow John Rogers from the Mexican Pacific coast to the shipyard in Mobile, Alabama where the last serving Fletcher-class destroyer will be restored for future genrations.

In the coming days, follow the story of the Rogers repatriation at Argghhh!, starting with John's first post, A Series of Fortuitous Events. I'll also have commentary here at Confederate Yankee.

It has been 63 years since the DD-574 was launched on the Texas Gulf Coast, but the John Rogers is finally beginning the longest trip home.

Update: The Operation Enduring Service Weblog is back up and running at a new address: http://www.btconline.us/mt.

"A Link In A Great Chain"

General George S. Patton's Normandy Invasion Speech:

"Be Seated."

"Men, this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out of the war, not wanting to fight, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight - traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble player; the fastest runner; the big league ball players; the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win - all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost, not ever will lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to an American."

"You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Every man is frightened at first in battle. If he says he isn't, he's a goddamn liar. Some men are cowards, yes! But they fight just the same, or get the hell shamed out of them watching men who do fight who are just as scared. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour. For some it takes days. But the real man never lets fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to this country and his innate manhood."

"All through your army career you men have bitched about "This chickenshit drilling." That is all for a purpose. Drilling and discipline must be maintained in any army if for only one reason -- INSTANT OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS AND TO CREATE CONSTANT ALERTNESS. I don't give a damn for a man who is not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready. A man to continue breathing must be alert at all times. If not, sometime a German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit."

"There are 400 neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily all because one man went to sleep on his job -- but they were German graves for we caught the bastard asleep before his officers did. An Army is a team. Lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting, under fire, than they do about fucking. We have the best food, the finest equipment, the best spirit and the best fighting men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor sons-of-bitches we are going up against. By God, I do!"

"My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That's not just bullshit, either. The kind of man I want under me is like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Lugar against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand and busted hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German: All this with a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you."

"All real heroes are not story book combat fighters either. Every man in the army plays a vital part. Every little job is essential. Don't ever let down, thinking your role is unimportant. Every man has a job to do. Every man is a link in the great chain. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells overhead, turned yellow and jumped headlong into the ditch? He could say to himself, "They won't miss me -- just one in thousands." What if every man said that? Where in hell would we be now? No, thank God, Americans don't say that! Every man does his job; every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important to the vast scheme of things. The Ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the Quartermaster to bring up the food and clothes to us -- for where we're going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man in the mess hall, even the one who heats the water to keep us from getting the GI shits has a job to do. Even the chaplain is important, for if we get killed and if he is not there to bury us we'd all go to hell."

"Each man must not only think of himself, but of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this army. They should all be killed off like flies. If not they will go back home after the war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men."

"One of the bravest men I ever saw in the African campaign was the fellow I saw on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were plowing toward Tunis. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at that time. He answered, "Fixing the wire, sir." "Isn't it a little unhealthy right now?," I asked. "Yes sir, but this goddamn wire's got to be fixed." There was a real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time."

"You should have seen those trucks on the road to Gabes. The drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting around them all the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of these men drove over forty consecutive hours. These weren't combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it -- and in a whale of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost. All the links in the chain pulled together and that chain became unbreakable."

"Don't forget, you don't know I'm here. No word of the fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell became of me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamn Germans. Someday I want them to raise up on their hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the goddamn Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again.'"

"We want to get the hell over there. We want to get over there and clear the goddamn thing up. You can't win a war lying down. The quicker we clean up this goddamn mess, the quicker we can take a jaunt against the purple pissing Japs an clean their nest out too, before the Marines get all the goddamn credit."

"Sure, we all want to be home. We want this thing over with. The quickest way to get it over is to get the bastards. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin. When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually, and the hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one. We'll win this war but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans we've got more guts than they have."

"There is one great thing you men will all be able to say when you go home. You may thank God for it. Thank God, that at least, thirty years from now, when you are sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knees, and he asks you what you did in the great war, you won't have to cough and say, 'I shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named George Patton!'"

