by Patrick Lang (bio below)
My friend Paul Petty wrote last night to tell us that his son, Captain Christopher Petty was killed in action yesterday in Iraq.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that he give up his life for his friends.”
Early this morning In Iraq, Chris and four of his soldiers were killed by a so-called “improvised explosive devise” implanted along the route they were taking between Baghdad and Najaf, to the South. Details, at this point, are sketchy but we know that the explosion was powerful enough to kill all five occupants of the armored HUMVEE in which they were traveling. He had been in Iraq only a few weeks. This we know for certain. Chris was in harm’s way out of dedication to his comrades and soldiers. He loved his family deeply. But he also loved his troops and, after he took command of the Headquarters Battery, despite his frustrations with the army and a full awareness of what was right and wrong about Iraq, there was absolutely no question in his mind that he had to go back with his soldiers for the second deployment. He would never expect them to do anything that he wouldn’t do himself. He was a professional in every sense of the word, as were his men. Their dedication to their mission and to each other was unswerving. Those of us who have never been in combat do not know of the kind of bonds which develop among fellow soldiers. And though my heart ached to see him go for a second time, I could never bring myself to pressure him not to do what he did. I know his wife feels the same way. It was his choice as it is the choice of all of our soldiers. The level of dedication and selflessness among them is unequaled and almost unfathomable in our society.
Chris is the first member of our family to die in combat since W.W.II. He is survived by a Grandfather who served in that war and an Uncle who served in Vietnam. We grieve! Oh, how we grieve for him! And for his wife, Deb, his 3 year old son, Oliver, and his less than three month old son, Owen, who will never know his sweet Daddy. God rest his soul.
Chris asked to be buried in Arlington, should the worst happen. He liked the dignity of military ceremony and took the rituals seriously. I am sure he thought they would comfort us and in some small way demonstrate the appreciation of the nation to his grieving family and friends. We will do our best to see that his wishes are honored and to honor his memory in our lives.
Yours, Paul
… Continued below with Alan Farrell’s thoughts on this sacrifice:
It is the sad business of this kind of thing that we thin the gene pool by its best and most able, aggressive, and dedicated representatives.
It was, seemed to me in Vietnam, the best of my buds who stood up under fire, went over the ridge first, stayed at the site of contact last. It fell to guys like me follow them… and, sadly, to survive them out here where I bear the double shame of not being their worthy and of living among those who neither went out, nor went after. Now I see my best students go out, then come back bearing that same shame over outliving their bros and returning to this anthill of weaker citizens, “blinding and pinching and fucking,” as I think T.E. Lawrence said in his “Mint”; “filching their lucre and gulping their stale beer,” as I think Conrad says on last page of “Heart.” So it goes…” AFF
“Pro Patria.”
Pat Lang
Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann (interview), CNN and Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room (interview), PBS’s Newshour, NPR’s “All Things Considered,” (interview), and more .
Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV
Recommended Books || More BooTrib Posts
Novel: The Butcher’s Cleaver (download free by chapter, PDF format)
“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2
Please let Paul and Christopher’s family know how sorry we all are.
It will be terribly sad the night I see his photo at the end of PBS Newshour. 🙁
If the family puts up a public guestbook on a Web site, such as legacy.com, please send us the URL so we can thank Christopher for his service.
(Alan, with your gifts for poetry and teaching, it is good you followed in battle … we need great writers more than ever, perhaps more than ever in the history of our country.)
such a fine soul as one who would return for his guys and try to do what he could do to aid them all in making it through this. All that I can offer is a tear.
This brings me to tears. I am so sorry.
But I also thank Christopher so much for his service. May he and his family find peace.
I am sorry for the loss of this dedicated and fine soldier. Our nation grieves for his family and friends. I live a mile from where he will be buried and it is somber when I look upon the graves of these soldiers daily and think of the sacrifices they have made for us.
But his death was needless in my opinion. This was a war of choice by this administration for domestic political purposes, not of necessity, to parrot Madeline Albright. Saddam the brutal dictator is gone, but on the whole, the Iraqi people are not better off in terms of infrastructure, education, medical care, and women’s rights. Christopher didn’t die to secure democracy for Iraq, but for crony capitalism benefitting US defense contractors.
CPT Petty’s sons should know that their dad died a hero because he did his duty and was committed to his fellow soldiers. I hope they also learn that the men responsible for sending their Dad to Iraq were selfish, shortsighted, greedy, power hungry meglomaniacs who cared little for the true costs of this war in human lives and monetary terms.
