There’s nothing like turning on the “telly” and
looking straight into the face of a woman GI smiling and pointing at something
out of range of the camera. As the camera pulled back the
image of a man with a hood over his head came into view, and he was naked.
“What is funny about that?” I asked the woman
GI’s photo as I looked back at her smiling face.
Then I realized that the entire world must be watching
these same horrible images of torture. What is the rest of
the world thinking?
And as if that wasn’t enough, Mr. Bush appeared and
tried to distance himself from the photos by acting shocked. I
shook my head. He takes young men and women, teaches them
to kill, sends them to a strange foreign land, tells them that everyone there
is evil and a “terrorist” – and then is shocked that they don’t play
nice? What ever happened to “The Buck Stops Here?”
All of this latest news has made me scared and ashamed of
my country’s actions, especially when I heard that naming the names of dead
US soldiers on TV by poor old Ted Koppel of all people is being called
anti-war and anti-patriotic. That spin from the White House
doesn’t even compute in my brain.
I needed an escape for the afternoon so Cat and I decided
that a pub lunch in Sudbury seemed an extraordinarily good idea. After
we ordered our food at the bar we played 20 questions to pass the time.
Just before the food arrived I noticed an old man and woman smiling at
Cat.
“So, what part of America you from?” he asked.
People here love to show that they can tell an American accent from a
mile off. Then folks usually follow up with some story
about visiting America.
“I was stationed in ‘The City of Brotherly Love’
– that’s Philadelphia ya know (his eyes twinkle at Cat). Served
there with the Royal Navy. I was in that beautiful city
when they bombed Pearl Harbor. What a time…” He seems
lost in reflection for a moment. Then he smiled.
“I saw Glenn Miller in Philadelphia.” He
smiled at Cat again. “You ever been to Philadelphia?”
he asked, his eyes shining. Cat shyly shakes her
head “no.” “Well, if you ever go, give her a great
big kiss for me. There is no more wonderful place in the
world than Philadelphia!”
He went on to say that after he left the US he married
his sweetheart in ’42…he patted her hand and she gave his a squeeze.
While he was serving on a ship in the Mediterranean Sea the Germans
sank his ship. He spent the rest of the war in a POW camp
in Tunisia. I told him that I was heading to Tunisia the
next week as a guest of their government. He seemed
genuinely interested.
Then he mentioned the war in Iraq…the photos on the
news. “You know,” he says after a long silence.
“It’s just a damn shame.” He looked sad.
“A damn shame,” he said, almost to himself. “We
should expect better, but it was a different time.” There seemed nothing
more to say.
I turned around to finish my food and found myself
thinking of ‘his’ Philadelphia. He was there during a
terrible, wonderful time – when “we were all in this together” and it
was good versus evil. To him, America was the best of the
good. And Philadelphia had been the best of America.
I found myself
longing for America to be that place of dreams, that place where anything was
possible. America ought to be a place where Glenn Miller
plays through the night, and the world is certain.