January 27, 1991
The grim TV coverage of our young Americans exposed to danger in the Saudi Arabian desert was exceeded in horror only by the spectacle of other youths — safe at home — publicly protesting the wisdom of that sacrifice.
To me, their histrionics conjured up a half-century-old image of their patron saint, Neville Chamberlain, arriving home from Munich in 1938 to smilingly proclaim “Peace in our time.” Blissfully unaware of his role in demythologizing appeasement of tyrants, his misguided optimism led the free world into the most crucifying conflict in the history of Western civilization.
Despite the lesson of Munich, America slept while the Japanese sent two ”peace envoys” to Washington in December 1941.
In the Pacific war that followed, a young pilot named George Bush risked his life. This month, as president, when he committed our troops to battle, I sincerely believe he was echoing the resolve of the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust when they firmly state, “Never Again.”
Granted that the protesters’ sophomoric ignorance is bliss, these truants would do well to heed the words of the American poet and philosopher Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
JACK O’NEIL
Sewickley