Of Love and War
by
Doug Patton
01/27/2003
"The soldier, above all
other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training -
sacrifice." - Gen. Douglas MacArthur
On March
20, 1942, my father, on leave from the Army, married my mother in an Indiana
courthouse, near where she was training to become a Registered Nurse.
His
National Guard unit, called to active duty shortly after the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, had been training for months in the swamps of Louisiana, and this
was the last chance these two high school sweethearts would have to say their
vows to each other before he shipped out to an unknown destiny in war-torn
Europe.
They
were nineteen years old, and they would not see each other again until August of
1945.
Last
Friday, Jan. 24th, Ryan Sedlachek and Carrie Davis, of Omaha, were
married. They had planned a big wedding in June. Nearly 300 invitations had been
sent out. The cake had been ordered. Counting the Maid of Honor and the Best
Man, ten attendants were to participate in the ceremony.
Instead,
two witnesses stood beside them in front of a judge at the county courthouse.
The big wedding would have to wait. Another war looms, and just as my parents
and countless other members of The Greatest Generation had to choose between a
quick courthouse wedding or the possibility of never having the opportunity to
exchange those vows at all, Ryan and Carrie chose to stand before a judge and
pledge their allegiance to each other—“until death do us
part.”
For
Ryan, that is a real possibility. He is an Army reservist with the
530th Military Police battalion based in Omaha. On Wednesday of last
week, he received orders to report for active duty the following Monday.
“If
something happened to him, I would never forgive myself for not marrying him
before he left,” Carrie said.
The 2003
story of Ryan and Carrie Sedlachek is much the same as the story of Don and
Donna Patton 61 years earlier. America has been attacked by an enemy bent on our
destruction. Tyranny, always present in the world, has once again reared its
head to threaten freedom-loving people, who must now lay down their civilian
pursuits and respond to a call to arms.
Of
course, it won’t take three and a half years for Ryan and Carrie to be reunited,
assuming that Ryan survives. But make no mistake: the stakes are just as high.
So why
does this war feel so different? A number of reasons come to mind. After America
endured a stalemate in Korea and a loss in Vietnam, we became a nation unsure of
our ability to win a military conflict. Ronald Reagan’s victory over our Cold
War adversaries, followed by George H. W. Bush’s triumph in the Persian Gulf,
helped to restore our confidence. But our nebulous incursions into Asia still
haunt us.
But
there is another reason for our uncertainty. We have lost our moral focus and
forgotten the lessons of history. The Greatest Generation came out of high
school knowing the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. Today,
those lines are blurred.
Thus,
unlike our parents and grandparents, who could recognize that an attack from
Japan was an attack from Germany, many Americans today can’t see the connection
between Saddam Hussein and terrorism. Moral relativism and political correctness
run amok precludes the profiling necessary to make judgments about the motives
and alliances of our sworn enemies.
Democracies
do not wage war against one another. Liberty creates a desire for peace, and the
self-governing are content to live and let live. It is tyranny that breeds war,
and it is the burden of free people to stop totalitarians.
For the
sake of America, I hope Ryan and Carrie Sedlachek understand this as well as Don
and Donna Patton did.
© 2003 by Doug
Patton
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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has
served as a speechwriter and public policy advisor at the federal, state and
local levels. His weekly columns can be read in newspapers across the country.
Readers can e-mail him at dpatton@neonramp.com.
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