| Wednesday,
May 26, 2004 Colin Powell's Memorial Day
Message
Sent to me by a serving officer.
Secretary Powell on Memorial Day
Every Memorial Day, my sister, Marilyn,
and I would put on our Sunday best and accompany our parents to Woodlawn
Cemetery in the Bronx to visit the graves of family members. Like all kids,
my sister and I were happy to have the day off from school, and I can't say
we were in a solemn frame of mind. But taking part in that annual rite of
remembrance gave me my first sense of the importance of honoring those who
have gone before.
I grew up and chose a soldier's life. I lost
close friends in war. Later, I commanded young men and women who went
willingly into harm's way for our country, some never to return. A day
doesn't pass that I don't think of them. Paying homage to the fallen holds a
deeply personal meaning for me and for anyone who ever wore a uniform.
In 1990, when I was chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, I took my Soviet counterpart, Gen. Mikhail Moiseyev, around
the United States. I wanted to give him a better understanding of what
America is all about. We started in Washington, D.C. I especially wanted to
take him to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
But I didn't take him there directly. First, I
took him to the Jefferson Memorial. I pointed out a passage from the
Declaration of Independence carved into its curved wall. All who have served
in our armed forces share its sentiment. "And for the support of this
Declaration," Jefferson wrote, "... we mutually pledge our lives, our
fortunes, and our sacred honour." Then I asked the general to look up. Above
the statue of Jefferson, in 2-foot-high letters on the base of the
monument's dome, is this inscription: "I have sworn upon the altar of God
eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
Here, I said, you see the foundation of
America, a nation where "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights." I told the general that like Washington, Jefferson and
all our Founding Fathers,
Americans of every generation are ready to
fight and die for those unalienable rights. Then, to show Gen. Moiseyev the
kind of sacrifices Americans are willing to make, I took him to the Lincoln
Memorial, where Lincoln's words at Gettysburg are engraved. There, Lincoln
said we had fought the bloodiest war in our history so our nation "shall
have a new birth of freedom" and so "government of the people, by the
people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." I wanted Gen.
Moiseyev to see how sacred those words are to Americans.
I showed the general the final lines of
Lincoln's second inaugural address: "With malice toward none; with charity
for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let
us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds;
to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his
orphan..."
I then walked the general part of the way down
the Lincoln Memorial's steps to the place from which Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. I explained that the unfinished
work of which Lincoln spoke was still unfinished a century later, so from
the very spot on which we stood, King challenged his fellow Americans to
make the promise of our Founding Fathers come true for all Americans.
Only now was I ready to take Gen. Moiseyev to
the Vietnam memorial. We walked the short distance from the Lincoln Memorial
to the Wall. I showed the general how to find someone's name on it. I looked
up Maj. Tony Mavroudis. Tony and I had grown up together on the streets of
New York. We went to college together. We became infantrymen together. And
in 1967, on his second tour of duty in Vietnam, Tony was killed. The
memorial book directed us to Panel 28 East, and there we found ANTONIO M
MAVROUDIS carved into the black granite. It was an emotional moment for me,
and not just for me. Gen. Moiseyev reached out gently and touched the Wall.
The infantryman in him understood.
Thankfully, our forces no longer face the
prospect of war with the Soviet Union. Today, we are cooperating with
Russia's evolving democracy and with other former foes against 21st-century
dangers common to us all.
Today's deadly threats come from rogue powers
and stateless networks of extremists who have nothing but contempt for the
sanctity of human life and for the principles civilized nations hold dear.
I do not know or care what terrorists and
tyrants make of our monuments to democracy and the memorials we dedicate to
our dead. What's important is what the monuments and memorials say to us.
They can teach us much about the ideas that unite us in our diversity, the
values that sustain us in times of trial, and the dream that inspires
generation after generation of ordinary Americans to perform extraordinary
acts of service. In short, our monuments and memorials tell us a great deal
about America's commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for
all.
The haunting symbolism of the 168 empty chairs
at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, the heartbreaking piles of shoes in
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the carefully tended headstones bearing
crosses, crescents and Stars of David standing row-on-row in Arlington and
our other national cemeteries - all speak to the value we place on human
life.
The Vietnam Women's Memorial of the three
servicewomen and the wounded GI; the Korean War Veterans Memorial's haggard,
windblown patrol trudging up the rugged terrain; and the memorial of the
flag-raising on Iwo Jima do not glorify war - they testify to the glory of
the human spirit.
The Civil War battlefields and the monument in
Boston to Robert Gould Shaw and his 54th Massachusetts Regiment of Negro
soldiers who rode together into the jaws of death for the cause of justice
tell us of the price past generations have paid so we might live in a more
perfect union. They remind us also of the work our generation must do.
This Memorial Day weekend, we will join in
celebrating the opening of the National World War II Memorial honoring the
great generation of Americans who saved the world from fascist aggression
and secured the blessings of liberty for hundreds of millions of people
around the world.
Today, their descendants are fighting the
global war against terrorism, serving and sacrificing in Afghanistan and
Iraq and at other outposts on the front lines of freedom. The life of each
and every one of them is precious to their loved ones and to our nation.
And each life given in the name of liberty is a life that has not been lost
in vain.
