Memorial Day

A friend of mine sent me this thought today: A win-win situation: Dig a moat the length of the Mexican border, take the dirt and raise the levees in New Orleans, and then put the Florida alligators into the border moat!  Any other problems you would like for me to solve?

Clever.  

He also sent me this, which is timely, this being Memorial Day Weekend, and all.  The music accompanying the slide show is from the movie, “Glory”, which is about the first US Army unit comprised entirely of Blacks.  

The combination of the two got me to thinking about immigration and time spent in our nation’s service.  One immigrant I met baffled me somewhat – we met in boot camp.  He was a lunatic Brit from Liverpool…a “Liverpudlian”, as I have since learned…and twenty-seven years later, I remain astonished by his choice to join the Navy.  Why?  What was it about this country that inspired him to make such a choice?  

If I may be permitted to put his choice into context, joining any branch of the military at the time was an unpopular thing to do; we were then just four years out of Vietnam, and a neatly-worn uniform nearly always came with the epithet, “Baby Killer”.

I never did get to talk to him about the reasons behind his choice.  I was in awe of him simply for making it.

I have since met many immigrants, most of them Filipino, who were allowed to join the Navy by virtue of winning a lottery established for the purpose of limiting their recruiting numbers.  One Filipino sailor I spoke with told me that many of his countrymen joined the US military to gain their US citizenship, a goal worth tremendous sacrifice.  For them, the cost of a better life is paid up front.

During one man’s security background investigation, it was discovered that though he had already been serving for a dozen years and held a lower-level security clearance, he was not a US citizen.  His mother had come from Mexico to be a cook for itinerant farm workers in central California, and had brought him and his brothers and sisters here when he was very young.  He was serving his country.

President Theodore Roosevelt said, “In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.  But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here.  Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all…we have room but for one sole loyalty and that is loyalty to the American people.”

You didn’t hear Teddy shouting, “All right, we’ll give some land to the niggers and the chinks, but WE DON’T WANT THE IRISH.”  As Americans, we should all feel welcome here.  Certainly, immigrant veterans have assimilated themselves by their very service.

He also said, “We have room for but one flag, and that is the American flag…”  This morning, I read this post by my friend Betty.  Towards the end, she writes, “At one point, the flashlight caught the image of the tattered flag I have had hanging on my porch since September 11, 2001. Last First Date Guy gasped in horror, immediately offering to take it down for me, to buy me a new one. Very calmly, I explained that I had a brand new flag in my foyer, but that I had no intention of taking the tattered flag down.

“I hung the flag that day because I was so proud to be an American, so proud to live in a country which could rise to the occasion, process our grief in a constructive way, help each other get through the cold night aftermath. Since then, I have been dismayed at the atrocities that have followed. I am appalled by the war, by the Patriot Act, by the dismantling of our civil rights, by the greed of the oil companies. I am confused by the hypocrisy of anger following the killing of American citizens by Iraqis, while the blood is still cooling in the bodies from the bombs we dropped on the homes of countless Iraqi women and children.“My flag reflects my dismay at the performance of our current president. I have not mutilated our country's flag, Mother Earth has. She is just as dismayed as I am. The wind and the rain has wreaked identical damage to my flag as George W. Bush has done to our country. My flag will fly until January 8, 2009, when his reign will finally be over.”

It goes without saying that I don’t share many of the sentiments Betty expressed, nor do I agree with some of her more emotional statements (quite the contrary; I take personal umbrage at the assertion that we dropped bombs on “the homes of countless Iraqi women and children”), but I am very grateful that we live in a country where she can write such things without fear of reprisal, where she can display a mutilated flag as a form of protest.  

There are those among you who might be astonished at how much I do agree with her.  I, too, am appalled by the USA PATRIOT Act*, the corporate juggernaut of greed, and by the way the war has been conducted.  

I am deeply suspicious of the current debate about immigration, and whether it is indeed about the security of our borders.  Why now, nearly five years after our border policy led directly to the loss of three thousand lives?  Had President Bush announced immigration reform the day after 9/11, I might have understood such an argument.  Now, however, I can’t escape the parallels with German National Socialism in the early 1930s.  (No, I am not comparing Mr. Bush with Adolph Hitler.  The President seems merely to be reacting to public outcry on the subject, and I believe there are far more sinister players on the field.)

Having spent my entire adult life in the service of the United States, first as an active duty sailor, and later as a consultant to the US Navy, I can’t help but think of all these things on a personal level.  My direct experience of immigrants has been, on the whole, overwhelmingly positive.  Surely, others must feel as I do.

At the end of Batman Begins, Police Lieutenant Gordon says to Batman, “I never got to say thank you.”

Batman replies, “And you’ll never have to.”

To Betty and to all Americans, whether you feel as she does or not, I must say that I am proud to be but one of the men and women (immigrants or the descendents of immigrants all) who have, over the course of some two hundred and thirty years, earned for you the privilege of hanging a tattered flag in front of your home.

No thanks are necessary.  

* The “USA PATRIOT Act” is the correct title for Public Law 107-56.  “USA PATRIOT” is an acronym which stands for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”.