Memorial Day

And oddly enough, _that’s_ the aspect of the hegemony of the educated elite over the working class that David Brooks doesn’t seem interested in writing about…

(For some reason Eric believes that Memorial Day = No One Is Allowed To Criticize Our Great Leader.)

(But why talk about US troops? Look, bad things are going on at Saudi Arabia! Uzbekistan! Israel!)

I’m generally inclined to agree with eric’s opposition to using Memorial Day to score political points (something that is, however, so common as to be almost intrinsic to the event). But I think that Kieran’s point isn’t cheap, but on the contrary important and valid, and put extremely well, to boot.

I put it to you Josh, that is because you agree with him.

Keiran’s posting is riddled with contentious points, and that is why it is cheap. Save it for later.

I’m sure someone who believes their son died for a noble cause (even if Kieran thinks he died for Dick Cheney’s business plans or Donald Rumsfeld’s cock-ups), will be glad to note that you are using his death for your own purposes.

Of course, you could argue that Bush is using Memorial Day, so let’s cut Kieran some slack.

But let’s just imagine the outrage here if Bush decided not to attend Memorial Day events to avoid cheap political points being made and criticism. Guess what? Cheap political points would be made about it.

As for crocodile tears, since we are continually told Bush is dumb schmuck, who has limited communication skills, I’m less than convinced he can turn on the tears for effect. Let’s just imagine for a moment that Bush is a human being (you can insert your fashionable snigger at Bush as an ape or monkey here if you wish) and actually feels something for the men his decisions have put in the line of fire. Perhaps he has visited the wounded, perhaps he has visited the families of the dead. What right or evidence do you have to dehumanise Bush in this way?

Isn’t Memorial Day the one day you might actually give your partisanship a break?

War with dignity and peace with honor.

That so many of the ordinary people of the United States were willing to be led is an indictment of something more than the political class.
Is the op ed in today’s times by the ex marine noble, stupid, or both?

eric,
Well, I’m not sure that I agree with Kieran — I was rather ambivalent about the war in Iraq to begin with, but did support it for a time; and while I’m now rather critical of the Bush administration’s conduct (both in how they initiated the war, and how they’ve handled the occupation) I’m still not entirely sure that going to war to unseat Saddam was an intrinsically bad thing. Also, while I remain somewhat pessimistic about the occupation, I’m not sure that simply withdrawing is the best thing to do.
Also, I’m not sure that contentious and cheap are synonymous, as you seem to suggest. That would make most commentary devoted to a strong thesis — your own included — cheap. As it is, not all of Kieran’s points are contentious, though his way of stating them perhaps is. For instance, one’s hackles might rise at the term ‘flimsy evidence’; but the evidence cited to prove that Saddam had WMD did turn out to be, so far as we can now tell, misleading.
I do think that it’s cheap to say things that don’t constitute arguments, but are merely intended to shut one’s opponent up.
It’s also somewhat cheap to impute arguments to one’s opponents that they haven’t made. I certainly haven’t, and so far as I can tell Kieran hasn’t, accused Bush of being inhuman. I’ve no idea whether Bush feels remorse or not. Certainly, he projects an impression of glibness, and seems to me to have demonstrated an inability to admit to having made mistakes, or indeed possibly been mistaken. Perhaps this is unfair, but it’s the impression I’ve formed. This is certainly not inhuman, but all too human; it reflects a weakness of character, though not necessarily a lack of feeling. I also recall some complaints that Bush wasn’t attending soldiers’ funerals during the campaign to avoid the bad PR, but am not sure how much truth there is to this. Anyway, do you actually know whether Bush has visited the wounded and bereaved? I don’t, and I haven’t suggested that he doesn’t. Nor have I said anything about Bush being a monkey. Nor has Kieran.
Imputing arguments to opponents that they’ve never made also seems a cheap shot.
But I’ve gone on far too long about a statement that probably doesn’t call for such a lengthy rejoinder. Sorry to be a bore, all.

America has a fine tradition of military service and sacrifice.

Really? Which were your favorite wars, and why? I’m not sure any of Gulf II’s predecessors were more obviously moral, when one considers the casualties we’ve sustained and inflicted vs. the historical throughput of Saddam’s wood chippers. Please walk us through your math.

Or are you separating the act of service itself from the causes? If so, you could make a case that the SS served courageously.

The best way to respect and honor it is to reflect on what it means to serve and perhaps die for your country, and to think about the value of the cause, the power of the reasons, and the strength of the evidence you would need before asking somone—someone like your brother, or friend, or neighbor—to take on that burden.

It’s hard to put any faith at all in a CIA which, operationally castrated by Democratic squeamishness, failed to forecast the end of the Cold War. But the unanimous agreement of all Western World’s intelligence services, coupled with Hussein’s history of having used chemical weapons against his own people, documented declarations of chemical weapons stores, and refusal to certify destruction of said weapons, would clear my threshold.

That so many are willing to serve is a testament to the character of ordinary people in the United States.

Please convey our thanks to yourself and your extraordinary friends.

That these people have, in recent years, shouldered the burden of service for the sake of a badly planned war…

Badly-planned by what historical standard? What specific battle or war can you cite which has offers the chance to achieve so much for the sacrifice of so relatively few?

I can’t tell which are the bigger hypocrites: the Republicans who now support democracy vs. Realpolitik, or the Democrats who used to.

…begun in the name of an ill-defined cause,…

GWB laid out quite a number of justifications, repeatedly, before the first shot was fired. That you could not be bothered to pay attention is not his fault. That he chose to couch any of the justification in terms of WMDs in order to secure the support of the breathtakingly corrupt and ineffectual United Nations was probably a miscalculation. But neither could he have expected you and your ilk to follow his advisors’ chessboard strategy for peeling Middle Eastern dictatorships off of their long-suffering people to remediate the “root causes” upon which, ironically, the Left so closely focused immediately following 9/11.

… on the thinnest of pretexts, and with the most flimsy sort of evidence, is an indictment of the country’s political class.

I think your unsupported sound bite, so inappropriate on this particular day, is a much bigger indictment of your ability to draw meaningful lessons from history. How many people, having seen the damage wrought by Hitler in WWII, wouldn’t use a time machine to stop him at geometrically smaller cost in Spain?

One, at least.

Just wanted to note that Orin Jumped in:

Memorial Day is not a time to separate out which of the dead served and died for good reasons or bad; to second-guess which decisions to declare war, launch a campaign or charge a hill were justified or not; or to test your ability to invent a populist voice to make cheap shots against an Administration you despise. I’m sure there are good times for that, but Memorial Day isn’t one of them.

Presumably, Orin also would feel the same way on the Memorial Day after the US helps China take Taiwan, in the name of continuity and stability. Of course he would! It is about the soldiers, see, not the value of the cause on which our country spends citizens. That’s never been part of the dialogue.

