Two unforgettable anniversaries this week

Two anniversaries take place this week of events that touched my life

deeply -- and that I can’t resist recognizing here.

The first is the 59th anniversary of D-Day, when Allied troops

stormed ashore in northern France to turn around, once and for all,

the war against Nazi Germany. Three years ago, my wife and I spent a

week in Normandy absorbing the immensity of this operation.

The rugged terrain, German gun emplacements and bomb craters are

still there, offering graphic evidence of what our troops had to

face. So are the thousands of white crosses that mark the graves of

those who died in that effort.

Reflecting on that visit brings to memory, also, the uncertainties

we were facing in 1944. If the Normandy landings were turned back,

there was a likelihood that the war might go on indefinitely. No one

in my recollection ever really believed that would happen, but the

danger was certainly real. That’s why comparing the threat to our

nation from Hitler’s armies to the alleged threat from Iraq is

downright obscene.

On D-Day, the weapons of mass destruction were readily visible.

Our troops had to scale a vertical cliff against withering German

fire to reach and destroy them. I strongly recommend a visit to the

Normandy beaches to offer perspective on the events of today. Such a

visit might also offer some understanding of why so many World War II

veterans had little enthusiasm for the preemptive attack on Iraq.

It is an oddity, seen only from the distance of years, that when

D-Day took place, we were fighting two quite distinct and disparate

wars with very little connection. Good news from Europe was a kind of

welcome sidelight in the Pacific.

There was no CNN to tune in, and lower-level combatants in the

“other war” had to depend on mostly fragmentary reports of what was

happening on the far side of the world. I was in the South Pacific

when the war in Europe ended, and I recall only mild elation at that

news because so much fighting remained in the Pacific Theater.

The second anniversary marks the murder of Robert Kennedy. He was

fatally shot on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles

after winning the California Democratic presidential primary. He had

just made his victory speech and was headed through the kitchen to

another room where his campaign workers were waiting when a

Palestinian immigrant named Sirhan Sirhan -- supposedly motivated by

Kennedy’s pro-Israel positions -- shot him.

Sirhan was convicted, but his death sentence was later commuted,

and he is presently in prison. Meanwhile, multiple conspiracy

theories have been put forward that a second assassin fired the

lethal bullets.

I believe, had he lived, that Robert Kennedy would have been the

Democratic presidential candidate rather than Hubert Humphrey. And I

think he would have defeated Richard Nixon.

These observations are not totally off the wall. I spent several

years writing about California politics during the 1960s for the

Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal’s weekly

National Observer. I covered Nixon’s apparent retirement from

political life when he told reporters after losing a gubernatorial

race to Pat Brown that “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any

more.” And I covered the last days of Robert Kennedy’s California

primary campaign -- and his life.

The Kennedy campaign is especially vivid to me because never,

before or since, have I seen a political candidate connect with his

audience the way Kennedy did -- especially in East Los Angeles, where

throngs of people greeted him with warm memories of his bonding with

Cesar Chavez during the farm workers’ strike. I can still see the

love passing between Kennedy standing on the tailgate of a truck and

the people who reached out to touch him. The trusted colleague who

made a lot of enemies while taking on many of the unsavory tasks of

his brother’s administration had mellowed considerably by 1968.

I wasn’t at the Ambassador the night Robert Kennedy was killed,

but my oldest daughter was. Working for RFK’s candidacy was the best

outlet Patt found for assuaging her grief over President Kennedy’s

murder -- grief ravaged by anger when she fled Corona del Mar High

School after hearing several classmates express pleasure at the

president’s death.

And so she was at the Ambassador, in an adjoining room, working

her way back into participating politics, when Robert Kennedy was

shot. She hasn’t returned to this arena to be bruised again since

that night.

*

Finally, a few words cast into a sea of words about the Nichols

caper. Dick Nichols, of course, is the Newport Beach city councilman

who showed up at a Planning Commission meeting, and when the results

weren’t to his liking, charged that the commissioners were on the

take. The tidal wave of rhetoric that followed has dealt with issues

from free speech to a course in municipal civics. None, to my

knowledge, has dealt with the only relevant issue: stupidity.

There is little doubt what Nichols said. A lot of people heard

him, and it was caught on tape. He accused “someone” on the Planning

Commission of accepting a bribe, which I understand to be a felony.

If Nichols had any hard evidence to back up the charge, he hasn’t

produced it. There is no defense or logical explanation for such

behavior. Intelligent people sometimes do stupid things (Bill Clinton

comes to mind).

I don’t know Nichols, so I don’t know if that is the case here. If

it is, the only rational response is for him to say: “I made a

foolish mistake for which I apologize” -- and then take the heat. If

it’s not the case, he should produce some evidence to back up his

charge.

If he does neither, then the city attorney will have to look up

the statutes on stupidity. Or create some.

They might be good to have around.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.