Restoring Memoriam to Memorial Day

[NYT] This Memorial Day, as we head to the lake and the beach, grill and drink, shop and save, lay out in the sun or seek shady places, we must remain cognizant that the holiday didn’t begin as a day of celebration or commerce but one of solemnity and, indeed, memoriam.

 

As David W. Blight, a professor of history and the director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yalewrote in The New York Times in 2011, during the final year of the Civil War, a racetrack was converted to an outdoor prison for Union captives; “at least 257 died of disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand.”

 

Blight wrote: “After the Confederate evacuation of Charleston, black workmen went to the site, reburied the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery” and the freed people, “in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged a parade of 10,000 on the track.”

 

He continued: “After the dedication, the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches and watched soldiers drill.”

 

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Open New York Times Link For Full Article:

http://nyti.ms/1JPp6cl

Michelle Howard, Navy, First Ever Four Star Female Admiral, who helped saved Captain Richard Phillips from Somali Pirate in 2009

 

She also helped save Captain Phillips

American military history was made Tuesday when Michelle Howard became the first woman in the U.S. Navy to be promoted to a four-star admiral. Howard was also named Vice Chief of Naval Operations.

 

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said during a ceremony that Howard’s promotion to the Navy’s second-highest position is a “representation of how far we have come, and how far she has helped bring us.” But Mabus added that “there is no news here today,” because according to him, the best officer got the job.

 

The 54-year-old Howard was also the first black woman to command a ship and the first to become a three-star Naval officer.

 

Howard is best known for leading Task Force 151, which saved merchant marine Captain Richard Phillips when he was captured by Somali pirates in April 2009.

 

The newly appointed four-star admiral was humble at the ceremony. “I’m just very proud of our service,” Howard said. [Time]

 

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http://time.com/2946571/navy-female-admiral/?xid=newsletter-brief

 

The President was right!

Soldiers don’t risk their lives only for those Americans who deserve it; they do it for the nation as a whole.

 

The president and vice president, the only government officials elected directly by the entire nation, have a special responsibility to nurture this national solidarity. So, of course, President Obama had to take all measures necessary to secure the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Of course, he had to do all he could do to not forsake an American citizen.

 

It doesn’t matter if Bergdahl had deserted his post or not. It doesn’t matter if he is a confused young man who said insulting and shameful things about his country and his Army. The debt we owe to fellow Americans is not based on individual merit. It is based on citizenship, and loyalty to the national community we all share.

 

National solidarity is especially important for the national defense. Men and women serve in the armed forces for a variety of reasons, but one of them is the awareness that it is an extraordinary privilege to be an American, that it is a debt that needs to be repaid with service.

 

Soldiers in combat not only protect their buddies, they show amazing devotion to anyone in the uniform, without asking about state or ethnicity. This is the cohesion that makes armies effective.

 

These commitments, so crucial, are based on deep fraternal sentiments that have to be nurtured with action. They are based on the notion that we are members of one national community. We will not abandon each other; we will protect one another; heroic measures will be taken to leave no one behind. Even if it is just a lifeless body that we are retrieving, it is important to repatriate all Americans.

 

It is not dispositive either that the deal to release Bergdahl may put others at risk. The five prisoners released from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in a swap for Bergdahl seem like terrible men who could do harm. But their release may have been imminent anyway. And the loss of national fraternity that would result if we start abandoning Americans in the field would be a greater and more long lasting harm.

 

Israel once traded 1,027 Palestinian prisoners to get back one of their own. Another time they traded 1,150 prisoners to get back three of their own. They did it because of a deep awareness that national cohesion is essential to national survival. They did it because Israeli parents share a common emotional bond; the imprisonment of one of their children touches them all. In polarized countries, especially, you have to take care of your own. If you don’t, the corrosive effects will be cumulative.

 

 It doesn’t matter either that the United States government ended up dealing with terrorists. In the first place, the Taliban is not a terrorist organization the way Al Qaeda is. America has always tried to reach a negotiated arrangement with the Taliban, and this agreement may be a piece of that. In the second place, this is the dirty world we live in. Sometimes national leaders are called upon to take the sins of the situation upon themselves for the good of the country, to deal with the hateful and compromise with the loathsome. That’s their form of sacrifice and service. [David Brooks – New York Times]

 

 

http://nyti.ms/1kFjZj7

 

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Bonnie and Clyde Internecine Polices Implemented by Bush, Wrecked America but the GOP continues to beat the Benghazi and Obamacare Drum!

President Obama has brought us a long way from the dark days of 2008, but the GOP and their right-wing followers with Fox News as their mouth piece, castigates Obama every day because the damage done to America by Bush and Cheney wiping out 235 years of goodwill and good fortune, hasn’t all been restored in the five years Obama has been President.

 

George W. Bush [Raymond Hamilton], Clyde Barrow [Dick Cheney] and Bonnie Parker [Condoleezza Rice] – “Bonnie and Clyde” 2001 – 2008

 

Dick Cheney used the Iraq War to help himself to No-Bid Contracts to enhance his Wealth through his Halliburton Company, making billions at the cost of American lives; Tax Payers Money and yet, this morally bankrupt Vulture, has the nerve to assign blame to Hillary Clinton and President Obama. In the final analysis, Iraq war was a “cash-cow” for pernicious Cheney and former President George W. Bush, bears the responsibility for all of this “evil,” because after all, he was President for eight [8] years.

 

Bush’s Policies Vis a Vis Bonnie and Clyde “killed” 6,781 American Soldiers; wounded in excess of 55,000 and left 75,000 with severe Mental Problems, at a financial cost to America’s Tax Payers of 4.1 Trillion Dollars and counting. The Republican Trolls should at least include “facts” rather than phantasmagoric rationales and internecine narcissism, in their 24/7, brainwashed, uninformed and ignorant “rant.”  

 

Bonnie [Condoleezza Rice] and Clyde Barrow [Dick Cheney] Polices that were implemented by former President George W. Bush, [Raymond Hamilton] has been the worst in the “entire” History of America. For Fox News, Bonnie, Clyde, Hamilton and the outrageous Republicans that are still harping on Benghazi, even though we have had 13 Hearings and a Criminal Investigation by former Republican Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Retired Republican Admiral Michael Mullen, whose “written” report found no malfeasance, is self evident of the moral bankruptcy by Repugnant Republican Reprobates, as they continue to use the tragic deaths of the four Americans, to raise money in their attempt to win the November 2014 Mid-Term Elections and the White House in 2016.

 

 

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