Watching the Trump Administration honor the American military this Memorial Day Weekend, I felt a wave of relief as well as pride. Relief that the four-year nightmare of disdain and blind risk for our soldiers and sailors under the previous regime was over. Plus, real old-fashioned pride, not the artificial Pride that had been forced on them by fools and fanatics to elevate unworthy, unqualified servicemembers and reject the best of them. My relief extended to my family, specifically someone I didn’t want to be lamenting on a future Memorial Day.
A final picture flashed in my mind. Biden at Dover Air Force Base checking his watch during the transfer of remains of all 13 service members killed in the Kabul blast.
Two years ago, my nephew, Lucas, then 22, told me he was considering joining the Marines, and asked what I thought of the idea. There was a time I would have blurted, “Simper fi!” However, here I had to pause to reflect.
Lucas was a good kid, smart and athletic, though rather lost. His two attempts at college had gone poorly, and the movie work provided by my Second-Unit Director brother ended with George’s early retirement. Traditionally, the Marines were a perfect fit for a young man in his place. But this was an anti-traditional period.
I reviewed my devoured history of the branch as referenced in The Marine Corps Hymn, which kids of my generation once actually memorized. “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli,/We fight our country’s battles on the land as on the sea./First to fight for right and freedom, and to keep our honor clean,/We are proud to claim the title of United States Marine.” For visual help, I mentally replayed scenes from great films associated with the song.
I drew a blank on the Halls of Montezuma, which referred to the heroic Battle of Chapultepec in the now politically incorrect Mexican-American War (1846-1848). Very few people today even Remember the Alamo. But in September 1847, U.S. Marines stormed Chapultepec Castle to take Mexico City and win the war. The heavy casualties they suffered — some 130 killed, 700 wounded out of 7,000 men — inspired the red “blood stripe” on Marine officers’ blue dress trousers.
I did much better on the Shores of Tripoli, recalling an incredible sequence from John Milius’ brilliant The Wind and the Lion. Though fictionally relocated to Tangier, the sequence thrillingly depicts a disciplined band of Marines marching to and seizing the royal palace. Even in 1975, nine years before his provocative Red Dawn, leftists screeched about Milius’ jingoism.
These images ran through my head before I replied to Lucas about his joining the Marines. Then followed a more recent and vivid one. Of 11 Marines blasted to bits in a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate, Kabul Airport during President Biden’s historically inept U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. A withdrawal Biden called “an extraordinary success” in a speech just five days later.
A final picture flashed in my mind. Biden at Dover Air Force Base checking his watch during the transfer of remains of all 13 service members killed in the Kabul blast. I gave Lucas my answer. “Absolutely not,” I said.
Clearly, I was not the only person in 2023 having unprecedented second thoughts about the military.
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