"That is all."

God Bless the veterans of the Great Crusade launched on this day in Normandy, France in 1944, and the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen that today carry on that same fighting spirit.

Update: BlackFive has far more.

Choices

Aurora, or Batesville?

I turn 35 today. Funerary contributions are appreciated...

Allergic to Heroes

So were the words of U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia as quoted in this CNN article about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That is all that should be said (and all I will quote from this sad article) about the foibles about a man who's legacy we commemorate today.

Sadly, some people are allergic to heroes.

The deeds of a brave and noble man are no longer allowed to exist on their own merits without being provided "context" by those who have provided nothing else with their lives. One can only assume that Steven Spielberg is working on a script now lionizing James Earl Ray.

Pretender Kings will trade upon Dr. King's sacrifice for their personal glory, delivering speeches designed to put the spotlight on them, not the Reverend Doctor and his message. Let's remember Dr. King for the good he did and what he accomplished, not for how others would use his memory for their purposes.

More About Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The King Center
The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute
Time Magazine 100 article
Wikipedia entry

A Hero Comes Home

DD-574 USS John Rodgers, the most-decorated surviving Fletcher-class destroyer of World War II in the Pacific, is coming home.

More on wikipedia.

Thirteen Folds

Our church was honored this past weekend when three American soldiers presented our congregation with a flag in recognition of the small acts we have performed for our military at home and aboard. As they presented the flag, the sergeant leading the detail explained the significance of each fold.

Via US History.org:

1. The first fold of our flag is a symbol of life.
2. The second fold is a symbol of our belief in the eternal life.
3. The third fold is made in honor and remembrance of the veteran departing our ranks who gave a portion of life for the defense of our country to attain a peace throughout the world.
   
4. The fourth fold represents our weaker nature, for as American citizens trusting in God, it is to Him we turn in times of peace as well as in times of war for His divine guidance.
5. The fifth fold is a tribute to our country, for in the words of Stephen Decatur, "Our country, in dealing with other countries,
   may she always be right; but it is still our country, right or wrong."
6. The sixth fold is for where our hearts lie. It is with our heart that we pledge llegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it tands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
7. The seventh fold is a tribute to our Armed Forces, for it is through the Armed Forces that we protect our country and our flag against all her enemies, whether they be found within or without the boundaries of our republic.
8. The eighth fold is a tribute to the one who entered in to the valley of the shadow of death, that we might see the light of day, and to honor mother, for whom it flies on Mother's Day.
9. The ninth fold is a tribute to womanhood; for it has been through their faith, love, loyalty and devotion that the character of the men and women who have made this country great have been molded.
10. The tenth fold is a tribute to father, for he, too, has given his sons and daughters for the defense of our country since they were first born.
11. The eleventh fold, in the eyes of a Hebrew citizen, represents the lower portion of the seal of King David and King Solomon, and glorifies, in their eyes, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
12. The twelfth fold, in the eyes of a Christian citizen,
    represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies, in their eyes, God the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost.
13. When the flag is completely folded, the stars are uppermost, reminding us of our national motto, "In God we Trust."

A sincere thanks to all of you who have served our nation's military.

Your sacrifices are not forgotten.

One More Stop to Make

Good luck and Godspeed on your final journey, Mrs. Parks.

Rosa Parks, American Hero, dead at 92.

Nine Eleven Zero Five

From September 11 News:

You are looking at what some people believe is a miracle.

Two days after the disaster, a construction worker found several perfectly formed crosses planted upright in a pit in the rubble of the heavily damaged 6 World Trade Center.

The large, cross-shaped metal beams just happened to fall that way when one of the towers collapsed. An FBI chaplain who has spent days at ground zero says he has not seen anything like it on the vast site.

