Stardate 20030401.1031

(On Screen): As an atheist, I have few uses for the term "consecration". But it is a concept I apply to great battlefields, and to the cemeteries in which soldiers are buried. Thus when I read about a man in Normandy who wanted to use the waters off of Omaha beach to grow oysters, and to spend his time putt-putting around in his boat there, I was outraged. The lives lost on that beach, and the purpose for which they fought, makes that holy ground and holy water. It must be reserved forever, preserved from lesser use, to honor what they did and to help us remember them.

And though we ourselves benefit from what they did, those who died there gained only a small piece of ground in which to sleep forever, remembering nothing, feeling nothing. We must remember them and remember for them; we must feel for them; because they can no longer do so for themselves. They sacrificed that for us; we owe them that service in exchange.

Several people recently have sent me the following. It's not clear where it originated, or even if it's a true report of events. But it contains a deeper truth:

When in England at a fairly large conference,Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush. He answered by saying that, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return." It became very quiet in the room.

And thus has it also often been for the British, and for other members of the Anglosphere. There is, for instance, a cemetery which is the final resting place of Canadian soldiers who died in France in WWI. However, it is now in the way. At least, it is in the way of a French developer who wanted the land to put in some commercial development. So he proposed that the cemetery be relocated. You can imagine the outcry to this from our neighbors to the north.

But just as with the oyster fisherman, it showed the shallowness of French concern for the sacrifice of those men. They will give lip service to them as long as they're not in the way. They will maintain the cemeteries, as long as we pay the bill to do so. But those men cannot even keep the soil in which they sleep if it becomes inconvenient to let them stay.

And now the British dead have in turn gained their proper thanks from our friends in France:

Vandals have defaced one of the biggest British war cemeteries in northern France with graffiti condemning the US-British invasion of Iraq, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) said Monday.

Insults aimed at British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush were sprayed in red paint over a monument to Britain's dead from World War I and discovered by a gardener last Thursday.

"It was removed by the afternoon but not before a couple of coach loads of visitors had been through and seen it. We are pretty hacked off and I am pleased to say the French authorities are too," said Tim Reeves, the CWGC's representative in France.

The words "Rosbifs (British) go home! Saddam Hussein will win and spill your blood" were painted in French over the base of the cemetery's main monument - an obelisk topped by a cross. On one side was a swastika and the words "Death to the yankees."

Some 11,000 British dead are buried at Etaples, which lies on the Channel coast around 15 miles (24 kilometres) south of Boulogne. It was the site of several hospitals during World War I.

A judicial enquiry has been opened.

"Rest in Peace", we say. R.I.P. adorns many gravestones. Thousands of English-speaking soldiers who died in France to defend it, or to liberate it, apparently cannot rest there in peace. Their very presence is resented; cold and silent, drawing no breath, they speak loudly and deliver a message that the French do not want to hear, against which there are no arguments.

They bear mute testimony to the fact that the French could not defend themselves. Because of their presence and their inability to speak, they puncture French pretensions to greatness. They represent irrefutable proof that the French have had to rely, again and again, on us for salvation, but we have not had to rely on them. In the last 200 years, no English speaking nation has ever required French help to defend itself.

Tens of thousands of Aussies and Canucks and Yanks sleep forever in the cold soil of France. But there are no French military cemeteries in Australia or Canada or the US.

For this crime, for speaking the truth about French weakness and decline so eloquently by not making a sound, not even our military dead can be tolerated; the French must lash out and punish even those who gave everything they had for France.

Our war dead have been targeted because they can no longer fight back.

There can be no greater demonstration of the blackness of the French soul than this desecration. The next time France is attacked, let them defend themselves without foreign help, for they deserve none.

Update: John writes to say that the quote from Pow