Proud to be An American

By John E. Carey
First Published Online: June 23, 2007
Republished on July 4, 2007

Some things we see every day and we take them for granted or pay little or no attention. But by noticing some of the things and news reports in our daily life, we might just get a better appreciation for who we are as a people.

A block or so from my house there is a triangular, yellow street warning sign that reads: “Blind Pedestrian.” My Vietnamese-born wife said one day as we passed: “Only in America.” She said she couldn’t imagine the caring for the safety of one individual in more crowded nations like India, Vietnam or China.

That sign speaks to the importance we put into every single citizen and every single soul.

A news report this week had the headline: “U.S. searching for Iwo Jima Marine.”

The seven-member search team — the first on the island of Iwo Jima in 60 years — is looking for the remains of Sgt. William H. Genaust, who was killed in action after filming the flag-raising atop Mount Suribachi 62 years ago. This is another indicator of the care and love we Americans devote to every life. I am amazed occasionally to read about the discovery and reburial with honors of some soldier lost 100 years ago or more.

U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Friday, Feb. 23, 1945. On Monday, June 18, 2007, Japan changed the name of the Pacific island of Iwo Jima, site of the famous World War II battle, to its original name of Iwo To after residents there were prodded into action by two recent Clint Eastwood movies. (AP Photo/Joe Rosenthal, file)
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In Chaleston this week, nine firefighters died in the line of duty trying to save other lives and property not their own. They were all heroes.  Firefighters came from all over this nation to honor those lost and to embrace their families.

Caskets are arranged in a row during a memorial service in North Charleston, S.C. on Friday, June 22, 2007 for the nine firefighters killed in a blaze in Charleston last Monday.

In Ohio this morning, about 600 volunteers turned out to search for a nearly nine months pregnant woman who has gone missing. This is the third day of the search and thousands of strangers have volunteered their time and their effort to find this one lost soul. Ned Davis, the father of 26-year-old Jessie Davis, begged volunteers to continue their efforts –which they were doing without complaint.

And on Friday a U.S. Navy AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense ship, other elements of the Missile Defense Agency’s Missile Defense Sytem and a Spanish Navy AEGIS completed a complex missile defense test including shooting down a ballistic missile over the Pacific Ocean.

And on Capitol Hill and in the White House this week, the president of a communist country was confronted on his nation’s record on human rights, freedom of religion and repression of dissidents.

This also made me proud to be an American — that our leaders put human rights on the agenda with Vietnam — a situation that obviously caused the Vietnamese communists uneasiness and perhaps “loss of face” or some modicum of shame.

When confronted, President Triet of Vietnam was, according to a Congressman who participated, “evasive.”

Triet told reporters that he and Bush had a “direct and open exchange” on human rights but offered no indications that he intended to do anything as a result of the discussion.

“We are also determined not to let those differences afflict our overall, larger interest,” he said.

President Triet reiterated that his country did not need to improve human rights.

“It’s not a question of improving or not,” Triet said in an interview with The Associated Press, hours after meeting with Bush. “Vietnam has its own legal framework, and those who violate the law will be handled.”

“The Vietnamese laws could not be 100 percent the same as the United States laws, due to the different historical backgrounds and conditions,” Triet said through an interpreter.

“There is a different understanding on this issue.”

President Triet insists upon defending an indefensible and shameful set of practices and conditions in Vietnam. He didn’t even sound convinced of the shameful communist party line himself.

We predict that if Vietnam continues its repressive human rights record, it will suffer a financial toll.

Communist Vietnam’s proven method
of silencing a prisoner.  Father Ly just
before he was removed from court.  He
had no representation at trial.

A word on heroes, American culture, and John Wayne:

“John Wayne reigned as one of Hollywood’s kings for nearly 40 years, and his support of his country’s war efforts — from American settlement of the West to stopping Communism both here and abroad — got him into trouble as the nation’s ideas about patriotism took a sharp turn to the left. …

“[W]hy then is there no John Wayne today? Anyone who surveys the current scene and is old enough to remember the days of the Duke surely knows the answer. The sublime Katharine Hepburn summed it up more eloquently than anyone:

” ‘John Wayne is the hero of the ’30s and ’40s and most of the ’50s. Before the creeps came creeping in. Before — in the ’60s — the hero slid right down into the valley of the weak and the misunderstood. Before the women began dropping any pretense to virginity into the gutter. With a disregard for truth, which is indeed pathetic. And unisex was born. The hair grew long and the pride grew short. And we were off to the anti-hero. John Wayne survived all this.’ “

— Lisa Fabrizio, writing on “The Duke of America,” June 27 in the American Spectator Online at www.spectator.org

Veterans’ Lifelong Mission To Keep Memories Alive

Rolling Thunder is 20 years old. 

