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From: Jasper
Date: 9/14/01
Time: 10:39:40 AM
Calvin Morrison is a former United States Marine and a good friend of mine. He is the one who said, "Courage means doing what's right no matter what the outcome is going to be."
Apart from the firefighters, police officers and emergency workers who died doing their jobs in New York and the ones who lived but knew damn well they could have died but did their jobs anyway, I have heard of few examples of courage in the wake of Tuesday's attacks. Yes, it happened on ground zero with various individuals in New York and Washington and it happened in mid air in Pennsylvania. It could have happened aboard the plains that crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon. But that's not the kind of courage I'm talking about. Emergency situations always bring out the best and the worst in human beings as a species.
I'm talking about the kind of courage it took for millions of Americans to sign up for duty in the Armed Forces after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. These were young, strong, healthy men and women with their whole lives ahead of them; people who decided to put their personal ambitions second to the war effort.
I can't stop thinking about Ted Williams, who might have been listed in the Baseball Hall of Fame as the greatest ballplayer ever had he not decided to join the Armed Forces during the peak of his career. Now when I look at the great ballplayers would could set that kind of example, I haven't seen one of them yet who has and I can't imagine one of them who will. The same thing goes for celebrated actors and musicians who could make a huge difference in recruitment for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Where are they? What are they doing? Giving interviews? Signing checks? Donating blood? Are any of them even thinking about signing up to put their storybook careers, their magnificent bodies or their promising lives on the line for something bigger than themselves? I doubt it.
The problem I'm having is, of course, is one of perception. I could be seeing things all wrong. I want to be wrong. But from the ads I've seen for the Armed Forces in the past two decades, the news stories I haven't heard about military volunteers in the past four days and the tepid first response of our President to an act of war that he didn't even call by that name until three days later, I think I have reason for concern. --Jasper