But this Memorial Day comes with darker news– the announcement that the United States military had surpassed more than 1,000 service members killed in Afghanistan, a war begun October 7, 2001 following the 9/11 attacks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/us/19dead.html?fta=y

The combat deaths in Afghanistan, which have accelerated recently with a “surge” of US troops in the troubled nation once ruled by the Taliban, goes along with the 4,401 Americans who have died in Iraq (Source: DoD, 5/18/10) since the invasion there began on March 20, 2003.

These black and white numbers don’t tell the true story behind the casualty figures. Every one of those numbers stands for an individual –a son, a sister, a mother, a brother, a father. But the stark numbers do remind us that Memorial Day is ultimately a day about loss.

Memorial Day has its roots in the Civil War –the nation’s bloodiest conflict with more than 600,000 dead and countless more wounded and maimed. Memorial Day began with the simple act of placing fresh flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers – in other words, “decorating” the graves, which gave rise to a national holiday of commemoration called Decoration Day. Once traditionally celebrated on May 30, it was a date chosen because the most flowers were in bloom in the North. But many states in the former Confederacy, viewed this as a “northern” holiday and created their own Confederate Memorial Days.

Given a semi-official launch in 1868 by the Grand Army of the Republic, a politically powerful fraternal organization, the holiday grew over the years, only to be forgotten in the early 20th century as the Civil War generation died off. It was given fresh urgency in the wake of World War I and the tremendous losses in the trenches of Europe. It was after that conflict that America began to recognize a need for reviving a holiday that honored the sacrifice of those who died in all of America’s wars, not just the Civil War. Memorial Day, as it eventually became known, was made a national holiday and was fixed on the last Monday in May date by a 1968 act of Congress that took effect in 1971. (Some traditionalists want to restore the original May 30 date.)

Memorial Day’s history and meaning have been obscured for many Americans. And as the holiday weekend approaches, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also seem mostly hidden from view. A numerical landmark –such as the 1000th death—or an act of Taliban terror –such as a suicide bombing in the capital of Kabul—puts the war back on the front pages for a day or so. The fighting in Iraq, where US troop numbers are slowly being drawn down, is even more hidden.

Which brings me to some of America’s hidden wars. Most of us are well schooled about World War II, which gets most of the glory –with lavish HBO productions like The Pacific. And the Civil War still occupies a central –if still overly “mythified” place—in America’s consciousness.

But there are many wars from the past that have fallen into the black hole we call “American History.” Most of us, for instance, have never heard of the “Creek War,” a vicious conflict fought in Alabama between Creek Indians and American troops led by a relatively unknown Tennessee planter named Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s ruthless victory over the Creek, led by a half-Scot, half-Creek warrior named William Weatherford, or Red Eagle, helped established Jackson’s heroic reputation. His ruthlessness in dealing with the Indians helped establish his nickname as “Sharp Knife.” The Creek War, a complicated struggle over land and freedom, took place even as America was fighting against England during the War of 1812.

The warfare between the federal government and Native American nations and their African-American allies continued in Florida in the long, costly series of wars called the Seminole Wars. Fought between 1835 and 1842, the Second Seminole War was America’s longest war between the Revolution and Vietnam, as the Seminoles, led by their war chief Osceola, kept American armies at bay for years in an an expensive, deadly guerrilla war.

No wars –or the losses and sacrifice they demanded – should be forgotten or overlooked, especially as we approach Memorial Day. This year, let’s remember all the fallen and forgotten fighters.

With Presidents Day around the corner, it seems like a good time to think about some other great books about the Presidents and Presidency. Here is a short list of some of my favorite Presidential biographies –all what I call “must reads.” Obviously, this not an exhaustive list, and some may already be familiar. Not all of them focus on the presidential years of the subjects. But this is a good place to start with a collection of accessible and fascinating views of the lives and careers of some of the most significant Commanders in Chief –all told by great storytellers, great writers and great historians.
Since Presidents Day exists to honor Washington and Lincoln, I’ll start with them–

Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington by Richard Brookhiser. Fairly brief, mostly admiring but honest, and to the point, Brookhiser of the National Review, cuts through the mythology but keeps Washington firmly in place as “Father of Our Country.”
Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America by Henry Wiencek. Rather than an exhaustive biography, this is a study of Washington’s complicated relationship to slavery and his views on emancipation.

Speaking of Emancipation, The Lincoln Library is enormous. But if I had to pick one single-volume biography of “The Great Emancipator,” I choose With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen B. Oates. I like it for its readability and utterly human portrait of one most mythologized of Presidents. A close second to Oates is Lincoln by David Herbert Donald. Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography by Philip B. Kunhardt. Jr., Philip Kunhardt III and Peter W. Kunhardt is a beautiful volume, a “coffee table” book that won’t just sit on the coffee table. It might be especially valuable for households with children, as is Lincoln: A Photobiography, an award-winning book for children by the appropriately named Russell Freedman.

Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt by David McCullough is one of my favorite biographies, although it focuses not on TR’s astonishing Presidency but on his youth. A magnificent book.
For Teddy Roosevelt’s Presidency, read Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

For the “other Roosevelt, another of my all time favorite books is Doris Kearn Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. It focuses life in the White House during the war years and is the perfect combination of scholarship and great storytelling
Because FDR’s historic “First Hundred Days” got so much attention recently, I would also recommend this fairly slim but excellent overview of the Depression and Roosevelt’s controversial, much-debated response to it: The First Hundred Days by Anthony Badger

For FDR’s successor, the gold standard is Truman by David McCullough

Master of the Senate by Robert Caro. Until Caro finishes the fourth installment of his epic biography of Lyndon Johnson, this book, covering Johnson’s years as the Senator from Texas will have to do.

President Reagan: The Role Of A Lifetime by Lou Cannon. A California journalist, Cannon covered Reagan for years and this is an even-handed assessment.

A comprehensive reading list of these and Presidential biographies can also be found in Don’t Know Much About History

Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
. . . The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost.
. . . No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.
–Franklin D. Roosevelt’s War Messsage to Congress (December 8, 1941)

At 7 A.M., Hawaiian time, on Sunday, December 7, 1941, two U.S. Army privates saw something unusual on their radar screens. More than 50 planes seemed to be appearing out of the northeast. When they called in the information, they were told it was probably just part of an expected delivery of new B-17s coming from the mainland United States. They were Japanese warplanes.

At 0758 the Pearl Harbor command radioed its first message to the world. AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. An hour later, a second wave of 167 more Japanese aircraft arrived. The two raids, which had lasted only minutes, destroyed or damaged nineteen ships, eight of them eight battleships, and 292 aircraft, including 117 bombers. And 2,403 Americans, military and civilian, had been killed, with another 1,178 wounded.

No question has tantalized historians and students of the period more than this: Did FDR know the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, and did he deliberately allow the attack that took more than 2,000 American lives in order to draw America into the most deadly, destructive war in history?

Some say FDR was preoccupied with the war in Europe and didn’t want war with Japan. Others hold that FDR viewed Japan—allied to the German-Italian Axis—as his entrée into the European war. The ultimate conclusion to this view is that FDR knew of the imminent Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and not only failed to prevent it, but welcomed it as the turning point that would end obstruction of his war plans.

There is no longer any doubt that some Americans knew that “zero hour,” as the Japanese ambassador to Washington called the planned attack, was scheduled for December 7. According to John Toland’s account of Pearl Harbor, Infamy, Americans had not only broken the Japanese code, but the Dutch had done so as well, and their warnings had been passed on to Washington.

Here is where human frailty and overconfidence, and even American racism, take over. Most American military planners expected a Japanese attack to come in the Philippines, America’s major base in the Pacific; the American naval fortifications at Pearl Harbor were believed to be invulnerable to attack, as well as too far away for the Japanese.

While the conspiracy theorists persist, a convincing case for Roosevelt trying to avoid war with Japan has been made by many prominent historians. Among them, eminent British military historian John Keegan dismisses the conspiracy notion.

“These charges defy logic,” Keegan wrote in The Second World War. “Churchill certainly did not want war against Japan, which Britain was pitifully equipped to fight, but only American assistance in the fight against Hitler. . . .”

The U.S. Navy’s History and Heritage Command has an extensive collection of online documents and resources related to the Pearl Harbor attack:
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq66-1.htm
This is the National Park Service link to World War II Pacific sites;
http://www.nps.gov/valr/index.htm

Find more on Pearl Harbor and World War II in Don’t Know Much About History

Of course, that means today there will be a lot of speechmaking about honoring our veterans. It will come a day after the Harvard Medical School released a survey showing that more than 2,000 veterans died in 2008 because they lacked health insurance.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/10/2266-veterans-died-in-200_n_353033.html

That news came on top of the fact that many of America’s veterans fill the ranks of the nation’s homeless. According to the VA, one third of America’s adult homeless are veterans.
http://www1.va.gov/homeless/page.cfm?pg=1

These grim facts are troubling enough when it comes to “honoring veterans.” What nobody will say today is what then-Senator Barack Obama said in the spring of 2007, invoking a public spanking: “We now have spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.”
Senator John McCain said something similar around the same time and both men quickly covered their tracks by claiming they should have said “sacrificed” not “wasted.” In word-wise America, “sacrifice” has triumphed as the socially polite term for referring to the thousands of American lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, with no end in sight.

This parsing of language –the distinction between the honorable “sacrifice” and the taboo “waste”—takes on added poignancy on Veterans Day.

With the memory of Fort Hood’s memorial service achingly fresh, and as Arlington and other cemeteries at home and abroad are festooned in flags and fresh flowers, some might find it inappropriate to question the “W” word. The implication is that ceremonial grieving is no occasion for truth-telling. But what better moment to ask hard questions than when the wounds are freshest?

An American President once made a very public acknowledgment of loss. Recognizing that sacrifices can indeed be wasted, Abraham Lincoln implored war-torn America to,

“resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain.”

Maybe if the country, and especially its political leadership, honestly acknowledged that all sacrifice is not created equal –that far too many sacrifices are made in vain—America will go a long way towards ensuring that there are fewer fresh graves to decorate next Veterans Day.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle
Anthem for Doomed Youth –Wilfred Owens

Here is a link to a BBC page on the great poet of the World War I era, Wilfred Owens and his poems “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poets/wilfred_owen.shtml