The Cincinnati Post – Distorted history demeans our past by James P. Pinkerton, Newsday

what’s new for Memorial Day 2005 is the recasting of America’s past in such a way that “blasphemes” our civil religion of service and sacrifice. …

“It’s an irony,” [Michael Vlahos of Johns Hopkins University] observes, “that a ‘conservative’ administration has launched a radical campaign of reshaping American historical thinking.” The Bush Doctrine, he continues, aims to change the world – but the first step is that America must be diverted from its tradition of governmental prudence and realism in the setting of objectives, at home and abroad. …

For America’s commander in chief to sully our historic achievements is to dishonor past sacrifice, to undo the meaning of Memorial Day – and to discourage service, present and future. Down that disrespectful road lies even further trouble with military recruitment and retention.

Defenders of the administration might answer that the new Bush policy is popular, even necessary. Yet if America’s leaders feel the need to rework history in order to make way for the new desired future, it’s inevitable that other historical markers of memory will be flattened.

Memorial Day is a good time to recall All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, and Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo. Peace. mjh