Obama closed the WWII Memorial :: 10/14/2013

Certainly, the POTUS has lost Harry Truman's desktop sign that reads "The buck stops here." While the current inhabitant of the White House, the Commander in Chief (what a ghastly thought) won't admit it, HE, Barrack Hussein Obama shut down something that doesn't belong to him. We the People own it. The WWII Memorial was reopened yesterday. Not by executive order, not by a Congress that's hell bent on proving some asinine point, no---it was reopened by Veterans of many Wars. The barricades were taken down and cast aside in a pile, giving unfettered access to the Memorial. Listen up, Mr. President. If there is one group you don't want to mess with, it is us, the United States Veteran.

For Veterans and Patriots !!

Subject: Disrespecting Veterans

Cruel politics of a government shutdown

By Diana West

Published: Friday, October 11, 2013 8:57 p.m.

WASHINGTON

While standing at the World War II Memorial on the Washington Mall last week I thought: What kind of president doesn't do everything he can to ensure that the elderly American men I saw have access to "their" memorial - even during a government shutdown?

I am not only referring to their World War II veteran status. This memorial cost $182 million to build; $197 million was raised privately (the extra money remains in a memorial fund). This non-government money came not only from corporations and wealthy individuals but also from a long list of veterans groups. Naturally, hefty donations came from the big national organizations, such as Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion and Disabled American Veterans. On the memorial website, however, you will also find listed scores of smaller donors.

So, again, what kind of commander in chief permits government barricades to go up around the privately funded World War II Memorial, even as he is informed that long-scheduled and privately funded Honor Flights of these aged veterans are arriving to visit their memorial?

The World War II Memorial, to my eye, is no beauty. It is a stone plaza, almost a giant sidewalk (and thus wheelchair-accessible) that is open to sun and sky and visitors 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. To "shut" this open plaza for the first time, National Park Service employees actually had to assemble barricades and yellow police tape.

This was no bureaucratic snafu in which these long-scheduled visits were somehow overlooked. The Daily Caller reported that Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., asked the White House, the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior and the Capitol Police to ensure that the vets would have access to the memorial. Palazzo was rejected everywhere.

"We got the heads up that they will be barricaded and specifically asked for an exception for these heroes," Palazzo told The Daily Caller's Charles C. Johnson. "We were denied and told, 'It's a government shutdown, what do you expect?'"

A lifetime ago, these seniors were "the boys of Pointe du Hoc." They took Iwo Jima, yard by bloody yard. They were Screaming Eagles, Pathfinders, Hellcats, all-American G.I.s who came by the hundreds, by the tens of thousands, from every farm town and big city in America to fight Nazism in Europe and Imperial Japan in the Pacific.

Once, they could scale cliffs, jump from planes and earn medals. Now, seven decades later, they walk slowly or need wheelchairs, their navy blue ball caps emblazoned with the name of their naval ships or battle. Long ago, they earned our eternal gratitude and respect, and no government of any political stripe or party should ever forget it.

But this is exactly what the Obama White House and the Democratic Party have done. In producing political theatrics to depict the budget impasse over defunding socialized medicine (ObamaCare) vs. funding the government, they have abandoned even these very special Americans.

It's unthinkable that any government would dishonor its veterans this way. It's not only that there was no need, no call to barricade the World War II Memorial. That a government would do such a thing shows it has no concept of what it means to be Americans with a common past.

Diana West's new book is "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character" from St. Martin's Press.