The Pilot's version of Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day and the Pilot celebrates it with the headline: “Goodwill at a Price.” The story is Iraqi reconstruction … No, it is about the US military’s efforts to improve the lives of ordinary Iraqis by building schools and digging wells. This is not reconstruction because these wells and schools were never there. We have gone past the point in Iraq where things are back to the ante bellum period. We are now building a country where schools and wells are built, not Presidential Places with marble walls and gold fixtures in the bathrooms.

But the headline reflects the Pilot’s attitude. The headline is trying to tell us that: “US Army Trying to Bribe Iraqis to be Good.” The fallacy in logic is that this is what Americans have always done. We fly aid to the world’s disasters and trouble spots. After WW II, we reconstructed Japan and created the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe. When the Russians were hauling whole factories out of defeated Germany after the war, we were feeding starving Germans and helping them rebuild their nation.

Is our altruism pure and without regard for our own good? Yes and no. The billions we have sent into that bottomless pit known as Haiti was almost wholly altruistic, although we hope that we can improve the situation there so that we won’t see boatloads of Haitians landing in Florida. The Marshall Plan turned Europe into a trading partner – in the long run. But in the short run we did it to kick-start a Europe devastated by a global war. And our aid to Japan was good for both of our countries. Macarthur was supposed to have cabled the President: “Send me food or send me bullets.”

There is another story on page A3 “Mother of Slain Marine feel the loss and sorrow of Memorial Day every day.” This – on Memorial Day – is a reprint of a Denver Post story about a mother. It isn’t about the slain soldier, why he died and the cause in which he died. He is a prop for a maudlin tale of a grieving mom whose son could as well have been killed in an auto accident. It is a tool with the subtext being: see the grief and anguish you are causing … George Bush … you devil. People are dying for nothing, and it’s your fault.

The rest of section A is filled with reports of ambushes, crimes by American soldiers via Jason Blair’s NY Times and advertisements. Have a memorable Memorial Day.