The opening of the memorial honoring what is now officially known as 'the Greatest Generation' was, fittingly enough, timed to coincided with this year's Memorial Day. Those who fought World War Two aren't known as the Greatest Generation just because they endured the challenges of war, although that by itself would qualify its members for the title. They came home from war and set about the even-greater task of rebuilding the peace. In the process, they changed the world.
It is hard to imagine the hardships endured by the men who landed on the Normandy beacheads. The late Stephen Ambrose and WWII historian (and veteran) helped design a computer game called Medal of Honor that simulates the journey from the landing craft to the seawall at Normandy from a first-person perspective. (Ambrose oversaw the historical accuracy of the simulation)
Playing it, one wonders how ANY of the flesh-and-blood heroes the game simulates ever actually made it to the seawall alive.
It strains the limits of the imagination to contemplate what it must have been like to be one of the men climbing up the sheer faces of the cliffs at Normandy as enemy forces shot them down from above.
And having survived, imagine the prospect of facing perhaps YEARS more of the same, liberating the whole of Europe, one town at a time.
The Greatest Generation was the generation that, having endured all that they endured at the hands of a determined, sadistic and vicious enemy, left their bitterness on the battlefield and built a world in which most of their children lived out their lives having never heard a shot fired in anger.
The Greatest Generation is also so-titled because of the tenderness with which it is treated by the media. It was the Greatest Generation that built and controlled the great media empires of their time. The veterans who had seen war understood both the cost of war and the price of peace.
They didn't come home to saturate the pubic with stories of American atrocities against the enemy. They didn't defame the men who fought and died for freedom, or those who survived to enjoy its benefits.
America's warriors were portrayed by John Wayne and Randolph Scott, and they weren't cowards or baby killers. To this generation, they seem corny and almost like caricatures, but to their audiences of the time, they were believable because they reflected the character and nature of the people that they attracted to the theaters.
There were honors and parades and plenty of commentators lamenting the passing of the Greatest Generation (somebody calculated it at 1,057 a day) and there were news cameras all over the place to capture the event -- before broadcasting snippets of it in between stories of military misconduct and accusations of war crimes being leveled against US troops fighting in Iraq.
As America honors -- and deservedly so -- the generation that made America the greatest nation in the history of the world, an ROTC recruit complained to the New York Post Friday, "I've been called a baby killer," by her fellow students at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University.
The future military officer told the paper, "I was thinking, I took an oath to defend their right to call me that."
The peace and safety that was won by the Greatest Generation is now being defended by troops no less committed to America than were their grandparents, but it seems unlikely they'll get any parades.
Since none of the other efforts to discredit the administration have borne fruit, the media has decided to attack the current Commander in Chief through his troops.
Thanks to constant pounding, most people not only believe Saddam didn't have stockpiles of WMD, but that the administration knew that in advance and lied about it as part of some conspiracy with oil companies, blah, blah. The sarin gas artillery shell used in a recent IED attack was dismissed out of hand after it was determined to be of pre-1991 manufacture. It was old, there was only one, and so on. . .
In a new effort to discredit the Bush administration, the Left is taking aim at the military forces in harm's way in Iraq. Abu Ghraib became an opportunity to get at the administration by exploiting the vulnerability the scandal exposed our troops to. The fact that, in the process, it increases the military vulnerability is an INTENDED consequence. It will result in greater military casualties, which makes the administration even more vulnerable, and so on.
Right now, as we honor the sacrifices made by our fighting men in prior wars, there are convoys of reporters scouring Iraq and Afghanistan, looking for former detainees to tell their stories of abuse and torture at American hands.
America is a nation at war. We are in a battle for our national lives, against a world filled with enemies. Even our alleged friends are suspicious of our motives, prepared to accept any story that confirms their pet suspicions, to the point that even when confronted with the evidence, still condemn us for removing Saddam Hussein and his terror machine from power.
And most of the anti-American propaganda abroad is being spread by the liberal media and American politicians so hungry for power that America's national interests are secondary to partisan propaganda. And the idiots that support them.
The media's Memorial Day honors those who protected America's freedom in past wars. As we pray for America, let us remember the generation of kids that are protecting us right NOW.
May God bless them, and keep them safe.
