For Memorial Day, 2009: The Lesson of the Four Chaplains, 1943

When I was child, my father, a World War II Navy veteran, taught me the story of the four chaplains of the USAT Dorchester.

I thought of the four chaplains during the presidential election when I listened to former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell explain why he endorsed Barack Obama for President of the United States.

In stating why he could not support the candidacy of John McCain, Powell referred to the death of U.S. Army Corporal Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, a 20 year old from Manahawkin, N.J., who was killed in Iraq and to a photograph he had seen of the soldier’s mother pressing her head against his gravestone at Arlington National Cemetery.

The headstone was engraved with the soldier’s name, his military awards (the Purple Heart and Bronze Star), and the Muslim symbol of the crescent and star.

As the New York Times observed, “Powell mentioned Mr. Khan’s death to underscore why he was deeply troubled by Republican personal attacks on Mr. Obama, especially false intimations that he was Muslim. Mr. Obama is a lifelong Christian, not a Muslim, he said. But, he added, ‘The really right answer is, what if he is?’ ‘Is there something wrong with being Muslim in this country? No, that’s not America,’ he said. ’Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourselves in this way.’ Mr. Powell said that he had heard senior members of the Republican Party ‘drop this suggestion that he [Obama] is a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.’ ‘Now, John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I’m troubled about the fact that within the party we have these kinds of expressions.’”

General Powell probably thought, too, of the four chaplains of the USAT Dorchester.

On the night of February 3, 1943,United States Army Transport ship Dorchester was en route from Newfoundland to England via Greenland, when it was hit by torpedoes from a German submarine.

The Dorchester listed sharply to starboard and began to sink almost immediately into the icy water.  The ship was overcrowded and there were insufficient lifeboats or lifejackets for the 904 men on board.

As the Dorchester sank, the  ship’s four U.S. Army chaplains aided the wounded, helped get the men into lifeboats and then gave up their own lifejackets when the supply ran out.

A survivor later explained:

“As I swam away from the ship, I looked back. The flares had lighted everything. The bow came up high and she slid under. The last thing I saw, the four chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men. They had done everything they could. I did not see them again. They themselves did not have a chance without their life jackets.”

As the ship went down, survivors in nearby lifeboats could see the four chaplains – their arms linked and braced against the slanting deck. Their voices could also be heard offering prayers.

Twenty-seven minutes after the torpedoes hit, the Dorchester was gone.

The four U.S. Army chaplains were:

Lt. George L. Fox, age 42, Methodist.
Lt. Alexander D. Goode, age 32, Jewish.
Lt. John P. Washington, age 34, Roman Catholic.
Lt. Clark V. Poling, age 32, Reformed Church in America.

According to the Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation, the lesson of their sacrifice is “unity without uniformity” and “selfless service to humanity without regard to race, creed, ethnicity, or religious beliefs.”

My father had a simpler lesson to teach me:  We are all Americans.

In a speech on in Fayetteville, North Carolina, near Fort Bragg, Barack Obama said that “The men and women from Fayetteville and all across America who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats or Republicans or independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag, They have not served a red America or a blue America. They have served the United States of America.”

(This post was originally published, in a slightly different form, on October 19, 2008.)

Foreclosure King Rules Orange County Republican Party

With Orange County’s real estate and mortgage industry-driven economy in shambles and local home foreclosures on the rise, you might think that our Republican politicians would want to distance themselves from those who are profiting from the misery of Orange County voters who have lost or are about to lose their homes.

Not so.

The Orange County Business Journal recently featured a glowing cover article on local Republican contributor, fundraiser, and king-maker Dale Dykema, founder and chief executive of Santa Ana-based T.D. Service Financial Corp, which bills itself as “one of the nation’s largest and most successful” foreclosure processing firms.

Not surprisingly, Dykema’s firm is “looking at record profits this year amid the foreclosure wave.”