Kieran,

I fully support and affirm what you did with this post. In fact, I wrote something along these lines this morning. The false piety of “military sacrifice” is always-already going to be deployed in favor of whatever administration happens to be in power and, almost inevitably, sending troops off somewhere or other. It’s sad that people are outraged that a powerless blogger would use this day to oppose the policies of a detestable administration — but apparently not as outraged that the same detestable administration is using this day as a way of continuing to justify its destructive and immoral policies. You want cheap? The rhetoric of the powerful son of a former president, now elected president himself and sending the poor and working class to die for his bad decisions — that’s pretty cheap. That costs him nothing at all.

It’s not those who call attention to sacrifices of questionable necessity who are dishonoring Memorial Day. Those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country are indeed noble, and all of us honor them. The politicians who mandate those sacrifices when they are avoidable, and the pundits (and commenters here) who want to declare Memorial Day a criticism-free zone for those politicians, are anything but noble. They are the ones who are dishonoring the intent of this day. And the pundits are also the ones who don’t seem to understand what it is about the US that makes it worth fighting for.

Jesus. All this objection to Kieran’s humane, sensible, compassionate post. They protest for nothing. No true honor could be sullied so easily.

Poor little sensitive Bush cheerleaders. I can only imagine the cerebral explosions they might suffer should they look at my Memorial Day post.

_No, not always. Just in the exceedingly rare case when someone tries to take a holiday focused on remembering the sacrifice of the dead and use that to try to score points on a foreign policy debate._

Well, Orin, since you realize that’s wrong, I can only suggest that you stop doing it (and perhaps apologize to Kieran for this clasic piece of projection). Expecting you also to criticze George W. Bush for doing it would be unrealistic, I suppose.

No, this is indeed not a game. It’s about people whose lives were sacrificed for the games of politicians. And about people who claim to think that exempting those politicians from criticism somehow honors those dead. Shame on you.

Steve,

What points am I trying to make in a foreign policy debate? I am confused.

Orin

Orin – if you want to make this criticism stick at all, I think you need to make the basis for your claims a lot clearer. Some more-or-less-connected questions:
(1) Are you saying that it’s necessarily wrong to reflect on the connection between the meaning of Memorial day and topical questions of foreign policy? Is so, why?
(2)Or alternatively, are you claiming that the only appropriate reflections on Memorial Day are those that bring the US together, rather than those that people disagree on? Again, why?
(3) Or that divisive reflection is OK, but that Kieran is in some way being disingenuous or politically manipulative by framing the issues in the way that he does? Again, why and how?
(4) Or is there some other possiblejustification of your criticism that I’m not thinking of?
(5) Why is it “point scoring” to connect otherwise entirely legitimate observations on the war in Iraq to a set of patriotic values?
(6) What makes this more or less inappropriate “point scoring” than, say, connecting your criticism of the way that the American political class has behaved on Iraq to any other set of commonly held values (say on human rights, just war etc)?
(7)Do you view Kieran’s argument as being less appropriate (I suspect, perhaps incorrectly, that you do) than Bush’s speech today? If so, why?

Here’s the crux of the matter; Memorial Day is supposed to be about honoring America’s veterans. Period.

To use it as a spring board to critique the present administration is just bad etiquette.

Had the post started out as saying “I think M’ Day is a great time to discuss this administration and what they’re costing our young Americans” or some such method, that would be a different story.

But the post took a purposefully solemn tone at the start only to segue into some political wrangling.

It’s a cheap stunt. The intent was obviously more about stirring things up than an actual discussion of the present administration.

_To use it as a spring board to critique the present administration is just bad etiquette._ But for the present administration to use it as a springboard to bolster support for its policies is good etiquette? That’s just laughable.

Memorial Day is supposed to be about honoring America’s veterans.

Wrong.

Memorial Day is about honoring war dead. One cannot honor the dead by glossing over that which they died for. And if they gave their lives in good faith as a result of lies on the part of their leaders, it detracts not one iota from their sacrifice and their honor to say so.

First, in response to Henry:

Re (1)-(6), maybe my view is idiosyncratic, but I have generally understood Memorial Day as a day to honor the dead. It’s not about politics, or whether any particular Presidential or military decisions were right or wrong. As you know, I struggled then and still struggle with the decision to go to war; it’s not a decision with which I have ever been comfortable. Still, I see the holiday as a time to put those questions aside for a bit. I don’t think it means that we should condemn all talk of politics on Memorial Day, but I think it imposes a duty to address politics in a particularly sensitive way. Standards for sensitivity can vary, I suppose, but I don’t think Kieran’s post satisfies that standard.

Re (7), I tried to find a copy of the full text of Bush’s speech, but couldn’t, and it’s a bit hard to know from the press report alone if or to what extent the same criticism should apply to Bush. If Bush used his speech as an opportunity to argue in favor of his decisions to go to war, however, (or, for that matter, to push social security reform or advance any other cause) instead of honoring the sacifice of our troops, then yes, I think he should be criticized for that.

In response to Steve:

I am trying to make exactly the same point as Armed Liberal in comment #25. I don’t know why Armed Liberal deserves “great credit” for making the point while I deserve “shame.” Perhaps I am missing some meaning you are drawing from my post that I didn’t intend? In any event, I’m with AL on this one.

Eric translated: Don’t use Memorial Day to make me think about the war going on right now.

In a sense, yes. Memorial Day is about the soldiers, not the war.

And about people who claim to think that exempting those politicians from criticism somehow honors those dead.

Gosh, Steve, you’re right. Telling families of the dead at the time set aside for a memorial that all the people being memorialized died for nothing (or “the games of politicians”) is a great way to honor them. Why don’t you go hang out at a funeral home and try that? See whether people agree.

Perhaps you could start by finding a funeral of a police officer killed in a drug raid and tell his family that the War on Drugs is a waste.

Gosh, David, you’re right. Obviously the way to honor them is to get more soldiers killed so that we can try to argue that those who died previously didn’t die in vain. Which, as Bob Duckles has already pointed out, has always been the deeply sick dynamic at work in prolonging wars. But let’s not talk about that lest we upset the prowar folks. That would be far worse than sending future soldiers to unnecessary deaths, wouldn’t it.

Oh, by the way, do try your little spiel on one of the many families who have lost loved ones in this war and who want to end it, and to work against the starting of future wars of discretion, so that other families won’t have to face a similar avoidable loss. They’ll be a lot less polite than I was, I’m afraid.

Memorial Day has its roots in Decoration Day, inaugurated to commemorate Civil War dead. I had hoped to find some basic generosity of spirit toward the vanquished in the original declaration,

http://www.usmemorialday.org/order11.html

but the wording is pretty clear: if you were a Confederate soldier, you didn’t count. The South had its own observance days (starting from even before the end of that conflict), and still does in some Southern states.