By Pamela Constable
The Washington Post
Sunday, May 27, 2007; Page C01

Thousands of military veterans from towns across the country cruised into the nation’s capital yesterday on polished Harleys and Hondas, filling the air with the unmistakable leonine rumble that, after 20 years, has become an intrinsic part of Memorial Day weekend in Washington.

The Rolling Thunder motorcycle legions, expected to reach several hundred thousand for today’s parade from the Pentagon to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, carry an annual message of moral support for U.S. troops fighting abroad, readjusting back home, and imprisoned or missing in action — a message as relevant today as it was when a handful of Vietnam veterans founded the group in 1987.

“We want to make sure that the soldiers coming back now from Iraq or Afghanistan, whether full or maimed or dead, are being honored and respected in a way that we never were,” said Ed Geoffrion, 62, a semiretired auditor and Navy veteran from Chicopee, Mass., with a tattoo of an eagle clutching an American flag on his left biceps. He has ridden his Harley-Davidson Road King to Washington every Memorial Day weekend since 1991.

Many of the bikers were Vietnam vets in their 60s, wearing gray ponytails and black leather vests crammed with badges, patriotic patches and military insignia; some were accompanied by their wives, sporting similar regalia. There were also several elderly Korean War vets in the crowd and a young Marine representing vets from Iraq and Afghanistan.

For some participants, the event had a theme of carefully nursed grievance, a permanent wound kept alive so future generations would not forget. Many Vietnam vets spoke with deep bitterness of being neglected and scorned after returning from combat 40 years ago, of having fought hard to win a war that they said politicians lost.

They also kept alive their permanent mission to remember soldiers who are missing or imprisoned abroad. Vendors at display booths sold packets of the names, histories and metal ID bracelets of such soldiers.

Most were from the Vietnam era, but one was a young soldier from Ohio, Keith “Matt” Maupin, who went missing after his convoy was ambushed in Iraq in April 2004. Several days later he was shown alive, as a captive, on a televised videotape. There has been no news of him since.

For other veterans in the crowd yesterday, riding to Washington with Rolling Thunder every year has become a ritual of renewed, cathartic healing, a chance to feel unabashedly patriotic and to revel in the friendly welcome they receive as they travel to the capital.

Milo Gordon, 63, a disabled vet and counselor from Wisconsin, said he felt lost and depressed for years after he came home from Vietnam. In 1993, he recounted, he happened to visit Washington and found himself at the Wall, sobbing uncontrollably over a wreath that said “thank you.”

“At that moment, I quit wanting to die and started to get involved,” he said. Now, Gordon joins a group of several hundred bikers each year in California in a Ride for the Wall. They travel east for 12 days, first on interstate highways and then on smaller roads, stopping at towns in West Virginia, where they distribute donations for schools. Residents eagerly await and celebrate their arrival.

“It is the parade we never got,” Gordon said. “When everyone wants to feed you and kids are asking for your autograph, it really pierces that emotional brick wall vets carry with them.”

Rolling Thunder riders parked their gleaming machines along Constitution Avenue yesterday and strolled around the Ellipse, relaxing and revving their spirits for their 20th annual parade today from the Pentagon, across Memorial Bridge, to the Wall.

“When we first started out, we had maybe 2,000 bikes, and nobody knew who we were. Now we are respected, and the police say we bring down the crime rate,” said Teddy Shpak, 60, a retired Veterans Affairs Department worker from Connecticut who has been to Washington every Memorial Day since 1987.

There were back-slapping reunions and tearful reminiscences. Combat units regrouped around picnics of barbecued ribs. A cluster of Marine veterans knelt to polish the brass plaques surrounding a memorial flagpole. At the Wall, vets mingled with tourists as they inched along the slab bearing 58,249 names.

Men posed for their wives in the door of an HU-1 combat helicopter used in Vietnam, decorated with a pair of boots and a display of 1968-vintage C-rations.

“See those villages? Somewhere around there is where I got shot,” a white-haired man said to his wife, peering through bifocals at the fine print on a map of Vietnam.

There were also a lot of paraphernalia, with vendors selling piles of helmets and tailors stitching insignia on new black leather jackets. Many motorcycles were decorated with personal or military touches, and a few were painted to look like the American flag.

