This essay about the death of Tony Nave’s father is dedicated to George Bush and to George Nethercutt, a Representative from Washington State who made it all possible.
Nearly eight months ago, there was printed in several newspapers and on the Internet, a photograph taken by Steve Perez of the Detroit News Photo Department.
It is a picture of six year old Tony Nave leaving the funeral service for his father, Major Kevin Nave of the United States Marines. Major Nave had been killed, apparently in combat, in Iraq.
This old essayist and World War II soldier, has seen thousands of newspaper photographs going as far back as 1926. It has been my lot to see war first hand in North Africa and in Italy. It is never pretty. Simply put, Steve Lopez’s photograph of young Tony Nave leaving his father’s funeral mass is the most poignant and touching scene that has ever come before me. It is not only poignant and touching, but it makes this old soldier’s being rage with anger when we consider what the United States forces have been sent to do in Iraq.
When Bush delivered his curious State of the Union speech on January 20th to upstage the Democratic primaries, the death toll in Iraq stood at 505 deaths. By weeks end, the toll had passed the 513 mark. It is now, on January 27th, at around 518 dead. When Bush made his ill fated journey on May 1st to the Carrier Abraham Lincoln flight deck, there were 138 deaths from combat in the invasion of Iraq. In the nine months since that day, 380 U.S. men and women have been killed in Iraq.
This essayist believes that the Pentagon continually lies to us. For them to now admit that 518 men and women in the military services have died from gun shot wounds or by bombings or by crashes of their vehicles including helicopters, is quite an admission. Since Bush declared on May 1 that combat operations had been completed and had his sign hung on the Abraham Lincoln, “Mission Accomplished,” 380 good military people have been killed. This is a rate of more than 42 per month, which is about where the prescription advanced by that grizzled warrior, Representative George R. Nethercutt, Jr. of Washington’s 5th Congressional District, said it should be.
Last October 14th in remarks to Congress, Nethercutt said that the deaths of two soldiers per day seemed to be within reasonable limits. To his credit, Nethercutt said he hoped there would be no further deaths in Iraq. Don’t we all. This was all uttered in a denunciation of the American press for not putting a positive spin on the war to the liking of the Republicans. Undisputed is this quotation from his October 14th speech:
“The story of what we’ve done in the post-war period is remarkable. It is a better and a more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day.”
Two thoughts. What “post war period” was Nethercutt talking about? Killings of American soldiers continue. Are we to consider all killings of American’s soldiers after May 1st as just “post war deaths”? The word “post” suggests that the war is over. Far from it.
Secondly, was Nethercutt’s cutting reference to “losing a couple of soldiers every day.” Many of us have been engaged in wars where it was fair to assume that not all of us would still be alive this evening or tomorrow morning. But Nethercutt says it’s only a matter of “a couple of soldiers every day.” If he was one of those soldiers picked for death, he might offer a more compassionate message.
Major Kevin Nave was one of those “couple of soldiers every day” that Nethercutt referred to. Hence, the dedication of this essay.
Attached is Nethercutt’s biography. It has been read minutely and thoroughly. It fails to mention his expertise in military matters. But that is no hindrance to his off-hand comment that losing a “couple of soldiers every day” is acceptable. Nethercutt was 25 years of age when the Vietnamese war took place. Obviously, he avoided that war just as the sainted Bush and Cheney also avoided it.
Any reference to Nethercutt’s remarks on October 14th, have also mysteriously disappeared from his website.
Now on to the Steve Perez photograph of Tony Nave. During my enlistment from 1942 to November, 1945, it would be safe to say that no more than 20% to 25% of my colleagues were married. That was true because jobs were very hard to find during the Great Depression. A man needed a job to propose marriage to any girl.
Of the men who had married, only a small handful had children. Therefore, there were few Tony Nave’s left to mourn the passing of a soldier killed in Europe or in the Pacific. But in this war, the percentage of military men with children as dependents must be many times the rate in World War II. We have today a voluntary military force who, before Iraq, lived with their spouses and treated the military as a job. Those days are gone, courtesy of our pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.
In Bush’s State of the Union speech on January 20th, the last thing he intended to mention was the 505 dead at that time. That was avoided while he bragged about how tough he was in dealing with other countries around the world. Bush may think he was tough, but Europeans read him as a blow hard bully. And a coward to boot. And so do many of Americans, including this one.
If this old soldier and citizen had a wish that Bush could fulfill, it would be for him to shut up for many minutes while he watched the Tony Nave’s of the world battle their monumental losses. There is no assurance that Bush, with his limited intellect and with his lack of interest in current events and in history, would be impressed. But it is worth a try for him to witness all of the heartache he has caused by this un-needed war. This war is about oil and Bush’s re-election in 2004. Make no mistake about that. The excuse that Bush took this country to war to do away with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, has been blown up several times, most recently by David Kay, who just resigned after hunting for WMD’s for several months with no findings at all.
