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.
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