Pete McCloskey on Memorial Day
Pete McCloskey on Memorial Day
The following is the final draft of the Memorial Day speech that Pete McCloskey is to give at the Golden Gate National Cemetery today. McCloskey was a company commander and silver star winner from the Korean War. He was also the first (and possibly only) major Republican to challenge Nixon on the conduct of the (Vietnam) war.
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Memorial Day, 2011
For over 145 years, we have set aside a day at the end of May to honor our nation's war dead. It is a sacred day. We pause for a brief moment to look out over the white crosses, and honor those young men who lie beneath them. War is the work of young men, not old. It has been thus since the greatest and most tragic of our wars, the Civil War. Most of those buried here served when one of the nation's values was that it was a duty to serve the country.
150 years ago this spring, our nation broke apart. Eleven states seceded from the Union, believing that the Constitution, as they read it, entitled them to do so. Young men died on both sides, one believing that it was right to preserve the Union, the other believing with equal sincerity that the North had no right to change the way of life and values of those in the South.
Of a new nation of some 32 million people, over 700,000 died in combat, or in prison camps. No war since has matched that sacrifice.
By World War II , our population had quadrupled to over 130 million, but we suffered only slightly over 400,000 deaths. In Korea, some 36,000 died, and in Viet Nam, with our population now over 160 million, 56,000 died. Most of those buried here died in those three wars.
But since, in a series of small conflicts, in Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, less than 12,000 have died. Since 1971, we have had an entirely volunteer Army. In nation of over 300,000 million people, less than one per cent of our families have sons or daughters at risk.
Significantly, during the eight years of the Viet Nam War authorized by our Congress in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, no sons of Members of Congress or Presidents fought there.
And while we honor the dead, perhaps this Memorial Day, we should stop and consider the hope expressed by Abraham Lincoln at the Gettysburg battlefield that “these honored dead shall not have died in vain.” We might well stop and consider the disconnect mentioned by Secretary of Defense Gates the other day about the world's most powerful and prosperous nation fighting its wars with only a fraction of its citizenry bearing the burden.
Perhaps we should reconsider that ethic of a national duty to serve shared by the young men who lie underneath these crosses…….perhaps some sort of national service where the children of the privileged and wealthy also serve, where the perils of combat are shared by young men and women of means and education.
And today, we should perhaps honor the most the few young soldiers, largely from rural or impoverished areas, who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, or been maimed for life by the most terrible of modern guerrilla weapons, the improvised explosive device or I.E.D.
For we ourselves make war with terror-inducing weapons. No longer do we fight with rifles, grenades and bayonets, as did most of the young men lying here in these beautiful rolling hills.
We now fight with weapons of “shock and awe,” the blockbuster bomb, or guided missile delivered by an unmanned drone directed by people in air-conditioned buildings here in the United States. The so-called “collateral damage” when these weapons suddenly land without warning in a village in the Muslim World virtually guarantees the continuing hostility of their inhabitants and sympathizers around the world.
I can recall only one instance where this war by massive air power had a favorable result, that being the overwhelming bombardment in Serbia which effectively halted a cruel genocide, and led to the trial of the murderous generals before the World Court at The Hague.
Of late, we have turned away from the concept of world peace through world law for which we fought in World War II. We have abandoned the principles of Nuremberg and Geneva which we led the world to adopt.
There could be no better time than Memorial Day to spend a few moments in quiet consideration of where and when we loose the dogs of war. The time draws near when our enemies will possess that most terrible of weapons we introduced to end World War II.
Last week, our Congress gave thunderous approval to the idea of going to war against Iran to prevent their acquisition of atomic weapons. At the same time the Congress gave similar applause to the Prime Minister of a country which has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but is known to possess over l00 nuclear warheads.
A famous Marine General and former National Security Advisor has suggested that the evolving aspirations of people in North Africa and the Mideast gives us the opportunity to reach out to those people and presumably aid in overthrowing their leaders. In the past we have overthrown the elected leaders of countries with whom we disagreed, Mossadeq in Iran and Allende in Chile, example. The end results have not been fortuitous.
When and how will this all end? I wonder if the dead we honor today were alive, might they not echo of one of this continent's most famous warriors, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, who, with his young men having mostly died in battle, and with Canada in sight, surrendered his forces, saying “I will fight no more, forever.”
We will of course fight, but I think it well also to consider the advice Abraham Lincoln gave us at Gettysburg: “It is for us the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”
150 years ago, that cause was the preservation of the Union. Today, it may be the preservation of the concept of World Peace Through World Law, as it was in 1945.