As word of the find has spread at ground zero, exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed rescue workers have been flocking to the site to pray and meditate.

"People have a very emotional reaction when they see it," says the Rev. Carl Bassett, an FBI chaplain. "They are amazed to see something like that in all the disarray. There's no symmetry to anything down there, except those crosses."

God be with those who died on September 11, 2001. God be with their families and friends.

Note: Incredible as it may seem, there are forces on the far left that seek to erase the memory of what was lost that day.

The Far Left has attempted ot hijack the Ground Zero Memorial in lower Manhattan and turn it into a "Blame America First" monument. Don't let them Got to Take Back the Memorial and sign the petition.

Don't let leftists desecrate the memory of "The Flight That Fought Back." Go to Michelle Malkin's to see how a liberal L.A. architect is trying to turn the Flight 93 memorial into a tribute to the terrorists.

Update: John in Carolina finds a touching story of friendship worth dying for in the South Tower.

Cindy Sheehan or Gandhi?

"It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home."

So who said this, Cindy Sheehan or Mahatma Gandhi.

Hard to tell isn't it?

In 1938, we didn't yet know men like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden.

In 2005 the "anti-war" movement has no such excuse.

60 Years After the Whirlwind

On August 6, 1945, Col. Paul W. Tibbets of the 509th Composite Group took off from Tinian Island hours before sunrise and piloted his B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay towards Japan. At 8:15 a.m., Mocksville, North Carolina native Major Thomas W. Ferebee pulled a lever and watched the 8,900-pound "Little Boy" fall away towards Hiroshima's Aioi Bridge. 43 seconds later, the world officially entered the nuclear age with a boiling, blinding white flash.

Three-score years have passed since that fateful morning, and the veil of time allows revisionists, apologists, and activists to portray the Japanese people as innocent victims of horrible weapons they didn't deserve, and indeed, many individuals were innocent. Japan, however, was reaping what it had sown in Nanking, Bataan, and course, Pearl Harbor.

While our valued allies today, the military society that dominated Japan sixty years ago was more akin to today's Islamic fundamentalists than most would comfortably admit. Fanatical Japanese soldiers were expected to fight to the death, as were all able-bodied Japanese civilians of any age or sex, many only armed with as little as sharpened sticks.

The planners of the invasion of Japan, code-named Operation Downfall, had constructed a two-pronged assault on the Japanese home islands. The opening assault—Operation Olympic—on the southernmost island of Kyushu was expected to generate 250,000 American casualties just in establishing a foothold in the Japanese mainland. The 790,000 Japanese defenders of Kyushu were expected to die, to the last man.

Operation Coronet, the assault on the main Island of Honshu and the Tokyo Plain, was expected to generate one million American casualties by the fall of 1946. The national slogan was "One Hundred Million Will Die for the Emperor and Nation," and every indication was that many Japanese planned to do just that, as 28 million Japanese had become part of the National Volunteer Combat force, armed with everything from obsolete firearms to bow and arrows, swords and spears.

Tens of millions of millions would have died in a Japanese jihad that would have left shell-shocked American soldiers guarding a shattered landscape, and a savaged nation that might have never recovered.

Millions dead, or 200,000 dead?

Major Ferebee never lost a night of sleep for pulling the lever that dropped "Little Boy" from the belly of the Enola Gay. He shouldn't have.

Update: He really shouldn't have. 1996 Nobel Peace Prize finalist R.J. Rummel calls the American decision to use atomic bombs on Japan "democide" and claims it was mass murder worthy of a war crimes trial.

I responded in his comments:

Dr. Rummel, I posit that you start with a false hypothesis: can you categorically state that all democide—which you define vaguely as “murder by government�—is a crime?

Homicide is discouraged in most situations, and yet, there are legally and morally acceptable times when it is implemented in civil societies. The same can be said for suicide, and for your concept of democide.

