This year's grand marshal of the Columbus Day Parade would particularly fetch their attention. He is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, a second generation American whose Italian parents arrived on these shores just before the Depression. A Marine, he is the first from the Corps to serve as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is also a fellow who has much to say about the success of immigration and tolerance here. Appearing before the Armed Services Committee not long ago, he was eloquent on the service of immigrants in the military who gain their citizenship by fighting for their adoptive country. Some 8,000 a year do this.
In that appearance Pace spoke of the hard work his parents undertook to raise their four children and of the children's achievements: a sister who is a lawyer, two brothers graduated from the Naval Academy, a younger brother who is a successful businessman. "No other country on the planet," he told the Committee, "affords so much to those who come here" as America. Then he added a line that ought to get the foul-mouthed dictators thinking. "I am still on active duty today for one primary reason, and that is I still owe those who served with me in Vietnam." He keeps two pictures on his desk. The first is of Lance Cpl. Guido Farinaro, the first Marine to die under Pace's command in Vietnam. The second is of Sgt. Matt Maupin, our only service member currently missing in Iraq.
Pace remains a soldier out of his sense of duty, loyalty and honor. On Columbus Day he will head out onto Fifth Avenue with pride in his Italian heritage and in his country, the good old U.S. of A. He will have Italy and America in his heart but he will have Vietnam and Iraq there, too. Our troops serve abroad to protect freedom and to advance it. We failed to advance freedom in Vietnam -- though the anti-war movement of the day insisted that if we withdrew, freedom would flower. A generation later freedom has yet to flower in Vietnam. The general wants to do better in Iraq, and remember in Italian, pace means "peace."