Admiral Thomas H. Moorer
America lost a great man and I lost one of my favourite personalities when retired Admiral Thomas H. Moorer passed away last month aged 91 at the National Naval Medical Centre in Bethesda, Maryland. A 1933 graduate of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, he was commissioned into the US Navy as an officer the same year. In 1941, as a member of the Pacific Air Fleet, he survived the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. During the 1950's, Moorer achieved the rank of Rear Admiral under the Eisenhower Administration and served in the Korean War. In 1964, he became the Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet during the Vietnam conflict. He later became the Chief of the US Navy in the late 1960s, and President Richard Nixon appointed him as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military post in the USA, which he held from 1970 to 1974. Here, however, begins his odyssey. A person who never wanted to fade into oblivion even after his retirement, Admiral Moorer helped in making Americans aware about the misdirection of his country's military and political policies, commenting on every major problem faced by the US government. Forceful to the end, Moorer's final public statement of 09 January 2004 took on the unspoken US double standard, where he dared to bring up the inequities and loyalties of the USA to a favoured nation (Israel). A true defender of the US, its principles and its people, he refused to cave in to the slander/libel intimidation tactics of Washington's most powerful special interest lobby.
Moorer's greatest legacy to America illustrates the measure of a leader and a true patriot, someone willing to go against meticulously moulded public opinion and foreign lobbies, and to maintain an advocacy of honouring the needs and interests of his country before all others. His death leaves a vacancy within forceful activism toward US values and true patriotism. I cannot help but note that the United States and the world will be much poorer in his passing because his stand for patriotism is a positive direction for patriots all over the world.
As a young school student back in the 1980s, I grew up admiring this honest and sincere man .
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