Reflection on War

Patrick Buchanan's column today focuses on the impact of military decisions. SEE HERE The column set the theme for my own personal reflection on a life at war. I was a fetus at Pearl Harbor. My dad was on U.S.S. Detroit when the Japanese carrier aircraft arrived bombing and strafing and torpedoing the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl on December 7, 1941. My mom was evacuated to the mainland along with all the other dependents in anticipation of a possible Japanese follow up attack on the islands.

I was born some seven months later on June 4, 1942 the day of the battle of Midway. My early life was determined by my dad's duty stations. The Korean war followed the end of WWII and the years of the cold war contained many events that had their own tensions. The Berlin blockade, the Soviet invasion of Hungary and our betrayal of the Hungarian freedom fighters. One of the young people who escaped from Hungary ended up being a high school classmate of mine. The Cuban revolution which put a communist dictatorship in play 90 miles off our coast. I remember the day the Cuban flags joined with American flags dotted Constitution Ave. in D.C. I was a high school student and caught the street car every day. We heralded Fidel Castro as a liberator only to see him killing his enemies and showing his true colors.

I remember the Bay of Pigs invasion, the planning for which had begun because of Castro's decision. I remember the Soviet missiles in Cuba which John Kennedy got removed. I remember the beginnings of the Viet Nam war, a war to protect a Democracy from the invasion of the Northern Communists. I remember the beginnings of the Green Berets because I was in the Army when it began. I remember the betrayal of the president of Viet Nam by the United States and our complicity in his assassination. I still wonder if that might have had something to do with President Kennedy's assassination which came so soon afterwards. I remember the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which was an excuse to increase our commitment. I remember the betrayal of our forces by the government and the student activists inspired by Communist clandestine activities in the United States. I remember the phony peace talks and the betrayal of the Vietnamese people by the congress of the United States.

I remember the betrayal of the Shah of Iran by the Jimmy Carter administration. I remember the consequences as the revolutionary jihadist Islamic radicals in Iran exported their ideology in the form of terrorist attacks at the Olympics, throughout the Middle East, even against cruise ships and airlines, and our marines, and our naval ships, and then a failed bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. I remember that we didn't connect the dots.

I remember the day when a fellow professor said to me, "A plane flew into the World Trade Center." I said something, "That shouldn't have happened." I was thinking that it must have been some idiot flying a light plane. Hours of watching the news coverage followed as the events played out at the World Trade Center on that fateful September day in 2001.

I remember the intervening years and the efforts to increase our security and the military's efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. I also remember thebetrayals and the traitors. The traitors are those who send our young men and women into combat situations that the leaders have no intention of winning. I am tired of war. I am more tired of traitors in our midst. My life is a tissue of wars, wars fought to help people which were undermined by evil men with smiling faces, men like Frank Church and Jimmy Carter who smile as they betray others. I am tired of war. The sacrifices of our young men and women deserves to be honored by victory. So finally I am tired of politicians who are men of no particular conviction and no particular honor and whose only interests are their own particular power. They smile, they lie, and all my friends in all the years go down to Sheol betrayed. We need to return integrity to government and to the schools.