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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pompsander who wrote (762542)	5/29/2007 6:15:01 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Clowns & Harlots: The War Dead by Christopher Corbett When I was a lad, Memorial Day was a time of solemn remembrance of the war dead. Old people called it Decoration Day. It makes me feel like Methuselah writing that, but in the 1950s and 1960s that was still true. When I was in high school I read “General Logan’s Orders” at a Memorial Day service to a modest crowd on a village green in Maine next to a statue commemorating Civil War veterans. A classmate read the Gettysburg Address. “General Logan’s Orders” were the instructions of General John A. Logan, Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, who more or less founded Memorial Day in 1868 to honor those who died in the Civil War. Probably few remember General Logan or his orders now. I think the American Legion was involved in the proceedings I participated in. There were flags. Boy Scouts and Gold Star Mothers and various VFW posts festooned the burial grounds with little flags on Memorial Day. General Logan’s orders made that very clear. The holiday was “designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.” The Civil War did not seem so far off then. The last veteran died when I was in grade school. It’s still a young country when you realize that it was possible to be alive at the same time as someone who fought at Bull Run. Remember the Civil War? “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.” There was a parade on Memorial Day when I was young. There were parades then and people marched in parades. We were still planning on winning the war in Vietnam that year. A few years ago, I was in Washington, near the Mall, when I realized that I was next to the Vietnam War Memorial. I walked down across the lawn to see it. There was a directory and I looked up the names of people I went to high school with who had died in Vietnam. I found Rodney Delisle’s name. I knew his sister in high school. He was one year ahead of me in school and he died July 6, 1969 at Quang Tri. He was 19. I knew a lot of people who went to Vietnam and some came home dead. “Be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box.” That was Country Joe and the Fish and “I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag.” If you remember that, you remember Vietnam. That was not “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.” One of my early memories of those easy years after World War II was that there were a lot of people around who had fought in the war, real combat veterans. Oddly, no one talked much about the war or what they did in the war. The biggest saber-rattler in my town, Mr. American Legion, was never in combat. He spent “The Big One,” as they called it down at the bar at the post home, counting blankets at Fort Drum. That’s pretty much the way it works. He drove around town in a big Buick with flags on it and vanity plates. He wore his American Legion cap a lot. His photograph appeared frequently in the local newspaper. He was ever vigilant for signs of communism. He often spoke at public events on the dangers of Moscow. He presented deserving youths with savings bonds. Even as small children we knew that he was ridiculous. Now everyone who talks most loudly about the war never saw a war. Never smelled Yankee powder, as the old Rebels used to say. That’s the world we are in. Hardly anyone serves in the military, if you look at Washington. Neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney nor Donald Rumsfeld ever smelled Yankee powder. And few in Congress have, either. Who among the windbags braying on TV ever saw combat? Who among them has had their boy come home in a box? What would old General Logan make of the armchair warriors and talk-show saber-rattlers who are so quick to doom the sons and daughters of the working class to die in the Fertile Crescent?