In short it is my desire for Bush to see what he has done to America’s children and their widowed mothers. If that does not sober him, nothing will penetrate his brain. Unfortunately, that may be the case.
Now before we leave the photograph of six year old Tony Nave leaving the funeral mass for his father, there absolutely has to be a condemnation of the conduct of the three priests who stood on the steps of the church offering NO SYMPATHY or help to the distraught Tony Nave.
Midwestern speech or Missouri speech contains only a few allegories or other allusions to the grandeur of man and his surroundings. Missouri speech wastes no words. It is largely incapable of being misunderstood. It is direct speech and let the chips fall where they may.
In the speech of Missouri and America’s Mid-West, the three priests who offered no consolation to Tony Nave richly deserve to have their asses kicked repeatedly. That is the minimum.
My father, who struggled all his life to overcome a second grade education, would have said this about Bush and the three priests:
“They deserve to have their asses kicked so that they come to rest between their shoulder blades.”
Good for my old man. Is that clear enough?
No one cares whether these were priests or pastors or preachers or imams or rabbis or mullahs or Doctor Professor Reverends. Their asses should be kicked resoundingly.
In Southern speech which was heard during Army days, the expression was, “Their asses should be kicked from here till breakfast.” Not bad at all. And it should happen.
Now while the expressions may vary, all of the thoughts have to do with the absolute failure of these grown men to kneel down or to pick up Tony Nave or to whisper comforting words in his hour of need. These priests stood there with their hands in a reverent pose and DID NOTHING. The Detroit diocese of the Catholic Church should send these three men away to join those associated with priestly rape of young Altar Boys.
This picture haunted me from April 5th when if first appeared until January. On January 9th, the Detroit News was called. When someone in Jan Lowell’s imaging shop came on the line, he knew immediately which photograph was being referred to. The News asked for its standard reprint fee of $30 and said it would send the photo in about four weeks. It arrived in two weeks.
It is hoped that when you look at the Steve Perez photo you will have a reaction much like mine. In my case, tears are the result.
And finally, it is hoped that my Missouri speech patterns don’t offend you. Aside from my 3½ year engagement with the United States Army Air Corps – later the U. S. Army Air Force – the first 28 years of my existence were spent primarily in the Show Me State. One thing or another has taken me away from Missouri since 1951, but the colorful patterns of Midwestern speech have always remained with me.
E. E. CARR
January 27, 2004
Post Script:
As the essay about Tony Nave was about to be put into final form, two columns from the Newark Star Ledger appeared on January 26th. Both are the work of two of the Ledger’s longest serving columnists.
John Farmer is a national political correspondent. He is a veteran of that forgotten conflict, the Korean War. Lawrence Hall is called a “Star Ledger columnist” in the tag line attached to his pieces. Lawrence Hall is much more than that. It has been my pleasure to read his output for several decades. For whatever it is worth, Lawrence Hall is an African-American who writes magnificent stuff.
These columns, particularly Lawrence Hall’s comment on our being “content to live with the lies,” brings to mind the complete absence of protests about events in Iraq by religious organizations in this country. A little more than a week ago, we celebrated the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. Can anyone imagine Doctor King having no comment on the deaths of 518 American service men and women in Iraq? Can you imagine that he would be silent about the deaths of 17 Spanish and two Polish soldiers lost in that same effort to wipe out weapons of mass destruction which did not exist?
No reasonable person would expect Doctor King to remain silent about our losses and about the killings that the Iraqi people have had to endure. Martin Luther King would mourn every death. Curiously, while little was said on commemorating the birth of Martin Luther King, there has been absolutely no discernable voice raised by any religious organization in this country since the Iraq war started. As Lawrence Hall says, “Sadly, Americans are content to live with the lies.”
No one has ever successfully accused me of being a practitioner of any religious faith. As an outsider, it is a complete mystery to me why religious figures thump on their Bibles and preach the same timeworn, misleading mish-mash, while the 10,000 pound Iraqi elephant struts unobserved and unmentioned around the church, synagogue or mosque sanctuaries. Sooner or later, that elephant will have to be dealt with.
EEC
~~~
Then, as now, it’s important to hold onto the outrage. There’s so much that’s wrong that it’s easy to begin to fatigue, but Pop wrote consistently about the wrongs of the war and its unnecessary deaths for years and years. It clearly got to him on a very personal level, and for good reason. I couldn’t really think of a better way to piss Pop off than for a draft dodger to refer to soldiers’ lives as expendable.