Remember Lt. Peter Burks and price of freedom

Ralph Peters:

TODAY, the 232nd anniversary of the day our Declaration of Independence rang out in Philadelphia, we rightly honor the men who debated and signed the document: Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and their colleagues. Yet, after that glorious declaration was signed in ink, it had to be counter-signed in blood.

Without men willing to take up arms and fight for the freedoms the Founding Fathers asserted, the words themselves would have secured us nothing.

It took courage to affix a signature to the Declaration. But it had taken another kind of courage entirely to stand at Lexington and Concord the year before. Our Founding Fathers would have become hopeless fugitives, had determined soldiers not stood by Gen. Washington - from the disaster on Long Island, through the misery of Valley Forge and on to Yorktown.

Then what would our Constitution have availed us, had another generation of patriots not filled the ranks at Chippewa, Ft. McHenry and New Orleans? What good would Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation have done without an army in Union blue?

...

Newspapers run rows of photographs of fallen service members, pretending to honor their sacrifices, but really to make Iraq seem a costly failure. The images of our dead are used and then discarded by editors whose vanity and ambition would've shamed a decadent Roman emperor.

So, on this Fourth of July, let me briefly honor just one of those who fell so journalists would remain free to belittle his sacrifice:

Second Lt. Peter Burks graduated from Texas A&M, then chose to join the US Army. Commissioned through Officer Candidate School and sent to Iraq as a combat platoon leader, he told his parents his goal was to bring his soldiers safely home. Quietly religious and dutiful, Burks was proud to serve.

On Nov. 14, 2007, as the lieutenant led his men back to their base at the end of a patrol in Baghdad, a massive Iranian-made bomb struck his vehicle. Two of his soldiers were wounded. Standing upright in a hatch to direct his unit, Burks was struck in the head by shrapnel and died.

His story was one of many, notched down as just one more casualty by the press. But the Burks family lives in Texas, a long way from DC (in more ways than just distance). Instead of blaming our government, they honored their son's service even as they mourned him.

His relatives remembered how Lt. Burks kept asking them to send goodies for his troops - not all of whom had a strong family supporting them. In his honor, they set up the Peter Burks Unsung Heroes Fund, literally a mom-and-pop effort to support those who serve.

What did their homespun effort accomplish? Nothing that would impress prize-hunting journalists. But they shipped over three tons of snack food and recreational materials to their son's comrades.

So many donations flooded in that the unit chaplain in Iraq set up "Burks Country Store." Everything on the shelves is free for soldiers.

Remember how much we heard about Cindy Sheehan a few years ago, as she cursed the government for the loss of her volunteer son in Iraq? Why haven't we heard about the Burks? Or about the many other families and friends of our troops who donate their time, goods and hard-earned money to say Thank you! to those who serve?

This Fourth of July, two nations will take a holiday: an intelligentsia that despises, mocks or pities the "losers" in uniform - and the other America, which didn't go to Harvard, but whose sons and daughters insure that We, the People, continue to live in freedom.

I don't think Lt. Burks would want you to mourn him at your holiday barbecue. I'd bet he'd rather have you enjoy everything his sacrifice preserved.

Lt. Burks went to collage about 35 miles from Washington, Texas with thousands of other students. On the back way into Bryan-College Station you can drive through the lush fields of corn or cotton and pecan orchards associated with Texas A&M.

There is a spirit at that school that inspires people like Lt. Burks. In World War II they produced more lieutenants than any other school in the country. It is a place where patriots go to become engineers or farmers or other professions. That spirit lives in the hearts of many Texans who contribute to the Unsung Heroes Fund. In the birthplace of Texas where our own Declaration of Independence was written and signed we honor the original today.

Rich Lowry also discusses the price paid by George Washington's troops for our freedom.