The Japanese people—not just the military, but the civilian culture that generated that military—were fanatical in a way we most commonly associate now with Islamofascist suicide bombers. From the well-known kamikaze pilots of the air to civilians equipped with primitive blackpowder satchel charges or even swords and spears, the Japanese people were not civilians in the sense we westerners commonly use. They were valid targets, and were expected by our leadership to provide armed opposition to the death.

You further misstate a truth when you make the claim that bombing the “civilians� of Hiroshima, Tokyo, etc were in violation of the Geneva Conventions. That is wrong on many levels, the first being that the Fourth Geneva Convention that covers the treatment of civilians was not signed until August 12, 1949, almost four years after the Japanese surrendered.

Even if the Fourth Convention has been signed before the war instead of after it, the expected use and training of Japanese “civilians� in attacks against American military units would have likely legally classified them as unlawful combatants according to this exact same Convention, just as the Taliban are today.

According to the Geneva Conventions, lawful combats satisfy four criteria: "(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; [and] (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war."

The Japanese “National Volunteer Combat Force� of 28 million “civilians did not satisfy even one of these four criteria. These “civilians� were expected to fight to the death or commit suicide rather than surrender, as tens of thousands of their countrymen, military and civilian, had done on islands across the Pacific, including civilian men, women, and children.

The People's Handbook of Resistance Combat was distributed by the hundreds of thousands in Japan, and sought to teach Japanese men, women, and children to fight with spears against American soldiers with machine guns. They were preparing for a self-induced genocide for their emperor's honor.

The use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and later Nagasaki, were not war crimes, nor were they examples of genocide, nor were they examples of terrorism, nor were they examples of murder.

It was war, a most horrible war against a fanatical enemy that did not honor the concept of “civilians.� This something you seem determined not to understand in your headlong rush to issue condemnation.

Assaulting the Dead

An American hero died today.

William Westmoreland died in Charleston, SC, at the age of 91. His life was extraordinary by any measure. He was an Eagle Scout who graduated at the top of his class from West Point in 1936, and earned the respect of his soldiers fighting legendary German Filed Marshall Erwin Rommel in North Africa during World War II. He was a colonel by 30, and became a general during the Korean War.

He had the distinct honor of being the superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point from 1960-64, where he will soon be laid to rest.

After West Point, General Westmoreland commanded troops in Vietnam during the controversial years of 1964-1968, became Army Chief of Staff in 1968, and retired in 1972.

He became active in veterans' advocacy, and he visited veterans' groups in all 50 states. He led thousands of his comrades-in-arms in a veterans' march in 1982 to dedicate the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, DC, calling it, "one of the most emotional and proudest experiences of my life."

This is how he should be remembered, as a soldier who dedicated his life to his country and to his men.

This is how the Washington Post would remember him:

One comment, lifted out of context, spoken out of passion, to tear down an entire career and reduce a man's dedication to his country to partisan politics.

I'd try to explain to the Post that this is not the way to honor someone who dedicated his life to preserving their freedom to say what they want, but that would involve explaining the concepts of duty, honor and loyalty, which would only cause confusion in the newsroom.

Update: The L.A. Times, perhaps predictably, proclaims an equally hate-filled view of General Westmoreland's life with the headline,"A Commander Caught in the Mire of Vietnam" and a lead paragraph that reads:

Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the World War II hero who was later vilified for his leadership of the United States' failed war in Vietnam, died Monday night in Charleston, S.C. He was 91.

Classy.

The unanimous Declaration

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

I've wondered at times if our forefathers knew the greatness we would achieve and trials and tribulations our nation would undergo in the years since they signed our Declaration of Independence. In our brief history our country has defended itself from all attackers emerging as a stronger more united nation.

There are and always have been those who feel the country should be in heading in a different direction. Only through healthy debate are we able to learn and grow and see all sides of the issues at hand. These different perspectives have allowed our great nation to grow and prosper as the world changes around us and as we change the world. However there are times when it is necessary for us to put our differences aside and take care of the task at hand.