Call it a cheap shot if you like, or an overextrapolation from Order 11, but I think this whole Memorial Day idea seems to have gotten off on the wrong foot, and has mostly hobbled along on that foot ever since. Isn’t it time to cast aside the moral crutches of nationalism (successful or failed) and put some weight on the untried foot? A more honest way to look at the problem of how to honor war dead would take into account that wars are caused by human stupidity. If someone fights valiantly to the death for what he believes in, and what he believes in happens to be wrong, is that any cause for dishonor? Has any rank-and-file soldier ever flung himself with a full-throated roar into a lethal fray thinking, “I must do this so that my people can win and thus go back to being cynical, self-serving and evil *full-time*, relieved of the wearying obstacles and distractions this enemy now presents to those all-important goals”? Somehow, I don’t think so.

I think any true Memorial Day, any honest accounting, would not be so much about honor, much less glory, but about reflection. Memorial Day parades would include the Confederate flag — not as a way to honor the Confederacy, only to acknowledge those who also lost their lives. We would invite the relatives and surviving co-combatants (or their descendents) of war dead from all foreign wars as well, to march under the same flags the fallen soldiers served under, whether erstwhile friend or erstwhile foe. Would this mean some Germans carrying a Nazi flag? Yes. That might make most people’s skin crawl, but it would be very much to the point: that soldiers fight and die for nations, both right AND wrong, and if we don’t think about root causes, we may never see an end to it.

Steve, what you don’t get is that Memorial Day isn’t (supposed to be) about you trying to make yourself feel morally superior to the president. It’s about the soldiers who have died.

Nobody is trying to silence the debate. (Nobody could, even if he wanted to; it’s been going on ad nauseam for three and a half years now.) The issue here is called “manners”. There’s a time for a debate, and there’s a time not to have a debate. At the memorial for the dead person is not the time to debate the morality of the situation that led to his death.

I’m always amazed at how utterly humorless and pedantic the so-called “reasonable” rightwing blog followers are. It’s painful to read their self-righteous posturing. Jesus, they take themselves seriously.

Nothing brings them flying in like the chance to act morally superior.

Perhaps you could start by finding a funeral of a police officer killed in a drug raid and tell his family that the War on Drugs is a waste.

If you want to troll, find one that is at least moderately on topic. Please, the poor quality kills me – I expect better from Memorial Day CT flamewars.

I think I agree more with Healy than with Kerr, but I can’t help wishing to see Memorial Day as a solemn reflection on the contemporary form of human sacrifice called “war,” one that we (as a species) continue to practice, perhaps because we see no better alternative, perhaps because we haven’t tried.

In that sense, however horrible & misdirected this particular war was, it shares those qualities with all wars. To that extent, arguing over whether the sacrificed lives in this particular war were sacrificed in a good cause or not … for the right reasons or not … does seem to miss the point.

(Please don’t mistake this sentiment for naive pacifism. But except for sociopaths who delight in war, surely we all must regret that wars occur, and that young people go off to fight them and die in the process.)

The purpose of Memorial Day is to honor those who’ve given there lives in our country’s wars. And so, on Memorial Day, President Bush said something along these lines: The best way to honor the troops who’ve died in Iraq is to complete the mission.

That’s not an exact quote, but I think it accurately expresses his statement. And it seems at first to be obviously true. We’re in the war; brave men and women have given their lives for our goals there; we must finish the job.

But it is, without question, a political statement. The implicit logic is that any war started must be continued until victory is secured. Otherwise, each life lost is lost in vain.

That clearly rejects the view of many commenters above that the political goal of war is immaterial to the sacrifice given by our war dead — President Bush has, today, linked them irrevocably.

And what is “victory” in a war? Well — just to offer a hypothetical — it might constitute the destruction of weapons-of-mass-destruction possessed by a tyrant.

Oh — wait — the tyrant-in-question might not have weapons of mass destruction.

Okay, yes, but that wasn’t the reason for the war — the REAL reason was democratization of the Arab world. (That’s a do-able project, right?)

But whatever. Really, who cares about all that stuff? The point is, the war’s underway, soldiers have died. There’s no going back.

The Iraq war must be continued, at whatever cost, however long it takes. Why?

Because it was started.

That, according to our president, is the lesson of Memorial Day.

The setting of this discussion and much of the dialogue betrays a sharp insincerity concerning the actual war dead and those now in harm’s way.

Argue your points for or against the war, but don’t hide behind some flimsy facade of concern for those who have died and who are in the war now. You’ve got an axe to grind, grind it.

But this whole spiel about M’Day and being upset that we’re fighting an unjust war is empty rhetoric.

labone, healy et al, you are an inch deep and a mile wide. If you’re case against the war had any credibility left, you wouldn’t need to resort to such hyperbole to keep the discussion going.

And yes, Bush is using the day for his advantage but he is not framing it in such a manner to question the purpose or service of those who have already died.

Henry: Kieran didn’t pick and choose among soldiers’ letters and family histories to find those that would support his political objectives. Bush did.

And had Bush done so during a debate about whether we should keep fighting — or whether we should re-elect Bush to go on fighting, or the like, he would have been validly accused of politicizing their deaths, and he would have merited condemnation.

The issue is, I think, that you view it as unfair that one side of the debate gets to say X, while the other side isn’t allowed to say Not X. But the problem is that you’re viewing it as a debate. But Memorial Day isn’t the time for that debate. it’s simply a time for remembering and honoring those who have died. Yesterday, and tomorrow, and all the rest of the time, that debate has gone on and will continue to go on. And that’s appropriate. Just not during the memorials.

By the way, Joe, it’s called an analogy. Unfortunately, they don’t have them on the SATs anymore, so a lot of people don’t understand the concept.

I’ll give a person room to fault President Bush’s use of M’Day (see Orin’s update) but I still don’t agree.

Those that have died in Iraq are part of the Memorial Day observance. Bush is extolling the virtue of their service and reminding us that they didn’t die in vain.

Now, argue that point in context to the debate of the war. But to argue that point using the very day meant to honor the dead, regardless of the war, is crass and vulgar.

In a democracy, soldiers fight for Kieran’s and Orin’s freedom to speak out. It is our duty to honor their sacrifice and the enormous suffering of their parents and kids and demand that such a sacrifice be a last resort and not a toy for mad dogs that start a war for selfish political reasons.

I don’t understand the point that Orin Kerr and those who agree with him are trying to make. Why is it OK to say, on Memorial Day, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” but not to point out that in many cases, this is simply not true? Doesn’t it honor those who have died needlessly best to point this out, so that their sacrafices may serve to prevent the further unnecessary violence and loss of life? If you genuinely believe, as I assume Kieran does, that the war in Iraq is causing many unnecessary American deaths, isn’t the day when you honor those who’ve died then the best day to point this out?

