The Cobra Gets It Right

I moved to Sun City in time for the Memorial Day observance. In honor of the veterans of WWII, a plaza with engraved pavers will be dedicated on May 31, 2004. I bought a brick and due to the space limitations of 3 lines of 16 characters each, I was handcuffed. So, the engraving will read

Robert Sapper

L. A. Chistopher

1942-1945—Thanks

in honor of my father and stepfather who served respectively in the USN/USMC and the USAAF. My father went through boot training in both the USN in San Diego and then was trained to Quantico to go through boot training all over again. Later, the War Department streamlined the training for the Seabees (USN Construction Battalions), but Robert Sapper could wear either uniform and—when he was behaving—was either a Carpenter's Mate Second Class or a Technical Sergeant. In any event, Maureen Dowd gets it right and I wanted to get it right, too. If this is (fair & balanced) gratitude, so be it.

[x NYTimes]
An Ode to Clarity
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

I was one of the snobs who hated the design of the World War II memorial. As a native Washingtonian, I felt sad to see L'Enfant's empty, perfect stretch of mall, elegantly anchored by the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, broken up.

And while heaven knows we could use a triumphalist moment about now, the architecture seemed so ugly for such a beautiful victory, and so 19th-century German for such a 20th-century American ode to heroism.

But when I went Friday and saw all the adorable World War II veterans rolling in wheelchairs, walking slowly with canes or on their own, sitting on the benches that encircle the fountains, taking pictures with children and grandchildren, meeting up with their old buddies, the memorial was suddenly a lovely place to be.

It may not be perfect as a piece of architecture, but it's perfect as a showcase for the ordinary guys who achieved the extraordinary.

Thrilled with their moment in the sun in their usual humble way, inspecting the memorial they earned 60 years after D-Day, they looked in that setting as shining and valuable as jewels in a Tiffany's window.

"We won because we were the smoking and drinking generation," grinned 83-year-old Joseph Patrick Walsh, who was part of the "miserable, cold" Normandy invasion. He spent 32 years in the Navy and fought in Vietnam, and lived for years on Staten Island and the Upper West Side. He showed off the tattoo of a leering Japanese soldier on his arm, and another tattoo with his wife's name and a bar of ink where his wife made him take out "Margie," an earlier girlfriend's name.

World War II had such stark moral clarity in history that it's almost irrelevant in providing lessons about conflict in a grayer time. The Japanese bombed us; they didn't have putatively threatening "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities," as President Bush said of Iraq.

Although conservatives compared Saddam to Hitler, America did not have to be persuaded with "actionable" intelligence before confronting Hitler. That dictator was an individual weapon of mass destruction.

I asked Mr. Walsh how he felt about the Iraq war.

"You gotta back the kids," he said. "And you gotta back the president. But I hate to see it looking like Vietnam night after night on TV, not getting nowhere, taking a town and then having to take it back again. They called us `baby killers' when we got home. This is a politicians' war, not a people's war. You can't win a guerrilla war against religious fanatics. Personally, I don't think we should have went in without U.N. backing. We had nobody — a few Spanish."

Over by the Pacific Arch, George Jonic, 89, was approached by a teenage girl in a T-shirt and toe ring, who was looking at him as if he were Orlando Bloom. "Can I have my picture taken with you?" she asked. Mr. Jonic was an Army combat engineer who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. "My commanding officer and a lot of other people got killed," he said, wiping away a tear. "I was lucky."

Asked about Iraq, Mr. Jonic, who lives in Sandwich, Mass., said he supported the president and his attempt to bring democracy to the Middle East. "We were in the `civilized' war," he said. "But I have to tell you, there's just as much confusion in all wars." He gave me a little salute.

From the standpoint of the soldiers, all wars are hellish, killing and trying not to be killed.

The speeches Saturday stressed how everyone in America had a role in World War II, men and women, young and old, all pulling together. In the Iraq war, there's not much sharing the pain. Most Americans take tax cuts while forcibly re-upped reservists fight without the right armor and face a shortage of bullets.

"Nobody is sacrificing now except the poor guys — men and women — over there," said Bob Dole, who got the memorial built for "the disappearing generation."

"We were all on the same page then, supporting the war. Today, it's more 50-50 about Iraq."

But this weekend, at this memorial, there was a flashback to moral clarity, and a chance to honor our heroes who fought fascism. "Oh, man, it's great," said Don Smith, 78, who enlisted in the Navy when he was 18 and who had arranged to meet two shipmates he hadn't seen since 1945. "I never expected it to be so big. It's too bad that they made it so late. At least it's here and I'm alive to see it."

Copyright © 2004 The New York Times, Inc.

The Trickster: Civil Rights President?

