Remarks by
Chargé d’Affaires Joseph Mussomeli
at the American Cemetery in Manila
Memorial Day, May 31, 2004

Ladies and gentlemen, family and friends, and most especially our veterans. Good afternoon.

Today, in this quiet place, we join together to remember those who died in conflicts of almost unimaginable violence. I can never come to this place without feeling enormous pride and enormous shame. And the pride and the shame come from the same place within me. This place reminds me too much of those who loved life so much they were willing to die to preserve it for those they loved more. How can one not be proud that they would die for us? And how can one not be ashamed, knowing how we the living, so self-centered, so self-indulgent, hardly comprehend the sacrifice?

As many of you know the origin of Memorial Day lies not in foreign wars, but in our own Civil War. Lincoln established the tradition, declaring that “every living heart should swell into a mighty chorus of remembrance, gratitude and rededication on this solemn occasion.”

In the century and a half since Lincoln spoke, Americans have fought many battles far from home. Here in the Philippines, and elsewhere in the Pacific, we and our allies fought some of the fiercest battles of the World War II: Bataan, Corregidor, Leyte, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal.

Many of these battles were great victories. But it is dangerously too easy to talk only of victories. Those who fought on Bataan and Corregidor were greater heroes. They knew they would lose, but they kept right on fighting, fighting for what they believed in, fighting for those they left behind, fighting for those fighting along side of them, their fear of letting their comrades down greater than their fear of dying.

It is hard not to hate war, but it is far harder not to love those who go off to fight them. My eldest brother, who in the 52 years I have known him had never said anything that made any sense, wrote me yesterday about Memorial Day and what he said made more sense than anything I have ever heard about this day. “Some folks,” he said, “do not consider this a religious holiday like Christmas or Passover or (Ramadan), but it is more religious than any other day I know. The place or time why one in our Armed Forces fell means far less than that he or she stood guard for us. And stood for the best in us. Somewhere in each of us is a dream of peace, a dream of courage, a dream of duty,” and these men and women fulfill for us that dream.

We should pray to be worthy of their sacrifice. As Lincoln put it, we should rededicate ourselves and “resolve that these honored dead shall not have died in vain.” But what does that mean? What does not dying in vain really mean today? Three things, at least.

First, they did not die in vain if we do not betray the ideals they died for. That we always cherish freedom, embrace freedom’s responsibilities, and not forget the heavy price in blood that has been paid to preserve freedom. Today freedom has many enemies. Some mistake license for liberty, and lack the discipline and sense of accountability that goes hand-in-hand with true freedom. Others wear their freedom like a cheap, sparkling bauble, or flaunt it like a new SUV, pompously trying to impress the rest of the world with our superiority. As if liberty were only a trinket.

But the greatest threat today to our freedom, as it has always been, is fear: fear of losing our sense of security. And certainly liberty without security is impossible, but some are too quick, too eager to sacrifice liberty for security. I am reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s warning over 200 years ago: “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.”

Second, they did not die in vain if we honor the code that warriors abide by. Most especially today we honor our own fallen soldiers, we Americans and Filipinos, but we also add to this list the names of our enemies who died for causes and countries they were loyal to: Germans and Japanese, Italians and Turks, Chinese and Vietnamese, fellow Americans in the Civil War and Native Americans in too many wars to number.

People who do not know any better condemn war for being a complete breakdown in law and order, a total absence of honor and civility. But this is not true and has never been so. Before recorded history the rules of warfare were written in the traditions of men. Before legal codes were hammered into stone tablets, there were customs that enshrined a code of conduct for all warriors. And this code has always been founded on an unfathomable paradox: that those we kill we must also honor. Not so much for their sake as for our own.

Achilles dragging Hector’s body three times around the walls of Troy degraded Greece more than he desecrated Troy. Caesar showing mercy to those who fought against him secured the borders of the Empire more firmly than all of Rome’s legions. Napoleon, slaughtering those who surrendered after the Battle of Jaffa, did more to undermine the ideals of the French Revolution than any battlefield loss to the British. Grant, graciously accepting Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, did more for healing the wounds of our divided nation and winning back the hearts and minds of the South than all his military victories. And here in the Philippines, nothing ensured the collapse of the Japanese Empire more than its brutal treatment of Filipino and Americans prisoners. Nothing hardened us more and made us more determined to defeat them.

When I was about 7 years old my father told me an odd story that caused me great confusion. He recounted how he had fought against the Germans, how he had always hated the Nazis, how he could never ever regret having killed the enemy. And then he told me how one day while on patrol he came upon a pack of wild dogs eating the remains of a German soldier. Blind with rage, my father grabbed his rifle and fired.

I guess I should add that my confusion was deepened by the fact that my father, like my own wife and children, had an irrational devotion to dogs. I suspect he would gladly have sacrificed his life for any of the many dogs he loved throughout his life. And yet here he was shooting an animal he loved in order to protect the rotting, mangled corpse of some man he did not know, but surely hated.

This made no sense to me: how can you kill a man one day, and revere his remains the next? This seemed enormously silly, even hypocritical. But my father understood a dark truth: that we lose our own humanity whenever we stop respecting those we fight.

Third, they did not die in vain if we remember the suffering of our soldiers, that we never forget that their lives were cut short, and that this price is too great to be paid out too casually: that we vow never to send our men and women into battle except as a last resort, when all other means have utterly failed.

After a great battle against the city of Sparta, Pericles looked over the battlefield and wept for the city of Athens. He looked upon the Athenian dead and cried out: “The City has lost its Youth, it is as if the Year had lost the Spring.” History loves irony more than anything, and when it comes to warfare the irony is rich. Those who try too hard to avoid war and those who are too eager to go to war find themselves inevitably drawn into wars of greater horror than they ever envisioned.

Throughout the world we are determined to bring freedom to people who have been too long oppressed. As with Jefferson, we should swear “eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” This is not an easy task; it is not a simple one -- though some try to find quick, simplistic solutions. Today, we remember our fallen heroes, and their sacrifice strengthens our resolve. We remain steadfast. We endure. And we will prevail.

To end, our soldiers did not die in vain if we remain faithful to these three values: to ferociously defend liberty, to fiercely safeguard the dignity of our enemies, and to fervently strive to find means to avoid war. We must not squander our freedom, we must not squander our principles, and we must not squander the lives of our young men and women. Only in doing these things do we pay true homage to these fallen warriors of the Republic.

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