Remembering and Honoring Eisenhower and the 101st Airborne Division

Thinking about the great 101st Airborne Division and their place in history. They were instrumental in the invasion of Normandy and the liberation of Eindhoven and Bastogne.
The Spirit of this great division of the Army can be summed up by a comment attributed to a member of the Screaming Eagles during the seige of Bastogne who said "They've got us surrounded -- the poor bastards!"

It was 55 years ago yesterday that the 101st made its mark on history by protecting 9 young black children as they sought register for school at Little Rock Elementary to carry out the mandate of "Brown vs the Board of Education" . Following the orders of President Eisenhower, the 101st proudly stepped in to assure that the law of the land was enforced.

The anniversary of this important date cannot be lost on us because it was a Republican president and war hero who issued the order sending the 101st to Little Rock. Using the power of the Federal Government to protect the rights of Americans too long denied their due.

This moment in history is instructive in many ways that pertain to today's current events.

First - for those who wish to blame President Obama for the unrest in the middle east right now - it demonstrates that the struggle for democracy is a process, and a messy one at that. Almost 200 years after the founding of our Republic, unrest was still characterizing the struggle to bring our institutions and the hearts of our citizens into alignment with our hopes expressed by the powerful words of the Declaration of Independence and the recipe of the Constitution. Eisenhowers brave actions, and the heroism of the 101st Airborne would not be the last of those struggles either and they certainly were not the first. The Civil War, was largely a result of the struggle to create a more perfect union and to live up to our credo, but there were dozens of rebellions and movements that characterized the process of nurturing the democratic ideal. Eisenhower and his actions were a part of a long-honored tradition of great American Presidents who used the power of the Presidency and the Federal Government to move the ball down the field toward that day when every American could say that we had truly lived up to our creedo.


The Arab Spring may represent a beginning but there will be many growing pains as the people of the region come to terms with the ideas and ideals of freedom and democratic governance.

If the memory of Eisnehower's actions and the bravery of the 101st can give us insight into the growing pains of democracy and freedom throughout the world, it can also give us insight into where the Republican Party has come since the days of Eisenhower. Could we count on Mitt Romney to stand up for freedom and democracy here at home if he was in a similar circumstance? The truth is that we probably could not. because Romney has become a captive of the ideology of the current Republican Party leadership. It is an ideology that sees government as the enemy and seeks to dismantle and discredit the moral authority and power of the Federal Government and leave each of us to the whims of state and local government without the ties that bind us together as Americans.

Living up to the lofty goals and words defining Freedom and democratic ideals - whether they are those that ring down through the years in America or those which reflect them uttered in the heat of the Arab Spring - is a long and sometimes painful process.
What we accept as the price of freedom - like obnoxious films with no redeeming value - will take some time to take root in the hearts and minds of the citizens of the middle east, we can only hope that it doesn't take them as long as it has taken us to get to this place. . . and that the pendulum of ideology in the Republican Party swings fast enough to bring them into the 21st century before it defines our relationship with these young democracies.