By putting our differences aside we have liberated countries.
By putting our differences aside we have delivered entire continents from the grasp of evil.
By putting our differences aside we have become and shall remain a super power for the world to respect and rely on.

This Fourth of July as you spend time with your friends and family please take a couple of minutes to reflect and say thanks to the sacrifices others have made for our way of life. Take the time to thank someone in our armed forces for protecting our way of life and for helping to spread democracy world wide. Take the time to reflect on what it truly means to be an American.

May all of you have a happy and safe Fourth of July.

Cross posted at phin's blog

D-Day Plus 61 Years

Order of the Day June 6, 1944

"Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

"Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

"But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

"I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!

"Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
Supreme Allied Commander
Allied Expeditionary Force

61 years ago today, 156,000 allied troops from the United States, Grean Britain, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Poland invaded Hitler's "Fortess Europe."

Approximately 10,000 allied soldiers became casualties on D-Day, with 2,500 killed. Between 4,000-9,000 Germans soldiers also became casualties on D-Day.

All told, the Battle of Normandy which began June 6, 1944 led to over 425,000 Allied and German troops killed, wounded, or missing.

Less than one year later, VE-Day--Victory In Europe-- was declared on May 9, 1945.

Please take a moment to remember the brave soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians on both sides that partipated in the liberation of Europe.

Links:
National D-Day Memorial (US)
D-Day Museum (UK)
National D-Day Museum Foundation (US)
American Experience| D-Day (US)
D-Day, Normandy, and Beyond
Normandy, 1944
Operation Overlord: The Invasion of Fortress Europe

Felt Sponges

“Grandpa, I Love You To Death... But I've Gots Bills To Pay� Was anyone else more than slightly creeped out by the Felt family's enthusiasm to cash in on their doddering 91-year-old grandfather's mysterious legacy as Deep Throat before he dies?

...Felt's daughter Joan, who persuaded her 91-year-old father to go public as "Deep Throat," lamented that the Post's Bob Woodward would get all the credit -- and profit--if Felt went to the grave with his secret.

"We could make at least enough money to pay some bills like the debt I've run up for the kids' education," she told Felt, according to the article. "Let's do it for the family."

Yes, you have to love a family that pimps out their pre-mortem grandpa.They might as well be humming some of Stephen Lynch's Grandfather

A stroke would be nice
Disease would be cool
I'll scatter his ashes
In my new swimming pool
I'll party with Hef
I'll dine with the Queen
So what say we unplug that machine?

Oh Grandfather, die
Before the fiscal year
Oh Grandfather, I
Wish Kevorkian were here
Oh Grandfather, die
Just take your final bow
Oh Grandfather, die
Family hates you anyhow...

Such behavior should be hardly surprising. Felt simply taught his kids to take the advice he gave to Bob Woodward as Deep Throat.

"Follow the money".

Footnotes

An excerpt of John Dean's comments regarding W. Mark Felt, who has recently come forward as the famed informant known for 33 years only as “Deep Throat.�

“I never thought he was in the loop to have the information," John Dean, counsel in Nixon's White House and the government's top informant in the Watergate investigation, told The Associated Press. "How in the world could Felt have done it alone?"

Dean said he couldn't see how Felt, then in charge of the FBI's day-to-day operations, could have had time to rendezvous with reporters in parking garages and leave clandestine messages to arrange meetings. Perhaps FBI agents helped him, Dean suggested.

I don't much care about whether Deep Throat was only W. Mark Felt, or a composite character Woodward and Bernstein made up of several sources. As I mentioned briefly in Ace's comments last night, a 33-year old story doesn't suddenly become newsworthy simply because a character's name changed. It would hardly matter if Lee Harvey Oswald's real name turned out to be Chippy the Wonder Squirrel; the historical record remains the same, only the footnotes change.

