Mark Steyn MEGA PING!!
Posted on 11/12/2002 6:35:35 AM PST by Ryle
Remembrance Day in Trudeaupia
Mark Steyn National Post
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the guns fell silent. But peace is more than the absence of war. For the last decade, the world has been preoccupied with the messy unfinished business of the Great War, the "war to end all wars" -- first in Yugoslavia, the prototype multi-ethnic utopia, which fell apart along the old Habsburg/Ottoman fault line as if the last 80 years had never happened; and then in "the Middle East," an Anglo-French construct cooked up in the years after 1918. After decades of coveting Araby, by the time they got their hands on the place both powers were too exhausted to do little more than draw lines in the sand and call them "Syria," "Iraq," "Saudi Arabia." The most toxic states of the 21st century are the progeny of whimsical Colonial Office cartographers of 1922.
The First World War casts other shadows, too. It was a victory without cheer: the sheer scale of the slaughter cost the ruling classes of the great European empires their moral authority, and eventually their nerve. Accused of urging their cannon fodder on to certain death on the Western Front, they've compensated ever since by eternally lagging back -- from the appeasers of the 1930s to the transnational progressivists of our own time. To listen to some of our political parties, you'd think the almost complete dismantling of the Canadian Armed Forces is some sort of budgetary oversight. It's not: It's a proud statement of who we are.
So to be honest I've found official Canadian military ceremonies a bit hard to take ever since the 40th anniversary of D-Day when Pierre Trudeau had the appalling taste to usurp the Queen and the Governor-General and insert himself into centre stage of the ceremonies in Normandy. While the men who stood before him that day had been liberating Europe, M. Trudeau had whiled away the war as a law student in Quebec. His reaction to the conflict is almost a parody of Trudeaupian hauteur: "So there is a war? Tough." Young Pierre's principal memory of the war years was of dressing up in German uniform to ride his motorcycle through the Quebec countryside -- one of those examples of his urbane witty sense of fun that, for some reason, doesn't get quite the airing his pirouette behind the Queen does. By his own admission, it was only when Pierre arrived at Harvard after D-Day that he "came to appreciate fully the historic importance of the war." Most of his contemporaries in Canada, Britain and elsewhere managed to appreciate its importance without the benefit of a Harvard education and while it was still actual rather than historic. That's why there was still a Canada for him to become Prime Minister of.
But standing before each other on the beach at Normandy on June 6th 1984 -- M. Trudeau and the anonymous veterans whose ranks he disdained to join -- there was no denying whose worldview had triumphed. For cosmopolitan, sophisticated Pierre Trudeau, the whole notion of something being worth fighting for, never mind dying for, is absurd: to go and slog it out on some foreign hillside, getting limbs blown off by grenades, blinded by shrapnel -- and for no other reason than something so risible as "duty" or "love of country"! How preposterous! Better well-read than dead.
So on Remembrance Day in Trudeaupia we attempt an awkward balancing act. Our Defence Minister, who presumably has at least a grade-school education, doesn't remember Vimy or Vichy or which is which but he remembers to look sombre in memory of our veterans from the First World War and Second World War and, er, any other wars that might happen to have taken place at one time or another.
We can remember our veterans, but we cannot remember what they remember. My wife's uncle, Napier Crookenden, died a few days ago. He helped plan the seizure of the bridgehead east of the River Orne in the early hours of D-Day, an operation vital to protect the eastern flank of the 21st Army Group's beach landings. The Orne bridges were taken by the first glider assault just after midnight. My wife's uncle was part of the second glider wave a few hours later and, in one of those acts of slightly dotty British élan, stopped a newspaper boy on the street just before he left and made an impulse purchase. He parachuted into Normandy with the boy's entire stock of the first edition bearing the banner headline, "Skymen Land In Europe," so that his comrades could read of their exploits on the very same day.
He was the youngest of three brothers. The war ended for his older siblings when they were blown up, returning home with only one functioning leg between the two of them, while he made it back with both still working. If you gave that scenario to Steven Spielberg, he'd go off and make Saving Private Ryan's Legs. But what we Boomers, Gen Xers and all the rest can never understand is the quiet, routine acceptance of personal sacrifice -- the fact that you can be crippled, your life shattered, your prospects shriveled, and that it's OK, it was still the necessary thing to do. That's why every old soldier I've ever spoken to considers the premise of Spielberg's movie laughable. He can recreate everything about the look of a war -- the explosions, the severed arteries, the ketchup -- and miss entirely its pulse. Saving Private Ryan is a "realistic" war movie, only if you don't mind every character thinking in a wholly Oprahfied way.
The most staggering line in the entire film comes when Tom Hanks muses that "maybe saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we managed to pull out of this whole godawful mess." Really? What about defeating Hitler and his Axis hordes bent on world domination? Or, if fighting for King and Country is a lot of old hooey and a tad judgmental, how about saving all those pink-triangled gays from the Nazi gas chambers? Spielberg isn't pro-war or anti-war, he just can't get his Boomer head round it.
