Pearl Harbor

Veteran broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw has written and spoken eloquently over the years about a long-ago time when young Americans rose up against a dire threat to our way of life.

That threat presented itself in a tangible and tragic way 70 years ago this very day in a faraway place called the Hawaiian Islands. That was when waves of warplanes from Japan swooped in over Pearl Harbor on a quiet Sunday morning. They bombed, torpedoed and strafed U.S. warships and airplanes in the harbor and at nearby airfields. They killed 2,402 Americans and thrust the United States into history’s bloodiest war.

And in the process, those Japanese pilots changed the world.

Seven decades ago, the “Greatest Generation” was born out of the fire that erupted in that tropical paradise. Brokaw wrote about that generation of Americans, who went to war, defeated the tyrants in multiple theaters of conflict, came home and built the greatest economic power in the history of the world.

These once-young warriors are now old. Many of them are frail. The total national mobilization that occurred as a result of what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt described rightly as a “dastardly attack” sent more than 16 million young Americans into military service.

The ranks of those 16 million Americans have shrunk to around 2 million. More than 1,000 of them are dying each day. Is there any way at all to thank them adequately for the service they performed in defense of liberty? Of course not.

We are left, then, just to say thanks to those brave warriors.

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto spoke presciently about the fateful attack on Pearl Harbor. “I shall run wild considerably for the first six months or a year but I have utterly no confidence for the second and third years,” the admiral wrote. The Japanese momentum in the Pacific lasted all of six months, until the Battle of Midway turned the tide against the aggressors.

Our nation’s warriors would achieve victory in the late summer of 1945. And those of us today who are the direct descendants of the Greatest Generation owe these great Americans all that we have.

From Amarillo Globe News, December 7th 2011

Veteran's day

This is not about whether you support war or are a pacifist that believes that war is never the right decision. Today is not about the rationality of war. It is about the men and women who have seen the tragedy and travesty of war first hand and what the experience of war is, was, and will continue to be for those who have been to the front lines.

The origin of Veteran’s day being held on November 11th dates back to the end of WWI, the first modern war. This day was known as Armistice Day and was to represent the day that signified the what was hoped to be the “war to end all wars.” On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month in 1918, the world knew peace once again.

Yes, this world has seen countless wars since that day in 1918. Millions have fought one another, and millions have died. Yet, this day is not about the ideological grounds that wars have been declared upon, nor religious differences. This is not a day that is a politicians platform, nor a day that is for the liberal, the conservative, the righteous or the corrupt. It is a day that we the people are given as a reminder that war exists and that those who are at the front lines experience events that most of us will never understand, and hopefully never have to experience ourselves. Perhaps this is a day where we should take a moment and contemplate what these words by a Veteran of WWII, “I do not remember what I read this morning, but the events of those days will be forever burned upon my soul.” And perhaps on this particular day, today, we should reflect back to Armistice Day in its original intent, that veterans often carry with them images and memories, emotions and reflections that are burned on their soul, which many of us can never comprehend and that they may never be able to share or shake the rest of their lives.

On the eleventh hour on the eleventh day in the eleventh month during the eleventh year of our second millennium, perhaps we should take a moment of silence and reflection for ALL of the veterans of the world, not just those that are American, and remember that every man, woman, and child that has directly experienced war is a veteran who carry with them the images of a war to end all wars.

Chances are you know a veteran…..

One Man's Dream, All of Our Dreams

Greetings to all of you on this day. Today, across this country, across the fields which lie fallow in their winter rest and across the bustling city streets, we are called to join together in remembrance of one of our nation’s greatest leaders and spiritual warriors. We are called to spend one day reflecting upon the message and the life of a man who had been to the mountain top and brought a message of justice and peace to us, the people in the valley. This is a day that we are all called to gather our strength, a strength that all too often lies silent most of the year. We are called to uncover this strength and bring it out of its passive solitude and into the active world. What is the strength that we all carry and that I speak of? It is the strength that the honorable and beautiful Martin Luther King carried into the streets of injustice the strength that flowed from his lips unto the masses who stopped to listen. It is the strength of a justice that does not live in our courts, but lives in each of our hearts. It is a strength that we so often forget, that we cover with misguided ambitions, illusory fears, and destructive actions upon our brethren.

Today I pray that we all spend a moment to surrender to the greater strength that Martin Luther King Jr. embodied and which he reminded all of us that we too embody. It was not only Martin Luther King Jr. who had a dream. I know that I too have a dream, and that you have a dream, and that all of our dreams center on the hope of a better world, a world of mutual respect, a world of honor, and a world where compassion outshines anger and hatred, where no person is judged by the color of their skin, or their choice of religious practice, or their political party affiliation, or the quality of their clothing, or their ability to speak English, Spanish, Pashti, but that all beings are judged “by the quality of their character.” May you all find a moment of peace today and may you rediscover your strength of heart today, and may it carry all of us tomorrow and beyond.