A D-Day Tribute

 

70 years ago this morning thousands of 19 year old kids were being killed on the beaches of Normandy. Two of my mother’s brothers were there along with my wife’s grandfather, who died about a month later.

I read books about it, watch the grainy newsreels, listen to the dwindling group of survivors tell their stories, and yet my mind cannot fathom such a thing. Even Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg’s epic retelling, with its powerful, almost unwatchable opening twenty minutes fails to fully expose the horror that those terrified young men faced on that gray morning. Yet, face it they did.

I try to imagine what would happen today if our government were required to plan and execute something as grand and intricately detailed as D-Day. In late 1943 in a practice run for D-Day called Exercise Tiger, over 900 men were killed either by friendly fire or submarine attacks of a ship which had wandered off course. Of course, back then the debacle wasn’t leaked to the press so it was largely kept from the public. Today, with social media and ubiquitous cell phone cameras, that would be impossible. I can’t imagine any modern President being able to overcome such a public relations disaster.

 

 

Luckily for me, my Dad was in the South Pacific on this day in 1944. Had his vision been a bit better, he could have been one of the boys storming the beaches that day, and depending upon which unit he was in, his chances of survival might not have been so good. Of course, had he died that day, this blog would be just a bit more vapid and uninspired than usual.

I’m not one to go overboard on this “greatest generation” business. I mean, my Dad’s generation did accomplish an awful lot and didn’t whine about their lot in life nearly as much as subsequent, far less accomplished generations have. But they weren’t perfect. Have a listen to your average group of octogenarians talk about race for thirty minutes and you’ll be disabused of any romantic notions of their moral superiority. The truth is that every generation is made up of rogues and princes. Every generation has helped build the world; every generation has done their fair share of terrible things to help destroy it. You take the good with the bad, because there’s plenty of both in us all.

Still, when I watch those jumpy black and white newsreels and I look into the eyes of those men, I can’t help but be overcome with profound gratitude that they answered the bell so often and so well all those years ago. Those guys (and girls) rid the world of the Nazi’s, and for that they have earned an eternal debt of gratitude from all who have come after.

A Reader Responds To My Bergdahl Take

An old friend of mine from college and prodigious reader of this space, Wexford Edsel Beauregard IV or “Web” for short, was none too happy with yesterday’s blog about the Sgt. Bergdahl business. Web works at the Defense Department in Washington and fired off a rather pithy e-mail upbraiding me for accusing the administration of making a terrible deal. “There’s just so much about the whole thing that you don’t understand,” he explained. The following is an excerpt.

“Doug, you’re a perfect example of what’s wrong with the world today; people with blogs spouting off the first thing that pops into their uninformed little heads when they don’t know what they’re talking about. This was a fragile negotiation, years in the making, with layers of nuanced shades of gray and I for one feel that the administration did an outstanding job of turning a very weak hand into a winning outcome.”

Well, after that opening paragraph, I had no choice but to call him and hash it out. But first, a little background on Web. Thirty years ago when we graduated from UofR, I went into business and Web took an entry level job at the DOD. Web comes from a long line of civil servants, so this was his dream job. He quickly made quite a name for himself, rising through the ranks in record shattering speed. In three short years he rose from his entry level Hack position to Hack First Class, and then blazed from Assistant Flunky to Senior Flunky, then from Pointless Functionary to Executive Functionary. Thirty years later Web is Director of the Office of Unnecessary Paper Shuffling, so his resume speaks for itself.

Me: Ok Web, where did I go wrong? I mean, on the face of it, it looks like a terrible trade.

Web: Listen Doug, you don’t actually think that the only thing we got out of this deal was Bergdahl do you?

Me: Well, yeah, that’s what I read in the paper.

Web: I happen to know the rest of the story. But you have to swear to keep this on the QT.

Me: (lying through my teeth)…Sure!

Web: Yes, we exchanged Sgt. Bergdahl for five Taliban fighters. But that was just window dressing. We secured one concession after another out of those clueless Taliban negotiators!

Me: I’m intrigued, what??

Web: For starters, they agreed to provide our guys with lamb kebobs and fresh naan every Tuesday and Thursday night.

Me: Wait…what?

Web: Not only that, but they also caved on our demand for access to unlimited goat cheese.

Me: Are you telling me that our soldiers will be eating food provided by the Taliban???

Web: Not just food Doug. We secured huge, and I mean HUGE discounts on some of the finest Opium in the world. Nothing but the best for our troops, that’s our motto here at the DOD.

Me: I can’t believe this.

Web: This is how things get done in the real world Doug. Sure, some of the guys in Bergdahl’s unit will be sore that the deserter gets treated like a hero and all, but when the vast majority of our guys are high as kites, chowing down on lamb kebobs, they are going to love this deal, believe me.

So, there you have it. I stand corrected. See, I knew there was something else going on!

The Bergdahl Trade

Some old Greek philosopher said it best, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” Combine this insight with the “fog of war,” and one gets the sense that in all things related to warfare, hard facts can be elusive. I say all this to protect myself against the real possibility that future information might render the following observation moot.