Why do we need to honor war to honor those who’ve fought in it? Why is it a cheap political ploy to say that war, especially wars of choice, are terrible things and should be avoided whenever possible, so that the number of men and women we are honoring on this day does not grow needlessly?

Memorial Day was observed on May 30 until 1971, when Congress changed it to the last Monday in May in order to give us all a 3-day beach weekend. That staunch patriot Richard Nixon signed the law. By 1971, over 45,000 Americans had died in Vietnam, when Congress told us all that Memorial Day was a good time to soak up some rays.

So please, people, a bit less sanctimony about the inviolable solemnity of Memorial Day.

“Why is it OK to say, on Memorial Day, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” but not to point out that in many cases, this is simply not true?”

Well, Santa Claus doesn’t really exist, but it’s not OK to tell kids that **on Christmas Day**.

This was the first analogy that leaped to mind, and I mean no disrespect to soldiers/veterans by it. There are myths (neither true nor false, but necessary) and there are days on which we venerate these myths, and on which we *should* be able to stop sniping at each other for 24 hours. This goes for sniping in both directions, of which there’s far too much on the net today.

Obviously, sacrifice for one’s country is a much more important myth than Santa Claus – all the more reason to take a day off to respect it.

Or not. It’s a free blogosphere.

Ah, yes… of course, the annual Memorial Day pissing contest over the sanctity of war dead. As sad as it is to say, I think it’s true that those who sacrificed their lives in Iraq did so for a stupid cause. I takes nothing away from their sacrifice, since they gave to their country and their service, but it sure as hell takes a lot away from Bush, et. al.

Still… it does seem a bit much to say so on Memorial Day. Even above and beyond the vast darkness that enveloped me (the oil fires did their part) as I handled the Iraqi POWs, was the one that clouded around as I stood at attention listening to a scratchy tape recording of the Marine Corps Hymn and Eternal Father at a rather perfunctory and pointless funeral during the Persian Gulf War. A death that occured several weeks after the war was over, a senseless accident in the haste to bring war’s momentum to a stop. I wondered what the letter said to that guy’s family? Bullshit, no doubt. He had gotten his head lopped off by the ramp of a tank trailer swinging down while he stood unaware. But… I stood attention at the funeral, because I had missed the two previous funerals in our unit and another absence was too much to bear. So we all stood in silence… wondering.

It’s astonishing to me (well, an affront, really–not really a suprise) that sixty-odd years of post-WWII propagandizing have so muddled the minds of Americans about just what war entails. Kicking Nazi ass (as well as saving the Union and gaining our independence) is about all we’ve ever done as a country for military honor–and even that honor was well-acquainted with its accompanying horrors. All the rest: the Mexican Wars, Spanish-American War (especially the following Philippine Insurrection–they had liberated themselves from Spain on the ground, after all), the fighting in the Banana Republics, World War One, Korea, Vietnam, the 60s-80s Banana Republic Redux… just pure unadulterated bullshit. You’d think we’d have a fucking clue… but we don’t, evidently.

So… we desperately need to get one. I’m just not sure that Memorial Day is the appropriate day of reminder.

Here’s an analogy that might help clarify Orin’s argument:

“This January, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we remember the victims of ‘affirmative action’, ‘reverse discrimination’, ‘racial preferences’, ‘quotas’–call them what you will. Under these programs, many have suffered the kind of unconscionable discrimination that the Rev. King himself would never have condoned–indeed, that he spent his whole life fighting, and that is now outrageously being imposed in his name by a corrupt, demagogic civil rights movement and its race-hustling political allies.”

Now, I’m as big an opponent of affirmative action as you’ll find, but I still find something quite unseemly about the above hypothetical rhetoric. I think the problem with it is that Martin Luther King Jr., as a holiday-inspiring symbol, represents something more than a purely neutral universal sentiment (“the brotherhood of man”), and less than a specific political message (“we must all support the current-day civil rights movement’s policy platform”). Rather, he and his holiday stand for a substantial point of national consensus: the ideal of racial equality. Hence, exploiting the symbol of that point of consensus to promote a particular highly controversial interpretation of it seems, as Orin put it, “designed to get lots of people hopping mad”.

Likewise, Memorial Day isn’t simply about honoring Americans who happened to have died during a war; nor is it (pace the president) about supporting the current administration’s foreign policy–or (pace Kieran) about opposing it. Rather, it’s about the American consensus that it is generally a noble thing when America calls her sons (and now daughters) to war on her behalf, and when they answer. If you disagree with that sentiment–and there are those who do, just as there are those who reject the ideal of racial equality–then the thing to do is to argue against Memorial Day itself, not to attempt to co-opt its message by reinterpreting it in an unusual, highly controversial light.

If what Kieran wrote bothers you, maybe you should examine why, rather than just reacting. Patriotism isn’t blind obedience.

It’s worth noting that I am not an American, yet still think this is a poor post.

It is even a poor post, in terms of utility, to those opposed to the Iraq war.

It will not change any hearts and minds over Iraq, because of its exploitation of war dead. It’s a tactically short-term action that makes Kieran feel all nice and pious.

“Hey look at me I’m grown up enough to ruin a day to remember the fallen soldiers, by making it all about Bush!”

My father, who fought in WWII, was present at D-
day, was highly decorated, and served in the military all his life, always took the occasion of Memorial Day to talk to us children about the evils of war and the futility and waste of the deaths it caused. Why do some commenters here regard those sentiments as inappropriate for this day? War should not be glorified.

“Those that have died in Iraq are part of the Memorial Day observance. Bush is extolling the virtue of their service and reminding us that they didn’t die in vain.”

If they did they in vain, would they not be remembered on Memorial Day? If in 20 years, or in 50 years, or in 200 years, the general feeling was that Iraq was a mistake, would that make a difference to the fact that the soldiers died in their country’s service?

I don’t think it would. I don’t think its denigrating the dead to say that they were “lions led by donkeys”, for example. Its possible to praise the spirit that leads someone to risk, and lose, their life for their country while saying that they shouldn’t have had to take that risk, or pay that price.

Cassandra,

You’re right that Memorial Day got its start as a day of reconciliation between North and South after the Civil War. But as it turns out, that wasn’t all good. By obscuring the reasons why the War was fought, the rituals of the day went hand in hand politically with a retreat from the future to which the War had pointed. Refusing to look at the real causes and reasons for the Civil War meant looking the other way as former Confederates donned white robes and terrorized African Americans in the South.

That’s why on a Memorial Day in 1878, Frederick Douglass gave a speech arguing that “there was a right side” in the recent war. Are you willing to say Douglass was just scoring a cheap political point too? I think, rather, that he was being an exemplary patriot.

