Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.
Beneath the perfectly manicured lawns and under the pines and elm trees at the Normandy cemetery lie 9,388 Americans who died during D-Day or in the liberation of France that followed. Among them is a most unlikely combatant, a 56-year-old Army officer who was a wounded veteran of World War I also suffering from a heart condition and arthritis. With his cane, he was the only general in the first wave under heavy Nazi fire on the beach that day. His name was Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the son of the Republican president. One month later, he would die of a heart attack.
In my home state of Massachusetts, both U.S. senators were Republicans. Henry Cabot Lodge became the first senator since the Civil War to resign to go into military service, as a tank commander fighting in North Africa. Sen. Leverett Saltonstall’s son Peter left Harvard to become a Marine sergeant and was killed in the battle of Guam.
This was a time when the children of privilege and power served and sacrificed: 18-year-old Stephen Hopkins — whose father lived in the White House, where he was the president’s closest adviser — joined the Marine Corps and was killed in the Pacific. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the son of President Franklin Roosevelt’s ambassador to England, died flying a dangerous mission in Europe. FDR had four sons: Elliott became an Army Air Corps pilot and flew 130 combat missions; Jimmy joined the Marines and, in combat against the Japanese, earned both the Navy Cross and a Silver Star. Navy Lt. John Roosevelt earned a Bronze Star while Lt. Commander Franklin Roosevelt, Jr. won the Silver Star for bravery under heavy enemy fire. One sickly young man used his father’s influence to pull strings so that the Navy would permit him go into combat and captain a PT boat in the Pacific. Sixteen years later, he would be President John F. Kennedy.
Americans once did believe that “war demands equality of sacrifice.” We had accepted our first income tax to pay for the Civil War and enacted a permanent income tax on the eve of World War I. After Pearl Harbor, Americans accepted the rationing of sugar, butter, meat, alcohol, gasoline, cigarettes. Civilians in their neighborhoods planted 20 million “victory gardens” which collectively provided 40 percent of the nation’s vegetables. One out of 4 American men wore his country’s military uniform. In the 1950s, 3 out of 4 male high school graduates and 3 out of 4 male college graduates served in the military.
That had, sadly, changed by Vietnam. Prominent sons of influence so often used their family’s contacts to avoid military service. The all-volunteer military, ending the draft, all but guaranteed that America’s upper classes would be spared the burden of defending their country. As eminent historian David Kennedy pointed out, among American males ages 18 to 24, some 36 percent had some college, while in the same age group in the military’s enlisted ranks, fewer than three percent had ever been in college.
Without the real prospect that their sons might go to war, American families lost immediate personal interest in U.S. foreign engagements. Americans have now been fighting in Afghanistan for 18 years, which is longer than the Civil War, World War I, World War II and the Korean War combined. But instead of tax increases to pay for our wars, we have lobbied for and welcomed three different tax cuts at a cost to the nation of $5 trillion in accumulating debt.
That’s tragically what you get when the “we” generation is replaced by a succession of “me” generations
To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
IMAGE: Acrylic screen print of John F. Kennedy in PT-109, the Navy patrol craft he helmed in World War II.
By Kathleen Hennessey, Tribune Washington Bureau
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France — After snubbing the Russian leader earlier in the week, President Barack Obama met briefly with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday for the first face-to-face encounter between the two leaders since the crisis in Ukraine sent their already rocky relationship into a spiral.
The roughly 15-minute chat between the two leaders came at the Chateau de Benouville, the countryside estate where a coterie of foreign leaders, kings and Queen Elizabeth II broke from a day of D-day ceremonies for a midday meal.
On June, 6, 1944, Allied forces landed on a swath of beaches in Nazi-occupied France in World War II’s most ambitious operation. The invasion and ensuing battle for Normandy helped change the course of the war.
Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes confirmed the “informal” conversation, but did not offer details immediately.
Obama had signaled the encounter with his sometime rival was likely. Even as the U.S. and Europeans shut Putin out of meetings on Thursday, Obama watched his three closest allies book their own private session with the Russian leader. Earlier this week, Putin told reporters he was open to talking to the American president, but Obama said he preferred to keep it loose. He said he would see Putin at the lunch, but declined the formality of a so-called “bilateral” meeting.
The men showed no signs of warmth while under the watchful eyes of reporters on Friday, as they were corralled with the rest of leaders for a photo to mark the high-powered lunch on the historic day. They either kept at a distance — busy talking to others — or ignored each other when in close range. Obama spent time seeing to the 88-year-old queen. Putin and Obama were not seated next each other at the lunch in the grand neoclassical chateau.
The diplomatic choreography reflects a sort of pivot point in the crisis. White House officials acknowledge they’re not trying to ramp up pressure on Putin at the moment. They instead see his decision to move troops back from the border as a positive sign, and are hopeful Ukraine’s election of a new president last week may act as an impetus for defusing tensions. They want to engage with Putin, but they don’t want to signal that the relationship is back to pre-crisis normal.
On Thursday, Obama called on Putin to engage in talks with President-elect Petro Poroshenko to hash out economic and political reform that could aid the Russian-speaking population in the eastern part of the country.
In one positive sign, Putin also talked with Poroshenko at the lunch. The two leaders spoke briefly, standing on each side of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Obama’s meeting came at the end of a four-day European trip that was dominated by the political upheaval in Ukraine.
AFP Photo/Saul Loeb
Bénouville (France) (AFP) – Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin held informal talks Friday, diplomatic sources said, amid the worst crisis in ties between the United States and Russia in decades over the unrest in Ukraine.
The pair exchanged brief comments while waiting to head into a lunch for world leaders held to mark the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, a French source said.
Ben Rhodes, a U.S. deputy national security advisor, said the meeting at Chateau Benouville lasted 10 to 15 minutes.
“President Obama and President Putin did speak with each other on the margins of the leaders’ lunch. It was an informal conversation — not a formal bilateral meeting,” Rhodes said.
It was their first meeting since the start of Ukraine crisis and first face-to-face encounter since the G20 summit in St Petersburg last year.
As punishment for the annexation of the peninsula and what the West sees as meddling in eastern Ukraine, Russia was effectively expelled from the group of eight rich nations and has suffered economic and diplomatic sanctions.
Obama said at a rearranged meeting of world leaders in Brussels on Wednesday that he would deliver the “same message” — that “if Russia’s provocations continue, it’s clear from our discussions here the G7 nations are ready to impose additional costs.”
AFP Photo/Saul Loeb
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