Post something you've written or read for Memorial Day.
Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.
…
I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.
–Andrew J. Bacevich, Viet Nam veteran, Professor at Boston University, whose son was killed in Iraq, in today’s Washington Post.
2 Comments
I liked this comment by Atrios today
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_27_archive.html#1632246112177636166
<blockquote>Joking aside, it occurs to me on this Memorial Day that the biggest challenge ahead is getting politicians, pundits, other elites, and to the extent that it's necessary the American public back to the radical consensus which seemed to hold between the end of the Vietnam War and September 11, 2001:
War is bad.</blockquote>
desmoinesdem Mon 28 May 11:55 PM
regarding Bacevich
I cannot even imagine what he and other parents of soldiers killed in Iraq are going through. If my kids enlisted with good motives, and bad policy-makers put them in harm's way, and they didn't come home, I would go crazy with anger and grief.
desmoinesdem Tue 29 May 12:19 AM