The seminal event of this week, and perhaps this year, ends, as it should, on a day of national consecration as much as those we celebrate that way.  The photograph of the President, whose grandfather and great-uncle were part of the liberation of Europe commenced that day is yet another image which can almost reduce a grown man to tears.



If the Gettysburg address says something about us as a nation, so does General Eisenhower's "order of the day" for June 6, 1944:

"The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world."

That is how, in the best of our days, we see ourselves.  Not as a mighty nation seeking to subjugate the rest of the world to our vision, nor as scared pawns in the  struggles of people trying to find a better way to govern themselves, but as the home of the free and the land of the brave, ready to fight "tyranny over oppressed peoples" but seeking only "security for ourselves in a free world."

Many young people deride the fascination of my generation, born after World War II, and reaching near and full adulthood in the traumatic decade of assassinations, riots and extraordinary change, with the brief presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Nobody can speak for the whole of us, but for this member, it has been the thing he said, the challenges to my generation as much as any other:

It is not just the words of the still resonant inaugural:

To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom -- and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required -- not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

or a speech about why peace is achievable and necessary

What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace - - the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living -- the kind that enables man and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children - - not merely peace for Americans by peace for all men and women - - not merely peace in our time but peace for all time....

Our problems are manmade - - therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable - - and we believe they can do it again.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the values of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace - - based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions - -on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace - - no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process - - a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor - - it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable - - and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly - - by making it seem more manageable and less remote - - we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.

or why we should explore the heavens:

man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

It was impossible not to think of this vision of the United States this week when we sent our new president, the true symbol of who we are as a nation, to the capitol of Egypt, the nation which stood in ancient times as a symbol of oppression and which, in 1948, led the attack of the newly established State of Israel, hoping to crush it, but whose president three decades later was the first to formally recognize its existence and paid for that vision with his life.

You will excuse some repetition with things posted in the immediate aftermath of our new President's stirring address to the students of Cairo University, but sometimes the first thoughts one has are the most worth sharing:

It was, of course, a masterful speech and yet another reason to suspect we may have greatness among us. He said what we all want to say, and told Egyptians truths about who we are and what we are willing to do, consistent, I think, with the views of most Americans. I was so proud of him and my country.

There are always questions to be asked about the claim of American exceptionalism, but when we send a person of this quality to say these kind of things to a foreign audience, there is much to be said in support of the claim that we are the last best hope and a beacon for a world in conflict.


I cannot say the same for his audience, willing to applaud for his call to the end of Israeli settlements, but not for the end of Hamas support for violence or to recognize the right of the State of Israel even to exist.

It is a first step, though and a step in keeping with who we are as a nation. We left that path somewhere during middle part of the Vietnam War and it has taken us about forty years to get back on it, but we are.

There is so much to quote from in this stupendous speech, but for the moment, I remain stupefied with the idea of an American President in Cairo to tell students there that

The obligations that the parties have agreed to under the Road Map are clear. For peace to come, it is time for them - and all of us - to live up to our responsibilities.

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered....

Finally, the Arab States must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities. The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems. Instead, it must be a cause for action to help the Palestinian people develop the institutions that will sustain their state; to recognize Israel's legitimacy; and to choose progress over a self-defeating focus on the past.

America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs. We cannot impose peace. But privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away. Likewise, many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state. It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true.

Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed. All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.

This is the prayer from many Saturdays of my youth which that portion of the speech immediately restored my head. (I have looked up the exact English text and in quoting it, I submit that "Israel" in this context means "the Jewish people" not the State of Israel, which did not exist when the prayer was written:

Grant us peace, Thy most precious gift, O Thou Eternal Source of Peace, and enable Israel to be its messenger unto all peoples of the earth.

Bless our country, that it may ever be a stronghold of peace and its advocate in the council of nations.May contentment reign within its borders, health and happiness within its homes

Strengthen the bonds of friendship and fellowship among all the inhabitants of all lands.

Plant virtue in every soul and may the love of Thy name hallow every home and every heart. Praised by Thou, O God, lover of peace.

These are not naive dreams, as some have said, but (with the exception of the call to honor God) a message of hope, and the message of our greatest leaders in the best of our days.

There is no way to know whether it marks a turning point. I hardly think that the President's views (and ours as a nation) are shared throughout the world, no matter
how popular he may be. The silence at so many points of his speech calling for an endorsement demonstrates how far we are from the peace so many crave.

Certainly the knowledge that it is politically incorrect to applaud for the end of violence is not encouraging, as was the silence toward the President's comments about the holocaust and even as to something Egypt has done, to recognize Israel's right to exist, the same issue as began the current conflict even before my own birth.

Indeed, the carping and whining from those willing only to listen to echoes of their own opinions aside, the speech was nothing less than a challenge to the Muslim world, one which the prior President tried to convey but could not, particularly given his childish views about evildoers. This President has thrown the political equivalent of a hard fastball down the middle and challenged the Muslim world to try to hit it, but at least swing for it, hoping that they can.

In the meantime, the troublemakers in our midst, trying to create a wedge between Jews and the rest of the country, or between this country and Israel, should be ignored if not outright repudiated. The debates about Israel's settlement policy and the conditions under which a new Palestinian state could be established are reasonable ones and can continue without rhetoric carrying loaded and absurd allegations of abandonment. Those who live in Israel, and have put up with a state of war against them since their first days of existence, know better and the Americans who push this line do not do so on behalf of Jews, but their own low rent politics.

Israel was designed to live in peace with peaceful Arab neighbors. It has not worked out that way and hardly because Israel did anything other than exist. All that has followed is because so many will not accept that simple fact. We can only hope and pray and work toward the day that they will.

That is what the President was saying and what D-Day was (and is) all about, too. The people with venom in their minds will always bedevil us but for the rest of us, the citizens of the country that led the liberation of Europe and sent this man to Egypt to speak for us, there is a pride that is quite beyond description.