NATO

Why does NATO exist?

Because 407,000 Americans died in WWII and nearly 600,000 were wounded. They fought alongside British, French, Norwegian, Polish, Dutch, Belgian, and Czech armed forced among others in Europe (and alongside many other nations in the Pacific).

They fought against Germany and Italy in North Africa and Europe and then in 1947 our country created NATO and brought those former foes into its fold to create a common interest in peace and strength with them in a Europe divided between East and West, between democracy, or the hope of it, and totalitarianism.

To denigrate NATO and what the alliance stands for is to denigrate the blood shed to make a world in which it is a foundation block.

It is to spit on the graves of 407,000 Americans and rip open the wounds of 600,000 more of those guys — and they were some kind of guys, and yes, gals.

There are armies and there are armies in history, great and courageous armies on the right side of history (just as there have been so many armies on the wrong side).

In our history there have been more good armies than not or as good as armies can be with some exceptions caused by confused national purpose or wrong national purpose as in 1847 in Mexico. But mostly our armies have served the greater or even greatest good of history.

They begin with Washington’s Army, the one that crossed the Delaware on Christmas Eve 1776, a third of whom made the 7-mile march to Trenton barefoot in the snow and ice or with the barest of foot cloths to bind their feet; to the army that served, died and is buried in the hallowed ground at Gettysburg commemorated by the address that beings, “Four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”.

On to the hastily created army of soldiers and marines that fought at Chateau Thierry and at Belleau Wood in 1918; to the more than 5,000 who died at and retreating from the Frozen Chosin on the North Korean border with China; to the 58,000 who died we know not quite what for in the mountains, on the plains and wading through the rice paddies of Vietnam; and, in recent years, the several thousand volunteer forces dying in the mysteries of the Near and Middle East.

But of all armies, of all our armies, that which served in WWII — and in this sense an army is all the armed forces and there were 16 million who served in the Army, the Marines the Army Air Corps and the Navy in WWII:  in the American army that won and gave the world if not peace then at least surcease from another worldwide conflict, who bequeathed in their blood and service a world that could be reconstructed, could be protected by international structures like NATO the one we made and sent to fight in WWII is the best there ever was.

That army was the best ever. It was a citizen army, disbanded almost entirely within 18 months of its victory to return to civilian life secure in the knowledge that every American president who came after would know what they did, who they were, why they fought, against who and what they fought; and the kind of world they intended to guarantee all their generations to come.

Untold numbers of them had nightmares for years ever after, what we now call PSTD. What would they dream now with a U.S. government ready to undo what they won?

And now this? And now this. While he is in Europe the president should go to one of the American cemeteries in Normandy — Normandy where we had almost 7,600 casualties on D-Day including over 2,600 dead, the majority on Omaha Beach.

He, five times deferred from the draft in the 1960s, should stand on the heights above Omaha Beach and then walk on it, close his eyes and imagine what that beach sounded, smelled and felt like that day, how the ocean tide carried American blood to and from the shore all that day — and think how NATO unites both sides of that vast ocean in mutual

security.

Just once he should think and learn. Just once. Just this once.

I don’t expect it to happen.