Stardate 20011005.0930 (On Screen via long range sensors): Peggy Noonan's heart is in the right place; she writes to honor the firemen who died in NYC when the WTC towers collapsed. Three hundred men who went to the scene of a disaster and were killed there when the buildings fell. We surely must remember and honor them; we owe it to them to be as brave as they were. They died for all of us, and they set the standard for our future.
But Noonan compares them to the Charge of the Light Brigade, and I find that offensive. Yes, Tennyson's poem can seem like a paen to bravery if someone doesn't know the historical background of it. Once one does, it becomes clear that it was nothing at all like the firemen in New York. The "Charge of the Light Brigade" happened during the Crimean War, a misbegotten operation started by England and France against Imperial Russia in the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea. The only good thing to come out of the Crimean War was that this was where Florence Nightingale observed the horrible way in which wounded soldiers were cared for, inspiring her life's work, and indirectly leading to the founding of the Red Cross. Aside from that, the operation was a shambles, inspired by stupidity, and commanded by blatantly stupid men, and ultimately a failure. The famous charge happened at the Battle of Balaclava. The Light Brigade was a unit of light cavalry who had just observed their brothers in the Heavy Brigade make a successful (and "glorious") charge against Russian units, and were eager for a piece of the action. An order was finally issued for an attack, but it was miscommunicated and the attack was directed at the wrong target, through just about the most dangerous zone of the battlefield. It is a tribute to the discipline of the cavalrymen that the charge went home despite the horrible losses they took from cannon and rifle fire, but in fact more than two thirds of them were slaughtered and the military effect of the charge was negligible. They were wasted, simply wasted. No soldiers should ever be wasted that way; the commanders should have been shot. Noonan quotes extensively from the poem but does not quote the most important line of all: Someone had blunder'd.
I don't think this has anything whatever to do with the firemen in NYC. The Light Brigade was wasted by stupid orders from incompetent commanders. The men who entered the WTC towers did so without being told to do so. The Light Brigade was trying to kill an enemy; the firemen were trying to save lives. The Attack of the Light Brigade was foolhardy; the behavior of the firemen in NYC was among of the most valorous and selfless acts I have ever heard of. The only thing they have in common is that they died. We should honor the firemen in NYC for how they lived, not for how they died. They routinely risked their lives in order to save the lives of their fellow residents, and finally some of them paid the ultimate price for that bravery. Can any of us now refuse to do the same? (discussion in progress)