Right cassandra. Memorial is personal and emotional, that’s why it should be de-politicised and NOT used for political ends. It should be simple and about the dead. Grievance is eternal and should be respected. Something that organisations like the United States and Al Quaida apparently don’t get

The dead are gone.

They are beyond our power to hurt or heal. It is the families of the dead who concern me now. And Kieran’s words cannot have been anything but unutterably painful to them, Glenn.

For one day out of 365, can’t we just let it go? Or if we cannot even spare a thought for the feelings of those who mourn, does it not occur to anyone that perhaps it might be a tad disrespectful to say, in essence, “they died for nothing” on the Memorial of their death?

For God’s sake, let the animus go just for one stinking day and let them rest in peace. I am so frigging tired of this. You cannot imagine how tired, or how it seems to us.

I don’t quibble with Kieran’s right to say what he said. I just question the need to say it on this particular day. I would not, for all the world, have caused such pain to another. I wonder that anyone would do so, and honestly trust that it was not intentional.

bq. ““Right cassandra. Memorial is personal and emotional, that’s why it should be de-politicised and NOT used for political ends. It should be simple and about the dead. Grievance is eternal and should be respected. Something that organisations like the United States and Al Quaida apparently don’t get”

I’m sorry, but that statement strikes me as quite extraordinarily naive. Memorialization is precisely a political act, and has always been subject to the kind of political debates that are going on in this thread. Different people have different histories, different notions of the dead that they want to honour, and different political aims associated with those notions. On this, read James E. Young, _passim_. If you don’t believe me (or Young), you really should look at the extraordinarily bitter political debates surrounding memorialization of the Holocaust (bitter among Jews, as well as in the national debates in Poland, Germany etc).

I am incredulous at the self-righteous humbug of people who invoke free speech – and the sacrifice of those who died to create it – by telling people like Kieran to shut up.

As a non-American, I can’t reconcile the free speech rhetoric I’m always hearing (and profoundly respect) with the reality of US life that anyone who questions national sacred cows is spewed with vitriolic indignation aimed to silence them and nothing less.

This is just the kind of thread that stops me from blogging on US politics or foreign policy. (So I suppose the intended chilling effect works.)
I applaud Kieran and the other bloggers on CT who continue to stick their necks out to comment on US politics, knowing the opprobrium they attract for statements that are mainstream everywhere else.

“Every single supporter of the Bush administration: you killed those troops in Iraq as surely as if you pointed the gun and fired it yourself. Their blood is on your hands, and when you cling to the flag you smear it with their blood. You have dishonored your country, and your children will curse you for it.”

“Right cassandra. Memorial is personal and emotional, that’s why it should be de-politicised and NOT used for political ends. It should be simple and about the dead. Grievance is eternal and should be respected. Something that organisations like the United States and Al Quaida apparently don’t get”

Unfortunately once again this discussion has brought it home to me that we live in different countries, and those countries pretty much hate each other. We share the same borders, the same language (mostly), the same currency. But we live on different planets. My “Red-State of Being” is far different from many here’s “Blue-State of Being” and I see no end to it. Some may say: “Well when Bush is gone it’ll be all better”. Poppycock. Does anyone think things will change with a President Clinton or a President Guiliani? Not likely. Sometimes I think it would have been far better if the South had chosen to end slavery on its own with the agreement that President Lincoln would have let us go. I know I for one wouldn’t miss the Blue-States much, and I’m sure many here would say the same of the Red States. Is this off-topic for this dicusssion? Maybe. But Jesus, we can’t even agree on a National Holiday anymore in this frickin country! That’s pathetic and sad. There’s no way this debate will ever end positively or well, nothing will get solved or resolved, it’ll just peter out to be replaced by a new round of vitriol on some other subject.

“As a non-American, I can’t reconcile the free speech rhetoric I’m always hearing (and profoundly respect) with the reality of US life that anyone who questions national sacred cows is spewed with vitriolic indignation aimed to silence them and nothing less.”

Free speech is a technical, legal concept. Having government representatives shut down a press, forcibly control content, or pasing laws that allow such are contrary to the US Const. 1st amendment. Shouting someone down, telling them to shut up, parental advisory warnings, political correctness, self-censorship are just personal, psychological manifestations. The latter might be rude or inappropriate or not fair or despicable, but it’s not illegal or unconstitutional.

You have the freedom to tell the meet the “shut-uppers” with a few “go-to-hells”.

It seems rather naive to assume the only threats to free speech are from governments. There are well established bodies of work (e.g. feminist theory, the work of chillingeffects.org) that show quite clearly that the ‘marketplace of ideas’ is heavily circumscribed by private actors.

The point isn’t the vitriol per se, it’s the idea that Kieran should just shut up. Do you understand the difference? This isn’t disagreeing with an idea, it’s trying to drown it at birth.

60 comments on Memorial day about whether Memorial Day should be a time to comment on politics! I’m surprised that people were able to take that much time off from their 24 hour fasting and meditation on the nature of military sacrifice.

Its not insulting to say that an honourable willingness to die for one’s country ended up being wasted by people who valued it too little, anymore than the old phrase about ‘lions led by donkeys’ is insulting (to the lions).

I wonder how many of the people who feel as some here do have written to the Tillman family to complain about their using Memorial Day to push a political agenda.

Congratulations! You seem to be the only English speaking blog that hasn’t condemned the French for voting no in the referendum, but instead tried to understand their feelings behind that vote.

This requires both a lot of intellect and empathy. It is unfortunate that your American compatriots, although claiming to be “progressive” could not make the same adjustment and were quick to jump on the European conservatives’ bandwagon.

Kieran,

I have to thank you for a well thought-out post. I’ve thought a lot about this holiday this year, and I can’t help shake the tragic feeling that most of these men’s sacrifice was an utter waste.

I guess I have a hard time revering the deaths for instance of soliders who died brutally subjugating the Philippines to American rule in 1898. I have a particularly hard time wanting to revere what they did with the same reverence and respect I have for those who gave their lives in the War of Independence. I feel sorry for their loss, but can’t sanction the cause. I have a hard time thinking about those who died in WWI without thinking how tragically wasteful every last one of their deaths were.

Most of those who died in our countries various wars were at least individually fighting for what they felt was a good and noble cause, and I *can* respect them for that. But I think that telling people to not think about the legitimacy of the wars these men died in is a sorry attempt at trying to use their deaths to sanctify the unsanctifiable. Pro-war people criticizing you for trying to score cheap political points over someone else’s tragedy are mostly just engaging in pot-kettle comparative chromatography.

Just go to Gallipoli any ANZAC day to see that there’s no contradiction between solemn commemoration and the reflection that it was all a huge waste.

