memorial day

On July 29, 1967 my uncle ADJ1 Toney Barnett, USN, died along with 133 other sailors in the tragic flight deck fire on USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin.

My thoughts on Memorial Day turn to the prayer we sang each Sunday in the chapel at Annapolis:

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

This Memorial Day I'd like to tell you about a great group of Americans.

Later this summer, I will be hosting a commemorative ceremony to honor the 30th Infantry Division, a forerunner to the North Carolina’s National Guard 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team. Currently, more than 4,000 members of the 30th HBCT are deployed in their second tour of duty during the war in Iraq.

The 30th Infantry Division was a National Guard unit formed in Oct. 1917 and made up of troops from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. The division got their nickname, Old Hickory, from President Andrew Jackson, who’d led troops from Tennessee and the Carolinas during the War of 1812.

Let us Remember…

Former vice president Dick Cheney speaks with forked tongue when he says that his and the George W. Bush administration’s “Program” was legal. The fact is, the “Program” of cruel and unusual punishment violated the Constitution, US statutes, treaty prohibitions against torture, and other international laws. I suspect that Dick Cheney would have been offended, if, as a captive of war, (if he had bothered to acquaint himself with war) had been stripped naked. If he had been forced to engage in sexual acts, which he found both humiliating and blasphemous, I think he would have objected. One thinks of the Marquis de Sade. One thinks of sadism.

But he might not have lived long enough to tell the tale, as an estimated 100 plus detainees in US custody were tortured to death.

I tried to think of something pithy to say about Memorial Day and after about the tenth draft, I decided to let the troops speak for themselves. These are letters to my charity Books For Soldiers.

Check them after the flip

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


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This was posted at ScruHoo all day, but I wanted to share it here.

Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane & My Left Wing


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No journalist has ever captured the reality of war like Ernest Taylor Pyle, who lived — and died — among the soldiers he covered.
From his column Brave Men:

Even after a winter of living with wholesale death and vile destruction, it is only spasmodically that I seem capable of realizing how real and how awful this war is. My emotions seem dead and crusty when presented with the tangibles of war. I find I can look on rows of fresh graves without a lump in my throat. Somehow I can look on mutilated bodies without flinching or feeling deeply.

It is only when I sit alone away from it all, or lie at night in my bedroll recreating with closed eyes what I have seen, thinking and thinking and thinking, that at last the enormity of all these newly dead strikes like a living nightmare.