After all, what person alive on the planet today has not heard, at least once, if not the more likely dozens of times, Lee's arousing anthem of Americanism, "God Bless The U.S.A."?
I mean, come on, you know that right this second you would gladly stand up / next to me / and defend her still today.
Catchy, huh?
Tell you somebody else who had a bead on the blue and its colorful companions, the red and the white.
Ray Stevens.
He probably just didn't know it at the time.
I'll be 'splainin' that to you shortly, there, Lucy.
First, a few words about Gene La Rocoque.
Here's the Wiki word.
Gene La Rocque was born in Kankakee, Illinois and began his naval service in 1940. When the attack on Pearl Harbor was carried out, he was serving on the USS Macdonough. He participated in 13 major battles in World War II and worked for seven years in the Strategic Plans Directorate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the Battle of Kwajalein, he was the first man to go ashore in the landings at Roi-Namur.
He retired in 1972, disillusioned over the Vietnam War. La Rocque and his colleagues testified before Congress, appeared frequently in the media, and consulted many national and international political leaders.
In the 1980s, La Rocque founded a weekly public affairs television program, America's Defense Monitor. In 1974, he stated that in his experience, any ship that is capable of carrying nuclear weapons, carries nuclear weapons and do not off-load them when they are in foreign ports. The statement directly conflicted with the Department of Defense's "neither confirm nor deny" (NC/ND) policy regarding such weapons and sparked controversy in Japan, which has had a non-nuclear policy since World War II.
As a Lieutenant Commander, La Rocque was commanding officer of USS Solar, destroyed on 30 April 1946 in an explosion at Naval Ammunition Depot, Earle (now Naval Weapons Station, Earle) in New Jersey. Five enlisted men and one officer were killed with 125 other wounded.
All of that is by way of providing credibility to go along with his commentary that found its way to Facebook this morning.
I had been in thirteen battle engagements, had sunk a submarine, and was the first man ashore in the landing at Roi. In that four years, I thought, What a hell of a waste of a man's life. I lost a lot of friends. I had the task of telling my roommate's parents about our last days together. You lose limbs, sight, part of your life—for what? Old men send young men to war. Flags, banners, and patriotic sayings.
We are unique in the world, a nation of thirty million war veterans. We're the only country in the world that's been fighting a war since 1940. Count the wars—Korea, Vietnam—count the years. We have built up in our body politic a group of old men who look upon military service as a noble adventure.
We've always gone somewhere else to fight our wars, so we've not really learned about its horror. Seventy percent of our military budget is to fight somewhere else.
We've institutionalized militarism. This came out of World War Two. In 1947, we passed the National Security Act. You can't find that term—national security—in any literature before that year. It created the Department of Defense. Up till that time, when you appropriated money for the War Department, you knew it was for war and you could see it clearly. Now it's for the Department of Defense. Everybody's for defense. Otherwise you're considered unpatriotic. So there's absolutely no limit to the money you must give to it. So they've captured all the Christians: the right of self-defense. Even the "just war" thing can be wrapped into it.
We never had a Joint Chiefs of Staff before. In World War Two, there was a loose coalition, but there was no institution. It gave us the National Security Council. It gave us the CIA, that is able to spy on you and me this very moment. For the first time in the history of man, a country has divided up the world into military districts. No nation in the world has done that before or has done it since. They have a military solution for everything that happens in their area.
Our military runs our foreign policy. The State Department simply goes around and tidies up the messes the military makes. The State Department has become the lackey of the Pentagon. Before World War Two, this never happened. You had a War Department, you had a Navy Department. Only if there was a war did they step up front. The ultimate control was civilian. World War Two changed all this.
I don't think I've changed. I was a good ship captain. I was tough. I worked like the devil to see that my ship and my men were the best. I loved the sea and still do. I think the United States has changed. It got away from the idea of trying to settle differences by peaceful means. Since World War Two, we began to use military force to get what we wanted in the world. That's what military is all about. Not long ago, the Pentagon proudly announced that the U.S. had used military force 215 times to achieve its international goals since World War Two. The Pentagon likes that: military force to carry out national will.
I was in Vietnam. I saw the senseless waste of human beings. I saw this bunch of marines come off this air-conditioned ship. Nothing was too good for our sailors, soldiers, and marines. We send 'em ashore as gung ho young nineteen-year-old husky nice-looking kids and bring 'em back in black rubber body bags. There are a few little pieces left: over, some entrails and limbs that don't fit in the bags. Then you take a fire hose and you hose down the deck and push that stuff over the side.
I myself volunteered to go to Vietnam and fight. I didn't question whether it was in the nation's interest. I was a professional naval officer and there was a war. I hope as we get older, we get smarter. You could argue World War Two had to be fought. Hitler had to be stopped.
World War Two has warped our view of how we look at things today. We see things in terms of that war, which in a sense was a good war. But the twisted memory of it encourages the men of my generation to be willing, almost eager, to use military force anywhere in the world.
For about twenty years after the war, I couldn't look at any film on World War Two. It brought back memories that I didn't want to keep around. I hated to see how they glorified war. In all those films, people get blown up with their clothes and fall gracefully to the ground. You don't see anybody being blown apart. You don't see arms and legs and mutilated bodies. You see only an antiseptic, clean, neat way to die gloriously.
I hate it when they say, "He gave his life for his country." Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.
Lee Greenwood gets a lot of deserved credit, and not just a few royalty dollars (not that there's anything wrong with that) for his 1984 ode to the land of the free, home of the brave heart that beats inside all of us who have been blessed to be born and/or live in America.
But Ray Stevens offered a little perspective of his own, however unknowingly, some fourteen years earlier when he released a similarly anthemic work, "Everything Is Beautiful".
And underscored, in the first line of the first verse of that song, again, surely, unknowingly, the point that Admiral La Rocoque so clearly makes.
"There is none so blind / as he who will not see"
No reasonable person could possibly think of Lee Greenwood, Ray Stevens or, most certainly, Rear Admiral Gene La Rocoque as anything other than proud and patriotic Americans.
And I would gladly stand up / next to them / and defend them still today.
While at the same time, mindful and appreciative of the Admiral's words, unarguably aware that Ray Stevens nailed it.
Because the inability to see the whole picture, in some cases, even a complete blindness to it, is sometimes an unfortunate side effect of passionately waving a flag too close to people's faces.
Everything is beautiful / in its own way
With the exception, of course, of body bags.
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