On any Memorial Day, it is important to remember...

Darkwind

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Jun 18, 2009
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It is not about what we believe, or what side (if such a thing can be said) of politics we fall on...

When honoring our brave and selfless, we must recognize the service given, not ourselves.

For those who would say I am partisan, you would be right. But in this, I give recognition to our service members and thank President Obama for his recognition of what is sacrificed for us all.

In the end, WE are all American.

 
Today is the day we put aside to remember fallen heroes and to pray that no heroes will ever have to die for us again. It's a day of thanks for the valor of others, a day to remember the splendor of America and those of her children who rest in this cemetery and others. It's a day to be with the family and remember.

I was thinking this morning that across the country children and their parents will be going to the town parade and the young ones will sit on the sidewalks and wave their flags as the band goes by. Later, maybe, they'll have a cookout or a day at the beach. And that's good, because today is a day to be with the family and to remember.

Arlington, this place of so many memories, is a fitting place for some remembering. So many wonderful men and women rest here, men and women who led colorful, vivid, and passionate lives. There are the greats of the military: Bull Halsey and the Admirals Leahy, father and son; Black Jack Pershing; and the GI's general, Omar Bradley. Great men all, military men. But there are others here known for other things.

Here in Arlington rests a sharecropper's son who became a hero to a lonely people. Joe Louis came from nowhere, but he knew how to fight. And he galvanized a nation in the days after Pearl Harbor when he put on the uniform of his country and said, "I know we'll win because we're on God's side." Audie Murphy is here, Audie Murphy of the wild, wild courage. For what else would you call it when a man bounds to the top of a disabled tank, stops an enemy advance, saves lives, and rallies his men, and all of it single-handedly. When he radioed for artillery support and was asked how close the enemy was to his position, he said, "Wait a minute and I'll let you speak to them." [Laughter]

Michael Smith is here, and Dick Scobee, both of the space shuttle Challenger. Their courage wasn't wild, but thoughtful, the mature and measured courage of career professionals who took prudent risks for great reward—in their case, to advance the sum total of knowledge in the world. They're only the latest to rest here; they join other great explorers with names like Grissom and Chaffee.

Oliver Wendell Holmes is here, the great jurist and fighter for the right. A poet searching for an image of true majesty could not rest until he seized on "Holmes dissenting in a sordid age." Young Holmes served in the Civil War. He might have been thinking of the crosses and stars of Arlington when he wrote: "At the grave of a hero we end, not with sorrow at the inevitable loss, but with the contagion of his courage; and with a kind of desperate joy we go back to the fight."

All of these men were different, but they shared this in common: They loved America very much. There was nothing they wouldn't do for her. And they loved with the sureness of the young. It's hard not to think of the young in a place like this, for it's the young who do the fighting and dying when a peace fails and a war begins. Not far from here is the statue of the three servicemen—the three fighting boys of Vietnam. It, too, has majesty and more. Perhaps you've seen it—three rough boys walking together, looking ahead with a steady gaze. There's something wounded about them, a kind of resigned toughness. But there's an unexpected tenderness, too. At first you don't really notice, but then you see it. The three are touching each other, as if they're supporting each other, helping each other on.

I know that many veterans of Vietnam will gather today, some of them perhaps by the wall. And they're still helping each other on. They were quite a group, the boys of Vietnam—boys who fought a terrible and vicious war without enough support from home, boys who were dodging bullets while we debated the efficacy of the battle. It was often our poor who fought in that war; it was the unpampered boys of the working class who picked up the rifles and went on the march. They learned not to rely on us; they learned to rely on each other. And they were special in another way: They chose to be faithful. They chose to reject the fashionable skepticism of their time. They chose to believe and answer the call of duty. They had the wild, wild courage of youth. They seized certainty from the heart of an ambivalent age; they stood for something.

And we owe them something, those boys. We owe them first a promise: That just as they did not forget their missing comrades, neither, ever, will we. And there are other promises. We must always remember that peace is a fragile thing that needs constant vigilance. We owe them a promise to look at the world with a steady gaze and, perhaps, a resigned toughness, knowing that we have adversaries in the world and challenges and the only way to meet them and maintain the peace is by staying strong.