An American living in Australia or New Zealand would hardly be criticised for saying it was a waste. So why is it so offensive when a émigré from the People’s Republic of Cork says much the same thing?

Orin Kerr did a pretty good job of distracting attention from the main point of the post:

That these people have, in recent years, shouldered the burden of service for the sake of a badly planned war begun in the name of an ill-defined cause, on the thinnest of pretexts, and with the most flimsy sort of evidence, is an indictment of the country’s political class.

That strikes me as fair. Even supporters of the war should be able to acknowledge that it was badly planned etc.

“It seems rather naive to assume the only threats to free speech are from governments.”

Yes, but you must remember that in the US “free speech” is taken for granted to be equivalent to the protections of the first amendment of the Constitution; and that context (as well as the whole notion of “liberty”) is strictly the relationship between government and citizen. Although it hurts my argument to admit that contemporary Americans are rather confused on this point and many are quick to cry “censorship” outside that context.

Nevertheless, my second objection to your line of thought would be that the idea of a “right” to free speech, censorship, and related issues become very amiguous and often problematic and paradoxical when the scope is broadened as you have.

Finally, in particular I don’t find this criticism from the right hypocritical in the least because it is criticism from individuals against individuals, I do not see a great imbalance of power, and there will always be things that are generally considered impolite to say in public, and which will be rebuked–and this is right and proper.

Mona,

“Or maybe Lincoln was a cynical political hack, too.”

More or less. Of course look what Lincoln did to make sure they didn’t die in vain. He enslaved tens of thousands of men and forced them to fight their bretheren (shooting them if they refused to be enslaved). He had the army burn, loot, and rape their way through the South. He signed a document freeing slaves–but only in territory that he had no control over. I could go on.

So we’re supposed to consider this honoring the sacrifice of those who died for their country?

Mr. Healey writes: That means that they are always political occasions, and the demand that critics shut up is a political position.

They may be political, but not merely so. On such occasions the President speaks also or primarily as the Commander in Chief who holds duties to the dead and those whom he continues to lead. Reassurance and promise to complete the mission for which lives have been given is hardly an improper course for him to take. (I would add here that I am not so happy with invoking the dead in the context of campaign stumping, and believe that, at a minimum, the spouses or parents should be consulted first to learn how they feel about having their deceased loved one’s names employed in such a context.)

But when you write:

That these people have, in recent years, shouldered the burden of service for the sake of a badly planned war begun in the name of an ill-defined cause, on the thinnest of pretexts, and with the most flimsy sort of evidence, is an indictment of the country’s political class.

you are implicitly saying the fallen have died in vain. You are saying that to the dead, to their families and to the Nation. You are undermining the Commander in Chief in his promise that they have, in fact, fallen for good cause.

That is a deeply serious course for you to chart. Many reports are that 3 of 4 active military voted to re-elect their Commander in Chief in November last. You would undermine their confidence in him and are necessarily repudiating their demonstrated belief that the cause is neither ill-defined nor their battles waged on the thinnest of pretexts.

You have the right to proceed as you have, and you may be correct in your judgments. But you have a profound moral obligation to be very certain of your correctness before you tell our soldiers that their Commander in Chief is wrong and that,in fact, they have died in vain. Are you sufficiently certain?

But you have a profound moral obligation to be very certain of your correctness before you tell our soldiers that their Commander in Chief is wrong and that,in fact, they have died in vain. Are you sufficiently certain?

Who has the burden of proof here — the politician who sends soldiers off to war, or the citizen who argues the planning is poor, the pretext is thin, and the cause is ill-defined?

Of course the critic does. He is the one with a “profound moral obligation.” Behold the power of patriotism. (Note that this argument has nothing to do with Memorial Day in particular, and should be applicable to any day of the year.)

And of course what about the military families who oppose the war, and question our cause?

There are well established bodies of work (e.g. feminist theory, the work of chillingeffects.org) that show quite clearly that the ‘marketplace of ideas’ is heavily circumscribed by private actors.

This referred site is setup specifically to cmobat the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This act is an encroachment on free speech in that guilt of copyright a violation preassumed, forcing the removal of material from Web sites BEFORE rights of due process have been exercised.. The DMCA is rightly abhorred for than and other reasons.

This in no way applies to this post or these comments. No one’s right to free speech is being threatened here. Certainly Mr. Healy’s speech hasn’t chilled to the least degree.

Mr. Ellis writes Although I think you’ve elided the portions of Lincoln’s speech which substantially mitigate his (arguably) self-serving justifications, I agree that there’s a valid comparison between Lincoln’s and Bush’s speeches.

Just to defend my intellectual integrity, I elided nothing — I always note in anything I post when it is an excerpt and insert elipses when indicated. I posted the full text of the Gettysburg Address as found at the University of Oklahoma Law School’s Chronology of Historical Documents site. That site declares: This version of the Gettysburg Address has been verified against the version on display at the National Archives.

Mr. Ellis continues: but I ask you to consider where everyone’s positions would be were this debate happening in the context of a Memorial Day where Clinton had remained engaged in a drawn-out and messy conflict in Somalia and had justified a continued presence as being necessary because of the sacrifice of the soldiers. If you think that those deaths were not worth the cause for which they were fighting (as surely do many Americans feel about the few American soldiers killed in Somalia), then your perspective on the President’s Memorial Day speech changes quite dramatically. That is, I suppose that it does. I ask you to consider the possibility that it does.

The Union prevailed, and the deaths are now (largely) viewed as efficacious and worth the blood. But I can understand reasonable people at the time questioning the proportionality aspect of the war.

Telling someone that they’ve exhibited questionable manners by notching a political cheap shot on an occasion where such cheap shots are uncalled for is just a bit different than lobbing an incendiary device into a church.

Eh, thanks lurker. I know what chillingeffects.org does. I brought them up quite explicitly as an example of the phenomenon of private actors who threaten free speech (as distinct from governments), not as a direct comparison with what is happening on this thread.

Keith has since pointed out that free speech in the US context is generally discussed in reference to the constitutional provisions regarding governments. Which is a fair cop on the whole. My doubts about the effectiveness of purely formal protections for speech and other rights are for another day.

Maria,

I know what chillingeffects.org does. I brought them up quite explicitly as an example of the phenomenon of private actors who threaten free speech (as distinct from governments), not as a direct comparison with what is happening on this thread.

Not exactly. It’s private actors with the power of a bad law (DMCA) behind them. There are provisions in DMCA which violate the 1st admendment IMHO.

There is no private threat to free speech. I think you assume that certain forms of the right not to listen or of the right to disagree violate the right to speak.

Again, an unfair and extremely politically charged characterization of what actually happened here.

In your opinion.

I wonder why they call that a reductio ad absurdum argument.

