Memorial

Andrew J. Bacevich has been one of the war's most fervent academic opponents and has written at length about American militarism and the dangers it poses. He was a soldier in a brutal, unpopular war, and a conservative in many traditional aspects of the word. As a sharp critic of the Bush Doctrine, he has noted that neither Democrats nor Republicans have acted in America's best interests, and as a scholar, he has helped lend credence to his brand of paleoconservative isolationism as an alternative to the Iraqi slaughterhouse.

He is also, more importantly than all those things, a father. His son, a 1st Lieutenant in the Army Cavalry, was killed by a suicide bomber on May 13, 2007 south of Samarra. No matter your political leanings, I implore you to consider exactly what it means to "give one's life for one's country." Instead of offering my weak words to honor the dead, I hope that Bacevich's words will suffice (read the whole heart-breaking piece here):

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.

Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.

This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.

In joining the Army, my son was following in his father's footsteps: Before he was born, I had served in Vietnam. As military officers, we shared an ironic kinship of sorts, each of us demonstrating a peculiar knack for picking the wrong war at the wrong time. Yet he was the better soldier -- brave and steadfast and irrepressible.

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.

But there may be hope that this ungodly war will end, and that Memorial Day next year will not have fresh graves to mourn.