D Day Plus Seventy

D- DAY PLUS SEVENTY  --   FROM LINCOLN TO BERGDAHL 

FRI 6 June 14, 2014 1724  

Today is D Day plus 70.  As one who was born in the late 1930s it is interesting to contrast the world today as compared with seventy years ago.  I don’t pretend to have a special insightful view of the changes in our daily lives, but I was struck on some observations reading the Washington Post over the last few days.

On the day allied forces landed in the beaches of Normandy, our nation was engaged in one of the most vociferous and costly wars this young nation had ever faced.  At the time it seemed that the whole fabric of Western civilization hung in the balance.  As a small child growing up on southern Long Island I certainly didn't realize the significance of the battles beyond my family’s fears as spelled out in the daily newspapers.  But I do remember the air raids then when I hid under a table in my home as my parents turned out all the lights.  The air raid warden was making her rounds to underscore the necessity of our responses as there were German submarines lurking just off the coast of New York.  Guess it was true.

Korea came and went.  I did not have a dog in that fight and maybe being a teenager I thought I had more important things to do, like fitting in, girls and may be college?

Viet Nam was different.  It was personal.  I had been in the Navy and flew off of Atlantic Fleet aircraft carriers, I believed in the mission.  My brother was serving two tours of in-county Vietnam and saw combat as a helicopter pilot and was wounded.  He received multiple awards and ribbons, but also saw the terrible consequences of a combat culture.  He and his unit had confronted Lieutenant Calley when the young Infantry lieutenant took the hostilities into his own hands and seemed hell bent on exterminating the North Vietnamese and civilians he encountered.  This was My Lai and photographers recorded the senseless slaughter.   Hundreds were reported killed.  A confrontation ensued between Calley and the pilot in my brother’s unit who landed and tied to stop Calley.  Several Vietnamese were rescued and a report was forwarded up the chain of command of this atrocity.  Somehow this report was lost, but the pilot who had this dust off with Calley and others on the ground were heard and a commission headed by General William Peers did investigate this debacle.  Pulitzer Prize award winning journalist Seymour Hersh chronicled this sad chapter of our history in dispatches on the war.

Today I remembered another chapter in this saga.  A good friend and my late son’s Godfather also perished in Vietnam.  He was flying when he was picked off by a chance shot by a ground fighter.  He was one of the good guys right?  We both were loyal Americans serving our country’s and our best interests.  Correct?  It just didn't seem fair.  I cried long and hard when his brother called me and told me the horrible news.  It was a just war, wasn't it?

Iraq came and we committed troops for another fight.  It was followed by conflict in Afghanistan.   We are told that we will be out of Afghanistan and turning the hostilities over to the Afghans by the end of this year.  We will see.   Late journalist Michael Hastings wrote a great book on the generals in these wars (The Operators).   He was as a gifted young journalist who tragically died in an auto accident about a year ago.  His tome is thought provoking and a good read.

Now we have Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl who was traded for five Taliban warriors a few days ago.   He had been held by the Taliban for over five years during these late days of American involvement in a place nearly a half a world away.  It is very controversial to the American public, especially the military.  Was Bergdahl a deserter and a traitor?  It seems clear that he left his post on possibly multiple occasions and had views on the war that did not support our role.  We do not have a lot of facts except he apparently was very ill and the Obama Administration felt that it was best to get him home.  In an iconic photo in today’s Washington Post, the President is shown from the back with his arms around Bowe Bergdahl’s parents.  Remember that he is a sitting US President who brought home a controversial soldier who left his post and was captured in this controversial war.

We have covered a lot of ground of American wars over the past seventy years.  Why am I interested?  Partly genes, partly because of the lessons we have to learn about man’s insatiable need to war within our species.  According to presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin President Abraham Lincoln put his cabinet together from his rivals in the 1860 Republican primary (Team of Rivals).  Lincoln’s primary rival was his future Secretary of State, William Henry Seward who he finally beat on the last ballot.  The two men were close and author John M. Taylor highlighted this kinship in a well-researched and annotated book, (William Henry Seward - Lincoln’s Right Hand).  I owe my middle name to my progenitor, aka Uncle Henry.  So said my mother.  What do I know?  The things you learn at the dinner table.

Lincoln had his share of problems with his generals in the Civil War.  The lines of communication were simpler, but subject to individual reporting through the press which was very controlled.

As a nation, which had suffered Pearl Harbor and the threat of Hitler, we were much more united by D Day.   Electronic and print journalist Tom Brokaw (The Greatest Generation) looked back on D Day in 1984 and proffered that the World War Two generation’s perseverance through difficult times set the tone for the greatest generation.  Yes, this was before television and the Internet.  Opinion makers were fewer and more concentrated in our country’s population centers and Big Media. 

Still there were some doubts.  CBS brought General and past President Dwight Eisenhower back to Normandy in 1964.  The former Allied Commander on that fateful June 6, 1944 day viewed the crosses in the US cemetery at Saint Laurent and reportedly said, “We must find some way…to gain an eternal peace for this world.”

We are now fifty years after our entry into Southeast Asia and Viet Nam.  As my generation’s war, we were committed to the mission, but I know few, who served in the military during that time who were born in the 1930s and 1940s, who do not now have misgivings about our involvement in that faraway place whose culture we never did really understand.  Are we the confused generation?

Iraq and Afghanistan occurred for us in the Internet generation.  The public which was interested had an unfettered access to facts and opinions on the wars.    As Michael Hastings reported President Obama fired General Stanley McCrystal and effectively ended the careers of several other four star officers.  

But now, the press is embedded in combat units and can report instantaneously on the activities of the troops during fighting and even during liberty.  Anything is grist for the mill.

Which brings to Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.  Michael Hastings first reported on him several years ago in the Rolling Stone.  According to Hastings, the sergeant was emailing his parents with his disillusionment with the war.  Imagine that.  Instant communications.  Sure changes the calculus.

Lincoln and Eisenhower did not have to contend with the hyper-connected world that Obama has to.  Still civilian control of the military is of paramount importance, as is an open and unfettered press.  The press will have increased pressure to report only those things that are in the public interest.  That will continue to be a difficult call and challenge to the government to constantly assess what needs to be kept from the public currently.  We will hopefully be a power for good in an increasingly conflicted world.

The Bergdahl saga has many more news cycles to go.  We should be patient for ultimately only careful review by the powers that be will tell us more details.  History will provide a more balanced view of this enigma in an Internet era.

Why am I interested?  I was born in 1939 and a world away from current technology and its implications.  As the first father and leading prophet of the electronic age Marshall McLuhan said in 1977 “The Medium is the Message.”  Think about it. 

-ooo-

Douglas Seward Lloyd was in the military from 1961 to 1999 first as a Naval Flight Officer and later as a Medical Officer. He served in the active duty and reserve Navy and retired in 1999 as a Navy Captain.

He was trained as a physician and spent most of his forty year career in government public service at the state and national level in addition to his time in the military.  He lives in Columbia, Maryland where he is semi-retired.  He likes to blog, a new found interest.

UPDATE on Thursday 31 July 2014 - As I was retyping this today and correcting some grammatical errors, I checked the Web and saw the US House Armed Services Committee passed a non-binding resolution two days ago condemning the President for the swap of Bergdahl for the five Taliban prisoners.  It will be considered by the full House and Senate just before the fall Congressional elections.  Still haven't heard from the US Army except that he has been returned to full active duty.

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