Having a child in the military has put Memorial Day into an entirely different light for me, as I "have skin in the game" so to speak. It brings the sacrifices made over the years by those in our military much closer to home for me, and makes me much less cavalier about where we send them to fight, and for what reason, than I would have been ten or twenty years ago. It also makes me much more intensely interested in the character and integrity of those in the political class who are in charge of them.
And so, on Memorial Day I remember those who were left behind to die in the pullout from Afghanistan, and I remember those whose ineptitude led to their deaths. Those soldiers expected good faith from their command and they didn't get it, and so I remember them with honor. And I remember the dishonor those who left them there now bear. There will be a reckoning for them - perhaps not on this earth, given the utter lack of accountability in our government these days, but there is one who judges men justly, and there is no escaping his court or his sentence.
And for the benefit of the NSA reviewers, I am referring to the judgement of God, and I am not calling for vigilantism against anyone, or any other type of unauthorized actions.
So to those soldiers, who were doing their jobs in a place they didn't want to be under impossible conditions, and to their families, I say with General Patton “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.”
