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Chicago Tribune
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Memorial Day is a time for reflection, not politics
Memorial Day, which was celebrated on May 26, is a cause for contemplation and also renewal. Parades featuring people in uniform — those currently serving, those who have served, and those who protect us — should always be welcome. Military uniforms at such ceremonies are important. Crude partisan declarations are completely out of place. From ancient times, parades have been vital to the reintegration of warriors into society. War is profoundly disruptive and disturbing, not to mention dangerous. Even the rare man or woman who finds combat invigorating and rewarding is in severe need of returning home after the killing ends. Homer, chronicler of the Trojan War, was extremely sensitive to this. His great classic is divided into two parts. 'The Iliad' focuses on the fighting and related associations involving Greeks and Trojans; 'The Odyssey' describes the very long voyage home of Greek leader Ulysses and his men. They traverse allegorical geography, struggling to put the horrors behind them. Gen. George S. Patton Jr., a very great American combat leader, was extremely mindful of this dimension. A special ceremony in the Los Angeles Coliseum after the surrender of Nazi Germany featured Patton and Gen. James Doolittle, who led the first air raid on Tokyo not long after Pearl Harbor. Patton celebrated the accomplishments of his Third Army in the victorious drive across Europe. In honoring his troops, he stressed in particular the 40,000 who lost their lives. Patton made such statements regularly in the few months remaining of his own life. In World War II, people liberated from Axis occupation welcomed Allied troops. Understandably, our media gave special emphasis to this dimension. The Korean War created very strong bonds between the U.S. and the people, as well as a very effective military of South Korea. The first Gulf War liberated an oppressed population. The Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars were different. During Vietnam, the Pentagon urged, sometimes ordered, personnel to practice public anonymity. Opposition to the war became hostility toward our own military. There was no collective welcome home. Many aging veterans of that war suffer without a Ulysses, troubled and troublesome, sometimes criminally. Afghanistan and Iraq war controversy did not target our military. Visits to Washington, D.C., provide reminders of the visibility of the uniformed military, especially on public transportation. President Richard Nixon's decisive end of the military draft was crucial in the change. However, the often-rapid rotation of personnel back to overseas missions is unfair, as well as counterproductive. Enormous psychological strains join physical danger, and families suffer heavily. The all-professional military is segregated from wider society. This, in turn, facilitates frequent personnel rotation overseas, a problem that developed destructively during the Clinton administration. The military remains a vital engine for equality and opportunity. Gen. Colin Powell and many others have demonstrated the point. Powell, from modest origins, achieved the most senior civilian and military posts in our government. Powell noted he experienced discrimination in the South, but never on post. Our military emphasizes merit. Memorial Day provides the opportunity to recognize a commitment to fairness. Encourage veterans to run for office. We won the Cold War in part because experienced veterans served in government. Every U.S. president from Harry Truman through George H.W. Bush was a veteran. Today, things are different. The all-volunteer military is not broadly representative. What we need above all is the sort of sensible realism that women and men who served bring to policy. Learn more: 'Patton – A Genius for War,' by Carlo D'Este, and the film 'Patton.'
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
A pogrom, a pushback, a region transformed: 600 days since October 7
Six hundred days on, those questions still defy comprehension. And those failures—including the inability to bring all the hostages home—shape how many Israelis view the war. Wednesday marks the 600th day of the Israel-Hamas War. Six hundred days since Hamas acted on a jihadist fantasy to destroy the Jewish state, breached a border unfathomably easy to penetrate, and carried out a pogrom that would have made the Crusaders, Cossacks, and Nazis proud. No less. October 7 was a blood-soaked letter from the Jewish past, a past many mistakenly believed had been relegated to history with the establishment of the State of Israel. They were wrong. October 7 was a catastrophe that remains incomprehensible. How did the country allow an organization with genocidal designs to metastasize into a full-blown terrorist army? How did a state with Israel's vaunted intelligence capabilities fail to detect thousands of terrorists assembling to storm the border? How were key warning signals missed? Even worse, and more unfathomable, how did intelligence exist, yet go unacted upon? Why was the military, especially the air force, so slow to respond? Six hundred days on, those questions still defy comprehension. And those failures, including the inability to bring all the hostages home, shape how many Israelis view the war. There are echoes here of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In the public memory, that war is largely seen as a calamity. And it was, if judged by its opening: intelligence lapses, unpreparedness, underestimation of the enemy, ignored warnings, early battlefield disasters, and high casualties. But that wasn't the full story. By the time a ceasefire was declared, Israeli forces stood within striking distance of both Damascus and Cairo, with Egypt's Third Army completely surrounded in the Sinai. That war effectively ended the era of conventional Arab-Israeli wars. Arab leaders learned a hard truth: They could not defeat Israel through conventional military force. Yet the trauma of the war's beginning – the losses, the shock – still defines it in the Israeli psyche. Psychologists often talk about something called 'a negativity bias,' the human tendency to fixate on the bad and overlook the good. If a singer performs and 10 people praise her, while one critic says she was off-key, it's the criticism that often lingers. And what is true for the individual is also true for nations. October 7 