But the showpiece of the Rolling Thunder contingent this year is Flashback, an exquisitely painted three-wheel Boss Hoss motorcycle covered with scenes depicting the Vietnam War — soldiers wading through rivers and throwing grenades; helicopters dropping napalm and evacuating wounded men from jungles.

“None of us likes to go to war,” said Lew Winters, 56, a Vietnam vet and trucking company owner from Tennessee who designed the scenes and had them professionally airbrushed on his bike last year in Florida. “But someone has to keep our freedom. This is our tribute to all of the 3.7 million who served in Vietnam.”

Winters, his wife, Wanda, and Flashback were surrounded all day by admirers who peered at the lifelike scenes in awe. Many fellow veterans tried to thank him, but he kept shaking his head and repeating, “This is for you.”

Guns and American History and Culture

From theMarch 31, 1995 statement of Tulane University criminologist James Wright before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary:

Guns are important elements of our history and our culture. Attempts to control crime by regulating the ownership or use of firearms are attempts to regulate the artifacts and activities of a culture that in its own way is as unique as any of the other myriad cultures that comprise the American ethnic mosaic. This is what is referred to as the American gun culture, about which many have written, and, I believe it remains among the least understood of any of the various subcultural strands that make up modern society.

The existence and characteristics of the American gun culture also have implications that are rarely appreciated. For one, gun control deals with matters that people feel strongly about, that are part of their background, and their heritage, and their upbringing … and their worldview.

Advocates for gun control are frequently taken aback by the stridency with which their seemingly modest and sensible proposals are attacked. But from the gun culture’s point of view, restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms amount to the systematic destruction of a valued way of life, and are, in that sense, a form of cultural genocide. Scholars, and criminologists, and legislators, who speculate on the problem of guns and crime and violence would, I think, profit to look at things, at least occasionally, from the gun culture’s point of view.

There are about 50,000,000 U.S. families who own firearms, and hardly any of these families have ever harmed anyone with their guns, and virtually none ever intend to. Nearly everything these families will ever do with their guns is both legal, and largely innocuous. So when we advocate restrictions on their rights to own guns, as a means to fighting crime, we are casting aspersions on their decency, as though we somehow hold them responsible for the crime and violence that plague the nation. Is it any wonder they object often loudly and vociferously to such slander?

Brothers Served Valiantly in War

By John E. Carey
The Washington Times
April 21, 2007

Two brothers in the Civil War, Jacob and Daniel Ammen, achieved distinction and glory, especially during the trying early days of the war. Although historians today largely overlook both, these two brothers deserve admiration and respect for remarkable service to their country.
    
After the battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, Brig. Gen. William Nelson, commander of the U.S. Army’s 4th Division, wrote of Jacob Ammen, “The style in which Colonel Ammen handled his brigade excited my admiration.”
    
Later in his postbattle report, Nelson singled out Jacob Ammen this way, “I desire to call the attention of the general commanding the Army of the Ohio to the distinguished conduct of Col. Jacob Ammen, of the Twenty-fourth Ohio Regiment, commanding the Tenth Brigade. The cool, wary, and vigorous method in which he fought his brigade, protecting all the while the left flank of the army, gave me a profitable lesson in the science of battle.”
    
This is high praise from a commander at the time of the Civil War. In fact, for generations of military men, to be “mentioned in dispatches” was about the highest distinction achievable.
    
After Shiloh, Jacob Ammen pursued the Confederates to Corinth, Miss., and northern Alabama. Unfortunately, Jacob suffered severely debilitating physical ailments that forced him from the field of battle. He was named commander of Camp Dennison in Ohio and ultimately promoted to the rank of brigadier general.
    
But Jacob Ammen’s assignment away from the front lines should not, in any way, be viewed as less than dynamic. For decades after the Civil War, the men trained at Camp Dennison recalled Gen. Ammen as both a stern disciplinarian and a “fine gentleman” whom they admiringly dubbed “Uncle Jake.”
    
At Dennison, Ammen trained 57 regiments of Ohio infantry, nine regiments of cavalry, and 19 batteries of artillery. Dennison was one of the largest camps used by the Union Army during the Civil War and also housed a 2,300-bed hospital, reputedly one of the best in the country.
    
Jacob’s younger brother, Daniel, attained a certain fame and distinction of his own. When the U.S. Navy launched a combined amphibious operation against Port Royal, S.C., in November 1861, the first amphibious assault of its kind in history, Daniel commanded the small gunboat USS Seneca.
    
