Memorial Day observation

I wandered off and didn't feel like writing on Memorial Day. However the many sacrifices of America's soldiers, sailors and Marines should be noted. Before this strange and dark administration took the helm, I had a pretty serious view of what service in the military meant. In part this was because there were two other Daniel Feidts who fought for the United States.

Daniel S. Feidt Sr., my grandfather, enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II, even though he could have avoided service since he was an elected Minnesota state senator, more than 30 years old, and color-blind. He went into the intelligence section and planned raids against the Axis from Britain, Egypt and late in the war, at the Poltava air base in recaptured Ukrainian territory. At one point there was a Nazi air raid and a bomb whizzed through his tent and out the other side. He eventually reached the rank of major, and since he was a lawyer, they asked him to go work at the Nuremberg trials, but he declined because it was time to go back stateside and start a family.

Another interesting story was the one of Daniel Feidt of the Pennsylvania Dutch, who fought in the Civil War. We have transcripts of his letters home, which really would be interesting to put up here. I am not certain if he is my direct ancestor, though.

But the Daniel Feidts had the good fortune to survive their brushes with war. Not so for my dad's cousin, Bruce William Heskett, who was killed in a tank in Quang Tri, South Vietnam on 29 June, 1970. He was born 20 April 1945 and came from Spokane. He was a first Lieutenant, cut down only a few months into his tour that commenced on the 8th of February that year. He served in the 5th Infantry Division, A Company, 1st Battalion. His official death code was "Hostile, Died; Ground Casualty; Gun, Small Arms Fire". The summer after 7th grade during our trip to Washington I took an etching of his name on the Vietnam memorial.

Quang Tri province, near the DMZ and the Ben Hai river that divided the country, saw nine years of fighting, intense bombing, free fire zones, and extensive land mine and Agent Orange contamination. Of the 3,500 villages, only 11 remained by the end of the Vietnam war. (see a 1975 Army study of the Northern Provinces)

Just in time for Memorial Day, a batch of Henry Kissinger's old documents have been released by the National Security Archives. Almost two years to the day after my dad's cousin fell in central Vietnam, Kissinger had a charming and 'loquacious' conversation (PDF)with the Chinese Prime Minister at the Great Hall of the People. It's interesting for a lot of reasons, but this passage got news coverage:

If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina.

Some folks couldn't live with it. These, and a few million more from Southeast Asia. Words can't really wrap around the reality of it. There were worthwhile ventures in the World Wars, perhaps Korea, maybe a bit of the Balkans. And of course keeping the Confederates down. Our citizens (and immigrants trying to become citizens) who stick it out are braver than my imagination can handle. But their commanders are only carrying out the policies of the generals, and the generals are (hopefully) only developing policies under orders from the civilian leadership, with transparent oversight from Congress. These days several links in that chain seem to be shattered, and the result are dead-end policies in places that American troops shouldn't be, and autonomous actions that don't support any kind of realistic goals.

They go without body armor so that privatized military firms can make off with fabulously lucrative contracts. The brass cower under Rumsfeld and look the other way when units in places like Abu Ghraib and Haditha go crazy under the stress and lack of support, among a confusing labyrinth of enemies, spies, mercenaries, contractors and the hapless local population.

The responsibility falls to those of us state-side to go after the military's uniformed and civilian leadership for its policies of deploying depleted uranium and caustic white phosphorus, private mercenaries instead of body armor, picking fights with clans instead of negotiating, its alarmingly delusional pattern of planting Psy Ops fake news stories (such as "Zarqawi's" February 2004 letter) instead of taking responsibility for their failed policies.

The good and honorable folks in uniform are getting left to twist in the wind not by us, but by a leadership that has failed to deploy them responsibly, provision them properly, hand down realistic policies, accept blame for failures or plan adequately. It's on us to fish a way out of this, if Memorial Day means anything at all.