You didn’t make a reductio ad absurdam argument. You made an explicit comparison. Said comparison was self-evidently idiotic.

Kieran-
I don’t know most of your work but I do know some of it; we tend to agree on most issues. While I try on occasion to read very different (in this political climate, this means almost exclusively: opposing) views, I find it reassuring to find any other sanity that defies our contemporary marketed reality. I came across your post, in fact, from reading the piece over on the Volokh Conspiracy- a site which serves (to me) as the perfect example of a reasonable and intelligent person who can’t get around the fact the people s/he supports are fostering and perpetuating the insupportable, pretty much across the board. It is not the contortions of those who attempt to define reality on matters of record that are so remarkable; it is the contortions of those who continue to defile the first while denying the second that are so spectacular. We get to enjoy some latitude bandying our “opinions” about reality these days, yet we also face incredible vitriol for pointing out that the sky is falling- it seems all the more so because it is.
Denial is a powerful force. One reflective, I think, in just how spectacularly bent out of shape many of your detractors, who were all too eager to comment on this post, seem to be.
Thanks for the thoughtful words in a painful and complex time.

This is a trifle late. But those who use the term “sacrifice” ought to recall its original, pre-CHristian context.

Animal sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean involved setting aside the meat, which was eaten by the attendees at the ceremony, which was also thus a festival.

The bones and fat of the animal (ox, sheep, goat, pig) were wrapped in its skin and burned as an offering to the gods, supposedly deceiving the gods into thinking that they received the whole offering (thanks to Prometheus).

The “sacrifice” of our soldiers in this war more resembles ancient Greek animal sacrifice than the stereotypical Crucifixion. The planners of the war get the feast — their profits from the oil and defense contracting, the re-election of Bush, etc. — and the supposed beneficiary, the nation, thinking that it is defended, is cheated.

El Generalissimo, Presidente Hereditario y Inelegido, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the People’s Army of the Theocratic Republic of San Banana, salutes Kieran Healy and the inordinately potent puppetmasters of the intellectual class.

he would approve of and contribute to a movement powerful enough to sap the morale of the military engaging in it. Such a movement succeeded in Vietnam.

Of course. When will we learn the lessons of history?

Kieran made a silly point here, the nonsensical idea that the political class that actually sends our soldiers to war is responsible for ensuring that they do not make sacrifices in vain. What a moron! You, on the other hand, see right to the heart of the matter: it is the critics of war who are responsible for ensuring the nobility of the cause. And the critics accomplish this by not criticizing our leaders. Similarly, we can all make sure that the emperor is well-dressed by not drawing attention to the fact that he has no clothes.

With power comes (or should come) moral responsibility.

Funny.

He believes that the American deaths were in fact a waste, so he cannot understand how other people do not agree with him.

That’s a common diagnosis in cases like this, but it doesn’t follow at all. It’s just another kind of ad hominem, locating the source of the problem in a personal failing of mine. I cite and agree with a pro-war blogger in the update to the post. It’s perfectly possible to debate with supporters of the war, as long as they don’t see their goal as proving that their opponents hate America, or freedom, or soldiers, or what have you.

Sometimes I have trouble deciding if you are actually disagreeing with me. I have read many of your posts over the past year. Am I misinterpreting you when I suggest that you in fact believe that the American deaths in prosecuting the Iraq war were a waste? I don’t think I am. But I will gladly apologize if you would like to clearly state otherwise. It isn’t an ad hominem attack to note your position on the very issue of discussion.

“Would the same people who attack me in the comments below defend me then?”

It is somewhat surprising that the same person who can think that this is an even-handed comment for Memorial Day:

That so many are willing to serve is a testament to the character of ordinary people in the United States. That these people have, in recent years, shouldered the burden of service for the sake of a badly planned war begun in the name of an ill-defined cause, on the thinnest of pretexts, and with the most flimsy sort of evidence, is an indictment of the country’s political class.

can simultaneously complain about being attacked in the comments by people who point out that the author’s idea of ‘pretext’ might not fully encompass the reasons ordinary people might have thought it was appropriate to go to war.

You see your own attacks as good faith efforts to engage in dialog, while you see other’s far less obnoxious comments as attacks.

You know, in my view what the pro-war supporters could most effectively do to signify their patriotism and support of the troops would be to quit wasting time posting messages on the Internet and instead go and enlist. The Army, Marines and National Guard are all seriously behind in their enlistments, threatening the success of the mission that the pro-war crowd believes in so strongly. And yet they act as though they believe that the war is noble and important enough for other people to die in, but not them.

“I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed… managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units…Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.” (Colin Powell’s autobiography, My American Journey, p. 148)

He’s talking about Ashcroft, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc., of course, but maybe this war will be different.

Ted

Ted writes: The Army, Marines and National Guard are all seriously behind in their enlistments, threatening the success of the mission that the pro-war crowd believes in so strongly. And yet they act as though they believe that the war is noble and important enough for other people to die in, but not them.

Well Ted, I’m a grandmother, and one who has buried an adult son. If you are not a member of that “dead kid club,” you have nothing to say to me on the issue. But in any event, I doubt I’m what they are looking for at the recruitment office.

Your smug certitude that all who find merit in liberating the ME from tyranny so that fanaticism might decline as a danger to the free world, causes me to flirt with language of the sort I almost always refrain from; I think you can gather what it is I’d be inclined to say. I shall settle for pointing out that I hope, very devoutly, that my grandsons are not called to war when they reach the age, but I also recall being 800 miles from them on 9/11 and fearing the entire nation was under attack.

How lovely for those of you who live in a world where the (non-existent) perfect is wielded to condemn those who can only settle for the best good.

Memorial Day is to honor all those who have died in the service of our country for the past 229 years, just not the most recent conflict, poltics aside.

Commander
Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9949

Mona, I’m not a member of any “dead kid club”, so what I’m about to say might fall on deaf ears.

I might consider this supposed project of “liberating the ME from tyranny so that fanaticism might decline as a danger to the free world” to be a noble one if it met certain conditions. I don’t see those conditions being met.

For one thing, it wasn’t started with that goal in mind, but with an endless “Saddam-bin Laden” mantra, repeated numbingly to sway those who didn’t already (falsely) equate the two. I.e., it wasn’t really about our freedom, or anybody’s freedom. Rather, the core message was about our ostensible security.

For another, if the project fails, it could lead to civil war, killing millions. There is no Hippocratic Oath in war, of course. In war, one *must* do harm. But what if we create a situation in which the damage is catastrophic. What we will say then? “Oops. Oh, well.”?

