thedrifter
12-12-06, 06:05 AM
Marie Antoinette Meets the United States Marines
Frank Schaeffer
Huffington Post
AWOL-The Unexcused Absence Of America's Upper Classes From Military Service and How it Hurts Our Country, a book I co-authored with life-long Democrat activist and former Clinton White House aid, Kathy Roth Douquet, was published in the spring of 2006. By this autumn we sat with teacups perched on our knees, the guest speakers at a Yale "Master's Tea" in the grand parlor room of a mansion, a "residence" for the coddled undergraduates.
What we were saying at that tea, and at other Ivy League schools such as Princeton, Columbia and Dartmouth, was different from what students at those schools usually hear.
Two recent juxtapose news items illustrate the point we were trying to make. The stories concern the behaviour and expectations of some contemporary eighteen-to-twenty-something Americans.
One is from a Nov, 23, 2006 ABC online story by Marcus Baram, "Secret Service Slip-Ups--Guarding the First Kids Is Never an Easy Job for Secret Service Agents." The other is from an AP report of December 8, 2006, "Marines Save Iraqi Baby to Honor Fallen Medic Routine Patrol Turned Into Mission To Help Sick Child."
ABC Nov 23, 2006--It's not easy to be one of the agents guarding President Bush's daughters... At least the agents trailing the daughters sometimes get a feel for the glamorous life... During an internship with an entertainment company, Jenna used to party with Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs and Ashton Kutcher, who recalled the girls underage drinking at his house, while the Secret Service waited nearby.
When the twins wanted to meet Audioslave's Chris Cornell, they sent one of their agents over to set up an introduction to the rocker... Another time, Jenna was reportedly refused service at a bar when the bartender noticed her two Secret Service agents. She fled the bar and ran into an alley where she taunted one of the agents: "You know, if anything happens to me, my dad would have your ass..."
************************
AP Dec 8 2006--At the center of the story is Navy medic Chris Walsh and the 1st Battalion 25th Marines. The Marines were patrolling the streets of Fallujah in June when they faced an enemy attack. An IED exploded immediately adjacent to Chris' vehicle, "So they all piled out to chase the trigger man," said Capt. Sean Donovan. But the Marines had a surprise encounter... "A woman came from one of the houses calling to them that the baby was sick. So they stopped, and Chris came up and looked at the baby," Donovan said. "And... it was immediately clear to him that this baby desperately needed care."
Baby Mariam was just 2 months old and suffering from a rare intestinal abnormality. Under the threat of another attack, Walsh had to make a quick decision. "Right on the spot, the mission changed from the trigger man to the baby girl," Donovan said. A routine military mission suddenly became a lifesaving mission for Walsh and those around him...
For the next three months, Walsh and the team made house calls under the cloak of darkness into the dangerous city to help the baby... On Sept. 4, tragedy struck when one of their Humvees was hit once again by an IED. This time three men in the unit were killed -- Lance Cpl. Eric Valdepenas; Cpl. Jared Shoemaker; and Walsh, baby Mariam's guardian angel. For those who survived, saving baby Mariam became a eulogy to their fallen comrades.
Eventually the Marines won their fight, and baby Mariam was granted permission to leave Iraq. Dr. Rafael Pieretti from Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital performed the surgery, which took place in October. "She's doing well," Pieretti said.
...On the eve of baby Mariam's arrival, Walsh's mother, Maureen, received a letter from Donovan, telling her the story of a life that was saved because of her son's big heart... Recently Maureen Walsh met baby Mariam. "It made me feel like Chris was there," she said. "He wanted something like this. He wanted to make a difference in somebody's life."
In AWOL and on our college tour, we were arguing that service to our country is in fact pre-political and not to be confused with the endorsement of one party let alone approval of one president or war.
The reaction on the Ivy League campuses surprised us. Young people seemed to understand that there is an imbalance in the country when class seems to predict who serves in the military. And they seem to "get" that this imbalance cuts across party lines.
We found that if the issue of service---both military and non-military---is presented as one of responsibility there are many privileged young people open to the idea. They "get" that the issue of service is about greater issues than who wins any one election.
It is time that leaders of both parties tell us again, that it is not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country that counts. And we need to understand that when one group--typified by the Bush daughter's--is doing little-to-nothing for their country and another group, like the Marines in the story above, is asked to give everything and does, something happens to the national soul. Maybe the soul of the country was what Eleanor Roosevelt had in mind when noted in her diary that her husband would have been ashamed to lead the country to war unless all his children were in uniform.
It's not about Republicans and Democrats or the Bush family. It's about America and the morality of our democracy; it's about "privatizing" service and making everything about personal choices and "all-volunteer" preferences, rather than common obligations.