"In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row ..." Row on row on row, as you can see in any Commonwealth cemetery in Europe. We can scarce comprehend the sacrifice, and even as we honour it we emphasize the gulf between our age and theirs. NBC's star anchor, Tom Brokaw, has found himself a lucrative franchise cranking out books about what he calls "The Greatest Generation" but the designation is almost pathetically self-serving. The youthful Americans who went off to war 60 years ago would have thought it ludicrous to be hailed as "the greatest." They were unexceptional: They did no more or less than their own parents and grandparents had done. Like young men across the world, they accepted soldiering as an obligation of citizenship, as men did for centuries. In 1941, it would have astonished them to be told they would be the last generation to respect that basic social compact. They understood that there are moments in a nation's history when the Trudeaupian shrug -- So there's a war? Tough. Nothing to do with me -- is not enough. When we --their children and grandchildren -- ennoble them as "the greatest" and elevate them into something extraordinary, it's a reflection mainly of our own stunted perspective.
Today, across the Western world, the generals dislike conscript armies. They want light, highly trained, professional regiments. But it's hard not to feel that the end of routine military service has somehow weakened the bonds of citizenship. Citizenship is about allegiance. We benefit from our rights as citizens of the state and in return we accept our duties as citizens of the state. And let's not be embarrassed about supposedly obsolescent concepts like the "nation-state." If we've learned anything since September 11th, it's that, if it were left to the multilateral acronyms -- the UN, EU, even NATO -- al-Qaeda would have the run of the planet. The great evil of September 11th is being resisted by a small number of nation-states, by the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and a handful of others. It seems hardly worth mentioning Canada, an advanced model of a society so free it cannot rouse itself to defend its freedom. It can only do the Trudeaupian shrug and turn away.
"In Flanders fields the poppies blow ..." They're the easy lines -- the poignant imagery of loss. This Remembrance Day, what counts in John McCrae's great poem is the final stanza, the charge to those of us who live:
"Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields."
© Copyright 2002 National Post
"From your lips ......."
Funny, but "earn this" is the line that offended me the most. It wasn't a reminder to the viewers, but a reminder to Private Ryan. That's who he spoke the line to. It's like Hanks' character is cursing Ryan because he was the one who forced them to come to that town and die. "Earn this sacrifice I made for you, you S.O.B." It's the ultimate in horrible guilt trips, and something I really can't imagine one person laying upon another person's conscience. You could even see the effect of that curse on Ryan as an old man, when he breaks down from the guilt and asks his family if he's been a good man. It was such a cruel thing for Hanks' character to say that I found it completely unbelievable.
Then what are they doing every day?
Here in New Joisey the other people in the audience weren't as respectful. During the opening scene where they guy who lost his arm and started looking around for it and picked it up, there was this one guy in front of me who started laughing hysterically like it was the latest fart joke. Then later on in the movie I had to yell at two teens behind me to shut up because they were making out and being very loud about it. After Lautenberg's victory last tuesday I will never have any respect for this cesspool I live in.
(Simply) Chretien has announced he will retire in 2004. By doing this he avoided a review of his leadership this coming February. But he also set in motion the Wanna bee's who are now jockeying for position and the other MP's and assorted hangers on and gophers are who are also kissing butts trying to find the most advantageous Wanna bee to be supporting.
Last week Harper's Canadian Alliance put forward a motion which asked for secret ballots when electing committee chairmen. A motion previously advocated by the big Wanna be Martin and a motion that took power from the PM Chretien who has been appointing these chairmen. Martin and his supporting MP's were caught. Vote for a motion Martin publicly has suggested or vote against it in support of Chretien. Chretien , in trying to save face, knowing he was going to loose, declared it a free vote. Fifty four Liberal MP's voted against Chretien , their own leader, with Harper's CA to pass the motion.
Chretien is looking for a legacy on how he will be remembered. The gun registry is a shambles they just want to forget and wish would go away. The military is starving while Chretien buys new personal government jets and throws money at Bombardier. Federal government spending on health care is down to 14% instead of the 50% it was.(before anyone jumps all over this , understand it is paid for provincially but it's still a raw subject) Chretien has announce Canada will ratify Kyoto but leaves out the part about that decision being Parliament's not his. The federal cabinet has had several members forced to resign over greed and ignorance based scandals . Chretien himself was caught in a scandel. The liberal appointed GG and her pink socked hubby/footman have become royalty preferring the title Excellency to being a servant of the people and representative of the queen. A recent bill for a new herb garden at their government provided mansion, Rideau Hall ,was 3000 bucks. Revenue Canada allows civil servants to deduct $62 a day for meals while long distant truck drivers are allowed $16.50. If I were a fan I'd stand back! The Liberal party is in disarray, paralyzed and nothing is being done.
I agree with your analysis. From what I've heard of Spielberg's political views, he doesn't seem to have much of a clue what the troops were fighting for.
Steyn is always a great read...imo.
I tend to agree with you but I have my doubts as to whether everyone truly did know. Frank Capra made a series of "Why We Fight" films for this very purpose. IIRC, they were mandatory viewing for trainees.
J. Glenn Gray, a soldier who fought in Italy, wrote a remarkable book called "The Warriors", and tells the story of how one day in the Italian mountains he met a man who truly had no idea what the war was about.
"It was quite beyond me, even considering language, to explain to this man why Americans, British and Canadians were fighting in Italy against Germans with Italians on both sides," he said (I'm paraphrasing ... no book handy here). It wasn't as difficult as that for some, but I do agree that the vast majority knew why we were fighting.
As for Hanks, I'd like to think he made up for Saving Private Ryan when he did "Band of Brothers", which is magnificent.
What did it for me was that this "incredibly realistic" movie let the rescuers go off on their mission without taking along a radio. Hanks' character was supposedly a seasoned combat veteran who surely would have known better than to make any of the multiple mistakes that he did.
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