Memorial Day 2005

Memorial Day brings out the best and the worst among those who live in this country. Some get it, and some don't.

Consider this (1): At the laying of the wreath ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the protestant chaplain concluded by thanking Jesus for showing us via the military dead that love comes only from self-sacrifice. He didn't get it. He was just reiterating religious propaganda that he uses to make his own life meaningful. Sadly, very many Americans who "believe" the same thing also do not get it. Parroting is not a sign of smarts.

People uncritically pick up this notion of self-sacrifice as some moral ideal very early in life and never reexamine it or try to validate it. Thus, when military members die, these people prattle on about the glory of their sacrifice, and words to the equivalent.

To say that the deaths of our military members represent some moral ideal of self-sacrifice is morally repugnant at best. Self-sacrifice is what Muslims do. That is what Islam teaches them is the ideal, and that ideal keeps Islam in business. Suicide bombers apply this credo in order to get to the non-existent "paradise." Dying for the cause, however, is self-sacrifice in name only because the martyr still hopes to achieve something selfish--his entry into paradise with all its mythical rewards.

What makes sacrifice so repugnant as well as so absolutely wrong is its very nature. To sacrifice means to give up something of higher value for something of lower value. That's nuts, and no really ever does it, although billions have died in its name.

Our military members do not die or suffer terrible, life-changing injuries out of sacrifice, and it is time to stop insulting them parroting such drivel.

Consider this (2): Most people remember the story of Pat Tillman. Pat was an Arizona Cardinal player in the National Football League, and he was terribly good. After 11 September 2001, Pat checked his own values and enlisted in the U. S. Army Rangers. He gave up a stellar career, inevitable fame leading quite possibly to the Hall of Fame, and millions of dollars in contracts. The last figure we heard was at least $9 million.

Why did he do this? Isn't this just a perfect example of self-sacrifice?

No, it is a perfect example of why our men and women serve in our military and endure maiming and death. They do not seek it, as self-sacrifice requires. They, like Pat, put their own morally superior, selfish values first. They devote themselves to their deepest values: Of being American. Few can articulate all that being an American means to them, but they carry it with them always. They know the price required to sustain freedom. They see themselves as instruments of those values, and they place those values so high in their own hierarchies that they risk maiming and death to achieve those values.

This is why we honor them. They are valuers.

A clip on the Fox News Channel this morning had Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, USMC (Retired) speaking to us with a field of grave crosses as background. He said, "They gave their todays for your tomorrows." This redeems the awful name Christianity and Judaism have given to selfishness, self-concern, and anything to do with self.

For us, Americans, life is important, and living free reigns supreme. For Muslims, dying and death are their values. We live freely and live for our progeny and our values to endure. Muslims exercise self-sacrifice to die to achieve their values, values they never achieve because they are not achievable.

We honor our military dead for their values, not their sacrifice. They do not give us our freedom as some wrongly say, but they help us preserve it in ways only they can. We can thank them by preserving and protecting those values and furthering them against all our enemies, foreign and domestic.

Pat Tillman died from friendly fire, and that was tragic. The Army coverup was horribly wrong. None of these take away from the fact that Pat Tillman stands as an arch-typical soldier, a person of values.

And he is far from alone. This excerpt from Jeff Jacoby's article for Memorial Day in Jewish World Review tells of an America-valuing Marine:

Jewish World Review May 30, 2005 / 21 Iyar, 5765, Death of a Marine, By Jeff Jacoby

Sergeant Rafael Peralta of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines was killed in action on Nov. 15 during Operation Dawn, the epic battle to retake the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah.

What follows is chiefly based on an account by Marine Lance Corporal T.J. Kaemmerer, a combat correspondent who took part in the operation that cost Peralta his life. Reports also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Marine Corps Times, The San Diego Union Tribune, and on ABC News.

On the day he died, Rafael Peralta was 25 years old, a Mexican immigrant from San Diego who had enlisted in the Marines as soon as he became a legal resident. He earned his citizenship while on active duty and re-upped in 2004. He was a Marine to the core, so meticulous that when Alpha Company was training in Kuwait, he would send his camouflage uniform out to be pressed.

He was no less passionate about his adopted country: His bedroom wall was adorned with a picture of his boot camp graduation and replicas of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. ''Be proud of being an American," he wrote to his kid brother Ricardo, 14. ''Our father came to this country and became a citizen because it was the right place for our family to be." It was the first letter he ever wrote to Ricardo — and the last. It arrived in San Diego the day after he died.

The Marines of the 1/3 were on the front lines in Fallujah, purging the city of terrorists in house-to-house combat. As a platoon scout, Peralta could have stayed back in relative safety. Instead, as was often the case, he volunteered to join the assault team.

On the morning of Nov. 15, one week into the battle for Fallujah, his squad had cleared three houses without incident. They approached a fourth, kicking in two locked doors simultaneously and entering both front rooms. They found them empty. Another closed door led to an adjoining room. As the other Marines spread out, wrote Kaemmerer, ''Peralta, rifle in hand, tested the handle." It wasn't locked. He threw open the door, preparing to rush in — and three terrorists with AK-47s opened fire. He was shot multiple times in the chest and face. As he fell, severely wounded, he managed to wrench himself out of the doorway to give his fellow Marines a clear line of fire.

The gunfire was deafening. To the sound of the terrorists' AK-47s was added the din of the Marines' M16 rifles and Squad Automatic Weapon, a machine gun. The battle was raging, with Peralta down and bleeding heavily and the other Marines firing at the enemy in the back room, when, in Kaemmerer's words, ''a yellow, foreign-made, oval-shaped grenade bounced into the room, rolling to a stop close to Peralta's nearly lifeless body."

As the other Marines tried to flee, Peralta reached for the grenade and tucked it into his gut. Seconds later, it exploded with such force that when his remains were
returned to his family for burial, they were able to identify him only by the tattoo on his shoulder. His five comrades-in-arms, shielded from the worst of the blast by Peralta's last act as a Marine, survived.

''Right now, people are really nice and everything," Peralta's 12-year-old sister Karen told a reporter 10 days after her brother's death. ''But I know that when it comes to later on, they are going to forget him. They're going to forget about him."

No, Karen. The Marines, always faithful, do not forget their heroes. And neither does the grateful nation that pauses to honor them this week — the nation Rafael Peralta loved so deeply, and for which he gave his last full measure of devotion.

To the men and women of America's armed forces past, present, and future: We cannot honor you enough.