For another, if it succeeds in ‘liberating the ME from tyranny’ … well, it’s not necessarily going to lead to a decline in fanaticism. Quite the contrary, I think. Scholars on the subject of modern terrorism point out that the overriding pattern (especially for suicide bomber terrorism) is that the attackers consider themselves to be fighting in the noble cause of wresting claimed (but contested) territory away from liberal democracies. Why from democracies? Because terrorism is next to useless against police states, which are, after all, very well policed and tightly controlled. Like Saudi Arabia. And who was it I read was strolling hand in hand with one of the tyrants of Saudi Arabia a few weeks ago? Ah, it was George W. Bush.

Finally, given the possibility of failure in any such supposedly noble endeavor, it’s interesting that this administration chose a target with a plausibly-profitable but not terribly noble exit strategy: in Iraq, they can fall back and carve out a New Israel in the form of a Kurdistan that includes the oil-rich region of Kirkuk, long claimed and coveted by the Kurds and with oil reserves worth about a trillion dollars in today’s prices (prices which can only go up over the next few decades.) With all the tyrannies in the world, why did Bush & Co pick one like Saddam’s, one with such a tempting moral hazard in regional partition if things get too hot, rather than one like North Korea, which was practically bragging about having WMD capability, but, alas, has no wealth of natural resources to be extracted?

“How lovely for those of you who live in a world where the (non-existent) perfect is wielded to condemn those who can only settle for the best good.”

Hey, I would have been fine with a “best good” of continued weapons inspections in Iraq, while keeping the pressure on. We might eventually have discovered, at zero cost in “dead kids”, what we finally discovered later at a higher, and continuing, cost: there was no WMD threat from Iraq worthy of the name, and Arab tyrannies like Saddam’s have even more to fear from fanaticism than we do. Sure, it sucks when even the “best good” sucks. But sometimes it does. This might have been one of those cases. Time was, at least to people like Rumsfeld, the “best good” was going and meeting Saddam and promising military aid in Iraq’s war with the fanatic regime of Iran. Yes, even *after* Halabja. Think of that when you think of what a handsome man our Rummy is. And ask yourself: do you really trust him?

Mona —

Obviously I wasn’t referring to those who were too old to serve, although even then there are plenty of people in a position to be urging others to enlist that aren’t doing it, or they might be calling for a tax increase on their rich selves in order to pay for better equipment, etc, and they aren’t doing that either. There are certainly war supporters who don’t fit those categories, and I should have made that clearer. Certainly not “all” have avoided service, but I continue to hold that taking the position that this is a vital, crucial war for the ending of tyranny and that other people – but not me – should die for it is shameful.

The sensitivity on the topic reflects the fact that is does indeed slighlty diminish the value of the sacrifice of the dead if the validity of the cause they died for is questioned, just as it elevates their heroism if the cause is praised as essential.

And so reserving one day to put aside that larger debate seems only proper. We speak well of the dead at funerals, we refrain from telling scandalous stories of a bride at her wedding, and we call these simple choices good manners.

Would anyone approach the family member of a dead serviceman at their funeral to argue that the cause they died for was unjust, futile, or otherwise less than heroic?

Election Day is not a day to tell our soldiers they died in vain.. vote Republican!

What a bunch of emotionally manipulative hooey. Thank you, mona, for coming in and demonstrating that what all this bitching and moaning is really all about is saying ‘this should be a day on which nobody challenges my biases.’ If Memorial Day is really just a time for everybody who doesn’t support the war to shut up, then it is about politics rather than about soldiers’ lives. You can’t have it both ways.

I am open to the idea that challenging the concept of the war might reopen old wounds among military families who have gotten over their losses by telling themselves that their son died saving the world. But I certainly don’t think it’s my responsibility to tiptoe around these delusions of grandeur. On Memorial Day we honor _all_ soldiers for their bravery and sacrifice — not for their individual achievements or wisdom of their civilian leadership.

Shame on the jingoists who have hijacked this thread to tell everyone that the honor of soldiers depends on the integrity of their leaders.

Kevin,

There’s a difference between a statement being:

(a) accurate;
(b) appropriate; and
(c) productive.

I agree that Kieran’s was accurate. My quarrel is mostly with the terms in which he expressed it. Even then, it’s not really a personal quarrel, in the sense that I myself find the statement inappropriate, but more just that it should have been obvious that a lot of people would.

Now, obviously the fact that some people find something inappropriate isn’t much of a reason not to say it if there is a greater good to be served. But in this case, the exact opposite seems true: you’re unlikely to bring people around to your point of view by offending them.

NB: None of this is to say that Kieran is somehow a ‘bad person’ for making the comment. We all say thinks that offend people without doing much good coming of it. It’s simply to say that perhaps it could have been done a little better.

Can I suggest that everyone following this thread (on both sides of the issue, liberal and conservative) read the following book review published in, of all places, Pat Buchanan’s rag, American Conservative. Then read Bacevich’s book.

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_05_23/article1.html

Bacevich is a self-proclaimed conservative (and had a long career in the military before getting his PhD at Princeton and becoming a professor at Boston University) but his arguments have great appeal I think to liberals as well as conservatives.

War is either an option or it isn’t. If there are some set of factors that make war an option, what exactly are they? Using Saddam as an example:

He didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Except for the ones he had (Chemical, Biological). He didn’t have illegal weapons programs. Except for the ones he had (missile technology, chemical weapon delivery technology). Exactly how many people is a leader required to murder before war becomes justified? Then of coarse UN approval is mandatory for any country to invade another country. Except for when it doesn’t matter (Bosnia, Ivory Coast, Hati, etc).

Am I the only one missing some obvious lack of consistency in the arguments for keeping Saddam in power?

He didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Except for the ones he had . . . He didn’t have illegal weapons programs. Except for the ones he had . . .

Better call the White House immediately, James. Apparently you have access to some convincing evidence that several rounds of weapons inspectors missed — and you’re holding out on them! That’s damn near treasonous. Why do you hate America and want it to fail?

“He didn’t have illegal weapons programs. Except for the ones he had (missile technology, chemical weapon delivery technology).”

Haven’t looked into the supposed chemical weapons delivery technology (‘less you talkin’ ’bout those weedwacker UAV’s agin?) But as for the “illegal missile technology”, I seem to remember the beef being that, WITHOUT warheads, certain of these missiles exceeded the allowed range for missiles WITH warheads. (I’m no rocket scientist, but I do know that rockets go much further without payloads.)

Well, that was still too rich for some people’s blood, so Iraq began a *monitored* program of destroying those missiles. As I remember it. Correct me if I’m wrong. I guess it was some kind of perverse, evil, deceptive attempt to be appear to be acting in good faith — which only proo-oo-ooves that they really had WMD somewhere.

If one believes that the myth of Santa Claus is doing an active harm to one’s child–indeed, if people are dying because of that myth–then Christmas Day is precisely the correct day to tell your child Santa doesn’t exist.

BTW, I still believe in Santa Claus. I can discriminate between a harmful myth and an empowering one.