November 11th. Veterans' Day. I made a little sign that showed:
11:11/11/11/1918
Nobody got it. Today used to be called Armistice Day. The Parties, as they were called, arranged for the official documents to be signed that ended World War I in an elegant railroad car outside Versailles, at eleven minutes past 11:00 on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. The War to End All Wars was ended. But war has been poured out on all nations.
"Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up:
"Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong." (Joel 3:9-10)
Honor veterans. If even they were rear echelon. But most especially those who were in it. Honor them. We used to see people selling little red poppies made of paper--the money went to veterans injured in the war. That was a WWI leftover.
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
Go to France. Go in early summer, when the wheat is green out in the fields out of the towns, and like weeds amongst the wheat you'll see poppies--red, blood red, the perfect complementary color for the green of the wheat. (See Monet's most famous painting, Les Coquelicots, the Poppies.) Go to France, where after you drive past the fields of wheat with poppies you come to an American Military Cemetery. Look at the thousands of white crosses, where our boys have been lain until the Resurrection, our soldiers who died over there for "so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."
Some years ago, at the outset of the War--the war we are in now, the war declared on us, against us, US, on 9/11, Secretary of State Colin Powell was at an international conference in Switzerland. This is the transcript:
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary of State, I'm George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. I'm now happily retired and here at the World Economic Forum. And I thank you very much indeed for your address and for all that you are personally doing to improve the state of the world.
Mr. Secretary of State, at this conference, among the language that has been used has been a phrase, the difference between hard power and soft power: hard power and military power, and perhaps expressed in America as the only superpower with a grave responsibility to create and help to forward the cause of peace in the world; and then soft power, soft power which binds us all, which has something to do with values, human values and all the things that you and I passionately believe in.
Here at WEF, we are thinking of creating a Council of 100 which includes business leaders, politicians, religious leaders -- trying to cross all of the boundaries of media and so on. That may be something that you may wish to give your support to in the days ahead.
But I've got two questions, if I may. The first one: Do you feel that in the present situation, and I'm following on my colleague who just spoke, and regarding Iraq but also Palestine as well, that we are doing enough in drawing upon the common values expressed by soft power in uniting what is called West and the Middle East in Islam and Christianity, in Judaism and other religions?
And would you not agree, as a very significant political figure in the United States, Colin, that America, at the present time, is in danger of relying too much upon the hard power and not enough upon building the trust from which the soft values, which of course all of our family life that actually at the bottom, when the bottom line is reached, is what makes human life valuable?
(Applause.)
SECRETARY POWELL: The United States believes strongly in what you call soft power, the value of democracy, the value of the free economic system, the value of making sure that each citizen is free and free to pursue their own God-given ambitions and to use the talents that they were given by God. And that is what we say to the rest of the world. That is why we participated in establishing a community of democracy within the Western Hemisphere. It's why we participate in all of these great international organizations.
There is nothing in American experience or in American political life or in our culture that suggests we want to use hard power. But what we have found over the decades is that unless you do have hard power -- and here I think you're referring to military power -- then sometimes you are faced with situations that you can't deal with.
I mean, it was not soft power that freed Europe. It was hard power. And what followed immediately after hard power? Did the United States ask for dominion over a single nation in Europe? No. Soft power came in the Marshall Plan. Soft power came with American GIs who put their weapons down once the war was over and helped all those nations rebuild. We did the same thing in Japan.
So our record of living our values and letting our values be an inspiration to others I think is clear. And I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of or apologize for with respect to what America has done for the world.
(Applause.)
We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we’ve done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.
We have seen these sorts of evil leaders before. We have seen them throughout history. And they are still alive today. There are still leaders around who will say, "You do not have the will to prevail over my evil." And I think we are facing one of those times now.
Let us honor those who have fought for our freedoms, even the freedoms so vilely misused, in the current conflict.
That is all.
