Fallen warriors remind us why whiny
celebs are irrelevant.
The battle of Iraq may be over but
the warriors for peace struggle on. Theirs
is not an easy road, particularly, we hear,
in the entertainment industry, which is
packed with notables fresh from their vocal
campaign against the war, the president,
Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney--objects of
scorn in all the best circles, from Paris to
California.
Now, it appears, some celebrities worry
about damage to their careers. The Dixie
Chicks have taken a hit. Sean Penn thinks
his views have cost him jobs. Tina Brown,
whose main concern about the war seems to be
that it caused the postponement of her new
TV show, announced last week that it would
soon air and that she planned to decorate
the set with an American flag bigger than
anyone else's. She had to scrape up as many
core American values as she could, declared
Ms. Brown, "to have any hope of being
allowed on TV at all in the current climate
of punitive patriotism."
No fear. Americans aren't likely to
concern themselves much with Ms. Brown's
flag--in the event they actually encounter
her program. Most of them have matters more
pressing on their minds. For some, these
days, those matters include funerals and
mourning rites for people they have never
met.
On April 14 in Vermont, for example,
mourners gathered for the funeral of
21-year-old Marine Cpl. Mark Evnin, killed
in action on the drive to Baghdad. A
thousand people attended the rites at Ohavi
Zedek Synagogue in Burlington, at which the
Marine's grandfather, a rabbi, presided.
Reporters related how the Marine Corps
League color guard and local firefighters
flanked the walkway into the synagogue,
where mourners included the Roman Catholic
bishop and the governor.
Crowds lined the streets in
salute--some with flags, some with
signs--everywhere the funeral procession
passed. But what struck the Burlington Free
Press reporters most were all the strangers
who had been impelled to come to the
cemetery to honor the young Marine. One of
them was a mother who had brought her two
young children and stood holding two
American flags. "Every single man and woman
out there is my son and daughter," she told
the journalists. "He could have done a lot
with his life. But he gave it to the
nation."
Two days later came the funeral mass
for 25-year-old Marine First Lt. Brian
McPhillips of Pembroke, Mass., killed not
far from Baghdad. Three Marines died in the
firefight at Tuwayhah described by Dallas
Morning News embedded reporter Jim Landers.
The 2nd Tank Battalion had run into an
ambush by a band of Islamic Jihad
volunteers--Syrians, Egyptians, Yemenis and
others. Lt. McPhillips went down firing his
machine gun.
The knock that brought the news home
in the early hours of April 6 had caused the
walls to reverberate, his mother recalled.
His father, a Marine veteran of Vietnam,
knew at once what the 5:00 a.m. visit meant.
They never come because somebody's been
wounded: "They want you to know as soon as
possible."
Neither of the McPhillips was
surprised at Brian's choice of a military
career. His father had served, his
great-uncle had fought at Guadalcanal; and
Julie and David McPhillips had been the sort
of parents who wanted to imbue their
children with a consciousness of
history--that of their country's not least.
So they took them to places like Shiloh,
Antietam, Gettysburg and other national
shrines.
David McPhillips nevertheless used
all his powers of persuasion to keep Brian
from enlisting in the Marines right out of
high school. Heeding his parents, Brian went
off to Providence College, a Catholic
institution, where he thrived, compiled an
academic record most people considered
enviable, his father included, and looked to
the future. Shortly after graduation in
2000, it arrived, with the commissioning
ceremony that made him an officer in the
Marines. He would go to war, his father
reported, carrying his rosary and his Bible.
At his funeral service at the Holy
Family Church in Rockland, where Brian's
mother attended daily Mass, David McPhillips
recalled his son's generosity and
enterprise. Mrs. McPhillips would deliver a
eulogy of her own, afterward carried in the
local papers, on the subject of her son's
life and death. She saw herself, Julie
McPhillips said, as one of the fellow
Americans for whom he had given his life. It
had been her great privilege to be his
mother: "To you my dear and faithful son,
from earth to heaven I salute you . . . ."
As at Cpl. Evnin's funeral, crowds
lined the streets. Brian's uncle Paul
Finegan pondered the problems getting to the
cemetery in Concord--a 150-car cortege
traveling 50 miles on the busiest highway in
New England. He had, it turned out, nothing
to fear: 50 state troopers, many of them
coming in from days off, had closed most of
the road for them, a stretch of 35 miles.
Then came another sight he could
scarcely believe. At the side of the road,
near their halted cars, stood streams of
people, standing at attention--paying their
respects.
"They stopped all these cars, and
people got out to stand holding their hands
over their hearts," he marveled.
He should not have been surprised.
Scenes like this are the reason all the
celebrity protesters can stop worrying about
public wrath and punishment. Americans have
other things on their minds all right.
September 11, for one. What they have on
their minds, too, since the just-concluded
remarkable war, is the consciousness of who
they are and what this society is that it
should have produced men and women of the
kind who fought in that war and died in it.
People got a powerfully close look
at their fellow Americans in uniform these
last weeks. This is what impels them now to
stand at roadsides in tribute, heedless of
where else they had to go. And this is why
strangers flock to funerals.
|