Retired Marine General Peter Pace

From: Edwards, Lloyd, LtCol, USMC (Ret), CTR, OSD-ATL
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 12:15 PM
Subject: Fw: This Speaks volumes

I suspect General Pace would be embarrassed by any attention paid to this act of loyalty. History will debate his effectiveness as CJCS, but their is no debating his decency as a leader. I wanted to share with you what we saw in Washington DC last week.

After the mid-term brief, we toured the Mall and made the usual stops at the WWII Memorial, the Wall, Lincoln Memorial, etc. At the Vietnam Wall we saw something unbelievable. We noticed three small index cards at the base of the Wall.

I knelt down for a closer look and noticed that a 4-star general's rank was pinned to each card.

The cards were personally addressed and said something like:

These are Yours - not mine!
With Love and Respect,
Your Platoon Leader,
Pete Pace 1 Oct

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had laid down his rank for his boys who died in Nam just the day before! I later found out that 1 Oct was also the same day he stepped down as chairman.

General Peter Pace....A man of honor. Just a few weeks ago many Democrats called him a betrayer and a liar.

Pace said he can still remember the names and see the faces of the Marines whom he served with in Vietnam. "I never want to lose that," he said. "Under the glass on my desk is a picture of Lance Cpl. Guido Farinaro of Bethpage, N.Y., a 19 year-old corporal killed by a sniper. He was the first Marine I lost in combat. I keep his picture as a reminder that he and Lance Cpl. Chubby Hale, and Lance Cpl. Buddy Travers and Cpl. Mike Witt and Staff Sgt. Willie Williams and all the others died following 2nd Lt. Pace's orders. I can never repay that."

The day Gen Pace steps down he visits the Wall and lays down his stars to those he owes the most. Impressive

excerpt from his retirement speech Oct 1 2007

link

"Our democracy is strengthened by divergent views and dialogue about those views when that dialogue is conducted in a civil manner, in a gentlemanly way, in a way that allows people to argue on the merits of what they believe and to understand that what they believe is part of the answer and if they have the willingness to cooperate to find the right answer for our country," he said during a Pentagon ceremony held at nearby Fort Myers.

"And what worries me is that in some instances right now we have individuals who are more interested in making somebody else look bad than they are in finding the right solution. They are more interested in letting their personal venom come forward instead of talking about how do we get from where we are to where we need to be," the general continued.

Pace added that he is privileged to be a member of a military whose goal is to uphold the rights of fellow citizens who object to their leaders, but "I just want everyone to understand that this dialogue is not about 'Can we vote our way out of a war.' We have an enemy who has declared war on us. We are in a war. They want to stop us from living the way we want to live our lives.

He strikes me as a man of morals who is also probably blindly loyal. Regardless, what he did at the memorial speaks volumes.

I am in contact with several Marines who served with Pace in Vietnam. He is everything that the above cited material states and he is still in contact with the men of his former platoon in Vietnam. They have sent me pictures of their get-togethers.

General Pace also took the time to personally respond to an email I sent him in the final days of his tenure as CJCS.

Men of such honor are not fashionable these days and it is to the detriment of the nation that men like Pace are denigrated while we venerate the lowest scum our nation can produce.