They don’t make Marines like they used to

Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, choked up and couldn’t continue speaking at a congressional immigration hearing in Florida where he was talking about his immigrant father.

Don’t get me wrong. People have a right to cry. Soldiers, especially commanding officers, especially the highest military officer in the land, do not have a right to cry in public. It spreads a message of weakness. It demoralizes a society.

Remember—it was when Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin saw Israeli soldiers unabashedly weeping in each other’s arms at the televised funeral of a slain comrade that he became convinced that Israel had lost the will to defend itself, and he decided then and there to initiate the disastrous peace process.

And Pace wasn’t even attending a military funeral. He was performing on the Immigrants-Are-Us circuit, the Borscht Belt of open-borders bathos, reminiscing emotionally about his father who came to the U.S. from Italy in 1914, a fact that Pace apparently played up in order to prove why America must open its borders to Mexico in 2006. It’s perfectly logical. I ate a pizza yesterday. Therefore I should eat five pounds of tortillas today, and every day for the rest of my life.

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Howard Sutherland writes:

This former Marine officer is disgusted, by the crying and the shilling. Today’s generals are worse than eunuchs. Graham’s closing comment is equally revolting.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 10, 2006 11:11 PM | Send