Reflections From a Murky Pond

On November 6th, 2007 Cambridge, MA election officials have ruled that collecting toiletries, magazines, candy and other items for care packages for US Troops stationed overseas is far too political and violated a Massachusetts State law prohibiting political statements pertaining to a particular election within 150 feet of any polling station . They forced Troop 45 Cambridge Boy Scouts to remove every flyer and every box from the environs surrounding the polling stations despite having twice previously giving their approval for the collection drive!

The troop 45 Cambridge Boy Scouts scouts earned some money in an unexpected fundraiser. Instead of using for the originally suggested purpose of trips to Water Country, Six Flags, white water rafting, or skiing they chose to use it to fund collecting donations of toiletries, magazines, candy and other items for the US troops at the polling sites on Election Day. That’s right, the children chose to give up their fun in order to support American troops who are far from home.

But sadly for us all, on Election Day, Marsha Weinerman, executive director of the Election Commission, removed the boxes from all the polling stations because one woman, a poll worker, complained it was a political statement.

Scouts Had been given verbal permission by the city election commission twice and at the polling stations as well. A promotion for the polling place collections was still up as of November 5th on the Veterans’ Services Department section of the city’s Web site. But it was all in vain; Marsha Weinerman, executive director of the Election Commission had all the flyers taken down and the collection boxes removed because of the complaint that claimed that supporting our troops is implicitly “pro-war.”

The location where this female poll worker was complaining about the flyer was on a bulletin board with 70 or so other flyers, including ones promoting: Get Out of Iraq, Campus Green, College Democrats of America, China’s New Property Law, Save the Non-Proliferation Regime, and Global Warming. The only flyer the Election Commission removed was that of the Boy Scouts collecting things for the troops.

What is truly sad is that, while sickened and enraged, I and many others aren’t even that surprised by Cambridge’s attitudes and behavior. We’ve come to expect such thing from “The Kennedy State.” In the current Massachusetts social and political climate one has to wonder how long it will remain safe for the Boy Scouts to operate. They are in uniforms after all.

In October 2000 Michael T. Powers, transcribed the following from a videotape he made of a talk given by author James Bradley at the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia. Bradley, whose father, John, was one of the six men pictured in the famous photograph of the flag-raising on Mt. Suribachi in February 1945 (and is thus depicted in the monument’s), had earlier that year published Flags of Our Fathers, an account of the life stories of those six men.

Each year I am hired to go to Washington, DC, with the 8th grade class from Clinton, WI, where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I greatly enjoy visiting our nation’s capital, and each year I take some special memories back with me. This fall’s trip was especially memorable.

On the last night of our trip we stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial. This memorial is the largest bronze statue in the world and depicts one of the most famous photographs in history - that of the six brave soldiers raising the American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on the island of Iwo Jima, Japan, during WW II.

Over one hundred students and chaperones piled off the buses and headed for the memorial. I noticed a solitary figure at the base of the statue, and as I got closer he asked, “Where are you guys from?”

I told him we were from Wisconsin. “Hey! I’m a Cheese Head, too. Come gather round Cheese Heads and I’ll tell you a story.” he said.

(James Bradley just happened to be in Washington, DC, to speak at the memorial the following day. He was there that night to say good night to his dad, who had passed away. He was just about to leave when he saw the buses pull up. I videotaped him as he spoke to us and received his permission to share what he said from my videotape. It is one thing to tour the incredible monuments filled with history in Washington, DC, but it is quite another to get the kind of insight we received that night.)

When all had gathered around, he reverently began to speak. Here are his words from that night:

“My name is James Bradley, and I’m from Antigo, WI. My dad is on that statue and I just wrote a book called ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ which is #5 on the New York Times Best Seller List right now. It is the story of the six boys you see behind me.

Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is Harlan Block. Harlan was an all-state football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps. with all the senior members of his football team. They were off to play another type of game. A game called ‘war.’ But it didn’t turn out to be a game. Harlan, at the age of 21, died with his intestines in his hands. I don’t say that to gross you out, I say that because there are people who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years-old - and it was so hard that the ones who did make it home would never talk to their families about it.

You see this next guy? That’s Rene Gagnon from New Hampshire. If you took Rene’s helmet off at the moment this photo was taken and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph - a photograph of his girlfriend. Rene put that there for protection because he was scared. He was 18 years-old. It was just boys who won the battle of Iwo Jima. Boys. Not old men.