What really matters is that a free press (with help) was able to help rein in criminal behavior at the highest levels of American government. What matters is that in this nation, reporters don't have to fear a knock at the door in the middle of the night if they publish a story the government doesn't like. What matters is that Deep Throat, Woodward, and Bernstein were able to help depose a corrupt government using the truth, the law, and the press instead of a bloody coup. That is the legacy of Watergate.

All the rest is footnotes.

Larks and Poppies

In Flanders Fields Lt. Col. John McCrae, 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

Remember.

Give Them Equality

Via CNN:

...In a nearly 15-hourlong committee hearing, the most contentious issue was the role of women in combat.

The language would put into law a Pentagon policy from 1994 that prohibits female troops in all four service branches from serving in units below brigade level whose primary mission is direct ground combat.

"Many Americans feel that women in combat or combat support positions is not a bridge we want to cross at this point," said Rep. John McHugh, R-New York, who sponsored the amendment.

It also allows the Pentagon to further exclude women from units in other instances, while requiring defense officials to notify Congress when opening up positions to women. The amendment replaced narrower language in the bill that applied only to the Army and banned women from some combat support positions.

The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps currently operate under a 10-year-old policy that prohibits women from "direct combat on the ground" but allows the services discretion to open some jobs to women in combat as needed.

"We're not taking away a single prerogative that the services now have," McHugh said.

Democrats opposed the amendment, saying it would tie the hands of commanders who need flexibility during wartime. They accused Republicans of rushing through legislation without knowing the consequences or getting input from the military.

"We are changing the dynamic of what has been the policy of this country for the last 10 years," said Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Arkansas.

Added Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the committee's leading Democrat: "There seems to be a solution in search of a problem."

The Democrats are right in opposing this bill, but more than likely for the wrong reasons.

Democrats rightly highlight that this could limit military flexibility, but I'd opine that their real reason for opposition to this bill is the inability of some of the American public to handle female losses in a combat zone. Republicans want women out of the combat zone for exactly that reason, as Rep. McHugh notes. It's about PR, not competency.

Nobody wants women coming home in body bags (or men, for that matter), but Democrats and Republicans alike are simply using this bill as a weapon in political infighting. Cynical anti-war Democrats want women in combat, because their deaths (and assured overblown media hype surrounding the same) can be used as political pressure against the war effort.

Republicans in Congress know this, and, being just as cynical as their foes across the aisle, seek to limit enemy contact so that women in the military so that can't be used as political pawns against them. The American public doesn't like the thought of women being wounded or killed in combat. Perhaps more importantly, we saw with the Jessica Lynch incident that the American public cannot stomach the depraved treatment that women face if captured alive.

Gang rape, sexual torture... these are some of the horrors that people do not want to directly mention by name, but flow through the dark recesses of our minds when we think of women in combat--and it is a risk. Yet while we prefer not to think of it, many of these same dangers are also faced by male American combat forces.

For how many years have we been told that rape is about power and domination more than sex? Women are perceived as being more at risk for this kind of treatment, and with just cause, but the fact remains that all of our soldiers know that this is a risk if they are captured, and yet they still lace up their boots, armor up, and do their duty.

And never, ever forget, women can fight.

For example, Raven 42.

On a Sunday afternoon in March, a convoy of 30 civilian tractor trailers ran into an ambush by an estimated 40-50 heavily-armed insurgents at Salman Pak, Iraq. Three armored HMMWVs of MPs from the Kentucky National Guard that had been shadowing the convoy, charged into the kill zone, upset the ambush, and turned the tables on the Iraqi forces despite intense return fire.

Seven Americans (three of them wounded) killed a total of 24 insurgents and captured 7 others. The ambush was completely routed; the vast majority of the attackers wiped out. Of the 7 members of Raven 42 who walked away, two are Caucasian Women, the rest men-one is Mexican-American, the medic is African-American, and the other two are Caucasian.

