CSotD: Veterans’ Day in the Committee Room
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I admire the fact that Canadians truly celebrate the poppy on Veterans Day, or, as they call it, Remembrance Day. Our day of remembrance is Memorial Day, so shifting the poppy there makes sense, but it’s a symbol of World War I, from a poem by a Canadian doctor at the front.
I read somewhere that the poppies came up in profusion because the ground had been so torn up, but having only read that once, I file it under “maybe.”
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
John McCrae did not outlive the war, but my favorite memoirist, Vera Brittain, did, and wrote of her experiences as a nurse near the front in her classic Testament of Youth. She survived, but her brother, his best friend and her lover were all killed, and she memorialized her fellow veterans in the wake of the war with The Lament of the Demobilized.
‘Four years,’ some say consolingly. ‘Oh well,
What’s that ? You’re young. And then it must have been
A very fine experience for you !’And they forget
How others stayed behind and just got on –
Got on the better since we were away.
And we came home and found
They had achieved, and men revered their names,
But never mentioned ours;And no-one talked heroics now, and we
Must just go back and start again once more.
‘You threw four years into the melting-pot –
Did you indeed !’ these others cry. ‘Oh well,
The more fool you!’
And we’re beginning to agree with them.
Another Canadian, Dave Whamond, marks the day with a poppy, and somewhat echoes Elly Patterson’s wish that children there would not know war, though Canadians served, and died, in Afghanistan despite Trump’s insulting claims, and have worn the blue berets of the UN in troublespots throughout the world.
Danziger, a Vietnam vet, marks the day with a Mauldinesque bit of dogface realism, and I suppose people are betting on the deployment, which sure feels like betting on other people’s deaths.
Then, too, who knows? The Pentagon is keeping a lid on reports of deaths and injuries to US personnel and the only photos I’ve seen of the massive destruction of our bases in the region were taken by soldiers and their families, since the press has largely been kept away.
This may be the first war we’ve had from which photographers were barred since Matthew Brady took pictures of Civil War battlefields.
Matt marks the day with an indirect remark about politicians who show up for the memorials but seem to forget to show up for the battles. Britain hasn’t had a veteran living at 10 Downing Street since Sunny Jim Callaghan (1976-79), who served in the Royal Navy in WWII, though I don’t know that any of them took the coward’s way out and falsified their medical records to avoid service.
I’m not in agreement with Murphy, having had veterans in my family for several generations, including my grandfather, father, uncle, son and, currently, grandson-in-law, plus having close personal ties to the Air Force. He’s right that service involves sacrifice, and, to reference Mauldin again, a certain amount of grousing is part of the game. But even my good friends and classmates who endured PTSD, homelessness, addiction and difficult recoveries, haven’t seemed sorry to have served, only to have suffered.
I was at a reunion a dozen years ago, talking to a couple who had been high school sweethearts. She was remembering how long they’d owned their house down the street from my mother, and came up with a date, saying, “That was when you got home from Vietnam.” I said I hadn’t known he’d been there, and that “I missed that party,” to which he replied, “You didn’t miss a thing,” and we continued talking about the house.
On the other hand, I worked with two guys in 1972, a Green Beret and a mud Marine, who had great stories to tell, but that was in the years before Vietnam vets learned that nobody else understands, and started keeping their stories to themselves.
It all makes me very sorry to serve up this
Juxtaposition of the Day
This morning’s newsfeed was a real bring-down, as the Republicans exercised their fading majority in the House to protect Pete Hegseth from the impeachment that had seemed such a sure thing 24 hours earlier.
Joyce Vance has a terrific interview with fellow-prosecutor Dan Goldman (D-NY), who led the first Trump impeachment and is very well positioned to explain the legislative legerdemain used to squelch Hegseth’s impeachment and the overall prospects for reviving it.
As he says, even if it had gone forward, getting the necessary two-thirds vote for conviction was unlikely. Still, the process of laying it all out in front of the voters who launched last week’s blue wave would have been valuable.
Brown riffs on a quote from Dr. Strangelove, “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!” the difference being that Stanley Kubrick was writing a bitterly hilarious satire and Hegseth really was sincerely hiding behind Dear Leader, with whom he has cooperated to shift our nation from seeking Defense to waging War.
Trump couldn’t have stopped the House impeachment process with an executive order, but his influence over the party was enough to spark the delay, which effectively leaves the Secretary of Greasy Kid Stuff in place until January, when the tides shift in both houses.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
However, if the uproar becomes an embarrassing inconvenience, Hegseth may discover what it means to no longer be a favored player in a bloodsport. Dear Leader doesn’t like to back down, but he also doesn’t like to look foolish, and while he is impervious to the feelings of the “suckers” and “losers” buried under white crosses in France and under the intended shadow of his arch, if Hegseth’s presence begins to make him look bad, No-Tab Pete may find himself on the outside looking in.
Keep the faith, and trust in karma.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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