It is evident that this young man was a good leader of/in his chosen profession. I have served under both kind of leaders. Thank goodness the best of the leaders have been there for their subordinates. I am relieved to know of his standards and ethics and morale`s. He most certainly was a good man to have as a leader.
Thank you, Pat, for sharing this with us here. We (if I may speak for others)are all sorry for the loss and give the most support we can muster for these kinds of good ppl. I send my sympathy to his family and to you for his extended family. This just goes to show how extended this loss can go. NO matter how one feels about the military, you and I both know that they are filled with good men and women, that we all should give great honor in having serving us as a country.
The leadership, higher up, is the problem in my honest opinion. But my opining here will not make it easer to accept the sorrow felt by us all at this one mans loss. It just should not have happened this way for many.
Give the family my words of sorrow for them, as I do know it will not make it easier to accept for the future of the healing process that needs to come.
Another loss for so many that was senseless. For what noble cause?
I am sorry for your friend’s loss, Pat.
And I am sorry for the families of the 10 other soldiers that died yesterday in Iraq.
I hope we can get them almost all home this year.
May God damn the souls of those who sent this good man there to die in an ignoble cause.
May they rot in hell for all eternity.
We have not fought in a valid war since W.W. II.
How many tens of thousands of American lives will be lost…as you say, the best and the bravest of us on some levels, many of them…in service to the absurd idea that we deserve more than the lot that is granted to the “inferior races”?
The “others”.
How many more?
How many literally millions of American lives will be forever shadowed by the vain deaths of their loved ones?
How many millions of MUSLIMS will have been killed in this foolish, short-sighted and criminal war before we come to our senses?
You end your post with the words “Pro Patria“, Col. Lang.
Wilfred Owen’s famous poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” (He was a young English poet who fought in the infantry during W.W.I and was killed in battle in 1918.) ends with these lines:
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” – It is sweet and right to die for your country.
He knew.
Too late.
It IS “sweet and right” to die for your country.
For your family, for your real friends and allies.
For the ideas of human evolution and human freedom.
But it is NOT sweet and right to die at the behest of a bunch of hustlers, racists and cowards who are simply out for all they can grab at any cost to anyone but themselves.
And that is precisely why this good man died.
I would die going over the ridge with a smile on my face if it was for the defense my family, and by extension if it was truly for the defense of my country.
But THIS!!!???
Vietnam?
And all the smaller wars of colonial aggression that we have waged over the last 40 years?
So that we can drive gas guzzling SUVs and become the most physically obese nation ever to walk the earth?
Not a CHANCE!!!
I am sorry for this man, for his family and friends, and for ALL of those whose lives have been ended or ruined by this war.
But pro patria uber alles?
I think not.
I really cannot conceive of how the many honorable fighting men and women of this nation can resist the impulse to turn their guns on these criminals and frog march the lot of them out of the White House and onto the gallows.
I cannot.
THAT would be “Pro Patria“.
This is just useless, criminal and vain slaughter.
I do not understand, anymore…
What sustains this kind of evil in the world?
I simply cannot understand.
Let us pray.
AG
Because I never have to guess at how you feel about something.
True enough especially since he could edit out 90% of it — rather than making people have to scroll through two screen lengths of single-sentence paragraphs, so they can go on to read other people’s posts. 25 words or less. That I’d like to see, for once.
No fat there, Susan.
If what or how I write bores you…there’s always the mouse.
Feel free.
AG
This is all just part of a conspiracy to make me the longest-winded and most frequent one sentence paragraph writer on here.
So far, you are my first and last line of defense.
Resist!
Gotta second that…keep ’em coming.
You’re the antidote to DT’s run-on diatribes. Hell, you even rhyme sometime.
“Bet on it”
Peace
I have this vision of Susan and others who object to my spacing…hich was one of the talking points that the “Reality-Based” Taliban over at Big Orange used when they didn’t want to consider what it was that I was saying…utilizing some sort of Rube Goldberg contraption that requires many pulleys and ropes to scroll down through my endless and rude spacings. Which are just rhythmic devices, really, ways to emphasize and isolate single ideas so that they do not get lost in the forests of long paragraphs. That and a way to slow down readers who skim but don’t absorb.
Which is MOST of us, in this soundbite-sized media world in which we currently live.
There is a lost essay or book…I cannot find it on the net, and I read it LONG ago…by someone like Jimmy Breslin or Pete Hamill that had as its title something about “Essays for Slow Readers”. The point was that the author actually PREFERRED slow readers, because they took the time to absorb the material rather than gulping it down whole and excreting it basically unused.
