Organizing for America | PA Veterans for Obama: The Color in the Foxhole

The Color in the Foxhole

By Veterans For Obama - Volunteer Outreach Director - Mar 18th, 2008 at 10:24 am EDT

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So here we are. This point and time in our political debate was inevitable. This foxhole is dark, and it is deep. The fears that lie dormant within each of us now rise to challenge the positive forces that have supplied this Campaign’s fight for our humanity above our politics. In 1960, then Senator John F. Kennedy stood before his Democratic Party after a long primary and a media bludgeoning that questioned his youth, his lack of experience, his unfamiliarity with foreign policy experience at a time of war. And then there were the attacks on his religion. The fear mongering, and the accusations of affiliating President Kennedy with radicals and Communists who preached social change. He was accused of pushing America too far to fast, of reaching for the Presidency too far too fast. He was maligned for affiliating himself, and attending services with controversial Ministers who preached hope, and yes, on occasion the unacceptable hateful and hurtful speech that are borne of the scars of racism and fear JFK heard it all. Standing in the eye of a racial maelstrom, he embraced the positive messages, he looked for the common ground and he challenged America to look beyond divisive rhetoric to seek a solution. JFK preached as well, but his congregation was not a church, it was the American People. He understood that his religion, although an important part of who he was could never be used as a weapon again unifying his country. That he accepted that the American People would judge him on his deeds, and vision, that they would trust him in his own words …“To uphold the Constitution and my oath of office, to reject any kind of religious pressure or obligation that might directly or indirectly interfere with my conduct of the Presidency in the national interest. My record of fourteen years in supporting public education, supporting complete separation of Church and State and resisting pressure from sources of any kind should be clear by now to everyone.”John F. Kennedy preached about reaching beyond our history, and accepted his parties nomination as the Democratic choice as the next Commander in Chief - taking over a country in a tumultuous and divisive War with no end in sight. Soldiers across the globe stood and waited for their next Commander in Chief to speak, to remind America that there is no color line in a foxhole. That the urgency of the fight for life and liberty drown out the voices of racial divisions as if they were only a whisper on the breeze of freedom, of hope. John F. Kennedy did not call for War against his detractors, he recognized that the ountry was undergoing “[a] peaceful revolution for human rights, demanding an end to racial discrimination in all parts of our community life, has strained at the leashes imposed by a timid executive leadership.” Senator Kennedy understood the power of our possibility, and spoke of the next battlefield not only in weaponry and war, but in the social conscious of our Nation: “Have we the nerve and the will? Can we carry through in an age where we will witness not only new breakthroughs in weapons of destruction, but also a race for mastery of the sky and the rain, the ocean and the tides, the far side of space, and the inside of men's minds?” My cousin served under John F. Kennedy and he, like I, earned a Bronze Star on a foreign shore in a divisive War. He, if even for only a moment, enjoyed the vision of this great Commander in Chief that understood that color does not exist in a foxhole. Wars and Soldiers can serve as a model for the importance of moving beyond our racial divide. We have a unique perspective on the “urgency of now”, and in the irrelevancy of the shade of color of the hand that reaches into that foxhole. We must never allow those lessons learned to fall into the annuls of history as a footnote. This foxhole is dark, and it is deep, and I only trust one man to bring light and lift us up from this place. “We are not here to curse the darkness; we are here to light a candle.” John F. Kennedy 1960 Democratic National Convention Acceptance Address As former officer and paratrooper who served in Iraq under an African American Combat Commander. I relied on a White Congressman from the suburbs of Philly covering my back, and skinny first generation Mexican immigrant scanning the horizon for IEDs as we traveled down Ambush Ally together in a doorless Humvee. There are still men in Iraq, and the danger they fight in that foxhole is more than an allegory. I know what is really important in this race, and what is at stake. I hope America does as well. Barack Obama will reach out to America today, he will peer into the foxhole and offer us a way out. I will neither hesitate, nor pause, nor ponder on the color of the hand. I am ready to accept that we are one, and that our times dictate that he realize our oneness, and stride to greatness and victory. Barack Obama will be the Commander in Chief that our generation of warriors and wounded warriors need and deserve. He is our Kennedy. - Koby J. LangleyFormer CPT, USAOperation Iraqi Freedom I

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