One female E5 claimed four killed terrorists killed directly with aimed shots, and the other sergeant claimed she killed another with an aimed M-203 grenade. Who wants to be the one to tell her that she did, "all right... for a girl." Not I.

And it isn't as if American women in combat are a brand-new phenomenon. They've been there, from the beginning. And women have ably served well in other countries, in other wars, both in support roles and on the front lines.

Large numbers of women served in the Soviet Army during World War II--nearly one million-- to great effect. Most did not see front line combat duty, but many did. They flew bombers, performed as snipers, and fought a guerilla war behind German lines. They served, and they served well.

But this isn't about other countries. This is about America.

American women want to serve. Some have died. More will die, whether we want them to, or not. If we've learned anything, it is that there is no frontline in modern warfare, and the enemy can strike a brigade-level base with mortar and rocket fire, as easily as they can a support convoy, or an infantry combat patrol.

My advice to Congress? Let them fight. America's female soldiers earned that right, even if you don't have the stomach for it.

A Comment on the "Religion of Peace"

When I hat-tipped Austin Bay's article yesterday as the inspiration for my Michael Isikoff/Lyndie England comparison, I did so after writing a comment that later I deleted before publication.

That comment was in response to comments such as these that Austin compiled from Muslim comments around the web:

“If the report proved true, it would become important that an apology be
issued and addressed to Muslims all over the world to avoid increasing the
hatred between nations and followers of religious faiths as well,� the Shoura
said in a statement.

The Shoura said it considered the incident an attack on Muslims all
over the world. “The council considers it as an attack on the feelings of
Muslims and their sanctity… and a violation of international law and human
customs,� said the statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency…

*****

In Afghanistan, a group of clerics threatened to call for a holy war
against the United States in three days unless it handed over military
interrogators who are reported to have desecrated the Qur'an.

*****

“The American soldiers are known for disrespect to other religions. They do
not take care of the sanctity of other religions,� Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the
Pakistani chief of a coalition of radical Islamic groups, said Sunday.

So Muslim leaders are worried about religious tolerance and disrespect?

Quite frankly, let them go to hell.

Islam is responsible for some of the largest human slaughters in human history, precisely for reasons of religious intolerance. Islam is the only religion that has proudly named a mountain range after one of their more serious crimes against humanity, and is responsible for more religious-based genocide that any other single religion that has ever existed on Planet Earth, genocide that continues to this very second in conflicts around this planet.

Perhaps I might have a bit more sympathy for a religion that didn't codify lying as a religious duty and often boasts about a 1,400 year track record of murdering those that had different ideas. Islam may be a lot of things and it may have some peaceful adherents, but if there is one thing Islam that can be said with absolute authority about Islam, it is that Islam is not now, nor has it ever been, a "religion of peace."

To Hell and Back... Again

Perhaps the most memorable scene in Audie Murphy's autobiographical To Hell and Back was when Murphy jumped up onto the back of a burning tank destroyer to single-handedly beat back a German assault using the .50-caliber M-2 machine gun mounted on top, earning the Congressional Medal of Honor, this nation's highest military award for valor.

Two years ago today, in Baghdad, Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company, 11th Engineer Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division, would almost exactly mirror Murphy's achievement. The parallels are staggering, the heroism and love of their fellow soldiers unquestioned.

Sgt. Smith was leading three dozen soldiers when they came under attack by an estimated 100 of the elite Iraqi Republican Guard armed with RPGs, machine guns, and mortars.

From Sgt. Smith's official Medal of Honor citation:

While an engineer squad began to clear debris in the courtyard, one of the guards saw 10-15 enemy soldiers with small arms, 60mm mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades (RPG). These were the lead elements of an organized company-sized force making a deliberate attack on the flank of Task Force 2-7. Sgt. 1st Class Smith came to the position and identified 25-50 more soldiers moving into prepared fighting positions. Sgt. 1st Class Smith instructed a squad leader to get a nearby Bradley Fighting Vehicle for support. While waiting for the Bradley, Sgt. 1st Class Smith had members of 2nd platoon retrieve AT-4 weapons and form a skirmish line outside the gate. By this time, the number of enemy identified rose to 100 soldiers, now a confirmed company-sized attack. Three of B Company's M113A3 armored personnel carriers (APC) oriented .50-cal. machineguns toward the opening in the wall and the surrounding guard towers, now occupied by enemy soldiers.

