A Tenth Memorial Day — and the Inexcusable Wasting of American Lives Continues in Afghanistan

© 2011 Peter Free

 

28 May 2011

 

 

Hope has died in the crevices behind Life’s baseboard

 

The fact that human intelligence does not guard against political cowardice, and the small-souled self-indulgence that fuels it, is one of the sad facts of contemporary American culture.

 

The war in Afghanistan continues today, with its regular and predictable drip of individual lives, one by one.  A serial litany of names and human uniqueness mostly remembered only by family and close friends.  Generally for a saddened lifetime.

 

The Washington Post’s “Faces of the Fallen” continues to track the price of our strategic stupidity, evolved by now (in the face of History’s constant reminders of this war’s futility) into something murderously immoral.

 

 

Our nation has become something the Founders did not intend it to be — and neither (in our hopes) did we

 

The Constitutional purpose to having a civilian Commander-in-Chief, overseen by the budgetary arm of Congress, was to prevent unnecessary wars and the temptation to become an oppressively Sparta-like nation.

 

It is difficult to excuse this President, or these Congresses, for their casual, but knowing disregard for the men and women they are ethically bound to deploy with care, “mission” with brain, and waste not.

 

 

Allocation of mistaken wrong involves us all

 

Misguidedness is not solely the camp of our enemies.

 

Disregard for the treasure of lives is in ourselves.  The flaw makes us globally weaker than we should be.

 

 

 

The moral? — Unforced, unfixed errors narrow our futures

 

Failure to implement the obvious strategic arguments against unnecessary wars makes the continual drip of suffering in Afghanistan more painful.

 

Memorial Day should be about the past looking forward.  Perhaps we should use this one that way.