Kissed them and put them there.
-Eugene Field,
Little Boy Blue
John McCain gave a speech this week in Arlington, Virginia, and he talked about when he was a little boy standing outside his house one day. And a car pulled up outside, and a man called out to his father that day. The Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor.
John McCain's father was a soldier. So John McCain's father went away, and this little boy grew, and one day, after his battles were through, this little boy's father came home. So did this little boy's grandfather, for he'd been fighting the same battles. And he was so tired, he died the next day.
When the little boy grew into a man, he, too, was called away, this time into the hot, wet rice fields of Vietnam. And then, one day, when his battles were through, this little boy, now a man, he came home, too.
And in his speech, a weathered and tested, and unbeaten and unbroken man, talked about a nation standing on a threshold. Will we be a young nation or an old nation? Will we forge ahead comfortably in our strength, or withdraw into a hardened shell of isolationism, which provides a brief period of false security, but little else? Will we live in a future or a past?
The soldier sees the world as it is; it is a dangerous place, filled with violent rhetoric backed up by horrendously violent action. That is one front. There is also ruthless competition from powers, who, having imported our markets but not our ideology, or our love of individuality, would be happy to take our place as a superpower at the global table.
What will they do with the power?
The soldier's speech traced America's history through Harry Truman and JFK, much as the soldier's life has. He reminded us that we did not win the Cold War by ourselves. Indirectly, he reminded us also that we did not lose Vietnam alone. Vietnam lost, too, as ethnic cleansing and genocide wrote its nation's last chapter before the ultimate embrace of the free markets of the West, but not of its ideology. And this is a return to a theme he raises powerfully, most notably with China.
America has sins, as all nations do. Once you accept your sins as your signature, you have no future. You are like Britain, a nation of past greatness and all apologies. You are a nation of isolationism. You are an old nation, with crumbling power.
America has a choice ahead of her, and the soldier sees it quite clearly. Will you be young again, not to fight, but to be forceful enough to make fighting a daunting choice for your enemy? Will you recognize that America has enemies outside of her own borders?
Will she become an old nation, lamenting her choices within her own borders and swimming in her own guilt? Or will she rise above it, accept her own responsibility to make it right with all her children, and keep her place as a shining city on a hill?
We will go one way, or we will go the other. We will be young, or we will be old. We will shine and thrive in the future, or we will grow accustomed to the darkness and wither in the past.
My grandfather was a man with a wide face and a bright mind and a bright smile and soft eyes and a sharp wit and a quick joke. My grandfather's hands were no strangers to a gun. My grandfather, too, was a soldier.
Too many Americans are used to toy soldiers. Blood runs through the stripes of our country's flag, the suffering of all of its children. America must decide now what she wants for herself: Will she be a shining sign of hope for the world, or a bleak and broken apology that cannot face itself or its neighbors around the globe?
We decided a long time ago that we would not end up like the British Empire. America is again at a threshold, deciding her own fate with the same question.
John McCain is a soldier, and America, of late, has been to quick to run from her soldiers. McCain does not celebrate either war or his status as a war hero. This is because good soldiers know better than you, or me, what war costs. Not in a budget. Not in a funding request. But in real, human life. America's best hope would be realized in bringing the real soldier home to make peace, and leaving the toy soldiers on the shelf of her past.