Honoring Our Heroes

Let’s mourn the real American heroes
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

Flags flew at half-staff this week in California’s state capitol. No, not for Michael Jackson. For Private First Class Justin Casillas.

Pfc. Casillas died in a jihadi suicide bombing attack on his Army base in eastern Afghanistan on the Fourth of July. While Americans enjoyed fireworks and Hollyweird mourned the “King of Pop” with wretched excess, the family of Pfc. Casillas learned that the 19-year-old paratrooper with the U.S. Army’s Alaska-based 509th Airborne had given his life for his country. His father told the Woodland (Calif.) Daily Democrat that Justin just “wanted to do his part.”

The family has a legacy of service: Casillas’s grandfather served in the Pacific theater during World War II; his father served in Vietnam. But the death of Pfc. Casillas didn’t make front-page headlines. His funeral won’t receive wall-to-wall coverage on cable TV.

Instead, it’s been all-MJ, all night and day: Nurses! Nannies! Doctors! Drug raids! Custody battles! Casket rides!

Jacko fever spread to the Beltway, where the House of Representatives held a moment of silence for the entertainer. President Obama sent a highly-publicized letter of condolence to the Jackson family. And topping them all, Texas Democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee drafted a 1,600-word congressional resolution that “recognizes Michael Jackson as a global humanitarian and a noted leader in the fight against worldwide hunger and medical crises; and celebrates Michael Jackson as an accomplished contributor to the worlds of arts and entertainment, scientific advances in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, and global food security.”

For Michelle Malkin’s column: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/07/08/lets-mourn-the-real-american-heroes/

Rep. Peter King: Let’s pay Tribute to Real Heroes, Mentors, not Michael Jackson

 

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Do you Remember Where You Were? Let us Always Remember!

     Here, that Tuesday wasn’t a bright sunny day, perhaps an overcasting shadow of how the day would soon unfold!

     To my parents generation, they can tell you to the precise moment what they were doing when Walter Cronkite broke into the afternoon soap operas to tearfully let the nation know that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, TX. Their parents can tell you how the voices sounded as the newswires announced that Japan had attacked our fleet in Hawaii on that December 7th, a day of infamy.

     For us, and for our children, the vision of those airplanes flying into the World Trade Center towers will be forever etched in our minds. The sight of the Pentagon burning after it was hit will be indullable. And the visualization of the heroics that ensued on Flight 93 as its proud victims helped to avert its disasterous attack, forcing it down into a field in Pennsylvania instead of allowing it to take out its target in Washington DC.

     The victims and the survivors of 9-11 will always be remembered as our heroes. The firstresponders who valiantly charged into the Towers….. those who lost their lives that day, or the next, or are now suffering from the illnesses that filled their lungs and their bodies as the rescued loved ones and colleagues.

     The military and civilians who were killed or injured at the Pentagon are forever memorialized in our minds.

     And the recorded messages and phone calls that emanated from the passengers and crew on Flight 93 will forever play again and again, and the words “Let’s Roll” will always evoke a heroic symbolism.

     Thus, this September 11th, 2008, seven years after our history changed forever, we will again pause and reflect. We will remember those lost that day, and their families who have attempted to pick up the pieces of their lives. We will think of the small children who lost family that day, who are now in school. We will think of those spouses and parents who deeply miss their loved one. All who lost their lives at the hand of those terrorists that day, those who survived that tragedy, and those who valiantly worked in the rescue attempts, we will remember the sacrifice that their service meant on that day.

     New York City today is a different place. Having had the opportunity to dine at the Windows on the World restaurant high atop the Tower, it is eery to see the void in the skyline, but so very easy to recall the beauty of the view. One cannot walk in the area now referred to as Ground Zero without feeling the quietness that falls on those few blocks, feeling and knowing that this place is the beginning of a new chapter in our history. A place where the true heroic nature of the heart and soul that has always embodied the American ideal, will forever be interred and forever be memorialized as a reminder to the next generation that we must never forget, we must always be diligent, and we must never take our lives and our freedoms as Americans for granted ever.