Ellie
Frank Schaeffer
Huffington Post
AWOL-The Unexcused Absence Of America's Upper Classes From Military Service and How it Hurts Our Country, a book I co-authored with life-long Democrat activist and former Clinton White House aid, Kathy Roth Douquet, was published in the spring of 2006. By this autumn we sat with teacups perched on our knees, the guest speakers at a Yale "Master's Tea" in the grand parlor room of a mansion, a "residence" for the coddled undergraduates.
What we were saying at that tea, and at other Ivy League schools such as Princeton, Columbia and Dartmouth, was different from what students at those schools usually hear.
Two recent juxtapose news items illustrate the point we were trying to make. The stories concern the behaviour and expectations of some contemporary eighteen-to-twenty-something Americans.
One is from a Nov, 23, 2006 ABC online story by Marcus Baram, "Secret Service Slip-Ups--Guarding the First Kids Is Never an Easy Job for Secret Service Agents." The other is from an AP report of December 8, 2006, "Marines Save Iraqi Baby to Honor Fallen Medic Routine Patrol Turned Into Mission To Help Sick Child."
ABC Nov 23, 2006--It's not easy to be one of the agents guarding President Bush's daughters... At least the agents trailing the daughters sometimes get a feel for the glamorous life... During an internship with an entertainment company, Jenna used to party with Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs and Ashton Kutcher, who recalled the girls underage drinking at his house, while the Secret Service waited nearby.
When the twins wanted to meet Audioslave's Chris Cornell, they sent one of their agents over to set up an introduction to the rocker... Another time, Jenna was reportedly refused service at a bar when the bartender noticed her two Secret Service agents. She fled the bar and ran into an alley where she taunted one of the agents: "You know, if anything happens to me, my dad would have your ass..."
************************
AP Dec 8 2006--At the center of the story is Navy medic Chris Walsh and the 1st Battalion 25th Marines. The Marines were patrolling the streets of Fallujah in June when they faced an enemy attack. An IED exploded immediately adjacent to Chris' vehicle, "So they all piled out to chase the trigger man," said Capt. Sean Donovan. But the Marines had a surprise encounter... "A woman came from one of the houses calling to them that the baby was sick. So they stopped, and Chris came up and looked at the baby," Donovan said. "And... it was immediately clear to him that this baby desperately needed care."
Baby Mariam was just 2 months old and suffering from a rare intestinal abnormality. Under the threat of another attack, Walsh had to make a quick decision. "Right on the spot, the mission changed from the trigger man to the baby girl," Donovan said. A routine military mission suddenly became a lifesaving mission for Walsh and those around him...
For the next three months, Walsh and the team made house calls under the cloak of darkness into the dangerous city to help the baby... On Sept. 4, tragedy struck when one of their Humvees was hit once again by an IED. This time three men in the unit were killed -- Lance Cpl. Eric Valdepenas; Cpl. Jared Shoemaker; and Walsh, baby Mariam's guardian angel. For those who survived, saving baby Mariam became a eulogy to their fallen comrades.
Eventually the Marines won their fight, and baby Mariam was granted permission to leave Iraq. Dr. Rafael Pieretti from Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital performed the surgery, which took place in October. "She's doing well," Pieretti said.
...On the eve of baby Mariam's arrival, Walsh's mother, Maureen, received a letter from Donovan, telling her the story of a life that was saved because of her son's big heart... Recently Maureen Walsh met baby Mariam. "It made me feel like Chris was there," she said. "He wanted something like this. He wanted to make a difference in somebody's life."
In AWOL and on our college tour, we were arguing that service to our country is in fact pre-political and not to be confused with the endorsement of one party let alone approval of one president or war.
The reaction on the Ivy League campuses surprised us. Young people seemed to understand that there is an imbalance in the country when class seems to predict who serves in the military. And they seem to "get" that this imbalance cuts across party lines.
We found that if the issue of service---both military and non-military---is presented as one of responsibility there are many privileged young people open to the idea. They "get" that the issue of service is about greater issues than who wins any one election.
It is time that leaders of both parties tell us again, that it is not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country that counts. And we need to understand that when one group--typified by the Bush daughter's--is doing little-to-nothing for their country and another group, like the Marines in the story above, is asked to give everything and does, something happens to the national soul. Maybe the soul of the country was what Eleanor Roosevelt had in mind when noted in her diary that her husband would have been ashamed to lead the country to war unless all his children were in uniform.
It's not about Republicans and Democrats or the Bush family. It's about America and the morality of our democracy; it's about "privatizing" service and making everything about personal choices and "all-volunteer" preferences, rather than common obligations.
Ellie