According to the Business Journal, Dykema has helped lenders foreclose on more than 450,000 homes, and expects the current foreclosure crisis to make this his best year ever, with his company taking in more than $70 million in foreclosure fees.

Dykema also expects his good fortune to continue as the local economy tanks.

As Dykema told the Business Journal, “It takes time for the foreclosures to hit after the economy dropped. I wouldn’t be surprised if we hit a peak next year for this time around.”

The focus of the Business Journal article, however, was not on Dykema’s success as a foreclosure-profiteer or his record profits, but on his role as an Orange County GOP king-maker.

Dykema, the Business Journal explained, “has helped GOP congressmen get elected with money and campaign advice. His beneficiaries include nearly all of the county’s congressional delegation: John Campbell, Ed Royce, Dana Rohrbacher, Ken Calvert, John Lewis, as well as former congressman and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox.”

According to the Campaign Money website, Dykema contributed $54,450 to Republicans in 2008.   He is also responsible for raising many thousands more from others.

Of course, all of the current GOP congressmen on this list voted against the stimulus legislation intended to relieve the economic crisis from which Dykema is profiting.

All of them oppose efforts to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.

And all of them, including former congressman Chris Cox, were instrumental in creating the deregulated mortgage mess that lead to the foreclosure crisis in the first place.

Amidst the rubble of Orange County’s housing market, Dykema and his Orange County Republican cronies can be proud of helping at least one business expand:

Dykema’s.

Biting the Hand that Feeds You: More Republican Hypocrisy

“And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.”
Edmund Burke, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity

You might think that Orange County’s Republican elected officials would be caught between a rock and hard place in the current economic crisis.

With the local economy in shambles, home values crashing, foreclosures on the rise, unemployment skyrocketing and good jobs scarcer than Republican fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger, you might think that the staunch and total opposition of Orange County Republicans to President Obama’s stimulus efforts would be, at the least, a political embarrassment.

But then you would underestimate the shameless hypocrisy of Orange County’s Republican establishment.

In her most recent online newsletter, Republican Orange County Supervisor Pat Bates (District 5) makes the following incredible claim:

“Orange County Projects Receive Stimulus Funds

A number of significant environmental enhancement and flood management projects in Orange County will receive vital support from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the Federal stimulus program.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has announced more than $50 million will be spent in Orange County on projects selected based on their anticipated economic and environmental return. The projects selected for funding include:

• $26,550,000 to complete channel improvements on the lower Santa Ana River within Orange County
• $1,000,000 for mitigation related to the Seven Oaks Dam, which provides flood protection to Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties
• $17,363,000 to complete plans and specifications and award a construction contract for the environmental restoration of Upper Newport Bay
• $5,265,000 for needed maintenance for the Santa Ana River, Carbon Canyon Dam, Prado Dam and Fullerton Dam
• $500,000 for a Dana Point Harbor breakwater study to identify and recommend any repairs to the breakwater/jetties and improve water quality.

The approval of funding for these projects is great news for Orange County. Orange County residents will directly benefit from these improvements and the Federal support is greatly appreciated. Our success is the result of great teamwork involving our County staff, our representatives in Washington and many city and community leaders.”

In informing her constituents of this “great news,” Bates does not mention the fact that all of “our [Republican] representatives in Washington” voted against Obama’s economic stimulus legislation, including these very projects.

Nor does she mention the fact that all of Orange County’s Republican “city and community leaders” have been vocally attacking the stimulus package as an evil socialist plot to destroy capitalism.

And Bates does not mention the fact that every penny of the more than $50 million that she is so grateful that Orange County will receive from the stimulus package will come from — dare we say it – taxes.

What Bates should have said is the “great teamwork involving our Republican County staff, our Republican representatives in Washington and many Republican city and community leaders failed to prevent President Obama and the Democrats from passing the federal stimulus package – and thank God for that.”

Of course, Bates won’t say it.

But the voters in Orange County should.