The War
Monday, October
8, 2007
I watched the recent Ken
Burns documentary, The War -- an oral history by and about about
the men and women who experienced WWII. What a remarkable piece of
work. In the third episode, there's a segment on the U.S. invasion
of Anzio, which went from being a cake walk to a blood bath due to the
ineptitude or vanity of the commanding officer of the invasion force.
After a merciless shelling by the Germans, a U.S. mess sergeant fell to
his knees and pleaded: "God help us. You come yourself.
Don't send Jesus. This is no place for Children." The War
isn't just for those who would hope to understand the people and events
that led to the United States becoming the most powerful temporal force
in the history of humankind. Like The War itself, the documentary
is for everyone in America.
"It is revolting to have no better
reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in
the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the
grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long
since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of
the past."
– from “The Path of the Law,”
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,
10 Harvard Law Review 457 (1897)
Copyright
© 2005 Ashe
Lockhart. All rights reserved.