The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sgt. Mike Strank. Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him the ‘old man’ because he was so old. He was already 24. When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn’t say ‘Let’s go kill some Japanese,’ or ‘Let’s go die for our country.’ He knew he was talking to little boys. Instead he would say ‘You do what I say and I’ll get you home to your mothers.’

The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona. Ira Hayes was one who walked off Iwo Jima. He went into the White House with my dad. President Truman told him ‘You’re a hero.’ He told reporters ‘How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?’ So you take your class at school, 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing everything together. Then all 250 hit the beach together and only 27 of your classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes carried the pain home with him and eventually died, dead drunk, facedown at the age of 32, 10 years after this picture was taken.

The next guy, going around the statue, was Franklin Sously, from Hilltop, KY. A fun-lovin’ hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me ‘Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the porch of Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn’t get down. Then we fed them Epsom salts. Those cows crapped all night.’ Yes, he was a fun-lovin’ hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it came to the Hilltop General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother’s farm. The neighbors could hear her scream all night long and into the morning. Those neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.

The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John Bradley, from Antigo, WI, where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but he would never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite’s producers or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say ‘No, I’m sorry, sir. My dad’s not here. He’s in Canada fishing. No, there is no phone there. No, I do not know when he will be back.’ My dad never fished or even went to Canada. Usually he was sitting there right at the kitchen table eating his Campbell’s soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He didn’t want to talk to the press.

You see, like Ira Hayes, my dad didn’t see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes because they’re in a photo and on a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a care giver. In Iwo Jima, he probably held more than 200 boys as they died. And when boys died in Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed, without any medication or help with the pain.

When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me my dad was a hero. When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, ‘I want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back. DID NOT COME BACK.’

So that’s the story about six nice young boys. Three died on Iwo Jima, and three came back as national heroes. Overall, 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time.”

Suddenly, the monument was not just a big old piece of metal with a flag sticking out of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero. Maybe not a hero for the reasons most people would believe, but a hero nonetheless.

A lot of people over the years have added bits of text to this story, but this is the original version. I think it’s worth reading - by those who hold to the illusion of “the glories of war”, by those neo-liberals who are allowing partisan politics to hinder our servicemen’s and servicewomens’ ability to survive the battlefield, and by those in power who have chosen to put these men and women in harm’s way.

What is Happening:
Earmarks are appropriations inserted into legislation by individual members of Congress while the bill for that legislation was in subcommittee, committee, or conference committee. They are not subject to debate, nor due they undergo any independent review. The Department of Defense budget is a favorite vehicle for earmarks because of its size; the Department of Defense Appropriations Bill is the single largest spending measure that Congress passes each year.

According to the Congressional Research Service, Memorandum, “Earmarks in FY2006 Appropriations Act,” March 6, 2006, p. 11 between 1994 and 2006 the number of earmarks attached to the defense budget increased from 587 to 2,847. Their cost increased from $4.2 billion to $9.4 billion. That is a 223.08% increase over the course of 12 years! Accurate figures for the latest round of appropriations is not available but Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)- a vocal opponent of earmarking is quoted as saying “the appetite is undiminished.”

The Pentagon does not request these appropriations; the appropriations are inserted into the DoD budget by individual members of congress often without any regard at all as to whether or not the appropriations have anything to do with Defense. The defense appropriations panels typically have to offset the costs of these earmarks with cuts to their original budget request; they generally justify these cuts by pointing to updated economic assumptions or analyses of Pentagon cost estimates by the Government Accountability Office (GAO)or other agencies. When queried on this practice the DoD is somewhere between reticent and deferential.

We’re obviously not going to pick a fight with Congress.

The process is what it is.

 

– DoD Spokesperson

What it’s Costing the US:
What are these earmarks added to the Department of Defense Appropriations Bill costing the United states? The earmarking of defense dollars dilutes the effectiveness and efficiency of defense spending. Instead of funding programs based on their necessity for national security, many legislators are focused on protecting their local constituents’ military industrial base. Earmarking also, because it is subject to neither debate nor review reduces transparency in the appropriations process which makes sound economic policy as well a public scrutiny near impossible.

“[Earmarks have]…gotten completely out of hand. This is the time that we need to put the Army in full readiness, and we cannot even afford to do that.”

 

– John Shalikashvili
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

In fiscal year 2005 legislators heavily prioritized local concerns defense spending bill, resulting in a $2.8 billion cut in funds for operations and maintenance and other readiness accounts that contribute to the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military’s ability to fight effectively is largely dependent on adequate funding in these accounts. In all, Congress cut $8.2 billion out of the entire bill to help make room for projects requested by individual lawmakers.