I just had a look at the names and pictures of the 13 victims of Major Hasan’s attack of Sudden Jihad Syndrome, which brought back a memory from my childhood.
In Newport, Rhode Island, tucked away on a side street just off the old town square is the Newport Artillery Company museum/HQ.
By an odd bureaucratic fluke, the company was never officially deactivated after the Revolution and so can technically claim to be the oldest unit of the U.S. Army. A charming fiction of course, but it’s a really fine museum. The members still have colonial-style uniforms and I believe a canon.
Among the exhibits was a propaganda poster from WWII, and I mean good propaganda. The graphic, if memory serves, was a soldier standing (I think, it’s been a very long time) in a graveyard. Along one side of the poster is a roster of obviously ethnic names: Polish, Irish, German, Italian, whatever.
Blazoned across the top were the words, “Americans All!”
The role of the dead at Ft. Hood:
Maj. Juanita Cole, 55 (Was her maiden name Hispanic or did her folks just like “Juanita?” That happens in this country.)
Maj. Libardo Caraveo, 52
Capt Russell Seager, 51
Capt. John P. Gaffaney, 54
Staff Sgt. Justin DeCrow, 32
Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29 (During WWI anyone named “Krueger” would have come in for a lot of suspicion and harassment. She joined the Army after 9/11 and vowed to get Osama bin Ladin. Sometimes, in degenerate ages it takes a woman to do a man’s job.)
Spc. Frederick Greene, 29
Pfc. Michael Pearson, 22
Pfc. Aaron Nemelka, 19 (Jewish? Slavic? I wonder how much “harassment” he got as a kid for his name?)
Pfc. Kham Xiong, 23 (Is that Cambodian? Did his parents flee the Killing Fields? Is it Chinese, perhaps from one of the ethnic minorities of China? We owe it to him to get it right.)
(UPDATE: He was Hmong, a tribal group in Vietnam with a strong warrior tradition who sided with the U.S. during the war.)
Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21 (Hasan got a twofer with her – she was pregnant.)
Spc. Jason Hunt, 22 (A fellow-Okie. He must have gotten some ribbing down at Ft. Hood during the annual OU-Texas football games.)
Michael G. Cahill, 62 (John Q. Civilian – except the enemy has made plain enough there ain’t no civilians in this war.)
Americans all. Gunned down by a man whose family was taken in by this country. Who was given a costly education in return for service in the military – in the higher ranks with honors and dignity. Not as an enlisted man, officer’s houseboy or hash slinger in the mess.
This is three straight posts on one subject, and I’m sorry I’ll quit now. Right after this.
I want him dead. I want him executed, hanged with a hemp rope. I want his mouth stuffed with pig’s flesh, his body wrapped in the skin, and I want him buried in a pig yard.
And if anyone objects, I want us to rise up as a nation and say, “GOT A PROBLEM WITH THIS? COME AND GET YOU SOME.”
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