"I don't remember whether I was working on a farm or on a road when war first broke out. But when we came in I was driving steel and blasting on the road that is now called the York Highway. I was earning a dollar and sixty cents a day. Had anybody at the time said the road was going to be named for me, I would have told him that I didn't believe it ever would."
--from Sgt. Alvin York's diary
As we draw near to the time of tonight's second presidential debate, I think about the two men who will be standing in front of America.
One is a leader who lost the popular American election, yet still got into office by a combination of luck, the Supreme Court, the electoral college, and cronyism. The worst attack on American citizens in history happened on his watch. He lied to America in order to convince its citizens to believe a war in Iraq was necessary, when we know it never was. I am so sad for our nation. I am so concerned for our fighting men and women.
The other man is a veteran of the war in Vietnam. It wasn't a war in which he wished to fight. It wasn't a war any of our soldiers wanted to fight, but John Kerry did his duty in Vietnam. He saw it through. He saved lives. He killed for his country. John saw it through.
On this day in our nation's history, Corporal Alvin C. York is credited with single-handedly killing 25 German soldiers and capturing 132 in the Argonne Forest of France. The action saved York's small detachment from annihilation by a German machine-gun nest and won the reluctant warrior, who halied from backwater Tennessee, the Congressional Medal of Honor.
In 1917, two months after the United States had declared war on Germany, Alvin York received his draft notice.
Because his church opposed war, he asked for conscientious objector status, but he was denied at both the state and local level because the small Church of Christ in Christian Union was not recognized as a legitimate Christian sect. Enlisting in the 82nd Infantry Division, he was offered noncombat duty but eventually agreed to fight after being convinced by a superior that America's cause was just.
Alvin York trusted that his nation's cause was just.
What soldier can confidently say that today with a known incompetent---a known misleader--as commander in chief?
If anyone can truly say they love this great country of ours, regardless of partisanship, they need to realize that this particular leader and his administration are corrupt to the core. It will take a transcendence of ego for the right wing pundits to understand that the nation's best interests are far more important than the Republican party's interests. It will take new leadership to turn this ill course around and to regain not only the world's trust, but more importantly, America's trust.
When John Kerry steps up to speak tonight, think of Alvin York's contribution to America. York wound up to be a hero, a word that would have, no doubt, sounded absurd to him in the days leading up to that fateful day, October 8, 1918.
I see John Kerry as our generation's absurd hero. He never expected to go to Vietnam, but he served when called. Fate lead him to save the life of a brother-in-arms. Bush hovered behind in the 1960s and pulled easy duty stateside. I think John Kerry was brave. I think George Bush was not brave.
In 2002, John Kerry trusted Bush to be presidential when Kerry gave Bush the necessary authority on the Iraq decision, much as Alvin York trusted his nation's cause. Bush let us down miserably and his pride and fear of political damage will not allow him to admit his misleading or his incompetence. John Kerry is sorry he ever trusted George Bush. I'm sorry John Kerry trusted Bush. Bush wasn't trustworthy.
I believe it's John Kerry's fate to be the one to turn America in the right direction. I trust he will do it.
IDDYBUD