In recent weeks the Watchdog visited Tunisia and had the edifying and emotionally wrenching experience of visiting a military cemetery containing 2200 American soldiers who fell during the 1942 African Campaign at the outset of World War II.
We reflected upon the lives not lived and how the premature death of a single person changes the world.
These emotions would have been the same had the cemetery been in honor of the fallen from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, but there would have been another layer of emotion: anger….yes fury… at those governmental and business leaders responsible for having misled us for years in the first and tricked us into the second.
(When one reaches a certain age, sorrow is also felt for those who died on the other side for much the same reasons.)
Memorial Day needs to be more than just reflecting upon and honoring the fallen. We need to differentiate wars that were necessary from those that were not. In the latter case we need to be prepared to accept responsibility for our nation’s folly and to be angry…furious!
For young men and women to die in war is tragic; but for them to have been sent through misbegotten ideology and for purposes of ambition and self-enrichment is despicable.
Honor and mourn the fallen; but recognize and hold accountable bad leaders.
Excellent opinion piece re: Memorial Day on NewsLanc. Wouldn’t change a word. That perspective is welcome. I don’t recall hearing a number of Iraqis that have been killed. I believe it is in the multi-hundreds of thousands as a result of the war.
I read that 160 Afghan girls were poisoned for going to school last week. The U.S. drops bombs from the sky, and their own countryMEN poison them on the ground. The United States has something to do with both.