However, if we just handed over 5 hardened, murdering terrorists for an America-hating deserter in Afghanistan, then the American government just made the worst trade since the Red Sox exchanged Babe Ruth to the Yankees for $100,000.

I read the story and am astonished at the abject incompetence of this White House. What on earth is the upside to this exchange? We have freed a POW who deserves to be court marshaled for 5 unrepentant terrorists? To what end? So, the President can have a photo-op in the Rose Garden with the parents? There has got to be something else going on here, because I refuse to believe that my government allowed themselves to be hosed this badly. Perhaps there’s a “player-to-be-named-later” that we don’t know about. Maybe Sgt. Bergdahl has been on some top-secret CIA operation whereby he has cleverly made himself look like a traitorous scumbag when in fact, he has been gathering crucial intelligence for the past five years. Maybe there is something we don’t know that will one day explain this manifestly lop-sided trade. You know, the fog of war and all.

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows that I’m no fan of our involvement in Afghanistan or any of our other misadventures abroad. If it were up to me we wouldn’t be there at all. But, for heaven’s sake, we have now set ourselves up for more and more trouble with this ridiculous exchange. Now, all of this country’s enemies know that the most valuable commodity in the world is an American serviceman. Hold him long enough, and you can get just about anything you want from our feckless government.

Shameful.

About that choir special...

Yesterday was “Senior Sunday” at my church, a day where we honor our graduates. Towards the beginning of the service, the estimable Sherri Matthews directed a choir of teenagers in a rousing version of a spiritual called “Ain’t Judgin’ No Man.” Under Sherri’s expert direction, the piece was performed beautifully, but labored under the heavy weight of irony. If only it were true.

     “Ain’t judgin’ no man for the life he leads, ain’t judgin’ no man.

     Ain’t judgin’ no man for the life he leads, ain’t judgin’ no man.

    Ain’t passin’ no judgment on my fellow man,

   I’m leavin’ that in the Good Lord’s hands.

 Ain’t judgin’ no man for the life he leads, ain’t judgin’ no man."

In point of fact, this is exactly what we do. Making judgments about our fellow man is actually what we do best at church, especially we Baptists. If being judgmental were an Olympic event, we would be like the Kenyan’s in the marathon…total domination!

Show up at church wearing shorts and a t-shirt, we’ll judge you. Vote for the “wrong” political candidate, we’ll judge you. Have a beer with your pizza, we’ll judge you. Endure a soul-crushing divorce, we’ll judge you. Send your kids to public school, we’ll judge you. Home school your kids, we’ll judge you. Get too excited during worship, we’ll judge you. Refuse to stand up when everyone else is getting excited during worship, we’ll judge you. Show up at church while gay, we’ll judge you. Let your cell phone go off during the service and I’ll judge you!

See, church is the place we come every Sunday to judge how we’re measuring up, not to some dusty old 2000 year old standard, but to each other. For those of us who are doing well, it can be a very satisfying experience. But for the poor slob who is dealing with a laundry list of personal and professional failings, it can feel like a visit to the principal’s office, only there are 800 principals.

But maybe the real problem is with the writer’s of this song. What idiot goes around all day not making judgments about his fellow man? I do it all the time. It’s called profiling and is a crucial part of the survival instinct. If I encounter a burly, tattoo-covered man in a wife-beater at 2 in the morning outside of an ABC store, I’m going to assume that he isn’t about to ask me my opinion on the symbolism of a Shakespearian sonnet. From his dress, body art and build, not to mention the bottle-shaped paper bag in his hand, I will judge him to be dangerous and get back in my car. Why was I at the ABC store at 2 in the morning? So, I wouldn’t run into anyone from church, of course.

But, wouldn’t the world be a better place if the words to this song were true? How cool would it be if we actually did leave all the judging in the Good Lord’s hands?

Softer Phrases

Having just spent the better part of four days in a place known as the “Holy City,” I feel especially obliged to attend church today.

Charleston’s skyline is dotted by a series of magnificent steeples. In the early days of the city, the construction of some of these churches was funded with a tax on liquor. Judging by the size, intricate detail and expense of these spires, perhaps “Holy City” is a bit generous. Our tour guide, a lifelong resident put it best. “Down here, we like to clean things up and make them sound better, so we change names of things a lot. For example, graveyards become, “Church gardens.”  But, I’ve got to hand it to the early preachers of Charleston who had the good business sense to schedule their Sunday morning services according to the tide charts, so the rich rice planters would arrive in town at the precise time that services were about to begin! Today, you can arrange to have your tithes and offerings automatically deducted from your checking account. That’s progress, I’m told.

I’m not so sure. Accosting a bunch of insanely rich oligarchs as they disembark from their ships at high tide on Sunday in front of God and Man seems like a pretty cool deal to me. From the looks of it in Charleston today, it worked out pretty well for the churches. Some might call it religious extortion, but Charlestonians might refer to it in a more gentle way with one of their softer phrases, “spiritual persuasion.”

So, off to church I go, confident that no public humiliation awaits me. Of course, I’m no rich rice planter and certainly no oligarch, and besides, the tide is out.