That, of course, is the lesson of this century, a lesson learned in the Sudetenland, in Poland, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, in Cambodia. If we really care about peace, we must stay strong. If we really care about peace, we must, through our strength, demonstrate our unwillingness to accept an ending of the peace. We must be strong enough to create peace where it does not exist and strong enough to protect it where it does. That's the lesson of this century and, I think, of this day. And that's all I wanted to say. The rest of my contribution is to leave this great place to its peace, a peace it has earned.

Thank all of you, and God bless you, and have a day full of memories.

Ronald Reagan -- Remarks at a Memorial Day Ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia
May 26, 1986
 
today is the day we remember the men/women who gave it all so that you can protest.......so that you can exercise you 1st adm rights....

today is not the day to honor a draft dodger like trump
 
On Thursday, President Trump awarded the Medal of Honor to former SEAL Team 6 officer Britt Slabinski. There are well documented allegations of war crimes committed by Slabinski in Afghanistan, including the killing, torture and dismemberment of unarmed Afghan men. Slabinski is the 12th living person to be granted a Medal of Honor in relation to the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

The establishment press has completely sidestepped the war crime allegations against Slabinski, focusing instead on the controversy generated by an internecine battle between the Air Force and Naval Command over a poorly executed operation that Slabinski led in 2003.

That operation resulted in five American deaths. One of the men killed, an Air Force officer named John Chapman, was left behind to fight alone after Slabinski ordered troops to evacuate their position on Takur Ghar, a mountain near the Pakistan border. Slabinski claims he believed Chapman to be dead when he evacuated the troops. Drone footage, however, suggests that Chapman survived and was left to fight off attacks on his own.

Days after the Takur Ghar operation, many SEAL Team 6 troops, including Slabinski, reportedly began mutilating the bodies of the men they killed in raids. These acts were purportedly done as revenge for the Taliban’s mutilation of SEAL Neil Roberts on Takur Ghar.

Trump awards Medal of Honor to Navy SEAL accused of war crimes in Afghanistan
 
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I'd advise everyone who has the opportunity to visit one of our national cemeteries to walk along the rows and rows of graves and read the names, the dates of birth and death. It is sobering.

One which forever will remain in my memory is a long row of graves at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. All of the graves in one long row contained Marines who died on the same day on one or our invasions on an Island in the Pacific Theater; most were not old enough to vote.
 
One of the most moving Memorial Day stories I've ever heard
Dr. Jim Denison | May 28, 2018

On June 21, 2006, in the Nuristan Province of Afghanistan, Staff Sergeant Jared Monti's sixteen-man patrol came under fire. One of his men was wounded and fell over a ridge into what the soldiers described as a "death zone." Despite an intense firefight, he tried three times to save the soldier. On his third try, Jared was killed. He was posthumously awarded America's highest honor for heroism, the Medal of Honor.

Paul Monti started an organization in his son's memory called Operation Flag for Vets. Their volunteers recently planted 57,000 flags at the Massachusetts National Cemetery.

Paul drives Jared's pickup truck, the military decals still on it. He explained: "It's got his DNA all over it. I love driving it because it reminds me of him, though I don't need the truck to remind me of him. I think about him every hour of every day." A Nashville songwriter heard this story and turned it into a song that country singer Lee Brice recorded. "I Drive Your Truck" earned Song of the Year honors at the 2013 Country Music Awards. As of this morning, the YouTube video had more than twenty-eight million views. I urge you to watch it on this Memorial Day. "The fate of unborn millions"

On August 27, 1776, George Washington addressed his soldiers before the Battle of Long Island. This was the first major battle after America declared her independence.

Gen. Washington stated: "The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves . . . The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die." We are now part of the "unborn millions" whose lives are indescribably different because of the soldiers who died to purchase our freedom and those like Jared Monti who died to preserve it.
 
freedom is not free. *sigh* freedom ain't free!

I GET A BAD FEELING ON DAYS LIKE TODAY! (my grandfather Eugene Anthony Finnegan was a vet)
 
On this wonderful day, we all should remember that the Alt Right eventually wants us to celebrate Victory Day on May 9 and acknowledge only Russia was responsible for the defeat of Nazi Germany.
 

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