As Confederate troops fell back from their coastal forts in the face of severe naval shelling, Adm. Samuel F. Du Pont, commander of the naval forces, ordered Ammen ashore with a contingent of sailors to secure the forts and raise the American flag. Du Pont would later turn the forts over to the U.S. Army.
    
This marked one of the few times in American history that a Navy officer raised the flag over a captured enemy land fortification.
    
Daniel Ammen accomplished another singular achievement in the annuls of U.S. history when he spearheaded the successful suppression of a mutiny. While commanding 220 U.S. Navy seamen in transit aboard the steamer Ocean Queen, Ammen, with the assistance of the master of the Ocean Queen, Capt. Tinklepaugh, and a Boatswain Bell, put down the insurrection. Historian David McCullough gives Ammen the bulk of the credit in his history “Path Between the Seas,” writing that “he had settled a mutiny on the instant by calmly shooting the two leaders.”
    
Daniel Ammen also commanded the USS Patapsco in the attack on Fort McAIlister, Ga., and Fort Sumter, S.C., in 1863 and the USS Mohican in the bombardment of Fort Fisher, N.C., in late 1864 and early 1865.

Although both Ammen brothers were childhood friends of Ulysses S. Grant, Daniel seems to have been the closer in a friendship that could clearly be called “lifelong.”
    
Although the story of the early relationship between Grant and Daniel Ammen may be more myth than history, Brig. Gen. Theo. F. Rodenbough stated unequivocally that “[Daniel] Ammen saved Grant’s life from drowning while a school-boy.”
    
Rodenbough also recorded that Grant would allow only two men to ride his beloved charger Cincinnati: Daniel Ammen and Abraham Lincoln. Grant considered Cincinnati the finest horse that he had ever seen and had reportedly been offered $10,000 in gold for the mount.
    
After the Civil War, Grant kept track of his friend Daniel Ammen, ensuring promotions and prized assignments. Grant engaged Daniel’s great intellect in the possibilities for a waterway across Nicaragua. In 1879, Ammen was sent as a delegate to a congress in Paris to discuss Isthmian canal questions — a project that would ultimately become the Panama Canal.
    
Daniel Ammen also designed the Navy ram Katahdin and the “Ammen balsa,” a life raft used by the Navy for decades. He wrote “The Atlantic Coast,” and a series titled “The Navy in the Civil War” (New York, 1883). He also wrote “Recollections of Grant” (1885); “The Old Navy and the New” (autobiographical, 1891), and other volumes.
    
Jacob and Daniel Ammen displayed unusual alacrity in battle and great acumen in administration and diplomacy during one of the most trying times of America’s history.
    
    John E. Carey is a frequent contributor to the Washington Times.

Honoring the Dead and Giving Thanks Started During Another War

By John E. Carey
First Published
The Washington Times
November 23, 2006
(Rebublished in honor of Memorial Day 2007)

The first “Official” Thanksgiving in the United States of America was celebrated in 1863. President Lincoln, by proclamation, declared a day of Thanksgiving in the middle of the Civil War!

The original proclamation is in fact dated October 3, 1863. Just a few months before, on July 1-3, 1863, the Union and Confederate Armies had clashed at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. During those three days 3,155 Union soldiers were killed and between 2,600 and 4,500 Confederate soldiers were killed. But they were all Americans.

The total of the killed, wounded and missing during those three days for the Union side was 23,040. The Confederate estimate is between 20,650 and 25,000.

The outcome of the Civil War was by no means clear in October, 1863. We still could have finished the conflict with two separate nations on the North American continent: instead of one United States.

Despite Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg in July, 1863, the nation still had 22 months of bloody Civil War ahead of it. At the end of the Civil War the nation had suffered approximately 630,000 deaths and over 1 million total casualties.

But President Lincoln and his cabinet discussed the situation in the country frequently and they came to several conclusions. Despite the tremendous loss of life and destruction, the population was indeed on the rise. The fields in the north were producing prodigious amounts of food. The mines were producing more coal, iron and precious metals than ever before. The cabinet officers wanted the President of the United States to remind the people to thank God for His blessings!

Amid all this suffering of the Civil War the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, ordered a Day of Thanksgiving in this Proclamation:

By the President of the United States of America.A Proclamation.The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,Secretary of State

According to an April 1, 1864 letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln’s secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy wrote in his diary on October 3, 1863 that he had complimented Secretary Seward on his brilliant writing.