Talk about a huge mistake.
The images of Obama Administration-directed park service employees trying to keep 80 and 90 year-old World War II veterans out of the open-air no-guides-necessary-for-a- sidewalk World War II memorial on the Washington Mall has launched a furious reaction.
Thanks to Congressman Louis Gohmert (R-TX), barriers that the Park Service was directed to put up were physically pulled back and the veterans were led onto the memorial. Take note of Gohmert in the this interview with Fox’s Bill Hemmer.
There are more vets coming.
Last night Mark Levin let loose in a monologue drawing a lot of attention.
I want to say this loud and clear to the people on Capitol Hill who are listening, to this administration. You lay one damn hand on one of those World War II vets at that memorial and I’ll bring half a million people to that damn memorial! You got that?!
Let me add my own thoughts here.
As I write this I look up and across the room I see the folded flag that covered my own father’s casket. Dad, who passed away just shy of 90 a few years ago, was a World War II veteran. He served five and a half years. Before he died he wanted to see this memorial and I made a point of taking him and my mother to see it.
He walked in very slowly and we eventually made our way to the section that focused on the war in the Pacific. We found a stone marked “Leyte” — and here is a link that explains the Battle of Leyte, one of the bigger islands in the Philippines. “I was there” he told me. The Battle of Leyte was a furious one. The Philippines were held by the Japanese, and the Japanese invasion had forced General Douglas MacArthur to evacuate the island, famously saying as he departed: “I shall return.”
In October of 1944 that return was underway. For the first time the Japanese used kamikaze pilots, and the battle was fierce. There were 15,584 American casualties, of which 3,504 were killed in action. Dad was, blessedly, not one of them.
There is a famous photo – this one – of Douglas MacArthur striding ashore at Leyte’s Palo Beach. Here is, amazingly, a color video of the moment from the History Channel along with an audio recording of MacArthur’s famous “I have returned” broadcast.
Such a storm was created by the attempt to keep WW II veterans from making the kind of trip to the WWII memorial that Dad made several years ago — doubtless helped by Mark Levin’s passionate warning — that momentarily the Obama administration has relented. The veterans will be allowed to see their memorial.
Many of the veterans making this visit in the last couple of days were wearing hats or shirts or medals that identified them as WW II veterans. In Dad’s case, he went in his civvies. So a question:
What happens when a WWII vet shows up like Dad did — in civilian clothes? With nothing to identify them but their age?
What then? Will the people who demand no ID to vote demand these veterans produce an ID?
And what about the Vietnam Vets memorial? And the Korean War memorial? And the Tomb of the unknown soldier? And any other monument to veterans like my Dad?
And, of course, a bill to fund the National Parks — already passed by the House — is being rejected by Harry Reid because, goes the reasoning as expressed by New York’s Chuck Schumer, to do so helps Ted Cruz.
Really.
So let me add my voice to Mark’s.
If the Obama administration and its Capitol Hill buddies “lay one damn hand on one of those World War II vets at that memorial,” I will come out of this Bat Cave and march right alongside the half a million people who will stand up to these thugs.
As parents say to a misbehaving child?
Don’t make me come down there.
