BEN STEIN'S DIARY: Unshared Sacrifice
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY Unshared Sacrifice by Benjamin J. Stein WEDNESDAY T s EARLY AUGUST. Here I am in hot, humid, miserably oppressive Washington, D.C. It is a steam bath. I am on a good mission,...
...Gee, I wonder if they would have turned down Ronald Reagan...
...In the Civil War, over 600,000 died out of a population very roughly one-eighth what ours is now...
...Each death is a tragedy and a curse...
...I passed the intersection of Connecticut and Kanawha Streets, NW...
...They were still thin enough to wear their dress uniforms from 53 years ago...
...I spoke to a man who was a hero at Guadalcanal...
...He is still amazingly handsome, even jaunty, and his wife is beautiful...
...The climate is getting unbearable, that's the long and short of it...
...They can spare a few thousand more each month...
...Off to dinner at the marvelous Watergate Hotel restaurant...
...Without Captain McMahon and the others like him, this would all be ashes...
...If we really mean to win it, though, let's get serious and have a much, much bigger Army and tax ourselves enough to pay for it...
...I met two men who had fought at Cho-Sin...
...Or we might talk too loud or play pinochle or some damned thing...
...In those days, in the 1950s and 1960s, it was strictly restricted against Jews...
...And they glow with their inner courage and bravery and patriotism...
...I introduced my sister and Marina, and she introduced us...
...Immediately, my stomach started to hurt and my head spun...
...She was with two distinguished-looking men...
...He is so handsome but so much a teenager...
...But we were too dirty and low to be considered for membership...
...Anyway, he's my hero, and he just rides the bus like everybody else...
...To a man, they were cheerful, optimistic, BENJAMIN . STEIN eager to stay in The Corps...
...He could not have been cheerier or more self-effacing...
...How unbelievably lucky we are to have them on our side, defending us...
...Maybe I'm wrong though...
...Then to several wards to see men missing limbs, missing eyes, often with severe, scary-looking machines implanted in them to make their bones grow again...
...Wars are not won by tax cuts...
...I wonder why...
...I know...
...Anyway, I am not here for a celebration of that adoption...
...FRIDAY IAM UP IN THE WORLD'S most beautiful county, Bonner County, Idaho, eating spare ribs at Hill's Resort, looking at Priest Lake, basking in the good aura, and a couple came up to me a few minutes ago...
...I think he would say we would all be behind it a lot more if we had some shared sacrifice...
...They immediately introduced me to a young Marine missing both legs below the knee but walking around perfectly well and visiting with his lovely young wife...
...Exactly 40 years ago today, while I was studying to be a pukey, whining trial lawyer, his A-6 caught fire and he had to eject over the South China Sea...
...They were filming a movie on 31st Street south of M Street and the sidewalk was blocked...
...We made small talk about the horrible East Coast climate, and then in strolled our Secretary of State, the redoubtable Ms...
...It is a sort of alumni association of the First Marine Division...
...Anyway, I spent about two hours there and then went back to my apartment at the Watergate...
...My father was a successful man with impeccable manners...
...Just in case you don't know, they are the heroes who fought at Belleau Wood, Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Okinawa, New Guinea, Cho-Sin Reservoir, I-Corps, Fallujah, and, well, you get the picture...
...That's because I think an intrusive government is a lot more dangerous than a racist club...
...I took my sister and Marina Malenic, also a contributor to this mag...
...Now I am still in touch with two of my roommates from those days, both doing well...
...No Jews would even be considered at all under any circumstances for membership...
...We had a long speech by General Natonski, curOCTOBER 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 53 BEN STEIN'S DIARY rently commanding general of the First Marine Division...
...I am here to speak to the First Marine Division Association...
...Then, off for a solitary walk through Georgetown...
...Brody greeted me...
...That's fewer than in Civil War battles we have never heard of...
...His name was Mr...
...A whole Southern generation was essentially halved...
...Back to my little apartment to soak up the vibes of my deceased parents...
...SATURDAY \ OW, I'M IN KANSAS cm...
...Cannell, I think...
...I went over to M Street, but it was so deserted that I might as well have been in a cemetery...
...If this is an important war, we had better grit our teeth and accept that great men and women will die...
...I really had a major resentment towards that club when I was a kid...
...When I drove by it in those days I would feel a surging, crazed fury...
...He was a real warrior type and I liked him a lot...
...Let's not sell them out, again, please...
...How I miss them both...
...Three crisply dressed, very fit-looking Marines and a pleasant-looking Ms...
...She has the world's most deferential manners...
...I have a driver and he's doing all of the hard part, so I can concentrate on the scenery...
...It's horrible, but there it is...
...My father had served in the Navy during World War II...
...Then I gave a short speech about how our whole life is dependent on the blood and sacrifice of the Marines and the Army and Navy and Air Force and Coast Guard and how we would not breathe one breath without them...
...By historical standards, it's not a huge number...