was a day of horror. A pogrom. But it was followed by October 8, the day after. And then, the world witnessed something it hadn't seen before: the Jewish reaction to the pogrom. It was called Operation Swords of Iron, and it was angry, fierce, and relentless. And in the 600 days since, it has reshaped not only Israel but the entire Middle East in ways not seen since 1967. From a purely security standpoint, the war has produced significant gains. But many refuse or are unable to acknowledge them because of the pain and suffering endured: the devastation of October 7, the tremendous losses, and the fact that of the 251 hostages taken, 58 remain in captivity, including 20 believed to be alive. Their families are still living a nightmare. Some may ask: How can anyone speak of success when Hamas still holds hostages and Israel's failures enabled that horrific day? Because it is possible to hold multiple, and even contradictory, truths at once. Yes, October 7 was a failure of biblical proportions. Yes, Israel has not fully achieved all its war aims. But that is not all that has happened. Alongside the failures during the war, some of them glaring, there have also been major accomplishments that have changed the regional landscape. And on this 600th day of the war, those achievements deserve to be acknowledged as well. Netanyahu's promise of an 'absolute victory' has yet to materialize. But if one of the war's three central goals—alongside destroying Hamas and returning the hostages—was to ensure Gaza no longer posed a serious threat to Israel, that goal is well on its way to being met. Hamas, as a functioning military formation, has been decimated. According to estimates from the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), more than 20,000 terrorists have been killed. Most of Hamas's senior leadership has been eliminated, with Israeli observers openly wondering who—if anyone—is now in charge and making the decisions. Hamas's rocket arsenal, which terrorized the South for two decades, has been drastically depleted. Its weapons production infrastructure has been severely damaged. And while assessments vary about the extent of damage to Hamas's vast tunnel system, it is no longer what it was on October 7. Much of the coastal enclave is a devastated moonscape that will take years, if not decades, to rebuild. This has extracted a high price from Israeli soldiers and Gazan civilians. But militarily, the threat Gaza once posed has been neutralized. Yes, Hamas is still recruiting, but the new fighters are mostly young, poorly trained, and motivated by a paycheck that's increasingly unreliable. They are a shadow of the well-trained Nukhba force that breached the border that dark October morning. A different reality has emerged in Gaza—a safer reality for Israel. In the West Bank, too, the IDF has made major strides. Some 950 Palestinians have been killed there, the vast majority terrorist operatives. According to INSS figures, another 15,000 have been arrested there since October 7, providing the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) with a far clearer intelligence picture. Since October 7, Israel has operated in the West Bank on a scale unseen since the Second Intifada. It has entered areas like the Jenin refugee camp that were once deemed 'off-limits' and delivered a severe blow to the terrorist infrastructure there. That doesn't mean the threat is gone. Iran continues trying to smuggle weapons and money into the area. But the gains are real and significant. Then there is Lebanon, which was, before last summer, the Kingdom of Hezbollah. Today, it is something else. Thanks to Israel's military campaign – exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, assassinations of Hezbollah commanders, precision strikes on missile stockpiles, and years of intelligence gathering – Hezbollah has lost its iron grip on the country. This doesn't mean it won't try to bounce back; it will. But for now, Lebanon is no longer fully in the hands of Iran's proxy militia. That changes the strategic map for the better – for Israel and the entire region. Syria, even more so than Lebanon, is a different country than it was 600 days ago, thanks in large part to the actions that Israel took against Hezbollah and its actions to destroy the bulk of ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad's military as his regime was collapsing. The fall of Assad has removed the cornerstone of Iran's 'axis of resistance,' and the pipeline through which Iran moved arms to Hezbollah has been plugged up. True, no one knows exactly in which direction Ahmed al-Sharaa, Assad's successor and a former jihadist, will lead the country. Will it be down the extreme Islamic path or toward moderation? Israel needs to prepare for both scenarios, as well as a third: Syria descends into sectarian chaos, and Turkey and Iran move into the vacuum. Regardless, Syria is no longer the conventional military threat it once was or a possible Iranian springboard for an attack on Israel. That, too, is part of the post-October 7 legacy. And finally, there is Iran. Thanks to Hamas's October 7 attack, Iran is arguably at its weakest point since the Iran-Iraq War in the mid-1980s. The 'axis of resistance' it poured billions into – Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria – has been severely degraded. The Houthis still stand, but they pose nowhere near the threat the other three once did. More than that, Iran's two attacks on Israel last year showed that the best they could deliver against the Jewish state was no match for Israel's air defenses, aided by the US and its allies. The best Tehran had made little more than a dent. At the same time, Israel's counterattacks reportedly took out Iran's air defense system and have left the Islamic Republic badly exposed. Those, too, are Israeli accomplishments in this war. So, on this 600th day, it is right and necessary to grieve the hostages still in captivity, to mourn the fallen, and to rage at the failures that led to October 7. The pain is real, and the cost is immense. But it is also necessary to recognize what has been achieved since. Israel has inflicted serious, unprecedented damage on the axis of forces arrayed against it. It has reasserted military dominance, regained deterrence, changed strategic assumptions, and, in important ways, redrawn the regional map. Those gains have come at a heavy price, and they do not erase the losses nor minimize the grief. But they do matter. And they will shape the region for years to come.
