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Three marines remembered
WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- In the self-congratulatory euphoria that swept official Washington this past week, you had to be grateful for the measured wisdom of Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, who knows from painful, personal experience -- unlike too many in power in this city -- the horror of war. No one has said it better: "War is awful. Nothing, not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality. Whatever is won in war, it is loss the veteran remembers." These few paragraphs are about three United States Marines: • The first was born in New York City just at the dawn of the last century to Irish immigrant parents. His mother died when he was seven, and he was sent on a train to Great Falls, Montana, to live with an uncle he had never met. His uncle died the next year. He spent a year in the Montana Home for Wayward Children. Then, before he finished the eighth grade, he ran away from home and altered the date on his baptismal certificate so he could, at the age of 14, standing 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighing 122 pounds, enlist in the U.S. Navy during the First World War, where he served 10 months overseas. After his discharge from the Navy, he joined the U.S. Army, which promised to send him to Germany -- a promise the Army broke by sending him to San Francisco. After completing his Army hitch, on November 10, 1920, this young man joined the United States Marine Corps for two years, which kept its pledge to send him to the Philippines and China. So before his 20th birthday, this young Irish-American had served honorably in all three branches of the U.S. military. Later, he would graduate from high-school, college and graduate school, and become a history professor at the University of Montana, before winning election to the House and later the Senate as a Democrat. He served as Senate majority leader longer than any other American -- for 16 years, during the civil rights fights, Vietnam and Watergate. He then served, under presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, longer than any other American, as U.S. ambassador to Japan, where he and Douglas MacArthur remain the two most revered Americans. In Arlington National cemetery inscribed in literally the most modest headstone available are these simple words with the dates of his birth, March 16,1903, and his death, Oct. 5, 2001: "Michael J. Mansfield, Private - U.S.M.C." • Mike Mansfield would have liked Jose A. Gutierrez, who was left an orphan in Guatemala before he hitchhiked on railcars into Mexico, from where in 1997 he entered the United States illegally. As a minor with no parents, he qualified for permanent residency, was taken in by a foster family, graduated from high school and studied at a junior college before joining the Marine Corps. On March 21, not far from the port city of Umm al Qasr in a battle with Iraq Republican Guard troops, Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez was killed in the service of the country he loved. One of his former foster mothers, Martha Espinosa, told Robert J. Lopez and Rich Connell of the Los Angeles Times, "He once told me, 'I was born the day I arrived in this country.'" • Jose A. Garibay was born in Jalisco, Mexico, and brought to Southern California as an infant. He was a football player at Newport Harbor (California) High School. Garibay's family live in Costa Mesa, and it was to there that the Marine officer came to tell them that on March 23, Cpl. Jose A.Garibay, 21, had been killed in heavy fighting near the city of Nasiriyah. On April 2, the United States government awarded citizenship posthumously to both Garibay and Gutierrez. Five of the first 10 Californians killed in the war with Iraq, report the Times' Lopez and Connell, were non-citizens. The next time you hear a loudmouth know-nothing -- either in person or on the air -- slandering immigrants and ranting about how the USA would be so much better off with just "real' Americans, you owe it to the memory of these fallen warriors to tell him or her the truth that today more than 37,000 non-citizens serve on active duty in the U.S. military. Three great American Marines: Mike Mansfield, Jose Gutierrez and Jose Garibay. The words of John McCain ring ever true: "Whatever is won in war, it is loss the veteran remembers." What is tragic is that American national leadership has so very few veterans who can remember.
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