STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

More All

• It’s Christmastime at Palm Cottage
• Great Depression unlike today’s troubling times
• You Review Movie: John Augustine

Share and Enjoy [?]

Democracies have an ambivalent relationship with their war heroes. In wartime, we admire and honor them. In between wars, we tend to neglect them and even be embarrassed by their exploits.

For example, consider the World War II Marine Corps fighter ace Gregory "Pappy" Boyington.

According to news reports, the University of Washington's Student Senate recently turned down a motion to honor Boyington, who graduated from UW in 1934, as a distinguished alumnus.

One student senator was quoted as saying that she didn't believe "a member of the Marine Corps was the sort of person UW wanted to produce." Another said, "Many monuments at UW already commemorate rich white men."

Boyington commanded one of the most famous fighter outfits in the Pacific Theater, Marine Fighter Squadron 214, the "Black Sheep." Earlier he flew in China with the American Volunteer Group, the legendary Flying Tigers.

"Pappy" was a hard-drinking, hell-raising, womanizing S.O.B. And that's what his friends called him! He was always in trouble with the brass, yet somehow he rose to the rank of colonel.

Boyington shot down at least 22 enemy aircraft, although he claimed he had bagged 28. With the "Black Sheep" squadron in the southwest Pacific he flew a Corsair, one of the biggest and most powerful single-engine fighters of that era. The eerie whistling sound it made as it flew led the Japanese to nickname it "Whistling Death."

He was awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest decoration this nation gives its heroes. And the Navy Cross. President Franklin D. Roosevelt personally pinned the Medal of Honor on his chest. Boyington was shot down in January 1944 and spent the final 20 months of the war in Japanese prison camps.

You probably wouldn't have wanted to invite "Pappy" to dinner. He was a roughneck, and prone to challenging friends (and strangers) to impromptu wrestling matches. He drank far too much, chased too many women, upset too many people. Still, he lived to 76, dying in 1988.

His exploits served as the basis for a popular TV show, "Baa Baa Black Sheep," but family television could never capture the real "Pappy."

Should the University of Washington have honored him as a distinguished alumnus?

I wouldn't mind if the students rejected "Pappy" because he was a drunk or a lout. "Pappy" himself would have understood that and accepted it.

But turn him down because he was a Marine?

Because he was "a rich white man?" Boyington was part Sioux, and came from poor parents. He worked his way through school.

And what's wrong with being a Marine? Marines have fought and died for us for as long as there's been a United States of America.

It would be heaven on Earth if we didn't need fighting men to protect us, but the sad fact is that we do. And the proud fact is that when there's fighting to be done, the United States Marines are usually in the thick of it, from the shores of Tripoli to the twisting streets of Baghdad.

Unfortunately, there are people who disdain the men and women who fight and bleed and die for us. Former presidential candidate Al Gore has been accused of making derogatory remarks about our military presence in Iraq. But that's nothing new.

In 1933, as Hitler was coming to power in Germany, the students of Britain's Oxford Union passed a resolution, "That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country."

With the carnage of World War I fresh in their young minds, perhaps the Oxford students could be forgiven such a brash moment.

But Hitler noted it, and it gave him added confidence that the citizens of democracies were, in his words, "worms."

That attitude led to World War II. Six years later those students were battling against Hitler's Nazis. Democracies need warriors, unfortunately, just as much as they need (but don't always get) wise leaders.

The ancient Greek historian Thucydides said it best, more than 2,400 years ago: "To you who call yourselves men of peace, I say: You are not safe unless you have men of action on your side."

• Speaking of wise leadership, the world's politicians are still fumbling with the issue of global warming. The Kyoto Treaty is pretty much a farce: it calls for drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by the rich industrialized nations while allowing the poorer nations to pump as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as they want to.

This would hamper (many say cripple) Western economies and encourage developing nations such as China to burn as much dirty coal as they like.

Meanwhile, the year 2005 was the warmest year recorded since scientists started keeping temperature records in the late 1800s.

The previous record-holder was 1998, when an El Niño warming in the eastern Pacific drove up temperatures worldwide. In 2005, there was no El Niño, but global temperatures were still their hottest ever.

One of the results of this warming is that Greenland's ice cap is melting precipitously, pouring a great deal of cold, fresh water into the North Atlantic. Glaciers in Greenland have melted back 15 to 50 yards per year recently.

If enough fresh water pours into the North Atlantic, it will break the flow of the Gulf Stream. Gulf Stream waters carry warmth to Europe, so that the British Isles and western Europe, which are farther north than Labrador, have a pleasantly mild climate. Break up the Gulf Stream, though, and Europe will become as cold as Siberia.

So one paradoxical result of global warming could be a new ice age! Tricky, but very possible.

The politicians need to do more than talk about this growing inevitability.

Naples resident Ben Bova is the author of more than 100 books. His latest novel, just published, is "Titan." Dr. Bova's Web site address is www.benbova.net