Yahoo
23-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Soldiers sail across the Rhine to mark 80th anniversary of the invasion of Germany
Eight decades after American soldiers sailed across the Rhine under gunfire to break through German defenses, U.S. soldiers gathered again at the banks of the river, joining veterans and German military counterparts to commemorate the historic crossing. While an Army band played on Saturday, soldiers in vintage World War II uniforms boarded an amphibious boat from the 1940s named 'Tugboat Annie' and sailed down the Rhine, in honor of the brazen March 22, 1945 crossing that helped kick off a massive invasion of Nazi Germany by Gen. George Patton's Third Army. Along with an Army band playing, the general's granddaughter Helen Patton was in attendance for the commemoration. 80 years ago this weekend several Allied armies staged massive, different crossings of the Rhine. It was part of major pushes past the last defenses at the German border. The Battle of the Bulge had ended with the Allies able to regroup and continue their advance towards the Siegfried Line. By March 1945, all that remained was to find a way across the Rhine, as Nazis rushed to destroy any crossing they could. The Allies had scored a miraculous win a week earlier, seizing the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen before the Nazis could blow it up. The First Army moved armor and infantry across the bridge, but Patton and his rival, Bernard Montgomery were racing to get their armies across the river before the other. Montgomery was preparing a major, combined arms push for the night of March 23. On March 22, Patton had his troops just cross without wider aerial support. Late into the night, without an artillery barrage to pave the way, soldiers hurried across the river in amphibious vehicles, crossing at Oppenheim and catching the Nazis — understrength from weeks of fighting — by surprise. In a few days, several divisions of the Third Army had seized a beachhead through the German lines. At the same time as Patton's troops were crossing the Rhine, Bernard Montgomery's 21st Army Group was launching its own invasion into the German heartland. Operation Plunder was a massive endeavor, with airborne units jumping ahead of amphibious crossing while Allied bombers dropped ordnance on German positions. More than four thousand artillery pieces launched a massive bombardment of enemy positions. Combined with the aerial attack, it paved the way for ground forces to cross in amphibious vehicles and for engineers to build bridges across the river. The assault spanned more than 20 miles, and by the end of the fifth day, it was a massive Allied success. Although beaten across the river by Patton, Operation Plunder was significant not only for its own success but some of the elements within it. On March 24, 1945, Allied airborne units carried out Operation Varsity, the single largest airborne operation targeting a specific location. Two airborne divisions jumped into German-held territory, seizing it and causing chaos for the Nazis as amphibious units pushed across the Rhine. The event at Nierstein was the latest commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Europe. Since last summer, the U.S. military and its partners have been retracing the steps of the Allied victory. Active-duty service members as well as veterans and reenactors have jumped out of vintage aircraft, landed on the beaches of Normandy and marched through parts of the Netherlands to honor the troops who fought there 80 years ago. Some recent events tied to the final push into Axis territory, such as this weekend's in Germany, have been smaller affairs than the D-Day commemoration, but still mark major turning points in the war. Arlington Cemetery website drops links for Black, Hispanic, and women veterans The Army wants to get the load soldiers carry down to 55 pounds Here are the latest military units deploying to the U.S.-Mexico border Why Washington state used M60 tanks to prevent avalanches Historic 'China Marines' battalion converts into latest Littoral Combat Team