So…
I space.
Now if I had written the above as:
Then perhaps it would have been more to Susan’s liking.
But…
It wouldn’t have been as effective.
Sorry, Susan.
Space is the place.
For me, anyway.
Later…
AG
You’re preaching to the choir,
and that lost essay sounds a lot
like Breslin to me.
The space
between the words
is as important
as the words.
Saxophonist?
Peace
Arthur,
Wilfred Owen did his duty to the end. Many of us know that our leaders are unworthy. If they were not, then this would not have come to pass.
“For 14 hours yesterday, I was at work,teaching Christ to lift his cross by the numbers, and how to adjust his crown; and not to imagine he thirst until after the last halt. I attended his Supper to see that there were no complaints; and inspected his feet that they should be worthy of the nails. I see to it that he is dumb, and stands before his accusers. With a piece of silver I buy him every day, and with maps I make him familiar with the topography of Golgotha.”
Captain Wilfred Owen, The Manchesters
Killed in Action, 4 November, 1918
Pat
Col. Lang.
I understand that many of you know this.
Limitation (Wilhelm translation of the I Ching)
And
However, even limitation must have its limitation. The loyalty of the warrior must eventually end. Blind adherence to Bushido in spite of the dishonorable actions of the lords over the course of decades is what got Japan into W.W. II.
We are headed into the same position.
Also from the same hexagram:
Brings misfortune.
When the time for action has come, the moment must be quickly seized…
And
Galling limitation must not be persevered in.
…But in limitation we must observe due measure. If a man should seek to impose galling limitations upon his own nature, it would be injurious. And if he should go too far in imposing limitations on others, they would rebel.
Therefore it is necessary to set limits even upon limitation…
It is time to end this “loyalty”.
The Prince is a devolved ruler. And the greater good calls for an end to his rule.
By any means necessary.
AG
Arthur
It is not from loyalty to the Prince that we so serve. It is from loyalty to the idea of a republic in which the leaders who you elect are privileged to call on us for service in your name. pl
.
BBC World radio – an interview and Q&A session «« LIVE Internet »»
Lance Cpl. Edward A. Schroeder II (23)
Company L, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment,
4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve
His son died as one of fourteen marines on August 3 near Haditha in Iraq.
Too much focus on dying, not on life that was lost. In terms of his father, lives wasted in a war of choice and not of necessity.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
.
CLEVELAND Ohio (WaPo) Jan. 3, 2006 — Early on Aug. 3, 2005, we heard that 14 Marines had been killed in Haditha, Iraq. Our son, Lance Cpl. Edward “Augie” Schroeder II, was among them.
Lance Cpl. Edward "Augie" Schroeder II
in Iraq. Courtesy Paul Schroeder
The words “hero” and “patriot” focus on the death, not the life. They are a flag-draped mask covering the truth that few want to acknowledge openly: Death in battle is tragic no matter what the reasons for the war. The tragedy is the life that was lost, not the manner of death. Families of dead soldiers on both sides of the battle line know this. Those without family in the war don’t appreciate the difference.
This leads to the second reaction. Since August we have witnessed growing opposition to the Iraq war, but it is often whispered, hands covering mouths, as if it is dangerous to speak too loudly. Others discuss the never-ending cycle of death in places such as Haditha in academic and sometimes clinical fashion, as in “the increasing lethality of improvised explosive devices.”
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Well, then, Oui…
SPEAK UP!!!
Feel free to call a spade a spade, a murder a murder, and treason by its rightful name as well. We have been betrayed by our leaders.
Say it loud, and say it often!!!
And don’t cover your mouth when you say it. You are right, and you HAVE the right…the God-given, human right…to speak up in your own protection and in the protection of your fellow men and women.
I have been telling people this for several years now…since Clinton’s successfully media-driven defeat.
We are at war, here.
It is an information-driven civil war.
Speech and writing IS information, and we have had the luck to find a forum that they cannot afford to shut down and really cannot control, either. We ARE the nuclear option, when it comes to information. A nuclear reaction, one ping pong ball at a time.
Say it loud, and say it proud.
“IMPEACH THESE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!”
Then try them in an open court for war crimes and treason, and publicly execute them.
It is said that capital punishment does not deter crime?
It doesn’t among the unintelligent and/or the mad.
But these people are neither.
A couple of executions would stop this shit IN ITS TRACKS here in the U.S. for at least several generations.
In it tracks.
BET on it.
(Uhhhh…seen any really big-time Nazi action in Germany recently…??? Point made.)
AG