a Memorial Day update

We tend to think in terms of the number of deaths .. death is final.

But the maimed will be living with their injuries for the rest of their lives, and there are many many more of them -

maybe ten times more, maybe even more than that..

I have read (don't remember where, maybe the New Pravda) that the injuries of survivors in the Iraq War tend to be

much more severe than the injuries of survivors in earlier wars - faster evacuation from the battlefield, better medicine..

Wounded are surviving with injuries that would have meant certain death in Vietnam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kki1kpFCBh0

It's not just the dead who deserve our gratitude and remembrance.

Requiescant pace.

In Memoriam

I had a middling draft number, but most of my year were taken. I reported. I expected to be drafted. I would have gone had I been drafted. The examiners rejected me: my blood pressure was too high, they said. I was not drafted.

We now have a volunteer Army. I'm not sure that's an entirely unmixed blessing. It seems to me that there's a good argument that every citizen should serve the Republic in some capacity. Even conscientious objectors could serve, perhaps behind the front lines, perhaps in front line non-combatant support roles.

But that's not how it is.

So you can look at it this way:

“The president carries the biggest burden, obviously,” Cheney said. “He’s the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans, but we are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the all-volunteer force, who voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm’s way for the rest of us.”

or you can look at it this way:

They served. They died. They are not coming back alive. Not to wives, husbands, children, parents.

Whether our troops are volunteers or draftees, it seems to me that there is no more serious decision a president can make than to commit young Americans to actions which inevitably will lead to the deaths of many of them.

The President decided to invade Iraq. The Congress supported the President's decision. We the People supported the President and the Congress.

Have the benefits of that decision been worth the lives of 4000+ young Americans, the maiming of ten times that many Americans, and the lives of perhaps ten times that many more Iraqis?

Requiescant in pace.