And Some That Ain't
... and some that ain’t
Early mornings I open Google News thinking perhaps Malaysia flight 370 has been found overnight. Unlike Amelia Earhart’s much smaller Lockheed 10 Electra, and especially given modern search technology, the Boeing 777 seems too big to vanish and never be found. All The News That’s Fit To Print this morning has something to do with searching the “seventh arc” where surely it will be found. We’ll believe it when we see it.
In the news, some are angry at Sgt. Bergdahl for writing that he was “ashamed of America.” I don’t understand their mentality, I really don’t. Other than that humans love to hate and will find something and someone to hate, I don’t understand them. Certainly, I understand his comrades’ and the military’s views about walking away from the post in a war zone in wartime. The Army will deal with that; it was reason enough to buy him back. But ashamed of America? I grew up in a wartime era of intense patriotism, taught, thinking, believing and feeling that America is special in the history of the world. I long felt that our motives were so pure that we could do no wrong. As a Christian and an American, a priest and retired military, I am not proud that the American flag and our national songs touch my heart and stir my emotions more powerfully than the Cross and all our hymns. At times, I still can hardly believe that of all the possibilities, for all that might have been, I, me, I have been so fortunate and blessed as to have been born and lived in America. But there are times when I am ashamed ...
... there are times when I am ashamed. My first memory and sense of shame was seeing photographs of the American atrocity at My Lai during the Vietnam War. Dead infants and children. Murdered babies. We did this. My shame was overwhelming, my illusions dissed, disillusioned with the realization that we are no different from the rest of inhumanity. My shame for that will only be closed in the sod.
I am ashamed of what the Iraq War showed our government to be capable of and us to support. I am proud that we have supported our military forces regardless, as we military did not feel supported during the Vietnam War even though our elected government was wrong, but I am ashamed of my government. I am ashamed of the elected and of the electors. I am ashamed that we seem incapable of learning lessons from our history and the history of the world. I am ashamed of our record of supporting “friendly” governments who forego the opportunity to better their people and brutally oppress them instead, in their greed. I am ashamed to read, again this morning from a university in Seattle, of yet another shooting scenario, ashamed because this is becoming as common in America as suicide bombings in the markets of third world countries, and I am ashamed that we are afraid even to discuss what would be necessary to stop it. I am ashamed that our sense of personal rights obliterates our sense of public responsibility. I am ashamed. I am ashamed of the racism that pervades us, our minds, our secret thoughts, our actions, racism of skin color and especially of religious differences and certitudes and the hatreds that ensue. I am ashamed that we hate those who are different from us. With Sgt. Bergdahl, I am ashamed of our record in Afghanistan, which we will, hopefully, soon depart but leaving that brutal stone age country and culture even worse than we found it if that is possible. I would be even more ashamed today, if my personal answer to 9/11 had been exercised in my anger and fury the day after, on 9/12; though not as many Americans would have been sacrificed for I am not sure what.
Did the president handle the Bergdahl moment properly? Of course not, certainly not. Obama knew gardenia well that the soldier had walked away, and that he had done it before, and that the ugly rumor was desertion. A returned POW is not necessarily a returning hero. But he is ours and the president was right to pay the exorbitant price for the exchange, because he is an American soldier. But to hail the event with grand fanfare at the White House was ill-conceived and stupid. Not as stupid as the political furor being raised by self-righteous second guessing politicians whose nose is out of joint because they weren’t consulted but especially because they love to hate. However, I of all people can forgive stupidity and hatred as I have been forgiven.
But ashamed? A man who feels no shame is a man with no conscience. God forbid.
W