Turn, Turn, Turn sang Pete Seeger (and the Byrds?): To everything there is a season. On the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, there has been a deluge of articles on the historical significance of Brown. I have been on the lookout for the ultimate revisionism of the historical legacy of Brown and I think I found it. The Trickster (Richard M. Nixon) is celebrated for his innovative Southern Strategy in 1968 and thereafter. The Southern Strategy has been so successful that in 2004, seventy-seven elections for state office in Texas will see Republicans elected without Democrat opposition. Prior to the Southern Strategy, Texas was a blue state. Today, blue has been overshadowed by red as Republicans hold sway in a direct reversal of the Solid (Democrat) South. Virtually all interpretations of the Trickster's civil rights record find him to be cynical and devious. For another take, here is a tribute to the Trickster as an advocate of peaceful desegregation in the South. However, white flight to private schools throughout the South preserved separate (and unequal) education. If this is (fair & balanced) rejection of revisionist nonsense, so be it.

[x History News Network]
Why Richard Nixon Deserves to Be Remembered Along with Brown
By Joseph J. Sabia

In recent weeks Americans gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision, which overturned the “separate, but equal” doctrine and ordered the desegregation of public schools “with all deliberate speed.” However, many Southern schools dragged their feet on integration, with districts steadfastly refusing to obey the court order. When federal bureaucrats tried to intervene to force desegregation, tensions grew. Summing up the situation, Senator Richard Russell, D-GA, stated in 1970, “The people of (the South) are more worked up over this problem than anything I’ve seen in all my years in politics.” Enter Richard Nixon: racial healer.

In the fall of 1968, 68 percent of black children in the South were attending all-black schools. By 1974, that number had fallen to 8 percent. This extraordinary accomplishment was achieved through the shrewd political skills and raw courage of President Nixon, Secretary of Labor George Schultz, and Attorney General John Mitchell.

In his book With Nixon, speechwriter Ray Price outlined Nixon’s school desegregation goals:

Nixon’s aim was to use the minimum coercion necessary to achieve the essential national goal, to encourage local initiative, to respect diversity, and, to the extent possible, to treat the entire nation equally – blacks equally with whites, the South equally with the North.

Vice President Spiro Agnew was chosen to chair a special Cabinet Committee on Education, the purpose of which was to find the best course of action to peacefully desegregate Southern schools in accordance with a 1969 court order. This Cabinet committee voted to create several state advisory panels, which were staffed with a diverse cross-section of leaders from each Southern state. These committees included white segregationists, black leaders, and other government officials.

Initially, there was little reason to believe that these state advisory committees would accomplish much. But Nixon pressed on. On June 24, 1970, the president met with the 15-member Mississippi State Advisory Committee in the White House. As Nixon reported in his memoirs, one of the black committee members expressed his optimism:

The day before yesterday I was in jail for going to the wrong beach. Today, Mr. President, I am meeting you. If that’s possible anything can happen.

And it did. In an incredible gesture of good faith, Mississippi Manufacturers Association president Warren Wood and Biloxi NAACP president Dr. Gilbert Mason agreed to serve as co-chairman of the Mississippi committee. According to Price, Mason christened his new relationship with Wood by saying:

If you and I can’t do this, nobody else in the state of Mississippi can. We’re probably the only black and white men in the state who can get together on something like this.

Nixon met personally with seven state advisory committees, expressing his belief that they could work together to peacefully solve one of the great crises of our time:

With each of (the committees) I stressed the same points. First, I condemned the hypocrisy in much of the North about the segregation problem. I affirmed my belief that the South should be treated with understanding and patience, but I also stressed the need to solve the problem through peaceful compliance. Second, I emphasized my commitment to the principle of local leadership to solve local problems.

During the 1960s, many liberals self-righteously screamed about racism, demanding that the federal government coerce Southerners into racial integration. The result of their heavy-handed tactics was more racial antagonism.

The president tried a different approach – cooperation. Thanks to Nixon’s strong leadership, Shultz’s masterful negotiating skills and Mitchell’s ability to keep overzealous Justice Department officials in check, the state advisory committees were an overwhelming success.

In a 1970 memo, presidential counselor Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote, “There has been more change in the structure of American public school education in the last month than in the past 100 years.” And, like going to China, only Nixon could have done it.

While much is made over his “Southern strategy” in 1968, few understand that the Southern strategy brought the South back into the nation’s body politic by appealing to sentiments that united all Americans: patriotism, duty, and cooperation. Nixon refused to condescend to Southerners. He treated them as Americans, equal in every way to Northerners. And because Nixon took that course, he was able to achieve one of the greatest civil rights triumphs of the twenty-first century: the peaceful desegregation of Southern schools.

Nixon gets almost no credit for his civil rights efforts. Thanks to the liberal press, most Americans think that Nixon’s civil rights record consists of him making a few racist statements in the Oval Office. Given the historical record, this is a tragedy.

In the Brown celebrations, virtually no mentions of the former president were made. Nixon’s civil rights triumphs have been flushed down the memory hole. Moynihan summed it up in a December 1970 speech, transcribed by Price:

Since [Nixon assumed office]...the great symbol of racial subjugation, the dual school system of the South, virtually intact two years ago, has quietly and finally been dismantled. All in all, a record of good fortune and much genuine achievement. And yet how little the administration seems to be credited with what it has achieved.

If we are to honor the Supreme Court for its decision in Brown, we should also honor Richard Nixon for peacefully carrying out its historic judgment.
_______________________
Joseph Sabia is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Cornell University.

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