In time, lasting memorials will stand where the
Twin Towers once etched New York City's skyline, near the west side of the
Pentagon, and in the Pennsylvania field where doomed heroes died on Sept.
11, 2001, using their last moments to save the lives of others and most
probably the Capitol or the White House - symbols of our living democracy.
All of us lead busy lives. We have little time
to pause and reflect. But I ask of you: Do not hasten through Memorial Day.
Take the time to remember the good souls whose memories are a blessing to
you and your family. Take your children to our memorial parks and monuments.
Teach them the values that lend meaning to our lives and to the life of our
nation. Above all, take the time to honor our fellow Americans who have
given their last full measure of devotion to our country and for the
freedoms we cherish.
Colin Powell, General USA Ret'd; Secretary of
State
========================
Boldface not in original.
==================
The Incredible Shrinking Army
The Weekly Standard arrived today, and there is an article by Frederick
Kagan called "The Incredible Shrinking Army." It's the new neo-con
line: the problem is that the Army isn't big enough to do the job.
What job? That isn't discussed: apparently the question isn't relevant.
We have to occupy Iraq, and probably invade some more places, and the Army
isn't big enough. We need a larger Army.
The good news is that we probably won't need to revive conscription in
order to get the bigger Army. Volunteer recruiting should be sufficient. But
this Administration is deficient: it promised to rescue the Army from the
Clinton depletion, and it didn't do it, and it's all the Administration's
fault, and Iraq is at the edge of catastrophe and that's all the
Administration's fault.
Well, yes: certainly if the mission of the US is to establish colonial
regimes all over the world (of course they are temporary, just being trained
to become independent liberal democratic allies, but that does take time)
then we don't have a large enough Army, nor will we ever.
Look: if the mission is to go conquer people and run their
countries we need an Imperial style army: one capable of defeating the
client states who do the actual dirty work of occupying other people.
Ideally we have Sunni clients occupy Shiite states, and Shiite clients occupy
Sunni, and Kurds occupy Turkmen and perhaps Chechens, and Chechens can be
used as a strike force for Africa, and, well, all right, I am not serious.
But until we see what the mission is, we can't possibly know how large
the Army must be, or how much it should cost.
My friend John McCarthy, one of the saner people I know, is fond of
pointing out that the US defense budget is pretty small compared to what it
was during the high stages of the Cold War, and tiny compared to what it was
in real wars. And the Army is pretty small compared to those times. Clearly
we can afford a larger military. The question is, do we need one?
And that, surely, is a function of what we intend to do with it.
If what we want to do is remain a republic, friends of liberty everywhere
and guardians of our own, I suggest that the Army is just about large enough
now. The Fleet isn't: we need more ships and men. And within the Army we can
use some new units. More Rangers and special forces. More language skills
and intelligence troops with proper training.
Expanding the Navy will be expensive, but I suggest it is more useful
than building an Army whose mission is to occupy other countries.
As to defending the US, have we tried? Our border controls are a joke;
yet surely it is easier to defend our borders than to ferret out our
enemies overseas? Surely it is more likely that we can detect bad guys
coming here than we can find them in Iraq, particularly when the
consequences of trying to find them in Iraq are often to generate more
people who want to kill us -- and to give them opportunities right there in
their home neighborhoods rather than put them to the trouble of learning how
to get to the US, smuggle in weapons and explosives, and the rest of it?
If you are in Iraq and want to blow yourself up with an American or two,
it's a lot easier if there is an American soldier on your block, than to
have to go find one in New York.
Now, yes, of course, if your goal is to be politically correct then it's
a lot harder to defend the country at the borders than to go occupy all your
potential enemies. Whether or not you have missed the point of political
correctness is another story.
Well, enough of this ramble: but it does seem to me that if we are faced
with the need for a larger Army, it may be time to rethink our goals and
strategies.
It may be true that they hate us and they are coming for us, and the only
way to stop them is to go get them first, and occupy their lands, and reform
them; but it is not overwhelmingly obvious, at least to me, that there are
all that many nations who hate us enough to risk regime changes instituted
by special forces whose only mission is to take out the existing government,
or that the best way to make governments overseas cooperate in our safety is
to invade and occupy them.
We are the friends of liberty everywhere. We are the guardians only of
our own; but guarding our own can include operations such as we undertook in
Afghanistan, and operations like Desert One done properly with enough force
to matter. It can include some actual money spent on securing our borders
and screening those who come into the country; it can include some internal
security people who actually enforce immigration laws and actually keep
track of those given asylum. Or perhaps not, but at least isn't it worth
thinking about?
And while we are at it, $40 billion would build 40 1,000 Megawatt
nuclear power plants (given any rational licensing system), and that in
itself would help reduce fuel prices, clean the air, and reduce our
dependence on Middle East Oil.
Another $40 billion spent on X programs would give us reasonable cost
access to space, with space travel costs at a multiple of fuel costs, not
the astronomical costs we pay now.
Or $80 billion can buy another year of occupation of Iraq. Maybe.
Apparently not: we are going to have to expand the Army, says Kagan, and
that can't be all that cheap.
Isn't it worth debating which would be worth more in the long run, a
larger Army and longer occupation, or new energy sources and access to
space?
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