Sgt. 1st Class Smith's actions to organize a defense against the deliberate attack were not only effective, but inspired the B Company, 11th Engineer Battalion Soldiers. He then began to lead by example. As the Bradley arrived on site and moved through the hole in the wall toward the gate, Sgt. 1st Class Smith ran to the gate wall and threw a fragmentation grenade at the enemy. He then took two Soldiers forward to join the guards and directed their engagement of the enemy with small arms. The enemy continued to fire rifles, RPGs, and 60mm mortars at the Soldiers on the street and within the courtyard. Enemy soldiers began moving along the buildings on the north side of the clearing to get into position to climb into the towers. Sgt. 1st Class Smith called for an APC to move forward to provide additional fire support. Sgt. 1st Class Smith then fired an AT-4 at the enemy while directing his fire team assembled near the front line of the engagement area.

Running low on ammunition and having taken RPG hits, the Bradley withdrew to reload. The lead APC in the area received a direct hit from a mortar, wounding the three occupants. The enemy attack was at its strongest point and every action counted. Not only were the wounded Soldiers threatened but also more than 100 Soldiers from B Company, the Task Force Aid Station, and the Mortar Platoon were at risk.

Sgt. 1st Class Smith ordered one of his Soldiers to back the damaged APC back into the courtyard after the wounded men had been evacuated. Knowing the APC 's .50-Cal. machinegun was the largest weapon between the enemy and the friendly position, Sgt. 1st Class Smith immediately assumed the track commander's position behind the weapon, and told a soldier who accompanied him to "feed me ammunition whenever you hear the gun get quiet." Sgt. 1st Class Smith fired on the advancing enemy from the unprotected position atop the APC and expended at least three boxes of ammunition before being mortally wounded by enemy fire. The enemy attack was defeated. Sgt. 1st Class Smith's actions saved the lives of at least 100 Soldiers, caused the failure of a deliberate enemy attack hours after 1st Brigade seized the Baghdad Airport, and resulted in an estimated 20-50 enemy soldiers killed. His actions inspired his platoon, his Company, the 11th Engineer Battalion and Task Force 2-7 Infantry.

Sgt. Smith and Second Lieutenant Audie L. Murphy both mounted heavily-damaged, lightly armored vehicles to man exposed .50-caliber machine guns. They did so to repel enemy assaults that threatened to overrun their positions at great personal risk and with tremendous valor to save the lives of their soldiers.

Sgt. Smith's Congressional Medal of Honor was just the third Medal of Honor awarded since the Vietnam war, and the first of the Iraqi War.

Not just American Heros
In Al Amarah, Iraq on May 1, and June 11 , 2004, Private Johnson Beharry, driver of a Warrior IFV ( infantry fighting vehicle similar to the U.S. Bradley) in the British Army, won Great Britain's highest award for valor, the Victoria Cross. It was the first Victoria Cross awarded since the Falklands conflict, and the first awarded to a living recipient since 1965.

Note: Unfortunately, not everyone respects Congressional Medal of Honor recipients.

Washington's Thanksgiving Proclaimation

Thanks to PBS for their site Discovering George Washington for providing the text of this speech.

Proclaimation of National Thanksgiving

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Go: Washington

Let's hope the atheists and agnostics among us among us don't get too upset that this is indeed a religious holiday, a national day of thanks to a higher power.

From Confederate Yankee and Family: Y'all have a safe and happy Thanksgiving, and God Bless.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)