Semper Fi
Owen West has a special op-ed up over at the Opinion Journal. It really is a must read.
Last month I was running the Central Park loop when a runner wearing a U.S. Marine Corps shirt approached. I alerted the two boys in the jog stroller and my eldest, who met this world with a father in Iraq, shouted, "Semper fi!"
The man saw the emblem on my visor and said, "You hear about Doug Zembiec?" If most Americans have six degrees of separation, Marines have no more than two. I nodded and stopped my watch. But all he managed to say was, "That one hurt." Then he plunged down the hill toward 72nd Street, cutting his own path against the flow.
I tried to make sense of it. Not the encounter but the sheer madness of the surroundings. Runners were chattering about school applications and subprime predictions. Yet most of them told pollsters that Iraq was the single largest anxiety in their lives. Like the majority of the nation, they were exhausted by a war in which they had no role. And they wanted out.
It was 65 degrees in August in Manhattan, about 65 degrees cooler than the temperature in Doug Zembiec's helmet as he approached a Baghdad target house in 90 pounds of equipment. He and his team wanted to be remembered for how they lived and how they helped others live. Inside was a group that cared only how it died.
West is writing about a corrosive divide that is getting worse. The attempt by MoveOn.org to slime General David Petraeus is a symptom of that divide. But there are other ones as well. Please read it. There is a real problem brewing if we do not - all of us - listen to what West is trying to get across.
By Sylvia, Wednesday, 12 September , 2007 @ 10:02 pm
Thanks for the link. I think I’ll go see if the lady who organized the Christmas card drive is doing it again this year. It’s a drop in the bucket, but the bucket is IMPORTANT.