...And they stand so straight and tall and still carry themselves with total pride...
...Really, how do we nasty civilians deserve any heroes like the ones in that room...
...We had a lovely meal looking out at the Potomac drifting by...
...One star with a prosthetic limb said his only goal was to return to Iraq and help out his buddies...
...Then we drove farther on past the District Line to the gates of the Chevy Chase Club...
...What times we had there...
...They laughed about getting shot at in 35-degree-below weather...
...There were actually a lot fewer men there than I thought I would find...
...His wife told me how he had won himself a ticket out of the war with a wound, a "million dollar wound," but then insisted on going back for the battle of Okinawa...
...I walked down by the shore of Luby Bay and looked at the lake and the mountains and the sky and the eagles at dusk and thought, when God sends messengers of good, he sometimes sends warriors with beautiful wives to do His bidding...
...Years ago, some pals from Columbia and I rented a house there...
...Rice...
...Well, oit sont les neiges d'antan...
...A quiet, unassuming man...
...And I wish there were none...
...Anyway, time has passed...
...Perfect sun, balmy breeze, friendly men and women greeting me by name out by the sailboats...
...I felt as if I were in heaven, and I was...
...McMahon, USN...
...And they taught the Red Army of China that Americans could and would fight and die for freedom...
...By the way, Marina enlightened me about how totally ungrateful the South Koreans are for our sacrifice...
...A Soviet trawler was about to pick him up when a U.S...
...I now think clubs should be free to exclude anyone they want under law...
...She is almost on a par with my pal, Phil DeMuth, in the manners department...
...These guys are so handsome in their uniforms and their medals you can scarcely believe it...
...But now I am back and wifey is still out of town with Tommy in Massachusetts...
...I had abed-room with purple walls and used to get very, very high there with the woman who is now my wife...
...That would be equal to almost 5 million killed today...
...Can't we at least have a small tax increase for the very rich...
...Rice...
...Who knows...
...Dean would make hay with that...
...Here the little Stein family was...
...But it still is personally insulting that (as I have been told and maybe I am misinformed) the Chevy Chase Club is still restricted against Jews...
...They were a good-looking middle-aged couple named Captain and Mrs...
...But they brought home all of their wounded and their dead...
...Hmm, 1,850 killed so far, many in accidents...
...I am on a good mission, though...
...I live among them...
...We might start bringing in 52 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2005 our shmatas and trying to go from member to member selling them wholesale...
...They have a silly charade that they don't discriminate against Jews...
...He is now a deputy secretary of defense and his name is Barney Barnum...
...Alas, the house has been torn down, replaced with icky townhouses...
...Is it global warming...
...Both of my parents had gone to major schools...
...Thanks to a woman named Ms...
...His wife, sitting nearby, looked sad...
...But one of them borrowed my eyeglasses a month or so ago and has not returned them...
...This city has major significance for me because it is here that we ......_ adopted our handsome but teenage son, Tommy...
...My life is great and I have very little indeed to complain about...
...Captain McMahon flew 150 missions piloting an A-6 over Vietnam...
...This is typical of Dr...
...And—now this is the best part—they are thanking me for the few words I write about the military...
...Is the media making the war seem worse than it is...
...The Marine band played "Waltzing Matilda" and "God Bless America" and I felt as if I were in a room of kings...
...I really do not deserve to be on the same planet as those men and their families and their doctors and nurses in Bethesda, but here 1 am, so I'll just try to get out a message of gratitude to the real sunshine of our lives: our brave, glorious military men...
...What a hero...
...What is wrong with them...
...There are so many very rich and they have money to burn...
...Well, enough of that...
...He told about incredible heroism in Iraq...
...Navy helicopter swooped in and saved him...
...I keep wondering how my father would react to the war in Iraq...
...It makes me even more furious that the Los Angeles Country Club, less than a mile from my house, is also, de facto, restricted against Jews...
...I greeted her and she greeted me affectionately...
...Shared sacrifice is a major way to bind the nation...
...54 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2005...
...God bless him and her, and this magnificent place, this Idaho, this America...
...At a reception before the dinner, I met a man who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in Vietnam...
...SATURDAY /AM BACK HOME AFTER A GLORIOUS morning at the marina in Sandpoint...
...They just don't take anyone in the entertainment business...
...But is 1,850 deaths in a war a lot or a little...
...It was fantastically hot and humid...
...E ARRIVED AT THE Bethesda Naval Medical Center, passed the old FDR-designed main tower where my very own father was treated during World War II, and then went to a new building...
...Maybe poor Dr...
...It's just not pretty that we civilians should be getting our taxes cut, get rich (on paper) from real estate, watch the stock market zoom, while those who signed up to defend us get killed and maimed for us...
...Brody at the USO, I am visiting Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland to see and talk to wounded Marines from Iraq and Afghanistan...
...It hurts like mad insanity to be excluded on the basis of a condition of birth...
Vol. 38 • October 2005 • No. 8
