THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 30, 1995 TAG: 9505300050
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
On Monday morning's drive to work down Granby Street, to the verge of what used to be downtown, only half a dozen cars moved.
And there was absolute silence.
As if nature had picked a way to observe Memorial Day, laying a calming hand, a balm, on the usually fretful land.
Saying shush to politicians.
With high-piled spun-white clouds, the day was so still that when a cloud-shadow floated across the ground, you could almost hear it scrape.
We have been at war continuously - counting the Cold War - since the First World War, which it is still called by the remaining few who fought in it.
And for all the losses and heart-ache all those wars caused, we sorrowed Memorial Day.
But the war most with us is Vietnam because we lost it and one of its architects, Robert S. McNamara, has admitted, somewhat belatedly, we never should have been in it.
Trying to wrap shreds of dignity about him, McNamara said that loyalty to his president prevented his saying it when it could have counted, which brings to mind excuses in the dock in Nuremberg.
Nor are reminders of war likely to abate during the coming presidential debate, not as long as Robert Dole with two Purple Hearts and a shriveled right hand is in the race.
President Clinton has said he felt vindicated by McNamara's mea culpa. That was gauche. Clinton's fault lies not so much with his having sought deferment from military service as his feverish, devious devices to get it.
Sen. Phil Gramm finds a difference in his five deferments and Clinton's evasiveness. He says he continued to seek his Ph.D. because his expertise in economics would help win the war.
Which will be met with scorn by families whose sons faced the fire and didn't come back, including boys from Appalachia and the ghetto whose folks lacked the wherewithal and pull to keep their loved ones from harm's way and can never forget it.
Gramm, along with Reps. Newt Gingrich and Richard Armey, who went to state-supported schools and enjoyed deferments, now prate about big government whose wings shielded them.
We should never forget that the young finally forced two old egos in the White House, Democrat and Republican, to close the conflict.
But more than that, Memorial Day belongs to the 57,000 whose names are on the dark Wall extending along the green Mall near the bright and shining monuments to the nation's founders and the dome of the Capitol - the pulsating heart of a big, big government of a broad, sea-to-sea country.
In the quietness, in the sunshine, along peaceful tree-shaded streets, our prayers and thanks are for those young, now-gone men and women and their families. by CNB