Joseph L. Galloway
is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and a nationally syndicated columnist.
One of America's preeminent war correspondents,
with more than four decades as a reporter
and writer, he recently concluded an assignment
as a special consultant to Gen. Colin Powell
at the State Department.
Galloway, a native of Refugio, Texas, spent
22 years as a foreign and war correspondent
and bureau chief for United Press International,
and nearly 20 years as a senior editor and
senior writer for U.S. News & World Report
magazine. His overseas postings include tours
in Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Singapore
and three years as UPI bureau chief in Moscow
in the former Soviet Union. During the course
of 15 years of foreign postings Galloway served
four tours as a war correspondent in Vietnam
and also covered the 1971 India-Pakistan War
and half a dozen other combat operations.
In 1990-1991 Galloway covered Desert Shield/Desert
Storm, riding with the 24th Infantry Division
(Mech) in the assault into Iraq. General H.
Norman Schwarzkopf has called Galloway "The
finest combat correspondent of our generation
-- a soldier's reporter and a soldier's friend."
Delaware resident E. Vincent Lee, a WWII veteran and POW, visits the National World War II Memorial with grandson Charles McLeod. CHUCK KENNEDY, Knight Ridder Tribune.
WASHINGTON - Memorial Day weekend. For most it means that summer has arrived. Swimming pools are opening. People are breaking out the backyard grills and incinerating meat.
For the few who still live by the old rules, it's now officially OK to wear white shoes and straw boaters. The stores and car dealers offer unbeatable Memorial Day deals.
For the rest of us it is a time for somber reflection on the 1 million Americans who have given their precious lives defending this nation - from the Bridge at Concord in 1776 to Fallujah in 2004 - and all that we who enjoy life in freedom owe them.
Memorial Day is all the more poignant because we are a nation at war and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have now contributed nearly 1,000 dead to that roll of honor. Not many, you say? Ask the mother, or the widow and fatherless children, how heavy just one death in combat weighs on them.
Here in the nation's capital the National Mall is jammed with hundreds of thousands of charter members of the Greatest Generation, gathered for a weeklong festival celebrating the opening of the National World War II Memorial.
It has come just in the nick of time. The vast majority of America's 16 million WWII veterans are gone. Only about 4 million veterans of the bloodiest and most costly war in history are still alive, the youngest of them four-score years and more.
The Mall is jammed with tents and events. Big bands are playing and a generation that taught America how to dance is cutting the rug with style in the 90-degree heat. Other tents are reserved for those who have a story to tell, whether it be a war story or a love story. There are laughter and tears.
They circle slowly around their memorial deciding whether they think it is fitting. The granite and bronze memorial is majestic and somber with its 4,000 gold stars, each star representing 100 dead American soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen during the war.
How puzzled these last survivors of a generation must be by the debate and furor over our current travails in Iraq. Their war was not optional and victory was not negotiable. They stood against a darkness, a barbarism, that threatened to envelope the world.
Since their war they have seen their younger brothers fight to a draw in Korea, their sons fight to a defeat in Vietnam, and now their grandchildren committed to yet another war of uncertain purpose in Iraq.
Our soldiers have remained steady of heart, noble really, throughout all these wars. When their political leaders are unable to state clearly and honestly what it is they are fighting and dying for, they have fought and died for each other, and there is honor enough in that.
My brothers in arms from Vietnam are anguished by what they see on television and read in the newspapers of the war in Iraq. The similarities are enough to chill the blood.
In Vietnam we had military victory piled upon military victory, but that was never enough. Wars of empire require political and strategic brilliance as well as military genius.
Last week we saw Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz pinned to the wall before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He became the first of the neo-conservative architects of pre-emptive war to admit, hesitantly, to failures - failure to plan adequately for post-war Iraq; failure to send enough troops to secure the peace; failure to define any exit strategy.
Those ultimately responsible for those failures include Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and their bosses, Vice President Dick Cheney and President Bush.
None of them has attended the funeral of a single soldier killed in pursuit of their policies in Iraq. Not one. They do not allow the cameras to record the solemn and dignified return home of those who have fallen.
There is a sadness in the land this Memorial Day. We have added nearly 1,000 names to the million who have died for us, for our country. Every one of them is a deeply felt loss.
Every American should pause in silence for a minute or two this busy Memorial Day weekend to think about the true cost of war and those, forever young, forever gone, who have paid the price for all that we hold dear.
